That Forgetful Shore (28 page)

“How dare you! How dare you say things like that about a man like Mr. Bishop?”

“You think I'm making it up? Ask Millicent, then. Ask Effie Dawe, or Amelia Snow. When I figured it out I made damn sure I wasn't the only one. I talked to the other girls and they all had the same story – all the clever girls, the ones with promise, once they got to be eleven or twelve and caught his eye. All those extra hours after school – this has been going on for years, Triffie. And nobody will see it or speak out because the man is like a god in that town.”

“You liar!” Triffie is more enraged, even, by the accusation against Joe Bishop than by the news that her husband was once intimate with her best friend. “Why would you make up slander about a man like that?”

“The man is a saint – I know, I know. I've heard for years what a saint Joe Bishop is, all the good he does, but I'm telling you, Trif, I was twelve years old and that man was trying to get his hands up under my skirts. He made me think I was something special, just so he could do things no man should do with a young girl.”

“So if this is true, why didn't you ever tell me? We used to talk about everything – tell each other everything, back then. Why would you keep a thing like that from me?”

Why? Kit has asked herself this question for years. Why she never told Trif about Jacob John is easy to figure out; why she never told her about Joe Bishop is harder. “I never knew what to think about it, how I was supposed to feel. I was ashamed, I suppose – but you're right, I did fancy him. I thought I meant something to him. It was years before I realized it was wrong, that he'd done a bad thing. By then, it was too hard to talk about it.”

Trif stares at her, looking down from the height of three steps up. The hallway is dark, lit only by the lamplight that leaks out of the sitting room. For a moment they both stand in silence, eyes locked.

“I don't believe a word of it.”

“You don't want to believe it.”

“Something's wrong with you, Kit. You've had a terrible blow, and I think it's turned your mind, I really do. I can't think why else you'd be saying these awful things.”

“What are you going to do then, go pray for me?”

“You know I will. I always have.” Trif turns away, continues up the stairs. The hem of her brown homespun skirt swishes against the tread of the steps. With every step, every swish, Kit feels the gulf widen. She wants to pull Trif back, but she can't take back or change a word of what she's said. There's such power in truth-telling. The truth will set you free – but free from what? Free to do what?

“I'd think you'd care more than that, seeing you've got a daughter who'll be going off to school with that man in another year,” she says. “Do you really want to risk not believing me, when Katie's the clever one, and Joe Bishop asks you can she stay behind for extra lessons?”

The swish of the skirt hem stops, and Trif stops moving, but she doesn't turn back. More silence. Finally, without turning around, Trif says, “I got nothing more to say to you tonight, Kit. Good night.”

And she goes upstairs, surely to go down on her knees and pray for her wayward friend whose morals are so loose, whose brain is so infected with madness.

Kit lies awake that night. A dozen times she thinks of rising, crossing the hall to the guest room. She remembers nights in girlhood spent at each other's homes, sharing those old feather beds, their feet twining as they stretched out together towards the hot water bottle or the warmed brick at the bottom of the bed. She remembers holding Triffie in her arms in those days after Beaumont-Hamel, letting her cry out her grief over Will. How easy it had been to help and comfort Triffie; how hard for Triffie to do the same for her, Kit, in her hour of need.

There is something wrong with me
, Kit thinks, lying in her empty bed, staring at the grey square of window in the blackness of the room.
I have lost my husband, and I can't even grieve properly: my world has shattered, but it's not a clean break that can heal. When my dearest friend comes to comfort me, all I can do is tear down her faith and throw old secrets at her, secrets that were better kept buried.

Yet with all that, she feels a sense of relief. Not so much for the admission about Jacob John: Triffie was right about that. Kit should have either told her long ago or else kept silent forever. But the other secret – the truth about Joe Bishop, what he was and what he had done, what he was still doing, for all she knew, to young girls from the Point – it's good to have spoken that aloud. Kit wishes she had said it years ago, shouted it from the rooftops.

