Silent Time (20 page)

We can never replace a mother's love but I promise you, Mrs. Merrigan, that we will do our best
.

Yours sincerely
,

Claire Batstone

P.S. Feel free to write to me here at the school. Be sure to mark my name clearly on the letter. Also, there's no need to indicate to Mr. Batstone that we've been in touch since he doesn't always approve of my ideas. I'm sure you understand.

The tiny, dark missiles dove and arced in front of Sir John Crawford's eyes, time and again, as he clutched vainly at the air and tried to catch them.

Goddamn flies! Get…get…get…get…get!

Darkness was coming on fast. It was getting tough to see the road with its worn purple and green stones protruding out of the grey ground. The sky near the horizon was blood red. Overhead the clouds trailed away in wispy rows of bright pink on deep blue. At the crest of a hill Crawford glimpsed the coastline. It, too, was steeped in the red glow all the way to Little Placentia. He would have loved to get out of the car and watch the sun set into the ocean. He always enjoyed the marvel of it, the magic of the quick swallowing down, but he needed a good place to pull over.

Then he remembered Father Connolly's well. There was a dip in the road there and a break in the trees on the ocean side. He could make it in time if he hurried. He pressed the gas. He suddenly longed to have that last moment with the sun before he was to be left alone on the ghost-filled road.

He tipped his pewter flask until the hot rum sang in his nostrils.

The road was coming alive with shadows, reddened pools and shafts of light. He could sense the coming darkness eager to reclaim it.

He came quickly upon the spot beside the well where the trees fell away. He glanced out at the blazing sun.

“What a sight! What a sight! If I could just get rid of these goddamn flies.” He swept his hand angrily through the air once more and heard the sudden screech of tires. His heart leapt into his throat as the car tipped over the side of the road to the wild shriek and grind of metal on stone. He felt a sickening impact as it turned in the air, and another, then
another before he lost consciousness. He awoke to freezing cold and a green murky haze with a silver shaft of light pouring through it. He decided to swim toward the light as, one last time, a strange solitary regret drifted across his mind.

I should have put more money into the goddamn roads
.

During her first year at school, Dulcie had often spent the days keeping an eye on the yellow fire trailing across the sky. She could spell the fire's name now with just three letters – S-U-N – but more than this, in sign language, she'd learned to hold the sun in the palm of her hand and use it to divide up the day. First, she made a horizon line by folding one arm across her chest. The sun hand slowly rose above that horizon line to sign the morning. At noon, it was held straight up in the air as her elbow rested on her fingertips. For afternoon, the sun hand moved closer to the elbow, and to sign the night it slipped below it and out of sight.

In Halifax, she'd stayed awake later and later until the evening finally came when she'd watched the sun disappear completely behind the distant buildings. It was easier to do that in Halifax than in Knock Harbour. It was never as dark in the night glow of a city, especially since people lit the lamps outdoors as well as in. After that evening, she'd wondered about the sunset in Knock Harbour. She'd always been afraid before, but now she wanted to watch the sun set into the open sea, untroubled by the buildings that crowded the Halifax sky from her window. She imagined it would make the perfect end to a day.

Still, even as she slipped quietly out of the house and left Mother reading the letter, Dulcie wondered if she dare do it. How long after sunset would the daylight last before the black Knock Harbour night fell upon her? Would there be time to get back to her room, to the safety of the light upon the shelf? She slipped out the back linney door and, like a mouse, scooted quickly over the woodchips and sawdust, past the stacks of firewood and fence railings leaning in the shadow of the stable. The meadow grass was slowly turning matted brown to green. She picked out the faint trace of the path that led to the Back Cove and followed it. Her small legs climbed the greying stile that took her out of the meadow and into the trees. Beams of dusky red light cut the shade, flickered and danced across her eyes. She came out of the woods near the top of a grassy bank. The ocean tossed silent waves ashore as she cantered down the gravelly slope to the beach. The sun was hovering just above the water, a red disc, so thin and perfectly round, yet so faint and hazy that she could look straight into it for a long time.

