by Paul Rowe
It was William’s first time down the Cape Shore in an automobile, so when the Fiat surged over the rise just past Three Brooks beach, he was amazed at the seemingly instant appearance of the lengthy coastline, the blue vista of sky and ocean that arose in one grand sweep. He noted again how the overlapping granite ridges that defined the Cape Shore were thrust into the ocean like the fingers of a giant stone hand. The day was a spectacular surprise, and brilliant sunshine bathed the entire scene in a waxy luminous haze.
The Fiat soon came to the top of another hill so steep that, going down it, William actually felt the sudden drop in altitude in his groin. This brought them into Nelson’s Brook, the first of the small Cape Shore settlements. A handful of houses and outbuildings flew by as skittish horses cantered in the meadows; stupefied cows stared at the dust tunnel churned up in the Fiat’s wake.
The climb out was long and steep and Crawford, his forehead now beaded with sweat, put the Fiat through its paces, tramping on pedals and shifting gears, smiling with satisfaction each time he felt it grab and conquer the land’s resistance.
“I could cross the goddamn Himalayas in this machine!” he cried, with a thump of his hand on the ebony steering wheel.
Not long after Nelson’s Brook a roadside shrine came into view.
“That’s Father O’Connell’s Well,” William said. “I think I told you about that old priest who had a run-in with the devil here.”
Since Crawford had a taste for the macabre that William occasionally gratified with a ghost story from the Cape Shore, he quickly pulled to the side of the road and both men got out of the car.
“It’s the little spring he scrambled to when he fell off the horse,” William said. “He blessed the water, flung it at the evil one and that, apparently, was all it took to send him screaming into the trees.”
“We should bottle the stuff and sell it,” Crawford said. He crouched and sized up the makeshift shrine. Someone had cut a hole in the bottom of a fish barrel, painted it white and placed it upside down on a loose cluster of rocks. A small wooden cross was mounted on the cover. Crawford lifted the cover and looked inside to see the tiny spring bubbling up into a small pool.
“Is the water still holy?” he asked.
“The locals certainly think so,” William said, leaning on the open door of the automobile. “Once and forever blessed. It is a spring, after all.”
Crawford walked to where the road fell off abruptly into a bank of loose rocks and twisted alders. It ran toward a cliff face that dropped sharply to the water. He fidgeted with his trouser buttons and soon sent a bright yellow stream arcing over the bank, leaving a dark grey path on the silvery stones. There was a surprisingly warm breeze. The ocean glittered into the distance.
“Maybe we should take a drop of holy water with us,” he said. “You never know, we might encounter the dark lord ourselves on the ride home.” He chuckled as he climbed behind the wheel. “How far is it to Knock Harbour from here?”
“It’s over that next rise, John,” William replied.
“Tell me that woman’s name again. Merrigan, was it?”
“That’s right. Leona.”
“And the deaf girl?”
“Dulcie.”
“Right. So you’ve made the arrangements for her to go to school. Well done.”
“Actually, the only thing I need is the mother’s final approval.”
“She’s not sure about it?”
“She definitely wants Dulcie to go to school, but it’s hard for her to accept that they’ll be apart for ten months of the year. I think she’s been secretly grateful that it’s taken this long to get things sorted out.”
“Why has it taken so long?”
“Elections, changing administrations, red tape; although, the problems in the Colonial Office have cleared up now that I’m back on the government side.”
“Naturally,” said Crawford. “It’s scandalous, really, that party politics could get in the way of a child’s education, but that’s the sordid business we’re in, isn’t it? How old is the girl now?”
“She’ll be ten this fall.”
“Oh well, that’s a good age.”
William smiled. “It is, as it turns out. The school likes the students to be a little older, especially when they come from far away. But there’s no more time to lose. Dulcie can only stay at the school for ten years, so she’s got to get cracking if she wants to complete a high school education, which, if she goes, is what Leona wants. She’s made no bones about that.”
“You did say it’s her only child.”
“That’s right.”
“Isn’t that unusual, even for a widow, in this great Catholic district?”
“She lost three children and a husband some twenty years ago now.”
“Good Lord. That’s terrible. So, she’s remarried?”
“No.”
“Then, to put the question as delicately as possible, what explains the provenance of a ten-year-old child?”
“It’s a bit of a mystery.” William thought it best to keep those matters to himself.
Crawford raised his eyebrows. “Curiouser and curiouser.”
“Leona is a good woman who cares deeply about her daughter,” William said. “We talk about that, but she’s otherwise quite secretive about her personal life.”
“I see,” said Crawford, and took a pull from his flask. “Now, let’s get going. I’m keen to know if the sea trout here are as fine as you promised.”
“They are,” William said. His taste for promise-making had made a cautious return in the last three years, hopefully with good cause. To reassure himself, he touched a sheaf of papers tucked securely inside his suit coat. He watched Crawford turn the key and push the starter button. His head flew back as the Fiat lurched into motion and made for the crest of the hill.
