by Paul Rowe
Do you not see how necessary a World of Pains and Troubles is to School an Intelligence and make it a Soul?
He closed the book and placed it on the washstand. The answer to this deaf girl’s plight lay in his hands. He must convince Leona Merrigan to trust him, allow him to arrange to send her daughter to school. He would thereby see not only to the girl’s schooling but, as his beloved Keats so marvellously put it, to the very making of her soul. Here, at last, was work worthy of a politician. This elaborate conceit struck him as a bit foolish, yet, strangely, it already provided a glimmer of relief from his growing malaise, his endless, nameless longing. There was something else, too, he realized, that called him to this task, something in the fixed pale face of Leona Merrigan; a mark of tormented innocence, perhaps; or maybe just the lingering trace of the bold-faced girl she must have formerly been.
He went downstairs and told Thomas and Maisie that he was going over to Leona Merrigan’s to get himself a bottle of rum for the rest of his trip. To avoid questions, he quickly slipped on his overcoat and headed out the door.
The night was pitch black and it was pouring down rain. He realized immediately that he’d forgotten a lamp, but he couldn’t bear to return to the house, so he said to hell with it and stumbled blindly along the road. Within seconds, his feet got soaked in a deep puddle. He found his bearings a little when he heard the rippling of the river and crossed the bridge, although he could barely make out the dark surface of the pond. He misjudged the distance to the Merrigan house and fell to his hands and knees among the sods and rocks when he broke too soon from the road. He finally found the lane and stumbled up to the door.
No light came from the front of the house, but he noticed a soft glow coming through a small window in the rear linney. He decided, considering the futility of his afternoon visit, that it would be best to try and have her let him in from there. He made his way along the side of the house until he stood beside the little window clouded with raindrops.
He was soaking wet and his aching hands and knees were skinned out from the fall. He leaned against the house a moment to compose himself and organize his thoughts. He knew he could help the girl, but only if the mother allowed it; he also knew there was no guarantee she would. There were deaf children in remote corners of the country whose parents, even when learning of the opportunity, stubbornly refused to let them go away to school. Would Leona Merrigan turn out to be one of those parents? If so, he had to admit he could understand it. What could he say to convince the woman to surrender her only remaining child to an institution? As a politician or otherwise, what compensation could he offer her for that? How could he even begin to understand the suffering and loss that she’d already experienced? Most of all, he thought, suddenly realizing how selfish his motivations were, why should she give up her daughter for ten months of the year so that William J. Cantwell could sleep a little easier at night?
He leaned carefully into the yellow light until he saw her through the glass. She was wearing a plain black dress and sitting in a rocking chair by the stove. Her dark hair, streaked with grey, was pulled into a tight bun at the base of her neck. Her eyes were fixed and intent, her brow furrowed with deep ridges. There was a firmness in her waist, and a determined set to her shoulders and to the rough hands that clutched the arms of the chair. Even through the clouded windowpane, or perhaps because of it, he thought he caught the essence of her beauty; the almost boyish comeliness that lingered in her face, despite the severe lines that stress and age had woven there.
He felt foolish spying on the woman like this but, for some reason, he simply couldn’t quite bring himself to face her yet. He felt a fresh wave of that lost, desperate feeling he’d had under the bridge and realized he was hesitating simply because he couldn’t bear the prospect of another failure. But there was no going back. He had to try. He stepped around the corner of the house and knocked upon the door.
He heard her walk through the narrow passageway.
“You,” she said, when she opened the door. “What do you want at this hour?”
The subtle irony, which suggested she knew exactly why he’d come, immediately convinced him he wasn’t dealing with someone confused or mildly deranged, as Maisie Tobin would have it.
He tried to imagine what he must look like standing there in the pouring rain, slouched by the weight of his soaked overcoat, his spectacles clouded with moisture, his homburg a drooping wet helmet as raindrops ran down his face and chin. He felt like one of those crouching gargoyles he’d once seen venting water through their mouths on top of Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris.
“Rum,” she said, as she turned to go inside, “is two cents a glass and forty cents a bottle.”
He took the open door as an invitation to enter and stepped in out of the rain. When he walked into the kitchen she pointed to a chair at a drop-leaf table beneath the window near where he’d just been standing outside. There was a bottle of rum there. If Maisie Tobin was right about the way Leona normally treated her customers, he was already in a privileged position.
“Sit down,” she said.
He found a nickel in his pocket, and slid it across the table with a low rasp, then poured himself a drink with a red, skinned-out hand. He thought he felt blood trickling down his leg but wasn’t sure. It might only be some of the water that broke the silence with a sharp tic-tic-tic as it slipped out of his clothes onto the floor.
She looked directly at him from the rocking chair, her eyebrows raised as if inviting him to speak. He thought it best not to get to the matter of the girl right away.
“I’ve never had an opportunity to offer you my condolences for the terrible things that happened to you that awful time, so many years ago. Please accept them now. I know it must still be very hard for you to bear.”
She barely nodded to acknowledge his condolence, but seemed to him to accept it with a good enough grace.
