Waiting for Time (36 page)

She stared down at the water that lapped softly around the barnacled piers, counting the connors and jellyfish drifting in and out below the wharf. Then, catching some movement out to sea, she looked up. The vessel that had brought Thomas three days ago was coming in towards the Cape. Again it hove to seaward of the shoals, and again a skiff with two seamen was lowered into the water. As Mary watched, two more men and a woman were helped down into the skiff and the seamen began rowing towards the wharf.

This, she guessed, would be Timothy Drew—the new owner and his wife, the woman Thomas Hutchings had described as kindly. A small woman, wearing a blue bonnet that tied under her chin and a long cloak made of soft brown material. Mary's attention was so focused on the woman that she hardly saw the two male passengers in the boat.

Mary did not stand, nor even move when the skiff bumped the wharf and the three passengers climbed cautiously up the shaky ladder. One man turned and told the seamen to wait, that they would be leaving again within the hour. Mary saw the boatmen exchange looks of resignation as they shipped their oars.

Beneath her cape the woman was wearing a dress the same shade of blue as her hat. Her boots were shiny black leather with a dozen little buttons up the side.

“She were like rich women I seen in St. John's, you could smell her, scented soap and powder, no human smell at all—I used to think about such women, wonder what they worried about. She stood so close I coulda spit on her boots.”

Although so many years have passed, Mary is still ashamed of how afraid she felt that day. Afraid of the people standing there beside her, afraid to look up, cowed by their importance, by their shiny footwear, humiliated by her own dirty feet, feeling suddenly stupid and clumsy—feelings anger usually protected her from. She sat very still, seeing nothing above the knees of these strangers who were staring down at the top of her head.

The older man, the one who had given the curt order to the seamen, said, “Hey, you there!” thinking, Mary guessed, that she was an idiot who lolled on the stagehead all day. He even nudged the side of her skirt with his polished boot.

Trying to control her fear, Mary scrambled to her feet, made herself raise her eyes—and found herself staring into the eyes of Tim Toop. There was no doubt of it. The face had changed, puffed out and coarsened, the nose was thicker, redder, but there was no mistaking the sharp, rat-like eyes of the pickpocket.

The two must have stared at each other for a full minute. Then the man pulled himself up to his full height, which, Mary noted, was still not great, and spoke: “Madam, may I introduce myself, I am Timothy Drew and this is my wife, and…” nodding towards the young man hovering at his shoulder, “this is Mr. Matthews, my clerk.”

Without pausing for Mary to speak, he ordered Matthews to have a look around the premises. “Make a list of anything of value, and then post the notice—and see if that Hutchings fellow is coming back with us,” he ordered, dismissing the man with a snap of his fingers.

Timothy Drew watched his clerk climb the three steps to the stage and disappear into the store before turning back to Mary. Taking his time he looked her up and down, from muddy feet to unkempt hair. “And what might your name be?” he asked.

“It might be almost anything—seems names don't keep—goes rotten—like fish, I s'pose,” she said. Her fear had vanished, swept away by rage and astonishment.

He leaned slightly forward and Mary thought she saw a flicker of humour in the eyes peering at her. “So they do, so they do. I, for instance, took my wife's name. It has a nice ring about it, don't you think?”

He turned to his wife who looked mildly surprised at her husband's manner. “My dear, this is Mary, Mary Sprig, the one I told you about. We used to sit on headstones sharing stolen oranges.”

“Yes,” thought Mary, “shared a jeezely sight more than oranges too.” She sized up the woman. Pretty, she was, but not soft, Mary judged, taller than she'd looked in the boat, the narrow plume in her bonnet was several inches higher than the top of her husband's stovepipe hat.

“She had a good face, she'd know a lot more than she'd tell, would Mrs. Timothy Drew,” Mary told her great-granddaughter.

Mrs. Drew had smiled and nodded. Mary nodded back politely but turned immediately to the man: “How come you're here, Tim Toop—and what's this news your flunky's goin' to tell us?” she asked although she knew the answer. She needed time to think, to figure what she could get out of Tim.

“I've always been connected with Caleb Gosse's business—you know that, Mary—wasn't I the one got you a job on one of his vessels?”

