Silent Time

by Paul Rowe

  It wouldn’t be too long now before Miller Norris’s car came flying across the beach road to take her into St. John’s to catch the boat. She pictured her friends waiting for her on the waterfront: the high-spirited and mischievous Mary Ann Curran from Brigus, chubby warm-hearted Maybel Mitcham from Bonavista Bay, shy Mary Lyons from Bareneed, sweet Bessie Mayo from Burin and, of course, her favourite, little Mary Snow from St. John’s, who had come to school two years after Dulcie and whom Dulcie had more or less adopted and looked after ever since. Leonard Bishop, the boy from Conception Harbour who was so good at making funny faces, would be there, too. So would Israel Allen, the Jewish boy who came all the way from Cape St. Georges, a dark-eyed fellow with good looks, an excellent soccer player and a very nice dancer. He would likely ask Dulcie to dance with him again this year in the ballroom of the ship. Israel was already in high school, just one year ahead of Dulcie.

  People were very kind to Dulcie here on the Shore, but how could there ever be such friends as she had in Halifax?

  Four more years of school. High school. She loved the image, so civil and respectful, that the expression brought to her mind. High-minded. High purpose. High Mass. High school.

  Dulcie looked up to see Neddy Collins’s horse and dray coming over the rise with the mail. She strolled back to the house as she watched him make his way down the hill. She got a glass of water and sat in the rocker beside the cold stove. She noticed Mother pass the window, probably on her way to get the mail. She kicked off her rubbers and stared for a moment at her naked feet. Later, she would pike some hay into the manger for Dan. Then, it would be time to get the cow into the stable for milking.

  She hauled on her rubbers again and went outside into the bright sunlight. The sun’s heat weighed heavily on the day; she felt a little like she was moving through water. She turned to see Mother leaning against the side of the house, staring out to sea toward the Virgin Rocks. There was a letter flapping in her hand; the hand was fallen lifeless to her side.

  “What wrong?” Dulcie spoke the words out loud.

  Mother held out the letter and Dulcie took it. She saw two black lions holding a coat of arms and the words “Department of the Colonial Secretary.” Then, she read such impossible words in that letter; words which could not, must not mean what they seemed to say. Such terrible words could make you wish that you had never learned to read.

  “Why?” Dulcie asked.

  Mother drew a circle in the palm of her hand. “Money,” she said. She threw her hands open in a fruitless, helpless gesture. “They say no money.”

  Dulcie threw the letter to the ground and ran, sobbing, into the house.

  3

  When William received the phone call from Leona he went straight to Arthur Duke’s office. He wasn’t sure what he was going to say or do when he got there. He just went.

  In the hallway outside the office, a man in overalls was removing the framing from the frosted windowpane in Arthur’s office door. William brushed past the fellow and entered without knocking. Arthur Duke was standing beside a set of bookshelves, sipping tea and wearing what looked like a brand new blue serge suit.

  “It’s hardly the time to be doing office renovations, Arthur,” William said. “Isn’t everyone expected to make sacrifices these days?”

  “It’s nothing major. The window is merely being changed to reflect my new title as Secretary of State.”

  “I see.”

  “Secretary of State is the new name for the Colonial Office,” Arthur continued, as he carefully moved behind his desk.

  “Well, congratulations,” said William, a rising anger trembling in his voice. “Your time has come, Arthur. These hard times will require the cold-blooded resolve of men like you.”

  “Look, William, I can see that you’re upset. You’ve obviously heard the news about the deaf contingent and …”

  “Yes!” William shouted, his anger bursting forth. “I have heard about your most recent act of public service.” He let the phrase drip with sarcasm before he added, “You bastard!”

  Duke gagged on his sip of tea. “Now, see here, Cantwell!”

  “You make such high claims for your office, but you’ve cheapened it by your sick desire for revenge.”

