That Forgetful Shore (6 page)

Kit remains Petruchio, does not break character, does not even listen to the voice that says
I could have done it so much better!
She is Petruchio; she will not disappoint Miss Shaw.

When the rehearsal ends, Kit goes into the cloakroom to put on her coat and hat when she hears the chatter of a group of girls just outside. “Ahh, I don't mind Shaw, she's not so bad,” one girl says. “I mean, she's a bitch, but she's a schoolmistress – it's 'er job to be a bitch. What I can't take is girls who act like they're better than anyone else, and you knows 'oo I mean, don't you?”

“Oh yes, prancin' around up there like she's God's gift to the theatre,” the other girl chimes in. It takes no effort at all to recognize the voice as belonging to Liza Butler, who plays Baptista. Only in that context does Kit realize the first girl who spoke was Nancy Ellis. She's rarely spoken to Nancy except during rehearsals, and the carefully cultivated stage voice Nancy uses for Kate bears little resemblance to her real Bonavista accent, which, like most of the girls' accents, sounds stronger when she's excited or upset.

“I wouldn't care so much if Shaw didn't make a teacher's pet out of her,” says another – that would be Grumio, a skinny redhead whose name Kit can't recall. “Not just in the play – she's just as bad in class, calling on her all the time, reading out her themes like she's – oh, I don't know what.”

“Like she's better than the rest of us,” Nancy says. Kit, long since dressed for the outside but now trapped in here, hears the other girls murmur agreement. “She wants to be taken down a peg or two, is what she wants – 'oo do she think she is? Miss Kitty Saunders from God-Knows-Where, a cut above the rest!”

The other girls laugh and Kit hears them getting ready to leave, going to collect their coats from the other cloakroom. She considers, just for a moment, sweeping out of the room before they go, head held high, fixing them all with a cutting glare, and then walking past them all as if she really is so much better than they are that their petty insults don't even touch her.

Inside, there's a Kit who can do that, who is just brazen enough to come out now. But she's lost access to that Kit, here in this place where her only ally is a teacher who is said to make a pet of her. After a year at Spencer she's not made one close friend. She was always the centre of a lively circle of girls back on the Point, though Trif was the only one she truly felt close to. Here she is a loner, and has made no effort to change that status.

If Trif was here, I could do it. I could brazen it out, I could face them all.
She hears the girls leave, waits till their voices fade, then steps out into the corridor.

But worse awaits. One girl is still there, kneeling down, packing her books in a satchel. It's blonde and pretty Alice Templeman, who plays Bianca – another girl Kit has barely spoken to in her time here. In Alice's case it's not dislike but sheer intimidation: she comes from a well-off St. John's family. What acquaintances Kit does have are girls from around the bay like herself, aspiring teachers who were the brightest and best in their little one-room, outport schools. While Kit's family connections make her one of the most well-off girls on the Point, she's well aware that the St. John's merchant families are a different class of people. She has no experience of girls like Alice, who make up the majority of students in her classes at Spencer. Knowing that Alice was out there, hearing the other girls discuss Kit, makes the whole experience infinitely worse. She can only hope Alice leaves quickly, without saying anything, without meeting her eyes.

“Miss Ellis used a rather coarse word beginning with a B.” Alice's clear voice has no trace of an accent that needs to be expunged. “I'd say it applies to her more than to anyone else, wouldn't you?”

Kit forces herself to meet the other girl's eyes as Alice straightens up and shoulders her satchel. Alice's small grin looks positively wicked in her pretty face. “Don't mind them,” she says. “You know there's always that kind of girl that has to put other girls down to make herself feel like someone. Nancy's that kind – I've seen it in her ever since she came in here. There's a few in every school.”

“I suppose so,” Kit says. “Thanks.”

Alice shrugs. She hasn't, after all, done anything much – she certainly didn't tell the other girls to shut up, defend Kit to their faces. But a little friendship offered on the sly is better than nothing at a time like this. “I don't have much time for people like that,” she explains.