He ignored her snort and, perhaps because he too needed time to think, took a turn around the salt-crusted wharf, studying the unpainted store, the tiny gardens, the raw houses set down helter-skelter amid the rocks before returning to where Mary stood.

“Now it's your turn to answer questions,” he told her briskly. “Two questions: first, where is everyone? And—once again—what are you called?”

“I'm called Mary Bundle, but for your information me name's Mary Andrews—Mrs. Ned Andrews to you. And regards where all hands is, they's inside there,” she pointed to the store. “By now I s'pose t'matthews feller is tellin' 'em whatever news you got for us. How come the crowd in St. John's haven't got you hung yet?”

She looked him in the face as she said this, and saw his eyes change. As if fire had been doused with water, all trace of humour disappeared, replaced by a look of such steely coldness that Mary would have stepped back if she had not held herself in check.

“In St. John's, Mrs. Andrews, I now have some say in who will hang—and as I remember, your name was on the list,” he pronounced each word slowly, with great care, as if someone had taught him how to speak.

Mary made herself keep looking into his eyes. She was aware of his wife's reaching out, touching the man's arm. When he turned, breaking the stare, the woman gave a small shake of her head, cautioning or reminding him of something. Mary could feel cold perspiration at the base of her spine.

When he looked back at her he was smiling. “Well Mary, what do you want, what's brewing in that greedy little mind of yours?”

“Don't you even want to know what happened to your daughter?” Mary glanced at the woman but to her disappointment Tim's wife showed no sign of surprise.

“Not particularly,” he said, “she's yours, I'm sure you're taking good care of her,” he reached into his pocket, pulled out a cigar and lit it. His humour seemed to have returned. Standing there beside his pretty wife Tim looked so rich, so oiled and well fed that Mary would gladly have pushed him off the edge of the wharf and laughed as he sank down among the connors and bits of rotting fish gut.

“She's dead—your daughter died down there—just down on the beach. She died havin' a baby, 'tho she were only a girl herself—not even old as I was when you knocked me up!”

“And your husband, Mrs. Andrews, where is he?” it was the woman who spoke.

“He's dead—he—he were killed, by a, by a…” Mary's voice rasped, “killed by an animal.” She took a deep breath, “'Tisn't hard to die in places like this.”

“I am sorry to hear that,” the woman said.

“We'd best collect that Hutchings man and be off,” Tim put his hand under his wife's elbow and turned her towards the store, “it was—interesting seeing you again, Mrs. Andrews.”

With clumsy haste Mary moved to stand between them and the store. “Not yet. Not yet, ye don't—last time I saw you, Tim Toop, you said you'd have somethin' for me, said when I come back to St. John's you'd help me get passage to England and give me money to settle down with Fanny.”

“That was a long time ago—a lifetime ago. That agreement was made between two people who no longer exist,” Tim's smile was fixed but his eyes were cold again.

“Not so long ago, not my lifetime nor yours, not so long I don't remember you ransackin' the Armstrong house—and what's become of that God damned bastard—did me hex work?”

She waited, he didn't speak and she, striking out in the dark, said, “What ever happened to that watch, the one you stole from Armstrong, the one with the letters and leaves on the back?”

The hand that had started to reach instinctively towards his vest pocket stopped. His wife said, “Timothy!”

And Mary, knowing she had him, pressed on, “I got good friends here, people who can read and write, who knows all about you, Tim Toop (this was not true, she had never mentioned his name) friends who'd be glad to write and let the Governor in St. John's know about that watch of yours, know what kind of man took over Caleb Gosse's business.”

Leaning towards him, hands on hips, chin pointed, Mary waited, determined that this time he would answer her. Instead he took a step forward, hand raised as if he was about to strike her or push her off the wharf.

“I didn't budge,” Mary tells her great-granddaughter proudly, “if he'd laid a hand on me, bejesus I'da killed him!”

But he jerked away at the last minute, stalked over to the edge of the wharf and stood there, staring out to his beautiful ship.

“We should give Mr. Drew a little time to compose himself,” his wife said in her soft, well-bred voice. “Now, my dear, what is it you want? A way out of this place? Maybe passage back to England for you and your children—you do have children?”

