That Forgetful Shore (16 page)

Nothing prepares her, though, for the reality. The tilt is every bit as bad as the one Jacob John stays in when hunting or cutting wood: it's a single room with a bare wooden pallet for a bed. Triffie unpacks her feather mattress and quilts, a few pieces of crockery and a change of clothes, and prays God will get her through.

She has grown up in a fisherman's home in a fishing village, but because of the poor fishing around the Point and the exodus of men to the Labrador every summer she has reached the age of nineteen without ever working on the flakes. She has, of course, split and gutted a fish the odd time, but never hundreds of fish, thousands of fish, hour after hour and day after day of fish, till her back kinks up from standing and bending. The salt works itself into the creases of skin till everything, even the breath in her lungs and the spit in her mouth, tastes of salt.

She learns by watching the other women. There's a kind of camaraderie down on the flakes, although, like any camaraderie among women, it's sometimes spoiled by petty nastiness. Clara Snow, despite her brief friendliness on the boat, soon reverts to her old ways, making sly comments about how Trif Russell might be clever at books but she takes longer to gut a cod than any woman Clara's ever seen. The other girls and women are kinder, give her hints on how to work more efficiently.

The children too small to work play underneath and around the flakes, and all the women take responsibility for all the children, so that no child will toddle into the sea and drown when its mother is too busy or exhausted to notice. Despite the grim labour there is laughter, gossip, even snatches of song. Trif is glad to be treated like one of them, but she notices that the women's kindness doesn't include everyone. A young Indian woman with a half-breed baby was waiting for Jabez Badcock when he arrived. The girl does her share of the work, her baby strapped to her back, but the other women make no move to include her. Trif feels sorry for the girl but has no idea how to reach out to her, which makes her, she supposes, as bad as the rest of them.

The day begins long before dawn when Jacob John gets himself a mug up and goes out to fish in one of Skipper Wilf's dories with Alf and Fred Mercer. Trif rises a little later, has tea and bread and goes down to meet him when he comes in with his first catch of the day. Then her work begins, down on the flakes with the other women, working like navvies as the sun rises in the sky and flies buzz endlessly, constantly around, landing on her skin, greedily sucking her salty blood.

At least there's almost nothing she can recognize as housework, only the barest necessities of preparing simple food – they eat fish two, sometimes three times a day – sweeping the worst of the dirt off the dirt floor of the tilt, and washing such clothes as are absolutely necessary. Niceties like laying a good table and keeping a tidy house belong back on the Point, which now glows in Trif's memory as a haven of culture and refinement.

She and Jacob John are so bone-weary that they fall onto the hard bed beside each other as soon as it's dark and are asleep often without exchanging a word. Sometimes whole days go by and she barely hears the sound of Jacob John's voice, and he usually so ready with a joke or a smart remark.

Sunday is the one day of rest and Triffie has to bend her convictions about the Sabbath for the first time since she learned of the seventh-day truth. There's simply no possibility here of taking two days off out of seven, nor of shifting the workday to Sunday and taking her Sabbath rest on God's holy seventh day. “It's not like I minds, you knows that,” Jacob John says one Sunday, as they sit out in front of the tilt drinking tea. “I knows how much your Sabbath means to you, and if I could fish on Sunday and take Saturday off to spare you, you know I'd do it.”

“No, you can't do that,” Trif concedes. Everything ceases on Sunday; a man who went out in boat to catch cod on Sunday would probably be stoned to death upon setting foot on the shore, never mind his missus if she went down to the flake.

“I 'lows even God got to make exceptions on the Labrador,” Jacob John says, slurping at the last of his tea.

Trif hopes God will. She has brought two books with her, her Bible and a book of poetry. On Sundays she reads a bit of both, and on Saturdays she prays for forgiveness for Sabbath-breaking, before picking up the splitting knife and getting to work. She's thought of her life as a hard-working one but never has she had so little time for reading, none at all for writing, and barely time to put together a coherent thought. On Sundays she sometimes manages a letter in hopes that she will be able to get it on a boat and it may end up back at the Point, where Kit is home from college for the summer, working at the Mercantile again.

