Silent Time (6 page)

Leona hadn't lied about everything. The baby, Jas, had been colic and unhappy for a day or two, and the next day the two older boys were complaining of headaches and a bad stomach, so she put them to bed. She nursed them there for two days and they seemed to be recovering. Then she discovered that Toby had developed a rash all over his body and she became concerned; when Nicholas and Jas developed the same rash the following day, she felt the first uneasy twinges of alarm.

“What ails ‘em?” Paddy asked, when he walked into the boys' room that morning and saw her bending over Toby and Nick in the bed.

“They got a fever and diarrhea. Jas is not the best either. I'll keep a close eye on ‘em again today. You go on, an' don't worry. Youngsters is always comin' down with something.”

But as the day wore on their conditions worsened. All three became more and more listless, their temperatures rose and fell between a fever and severe chills and she struggled to keep them alternately cool or warm. She nursed them all day. Several times it occurred to her to ask Katie for help, but when they seemed to rally the hope that she might nurse them back to health herself held her back. Darkness crept in almost without her noticing until she heard Paddy come in by the back linney door. At this point, she didn't want him to see the children's condition, so she blocked his way in the door when she opened it to his knock.

“They're doin' better,” she said, nodding at the fish slime on his red hands. “You clean yourself up now and get a bite to eat. I got to clean them up, too, then you can come in and say goodnight.” Paddy gave her an awkward, worried smile and stepped sheepishly away. She listened to his slow retreat down the stairs. She could tell he'd been struck by the stench in the room. She realized as soon as she closed the door on him that she'd adjusted to it during the long day.

She had it in mind to give each of the two older boys a careful washing before dressing them for bed. She lit a second lamp, unfolded a clean
white sheet and spread it on the floor. It was cooler there anyway, and it would be a good place to have a really close look at them from head to toe. She wanted to get to the bottom of this illness. Nick protested with a slight groan as she lifted him to the floor and slipped a pillow under his head. He asked for water, swallowed hard when she gave it to him, then stared at her with shining, frightened eyes. Toby, unlike Nick, she realized with a start when she moved him, was no longer aware of his surroundings. Once on the floor his breath became raspy and uncontrollable. She watched with alarm as his chest began to expand and contract with a sickening rapidity. But he soon calmed down again and she breathed a sigh of relief. The wisdom of getting Katie's help, even having Edward fetch the doctor in Placentia, occurred to her with greater force now. She'd run over to their place, she decided, as soon as she'd finished her inspection.

She took the smaller of the two lamps in her hand and laid it on the floor beside Nick. Her face was inches from his skin as she examined his thin body, not sure what she was looking for – some cut, or sign of infection, some cause or explanation of how the sickness was getting in. She found a scattering of small, barely noticeable spots on his shin. The area was red with scratching and she realized that she had seen them all scratch themselves in the last few days. She'd thought perhaps they were unused to the type of wool in the new underwear. She found spots on his chest, as well, which was also red with scratching. They appeared to be tiny, tiny scabs covering insect bites. She picked one loose with a fingernail and held it between her thumb and forefinger. She brushed sweat-dampened stands of hair from her eyes as she stood and brought her fingertip toward the lamp. A deep shudder of horror ran through her when she saw the minute translucent creature with its crab-like claws.

The realization that the long underwear had been infested slammed into her like a hammer stroke. The force of it staggered her and she had to steady herself against the wall. How could she have neglected to sterilize everything in the hottest kind of water?

“Paddy,” she called frantically and started stripping the beds. By the time he got to the top of the stairs she was dragging the straw and seaweed-filled mattresses into the hallway. She threw the sheets and blankets after them. “Take this outside and burn it. All of it!” she shouted at him. “The clothes we found is lousy. That's what's makin' the boys so sick. We got to destroy that trunk and everything that come out of it.”

Paddy wrestled the mattresses and blankets into his arms and threw them over the banister. He was about to bolt down the stairs when she
grabbed his sweater in her fists and shook him in a confusion of pleading and pointless aggression. She saw the hurt and confusion in his eyes. In her mind's eye, she saw the foundered schooner slip beneath the waves and a vast and sickening emptiness swept into her stomach.

