The Survivor (27 page)

He and Catherine traded looks. He could see that she was nervous about being back in her hometown after a three-year absence. How the time had flown! The last visit had been the spring of that terrible famine, the “year of no summer” in fact.

Once at the courthouse, James saw quite a few faces of old friends, some from Paspébiac. But no sign of M. Blanquart. He spotted the McRaes from down Hopetown way and, of course, John Ross.

And who should be there but Catherine’s brothers, John and Joseph. At least they would have no trouble: their land had been given them by grant from the King. But they also occupied other waste land they had cleared behind the village. They would be wanting title to that, too. Unless all of it were seized by some greedy bureaucrat from Montreal and Quebec.

James greeted John, shook his hand and, after more pleasantries, asked, “You got out of debtors prison all right I heard.”

“Back then? Oh yes, we only spent a week. Big mistake. We soon rectified it, once Father arranged to get us out.”

“And are your parents at home?”

“They are.” James could see in John’s face that he was worried about what lay ahead. “I reckon they must be expecting a visit from yez. Half the country’s gathering in New Carlisle now, for this here land commission.”

“Have they mentioned anything?”

“No. We don’t talk about you fellas around the house. Only when me and Joseph are alone. We’ve been wondering how you was both making out.”

“Catherine,” James said, “wait here with your brothers and see what you can find out. I’ll go face your mother and father.” He said it with such resolution that Catherine was ready to obey. She dropped her eyes.

“We’ll be waiting here for the result.” Joseph shook his hand warmly.

With resolution, but also trepidation, James went off and soon came knocking at the Garretts’. He heard movement inside, and William Senior opened the door. Mr. Garrett looked as if struck by a giant fly swatter. He paused for a second and then turned and called inside, “Eleanor. There’s someone here to see you.” He opened the door courteously and then limped across to his favourite chair, and wordlessly sat down.

Eleanor came downstairs and stopped. “James!” She hurried across to give him a hug and a kiss. “We’ve been waiting so long for you to come.” She turned to her husband. “Haven’t we, William?”

William looked up and met her eyes. Then he dropped his. “I reckon we have.” He busied himself getting out his pipe and his tobacco.

“Well, come and sit down. Let me make you a cup of tea. I must hear all the news.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Garrett.”

“I thought we agreed you’d call me mother,” Eleanor said. She busied herself getting the kettle ready for tea, not meeting his eyes. “We’ve heard the sad news about you losing your own parent while she was en route to live with you. We were very sorry to hear that, James. So now, you really must look on me as your mother instead.”

He looked at her. Such a warm feeling. Yes, he would find that easy, given time. “Very well, ‘Mother.’ And you know, I have a surprise for you.”

William looked up from his pipe. Eleanor turned nervously.

“Your very own grandchildren, and your daughter, are waiting at the courthouse, where the land commission is meeting. They dearly wish to be received here in your home, as I have been. Perhaps, then, we might even stay with you a few days.”

Eleanor straightened. “Those are the words we’ve waited to hear for three long years.” She turned again and looked at William. “Haven’t we, William?”

“I suppose so.”

Eleanor put her hands on her hips, angrily.

William glanced up, and then obviously had a change of heart. “Aye, that we have.” He proceeded to struggle out of his chair. “It’s been far too long, that it has. What’s done is done. And a man can always turn over a new leaf, that’s what I always say.” He glanced at Eleanor who turned away, exasperated at his gall. William then stumped across to James and held out a freckled hand. James looked in his eyes. He saw the eyes of an old man, weary and contrite. James gripped his hand and put another on his father-in-law’s shoulder. “No man can say how happy this makes me.”

“Tea’ll be ready in a few minutes,” Eleanor said.

“To hell with tea! Let’s get right out that door, luv, and run up to the courthouse and find our daughter.” William motioned. “We’d best not waste another minute.” It seemed to James, as he hurried along with the older couple, that the whole thing had taken place so easily. No great dramatic scene, no thundering denunciations, no fierce anger and shaking of fists. Well, why not? It was as it should be. Lonely souls, getting back together. If only the land commission battle could be this successfully won.

As they rounded the corner, James saw Catherine turn and gasp. Her hands went to her face. Could it be true, she must be thinking. And yes, he said to himself, only too true. Why didn’t we do this last year?

Catherine broke into a run to meet her mother as they wrapped each other in their arms, crying and laughing as only a mother and daughter can.

Then Catherine disengaged herself and came over to throw her arms around her father, and kiss him, too.

From the look on his face, William Sr. seemed mightily satisfied. “Now, where are our two grandchildren?”

James could not help but notice the firmness in his voice as he pronounced both words: “two grandchildren.” So John had been accepted at last.

Eleanor bent down and hugged little Mariah while William Sr. picked up little John. For a few moments the little boy looked frightened, but then seeing the joy in the old man’s face, he soon relaxed and laughed delightedly as William hoisted him up in the air.

James noticed that Joseph had been watching from afar, and he now came over. “Together again,” was all he said, but his eyes brimmed with tears. “John’s inside. He’ll be out in the second.”

Before he had finished speaking, John came out through the doors, saw them, and hurried across to the happy family.

“You’ll never believe it! All you have to do is go in, and make your petition with one witness. And the land is yours!”

“You mean, it’s a commission to give us a deed to our land, free and clear?” Such good news! After all those worries. But so much better to worry beforehand and find the truth agreeable, than the other way around. He looked at his wife. They had weathered so much together: the building of the farmhouse, the year of no summer, the accepting of the two children, on and on. “We have our land,” she beamed, “and we have our family. What could be better?”

