The English Wife

by Adrienne Chinn

  She’d feel disheartened if her body hadn’t succumbed to the numbness that had taken hold on the Halifax dockside. When Thomas had kissed her, the kiss she’d spent hours imagining, it’d been like kissing a stranger. But that was to be expected, wasn’t it? They hadn’t seen each other for over two years. She was a mother now, and Thomas was …

  Ellie licks her chapped lips. She’s made her bed and now she has to lie in it. Isn’t that what Dottie had said to her that last night in the house? Dottie was furious with her. Yes, they’d always had their squabbles growing up, but sisters do. But then things had become so much worse after she’d met Thomas. Stealing a lipstick was one thing, but stealing her engagement ring and hiding Thomas’s telegram were really beyond understanding.

  Why was Dottie so upset that she’d married Thomas instead of George? Was it because she was jealous of Ellie’s imagined life on the other side of the ocean? Maybe it was just that Dottie was caught in that awkward age between childhood and adulthood. Almost seventeen. About the same age she’d been when she’d met Thomas.

  Ellie glances at her husband. At the shock of ash-blond hair grown darker now in the winter gloom. At the thin white scar on his left cheek and the fan of fine lines etched into his skin either side of his eyes. What had happened to him to leave these marks on the handsome, youthful man she’d fallen in love with? Why had he told her so little in his letters from Newfoundland? Why hadn’t he told her about—?

  She glances at the pinned-up trouser leg. Maybe it was better that she hadn’t known.

  Reaching into the net bag of oranges, she takes out a fat round fruit. She runs her thumbnail along the dimpled skin and pulls away the rind. Splitting the orange into segments, she holds one out to Thomas.

  ‘An orange for your thoughts.’

  Thomas glances at the orange and back at Ellie. A smile tugs at the corner of his mouth. ‘Don’t mind if I does.’

  She smiles at him as they eat the sweet orange. They’ll find their way back to each other. One segment of orange at a time.

  ***

  ‘Well, here it is. Tippy’s Tickle. Home sweet home.’

  Ellie jiggles Emmett in her arms as her thin-soled English boots sink into the wet snow. She shivers as the damp, cold air rolls over her face and stockinged legs. In front of her, a tall wooden house with two round turrets perches on a snow-covered hill overlooking the ice-strewn, grey Atlantic. The clapboard house, like all the others she’d seen on her journey, is wind-battered, and its yellow paint is a ghost of its original incarnation. An ancient grey wooden fence missing several pickets separates the property from the roadside.

  ‘It’s … it’s larger than the other houses I’ve seen.’

  ‘Belonged to my fadder,’ Thomas’s father, Ephraim, says, setting Ellie’s trunk in the snow. Ellie looks at the tall, wiry man, still handsome in the weathered way a man who’s led a physical life can be.

  ‘Da’ ran a good business with the fisheries back in the day, but times isn’t whats they used to be. He wasn’t much of one for pushin’ paper around, not like his fadder who was captain of a sealer – that’s why we has the big house. It’s called Kittiwake after the sea birds round here. My da’ started fishin’ when he was a b’y. I joined him on the boat when I was fifteen.’ He nods at his son. ‘Just like Tommy joined me.’

  ‘Dad closed off the top floors years ago,’ Thomas says as he points at the house with his crutch. ‘Too dear to heat. We just lives on the ground floor now.’ He looks over at his shivering wife. ‘Let’s get the baby inside. It’s cold enough to freeze the arse off the devil out here.’

  Ellie frowns at her pile of luggage, which is accumulating a light dusting of snow. ‘What about the luggage?’

  ‘Don’t worry, Ellie Mae. I’ll come back for it.’

  ‘But your—’

  The warmth in Thomas’s gaze turns frosty. ‘I still gots my two arms.’

  ‘Yes. Yes, of course. I’m sorry, Thomas. I didn’t mean—’

  Ephraim picks up Ellie’s suitcase and several bags of provisions they’d bought in Halifax. ‘Don’t you worry, maid,’ he says as he heads up the steps. ‘Tommy and I’ll manage. We’ll gets the trunk up to the house together.’

  Thomas scans the grey water and lets out an exhausted sigh. ‘I’m sorry, Ellie Mae. I should’ve told you.’ He looks at her, his eyes the colour of the winter sky. ‘I was afraid if I did, you’d not come.’

