That Forgetful Shore (10 page)

“I don't know why you thinks I'd care about the likes of you and your house,” Triffie says, and goes up the walk to the front bridge, careful not to give a backward glance.

She knows the house. It's a fine sturdy old house, built by Jacob John's grandfather fifty years ago. It sits on the south side of the Point, right at the head of the Long Beach, looking out over the beach and the bay at Bareneed across the water.

Trif walks into her uncle and aunt's house, this house where she will never be more than the unpaid help, the poor relation.
I got me own house
. She tries not to dwell on Jacob John's words, for what good can come of it?

A house of one's own, even the promise of one, is not enough. She sets her face against Jacob John and his patient efforts at courting.
In my Father's house are many mansions
, she recites to herself as she goes about the round of her daily work, digging up the potatoes and turnips she weeded all summer, preparing for winter.
I go to prepare a place for you, and if I go, I will come again and receive you unto Myself
. The end times are coming, and it's no time to be thinking of marrying or giving in marriage, even if she were so inclined. She tells the minister she wants to be baptized when the meetings are finished. If she has to trust someone to help her escape her life on the Point, it's going to be Jesus, not Jacob John Russell.

Kit

Elliston
October, 1907

My Darling Posy,

How strange your letter seems to me! As strange as those books and charts of prophecy that you write of, as if it comes from another land or another time. I know you have always felt closer to the Throne of God than I could do, but to imagine you being entranced by these Strange Doctrines, being – I want to write “Taken In” but it is impossible to me, dearest Posy, that a mind as clear and sharp as yours could be ever
Taken
 
In
by any charlatan or deceiver.

You are right, of course, there is a great gulf fixed between us if you truly believe the end of all things is near, while I think that the world will go on
much
 
as
 
it
 
always
 
has
. And yet, forever and ever, world without end you will always be my dearest friend and companion, nothing shall change that. Change everything, dear one, but not
your
 
love
 
for
 
me
!

I suppose I ought to write about my own new
Voyage
 
of
 
Discovery
, here in Elliston. The school here is not bursting at the seams like ours at home, but has upwards of forty students on the books, of whom about twenty-five attend on a regular basis, with the others coming and going more or less as they please. There is the usual mixture of bright children, dullards and all in between. I have one boy preparing to write Standard Six examinations, the oldest boy left in school once all his fellows have gone fishing. His father, who is Captain of a Schooner with one older boy already gone to college, has great hopes of sending the lad to school in St. John's, but it will take a
deal
 
of
 
work
to get him ready to occupy such a place.

I am busy from dawn till long past dusk, sitting up in my boardinghouse room muffled in blankets and gloves making plans for my classes. Yet the greatest
burden
comes not from the teaching itself, but from all the things the community expects of its Teacher. I promise, I had not considered how heavy my duties might be…

It's ironic, Kit thinks, that just as Triffie plunges ever deeper into the mysteries of holiness, Kit, who barely knows what she believes, finds herself expected to be a pillar in the Church. It's not enough that she teaches the children five days a week at school; she is expected to be the girls' Sunday School teacher as well. It is assumed that she will take an active role in the Church of England Women's Association: the minister's wife runs it, but latches onto Kit and enlists her help.

Mrs. Chaulk, her landlady, has expectations of the new teacher as well. Kit pays for room and board out of her wages, but has been told that the greatly reduced rate assumes she will take her turn at cooking and cleaning. As Mrs. Chaulk cannot read or write, Kit also reads her letters and writes the replies Mrs. Chaulk dictates. She reads three chapters of the Bible aloud for her landlady before bed: “yourself being an educated girl and all.”

Kit does everything she's asked. What would it mean, if the teacher put her foot down and refused to teach Sunday School, or help plan church women's meetings? Or, for that matter, if she refused to cook and scrub and read the Psalms to her landlady? She is determined to give no-one in Elliston any cause for complaint: she will be a model teacher, a paragon. When she is gone from here, they will shake their heads and say, “We never had a teacher so good as Miss Saunders, not before nor since.”

