“Give her hay.” The freezing wind stung my face and eyelids and I could hardly tell sea from land, beyond the outline of our lovely Oceanside. Stormy sea whipped right up to sky, and clouds raged right down to sea. I followed Beryl up a long trail out back, through the wide field and over a footbridge.
Daro Michelson caught up as we scrambled up a grassy hillside.
“It’s a fast-moving squall, common enough this time of year. Might be bad, but it should over in a day.” He plainly believed the ‘might be bad’ to the core of his bones.
****
Beryl’s auntie lived in a little cottage tucked into the base of a hill, a snug eddy against the forces of wind and weather. She surprised me, for she could hardly be much older than I. She swung wide the door and shouted ‘Welcome, welcome,” before we were across the dooryard.
My fisherman settled us there and turned to depart.
“You aren’t going back out into the storm?” I gasped.
He paused, his broad shoulders nearly filling the doorway. He reached out and just touched my arm. Softly, he said “My mum will be worried. I’ll be able to get there okay.”
I wanted to cling to him—to assure him his mum would most want him to be safe! I did not allow myself to do any such thing. My mind might be entirely fanciful, but I well knew how to appear quite sane and competent. Daro and I were scarcely more than strangers to one another. I could hardly, with any decency, confide my real feelings. I could hardly acknowledge them to myself. I said the first thing to pop into mind. “I wanted to discuss how we both mistook that one light for the lighthouse.”
He paused in the doorway with the storm whirling around him. “Later. I’m afraid there’s no way to say, not with surety, not yet. There’s something not right with it. A false light.”
His words were grim, and my heart sank as he spoke. ‘The false light,’ must mean something, some dark thing, far more than I could imagine. I stood in the doorway and watched him rush back toward the coast.
The cottage was little more than a room, and I hated to intrude. Hesitantly, I made for a corner chair. Alma Doughty wasn’t one to let someone sit uncomfortable in her home, though. She about dragged me to a chair in her warm flagstone kitchen, next to the old-style bread-oven built into the fireplace. In no time, we had lovely cups of peppermint tea in hand.
“I haven’t felt so warm in weeks,” I had to say. “Thank you so much for taking us in.”
Alma chortled like a girl. She seemed few years older than I. “I am so glad of the company! I took my little boy over to play with his cousins early this morning. Thought I’d be here all day, all alone.” The wind howled, but the Auntie’s home was more than equal to the day. The wind was pleasantly muffled, the cold held firmly at bay. “My husband Donnall is down at the docks. He’ll wait the storm out there, I’m sure. This looked like the most boring day, ever.”
I snuggled into the deep armchair and thought it likely to be the most restful day I had had in months. I’m embarrassed to admit, I didn’t spend a moment thinking how terribly cold and uncomfortable Oceanside was likely to become.
Beryl, Auntie Alma, and I started to chat about recipes and cooking and all.
“I’m so glad the Michelson fellow thought to bring you, too.” Alma clasped her hands together and smiled.
“Cook thinks he’s sweet on ’Lizbeth.” Beryl smirked.
“Oh stop,” I said.
Alma paused, hand-on-hip and glanced toward the door as if she could still see him there. “He’s an odd one.”
Beryl snickered. She could be tiresome, at times.
Alma sent her a sharp look. “Mind, my Donnall thinks the world of him. Says he’s a worker. Still, the folks do say he keeps to hisself.”
“Oh how funny, you have a little blue stone on your bread oven,” I said, to change the subject. “Our Cook, that is, Mrs. Buxton, keeps a blue stone by the warming oven, too.”
“For luck,” Alma murmured. “You didn’t leave it, did you? You must carry your luck with you.”
Beryl looked stricken. “Mrs. Buxton leaves it there every night!”
Alma winked at me. “Superstition.”
“Luck,” Beryl corrected. “It works, everyone knows it.”
“How do you know this stone is lucky?” I patted the one on the hearth.
Beryl giggled. “All the blue stones are lucky. There’s only a few real ones in all of Cape Breton.”
I looked at Alma.
