Waiting for Time (37 page)

“It's enough to make a cat laugh,” Mary thought, “all of them bein' so meek—and Tim Toop, the little thief, actin' like he was King of England.”

Still, she smiled too, smiled and smiled, and stood hugging the stiff paper inside her sweater, saying over and over to herself, “in perpetuity, in perpetuity.…” It was a grand word. She had young Matthews read the paper out and explain what each word meant, she liked that one especially.

“In perpetuity,” she whispered under her breath, smiling as the skiff carrying Timothy Drew Esq. and his wife moved away from the waving people. “In perpetuity!” She didn't care if she never saw the sky over either of them again.

She never did. But in the years that followed, Timothy Drew's name, the names of his sons and grandsons, as well as the names of Drew vessels—the
Northern Queen
, the
Seahorse
, the
Jubilee
and the
Northern Pathway
—became bywords along the northeast coast. Mary had seen the beginnings of a family empire that would control much of the mercantile and political life of Newfoundland for generations.

Timothy Drew, with the help of his wife's relatives in England, would in twenty years own a huge business. A business based on carrying Newfoundland whale and seal oil and dried salt fish to ports in Spain, Portugal and Great Britain, returning with rope, rum, salt, flour and coal. In a thousand coves and bays, on a hundred tiny islands, thousands of fishermen and their families worked for the Drew empire and depended on Drew vessels for every mouthful of food, every item of clothing. Timothy's descendants became manufacturers, bankers, lawyers and, of course, politicians. In Newfoundland they were considered only a little lower than the angels and a good bit higher than royalty.

But that spring day, standing quietly on the wharf whispering the magic word to herself, Mary Bundle knew nothing of this. Nor, had she known, would she have cared. Never one to brood on what might have been, Mary was overjoyed to know she owned the planks beneath her bare feet, the flakes and the solid wooden store behind her.

thirteen

“I tell ya, girl, that day I watched the Seahorse sail off with Tim Toop I wouldn't ha' called the Queen me aunt! Not one of us wasn't relieved. The grownups looked a bit stunned but the youngsters romped around the wharf like young goats.”

They were safe! They had been reprieved!

“I kept thinkin' how it'd be if I had to leave—what it'd be like to get me things together and start off in another place. How it'd be, leavin' with Josh out there on the point and Joe and Peter buried in back,” Sarah sobbed as she hugged Meg and Anne.

Each woman had been thinking such things, not only of the graves, either, but of the houses, the solid shelves, the gardens and potato cellars, the half-finished church, of the lilac bushes beside their doors and the sight of sun hitting the water off Turr Island. Never had the Cape seemed so dear, so settled, so filled with friends and fine possessions. In the fading light of a spring evening everything around them took on a golden glow. How could such wonders be abandoned, and, if abandoned, how assembled again in this world or the next?

Willie nudged his father, “We done all right, Pop—we done all right, eh?”

Ben looked at his son and grinned. “I 'lows we did—seems to me Drew be a fair man. That young feller, now, that Matthews, he were all there to turf us out before Mr. Drew come and put his foot down.”

The other men nodded, but Meg dried her eyes and frowned at her husband. “I was prayin' the whole time we was up there—prayin' we'd not be left next summer with no one to take the fish we caught—and I allow 'twas the Lord's work we got sove.”

Sarah, Anne and Lizzie were quick to agree, it was a miracle, pure and simple. How else to account for that man's change of heart?

Suddenly they were all talking, Meg and Sarah quoting scripture, Lizzie chastising the twins for lack of manners in front of quality, Jane and Rose describing to Pash each button and ribbon on Mrs. Drew's costume. The men, sheepish as children who find when a candle is lit that the monster is only their father's coat, walked in circles, muttering that they must have misunderstood the clerk fellow from the first—and no wonder—he had that strange townish way of saying his words.

No one saw Thomas go over to Lavinia. Only when he cleared his throat did they notice the two of them standing so close together, arms linked.

“We're going to begin living in the store.” He looked towards Meg as if seeking approval, “Living together—we'll marry as soon as a preacher comes by.”

Meg could hardly believe what she'd heard. What was Thomas saying, right out in front of them all, in front of the children? Mouth agape she looked at him. “What?” she asked.

“Lavinia and me, we're moving into the store to live.”

“Thomas! You're not thinkin' of livin' like man and wife without God's blessing—you mustn't do such a thing!” Meg glanced at Willie and Rose who were also waiting, in separate houses, for the arrival of a minister. “'Tisn't decent, besides bein' a bad example.”

“Why don't we have Charlie marry us all—just like he done.…” Rose's voice came to an abrupt stop, she sputtered and turned crimson, remembering that wedding had been Thomas' and Fanny's.

“Them was special circumstances, Rose Norris—not something we're likely to repeat. There'll be a minister down in a week or so—Reverend Oakley perhaps, when he gets finished in Shamblers Cove,” Meg gave her prospective daughter-in-law a black look before pronouncing judgment. “Ye can wait 'till then, all four of ye, 'specially you Vinnie, after all, you're our teacher. I'm pure mortified you'd consider something so sinful—and to talk so in front of children! If need be well talk after service on Sabbath.”

