Sam laughs.
‘What?’
‘You said we. Twice.’
‘Did I? I meant you. Or me. Drawing. You know.’ Sophie feels the blood rise in her face. Bloody, bloody, bloody hell.
‘I like it. I like that you said that.’
‘Yes, well.’ She clears her throat. ‘Where were you thinking of putting them?’
‘Thought I’d put a couple down along the coast the other side of the beach, and one on the cliff the other side of Kittiwake.
‘On the cliff?’
‘Yes, it’s a great spot. I haven’t found better along the coast here. I’ve been looking for the past year. I bought the land six months ago.’
‘You bought the land?’
‘Yes. Down by the beach too. Ellie and Florie wouldn’t sell to anyone else. That’s why I’ve still got the old pickup and Florie has new kennels.’ He grins. ‘Priorities. Thought I’d snatch up the land before some CFA speculator put a hotel or a condo up there.’ He laughs. ‘Can you imagine it?’
Sophie laughs. ‘No. That would be ridiculous.’ She clears her throat again. ‘So, you’re planning to build these artists’ retreats there. Won’t they be … intrusive?’
‘No. Look at the size of these. They’re small, and I’m using local materials. Compost toilets. That sort of thing. They’re not going to affect the landscape like a huge development would.’
Sophie rolls up her sketch and hands it to Sam. ‘How are you going to build these when you barely have staff to fill your furniture orders, let alone the time it takes you to do your construction work?’
He shrugs. ‘I’ll find a way.’
‘What about just moving to St John’s? You could make your furniture just as easily there, and have a showroom. A lot more people will see your work. You’d be close to Becca, too, when she’s at university.’
‘I’m sure Becca will be thrilled not to have her old dad hanging around. Besides, I like it here. It’s grown on me.’
‘So, you do have a girlfriend.’
Sam laughs. ‘I don’t think Bear would appreciate being called my girlfriend.’
He reaches out, his fingers hovering near Sophie’s cheek. She leans away from his hand. ‘Sam, I—’
He drops his hand. ‘Right. Take it easy, Princess Grace.’ Turning to the big dog who is lying on the floor like a black rug, he claps his hands. ‘Bear! C’mon, Bear!’ He heads out past the kitchen and into the porch. The door slams.
Sophie stares at the flashing cursor. What am I doing? It’s just like last time. It’ll never go anywhere with Sam. So, why do I want it to such much?
And now Sam owns half the land the consortium wants. And Ellie and Florie own Kittiwake and the shop.
Maybe she can convince her aunt to sell – the stairs up to the house can’t be that easy for her to climb anymore. Especially in the winter with the snow and ice. And if Ellie went, so would Florie, that was a given. But, where would they go? She could suggest Florida. Lots of Canadians retire down there. She could talk up the weather. But Sam would never move, no matter how much money Richard and the consortium waved in front of him.
Sam is a problem.
Chapter 58
Tippy’s Tickle – 24 October 1949
‘Mrs Parsons! This is a surprise.’
Agnes Parsons eyes the new schoolteacher. Sensible-looking enough. Good shoes, plain dress. Wool cardigan, which you’d expect this time of year. Short dark hair in the permanent wave everyone’s doing now. Odd-shaped glasses, though. Like cats’ eyes. Town woman, that’s for sure.
‘Why should it be a surprise? Emmy here’s my grandson. I’ve come to fetch him home from school.’
‘Is Ellie not well?’ Bertha Perkins asks as she buttons the last button on Emmett’s pink jumper. ‘She always picks up Emmett.’ She pulls the matching pink wool cap over his wavy brown hair and pats his head.
‘She’s brewed a cold. Took to her bed.’
‘Oh, I’m sorry to hear that. Please give her my best wishes.’
‘English, you see. Weak as a bent branch in a storm.’
‘Oh dear. Is there anything I can do? Bring over some soup?’
Agnes screws her face into a frown. ‘You sayin’ my soup’s not good enough?’
‘No, no, of course not. I’m sure your soup is very good, Mrs Parsons. I just thought to be helpful.’
Agnes huffs. ‘We don’t needs charity. We can takes care of our own.’ She takes hold of Emmett’s hand. ‘Come on, b’y. Let’s go.’