“Tell Katie I needs her,” she said. A desperate sob broke from her and she struck herself angrily on the chest. “You and Edward start a fire in the yard.”

Soon, in the yard, the yellow flames licked wildly at the night and drew the neighbours out of their houses. They peered confusedly into the darkness and saw Paddy throw a load of bedding onto a blazing fire. They watched as he returned to the house for an armful of woollen clothes and flung them into the fire, as well. They saw him carry a small trunk into the yard, angrily smash it to pieces with an axe and feed it to the flames in a flurry of curses.

“What in God's name are ya doing, Paddy?” someone called.

“Something in the house is makin' the youngsters sick,” he said. “Got to get rid of it.”

He never said another word, not even much later when he heard Leona's scream, her choking sobs and Katie's frantic consoling. He was silent all the while, even when he walked into the boys' room moments later and lifted Jas out of the crib, even as he carried him downstairs to the wood stove, pulled down the oven door and laid his baby boy on the bed of warm splits. He wordlessly sat to the table and waited.

Leona and Katie stayed in the room all night, Katie scrubbing the floor and walls with Jeyes fluid while Leona desperately tried to save the two boys she had left. A pale shaft of morning sunlight cut through the kitchen when Leona finally came down the stairs. Paddy sat looking across the room at the still, silent bundle in the oven. He had his arm outstretched, palm upturned upon the table. Leona found herself unable to reach for that hand. Instead, she walked past him into the yard, in time to see the doctor from Placentia ride up in his gig.

“We don't need the doctor any more,” she said, to no one in particular. “Someone get Father O'Connell.”

Next day, three small crosses were erected on the cemetery hill.

April 1, 1923, was Easter Sunday. It was also April Fool's Day. William James Cantwell looked out Thomas Tobin's kitchen window and contemplated the absurd collision of those two feast days. He watched the little beached-in community of Knock Harbour endure the usual trinity of strong winds, grey skies and bone-chilling cold that often accompanied the dubious resurrection of a Newfoundland spring. William glanced forlornly at the lowering sky and experienced a vague sensation that it was closing down on him somehow, like a coffin lid. He breathed deeply to combat this feeling, resisting the large, world-weary sigh that was slowly building inside him. He was the government member, after all, and Thomas would be disappointed to have such a visitor appear low-minded. On the contrary, his visit ought to bestow a certain distinction, even joy, upon the household.

He looked through his rounded spectacles at Thomas who sat sucking on his pipe in the rocking chair by the woodstove, sending great clouds of smoke tumbling across the kitchen at him. The smoke wafted toward the ceiling and resolved itself into one long blue wave cut by a thick shaft of afternoon sunlight. William enjoyed a smoke himself, but today his own pipe was empty, cooling on the table as a sign of surrender to Thomas; or an unheeded plea for mercy.

Thomas had been startled to find a politician on his doorstep on Easter Sunday morning. It had briefly crossed William's mind to call out “April Fools” when Thomas opened the door. Instead, William quickly assured him, as Thomas carried his satchel upstairs, that he'd been to Mass in Placentia already, but that he was keen to get a jump on campaigning well before the May election. It would have been closer to the truth to say that the unending solemnities of Easter Week were driving him mad, and that he simply couldn't stand to be barred up for another day at the old family home in Placentia, where he always spent Easter and Christmas holidays.

He'd planned his visit to the Cape Shore for later in the week but, in a moment of quick and sudden resolve, had packed his bag last night instead. As soon as Mass was over, he'd headed for Miller's Wharf, jumped into the dory he kept there for excursions down the shore, hauled oil clothes on over his dark suit, replaced his grey homburg with a black sou'wester, and headed out the harbour. He was grateful that a stiff off-shore breeze had masked the
putt-putt
of his new Coaker engine; he didn't want it to draw attention to his hasty departure. It was his custom to stay at Thomas and Maisie Tobin's house in Knock Harbour while he visited the surrounding communities. Once there, he hauled up the dory, put his shoes back on, then stored his oil clothes and rubbers in the cuddy.

