Deluded Your Sailors (3 page)

—Last time I saw those letters, wait now, yes, up in the attic. I remember, because John barked his head off a ceiling beam so hard he nearly crashed down into the kitchen. The attic's almost directly overhead.

Chewing an entire chocolate mouse at once, Evan dutifully glanced up at the low ceiling.

Mrs O'Dea nudged the teapot closet to Evan. —You'll hear me lumbering up there in a moment. Pour yourself some tea once it's steeped, and have another square. It's not every day I get company, especially polite young men who look so smart in their Republic Parks uniforms.

He'd worn the Parks uniform so Mrs O'Dea wouldn't think he'd come from Rare Documents. Born and raised in Newfoundland, and not terribly young – he'd recently lost an argument with forty-three – Evan understood the etiquette: refuse a cookie, square or, worst of all, a cup of tea, and you'd spark in your hostess a steadily hotting-up frenzied quest for something you would deign to accept, take, eat. Hard times, days of common and private starvation, lurked in living memories. Supermarkets and regular imports had cosseted everyone into expectations of quick plenty, when in truth a ferry disruption of a mere three days would cause visible shortages. Offers of sweets and tea, then and now, translated into offers of shelter, common decency and love. Translated, too, into status, ambition and lies.

Evan just stopped himself from answering
Yes, Nan,
like a child. —Thank you, Mrs O'Dea.

Moisture beaded the chocolate mice. Mrs O'Dea, Evan reflected, had likely just fetched the sweets from a tray in her deep freeze, trays kept handy for company. Evan's grandmother had always disliked having company over. Company meant shoes in the front porch, perked coffee in the front room, and a madness of J-Cloths the day before. Friends, by contrast, piled in the back door, drank ready tea in the kitchen and confessed happily to the state, my dear, the absolute
state
of their own houses.

Evan listened to Mrs O'Dea climb a far-off ladder and then tread slowly over the attic floor, almost certainly wiser and more careful than her husband about where now she stood, crawling through insulation and dust for a local boy from the other side of the bay. Certainly not for Rare Docs. And not for Evan. For Evan's boss, Assistant Deputy Minister of Tourism, Culture and Recreation, Chris Jackman, or, to Mrs O'Dea, always and forever Larry Jackman's boy.

She cried out.

Evan nearly squashed a lemon square between his forefinger and thumb. —You all right, Mrs O'Dea?

No answer.

Evan scowled.
Be Jackman's fault if Mrs O'Dea breaks her hip
up there. Yes, you, Chris Jackman, you Ritalined pork-barrellin skeet. How in the name of Jesus did I let you suck me into doin your dirty
work? Heritage and culture – no. You promised to help me fast-track
my grandfather into a Home, skip past those Jesus wait-list lotteries.

The house had a smell to it, familiar and frightening: must and foust and baby powder and damp wood and copper, hidden decrepitude, as if some moist corpse all washed and dressed in Sunday best, watch and fob, high collar and waistcoat, soaked that crumbling wall and would soon rupture it, plummet to the floor and release a mushroom cloud of dust from his hands, and –

Evan's belt cut into his belly as he leant forward to pick up his third cookie. He sat back, considering the expense of his tailored Republic Parks uniform and how Tourism, Culture and Recreation had issued memos denying replacement before two years' wear on all uniform pieces, maternity excepted, and decided to stop for coffee but not doughnuts on the drive back to St John's.

Least this house doesn't smell like Nan's, all glassy piss and
kerosene, her and that Mason jar full of kidney stones. Don't know
how Pop stood it. Misses it now.

High above Evan, Mrs O'Dea opened and closed something, probably a trunk, muttered, and crawled carefully back to the attic ladder.

Chris Jackman's voice, deliberately slumming into dialect:
Evan, me ol cock, dart out to Riordan's Back for me and see what
Mrs O'Dea is after thinkin she's found for Settlement 250, some letters,
been in her family since the year dot. She said she's after hidin them
from the Rare Docs crowd. Some glad I seconded you from Republic
Parks. Beats collectin the dole all winter, hey b'y?

Mrs O'Dea stood before Evan, clutching something precious to her chest.—Are you all right, Mr Rideout? You looked so angry just then. Have another cookie. Or should I pour you some tea?