Bertha Perkins watches the older woman pull the small boy along the path from the church’s basement hall. ‘Lovely to see you, Mrs Parsons! Give my best to Ellie!’
No response. She pulls her blue cardigan close around her body and closes the door.
***
Ellie rolls over under the covers and reaches for the handkerchief on the bedside table. She blows into the handkerchief and coughs hoarsely. Flopping back against the pillows, she pulls the covers up to her chin.
She should get up. There was supper still to make, and Thomas’s trousers to mend for tomorrow. At least Agnes had gone to collect Emmy. Agnes would never admit it, of course, but she had a soft spot for her grandson. If only she’d stop knitting Emmy girls’ clothes. Thomas was right. He’d start getting ribbed, now that he was in school.
She closes her eyes and succumbs to the aches throbbing through her body. The last time she’d been this sick she’d been back home in Norwich, tucked up in bed in her old room, Poppy filling her hot water bottles and Dottie bringing her hot lemon and honey for her throat. Before Thomas. Another life.
Why didn’t Dottie answer her letters? Nothing. Not a word since that telegram about Poppy. If only she could speak with her. Apologise for leaving, if that’s still what was upsetting Dottie so much.
Things change, Dottie. Don’t blame me for that. I have to live my life. And my life is with my family here in Newfoundland. My Emmy and my Thomas. I hope you find what you’re looking for, Dottie. I hope one day you’ll forgive me.
***
Agnes sets a glass of milk and a plate with a date square on the kitchen table in front of Emmett. ‘There you goes, Emmy. Don’t tell your mam, for it’ll spoil your supper.’
‘I won’t, Nanny.’
‘Say grace, Emmy. You must always thank Holy God for what you’re given or it’s a black mark against your immortal soul and you’ll go to Hell with the Devil. You don’t wants that, do you?
Emmett’s eyes widen. ‘No, Nanny.’ He presses his hands together and squeezes his eyes shut. ‘ForwhatImabouttoreceivethroughthybountyChristaLordAmen.’
‘Good b’y.’
Agnes takes up her knitting and sits in a chair across from Emmett. ‘How’s the little Chaffey girl? She back at school now?
Emmett chews on the date square. ‘Yes.’
‘She have anything to say about when she was gone?’
‘No.’
‘Ah, well. That’s normal, Emmy. It’s just like what happened to the girl down in Colinet back in 1915.’
‘What girl, Nanny?’
‘I don’t know her name, son. But the fairies took her.’
Emmett’s odd eyes widen. ‘Fairies?’
‘Yes, Emmy. I heard about it myself. I was visiting my sister down in Gambo and a neighbour came over for tea. She told us she’d been on the train from Brigus just the week before and a man got on who she recognised from Colinet – that’s down south, Emmy. He told her he’d been there helping to look for a little girl who’d gone missing.’
‘Did she run away?’
‘No, she was only a year old. She’d been crawling around the floor when her parents were havin’ their tea one day and she crawled out onto the porch. Her mam went out to get her but she wasn’t there.’
‘She was gone?’
‘Yes, b’y. Sure as ice melts, she was gone. So, the parents looks around all over the yard and the neighbours’ but they don’t find her. They searched high and low
for twelve days. They tried every lake and river, thinkin’ the baby had fallen in.’
‘Did she, Nanny? Did she fall in the water?’
‘No, Emmy. They looked and looked and the parents were very sad because they couldn’t find her. Then after twelve days the father looks out the window and he sees a man walkin’ down an old path from the woods carryin’ a bundle. The father and the mother went out to meet him and he had the baby girl in his arms. He said he’d found her six miles away sittin’ under a tree playin’ with the dead leaves, happy as can be. He gave her some hard tack to chew on and picked her up and brought her back to Colinet.’
‘Was she hurt?’
‘No, she was fine. Just a bit of sunburn on her neck.’
‘How did she get so far away, Nanny?’
‘It was the fairies, Emmy. They’re angels that Holy God shut out of Heaven in the war with the Devil. You don’t wants to mix with fairies, Emmy. They took the child and they kept it alive, but you can be sure they were plannin’ some mischief. The baby was lucky to be found. Sometimes the fairies takes a child and you never sees it again. You don’t wants that to happen to you, do you, b’y?’
Emmett shakes his head, his eyes wide.
