Donovan's Station (2 page)

I used to wonder about the places it went, what meals the other station hotels and inns were serving to the passengers, but somehow there always seemed so much to do here that getting on the train when it was outward bound just didn't happen. Lizzie can't believe that I've never been west of Kelligrews. I've been south to Petty Harbour, east as far as the Battery, and north to Broad Cove, and I know every inch of the land between. I've walked it, rode it on horseback, driven it in carriages and long carts, even done most of it one time or another in Mr. Goodridge's motor car. I know every stick and stone from Paradise and the Horse Cove Line to Fort William. In my
younger days, I could find my way in the thickest fog or a driving snowstorm as easily as if it was a sunny day in September. Even the Bishop didn't know the route as well as I did.

Now here's a thought. I will see the Bishop soon if I can just shut my teeth against the baked apples. That's who I'll look for, as soon as ever I've found my own sweet man, Mr. Donovan. I'm sure Bishop Fleming will like Mr. Donovan. I must tell him about the train, though perhaps people in heaven already know everything there is to know. Still, I'll tell him about the engineer and the waistcoat, as it will make him laugh. Perhaps in heaven I will remember the burnt waistcoat but not Mrs. Cadigan's baby.

Oh, I can feel the water on my face again. I am so weak. I can't shut my mouth against the sweet apples and I can't shut my eyes against the salt tears. So long ago. I can't remember a thing before that day, not even my baby brother being born. The Bishop was at the stove stirring the pot and he fell asleep and burned his waistcoat. I will think about the work, carrying the food to the houses, and it will dry the tears. Five, I must have been, and sturdy even then, and so lucky not to have caught the smallpox when everyone else was sick and dying with it. My father got it first, spots like bird shot under the skin of his wrists, and then just as he was getting a little better Mother got sick and then Richard got it, and neither of them able to lift a finger to do anything for the poor little boy. I did what I could, keeping the fire going in the stove and soaking out a bit of fish and biscuit to feed us all, but I was only five and I'd been waited on hand and foot my whole short life. That changed soon enough.

I was looking out the window, I don't know why because everyone in Petty Harbour was either gone or sick, and that's when I saw the Bishop coming over the hill. He had his skirts hiked up into his belt and he had a bag on his back with his medical chest in it. I remember, I ran and told my mother there
was a black man coming, meaning a clergyman, and when she looked and saw it was a Catholic priest she started to cry, thinking she'd get no help from him. Maybe if it had been another man, she'd have been right, but Bishop Fleming never asked who was Catholic and who wasn't, he just set to, trying to help feed everyone.

I think we were the only house on the Southside with a stove then. Everyone else had an open fireplace, with crooks and crottles for hanging the pots on, or iron fire dogs and a crane if they were lucky, and I thought it was such a pity to shut the fire up in a box but my mother was so proud of that stove. Grandfather Bulley had sent it out when Richard was born, a gift for his first grandson.

There now, I, do remember before the Bishop. I was so small, I hadn't realized how much trouble it was to keep an open fire, or how hard it was to cook on one. Father had cut enough wood for the whole winter when the smallpox came, so the Bishop used our house for cooking the food, what there was of it. “The Bishop's little rodney” they called me, because I followed him around the Harbour the whole winter, carrying pots of food across to the Catholics on the Northside as well as to the Protestants on the South. I still have the scar on my ankle where I spilled hot water down my boot. I was such a baby— people were dying all around me and I was crying my eyes out over a blister the size of a penny, but the Bishop put chamomile salve on it and wrapped it in scorched cloth just as if it was a real injury.

I can almost smell the bandage now, the hot, clean smell of the burnt linen so different from the scorched smell of his waistcoat. He was so tired, he must have fallen asleep standing up at the stove and I smelled the wool of his vest burning. “Bishop, dearest,” I said, pulling on his coat tails, for I was such a baby I didn't know you mustn't call a bishop ‘dearest'. “Bishop, dearest, wake up or you will burn the dinner,” I said, and he
staggered back from the pot and almost lost his balance, and his waistcoat was steaming. He was making a sort of porridge, using whatever he could find, oatmeal and flour and hard biscuit all boiled up in water, and then he'd put a lashing of molasses into it from the keg in the corner, and we'd carry it around the Harbour, to the houses where the people were too sick to cook anything.

