The Shipping News (47 page)

A few torn pieces of early morning cloud the shape and color of salmon fillets. The tender greenish sky hardening as they drove between high snowbanks. A rim of light flooded up, drenched the car. Quoyle's yellow hands with bronze hairs, holding the wheel, Wavey's maroon serge suit like cloth of gold. Then it was ordinary daylight, the black and white landscape of ice, snow, rock and sky.

Quoyle's romping thoughts left him with nothing to say, nothing to crack the silence swelling between them. Mumbled a stupid question about Alvin Yark's endless song. But didn't care. It was just to get started.

“Sung that long as I can remember. The
Gander Goose
sank at sea and the
Bruce
was the one they shipped the moose on. Moose from New Brunswick. I don't know when, back around the First World War. Newfoundland didn't have moose until they brought them in.” Nor was it anything to her, but the exchange of voices in the humming car encouraged. She thought of a boy in school who had wept over his lunch of mildewed crackers. She had given him her meat sandwich, cut from a cold moose roast.

“There's enough of them now,” said Quoyle, laughing, wanting to seize the chapped hand. It seemed an omen when they saw one of the animals in a frozen wallow beside the highway.

By noon there were open harbors, and the sight of blue water made them both happy. Blue, after months of ice.

Wavey in the shops on Water Street, exhilarated and startled by the smells of new leather, perfumed magazines, traffic exhaust. She bought a toy cow for Herry, a pair of long underwear for her father. Box of greeting cards for all occasions, on sale. A paring knife with a red handle to replace the stub in the kitchen drawer. A floral-print brassiere in jewel colors. There was lovely Shetland wool that would make a Fair Isle sweater. But it was too expensive. She noticed a monger's window where, on a bed of ice, a wonderful
scene was worked in fish. A skiff made of flounder fillets rode waves of shrimp and blue-black mussels. A whole salmon was a lighthouse, shot out rays of glittering mackerel. All framed by a border of crab claws.

She had Quoyle's list, his envelope of money for clothes for Bunny and Sunshine. Tights, corduroy pants, a pullover for Sunshine, socks and panties. What enormous pleasure in shopping for little girls. She added barrettes, socks edged with scallops of lace, two lovely woolly tams, teal and mauve. Careful to guard against the pickpockets that abounded in cities. Ate a roast beef sandwich for lunch and spent the afternoon twacking through rich stores, looking over everything and never spending another cent.

Quoyle shopped, too, circled the shelves of the asylum gift shop wanting to bring something to the old cousin. Who knew what his memories were? Who knew what his life had been? He'd fished. Pulled up whelk pots. Had owned a dog. Walked at night. Tied knots.

He looked among the wrestling magazines and machine-embroidered sachets, found a sentimental photograph of a poodle in a stamped metal frame. It would have to do. There was no point in wrapping it, he told the woman at the register and put it in his jacket pocket.

The old cousin sat in a plastic chair with wooden arms. Sat alone near a window. He was very clean and dressed in a white nightgown, a white robe. Paper slippers on his veiny feet. He stared at a television set in a bracket near the top of the wall, the picture blurred enough to show two mouths, four eyes, an extra rim of cheeks on every face. A bald man talked about diabetes. An explosive blue commercial for antifreeze showing fragments of a hockey game, a spray of ice.

Quoyle got on a chair and adjusted the controls, lowered the volume. Stood down, sat down. The old cousin looked at him.

“You come ‘ere, too?”

“Yes,” said Quoyle. “I came to see you.”

“Damn long ride, ent it?”

“Yes,” said Quoyle, “it is. But Wavey Prowse came along for company.” Why tell that to the old cousin?

“Oh, aye. Lost ‘er ‘usband.”

“Yes,” said Quoyle. There seemed nothing wrong with the old man's mind to Quoyle. He looked around for knotted strings, saw none. “Well, what do you think?” he asked cautiously. Could mean anything.

“Oh! Wunnerful! Wunnerful food! They's ‘ot rainbaths out of the ceiling, my son, oh, like white silk, the soap she foams up in your ‘and. You feels like a boy to go ‘mongst the ‘ot waters. They gives you new clothes every day. White as the driven snow. The television. They's cards and games.”

“It sounds pleasant,” said Quoyle, thinking, he can't go back to that reeking sty.

“No, no. It's not entirely pleasant. Bloody place is full of loonies. I knows where I is. Still, the creature comforts is so wunnerful I play up to ‘em. They asks me, ‘Who are you?'—I says ‘Joey Smallwood.' Or, ‘Biggest Crab in the Pot.' ‘Oh, ‘e's loony,' they think. ‘Keep ‘im ‘ere.'”