“I knew there'd be all kinds in college,” Kit says, “but to tell the truth I was more worried about – well, girls like you. Townie girls. At home they always say the townies will look down on you.”

Alice smiles. “So we will. Some of my friends are awful, the way they talk about the bay girls – making fun of their clothes, their accents, the things they didn't learn in school. But the bay girls are worse to each other, especially if they think anyone's getting above herself. Like lobsters – you know?”

“Lobsters?”

“They say if you're cooking a lot of lobsters in a pot, you know, boiling them alive –” Alice wrinkles her pretty nose at the idea. “– if one tries to escape, the others will pull them back down into the pot. I don't know if it's true, but you see it all the time with people. Can't let anyone rise too high, you know.”

Kit goes home that night and writes to Trif about the lobster pot, and the girls' cloakroom, the nastiness of Nancy Ellis and the unexpected kindness of Alice Templeman. It would all be more bearable if she and Trif could face this together, but in the absence of her Posy she forges a sort of friendship with Alice and some of her townie friends. It makes Nancy more poisonous than ever, to see Kit walking to and from class with the St. John's girls who have been at Spencer since they were learning their alphabet. But even if few of the girls have the qualities Kit would like to see in a true friend, sitting or walking with them is like having a bodyguard – no-one dares touch her when she's in their midst.

Still, it's only when lost in a book or onstage, playing Petruchio, that she loses all self-consciousness and really loves college life. It can't be denied that the rivalry between herself and Nancy adds fire to Kate's and Petruchio's scenes: they are able to snap at each other with genuine dislike, though their eventual reconciliation and romance is less convincing. But on the night of the performance they come out together to take their bow and clasp hands as if they really were lovers, united for that one moment in the glory of performance.

It's a pity
, Kit writes to Triffie the next day,
that going on stage is considered neither a Respectable, nor a Practical Occupation for a young woman. For if I had my wishes, I think that is exactly the career I should Pursue! What would my mother make of that, do you think?

Triffie

THREE OF THEM go off to school in the mornings now. Ruth leads the way, her plaits so tight they almost stick straight out from her head, her pinafore always clean and starched. Will slouches along behind until he catches up to Isaac French or another of his friends; he seems more reconciled to school this year and rarely sleepwalks, though it's clear he'll never make a scholar. A little behind them walks Trif. Miss Bradbury, they call her once they are all inside the schoolroom, even her cousins. Back in the spring when she first started helping at the school she was in Parsons' Mercantile one day when she heard Annie Barbour say to her sister Clara, “Do I got to call Triffie Miss Bradbury now she's a teacher?”

“That one! She put on enough airs before she was a teacher; she won't be fit to live with now,” Clara replied. “Too good to walk on the same ground with the rest of us.” Trif was standing only a few feet away, the other side of a stack of barrels, and the Mercantile isn't a big shop. Clara knew she was there, meant for her to hear. Clara never liked Trif and Kit in their schooldays, but her insult has no sting for Trif. All she hears out of that is “now she's a teacher.” She walks to the school each morning like a prisoner on the day of her release, leaving behind laundry and scrubbing, garden and house, Aunt Rachel and Betty.

In the schoolroom a different kind of chaos waits to be made into order. Boys and girls tumble through the doors, stumble over each other. Small quarrels flare and die down as children hang up their jackets and press onto the benches. Trif moves among them with authority, silencing them, straightening away books and boots to make the aisles and desktops clear. Then she sits on a chair by the stove, which is already throwing out a nice bit of warmth since Joe Bishop got here early to build it up. He takes his place behind the desk at the front of the room and the children, magically transformed from a pack of wild puppies to erect, dignified schoolchildren, rise to sing “God Save the King.”

