Authors: Barbara Walsh
“Ambrose treasured that story, he really did,” Sybil explained to me years later during our trip to Newfoundland.
Why did he treasure it?
I wondered.
Did it make him happy to know that Patriciaâmy Nanaâhad eventually found happiness? That she was adored by her grandchildren? Did the story ease some of his guilt? Or did it remind him of the young woman who showed him kindness soon after he immigrated to the Boston States?
Not long after Sybil left California and flew back to Newfoundland, Ambrose discovered that the ache in his back signaled more than old age. He had end-stage colon cancer. Over the next several months, the pain and disease consumed him. He died a little more than a year after my Nana's death.
I think of my grandfather as I study Paddy's gravestone and the large bold Walsh surname engraved on the granite marker. Two decades earlier, Ambrose stood on this same plot of dirt. He made his own pilgrimages to Paddy's grave whenever he returned to Marystown. Alone, he visited the cemetery, sharing a silent conversation with his hero, the brother whom he idolized and sought to emulate.
Did he talk to Paddy about his poor choices, his regrets? Did he wish he had been more like Paddy, a loyal husband, a faithful father?
Alan jars me from my thoughts, asking if we would like our pictures taken, a souvenir of this much-talked-about site. My father, Joanie, and I gather in between the polished stones. Fittingly, my dad is dressed in his Navy cap and sweatshirt, a salute to his Uncle Paddy and his love of the sea. As Alan focuses the camera on us, my father instinctively wraps his arms around Joanie and me. We smile, captured on film at our ancestors' burial site, photos that we will later pass around to our own family, furthering the Marystown lore, explaining, “This is where Tom Reid's body was dug up from Paddy's grave.”
Handing the camera back to me, Alan offers to show my father the grave of his mother, Donalda. As they walk away, I linger behind to touch the stones and say a prayer for Paddy and his deceased children. Though his name is not listed, his grave not here, I also utter a prayer for my grandfather.
I hope you found peace before you died
.
“No one is good when they run off on their children,” Sybil has told me, trying to explain my grandfather's character. “But down deep, Ambrose was a good man.”
I breathe in the scent of the sea, the salty breeze of my grandfather's birthplace. Here in the stillness of the cemetery, I want to believe that Ambrose asked for redemption before his death, that he whispered,
I'm sorry
. Even if my Nana, dad, and uncle never heard those words, I want to believe my grandfather sought their forgiveness.
A
pall, a darkness in spirit and hope, settled over Marystown like a black thunderhead. On footpaths, in classrooms, and in meadows, the fatherless children passed one another and nodded, the tears inevitably tarnishing their cheeks. No words did they share; each understood the loss that pressed like a stone on their hearts from morn till night.
Dressed in black from head to toe, their dyed stockings, aprons, and dresses cloaking them in grief, the August Gale widows carried their own burdens. The women worked from dawn to dusk. They raked hay until their hands blistered, washed and salted the cod until their fingers numbed with cold; they pulled beets, potatoes, and carrots from the ground and stored the vegetables in their cellars, hoping it could carry them through the cold months ahead. In between their work and worry, the widows often stared at the bay and sobbed. They spoke to the water as if it would somehow talk back to them, render the secrets of where their husbands' bodies lay hidden.
Five months pregnant, with a two-year-old daughter and a five-year-old son, Mary Hanrahan cried herself to sleep and lingered by the bay where her husband, Charles, had departed on the
Annie Anita
. “I wish we could find yur dad,” she often told her children. “I miss him, the poor soul.”
Like the other widows, Mary received $9.50 each month from the Marine Disaster Fund. With the thirty-one cents a day, she provided what she could for her son and daughter. Still, dinner was often nothing more than a crust of bread and a spoonful of molasses, a meal that did not satisfy and often ended with tears and protests from her children. “We're hungry, Mother!”
“My dears,” she tried to explain, “We just got to put up with what we got; I've no more to give us.”
From the presbytery meadow across the water, Father McGettigan watched the widows stand by the shore's edge, gazing at the bay as if they expected the sails of their husbands' vessels to appear. Day after day, the priest crossed the inlet in his skiff to visit the mothers and check on their children, who grew paler with each passing week. The sight of their gaunt faces sent shivers down his collar.