The special building on the far side of the bridge from Dulcie Merrigan’s house had a little cross on top and windows: one, two, three in each side. The windows were not like any others she had seen. Her eyes could not penetrate the glass, some of it coloured prettily. There was a curve and upward sweep to them, like branches on the trees beside the river. For a time, she thought they concealed some secret joy. But they didn’t. She had learned to hate that building. They weren’t nice to her there. They held her hands, palms down, on a table and made her keep them there, even though every part of her wanted to run away.
Dulcie tried opening and closing her mouth to send her thoughts to the older girl, the one who kept forcing Dulcie’s hands back on the table, but whenever Dulcie tried to send her thoughts that way, it caused unhappy faces all around her. The older girl would put a finger to her lips and blow at Dulcie, sometimes so hard that she felt the ugly wet gust of it on her face. Then Dulcie got mad. She hit and spat and smashed and ran from the once-magical building. After that, she stopped going there altogether.
Dulcie Merrigan had her own way of sending thoughts. Sometimes she released them with her arms and hands, like small birds, into the air. Sometimes she wrote upon her body and invited you to read.
There was Dan the horse, for example. Dan, whom she loved, who made her smile, who never bit her but who could be downright nasty to others, who was small and strong and loved to pull the load, but who had to be spared going up Knock Harbour Hill where Dulcie always walked beside him, whom she would not suffer to be struck, who took from her sweet-smelling armfuls of hay, who greeted her approach with deep approving nods and drank her in with dark luminous eyes. Dan, the horse, meant a world of things to Dulcie, but to send the thought of Dan she traced her index finger down her own forehead right to the tip of her nose.
Dan had a white stripe down his muzzle.
Then there were people; especially the most important person. Mother wore her hair in a tight bun at the base of her neck. Mother, for Dulcie, was an open hand circling that spot. But even that name could not express the world of things that Mother meant to her. Mother was the hand that turned the la
mp down low in her room, but always left a faint glow burning through the night, so Dulcie never had to be afraid when the sky came to lie upon the earth. Mother was the hand that cut the simple fishing rod, who showed her how to make a gad from an alder branch and how to string her catch along it by the gills.
When she fished, Dulcie saw the trout in the water sending thoughts with their mouths. She wondered what thoughts they were, or what thought the caught trout was trying to send before she smacked it off a rock and left it stunned and shivering for the gad. Of course, there was no word for trout. The cool creature from the brook was a hand waving through the air. The waving hand meant slippery touch, grey-brown burst of movement in the water, crisp, salty-tasting meat upon a plate.
Things always had some little mark, something about them that called out to Dulcie from the world. She used these to make signs. She showed the signs to Mother and Mother repeated them to her. Sometimes Mother made up signs, too, which Dulcie repeated. These silent echoes became her language.
Feelings were another thing. They lingered inside her, warm and gentle in her chest or cold and restless in her gut. Sometimes they moved slowly through her, like cats in summer; other times fast, like rats across sawdust-covered ground. Sometimes they demanded release, until the urging in her throat, the fist against the wall, the foot upon the floor, or the salt drops across her face sent them on their way.
Sometimes, only Mother could do that for her.
There was something going on these days that Dulcie did not understand.
One day, soon after the man with glasses came, the man whose name became those glasses formed with fingers on her eyes, Mother took her to the beach and pointed across the ocean with a reach and expression that suggested something way beyond what Dulcie could see, no matter how far into the horizon she looked. Dulcie had never dreamed of anything beyond all that water and sky. Whenever this occurred, usually soon after the big man left, Dulcie looked at the horizon and back to Mother with her face full of questions. For some reason, then, her mother laughed a bit and held her close.
Today, the man was back. The shining thing beside the house, a carriage without a horse, it seemed, had just brought him and another man, one in a silver suit, in a dust cloud down the big hill and across Knock Harbour Bridge. Dulcie liked the man with glasses, so she pulled in her line, picked up her gad of trout and walked along the meadow path to see him.
William and Sir John Crawford were seated directly across from a portrait of the heavily bearded Edward VII. He stared dourly at them from his place on Leona Merrigan’s parlour wall.
“That’s quite the portrait,” said Sir John, as he raised his glass of rum to his lips. “But I have to say, I’m surprised to find the Prince of Wales hanging on a wall in this great Irish district.”
The conversation so far had been awkward and this bold remark made William a little nervous for Leona. But she appeared quite undisturbed by it and he even saw her smile slightly as she replied.
“Paddy never said where he got that, but he used to say it reminded him that his brother Edward was a real prince. It was like a joke they had between them.” She shrugged a little. “I left it there.”
William raised his own glass and sampled the rum’s fire. Its syrupy texture left a slight film on the inside of the glass. He placed it on the table and the sharp sweet smell of molasses and alcohol rose to his nostrils. A light breeze gusted through the raised parlour window.
Sir John, already out-drinking William two-to-one, downed his and was reaching for the bottle again when Dulcie walked into the room. She entered the circle of her mother’s arms.
“So this is Dulcie,” Crawford said, grinning at the child. “Well, she looks like a very bright girl indeed. I know William is seeing to her schooling, Mrs. Merrigan, and he tells me he’s got the situation well in hand.”
