by Paul Rowe
“This is a grand spot,” he said.
She kept digging, uncovering and tossing potatoes in a pile as she talked. “The old man was a fool not to build down here. A nice cozy spot out of the wind, but the soil is good here, see, compared to the top of the hill. He couldn’t give up these few beds of potatoes for the sake of a decent place to live.” She looked up at the rough box of a house that sat on the hilltop. “I remembers storms when I was little. I thought a giant had a-hold to that house, shakin’ it so hard I’d be awake half the night, afraid he was going to pick up the whole works and throw it in the pond.” She stooped to toss several large potatoes onto the pile.
“The old man is not fit, is he?” she said, daring him to speak openly against her father. She knew he wouldn’t, but was pleased when he at least shook his head in silent agreement. “I used to dream about building a house here myself, but I knows now I never could, not while he’s alive.” She pointed to a purple beach rock on a recently disturbed patch of sod beside the garden. “Princess is buried right there. Died this morning. Really, this time. She was pretty well the only thing I liked about this place.”
He was staring at the ground. A longing stirred in her as she watched him fidget with the grass, then pick up a small piece of driftwood and nervously turn it over and over in his fingers, like a timepiece marking the seconds of silence between them. He seemed unable to bring himself to the point of saying what he wanted, so she decided to help him along.
“Guess what, Paddy,” she said. “I’m eighteen years old this very day. I can do what I wants now, go where I likes with whoever I likes and no one can say any different.”
He got to his feet. “Good,” he said. “Your work here is done, then.”
“My work here is never done,” she said.
“You’ve worked enough, Leona.” It was the first time he spoke her name. “It’s time you got out of here.”
He put one hand in his jacket pocket, lurched down the hill and strode across the potato beds to her side. He held out his hand to show her a small gold band.
“Here’s your chance to keep your promise,” he said.
She stared at the ring. It caught a glisten of the sun heading for the western horizon.
“What do you want spending another winter in that house when I got one in Knock Harbour twice as nice, an’ no one there but myself to look after?”
“You’re askin’ me to go live with you on the Cape Shore?”
“The Shore will never hurt you,” he said. “Nor will I. I’ll promise you that.”
She carefully touched the ring with the tip of her finger as it lay in his calloused palm, the same way she’d touched Princess earlier that day to see if she was sleeping or dead. Was there life in this? She quickly weighed an uncertain future against the hollow present, picked it up and slipped it on her finger.
“That’s it then,” he said. “You an’ me are engaged. I think you should come with me right now.”
“Good,” she said.
He turned and clomped his way up the bank, saying as he went, “I spoke to Father O’Connell this mornin’ in Placentia. You can stay with my brother an’ his wife in Knock Harbour ‘til he comes to do the weddin’ on Sunday. I’ll tell your old man. Get yourself ready, now. I made room for you and your trunk in the dory.”
With that, he disappeared over the brow of the hill.
2
Leona awoke on her wedding day to the surprising sensation of warm air on her bare arms. A genial current drifted up the stairwell, filling her room through the open doorway. She heard a crackling fire in the kitchen, no doubt made by Paddy’s sister-in-law, Katie, whose voice soon called up the stairs. “Time to get up now, my dear.”
Leona could not remember the last time she’d gotten up to a warm house. She heard the sound of pouring water as she crept down the stairs in her nightgown. She saw Katie heading to the back pantry in full flight, wiry blond hair corralled in a kerchief, sleeves rolled up her pudgy arms past the elbows. She carried a large empty pot which she began to fill with spurts of cold clear water by vigorously cranking the hand pump.
“Good morning, Aunt Katie,” Leona said. Katie turned her reddish face toward her and broke into a broad smile. The woman’s face was almost perfectly flat and round. A small button nose sat between her ruddy cheeks; an inverted half moon beneath her mouth was the only sign of a chin.
