That Forgetful Shore (31 page)

She may be able to charm the minister, but Aunt Rachel is still angry about her joining the Pentecosts, and poor Aunt Rachel never got over the Adventists. Not to mention, the Adventists are mad at Trif too, now. She still worships with them on a Saturday morning, because the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord your God and will be until long after Trif Russell is laid in the grave, but a few of her fellow believers have harsh words for her.

Aunt Hepsy Snow has been barely civil to Triffie since Trif started going over to the meetings in Clarke's Beach. “What is it now?” she sniffs, when Trif shows up at her door to ask what she can contribute to the sale of work. “Are you preaching a new religion or campaigning for votes for women this week? I never knows what it is with you.”

“Now, Aunt Hepsy, we may have our differences but that's no reason we can't pull together to do the Lord's work.” Trif explains about the sale.

“The Lord's work? How can you be working for the Lord when you're dabbling in Satan-worship?”

“Call it what you like, I know the Holy Spirit when it touches me,” Trif says. “But that's neither here nor there – I'm sure we can both agree that feeding the hungry and clothing the needy is God's work, can't we?”

“
And many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, did we not do many mighty works in your name
,” quotes Aunt Hepsy. “And what will the Lord say, Trif Russell? What will He say to those people?”

“
Depart from me, I never knew ye
,” Trif quotes back.

“Do you want him to say that to you on Judgement Day?”

“Of course not. Now, can you knit a few of your pairs of fancy mitts for the sale or what? Let's leave God and the Devil out of it altogether and say we're doing the right thing for our neighbours in need.”

Aunt Hepsy she can at least respect, knowing the older woman speaks out of sincere, if misguided, conviction. It's a different matter with a woman like Clara Snow, who has always been petty-minded. She considers skipping over Clara's house in her canvas of the Point, but she's never been one to take the easy way out. She brings Katie and Billy along as a sort of bodyguard when she goes over to the north side to face Clara in her den.

Katie Grace is doing a dialogue with Clara's daughter Lydia in the concert. As Triffie sits down at Clara's kitchen table and her children are absorbed into the noisy crew of Snows, she hears Katie's voice raised above the rest, ordering Lydia to practise lines with her. Above the din, Triffie explains her errand.

“You must have some time on your hands, Trif, to be going around stirring up the rest of us to do good works.” Clara hands her a cup of tea with such poor grace that some of it slops into the saucer. “Haven't you got enough to do with your husband and youngsters and three churches to run?”

Trif bites back a retort to the effect that there are worse places to go on a Saturday morning than to church. One of the worst-kept secrets on the Point is that Clara Snow goes out to Jabez Badcock's ramshackle house at the end of the Point on Saturdays when Obadiah Snow is gone cutting and hauling wood. Officially, she goes to clean for Jabez, “but the Mister been inside that place and he tells me there's precious little cleaning ever got done there,” Aunt Rachel once told Trif, with lowered tones and raised eyebrows.

Jabez is as much of an odd sock as ever. He lives alone, though there are always rumours about him and other men's wives, of whom Clara is only the latest. Triffie saw him once at the revival meetings; he was slain in the Spirit, spoke in tongues, and prophesied with great fervour, but never came back. Jabez fishes only when he pleases; he won't play the fiddle at dances or concerts but will sit for hours playing it on an empty stage head; he's drunk more often than he's sober. Triffie can't see the attraction, but for a woman like Clara, it's possible there's some romance to be found in a solitary, dangerous man like Jabez Badcock.

Clara's house is tidy, though noisy and crowded. She and Obe have six children. The baby currently squalling in the cot was born in April, nine months after the height of the fishing season; Obadiah Snow went down on the Labrador last summer, though Jabez Badcock did not.

Triffie does her best to ignore Clara's jibes and swallow her own dislike of the other woman long enough to get a commitment from Clara for a dozen crocheted doilies for the sale, which is also long enough for Lydia to get tired of practising the dialogue and Katie to stamp off in frustration. Prying Billy loose from the snarl of little boys in the yard, Triffie goes home, reasonably satisfied with the list of contributions she has managed to collect.

