by Darrell Duke
A large saltwater-stained transom over the facing entrance once allowed bright shafts of sunlight to breathe life into the house. Now, a murky glow falls on the hallway and half the stairs. A cobwebbed kerosene lantern perched on a fancy cast iron bracket swings from the wall.
Looking at it, the home still might give off a mild glow of old fortune, but that’s only compared to the roughly hewn dwellings of most of the town. The picket fence, distressed with grey and black lines of age, runs alongside the road to keep in the sheep.
Upstairs in the store, a rectangular, two-levelled affair about forty feet from the side of the house, is where Richard sat in his solid oak chair and kept his office—a large room, with boxes of account books, deferred invoices, and stock, where no one has bothered the dankness and dirt since he left Fox Harbour. Anne found that out foraging around up there earlier this morning. Tonight she will take the young ones up there, show them why their grandfather’s work was often interrupted by skies of vivid oranges, reds, pinks, greens, purples, and blues. Not to mention the impressive, calming shadows of The Isaacs and The Neck at sunset.
From the bottom half of the building, people continue to take supplies and borrow tools and fishing gear on the awkward promise of catching enough fish to repay it all.
Telling someone their dead mother or father still owes for this or that hasn’t gotten any easier, according to the number of empty liquor bottles strewn about the big room partitioned by forty-odd years of bills in boxes, old tools, more dust, and more dirt.
Running out from an unpainted, heavily built barn in the far corner of the yard, the flakes span over the road, right past the water’s edge. A series of walking planks run through hundreds or thousands, depending on the situation, of split and salted fish drying on the longer-topped platform when the rain bothers to stay away. Otherwise they wait out the weather in round piles, covered in tree rinds weighed down with big rocks.
Jim, Mike, and Henry always did shore work, fished, and handled their father’s schooners while Annie and her sister, Mary, helped keep the store’s records in order. They sometimes accompanied their father on business trips to St. John’s, giving him time to socialize with the powerful merchants of Water Street and Duckworth Street.
As a young woman, during the busy fishing season, Annie, as she was called, went with her father more so than the others, who couldn’t spare the time.
On the long train ride from Ville Marie Station to the bustling city, Richard smoked his pipe and rarely spoke, while young Annie dreamt of St. John’s and how its people might one day admire her as they seemed to respect her father. She loved not feeling out of place in her good dress, learning to stroll with purpose along the busy sidewalks of the city. There were big shots everywhere. And she loved the way the young men dressed in their Sunday best, even when it was the middle of the week. They were a far cry from the boys in Fox Harbour.
Corner boys gawked at her while other lads, dressed in felt hats and jackets of tweed, tried selling her newspapers. The attention she often received brought a lovely red glow to her face now and then.
Anne loved looking at fancy clothes in big store windows, and not having to walk under shady fish flakes where, at home, she was sure to be pinched by dirty old men and curious young boys alike.
In the big mercantile shops, Annie smiled shyly at the fine-looking businessmen in tailored suits running on her father like he was a king. She even made eyes at clerks, although they weren’t nearly as important as the sons and nephews of rich, powerful merchants.
When she was nineteen, in a city studio, Annie had a portrait taken of herself in a fancy dress. Her staunch Catholic upbringing wouldn’t allow her to go out of her way to show the photograph to many, in case they’d think she was getting above herself. But she was proud of it. It was no secret the girls of Fox Harbour were rare beauties, but all weren’t so fortunate as to be brought up like Annie. It wasn’t always easy for her to blend in at home where women were expected to marry the next available man, get pregnant one year after the next, and, wrapped in a dirty apron, tend to a husband the rest of their lives. One day, she always said, she’d have a job of her own, in the city, and a clean, handsome man with money, who didn’t smell like fish.