“We'll not wait, Meg—Thomas and me already waited too long,” Lavinia looked around the circle of faces without embarrassment. “This very day Thomas is going to board off part of the store for us to—to sleep in,” she did have the grace to lower her eyes on the last words.

“Stiff necked she was, 'tho I do say so.” Mary passes her empty cup to Rachel. “Vinnie and me was like sisters in later years but I haves to say, she done what she liked and the devil take the hindmost. Never got held against her somehow, never got bawled out and looked down on, Vinnie didn't.”

That day, however, Mary had not cared. Lavinia and Thomas could have rolled around together right there on the stagehead in front of everyone, for all she was concerned. Euphoric from the success of her shouting match with Tim Toop, confidence seeping into her from the paper she clutched against her chest, Mary was interested in nothing but herself. She had clambered up onto the splitting table, stood above them, scowling down until one-by-one, they noticed her.

“A fine bunch ye are—sheep, just like the man said. Sheep! God's sheep or Drew's sheep—or even Thomas Hutchings' sheep—sheep for anyone,” Mary yelled down at their upturned faces.

Swivelling around to face Thomas, she shouted: “Who the frig you think you are, Thomas Hutchings? Comin' back here like a lord, takin' over like you owns us! And the rest of ye—actin' like we can't get along without him. What did we do when he was gone, tell me that, what did we do? Didn't we get our boats in the water? Didn't we catch fish and make it? Didn't we cull it and count it and send it off to St. John's?”

They had stared up at her in wonder and bewilderment. What was she carrying on about? Her own boys were shamed by their mother's outburst. Jane whispered to Dolph that he must do something, and pushed her husband towards the table on top of which Mary stood.

“Come on down now, come down, Mamma Mary,” Dolph spoke as he would have to a child, or a cat that had climbed up under the wharf.

She slapped his hand away. “Bugger off—and stop callin' me that stunned name—I can't abide it—sounds like some Roman Saint!”

Mary looked around until she found Thomas again, “I minds when I first come here, Alex Brennan asked him over there if I could stay, and he said no. No! This were his place then. Whatever were done, everybody came to he. Them times is gone, Thomas Hutchings! Different times now! Now my man, if you wants to live in the store you gotta come to me—got to ask me—'cause 'tis me owns the store!” Mary screamed the last words waving her paper over their heads. It fluttered out of her hand and she had to make an awkward grab to catch it.

Regaining her balance, she took a deep breath and raved on, pelting years of resentment down on them, reminding them of all she had done to keep the place alive, of every grievance she had ever held, ending with her opinion of their performance in front of Timothy Drew, “…and now ye all stands here like the cats that ate the cream, thinkin' it was yer prayers, or yer kow-towin', the bo win' and scrapin' and tippin' of caps to them buggers that got ye off. Twarn't! 'Twas me—me who made that old crook say his vessels will keep on comin' in to the Cape.”

She was like the tide, like the moon, like the great unstoppable icebergs that came down the coast. They stood in silent awe—what she said made no sense but was still a marvel. Even the smallest children knew they were witnessing one of Mary Bundle's famous rages, an event they would some day tell their grandchildren about.

Eventually her fury subsided, her gesturing hands dropped, she looked around. Still standing atop the table she beckoned Lavinia over: “Here, you read this to 'em—and keep ahold of it or we'ums all lost.”

Remembering that moment, Mary cackles and closes her eyes to savour it. “Talk about good—my dear 'twas marvellous standin' up like that, watchin' the looks on them faces while Vinnie read the paper out.”

Whatever regrets she had felt when she stood over the sleeping lovers were gone, unimaginable as ice is in summer.

Looking down at the people standing below, Mary remembered others, people who had looked down thus at her: Master Potts sitting on his horse telling Una if he didn't get more work out of her, she and her children would be thrown out of the hut; Mrs. Brockwell scowling at the little girls on the workhouse steps, saying they were lousy and must be scrubbed down; Mr. Armstrong leering at her and Tessa, reaching for them with his putty-like hands; Thomas Hutchings telling her she and her child couldn't come ashore on the Cape. And from some great height, all the “thems” who'd killed Tessa and driven Mary Sprig into hiding, the “thems” who'd starved her, kept her poor and overworked all her life. Even Meg's face came to her, looking down at her and Ned, ordering them out of the house, saying they must forget their bodies and care for their souls.

“Tim was right,” she thought, “'tis worth anything, worth lyin', stealin', maybe even worth killin' to be the one up here, the one holding onto the whip, not the one feelin' it.”

When Mary finishes telling Rachel about the scene on the wharf, she opens her eyes and stares at the girl. No more than a child she seems to the old woman, a child who sits, head bent, still writing in Lavinia's book.

“She's not hard enough,” Mary thinks, “not near hard enough for what's comin' to her.”

She tries to remember something more she can tell her great-granddaughter, some advice she can give, some spell or hex that will make Rachel stand up for herself when she, Mary, is not there. Something that will keep her safe.