  Arthur laid down his cup. “Sit down,” he said, pointing to William’s customary seat. “Give me a chance to explain. The contingent was quite large and –”

  “They’re not a contingent, Arthur. Don’t talk about those children as if they’re a shipload of soldiers headed for France. God knows, I played my own part in that sad business. These are helpless children trying to have a decent life, a better future. You’ve robbed them of that future just as surely I helped cut short the lives of…”

  William regretted the words instantly as he watched the realization dawn in Arthur’s eyes.

  “Now I finally understand what this has been about all along,” Arthur said. “Why you’ve been so dedicated to that Merrigan child. Come now, William,” he added softly, “did you really think your sins would be expiated by the education of a schoolgirl?”

  “You bastard,” William repeated, barely holding back from throttling Arthur Duke on the spot.

  “I did what was necessary for the good of the country, William, and so, by the way, did you.”

  William was suddenly overcome with a leaden fatigue. He slumped into the chair that Arthur had proffered a moment ago.

  “You could have spared those children, Arthur, and you know it,” he said.

  “I am a civil servant. I do what is required of me.”

  William stood up and looked at him. “You’re a disgrace.”

  Arthur’s lips curled into a nasty sneer. “Get the hell out of my office. You should thank me for the job I’ve done. After all, I’ve spared you the unpleasant business of delivering the bad news yourself. I am your lowly civil servant. I deliver your messages for you. Fast and efficient, and all for the cost of a postage stamp!”

  “Damn you to hell!” William said, and stormed out the door. He slammed it hard behind him and didn’t even bother to look back at the bright stream of shattered glass that went crashing to the floor.

  William arrived in Knock Harbour late the next day. He left his bag in his customary room in Thomas Tobin’s house and walked in the fading light to Leona’s. For the first time in all the years that he’d been coming there, Dulcie did not greet him when he entered the house.

  He sat in the parlour with Leona as night slowly descended. They talked in oddly hushed tones, as if fearing Dulcie might somehow overhear.

  “I spoke to the prime minister yesterday, Leona, after I got your call. He said there was no way to reverse the decision or make exceptions. He said it was too late for that now. “

  “It was Arthur Duke’s name on the letter.”

  “The bastard has struck us a serious blow.”

  “I told you he never meant me no good.”

  “You were right. I hate to say it, Leona, but it looks like he may have won.”

  Leona got up and walked into the kitchen. He followed and watched as she took a lamp from a shelf and lit it.

  “You wait for me here, William. We’re not beat yet.”

  He watched her go out the door and disappear into the night.

  She walked through the backyard and took the meadow path toward the droke. Her pace quickened involuntarily and she found herself running along the path with the lamplight swinging wildly onto the shorn grass at her feet. There was no moon, so when she emerged from the trees into the cove she found the water solemn and black. She heard the indifferent waves curl and break listlessly against the shore.

  The lamp suddenly sputtered out and left her in near-total darkness. She angrily sent it spinning into the water. Her eyes soon adjusted enough to see that she was standing on the very lip of the bank. It was a three-foot drop to the shore. She jumped into the blackness and landed heavily on the rocks a few inches beyond the reach of the waves. She turned sharply left an
d followed the arc of the cove to the other side. She stopped by a hulking, yellow stone that ran back into the trees. She crawled along it past the lower branches of some spruce trees which tore at her face and hair. She knew exactly how far to go before digging. Damn! She had forgotten the spade. She tore into the damp earth with her bare hands. There would be no need to replace the soil this time.

  Tonight she would bring the secret to an end.

  Her chest wrenched painfully with a sharp uncontrollable sob. She stopped digging and forced herself to breathe. This was no time for panic. She had to be calm now. For Dulcie. She continued the excavation with deliberate slowness, pushing the dark soil aside with her hands into a growing pile. She was looking for the rough flat wooden surface of a trap door, the cover to the little secret cellar she’d built here all those years ago; a smaller version of the one the Frenchman had helped her build to hide the rum. Strands of hair escaped from the tight bun at the back of her neck, fell across her face and eyes, got tangled in her mouth. She brushed at them with a soil-stained hand and kept on until, at last, she felt the top of the little trap door. She felt in the dark for the round metal handle and pulled it open.

