"You have to go now," she said, darting to the side of the bed and wrapping her arms so hard around Hannah that neither of them could scarcely breathe. "You have to go. Ooh," and a sob tore from her, and her heart beating wildly against Hannah's. Knowing with a child's simplicity that it wasn't she, Hannah, the aunt was seeking to comfort in that moment but a soul seeking its own solace, she grasped her arms around her aunt's neck, hugging so tight, she feared her arms would crack like matchsticks.
"Missy," she heard her mother call, her footsteps sounding urgently on the stairs. "Missy." Then a gentle tapping on the door. "Missy, please come out."
Rising from the bed, Missy pulled Hannah to the door, dropping a dozen kisses onto her face, whispering, "Be a good girl, Hannie; you be a good girl, now." Unlocking the door, she quickly pushed Hannah through and just as quickly closed it behind her, locking it, ignoring her sister's pleas to wait, wait, please, wait.
"Leave her be," growled the uncle from the bottom of the stairs as Clair's cries grew louder, her knocks more insistent. "She knows her mind."
Taking hold of Hannah's hand, Clair flounced down over the stairs.
"You've turned her from me," she said scornfully, chasing the uncle into the kitchen. "From since she was little, you've been turning her from me."
"You been always blaming me, still for all. You wouldn't set step inside the door when she was bawling after you. Even when her grandmother died and she was bawling, you wouldn't come. You was always brazen, and you've yourself to blame."
"You kept her from coming to me!"
"Think what you wants—but you'll not do it in this house—I'll ask you to leave," he ordered. And as if worn by his anger, he shuffled past them, crumpling like Luke's accordion onto the chair besides the window. Clair watched. Even as he reached for his pipe, she watched. He flared a match, and as if forgetting that the thing she was holding on to was her daughter's hand, she lurched forward, wrenching Hannah along with her, near running out the door.
Chapter Twelve
THE SCREECHING OF THE CLOTHESLINE pulleys and the screaming of the gulls and the roaring of the wind made nary a sound to Hannah's ears as she tore up over the hill the next morning, lying flat-belly across the cliff, and looking down upon the weather-beaten grey of the houses, barns, woodsheds and chicken coops circling the patch. It was the women's chatter her ears sought, their scandalizing tongues that made common knowledge of the most private thought or deed, rendering each soul that strolled across the patch as bare as the yellow staining the seat of their underwear as it flapped over their heads on the clotheslines. And with her mother just gone with Frankie to see Missy again, forbidding Hannah to put a leg on the beach till she was gone, and Willamena dodging back onto the patch from calling out goodbye to Frankie, she shouldn't wonder whose stains were going to be aired this morning. And indeed her ears cupped forward like a baby elephant's as Willamena started right in: "It's not much good going after Missy now. I always said Clair shouldn't have left her in the first place. My God, sure she never even went back for a visit—not even when her grandmother died, except for the burying, and even then she showed up late."
"Why would she," spoke up her aunt Nora, shoving out her clothesline, "when her uncle was trying to hire her off the same day her mother died?"
"There wouldn't much Sim could do with her," countered Willamena. "Clair was always stubborn; I knows that from serving her in the store. And now this with young Missy—poor Sim is who I thinks about."
"He's not that poor," cut in Beth, "he got a good house out of it, and what sounds to be a right nice young girl who's been caring for him like a daughter the past ten years. It's Clair I thinks about; she's worried out of her mind."
"No good to worry now, the gander's come and gone," said Prude, heaving out a bowl of slops for the hens. "They be getting more wild by the day, the young is; she should mind her own foolishness and move down here with Clair."
"I'm sure I wouldn't know what to do with her," said Willamena, in the tired tongue of one who ought to. "Missy was never one for acting sensible, all that running around and singing about fairies and stuff. Made me shiver, sir, when I heard her once—a streak from her father, they says."
"And what's sensible?" asked Nora. "She's not the first young girl to fall down, and I don't see nothing wrong with her wanting to stay in her own house and rearing it, either."
"She's the first to be six and half months and not know about it, though," said Willamena. "That says the kind of mind she got."
