That Forgetful Shore (21 page)

They sit together in a warm silence, eating toast with bakeapple jam, one of Trif's great pleasures. She finds herself thinking more kindly of her husband these days, with something akin to affection. It's as if she's gotten used to having him around, she thinks. They have, after all, been married six years now. Katie, two years old now, is still an only child, though it's not for lack of opportunity to have another.

Trif has to admit – to herself, not to Jacob John of course – that she is even beginning to enjoy the marital relations a bit, or at least not to mind them as much as she once did. Motherhood has eased up her mind in some ways. She is bound to Jacob John now by a tie far stronger than wedding vows; she no longer regrets having married him, or thinks how she might get out of it. She is Mrs. Russell for better or for worse, and Mr. Russell is not such a bad fellow after all, though he's no hero of romance.

Just as well he's no hero. It's mostly young single fellows like Will and his buddies who've gone off to join up, but there's the odd married man with children who takes it into his head to go off and volunteer. The very knowledge that Jacob John will never do anything so foolish comforts her, is probably half responsible for the warm feeling she feels now as he takes his plate and hers, lays them in the sink, banks up the fire and takes her hand to lead her upstairs to bed.

Kit

The Western Front
June, 1916

Dearest One,

All I can say of our location is that tired old cliché: Somewhere in France. You will know more of the news when you read this than I do, for reporters' telegraphs travel far more quickly than soldiers' letters.

I remember studying history in school, looking at maps of South Africa or the Crimea or even of ancient wars – Julius Caesar's conquest of Gaul was a favourite. I loved studying those battles, soaring above the page like an eagle flying above the battlefield, seeing the great strategic movement of armies, lines of battle moving back and forth with victories and defeats.

How different that is from being in the middle of a war! Here on the Western Front we do not soar like eagles, but slog along like the rats that keep us company in these muddy trenches. I believe there are commanders somewhere who have a sense of battle lines, and I hear that our lines are not moving much – which is bad, but also that the Germans' are not moving either – which is good. Beyond that, I do not see the movement of armies or the grand sweep of battle – only the slimy, mud-covered walls of a trench, with a bunker dug in at the end where I huddle with a few of the bravest boys I've ever known.

And they are boys, darling – at twenty-four, I feel like an old man here. So strange to think that had I stayed at home, I would be the youngest lawyer in a practice, a youngster still wet behind the ears, making beginners' mistakes and learning from my elders. Here in this trench, I'm the old man, Captain Porter, a senior soldier though I have virtually no experience of war, save that I came through the Gallipoli campaign and am one of that First Five Hundred who drilled at Pleasantville in the days when we didn't even have rifles.

How long ago it seems! And how long ago all that talk of the war being over by Christmas. Going on two years now, and no end in sight. We signed up for a year, do you remember? I've been married nearly two years, and we had two nights together as man and wife. What a strange start to a marriage. It comforts me only a little that thousands of couples are in the same predicament.

Somewhere far above this filthy trench, where that eagle soars and looks down on us, plans are being made. We hear rumours of a Big Push, but what that might involve – except for more battles and more blood – we cannot imagine. Home before autumn, the most optimistic of the boys say now…and I wish I shared their optimism. Darling Katherine, I hope this letter won't be shredded by the censors because it betrays a hint of doubt about the war. If soldiers wrote what we truly thought, not a single letter would get through.

Hang it all, I can't end on that note. I want to say something cheerful and encouraging, and to-night's mood is hardly conducive to that. So I will say the most hackneyed and clichéd thing of all – that the thought of you, of being with you again, is all that keeps me going in these darkest hours – because it is, however trite, simply the truth.

Ever your own,
Ben

“I notice he never writes much about the fighting,” Kit says, folding away the letter which she has just read out to Trif. Ben told her years ago when they were courting that he wasn't much of a letter-writer, and that was true until he went overseas. War has unlocked his pen; his letters now are long and thoughtful.

The two women are enjoying the cool of the June evening on Trif's front bridge. Trif is knitting, something she never liked to do when she was younger. Now her hands are rarely still; she has knitted more pairs of socks for soldiers than any woman in Missing Point.

