Silent Time (2 page)

“Last year, I fed half the fall catch to the pigs,” she said, “but he don't care as long as I'm workin' day and night. That seems to keep him happy, for some reason.”

He looked up for a second and she caught and held his gaze. She was slightly taller than him, she noticed. He looked a lot younger than her father, which was good, though he was certainly older than any of her brothers. She guessed he was around forty.

“Here,” she said, and handed him the teapot. In a surge of boldness, she added, “Anyone can put a window in a stable, but a man who can fix a teapot, now that would be a fella worth marryin'.”

“I dare say you're right,” he said, and with that he slipped a hammer from his belt, tossed it one-hand to get the proper grip, and gave the teapot lid a smart tap. It popped loose with a rattle and he handed it back to her.

“Good as new,” he said, as they both looked toward the yard at the sound of approaching footsteps.

“I'll go have a word with your father, then.”

“I never really meant I'd marry you,” she said, regretting her impetuous words.

“Oh, not about that,” he said, mischief in his eyes. “I'll show him the work I done today. That'll give you time to make a drop of tea.”

She was unused to the idea of an ally. Her stomach fluttered a bit as he moved toward the door. When he was gone, she put the lid on the teapot, then took it off and put it back again several times, amazedly.

Yes, she thought, a man that cute with a hammer got to have some good in him.

The following week the old man left an envelope with Leona to give Paddy when he came by to collect his pay. A sudden squall, an unseasonable
mix of rain and snow, blew in in a nasty flurry around noon. The downpour flitted wet and cold across the shorn amber meadows, with their black rectangles of empty gardens. Thick clouds cast a grey pall over the spruce-covered hills. The burst of foul weather reflected Leona's mood as she rushed to the flakes to pile the fish, already damp and stained red from earlier showers. Afterwards, she went into the stable, soaking wet and chilled to the bone, and found her cat, a giant orange tabby named Princess, lying cold and motionless in a corner stall. The exposed white slivers of incisor teeth, the vacant slits of eyes, the cold as she ran her hands down its furry sides, all told Leona that Princess was gone. The cat had been around as long as Leona could remember, a gateway to the time when her mother had walked around this place as a young and hopeful woman.

She decided to bury Princess quickly before the old man got home. He'd mock her for her foolishness, giving a grave to an animal, and order her to throw the poor thing on the manure pile. She'd rather drive the pointed spade leaning against the wall through his heart than do that, but she knew he'd make her do it just the same. With a familiar flush of anger rising in her, she scooped up the cat and grasped the spade in her free hand as she shouldered her way out the door. She'd bury Princess right now, good and deep, in the loamy soil below the hill.

Outside, she saw Paddy come round the corner of the house. The squall had caught him by surprise. He had his bare hands stuffed into his pockets and his cap pulled over his ears. His left shoulder leaned into the slanting drift of the mingled snow and rain.

“Where you going with that poor creature?” he said, when he glanced up and saw her.

“I'm going to give it a decent burial,” she said, “before that crowd comes home.”

“Hmm,” he said, eying her briefly. “Are you sure he's dead?”

“It's a she,” she replied, in no mood for jokes, “and, yes, she's dead. So stop your foolishness.”

“Foolishness, is it? What if I told you I could probably bring that cat back to life?”

“You'd be a liar.”

“There you go again, speaking without thinkin'. Next thing, you'll be promisin' to marry me again.”

“I didn't promise you last time. But I'll tell you what,” she added, “you raise this cat like Lazarus from the dead and I will marry you. That's how sure I am you can't do it.”

He cocked his head toward the linney door. “Is there no one in the house?”

“No one,” she said.

“You got my pay in there?”

“Yes, I do.”

“Well, take me in and show me where it is and I'll show you how to save your poor ol' cat.”

“This is foolish,” she protested, holding her ground. He reached out and stroked one of the cat's forepaws with his thumb. “She's old,” he said. “It'd be nice to give her any bit of time she got left.”

