Waiting for Time (23 page)

“Mrs. Bowden told us she'd leave the back door unhooked,” she said.

Tim understood immediately. At the foot of the hill he told her to wait and disappeared behind a shed. He returned in minutes with two brin bags, dirty and stiff with snow. The eerie light had not changed although it must have been near dawn when they let themselves into the silent house.

The big kitchen was empty, the fire out, the pan where Mary'd been washing dishes when Tim arrived was still there, the dishes covered in congealed grease.

Tim tossed her one of the bags, “Here Blackie!” he grinned at the name and gave her a push towards the pantry, “Fill this with stuff to eat—I'm goin' to have a look around.”

Instead she followed him, down the hall and into the small front parlour, watching as he walked around the room dropping things into the bag: a small vase, the Colonel's gold watch, a set of candlesticks. He saw her and grinned, “Go on back and get that grub, I'm goin' upstairs.”

She shook her head frantically. She was sure that any minute Mr. Armstrong would appear at the top of the stairway. But Tim took no notice, silent as a shadow, he crept up the steps. Mary went back to the pantry and swept butter, bread, cheese, fish and sausage indiscriminately into the bag.

But she had not come here to steal! Looking about, wondering what she could destroy without making any noise, she saw the supply of wine Mr. Armstrong kept beneath the butter cooler. Using the corkscrew just as cook had taught her, she worked the corks out of three bottles of red wine. Carrying them with care she went into the dining room and poured the contents over Mrs. Armstrong's needlepoint cushions. The act gave her such satisfaction that she decided to take more wine upstairs—to pour over Mr. Armstrong's jackets, over his wife's dresses, maybe over Mr. Armstrong himself.

“No, I'll not pour wine over him, I'll smash the bottle down on top of his bloody head—then I'll cut his thing off!”

She rushed back to the pantry and was just snatching another bottle from under the butter cooler when she felt a hand on her shoulder.

The bottle crashed onto the stone floor. She whipped around to face Tim, still grinning and holding a bulging bag on his shoulder. He paused long enough to snatch the two unopened bottles, dropping them neatly in on top of the food, he grabbed her by the wrist and pulled her behind him through the kitchen door.

Mary did not want to leave. She was riding a crest of exhileration. All she could think of was killing Mr. Armstrong. It was what she wanted more than she had ever wanted anything, more than she had known anyone could want anything! She tried with all her might to pull away, but Tim held on and hauled her down the street, around the corner, behind a tavern, through a series of yards and back alleys, until they were standing on one of the wharves that jutted out into the harbour.

“What ya think of that—pretty good what? Not another person in all St. John's coulda got you down here quick as that!” Tim waved at the dim outline of warehouses, the shrouded harbour, the sagging wharf, as though introducing her to some magical kingdom he'd conjured from a bottle.

Mary was not inclined to be grateful. She dropped her bag and began massaging her wrist—“Got me friggin' arm hauled off, ya stunned bugger!” She looked around, “What good's this? The harbour's the first place they'll look!”

“And that they won't!” Gesturing for her to follow, he climbed down over the side of the wharf and vanished. Underneath the wharf they began moving back away from the water, dodging between barnacle covered supports, climbing over slimy rocks and reeking garbage, towards the blackness. It was so dark that Mary bumped into the stone foundation and, although she was not really hurt, began to sob.

“Shut up for Christ's sake—we'll be inside in a minute,” Tim said.

She heard him moving things away from a low door, then they had to get down on their hands and knees to crawl in. Once inside Tim lit a candle and with the same irritating pride he'd displayed on the wharf said, “See—it's all mine—snug as a bug in a rug!”

The room was no bigger than a small hen house. Most of the space was taken up with a deep shelf halfway up the wall that appeared to serve as a bed as well as a place where Tim stored his belongings.

“Sometimes the floor gets a bit damp, but 'tis always dry up there,” he tossed both bags up onto the shelf and climbed up himself, dangling his legs over the side and grinning.

He explained that they were in a crawl space below the warehouse and cook room of Caleb Gosse's business premises. “I runs messages for him, see—and betimes I fills in for the old coot what does night watch up above. But none of 'em knows about this place.”