“I got a bit of breakfast laid out for you in there,” she said. “I’ll put this on the boil in a minute and that should fill the tub. You can have a nice hot bath, then, and get dressed for your big day. I’ll wait on you hand and foot this once, my dear, since forever after you’ll be tending to a man and, please God, a crowd of youngsters.”
In the kitchen, eggs, toast and thick slices of back bacon, along with a mug of hot black tea, were set out on a table by the window. It was cool outside and slivers of moisture ran down the windowpane. Leona sat, sleepily, and decided to put milk and sugar in her tea for a change. An old galvanized tin tub sat half-full on the floor, the water releasing wisps of steam that promised further pleasure.
“We won’t let this one come to a full boil,” Katie said, as she waddled into the kitchen with the pot, “or else the bath will never cool down in time. We don’t want to make you late for your own wedding.”
“I guess not, Aunt Katie,” said Leona.
Katie sat down at the table and fondled Leona’s hand. “I’ve been thinkin’ about this ‘aunt’ business, Leona. It’s all right for youngsters to call me that, but not you. You might only be a girl compared to me now, but after tonight, my ducky, you’re goin’ to be just as much a woman. So call me Katie from now on, okay? We’re more like sisters, anyway, married to brothers around the same age, right?”
“All right, Katie,” Leona said, struggling with the omission.
Katie leaned back in her chair and clapped her hands together happily. “I never thought I’d see the day that Paddy Merrigan got hitched, let alone to one so young and pretty as you. He chose well, my dear, and so did you. The Merrigans are the best crowd on the shore. They been in Knock Harbour now for over a hundred years. Old Roger Sweetman, the merchant in Placentia, he give the cove to Paddy’s grandfather years ago as a reward for all his hard work.”
“Do you think I come from a good crowd, Katie?” asked Leona.
Katie knit her brow and bit her lower lip. “A few years back your father was down here looking for a wife, and no one wanted their girls goin’ up the shore with him because he was so hard on your mother. Everyone figured it wouldn’t be long before he put a second wife in the ground. But that don’t mean there’s anything wrong with you, my love. I’m sure you’re more like your mother, who everyone says was a gentle soul.”
“I don’t think I’m gentle,” Leona said.
“Sure, how could you be? All those years, the only woman in the house with five hairy-arsed men! But that’s all over now, my dear. Paddy Merrigan is a good and, yes, a gentle man. You’ll be the best kind with him.” She lowered her voice. “The truth is, girl, it’s mostly the women you got to watch around here.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, it’s the women who comes from elsewhere, you know, like I did when I come over from Comfort Cove to marry Edward. You never knows what kind of a crowd they belonged to before they come here. You take Maisie Coffey over there. She come here from Distress ten years ago to marry Thomas Tobin. Turns out she’s the biggest newsbag you ever saw, never a good word to say about no one, and, to top it off, she’s the postmistress, now, and got her nose into everybody’s affairs. She’ll be at the wedding today, but you mark my words, she’ll have a crooked face on her and not a good word to say.”
“Why won’t she have a good word to say?”
Katie raised her hands in bewilderment. “That’s just the way she is. Never a good word about nothing or nobody, least of all poor Tommy, who got to have the patience of Job to put up with that tongue of hers. They married late, s
ee, an’ haven’t got no youngsters; that’s how come they got the post office in the house and Maisie got to be the queen of gossip. Now, I’d better stop or you’ll be accusing me of the same.”
Leona tasted the sweet tea and gratefully cradled the warm mug in her hand. She watched Katie take a small package wrapped in decorative shiny paper out of her apron pocket. “I got something for when you gets in the bath,” she said, and opened the wrapper to reveal a small bar of soap. “It’s French.”
A faint perfume scent rose to Leona’s nose, evoking an elusive and distant memory.
Katie said, “I used it one time, on my wedding day, an’ kept it ever since. I want you to use it today. It’s my little present to you an’ Paddy. It leaves a beautiful smell on your skin, all day, an’ all night, too, for that matter.”