In 1904, while accompanying her father on a business trip to T & M Winter Ltd., Annie sat on a wooden bench, waiting for the clerk. She read the Evening Telegram, and had enjoyed that newspaper for as long as she could remember. Richard always had copies sent or brought from the city. She especially loved reading the section on world news and sharing stories with people in Fox Harbour who couldn’t read or afford the paper. In later years, Richard had taken her to see a few moving pictures at the Nickel Theatre, too, and she had no trouble drawing an audience at home with her recounts of the stories she’d seen on the big screen.
“Buffalo Bill Cody,” she read audibly. “Did you know he helped build a town in the States three years ago and they named it Cody after him? Just imagine. And, he named a hotel after his daughter just two years ago?”
Annie glanced over the paper at the clerk for a reaction, but got none. She thought how nice it was for Buffalo Bill, such a famous man, to think so much of his daughter.
The clerk cleared his throat and Annie neatly folded the paper, setting it on the low table next to the bench. She stood in front of the large oak desk full of papers stacked tidily.
“Your purchase order, miss,” said the clerk, looking up and handing it to Annie.
He’s some polite, she thought. She couldn’t get over how good he looked in his suit of clothes. Pocket watch and all.
The clerk wished he’d gotten his work done sooner. Perhaps he did look up once or twice, only to see the back of the newspaper.
“Thank you,” Annie said, sitting back down to examine the order.
The courteous clerk started another order while lifting his eyes often to take in the warm presence of the beautiful young lady carefully looking over the bill. Her lips scarcely moved as she quietly made sure they had all they needed for the family store.
“Twelve barrels of flour, Lakewood’s, $6.10 a barrel; two hams, butt pork, $25.00 apiece; 10 tubs of butter . . .” her voice faded. She gently cleared her throat before continuing. “Twenty-two cents apiece; one barrel of seeded raisins, fancy, $4.00 . . .” She stopped murmuring and read the other five items in silence, having noticed the handsome clerk watching her.
For two or three seconds she dropped her head and raised the corners of her mouth, never taking her eyes off of his. He couldn’t get over how beautiful she was, and they both blushed and laughed quietly at their awkwardness. It seemed to last an eternity.
“It’s the best kind,” she said.
“Good, then.”
Annie watched him initial the bill.
“E.T.F. What does that stand for?”
“Edward Thomas Furlong, miss,” he answered, handing her a receipt. “And you’re Richard K. Healy,” he joked, pointing to the signature on the dotted line.
“That’s what I have to write,” she said. “My father’s name, I mean, the business bein’ in his name.”
“I know,” he smiled. “I was just . . .”
“It’s Anne,” she said under her breath.
The clerk’s penmanship was sort of eloquent, like hers, she mused. She blushed again when his hand accidentally touched hers.
“So, Anne, you live in Fox Harbour.”
“Yes,” she answered. “Placentia Bay. Not Labrador,” she said quickly.
“It’s you,” the clerk said excitedly.
“I was gonna say,” Anne said, a smile spanning the width of her face. “I knew it. I should’ve said right away that you looked familiar . . . the dance.”
“Yes! The dance before Christmas three years ago,” he said, as if he’d had the line rehearsed ever since, waiting for thi
s moment. “And you had to . . .”
“I had to go. Tell me about it!” Anne said, rolling her eyes.
“Do you still work there?” he asked.
“The Royal Stores? No. I got sick, rheumatic fever, and had to leave. I went back home to help with the family store, after I got better.”
“You’re all right now?”
“I’m fine, except I’d rather be in here.”
“Not too much in the way of excitement out your way, I suppose.”
“Very little. I mean . . . it’s home and everything, but . . .”
“I know,” Edward laughed softly. “It’s not St. John’s.”
“No, it’s definitely not St. John’s,” Anne said with a little chuckle, relieved by not having to give a detailed description of her life in Fox Harbour.
Richard K. Healy and Marmaduke Winter clinked glasses and bid goodbyes in a room across the hall, and Anne stepped back.
Edward smiled. “You’ll probably be in here again, then.”