She puts in extra hours knitting and crocheting herself, on top of baking for Christmas, helping the children learn their lines for the pageant, and re-papering the kitchen and parlour. She is worn out by the night of the concert, but sits proudly to hear Billy recite a poem and Katie outshine the other girls in her dialogue. Then she slips out to the other room to set up tables for the sale, listening to the other concert pieces through the open doorway.

The performers are mostly schoolchildren, but near the end Char Mercer gets up to play the accordion and sing “The Boys from Newfoundland” – hardly a Christmas song, but everyone gives Char, with his wooden leg and his Papist Irish wife, a bit of leeway. He's well on his way to becoming as good a singer and storyteller as old Uncle Jed was, and he often sings about the War, though he talks about it only to tell funny stories. He never describes the horrors of battle, or speaks of the death of his two best friends.

The older students continue the patriotic theme by getting up to close the concert with “God Save the King,” and then parents crowd into the room to examine the items they and their neighbours have contributed to the sale. Trif, standing behind the table of fancywork, rejoices in one of her favourite sounds – the solid clink of coins falling into a money box, people contributing to a good cause thanks to her hard work.

When the crowd departs she's left to clean up. Reverend Spence thanks her as she hands him the heavy money box. As she sweeps the floor and packs the unsold goods in a box, she hears Jacob John and a few other men in the next room, putting back the desks that have been moved aside for the pageant.

She doesn't pay much attention to the men's conversation till she hears her own name. “You must have your work cut out for you keeping up with Trif,” says Fred Mercer. “She don't stop, do she? If she's not getting up a sale of work, sure she's starting up another church.”

Triffie hears, as Jacob John must, the implied rebuke in Fred's joke. Except for ministers, religion is pretty much seen as women's business in these parts, and it's certainly not unusual for a woman to be a churchgoer when her man is not, or to be more active in the Church than he is. A good husband is expected to keep his nose of out of his wife's religious business. But when it comes to her taking up with strange new sects or otherwise making a holy show of herself in public, well, a prudent man should keep a bit of a rein on his wife. Jacob John teases Triffie about her faith as he always has, but he makes no effort to change it.

“Nah, sure I don't bother her with that, she can get up to whatever old foolishness she wants,” Jacob John says now, confirming her expectations. “The Good Lord got His hands full keeping up with Trif; I don't suppose He needs my help.”

The other men laugh, but Obadiah Snow persists. “Even so, b'y, these Holy Rollers are a bit much. I heard the minister had to have a talk to your Triffie, and she still haven't stopped going over to Clarke's Beach for their meetings. She'll be raising up a crowd of them around here next, falling down on the floor and talking gibberish, saying it's the Holy Spirit. Sure you don't want the likes of that that going on in your house, do you?”

The men's rough laughter is quieter now, the challenge to Jacob John's authority no longer veiled. What would she do, Trif wonders, if he ordered her to stop going to the Pentecostal meetings? She believes on principle that St. Paul is right and she should be subject to her husband, but in point of fact she's rarely tested on this. She knows she is less than an ideal wife in so many ways. But she's never outright disobeyed him – probably because he gives so few orders.

Out in the classroom, a moment passes before Jacob John replies, and she feels the gathering tension, imagines the men looking at him for his answer. Finally he says, “Well, Obe b'y, here's how I looks at it. Some women, right, whenever they gets restless, you got to watch out for them. Woman gets restless enough, she's liable to be up to no good behind your back. But when Trif's gone out late at night, I knows she's only down on her knees prayin'. And if she gets restless, she just starts a new church. I 'lows I can live with that.”

This time there are not chuckles but guffaws. Trif knows she ought to feel sorry for Obadiah Snow – or even for Clara, for Jacob John has said one of the things that's never said aloud, charged Obe publicly with having a faithless wife. Who knows if Obe might be the kind of man to make Clara suffer in private for that public shame? But what Trif feels is a swell of pride, or maybe gratitude.