  William was standing in the yard holding his own lamp when she stumbled out of the darkness. She offered him a thick cardboard box with a heavy fabric belt drawn tightly around it.

  “My children …” she said at last, in a voice so small and distant that he barely recognized it as hers. “The sea stole them from me and gave me this. It’s all I have left of them. I wanted to keep it forever, but now it’s time. You take it, William. It’s what they would want. You take it to St. John’s and use it to save my girl.”

  A little while later they were in the parlour. William had made tea and Leona was sitting, exhausted but calm, on the parlour couch with a steaming cup in her hand. William was kneeling on the floor looking in disbelief at the contents of the box he had just opened. One hundred orange brown portraits of a thickly bearded Edward VII stared up at him in neat perforated rows. The numeral 2 appeared in white in the four corners of each stamp. The king’s tiny portrait hung on a banner beneath a decorative arch which bore the word NEWFOUNDLAND.

  “Judging from the thickness I’d say there are a thousand sheets here.” William shook his head in amazement. “That’s two thousand dollars.”

  “That’s just so much as Dulcie needs for four more years of school,” said Leona. “It said in the letter that it cost $500.00 a year.”

  She looked at William, waiting for his next word or move.

  “We need to think for a minute, Leona. Let’s consider our options. First of all, even if I can sell the stamps on the black market, I won’t be able to get full value for them. I’m guessing a thousand is as much as they’ll bring.”

  “That’s two years’ worth,” Leona said. “I’ll worry about the rest when the time comes.”

  “We could turn them back over to the government,” William said. “There may be a reward.”

  “More likely a jail sentence, William, and you know it.”

  William nodded. He could see that he had little choice. He could abandon Leona and Dulcie or else quickly develop a criminal mind. Strangely, once he’d made up his mind to it, he felt his courage rise. “I said earlier that Arthur Duke has struck us a serious blow. It’s true, he has. But this is our chance to strike back.”

  He thought he saw the trace of a smile on Leona’s lips. “What can we do?” she said.

  “It’s going to be a tricky business to sell these stamps on the black market in St. John’s. But there’s one thing in our favour. They’re not forgeries. There’s no way of telling them from the two-cents stamps already in circulation. Our problem is I don’t know anyone who is in the business of buying or selling illegal stamps.”

  “There’s got to be a way,” Leona said. “My little girl needs schoolin’ an’ that’s all there is to it. I’ll take ‘em to St. John’s myself if I have to.”

  William looked at Leona with her long skirt and tight knit hair. He’d always been the one to act for her in the city. How could he refuse to do it now?

  “No, I’ll do it, Leona. Now that I think of it, I do know one man who might be able to help us.”

  William slipped the cover back on the box. He noticed as he did so that exactly six stamps, one for each year of Dulcie’s schooling, were missing from the top row of the first sheet.

  4

  Two days later William found himself completely immobilized in the stairwell of the Vail Building, unable to either carry on up to Percy Fearn’s office or go back down the stairs again and leave. It would do no good to think further on the affair. He had turned it over and over in his mind all the way back from the Cape Shore, then called Fearn the minute he got home, and made the appointment for today. Still, a quick check of his pocket watch told him he was late.

  There was nowhere else to turn. Percy Fearn was the only stamp dealer he knew, but how could he broach the delicate matter of an illegal stamp sale with the man? How much could he tell him? What sort of questions might Fearn ask, and how could he answer them without giving himself and Leona away? Should he risk telling him the entire story? Should he get Fearn to make the sale, or merely establish a contact? He was aware that the minute he broached the subject, Fearn would become either an accomplice or a potential informant. Which would it be? He came back to the stark fact that he had no one else to turn to and headed up the stairs.

