by Paul Rowe
So Dulcie was conceived in a cold November bed with only tears to warm it. She was born in August, two weeks after the news arrived in Knock Harbour that Jimmy Merrigan, too, had died at Beaumont Hamel on the first of July. Leona somehow wasn’t surprised when she learned later that the poor child had been born into silence. Nothing, it seemed, was ever easy. She found Dulcie’s deafness a hardship at first, and was frightened by it. But the two of them made out all right together. Leona gradually left off thinking about dying and slowly began to live. The old promise about her children’s schooling returned to her, and she wondered how it would be that Dulcie could ever learn to read and write.
Until William came.
She liked William. She saw the same gentleness in him as in Paddy and Jimmy. But she would never say so to his face. She had to be careful. It seemed every man she took a liking to had a bad fashion of dying.
It was five o’clock the next afternoon when she finally saw the Fiat come down Knock Harbour Hill with its precious cargo aboard. She had already placed a bottle in the parlour for her guest. She could barely restrain her excitement as the car pulled up to the house and was a little disappointed to see that Dulcie was sound asleep in the front seat.
“Carsickness,” Crawford whispered. “Don’t worry. It’s fairly common. She’ll be all right after a good rest.” He leaned in and lifted the sleeping child out of the seat. Leona touched her softly on the forehead. It was cool, thank God. She noticed that Dulcie had grown, her hair was longer, less boyish than before, and a sprinkling of tiny freckles had magically appeared across her nose. Her front teeth, which fell out last summer, had come in nice and straight. Leona detected the sickly odour of milk and porridge.
The poor child. Why must everything be so hard?
She took the sleeping girl from Crawford and carried her upstairs. She returned in a moment and invited him into the parlour for a drink.
“I won’t stay long, won’t stay long,” he said, as he took his seat.
Leona was startled to see the change in him, the redness in his complexion that ran back even into his thinning hair. Yellow spots dotted his skin like old candle wax. His talk was rambling, he twitched involuntarily and batted his hands aimlessly into the air. She needn’t have worried about what to say to him for he talked non-stop as she just sat quietly and listened.
“I have to get to my cabin before it gets too dark. I’ve time for one, though, Leona, before I go; always time for one.”
She indicated the bottle and he uncorked it with a satisfied “Ahhh.”
“Dulcie must be doing well at school,” he said, as he poured. “She spoke to me in St. John’s! She said, ‘Hello, Mr. Crawford,’ plain as day. You’ll be amazed, Leona. By the way, the Norris’s are fine people. You need never worry about Dulcie when she’s with them. They had experience with deaf children in Nova Scotia so they volunteer to help out here. Good people. I’ll have another small one.” He tipped the bottle again. “Can’t fly on one wing.” He downed it and poured another, continuing to run on. “Well, you’ve got your little girl back now for the summer and that’s the main thing. Too bad we can’t go for a few flicks off the barachois, like last time. I plan to come out sometime the summer with my wife, Maddy. William, too, hopefully.” Incredibly, he reached for the bottle again. “A last one, now, and I’ll be on my way.” He waved a hand in the air. “Damn! Bit early for blackflies, isn’t it? All over the restaurant this morning, and in the car, too. Everywhere. Can’t get rid of ‘em. God, I’d love to stay and watch the sunset. It must be spectacular here. It’s going to be a fine day tomorrow. Red sky at night, sailors’ delight. I’ll have a nice drive back to town, anyway. Well, I’d better get going. I’d hate to be stuck on that road at night with a puncture, know what I mean? Sorry again about that business today, but a little carsickness is nothing to worry about. I can’t believe how hot it is in here. Where’d I put that handkerchief?” He wiped the beads of sweat that had seeped out in neat little rows onto his forehead. “There, that’s better. Don’t mind me, I sweat like a pig all the time. Do you mind if I fill this flask before I go? Give me a bit of courage on that road. Unless you have a drop of holy water from Father What’s-His-Name’s Well. No? No holy water? Only firewater. So much the better. Haha. I suppose that’s not funny, but there you go. Anyway, that’s that, time to go, all the best, now. Don’t get up. It was no trouble, no trouble at all.”
He stumbled out the door and got in his car. A moment later Leona watched the Fiat lurch into motion and pull away. She would tell William on his next visit that Sir John Crawford must never drive Dulcie home again.
Leona was sitting at the table a short time later when she heard a noise and turned to see Dulcie, still in her traveling clothes, standing groggily on the stairs. She wrapped the child gently in her arms and held her for what seemed like a very long time; during the embrace Leona had the sensation of actually leaving her body for a time and hovering above the room. When she returned to her present senses and held Dulcie at arm’s length to look at her, the little girl looked back with a peaceful smile and offered her the letter she’d been holding in her hand. Leona sat to the table and opened it. She expected to see the familiar letterhead of the School for the Deaf. Instead, the words were on plain paper, not typed, but carefully penned in thin blue lines of ink.
Dear Mrs. Merrigan,
I’ve given this letter to Dulcie for you because I know how little really gets said on those progress reports that get sent home twice a year.
