Waiting for Time (17 page)

“Sure, everyone knows they crowd loots banks, makes fortunes off government contracts and rakes in money on every bit of food, fish or gear comes into or leaves the country,” Captain Hounsell told them.

Having skippered schooners all over Newfoundland and even down to the West Indies, Lem Hounsell is listened to with respect but when he stopped speaking, a general argument, with much shouting and shaking of newspapers, had broken out.

One or two of the men, Toma Hutchings among them, thought it wrong to tar everyone with the same brush: “Take this man Bond for example—I allow he'll be the savin' of us!” Toma said.

Political talk never changes, Mary thought. She can remember Ned and Thomas and Alex Brennan sixty years before arguing about what could be done to save the country.

“Always in need of savin' and never saved, this place is. Waitin' for time, Ned used ta call it—'we'um just waitin' for time, maid. Just waitin' ‘til our ship comes in,’ he'd say. Well, I allow our ship got sunk off the Funks!” Mary had glared around the room, challenging any of them to argue with her.

When no one spoke she directed Tessa to read some advertisements out: “Least I can make some sense of 'em—know what people gets in wages and what they gotta pay out ta keep body and soul together.”

Willie Andrews, who cannot read much more than his own name, passed the newspaper he was holding to Tessa. The men leaned back good naturedly and lit their pipes. They will talk about what they've read later, in tilts or down in the twine loft when the women are not around. One of the babies toddled over to Toma who lifted the child onto his lap, rocking her and warming her feet with the bowl of his clay pipe.

“Wharf labourers needed, steady work, 8 cents an hour for ten hour days,” Tessa read out in her loud, school-teacher voice. “Sturdy single back chairs, hand-built by Ephraim Nichols, 55 cents each. Strong boy, willing to apprentice to St. John's printer, $6.00 per month, keep not included,” and so on through paper after paper until Mary could stand it no longer. She told her daughter to stop showing off and ordered her guests home to their suppers.

For herself, she had not been hungry that night. She tried to settle down, to wait quietly for Rachel, but ended up pacing the floor, assuring herself her great-granddaughter was safe, that she had simply gone home to read her letter and was probably asleep in her own bed. Eventually the girl did come, as she always had when she was in trouble. Blue with cold and shivering she dropped into a chair and began to weep.

“Foolish as a coo—dawdlin' about outdoors on a dirty night,” talking and scolding, Mary had combed ice out of the child's hair, wrapped a blanket around her, hauled off her boots and propped her freezing feet up on the fender of the stove. All the while Rachel sat like a rag doll, holding the crumpled letter in her hand, crying quietly. Much later, when her father came looking for her, she still had not said a word.

“Come on home now, maid, 'tis well past bedtime,” Calvin spoke gruffly, pretending not to notice his daughter's red eyes and dripping nose.

“She's bidin' the night. Her feet are full of pins and needles—she can't walk,” Mary gave her grandson a hard look, thinking for the thousandth time how much he got on her nerves. He looked so like her Ned with his round smiling face, his bush of flaming hair, that she wanted him to act like Ned. Of course he never did. Calvin took after his father Henry—no more spirit than a pan of dough.

That night Mary could have kicked him as he dithered by the door not knowing whether to go or stay: “Jessie says she wants the young one home—wants to know what's in the letter before she goes to bed.”

“Tis just too bad what Jessie wants!” Mary snapped. She had no time for Calvin or his wife—what could those two gormless dotes do for Rachel?

Mary had snatched the letter from Rachel's limp hands and lifted the stove lid as if to throw the paper into the flames. At the last second something in the girl's face made her change her mind and she pushed the letter deep into the pocket of her red dress.

“Now, go home and tell your wife she don't get everything she wants—'twill be a good lesson for her!” Mary said.

Mystified, as he often was by his grandmother, Calvin shook his head and left without a word. When he was gone, Mary studied the girl for a long minute. Then she went to the pantry, ladled milk into a saucepan and set it on the stove. She pinched bits of bread into a small bowl, crumbled a spoonful of brown sugar over the bread and poured the hot milk on top. This mixture, which the children called mush, was considered a treat and reserved for serious illnesses.

A feeling of inescapable doom and terrible sadness had overtaken Mary. It goes on and on, she thought, the only way not to be tormented like this is not to care about one living thing.

