That Forgetful Shore (7 page)

“He's not as bad with sums as he is with his letters,” Trif says, opening her lunch pail. The children all go home for dinners, but she has taken to packing two slices of bread with partridgeberry jam and having it here in the schoolroom with Joe Bishop, enjoying this little time talking about the children and their classes, feeling like a teacher.

“Sums will do him more good than letters,” Mr. Bishop says, “but we must do our best to teach him his alphabet at least. If he can count, add and subtract, and knows his alphabet, that's the best we'll do by him. And all that might take him until he's old enough to go out in boat anyway.”

Later in the day she passes the bench where Joe Bishop and Charlie Mercer are bent over the slate. The Primer is laid aside: Mr. Bishop has gone back to trying to teach Char the alphabet. He draws well, his little sketches bringing scenes vividly to life with a few lines. On Charlie's slate he has drawn a large curving fish, curled into a half-circle, a few quick lines delineating scales and gills, a single eye peering up. Joe traces the curving outer line of the fish's body. “That's C,” he tells the boy. “C for codfish – can you see the codfish shape? When you see that shape, think of the codfish, the letter C.”

“That was clever,” she tells Mr. Bishop later. “Do you think he'll remember?”

Joe Bishop shrugs. “He might; he might not. The problem with teaching A is for Adam, or apple, is that half the children don't know Adam – well, from Adam. And if they've seen an apple one Christmas, that's all they've seen. A for axe, B for black bear, C for codfish – that would make more sense.”

“You should write your own alphabet book,” Trif says.

“If I only had time,” he sighs, picking up a stack of copybooks. “Anyway, Charlie couldn't sit still for more than A, B and C, so after C for codfish I sent him out to stack firewood with the older boys. Someday we'll have to tell him C is for Charlie too, but that might only confuse him.”

“Well, you helped him, anyway. Better than I could have done.”

“It's only experience, Triffie. I've been ten years in the classroom now, and I've learned a few tricks. I'll take Charlie now and then for some extra help, when I can spare the time – you can make it up by reading with the Third Reader children. You're such a good reader, you could be working with the older ones.”

Triffie thinks the older children, so recently her classmates, won't accept her as their teacher. Sadie Parsons and Millicent Butler, both doing the Fifth Reader now, are the closest she has to friends now that Kit's gone; it's strange to walk home from church with them on Sunday night and then stand up in the classroom on Monday as if she were a teacher. But Trif will do whatever she can to please Mr. Bishop and help him.

By three o'clock the last lessons are finished, and Mr. Bishop ends everyone's day by reading the latest chapter of
Robinson Crusoe
. He read that aloud the year Trif and Kit were doing the Fifth Reader; before that Trif remembers travelling through
David Copperfield
and
Oliver Twist
on the waves of Mr. Bishop's deep voice, the voice that carried the children of Missing Point to shores their father's dories would never take them to. She closes her eyes to hear him read the last words of the chapter, then moves quickly into action to help the little ones with their jackets. It will be more work as the winter gets colder, when she'll have to wind them into scarves, find cuffs and mitts for small hands, put gaiters on over their shoes. They learn quickly to do for themselves, but the smallest children always need help.

Ruth and Will walk home with the other children while Trif stays back. When the children are gone and the room is tidied, she leaves Mr. Bishop to correcting compositions, making plans for the next day, and helping any older students who may need extra coaching. This year Trif has noticed that Millicent Butler is singled out as she and Kit used to be: a clever girl who reads and figures well, who has a chance of going on to school in St. John's and whose parents might have a chance of sending her. Mr. Bishop has kept Millicent behind several times this month already for extra tutelage; now, as she moves to get her coat, giggling with Sadie Parsons, he says, “Millicent, don't you want to go over those Algebra questions? We talked about spending a little more time on those, remember?”

The girl looks startled, almost guilty. “Oh, sir, I think I got all them learned; I don't need to take up no more of your time.”

“If you've done them all, that's wonderful,” Mr. Bishop says. “Just stay back a minute and let me look at them.”

“Not today, sir, I got to help me mother,” Millicent says.

“Tomorrow, then?”

