A Sudden Sun Read online

  By the time the sky lightened to a dull grey, men had returned to the park. Exhausted, soot-stained, coughing men, telling tales of houses gutted, families homeless, wharves and shops and even the churches that were thought to be invincible, gutted by flames. There was still a glow in the sky; smoke was rising, though the weary, dirty men said the fire was no longer spreading. Only the buildings that had already been devastated smoldered like kitchen stoves banked for the night.

  Then, out of the grey mist her father appeared, tall and bearded, his suit jacket gone and shirtsleeves rolled up. His face was nearly black with soot. He put out his arms and Lily stumbled into them. “Papa!” she sobbed. “You’re alive, thank God! We were praying—”

  With the words came the thought that they were not precisely true—she had been worrying about her father and had remembered that she ought to pray, but had been too caught up in the troubles of the moment, even in the long watches of the night, to form the words of a prayer. Her father’s shirt smelled even more strongly of smoke than the air around them did. “The building, Papa? The press? Did you save it?”

  “It’s gone, Lily, all gone.” His voice broke on the second “gone” and she thought he might be crying—she had never seen her father cry—but then he coughed. “The press is gone, everything,” he repeated, as if he had to say it over and over to make himself believe.

  She didn’t ask if he had been to see their house yet. She wasn’t ready to know.

  She was hungry; her limbs were stiff and sore. And she longed to use a privy, but she didn’t know where to find one and how could she even ask? Surely her mother, too, must be desperate to relieve herself, but in such a scene, how could one delicately find a place? It was impossible to even think about, and at the moment it seemed more pressing than finding food or bed or a roof over their heads.

  When she led her father back to their picnic spot, her mother was talking to another woman, looking more animated than she had all day and night. “Lily, love, you’ve met Mrs. Ohman, of course,” she said, and with the introduction out of the way she turned to her husband’s arms.

  Lily was left with Mrs. Ohman, whom she had not met, though she had heard her speak once at a meeting of the Women’s Missionary Society. She was a neat, trim little woman fond of feathers, beading, and embroidery on her clothing, and she looked tidy and pretty even after spending all night in the park. Wisps of hair escaped from under her hat, and her skirt was stained with grass and dirt, but she still carried herself as if she were Queen Victoria. Lily was almost breathless, for she admired Mrs. Ohman very much. She was a leader in the Women’s Christian Temperance Union and the editor of the Water Lily, a lady’s paper that Lily devoured as soon as it went on sale every month. “I—I’m so very pleased—I’ve wanted to say how much I…”

  “Yes, of course, thank you, dear. You’ll be wondering about breakfast and the other necessities. Well, there are no privies yet, of course, but some men have dug latrines down there by the trees and we have people watching them to make sure ladies are given a little privacy—as much as is possible. We’ve set up some tables with porridge and bread and tea—not very much, among so many people, but we’ll get better organized as the day goes on. Come with me now, Lily. You can find a latrine and then I’ll get you some water to wash up and you can help some of the girls serve tea and bread. We need to make sure it’s distributed fairly, you know, so it doesn’t all go to those who are strong enough to push to the front of the lines.”

  Mrs. Ohman was a whirlwind, and Lily was carried along, happy to bob in her wake now that Papa was here to take care of Mother.

  Mrs. Ohman stationed Lily behind a long table—a sheet of board lying over a line of sawhorses—and put a ladle in her hand. Several large iron pots filled with porridge were placed on the table as volunteers organized a mass of people into lines. As they reached the table each person thrust out a bowl, or a plate, or a cup—whatever they had managed to salvage from home or borrow from a neighbour—to be filled. Every few minutes someone brought another pot, swaddled in towels, to replace an empty one. Most of the people proffering empty bowls were poor, but Lily saw some better-dressed folk among them. She was glad to have work to do, but the ache in her stomach reminded her that she hadn’t yet had anything to eat. Sally came to the table with an assortment of the crockery they’d used for last night’s picnic, wiped out rather than washed, and Lily filled bowls to bring back to her parents.

  “Where is the food coming from?” Lily asked the girl next to her, as someone brought a new pot of porridge. Martha Withycombe was a year or two older than Lily herself. She attended Gower Street Church, her father was a schoolmaster, and there was talk she was going to be engaged to some young lawyer whose name Lily couldn’t recall.

  Martha nodded her head off in the direction of Circular Road. “Some big houses that escaped the fire—and I think some of it may be coming from the kitchen at Government House. How did your house fare?”

  “I—I don’t know yet. When I saw Papa he had come from trying to fight the fire at the print shop—he hadn’t even been to see our house yet.”

  On the other side of Martha, a familiar head popped forward, crowned with a flowered hat that still managed to look jaunty. The curls beneath the hat belonged to Lily’s friend Abby Hayward. Lily hadn’t seen her in the park during the night.

