Waiting for Time (30 page)

Mary was frightened—and astonished, not just at the words on the paper, but that Peter Vincent could read them. She had often heard Lavinia complain that Peter never showed his face in the schoolroom. “Don't s'pose you're makin' that all up?” she asked, partly to give herself time.

“No that's what the paper says—'tho Escott told me it was wrong. He knew the Sprig woman wasn't anywhere near St. John's 'cause he himself had come down the shore on board the
Tern
with a Mary Bundle—said he knowed she were a girl who'd been thievin' along the St. John's waterfront, besides, she answered to the description. Told me this Mary Bundle was so vicious she'd attacked him, then she was put ashore on Cape Random. Accordin' to Escott they'd be puttin' in at the Cape in a day or so—Mary Bundle were the one person on his list he was countin' on takin' back. I could see how it'd be with her if he ever got her on that ship.”

“What did you tell him?”

“Nothin'” Peter said, “I told the bastard nothin'—then he got dirty with me, said he could charge me with shelterin' a fugitive or some such foolishness.”

Peter stood up and stretched. “So I beat the shit outta him. When I'd finished I told him there was no Mary Bundle on the Cape and if anyone, anyone ever come lookin' for such a person I'd be inta St. John's on the next vessel and finish him off.” He smiled and spit a glob of tobacco juice over his shoulder, “I think he took it as truth,” he said with satisfaction.

Mary tried to stand but could not and Peter had to pull her to her feet. The pain in her legs was terrible and water had soaked up into her skirt. She was cold and frightened.

“So then?” she asked, trying to make her mouth stop bivvering.

“So then, what?” Peter folded the paper and tucked it into his pocket. “I'll be off now—only two hours of daylight left,” he said and began trotting away from her in the opposite direction.

“Wait!” she called after him. “Why'd you do it for if you don't want nuthin?”

He stopped and scratched his head, “Dunno—cause Mudder likes ya, I s'pose,” he said. Then he vanished.

After that, whenever Mary and Peter met they would take a spell together. Sometimes they would just sit and chew tobacco, sometimes Peter would talk, for the young man was more inclined to conversation than anyone on the Cape would have guessed.

“He'd be always showin' me how to do somethin'—I s'pose I were the only creature he got a chance to show off to. Taught me how to set a snare and how to toss a net to catch birds—he knowed everything regards the country roundabout—had walked to every hidie-hole for a hundred miles, knew people all along this shore, Peter did.”

“Sometimes seemed like he thought I was gettin' too friendly, or too nosey. Soon as ever that happened he'd jump up and walk off. One minute we'd be squat down talkin', the next he'd be gone—vanished like the snow that fell last winter!”

Peter was right in thinking Mary Bundle nosy. She collected information and stored it away. She was patient, she trusted Peter and over time he came to trust her. Although he would never say why he was building the house, he did tell her other things, things Mary now tells her great-granddaughter.

“Peter Vincent were the only soul I ever heard tell really talked to Red Indians. Told me they were cute as Christians—had secret places in tree trunks or under rocks, where they hid messages so's they could get news to one 'nother across hundreds of miles—each one passin' it along to the next message place. That way they'd know well ahead if white men were comin' and they'd hide.”

“For all that, Peter got to know some of 'em—lived with one crowd for a full winter. Said they could cure fish without salt and made catamarans with runners covered in seal fur so's they'd slip along on snow. Indians had their own medicines too, concoctions of dogberry bark, beaver root and suchlike. I still makes some of them mixtures Peter told me about.”

After they had known each other for some time, Mary persuaded Peter to read the descriptions of all the fugitives listed on the paper he'd taken from Matt Escott. Apart from Mary Sprig there were four other names: Nell Sheppard, the poor creature who was wanted for stealing a counterpane; one Father Commins, an Irish priest who had gone mad and murdered some Englishman; Bertha Putt, a servant girl said to have smothered her infant child and buried it beneath the doorstep of her employer's house, and George Gipps, a one-eared thief who had escaped from gaol in St. John's while awaiting hanging.

“That all?” Mary was disappointed, having hoped that Tim Toop, or even Thomas Hutchings' names might be on the list with her own. Still, you never knew, one day the piece of paper in Peter's hand might be useful.

“What you gonna do with that bit of paper—no use your keepin' it now, is there?” she asked.

Mary tried to keep her voice casual but Peter had been alerted. His eyes got that far-off look, as if he were listening to something inside his head. She had expected him to get up and walk away. Instead he put the list down on the ground between his feet, pulled a plug of tobacco from his pocket and holding it over the paper began peeling off bits of tobacco with his knife. When the paper was covered, he picked it up and, holding it between the fingers of both hands rattled the shreds of tobacco to the centre. Then he rolled the list into a tube and, using a flint, set it on fire.

“He puffed away at it pretendin' like 'twas a pipe and laughin' to hisself. Had streelish hair, Peter did—almost caught it afire that day. Not many on the Cape had a decent word for Peter Vincent but he were a good friend to me.”

eleven

“Once them preachers started comin' to the Cape things was never the same. Not ever!”

Rachel smiles at the venom in Mary's voice. She has heard Nan express this thought many times, usually to some unwary missionary come to pay his respects to the oldest woman along the coast
.

“No need ta sit there grinnin' like a cat, Rachel Andrews! I'm not foolish yet—though Lord knows I should be, livin' among ye crowd all these years! A pure plague, ministers is!”

