That Forgetful Shore (18 page)

No, it's the letters' contents she weighs, their vivid depiction of two different worlds. For Trif, though without Maggie's journalistic training, is in her own way a vivid writer and a lively correspondent. Her letters sketch the well-known world of Missing Point, the faces and voices left behind. But lately – since her marriage, and especially since Katie's birth – there is another world revealed in her letters, one which, like the Toronto streets that Maggie describes, grows narrower and meaner with the passing months. It's hard not to contrast Maggie's life – the young career woman, forging her way in a man's world, giddy with the opportunities opening before her – with Triffie's life, married to a fisherman, caring for a baby, keeping house. Kit senses how poverty, marriage and now motherhood are grinding down Trif's ambitions.

As for Kit herself – well, here she is, poised between two worlds. She has a college degree and a job with unusual power and prestige for a woman because of that – but she is also as good as engaged, despite the lack of a ring on her finger. She and Ben have discussed it: he is in his final year of law school; next year he hopes to find an articling position with a firm either in Halifax or St. John's. Kit will spend these two years teaching, and when his year of articling is finished, they will be married.

When she thinks of Ben himself – his kindness, his humour, the touch of his fingers on her skin – two years seems far too long to wait. But when she thinks of giving up teaching, putting aside her independence and her career, and becoming a lawyer's wife – then it feels as if a trap is slowly, slowly closing upon her. She will have opportunities, of course – as Ben Porter's wife she will be active in whatever community they settle in. She will have church and volunteer societies, but whatever she does will be done as Mrs. Ben Porter, not as Kit Saunders. She will never teach again.

The next letter is from Miss Shaw, who writes faithfully to dozens of former students.

Dear Miss Saunders,

How delighted I am to hear that you are once again a colleague in the teaching profession. I hope your new appointment brings you every happiness. I congratulate you on becoming a Bachelor of Arts. It is indeed heartening to see so many young women taking the path to higher education, and so many more of the professions opening to our Sex.

As for my own news, I have little enough, I suppose. I continue with the same courses at Spencer; this year, our play is
The
 
Merchant
 
of
Venice
, which is not a tragedy, but as close to one as I shall ever likely get the opportunity to direct. This summer I travelled to Boston with my sister and had the opportunity there to see a stage production of
Macbeth
. Short of having seen the great Sarah Bernhardt in
Hamlet
, a privilege that the Lord did not see fit to grant me, I imagine there could be few greater pleasures than to see the Scottish tragedy acted out on stage. You will remember I told you of the superstitious theatre folk who will not say the name of that play aloud – so hard to imagine that one whose mind is immersed in the great works of Shakespeare, could at the same time be so ignorant as to believe that a name carries the power of a curse!

I hope you continue to read regularly and well. Novels and plays are all very well but it is important to read that which challenges the mind as well. I have recently finished a new collection of essays by Augustine Birrell, which I shall send you, if you wish. I am sure in the outports your opportunities for getting good books are limited. If you let me know your needs I shall be happy to supply any that I can obtain for you.

Reading this brisk missive in Miss Shaw's firm, rounded handwriting – her own version of the distinctive script that every schoolgirl and schoolmistress at Spencer College uses – is like opening the window in a stuffy room to allow a bracing breeze in.
This
, Kit thinks,
is the life I was born for. I don't want what Maggie wants, nor what Trif has, but I could live as Miss Shaw does, surely, surrounded by books and scholars.

And yet – that brief sentence about going to Boston to see her sister. The sister, as Kit knows from previous letters, is married with grown children and has just had her first grandchild. Miss Shaw, by the path she has chosen in life, has been cast forever in the role of maiden aunt. Has she ever had a lover? Made love, or even kissed a man? Broken her heart, or someone else's? Little as Kit envies Trif's closed-in life of domestic duties and diapers, she knows that the barrenness of spinsterhood – even a scholarly, professional spinsterhood – will not fulfill all her needs.

Underneath the three letters is Ben's postal, already read.

Dearest One – I will come for you as soon as the
Bruce
lands me in Newfoundland on the 19th Dec – or as soon after as I can manage – and whisk you away home with me for the holidays. I won't write, out here where the curious postmistress can read every word, how very much I long to be with you again.

Today is the twentieth of December. Last night was the school pageant and today the last day of school. Kit is here tonight only to tidy away the last of her work, to make sure she doesn't return to disarray in the New Year. Then she will go to her boarding house to pack and wait for Ben's arrival. When she taught along this stretch of the coast before, in Elliston, she was dependent on the coastal steamers to come and go, but now the railway branch line extends to Bonavista and she hopes the train will bring Ben to her more quickly than a ship could. She hopes he will come tomorrow, though it might be the next day.

She's marking the last of a pile of composition books when she hears footsteps in the hall outside her classroom. None of the lower grade teachers is likely to come in today; Kit gets to her feet, startled, to see who is there. Before she can open the door it's opened from the other side and Ben stands there, smiling.

“How can you be here already? I just read your postal … I wasn't expecting you yet –”

“Never underestimate a young man in love,” Ben says. “Caught an earlier ride down from college to Sydney, so I was able to get an earlier crossing. And here I am – I couldn't have waited another day.”

They are alone, the classroom door closed behind them, in perhaps the greatest privacy they have ever enjoyed in their long courtship. During Kit's four years at university they enjoyed each other's company almost every day, yet the rules of propriety and college life meant they were almost never truly alone, in a room like this with a door that could shut behind them. As Ben's lips meet hers, Kit recognizes her own need for his touch, realizes how badly she has wanted him during this fall's separation.