When morning comes, vague memories of troubled dreams are the only evidence that Kit has finally fallen asleep. She breakfasts alone, which is not unusual as Trif has been thoroughly enjoying her holiday from housekeeping and sometimes sleeps late. Betty says nothing about having overheard a quarrel in the middle of the night.
It will be all right
, Kit tells herself as she walks to work.
We will find a way to make it right.

But when she comes home for dinner, Trif is not there, nor is she there at supper-time. Kit goes up to the guest room to find Trif's clothes and her trunk gone, and a note neatly penned on a square of notepaper propped on the pillow.

Dear Kit,

I have been to call on Aunt Clara Bradbury, who lives here in Town, and she has been kind enough to ask me to stay with her a few days. I have removed to her house and will leave from there to take the Tuesday train to Bay Roberts.

Thank you for your kind hospitality.

Sincerely,
Trif Russell

She goes to the kitchen, wondering how much Trif said to the girl before she left. She's unsure how to broach the subject, but Betty says cheerfully enough, “So, Trif told me she was staying down with Aunt Clara for a few days. Is she coming back here before she goes, or going on home from there?”

“I…I think she's going home from Clara's,” Kit says, and Betty nods, taking it all in stride.

Kit does not ask where Aunt Clara lives, nor does she make any effort to contact Trif before Tuesday. On Sunday evening, though, she goes to George Street Church, where the revival meetings continue. Kit sits at the back of the crowded room and watches the ecstatic worshippers, hands raised in the air. She has almost satisfied herself Trif is not there when she recognizes Trif's hat, bobbing in time to the hymn music.

The sermon, highly emotional and quite devoid of any logical exposition, leaves Kit unmoved and irritated. She cannot understand why it elicits tears and cries of “Amen! Praise the Lord!” from the those around her, but several rows in front she sees Trif's hands raised to the sky as if she could pull heaven down, as if like Israel she could wrestle a blessing out of God.

She's always been this way
, Kit reminds herself, rising to leave. She remembers the Salvation Army prayer meetings when they were girls, and the Adventist prophecy charts with the strange beasts that Triffie pored over with such avid interest. When they were girls, Trif and Kit were bound together by restlessness, by the knowledge that they sought something outside the life offered them. For a time they pursued it together, in the classroom and in books and in each other.

She is no longer sure if she and Trif are even looking for the same things, but their quests have diverged so widely they are like people on opposite banks of a river, shouting to be heard, barely able to make out each other's words.

A hymn is ringing out as she leaves the building, hundreds of voices raised in happy cacophony.
Will your anchor hold in the storms of life?

That's it, exactly – she pictures Trif as drifting through all these superstitions and religions, but in Trif's mind it's just the opposite. She's found a secure harbour to anchor in, and Kit is the one cut loose and drifting.

Do I have an anchor?
Kit wonders. She has, in some ways, travelled much farther from the small world of their girlhood than Trif has, going off to college, working and supporting herself, becoming an educated, independent woman. But if there is something out there in the empty, post-war, Ben-less world that will fill her with the same bliss that now animates Triffie as she dances and jumps around at this revival meeting, Kit has yet to find it.

Triffie

JACOB JOHN AND the children are waiting for her when she steps off the train. With them is Ruth, who has doubtless done most of their cooking and cleaning these last few weeks. Seeing her pretty young cousin holding the baby, Trif thinks,
What if I went away again, and left her with them? I bet it wouldn't take Jacob John long to find some comfort with Ruth – if he hasn't already.
Kit's secrets have planted darker thoughts in her head than she could ever have conjured on her own.

Jacob John looks pleased to see her, but Trif saves her kisses for the children. She has almost forgotten, in these weeks away, how fiercely she loves them and how that love anchors and grounds her. With Katie's plump arms around her neck Trif knows she can't go away again, not ever, not really. Not until they are grown up, at least.

They have supper at Aunt Rachel and Uncle Albert's house, and Trif tells them how Betty is getting on and answers questions about whether Kit is recovering from her husband's death, smoothing over the fact that she never set foot in Kit's house for the last several days of her visit. She brings out Aunt Clara as a trump card, and Albert is so pleased she has stayed with his sister that this opens up whole new vistas of conversation.