“What's all this falderal then?” she asked when the girl had eaten the bread and milk. Mary tried to sound sure and unafraid, the way she used to when Rachel was a child and rushed in with cut knees or hurt feelings.

“Oh Nan, I wrote him. I wrote to Stephen right after he left—I didn't say much—only asked him to write me…” her voice dribbled out.

“So then—wrote back, did he?”

“I don't know if he even got the letter I sent. That letter, the one come today,” Rachel gestured towards Mary's pocket, “Twarn't from him, Nan—'twas from his mother. He's—he's—Nan, Stephen's dead!”

This was not what Mary had expected. As she waited for Rachel's weeping to end she pulled the letter from her pocket, laid it on her lap and smoothed it out. She looked at the pale grey paper bordered in black, squinting at the thread-like marks some stranger had made to tell her great-granddaughter that Charlie Vincent's grandson was dead.

“'Tis strange beyond belief, the way things comes 'round,” Mary thought as she passed the letter to the girl, “I'm sorry, maid, I wrinkled it all up on ya.”

“You want to hear it, Nan? She calls me ‘Stephen's little friend.’” Rachel began to read, slowly, sounding out the long words the way she had been taught.

I write to acknowledge your charming note and to convey the melancholy intelligence that our beloved son Stephen passed away three weeks after returning home. He had, as you know, been ill for some time, yet we had hoped that a summer by the sea would restore his health. Alas, it was not to be. During the days before his death, Stephen spoke with great affection of his relatives on Cape Random and of his charming little friend Rachel. His poor wife, Melissa, who has only just recovered from the birth of their son, is disconsolate and can undertake no correspondence. On her behalf, as well as for myself and my husband, I express our deep appreciation of your kindness to dear Stephen.

Yours sincerely,
Mrs. Paul Vincent,
1026 Riverside Drive, Boston.

“His wife Melissa—and a son! He never said one word about them Nan, not a word! He said: ‘I'll be back for you Rachel, I'll be back next summer.’ Oh Nan, he were so different, so alive—he'd been so many places and when he talked about them 'twas like I been there too.” The girl gulped and closed her eyes but did not start to cry again.

“What was his grandfather like, Nan?” she asked after a few minutes.

Mary tries to conjure up a picture of Stephen's grandfather: “He was skinny like all the Vincent men, but he thickened out later, got stocky, more like Sarah. Smart as a tack, accordin' to Lavinia. He was still young when he went off to some kind of school for ministers. 'Twas Meg and Ben Andrews paid money so's Charlie Vincent could go—I knows that for a fact. Saved for years and years they did—set on makin' a preacher outta their Willie. Then Willie went and married Rose Norris who was a real flibberty-gibbet in them days. Meg was that miffed she just guv all that money to Charlie Vincent—so's he could be a preacher instead of Willie. And when he got his education, sure didn't Charlie go off to foreign parts ta be a missionary and was never heard tell of again?” Mary shook her head, unreconciled after all these years to such waste.

“Stephen is—was—smart too, different from the boys around here—you knows what I means, Nan.…” For the first time that night Rachel looked up, meeting her great-grandmother's eyes. “Oh Nan, I'da done anything for him—anything.” Her voice dropped to a whisper, “Nan—I got his baby—what am I goin' to do, Nan?”

“I knowed it!” Mary thought and snapped, “I tell you what you're goin' to do, we're goin' to be rid of it—and before this night is out, too!”

Mary had stopped, had made herself stop and wait. She studied her hands, thin and sinewy, spotted with age and criss-crossed with great knotty veins. “Done some hard things in their time, them hands has,” she thought, remembering the births and deaths she had presided over.

But the girl had not spoken, had not said: “No Nan, I'm keepin' the baby!” So Mary went out to the back porch and brought in her big cooking pot which she filled with water and set on the fire. Choosing carefully, she pulled five bags from the line behind the stove measuring a spoonful from each into the pot. She set the girl to grinding roots of goldenthread, mixing it with seeds of Queen Anne's Lace, while she pounded bittersweet berries into a paste. For a little while, working together like that, everything seemed almost ordinary.