  ‘Of course, I would have come, Thomas. It doesn’t matter. Really, it doesn’t matter at all.’

  Thomas shakes his head. ‘It matters to me.’

  ***

  ‘So, here she is, then. The English wife.’

  ‘Yes, Mam. This is Ellie Mae. My wife.’

  A short, broad, grey-haired woman moves away from the wood stove and reaches for the baby. ‘Are you expectin’ to give the baby pneumonia? What kind of a blanket does you call this?’ She tugs Emmett out of Ellie’s arms and swaddles him in a heavy wool blanket she picks off a wooden rocking chair. ‘There you goes, sweetheart,’ she says to the baby as she starts rocking. ‘You’ll be right fine now Nanny’s got you. Will you look at you? You’ve got the mark of the fairies on your eyes. I’s never seen the likes of it.’ She squints at Ellie through her frameless glass and wrinkles her nose. ‘Catholic girl, I hears, is it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Hmmph.’ She looks over at Thomas. ‘Told you to stay away from those Catholic girls, Thomas. You can’t trusts them as far as you can throws them. Then you goes and gets one in England.’ She frowns at Ellie. ‘Thought everyone was Protestant over there.’

  Ellie shakes her head. ‘No. No, not everyone.’

  ‘Now, don’t you be giving Ellie Mae a hard time, Mam.’

  Thomas’s mother peers at Ellie over the top of her glasses. ‘We only gots the Church of England here. No Catholics in these parts. You should’a married a fella down the South Coast where all the Irish is.’

  Ellie glances over at Thomas. ‘Oh. No Catholic church? I—I guess I’ll manage.’

  Thomas lifts the rattling lid off the pot on the stove. ‘Where you putting us, Mam?’

  ‘Your room, of course.’ Thomas’s mother nods towards Ellie. ‘The Queen of Sheba wants the main room, I expects?’

  ‘Her name’s Ellie Mae, Mam. We needs a large bed for the two of us. Mine’s only a small one.’

  ‘Dad’s dragged down the big bed from the attic. Probably has bedbugs.’

  Ellie jerks her head around to Thomas. ‘Bedbugs?’

  ‘Mam’s only pulling your leg. It’s a brass bed. Anyway, bedbugs would freeze to death this far north.’

  Ellie edges towards Thomas and whispers in his ear.

  ‘Out the back door. I’ll takes you.’

  She looks out through the dirt-streaked glass of the door to the stony cliff beyond. ‘Out the back door?’

  Thomas’s mother chuckles. ‘She’s gonna be a fun one to have around, Thomas. Wait till you shows her the piss pot.’

  ***

  Ellie sets the candle on a chair beside the brass bed and tucks the pink nylon nightie she’d bought at Buntings with hoarded clothes ration cards around her. She shuffles under the stack of sheets and blankets.

  ‘Jaysus wept, girl. Your feets are like ice.’

  ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t realise it’d be so cold here.’ Lifting a foot, she rubs it under the covers.

  Thomas takes hold of her hand. ‘Your hands is freezing too.’ He sandwiches her hands between his warm palms and rubs them until she feels the blood run back into her fingers. ‘Give us your foot, maid.’

  Thomas’s face glows golden in the warm candlelight. ‘How do you manage here without electricity or plumbing?’ Ellie asks.

  Thomas takes hold of Ellie’s left foot and rests it across his jersey undershirt, rubbing it like it’s kindling for a fire. ‘You don’t miss what you don’t has.’

  ‘But, you’ve had it in England, so you must miss it now.’

  Thoma
s nods. ‘Too right, maid. I’d give up a lifetime of Jiggs dinners to have an indoor toilet. But the government won’t bring plumbin’ out to the outports because it’s too dear. They’re starting to get electricity poles up though. They’re as far as Gambo now. They’ll get to us in another couple of years or so.’ He releases her foot. ‘Give us the other one, maid.’

  Ellie swings her right foot over and hits the stump of Thomas’s leg. He groans. She sits up in the bed. ‘I’m so sorry, Thomas. I didn’t mean to.’

  ‘I knows it, Ellie Mae.’ He rubs the scar on his cheek. ‘I’m not much of a specimen, am I? He grunts. ‘You half expects to die, but you don’t expects to come back half a man.’