“He's not much like our Will, then,” Trif says. “Of course Will don't write near as well as Ben – he never was much for book-learning – but all he does write is about fighting. I thought he'd sober up pretty quick once he got over there and saw what it was like, but he's not hurt so far and he still thinks it's grand.”

“Even after Alf was killed?” Kit says. Word had come during the winter that Seaman Alfred Mercer was lost on the
Alcantara
– the first casualty among the boys from the Point.

“You'd think that would bring it home to him, wouldn't you?” Triffie says. “He said Char took it some hard. But to hear Will talk about it, you'd think crawling through barbed wire, slogging up to his knees in mud, and shooting artillery shells at the German trenches was no more than skipping rocks down on the beach on a fine fall day.”

“I hope he never has cause to change his mind.” Kit remembers those early letters of Ben's. Ben is older and wiser than Will, but still when he first went overseas he was idealistic, believing he was fighting in a noble cause and right would be rewarded. Gallipoli knocked that out of him – seeing men he knew, boys under his command, wounded around him. He's written little about battles, it was true, but in a few sentences he could sketch what it was like to find the body of his commanding officer – a man a few years his senior, who had gone to school with him at Bishop Feild – torn and mangled on the field, his perfect blue eyes staring unseeing at the shining Turkish sky. Ben is a gifted writer – too gifted, Kit sometimes thinks. His letters put pictures in her mind she'd rather not have there. He has moved up through the ranks quickly because of the deaths of other men, many of whom he liked and respected. There is little boyish enthusiasm left in Ben after nearly two years overseas, a year of active service at the Front.

“Ah well, all we can do is wait and pray, and do what we can to help out,” Trif's knitting needles fly as she speaks. “You're still going to do the recitation at the concert, aren't you?”

Trif's energy amazes Kit: she works around the house and garden all day, caring for Katie, pulling weeds from the rocky soil on the hill above the house where her vegetables grow, scrubbing and mending, baking and cooking. Jacob John is away for the fishing season, so Trif does everything. In what she calls her spare time she does WPA work, which includes not only knitting but also canvassing for money, organizing donations of clothing for the Red Cross, and now planning a big fundraising concert.

“I can't say no, can I?” Kit says. “I feel like a lily of the field next to you; it's the least I can do to help the cause.”

The Women's Patriotic Association on Missing Point is officially run by Mrs. Wilf Parsons and her daughter Rebecca, and Mrs. Reverend White. But everyone agrees that Trif Russell works harder than anyone. Unlike the women of Bareneed, who couldn't co-operate and had to start two WPAs, one for the Methodists and one for the Anglicans, the ladies of Missing Point have banded together for the war effort. Even Trif's adherence to the Adventist faith doesn't exclude her from raising funds to relieve the needs of soldiers and war orphans.

Trif's religious convictions are as much a mystery to Kit as they have ever been – perhaps more. Sunday after Sunday this summer, Kit sits between her mother and father in their pew and listens to the minister pray for an Allied victory, for the success of the British army and navy in their battles, for the safety of Newfoundland boys and especially those from the Point and surrounding areas. During the school year she goes to church in town and hears the same kinds of prayers, the same patriotic sermons exhorting everyone to do their part for the cause of freedom and liberty. She cannot shake the thought that in some Lutheran church in a little German village, the pastor is urging his people to pray for German victories, for the triumph of the Fatherland, and most especially for the safety of the brave boys from their village. Both sides claim God as their leader, just as has every army that ever marched – and what does God do? Pick sides? Turn a deaf ear? Or laugh like Puck, sitting back as the chess pieces stagger drunkenly about the board and say
Lord, what fools these mortals be!

She tries to put something of this into words, now, to Triffie. Despite Trif's fervent faith, she is the only person to whom Kit can honestly express her own doubts. Trif is never shocked by the things Kit comes out with, and now she nods. “Jacob John says that the English say, ‘God is on our side,' the Germans say, ‘God is on our side,' and God says, ‘Good God, what am I going to do with this crowd?'” She laughs at her husband's flippancy, then grows serious. “Honestly, Kit, if I thought God was fighting on our side like most people here seem to think, I wouldn't think much of Him either. God is above all this; He has a greater purpose.”