All through the terrible night Rachel had followed the old woman's instructions without a word or whimper. The girl did not flinch, not even when Mary made her swallow the bitter stuff until she vomited, forced her to pace back and forth until she was faint. The old woman held the girl's head over a steaming concoction of herbs, spooned glutinous black seaweed into her mouth, made her eat raw eggs and, in desperation, finally dosed her with castor oil. By then Mary felt sick herself and so tired that every bone in her body ached.

She went to the window, rested her head against the cold pane and tried to recollect if there was something more she could do. Outside, the night was black—“black as a cow's guts,” Mary thought, “not a light to be seen on land or sea.…”

There were other ways, hideous dangerous means of producing a miscarriage. Gruesome probings and piercings, things she and Sarah had only whispered of. Things she recoiled from even thinking of in connection with Rachel.

“Tis no use, maid—I done all I knowed of—'tis meant to be.…”

Mary had turned away from the window then—and gotten the fright of her life. Standing by the table, holding onto it as if she might fall, had been not Rachel, but Una—Una Sprig. Mary's mother, almost ninety years in her grave, stood there looking very much as she had on the last day of her life. The weary slump of shoulders, the dirty, damp dress, the matted hair, the deep lines from nose to mouth, the crazed look, were all Una's. Mary gasped. The figure moved, straightened, Una vanished, became again Rachel.

“So,” she had thought, “that's who the child takes after!”

Never having seen herself in Rachel, Mary had often pondered on the girl's swarthiness, wondering secretly if people had been right after all, if Jessie did have Indian blood from her father Toma. But Mary could see now, it was Una's blood Rachel had. The blood of the old people—the only thing her mother had ever spoken of with pride.

Without realizing it, Mary started to cry. She'd walked over and kissed Rachel's cheek, something she had not done since her great-granddaughter was a baby. “Some things nothing can change, girl—there's some things is just meant tobe.”

“But Nan, what'll I do, what will Mam and Pap say? What'll I tell people?”

“Less said, soonest mended. 'Twon't be the first merrybegot born along this coast and I doubt it'll be the last.”

She looked at Rachel's exhausted face and said more gently, “Never mind, girl, you'll be all right. I'll work somethin' out. Go on up to my bed and lie down for a spell, no doubt your mother'll be up here nosin' around at the crack of dawn.”

Rachel nodded and, biddable as a child, went upstairs.

It had grown light, Mary blew out the lamp and looked around. The kitchen was in chaos, a chair overturned, a bucket of vomit by the door, the table littered with bags of spilled herbs and moss, spoons, saucers, cups and bowls, each containing the dregs of a different mixture. Some powder had tipped onto the floor and been ground in with their pacing. Pots of liquid still simmered on the stove, thickening the unsavory stench of vomit, the acrid smell of seaweed, sweat and fear. Everything must be cleared away. Jessie must not guess what they had tried to do.

“I'll work something out,” Mary Bundle had promised—and she meant it. And for a woman nothing could be worked out without a husband—this lesson Mary had learned long ago. As she scrubbed the kitchen floor she was already running through a list of unmarried boys and men on the Cape, trying to think of one who might provide a name for Rachel's baby.

After that night Rachel seemed to give up. She just wrapped grief around herself, curled up on Mary's couch and slept for longer and longer periods each day. The girl became obstinate, she ignored Christmas, refused to join in the mummering or the carol service and would not talk about her now obvious condition even with Mary.

By then, of course, everyone knew that young Rachel Andrews was in the family way and that: dead Stephen Vincent was the cause of it. It was whispered about, but there was no open talk and, as far as Mary could see, no one condemned the girl. Indeed, there was a certain amount of sympathy for Rachel, especially among the women. In death, Stephen took on an even more romantic aura than he'd had in life. His good looks, his fine clothes, his manners, his habit of tipping an invisible hat, his reciting of poetry, his lavish compliments, were remembered and expanded upon.

“I partly blames meself, so I do, after all's said and done he was me cousin's son,” Mary heard Flora Vincent tell Jessie one day when the women met in her kitchen, each bringing a pot of rabbit stew. “I shoulda kept a closer rein on the lad—but my, he were that handsome and him and your Rachel did make a lovely couple—I'm sure, girl, he intended to come back and marry her!” Flora was clearly trying to pull Jessie's tongue. And Jessie nodded and smiled—ignoring the fact that the handsome lad had already been married.