It was the day he burned his waistcoat that we went out to see the Cadigans. Theirs was the last house on the path out to town, and they'd all been fine when the Bishop came into the Harbour, so he hadn't worried about them, thinking, I suppose, that they were too far away to be infected. But then he noticed that there was no smoke coming from there two days in a row, so we went round with the food and saved a bit in case they needed it. They were all dead except the baby. Mr. Cadigan was wrapped up in a blanket on the floor by the wall, and the older boy was on a mat near the fireplace, and Mrs. Cadigan was in the bed, covered in sores from the pox. The baby was covered in sores as well, but it was still alive and the smell of the place was enough to choke you. Poor little baby, so sad, only it had managed to get the clothes off its mother and had gnawed at her breasts ‘til she was half eaten.

The Bishop must have forgotten I was there, for he took the Lord's name in vain, though I'm sure the Lord will have forgiven him considering the circumstances. I must have made a noise, dropped the little bucket I was carrying, perhaps, because he turned around and flung his arms round my head, pulling me tight to his waist so I wouldn't see, and I could smell the burnt wool of his waistcoat, such a relief after the smell in the room where the baby had done its business all over the bed, and the poor little thing died before we got halfway home with it. We buried it in an empty nail keg. I remember thinking it might have been my baby brother, and I never wanted to mind Richard after that.

I suppose if I could lift my hands, I could say a rosary for the Bishop's soul, but he probably doesn't need rosaries. I'd have offered up a lifetime of rosaries for him already, if I'd thought for a moment that he really needed them. October 7th, he came, which is the feast of Our Lady of the Holy Rosary, he told me later. I was too small to know at the time and besides we were all Anglicans then. The feast was to celebrate the defeat of the Turks at the battle of Lepanto, wherever that is. Maybe it's in Carpasia—after all, he was Bishop of Carpasia, not really Bishop of Newfoundland.

It was Bishop Fleming who taught me to say the rosary, and I have said it thousands and thousands of times since—the Joyful Mysteries for my father, who learned to be content with having just a daughter, the Sorrowful Mysteries for my mother who lost the only child she really loved, although she did her best to hide that from me, and the Glorious Mysteries which I said first for nobody in particular but that I now know were really for Mr. Donovan.

The Bishop taught me my letters too. I'm sure he wanted me to be a school teacher, but he showed me too clearly the blessing of feeding people during his winter in Petty Harbour. A was an apple pie, and everything that follows does so because apple pie is good to eat. “C cut it”, he'd say, and using a bit of charred stick he's draw the letter C on the side of the pail full of porridge, so I'd know I was to bring it to the Clearys on the Northside. L longed for it—that went to the Lees, on the Southside. M mourned for it. Morris, Southside. He drew me out the whole alphabet on oilcloth, and sewed it into a tiny book: “The Tragical Death of A, Apple Pie, Who was Cut in Pieces and Eaten by Twenty-six Gentlemen, With Whom all Little People Ought to be Very Well Acquainted”.

By Christmas, I knew all the letters, even the ones like X and Z that had no names, so he began to teach me words other than names. There were no books, except his breviary and our
Bible, so he taught me to read from the Bible and it is a habit I have retained all my life, though it is not a very Roman thing to do. “What do you want with that?” asked Paddy, when I put the Bible in with the linen to move to town with him after we were married. “They've got one in the church. The priest will read it to us if we need to know it.” Not that he went to church much. He'd make a show of going, stand in the back with the other men for a while, and then drift off out the door, to smoke his pipe and talk, or away to O'Neils for a drink of rum.

Poor Paddy. Perhaps if I had loved him more he would have come to church with me, but he loved himself such a great deal that there wasn't really room for anyone else to love him. Certainly our girls loved him, but he saw them as part of himself, like his hands or feet. I'm glad they were grown and gone, except Kate, of course, when I married Mr. Donovan. They couldn't approve of anyone taking their father's place. I could never bring myself to call Mr. Donovan by his first name, it being the same as Paddy's, and I know they thought it was a delicacy in me, an unwillingness to use the holy name of Paddy Aylward on a man they thought was his inferior, but the truth is that it was the other way around. I loved my darling Mr. Donovan so much that I couldn't bear to call him by a name that was ashes in my mouth.