“Um,” said Quoyle. “There's a Golden Age home in Killick-Claw. There might be a chance—.” But wasn't sure if they would take him. Reached in his pocket for the photograph of the poodle, handed it to the old cousin.

“Brought you a present.”

The old man held it in his trembling claw, looked. Turned away from Quoyle toward the window, toward the sea, his left hand came up, fingers spread over the eyes.

“I tied knots ‘gainst you. Raised winds. The sheep is dead. Whiteface can't get in.”

Painful. Quoyle wished he'd gotten a box of chocolates. But persevered.

“Cousin Nolan.” How strange the words sounded. But by uttering them bound himself in some way to this shriveled husk. “Cousin Nolan Quoyle. It's all in the past. Don't blame yourself. Can you hold on while I look into the Golden Age home? There's quite a few from Killick-Claw and No Name Cove there. You know you can't go back to Capsize Cove.”

“Never wanted to be there! Wanted to be a pilot. Fly. I was twenty-seven when Lindbergh crossed the Atlantic. You should have seed me then! I was that strong! ‘E was ‘ere in Newfoundland. ‘E took off from ‘ere. They was all ‘ere, St. Brendan, Leif Erikson, John Cabot, Marconi, Lucky Lindy. Great things ‘as ‘appened ‘ere. I always knowed of it. Knowed I was destined to do fine things. But ‘ow to begin? ‘Ow to get away and begin? I went to fishing but they called me Squally Quoyle. See, I was a jinker, carried bad winds with me. I ‘ad no luck. None of the Quoyles ‘ad no luck. ‘Ad to go on me own. In the end I went down in me ‘opes.”

Quoyle said he would find out things about the Golden Age home in Killick-Claw. Thought, in the meantime he would sign nothing.

The old cousin looked beyond Quoyle to the doorway.

“Where's Agnis? She ent come see me a once.”

“To tell the truth, I can't say why,” said Quoyle.

“Ah, I knows why she don't want to come by. Shamed! She's shamed, knowing what I knows. ‘Er was glad enough to be in my ‘ouse though when she were a girl. Come to the old woman with ‘er trouble, begged for ‘elp. Snivel and bawl. Women's dirty business! I seen ‘er digging up the root. Squinty little Face-and-Eye berry, the devil's evil eyes watching out from the bushes. Boiled them roots up into a black devil's tea, give it to ‘er in the kitchen. She was at it all night, screeched a bomb, the bawling so's I couldn't get no rest. See ‘er there in the morning, she wouldn't look up, turned ‘er dishy face to the wall. There was something bloody in the basin.

“ ‘Well,' I says, ‘is it over then?'

“ ‘It is,' says the old woman. And I goes out to me boat. It was ‘er brother done it, y'see, that clumsy big Guy Quoyle. Was at ‘er from when she was a little maid.”

Quoyle grimaced, felt his chapped lower lip split. So the aunt had been to the Nightmare Isles as well. His own father! Christ.

“I'll come by in the morning,” he mumbled. “If there's anything you need.” The old man was looking at the photograph of the poodle. But Quoyle, turning from him, thought he saw the mad glint now, remembered Billy's vile story about the man's dead wife. The old woman. Assaulting the corpse. Ah, the Quoyles.

In the hotel dining room Quoyle ordered wine. Some obscure Bordeaux, corky and sour. Wavey's graceful lifting of her glass. But it went straight to their heads and they both talked wildly of what— nothing. He heard her dark voice even when she was silent. Quoyle forgot the old cousin and all he had said; felt wonderful, wonderful. Wavey described the things in the stores, Sunshine's new cobalt blue sweater that would set off her fiery curls. She was conscious of the new brassiere under her dress and slip. Samples from the perfume counter cast exquisite scents from her wrists every time she raised her fork. They looked at each other over the table. Briefly at first, then with the prolonged and piercing gazes that precede sexual congress. Wineglasses clinked. Butter melted on their knives. Quoyle dropped a shrimp and Wavey laughed. He always dropped shrimp, he said. They both had veal scaloppine. Another bottle of wine.

After such a dinner the movie was almost too much. But they went. Something about a French recluse who peeped through Venetian blinds and played with a bread knife.

And at last to bed.

“Oh,” said Wavey, lying dazed and somewhat bruised in Quoyle's large arms, “this is the hotel where Herold and I came on our honeymoon.”

In the morning the attendant said the old man could not be seen. Had broken the glass from the poodle picture and stabbed at all who came near. And was tranquilized. No question of a Golden Age home for him.

37

Slingstones

“The slingstone hitch
. . . is
used in anchoring lobster pots. It may be tied either in the bight or in the end. Pull the ends strongly, and the turns in the standing part are spilled into the loops.”

THE ASHLEY BOOK OF KNOTS