  Pressing her body against Thomas’s, Ellie tucks her head against his chest. ‘I don’t care. I’m just so glad we’re together again. We’re a family now. Emmy’s such a good baby. I’ll wager you’ve already forgotten he’s in here with us. He hardly makes a sound.’

  ‘He must take after you, Ellie Mae. Mam said I howled like a banshee till I was five.’

  ‘I don’t think your mother likes me.’

  ‘I’d say you’re right.’

  Ellie’s head bolts up. ‘Thomas! You’re supposed to say something like “She’ll come round”. Or, “She’s just having an off day”.’

  ‘Mam’s a hard case. She’s lived in Tippy’s Tickle since the day she was born. Saw her mam and her four brothers die of TB. Lots of people die of that up here. Then my brothers and sister with the Spanish Flu in ’Eighteen.’

  ‘That’s awful. At least she has you and your father.’

  ‘And look what the war’s done to me.’

  ‘Your father seems nice.’

  ‘Best kind.’

  ‘Where did he go tonight?’

  ‘Rod Fizzard’s stage down on the tickle. It’s crib night. He’s the best cribbage player in Tippy’s Tickle.’

  ‘Cribbage?’

  ‘Well, that’s what he tells Mam. Mostly, they goes there to drink Rod’s rum.’

  Thomas slides his fingers under the pink nylon strap of Ellie’s negligee. ‘What’s this get-up you’re wearin’, maid?’

  Ellie runs her hand over the shiny pink fabric. ‘It’s the nicest negligee I could find in Norwich.’

  He hooks his finger around the thin strap and slides it down her arm. ‘You’ve gots too many clothes on.’

  ‘But, Thomas. It’s freezing.’

  Thomas raises the sheets and blankets over their heads. ‘Not under here it isn’t, maid. Come under here with me.’

  Chapter 51

  Tippy’s Tickle – 12 September 2011

  Emmett’s store is how she remembered it. The paint the colour of meat that’s been left to age. The four small windows painted white. The wharf leading down to it from the rocky beach a salt-blasted silver.

  Sophie stands on top of a slab of grey rock and watches Sam as he leans over the white wooden hull of a small boat, sanding it by hand to what Sophie can only imagine will be a pristine smoothness. If a job’s worth doing at all, it’s worth doing right. She smiles. Sam didn’t believe in shortcuts. The old way is the best way, he’d once told her. Just mix the method with modern design.

  It’s why his furniture has been selling so well in New York. Whenever she’d missed him, when she’d wondered what he was doing right then at that minute when she was thinking about him, she’d stop by The Future Perfect and run her hands over his sculptural tables and chairs. Everything fashioned out of the silver, salt-cured wood of old Newfoundland wharves and abandoned outport houses. She’d feel its contours, its lines, as smooth and cool as satin under her fingertips, and imagine herself back in Sam’s cottage. But then she’d close down the thought like a shutter over a beautiful view that she knew she’d never see again.

  He’d called, just after she’d emailed Ellie with her new contact details after she’d started the job in New York.

  She’d been rushing up Madison Avenue to a meeting at TBWA to pitch for the redesign of their offices. She’d had her laptop case and the huge portfolio with the presentation boards and she’d been trying to drink a Starbucks skinny latte without spilling it over herself. Then her phone had rung.

  She’d meant to call him back later. He’d called a few more times, sent some texts. She’d never answered those either. She’d meant to, but she’d been so busy.

  The last time she’d seen him, in front of the airport terminal, he’d said it would never work. That it wouldn’t be fair to Becca to get involved with someone who lives in a different country. He was just doing that ping-pong thing men do. When you want them, they don’t want you. Then when you don’t want them, they can’t leave you alone. She wasn’t going to play those kinds of games.

  For about a year he’d tried to keep in touch, the messages thinning out until one day she realised she hadn’t heard from him for several months. Then, about a year and a half after her detour to Newfoundland, she’d walked by The Future Perfect furniture shop. Sam’s picture was in the window.

  Introducing the exclusive Bufflehead collection of hand-crafted furniture

  by Sam Byrne.

  A collaboration between an artisan furniture maker and nature, from the north shore of Newfoundland. Meet Sam Byrne on Friday evening at 6.30pm on a rare visit to New York.

  By appointment only. Inquire inside.