I can only imagine, as I do not yet have children of my own, how hard it must be for you to be separated from Dulcie. It was very selfless of you to let her go. I hope you’ll be consoled a little when I tell you, in all sincerity, that you made the right decision.
Dulcie is a bright and happy child and is doing extremely well at school. She made excellent progress in learning to print and in her reading this year. Her signing has improved enormously and she converses happily and easily with the other students. She’s fit and healthy and enjoys physical activity. She’s first out the door when it’s time for exercise class on the field.
We take Dulcie to Mass every Sunday morning with the other Catholic children. However, apart from that we make no distinctions between the religions here. It doesn’t trouble us at all. During the winter we make a rink out of the boys’ soccer field. Dulcie is learning to skate. Once a month we take the students to see a film at a film house near here. I believe Dulcie has quite a crush on the actor Ronald Coleman.
Dulcie isn’t fond of arithmetic, although she’s getting the hang of it. Nor is she very happy with all the time spent on lip-reading and speech. This is understandable since both these things take a great deal of effort to produce even a small degree of success. You will no doubt notice that hearing people are quite impressed by Dulcie’s attempts at speech; however, I can tell you that reading, writing and signing are much more important to her development.
Dulcie has made excellent progress in her first year. In the years to come she will no doubt complete a high school education which will give her some marvellous choices in life. Some years at school she will have to cover twice the work, but I’m sure she is up to the task. We are also teaching her some of the practical skills, like cooking, sewing and housekeeping, that she might otherwise have learned from you.
Best of all, Dulcie has found here in Halifax a loving community, most of them deaf like herself, people who will continue to love and support her in friendship in the years ahead. The deaf like to be together, Mrs. Merrigan. They rejoice at finding one another because for them the world can be a very lonely place.
We can never replace a mother’s love but I promise you, Mrs. Merrigan, that we will do our best.
Yours sincerely,
Claire Batstone
P.S. Feel free to write to me here at the school. Be sure to mark my name clearly on the letter. Also, there’s no need to indicate to Mr. Batstone that we’ve been in touch since he doesn’t alwa
ys approve of my ideas. I’m sure you understand.
The tiny, dark missiles dove and arced in front of Sir John Crawford’s eyes, time and again, as he clutched vainly at the air and tried to catch them.
Goddamn flies! Get…get…get…get…get!
Darkness was coming on fast. It was getting tough to see the road with its worn purple and green stones protruding out of the grey ground. The sky near the horizon was blood red. Overhead the clouds trailed away in wispy rows of bright pink on deep blue. At the crest of a hill Crawford glimpsed the coastline. It, too, was steeped in the red glow all the way to Little Placentia. He would have loved to get out of the car and watch the sun set into the ocean. He always enjoyed the marvel of it, the magic of the quick swallowing down, but he needed a good place to pull over.
Then he remembered Father Connolly’s well. There was a dip in the road there and a break in the trees on the ocean side. He could make it in time if he hurried. He pressed the gas. He suddenly longed to have that last moment with the sun before he was to be left alone on the ghost-filled road.
He tipped his pewter flask until the hot rum sang in his nostrils.
The road was coming alive with shadows, reddened pools and shafts of light. He could sense the coming darkness eager to reclaim it.
He came quickly upon the spot beside the well where the trees fell away. He glanced out at the blazing sun.
“What a sight! What a sight! If I could just get rid of these goddamn flies.” He swept his hand angrily through the air once more and heard the sudden screech of tires. His heart leapt into his throat as the car tipped over the side of the road to the wild shriek and grind of metal on stone. He felt a sickening impact as it turned in the air, and another, then another before he lost consciousness. He awoke to freezing cold and a green murky haze with a silver shaft of light pouring through it. He decided to swim toward the light as, one last time, a strange solitary regret drifted across his mind.
I should have put more money into the goddamn roads.
During her first year at school, Dulcie had often spent the days keeping an eye on the yellow fire trailing across the sky. She could spell the fire’s name now with just three letters – S-U-N – but more than this, in sign language, she’d learned to hold the sun in the palm of her hand and use it to divide up the day. First, she made a horizon line by folding one arm across her chest. The sun hand slowly rose above that horizon line to sign the morning. At noon, it was held straight up in the air as her elbow rested on her fingertips. For afternoon, the sun hand moved closer to the elbow, and to sign the night it slipped below it and out of sight.
In Halifax, she’d stayed awake later and later until the evening finally came when she’d watched the sun disappear completely behind the distant buildings. It was easier to do that in Halifax than in Knock Harbour. It was never as dark in the night glow of a city, especially since people lit the lamps outdoors as well as in. After that evening, she’d wondered about the sunset in Knock Harbour. She’d always been afraid before, but now she wanted to watch the sun set into the open sea, untroubled by the buildings that crowded the Halifax sky from her window. She imagined it would make the perfect end to a day.