The young will not survive the winter. Their bones poke through their thin clothing like sticks
.
As the autumn days grew shorter, the widows grew angrier over their misfortune. They wanted explanations for the August Gale, reasons why the Lord swept their men to death in the cold, dark sea. “Why, Father?” the widows asked. “Why did God take our husbands?”
McGettigan shook his head and folded his hands in prayer. Surely, the Lord had His reasons for their fate, but even the priest wrestled with the magnitude of Marystown's loss, and he feared that more sorrow would befall the small outport and its young. The doctor and constable shared McGettigan's concern. Before the winter snows fell and the bay turned to ice, the law officer knocked on the doors of the August Gale widows.
Unwilling to hand over their sons and daughters, mothers pointed to pots of water boiling on cookstoves, a ruse that failed to satisfy the constable, who understood there was nothing to boil, nothing to cook. Her three-month-old baby on her hip, Alice Brinton confronted the officer's solemn face as he stood in her kitchen. The past few weeks had tested the young woman, but she was not ready to give up her daughters.
“Pack up your children,” the constable told her. “I'll take them to the orphanage.”
Alice reached for her daughters' hands. She could barely stand from the exhaustion and grief. Still, she would be damned if she would parcel her children off like packages.
“If they're going to starve,” she told the officer, “then they'll starve at home.”
Other widows with larger families and six or seven children to feed had no choice but to send one or two of their offspring away to the orphanages in St. John's. Tom Reid's wife, Jessie, reluctantly hugged her nine-year-old daughter Theresa good-bye.
“My dear girl, we will see ye soon,” her mother promised.
Jessie also lost another child, her son, Bill Reid, to the law. The boy was arrested by the Rangers, the government police, for stealing a sack of flour to help feed his family. Angry over the injustice, Jessie pelted the officers' boat with wood and rocks as they hauled her son away to serve his time. Several other fishermen's wives grew so desperate they scattered their children in neighboring villages among families who could spare a bit of food and a bed. And though she could afford to provide for her four surviving children, Lillian Walsh's tattered nerves and grief left her in a daze; she could not console or control her seven-year-old daughter, Little Lillian. Tormented by her own heart-ache, the child thrashed on the floor screaming for her father.
“She'll be better off in the orphanage,” Father McGettigan advised. “The sisters will look after her there and provide the girl with a good education.”
The spirited young girl, who had often fished with her father and had pleaded to sail with him on his August journey, found herself in the red-bricked Belvedere Orphanage of St. John's. Supervised and taught by the stern and formidable Sisters of Mercy, Lillian took comfort in the familiar face of Theresa Reid, who had also been placed there. Just as her father had depended on his second hand Tom Reid at sea, Lillian now sought Reid's daughter for kinship and memories of home.
As the fall winds chilled the night air, Father McGettigan continued to visit and check on the widows. The vacant and worn look in their eyes alarmed the priest. Lucy Walsh particularly concerned McGettigan. She could barely hold her baby as she sat in her rocking chair, trembling. The young woman's mind was locked on the past, the days before her husband James set sail on the
Mary Bernice
. She had little interest in caressing or feeding her blue-eyed infant born the night of the gale. The child reminded her of death.
“She has a horrible case of nerves,” McGettigan told Lucy's mother, Selena Gaulton. “Perhaps, it's best for her to go away.”
Selena nodded. A midwife for many years, she knew her daughter might never recover from the tragedy. Before the spring snows thawed, Lucy would be gone, leaving Marystown and her baby, Jamie, behind.
In the home on the hill, Lillian concealed herself behind closed drapes and shades. At night, every lamp blazed, warding off the shadows and darkness. Lillian dared not sleep for fear of the images that settled in her dreams, visions of her sons screaming
Mother!
as the monstrous waves battered their vessels and pulled them beneath the malevolent sea.
My babies. My poor babies. Why did I let them go? Why?
For hours, she stared at photographs of her sons and Paddy, talking to them as if they were seated on the settee next to her. One by one, she held the pictures to her eyes, studying the details, the moments of their lives frozen in the black-and-white images. Her fingers outlined the edge of Jerome's rounded face in a photograph taken in the priest's meadow during a Lady Day garden party. Dressed in a white shirt, tie, and the new brown breeches she had sewn for him, her boy grinned into the camera. Ten at the time, his hands stuck in his pockets, he balanced himself on a post, proud and confident.
