Three days and nights went past, and as far as she could tell he never slept or ate. She often went downstairs in the middle of the night to ask him to come to bed, but he only shook his head and went on sitting there, hour after hour, night after night, thinking. A few more days and the talking started, long and sometimes fierce dialogues with an unseen someone, full of argument and self-defensive protests. She sometimes heard her name mentioned but could not pick any sense from the endless ranting, only the restless rumble of his voice through the floorboards. It stirred such fear in her that she got only scant, troubled sleep, which slowly wore her down even more.
It was a week or more of that before she found him in the stable with the open can of lye beside him on the floor, the rank dry powder visible on his blue lips, a lost, tormented look in those eyes that used to be so full of laughter. She looked in alarm at the white-green foam, like pond scum, that was running down his chin.
“Oh, Leona,” he said, as she heard a terrible pain in his voice, “I was the one that broke my promise, wasn't I?”
“No, Paddy,” she said, reaching for his hand. “You never broke a promise in your life, least of all to me.”
“I did so,” he said. “I promised the Shore would never hurt you, and it did, in the worst kind of a way.”
Tears flowed down her cheeks as she helplessly squeezed his thick calloused fingers. “No, Paddy, you promised you would never hurt me, and you never did. It was all my doing. I brought harm on all of us. It was all my fault.” She was sobbing now. “But you will harm me if you leave me here alone. Don't leave me, Paddy.”
“It can't be helped, Leona,” he said, as he put his hand on his stomach and managed the tiniest of smiles. “Sure, I believe I'm after swallowin' a fox.”
He didn't last the night.
Poor Paddy. He just couldn't find the strength to start again.
She couldn't find the strength to follow him, either, although she'd thought about it every day for years after that.
Then Jimmy came.
Jimmy must have taken after his mother or something, for when he showed up at the door that first night, looking for rum, she never took him for a Merrigan at all. He was young and clean cut and, since she'd seen him in his brown army uniform earlier that day as he'd passed along the road, it was impossible for her to see him as anything but a soldier. A poor young foolish soldier.
He held out a new five-dollar bill to her and said he wanted rum.
“What does a little fellow like you want with rum?” she said.
“I'm well used to drinking rum in the army, ma'am,” he replied. “We gets a daily ration and a strong dose of it just before we goes over the top.”
It was the first time anyone had ever called her ma'am, the first time she realized that she was growing old in the eyes of the world. She got him a bottle. He tried to refuse the change she owed him but she was having none of that. She asked him why he'd bother trying to put charity on her. He stood there, awkwardly, and didn't go away.
“Is there something you want to say to me?” she asked.
That's when he told her he was Paddy's brother. She was stunned by it and almost keeled over to suddenly recognize Paddy in his young blue eyes. He stood straight as an axe handle, and pulled his shoulders back like they must have taught him at that training camp in St. John's.
“Ma'am, I feel it is my duty to offer any help I can to my brother's widow. I won't be around here for long. I got wounded in Turkey so they brought me home to help with the recruiting. In a few weeks, I'm going back to join the fighting in France. But, while I'm here, I'm willing to put my hand to anything that needs doing around your place.”
She had a strong feeling right then that he wasn't going to make it through the war. He seemed too good, too pure, like Paddy. The world wouldn't let this one live either.
But she accepted his offer and the next day he started coming around. Everything needed doing around the place. Leona hadn't cared for it properly in years. She hadn't planned on living in it for very long; but the days and months unwound into years, and she did live on as the house turned cold and wet and miserable around her. She finally abandoned most of it and retreated into the kitchen with the woodstove where she somehow managed to keep herself warm, fed and alive while the house continued its slow death. She left off all the cleaning and cooking she'd learned in the service of her father and brothers and had performed later, in caring for Paddy and the boys. Those things were useless to her now as she hardly needed them to keep her miserable self alive. She refused help from anyone, even from Paddy's family, until Jimmy came.