She looked at Leona with a soft wink, then got up and tested the water with a flick of her hand.
“That’s good there now. You get in, an’ don’t worry. I banished Edward, and the youngsters won’t be allowed downstairs until you’re good and ready. Edward is over to Paddy’s helping him get ready. I believe he’s nervous,” she said, with a chuckle and a shake of her head. “God, he’s a queer hand, the way he went about it. Showin’ up here without a word of warning on Thursday with his future bride in tow, and wantin’ to get married on Sunday! How did he expect anyone to be ready, least of all you?”
She waved her hand at the tub. “Get in now an’ I’ll come back in a minute with some towels and I’ll do your back for ya.”
Leona hesitated, wondering if she should wait until Katie left the room before disrobing.
Katie noticed this and said, “I’ll probably be delivering your babies before this is all over, my love. So don’t be shy with me. We’re sisters now, remember.”
Leona let her robe drop to the floor and Katie, in spite of herself, couldn’t resist an envious glance at the pale body with its defined curves, the slender, well-formed arms, the firm thighs and ample breasts that swung slightly as Leona stepped gingerly into the tub.
As she walked away, Katie said teasingly over her shoulder, “Yes, sir, that Paddy Merrigan really got himself something there.”
After her bath, Katie brushed Leona’s thick dark hair to a shine and pulled it into a tight bun so it neatly framed the girl’s cheerful boyish face. Leona was surprised to find she liked it that way. Katie also gave Leona a plain white cotton dress that, after a little fitting, flowed evenly down Leona’s frame and masked, for the most part, the shapeliness of her strong young body. Lastly, Leona went upstairs to get her mother’s silk shawl. The red needlework in the shimmering white surface would provide a small splash of colour for the occasion. Then Katie, after getting ready for church herself, helped Leona aboard a little gig she had waiting by the door and brought her to the mission school for the ceremony.
Leona’s eyes met Father O’Connell as soon as she stepped into the room. She recognized his silver hair and bony, waxen face. She realized she’d never once spoken to him in the years she’d gone to Mass in Three Brooks. But he smiled gently and nodded reassuringly as she walked up the narrow aisle between the two rows of pews. She welcomed his silent approval and, despite her general lack of religious feeling, hoped it might bode well for the marriage.
Paddy had a white shirt, a starched collar and a narrow black necktie on under his suit coat. His throat was flecked with fiery dots from a close shave. Leona noticed dried blood on his collar. She also caught the fresh smell of his shoes, so new they squeaked during the ceremony whenever he shifted his gaze from the ceiling to the floor. But he looked Father O’Connell in the eye when the time came to say “I do.” When the priest pronounced them man and wife, Paddy put a crooked forefinger under Leona’s chin and planted a firm but pleasant kiss on her mouth. The gesture raised smiles and little elbow digs among the friends and family that were jammed into the rough-hewn pews. They were generally delighted at this surprising turn of events in the shy bachelor’s life. What odds if the girl was young! Lots of men married women younger than themselves.
Leona noticed, as she turned and smiled to the well-wishers during the brief volley of applause, that one thin, white-faced woman did indeed look on disapprovingly with her fingers knotted tightly as the others clapped. Surely, that was Maisie Tobin. Leona could see how such a sour disposition could be easily disliked. If the need ever arose, she decided, she would have no trouble winning people over to her side against Maisie.
Then she saw her brother, Vincy, standing in the pew closest to the door.
“Must have snuck in after I arrived,” she thought, “so he could be the first one out at the end.”
She saw him turn and leave, but was surprised to find him standing at the corner of the building when she and Paddy stepped out at the head of the small congregation. As she approached, he rooted around for something in his pocket.
“Me an’ the boys wanted to give you this,” he said, and handed her a crumpled five-dollar bill.
The bill lay faded and dirty in her washed and perfumed hand. She felt an impulse to throw it to the ground, but resisted for Paddy’s sake and clutched it in her fist instead.