“I … I don't know, sir. I'm not sure how much extra tutoring Mother wants me to do, it takes up an awful lot of time, especially now the evenings are drawing in and it's dark so early. I'll…I'll let you know.” She ducks out the door quickly behind Sadie before Mr. Bishop can reply.

Trif, buttoning up her own coat, clicks her tongue and shakes her head in disapproval. She glances over at Mr. Bishop. “She's a foolish young thing, to throw away an opportunity to learn like that,” Triffie says. “She don't know what's good for her. You ought to talk to her mother.”

But Mr. Bishop is staring out the window, his eyes focused on something faraway. He seems not to have heard, and Triffie doesn't want to presume, so she goes on home out of it.

On Friday afternoon when the books and slates are put away, it's time for recitations. Matthew White stands up and rhymes off “The Wreck of the Hesperus” in fine form, hands clasped behind his back, his voice an early echo of his father's pulpit voice. An older boy recites a passage from the
Odyssey
. Millicent Butler, who was supposed to say the fourteenth chapter of the Gospel of John, is absent. As the penultimate performance of the day, before the recitation he always gives himself to finish off the week, Mr. Bishop announces Charlie Mercer.

Charlie clambers up on to a three-legged stool Mr. Bishop pulls out for him. He shiggles around on the stool for a minute, then crosses one ankle over the opposite knee and lays his hands on his thighs. He lifts his head and begins to sing

There's a noble fleet of whalers a-sailing from Dundee,
Manned by British sailors to take them o'er the sea…

His little-boy voice is thin as a penny whistle but he sings out every word clear and true, and on tune as well. His right hand taps lightly on his thigh, lining out the rhythm of the song.

It occurs to Trif that Charlie's pose is the exact copy of his grandfather, old Uncle Jedidiah Mercer, one of the best storytellers and singers on the Point. Trif is sure the old man cannot read a word or sign his name, but she, like everyone else on the Point, has sat spellbound, whether in the church hall or in his kitchen, as Uncle Jed rhymes off some ancient song or tall tale.

Joe Bishop watches Charlie with a smile on his face. She is sure this was Mr. Bishop's idea, that he put Charlie on to the idea of learning a song by heart from his grandfather. Charlie has clearly inherited not only his grandfather's memory but his flair for dramatic presentation: he pauses, crescendos, even gestures from time to time as he sings about the
Polina
, the fastest ship in the whaling fleet.

For she challenged all, both great and small,
From Dundee to St. John's!

Charlie hops off the stool and sweeps a bow towards his schoolmates, who all applaud. When Joe Bishop stands up, he says, “It's almost four o'clock, and I haven't time for my recitation today – and anyway, I'd rather leave you with Charlie's song, for I couldn't do a better performance than that. All stand for prayer.”

He leads them in the Lord's Prayer to close the day and then they all flood towards the door.

That night Trif finishes off a letter to Kit:

You are so blessed, you can't know, and I know it's a wicked sin to envy but I can't help it, tho' it doesn't diminish my love for you, which is Strong and Deep as ever it was. But someday you will be in charge of your own classroom, and be able to do as our Dear Pedagogue does, to Inspire and Educate, to find a spark of Hope even in the Dullest. Oh, if you had seen Charlie Mercer singing today, seen how our old teacher coaxed him to find his own buried Talent. How proud I was of Charlie, how admiring of Pedagogue, how envious of you, who will spend your working life in such Worthy Endeavour!

But I remind myself: “Brighten the Corner Where You Are, Tryphosa!” I have been given this little task, to help our Dear Pedagogue with the children and to make his task lighter, and I must do it with the best will in the world. Perhaps when I have proven Faithful in a Few Things, I will, like the loyal servant – like you, my dearest Peony – be made Ruler over Many. Such is my prayer, as I go to my bed tonight, and think of you so far away, under the same sky, the same moon, the same stars.

Kit

There is power, power, wonder-working power,
In the precious blood of the Lamb!

Shouts, tambourines, stomping feet and clapping hands carry the joyful sounds of worship up through the roof of the Salvation Army Citadel in Bay Roberts and straight to heaven. Kit mouths the words, unable to stop watching Trif dance as she beats her tambourine. Trif is completely lost in the music, lost in God. Kit will not get her back until the meeting ends, until the preaching finishes and the call comes and Trif goes up to the mercy seat, weeping over her sins, asking Jesus back again over that well-worn threshold into her heart.

