Michael Crummey

by Galore

  —You’re drunk.

  —What do you care? she said.

  It felt like a fight coming out of their clothes, as if they were each trying to keep something hidden while stripping the other bare. He turned her on her back and lifted his knee to pry her legs open but Esther wouldn’t have it, twisting away to push her naked ass into him, reaching behind to guide his cock inside when he seemed at a loss. He fell across her after he came and held on until she turned underneath him, reaching up to pat his cheek. —A sin to waste that gear of yours, she said.

  —I’m not wasting it.

  —Go put some wood on the fire, she said and he stepped across the room, his legs rubbery beneath him. When he climbed back into bed Esther pointed up at the dimly lit ceiling. —There’s France, she said.

  —Where?

  —Next to England there.

  —There’s nothing up there but a water stain.

  —You can’t see Italy? she said. —The one that looks like a boot?

  —You can make anything out of anything, can’t you.

  Esther laughed. —I wouldn’t be back here if that was true, she said.

  He leaned up on an elbow to look at her. —What happened to you over there, Esther?

  —Nothing, she said and she shook her head. —Everything, she said. He watched her steadily.

  —All right, she said.

  She was in London the first time it came over her. Fifteen hundred people in the theater and she stood in the wings listening to their murmur beyond the stage lights. All week the papers reporting how her voice had faltered in her last three performances on the continent. Her German understudy sleeping with the orchestra’s conductor, the two of them leading a campaign to push the Northern Pearl off the marquee. She hadn’t slept in days.

  She walked on stage to polite applause but there was a whiff of blood about her and the audience could almost taste it. She felt like she was singing under water, she said, her own voice muffled in her ears, a sound as syrupy and thick as molasses. And she could sense something unfamiliar approaching in the middle of the first aria, a black tunnel that opened beneath her feet and she fell from the world in mid-note. She was in the wings when she came to herself, the bitch of an understudy already on stage. She could see faces gathered over her but couldn’t move or speak for the longest time.

  —Like Lizzie, Abel said.

  —Just like Lizzie, yes. Esther rolled over him and out of bed, standing naked at the fireplace. An angry-looking scar on her abdomen. —Happened almost every time I went on stage after that. I spent every cent I had on doctors.

  —What did they say?

  —A kind of sleeping sickness. They think it travels through families. Not a thing they could do for me.

  —I thought you made all that stuff up, he said. —All those stories.

  —I can’t help what you think, Abel.

  He held a hand out to her. —Come back to bed, he said.

  When Hannah left Selina’s House she rushed across to the F.P.U. Hall only to be told Eli was already on his way to the Gut. By the time she caught sight of them the two men were crossing the garden to the house and she ran the last fifty yards to stand between them and the door, her chest heaving. —Mrs. Devine, Coaker said, and she shook her head as if denying the fact. He turned to Eli. —I might take a little stroll before I go in.

  Eli stood within arm’s length of his wife, waiting for Coaker to move out of earshot. —Abel volunteered, Hannah, he said. —He won’t be anything but a stretcher-bearer, Mr. Coaker will see to that.

  Hannah shook her head again. —You never give a thought to none but yourself, Eli, not once in your life.

  Eli turned to stare in the direction Coaker had wandered off. —Tryphie says Levi Sellers come round to see you a while back.

  —What does that have to do with Abel?

  —I just wanted to say it wouldn’t serve you to have any gossip come out in the papers or in the courts, he said. —It wouldn’t reflect well on yourself or on Abel.

  —I could kill you, Eli Devine, I swear to God, she said.

  Eli stepped close so she could see every feature of his face in the pale moonlight. —I won’t have anyone belonged to me hurt Mr. Coaker, he said. —I won’t allow it.

  Hannah covered her mouth with her hand, shocked to see so clearly something she’d tried to ignore all her life. She pushed past Eli, running back across the garden, and he stood watching as she went. Coaker ambled over to him once she was gone and they stood side by side in the dark. —Should we go in? he asked.