  “I’m sure you’ll be fine, Lily. Father says we are,” Abby assured her. “He says Cochrane Street Church and everything on the west side of the street is still standing, and so is St. Thomas’s.” Abby lived on Cochrane Street, much further east than Lily’s home on Queen’s Road. Lily had already heard that the Congregational chapel, just west of their house, had succumbed as rapidly as the other brick and stone churches that were supposed to be invulnerable.

  What if our house is gone? Lily wondered. She had already handed bowls of porridge to her own housemaid to feed her parents—surely the first time in their lives her mother or her father had to take a handout from anyone. Father was well-off enough to rebuild his house and business, but where would they live until that happened? The sun was not yet fully up in the sky and already policemen were arriving with tents, temporary shelters for people who did not expect to sleep indoors tonight—or for many nights to come.

  “Any more gruel left in that pot?” said a vaguely familiar male voice, as another bowl appeared in front of her.

  She looked at the young man holding out the bowl and wondered where she had met him before. He wasn’t a neighbour nor did he attend Cochrane Street Church. His sooty clothes were slightly better than those of a working man but neither his suit nor his accent suggested he was a gentleman.

  She filled his bowl, still looking at the keen eyes under a shock of ginger hair, trying to place him. “So, did your house survive, or are you taking refuge here in the park as well?” he asked, showing no inclination to move away once he had his bowl filled.

  “I don’t—I am sorry, I don’t think we’ve been introduced,” Lily confessed.

  His face broke into a grin. “No, we haven’t, not a bit.” He stuck out a hand for her to shake, just as if someone had presented him, which of course no one had. After a moment, Lily took it, giving his fingers the briefest shake possible. “David Reid, newsman,” he said. “We met yesterday when I was giving the alarm about the fire down by your house. But it’s hardly the time to stand on ceremony, is it?”

  “An emergency is no excuse for impertinence, Mr. Reid, and Miss Hunt has work to do.” Mrs. Ohman appeared by Mr. Reid’s elbow. Mrs. Ohman had a high, fluting little voice that led some people to take her less than seriously, but she could sound stern when she wished, and now she wished to.

  Mr. Reid touched the brim of his hat and smiled. “I’ll leave you to your work, Miss Hunt—now that Mrs. Ohman’s told me your name,” he said, and sauntered off. Mrs. Ohman was already scurrying in the opposite direction, rolling up her sleeves to cut some of the loaves of bread that had just arrived.

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bsp; “What a very odd fellow!” Abby giggled. She was a giggler, had been the silliest girl in their class at school. “He certainly likes you, Lily.”

  “He’s very impertinent, is what he is,” said Martha. “You oughtn’t to have spoken to him without being introduced—and nobody would introduce you to such a person.”

  “You know who he is, then?”

  “He was a pressman or some such thing at the Evening Herald who started writing bits of copy and now imagines he’s a newspaperman. Trying to strike up conversation with a lady he hasn’t met is beyond rude.”

  “Mrs. Ohman seems to know him…”

  “Oh, Mrs. Ohman!” Martha rolled her eyes. “She knows all sorts of people—and has all sorts of queer ideas.” The line of people coming to have their bowls filled had slowed to a scattered few, and most of the porridge pots were empty. Martha began collecting the pots, moving with brisk efficiency.

  “I think Mrs. Ohman is marvellous,” Lily said. It was hard to attempt a dissenting opinion in the face of Martha’s confidence, but she couldn’t stand by and hear her heroine disparaged. “Don’t you read the Water Lily?”

  “Mother reads it first and clips any articles she thinks are appropriate for me to read,” Martha said, “There are things in there she doesn’t agree with.” That surprised Lily, since Martha’s mother served along with Mrs. Ohman in the WCTU and the Water Lily was, if not the official WCTU paper, certainly a mouthpiece for that organization. Martha turned from the pots to give Lily a measuring glance that took her in from top to toe, then said almost kindly, “But of course your mother’s not well, is she? Perhaps she hasn’t the time or energy to be aware of all that goes on.”

  “My mother is well aware of everything I read,” Lily said, though she doubted that was true, “and she admires Mrs. Ohman too.”

  “I love the Water Lily nearly as much as the Ladies Home Companion,” Abby chimed in. “Did you read the latest instalment of Alida’s story, Lily? I can’t bear to wait for the next issue!”

  “It’s a temperance paper,” Lily said to Martha. “Our family have always been temperance people.”

  “Of course we are for temperance,” Martha said. She handed a stack of pots to a girl in a maid’s uniform, who was presumably taking them back to her mistress’s kitchen to clean, and Lily passed hers to a similarly garbed older woman. “The WCTU does good work, and so does Mrs. Ohman herself. But if you think the Water Lily is just a temperance paper, you’re deceived. Mrs. Ohman uses it to promote the idea of votes for women. Father says too many men let their wives and daughters read all sorts of books and papers, not even realizing they are introducing radical ideas. But as your father is a printer, I thought he’d be more aware of such things.”