“I dare say,” Anne said.
Anne and Richard walked from Duckworth Street, down over the hill toward Water Street. Tall wood-and-brick buildings held back in reserve. The sun dropped and horses snorted while their weary masters steered cartloads of everything imaginable along the lively corridors of prosperity. Barking dogs chased flapping miniature Union Jacks on carts while dignified women proudly shoved prams of babies over the streetcar tracks and up the steepest roads, even steeper than the one leading to the graveyard in Fox Harbour. Ornately trimmed dormer windows pouted boastfully from mansard roofs. Clad in shingles of black, red, or green, attached homes leaned on one another, for fear of falling down the sheer hills, reminding her of the men staggering home early on Sunday mornings at home; only the houses were silent, singing no songs of Irish rebellion and freedom. There was peace in that, but silence, she knew, was never an option for drunken Irish mouths sworn to keep true to the promises and memories of their forefathers.
The stench drifting up from wharves and schooners behind the buildings rivalled tantalizing smells of supper escaping through open windows where mothers and wives beckoned all hands home to eat. Less lively women, cloaked in black from head to toe, stared blankly from half-open doorways, calling no one, just like the widows in Fox Harbour.
A dishevelled specimen of what might have been a handsome bachelor begged for a few coppers for a bite to eat, and Anne wondered to her father why the man didn’t just go into someone’s house for food like they would at home.
Colourful row houses, no older than the twelve years since the Great Fire, lent warmth to the cooling twilight as Anne wrapped her shoulders in her mother’s black woolsquare. Perched upon iron posts letting go of the sun’s warmth, gas lamps hissed at the oncoming night while manikins in the front windows of the Arcade Store masqueraded heaps of the latest fashions to the emptying cobblestone street.
The jarring streetcar rattled its way to the enormous train station at the end of Water Street. Though her eyes scanned her physical surroundings, Anne’s thoughts looked only into her heart for something she’d scarcely, if ever, felt before. She couldn’t think past Edward—his handsome face, his polite manner, and the lovely suit of clothes with the pocket watch on a silver chain. And the fancy initials, E.T.F. How she wished her time longer with him that night of the dance, and back there today, in the city, how she was dying to find out if he was courting anyone, but she could hardly be so bold. He was awfully nice to her, but perhaps he was like that with everyone. Would seeing him again put her right back where she was after they first met—home? Would she soon be sick to her stomach, with little to do but think about him, wondering if she’d ever lay eyes on him again? How unwanted doubt and spells of pessimism had replaced her dreams of waltzing him again, of having a sensible conversation, the way she couldn’t with the young, single men at home.
Rarely has a child of a Roman Catholic family been spared the encouragement to become a priest or nun. In keeping with pure Irish Catholic tradition, every parent knows having a child wear a habit or a collar in a world where only Roman Catholics are entitled to God’s forgiveness will automatically place them higher on the social scale.
Anne’s intentions, however, didn’t involve entering a convent. Instead, she chose to go to Littledale College and boarding house in the city to further her education.
On the train ride back to Ville Marie Station, Anne dreamt of her time in St. John’s six years ago when she went to Littledale. Then, the enjoyable days at work, and walking the streets in the evenings, watching people and going to the moving picture shows with her new friends.
Littledale, the post-secondary school run by the Sisters of Mercy, was also a place for young ladies training to become nuns in the convent located on the same grounds. While praying in the chapel for the souls of her five siblings, and walking the long hallways between classes, Anne witnessed young girls, no older than herself and some much younger, wholeheartedly giving themselves to Jesus in musty pews and damp, gloomy vestibules. Echoes of whispers of novenas to the saints, litanies of the dead, and acts of contrition, faith, hope, and charity that seemed to hold the walls together, sometimes left her to wonder if her plan to work and raise a family and simply go to Mass and to eat no meat on Fridays was good enough.
