Donovan's Station (22 page)

Lizzie gave me a wash today, my hair too, and then she combed and braided it back into its bun. When she held the mirror for me to see, I got a shock. I look like that little monkey Judith had, all eyes and skull. Paddy hated that monkey, more even than he hated Judith, I think. I always thought there was a resemblance between them—Paddy and the monkey—which might account for his aversion. They were both so small and had such a thin, hairy pelt, and they were never still, just jumping and twitching and jerking around all the time, never still for a moment.

The first time Judith brought that monkey into the kitchen, it gave me such a turn. She had it down in her bosom, and when
she drew back her shawl and there was the ugly little face peeping out with those big, cold eyes, I thought for a moment she had a baby there at the breast. Poor thing, neither chick nor child to love and then the best she could do was that ugly little monkey. There was a woman had a shop in the east end, on Wood Street, who had a monkey that her husband gave her when her baby died, and people used to say she really did put it to the breast. Judith wasn't that touched, or if she was she was cute enough to hide it. I couldn't imagine where she got such a thing, or where she got the money to buy it, for I'd been led to understand the nasty little beasts cost a pretty penny, and I was half afraid to ask. Not that Judith was ever a bad girl, but some of those women who worked on the wharves were so pressed to make a shilling to feed their families that they would sometimes accommodate a sailor out of desperation.

She told me she got the monkey from a man on a boat from St. Peter's. They were offloading the contraband, and had only one keg left when the customs man came by—not the one they had paid off but another, for the shifts had been changed without notice. This was a new fellow in a spanking new uniform. One of the men took the keg of brandy and dropped it down into an empty five kintal cask that was sitting by the wharf. The customs man was going up and down the wharf, poking his nose into all the boxes and barrels, and it was just a matter of time before he saw the keg, which was exposed in the bottom of the empty barrel. Judith went over to one of the splitting tables and came back with a bucket of half-rotten cod livers and poured the oil into the barrel, and all over the edge and outside as well.

It's a pity men aren't as particular about their ordinary clothes as they are about their uniforms, for it would save a great deal of work for their wives. That barrel was so big that there was no way the excise man could see down into it, or even tip it over, without getting a good hold on it and getting rancid
oil all over his nice new government suit. Judith said you could tell by the way he was looking around him that he suspected, so she went and got another bucket of the foul stuff and slopped it over his boots as she passed him to pour it into the barrel. The keg must have been made by a very conscientious cooper, for the brandy survived not only the drop off the Frenchman's shoulder into the barrel, but it sat in that oil for two days before they could get it out without being caught and there wasn't a whiff of anything but the best Napoleon when they drained off the contents.

Paddy said Judith should have asked for the brandy instead of the monkey, but that's just because the poor creature bit him when he tried to make it do tricks. Judith had to have some comfort in her life. She used to say “I kill myself on the wharves and when we clew up, I know I won't have a copper to put on my eyes,” and it was true, too. When the poor monkey got sick, she went to Dr. Cuddihy because he was the only doctor who would look at the creature, but he just poked it in the belly a few times and then took her money. She sat with it in the corner of my kitchen, near the stove, and coaxed it to drink the St. Jacob's Oil off a tiny spoon I had from Mother, and when it died, even Paddy was careful not to make fun of her grief.

It wasn't long after that I was coaxing Paddy with the spoon myself. I told Judith he'd probably got a dose from some girl down behind the courthouse, but given the way Paddy ate and drank and lived, it's as likely he just suffered from a bad gut. After the shop closed in the evening, he'd take tobacco and rum and a plate full of doughboys and eat them standing at the table. Then it was off to the races on Flower Hill, or dancing on the tables and playing the concertina in some hell-hole grog shop until all hours of the morning. It would give anyone the cramp.