He brought a can of tar with him the first day and looked after the roof. He showed up with a toolbox in his hand the next day and she wordlessly let him past the door. He started going through the rooms repairing damage done over the years by leaks. She never spoke and barely looked at him the whole time, but he didn't seem to care as long as she didn't stop him from doing his work. She sometimes caught him looking at her, though, when he thought she wouldn't notice. He bought a load of wood, borrowed a horse and carried it out of the woods for her. He piled it outside the stable and sawed and cleaved it for a couple of hours every day. He repaired the fences, mended the barn roof and even put in a small load of hay, in case, he said, she ever wanted to get herself a horse. Then, one night he came over with the news that he was leaving, and asked if he could come inside for one last drink before going away.
That night she watched Jimmy as he sat at the table where Paddy had sat that awful morning. She caught the memory of Paddy again, in the young fellow's pale, sad face. His hand, too, resembled Paddy's, though smaller, and, strangely, she saw that it lay upturned upon the table in the same helpless way that Paddy's had that morning. She remembered how she'd failed Paddy that morning, hadn't had the strength to take his hand. She rose from her place and took Jimmy's hand in hers and led him further
into the dark house. Later, in the ice-cold bed upstairs, he'd cried in her arms and told her how afraid he was to die, how badly he wanted to live, yet how determined he was to do what his country asked of him when the moment came.
So Dulcie was conceived in a cold November bed with only tears to warm it. She was born in August, two weeks after the news arrived in Knock Harbour that Jimmy Merrigan, too, had died at Beaumont Hamel on the first of July. Leona somehow wasn't surprised when she learned later that the poor child had been born into silence. Nothing, it seemed, was ever easy. She found Dulcie's deafness a hardship at first, and was frightened by it. But the two of them made out all right together. Leona gradually left off thinking about dying and slowly began to live. The old promise about her children's schooling returned to her, and she wondered how it would be that Dulcie could ever learn to read and write.
Until William came.
She liked William. She saw the same gentleness in him as in Paddy and Jimmy. But she would never say so to his face. She had to be careful. It seemed every man she took a liking to had a bad fashion of dying.
It was five o'clock the next afternoon when she finally saw the Fiat come down Knock Harbour Hill with its precious cargo aboard. She had already placed a bottle in the parlour for her guest. She could barely restrain her excitement as the car pulled up to the house and was a little disappointed to see that Dulcie was sound asleep in the front seat.
“Carsickness,” Crawford whispered. “Don't worry. It's fairly common. She'll be all right after a good rest.” He leaned in and lifted the sleeping child out of the seat. Leona touched her softly on the forehead. It was cool, thank God. She noticed that Dulcie had grown, her hair was longer, less boyish than before, and a sprinkling of tiny freckles had magically appeared across her nose. Her front teeth, which fell out last summer, had come in nice and straight. Leona detected the sickly odour of milk and porridge.
The poor child. Why must everything be so hard?
She took the sleeping girl from Crawford and carried her upstairs. She returned in a moment and invited him into the parlour for a drink.
“I won't stay long, won't stay long,” he said, as he took his seat.
Leona was startled to see the change in him, the redness in his complexion that ran back even into his thinning hair. Yellow spots dotted his skin like old candle wax. His talk was rambling, he twitched involuntarily and batted his hands aimlessly into the air. She needn't have worried
about what to say to him for he talked non-stop as she just sat quietly and listened.
“I have to get to my cabin before it gets too dark. I've time for one, though, Leona, before I go; always time for one.”
She indicated the bottle and he uncorked it with a satisfied “Ahhh.”