Then she closed her eyes, opened her mouth, and drank in the blood-red sea.

When Leona looked up from Claire Batstone's letter, Dulcie was gone. A quick look upstairs confirmed that she had left the house.

It wasn't like her to do that so close to dark.

Leona hauled on her rubbers and took the meadow path to the brook to see if Dulcie was there. She wasn't. She took the path to the Back Cove. No sign of her there, either. She walked the stony arc of the cove and took the path on the far side that led to the grassy bank above the beach. Sometimes, Dulcie enjoyed watching birds from there.

Leona finally spotted her below the bank standing on the beach with her face toward the sunset. She scrambled down the bank and walked up to her, but stopped a few feet away. Dulcie's eyes were closed. Her mouth was open and her fingers carefully explored the air around her. She was tasting, breathing, seeing, feeling, being the sunset.

Leona could see what was happening. Dulcie Merrigan's mind was full of fire.

On June 9, 1846, a great fire crawled along the north side of St. John's harbour like a giant flaming arm curling around a shoulder. The towering flames, poisonous smoke, the exploding stores of seal and cod liver oil provoked a flood of people into the streets – men, women and children fleeing homes and workplaces, their possessions stowed in handcarts and wagons or lugged in cloth sacks on their backs through streets where deep sucking mud dogged their every terrified step. The next day a dark sea of ashes backed the finger-piers along the waterfront in a smouldering, stinking sweep from Temperance Street in the east to Springdale Street in the west. Everything but the chimneys, crooked fingers in the eerie landscape, was utterly destroyed. A long reconstruction lay ahead for the weary citizens.

The Vail Building, on the northeast corner of the Springdale and Water Street intersection, was built in that reconstruction by an American baker, Robert Vail, who later made a fortune when he came up with a hard bread suitable to the Newfoundland taste. The building previously on the site was, thanks to an heroic firefighting effort, the last to go down in flames in the West End on that awful June day.

On a sunny afternoon in February, 1932, William J. Cantwell sat in the business office of the Vail Building and reflected on that particular facet of its history. He enjoyed the notion that his investment property marked the spot where the fire-beleaguered citizens of St. John's had once made their stand and said “Enough!” to a great inferno.

It was a deep, clear winter's day. He'd walked there, rather than take the west-bound streetcar that drifted dreamily along the track below the office window. The city was still digging out from a two-day-old snowstorm. The unemployed revelled in this windfall of odd jobs, or hobbles, as the townies called them. Even if you weren't lucky or well connected enough to be on one of the shovelling brigades hired by the city, there were still plenty of opportunities to make a dollar doing storefronts and
homes. All you needed was a shovel and the nerve to negotiate a fair wage for yourself.

William was visiting his building on what he judged to be unpleasant business, so he was surprised when his tenant, Percy Fearn, a homunculus of a man with the severest overbite in his lower jaw that William had ever seen, strode cheerfully into the office and sat across from him. Fearn's grey hair was swept forcibly back in long thin strands; the lower jaw, as always, stuck out a mile. He sat there bright and alert like a bull terrier expecting a bone.

William sighed. Percy was not going to make this easy for him.

William had bought the Vail Building back in 1928 just before he lost the first election of his career. He'd leased to Fearn, who'd turned it into a retail outlet for office furniture and radios. Business had been slow since then and during the last year Fearn had finally fallen behind in the rent.

William got straight to the point.

“I hope you're in a position to do something about these arrears today, Percy, and no offence, but another promissory note is out of the question.”

He managed a nervous smile. Fearn responded with a smile of his own, as pleasant a one as a face with that severe an overbite could provide. The restraint that pulled at his chin lent an odd involuntary British accent to his speech.

“I understand your concern, William,” he said. “Fifty-two hundred dollars is a lot of money and you've been very patient. So, if I may ask, what is your final position today?”

William took a slow deliberate breath before he issued his ultimatum. For all his combative experience in the House of Assembly, he found it difficult to be aggressive in the confines of an office. He simply wasn't cut out to be a businessman.