She rises before dawn to go down and light the kitchen fire and cook porridge for her own breakfast and Mrs. Chaulk's, then packs herself a lunch so she can stay at school and work through dinnertime. She opens up the school an hour before the children come, and sometimes starts the stove herself, if the big boys don't come early with wood.

Then the dizzying reality of the school day sweeps over her, balancing the various classes and subjects, trying to give enough time to everyone while keeping order at the same time. Despite the anger that surges inside her whenever she thinks of Joe Bishop or recalls his name, she can't help calling on him as an example. His work is more relevant than that of Miss Shaw or any of her other Spencer teachers, who had the luxury of teaching a single subject at a time to groups of eager scholars.

Winter closes in. The ground turns to stone beneath her boots. Kit rises in the dark in order to get to school, to have the stove going early enough to drive the chill from the room.

One morning she climbs the hill leading up to the school and sees a tall figure leaning against the schoolhouse wall. She hesitates. She is a woman alone on a dark road. Would anyone dare lay a hand on the school teacher?

The figure steps forward: a man, tall and broad shouldered, carrying an armload of wood.

“I'd take off my cap, but my hands are full,” he apologizes, “and I can't hold the door open for you neither.” He speaks with a Bonavista Bay accent but his speech is careful, as if he's used to choosing words to impress people far from here. “Father told me the new schoolteacher was a woman so I thought you might want a hand laying the fire,” he adds, following her into the schoolroom.

Inside, she lights a lamp while the stranger carries his load of wood to the stove. Crouched in front of the stove door, he doesn't speak again till he has a flame going.

“I'm Ben Porter, by the way,” he says. “Harry and Maud's boy.”

“Oh, of course,” Kit says. If it weren't so early, if he hadn't startled her by appearing in the dark like that, she would surely have had the wits to guess. She knows Harold and Maud Porter's eldest son is their pride and joy, the boy who went through school in St. John's and then on to university up in Nova Scotia, studying to be a lawyer or doctor or something grand. For a man like Harold Porter, skipper of a fishing boat, this is a lofty height for his son to soar to. Captain Porter's second son, Lije, has no inclination for further schooling and is already a crewman on the
Clyde
, but Harold Porter has told Kit he hopes the younger boy, Sam, will follow in Ben's footsteps. Sam is Kit's senior student this year, the boy struggling his way through the Third Reader while sailing through his Mathematics.

“You're home for Christmas, I suppose,” she says to Ben Porter.

“Yes. And you'll be leaving us soon, going home for Christmas yourself, no doubt.” He gets up and moves away from the stove, closing the door, and crosses the floor to stand by her desk. He is very tall, one of the few men Kit has stood beside who makes her feel small. Lamplight mingles with the first gray light of morning leaking through the windows, light enough to see the clean strong lines of Ben Porter's cheekbones and jaw, his large nose, his full, warm mouth. He lifts his cap. “Pleased to make your acquaintance while you're still here, Miss Saunders.”

“I – thank you. Yes, I'll be here for another fortnight, till we finish up lessons and have the Christmas pageant, and then I'll go back to Missing Point for Christmas and New Year's.”

“That's a shame,” he says, then smiles. “I mean, it's a shame for me. You'll be glad to get back to your people for the holidays.”

Kit can think of nothing witty or charming to say, although he has charm enough for the both of them. “I think that fire will do fine,” Ben says. “I 'low some of the boys will be up here soon with more wood – that's what we used to do in my day.”

“In your day!?” she echoes. “You sound like your schooldays were fifty years ago.” It's a relief to laugh, though she's sure it comes out as a nervous titter.

