Silent Time (18 page)

Dulcie avoided Miss McLean's eyes when the stout little teacher walked to the head of the class and sat down. Dulcie had to be careful
with her hands in this class. She kept them quiet and did not use them for signing. She did not want Miss McLean to be cross. When Miss Mclean was cross she might hit you on the knuckles with a wooden ruler. Dulcie didn't want any part of that.

That morning after they had worked together for a while, Miss Mclean motioned to Dulcie to come up to her desk. Dulcie thought it was time to have her jaw moved, but Miss Mclean signed to her instead. Miss McLean said she had been in Knock Harbour during the Christmas holidays. She added that it was all right for Dulcie to sign back to her today. Dulcie was delighted and immediately asked if she had seen Mother.

“Yes, I talk your mother,” Miss Mclean signed.

“What Mother say about me?” Dulcie asked, excited.

“Mother say Dulcie a very bad and lazy girl.”

Dulcie burst into tears. She was still crying when Miss Batstone came into the class and asked her what was wrong. She couldn't say. She wouldn't say. She would not repeat such a terrible lie.

Days like this made Dulcie wish that she could go home. That evening, she went to the study hall where there was a big calendar on the wall. She counted the months she'd been at school and the ones that remained before the summer break. There were only two months left.

That night Dulcie dreamed of Mother. She woke the next day with a longing for home inside her as deep as the ocean she would have to cross to get there.

Summer came in suddenly in mid-June that year, as it often did in Newfoundland.

Sir John Crawford sat at a table in the restaurant of his family hotel shooing non-existent flies from his plate as his new Jewish son-in-law, Albert Pearlman, looked on in dismay. Sir John had recently flaunted religious convention among the St. John's elite by allowing Albert to wed his daughter, Nora. Albert, a strong, athletic newsman in his early twenties, could see that the old boy was failing badly, but loved and admired him just the same. Sir John glanced up from his food as Albert lit a cigarette and accepted coffee from a passing waitress.

“When are you going to give those things up, Albert? They're a goddamn nuisance and I hear they're quite bad for you.”

“I'll quit the cigarettes when you give up drinking, John. How about that?”

“Smoke on, my boy. It's your funeral.”

Albert only wished his father-in-law was not so cavalier about the drink. The fact was, Sir John's condition seemed increasingly hopeless. Albert recalled the day, almost a year ago now, that Sir John had returned from a treatment clinic in the United States. He'd gathered the family together in the drawing room and announced that he was cured, that he could drink normally. To prove the point he polished off a glass of scotch and then abstained for the rest of the night. As everyone suspected, things quickly went downhill from there and were now worse than ever.

Sir John's large hands trembled as he handled the silverware.

“So, Albert, I hear you won that debate at the Capitol Club pretty handily last week. You're a champion of democracy now, are you?”

“I think it's better than dictatorship,” he said, “and, yes, I did win the debate handily, although my opponent made some pretty good points.”

Sir John's face dissolved into a watery smile. “You're such a reasonable fellow, Albert. Always the voice of reason. Speaking of dictatorships, I
heard that Prime Minister Monroe sent a postcard to Mussolini? What was that all about?”

In answer, Albert took an envelope out of his inside jacket pocket and extracted a block of four stamps. He was, as Sir John knew, an avid stamp collector.

“Remember I went to Trepassey to cover the transatlantic flight of that Italian aviator last month,” he said. “Well, these are the stamps our post office did to commemorate the voyage. There's a lot of speculation that the entire issue – the De Pinedo, it's being called – is going to become quite valuable.”

“Get to the point, Albert!”

“Prime Minister Monroe, apparently, had a postcard to Mussolini included in the mailbag that De Pinedo took with him on the voyage.”

“What a load of foolishness,” Sir John said.

“I agree. Still, I wouldn't underestimate the value of these stamps.” Albert lowered his voice and leaned forward in his chair. “I bought this block for five dollars last month. I'm going to get five hundred for them this afternoon.”

“Bully for you.” Sir John was pointedly unimpressed.