‘That’s right. You’re lucky ‘cause the fairies gave you different coloured eyes for protection. But just in case, always wears a piece of your clothes inside out and carry a bun. That way, they’ll leave you alone. Will you do that for Nanny?’
Emmett nods. ‘Yes, Nanny.’
‘There’s a good b’y, Emmy. Now, don’t tell your Mam which I told you. This is our secret. You gots that, son?’
‘Yes, Nanny.’
Agnes smiles and pulls another ball of wool out of her knitting bag. ‘There’s a good boy. Those fairies will never come after you. Not so long as your Nanny’s around.’
Chapter 59
Tippy’s Tickle – 13 September 2011
Sam waves at Wince as he powers Miss Julie out onto the highway, turning left towards Wesleyville. The sun is high in the sky. Twenty degrees, going up to twenty-two the next few days. And icebergs off the coast in September. Unheard of. It’d hardly ever got this hot in September when he’d first come back to Newfoundland. He used to have to wear his winter jacket to school this time of year when he was a boy in Grand Falls. Maybe there was something to this climate change stuff he’d been reading about in the papers.
He glances at his watch. Just gone eleven. Nine-thirty New York time. Nine-thirty and she was already working and emailing New York. Didn’t she say she was here on holiday? For someone on holiday, she had a hard time tearing herself away from her phone and her laptop. But then, she’d always been a workaholic. She hasn’t changed that much. Maybe she hasn’t changed at all.
So, why can’t I get her out of my mind?
There hadn’t been anyone else. Not seriously. He’d been careful. He had Becca to think of. He didn’t want a repeat of what had happened with Sophie. It wasn’t fair on Becca. Bringing somebody new in, not when she loved Winny so much. Winny was still her mother. Winny would always be her mother.
But, Winny. It’s hard sometimes. Lonely. I miss you. I miss you, but you’re gone. I love you, Winny, but maybe I need to start over. You’d understand that, wouldn’t you?
Sophie wasn’t a stranger to Becca, and she was Ellie’s niece. That was a bit strange, Sophie being Winny’s cousin, but it wasn’t like he was related to her. Maybe that’s why I like her, Winny. Because there’s something about her that reminds me of you.
An image of Sophie sitting at his table in jeans and a Billy Idol T-shirt sketching out her ideas for the artists’ retreats floats into his mind. The habit she had of biting her lip when she concentrates; of tucking her hair behind her ear when it falls out of her ponytail. When she did that it just got him. His fingers itched to tuck that hair behind her ear. To kiss that lip.
Maybe it’s time, Winny.
***
Sam parks the bike and stamps up the steps into Florie’s shop.
‘Florie! You got any canned tomatoes? They were fresh out at Foodland.’
Florie emerges from the back room, two of her dachshunds at her feet. ‘Jaysus, Hildy and Mamie. Get outta my feet, girls. Sure thing, Sam. It’s over there on the top shelf. Just grab yourself what you needs.’
The screen door swings open and Becca enters, a look of urgency on her face.
‘Becca, maid, thought you were at home studyin’,’ Florie says. ‘Does Ellie need somethin’?’
Becca shakes her head, her pink pompom earrings swinging against her neck.
Sam sets two cans of tomatoes on the counter. ‘Becca? Where were you till all hours last night? It was past three when I heard you come in.’
She signs to her father.
‘You want to speak to me outside? Sure, all right, honey. Just let me pay Florie. I’ll meet you outside in a minute.’
Chapter 60
Tippy’s Tickle – 25 September 1952
‘I’s the b’y that builds the boat—’ There’s a crash of tin as the empty milk can by the picket fence tumbles onto the dirt road.
‘Jaysus God, b’y! Watch where you’re goin’. Your mam will fry us up with scrunchions for supper.’
Thomas grasps a picket and steadies himself. ‘Do you figure Mam’s cooked up cod and scrunchions tonight? I’m gut-foundered.’
‘You gots a hollow leg, b’y.’
Thomas stares at his father. Grinning, he slaps him on his shoulder. ‘Well, you’re not blind there, Dad.’ He lifts his face to the darkening sky and belts out the next line of the ditty. ‘And I’s the b’y that sails her—’
Throwing his arm around his son, Ephraim bellows out the song with Thomas. ‘And I’s the b’y that catches the fish and brings them home to Liza!’