Nearby, four little Frenches and two small Dawes gather around a tidal pool in the rocks, staring with great interest at something, probably a frog or a crab. “I'm not bringing no youngsters here,” Trif says abruptly.

“What? Sure what youngsters have you got to bring?” Jacob John says.

“You know what I mean. When we haves children. I'm not hauling them down to the Labrador every summer. I'll come as long as it's just you and me, but this is no way for children to grow up.”

Jacob John shrugs. “It's the way we all grew up, and it never did me nor any of the rest of us no harm. Family's together all year round, and the youngsters learns to work. It's not such a bad way to grow up.”

“Well I grew up the other way and there was nothing wrong with that either,” Trif says. Uncle Albert was a shadowy figure in her childhood, gone to the seal hunt for March and April and then gone fishing from June till October. He spent less than half the year at home with the result that Aunt Rachel was the dominant figure in the house: though nominally Uncle Albert was the head of the home, in reality his wife's authority was rarely challenged. Trif wonders if it's this, as much as her dislike of making fish and sleeping in a tilt, that fuels her determination to stay home once they have children. She will be undisputed mistress of her own house, ruling it in Jacob John's absence for seven months of the year. She had a taste of it in March of this year when he went to the seal hunt: for six weeks she had the place to herself. Yes, the house was lonely betimes, but Trif doesn't mind loneliness, considers it her natural state. She was able to keep house to her own rhythms, read as much as she liked. Of course if there were children she'd have more responsibilities, but she can't deny she likes having the run of the house.

But for now she is here, on the front step of a tilt in Battle Harbour, resting on the wrong Sabbath, gearing up for another assault on the flakes tomorrow at daybreak. Spreading out the fish that's been taken in and covered for fear of a drop of rain, then splitting and salting the next load as it arrives, forever and ever, world without end, amen.

The circle of children breaks up into tears and quarrels, and the mothers come running from the tilts to scold and slap and comfort. “Youngsters who comes down here for the summer don't get a proper year of schooling, anyway,” Triffie says, remembering Mr. Bishop's frustration at the empty desks in June and September. Jacob John believes that a summer at the fish teaches children the value of work, but in her mind it teaches them the value of only one kind of work. It teaches them that nothing but fishing matters and nothing else ever will.

“Well, maid, you know what we got to do, got to get busy makin' babies then, so you can stay home with 'em.” He reaches over to pinch her bum and she squirms away.

“Some chance of that, working like dogs up here,” she says. At home she sometimes complains Jacob John is always at her, but most nights up here they roll into bed too tired to do more than fall asleep. Jacob John is often snoring before she puts out the lamp.

“That's why God made Sunday, maid.”

And indeed – not then, but after supper – they go to bed a little less tired than usual, and Jacob John heaves himself over her, and Triffie tries to bear it with as much patience and good grace as she can. A man has needs, even when he's worn to a rag working all hours of the day. She thinks again of staying home while he fishes for the summer, imagines months free of this tedious business.

It doesn't take long – it never does. Afterwards, she closes her eyes, ready to sleep, hoping dreams will take her somewhere far from Labrador. Jacob John gets up to go outside and relieve himself. But a few minutes later he's back, urging her, “Triffie! Trif, maid, get up!”

Her legs are over the side of the bed before the question is out of her mouth, “What is it?” His tone is so urgent she imagines a fire or a tidal wave.

“Come out and see.” He grabs her hand, drawing her through the door as she wraps the quilt around her shoulders and goes out, bare feet and all.

Outside, the September night is still and clear, but it's already chilly here, chillier than at home in early fall. The sky arches huge and blue-black overhead, looking somehow larger and more empty here than it ever does at home, though the same stars shine. The moon is new tonight, barely a sliver, but what makes Triffie catch her breath is neither new moon nor stars, but the shimmer of coloured lights in the sky, like gauzy ribbons of yellow and green hung across a darkened window.

“Oh… is that them? The Northern Lights?”