Such an idea had not occurred to Mary. She thought about it. She probably could get passage back to England out of them, and maybe something more, enough for a little house perhaps? Go back to England? Where in England? With Ned's children? She tried to remember what England was like but could conjure up no picture of the place outside the workhouse, the graveyard and the street skirting it, could not imagine the shape of England's coastline, the colour of its sea or the smell of its air.

“You know, Rachel, I thought in them days I was well along—but I was still not forty. Young! Why me life wasn't even half over!” The old woman's voice is amazed, wistful.

“You sorry you never went, Nan?” the girl stands and stretches, she has been writing for hours.

“I can't say even now, maybe I shoulda. Tim Toop was well able to do it—passage to England woulda been nothin' to him—he'd of tucked we crowd in among salt cod on one of his ships. I'd have gotten money out of him, too. He was rich as God even then and got a lot richer before he died—the old bugger.”

But Mary had barely considered the idea. What would she do in England? What would Henry, George and Alfred, half savage and not able to read more than their own names, do? They'd all have to start over again, as what? Gypsies? Pickpockets? Like her father, taking care of some rich man's sheep?

“That's what you two'd like, wouldn't ya? Me stowed safe away on t'other side of the ocean—sure he'd have me hove overboard half way across!” she pointed at Tim's back.

He turned around then, came over to his wife and, as charming as if he'd never thought of murder, told Mary to put her cards on the table. She did, and they bartered just as they had in the space under Gosse's cook rooms, snapping at each other like two crackies, measuring each other's strength, spitting out insults. Tim's careful grammar slipped and his wife wandered off to gaze vacantly down the empty beach.

Mary enjoyed it, was sorry when it ended and they made their sober way up to the store.

As they walked in Mr. Matthews, the clerk, was speaking, coming to the end of his patience it seemed, “…the Cape is known to be dangerous, especially for the larger vessels Mr. Drew plans to purchase from now on. It's not practical to discharge and pick up cargo in every flea-bitten outport along the coast. And that's that!”

When he stopped speaking there was silence. No one objected or asked questions. No one moved, not even to look towards the door where Mary stood beside the new owner and his wife.

“A sheep-like bunch you fell in with,” Tim said out of the corner of his mouth. Mary had to agree, wishing that instead of looking down at their boots they would rush up and kick the young dandy's backside.

“They're not half so sheep-like as they looks—someday you might find that out!” she hissed, but did not dare turn to face him for fear he'd see the gleam of victory in her eyes and know she would have settled for less, far less, than he had agreed to.

Leaving his wife and Mary at the back of the room, Timothy Drew walked briskly to the front. Without a word of explanation to Matthews he brushed the young man aside, climbed up on the box and contradicted everything his clerk had said.

“We have decided to continue with Gosse's practice of dropping supplies at Cape Random and, of course, of picking up your fish here. If any of you men want berths to Labrador on Drew vessels you can give Mr. Matthews your name right now, and,” he glanced at Mary, “you will get a fair price from my firm for your fish.”

The clerk looked dumbfounded, the audience bewildered. There was a low murmur of whispered consultation, people smiled uncertainly. Then, hesitantly, the men went up one by one to Mr. Drew, muttering their thanks: “We appreciates it, sir, that we do,” they said, tugging at their caps.

Mrs. Drew walked to the front and whispered something in her husband's ear. He nodded and held up his hand, his stiff authority was all back. “Just remember one thing, you might be hearing the Drew name again—we got sons,” he smiled at his wife. “And one day you'll hear of them running for government. When that time comes I expect your loyalty—I expect you and your families to stand behind the Drews same as we stood behind you.”

Everyone nodded and smiled and there were even a few half embarrassed cheers as he got down from the box.

Before leaving the store, Mr. Matthews wrote out a paper for Mary. It stated that the Cape Random premises formerly belonging to Caleb Gosse now became hers and her heirs' forever, that Drew vessels would continue to call there for fish.

Down on the wharf the men came forward again to tip their caps and nod before the great man and his wife. “God be with ya, missis,” “We appreciates it,” and “We'll not forget what ya done, sir,” they said. Even Thomas Hutchings thanked them and gave a kind of bow to the woman. Jane and Rose clapped and some of the youngsters cheered. The Drews nodded and smiled.