Waiting for Time (15 page)
He pours coffee and with a great flourish brings warmed plates and food, announcing each dish as he sets it down: “Fish and brewis! Scruncheons! And—as a special concession to Madam's mainland palate—chives in drawn butter!”
Hunger overcomes. Despite growing apprehension, despite the unappetising appearance of the food, Lav eats.
“Look out there! Look out there and tell me there's anything wrong with the ocean, anything wrong with the earth!” Wayne pats his mother's shoulder and gestures expansively towards the sparkling, sun-drenched harbour.
“You know what that harbour's full of!” Verna says, but she is relenting, succumbing to her son's charm and to the beauty of the morning—to the cliffs and sea, to the small red boat chugging out the narrows, to the ragged, slightly hazy outline of St. John's rising against the blue sky.
“Best view in the world out this window,” Wayne says.
They eat and watch the fishing boat, trailing gulls and white foam, circle and come back in to one of the small wharves that cling to the Battery cliffs.
“That'll be Herb Pearcey out for his Saturday morning spin,” Wayne says. “Must be eighty, but he's on the water every day of his life.”
The fish and brewis tastes better than it looks. Lav has eaten everything on her plate before Verna, with a hard look at her son, says: “You goin' to tell her then—or will I?”
Wayne refills the coffee cups, lights his cigar, turns to Lav and says, “Mark Rodway broke into our offices last night—got himself arrested.”
“But he's an employee! Why would he break in?”
“He's only casual—no DFO security pass. He got in though—tricked the guard into letting him right into my office. Looking for that report he sent to Ottawa—apparently he was too stunned to keep his own copy! Not only did he have the nerve to ransack my desk, when he found the thing he took it into the Xerox room and started making copies. That's what he was doing when Clive caught him. Lucky for us Clive went back—that report could scuttle the Oceans 2000 launch. And it could cost you your job!”
“But what's all this about Mark being in jail?”
“I had him arrested for break and entry, for removing documents from a government office.”
“But why?”
“Jesus! Can't you just see it on Monday morning? The Minister holding a press conference inside the Radisson and that little snot outside passin' out his own version of the report!”
The man who sits scrutinizing her through a cloud of smoke seems quite different from the one she had made love with last night.
“Besides,” he pushes his chair back and stands, “besides, he hit the security guard—hard! You don't do that sort of thing to union members. He'd have done better hittin' Clive or me—but that's them radicals for ya, no sense of class, no discretion!” Charming again he shakes his finger in mock horror at his mother, leans over and kisses the top of her head, “Never you mind, dear old mudder, I got a lawyer all lined up—the poor lad'll be outta pogey soon as Minister and media takes off for Ottawa.”
“Don't dear old mudder me!” Verna pushes him away. “I hope Mark Rodway breaks out, hope he throws a bomb into the middle of your press conference. What's all this about him having a report of his own?”
“Nothing fit for the likes of you to know—don't want to give information to the resistance, do we?” Wayne smirks at his mother, then, with one of his quick changes of mood, becomes coldly serious. “Look Mother, don't embarrass me. Stay out of this. Timothy Drew is only trying to get a few jobs down here. Wouldn't your union friends like to get that fish plant across the harbour opened?”
“You don't have the gall to drag that one out again—next thing you'll be rabbittin' on about a Coast Guard station for the Battery and a big federal pen for Bell Island.”
“It's the truth—Drew is going to see that plant over there is refinanced…”
“Refinanced!” Verna's voice vibrates with anger. “I've got a two inch thick file on that place—been refinanced more times than poor Patsy Carey down behind the post office!”
“Mother! I didn't know you knew such people! You really are going to have to stop going to Government House garden parties!”
The mother and son keep at it hammer and tongs. Verna shouting and waving news clippings even as they hurry down the steep steps to where Vic's taxi is waiting. Only at the last moment does she remember the demands of etiquette and call down, “Nice meeting you, Lav—come again!”
“What happened to Mark's report?” Lav asks as Vic manoeuvres his taxi around the dead-end street.
“Gone—shredded. Disk wiped—never existed.” Arrested by a sudden suspicion Wayne gives her a sharp look, “You have a copy?”
When she tells him no, he smiles. “I'll drop you off at home if you like,” he says, sets his briefcase on his knees, opens it, and begins leafing through papers. “I'm going on into the office—see how Clive made out, how the finished product looks. The rest of the day and Sunday I'll be checking around town—making sure everything's in place.”
Wayne doesn't speak again until they get to Lav's door. “I'll be busy until Monday—but I'll see you at the Minister's reception—and at the press conference, of course!” Beaming like a child on Christmas morning, he kisses her cheek, waves, and as the car pulls away calls, “See you at the Radisson, luv.”
In her ninety-seventh year Mary Bundle woke one morning with the sure knowledge that she would not see another spring. The howl of wind, snap of frost and the clatter of icicles against eaves, sounds she had once slept through, now keep her awake most of the night
.
