Downhill Chance (33 page)

Frankie. The tears dried in Hannah’s eyes. Tearing away from her father, she darted back to the boat, her eyes narrowed and her mouth open, bellowing, “You said, Frankie! You said!”

Frankie looked to her as speechless as her father. Then smoothing back his hair, he shrugged, raising a brow towards Clair. “I did say,” he said. Lifting his hand to quiet Willamena’s protest, he added abruptly, “Throw her aboard. We can look after her while Clair’s doing her business. Lynn will be there. What’s one more?”

Getting a nod from her mother, her father scooped her off her feet, his coarse warnings to be good subduing any feelings of gratitude she might like to have expressed to Frankie as he reached down, lifting her into the boat. Shivering past her mother and Willamena, she scurried to the stern, taking up seat besides the tiller.

“Be sure you steers us straight,” called out Frankie as the piston caught fire and they started forward, “else we’ll be meeting with the folk on Miller’s Island.”

She managed a grateful look for him, and turning guiltily from her mother’s brooding eyes, and ignoring the tutting of Willamena’s tongue, she raised her eyes towards the Basin, one hand wrapped tightly around the tiller, the other pressed against the fairy butter soaking through the cotton of her skirt and dampening the skin beneath.

The postmistress, Alma, was standing besides the rotting-down old store on the wharf, watching as they drew closer. “I been out on the road every five minutes since I sent the message,” she said as Clair climbed up on the wharf behind Willamena. “I suppose I got you scared to death, do I?”

“Is it Missy?” asked Clair, her voice quavering.

“Missy’s fine,” said Alma, taking Clair’s hand. “I should’ve made sure and said that on the message, I should’ve. And perhaps I shouldn’t have sent the message at all, just waited till you come back up agin and called you in—”

“It’s not just Clair you got worried,” said Willamena. “We’re all worrying about what could be wrong.”

“Well, ye can all stop,” said Alma, “because it’s Clair’s concern, and nothing that can be settled in a day.” She directed Clair towards the road, saying, “Come, my dear. We goes up to the house and haves a cup of tea. You’ll be going up to your mother’s, I suppose?” she asked Willamena. “Perhaps you can take Hannah with you till we sends for her.”

But Hannah was already inching her way from the group, edging towards the road. “I’m—I’m going to Aunt Missy’s,” she faltered, a careful look at her mother.

“I suppose that’s fine,” said Alma, waving Hannah onward. “Tell her your mother will be along after tea— because she knows I’ve sent for her, poor thing—” Brushing away the concerns her words welled up once more in Clair, she led her towards the post office with stout reassurances that everything was fine, truly, everything was fine. Receiving a nod from her mother, Hannah kicked up heels, racing towards her aunt.

The door was shut and the curtains drawn on this fine summer’s evening. Quieting her step, Hannah inched open the door, peering inside. Missy was sitting besides the table, her hair tightly pulled back and clipped, and her face greyed by the curtained light. A dark shawl of sorts lay around her shoulders, and she looked to Hannah as if she were a hundred years old and as if she’d been cast in stone. She didn’t move as Hannah entered, but remained sitting with a straight back on her chair, eyes cast down and her hands clasped in her lap like a child’s in prayer. More surprising to Hannah was the sight of him, the uncle, sitting there; this man who was always rabbit catching or fishing or woodcutting whenever her mother was expected. He turned to her, his face shrivelling further with the weight of the evening shadow, and his shirt wrinkling around the thin shoulders supporting it.

It wasn’t till Hannah dashed to her knees did Missy turn, the liquid black of her pupils hardening like coal as she stared transfixed at the door Hannah had left open behind her.

“What’s wrong, Aunt Missy?”

“Did she come?” she asked, her tone sullen, heavy.

“Who, Mommy?”

“Where is she?”

“She’s talking with Alma. Are you sick? How come you looks sick?”

“Do I?” she asked, her eyes letting go of the door, her fingers cool as she touched them to Hannah’s cheek and then her own. “Come,” and rising, she led Hannah across the stairwell into the sitting room. “She shouldn’t have brought you,” she said woodenly, giving Hannah a little hug. “You sit in here till she comes—”

“But she’s having tea with Alma.”

“She won’t be long—you sit here, now—ooh,” she added with a sudden rush, dropping her arms around Hannah’s shoulders and hugging her tight. “She shouldn’t have brought you—why did she bring you?”