His hands are as busy as his lips, loosening the laces and buttons of her clothing as if he can't get enough of touching her. She doesn't even stop to think of the fact that she's allowing him far more liberties than she ever has before. She's eager for his touch, and no considerations of propriety – not the thought of her parents, nor of the school trustees, nor even of poor disgraced Louisa Arthur – cross her mind. She only wants to give herself up completely to Ben, to feel his body touch every part of hers. He doesn't ask “May I?” because he doesn't need to; every movement is her assent as he slides her shirtwaist off her shoulders and his hands move towards the buttons of her skirt.

Triffie

Missing Point
October, 1914

My dearest Peony,

How strangely things turn out! Years ago we vowed we would be each other's bridesmaids, and yet when it came my time to be married you were far away at college, and your own wedding was held in such haste that I could not be by your side. Such are the times we live in, and of course I understand fully why you and Ben wanted to be Joined in Matrimony before the First Five Hundred sailed. But how I wish I could have been there beside you, my Kit, to hold your hand as you watched him sail away!

Imagine – a war bride. How romantic it sounds, yet the reality, I'm sure, is far less so. Two boys from Missing Point have joined the Naval Reserves – Alf and Harry, the middle two Mercer boys – along with your cousin Ted, who was already in the Reserves and was called up to report to the
Calypso
. Mrs. Mercer and your aunt, different as they are, are both drove to distraction with the thoughts of what might happen to the boys in a battle at sea. Meanwhile, the young fellows – our Will, and Charlie Mercer, Isaac French and the others their age – mere lads of sixteen and seventeen – go about saying they hope the war lasts long enough for them to go overseas! Can you imagine the wickedness, of wishing for bloodshed and horror to last longer? I told Will that it was evil to say it, and cruel to say it where his mother might hear. If Aunt Rachel were to guess he was even thinking such a thing, I think her poor heart would give out once and for all.

“That's young Char Mercer got Will and Isaac going on with that foolishness,” Jacob John says, when Triffie grumbles. “Them Mercer boys is all mad. They spent their whole lives fighting each other and everyone else they could get their hands on all around the bay, and now they reckon all they got to do is get over to France and they'll tear strips off the Huns. Kaiser won't have a chance once the Mercer boys gets at him. Sure even Fred's going on about it, wanting to join up, and him a married man with two little ones to think about.”

“You're a married man yourself, with a little one to think about,” Trif says. “I better not hear no talk from you about going overseas.”

“Not me!” Jacob John says, and Triffie has to admit, while her husband doesn't lack for bravery, he knows how to look out for himself. He was at the ice in March, on board the
Bellaventure
when all those poor fellows from the
Newfoundland
got stranded and died out on the ice. “Stunned buggers,” Jacob John said when he came home. “I mean, poor stunned buggers – I pitied 'em, Trif, anyone would, all frozen and black as they were, some of 'em froze to death on their knees like they was praying, or with their arms around each other to keep warm. But did you know there was a slew of them, thirty or more, off the same crew that weren't stuck out on the ice because they had the sense to disobey orders and go back on board their own ship? You don't hear much about them in the newspaper reports – they're not heroes. Smart men are never heroes. That's just what I'da done, and never mind what the master watch or anyone else said to me. Obeying orders don't make sense if it's only going to get you killed.”

After four years of marriage, Triffie recognizes this as the code Jacob John lives by. He would be a poor choice for a soldier. He's no foolhardy boy spoiling for a fight like the Mercers, nor no high-minded young hero like Kit's Ben, going off to fight for King and country. Of course, Ben is an officer – he'll miss the worst of the fighting, no doubt. If Jacob John were fool enough to join the Regiment he'd be a foot soldier; in the Navy he'd be a common seaman. Either way he'd have to take orders from some merchant's son in a fancy uniform, orders that might well get him killed. Jacob John would never stand for that.

She doesn't believe, as so many people are saying, that it will be a quick and decisive war, over by Christmas. She believes, as do most of the Adventist faithful, that this is the beginning of something far bigger and more sinister. Elder Hubley preached all summer that Armageddon was coming as the news from Europe grew more and more ominous. Most people on the Point said it was only those Europeans up to their old foolishness, shooting archdukes and the like, and it would never come to Newfoundland.

Now the frenzy and fear over local boys going off to a war on the other side of the world has provided fertile ground for the Adventists. They can barely put out enough seats in their new little church for the people who come to the evening services. Elder Hubley preaches about how war in Europe will lead to the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, which will lead to war in the Middle East and everything will be fulfilled, just as it's spoken of in the Book of Revelation.

“There shall be wars and rumours of wars,” Aunt Hepsy Snow said back in the summer, every time anyone raised the possibility of war. “The sun shall be darkened, and the stars fall from the sky. Them signs already happened, 1780 and 1833. There shall be earthquakes in divers places, like there was in San Francisco. Nineteen-aught-six. Now we got rumours of wars, and before summer's out we'll have war itself. You mark my words. You may scoff at it,” she would say to the doubters, especially when the Methodist minister pointed out there had been wars off and on ever since Jesus was taken up to heaven, “but you'll see. This will be the war to end all wars – earth's final battle. New Year's 1915 is the last new year we'll ever see.”