William always wore a suit no matter where he traveled in the district. He wasn't afraid of going on the salt water, he wasn't dainty or squeamish, and people respected that, but he'd learned over the years that the government member shouldn't too strongly resemble the people he represented. This had to be accomplished, however, without creating the impression that his years in St. John's had turned him into a townie. The townie politicians usually left the capital only at election time to deliver their handful of empty promises. William swore when he'd entered politics that he would never become like them. He prided himself on having visited even the remotest parts of his sprawling district at least once during the last four years. He was well-liked because he'd made that effort and also because he was a bayman born in the riding. The only real and present threat to his re-election was his own lack of enthusiasm. He was struggling to find a spirit for electioneering and, what was worse, had no heart for promise-making any more. He was in a sorry state for a politician.

“It's going to be hard to get money out of the townies for that new bridge, Thomas,” William said.

Knock Harbour was still badly in need of a new bridge, even though William had promised one in his last election campaign. But he'd been cast into Opposition in that 1919 election, the first since the Great War, and so must now encourage the idea, easily fostered in a man like Thomas Tobin, that the townies and the government party were one and the same. The notion provided at least some explanation for his failure to get things done over the last four years.

Thomas furrowed the shiny dome of his forehead. William was gratified by a flash of resentment in the older man's eyes at the mention of the townies. He'd often noted a lingering sadness there, too, heightened by thin yellow rings around the faded blue irises.

“In my day, William, people looked after the bridges themselves,” he said. “But since the government started payin' for road work, you won't find a man around here to do it for free.”

“You always say money ruined everything, Thomas.”

Thomas made one slow nod to confirm this. “When a man hunted for food, he only caught or shot what he needed, but now that he gets a few cents for his brace of turr or rabbit, he got to kill every last one he sees.”

William recognized the essential truth of this observation, but quickly redirected Thomas toward the more productive subject of the townies, who, especially with the election looming, must bear the blame for as much as possible.

“It was the townies who brought money here in the first place, wasn't it?” he said. The rocking chair stilled as a dark inner cloud passed over Thomas's face.

“All they ever brought here was trouble. I remembers one old bugger, Emerson was his name, had a white beard right down to his waist. My father used to spend whole days in the country with him when I was little. That townie took home more salmon an' partridge than we'll ever see, an' all thanks to my father. But all Father ever got from the old bastard was a plug o' tobacco. He'd put that in his pocket and not say a word. He had to please the townie, see, ‘cause ya never knew, one of those days he just might give you a bit o' money. The bastard never give Father a cent, first nor last. He come down here and took what he wanted, same as the rest of ‘em. An' Father would never ask for nothing. No, no, no, couldn't do that! Thank God, I was never so foolish.” He punctuated this speech with a brown dollop of tobacco juice that slipped from his lips into the coal bucket.

The heat from the woodstove was staggering, but Thomas still got up to poke in another birch junk and cut more shavings from his tobacco plug. He refilled his pipe, lit a match, and launched a fresh assault on the available oxygen in the room.

William fought off another wave of panic and began to doubt the wisdom of his coming here. How was it possible that even in this house, in this tiny community on the remote Cape Shore, he still needed a place to hide? He searched desperately through the window for some relief in the grey day outside. Suddenly, he had an idea.

“You know what, Thomas?” he said. “I'm going out for a while. I want to inspect the undercarriage of that old bridge myself.”

He walked down the lane away from the Tobins' solid two-story house. Thomas and Maisie were that rare childless couple and so, over the years, the extra space in the house had become devoted to things other than children. For some years now, Maisie had used the largest room downstairs as the Knock Harbour post office. Once a week, after Neddy Collins brought the mailbag down the shore from Placentia in his horse and gig, Maisie sorted the letters into the wooden slots that Thomas had built on the wall for hand-mail. He'd also cut a hole through to the pantry where Maisie handed out larger parcels and sold stamps and envelopes. A smaller downstairs room contained a wooden chair, a writing table and the only telephone in Knock Harbour. A great deal of news passed through the house, giving rise to an enormous flood of gossip from Maisie, but also to some solid information by way of Thomas. That, plus the fact they had an empty bedroom upstairs, made the Tobin's a good house for William.