Charlinder's Walk (51 page)

"I don't see any men supporting your family now," Charlinder pointed out.

"There aren't any now," she said. "And we've been so much poorer since Dad died because his work was seen as so much more important than Mum's."

"What kind of work did your dad do?"

"He was a carpenter," said Pauline. "He made and fixed parts of boats."

"And of course we
like
the stuff they bring back from Iceland," Francie continued, "though we mostly live without it since we lost Dad, but why was he the provider, while we and Mum were always bringing stuff that folks could eat?"

"Well, it isn't just us girls, either," said Pauline. "Look what happened to Georgy."

"Right!"

"You know, why should anyone want to attack a boy who's good at breeding bunnies? And then look at Char here," Pauline went on, somewhat to Charlinder's alarm. "What's so shocking about a bloke who can make his own mittens? We've gotten used to it by now, but why was it so odd in the first place, to see a young man who doesn't need a woman on land to look after him?"

"That's a good question, isn't it?" Francie agreed. "I think it's 'cause we're not supposed to use work as a way to treat men like babies, so when they start doing the dependents' sorts of jobs, then what does
that
mean?"

"Fanny's your uncle and Bob's your friggin' aunt, I guess," said Charlinder.

The girls looked at each other and then burst out laughing.

"And we can't have
that
, now can we?" Francie laughed.

"If you don't mind my playing Devil's Advocate," he began, at which the girls looked at him blankly. "I mean, let me argue just for the sake of arguing, perhaps the reason you're not allowed to take any risks outside of having babies is because childbirth is such an important risk to take?"

"I might buy that," replied Pauline, "except nobody can stop with that. Nope, then they've got to keep telling us we're so much different, and not just our bodies, no, it's got to be our souls."

"And how are your souls supposedly so different from men's?"

"Oh you know, how we're so bloody
compassionate
," Francie sneered, "and we like to cooperate, and all that other soft and sensitive, dainty and delicate rubbish, spare me. All that’s supposed to mean we really don’t want to do anything besides tend to our husbands and raise our boys to make them proud. That
is
what’s expected of us."

"And you know what?" Pauline continued. "Maybe we are naturally different, but then so what? If we're really so compassionate and cooperative, why's that got to mean we're always the dependents? Why can’t we also be heard?"

"Yes, why not?"

"Well, Belinda's already on the village council, isn't she?" Charlinder pointed out.

"Yeah, she is," Francie answered, "and she's good at it, so why should we have to wait until we're her age to have our say?"

"You shouldn't," said Charlinder.

"Char, I'm sure you know more than we do about how the world was before the Plague," said Pauline, "but from what we've had passed down, it wasn't Heaven on Earth. I know folks back then had a lot more stuff than we do now, but they also had a lot more problems, am I right?"

"It was...complicated," said Charlinder. "It sounds like, for the lucky ones, life was a lot better than we have it now. Not everyone was so lucky, though. It's really risky for us to talk about the pre-Plague world. We weren't there, and our records are sketchy at best."

"Of course it's risky for us to talk," Francie admitted, "but is it wrong of us to say it was a man's world?"

"That could mean a lot of things," said Charlinder. "If you mean most positions of power were under men’s control, then, yes, it sounds like that was the case in most of the world."

"And some things never change," said Francie. "So, who knows how different the world would have been if women didn't believe they couldn't take part in running the show? I mean to say, if the ladies back then weren't so used to having their menfolk make the rules, there's no telling what kind of place it would have been. I can't say it would have been
better
, but...something different never really got a chance, did it?"

"The world, pre-Plague, is in the past," said Charlinder, "and there's nothing you can do about it now. You can ask yourselves what you'll do about the future, for the society you're living in now."

"Oh, we
have
been talking about it," said Pauline. "We're just not sure of what else to do."

"Why aren't you two in my class, for instance?" he asked. "You might like to write your ideas down."

"We didn't give it much thought when it was time to sign up, did we?" said Pauline to her sister. "I wish I was there now, though."

"There's no reason you can't learn from the ones I'm teaching now. I wouldn't do it if I expected them to keep it to themselves."

Chapter Thirty-Six

Voyage

His time in the village was over before he knew it.

In his last few weeks in coastal Scotland, he identified several youths in his class who were either very proficient spellers or talented artists and organized their abilities into a project for their later endeavors at literacy. After lessons every afternoon, he placed his helpers in front of large sheets of linen paper and helped them rack their brains. They were making a book to help detangle the many ambiguities of the English language for later students, and the phonetic section was the part that required the most imagination. Charlinder made a list of sounds made by particular letters and combinations thereof, and his helpers thought of words that exemplified each sound and accompanied each with an illustration. To no one's surprise, the vowels made the students cringe most often, along with certain shameless troublemaking consonants such as g, h, x and c. Some letter groups simply baffled the artists; how exactly did one illustrate any word ending in
-tion
, for example?

After they were satisfied that the pronunciation guide was thorough enough for a starting point, Charlinder released most of his helpers from duty and engaged the rest in creating a grammatical primer. The students helped think of sample sentences and wrote them out, while Charlinder diagrammed their punctuation and other linguistic properties and stated grammatical guidelines.

He identified a handful of students who were likely to make good teachers, and matched them up with more prospective students, such as Pauline and Francie. His work schedule became increasingly random as the days grew longer and people started streaming in from other villages with goods for shipment. The shipments meant more work for his students to do outside of lessons, and it meant the approach of his departure.