What does Kit Saunders know of men like Ben Porter, outside of books? He might as well be Mr. Darcy or Mr. Knightley for all the experience she has of a flesh-and-blood man, tall and handsome, a fisherman's son gone away to university. All Kit knows of men is – well, there's Joe Bishop.
Infatuation
, she calls that now – infatuation on her part; something else on his. Something she has no name for. Then there was Jacob John Russell: her word for that is
dalliance
. A brief dalliance, quickly ended. Now she needs a new word:
romance
, perhaps?

Even her words come from novels; that's all she knows. She went from an outport schoolroom to an all-girls college and now to another outport schoolroom where she plays a different role: different, but equally chaste.

The next three mornings he's there before she is, each time with a load of wood, waiting for her to open the door. His parents' house is on the opposite end of the road from her boarding house, so there's no passing each other on the way. He gets to the school, builds up the fire, and leaves before the first children arrive. She doesn't even see him in full daylight till church on Sunday.

After church, he lingers to ask if he can walk her home. She asks about university, about the things he studies – he is getting a degree in History with the intention of going on to law school – and the people in his classes. She asks where the other young men come from, what kind of people they are.

“It's not all men, you know. There's a good few girls there, getting their B.A. degrees. A couple of years ago there was even a woman from Newfoundland.”

“From St. John's, no doubt,” she says. Who but a wealthy St. John's merchant would send a daughter to university?

“You should go,” he says. “I know what you're like, you've got a good mind. You'd fit right in up there.”

“You know what I'm like? And how do you know that? You've only met me three times, and every time to build up the fire in my woodstove.” The words, spoken in as light and flirtatious a tone as she possesses, suddenly sound suggestive, as if she were hinting at something improper. Or perhaps it's just his answering smile, the dimple in his right cheek, that makes her think so.

“I hear things,” he says. “I hear talk about the new schoolteacher, how smart she is, the grand fine books she reads to the youngsters.” Kit imagines the younger children, Sam, Tillie and Rachel prattling about school, telling tales about Teacher. She imagines Ben drawing the children out with questions, glancing away as he does so, trying not to seem too interested. Kit feels a blush creeping from her collar up to the brim of her hat, which she dips to hide her face.

Apart from filling the woodstove and walking home from church, the social life of Elliston offers few opportunities for courting. Young couples walk back and forth on the road on warmer evenings, but with winter closed in there's little of that, and Kit wonders if it's considered proper for the schoolteacher to engage in such mating rituals, anyway. In lieu of more romantic activities, Ben volunteers to help with the Christmas concert. He comes to the school in the afternoon as Kit rehearses with the students and helps keep them in line while they wait to go on with their songs and recitations. He hangs a piece of canvas and paints a backdrop, and builds a passable manger.

After the triumph of the concert, Kit packs her bags for home. Two weeks ago she could not have imagined being reluctant to leave Elliston for the holidays. Whatever mixed feelings she has about people back in Missing Point – her parents, Jacob John, Joe Bishop, even Triffie in a way – it is her home, the place her roots are planted. She will never live there again, but she'll always go back there – and Triffie, whatever strange new religion she's embraced, is still her second self, her other half. What could Elliston offer to compete with that?

Ben takes her bag down to the wharf and sees her off on the
Ethie
. “I'll be gone to Nova Scotia when you get back.”

“Yes, and if you come home for the summer, I'll be getting ready to go home again,” she says.

“Ships passing in the night. I'll be sure to have my flags out when you pass by, though.”

“You could write me,” she suggests.

“I'm no great letter-writer,” he admits. “But I may send the odd postal.”

“You do that, then,” says Kit. “The odd postal. The odder the better. I'll look for it.”

Triffie

Missing Point
January, 1908

My Dear Peony,

Just a postal to send on the
Ethie
when she sails tomorrow – long letter to follow. How short a time you were here, yet how great a gap your Absence leaves. New friends may come and go but none fills the Void left by an Old, True Friend who is Far Away. I sit at my little table tonight and wish I could cross the water and be with you. And if I caught a glimpse of a certain Mr. Darcy, that would at least satisfy my curiosity!