It started off easily enough, with a bit of griping and complaining
and Paddy off his feed for a week or so, but then it got worse at night and off he went to Dr. Cuddihy for a cure. Inflammation of the bowels, Cuddihy told him, and wrote up a recipe for Mr. McMurdo. I don't know how much of the medicine Dr. Cuddihy told Paddy to take, but he was never a man for short measure, so I expect it was a good dollop. Paddy wasn't one to hold back, either, and he seemed set to make a thorough job of his own destruction. He was swilling the stuff back at a great rate, and sending Johanna or one of the apprentices down to the pharmacy every day or so for another bottle, until Mr. McMurdo refused to sell him any more. By this time, Paddy had the colleywobbles and was on the chamber pot half the night, and his hands were shaking so badly he could hardly hold an awl.

I thought he was wasting his time taking that old stuff Cuddihy suggested, but he was so miserable, even snapping at the children, and the black dog was so well settled onto him that I was ready to do anything he wanted just to stop his griping. It was Judith who reminded me that McMurdo wasn't the only chemist in town, and she offered to go into the Cross and get what I needed there. Paddy's tongue and mouth were so swollen by then he could hardly speak, and the spit was running out of his mouth and down his chin like a baby. He could barely sit up, never mind stand, so I had Judith get the medicine for him, but it just made him vomit. After that I sent for Dr. Cuddihy again, but it was no good for the doctor was on a randy and didn't sober up for another two days.

I'll never forget the look on Cuddihy's face when he found out how much of his medicine Paddy had managed to choke down. By this time Paddy had been half unconscious for four days, and it was less than a week more before he died. “Kidney failure” was what Cuddihy put on the death certificate, but Mr. McMurdo told Judith and half the town that it was mercury poisoning and that Cuddihy should have been prosecuted.

I got the priest in to Paddy before he went, but I doubt he could have made much of a confession as he hardly knew what was what, but at least he got the last rites, and I made sure he got a proper funeral, with all the societies in their uniforms and capes and sashes and the Fort William Volunteer Fire Department all done up in red and green and their banner draped over the coffin. I sat home with the girls, and Mrs. Smyth and Judith and some of the other women came to be with me, and afterwards the men came from the graveyard and stopped on their way to the tavern and offered their condolences. Mr. Smyth was very kind and said he would be happy to help me with selling the machines in the shop, and Mr. McMurdo brought a bag full of barley sugar for the children. Dr. Cuddihy was at the church, I was told, but he didn't stop to see me after and he didn't go to the tavern but bought a bottle and went straight back to his surgery, they said. 1 never laid eyes on the man again in my life.

I didn't see too much of Judith either, after Paddy died. It seemed as if she was avoiding me, and it troubled me a good deal. I saw her going through the back way one morning when I was packing up, and called her in to have a cup of tea. She stopped, but with reluctance.

“I can't visit, Keziah,” she said. “I've got a hobble, one you'd rather not know about, and it can't wait.” By that I understood she was helping to take contraband off one of the ships in the harbour.

“Judith, the excise men are going to force you off the wharves if they catch you again, they're just looking for an excuse.” She'd been into it with the customs office more than once.

“Let them try,” she said with a laugh, just like her old self. “God's vengeance on the lot of them. May the dogs lap their blood when they die, and the ground sink beneath their graves.”
The Irish take their curses very seriously, so I clicked my tongue at her.

“Don't go ill-wishing them, Judith, they're only doing their jobs. And you won't get away with it forever.”

“You're the one to be talking. There's some think they can get away with murder around here.” She flung the words at me and turned on her heel and was gone.

It worried me, Judith misunderstanding me that way, just when I needed her friendship more than ever. I was only thinking of what was best for her. She wasn't smuggling for the money, I'm certain of that—she just had a scunner against every tidewaiter that ever drew breath on this earth.

“Married in black, you'll wish yourself back,” was the old rhyme. I had been married in black, after the Bishop's funeral, and here I was in black again, with three fatherless children to care for. I can't say I didn't worry, but after all the long days of Paddy's illness, and the bad temper and moodiness, and even worse the pathetic look of him trying to hold a spoon or climb the stairs, it was a relief to have it over. Poor Paddy, in his good days he used to go into the fish sheds on the harbour and he'd hook a half-kintal weight onto his little finger and then he'd take a pencil, and with the same hand he'd write “Talamh an ‘Eisc” on the beams over his head. He said that meant “The Land of The Fish” in Irish, and it was what they called Newfoundland where he came from. By the end he couldn't lift the pencil alone.