“Nothing in the whole world, my dearest,” James said. “Our land and our family indeed.”

Author’s Note

My great grandfather fought in 1805 under Admiral Nelson in the Battle of Trafalgar. When his man o’war, the
Bellerophon,
came to the New World, he jumped ship and built his new home in the Gaspé. His youngest son, my grandfather James, was born in 1835, and my father, Eric, also a youngest son, was born in 1893.

To commemorate these three ancestors, I write this series of largely fictional accounts of a family that helped found a real English community on the shores of the Gaspé Coast, and lived and farmed there for two centuries.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to acknowledge with real gratitude the many who have helped me write this novel, and apologize to those who have also provided insights but may not be mentioned herein.

As before,
Roger Pelletier
, former Director of the Micmac Interpretation Centre in Gaspé, continued to provide me with great help.

Prof. Danielle Cyr
of York University, foremost expert on the Micmac language, summers on the Coast and has co-authored a splendid Micmac dictionary. She helped me with words and concepts, and, finally, read the completed manuscript, adding valuable changes.

My cousin
Elton Hayes
, horse-breeder par excellence and one of the many custodians of Shigawake’s oral tradition, provided me with a living source of animal husbandry, and much of the local history.
Raymond Garrett
, a Pabos schoolteacher, has laboured over the years to provide a comprehensive genealogy of the Garretts and Almonds. He didn’t mind, in this work of fiction, the odd discrepancy in dates. In oral tradition, our family has some Micmac blood. I have presumed Catherine claimed John as her son and, to protect him, chose another date for his birth and baptism. (John shows up in genealogies as being born after Mariah.)

Carl and Lois Hayes
, intrepid birders and the unquestioned historians of Shigawake families, helped me enormously with the arrival and lineage of our first settlers here in Shigawake.

David Cordingly
’s impressive, readable, and at the same time scholarly volume
The Billy Ruffian
(nickname of the
Bellerophon
) came along at just the right moment. In New Richmond,
Joan Dow
, who founded the British Heritage Village and its fine genealogy department, was of great help in looking up our mutual antecedents.

I must mention and thank two other friendly cardiologists:
Doctors Suhail Dohad
and
Ronald Karlsberg
, who have kept me on my feet, and
Cynthia Patterson
, who challenges me to run faster, just to keep up with her. I should thank my former housekeeper for providing me with material from which to shape one of the characters herein. And finally, a most important thank you to my sharp-eyed friend
David Stansfield,
himself a fine novelist, who helped with my website and also added many finishing touches to this book.

I am blessed also with marvellous advisor-readers.
Nicholas Etheridge
, a former diplomat of no mean intelligence and scholarly wisdom, has pointed out some discrepancies and anachronisms.
Rex King
, a novelist herself, has been a continual source of encouragement, perceptive editing, and support.
Diana Colman
, a good friend from Oxford fifty years ago and herself a novelist and grandparent, gave me wonderful suggestions.
Peter Duffell
, a distinguished British film director, who wrote novels in his Keble College digs when the rest of us at Oxford were just learning to spell (well, perhaps a bit more) did read this thoroughly and gave structural and helpful hints. The
Rev. Susan Kline
has been a great inspiration and gave many good notes, as did the playwright
Oren Safdie
, whom I have known since he wore knee-pants in Montreal on his daddy Moshe’s lap. Finally, my cousin
Ted Wright
thankfully solved many of the smaller (and larger) problems during our discussions while fighting the pernicious advance of Queen Anne’s Lace into our beetroot. After a good farm breakfast together around five-thirty, he would sally forth to make crab traps for the leading trap-maker in the Maritimes, Camille Gignac. Ted’s unparalleled store of knowledge of history (and almost everything else) in science, crafts, and local lore, intersected so often with the interests of this book.

APPENDIX: HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

May 1816 — First Historical Document: James Required as Witness

George the Third by the grace of God of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, King, Defender of the Faith, To James Oldman [sic] alias Thomas Manning of Hopetown, farmer and fisherman, and John Rafter of Cox Township, fishermen and maritimer You are hereby required to be and appear before our Judge of our Provincial Court for the said Inferior district of Gaspe at the Court House of Bonaventureon Monday the twenty-seventh day of May instant at 10 of the clock in the forenoon, to testify in truth and give evidence in that cause now pending and undetermined between: Jacobson Belair of Cox township, plaintiff, and William Garrett of Cox township, Junior, defendant as to slander of the defendant against the plaintiff as heresay Hereof fail not on pain of law Witness the Honourable William Crawford, our judge of our said Provincial Court, the twenty-fifth day of May in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixteen and in the fifty-sixth year of our reign.

Amasa BeeBe, Clark of Court.

December 1816 — Second Historical Document (Excerpt): James’s Petition for Food

That your petitioner...Was led to the sea service from 15 years old and served his Majesty the King...as a seaman in the fleet under Lord Keith at the taking of Alexandria in Egypt, being then in the Bellerophon Man of War, [under]

Captain Pratt, and has been settled in the Bay of Chaleur for five years having then married the daughter of William Garrett Snr in Cox Township.

...has occupied a piece of waste land in East Nouvelle aforesaid where he lives with his wife and two children, and that last spring he planted two barrels and half potatoes but from the frosts in August has had a very bad crop, not more than eight barrels and had no other. ...That your petitioner had an infirmity in his back by a strain in lifting of barrel of potatoes into Amos Hall’s cart but that he is now pretty well recovered from that complaint.