"I don't stand by that," said Beth. "That young one down Sop's Arm was giving birth before she even knowed she was pregnant—and there was another one—what was her name, Nory? She was eight months before she put on a pound. And sure look at Nory; seven months, wasn't it, sis—before you started popping with young Rod? And look at the size of him now."
"Seven pounds the day he was born," said Nora.
"Well, sir, at least you knowed you was pregnant," exclaimed Willamena. "I can't bide by her saying she never knew."
"Aah, sure we never knowed about none of that stuff," said Prude, coming out of her woodshed with her hoe. "I was further on than she before I caught on. And it wasn't till the cramps started did old Winnie Brett tell me how it was coming out. I near fainted, I did; thought it was through the belly button they come out."
"Cripes, Mother," said Beth, "didn't any of ye's talk to the other?"
"What other?" asked Prude. "There was none here then, only me and Mother, and Hope and poor old Char, and for sure we wouldn't going to ask Mother. And as for them crowd down Lower Head, I never could talk to them—still can't."
"I still says, sir, it's only just starring," said Willamena, as Prude vanished around the corner of her house with the hoe. "She's a strange one, young Missy is, with her talk of fairies and stuff. We'll see what's going to happen now, when she starts raising a youngster; we'll see."
"Heh, she's one for talk, she is," muttered Beth, as Willamena went inside, "when her own youngster's a bloody merry-begot."
"Shh, now," warned Nora, her tone torn between a titter and a tut.
"Shh, nothing," said Beth, "jealous as a cat, she is, over Clair."
"Yes, and talk to me about the uncle," said Nora. "I seen him for what he was that first time she went back for a visit. Not even a minute would he give her with her sister that day. And I remembers the funeral, too. Sure, she was only after giving birth three days before—what would anybody expect—for her to come and lay her out? Enough she got there at all. And it wasn't just the uncle she was mad at that day—she was mad at Missy too, whatever it was Missy done or said to her, I don't know—Alma, the postmistress, was talking in my ear. But I don't forget her face the day we walked out of that cemetery. And I haven't heard her talk much of Missy since. Till now. She's not one for talking, Clair isn't, but I sees on her face how hard this is for her. She'd raise that youngster like her own if Missy let her; I knows she would. But that's it now. Missy's determined she's going to raise it herself, and that's all anybody can do about it—stand back and let her be a mother."
A mother. Hannah rolled onto her back, sickened to her stomach. Her Aunt Missy was going to be a mother. The divinity of the blue above her might well have been grey, and the gentle June breeze a tiresome squall, for the lack of splendor beholding her world in that moment. A mother. Gone were the days of dancing around the fairy ring, of chanting songs to little girlies lying sleeping in the bluebells at night. Gone were the stories of blinded old men and gathering fairy butter and hankies written with dew in the mornings.
Of what use now were visits when her aunt Missy would be a mother, sitting and rocking all morning long, with a baby slobbering at her breasts? She closed her eyes to the sun, the wind and the shimmer of her aunt's hair rippling behind her like rays of sunshine as she danced around the fairy ring. Unable to bear her heartsickness alone, she rose, doddering down the hill.
The women had gone inside to start on the colours, and she though
t to go help her grammy Prude with the hoeing. Lynn came out on her stoop, her bangs sheared near to their roots, brazening a face already saucy with piercing button eyes and nostrils that twitched on sight. Screwing up her mouth, Hannah traipsed by, not wanting her company on this day.
"Missy's a trollop," hissed Lynn.
"You're a merry-begot," hissed back Hannah, then took to her heels as Lynn snorted like a horse, tearing around the corner of Prude's house after her.
"Here, here, stop that, stop that," Prude bawled as Hannah fell to her knees, scrambling behind the grandmother as she knelt besides a bed of greens.
"She's mocking me," shouted Lynn, skidding to a halt.
"No I never!"
"Yeah you did! You called me a merry-begot!"
"Get on, get on with your blackguarding; you're the devil's imp," cried Prude, wagging her hoe at Lynn, "and your father'll hear about this; mark my words."
"Hope now I was blackguarding—she was the one blackguarding," cried Lynn. "I'm telling Mom she called me a merry-begot!"
