Waiting for Time (28 page)

“On top of that Meg kept Ben poundin' and hammerin' all day and half the night. I were fair out of me mind thinkin' on what I'd gone and done by marryin' in with such a crowd. I didn't have a civil word for any of 'em—especially not for Ned—for all he were good as gold.”

One day that winter Mary told Ned she had never been hunting and why didn't they go. “Maybe we can find a fox, or duck, or even some salt-water birds like Josh Vincent's all the time bringin' home,” she said.

“No fox hereabouts, maid. Anyhow it'd freeze the arse right off ya out there t'day—and we don't want that, do we?” Ned gave her a wicked grin and made a grab at her behind.

They had gone, though. When Ned saw she was desperate to get out of the house he capitulated, became enthusiastic, sent Jane off to borrow two pair of racquets from the Vincents and went himself to get the old gun Thomas Hutchings kept in the store. Mary stuffed bread and roasted caplin into a sack and told Jane to keep an eye on Fanny.

“Better you stayed home and looked after your own youngster, Mary Bundle! Never heard the likes—a grown woman traipsin' about this time of year!” Meg glared at Mary who was wrapping her skirt around her hips and hauling on a pair of woollen leggings.

When Ned came back with the old muzzle loader and powder bag, Meg started in on him, “Haven't got a mortal grain of sense, neither of ye! Can't put your trust in weather this time of year—civil enough now but s'posin' the wind comes up, or ya comes across some wild creature—a bear, or even a wolf? Ye'd both perish and who'd be left then ta take care of Fanny—or of Isaac and Jane, comes to that?”

“Don't worry, Meg girl, I'll make sure no wolf don't eat sweet little Mary,” Ned made a terrible face, growled and dashed at the children, sending them into the corners squealing—all except Isaac who grabbed Ned's leg, whimpering that his father was not to go.

He picked the little boy up and danced him around:

Isaac Andrews went a-hunting,

For to catch a hare,

He rode a goat about the street,

But could not find one there.

He went to shoot a wild duck,

But the wild duck flew away;

Says Isaac, ‘I can't hit him,

Because he will not stay.’

Ned gave his son a great smacking kiss and planked him down on Jane's lap.

“Grease up the bakepot and keep the fire goin',” he told Meg as they went through the door. “We'll be back by dark with a feed of duck.”

“Nomedoubt!” Meg's voice was tart but she rolled a flint and a candle inside two pair of knitted socks and stuffed the bundle into the sack Mary was carrying.

It was bitterly cold outside, but sunny and still. Along the beach frozen spray covered everything. Driftwood, upturned boats and rocks glittered in the sun. Above the beach, where snow had swirled into great looping drifts, Ned and Mary laced the racquets onto their boots and waded back through small woods and over snow-covered marshland.

Neither of them had ever worn snowshoes before, but Ned seemed to know instinctively how to swing his legs in a wide arc, breaking a trail across the powdery snow. Mary wallowed behind, stumbling and cursing for an hour before she fell into a rhythm that accommodated the awkward foot gear.

Only then did she become aware of how silent the world around her was. All she could hear was the whoosh of snow underfoot and her own gasping breath. She could see for miles across the frozen bog to a line of spruce-covered hills on the horizon. Nothing stirred. Not bird or animal, only Ned, a large dark figure well ahead of her, moving gracefully despite the muzzle loader and powder bag slung across his back. Ned, moving silently, swiftly away from her across the vast whiteness, a white mist rising around him as he plowed into the snow.

Watching him, a sudden sense of loss, of abandonment, hit Mary like a blow. Without thinking, she screamed his name. He stopped, swung around. She saw his face, and the panic, or whatever it had been, left.

“Look!” he yelled and pointed to a clump of alder on their left.

A great flush of birds rose towards the sky. Brown, hen-like creatures, speckled, with white underbellies, cackling in fright over their heads.

“Partridge!” Ned said, dropped to his knees and began scravelling through the powder bag.

It seemed to take him forever to find a paper of powder and a piece of greased rag, to slip the powder and the rag down the barrel of the rifle, to pack in the shot and ram it home. Mary had watched Josh Vincent show Ned this method of loading a dozen times but never had it taken so long.

The birds collected their wits, stopped bawling, their flying became orderly but Ned kept frantically pushing more and more shot into the muzzle loader. Some of the birds disappeared back into the clump of bushes. Still, others—many, many more than Mary could count—swooped and circled overhead.