Sometime in the past, he told her, the floor of Gosse's warehouse must have been raised and the space that had once made a back entrance forgotten. Although she would not let on—pointing out that they would both drown like rats if a high tide ever brought the sea in over their door—Mary was impressed with the warm, safe spot Tim had found. Too tired to think about the future she rolled up in one of the quilts and cried herself to sleep.

Mary and Tim were both awkward during the first days they spent together in the hidden room but once the strangeness wore off they got along well. They slept when they wished, never washed, rolled around in the dirty quilts discovering the pleasures of sex, and ate better than half the population of the wretched town.

For two winters and the summer in between, Mary lived in the tiny room with Tim. She went out only at night, when she helped him steal, “floppin'” he called it, from seamen who frequented the fifty or so public houses near the harbour. Tim never called her anything but Blackie. He hacked off her thick hair, gave her a pair of boys' breeches and an oversized jacket he'd flopped off a Portuguese and told her to pretend she was mute when they met up with other young cutpurses working the waterfront.

She tried not to think about Tessa—about what happened to her. But she often thought about the Armstrongs and wished them dead. Tim learned that they had gotten a warrant sworn out for Mary Sprig's arrest. For months every ship leaving port was searched for the missing servant girl who'd ransacked her master's house and made away with candlesticks, a gold watch and, it was said, “a considerable sum of money.”

Tim delighted in bringing her stories about sightings of Mary Sprig who became something of a hero among the town's underdogs. Someone had seen her on the highway on horseback, shouting curses on the Armstrongs for having her sister whipped. Some said she'd run off to live in the woods with Red Indians. Any villainy that showed imagination was blamed on Mary Sprig, but the story she and Tim liked best was that Mary had all the time been the wife of Mike Morey, a pirate who had been working the Newfoundland coast for three summers. Now they had sailed off to Bermuda to live rich as lords on their loot.

Tim knew St. John's like the palm of his hand—was familiar with every fish flake, cow shed, cove, back alley, tavern and gambling room. He knew each ship that entered port and who the crews were, was acquainted with every night watchman along the waterfront and made sure that every thief, beggar, and drunk who slept under the wharves owed him favours.

“Them gobs in Christchurch was right—ya got to learn to bargain,” he instructed Mary. His old mates would have been proud of him, he could not read but had quickly learned to count and could do business with the sharpest cutthroats in the place.

“Tell ya the truth girl, I relished it—if ya ever gets a chance ta be a boy take it—'tis more fun!” Mary tells her great-granddaughter.

She would have stayed with Tim forever, dressing like a boy, roving around the foggy streets at night, eating, sleeping and enjoying sex during the day. Only one day she discovered she could no longer button her pants and was brought to the truth by Tim's, “Gone and got into it you have!”

Despite his knowledge of sexual matters, Tim seemed completely taken aback by the consequence of their lighthearted romps. “Sweet Christ!” he said and disappeared.

Since he often stayed away for a day or more, it was not until the fourth night that Mary began to think he had left for good. It would be just like Tim, she thought, to stow aboard some foreign vessel and leave her alone under the floor boards of Caleb Gosse's warehouse.

She pawed around among the dirty quilts, feeling for the corner where Tim kept what he called his “go to hell” money. When she found it she unknotted the torn corner and extracted the gold coins one by one. There were eight of them, two large and six smaller ones, all of unknown value to Mary. The money reassured her that Tim would be back. She piled them into two small stacks with a large coin at the bottom of each pile, knotted four coins back into the blanket and tied a scrap of rag around the other four. She pinned the money into the pocket of the old coat, along with the purple brooch that had been Tessa's and the combs she could not wear now that her hair was short as a boy's. Having done what she could, Mary settled down to wait for Tim and to think about her future.

He came in, jangling money in his pocket and telling her about a group of sailors he'd taken up to the card game in Doyle's Tavern. In exchange for bringing in business, Rube Doyle had given him sixpence and a cold meat pie. He was cheerful. While they shared the pie Tim told her he'd arranged for her to stay out her time with one of the sailors' wives who, with her five children, was spending the winter in a tilt down in Logie's Bay.

“'Deed I won't spend winter in no tilt with five bawlin' brats and some old bag you probably been messin' with!”

