An Imperfect Librarian (15 page)

“How do you think I'd look with a tail?”

“Wouldn't match the life jacket. Aren't you hot sitting in the boat with that thing wrapped around you?”

“That thing will save me from drowning.”

She runs her fingers through her hair like a comb. “Not if you only wear it in a boat or on land. Test it in the water, why don't you?”

I climb out onto the boulder while I listen to her reminders about three-point contact. “Hang onto the rock with one hand and the boat with the other while you step out,” she says.

The water may be cold but at least I don't have to touch off the bottom. It's a bog-saving vest as well. I kick and wave my arms to warm up. I play with the buoyancy and swirl round. I turn to face the boat. She's drawn the anchor and she's rowing away from me.

“Where are you going?”

“Swim to me,” she calls.

I wave to her. “Come back! I can't swim. I can only tread.”

She's not waiting for me. “You're swimming now.”

The boat leaves a smooth wake behind it. I shatter it when I thrash my arms and kick my legs. That's the closest I'll come to swimming. I stop partway to hold my breath and dip my head under. There's not much to see in the murky waters but then something moves. It could be a terrified trout, an eel or the carcass of a moose thawing out. I kick and thrash then kick and thrash some more. I reach the shore as she's anchoring the boat.

She hands me a towel. “Hurray for you! You officially swam the length of the pond.”

I wipe my face. “That wasn't a very nice trick to play on me.”

She kisses my shoulder. “Forgive me. I'll make up for it. Anything you want.”

“What about if you answered my questions about you know who.”

“Who?” she says.

“There you go again. I told you, you were evasive about him.”

“Not Francis. Please. We're having a great day. Don't spoil it again.”

“Again? Since when did I spoil the day? I just swam the length of the pond? What else–”

“I didn't mean today. I mean in general. Enough about Francis.”

“You make it sound like that's all I ever talk about.”

“Sometimes it feels that way, yes.”

“Feels to me like you're avoiding the topic.”

“Not paranoid by any chance are you?”

“That's not a very nice thing to say.”

She stands. “I didn't say you were.”

I grab her hand. “Stay here with me. Don't go. You can make up for forcing me to swim across the pond if you bake me one of those blueberry pies you've been boasting about.”

“Blueberry pie it is, once the berries ripen and you help me pick them.”

She sits on the blanket. I put my arm around her. “But not the red ones because they're green, right?”

“I told you you'd catch on,” she says. “Next, you'll have to learn about the berry grounds, berry pots, berry notes, berry ocky, berry duffs and berry bank.”

“Is that it?”

“Nowhere near. You still have to learn how to tell marshberries from partridgeberries, which berries to pick before the frost and which after. There's the whole issue of knowing where to find them. One year, there might be thousands in an area. The next year...”

Norah talks as she lies down and rests her head in my lap. She knows how much I like to run my hands through her hair. I close my eyes and remember a day at the shore with Papa. It was the summer before we moved to France from Quebec. We had to get up while it was still dark. I felt sick sitting in the back seat during the long drive. A man and woman came with us. The man took us to a park in the forest with a lake. He lent me his fishing rod. When I caught a fish, Papa shouted, Bravo. He hugged me. I wrapped my arms around his neck and he hugged me even tighter. Later, we had a picnic on the shore. After supper, I lay with my head in his lap while he talked to the man. Papa rested his hand on my head. I closed my eyes, but not because I wanted to hurry things.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

T
HE BEACH IN THE COVE
is a noisy place, especially when the tide is high. It wouldn't be nearly as noisy if it were sandy. I could get used to the quick splashing sound of waves hitting the shore. It's the rocks smacking off each other like firecrackers when the water recedes that I can't ignore. Sometimes, I'd like to be able to flick a switch, turn off the noise and enjoy the calm of the cove. The stream is noisy but I don't mind the predictable sound of its flow. It barely whispers when it gushes over, under and around the rocks into the ocean.