Finally Ned rolled onto his back, pointed the long barrel skywards, braced the stock against his shoulder and fired straight up into the cloud of birds.

The gun roared. Not one bird fell but the sky was instantly empty. Everything became silent and Ned lay sprawled on his back with the rifle in the snow beside him.

“Ned, Ned for God's sake!” Mary floundered towards her husband. It seemed to take years to get to where he lay in the snow surrounded by a black circle of burnt cloth and gunshot.

His eyes were closed and blood dribbled from between his lips. Certain he was dead she fell to her knees, grabbed his shoulders, pulled him up to a sitting position and screamed: “I've gone and loved ya and now look what ya done—killed yerself! Ya stunned bugger!” Half mad with fear and spite she kissed his blackened face, cursing and shaking him by turn.

Ned's mouth opened and two teeth dropped out. Mary stopped shaking him. His eyelids fluttered, he began to groan. She eased his head down on the powder bag, got a handful of snow and began rubbing it into his face.

“Lord, girl! What ya trying to do, kill me altogether?” the words came out of one corner of his mouth. “How's about a bit more of that lovin' and kissin'—fair warms the cockles of me heart that stuff do,” he lay there a few minutes more as if hoping she would kiss him again.

“Got the guts frightened half outta me you have!” she said and made as if to rub more snow in his face.

He pushed her hand away, got slowly to his feet and touched his cheek gingerly, “Friggin' gun slammed up agin' me face, wouldn't doubt but me jaw's broke!”

“Serve ya right, Ned Andrews! Rammed in too many fingers a powder, ya stunned arse! How's about you call out and I'll shoot—allows I'll make a better job of it.”

Ned didn't seem to hear, he was studying the two teeth he'd picked up from the snow, “Too bad we can't figure out some way ta mitre 'em back in me head!”

“Here—give em to me,” Mary shook what was left of the old priming out of the gun, rummaged through the gunny sack, found another scrap of greased cloth and in a minute had the muzzle packed with powder and teeth.

She stuck the stock of the gun in the snow and wedged it in place with the bags so that it pointed cannon-like towards a spot just above the alder bushes. “Now,” she commanded, “Shout!”

Ned yelled, “Mary loves Ned!” Twenty or so birds, wings pounding, rose into the sky. She fired and two birds fell to the ground like rocks.

Mary let out a shout, and moving faster that she had all day, flung herself through the snow to the dead birds.

“Fair exchange I'd say—two birds for two teeth,” she gloated and did a little dance, jumping up and down on her snowshoes.

“Might seem fair to you, 'twarn't your teeth,” Ned gave her a reproachful look and tugged at her hand. “Come on, Mary maid, we'um both half perished with cold. There be an old tilt just inside them woods,” Ned nodded towards the few scrawny trees beyond the alders.

“Last fall Josh daubed up a chimney out of rocks and mud so's we could have a fire.”

“We're not going to eat them birds 'till everyone sees em!” Mary said as they clumped in the direction Ned had pointed.

“I s'pose now you're gonna stuff 'em and hang 'em over our fireplace so's you can forever tell people how smart you are ta get two birds with my teeth,” Ned teased.

Mary remembers that day as being one of the happiest of her life.

When they reached the tilt they had to use the racquets as rakes to clear drifts away from the low door. They crawled in on hands and knees, lit a fire with wood stacked below the bunk, filled a dented bucket with snow and made tea. The tiny room became very smoky but it did warm up. They took off their heavy clothes and arranged sweaters, caps, cuffs and leggings around the fire on sticks. Mary thought the bread and roasted caplin was the best food she had ever eaten. When it was gone they made love on the hard slatted bunk surrounded by smoke and the stench of scorching wool.

“And that, my maid, was how our first, him was your Grandfather Henry, got started—in Josh Vincent's tilt—always found that part easy Henry were bom nine month to the day after I shot them birds. Meg worked it out—said that's what come of me goin' around the place got up like a tinker. Betimes I use ta wonder if Meg knew where babies come from!” Mary says and then, brazen as brass, asks where Rachel and nuisance-face started the baby her great-granddaughter is carrying.

“Never mind that, Nan,” the girl says.

Love has been mentioned. Rachel wants very much to ask her great-grandmother about love: “That day, the time you was huntin', you said—said you loved him?” The girl turns away to poke at the fire.

