Waiting for Time (43 page)

They sit talking in the warm hollow for an hour or more. Lav asks about the geography of the offshore. She knows, but does not say she knows, that the Cape is situated on a huge underwater plateau.

“The sea 'round here is no more than fifty fathom deep—used to swarm with fish—caplin, herring, cod, lobster, anything you'd ever want,” Alt tells her.

“In Grandmother's day every bit of ocean was divided up between families who lived along this coast—mostly on the offshore islands. Lots of men went to the Labrador of course—but around home they fished the same grounds year after year. By the time Father was old enough to fish people had motor-boats and were going farther out, to the Funks or up along what they used to call the French Shore. By then the salt fish trade was already in decline. Once refrigeration came, people didn't need salt cod—all had to be fresh or fresh frozen.”

“We brought the world's biggest reserve of protein into Confederation and now look at us!” Alf continues, relentlessly pursuing the only subject he displays any emotion about. “Europeans do a great job of protecting their own fishing grounds but no one protects ours. Fact is, Canada signed an agreement in '84 that prevents us from even putting observers on French fishing ships—though we all knew they were taking up to four times their quota. There's fourteen factory freezers out there right now—just out of sight of land. Of course we're doin' the same ourselves—you heard that talk yesterday—nowadays a fish haven't got a chance. It's a wonder any survive—not many do!”

He sounds just like Mark Rodway, Lav thinks. Having no desire to discuss fish she changes the subject, asks how many brothers and sister he has.

“Just Ned and Vicki—she married a U.C. minister, they live in Ontario.”

“But you said you and your brothers used to play in this pit.”

“I had a twin brother—he died young.”

Knowing from his voice that she has trespassed into forbidden territory, Lav quickly asks about Rachel. What kind of woman had she been when she was young?

Amazingly, Alf knows little more about his grandmother than she does. Rachel had left the Cape before he was born and had somehow become a nurse, “Worked for some doctor who had sons. I know that because she used to send us boys their outgrown clothes—in packages from New York, velvet jodhpurs and striped shirts. We hated 'em, made us the laughingstock of the place, Grandmother did.”

She asks if Rachel Jane will get Rachel's brooch.

“I dare say,” Alf is curt again—not rude, as he had been the day before but clearly setting limits on what questions he will tolerate.

Tired of trying to decipher the protocol of conversation, Lav lapses into silence. She thinks about last night, wonders how long she had slept. How would it have been ii Alf Andrews had not come looking for her? What would she have done if she'd waken alone? The memory or dream—whatever it was that had flashed accross her mind during those last moments in the tent—that scene from her childhood, of Audrey, of a motorcycle, hangs on a thread at the back of Lav's mind. Will she have to take it out, examine it, or can she ant the thread, drop the memory back into that unexamined corner it has occupied for thirty years?

“You were right, I shouldn't have come out here by myself,” she says.

“Wasn't those young Turks I was thinking about—I was expectin' the great white bear to come out among the graves, or for Mary Bundle to make away with you…” Alf says and when she smiles—though not as confidently as she would have the day before—he does not smile back.

As the sun rises the mist burns off. They walk along the beach gathering up pieces of the ruined tent, the thermos and Lav's parka.

Alf fills his yellow bag with broken glass and plastic containers: “We're the biggest slobs on earth—still dumping anywhere—especially in the sea—we think the sea will take anything. Once or twice a week this time of year I lug home a bag of garbage,” he says.

Like the owner of a cherished garden, he leads Lav from place to place pointing out hills and hollows, sheltered places where small purple flowers grow out of sand, the round underwater shadows of flatfish, tiny birds that dart about on thread-like legs, tidal pools shimmering with multi-coloured rocks, breakers cresting over offshore shoals.

They spend the morning making a slow loop of the Cape. But according to Alf it is not the Cape of Thomas and Lavinia, not even the Cape of his childhood—or of yesterday.

“It's never the same twice,” Alf says. “Come out here ten days in a row and the shoreline is different each day.”