There's no shortage of comfortable rocks to sit on while I read, watch the whales chasing the capelin, the gulls hovering over the whales, or the dogs chasing after the gulls. To the left is Europe. To the right is the community of Blackhead with its fourteen houses, church no bigger than a house, and corner store where I go to buy milk when we run out. They also sell souvenirs including pink poodles made of nylon and homemade soaps and salts with names like Partridgeberry Punch, Iceberg Explosion or Spruce Sizzle.

I visit the store for the first time one Saturday afternoon in August. Norah is baking a cake. She runs out of baking powder so I offer to fetch some. She gives me directions and I find it without any trouble. I pull up in front of the one-storey building with its yellow clapboard and red door. It's no bigger than a garage. The hand-painted sign says
Oliver's
. Two girls are sitting on the store's steps sucking on orange popsicles. They follow me inside. The bell tinkles when I open the door. The girls seem to like that so they open and close it until the woman behind the counter shouts for them to give it up. “Sorry, Mrs. Oliver,” they respond in unison with their matching orange lips and moustaches.

The inside is nothing more than an oversized closet stacked to the ceiling with supplies. I ask if they have baking powder. Mrs. Oliver seems surprised, almost affronted at the question as if I'd made inquiries too personal. “My darling,” she says, “we got that and everything else besides.” She rhymes off a line of products from baking soda and baking salts to baking flour. I say the powder's fine for my purposes and she says what purposes would those be and I say someone's baking a cake and she says now who might that be and the conversation goes in the direction it always does. “How long are you here for?”

I know exactly what she means, unfortunately. Long enough to buy the powder, I reply. Is that so, darling, she says and I ask how much and she wants to know if I'll be paying in Canadian dollars and I tell her of course and she says special price for strangers and I say not necessary and she says don't be talkin'. She places the tin of powder in a paper bag. “Anything else for you now? Some homemade bread, homemade fudge, spruce beer? Salt beef's on special this week.”

“Another time, maybe.”

“Special's over tomorrow.”

The bell rings again when I walk out the door carrying two
five-gallon buckets of salt beef. The girls with orange popsicle lips follow me outside. I turn the car's ignition over and over. A loud squeak from the engine startles the girls. They shriek then laugh. Mrs. Oliver comes outside. A man calls something to me and I roll down the window.

“I said you won't be doin' much drag racin' with the likes of that jalopy.”

The audience swells to a couple of teenage boys wearing baseball hats and jeans so low you'd think they had no bums. A frail man with grey whiskers lays down his empty wheelbarrow to watch the scene. He takes off his khaki hat to wipe his brow with the back of his hand. Four eager dogs show up, tails wagging and tongues hanging.

“How much do I owe you?” I say to the man after he diagnoses the problem and gives the battery a boost.

“Go on wit' ya,” he laughs. The others look at each other and laugh with him. “We're all neighbours round here.”

I reach my hand out the window to give a final wave before I head onto the main road. They watch me so closely you'd swear it was the departure of a loved one heading off on a perilous journey. By the time I'm back at Cliffhead, Norah has given up on the cake. Just as well. The best-before date on the powder says it expired three years ago. The house is too warm for baking anyway.

We stuff supplies into our backpacks then head to the cove for the afternoon. I'll need physiotherapy on my shoulder from throwing sticks into the water for the dogs. “That's enough. Go lie down,” I order them. I take my seat on a flat rock in the stream then dabble my feet in the water. Norah spreads the blanket just under the cliff in a thin band of shade. She sleeps for a while. I don't sleep, not sitting on a rock in the stream, not with the three dogs splashing about, dropping sticks at my feet, in my lap, or worse, on top of my book.

Later in the afternoon, Norah goes to the house to fetch the lobsters while I build the fire. When the water in the pot is boiling, we drop the creatures in. I think I hear them squeal but Norah says it's not possible because they have no voice boxes. By the time we finish eating, the coals are giving off so much heat we have to move farther from the fire. The orange glow is hypnotizing. The dogs claim Norah's blanket for their siesta. The sun is low in the sky and soft on the eyes. Norah rinses her hands in a bath-size pool in the stream while I stoke the bonfire.