Ellie slides up the sash window in the kitchen. ‘They’re back, Agnes.’
Thomas’s mother wipes her floury hands on her apron. ‘I’m not deaf as a cod, girl. My sister could hear that racket all the way to Salvage.’ She picks up the old metal kettle and thrusts it at Emmett, who is sitting at the kitchen table assembling a set of thumb-sized stone bricks into a lopsided house. ‘Fetch some water down the pump, Emmy. I’ll need to be pourin’ tea down the likes of them when they gets in.’
Eight-year-old Emmett slides off the wooden chair and silently takes the handle of the kettle, exiting through the back screen-door.
Ellie opens the pantry and takes out two tin pails, setting them on the floor in front of the stove. Agnes eyes her as she lifts the lid off the pot of soaking hard tack and pokes at the softening bread with a wooden spoon.
‘Where’re you off to with those?’
‘To get water to heat up for a bath for Thomas. It helps him sober up.’
‘He’ll have to make do without the bath tonight. I’s got beer stewin’ in the tub. ’Course you’d knows that if you wasn’t off dilly-dallyin’ all the live-long day with your pencils. I can’t have Rod Fizzard takin’ all Ephraim’s money.’
‘I wasn’t dilly-dallying. I brought you bakeapples for the crumble. They were even ripe this time.’
‘It took you six years to finds me ripe bakeapples when the marsh I showed you is full of them. You’re as blind as a snow-blind Canadian in a blizzard. I’ll hardly give you a prize.’
The front door slams open and the men stumble down the hallway into the kitchen. Ephraim grabs his wife and plants a sloppy kiss on her plump cheek. He drags over a pressback wooden chair and slumps into it, shrugging out of his pea jacket. ‘What you got for the scoff, maid? I’m that hungry I could eat the arse off a low-flyin’ duck.’
‘You think I lives my life at your beck and call, old man? Maybe I was out with my fancy man in Gambo.’
‘Don’t you be teasin’ a hungry man like that, Nessie, or I’ll be back off to Rod Fizzard’s. His wife’s cookin’ up flipper pie.’
Thomas slides into a chair and leans his crutch against the freshly painted yellow wall. ‘I’d stop
there, Dad. Mam’s gots a face on her like a burnt boiled boot.’
‘It’s fish and brewis tonight with scrunchions,’ Ellie says as she peels the papery brown skin off an onion. ‘We were waitin’ for you to get home before we fried up the fat and onions. The cod’s been soakin’ since last night.’
The screen door swings open and Emmett enters with the kettle. After handing it to his grandmother, he slips silently onto his chair and takes up the construction of the tiny house.
Ephraim pats his grandson on his head. ‘You’re a good boy, Emmy.’ He ruffles Emmett’s dark hair and tweaks his nose. Emmett fixes his steady blue/brown gaze on his grandfather and wrinkles his nose.
‘You’re a funny one with your brown hair and that brown eye, b’y.’ Ephraim bends over with a grunt and tugs at the laces of his boot. ‘You must get those from your mudder’s side. The Parsons and Mam’s Inkpen side are all blond and blue-eyed. It’s those Vikings hittin’ up the Brits all those years ago.’
‘He gets his dark hair from my mother,’ Ellie says as she chops up the onion. ‘She had dark eyes, too.’ Probably best not to tell them she was a half-French Catholic. Agnes would have a field day with that.
‘It’s a fairy blast,’ Agnes says as she hands out mugs of steaming tea to the men.
Ellie looks up from the pork fat she’s begun to cut into chunks. ‘A fairy blast?’
‘He must’ve got touched by a fairy when he was a baby. Some around here takes it as a bad sign, but I thinks it makes our Emmy special. The fairies gave him a brown eye to leave their mark on him, so the other fairies knows to leave him be.’
Ellie laughs. ‘Surely you don’t believe—’
‘There was that little girl went missin’ in Colinet back in ’Fifteen,’ Ephraim interrupts as he eases his feet out of his boots. ‘A year old or so. Disappeared out of the kitchen when her mudder’s back was turned. Showed up twelve days later six miles away sittin’ under a tree in the forest, not a mark on her. Happy as a duck on a fresh pond.’
Ellie shakes her head. ‘Someone must have brought her there.’
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