  Abel left for St. John’s en route to overseas at the end of the week, the wharf and shoreline crowded with well-wishers despite the cold. Union banners on the stagehead, Adelina and Flossie Sellers presenting him with woolen socks and a scarf from the Women’s Patriotic Association, Reverend Violet offering a blessing before the boat departed.

  Abel stayed at the rail of the F.P. Union long after his father and Coaker went below, watching the coastline slip by. Snow creviced in the headland of the Tolt, the nearly invisible entrance to the Gut snaking through the cliffs. Devil’s Cove where the quarry cut for the cathedral’s stones showed black through the drifts. Miles further on to Spread Eagle and Smooth Cove and the cold didn’t touch him the whole way. Esther hadn’t been on the wharf to see him off and he tried to tell himself he wanted no different. But by the time they sailed over the Rump his legs were watery and shaking and it was all he could do to keep from bawling. He wiped at his eyes and found the ridiculous socks from the Women’s Patriotic Association still in his hand, bent down to shove them into his kit bag. Discovered Jabez Trim’s Bible tucked away inside, tied up in its leather case. Only Esther could have stowed it there, he knew, to say something she was too goddamn precious or traumatized to speak, and in a fit of childishness he pitched the book over the rail. It floated alongside the boat awhile and Abel ran the length of the deck to keep it in sight, shouting at the water. He could just resist the urge to go over the rail after the book as it churned in the wake and sank below the surface.

  Tryphie was surprised that Hannah stayed on with Esther after Abel left, though he guessed it was preferable to the company she might be forced to keep if she moved back to the Gut. He stopped by Selina’s House every few days to see the women had enough wood in and to ask after his daughter. There was no word from Abel and they expected nothing for weeks if not months. Hannah had to make do with speculation in the St. John’s newspapers and rumors passed on by Tryphie, or by Dr. Newman when he visited on Sunday afternoons.

  At the beginning of April Tryphie came to Selina’s House with news that Eli was back from St. John’s.

  —When did he get in?

  Tryphie slapped at some invisible lint on his pant leg. —I saw him coming off the boat yesterday morning and he wouldn’t so much as look at me, Hannah. He’s holed up over in the Gut now. Haven’t even been by the union hall.

  —Did he hear something about Abel?

  —I don’t know what’s wrong. I was thinking you might want to go look in on him.

  Hannah shook her head. —I can’t be the one to do that, she said.

  Tryphie looked up at the ceiling and nodded.

  He could see snow still drifted up the side of the house as he crossed the garden, a footpath kicked through to the front bridge. He leaned in and called, closing the door behind him when he got no answer. The fire had guttered to ashes and he stoked it up against the chill in the air. —I’m making meself a cup of tea, he shouted. He reached for the kettle where it sat on a small table beside the stove and startled at the sight of Coaker’s portrait above it, as if it were someone flesh and blood in the room with him. —Jesus loves the little children, Tryphie whispered. It occurred to him that Eli could be lying dead up there and he forced himself to climb the stairs. Found him on the bed in Abel’s room.

  —Hello Ladybug.

  —You just come up from St. John’s, did you?

  —Went through Port Union, he said
, on the way along.

  —Everything all right down there?

  —How about that tea? Eli said.

  Tryphie left an hour later without learning the first thing about what was troubling Eli. He packed the firebox with wood, thinking Eli didn’t have it in him to keep a bit of heat in the house. —You know where to find me, he said, you needs anything.

  Eli didn’t get out of the chair to see Tryphie off. He sat and watched the portrait beside the chimney, half a mug of tea gone cold in his lap. He’d been held up in St. John’s a week after Coaker left for Port Union and wired to say he would stop in on his way to Paradise Deep. Spent half an hour on the wharf when he disembarked to make the rounds, poking his head in at the office to shake hands and ask after this or that project. He walked up past the rows of union houses to the residence Coaker had built for himself. It was the only touch of ostentation in the town, a turret and gabled windows, a sun porch screened in at the back. Coaker had packed the rooms with lavish furnishings and every time Eli came through he found some new addition—a woolen rug from one of the union’s European fish buyers, chairs from Harrods in London, a South American dining table, Italian statues. Not a soul begrudged it to him, seeing he’d built the union and the town from nothing.