“Dulcie must be doing well at school,” he said, as he poured. “She spoke to me in St. John's! She said, âHello, Mr. Crawford,' plain as day. You'll be amazed, Leona. By the way, the Norris's are fine people. You need never worry about Dulcie when she's with them. They had experience with deaf children in Nova Scotia so they volunteer to help out here. Good people. I'll have another small one.” He tipped the bottle again. “Can't fly on one wing.” He downed it and poured another, continuing to run on. “Well, you've got your little girl back now for the summer and that's the main thing. Too bad we can't go for a few flicks off the barachois, like last time. I plan to come out sometime the summer with my wife, Maddy. William, too, hopefully.” Incredibly, he reached for the bottle again. “A last one, now, and I'll be on my way.” He waved a hand in the air. “Damn! Bit early for blackflies, isn't it? All over the restaurant this morning, and in the car, too. Everywhere. Can't get rid of âem. God, I'd love to stay and watch the sunset. It must be spectacular here. It's going to be a fine day tomorrow. Red sky at night, sailors' delight. I'll have a nice drive back to town, anyway. Well, I'd better get going. I'd hate to be stuck on that road at night with a puncture, know what I mean? Sorry again about that business today, but a little carsickness is nothing to worry about. I can't believe how hot it is in here. Where'd I put that handkerchief?” He wiped the beads of sweat that had seeped out in neat little rows onto his forehead. “There, that's better. Don't mind me, I sweat like a pig all the time. Do you mind if I fill this flask before I go? Give me a bit of courage on that road. Unless you have a drop of holy water from Father What's-His-Name's Well. No? No holy water? Only firewater. So much the better. Haha. I suppose that's not funny, but there you go. Anyway, that's that, time to go, all the best, now. Don't get up. It was no trouble, no trouble at all.”
He stumbled out the door and got in his car. A moment later Leona watched the Fiat lurch into motion and pull away. She would tell William on his next visit that Sir John Crawford must never drive Dulcie home again.
Leona was sitting at the table a short time later when she heard a noise and turned to see Dulcie, still in her traveling clothes, standing groggily on the stairs. She wrapped the child gently in her arms and held her for
what seemed like a very long time; during the embrace Leona had the sensation of actually leaving her body for a time and hovering above the room. When she returned to her present senses and held Dulcie at arm's length to look at her, the little girl looked back with a peaceful smile and offered her the letter she'd been holding in her hand. Leona sat to the table and opened it. She expected to see the familiar letterhead of the School for the Deaf. Instead, the words were on plain paper, not typed, but carefully penned in thin blue lines of ink.
Dear Mrs. Merrigan
,
I've given this letter to Dulcie for you because I know how little really gets said on those progress reports that get sent home twice a year
.
I can only imagine, as I do not yet have children of my own, how hard it must be for you to be separated from Dulcie. It was very selfless of you to let her go. I hope you'll be consoled a little when I tell you, in all sincerity, that you made the right decision
.
Dulcie is a bright and happy child and is doing extremely well at school. She made excellent progress in learning to print and in her reading this year. Her signing has improved enormously and she converses happily and easily with the other students. She's fit and healthy and enjoys physical activity. She's first out the door when it's time for exercise class on the field.
We take Dulcie to Mass every Sunday morning with the other Catholic children. However, apart from that we make no distinctions between the religions here. It doesn't trouble us at all. During the winter we make a rink out of the boys' soccer field. Dulcie is learning to skate. Once a month we take the students to see a film at a film house near here. I believe Dulcie has quite a crush on the actor Ronald Coleman.
Dulcie isn't fond of arithmetic, although she's getting the hang of it. Nor is she very happy with all the time spent on lip-reading and speech. This is understandable since both these things take a great deal of effort to produce even a small degree of success. You will no doubt notice that hearing people are quite impressed by Dulcie's attempts at speech; however, I can tell you that reading, writing and signing are much more important to her development.
Dulcie has made excellent progress in her first year. In the years to come she will no doubt complete a high school education which will give her some marvellous choices in life. Some years at school she will have to cover twice the work, but I'm sure she is up to the task. We are also teaching her some of the practical skills, like cooking, sewing and housekeeping, that she might otherwise have learned from you.
Best of all, Dulcie has found here in Halifax a loving community, most of them deaf like herself, people who will continue to love and support her in
friendship in the years ahead. The deaf like to be together, Mrs. Merrigan. They rejoice at finding one another because for them the world can be a very lonely place.