“These transatlantic air crossings are creating a whole new branch of stamp collecting,” Albert enthused. “Aero-philately, it's called. Take it from me, in a few years the Newfoundland airmails will be among the most valuable stamps in the world!”

Sir John reached into his pants pocket and, after rattling around some keys and change, pulled out a block of four exactly like the one Albert had produced moments ago. Albert almost fell out of his seat.

“These came in the office mail a few days ago,” Sir John said. “Ministers often get complimentary copies of such things.”

Albert could barely refrain from reaching across the table and gingerly removing the precious stamps from Sir John's trembling fingers.

“I'd look after those if I were you,” he said, struggling to maintain his composure.

“Hmm.” Sir John loudly blew his nose into a red cotton handkerchief and, in a move no doubt calculated to cause Albert to wince, stuffed the hanky into his pants pocket along with the stamps. “Too bad I didn't have them to put on my letter to Monroe last Christmas,” he complained. “That might have got him to notice that the country's going to hell in a handbasket.”

“Don't be too hard on Monroe, John. It would have been a fine administration in better times. You've all done a good job, but maybe it's time you let someone else have a crack at it.”

Sir John shot him a sceptical look and pushed his chair back from the table.

“Well, I've got to make a little trip today.”

“Oh? Where's that?”

“Nowhere too exotic, Albert. My nephew, George, called me this morning and asked me to drive a little deaf girl to the Cape Shore, a place called Knock Harbour. Apparently, something came up so he can't do it, and he knew I was looking for an excuse to go to the cabin. The girl just finished her first year at the School for the Deaf in Halifax. She stayed the night with the Norris's on Atlantic Avenue. I mean to pick her up there in half an hour.”

Albert couldn't quite believe his ears.

“You're driving to the Cape Shore today?”

“If that's all right with you,” Sir John replied with a sarcastic drawl. “I'm leaving within the hour.”

“It's a long way, John. Are you sure you're feeling up to it?”

In response, Sir John summoned the waitress and said, “I'll have one more for the road, Marie.”

Albert backed down, realizing that further protests would only make his father-in-law all the more determined to go. The waitress arrived wearing an unrelenting smile as Sir John, fearing to be overheard by the clientele, lowered his voice and said, “Look! Open the windows, close the windows, do whatever you have to do. Just get rid of these goddamn flies!”

“Miller's confined to quarters, Sir John,” Miller Norris's wife said at the door. “I'm quite worried. The doctor says it's a bout of influenza. I want to get the child out of the house before she catches something, God forbid. This way, please.”

He followed her down a shady hallway into a bright room facing the street. There was Dulcie Merrigan sitting patiently with her hands in her lap on an small occasional chair in the corner. She quickly put on her hat and coat and moved toward him. He was very impressed when she said, “
Hell-o, Mr. Craw-ford,”
in an off-key, oddly pitched voice.

He shook her hand gently and more or less shouted, “WELL, IT'S LOVELY TO SEE YOU AGAIN, DULCIE. I'M CERTAINLY LOOKING FORWARD TO OUR DRIVE.”

He glanced at Mrs. Morris. “Amazing what they can do,” he mumbled to her out of the side of his mouth, for some reason concerned that Dulcie might read his lips and know that she was being talked about.

Mrs. Norris smiled. “She's really adorable,” she said.

Dulcie looked at Mrs. Norris with a slight shake of her head. Mrs. Norris signed to Dulcie, prompting her to turn to Crawford and say in that same curious tone,
“Thank you.”

Sir John suddenly had a thought.

“Ask her if she gets carsick, will you. My granddaughter Bippy does and I usually bring a supply of towels.”

There were more signs before Mrs. Norris said, “She says she's never driven a long distance in a car, but she's never been sick on a boat or a train. So, she doesn't think so.”

“Good. That'll make the drive a lot more enjoyable. I'll go by the hotel and grab a few towels, just in case.”

“Her trunk is in the hall. Do you need a hand getting it aboard? I can get one of the boys to help you.”

“If you'll just get the door for me, I'll be fine.” Sir John already had the box by the handles and was heading down the hall.