  The Bungalow was the only house in Port Union where people knocked before entering and a youngster answered the door. Eli had seen him once or twice on the waterfront, Bailey he thought the name was. His hair combed back from a high forehead, wool coat and tie and a high starched collar. He couldn’t be more than eighteen, Eli guessed. A mouth to make the angels jealous. —Uncle Will said to expect you, the boy told him.

  There was an orphan’s look about him, Eli thought, a hint of want so sullen it was almost predatory. He could hear Coaker’s gramophone in the parlor, the music seeping past the boy into the open air.

  —He’s having a little lie-down, the boy said. —You can come in and wait if you like.

  Eli considered that a moment before he said, Tell Mr. Coaker I stopped by.

  He heard the door close as he walked down the long concrete walkway to the road and he stopped there, still trying to take in what he’d seen in the youngster’s face. One more exotic trinket added to the Bungalow’s comforts. Two men wandered along the path and they nodded to him there, courteous and a little wary. He could see them shake their heads when they’d gone past, as if the new arrangements at the Bungalow mystified them, though they couldn’t begrudge Mr. Coaker even that.

  Tryphie came by a second time two days later, standing just inside the door to tell Eli that Allied lines across the Western Front were overrun by a German offensive. Fifty killed in the Newfoundland Regiment, another sixteen unaccounted for, though the names of the dead and missing weren’t known. Eli stood from his chair and picked up his coat lying on the green leather chesterfield. —I’ll walk you back, he said.

  They didn’t speak until Eli dropped Tryphie at John Blade’s house. —You’re all right, are you? Tryphie asked.

  —I’ll be fine.

  He went on to the F.P.U. office where he tendered his resignation from the union executive. He walked to the telegraph office in the hospital basement, cabling St. John’s and Port Union to resign from the House of Assembly and the national coalition government. Back in the Gut he took his seat across from the president’s portrait and waited for night to fall.

  Late that evening Eli lit a lamp and stoked up the fire to boil the kettle. There was a basin on the table under Coaker’s portrait that he poured full, shaving by his reflection in the glass. When he was done he took the frame off its nail and turned Coaker’s face to the wall. He dressed in his best shirt and coat and set out for the Tolt under a cold flood of stars. He walked into Paradise Deep, past Selina’s House and up Sellers’ Drung to the merchant’s house. Adelina met him as he let himself into the porch and he apologized for calling so late. —I wonder, he said, if I could talk to Levi.

  On May eleventh the coalition government in the Newfoundland House of Assembly passed the Military Service Act with the full support of its F.P.U. members. The sudden reversal of the union’s opposition to conscription was undertaken without warning, and local councils across the island passed resolutions condemning the act and Coaker’s high-handedness in imposing the change without consultation. Responding in The Fisherman’s Advocate, Coaker spoke of the torture he suffered making the decision to support conscription, how he neither slept nor ate in the days before the vote. But he never managed to explain his reasoning to anyone’s satisfaction. In thousands of union homes the president’s portrait was turned to the wall or smashed on the floor or taken down and put away for good. It was as if half the country had woken from a collective dream to find the world much the same as when they’d drifted off.

  Abel’s name wasn’t among the list of the regiment’s dead and missing published in the St. John’s Evening Telegram. His letters to Esther began arriving belatedly, from England and then France. Esther never opened them in company and never reported their contents and Hannah was forced to read them on the sly, sneaking into Esther’s room when she was gallivanting drunk through town.

