That Forgetful Shore (41 page)

He grabs her wrists, pulls her arms out from under her so she is lying on top of him, her face inches from his. “That is how I will remember you,” he says. “The proper English schoolmistress I loved, and will love always, as long as I live. How will you remember me?”

A sudden knot in her throat makes it hard to speak. After a moment Kit says, “I will remember you as my foolish Pole who was in too much of a hurry to die.”

“Will you write to me?”

“Of course, if you write to me first. I won't know your address otherwise.” She thinks of something, one thing she hasn't said yet. “If things in Poland are – if it's not safe for you there. If you have to leave again – where will you go? Back here to England?”

“No, I don't think I would be allowed back to England. I might go to Russia, but I don't trust Comrade Stalin. Apart from all his other virtues, he hates Jews.”

“Come to me. To Newfoundland. If you have to leave – please, promise me you'll come.”

He reaches up to trace the line of her cheekbone with his fingertip. “If I am driven away by danger or desperation – it will drive me to you.”

“I'll be your last resort, then.” And because he said it, but she didn't, she finally adds, “I love you, Leo.”

He leaves the next day, and Kit finishes up her school year, prepares for her move back to Newfoundland, trying not to wait for a letter from him. She doesn't receive one until September, when she is settled back in her old house on Gower Street in St. John's.

Lodz, Poland
September, 1931

My dear one,

How strange it is to think of you, a university Professor, a model of English Propriety, and I, the humblest and lowest of all, working in a factory, longing for you yet knowing our lives are like two lines parallel, never to meet.

My own new life is not the tragedy you imagine, though I have been obliged to take a humble position, but I think this is best for me. In Manchester, I often thought, those of us who were true believers in the Cause were hampered by being intellectuals, far removed from the real life of the workers. Here I am a worker as well as a member of the Party, and I feel I have a calling. As you have yours – only the fact that our callings keep us far apart, gives me a little pain just above my heart in the evenings when I sit alone and smoke, and remember you.

Your beloved,
Leo

Kit settles quickly into her new life, which feels like such a natural progression from her old life that sometimes she wonders if the ten years in England ever happened. But of course they did; those years have given her not just further book-knowledge but experience and confidence. Confidence enough to stand before a class of college students, young men and women so very different from her posh English schoolgirls with their light chattering voices. Here she hears everywhere the accents she grew up with, the slow drawl of Conception Bay North, the hasty lilt of St. John's, the dropped aitches of Bonavista and Trinity Bays.

Her new students are a shabby lot compared to the girls she left behind in London. Some of them, to be sure, come from good St. John's families, but many come from the outports, and while many are seventeen or eighteen, some are older, already with some work experience – usually teaching – eager to come back and get further qualifications.

Memorial University College is certainly no Somerville, no Oxford. The whole college, which offers two years of schooling in a handful of subjects, is a squat unlovely building at the top of Parade Street, sitting on grounds that are equally unimpressive. Groups of unemployed men forced to work for their dole are brought in to landscape and beautify the grounds, but they have precious little to work with.

There are no dormitories, not even a dining hall; students arrive in the morning for classes, go home for their dinners, and come back for the afternoon. The place is deserted by teatime. Yet for all the bareness of the college, there's a sense of energy and purpose here. It's different from the energy and purpose of a venerable institution like Oxford; here the excitement is not in being part of an ancient tradition but, as Dr. Paton said in his letter, of making all things new, creating an oasis of learning in what is, far too often, a desert of ignorance.

Kit is not idealistic about her home country. She wasn't sure she wanted to return, and even now that she's here, caught up in the venture of launching the college, she is not sure she can spend the rest of her life here. The Depression has hit Newfoundland hard; things are bleaker here even than she remembers them being in London. The price of fish has plummeted; men are unemployed all over the city; nobody trusts the debt- and scandal-ridden Squires government. As conditions grow worse throughout her first year at Memorial, Kit feels more and more that the college really is an oasis, not of prosperity, but of hope in a colony that is becoming increasingly hopeless.

In the spring she writes to Leo at the address from which his last letter came:

St. John's, Newfoundland
April, 1932

Yesterday there was a riot here – a real riot, demonstrations turning to violence and the Prime Minister driven out of the Colonial Building – such an uprising as I never saw in England even during the General Strike. I did not join the protestors, but saw the crowd in the street as I hurried home. The air was electric, as if it might ignite any minute, and based on the reports I heard of what happened after I was tucked safely behind my barred door, it did ignite indeed.

Do you know what my thought was? If only Leo were here, how he would love this! I know how Revolution stirs your heart, and the thought that you might be present, light the match that ignites the powder, when a real Uprising comes.

It has not come here. The crowd rioted and broke windows and looted the shops, but today the sun has risen and there is no blood flowing in the streets. There will be – must be – changes in the Government after this, but not, I think, the kind of Radical ones you would applaud. We are, after all, still very English at heart …

Still, I wish you were here, and not only because you would enjoy a good riot!

Her first year at Memorial ends and, with no summer plans and nowhere she wants to be for vacation, Kit accepts the offer to teach during the summer session held for teachers who want to upgrade their education. She goes with a colleague for a few days to Torbay at the end of that term, and then another school year begins.

In her first class on the first day of the new year, Kit sees the name Katherine Russell on the roll and looks at the assembled group of scholars. She spots her at once, or thinks she does – a girl with dark hair and firm brows who reminds her of Triffie. But when she calls the roll, that girl answers to another name, and the young woman who says “Present” to the name Katherine Russell is a strawberry blonde with Trif's dark eyes and quick smile. She has forgotten how much Katie, as a child, took after her father.