William took this cue to remove the sheaf of hand-mail from his coat pocket and drop it on the table.
“It’s copper-fastened this time, Leona,” he said, indicating the package. “Safe as houses. All I need is your go-ahead and we can have Dulcie in school by the fall.”
Seeing the uncertainty in Leona’s eyes he laid his hand reassuringly on the papers. “I saved all the correspondence, like you asked. There’s only one letter you haven’t seen yet, from the Colonial Secretary’s Office. We can take a look at it in a minute.”
Leona looked at the little stack of papers and said nothing.
Crawford and William exchanged glances.
“William promised me I’d catch the best sea trout in Newfoundland here,” Crawford said. “Is he as good as his word, Leona?”
“I’d say so, Mr. Crawford,” she said.
“Do you think they’re biting now?” Crawford asked.
“Anytime off the bar is pretty good, sir.”
“Why don’t I go have a flick over by the gut, then?” He stood up. “You coming, William?” he asked.
“In a bit,” William said.
“What about the little one? William mentioned she was a good hand at trouting.”
Leona made signs to which Dulcie nodded happily. She disappeared and returned to the parlour with a fishing rod.
“She’ll probably catch more than you and me together,” William said, with a laugh. Leona got Dulcie’s attention, pointed to Crawford and then used a broad gesture of her arm to indicate the beach on the far side of the pond, as opposed to the river where Dulcie usually liked to trout. The girl understood immediately and nodded. Crawford got his fishing gear from the car and soon the two made an odd pair strolling along the beach road toward the gut.
Back in the parlour William continued to be quiet with Leona. He didn’t want to push her, and so, had to restrain the urgency he felt after three years preparing for this moment.
“Now is the time, Leona,” he said, as gently as he could. “Dulcie will be ten this fall. According to the policy of the school, she can stay until she’s twenty. With every year that passes from now on her chance to complete high school will slip away.”
Leona nodded, but still said nothing.
“If you give me the go-ahead today, you’ll get another letter, in due course, from George Batstone, the principal of the Halifax School for the Deaf. He’ll tell you exactly what Dulcie needs for school. She’ll sail aboard the Portia from St. John’s on the 15th of September. We’ll arrange one night’s accommodations and train fare to St. John’s for you and Dulcie, so you can see her off at the waterfront.”
He had rarely touched her during the three years they had known each other, but now he reached across the table for her hand. He wanted her to know that he understood how difficult this was. He still wasn’t sure what he read in her dark eyes when she looked up at him. He sometimes felt that she thought of him as more than just a politician, but mostly, she had remained a mystery. The time they spent together on his brief visits had passed more easily with the years. Sometimes she had even laughed at his stories of shenanigans in the House of Assembly; but now her mood was as remote and humourless as when they’d first met.
He got up. “Take a little time to yourself,” he said. “I’m going to drop over to Thomas Tobin’s for a minute, so he can thank me properly for the new concrete bridge. I’ll be back in a little while.”
Leona placed the rum bottle on the floor and twisted the cork into it with a dry squeak. For the thousandth time, it seemed, she imagined the reality of Dulcie leaving home and admitted to herself that, even after all this time and after all William’s efforts, she still didn’t know if she could let her go.
She picked up the packet of mail. The envelopes had been separated from the letters and stacked carefully underneath. She laid them aside and unfolded the first letter. She’d received it during the winter. It had appeared like magic in the mail, a few weeks after she’d sent the application form to Halifax.
She saw the elegantly lettered words School for the Deaf centered at the top of the page. Thin black type spelled out George B
atstone, Principal, in the upper left-hand corner. The type itself was purple. A carbon copy.
She glanced through it one more time to reassure herself she had truly understood the contents:
You will have to get a permit from the Colonial Secretary of your Colony before your child can be admitted. I advise you to get in touch with your local member of the Newfoundland Parliament to speak to the government on your behalf.
William had made his first inquiry soon after that rainy night three years ago. Someone in the Colonial Office told him that Dulcie, at the age of seven, was too young for school. Yet the letter in front of her plainly said: Children admitted between six and ten are allowed to stay ten years. Someone had lied to him, put him off. The next year William was told that the Newfoundland contingent was already full. He had been extremely busy, what with all the goings-on in St. John’s after the government fell. She knew that there had been some sort of scandal and that William saw it as a chance to get himself re-elected on the Government side. He said this would help with Dulcie’s case. And so it did. He was as good as his word. Still, while the delay had frustrated William, Leona found herself relieved that her awful decision could be put off for another year, and then another.
And now another?
But the principal’s letter made it clear that nothing but her mother’s refusal could stop Dulcie from going to school now.
She put that letter aside and took up another, one that William sent her just last month from his new office in St. John’s. She rubbed her thumb back and forth over the words Department of Agriculture and Mines embossed in bright red at the top of the page. On the letterhead a lion and a unicorn held up a banner with the words HONI SOIT QUI MAL Y PENSE. They each had one leg on a second banner underneath bearing the words DIEU ET MON DROIT. That was French, William told her, for “God and my right.” It reminded her of what he’d said that first night about Dulcie’s right to go to school.