  Abel was marched around a parade square with a wooden rifle and a bayonet. He was granted two days’ leave before being posted across the Channel and wandered over half of London to see the theaters where Esther made her name. The roads in France were frozen mud and his toenails had blackened and fallen off from the rough walking. There was a half-breed from Labrador name of Devine in the regiment, he carried a tooth he claimed belonged to Judah. Abel was assigned work as a regimental stretcher-bearer where he was least likely to get others killed. They were moved off the front lines while they waited for reinforcements and were living the easy life, assigned as guards to the commander-in-chief. All through that summer he complained he was bored to tears but he’d requested a transfer to the regular infantry and expected to be more than a stretcher-bearer when they moved back to the front. Each letter closed with a line in a hand unlike the writing in the body, a style so old-fashioned and baroque it was almost comical. Behold thou art fair, my love, thou art fair, thine eyes are as doves. Thou hast ravished my heart, my sister, my bride.

  As the summer wore on Hannah began to catch glimpses of a change in Esther’s figure, a rise in her profile under the layers she wore, a slight change in her posture that suggested a particular discomfort. Esther seemed determined to keep her condition a secret from the world, wearing even more clothes than was her habit, never leaving the house without a shawl or overcoat even when the sun was splitting the rocks. For weeks Hannah dismissed the evidence as her own imagination at work but by the end of August Esther’s overcoat was barely equal to the task. Hannah finally mentioned her suspicion to Tryphie, talking in a roundabout fashion that allowed the word itself to go unspoken.

  —I knew goddamn well, he said. —I knew it. Have you told Eli?

  —I wanted to be sure, she said.

  —Perhaps we should have Dr. Newman take a look at the girl, he suggested. —Before I bothers Minnie with it.

  —Come by on Sunday afternoon, she told Tryphie. —We’ll ask him then.

  The doctor spent an hour at Selina’s House every week, drinking cups of barky tea he fortified with rum when he thought Hannah wasn’t watching. He was telling her the regiment was back at the front and fighting in Ypres when Tryphie stuck his head round the door. Tryphie looked from one to the other, tentative, trying to guess if there’d been any mention as yet of Esther. He sat to the table and fell into talk of the union to avoid the subject most on his mind.

  —This conscription bill is the end of it, Dr. Newman predicted. —The F.P.U. is dead.

  —Coaker won’t let it go so easy as that.

  —He’ll keep it afloat a good while, Newman said. —But there’s no one going to take him at his word again. He’s just another politician now.

  —The movement’s finished, you’re saying.

  —No one will remember there even was a
movement after Coaker goes.

  —You sound more like Bride all the time, Hannah told him.

  Newman nodded. —I have to keep her with me somehow, he said. He cast around the room, struck by the loss afresh and fighting for purchase. —I appreciate you looking out to Esther all this time, he said finally.

  Hannah glanced at Tryphie. —We’ve been meaning to ask you, Dr. Newman. Have you noticed any change in her lately?

  —She’s drinking a bit less, I thought.

  —I mean in how she looks. Her shape.

  Newman squinted across at her. —I haven’t really paid. He glanced down at the table as if trying to picture his granddaughter.

  —I think before Abel left for overseas, Doctor, Hannah said. —Tryphie and me, we’re fairly certain.

  Newman was still staring at the table and she thought he’d never looked more like an old man. He glanced up at Tryphie and then Hannah. —You’re sure?

  —There’s no mistaking it, she said, suddenly doubting herself again.

  Newman shook his head and looked directly at his stepson. —She asked me not to tell you, Tryphie. She had a procedure in Europe.

  —What kind of procedure?

  —I tried cleaning up the scar tissue when she came home. A butcher’s job they made of it.

  Hannah turned away from the table, setting the teapot on the counter. She felt strangely disappointed to think she’d been wrong all this time.

  —Perhaps I’ll go up and talk to her, Newman said.

  The stairs were almost too much for him and he stood on the landing a minute to get his wind. Ambushed by an image of Bride as the cancer dismantled her one organ at a time, the veins showing through her papery skin. The false teeth in her wasted face made her look a corpse in the bed and he’d wished he was dead, watching her leave in so much torment. —I can make it stop, he told her, knowing she would never consent to such a thing. —When you’re ready.

  Bride offering the slightest nod. —Now the once, she said.