“I minds that old one come first, Reverend Ninian Eldridge. Like a dried up stick he were, creepin' up from the boat with Meg holdin' onto his arm for fear he'd break or get blowed away in the wind. Too bad he didn't!”

“Before the week was out he had all hands, even my Ned, yammerin' on about things ya can't see—souls and angels, heaven and bein' saved. Does no mortal good ta talk about such stuff. Turned everything 'round, Ninian Eldridge did.”

“‘Twas his pratin’ on about foreign places put the idea of St. John's in Jane and Emma's head. I never trusted Meg's Emma, but Ned's Jane was a good, biddable maid—got along better with her than I ever did with me own Fanny who was useless in the house. After listenin' to the minister Jane and Emma made it up between them they'd traipse off to St. John's, go into service, make money, buy pretty things, marry rich men. 'Course I knowed how foolish such notions was but I had no say—the rest were content to let 'em go—said Jane and Emma'd just been saved, were big, sensible girls, and besides, Captain Brennan promised us his wife would keep an eye on em.”

“I wondered after, when Emma had her two merrybegots dropped off on the Cape like kittens, if Meg or Ben remembered all their talk about the girls bein' wrapped in a cloak of righteousness. Coulda thrown it in their faces then—I didn't though,” the old woman's look of piety is quickly replaced by a scowl, “but was the friggin' minister's notion to build a church on the Cape drove me to distraction!”

It was certainly Reverend Eldridge who put the idea of building a church into Meg's head, along with the idea that she could make a preacher out of her son Willie—despite the fact that the boy hated schoolwork and had little interest in anything except Rose Norris.

By then the two Andrews families were living in the big double house. Mary's and Ned's side never changed, one huge downstairs room with their curtained-off bed and an open loft up above where all the children slept on the floor.

Ben and Meg were different. Meg's floors were boarded over, oiled and covered with the mats she had hooked. In wintertime she hung a mat inside the door and another over the glass window she was so proud of.

Ben was the same—was, as Ned said, “Forever addin' a fig to his cake.” Whenever he was not repairing wharves or flakes, or working on a boat, Meg had her husband putting up partitions, adding rooms, building shelves, tables and chairs, blanket boxes and washstands and footstools.

Meg had a big sideboard against her kitchen wall, little seats on each end of her fireplace; and Lizzie, Pash, Emma and Willie slept in proper beds Ben had made. At night, while Ned was mending nets and telling tales, Ben would be whittling something: candle holders or spoon holders, toy boats for the boys, dolls for the girls, or frames for little pictures Meg worked in brin.

“All the men useta help get wood. Even then there were no trees on the Cape—even for splits you had to go well back in the country. All hands'd be cuttin' in the fall and wintertime, drag logs out on dogsled or else cruise 'em down by boat when the ice was gone. Bit by bit Ben got tools, first he had a regular saw and woodhorse but in later years he got a pit saw. And the men always let him have the best wood for lumber. Idea was Ben'd give us a hand with our place—for all Ned was willin' he warn't handy with tools.”

“Once Meg got the idea of buildin' a church I hove over all hopes of gettin' our floor laid or partitions up. Took years and years ta build, that church did, great jeezely place!” Mary snorted and spat out her worst insult: “Pure useless!”

But even this waste of work and time was not the root of her bitterness against ministers. In Mary's mind something like a curse had settled on the Cape after Reverend Eldridge sailed away, a fog-like miasma that seemed at first harmless but in the end crept up, covering the familiar landmarks, changing everything so that a person's own yard could become a strange and dangerous place.

For a while after Jane and Emma left, everything seemed lovely. It was the best summer anyone on the Cape could remember, gardens were good, berries plentiful and the sea boiling with fish. By then Ned and Mary had four sons—the older boys, Henry and Alfred, along with Ned's Isaac were all able to fish alongside Ned. George was about six and Moses just beginning to walk.

“Thought I'd finished havin' babies but by the time that summer was out I was in the family way again. According to Meg all of it—fish, berries and babies, were God's blessings come about by so many of us havin' been saved. She and Sarah used to take turns bawlin' out hymns and preachin' in their houses on Sunday—only people in the place didn't go were poor foolish Ida Norris, me, and Thomas Hutchings.”

“Bein' saved changed people, the scattered time Alex Brennan brought a bottle ashore none of 'em would take a drop and they stopped swearin' altogether—got right holy. Charlie Vincent started off preachin' for all he were only a boy. Bein' saved made Fanny queerer than ever but Vinnie come out of her daze and started makin' sheep's eyes at Thomas. Didn't change Ned—he knew all the words and all the hymns but in hisself Ned was same as ever.”

“That were the summer Ned told me 'bout Thomas.”

It had been a Sunday and warm for all it was October. Ned loved both the singing and Bible stories but had left the service to sit on the beach with his wife. He hoped to beguile Mary out of the black mood she'd been in for weeks.

From where they sat, clean empty sand curved out on either side, on their left the tall black rock called God's Finger pointed up at the sky, far down up on their right was the wharf, the fish flakes and the store—now holding; only the Cape's winter supply of salt cod, the summer's catch having already been shipped in to St. John's. Potatoes were still being dug in the garden and every family had a cellar of turnip, carrot and cabbage. Barrels of wine, red partridge berries and tubs of blueberries stood in lofts and back porches. Despite the stacks of fish in the store and mountain of firewood behind each house, the men would continue to catch fish and cruise wood down around the point as long as the weather held. If tomorrow was fine Mary would do a second cutting of grass for her goats, other women planned to dip candles or turn out their houses one last time before winter set in.