Waiting for Time (41 page)

Ned's story ends with the couple having spent their entire nest-egg to discover that the first Vincents were all Catholics and not even Vincents but St. Vincion or some such outlandish name.

“I hope you never told your Grandmother Rachel that one,” Selina snaps before turning to Lav, “There's a bathroom just down the hall if you want to freshen up,” she says.

In the bathroom Lav splashes cold water on her face, applies makeup, gives Selina time to have a private word with her sons.

She wonders if she will be asked to stay the night. Probably not, Selina is less friendly than she had seemed on the phone—they are different, not what she had expected—not like the people in the journal. Staring absentmindedly into the mirror it occurs to Lav that she now has the opportunity to change her name—in Davisporte she can be Lavinia if she wishes. She tries out the name, “Lavinia, Lavinia”—whispering it at her reflection. But it is too late, her name is Lav—Lavinia belongs to the woman in the journal. She goes back into the kitchen.

“Now Mother, you knows Vicki couldn't get down just for the funeral—after all she was here Christmas,” Ned is saying.

Selina leans against the stove sipping tea, she seems weary, near to tears. Alf is still staring out the window.

As if casting around for something to distract his mother from the absent Vicki, Ned begins telling them about a neighbour who's had sonar installed in his boat. When no one comments on this news he turns to Lav, “I'll have to get sonar meself soon. Can't do nothin' inshore anymore. Barely hauled in enough to cover gas last summer.”

“Sonar! My son you been listenin' too long to them crowd in St. John's—watch it or your brain'll be soft as theirs!” Alf turns from the window to give his brother a baleful glare. “I worked it out on paper last week, right in Bruce Blackmore's kitchen, worked it out and showed 'em—them crowd with their fibreglass boats, with their Japanese sonar and their American navigation equipment—with their government loans for a million dollars. They'll never be able to pay off that kind of money—never! No bejesus—not if every main jack of 'em hauled full nets day and night 'til they dies!”

“And why should we listen to the likes of you who haven't set foot in a fishin' boat for twenty year?” Lav can see that Ned is gleeful at having jarred his brother into an emotional outburst. “All them experts who been studyin' fish these last thirty year are tellin' us the trap fishery's over. I already talked to the man down at the bank. He says there's a new government loan program, says it's just like when them farmers out West had to get combines, we got to get big boats and sonar—and everything else accordin' to. It's progress, boy—can't stop progress!”

Selina's look of resignation suggests this is a long-standing argument, perhaps the one subject her sons can shout about, discuss safely, can use to hold silence at bay while the women talk in another room.

This time, though, Alf will not be baited. Muttering, “Fuck progress,” he sets his cup down and walks to the door. “I'll see Miss Andrews off. Then I'll check on things at the Cat—be back by the time Levi and the Gills get here. It'll take all six of us to get that box down over them steps.” He stands, holding the door open while Lav thanks Selina.

As they walk to the car Alf Andrews seems more cheerful. Perhaps the argument with his brother has lifted his spirits, or perhaps he is relieved that her visit is ending. He tells Lav the empty house across the yard belonged to Rachel, “Grandmother had it floated up from the Cape, then dragged here, back when father was a boy. No one's lived in it for years. I expect Mother'll be after us to tear it down, now Grandmother's gone.”

Lav would have dearly loved to go inside the old house, which she guesses to be the one Thomas Hutchings had built for Lavinia, the one Mary Bundle had died in. But she cannot bring herself to ask a favour of Alf Andrews.

He watches her climb into the car. “Well I don't expect we'll see you again. We people don't go in to St. John's very often.”

“Oh I'm not going back to St. John's yet—I'm going out to the Cape, at least for tonight.”

Perversely pleased at the disapproval that floods his face, Lav laughs out loud before telling him not to worry about her, “I'm well prepared. I have a tent, food—even a lantern.”

“You can't just drive out there, you know—it'll be dark in two hours and you won't find your way back.”