She carefully placed the treasure – a flattened and decapitated cat, perhaps – on a lavender armchair still wrapt in clear plastic. Then she poured tea into china cups patterned with lush blue roses nearly the same hue as her eyes. Veins and knuckles interrupted the soft skin on the backs of her hands.

—I don't know what he was thinking, telephoning me on a Sunday morning during mass. At first I couldn't figure out the message on my machine, but then when Chris said he was Larry's boy, it all came rushing back. I hadn't heard from him since he took it on himself to create all those Living History Displays. Remember those? Couldn't sweep a floor in a bay for the LHDs there for a while. Even got my father-in-law involved, though I don't think Ange, God rest his soul, really liked it. I remember, Larry's boy propped Ange on a rocking chair, up on a little stage all roped off like those line-ups at the bank, made Ange act like he was mending a net, but a brand new net, bright green. But I think what really got to Ange was the woodstove, chimney pipe just jutting towards the ceiling, connected to nothing.

Silence. Evan strived to mark it with the answer Mrs O'Dea wanted. He failed. —Like how Riordan's Back isn't even on Google Maps?

Mrs O'Dea sipped her tea, quite loudly. —Did you say you draw cartoons on Signal Hill?

—I'm the military animator for Signal Hill. In tourist season. I look after the Tattoo, re-enactments of fife and drum drill with the Royal Newfoundland Regiment of Foot. I supervise the weapons and look after historical accuracy in costume and drill. Sometimes I do consultin for the Admiral's Rooms. Over the winter I'm assistin Mr Jackman with the Settlement 250 initiative.

—Settlement 250, yes. VOIC Radio hasn't shut up about it, and Reverend Winslow over at Prevenient Grace in Port au Mal – I must remember to bring him some cookies, he's getting thin – he wants to organize a protest group to just leave all the old history alone if the arts crowd from town can't promise to interpret it properly. Sure, the whole works is still a year off. Though lots of people out this way haven't got much time for the arts crowd. Even John – my husband, I mean – even John's been asking me about it, and he's in the Estuary Home with Alzheimer's.

—You're a long way out. Estuary's in St John's.

—The dementia beds are all full out here. Did I hear right that some young girl from town is supposed to come out here to write the play for us?

—Nichole Wright. Friend of mine.

—Is she anything to the Port au Mal Wrights? Good. That's not so bad then, not the same as some perfect stranger come digging for his own reasons. But it's my John you and Larry's boy need to thank, really. John's the one who insisted we keep the Captain's papers all these years. Poor Captain Wright.

Jackman, for fuck's sake, you told me...
—So these letters haven't been in your family for generations?

—Lord, no. John got these letters and the pelt bag off Captain Wright on one of his foggy days, no, wait now, what did he call them? Storm days. Nothing to do with the weather. Captain Wright, I mean. One of his sons went on to found VOIC, did you know that? But the storm day: 1947, dampest old draughty winter day, Captain Wright criss-crossing the bay a dozen or more times, pressing old rags and scraps and broken lamps on people willy-nilly. The winter before that he coppied ice pans barefoot, carting a big slut kettle. How he didn't slip and drown, I'll never know. God looks after His fools, I allow. You haven't started your tea. But then I suppose you want to look at what the captain left us.

—I should wash my hands before I touch it.

—Kitchen sink is right over there. Sugar or milk in your tea?

I don't want any friggin tea. That's why I didn't pour any. I
hate tea.
—Plain is fine, thank you.

—John now, John, I couldn't get him to give up the sugar in his tea to save his life. Him diabetic, too. How many times was I after saying...

No longer listening, Evan carefully washed and dried his hands, then tugged on white cotton archivist's gloves. He stood over the lavender good chair and studied the treasure: a flat bag, almost an envelope, made from seal fur and fastened by a loop of leather over a piece of bone, rather long piece of bone, a strong finger and tapered nail, pointing...

Only flipper bone, ya fool.

The seal bone reminded him of his ex, all waxed, zaftig and dyed.
She really looks after herself, that one,
his grandfather had observed, over and over. She filed her strong nails to a lovely almond shape, and she'd taken Evan's comparison of her lying prone and post-coital to a harp seal basking on a rock completely the wrong way.

Mrs O'Dea's cup clinked against the saucer. —Aren't you going to open it?

Not a malicious dig or demand but an expectant reminder, as though Evan just missed a crucial step in a ceremony.

Evan gently lifted the leather loop from round the seal bone. Nothing crumbled.