Mr. Bishop has a fine voice for leading the anthem, and Triffie joins in with enthusiasm. She remembers the day when she was ten years old, when Queen Victoria died and they had to switch from singing “Save the Queen” to “Save the King.” Mr. Bishop said he had been born in the reign of Victoria and so had his father; they had never known anything but “God Save the Queen” and it truly was the end of an era. The next day he brought in a picture from
The Illustrated London News
to show them the new King, King Edward. He told them how King Edward had been called Prince Bertie when he was just a prince, and even though he was a middle-aged man now with grown children of his own he was still considered a bit scandalous for his wild ways, but he was their king now and they all must pray for him as they had done for his good mother, God rest her soul. Now it's been “God Save the King” for four years and there are children in the schoolroom who have never sung “God Save the Queen” in their lives.

When the lessons start it's the usual thing, the older ones helping the younger, but with Triffie here to take the very littlest ones through their alphabet and First Reader, Mr. Bishop has a little more time to spare for the older ones. He teaches a Geography lesson to the oldest group, while the children in the Third and Fourth Readers are reading. Triffie gathers the smallest ones, those who are six and seven years old, on the bench nearest the stove. Some of their feet don't touch the floor yet; many of them only know the alphabet and a few simple words. She reads them a story from the First Reader and writes some of the words on her slate for them to copy down.

Charlie Mercer shoves Isaac French off the bench, hoping to get in trouble and get sent outside so he won't have to write. Triffie goes to sit between the two boys, settles Isaac to his copying and then opens up the Primer for Charlie. It's a hopeless task. “The fat cat sat on the mat” means nothing to him when he sees it on the page, much less: “Lo! I am on my ox.” He laughs at “an ox, a box and a fox,” but can't see the difference between the
f
and the
b
. He has learned to recite the alphabet from memory but can't recognize most of the letters: he sees no connection between the shape of
b
and the sound at the beginning of “box.” Will and Isaac, who are at the end of the Primer, have to copy out sentences like “Jack is on the deck of a ship,” and “I wish I had to go on a ship.” Charlie, hearing these sentences spoken aloud, gives a wistful sigh.

Charlie is seven now and Triffie has her doubts about him. His mother already has one poor silly boy at home, Edward, who can't learn at all – not letters or anything else. He can't even go out in boat for fear he'll fall in the water. His brothers Fred and Harry both left school when they were ten to go out fishing; Alf, the next oldest Mercer boy, will leave this year. But at least they all got as far as the Second Reader. Poor Charlie's not simple the way Edward is, but Triffie's not sure he'll ever master the Primer.

On the other end of the bench, in every sense, is Matthew White. He has every advantage, of course, being the minister's son, books all around and both his parents being educated people: Mrs. White was a teacher in St. John's before she was married. But Trif knows well enough all that background doesn't guarantee a bright child; Matthew's older brother and sister are capable enough, but nothing special. Matthew is six, a year younger than Charlie, Will and Isaac, but he's already through the first Royal Reader and into the second. He's bored when the other children his age go through the Primer or hear simple stories, but if he's put with the older children, then Ki Barbour and Wilf Dawe and some of the other big boys tease him. This morning, while she works through the simple words with the others, Triffie gives Matthew “The Wreck of the Hesperus” to memorize, to say up front on Friday afternoon when Mr. Bishop always has recitations.

“I do not know what I would do without you, Triffie,” Mr. Bishop says at dinnertime when the noisy flood of children has poured from the room.

“You'd do what you did before, Sir,” Triffie says. “You always did well enough by our crowd, even though you had no-one helping you then.”

“Ah, yes, but it's so much easier now. You're a gift from God, is what you are, Triffie. And you have a gift for it, a way with the little ones, there's no doubt of that. It's a shame –”

But Triffie doesn't want to talk about what's a shame. “I'm glad to be here,” she says, cutting him off, “and Uncle Albert and Aunt Rachel don't mind so long as I'm bringing in a little money. It's a grand help to them.” Like most fishermen, her uncle sees little cash money from one season to the next, except in spring when he goes to the ice. Trif's pay packet is a boon to the household: she keeps none of the money but Aunt Rachel expects her to do less around the house, in honour of her status as a working woman.

“After dinner, the third and fourth book will be doing History,” Mr. Bishop says, “and the older ones have some Mathematics to work on. They'll all be busy for awhile. Why not let me have a try with Charlie while you teach the other little ones their sums?”