On sunny afternoons in the usual late Newfoundland spring, Anne spent most of her time studying outdoors. Upon the ancient grounds, young nuns-to-be strolled, stopping from time to time to rest on cool, elaborate cast iron benches in the shade of old tree branches and new leaves. Clothed in summertime white from head to toe, the nuns hovered over the manicured grass like mislaid ghosts in grave contemplation. They’d appear and disappear behind big, straight, knotty pines and gigantic Carolina poplar, and rose bushes adorning the air with thick scents worthy of heaven itself.
With her new schooling behind her, Anne went back home to Fox Harbour. She terribly missed the many forms of excitement so bountiful in the city.
Richard said she could move to the city again, but only if she had a job. So, it wasn’t long before she was hired to work in the hat department of the Royal Stores. There, her employers and co-workers treated her with kindness and respect. Life was good, both at work and at her new home staying with her sister, Mini, and brother-in-law, Jim Davis, at their Duckworth Street home. When rheumatic fever brought a hurried end to Anne’s working life, she was lost.
Before she knew it, Richard was waking her up at Ville Marie station, between Dunville and Fox Harbour. During the four-mile jaunt home, Anne paid little mind to the words spoken between her brother, Jim, and their father about low fish prices, and their fearful talks of a big union in the near future.
The supplies he’d ordered in St. John’s would arrive in two days’ time, Richard said. His sons would retrieve them in their longboat, Revels, at the railway terminus on the Jersey side of Placentia. Their moving lips and eyes were revealed now and then by the light of two square kerosene lanterns swaying and rattling on brackets fastened to either side of the rickety cart. At times, silhouettes of the horse’s head and treetops covering Birchy Hill appeared when the clouds made way for the big, bright moon.
After another handful of visits to T & M Winter, the awkwardness Anne and Edward once felt was no more. They hurried through routine business dealings, making time for uncomplicated banter.
Anne agreed it was okay for Edward to send a postcard or two to keep in touch, as telephones outside the city were scarce.
As time passed, the emptying of inkwells spelled out their budding mutual affection, and soon the whole of Fox Harbour knew the couple’s affairs. The postmistress, taking it upon herself to dish out the latest news of their relationship, met terrible dismay one day when Edward’s latest card arrived. He’d invented a code of words and phrases only he and Anne could understand.
Alone in her room, rereading the han
dful of postcards, Anne wished she’d stayed in the city and had reunited with Edward much sooner.
The next year, 1905, Anne’s mother died. When the fishing season ended that same year, Jim Healy married Kate Davis. Their daughter, Johanna, named for Jim’s mother, was born two years later. Shortly after the baby was christened, Kate came down with the consumption. Keeping up with the demands of an infant was tough for the young mother and, although Jim would never let on, he’d seen too much of the disease to believe his Kate would last the winter.
“I can’t stand the thought of her endin’ up in that cursed hole,” he’d say to Mike every morning in the fall while they cut wood for the winter.
Without her knowing, Jim had dug Kate’s grave long before the frost set in. Storing her corpse in the shed, covered in salt and sawdust until the spring thaw, like some had had to do, was never an option. Kate died the day after Christmas in 1908.
After his father and his brothers helped him lower his dead sweetheart into the cold ground in the box he’d made, Jim rarely spoke. Only words related to business matters and the weather crossed his lips. The latter was an easy topic to discuss, living on an inhospitable island in the North Atlantic.
“The little one’s not even a year an’ a half old,” and, “He can hardly rear her on his own,” everyone said.
Having neither the skill nor the time to take care of a child, Jim allowed his sister, Mini, to take the baby to live with her and her husband in St. John’s.
For nearly thirty years, Fox Harbour fishermen had been going to sea in Richard Healy’s Queen of Providence until early in the fall of 1912. While all other schooners fishing around Cape St. Mary’s abandoned the area on account of a scarcity of fish, the Queen of Providence lingered behind, ending up with a full load.