“Three days later I received a telegram from the captain. He was in Placentia. The schooner had been caught in dense fog off Cape St. Mary's, drifted into Placentia Bay and gone up on the Virgin Rocks.”
William and Duke locked eyes.
“You know where those rocks are, Mr. Cantwell?”
“I do.”
“Then perhaps you're at last beginning to understand. The captain told me he'd lost one of the boxes of the two-cent stamps. He said that, in the confusion and haste of abandoning ship, he'd accidentally left it on deck as they were getting into the lifeboat.”
“Did you ever find out what became of the box?” William asked.
“At first, the captain lied. He told me he was certain that it had gone down with the ship, but he eventually admitted he had doubts. He had seen a young woman heading suspiciously in the direction of the schooner on the morning of the wreck. I went down there right away to talk to this woman but, unfortunately, she refused to cooperate. However, as you and everyone else in that quaint little community know, subsequent events proved that she had indeed gone on board and salvaged certain items from the wrecked vessel.”
“Subsequent events? The woman lost her husband and three children!”
“Regrettable, to be sure. Tragic. But not the point of our discussion.”
“How can you be sure she took those stamps?”
“The captain told me that he and the crew had used a rope ladder to abandon the ship. He was certain he'd left the box on deck, right at the head of the rope ladder. Anyone arriving on the scene would surely have used that same ladder to climb on board. Inevitably, they would come upon the stamps.”
“But you have no proof that she even went on board. She could have found the trunk in the water.”
“I have proof enough to make me want to get to the bottom of it.”
“But why would she hold on to a box of stamps all these years? It doesn't make any sense.”
“You might want to ask her that yourself, since you seem to have become something of a confidant.”
“I would never ask her to relive that terrible time, in any respect.”
Duke gave a careless shrug. “I offered her a generous reward. I suspect she either sold the stamps a long time ago and is hoarding the money like a miser, or is still waiting for a chance to do so.”
“That's preposterous.”
“People are strange, Mr. Cantwell.”
“They are indeed, Mr. Duke,” William replied, his anger rising. “Tell me something. How did the Prime Minister react when he got back from London?”
He was gratified to see Duke swallow hard at the question.
“He was furious. Sir Robert prided himself on fiscal probity and this was a terrible waste. Thousands of dollars wrapped up in the stamps alone, to say nothing of the cost of replacing them. He said I had bungled the whole business, made a mess of it. Even the recovered box of two-cents couldn't be put into circulation since there was no way of telling them from the stolen ones â if and when they turned up on the market. They would have to be demonetized, destroyed. Sir Robert decided to risk it and did eventually put them into circulation. But, to be on the safe side, he commissioned a brand new stamp to cover the shortage.”
“The Map Stamp.”
“There you have it. The entire fiasco cost the government thousands.”
“Fiasco? Sir Robert's word?”
“No, my word! It was my fault. I should have waited for the steamer. I was trying to impress him. It was a mistake.”
“One that has kept you in the same civil servant post your entire career, after such a promising beginning. It must be galling for you.”
Duke glared at William. “If you're insinuating that's my motive for getting to the bottom of a serious theft, you're wrong. In any case, I might well have rectified the situation if I'd been dealing with someone honest. But you, obviously, don't care about that.”
“That's right, Mr. Duke. I don't give a damn. I just want you to do your job and everything will be fine.”
“Don't worry, Mr. Cantwell.” Duke again flashed his disturbing little smile. “Together, we'll see to the schooling of Dulcie Merrigan, and you may rest assured I'll do my job. I'll be watching the situation very carefully.”
For many years Leona hadn't bothered to check if she had mail. If the rare letter or package came she left it to the kindness of Thomas Tobin to bring it over to the house. Now, she began to make the weekly pilgrimage to the post office herself. Her strange silent feud with Maisie had endured through the years. Thankfully, the unfriendly postmistress usually stayed buried inside the pantry as Leona came and went.