She pulled a face. “That is the legend. The real ones are said to be pieces of CarnGorm, from the north of Scotland. They say the blue stone monuments on the north of the island all came from the same place, way back. Carried by the first settlers.”
“Lots of people say they’re real.” Beryl put one fingertip on the little rock. She had a firm, if childlike belief. “I find lovely big scones in the tea cupboard above the one at Oceanside. Mrs. Buxton says the stone is lucky for me.”
Alma nodded to the little brick oven and winked at me. “Scones, you say?”
The conversation returned to recipes, and most importantly, to party food. Bannock bread and pies, and then pies and how Alma’s handsome Donnall sang at many a Ceilidh, or folk-music party, because he had such a lovely voice.
“Is your Daro much of a singer?” Alma paused delicately, eyebrows raised.
I had no idea. I’d heard him shout poetic lines at a raging sea but never sing. I could only shrug.
“I thought you’d know,” Alma said. Beryl giggled and blushed. Whatever stories had Beryl carted up here?
Alma leaned forward and all but whispered, “You can hardly blame him if he’s a bit of a wild one, now. People can say what they like, I say he’s a decent fellow.”
“Too different,” Beryl piped up. “Cook says our Miss Eames comes from a proper city family and got educated like a lady. She’s meant to take up with Mr. DeLaMore and live in Halifax.”
“Tut,” Alma shushed her. “The families obviously prefer this Mark fellow, but there is no telling a heart, or a pair of hearts, is what I say.”
I am afraid I sat open-mouthed, completely floored. Mark? He came from good family, not with the Brookeson’s sort of money of course, but he’d be expected to carry on in whatever his family business did, and he’d be looking for an educated wife. In short, exactly the sort of man my mother dragged me to various parties to meet.
Wait. How had Alma known Mark’s first name? Beryl said ‘Mr. DeLaMore.’ Alma had never even visited Oceanside. I glanced at Beryl, and she flushed with embarrassment yet again. Beryl had already been installed at Oceanside when I had arrived. I clearly recalled her hanging about doorways, even then.
“Whatever have you been saying?” I muttered, as I recalled my first day at the resort.
I recalled my mother chatting with Mrs. Brookeson in the front room on the day. She had marched in and said something ridiculous, like: “I’m confident this summer here will play an important role in our Elizabeth’s future.” I sure hadn’t wanted to listen to my mother’s plans for me but had dashed off to explore the magnificent Oceanside.
As both of our families hailed from Halifax, the ladies were already acquainted, even if the Brookesons were a clear social circle or two higher than us Eames. They must have talked about me and my, (my own face flushed at the thought) ‘prospects.’ And here sat Beryl, who so often listened at doorways and knew all sorts of gossip.
I could have sunk into Alma’s saggy old sofa and disappeared entirely. A young lady’s prospects! Mark DeLaMore! All the staff had probably known about the matchmakers’ plans. Had they been chatting about how soon the romance would kick off, behind my back? How had I not heard any of this rumor, before now?
Alma kindly took the conversation back to mixing dough and other such things, but I am afraid I managed to contribute nothing more to the conversation.
Eventually, the storm blew by, and Beryl and I were able to wend our way back through the high meadow, over the hill and back down
the sloping hills to Oceanside.
The bay mare stood with her head out over the top of her stable door, watching us struggle home through the wind-whipped grasses. I thought her a friend, but suspected it was all carrot-love from her side. I feared Beryl was much the same; a friend to my face, but a gossip when my back was turned. She plainly spent every spare moment at Alma’s, sharing news from Oceanside.
The mare was likely my best prospect for friend, after all!
Chapter Five
Avery’s Hair of the Dog
The following day arrived curiously quiet. The calm after the storm? The sun’s rays glittered off the waves still rolling up onto the beach, and our artist was out there, painting the water and ignoring the rather more dramatic scene behind him.
The storm had shattered the front room windows. The sea had breached the inadequate seawall and left shells and debris scattered right up to the porch steps.
The hotel’s builders plainly hadn’t planned for a true Cape Breton-style winter storm.