“I were thinkin' on that t'other night—queer old things comes into a person's head nighttime! First time I ever remembers hearin' talk of love were once when Jennie Andrews, Meg, Sarah and me was burnin' roots up in the potato garden. Old Jennie started ta tell us how much she and her husband, Ned and them's father, loved one 'nother. I thought it were the most outlandish thing I ever heard tell of.”

“Back where Jennie growed up there'd be one night each spring before the fields were planted when they'd have big fires. Boys and young maids would pile up dead wood, roots and dry grass, after dark they'd set it alight, stay out all night playin' games and dancin' 'round the fires.”

“This was first when I come to the Cape—before ever I thought of marryin' Ned. Meg was mortified, she kept tryin' to hush Jennie but the old woman wanted ta tell us. What used ta happen was half the unmarried girls'd be knocked up by morning, then all hands'd get married after the harvest. Accordin' to Jennie that was how she and Ned's father got together: T loved him from the minute I clapped eyes on en', she said. Stuck in me mind, that did.”

“For meself I never seen no signs of love around where I come from, certainly not between me mother 'n father. Nor thought on it when I bedded down with Tim Toop—for all I enjoyed it much as he did.”

“Once I started listenin' to Ned though, seemed love were the most common thing in the world. In all them stories he told there'd be princesses and beggar maids in love with some man. He'd turn out to be rich—a pirate king or a prince—and they would live happily ever after. Tha's how Ned's stories always ended—happily ever after.”

“For all I shouted out that I loved Ned that day in the woods, 'twarn't something I ever thought about. Love and happily ever after were things in stories. Words! Words nobody but an Andrews would ever say out loud.” Mary pauses and Rachel waits, not daring to move for fear her great-grandmother will lose the thread of thought.

“Summertimes'd be best. In summer I'd think 'twas only a matter of bidin' me time and we'd all be rich, never again know want. That's what 'happy ever after' was, far as I was concerned.”

Seeing the sea for miles around the Cape foaming with caplin, having the men returning trip after trip from the fishing grounds, their boats loaded to the gunwales with cod, helping to gut, wash, salt and turn hundreds of quintals, watching the stacks of salted cod in Thomas Hutchings' store grow taller and taller—these things filled Mary with energy and hope. Surely such abundance, such industry would bring its reward!

Then the fish would be carted away, the days would grow shorter and her fear would return. In the dead idleness of mid-winter she would become frantic. Cooped up in a dirt floored house with another baby on the way, watching the food supply go down, always down, seeing Ned's hands getting more and more crippled each year, listening to his tales about gold, watching the pinched winter faces of the youngsters, knowing another yaffle from the woodpile was going up in smoke, turned Mary into a black wrath.

“Many's the winter we barely kept body and soul together. Yet they'd call me greedy when I'd try ta figure out some way ta make a bit of money. Only real money we ever seen them days was what the men brought home from the ice—and God knows that were little enough!”

“Still and all, in between workin' and havin' youngsters, between shiftin' rocks, haulin' water and curin' fish, I stopped thinkin' it'd been a mistake ta marry Ned, stopped wantin' to be somewhere else. Lookin' back I can see clear as day that for almost fourteen year, all them years we was workin' like beasts, all them years I never stopped worryin' about havin' enough to eat—all that time I was livin' happily ever after. And I didn't even know it!”

The old woman looks straight at the girl: “Ta tell ya the truth, maid I'd give anything ta be in that old house again—a nor'east gale blowin' outside and me snug in bed havin' a bit of fun with Ned.”

“Weren't only the bed thing either,” Mary daubs at her eyes with the sleeve of her red dress. “Ned were all the time doin' things for me or showin' me somethin'. Most times 'twould be nothin' at all—a strange shaped tree, or seaweed curled 'round rocks—or just rocks! Ned could look at rocks by the hour!”

“I minds once he got me up in the middle of the night—wrapped a quilt around me and took me down to the wharf. Late fall it was and cold as the devil but we lay on our backs and watched the northern lights—right overhead, like you could touch 'em, or they might touch you! Little coloured fingers going around and around in circles, red and purple and green twinin' in and out like a maypole dance I saw once in Christchurch—coloured ribbons goin' round and round over our heads. And you know, every time they started to fade Ned'd whistle 'em up again. Never saw the likes of it, like they were dancin' for him.”