Dulcie was soon ensconced in the Fiat's sumptuous front seat.

Mrs. Norris stood on the steps and watched them pull away. It was only when she returned to the house that she noticed the smell of alcohol.

While he was at the hotel getting towels, Crawford remembered to fill his pewter flask with brandy from the bar. “A few nips for the trip back,” he told himself.

They were on the Salmonier Line when Dulcie started throwing up.

“Jesus Christ,” he said aloud. He was at a loss as to how to communicate with the girl. It was one thing to look after Bippy; he knew how to comfort and cajole her. He found it unsettling for a man who wielded language so powerfully in his daily life to have no recourse to it now.

Dulcie was very pale. He passed her a fresh towel, took the soiled one, rolled down his window and flung it into the trees. He glanced in the rear-view mirror and saw it dangling lazily on a branch. When he was with Bippy they made a game of counting them.

“THAT'S ONE,” he said to Dulcie, looking at her and holding up one finger. “THAT'S ONE.” She smiled vaguely at him, urged and covered her face in another hotel towel.

“Jesus Christ, I've got to get this little one home.”

His hand reached automatically for the pocket flask as his foot put added pressure on the accelerator.

It was Thomas Tobin who came to Leona's door with the message that Dulcie had safely arrived in St. John's. “She's spending the night with the Norris family and will be driving to Knock Harbour tomorrow with Sir John Crawford,” he read from his scrap of paper, repeating the finance minister's name with a bewildered shake of his head as he strolled back down the path. It must have appeared to him, and everyone else in Knock Harbour, that William had put Leona in touch with some mighty powerful people in the capital.

But Leona didn't relish the idea of entertaining an illustrious guest. She was grateful to have Sir John drive Dulcie safely home, sure, but what could she be saying to a man like that? If only William were on hand; he had a way of keeping the conversation flowing, but she knew he was out of the country on government business. Well, Sir John had drunk his share and gabbed enough for two the last time. Hopefully, he would again and wouldn't stay too long at that.

The main thing was that Dulcie was coming home. Leona had been in a flurry all week. The house was its cleanest in years. She'd even stayed up nights scrubbing the walls and floors. She'd removed the storm windows and stored them in the stable, polished the windowpanes, washed and ironed the curtains and all the linens, beat the rugs and mattresses, dusted, cleaned and refilled the lamps, cleaned inside the stove with spruce branches and renewed the top with blackening, forced open every window and aired out all the rooms with the chill June air. She felt a keen satisfaction that evening before Dulcie's arrival as the setting sun poured its golden haze through the kitchen window. She felt, in a way, like the house itself, fresh and alive after a long hard winter and a slow reluctant spring.

When darkness fell she lit the lamps and sat in the rocking chair by the stove. She allowed herself to recall the night when she and Paddy had opened the trunk in that very room, the trunk that had brought such
pain and misery into their lives. It was hard to know who'd suffered more: her, in the long silent time that had followed; or him, in the dreadful end he'd come to so very soon after the terrible thing had happened. Poor Paddy. He just hadn't been able to find the strength to start again.

They returned to the little church school for mass one last time the week after the burials. Leona felt the cold accusation of the community, not only in Maisie Tobin's boldfaced stare, but equally in the downcast faces of those who could not bear to meet her eyes. The greatest humiliation was the vacant space in their pew. It was here that she and Paddy had shown the boys off so proudly, in the building where she'd secretly held such high hopes for them in days to come. She glanced at Paddy and suddenly knew that his humiliation was even worse because she was there beside him; she was the promise that had failed him so utterly and completely. They stood side by side but he did not touch her nor did he once look at her throughout the ceremony. She could actually feel the gulf between them widening by the minute, like two ice pans drifting apart in a current until perilously out of reach.

Later, at the house, he broke the long silence between them.

“The proudest thing I ever done was bring you down the shore with me … the very best thing, that was … and now …”

“Please, Paddy, don't say what you're thinkin'. I can't stand to hear it –”

He raised his hand to silence her and shook his head violently. “I can't stand to think it, Leona, but I do. An' that's the truth. I curses the day I brought you here!”