“Because I made her,” said Hannah proudly, snuggling her cheek against the tightly clipped hair. “I know,” she exclaimed, pulling back, “we can wait in the garden—ohh, Aunt Missy—I got some fairy butter.”

“Leave it there,” said Missy, laying a hand on Hannah’s as she reached it into her pocket. “Just—leave it there for now. And stay here till I sends for you. Promise,” she said more tightly, cutting off further protests. At Hannah’s nod, she dropped a kiss on her forehead and rose, backing into the stairwell, a ghost of a smile quivering her bottom lip, leaving an imprint upon Hannah’s mind of a frightened youngster too far gone astray. Hannah strained, listening as Missy ran across the kitchen, her chair creaking beneath her weight, and the uncle’s voice mumbling about something—as it mostly did. Then, silence.

Looking around the sitting room, she perched on the edge of a wooden chair, the sense of wrongdoing permeating the air too heavy for the feather-softness of the daybed. The house sighed. She heard it, along with that of her aunt, and the moaning of the half-boiling kettle. Her mother would fix it. Despite all, and no matter what, her mother would fix it. Her mother fixed all things. That she knew. If only she would hurry. Sitting back on her chair, her fingers gripping its edges, she allowed herself to breathe, praying for her mother to come. Ohh, was there ever a moment that took so long in the fortitude of a child’s prayer?

Finally, the door opened and she clutched onto her chair as her mother spoke Missy’s name, her tone hushed. Then it was the uncle she was speaking to, and her voice dropped, hardened, becoming cold. Hannah crept into the stairwell, wanting to hear, to share with them the sorrow so levied upon this precious aunt; but anger born out of yesterday’s malice brings with it a vengeance far more frightful than that following a cheeky tongue or disobeyed command. Thus when she crept into the stairwell, inching towards the kitchen, and her mother spun towards her, her features trembling with a rage that was scarcely suppressing itself, and bade her wait upstairs in Missy’s room till she was called, Hannah gave up any further notions of challenging her mother on this day and trailed dutifully upstairs, sitting onto the bed that her aunt and mother had slept in as girls.

Their voices were low, and she scarcely breathed with wanting to hear. Then the sound of Missy sobbing. Leaping to her feet, she ran back to the door, pressing her ear against it. Missy’s cries sounded louder, and Hannah bit onto her fists for fear of crying alongside of her.

“She’ll stay here,” said Sim loudly, accusingly.

“She’ll stay where she wants,” snapped Clair, more angrily, more accusingly. And then beseechingly, she begged, “Missy, please, please come with me; I wants you to come with me—”

“No! Don’t make me, Clair; I won’t, I won’t ever,” shouted Missy, her voice weak despite its loudness, and then her footsteps running into the stairwell and up over the stairs. Hannah ran back to the bed, sitting down as Missy burst in through, slamming the door behind her, and turning a key in the lock. Looking at Hannah, her cheeks glistening with tears, and her lips puckered like a dried rosebud, she clasped her hand to her mouth, trying to keep from crying further.

“You have to go now,” she said, darting to the side of the bed and wrapping her arms so hard around Hannah that neither of them could scarcely breathe. “You have to go. Ooh,” and a sob tore from her, and her heart beating wildly against Hannah’s. Knowing with a child’s simplicity that it wasn’t she, Hannah, the aunt was seeking to comfort in that moment but a soul seeking its own solace, she grasped her arms around her aunt’s neck, hugging so tight, she feared her arms would crack like matchsticks.

“Missy,” she heard her mother call, her footsteps sounding urgently on the stairs. “Missy.” Then a gentle tapping on the door. “Missy, please come out.”

Rising from the bed, Missy pulled Hannah to the door, dropping a dozen kisses onto her face, whispering, “Be a good girl, Hannie; you be a good girl, now.” Unlocking the door, she quickly pushed Hannah through and just as quickly closed it behind her, locking it, ignoring her sister’s pleas to wait, wait, please, wait.

“Leave her be,” growled the uncle from the bottom of the stairs as Clair’s cries grew louder, her knocks more insistent. “She knows her mind.”

Taking hold of Hannah’s hand, Clair flounced down over the stairs.

“You’ve turned her from me,” she said scornfully, chasing the uncle into the kitchen. “From since she was little, you’ve been turning her from me.”

“You been always blaming me, still for all. You wouldn’t set step inside the door when she was bawling after you. Even when her grandmother died and she was bawling, you wouldn’t come. You was always brazen, and you’ve yourself to blame.”