She puts away the broom and closes up the box, then turns to see she is not alone. Joe Bishop has entered the room. He must have been in the other room, hearing the men's conversation.

“Grand concert, sir,” she says.

“Katie's got your gift for recitations,” he says. “She's a clever girl, she's coming along fast. All the children did well, really,” he adds, then glances back over his shoulder to the men in the other room. “You've got a loyal husband there,” he says, “as well as clever children. You're a lucky woman, Trif Russell.”

“Well, thank you, sir,” she says, and follows him out. She wishes she could burn out of her mind forever the terrible things Kit said about Joe Bishop, those awful lies. She's admired this man her whole life and now she can't look at him across the aisle in church or stood up in front of his pupils without thinking of those dreadful slanders. She watches him with the children when she's at the school for a concert or any other reason and has never seen a thing to back up Kit's accusations – but then, if Kit's story were true, this business went on before under Trif's very nose and she saw nothing, suspected nothing. Now she is saddled with suspicions, but tells herself over and over that it must be only maliciousness on Kit's part. It can't be true.

The men have finished putting the schoolroom to rights and Jacob John has the children collected outside the door when Triffie comes out. Joe Bishop locks up the school and says goodnight, walking away in the other direction as Jacob John lifts a sleepy Billy into his arms.

“You did a fine job tonight, Katie Grace,” Trif says, taking her daughter's hand as they head back down toward the south side. She doesn't want to praise the girl up too much, to make her vain, but she knows what it's like to grow up without ever hearing a word of approval from anyone in your own house, knowing you're clever but never being told there's any value in that. She won't have that for Katie Grace.

As they walk home through the clear, cold night, Jacob John beside her, she ponders Joe Bishop's words.
You're a lucky woman, Trif Russell.

She is not accustomed to thinking of herself as a lucky woman. Kit got the charmed life, while Trif got the blighted one, cursed by poverty and ill-luck. Never to go to school or become a teacher, never to leave the Point, married to a man she never loved. Awkward as that relationship was in its early years, it certainly hasn't gotten any smoother since the night she threw in his face her knowledge that he'd once made love to Kit Saunders. Not that they've spoken of it again – that isn't Jacob John's way, and Trif has said all she ever wants to say on the subject. But the knowledge is there, between them, never more so than when they're alone in the bedroom.

Tonight, though, she thinks of Jacob John cutting down Obadiah Snow in her defense. As they turn onto the road that leads down to the south side and she sees the bay spread out before them, she tucks her free hand into the crook of Jacob John's arm. Katie holds her other hand, chattering away with excitement, while Billy is almost asleep draped over his father's shoulder.

Jacob John glances over at her with a half-smile and tightens his arm a little, squeezing her hand against his side. “Now, what's that for?” he says, under the rise and fall of Katie's voice and the rush of the waves.

“The road is icy; I don't want to slip,” Trif says.

“Fair enough, maid.”

Kit

Charlottetown, PEI
April, 1923

Dearest Kit,

How exotic it still seems, even after two years, to be addressing letters to you in Oxford! I am so thrilled that you are realizing your Dream despite any difficulties. I know, better than most, that Dreams fulfilled are not always what one expects them to be. When we were girls in college it hardly seemed possible to me that there could be a more Glamourous life than that of a Lady Reporter, working on a big City Newspaper, a single Woman forging her way in a Man's World.

But the truth is, Kit, it is damnably hard and lonely, and there are only so many society weddings one can report on. Even after crawling my way up out of the social notes to human-interest stories and interviews, I have had to face the harsh reality that I shall NEVER be given a job reporting the “serious” news of the day – and even more shocking, that I am no longer sure how badly I want it.

So, those Dreams fulfilled – to a degree – I have turned my thoughts to other Dreams, things I did not even realize I wanted till I began to pursue them. Thus I have two pieces of news for you, both of which will, I think, surprise: first, I am starting to write a Novel, and second, I am going to be married!…