“I'll find my way!” she turns the key in the ignition, “I'm quite capable of walking a mile or so. What's more, I can read a map as well as you.” She is sick to death of Alf Andrews.

“Don't be so stupid, woman, it's only May—you'll freeze! Don't you understand, there's no one out there—you'll be alone!” he yells through the open window, his hand is on the car door as if he might physically stop her.

“Do you think I'm afraid of the dark.…” Lav starts the car, racing the engine.

He steps back, says, “There's more than dark to be afraid of out there!” Then, as she brings the car around in a tight circle and starts down the lane throwing mud and grass up around him, he shouts, “Stupid mainland bitch!”

She drives through Davisporte in such a rage that when she reaches the highway she has to pull over, roll down the window and take deep breaths of salty air. Finally her face cools and her breathing returns to normal. How childish she's acted! She wishes she had said something dignified, dignified but cutting—something that would have put him right in his place.

Advising herself to forget Alf Andrews, Lav takes a good look at her map and discovers she is headed in the wrong direction, makes a U-turn and starts down the coast towards Cape Random.

fifteen

Lav finds her way easily, as she'd known she would. The last four or five miles are over a brown mud path across marsh and bog. There is not a house in sight. The only sign of civilization, in the general sense—not in the way Philip would have used the word—is a power line strung between poles set down into cages that are filled with rocks. She cannot see the ocean, just sky and bogland.

The road ends in a torn up patch of mud that is littered with beer bottles, Kentucky Fried Chicken packages, condoms and a large roll of filthy carpet. Packing bread, fruit, cheese and the remaining coffee into her knapsack, Lav locks everything else into the trunk of the car and slings the army parka, knapsack and tent bag over her shoulder. She starts down a footpath that is hollowed deep into the bog but a few hundred yards along stops, turns and goes back to the car.

There is something unpleasant about the parking spot. It reeks of mindless vandalism, a kind of casual evil. She cannot leave the journal there. Telling herself that what she is doing is stupid, Lav unlocks the trunk and removes the journal. Wrapping her sweater around the heavy book, she slides it into her knapsack, gathers up her belongings and starts off again.

It is enjoyable walking on the spongy peat path between low marsh plants. Lav fancies she can catch an elusive minty smell—the white winter-shrivelled berries perhaps, or the tiny yellow blossoms growing near the path. Or maybe it's just the brown leaved bushes percolating in the heat. The sun warms her hair and the back of her shoulders. She wonders why she brought the bulky parka.

The path becomes wetter as it meanders towards the sea. It skirts outcroppings of rock and perfectly round ponds of bog water shining like melted chocolate in the sun. She can feel the water, pleasantly warm, seeping into her running shoes, oozing between her toes. Each time she lifts a foot she hears a small plopping sound and when she looks behind sees brown water filling her footprints. Who would have thought that walking through a bog could be a sensual experience? She walks slowly, knowing, despite Alf Andrews' warning, there are still two or three hours of daylight.

She comes to the neck more quickly than she had expected. The strip of land that anchors Cape Random to the shore is today cut by a deeply flowing river. It is not, of course, a river but two arms of the sea. A narrow bridge over the water looks as if it has been deliberately hacked apart and crudely repaired. However, she crosses without difficulty—and is on the Cape.

The expected rush of excitement does not come. According to the journal the church should be nearby—but she sees no building of any kind. The path rises a little, curves around a giant lump of speckled marble, smoothed by wind, snow and ice until it looks like a huge egg resting in a nest of bushes. Lav climbs the gentle curve to the top of the rock—and there is the ocean!

She sees it, hears it, smells it! Around her stretches the long sweep of beach where the sea rolls in and out—its soft swish belied by the ominous roar that rumbles up after each receding wave. Overwhelmed by the combination of sight, sound and smell, Lav drops her belongings, runs toward the wet sand.