Did the Bishop know what he was doing when he married me off to Paddy Aylward? The Bishop was such a good man, and he had such faith in me, that he may have thought I would save Paddy's soul and so he offered me up as a sacrifice. I'm afraid I let him down. It wasn't such a bad marriage, I suppose. Paddy was sober when he had to be, and he never laid a finger on me in anger except the once. We raised three fine girls, and buried only one beautiful baby. He was a hard worker in life and he left me provided for after he died. Can anyone ask for more? Oh, yes, for there is more, and I got it eventually.

I must ask Kate about the bacon. The partridges will be too
dry without it. I tried to remind her yesterday, but she didn't seem to be able to understand me. My head is so clear, now, that I'm sure I will be able to talk. I must remember, though, not to try to speak if she has a spoon in her hand or she will be sure to put food in my mouth. The sooner I learn to keep my mouth shut when there is a spoon, the sooner I will be with my sweet Mr. Donovan and my dearest Bishop.

Now they stamp, now they champ, now they
stand still.

Fine day. Attended mass at Topsail while Mrs. Walsh stayed with Mumma. Home in time to do the teas. Had to redo the pastry
—
the girl forgot to add vinegar to the cold water and it was dunchy. The place will go to ruin without Mumma. Her eyes never stop searching the ceiling. What is she looking for? Had a most unnerving visit from Monsignor Roche, who said he'd wanted to speak to me after mass. How was I to know? I know I am not an imposing figure like Mumma, but he makes me feel so small and insignificant that I want to crawl into the milk house and hide. When he calls, I wish we had just an ordinary parish priest, the kind who likes a short rosary and second helpings. We have the Newsboys on Wednesday. Last year they rode on the cows and almost drowned two hens in the river. Please God, Dermot will lend a hand.

Father Roche was here and left without even a glass of port, for I heard the door slam behind him and I know Kate wouldn't have forgotten to offer something. I am uneasy with a priest who doesn't drink at least a little. He spoke to Kate as if she were deaf, asking about whether the doctor thought I'd recover and then quizzing her on how much I talked to her about the old days and my friendship with Bishop Fleming. He said if I recovered, he'd like to talk to me about it. Nothing would give me greater pleasure than to remind Father Roche of
the Stirling qualities of the man who first held the office he aspires to.

Dear Bishop Fleming was such a blessing to the poor people here—so anxious for the fishermen and their families who had little or nothing. They came with nothing and after all their labours, they often had nothing but more mouths to feed at the end of a season. And the poor babies—not a cuff or a vamp, and sometimes not even a shirt to cover their poor bare bottoms. But such compassion the Bishop had, even for the improvident. Father Roche will need a bigger heart than those usually found in Placentia Bay men if he is to fill the Bishop's shoes.

My parents were more fortunate than most in the way they settled here, although some would say there is no such thing as good fortune unless you make it yourself. That is what my mother always said, and it is what I told Judge Prowse when he asked me to tell him of the circumstances surrounding my people's settling here. I suppose it was really an accident of the weather. They came out heading for Upper Canada, but their ship ran into difficulty and took refuge in St. Johns Harbour, short of food, full of water, and half sinking. Mother had friends in the Garrison—coney kin, I believe—and insisted on disembarking while the ship was refitted, and during the stopover they decided to stay on and go over to Grates Cove where there were some distant relatives of Father. The cod fishery was looking pretty grim at the time, but sealing was a growing industry and during their stay the whelping ice came in, jamming between the point and Baccalieu Island, and my parents were instantly transformed into landsmen for the course of one week. The judge rubbed his hands in satisfaction when I told him that, and pencilled a little note in the book he always carried in his pocket.

Father always teased Mother about that occasion, brief as it was, and said that if he ever gave up fishing he'd arrange to send
her to the ice on one of the sealing vessels to support the family. Mother rarely did more than pull a face at this remark, but I could tell there was a mixture of pride and regret in her at the memory. Having been raised on a farm, she had more than a passing familiarity with the bloodier elements, and had learned as a young child to castrate pigs and kill chickens—her father had some form of palsy and considered her hand steadier than his own—and it was with her encouragement that Father went out on the ice that spring day at Grates Cove. Father was a great fish killer but he had never before killed a fur-bearing animal, and the sound of the whitecoats bawling—as like a human infant as one can imagine—unnerved him dreadfully. After he had taken the first few pelts and towed them back to shore, Mother's frustration at watching him do things in such a tentative and clumsy way led her to shed her coat and tuck her skirts up to show him how to dispatch an animal properly.