"Tell her what you wants—it's the logan's tongue you got; get home, get home!" yelled Prude.
"Trallop!" Lynn spat out to Hannah and vanished as Prude come to her feet, going after her with a hoe.
"Brazen as the devil, that's what they is, brazen as the devil," cried Prude, turning back onto Hannah. "Get up there, go on, get up there," she ordered, jabbing at her feet with the hoe, nudging her farther and farther up the furrow between the two beds of greens. "The tarment, the tarment; I allows your mother will tan your arse she gets home this evening—show, is that a shoot? Is that a shoot you're plucking out there? Name a God, they don't know a weed from a shoot."
"Yes I do, I knows," protested Hannah. "He was already plucked. There, I got it planted agin, now—see, it's growing."
"Fine chance it'll have; if not for ye, it'll be the sheep—it's a fool's job trying to grow a green these days—show, what's that, what's that you got there?"
"That's a weed; it got a yellow top—that's what the weeds are, right—the ones with the yellow top?"
"Show, I can't see, I can't see that—pass it here." Content that it was indeed a weed, Prude tossed it to one side, ordering Hannah onward with the plucking.
And after the old woman laid down the hoe and was sitting for rest besides her beds, Hannah paused in her weeding and asked, "Grammy, what's a merry-begot?"
The weight of her grandmother's hand whacking her on the behind jarred her a foot farther along the bed. "You bloody young thing; the dirt! I allows you'll feel the warmth of my hand on your arse afore your mother gets home on this tarmenting day—sure, ye haven't got a lick, not a lick of sense—your poor, poor mother; I allows she got her hands full with you, I allows she do. I wonder she don't take a strip off your hide one of these days."
No doubt the fates might've been more accommodating of Prude's warning if they weren't busy bringing about the greater of her prophecies. Four weeks had passed since the discovery of Missy's pregnancy, four weeks in which Clair had made several trips up the Basin, but was met by a closed door and Missy's refusal to see her. On this particular morning the wind had risen, a cold easterly, bringing with it an offshore fog that lay low on the sea, touching Hannah's cheeks with the coolness of mint as she loitered on the beach with some other youngsters and Grammy Prude hollering warnings from the bank. She heard before she saw Harve's boat as he put ashore to the stagehead, and watched as her mother climbed on top. Despite her knowing that her mother hadn't been gone long enough to do much more than walk up over the hill and then back down again, Hannah started towards her, hoping for some tidbit of news about her aunt. Her step was deterred, however, by a dark hulk coming through the fog—another fisher from Lower Head, confused by the whiteout, she thought, letting go with the last skiddy rock she held in her hand.
"Mind the rocks, mind the rocks; there's a boat coming," Prude cried out, and then let out the yelp of a frightened dog as the boat popped into sight. The war vet, no doubt, his greying hair, uncommonly long and made damp by the fog, hanging in strands across his face, his eyes sunken into his skull and encircled in a misery of red, and his skin as cracked and peeled as the age-old paint blistering the punt he sat in. But it was his coat that gripped Hannah's and the eyes of all others the way silver grips a crow's. Made of black leather, thicker than the hide of an old harp seal, and with large silver zippers gashing both sides across the breast and jutting up and down the sleeves, and with patches of fog still clinging to him, he appeared the one flung from the heavens and falling to the shores of Rocky Head on his way to hell.
"Get off the beach, get off the beach!" cried Prude, her voice rising to the pitch of the gulls screaming overhead. And as if wearing the one boot, the crowd of them took a step back as the stranger lifted his oars out of the water, rising before them as his boat drifted to shore.
"Good day to ye," called he in a rough voice, and as he made to climb out of his boat, the youngsters scattered like flankers shooting out of a blazy bough.
"Clair! Clair—tell he to wait, tell he to wait," Prude was bawling out, the flesh quivering on her bones as she caught sight of Clair on the stagehead and Harve shoving himself off again.