“And what are we all supposed to do then? Sit around and wait for the end of the world?”

“Wait for it, yes, but work for it too. And do what we can to help others while the suffering lasts. I don't hold with them who says we shouldn't do anything at all to help out with the war effort, like Aunt Hepsy.” Hepsy Snow has made herself unpopular of late by proclaiming that since war is the work of wicked men and God will soon put a stop to it all, His faithful people should have no part in it at all, not even to the point of knitting socks for soldiers. Kit can't imagine Trif, no matter what her religious beliefs, sitting back and doing nothing when there's a cause to support. The WPA effort animates Trif, gives her a crusade, and Trif's never happier than when she has a crusade.

“Well, I should go on and let you get some sleep,” Kit says, packing up her own knitting, which doesn't take shape nearly as quickly as Trif's does. “I'll try to have my mind made up about the recitation by tomorrow. Do you want it to be patriotic, or does it matter?”

“My dear, you can recite what you likes so long as 'tis not ‘Lucy Gray',” Trif says, and they both laugh. The hackneyed old poem from the Third Royal Reader is a favourite with a great many people, and in school days Trif and Kit had both been so moved by poor Lucy's fate that they had cried for hours.

The sun has set and the sky is a vivid twilight blue as Kit walks down the South Side Road to her parents' house. She finds her father sitting out on the front bridge of the house. “Mother's already gone up to bed,” he tells her.

Kit sits down beside her father and they watch the waters of the bay turn gray under the darkening sky. It's a companionable silence; Kit has always been closer to her father than to her mother, always appreciated his willingness to take her ambitions as seriously as those of a son. She steals glances at him as they sit; his hair is gray now, almost white. He still keeps the books for his brothers-in-law, Abe and Wilf Parsons, and he worries about his wife, whose health has never been good and is worse this year. Kit has taken over the housekeeping while she is home for the summer.

“What will you do when I go back to town?” she says. “You know Mother's not going to be strong enough to cook and clean anymore. It's high time you hired someone to help out.”

“I know.” Her father nods as he looks out at the water. “Mother don't like to admit she haven't got the strength anymore, but I was talking to Aunt Sarah Dawe and she says their Ida is thirteen now, done with school, and she could come up and cook and clean for us once you're gone.”

“That's good,” Kit says. She is bringing back her own hired girl when she returns to town; Cousin Ethel's old housekeeper is no longer able to work, and Trif's cousin Betty, at fourteen, is eager for the chance to move into St. John's. Kit pushes aside the thought that she herself ought to stay home on the Point and look after her parents. It would be the dutiful and daughterly thing to do, but much as she enjoys the summer here she can't imagine living this life throughout the fall and winter.

On the night of June 30, the church hall in Missing Point is filled to the point of standing room only for the benefit concert. Though most of the fishermen are down on the Labrador – except, of course, those who are overseas – there are enough women, children and old men in the community to fill every seat. Two more boys about to volunteer – Ki Barbour and Wilf Dawe – are given seats of honour at the front of the room.

Kit has chosen “The Charge of the Light Brigade” to recite; she and Trif both love Tennyson, and the military theme seems to suit the occasion. Not all the evening's entertainment is required to have a patriotic or war theme: there are many good old-fashioned recitations and love songs, but sprinkled in among them are pieces like Miss Agatha Mercer singing “When the Boys Come Home,” accompanying herself on the mandolin, and the Church of England choir will close the evening with “Land of Hope and Glory” followed by “God Save the King.”

Kit's recitation is the last item before the choir sings. The night is warm and even with all the windows in the hall open, the press of bodies in chairs gives the room a close, sweaty feel. Ladies fan themselves with fans or with paper programs, and Kit keeps checking the clock, wondering how late the program will go. It's half-past nine now and Ada Morgan is singing “O Promise Me,” a song she mastered for her sister Sally's wedding last winter. Sal got cold feet at the last minute and left Ki Barbour at the altar. Now Sal is gone off to Carbonear in service, Ki Barbour is enlisting, and Ada is bound and determined to sing her solo.