  The stamp box weighed heavily in his hand as he remembered Leona’s dark eyes. He imagined the visions those eyes had seen, the terrible tragedy she must have relived time and again on the restless sea of her mind. She had struggled all those years, trying to keep some sense of life alive, until an unexpected grace came into her life and gave her cause to live again. Dulcie’s grace had touched him as well, allowed him to mend his own brokenness. He remembered how the high cause of her education, the very making of her soul as Keats had called it, had gotten him through that difficult time after the war. He couldn’t forget that now. He was the only one left to defend her and he would walk through fire to do it.

  He reached the landing and saw Percy Fearn’s office. He told himself he would know instinctively how to deal with the situation, steeled himself one last time and walked through the door. He forgot to knock, but Fearn didn’t seem to mind.

  “William,” he said on seeing him. “I was beginning to think you were going to stand me up. Come on in, man, and take a seat in one of my fine chairs. Buy one on your way out, if you like, or better still why don’t you order enough to redecorate your entire department. I’m sure Agriculture and Mines could do with a new look.”

  “It’s cuts they want to hear about today, Percy, not expenditures.” William slid into an armchair. “So, how is business?”

  “Frankly, not good, but I hope you’re not here to welsh on our deal. I’m still prepared to give it the rest of the year to see if things turn around.”

  “No, that’s not why I’m here,” said William, his hand touching the box of stamps he’d laid on the floor.

  Percy gave the surface of his desk a couple of reassuring thumps. “Good! What can I do for you, then? You wouldn’t give me any information over the phone. Why all the mystery?”

  William stumbled on despite a lack of the inspiration he had hoped for on the stairs. “Percy, I need your advice, maybe even your help, your expert knowledge, say, in a … delicate matter.”

  Fearn smiled, seeing William’s obvious difficulty.

  “You’re a good man, William. I think you know you can trust me or you wouldn’t be here. So let’s talk candidly, shall we?”

  William decided to tell him the whole story. He was just about to launch into it when the phone on Fearn’s desk started to life with a loud ring. Fearn grabbed it up and said, “Yes, Noreen.” He paused, listening. “Really? Right now? All right. Send them up.” He hung up. “William,” he said. “Would you mind waiting in the inner office for a minute while I take care of
this? For some reason the police are downstairs.”

  Thanks to a clear border around the frosted glass in the inner office door, William was able to watch what was happening, and hear well enough, too. He saw two policemen enter. One was in plainclothes, the other in uniform. The plainclothes one seemed to be in charge. He handed Fearn an official-looking document and said, briskly, “Good day to you, Mr. Fearn. I’m Detective John Rossiter and this is Constable O’Reilly. We have a warrant to search these premises, as well as your home. We have proof that you are in possession of counterfeit stamps, and have reason to believe that you are also concealing the presses where they are being made.” He gave a quick nod to O’Reilly, who immediately started going through a filing cabinet. William watched Fearn sink, stunned and suddenly pale, into his seat.

  “You won’t find anything,” he said. “I deal in stamps, yes, but I have never knowingly bought or sold a counterfeit stamp in my life. And I’m certainly not in the business of making them.”

  “Mr. Fearn, we’re already aware of at least two fakes that you have, excellent forgeries, that were likely done right here in St. John’s.”

  “How could you possibly know if I have forgeries or not? I haven’t put any of my stamps on the market.”

  “No? Well, based on an anonymous tip we received, we did a little digging into your affairs and discovered that you have entered into a rather unusual contract with your landlord, the Honourable W. J. Cantwell, in which you are using the forged stamps as collateral. That, sir, is fraud.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with any of those stamps,” Fearn protested, although he was looking increasingly doubtful and distressed.

  The detective pulled a letter from his inside coat pocket and tapped it with his finger. “That is not the opinion expressed in this letter to the authorities from Harmers of London.”