It took just six weeks for Paddy to die, the longest weeks I've ever suffered through, longer even than these weeks I'm living now. The shop was going to wrack and ruin, with the apprentices saucing the customers and the journeymen just waiting to steal the place out from under me, and finally I could just shut the doors on it and get ready to sell up.

It might have been true, what I told Judith. Maybe Paddy did catch the clap from a trollop. The girls always liked Paddy.
Once I was down at Ayre's, looking at a bit of lace for Johanna, and Paddy went by on the sidewalk, bouncing on his heels the way he always did and looking like a golden angel in the sun, with a joke or a compliment for every woman he passed. The girl in the shop stopped and looked out the window at him, and this small sigh escaped her. “Now, he's the lovely fellow, isn't he,” she said to me. So I just thanked her, and that's when she realized that he was my husband and she blushed and dropped the scissors. When I got home I found she'd cut me an extra yard of lace by mistake, but I didn't bring it back for fear of getting her into trouble.

Donovan's Station

August 30, 1914

Dear Johanna,

Min was out yesterday to see Mumma and to celebrate little Jim's birthday, and she suggested I write to you, for I have been very worried about the business lately. Even before she became so ill, we had all three discussed the necessity for making some changes, for Mumma was finding it difficult to keep up her end of things. She is now eighty-four and everyone agrees that until this stroke she was a wonder, but since she broke her hip she has been finding the volume of work to be almost too much, and I don't hesitate for a moment to admit that I have never had her stamina.

We had talked over the possibility of moving into the small house again, and leaving the hotel to a manager. Mr. Samuel Neal of Manuels, who is married to one of the Walsh girls, has been enquiring about buying the hotel, but of course it is not for sale. He might, however, consider taking on the management, and with me next door to keep an eye on things and do the accounts I think we could maintain control. To be blunt, I have never been good at anything but the dairy and I would very much like to get back to my cows. At the moment, Dermot is caring for them and he is very good about it but he is a little heavy handed and knows it. It is not a comfortable situation for us or for the cows.

As you are in the business yourself you will understand when I tell you that things are not as they once were. When Mumma took on the station, she had only to look after the railway men and occasional travellers. The Society dinners and picnics that followed are an enormous amount of work but they are seasonal and we always had a chance to recover from them during the winter. Now, however,
there is not just the railway but also passing trade and in the evenings we have almost as many automobiles as buggies in the yard. It is often midnight or later before we can close the doors. Mumma might have managed a roadhouse as she has the strength of personality, but I am neither capable nor willing to do so.

And while we are on the subject of Mununa, I have to tell you that I am very worried about her also. Father Roche has been coming by every few days, and Johanna I daren't say this to Min for she won't hear a word against any cleric, but I believe he is tormenting Mumma in her last days. He stays talking to her for an hour at a time and when he leaves she is agitated and restless. She has been rambling on about Papa for the last few days, in a very distressing way. At first I thought she meant Mr. Donovan, for she rarely spoke of Papa, but she didn't ever call Mr. Donovan ‘Paddy' and it is Paddy that is on her mind.

I do not remember Papa at all, except that he was rather noisy and he laughed a good deal. I still have the mechanical chicken he gave me for my second birthday —I let
Lizzie
play with it and she broke the spring—and I recall that he would stand me on his boots and dance around the room, but sometimes I believe I don't really remember these things at all but only that you told me about them. Mumma said once that when we moved here, we left Papa's ghost back in the city. Well, I believe he has finally found his way to us, for the house feels full of her memories of him.

Dermot says Father Roche is out to damage Bishop Fleming's memory and that I should refuse to allow him to see Mumma again. I wish I could, but he is a very powerful man and if he were to decide to work against us, we would certainly lose all the Catholic Societies which are the backbone of the business.