—I was after John for years to bring that into the university. Then Rare Docs came looking, but no way would I let them take it. I wouldn't even let them in the porch, told them I had no artifacts whatsoever. Young men in suits with name tags, honestly. As if I'm going to address some boy in his twenties as ‘Mr'.

Papers. Very old. Thready handwriting, the spill and the scratch of a quill, iron-gall ink faded to that old brown, a feminine hand, sentences criss-crossed, half the text perpendicular to the other half, some words ruint by folds, but most decipherable to the trained and patient eye. To Evan's eye. Squinting, Evan took hard care not to breathe on the paper.

—Can you actually read that writing? John and I could never make head nor tail out of it.

—I studied with a professor in Salem a few years ago. Massachusetts. He taught me all about eighteenth-century spelling and penmanship.

Date, date... 1745? Blisterin third-degree royal-arsed fuck. I got
a letter here addressed to some Cannard dude in Port au Mal in 1745. I'm gonna come in my pants. Wait. Settlement 250 presumes
1760, 250 years of settlement to 2010. We got the wrong date. We got
the whole fuckin thing wrong. Wait –

March 14
^th
, 1745. From Newman Head, Merchant, Salem, Massachusetts. To John Cannard, lately of Bristol, residing now in Port au Mal, Newfoundland.

Sir: I knew both Captain Finn and Captain Cleasby. Captain Matthew Finn, for so we in Salem knew him, sometimes also Kit Finn, being a Christopher as well as a Matthew...

Evan grinned, getting quite warm. Not just a letter, this, but also an answer. Meaning the first letter pre-dated this one. Meaning, given shipping times, settlement of Port au Mal dated at least to mid or late 1744. At the very least.

Alarmed, Mrs O'Dea put down her tea.—Goodness, sit down. You look like you're about to faint or – oh my.

No slight bit embarrassed by the hard-on now poking the pleats of his Republic Parks uniform pants, Evan sat. He even drank some tea, medicinally, just to steady his nerves.

17-fuckin-45.

Mrs O'Dea held out the plate of cookies. —Date square?

Evan's drive back to St John's, rendered all steamed-up misery by snow showers, horrid early dusk, lap-spilt coffee, chargeless iPod, staticky VOIC radio signal, and the sudden death of the car heater, kept him from swiping his timecard back in at Tourism, Culture and Recreation until almost 5:30. With any luck, Chris Jackman had already left for his weekly supper at the Prime Minister's house – the weekly supper about which he regularly briefed his staff and tweeted to his followers.

Fluorescent lights spread greasy cold glare over the dozens and dozens of cubicles crammed together on TCR's huge open floor. Years before, uncounted secretaries had typed and answered phones and crossed their legs behind desk modesty panels. Now the floor housed the much-expanded department's workforce – the gaffers, as Jackman called them. Behind closed doors, other Assistant Deputy Ministers just used the words ‘cattle' and ‘stalls.' Evan, a seasonally-seconded temp, had been lucky to get a cubicle. A few committee heads and the Assistant Deputy Ministers, those happy few, worked in tiny Venetian-blinded offices lining the east wall, scheming and competing to stand ready when the Minister called one of them up to fill the empty role of Deputy Minister. They kept their office doors closed. The Minister himself rarely graced the department, but two executive assistants regularly dusted and vacuumed his cavernous office. Much as Evan disliked swelling Jackman's head still further, he must agree: in Tourism, Culture and Recreation, at least, the Assistant Deputy Ministers did most of the work.

Evan followed his memory-thread to his cubicle. Faux St John's street signs marked the pathways: St Clare, Water, Elizabeth, Duckworth, Harbourside, Beck's Cove, Clift's-Baird's Cove, LeMarchant, even George. The little corridors intersected like the handwritten sentences from 1745. Not corridors, truth told, nor pathways. Most people called them lanes, despite Chris Jackman's several memos instructing staff to refer to the paths as drungs
. If the
Department of Tourism, Culture and Recreation of the Republic of
Newfoundland and Labrador does not use authentic Newfoundland
English, then who will? We here at government cannot allow
Newfoundland English to go on state-sanctioned life-support the way
that Irish Gaelic did.
Evan had chuckled when first reading the memo and almost shared his thoughts with Jackman, but then the pathologically busy ADM would likely take Evan's sauce for a rallying cry:
What once they spoke we speak?