“Are you gonna have another?” she said, indicating the bottle. “If so, I owes you a penny.”
“Oh, it’s all right,” he said, as he downed his first and poured himself another drink. “I don’t need the change.”
“An’ I don’t need your charity,” she said, tossing a penny on the table.
“Right. Sorry,” he said, as he pocketed the coin. He decided it might be best to get to the point after all. “Mrs. Merrigan, I know I said this afternoon that sending your daughter away to school was an act of charity on the part of the government, but let me explain exactly what I meant by that.”
“Charity is something for nothing. That’s the way I always saw it, anyway. Maybe you can tell me something different, but I doubt it.”
“Well, the fact is Dulcie has a right, some would call it a human right, to a proper education.”
“A human right?”
“Yes. It’s a right she has simply because she’s a human being.”
“Of course, she’s a human being. She can’t hear like other children, that’s all.”
“That’s right,” said William. “Dulcie is exactly the same as every other child in Newfoundland except that she can’t hear or talk.”
“Well, you say that, sir, but she talks to me just fine.”
William smiled gently to show he stood corrected. “I’m sure she does, Mrs. Merrigan. But what I mean is she has a right to go to a proper school for deaf children where she can learn to read and write and even speak like hearing children. Since we can’t provide that here, the Newfoundland government accepts the obligation to send such a child forward to an institution where that education can be had.”
He was struggling to be plainspoken and noticed with relief that she had the rocking chair tilted forward, giving her full attention to his words.
“And she has to go to Nova Scotia, is that right?” she asked.
William nodded. “That’s right, to Halifax.”
“How come they got that up there and we don’t here in Newfoundland? What’s wrong with us we can’t look after our own chil
dren?”
The starkness of the question hit William hard and he did his best to deal with it honestly.
“Hopefully, we will some day. But the province of Nova Scotia just happens to be one of the most advanced places in the world for the education of the deaf. We’re fortunate to have them on our doorstep.”
“On our doorstep, is it?” she said, with a sharper touch of irony. “Tell me this, then. How long would my Dulcie have to be away from home?”
“Ten months of every year she’s in school.”
“How long would that be?”
“She could complete a high school education in ten years.”
He saw her wince slightly, as if in physical pain.
“I realize it’s a very long time and, unfortunately, there’s no money to pay for trips home during the school year. You would have her only for the summers.”
He expected immediate resistance to this, so she surprised him with what she said next.
“My boys never got the chance to go to school.”
He spoke with even greater care, then, his voice like a shovel of gravel poured slowly into the room. “But Dulcie has that chance. I know you tried sending her to school here, with predictable results. That poor teacher isn’t equipped to deal with a deaf child. Believe me, Mrs. Merrigan, Dulcie will only get the education she needs in a proper facility.”
She suddenly hardened her tone. “How come I didn’t know about this before now?”
He hung his head and made the abject confession to the floor. “I didn’t know you had a deaf child, Mrs. Merrigan. I suppose that means I haven’t been looking after my constituents very well, doesn’t it? I’m afraid that, ever since the war, I’ve been a bit preoccupied with things. You might even say I’ve been a bit…lost.” He took a deep breath to get control of an expected flood of emotion, then looked her in the eye. “But now that I know Dulcie’s situation, I promise…” He hesitated, feeling, for the first time, an immense power and obligation in those two words. “I promise I’ll do everything I can to get her the help she needs.”
She looked at him for a long time, then asked, “Did you lose somebody during the war?”
“No,” William replied, carefully “it wasn’t like that for me. I had no one to lose, though I understand you did.”
Again, she let the silence sit until William could stand it no longer.
“Forgive me, Mrs. Merrigan. I know this is deeply personal, but the school will likely want to know who Dulcie’s father was. His name, I mean, for their records. Jim, was it?”
He sensed he was going way out on a limb here, speaking the unspoken.
“His name was Jim, if ya got to know,” she said, after a short pause. “An’ what about you,” she added, as if to challenge his honesty in kind. “What did you lose in the war?”
“I lost my self respect,” he said. “Maybe I can get it back, if you will let me help you.”
She nodded slightly to herself and seemed satisfied with the reply. “Say I goes along with what you’re sayin’,” she said. “How does it work?”
“Every September a government-sponsored contingent of deaf children leaves St. John’s by steamship. Dulcie can become part of that group. All she has to do is ask. That’s where I come in. As your government member, it’s my job, it’s my duty” – a thin film of moisture suddenly covered his eyes and he feared he was about to make a complete fool of himself – “it’s my responsibility to move the matter through the proper channels.”
His emotions continued to surge, so he quickly stood up to go. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Merrigan,” he said, his voice trembling, “I don’t quite understand what’s come over me. I’ll come back tomorrow, if I may, after you’ve given some thought to what I’ve said. Please know that I’d consider it a privilege to act on your behalf in the best interests of you and your child.”
She made no effort to soothe or stop him as he walked out the door.
3
It took every bit of the next three years to get Dulcie Merrigan in school. On April 20, 1926, William was at last on his way to Knock Harbour to tell Leona that the arrangements were finally completed.