Cook arrived very late in the morning, chauffeured by our manager, Osten, in the hotel’s open-seat touring automobile. It had to have been a miserably cold ride, but he said nothing about it. He gawked at the shattered windows as if such damage were unimaginable.
“Waves left sand and flotsam right up over the road. We were lucky to get through to here, at all.” Osten gawked at the sandy debris left on the porch stairs.
“You weren’t here?” I knew he hadn’t been but couldn’t help but ask. I wanted to hear his explanation. How could he have simply been away?
“Held up in town.” The manager stomped about the front room, staring at the damage. Glass and bits of debris littered carpet. The chairs were damp and a puddle still sat in the middle of the coffee table. The pretty lamps on each side of the room had fallen and the lampshades were sodden.
“I guess Avery must have been caught somewhere, too?”
“I didn’t see him.” Osten hastily marched up the front stairs to survey the foyer. “Probably stayed overnight at a friend’s. Best to have Beryl sweep up in here straightaway. I’ll have to order boards to cover these windows. This is unexpected.”
“You hadn’t planned on boarding up anyway?”
“Boarding up? Oh, closing. Closing!” Osten turned away abruptly. “I am much too busy to worry about something a long way off yet! Now, you go see to the, er…kitchen. Have Cook serve a quick brunch in the hall. I’ll leave it to you to reassure the guests. I know I can rely on you to be tactful, Miss Eames.” The hotel manager hurried into his office.
I found Cook tsk-tsking as she walked about the kitchen. There was no storm damage out here, but the hotel guests had been a bit of a storm themselves. Dishes and things had been left all about the kitchen.
“Had to fend for themselves, with only bread and jam, cold sliced meat, and the eggs and whatnot Beryl made. I see those two pork pies I had done ahead are gone.” Cook sat heavily in one of the kitchen chairs and surveyed the mess.
I started clearing up the teacups and scattered flatware. “Did you expect this storm then?”
“Daro warned me about a storm brewing, what with the wind out of the nor’east. I’ve told Mr. Osten I’ll not travel on such a day.” She leaned back, frowning. “I’ve the dough set to rise, but blessed if I’m not about done, already. My legs pain me so, this weather.”
I could not, for the life of me, remember seeing her sit down before.
“I can get the potatoes into the pot,” I told her. I glanced over at the empty warming oven. “Was it quite a drive up from Ingonish?”
“I guess now I’d say Daro was right to worry. The road could have just as easily been blocked. And to get here and find windows shattered and all. Lucky no one was injured.” She saw my gaze fixed on the lucky stone. “Daro saw to you and Beryl then? He said he would fetch you up behind the hill. The sea is too near here, too near.”
I noticed she didn’t mention those clever engineers or builders from ‘far away,’ this time.
“There was no real harm,” I said.
“Could-a been. I can see Daro was right. Maybe now the management will take some proper care.” She jerked her head toward the hallway, and I guessed she meant Mr. Osten or perhaps the Brookesons in general.
“Daro came all the way here from Ingonish during the storm to take me and Beryl to her aunt?” I busied myself setting up dishes that didn’t need to be seen to for hours yet.
“Ingonish? No, likely he’d come down from his mother’s there in the village at McLellan’s Harbor, I expect.”
“So, he doesn’t actually live too far from here?” I thought of him, storming down the narrow coast road when he sensed a bad nor’easter coming.
“Not far, if it could be said he ‘lives’ anywhere at all.” She shot me a look, sighed and carried on. “He’s a wild one, child. I think he sleeps rough, wherever he happens to be, often as not. Not the fisherman his father was, but then, he hasn’t inherited his father’s big fishing vessel nor the money to run a crew, nor learned on the ocean as his father did, now has he?”
Oh?” I busied myself at the counter. She usually didn’t share so much. I hurried around so she would see there was no need to get up and set to work.
“Yes, my yes. Mike Michelson made a name for himself from here to the George’s banks. Right up until he set off into the teeth of a northern gale one November.”
“Another November.”