The idea of a place that is forever reshaping itself, or being reshaped by ice and sea, horrifies and delights Lav. She wonders if the Cape will vanish completely some day, but Alf says no, it is the changing that saves it, “One bit of beach crumbles away and another bit appears.”

Yet some things remain. He finds vegetable cellars, now caved in and overgrown, shows her the great pointed rock which, he says, is called God's Finger, locates Aunt Jennie's garden, footings of the Union Store, the trenched marshland that had once produced barnfuls of grass, barrels of vegetables. They stand on the granite rock upon which the Vincents' house had been built and look out over the pond that has long ago turned salty.

They visit the graveyards. First the one on the point where many graves have slipped into the sea but where some remain—a few inches of white marble, stone fingers, carved crowns and crosses, the heads of small stone lambs rising from sand drifts. Lav kneels at one of these and with her hands scoops sand away from the white slab.

Feeling the letters with her fingers she reads:

In loving memory of Ned Andrews

Born Weymouth, England 1799—Died Cape Random 1838

Born into the world above,

They, our happy brother greet,

Take him to the throne of love,

Place him at the Saviour's feet.

Other words had been cut below, “Erected by his loving wife Mary,” perhaps? But no, Mary would never have chosen such a verse! Maybe Ben and Meg erected the stone, or Lavinia. Lav will never know, sand pressing into the letters has obliterated the lower lines.

Near what Alf calls the new graveyard they stop beside a few feet of crumbling stonework—all that is left of the Cape Random church. Lav asks how such a building could have vanished in just fifty years.

“Years after everyone left the church was pulled down and carted away,” he tells her. “Some federal program to keep people from starvin' one winter there wasn't enough stamps to go 'round.”

He nods towards the rows of headstones, “Kept them people poor buildin' it, only fair the livin' should make a few dollars tearin' it down. Besides, it was a nuisance. Youngsters used to climb over the rafters and bazz rocks through the windows.”

“In civilized countries old churches are protected,” Lav says and quotes:

…for how can man die better

Than facing fearful odds

For the ashes of his fathers,

And the temples of his gods?

“I can think of a dozen better ways!” Alf snaps. He turns his back on her and walks into the neatly fenced graveyard.

It will be a long time before she learns of Alf's twin brother who hung himself inside the rotting walls of the demolished church. Tossed a rope over a hand-carved cross that had hung above the congregation for fifty years, and jumped. The boy's name was Mark—he had been seventeen.

He and Alf were to have returned to St. John's the next day for their second year of university. He should not have died—by rights would not have died, “I'd stake my life on it—all Mark intended to do was scare Mother—sprain his ankle maybe, so's she'd let him stay home and fish—he had no interest in education,” Alf will tell Lav years later.

But the cross had not broken. Boys jigging connors off the Cape found Mark on their way home. He was still hanging from the crossbar that had not, after all, been made of wood but of a long iron rod rusted to the same colour as the wooden beam.

Although Lav knows nothing of this, she knows she has deeply offended Alf. Going to stand beside him at a low stone wall surrounding four identical headstones she apologizes: “When I was a child I use to prove how smart I was by quoting poetry—I still can't resist it,” she says. “Besides, I'm still angry about last night.”

He will not let her off so easily. “Speaking of the ashes of fathers—why didn't you ever come to see him when he was alive?” he asks, his voice as cold and combative as it had been the day before.

Lav stares, not understanding, “My father died long ago.”

He points to one of the marble headstones, reads the words out loud:

In memory of David Albert Andrews

Born Cape Random 1924—died 1975,

For of such is the Kingdom of Heaven.

A cloud seems to have passed across the sun, she shivers, “It can't be the David who was my father—he died before that—before I was born!”

“It's your father, alright—he died less than fourteen years ago. There's his people—Aunt Cass and Uncle Ki beside him—and that's his brother Cle's marker right there.”

Lav sits down on the stone wall, “My mother said he was killed in the war. At sea—before I was born.”

“He was in the war alright—they both were—but Cle was the one killed,” he produces a flask, offers it to Lav but she shakes her head.

Alf takes a long drink, “You mean to tell me, all these years you never knew your father was alive?”