It was early August before the School for the Deaf letter finally appeared in Leona's mail slot. She hurried home and opened it. It gave her a bad start. The list of things that Dulcie needed for school was formidable. They included, for her feet alone, two pairs of shoes, along with overshoes, rubber boots, bedroom slippers, woollen stockings and two pairs of winter boots. She also needed a blue serge middy dress, two summer dresses, two winter dresses, a white dress for Closing Exercises and parties, three nightdresses, four or five pairs of bloomers, a walking coat, a winter coat, a spring coat, a pair of gloves
and
a pair of mittens, a half-dozen aprons, two hats, a sweater, and something called a kimono. Where on earth would it all come from? Leona was not a good seam-stress. She had barely any money and there was very little time.
But the thing that caused the letter to slip from her fingers to the floor was at the bottom of the list, under the heading Additional Articles for Both Sexes. Besides a hair brush and comb, a toothbrush and paste, and an umbrella, Dulcie would need a steamer trunk.
She pushed it from her mind.
She decided she would do a harvest of carrots and cabbages and cut a load of turnip greens. She might get a couple of dollars for the tender early crops at the Trading Company in Placentia. Katie and Edward were older now and had almost given up on gardens themselves, but they were happy to oblige when Leona crossed her yard into theirs for the first time in a long while and asked for help. They all spent the next two days working in the garden while Dulcie tramped about the furrows
in her knee rubbers lending a hand where she could. Edward brought the resulting sacks to Placentia and sold them for Leona along with a crate of canned lobster that he'd pitched in himself. Leona had reluctantly accepted the offer. A few drinkers showed up at the door, as usual, and a small pool of cash was accumulating, but not nearly enough. Even if she sold her entire crop, which she couldn't do because she needed something for herself for the winter, and even if she didn't set money aside to replenish her rum supply, she still wouldn't be able to buy everything on that list.
In the end, she took Dan to Placentia and bought enough material to at least get the middy dress and blouses underway. That evening she took a calendar and counted the days to Dulcie's departure. The panic inside her grew. The clothes that she was able to make had to be hand-cut and sewn, and the other things, like the winter coat and boots, the formal dress, the new shoes, and the umbrella simply had to be bought.
Leona needed money. As she set to work on the clothes her thoughts slowly began to turn to the hidden treasure that lay buried in the droke. Strange that she had so completely left off thinking of it these last few years. She realized she might well have gone her entire lifetime without uncovering it. For some reason that she would or could not fully grasp, her only real desire had been to preserve it, to keep it, even if it simply lay a secret in the ground. Now, for the first time in many years, she allowed herself to speculate on how the box of salvaged stamps might be used to get the money she needed.
However, she also quickly realized that, even if she could muster the courage to go into the droke and dig the box up, along with all the memories it evoked from that terrible time, she still had no idea what to do with it after that. She remained trapped by her own limited ability to move about in the world and, she had to admit, by her own dread of digging up the past.
It crossed her mind to sell Dan instead.
One night she heard someone knock gently at the back linney door.
“Leona?” It was Katie Merrigan.
“Come in,” Leona called, and watched as Katie stuck her greying head into the kitchen with a cautious smile.
“Edward made something for Dulcie,” she said.
Leona smiled back and nodded, so Katie pushed open the door and waited as Edward shouldered his way into the room with a new trunk in his arms. He laid it on the floor in front of Leona. The smell of new wood and fresh paint rose to her nostrils.
“We knew she'd be needing one for the trip,” Katie said, watching carefully for Leona's reaction.
The trunk was painted sea blue. There were shiny brass handles at each end. A hefty clasp fit neatly over the staple so that it could be securely locked. Best of all, Edward had carved the image of a horse and dray into the lid with his pocket knife. The horse was russet brown and Dulcie would know by the tiny sliver of white paint on its muzzle that this trunk was hers, and hers alone.
“I hope she likes it,” Edward said, as he approached and opened his hand. It held a silver lock and two small keys.
Then, they left her alone.