“Yes, nearly the same time of year as now. Nearly the same sort of storm. He was handsome and dashing and so proud. Everything about that man was proud. He brought in swordfish from far off shore, far far off, then. The story goes, that one November, he swaggered around the Purple Carp Pub and let everyone know his boat was heading back out, even though the rest of the fleet saw fit to cower in the cove. He wouldn’t heed any of the other men. He said he’d stand the cowards a drink when he got back.” Cook started to her feet. “He’s not made it back yet, these many years.”
“I’ll do this,” I hurried to say. I wanted to keep her talking. I motioned to the chair. “Rest a minute.”
Cook, leaned back, shook her head dramatically, and carried on. “Left his pretty wife and children without a dime. You see what arrogance will do? When neither Mike nor boat nor his great haul ever came in well, his wife Daisy had nothing. Brought her children to her mother’s place at McLellan’s harbor. Daro, the oldest, got sent off to the Sydney mines, and him no more than ten or twelve at the time.”
“The mines.”
“He made a good job of it, by all accounts, working in the mine. Ten years or more. He left it without a second’s thought, the moment his mother finally gave him leave. She wanted help at home you see. It’s why he’s not in service now. Supports a whole family of younger brothers and sisters.”
“To think he grew up in Sydney, far from home, working all waking hours in a deep dark mine.”
She wiped her hands on her apron. “Mind you. He’s cut from the same cloth as his father. Brash. He’ll come to the same sort of end, thundering off alone, unwilling to accept help or advice from one living soul.”
Brash and arrogant? Surely she couldn’t mean the man who had said, ‘you’re a better seaman than I, Captain.’
Cook prattled on, telling me my business, or what she thought it ought to be. “Young Mark DeLaMore would be much more suitable. They say he has a city job lined up. He’ll have a nice house and spend summers in a place like this. You’d not want for a thing.”
Suitable? I snorted. Wife of Mark DeLaMore. I could never consider such as him. A city house on a city street and always trying to impress the neighbors. I knew enough about that life. I snorted again, in a manner to quite match Cook herself. I tried a friendly, conversational tone to get Cook back on point.
“How long was Daro working in the mines?”
“I’d think it nearly ten years, he worked there in Sydney.”
Ten years in the dark, dreaming of the sky.
“They sent his paycheck straight to his mother. Not that it was enough, not nearly. The family barely scraped by.” Cook looked sharp at me, and I couldn’t guess what she expected me to say.
“Can’t imagine what job a boy might do in the mines,” I finally ventured.
“Scraped by.” Cook rolled her eyes. “Are you listening? Waste of time, thinking on the likes of Daro Michelson. Not the life you’d want.”
She shooed me out, and Osten set me to waiting on one and all. I brought a lap robe up to the French lady and then shot all the way down to the other end of the house with the sandwiches for the professor. Mrs. Brookeson wanted hot tea and the chance to complain. I skirted Osten’s office, as I didn’t need yet another run-in with him, then took the mail, mostly magazines, over to the ladies’ big basket.
To think I had worried I’d be bored! Summer had been all about catering to the masses, with a weekly dance, organized picnics or sailing for the younger set, and shopping trips, carriage rides to scenic views, and swell afternoon tea parties, card parties and piano recitals for the older.
I’d have easily believed life would become quieter, even dull, with so few guests…and yet now, with so few staff, I ran around busier than ever.
“Elizabeth, Elizabeth!” Avery, his voice little more than a croak, tried to shout.
I didn’t need to see his red-rimmed eyes, or greenish pallor to know he’d been up all night.
“Bit of a party, Avery?”
“Don’t be a witch. Fetch some whiskey. Hair of the dog all I need. In the smoking room; for me and Mark both.”
I toyed with offering him something nasty; ‘sardines in oil’ popped into mind, but he appeared in no mind to enjoy a bit of my humor. Serve him right for drinking so much.
I doubled back to the gentleman’s bar and hoped there’d be an open bottle so I need not request one from the grumpy Mr. Osten. I wasn’t meant to hand out the liquor, even to the owner’s son.
Trouble Cove Page 4