“You kept her from coming to me!”

“Think what you wants—but you’ll not do it in this house—I’ll ask you to leave,” he ordered. And as if worn by his anger, he shuffled past them, crumpling like Luke’s accordion onto the chair besides the window. Clair watched. Even as he reached for his pipe, she watched. He flared a match, and as if forgetting that the thing she was holding on to was her daughter’s hand, she lurched forward, wrenching Hannah along with her, near running out the door.

CHAPTER TWELVE

T
HE SCREECHING OF THE CLOTHESLINE
pulleys and the screaming of the gulls and the roaring of the wind made nary a sound to Hannah’s ears as she tore up over the hill the next morning, lying flat-belly across the cliff, and looking down upon the weather-beaten grey of the houses, barns, woodsheds and chicken coops circling the patch. It was the women’s chatter her ears sought, their scandalizing tongues that made common knowledge of the most private thought or deed, rendering each soul that strolled across the patch as bare as the yellow staining the seat of their underwear as it flapped over their heads on the clotheslines. And with her mother just gone with Frankie to see Missy again, forbidding Hannah to put a leg on the beach till she was gone, and Willamena dodging back onto the patch from calling out goodbye to Frankie, she shouldn’t wonder whose stains were going to be aired this morning. And indeed her ears cupped forward like a baby elephant’s as Willamena started right in: “It’s not much good going after Missy now. I always said Clair shouldn’t have left her in the first place. My God, sure she never even went back for a visit—not even when her grandmother died, except for the burying, and even then she showed up late.”

“Why would she,” spoke up her aunt Nora, shoving out her clothesline, “when her uncle was trying to hire her off the same day her mother died?”

“There wouldn’t much Sim could do with her,” countered Willamena. “Clair was always stubborn; I knows that from serving her in the store. And now this with young Missy—poor Sim is who I thinks about.”

“He’s not that poor,” cut in Beth, “he got a good house out of it, and what sounds to be a right nice young girl who’s been caring for him like a daughter the past ten years. It’s Clair I thinks about; she’s worried out of her mind.”

“No good to worry now, the gander’s come and gone,” said Prude, heaving out a bowl of slops for the hens. “They be getting more wild by the day, the young is; she should mind her own foolishness and move down here with Clair.”

“I’m sure I wouldn’t know what to do with her,” said Willamena, in the tired tongue of one who ought to. “Missy was never one for acting sensible, all that running around and singing about fairies and stuff. Made me shiver, sir, when I heard her once—a streak from her father, they says.”

“And what’s sensible?” asked Nora. “She’s not the first young girl to fall down, and I don’t see nothing wrong with her wanting to stay in her own house and rearing it, either.”

“She’s the first to be six and half months and not know about it, though,” said Willamena. “That says the kind of mind she got.”

“I don’t stand by that,” said Beth. “That young one down Sop’s Arm was giving birth before she even knowed she was pregnant—and there was another one—what was her name, Nory? She was eight months before she put on a pound. And sure look at Nory; seven months, wasn’t it, sis—before you started popping with young Rod? And look at the size of him now.”

“Seven pounds the day he was born,” said Nora.

“Well, sir, at least you knowed you was pregnant,” exclaimed Willamena. “I can’t bide by her saying she never knew.”

“Aah, sure we never knowed about none of that stuff,” said Prude, coming out of her woodshed with her hoe. “I was further on than she before I caught on. And it wasn’t till the cramps started did old Winnie Brett tell me how it was coming out. I near fainted, I did; thought it was through the belly button they come out.”

“Cripes, Mother,” said Beth, “didn’t any of ye’s talk to the other?”

“What other?” asked Prude. “There was none here then, only me and Mother, and Hope and poor old Char, and for sure we wouldn’t going to ask Mother. And as for them crowd down Lower Head, I never could talk to them—still can’t.”

“I still says, sir, it’s only just starting,” said Willamena, as Prude vanished around the corner of her house with the hoe. “She’s a strange one, young Missy is, with her talk of fairies and stuff. We’ll see what’s going to happen now, when she starts raising a youngster; we’ll see.”

“Heh, she’s one for talk, she is,” muttered Beth, as Willamena went inside, “when her own youngster’s a bloody merry-begot.”

“Shh, now,” warned Nora, her tone torn between a titter and a tut.