“What about the old man?” she asked.
Vincy merely shrugged and looked at the ground. Then he added, “You’re better off out of it, girl,” before she could turn and walk away.
“I know.”
“Me an’ the boys is goin’, too, one of these days.”
“Oh. You’re all goin’ to marry down the Shore now, are ya?” Her tone was plainly saucy and she had to school herself to mind her tongue.
“No, girl. We’ll be goin’ to the States to work on the big boats. Cyril is leavin’ in a month an’ we’re all to follow in our own time, one by one.”
“What does the old man think of that?”
“Not much.”
“No, I don’t suppose he does,” she replied. She imagined the old man’s roars and table-pounding as he fought to get his way. “Who’ll look after him?”
“Me,” he said. “It falls to the youngest. I’ll be the last to leave.”
“Won’t be soon enough,” she said, disturbed, despite herself, by the brutal implication of the remark. Oh, why did Vincy have to come here at all?
“You can stay if you want,” she said, more to free herself of him than anything else. “Have a bite to eat.”
“Can’t. He said to come right back, so I better get going.” He doffed his cap to Paddy who had been standing a little apart. “Goodbye, Leona.”
“Goodbye, Vincy.”
He turned away and headed across a beaten meadow path toward the road. She could tell by the dust on his boots that he was after walking the whole way. It would take him a good three or four hours to return to Three Brooks and there’d be lots of work waiting for him once he got there. She felt a little sorry for him at the thought of what he would face in the years ahead, but mostly she remained silently thankful that it was him and not her who had to face it. For her, at least, the future would be different from what the past had been.
This thought was in keeping with one that Leona had earlier during the wedding ceremony. For despite the presence of the gaunt old priest, the intricate lacework of his snow-white alb, the sign of the cross that he formed in the air with his drooping hand, even despite the holy water, incense and candles and the fourteen hand-carved stations of the cross that lined the upper walls of the room, Leona had been more strongly aware that she was standing in a schoolhouse rather than in a church.
She hadn’t been inside a classroom since the age of ten. In Three Brooks, as well as on the Cape Shore, girls instead of boys usually carried on in school and, in some cases, became teachers themselves. Leona had loved her time in school and, though still a small child, had hoped that she, too, might be treated differently from the boys. That hope was dashed the fall after Grade Six when the old man told her that she wouldn’t be needing her cloth bookbag any more, that she must stay at home and lear
n to work. She submitted to the instructions of a come-by-day housekeeper for a couple of years, but by the age of thirteen she was doing pretty well everything herself.
It occurred to Leona that the wedding ceremony had, in a way, happened in two places at once. She had just made her vows to her husband in church. Now, she smiled whimsically to herself as she made a separate vow, this one to her future children. She vowed that not one of them, neither boy nor girl, would be kept away from school. They would come to this building, not only for obligatory Sunday Masses, but for an education, as well, and be encouraged to continue for as long as they liked.
3
The babies came in quick succession. By the spring of 1904 Leona had two running around the house and another in the crib – all boys. A fine start to the family. To further satisfy her craving for an entirely new life, she gave them first names that, as far as she knew, had never appeared on the Walsh side of the family: Nicholas, Tobias and, the baby, James. She used the popular Patrick, Thomas, and Edward as middle names to acknowledge the Merrigan side.
Once a month, on Sunday, she and Paddy appeared at Mass with the youngsters. Leona enjoyed showing them off in this way and, often mindful of her silent wedding day promise, would look forward to the day when they’d also go to school in the building.
One morning that April when Knock Harbour and the whole of Placentia Bay, it seemed, was socked in with fog, Leona woke to the sound of shuffling feet and a low mumble of voices in the yard. She went to the window and wiped the morning’s moisture from the glass with a swipe of her hand. She saw a cluster of men, dark-haired, most of them, with pale olive faces, gathering between the stable and the house; still more approached in a line across the meadow.