The thought of death did not frighten the old woman, it irritated her. “Such a torment, the way things turns out—last year this time I' da been content to go. “ This is not true, of course, Mary had not been content to go, never would be content to go—certainly not now with Rachel's life fousted up the way it was
.
Mary Bundle lies in her bed, feathered and curved down in the middle like a dory, thinking about her great-granddaughter, thinking about safety—about safe places. There are no such places.
“Safe as if you're in God's pocket,” Meg used to tell the children when starvation and death seemed certain. And although Mary would never have admitted it, the words had always comforted her, too. She used to think about God's pocket, about how nice it must be, warm and dry and safe. Well, Meg is long gone, Sarah too, and most of the children they tucked into bed. Taken by the sea, by cold, by old age and sickness.
“I outlived them all,” the old woman thinks, not without pride, “all them good women who knelt and prayed, knelt and scrubbed the splintered floors of the church, herded their men and children into that holy coldness every Sunday. All gone. If we're in God's pocket, must be like crumbs he's forgotten, some of us gets flicked about and blows away when he pulls his handkerchief out.”
The thought of God's carelessness cheers her. Ignoring her stiffness she climbs out of the sagging bed, pulls a quilt around her shoulders and pads across the floor to the narrow window. With her fingernail she scrapes a circle in the frost and peers out to see what the day is like.
When Thomas Hutchings finally came to build a house for himself he certainly knew where to put it, up here by the old potato garden, good and high and safe, back from the water. Mary can see everything on the Cape from up here—or could see if her eyes were what they had once been. But the world is drawing in, circled by a milky haze like slob ice. Still, she can manage—sighting down the tunnel she can make out the dark shapes of houses, the sheds and flakes and beyond, the glittering grey sea. Right below her window is her own front bridge and hen house, and below that the slate roof of her grandson Calvin's new house. Over a ways she can almost make out the corner of the old Andrews place—the big double house where she'd lived all her married life, she and Ned and their children in one half and Meg and Ben in the other—used now as a barn and storage shed.
Nothing moves, not animal or bird, nor trail of smoke. The walls of the room and the window seem to breathe cold air but the old woman stands looking down on Cape Random, thinking about the people in each house. Last night she had tested herself, calling up the face of every person in the place, remembering who their parents and grandparents were, tracking those who were connected to her through her own three sons and through Fanny's son, Toma. Mary has noticed there are days when the past is all aslurry, frost forming around her mind too, she supposes. But last night she could remember every soul on the Cape, all one hundred and twenty-six of them.
She watches the sun come up, changing the sea from dark grey to pale blue, shimmering like a silk shawl Lavinia once owned. It is going to be a fine clear day, but bitter.
Shivering, she turns away from the window and gathers up her clothes: two flannel petticoats, a home-made canvas corset, knitted sheepswool stockings, heavy bloomers and the dress her grandchildren had ordered from St. John's for her ninety-fifth birthday. Mary has worn the dress every day since, ignoring Jessie's insistence that it is intended to be saved “for good.” The dress is made of warm red cloth, store-bought wool, not the scratchy homespun stuff. It has a ruffle of black lace at the neck and two big V-shaped pockets trimmed with the same lace. It is the grandest garment Mary Bundle has ever worn. The feel of it, the thought that she owns such a dress, gives her immense pleasure. She has no intention of saving it to be buried in.
Clutching the bundle of clothing to her chest and holding onto the bannister, she slowly makes her way downstairs. In the kitchen she lays her clothes over a chair next to the fire, which, having been banked, still gives off a little heat. The cat slides out from under the stove to curl around her legs. Being careful not to waken the young woman sleeping on the couch, Mary feeds the animal and pours herself a cup of black tea from the teapot that has been steeping all night on the back of the stove.
She takes a mouthful of the hot tea, puts down the cup—large, with the word “Mother” and the likeness of stern old Victoria, whom Mary is proud to have outlived, painted on its side. Without taking any care she pulls on layer after layer of clothing, covering everything with an immense wool shawl that one of her daughters-in-law, she forgets which, crocheted years ago.
Once dressed, Mary goes to sit in a rocker by the couch. She sips her tea thoughtfully, looking down on the mound of quilts at the top of Rachel's dark head. She cannot—must not—die until something's been worked out for the child.
Rachel is fifteen, born the year Lavinia died. Mary had wanted the baby called Lavinia, but Jessie, the child's mother, objected: “Go on, Nan, if you had your way every young one on the Cape'd be called Meg or Sarah, or Lavinia and every boy'd be Ned. We'll call her Rachel, she can have Lavinia for a middle name.”
In her heart Mary still thinks of her great-granddaughter as Lavinia's namesake. It takes some of the grief out of her friend's death to know there is another Lavinia Andrews on the Cape.
She had expected to see Rachel grow into a tall, loose limbed Lavinia, with foxy curls and Lavinia's pale complexion. Instead, the child stopped growing at five feet and is dark as a Turk. Rachel, although Mary cannot see it, is the spitting image of herself the day she came ashore on Cape Random.