Leona let the spade fall and walked into the house with Paddy following, first through the darkened linney and then into the warm, bright kitchen. The morning fire had cooled enough to allow Paddy to lay the flat of his hand on the stovetop. Satisfied with the level of heat, he pulled open the oven door. Leona held Princess like a baby, supporting the small round head with her hand. “I'll take her now,” he said, and held out his hands. She felt some reassurance in the gesture since it recalled the episode with the teapot. She passed Princess to him and watched as he laid the cat gently on the bed of splits warming inside the oven. Then he raised the door again, leaving it open just a crack.

“Even if she is over and done with there's no harm in tryin', is there?” he said. “People gives creatures up for dead sometimes when all they needs is a little help to stay warm. That gets harder when you're older.” He smiled. “Ask a fella who knows.”

“You're not so old as that, Paddy Merrigan,” she said.

“I'm too old for you,” he said, as his gaze shifted again to the floor. She felt his eyes on her feet as she moved to a chair, sat and crossed her legs to reveal the toes of her black boots.

“You should not make promises you can't keep,” he said.

“Why not? I can marry who I likes. Who's to stop me?”

“No one, I s'pose. You could always take off, couldn't you?”

“I could. I'm not sayin' I'd want to marry you, though. For one thing, you're as old as the hills and, for another; I don't ever want to live on the Cape Shore.”

“Well, for one thing, you just said I wasn't so old as that and, for another, what's wrong with the Cape Shore, I'd like to know.”

“What's right about it, you mean!” Her eyes widened. “The road's not fit for man or beast and the place is full of ghosts and devils, so they say.”

“You don't believe that old cod, do you? Old stories made up to scare the youngsters.”

“I'm sittin' here with my dead cat in the oven waitin' for it to come back to life, so you might as well say I'd believe anything.”

“This is different. Them old stories from the Shore have been around for years and years. No truth to ‘em.”

“There is a bit of truth to ‘em, or else they wouldn't exist, would they? Who would make up a story about nothing at all?”

“There's some would. People likes a story, whether it's real or no.”

“Is that so? Well, the last thing I wants is to become part of some old story on the Cape Shore.”

He smiled at the toe of his boot. “What if it were a happy story?”

She smiled to herself. He could be charming, couldn't he? “In that case, I'd have to think about it,” she said.

Her eye caught the flick of an orange tail across the crack in the oven door and she leapt out of her seat to the stove. She pulled the door down with a loud squeak and there lay Princess, her stomach rising and falling, clearly breathing and resting quietly. She lifted out the toasty animal and held it to her.

She could not bear to look at Paddy right away.

“Your pay,” she said, “is behind the statue of the Virgin Mary.” She heard him cross to the small oval shelf from which the Virgin surveyed the room. He slipped the envelope from behind the statue and tucked it into his pocket.

“T'ank you,” he said.

She was unable to overcome her silence as he slipped quietly out of the house.

A week later she was working the gardens in a spate of warm sunshine when she saw Paddy approach the stagehead in his dory. He must have rowed up the shore from Knock Harbour, come in through the gut and crossed the pond. A good three hours. That wouldn't be so unusual if he had something aboard to sell or deliver, but the dory sat high in the water and seemed quite empty except for Paddy himself. She watched unseen as he climbed out of the dory onto the stagehead, then pulled a white handkerchief out of his back pocket, shook it vigorously and wiped his face and neck. She noticed a white shirt collar beneath his Guernsey. He buttoned his suit coat over the thick sweater and, looking a bit like an over-stuffed sausage, started on his way up the lane. She waited until the tramp of his rubbers came even with her on the lane above and called out to him. He came to the edge and saw her, then walked halfway down the steep bank and sat on the grass.

“This is a grand spot,” he said.

She kept digging, uncovering and tossing potatoes in a pile as she talked. “The old man was a fool not to build down here. A nice cozy spot out of the wind, but the soil is good here, see, compared to the top of the hill. He couldn't give up these few beds of potatoes for the sake of a decent place to live.” She looked up at the rough box of a house that sat on the hilltop. “I remembers storms when I was little. I thought a giant had a-hold to that house, shakin' it so hard I'd be awake half the night, afraid he was going to pick up the whole works and throw it in the pond.” She stooped to toss several large potatoes onto the pile.