  She’d gone into the shop and had her name put on the guest list. But when the day came, she’d bottled out. What was it that Sam had said? Timing and geography. They were two people on two different paths that had crossed, but now they were travelling in different directions. It was just one of those things.

  He didn’t call her when he was in New York. She’d been expecting the call. Her heart jumping every time her phone had rung. But it was done. A boat missed. A ship passed in the night. The possibility of a relationship with Sam had slipped away, like a memory of a dream that dissolves when you open your eyes to the morning. She’d drunk two bottles of wine and cried in the bathtub. Then she’d got on with life. And life was work.

  A tall man with a shock of wiry, grey hair emerges from the store, carrying two mugs. Emmett. He must be about sixty-five or so now. Emmett hadn’t thought much of her, back in 2001. Couldn’t have said more than two sentences to her. Sometimes he’d scrutinise her like she’d caused him some great wrong. She’d never had a chance to find out why. He’d avoided her like she was carrying the flu. If Newfoundlanders were known for their friendliness and hospitality, Emmett Parsons was certainly the exception that proved the rule.

  He joins Sam by the boat and hands him a mug. It’ll be coffee. Black. Sam’s a coffee man. The two men lean their elbows on the boat’s hull and talk. Sam shakes his head and rubs his forehead. She wishes she could read his lips. To know if he was speaking about her.

  ***

  ‘Sam.’

  Sam and Emmett look up. Sophie picks her way down the rocky slope onto the wharf.

  ‘Hi, Emmett.’ Sophie holds out her hand. ‘Nice to see you again.’

  Emmett screws his lips together and stares at her with his odd blue and brown eyes. He gives her a quick nod. He takes Sam’s empty mug and heads back into the store.

  ‘That wasn’t very friendly.’

  ‘Why do you suppose that is?’ Sam picks up the sandpaper and drags it across the wooden hull.

  ‘He never liked me. He’s always been like that with me.’

  ‘Maybe he’s a good judge of character.’

  Sophie bites her lip. He’s just needling her. Trying to get a rise out of her. She runs her hand along the boat’s hull.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell him his jumper is inside out?’

  Sam shrugs. ‘I’m not his mother.’

  ‘No, that you’re not.’ She leans against the wall. ‘I’ve seen your furniture in New York. I specified it for a restaurant we designed in Tribeca.’

  ‘That was you?’

  ‘I had a colleague in our interior design practice place the order. I
didn’t want you to think I was doing you any favours.’

  ‘And were you?’

  ‘No, of course not. If your furniture was rubbish, I’d never order it. I take my work very seriously.’ She glances at the store. ‘You’re not still making it in there, are you? I ordered over a hundred chairs.’

  ‘No.’ Sam nods towards the shore. ‘I’ve got a bigger place down by the shore now.’

  Sophie squints at the shore. ‘You’ve got people working for you now?’

  ‘Emmett helps on the bigger orders when I need it. I still help him on the boats when he needs it. Becca’s boyfriend, Toby, has been getting underfoot there, too, since the fish processing plant closed in Heart’s Wish. I’ve had him turning out the table and chair legs on the new lathe.’

  ‘Why don’t you expand? The lead-time was quite long.’

  Sam grunts. ‘Why would I want to do that?’

  ‘Well, to make more money. Be successful.’

  Sam pulls a chamois cloth from his back pocket and rubs it along the sanded hull. ‘That’s it, then? In order to be successful, you need to earn a lot of money?’

  Sophie crosses her arms. ‘It’s what capitalism is all about.’

  ‘Right. And money plus success equals happiness?’

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  ‘Are you happy?’

  ‘Why wouldn’t I be? I’ve got everything I’ve ever wanted.’

  ‘That wasn’t what I asked.’

  Sophie frowns at Sam. ‘Why are you so angry with me?’

  Sam folds the cloth and stuffs it back into the pocket of his jeans. ‘Because I haven’t been able to forget you. And it tees me off.’

  Sophie feels the blood rising in her cheeks. He hasn’t been able to forget me?

  ‘Sam, look, I’m sorry. Life just … the past ten years just went so fast. I never intended to lose touch.’ She kicks at a small orange buoy on the wharf. ‘I concentrated on my career and it’s been wonderful. I’m a lead architect at the firm. Up for a partnership. I design buildings all around the world. It’s everything I’ve ever wanted.’