“Go on, you'd love it, Kate's good as gold and 'tis pretty down that way—nice little farms, with hens and sheep.”

“I seen enough friggin' hens and sheep to last me lifetime—I can't abide them empty places where there's no people nor streets, nor even a place to hide,” Mary snapped.

Then she told Tim her own plan, “If I was to get to some big town back home I'd be able to make me way. I could live like you do—floppin' things.”

“Aw go on, a girl couldn't manage on her own, ye'd be caught and hung first day—or end up bein' a little whore—full of pox like Nutty Nelly down in Bates' Cove—that'd be some life, now, wouldn't it?”

“Better'n workin' for the likes of the Armstrongs and endin' up like poor Tessa,” she said bitterly

They argued for weeks as the days grew shorter and shorter and Mary's waist grew thicker. She still went out each night disguised under layers of rags but she was now so awkward that she could barely crawl in under the wharf.

At this point in her story Mary stops, considers the thickening waist of her great-granddaughter: “I was tryin' ta bargain like he taught me, but truth be told I was frightened spitless. Tim didn't want me around any more and I didn't know what was goin' to become of me.”

“Then, one night—it was wintertime, we were sittin' round a tar pot the boys had a fire goin' in—and me time come. Well, you talk about a fuss! Here I was bent over double, this crowd of ruffians shoutin' and bawlin'. Thought I'd been poisoned from the bottle we was passin' around, they did—and Tim tryin' to haul me away afore I had the baby right there, back of Murray's sail loft.”

Tim managed to drag Mary up to the street and into the first place he could think of, a room above one of the licensed houses where Fan Larkin and her sister Lol entertained ships' officers. He had often directed men to their premises and reckoned they owed him a few favours. With only a cursory explanation he deposited Mary in the hallway outside the women's small flat and started towards the stairs.

“We'll expect to be paid for her keep,” Fan, already beginning to unwrap the layers of clothing that covered Mary, called after him.

Without even looking back Tim waved over his shoulder: “Aw she got her own money, by the time ya works down to the skin ya'll find it!” and with that, the only reference he ever made to the disappearance of coins from his hiding place, he raced down the stairs and out the door.

The baby was born that night, a scrap of a girl, so dark that Lol asked Mary if she'd been messin' about with a black man. Mary named the child Fanny, after her benefactor, and stayed on in the rooms over the tavern for two months. Despite their businesslike attitude, the sisters were kind enough but it was clear that their activities were somewhat restricted by the presence of Mary and the baby.

In March, Fan told her that she and Lol were giving up work to become ladies: “I'm bein' married to a gentleman and Lol will come and live with us. We got a bit put away and we expects to open a tea-room out on the new road goin' towards Topp's Hill.” She suggested that Mary might like to take over their room and continue the trade.

Mary considered the idea. “But ya know, I always was plain as an old boot, not pretty like them,” she says and seeing Rachel's shocked face, adds: “Yes, I can't tell you a word of a lie, I gave thought to bein' a whore. I knew Tim'd bring me business. But by then I had a chance to see what 'twas like and I didn't think I could endure earnin' me livin' on me back like that—almost bad as cleanin' chamber pots. Besides, like I told Fan, that's the only bit of fun poor people haves and I'd just as lief not make work out of it.”

Mary declined their offer, gave the sisters her largest gold piece and returned the other three to the front of her secondhand dress, one Lol had discarded. Then she rolled Fanny in an old blanket and went out in search of Tim Toop.

Outside she felt exposed and vulnerable. It had been such a long time since she'd ventured out dressed as a female. She had heard that the Armstrongs had moved into a larger house and were being made much of by the governor and his wife—Mary wondered if they were still looking for her. She rearranged the quilt so that it covered part of her face as well as the baby.

Walking fast as she could through streets that were filthy with spring mud and garbage, Mary made her way down to the harbour. Any minute she expected to have a hand laid on her shoulder and be carted away to the lock-up. She could not find Tim in any of his usual haunts. Becoming more and more terrified that she would be recognized by a soldier or one of the tradespeople who may have seen her in the Armstrong kitchen, she crawled under the wharf and into the hideout below the Gosse premises.