“The old man is not fit, is he?” she said, daring him to speak openly against her father. She knew he wouldn't, but was pleased when he at least shook his head in silent agreement. “I used to dream about building a house here myself, but I knows now I never could, not while he's alive.” She pointed to a purple beach rock on a recently disturbed patch of sod beside the garden. “Princess is buried right there. Died this morning. Really, this time. She was pretty well the only thing I liked about this place.”

He was staring at the ground. A longing stirred in her as she watched him fidget with the grass, then pick up a small piece of driftwood and nervously turn it over and over in his fingers, like a timepiece marking the seconds of silence between them. He seemed unable to bring himself to the point of saying what he wanted, so she decided to help him along.

“Guess what, Paddy,” she said. “I'm eighteen years old this very day. I can do what I wants now, go where I likes with whoever I likes and no one can say any different.”

He got to his feet. “Good,” he said. “Your work here is done, then.”

“My work here is never done,” she said.

“You've worked enough, Leona.” It was the first time he spoke her name. “It's time you got out of here.”

He put one hand in his jacket pocket, lurched down the hill and strode across the potato beds to her side. He held out his hand to show her a small gold band.

“Here's your chance to keep your promise,” he said.

She stared at the ring. It caught a glisten of the sun heading for the western horizon.

“What do you want spending another winter in that house when I got one in Knock Harbour twice as nice, an' no one there but myself to look after?”

“You're askin' me to go live with you on the Cape Shore?”

“The Shore will never hurt you,” he said. “Nor will I. I'll promise you that.”

She carefully touched the ring with the tip of her finger as it lay in his calloused palm, the same way she'd touched Princess earlier that day to see if she was sleeping or dead. Was there life in this? She quickly weighed an uncertain future against the hollow present, picked it up and slipped it on her finger.

“That's it then,” he said. “You an' me are engaged. I think you should come with me right now.”

“Good,” she said.

He turned and clomped his way up the bank, saying as he went, “I spoke to Father O'Connell this mornin' in Placentia. You can stay with my brother an' his wife in Knock Harbour ‘til he comes to do the weddin' on Sunday. I'll tell your old man. Get yourself ready, now. I made room for you and your trunk in the dory.”

With that, he disappeared over the brow of the hill.

Leona awoke on her wedding day to the surprising sensation of warm air on her bare arms. A genial current drifted up the stairwell, filling her room through the open doorway. She heard a crackling fire in the kitchen, no doubt made by Paddy's sister-in-law, Katie, whose voice soon called up the stairs. “Time to get up now, my dear.”

Leona could not remember the last time she'd gotten up to a warm house. She heard the sound of pouring water as she crept down the stairs in her nightgown. She saw Katie heading to the back pantry in full flight, wiry blond hair corralled in a kerchief, sleeves rolled up her pudgy arms past the elbows. She carried a large empty pot which she began to fill with spurts of cold clear water by vigorously cranking the hand pump.

“Good morning, Aunt Katie,” Leona said. Katie turned her reddish face toward her and broke into a broad smile. The woman's face was almost perfectly flat and round. A small button nose sat between her ruddy cheeks; an inverted half moon beneath her mouth was the only sign of a chin.

“I got a bit of breakfast laid out for you in there,” she said. “I'll put this on the boil in a minute and that should fill the tub. You can have a nice hot bath, then, and get dressed for your big day. I'll wait on you hand and foot this once, my dear, since forever after you'll be tending to a man and, please God, a crowd of youngsters.”

In the kitchen, eggs, toast and thick slices of back bacon, along with a mug of hot black tea, were set out on a table by the window. It was cool outside and slivers of moisture ran down the windowpane. Leona sat, sleepily, and decided to put milk and sugar in her tea for a change. An old galvanized tin tub sat half-full on the floor, the water releasing wisps of steam that promised further pleasure.