Too late was her cry and within seconds Harve's boat was swallowed by the fog, leaving Prude freezing in her tracks as the leather-zipped apparition wheezed, "Is there a Prudence Osmond amongst ye?" Climbing out of his boat, he made his way up over the bank with the drunken gait of a sailor. "My name's Roland Ouncill, missus," he huffed, a belly that had heretofore been hidden behind his coat spilling over the waist of his pants as he leaned over, giving himself a last shove to the top of the bank. Doffing an imaginary hat, he bowed before the old woman's stricken figure, and never had she been so joyous at the sight of Willamena scurrying towards her, her bread-making bandanna wrapped and knotted around the front of her head, and her eyes narrowing slits as she took in the sight of the stranger.
"Yes, sir?" asked Willamena, the gravity of her voice signalling her own authority.
"Sergeant Roland Ouncill, ma'am," said the stranger with the same bow towards Willamena.
"That's Prude you just met," said Willamena, offering her hand, "and I'm Willamena, from up the Basin—my father, Saul Rice, he used to be the merchant, and this is my girl, Lynn," she added, as Lynn, as owl-eyed as the rest of the youngsters, came running up and curled an arm around her mother's waist as a means of propping herself before the stranger.
"It's a pleasure, ma'am, a pleasure," said the stranger, shaking the proffered hand. "I was about to tell this fine woman here," he added, turning towards Prude who was quivering on the brink of flight, "that I come from L'Anse aux Meadows, on the Great Northern—two hours from here as the crow flies, but a fair trip in punt. Took me a while, but I allowed some years ago I was going to make this trip, come meet the folks I heard so much about." Clearing his throat, he lowered his head towards Prude and spoke in quietude of prayer, "I knowed your boy—Joey."
"I'll not hear it," she wailed, and breaking from her stance, she started running towards Beth, who had appeared at that moment from behind the woodshed, a youngster in hand. "He's the devil, Betty," she cried, "he's the devil; I seen him in my tea, I did, I seen him in my tea."
"Ohh now, Mother," cried Beth, staring wide-eyed at the stranger as she wrapped her arms around her mother.
"He says he knowed Joey, but I'll not hear it, I'll not hear it. You stay put, too, Clair; you don't listen to his yarns neither," the old woman begged as Clair touched her shoulder reassuringly, approaching the stranger.
"Sergeant Roland Ouncill," said Willamena as the stranger reached for Clair's hand. "He knowed Joey in the war. I suppose you knowed Job Gale as well, then? Clair's his daughter. She married Luke, Joey's brother."
The smile fell from Sergeant Roland Ouncill's face, as did the hand holding Clair's. "Indeed," said he, wiping it oddly on the side of his pants. "I should've seen it right off; you're his likeness."
; "I suppose you'll come in for a cup of tea, won't you?" asked Willamena, brushing Lynn off from heaving another hug around her waist. "The men won't be home from the woods camp till Friday evening, and Frankie—that's my husband—he's the politician for White Bay—should be home by then, too. He's in Cormack, seeing to business. For sure he'll want to talk with you once he gets here."
"You'll spread no yarns about his doings," Prude sang out as Willamena started leading the stranger towards her door. " Twas a dark day he left, and darker ever since. Take yourself home; we've no need a strangers here."
"Sir, she's always in a thither about something," said Willamena with a grimace. "I suppose, Clair, you're coming for tea?"
"I sees to the baby first," said Clair, breaking off from the group, her eyes upon the stranger as ill at ease as Prude's.
Hannah dragged her step, watching after the war vet and his mighty coat as he followed Willamena towards her house, and then her mother as she took the baby and was walking with Nora towards home. Whom to follow? The worried look on her mother's face won, and tearing around the woodpile to the far side of the house, she let herself in through the door and was scooting up behind the stove a full minute before Nora and her mother entered. Laying her head on a pillow, a token from cold days where she sought more precious heat, she closed her eyes, feigning sleep, her ear pinned to the door squeaking shut and Brother fussing.
"For sure Mother's nervous," said Nora. "My stomach's jittery, too—do you think he come to tell us things, Clair—about Joey? Perhaps Mother's right—perhaps we don't need to know nothing more. Frankie said he's a drunk, just wanting our liquor—perhaps we should drive him off like Mother says."
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