It's a strange thing, to know this girl is her namesake. It had been one of their girlhood vows – we'll name our first daughters after each other – and Trif had obligingly complied. Kit was by her side, holding Trif's hand, closer than Jacob John or Trif's Aunt Rachel, when this girl was born. And yet she is a stranger, a name on a class list. Kit has not seen Katie Grace since the child was six years old, and here she is now, a woman of nineteen with teaching experience, beginning her two-year Arts course, paid for no doubt by the savings from her teaching and a hard-won scholarship.

It's not until the third day of classes, when the routine is well established and the students are beginning to know one another, that she sees Miss Russell break from a small knot of friends at the end of class and come towards her desk.

“Mrs. Porter.” The younger woman puts out a graceful hand to shake. “I'm Katherine Russell – you know my parents, Triffie and Jacob John Russell?”

Kit takes her hand. The girl has little of Trif in her, except for her height and a certain confidence in how she carries herself. “Of course,” Kit says. “Your mother and I were great friends when we were girls. I'm afraid we've rather lost touch – I hope she is well? And your father?”

It occurs to her as she speaks that they might not be well, that somehow, in the scattered news she gets from home, that someone might have missed telling her of Trif's illness or death, assuming she would already know. It seems condescending, but also true, to say that life is hard and short in a place like Missing Point. This realization makes the conventional words turn sour in her mouth and an unexpected lump rise in her throat.

But Katherine Russell says, “They're quite well, thank you. I remember my mother telling me I was named for you.”

“Yes, you were,” Kit admits, “and it looks as though your parents have every reason to be proud of you. You've been teaching for the past few years, have you?”

“Yes, in Spaniard's Bay,” the girl says. It seems natural to fall into step beside her, to walk together to the women's cloakroom and sit for a few moments catching up on news of home and her family.

It's a pleasant talk, though bittersweet for Kit. Katherine says nothing about any rift in Kit's old friendship with her mother; the girl seems to assume that they grew apart naturally and lost touch when Kit went to England. Kit keeps the conversation light, but she feels like a hungry beggar snatching at scraps as she picks through Katherine's words for anything that will give her a picture of Trif, of her life now or what kind of woman she has turned out to be.

They spend a pleasant half-hour together before each has to go to another appointment. Kit imagines that after that there will be a special relationship between them, that she might become a mentor to the girl. But Katie Grace Russell – she is “Katherine” or “Miss Russell” in formal settings, but Kit overhears friends calling her “Katie” – does not seem particularly to need a mentor. She is an excellent, hard-working student, pleasant in class, active in the Glee Club and on the women's ice hockey team, a leader among her classmates. She is always cheerful and courteous to Kit, occasionally stops by her desk to give her some small piece of news “from home,” as Katie calls it. She assumes Kit will be interested in the news that Aunt Nellie French has passed away, or that Lydia Snow is marrying Walt Mercer – and she takes the requisite moment to explain whose daughter Lydia is, who Walt's parents are, to put the puzzle pieces in place for Kit. Beyond that, though, they have little personal conversation, and Kit wonders at her desire to play a part in the girl's life.

By the end of the first term she's used to Katie's presence; she thinks of the girl more as one of her students than as Triffie's daughter. So it's something of a shock one day when Kit leaves class, walks through the cloakroom, and sees Katie, just ahead, pick up her pace and hurry towards an older woman sitting on a bench. The woman stands, Katie embraces her and says, “Mother!” and then, “Mrs. Porter! My mother's here!”

Reaching out a hand, forgetting propriety for once, Katie grabs Kit's hand and pulls her toward Trif. Amid the bustle of the girls coming and going to and from class, Kit and Trif stand face to face for the first time in over a decade.

Kit does a quick appraisal: Trif looks much as she always has. Her hair has far less gray in it than Kit's own, but her face is more weathered and lined. She's grown a little stouter too: not fat, you wouldn't say, but curved and softened, as you might expect of a woman who's borne three children. Her gaze is as direct as always, and she doesn't smile as she puts out a hand to shake Kit's.

Katie steps back, falters a little. It's clear she expected a more joyful, less awkward reunion between her mother and her professor. For a moment Kit and Trif don't say anything at all, only eye each other, half greedily and half warily. Kit thinks of various phrases “….Good to see you …” “…You're looking well…” but it's Trif who breaks the silence, and as usual, she wastes no time on clichéd pleasantries.

“I nearly didn't come,” Trif says. “I been thinking about it ever since Katie told me you was here, but I put it off. But we're in your debt, even if Katie doesn't know it. I couldn't put my mind to rest till I'd said thank you.”

Triffie

THERE. IT'S OUT. She's said her piece. Trif prides herself on being a person who speaks the truth without fear – indeed, she's built something of a reputation on that. But speaking this truth, coming to say thank you to the friend she hasn't spoken to in more than ten years, makes her heart hammer and her mouth dry.

Kit, who hasn't said a word since she shook Trif's hand, now says, “You should know it was my pleasure to do it. But perhaps you want to tell Katie what we're talking about?”

Her voice sounds different, more layers of culture and education added on top of what she already had, like a room that's had wallpaper put on it so many times no-one could guess what the boards underneath looked like.

They both glance over at Katie, and Trif doesn't even try to quell the rush of pride she feels when she looks at her girl here in the college, looking like she was born to it. Trif herself may feel backward and old and dowdy next to Kit, but she has nothing to be ashamed of in Katie.

“I wanted to tell her long ago – I knew it was you – but I wanted to be sure it was all right with you. They told us it was anonymous.”

“Only because it was – awkward. You know. After all these years.”

They both begin, then, stumbling over each other's words, to tell Katie that it was Kit Porter who paid her school fees at Spencer, who made it possible for her to become a teacher and eventually come here, to college. Of course Katie earned her college money and her scholarship, but she would never have gotten this far without Kit, and Trif intends for her to know it.