He made the trip in the passenger seat of a brand new Fiat touring car that belonged to his long-time colleague, Sir John Crawford. The finance minister owned a summer cabin near Placentia, and when William had asked him for a ride as far as there, Crawford had not only agreed but offered to drive them both to Knock Harbour for a spate of fishing off the barachois. Crawford was especially fond of sea trout and the Cape Shore, with its little beached-in communities, was an ideal place for catching them. The offer was proving a mixed blessing, however, for Crawford also had a well-known fondness for expensive brandy. William nervously watched him take yet another nip from a pewter pocket flask.
“Something on your mind, William?”
Crawford also famously resisted any attempt to curb his personal habits. In any field of endeavour he liked to do things his own way; for instance, he was once quoted in the press as telling a politically interfering Roman Catholic bishop to kiss his arse. William knew he could be subject to similar rebuke if his unease drew unnecessary attention to either Crawford’s drinking or driving.
“Not at all,” said William. “It’s just that the house up ahead belongs to the woman we’re on our way to visit.” William was secretly gratified when Crawford eased up on the accelerator to take a look at the crumbling old house on top of Windy Point.
“No surprise that’s falling down,” he said. “Who in their right mind would build in that wind?”
“Leona’s father did. I got the impression from what little she’s told me that he was a pretty hard man. He died some years ago, as I understand it, and her brothers have all gone to the States.”
William was relieved as Crawford, at reduced speed, safely executed the sharp turn past the point. The road toward the beach was easy going, straight and flat, keeping Three Brooks pond to the right of the vehicle. Still, William thought it best to keep the banter going.
“Actually, you seem a little preoccupied, John, if you don’t mind my saying so.”
Crawford glanced at him and chuckled. “I am, as it happens.”
“How so? Care to talk about it?”
“It’s my daughter, Nora. I think she’s found a beau for herself at last.”
“That should be good news, John. She’ll be the last of the girls to the altar.”
“She will indeed.”
“It could hardly be a question of suitability. If I know Nora, she’s chosen well.”
“She has. It’s Albert Pearlman.”
“The newsman?”
“Exactly.”
“I see.”
William briefly pondered this information. The problem was obvious. Albert, though a very fine fellow and from an excellent family, was Jewish. Even for the unconventional Crawford family, the marriage of a Christian to one “not of the faith” would raise eyebrows significantly in certain quarters of St. John’s high society.
“I can’t see stopping it, William. He’s at the house continually now. Nora dotes on him and I’ve taken quite a liking to him myself.”
“If it’s any consolation,” William added, “he’s probably finding it just as difficult from his side.”
“I’m thinking of a long engagement to get everyone used to the idea, and then a quiet marriage, maybe even out of the country.”
“I think that’s a good plan under the circumstances,” said William. “They’ll be all right. They’re both fine people and I’ve no doubt they’re very much in love.”
“No doubt about that,” said Crawford, now building a head of steam as he approached the first of a series of very steep hills. “I briefly had hopes a few years back that you might take a fancy to one of the girls, but you steadfastly resisted their charms. Here you are still single at your age. What’s your explanation?”
William trotted out his ready-made reply.
“Well, John, it’s like t
his: the girls from home think I’m too sophisticated for them. I’m practically a townie politician, after all. I’d also be away from home an awful lot. The townie women, on the other hand, suspect that a politician who isn’t also a lawyer or a merchant could be a disaster waiting to happen. So, I’m caught in the middle, so to speak – satisfactory to none, and, despite that, still too willing to please myself.”
Crawford laughed. “A bit hard on yourself, William, but well done just the same. Stay as you are, my son. At this point you’d probably be better off.” Seeming satisfied with the exchange, Crawford fixed his attention on the road.
William knew it was a convenient answer, pat, but essentially untrue. The truth was he hadn’t planned to be unmarried and without children at this time of his life. He had tried settling down at an acceptable age, but things simply hadn’t worked out that way. Maria Downs had recovered from the experience, though. The grapevine informed him that she had just had her fifth child. He’d had no such luck. More and more these days, he wondered whether it was some insufficiency within himself that kept him alone; it surely wasn’t due merely to the discriminating choices of the women he met.
Or maybe, he thought, his time had simply not yet come. In his opinion there were far too many people in the married state, anyway. He wasn’t entirely convinced that it was natural for everyone to be sorted into pairs for life. But, at times, he recognized its attractions. The image of Leona Merrigan in her plain black dress slid almost imperceptibly into his mind. Over the last three years he, if not her, had felt at least a growing comradeship during the many hours they’d spent together. He’d noted their relative ease at being together despite the degree of silence that so often sat between them. Through stolen glances, he had quietly assessed her physical attractions and liked what he saw. But he also found her absolutely inscrutable and knew that he, too, was a long way from giving the slightest hint of what his intentions might some day be. On the one hand, he was afraid she would be horrified and reject him; on the other, he feared any such revelation might imperil the work he was doing to guarantee Dulcie’s education. At least he would be one step closer to completing that goal by the end of this day’s work.