The last lesson was in the middle of May. Belinda came into the schoolhouse that morning and informed Charlinder that one of their ships had a spot for him the following day. She and her family arranged a send-off party for that night's dinner on the back of their property. It was a gentler affair, but similar in mood, to the farewell he'd received for his departure from Paleola. He said his goodbyes to his hostesses; their neighbors; his students; their families.

He stepped onto the boat the next morning after several crates of root vegetables and before several cages of fowl. He was the only person on board who didn't know what to do with a mast, a rudder, or a bilge pump, and nobody asked him to learn. The trip would take over a week, and Charlinder was asked only to stay out of the way. He tried to help the ship's cook, just to keep himself occupied, but found it difficult to be useful when the boat kept going up and down.

"Oy, Char, come up here a bit," Duncan called out to him on the third day. Charlinder tottered up to the bow end to talk to him by the wheel. "Are you seasick, or should we just take you on back along with the Icelanders' wares? It's too late to send you back in a lifeboat, you know."

"Do I really look that bad?"

"Miserable."

"Maybe just a little seasick."

"Just a little, you say," Duncan remarked. "I never saw any lad look so frayed on a trading ship."

"It's the waves getting to me," said Charlinder. "I've never traveled over water this
deep
before, and I'm not used to all this up-and-down business."

"You'll get used to it by the time we reach port," Duncan warned him, "and then you'll step on solid ground and you're going down-and-up all of a sudden."

"Oh, that sounds crazy."

"You're a landlubber, all right."

"I
do
love it when the land stays in one place."

"I don't mean it as a bad thing, you know. How was it, staying with Marietta MacPherson and her girls?"

"It was fine. I got along really well with them, and they took excellent care of me."

"I'm sure they did. I can't imagine you'd come this far if you had a family that needed you at home, so...did it feel strange to be the man of the house?"

Charlinder scoffed. "I was the only man
in
the house, but I don't think that's what you mean."

"No," chuckled Duncan, "I suppose it isn't. Marietta can look after herself after all this time, but are you quite sure she didn't try to match you up with one of the girls?"

At this, Charlinder burst out laughing; the thought of Pauline or Francie as his mate was about as congruous as Ruth living in domestic bliss with Kenny. "Definitely not," he managed.

"See, now, when was the last time anyone heard you laugh like that? I don't see Marietta as the scheming type, now, I'm only asking because...that Francie really should be married by now, but...folks see how she'd rather just stay home with her mum. We wonder...if we've done wrong by them."

"You know what happened with George, then?"

"You can't take a crap in our village without everyone knowing how soft it is," Duncan replied. "Yes, I know all about George MacPherson. As much as anyone outside the family does, anyway."

Charlinder nodded. "Marietta wishes I'd come earlier and taught her son how to read and write. He sounds like he would have made a good student."

"I think he would have liked to learn," Duncan offered. "Though I doubt it would have kept him with us once the lessons were done."

"Maybe not, but then he could write her letters, she figures."

"That would make doing without him a bit easier on her. I used to see other children always attacking him, and I thought, 'Why doesn't he fight back? Why can't he toughen up?' When I saw how that Dylan treated him, I started thinking George must be either the saddest little fellow or the boldest one in the world, to face what he did and keep going the way he was. I'm sorry he ran off, but I can't say it was any surprise."

"That's just about how his mother looks at it," said Charlinder. "I mean, how it wasn't a surprise."

"Sometimes I thought, if she and Dylan had another son, then Dylan would have eased up on George," Duncan suggested. "Either that or he would have always been comparing the lad to his brother."

"Yeah, that can happen, too. Listen, I had a couple of boys in my class; Justin and Billy. Are they your sons?"

"Yes, they are. I wanted them to take your lessons as soon as I heard what you were doing. How were they?"

"Justin was a good student; Billy was...energetic."

"Oh, dear," laughed Duncan, "sounds like he gave you a hard time."

"He's a good artist, though. He did some really helpful illustrations for the book."

"Yes, he told me how much fun it was to work on that. I would have liked to learn, too, but at least my boys got their chance."

"Well, I had room in my class for grown-ups, so where were you?"

"You've never lived in a seafaring village, have you?" Duncan remarked. "I was always at work, Char. The few adults you had in your lessons could make their arrangements to move their chores around, but I was needed at the boatyard when we had light. I helped set up your blackboard and arrange your classroom, but I could never dream of taking enough time to learn how to read."

"I really liked that blackboard, so, thanks."

"I'm glad it worked for you," he replied with a little laugh. "I'm still sorry I didn't get to see what you wrote on it."

"But, you know, I can think of worse reasons not to go to school."

"Work is a harsh mistress. My father had the same job until he suffered a mishap in the boatyard and lost a leg."

"And then he couldn't work on the boats anymore, I take it?"

"Of course not. He lost his livelihood, and he needed his family to take care of him after decades of it being the other way around. He died a broken, miserable man because of one moment when he didn't watch his step. It's a good living and a fine line of work if you're up to it, but I want my boys to have more choices than that."

Charlinder was about to say that he really admired that attitude in a parent, but also considered that, as a non-family man, it would sound condescending and presumptuous. "That's great," he said. Duncan looked at him quizzically. "That you want that for them, I mean. I should warn you, though, literacy only goes so far. It's no guarantee they'll be able to make a safe living."

"Nothing ever guarantees a safe living, but," Duncan began, with a manic edge creeping into his voice, "now we can find out what’s stored in those books we’ve been holding onto since we crawled out from under the Plague, and then we’ll find out what certain
other
villages have been hiding from us while they could read and we couldn’t. And once we find out that much, the possibilities are endless."