Ye were always so sure of yourself, Jerome, so full of spirit like yur Da
.
Lillian picked up another picture of Frankie and Jerome. The two of them sat shoulder to shoulder in their uncle's rowboat. Caps on their small heads, they smiled, secure in the vessel that was safely moored on shore.
Ye were only five and seven then. Good little brothers, always at each other's side, looking out for one another. Sleep well, boys, take care of each other now until yur mother can hold ye close again
.
Turning to a photograph of Paddy, Little Lillian, and Paddy Jr., Lillian remembered the chilly Sunday it was taken. She had insisted they take a picture on that afternoon in 1934. The three of them posed on the side of the house. Bundled like a doll in his snowsuit, Paddy Jr. gazed downward, mesmerized by something in the grass. Outfitted in a dress and her Sunday coat and shoes, Lillian pressed close to her father's side. Her small hand wrapped around one of her father's large fingers. Dressed in a cap, suit coat, and tie, Paddy stared straight into the camera, his eyes defiant, a surly smile on his lips.
Ye were afraid of nothing, Paddy. Fearless of God and the sea. Always believing ye'd return. But now Little Lillian has no hand to hold, no father to take her fishing. And Paddy Junior, no da to look up to. How will we get on without ye, Paddy?
Her son James gazed at Lillian from the last photograph. Leather jackboots rose to his knees, the woolen sailor's jacket his mother had sewn covered his broad shoulders. His lips pressed together, he shared his father's stern, serious look.
Oh, me son, ye were ready to captain, ready to be a father. Ye would have done a fine job of both, dear boy. A fine job. Yur new baby has yur eyes, son. She'll be forever wanting to know ye. Forever missing ye, like yur mother. May the angels watch over ye, son
.
From the kitchen, Alice Brinton listened to Lillian's ramblings. If she hadn't known better, Alice would have thought James, Jerome, Frankie, and Paddy kept their mother company in the parlor. But the young maid understood how grief could change a woman, turn her daft with sorrow and heartache. Since Alice had lost her husband John off the
Annie Anita
, she had begun talking to her dead husband herself.
Are ye there, John? Can ye hear me? Is yur spirit settled? Are ye at peace, my poor soul? We miss ye, John, yur daughters pray for ye every night. They love their da
.
Though Alice kept vigil for her husband, she glimpsed no sign of him, heard no whispers from his phantom lips. Still, she knew such things could happen. She had witnessed plenty of odd occurrences at Captain Paddy's home since the skipper's death. One evening as she finished the ironing, she heard stomping on the stairs. Alice took the lamp into the hall and discovered a single brown shoe on the step.
Aye, that's Skipper Paddy's shoe. He always told Lillian if there was a way for him to come back, he'd find it. Dear Blessed Mother of God, the captain had kept his word. No wonder Miss Lil was afraid of the night
. “Go on now, Mr. Paddy, settle down,” Alice whispered in the dark.
Another curious event startled Alice on a Sunday morning. She and the second maid were cooking dinner while Miss Lillian and her children had gone to church. The two women nearly jumped from their shoes at a loud crash in the dining room. Must be the cat knocking the dishes from the table, Alice thought. Searching for the wreckage, she found nothing out of order. The plates, silverware, and glasses remained in place, and there was no sign of cats or any earthly evidence for the noise.
Jaysus, something has the skipper out of sorts today
, Alice reckoned, remembering Paddy's rage as he pounded the teakettle spout, angry over his late dinner. If she wasn't so desperate for the extra money and the secondhand clothes that Miss Lil offered, Alice would have steered clear of the captains quarters for good.
“Don't be passing Paddy's house after dark,” she warned her children.
Throughout the winter, into the spring and summer, the shades and drapes remained drawn on the house on the hill, and the lights continued to blaze from dusk to dawn. Inside, Lillian sat beneath the lamplight, shrouded in black, holding the photographs of her three sons and husband, her voice filling the parlor with hushed murmurs and memories.