“Unless I walk out of here with something, I'll be forced to evict you and sue for the arrears. I'm sure neither of us wants it to come to that.”

Fearn didn't even blink before he replied, “I'm asking you to give me another year to turn things around.”

“You know I can't do that, Percy.”

Fearn leaned ahead in his seat. “I think you will once you hear the proposal I'm about to make.”

William let that statement hang, awkwardly, for a long time.

“Go ahead,” he said at last, throwing up his hands, “do your worst.”

“I would have broached this subject with you weeks ago, William, but I've been waiting on some important correspondence which finally arrived yesterday morning. You've heard of Harmers of London, haven't you?”

William coughed and crossed his legs. “Cyril Harmer? The stamp dealer?”

“Correct. They are the pre-eminent stamp house in this part of the world.” Fearn held up a sheet of paper. “This is a valuation from them on some items in my collection.”

“I see. I didn't know you collected.”

“I have one of the finest stamp collections in the city. I know it seems rather calculated to say it right now, but when I first met you I thought I detected a collector's instinct,” Percy said, and added with great assurance, “I know you'll be intrigued by what I am about to propose.”

“Surely you're not excepting me to accept stamps as payment?”

“No. No, indeed. Although it would be very much in your favour if you did. No, I'm about to propose something much more interesting than that. Shall I go on?”

“Go on.”

A small blue tin, the sort in which women keep their sewing supplies, had been sitting on Fearn's desk the whole time alongside a small photo album. He flipped open the album to reveal an array of postage stamps.

“Remember these, William?”

William's eyes widened involuntarily. He was looking at De Pinedoes. A lot of them. He'd been in the delegation that saw the eccentric Italian aviator off at Trepassey back in 1927, and was well aware of their extraordinary value now. William smiled ruefully at the sight. “I practically gave away the four I got as minister. I'd no idea back then that the stamp game could be so lucrative.” Fearn seemed pleased that he'd touched a nerve. He flipped a plate in the album. “I have seven pairs and four singles. All unused, which is the most desirable for collectors,” he added, playing the savant.

“How did you manage to get so many?”

Fearn suddenly cut a more impressive figure. “I got them early on,” he said, “some from inexperienced people like yourself, others from collectors impressed with what they could make even then on a quick sale. I recall one specific transaction where I got a block of four for four hundred and fifty dollars. The buyer had just gotten them for three dollars from the postmaster general himself. So you can understand why he was impressed with the quick profit.”

“And what are they worth now?”

“I've been working on Harmer these last few months to boost the price of the De Pinedoes. He began with an offer of $1,100 for a single and ended with $3000 for a pair.”

“And you have seven pairs!”

“That's right. The De Pinedo is on its way to becoming one of the most valuable airmail issues in history. Would you like to examine it more closely?” Fearn turned the stamp album toward William, who couldn't stop an avarice rising in him as he leaned toward it.

“As you may recall, it's quite a beautiful stamp. The black sixty-cent from the 1897 Four Hundred Year Anniversary issue. Henry VII's portrait, overprinted in red with the words
AIR MAIL / DE PINEDO / 1927
. Only three hundred were prepared.” William didn't know the stamps were that rare.

“You can look closely, William, but please don't touch or handle them in any way.”

William glanced up. There was more to this little man than met the eye.

“I'm convinced of the value of the stamps, Percy, but, unless you're prepared to offer them as payment, and I'm still not sure I would agree to that, I don't see how we can use them in the current situation.”

Fearn uncapped the blue tin to reveal still more stamps.

“I've selected 180 pairs of various stamps here, good collectibles, that could be added to a transaction so that if the very worst should happen and you were forced to dump them onto an unfavourable market, you'd still be sure to get your money back, at the very least. This letter from Harmer indicates his willingness to purchase the De Pinedoes immediately, so, as you can see, this collection is already worth a great deal more than $5200. I can make good on these arrears anytime, William, you know that. I simply don't want to have to start liquidating assets or drawing on my private estate. I'd rather wait until the business turns around. So, here's what I propose. I want you to loan me ten thousand dollars.”