“It's so warm. Come see,” she calls. She strips down to her bra and underpants.

I throw another piece of driftwood on the fire. “Does the sunburn hurt?”

“Not while I'm soaking in the salt water,” she says. “Join me?”

I strip down to the evidence of my own time in the sun then sit beside her in a pool like a lukewarm bath. The rock underneath is smooth. I lie back on my elbows, almost completely immersed in the water. She turns onto her stomach then leans forwards to kiss me. I balance on one arm and reach the other around to draw her closer. All of a sudden, a cold wave splashes into the pool. Norah jerks forwards. I lose my balance and fall backwards. The salt water pours up my nostrils. The wave is sucked back out and I sit up, coughing. Norah laughs.

“What's so funny this time? I thought I was drowning.”

“That's your christening,” she says. “You now have the salt of Newfoundland flowing in your veins.”

“I'm relieved to know I got something out of it.”

“Let's go back to the house, take up where we left off,” she says.

“Make love Newfoundland style?”

“Whatever style turns you on.”

Later, under her star-lights, under her blankets, under the weight of her body, with skin that tastes of salt and smells of smoke and without the worry of a mischievous wave, we consume each other.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

R
AY
H
ARDING RETURNS FROM
A
LBERTA
at the end of August. He's fuming that we painted the inside of his rowboat the tricolour pink, white and green of the Newfoundland flag. We avoid the pond to spend our time nearer the hexagons or the cove. The delivery of birch and spruce needs to be stacked into cords. The bakeapples then the blueberries ripen. We travel into the back-country to pick them. On more than one berry-picking expedition, we cross paths with hoards of flies. Norah told me their names – nippers, stouts, garnippers, gallynippers, black flies, sand flies and horse flies. She forgot to mention the flies that are drawn like vampires to the fresh blood of strangers.

Classes begin, students crawl out of the woodwork, the library comes alive again. Edith's telephone number appears on my caller ID daily. Her emails are there too. The subject lines range from
Missed you!
to
COME FOR SUPPER??
Henry will be back from vacation in less than ten days. “I've got things under
control,” I told him before he left. “I can manage without your advice.”

“Prove it,” he said.

I don't have to prove anything to him but I'll be forced to listen to his “I told you so” if he returns after summer vacation and I've done nothing about Francis and the People for Privacy. The last time I went to see the Chief Librarian about Francis, it backfired on me. This time it's different. He has to listen to me now. I've been here almost a year and I still haven't had any access to anything from Special Collections. I open my office door to head to an appointment with the Chief and almost bump into Edith.

“Why didn't you answer when I knocked earlier?” she says.

“I must have been on the phone. How was your holiday?”

We're boxed into a corner between my office door and the stairwell. Edith moves closer and squeezes me up against my door. “My holidays would have been better if you came with me like you promised. I'll take a hug instead of an excuse.” She wraps her arms around me, buries her face in my shirt then gazes up at me. “What did you do all summer?” she asks.

I move her away from me. “I read and wrote reports.”

“Am I in your report?” she says.

I turn the knob of the stairwell door. “I have to go now.”

She pushes on the door. “I'll walk with you.” She follows me down the three flights, each twenty steps, plus the four landings. “I suppose you were writing reports on the weekends too, were you?”

I hold the door open for her at the bottom of the stairwell. “I was busy, yes.”

“Why don't we go for lunch together?” she says.

I look at my watch as we stand together outside the Chief Librarian's office. “I have a meeting now. We'll be in touch.” I
wave goodbye then open the door. His secretary Margaret is on the telephone. She puts the caller on hold. “I'll let you know when he's ready.” She continues her phone conversation. “You have to knead it until every breath of air is out of it,” she says. “Put it in a warm place near the stove, wrap it in blankets and let it rise again.” Silence. “There'll be a crust on the top. It'll have air bubbles inside like a sponge.” Silence. “You won't have much left over. Fry it up with a bit of lard, put some molasses on it then have it with your tea.” Silence. She gazes at me with the receiver to her ear. “Just a second.”