She cannot bottler to answer. She is trying to remember everything she knows about her father—very little, only what she was told that night in her mother's apartment. Had Charlotte not known? Had she forgotten? Yesterday Lav would not have entertained such a possibility. Today she knows better.

“Maybe he was reported dead,” she says.

“He was reported missing in action. But he turned up in a hospital somewhere in England.” Alf speaks in a dull, even tone, “Your father was back in St. John's within six months of the day his ship went down—but by then you and your mother were gone.” He turns to look at Lav, “I remember your mother.”

“She's still alive—well, why wouldn't she be she's only…” Lav glances at the birth date on the headstone, realizes it does not line up with the age her father was supposed to have been, realizes she probably does not know her mother's real age.

“She's only in her sixties,” she ends weakly, adds, “She's recently remarried—living in California.” Even as she tells him this Lav wonders if it is true—perhaps everything she knows, or thinks she knows about Charlotte is a lie.

“She would.”

“And what does that mean?”

“She was that sort of woman—even then—like a cat. The kind to do whatever made her most comfortable. That kind always ends up somewhere like California.”

Lav guesses this bitterness has more to do with some other woman—his missing wife perhaps—than with her mother. “What kind of life did he have—my father?” she asks tentatively.

“Not too good, I'd say,” Alf pauses, considers, “But then, who knows? Maybe he was happier than any of us. Come on, let's pick up our stuff and get back to the cars before dark.”

As they walk towards the hollow he seems to relent, begins to talk about her father, “We all knew he was missing, of course. There'd be a special church service and prayers whenever that happened—by then there was a good few along this coast missing—defending the ashes of their fathers and the temples of their gods over in England,” he gives her a sharp sideways glance.

“Then we heard he was in a hospital in St. John's. He was there for months. Aunt Cass put it around he was in the San—something wrong with his lungs, she said. But wasn't the San.”

Alf unscrews his flask, takes another drink before telling the rest of the story. “Late that fall Uncle Ki and Aunt Cass went in to St. John's and got him. I was no more than five or six but I was in school. The teacher marched us all down to meet the boat. All of us—a dozen or so youngster holdin' little Union Jacks lined up on the wharf. We started to sing some song—'There'll Always Be An England'—or some such stunned thing. Then we saw what he was like.”

Standing at the top of the gangplank David Andrews had looked the same—a tall red-headed sailor in the tight Navy jacket and flared trousers. But then he started down, falling over himself, shaking with fear, being held up. It had taken forever. When he got ashore everyone could see the simple-mindedness in his face. Flags and song forgotten, the children stood in a silent line watching the young man being led away from the wharf, a parent holding onto each hand.

“Aunt Cass's face was like the rock but Uncle Ki had tears rollin' down his cheeks—the one time I ever saw a grown man cry. It was like the end of the world for them—only had the two sons and by then they knew Cle was gone.”

Back in the hollow, Alf says they have plenty of time. He lights the fire and boils the kettle again. They sip whiskey-laced tea and he tells Lav about her father's life.

“Took care of him all their lives, Aunt Cass and Uncle Ki did. When they died he went to live with Maud Stokes and them up in Wesleyville—Maud was a Vincent, Aunt Cass's sister. He got along with youngsters—I can remember skimmin' rocks with him down on the landwash. He would never get into a boat, though—went right crazy it you tried to get him on the water. Still, he was good as the next man in the woods, kept half the place in firewood—used to make wonderful thole pins.”

Alf searches for something more to tell her about David Andrews. After some thought he says, “Your father was a good man, never harmed a living soul—and not many can say that.”

They walk back down the beach and through the grassy dunes without a word.

“Some of us cut the bridge apart last fall—didn't want the ATV's out here tearin' everything up—but the young crowd got it clobbered back together again,” he remarked as they crossed over the little bridge linking Cape Random to the mainland.

Lav does not respond. She is thinking about her father. About David Andrews living here all these years—living like a child—simple-minded, Alf had said. What do those words imply? Had he remembered anything? England? The war? A wife? Could he read? Write? Did he remember having written that letter?