Finally, though, the time comes – the good nights, the chilly walk home to the south side of the Point. At the sight of the house Trif's heart leaps almost as it did when she saw the children. She has forgotten that she loves this house too, has made it her home, her own place. She cannot leave. Three weeks away have only shown her how rooted she is.

She goes in through the back door, through the pantry to the kitchen. She stands taking in the house, the shining black woodstove and the low wooden beams overhead. Jacob John lights a lamp. Billy is asleep in Trif's arms and needs only to be laid in his cot, but Katie must be persuaded to bed, and Trif has to tell her a story before she will consent to sleep.

Trif crosses the hall to the room she shares with her husband. She hopes Jacob John is still downstairs, but he is waiting for her, sitting on the side of the bed in his nightshirt.

“Good to have you home, girl,” he says with a hint of a grin.

Trif moves toward the lamp. She always turns it off before taking her clothes off: to this day, Jacob John has never seen his wife naked in full light.
Did he see Kit naked?
she wonders. Thinks of the two of them, young and limber and beautiful, on a pile of old nets and brin bags. She reaches to put out the lamp.

“Leave it on for a minute, and sit down by me,” Jacob John says, patting the bed beside him.

She sits stiffly, still in her skirt and blouse and sweater next to her husband dressed for bed.

“I missed you,” he says.

“I wasn't gone half as long as you will be in a few weeks, when you goes to the ice,” Triffie points out. She gets up to take off her sweater, hangs it on the hook behind the door.

“Not the same,” Jacob John says. “Man goes away fishing or sealing, woman stays home and waits. Like when the boys went off to war – the women stayed behind. Always has been and ever shall be. Feels different when you're the one left behind.”

“Well, you're getting a taste of your own medicine then.” Trif puts out the lamp at last. For a moment everything feels the same as always, but it isn't. In the dark she unbuttons her blouse. She hears the bedsprings creak as Jacob John lies down.

She finishes undressing and sits on her side of the bed. His hand snakes across the quilt and touches hers.

Well, what else would he expect? They're man and wife; she's been away nearly a month.

That image of Kit and Jacob John in the fish store won't go away. Seeing she still won't lie back on the bed beside him, Jacob John makes things worse by saying, “So, it was good, then, having the time to spend with Kit?”

Triffie takes a long breath. “I don't want to talk about Kit.”

She didn't mean to say that. She was going to keep the whole thing quiet, let Jacob John think with time that her friendship with Kit has just faded away, that they grew apart. But she can't. She won't live a life of secrets and lies like some people. If you don't tell the truth, what kind of person are you?

“No? Nothing wrong, I hope,” Jacob John says, and it suddenly occurs to her that he too has been keeping this secret for ten years. It's not as if he doesn't remember doing – that – with Kit.

“She told me.” Three words is all it should take.

“Told you what?” He sounds genuinely puzzled, and he's not a good liar. No, wait – she believed he wasn't a good liar, but obviously he is, better than she could have guessed. Is everyone but Triffie a good liar?

“About you and her.”

Now it's his turn to be silent a long time, to give a heavy sigh. His hand doesn't pull away from hers, but grips it tighter in the dark. She still sits with her back to him.

Finally he says, “Ahh, Trif, that was years ago. We was youngsters.”

“Oh. And that's all right then, is it? As long as it was years ago, and you were youngsters.”

“No, I don't – I didn't mean it that way. It wasn't all right, but – it happened. A long time ago.”

“So long ago, you'd nearly forgotten, had you? Forgot to mention it to your wife?”

“Oh, Lord, Trif. What man tells his wife if he's been with another girl long before they were married? Especially if –”

“Especially if it was her best friend?”

Jacob John is quiet again for a long while, so long she wonders if he can possibly have fallen asleep in the middle of this. He is a heavy sleeper, and has been known to drift off in company when people are talking, if the subject doesn't interest him. Finally she says, “Are you awake?”