How many sins can Trif have committed since last Sunday?
Kit wonders. The only one she knows of for sure is the sin of envy, for this one Triffie has confessed to her. Triffie commits and confesses the sin; Kit feels the guilt and does the penance.

It's only natural that after Trif has worked for more than a year as Mr. Bishop's assistant, she will be jealous when the School Board finally agrees Missing Point needs a second teacher – one with a Third Grade certificate at least – and hires Kit. They cannot afford two teachers and an assistant as well, so to all intents and purposes Kit has taken away the job that gave meaning and purpose to Triffie's life.

“I've made up my mind I won't let it come between us,” Trif said, confessing her jealousy back in June, when the fateful decision was made. “Our friendship means more than anything. Anyway, I got to think of what's good for the children – of course they're better off with a qualified teacher. You'll be more help to Mr. Bishop than I ever could.”

“If I could give it up for you, you know I would,” Kit said with passionate sincerity. She has no idea whether those words are true or not, but they're easy to say, since she can never be tested on them. If Kit Saunders doesn't take the job, someone else will – an outsider, someone from away. Trif would be no better off, and Kit would go off as a stranger to some other outport, some other school.

Kit misses Spencer College, misses Miss Shaw and the other teachers, even some of her classmates. Coming home feels like putting off her own life, postponing independence till some future date. But it also means coming home to Triffie and to Joe Bishop, and despite complications, these are, beyond even her parents, the two most important people in her world.

The call has gone out; Triffie and a dozen others are kneeling at the mercy seat. Two years ago, Kit and Trif used to laugh together at girls who went down to the mercy seat every week, who got saved over and over. Now Trif is one of those girls; she no longer goes to Salvation Meeting just for entertainment. Something has changed in the two years Kit has been away.

Whatever Kit's sins – and she has them, hidden, unspoken – she will never be found here, weeping, displaying emotion like a new Sunday dress. She misses the grandeur of worship at the Anglican Cathedral in St. John's, a loveliness of liturgy and vestment that has less to do with religion and more, she thinks, with poetry and art and theatre.
These are my religion
, Kit tells herself, trying out both the phrase and the sentiment for size.

Whatever Triffie has to confess, it can't be lust, Kit thinks. They walk home with Jacob John Russell, who is sweet on Kit, and his friend Fred Mercer, who is happy enough to go along and partner Trif. Fred is an easygoing fellow, not bad-looking, and would be happy enough to fall in love with Trif given the slightest encouragement, but he gets none. Jacob John gets none from Kit either, but that's not because Kit lacks passion or the desire to fall in love. She has set her sights higher than Jacob John, though so far she has little to show for it.

During her two years in St. John's, after that first visit with its strange ending, she heard almost nothing from Joe Bishop. Not even letters – just the occasional postcard expressing sentiments so general there was no need of an envelope to contain them. Wishing her well, encouraging her to make the best of her opportunity – the sort of thing a good teacher might write to any promising former student; the sort of letter Mr. Bishop writes to half a dozen young men and women who have left his classroom.

But when he wrote to say that the School Board finally had the funds to hire a second teacher, she knew the pieces were falling into place. All part of God's Great Plan, Triffie might say, or the Workings of Providence, as Kit's mother would put it, expressing the same sentiment in more formal language. Providence, Kit thinks, is a more manageable concept than Triffie's intensely present Father God, or that meddling Jesus.

But lately, she has begun to doubt even Providence. Could there, truly, be a Divine Hand at work bringing her home to Missing Point? Providence has apparently neglected to inform Mr. Bishop. There could be no impropriety in the schoolmaster coming to call on his young colleague, or in walking her home from church, could there? Yet no such overtures have been made. And considering what he did when she was still a schoolgirl – well, no. That must not be thought of. It makes no sense. If he were to court her, to propose, it would settle not only the future but the past; it would make sense of everything that had gone before. Until that happens, certain incidents from the past must remain forever shrouded.
Forever shrouded
. Another lovely phrase to try out, to roll around on the tongue.