Still, even as she slipped quietly out of the house and left Mother reading the letter, Dulcie wondered if she dare do it. How long after sunset would the daylight last before the black Knock Harbour night fell upon her? Would there be time to get back to her room, to the safety of the light upon the shelf? She slipped out the back linney door and, like a mouse, scooted quickly over the woodchips and sawdust, past the stacks of firewood and fence railings leaning in the shadow of the stable. The meadow grass was slowly turning matted brown to green. She picked out the faint trace of the path that led to the Back Cove and followed it. Her small legs climbed the greying stile that took her out of the meadow and into the trees. Beams of dusky red light cut the shade, flickered and danced across her eyes. She came out of the woods near the top of a grassy bank. The ocean tossed silent waves ashore as she cantered down the gravelly slope to the beach. The sun was hovering just above the water, a red disc, so thin and perfectly round, yet so faint and hazy that she could look straight into it for a long time.
Then she closed her eyes, opened her mouth, and drank in the blood-red sea.
When Leona looked up from Claire Batstone’s letter, Dulcie was gone. A quick look upstairs confirmed that she had left the house.
It wasn’t like her to do that so close to dark.
Leona hauled on her rubbers and took the meadow path to the brook to see if Dulcie was there. She wasn’t. She took the path to the Back Cove. No sign of her there, either. She walked the stony arc of the cove and took the path on the far side that led to the grassy bank above the beach. Sometimes, Dulcie enjoyed watching birds from there.
Leona finally spotted her below the bank standing on the beach with her face toward the sunset. She scrambled down the bank and walked up to her, but stopped a few feet away. Dulcie’s eyes were closed. Her mouth was open and her fingers carefully explored the air around her. She was tasting, breathing, seeing, feeling, being the sunset.
Leona could see what was happening. Dulcie Merrigan’s mind was full of fire.
part five
1
On June 9, 1846, a great fire crawled along the north side of St. John’s harbour like a giant flaming arm curling around a shoulder. The towering flames, poisonous smoke, the exploding stores of seal and cod liver oil provoked a flood of people into the streets – men, women and children fleeing homes and workplaces, their possessions stowed in handcarts and wagons or lugged in cloth sacks on their backs through streets where deep sucking mud dogged their every terrified step. The next day a dark sea of ashes backed the finger-piers along the waterfront in a smouldering, stinking sweep from Temperance Street in the east to Springdale Street in the west. Everything but the chimneys, crooked fingers in the eerie landscape, was utterly destroyed. A long reconstruction lay ahead for the weary citizens.
The Vail Building, on the northeast corner of the Springdale and Water Street intersection, was built in that reconstruction by an American baker, Robert Vail, who later made a fortune when he came up with a hard bread suitable to the Newfoundland taste. The building previously on the site was, thanks to an heroic firefighting effort, the last to go down in flames in the West End on that awful June day.
On a sunny afternoon in February, 1932, William J. Cantwell sat in the business office of the Vail Building and reflected on that particular facet of its history. He enjoyed the notion that his investment property marked the spot where the fire-beleaguered citizens of St. John’s had once made their stand and said “Enough!” to a great inferno.
It was a deep, clear winter’s day. He’d walked there, rather than take the west-bound streetcar that drifted dreamily along the track below the office window. The city was still digging out from a two-day-old snowstorm. The unemployed revelled in this windfall of odd jobs, or hobbles, as the townies called them. Even if you weren’t lucky or well connected enough to be on one of the shovelling brigades hired by the city, there were still plenty of opportunities to make a dollar doing storefronts and homes. All you needed was a shovel and the nerve to negotiate a fair wage for yourself.
William was visiting his building on what he judged to be unpleasant business, so he was surprised when his tenant, Percy Fearn, a homunculus of a man with the severest overbite in his lower jaw that William had ever seen, strode cheerfully into the office and sat across from him. Fearn’s grey hair was swept forcibly back in long thin strands; the lower jaw, as always, stuck out a mile. He sat there bright and alert like a bull terrier expecting a bone.
William sighed. Percy was not going to make this easy for him.
William had bought the Vail Building back in 1928 just before he lost the first election of his career. He’d leased to Fearn, who’d turned it into a retail outlet for office furniture and radios. Business had been slow since then and during the last year Fea
rn had finally fallen behind in the rent.
William got straight to the point.
“I hope you’re in a position to do something about these arrears today, Percy, and no offence, but another promissory note is out of the question.”
He managed a nervous smile. Fearn responded with a smile of his own, as pleasant a one as a face with that severe an overbite could provide. The restraint that pulled at his chin lent an odd involuntary British accent to his speech.
“I understand your concern, William,” he said. “Fifty-two hundred dollars is a lot of money and you’ve been very patient. So, if I may ask, what is your final position today?”
William took a slow deliberate breath before he issued his ultimatum. For all his combative experience in the House of Assembly, he found it difficult to be aggressive in the confines of an office. He simply wasn’t cut out to be a businessman.
“Unless I walk out of here with something, I’ll be forced to evict you and sue for the arrears. I’m sure neither of us wants it to come to that.”
Fearn didn’t even blink before he replied, “I’m asking you to give me another year to turn things around.”
“You know I can’t do that, Percy.”
Fearn leaned ahead in his seat. “I think you will once you hear the proposal I’m about to make.”