“It is, maid, it is. Brighter tonight than I've seen 'em for years. Some good thing I got up to take a piss just then, wasn't it?”

Jacob John's coarse talk is so incongruous against the backdrop of this lovely, shifting light that Triffie says nothing, hoping it will encourage him to keep silent too. Around the village of tilts others have seen the lights; here and there a door opens as people come out to watch, lifting the small children up on their shoulders, pointing out the wonder of the aurora to the little ones who, like Triffie, have never been here before to see it. A little distance away she sees Jabez Badcock with an arm around the shoulder of his Indian woman, and thinks that the man should stay here year-round; his handsome, haunted face looks more at home here than it has on the Point since Sadie died.

Triffie looks away from her neighbours and gazes up again, no longer feeling the knife-sharp night air, though she's shivering inside her quilt. Jacob John stands behind her, his arms around her, pulling her against his chest for warmth. “I was afraid you might not get to see them, but look at 'em,” he says in her ear. “Is there anything finer than that?” He sounds as pleased as if he'd climbed up on a ladder and hung the lights in the sky himself, just for her pleasure. Then he has the decency to keep quiet and let her watch, till the last wisp of light fades and the display has ended, and they go back into the tilt to sleep.

Triffie

THE ROOM IS small, dim and warm, heated by the muggy weather outside. The curtains are drawn, shutting out the view of the sea that Triffie loves. The light hurts her eyes. She has been in labour for fourteen hours, since she woke in the middle of the night and felt the cramping pain in her belly.

She got up then, wrapped herself in her robe, paced the room, riding out those first shallow waves of pain. The moon rose on the water, making a path of light across the dark waves.

She delayed waking Jacob John until she cried out in pain and couldn't keep it back. When the noise woke him and she told him she'd been up for an hour he said, “How come you never woke me up?”

“There was no need,” Triffie said. He should have known, should have been pulled into wakefulness as she was by the arrival of their child. It was her body, of course, but she thinks if they were connected like they should have been, linked in mind and soul, he would somehow have known.

He isn't even supposed to be here. It's the first summer in his life that Jacob John hasn't gone to Labrador. For the last three summers Trif went with him, hating every minute of it. She went last summer even though she suspected she was in the family way. She lost that baby, a boy, one hot hellish night in late August, after a day working on the flakes.

This summer she was well along, seven months by the time the steamer left for Labrador, and there was no question of her going. But Jacob John refused to go too, saying he would spend the summer fishing off the Point rather than be on the Labrador when his child was born.

“Foolish as an odd sock, you are,” Trif told him. “Sure, you'll make next to nothing fishing here, and with a youngster we'll need good credit this winter more than ever.”

“All the same, I'm not going,” Jacob John insisted. As if he could do anything by being here! As if he was any good in this moment, when it was Triffie pitted against her body.

“Should I go for Granny Morgan?” Jacob John asked when he finally woke.

“Could be a long time yet,” Trif said. “When the sun comes up, go get Kit and Aunt Rachel, and tell Granny I'll need her before the day is out.”

Kit arrives moments after Jacob John leaves. “He passed me on the road, coming up to our place,” Kit explains. “I woke up before dawn and couldn't stop thinking of you, thinking this might be the day. I'm glad I did – now you don't have to be alone while he goes for the midwife.”

Trif, unable to speak as a contraction clenches her body, grips Kit's hand in gratitude. Jacob John, in the bed beside her, couldn't sense that the baby was coming, but Kit, all the way up the road in her parents' house, knew. “Thank you,” she says when the pain passes.

The morning wears on, Trif shuffling around the house like an old woman, trying to walk through the pain. Finally Aunt Rachel makes her lie down. Jacob John hangs about, useless, till Rachel tells him to go out in boat. Birthing a child can take hours or even days, she says, and why should he lose a full day's fishing when there's nothing a man can do?

Kit sits by the bed the whole time, giving Trif her hand to squeeze during the worst of the pain. She graduated in May with her B.A. and has a good job waiting for her in September; she could have remained in Halifax with Ben for the summer, but she chose to come home because Triffie is having her first child, and Kit wants to be with her.