Leona stared at the trunk for a long, long time. Despite its benign, even welcoming appearance, she struggled with the idea of putting it in contact with her child, safely asleep in her room upstairs. It was hard to trust the world and what it gave you. It was hard, very hard, to accept that this box meant life instead of death, that there was nothing evil hiding behind its simplicity and innocence. She stayed up deep into the night and fell asleep at last in the rocking chair. When morning sunlight teased her eyes awake, she noted the remarkable absence of fear in her stomach. She breathed carefully, waiting for its corrosive touch, but it never came. She gave the trunk a gentle push with her foot, then picked it up and carried it upstairs into Dulcie's room. She crossed the hall into her own room and got the middy dress that she had finished. She woke Dulcie, showed her the new trunk and had her put the folded middy dress inside. Together they inhaled the reassuring scent of new wood and looked at the one blue dress in the bottom of the trunk. Leona was still at a loss as to how it was ever going to be filled with all the things that Dulcie needed for school.
The next day she received a letter from William. He told her not to worry about the clothes, that everything would be taken care of when she and Dulcie got to St. John's.
Inside the envelope she found two passes for the train.
The warm kiss of summer had faded and Dulcie found the evenings cool on her bare arms while fishing. The river threw shivers into her small frame and Mother made her wear a sweater. The fire in the sky moved earlier each day toward the brim of the sea, and she ran to the house earlier and earlier to escape the first brush of nightfall. She liked to be safe in her room with the lamp glow when the sky came to lie down on the earth.
Mother was always busy making clothes. She sat forever at the table in the kitchen cutting and sewing. Every now and again Dulcie briefly tried on something Mother had made and Mother smiled. There was a beautiful wooden box in Dulcie's room: the Dan-box, she called it with a stroke of her finger down her forehead and the outline of a box formed with her hands. Sometimes, Mother took her by the hand and led her to it. She got Dulcie to fold a crisp white blouse or a pair of bloomers, one time a blue dress, and lay them in the box, adding to a small pile of clothes. But whenever Dulcie signed, open hands brushing down her breast, that she wanted to wear the new blue dress or put on one of the crisp white blouses, Mother shook her head. She only motioned toward the sea with a faraway look and tried to send a thought with her mouth, rounded lips and a long gentle push of air, that Dulcie did not understand.
A day came when Mother got Dulcie out of bed very, very early. Downstairs, the kitchen was already warm. The grey tin washtub was on the floor, steam gently rising from it. She watched as Mother took a big pot off the stove, held it by the ears, and poured out water in a long silver stream. She tested the water with her hand, then nodded to Dulcie to get into the tub. Dulcie had never bathed in the morning before, so this day was already different from any other.
When Dulcie was clean and warm and dry in her flowered flannel nightdress, Mother led her down the hall into the parlour. Dulcie stopped in her tracks. Her best coat, which she hardly ever wore, was laid out on the settle beside one of the new blue dresses and a blouse. Her last year's shoes sat on the floor.
Mother helped Dulcie into the clothes and they went into the yard. Dan was there, good Dan, waiting patiently, hitched to the wagon. Dulcie saw the Dan-box on the back of the gig. For some reason, it was no longer in her room. A cloth bag with wooden handles belonging to Mother was leaning up against it.
A little while later her feet were hurting in her shoes, but she kept on walking just the same. She refused to sit on poor Dan's wagon when he already had to work so hard to pull it up Knock Harbour hill.
The sun was high in the sky when Dulcie later stood on a beach amid stones in shades of purple, green and grey and watched the water rushing past. There was a river in Knock Harbour that ran like this one, through a hole in the beach, but it was not so wide or swift or swirling. A skinny, hard-boned man with no teeth rowed up in a dory to where she and Mother stood. He took the Dan-box and put it in his boat. He turned,
picked up Dulcie and placed her on a seat inside the boat, as well. Mother quickly climbed in and sat beside her. Then, the man pushed the boat from shore and climbed in over the side himself.
They were swept along by the tide deeper and deeper into a long thin arm of sea as Dan was left on shore tied to a post. Dulcie watched the watery distance grow between herself and the horse and felt something squeeze at her insides. Soon, the toothless man lifted his oars out of the boat and started rowing to the far shore. Dulcie watched as white birds circled in the bright blue sky: sky tucked as neat as a blanket behind green hills.