Here, along the landwash, the beach is covered in small shells, cream, peach and pale mauve, blue mollusk, purple starfish, amber kelp, long strings of seaweed from which green translucent grapes hang, algae, white corallina and black mermaids' purses, ivory sand dollars and scarlet jellyfish shining like glass bowls. There are broken lobster pots, driftwood carved into abstract sculptures, bits of worn glass that resemble sugared candy and garish plastic containers not even the sea can make beautiful. Lav walks back and forth, gathering things until her pockets are full and her hands smell of kelp and sea weed.

She sits on the sand, watching gulls and seabirds swoop and dive, watching the sea roll up the beach. She tries to imagine a city, but cannot.

Intoxicated by light and air and salt water, she climbs the bank, returns to the speckled rock and tries to orient herself. She picks up her belongings and clambers through thick brush up towards a rock ledge where she guesses the potato garden would have been. But on the brow of the hill there is no sign of cleared land—just alder and wind-stunted evergreens, their bare roots clutching at rocks.

Then, towards the edge of the hill, she sees the mound of stones, grey surfaces half covered with mustard lichen. The stones have been piled in a great heap, carried one by one to this spot to make a kind of rough wind-break for the vanished garden. They are the only sign that anyone has ever lived here. She picks her way over the thistle and dandelion that ring the stones and steps gingerly onto the rock pile. The rocks appear loose but time, weed and lichen have bound them together. It is easy to reach the top where she spreads out the parka and sits down. Scraping back the threadlike tentacles of some subterraneous plant, Lav eases a large grey rock out of its place.

She sits, holding the rock, giving herself up to imaginings—wondering which of the women—Jennie, Meg, Sarah or Mary—last touched it? Surely one of them had pried it up out of the ground and carried it, perhaps in her apron, to toss onto this pile. Lav rubs her fingertips over the hard surface. The top of the rock is smooth but its underside has a rough wave-like pattern, incised eons ago by the great ice cap as it retreated, pressing silt and sand down to make the hills, bays and islands along this coast.

Wishing for clairvoyance, Lav closes her eyes, holds the cool rock against her forehead. Nothing happens. No face, no voice, no presence appears before her mind's eye.

“A good thing, too—supposing it worked both ways—suppose they could see me,” Lav looks ruefully at her well-manicured hands, her tapered, varnished nails.

Feeling foolish, she puts the rock back in its place, stands, searches for a flat spot to pitch her tent. Down where the houses must have been there is only rock and low bush, no cellar, fence or barn, no lilac tree or wharf. It looks like Tennyson's land, Lav thinks, staring out over a landscape where nothing but the sea moves—a land where no one comes or has come since the making of the world.

The day has grown dull. A haze that is not quite fog hovers over everything. Checking her watch, she sees that it's eight o'clock and climbs quickly down from the lookout. How could people have built anything amid these humps and hollows? She turns left, walking through tall grass and sand towards a shorter curve of beach that cuts out to the tip of the arrow, she sees the high finger of black rock against which Lavinia had sat her first day on the Cape. The tide is in and white foam hisses around the base of the shining monolith.

Lav's first instinct is to set up the tent well back from the sea, in the shadow of the banks that shelter the beach. Then she sees that those mounds, overgrown with wild rose bushes and hanging like porch roofs over the beach, have eroded, have crumbled down in places onto the sand. Having no desire to be buried alive on the Cape, she finally unrolls the red tent right on the beach, midway between the high water mark and the embankment.

She has no trouble driving the eight plastic pegs into the soft sand. In case the wind should rise, she piles stones and driftwood around the posts, wedging each one firmly. The tent has a floor and when she crawls inside, it is like being in a small red box—the size of Rachel's coffin but without God and painted angels staring down inches above her face.

By now Rachel's funeral is over. The relatives from away will be driving towards St. John's or back to Gander to catch the first flight out. Local people will have returned home, will be sitting around their supper tables, talking about the old woman more freely than they had in Selina's front room.