  There was little to say to this, since Lily was fairly certain her father had never picked up a copy of the Water Lily despite the fact that each month’s issue was on the parlour table as soon as Lily could get hold of it. He would be no more likely to read it than he would the Ladies Home Companion. But what if Papa heard that Martha’s parents had forbidden it, and wouldn’t let her read any more of it? Like Abby, Lily was caught up at the moment in reading Mrs. Ohman’s serial story Alida, which had been going on for months showing no sign of an easy resolution. Lily secretly tried to model herself after Alida, a girl of her own age and class living right here in St. John’s. Alida was so pure, so perfect, so full of high ideals and good works. She had refused to marry the man she loved because he wouldn’t take the temperance pledge, and now her wicked younger sister was set to steal his affections. If she didn’t find out how the story ended, Lily thought she might die of curiosity.

  It would be wonderful to be like Alida, or Mrs. Gaskell’s heroine Margaret in North and South, or like Mrs. Ohman herself—to fight for good causes and care for the destitute, to be a shining light in the community. Perhaps, Lily thought, the fire, this strange night and day in the park, might mark a turning point in her life.

  When the supply of food ran out—which happened before the supply of hungry people did—and all the pots and pans had been sent off, Lily walked back to where she had last seen her parents. Her clothes, worn since yesterday morning, were dirty and smelled of smoke—but then, everything did—and she wondered if she still owned anything else to put on. Little clusters of people camped out on the grass. The wretched poor huddled together in rags, while people like her own family, well-to-do folks suddenly made destitute by unlucky chance, looked far more shocked than the poor at this turn in their fortunes.

  Back at the blanket where she had left her family, Papa paced restlessly. “Come with me, Lily,” he said when he saw her. “Walk with me down to the house and we’ll see what’s still standing. I’ve heard tell that whole row of houses is gone but I won’t believe it ’til I see it for myself. Sally’s caring for Mother—I don’t think she could stand the strain of seeing the place if it has been burned down.”

  Lily took her father’s arm and they made their way through the crowds, out of the park. Military Road was full of people doing the same thing they were doing: venturing out to see the devastation, to see what remained of homes and businesses.

  The dull grey light of the smoky morning showed a road that had become impassable, strewn with the rubble of fallen houses. Across from the park where hundreds of people had sheltered during the night, the fire had ripped through the wooden row houses, leaving only the brick chimneys standing so the street looked like a graveyard with gigantic brick tombstones. Between each lay the debris of what had been a home, a life.

  “No matter what condition the house is in, you and Mother are not to worry, now, Lily,” Father said, the tremble in his voice betraying him. He and Lily picked their way through the huddled knots of people and the debris in the road, up Military Road, down Prescott Street, down to Queen’s Road. “We will be able to rebuild. You may have to go stay with your mother’s people out in Harbour Grace until we have a roof over our heads again. It may be only a matter of minor repairs….”

  His voice trailed off as they reached the spot that, until last night, had been their home. It had been an imposing three-storey house, not grand but solid, attached to the house next to it. All that remained now were the blackened chimneys, towering above a heap of fallen interior walls, shattered windows, burned possessions that had been their furniture, clothes, china dishes, and shelves and shelves of books.

  “Don’t, Lily,” her father said as she let go his arm and began to walk into the rubble. “Your skirt—your shoes—”

  It was a feeble protest and even he recognized it, for he was doing the same, moving into the debris of their home, their lives, as if looking for one miraculously unburnt thing that would be a talisman, a sign of hope. Lily looked in the ashes for a gleam of silver or gold, a face still peering from the frame of a painting, a book whose pages, inside charred covers, might still be intact. The sharp smell of ash almost choked her. And wherever she looked on the ground at her feet, she saw nothing but trash and soot.

  Despite the devastation, despite the way her father was rubbing his face with a handkerchief as if he could erase the devastation he saw all around him, Lily couldn’t suppress a quiver of excitement, a small winged thing inside her. With everything destroyed, there was always the possibility of beginning again.

  She knew better than to mention the phoenix to her father—that was overly dramatic even for her. Papa would be concerned, man-like, with the practical details of insurance and rebuilding. She kept hope folded inside herself, a phoenix in a cage, as she and her father wandered, arm in arm, around the edges of the ash-heap that had been their home.

  Part One

  1917–1919

  Grace

  CHAPTER ONE

  A SEALED ENVELOPE addressed to Reverend Obadiah Collins, Catalina, Trinity Bay, Newfoundland, lay on the kitchen table. When Grace came home she found her mother sitting at the table, her hands folded, about eighteen inches from the envelope. Her gaze was fixed on it.


  Grace didn’t know, as she crossed the kitchen, that it was a telegram. She came through the door telling her mother that Mrs. Snelgrove had stopped by the school to pick up the little ones and told Grace to tell her mother she couldn’t be at the WPA executive meeting this evening. “She said to say she was sorry, hoped it wasn’t too much of an inconvenience—” Grace stopped short of trying to convey the undercurrent of nervousness in Mrs. Snelgrove’s tone: the women of Catalina did not lightly tell Mrs. Reverend Collins that they could not attend a meeting. Then she realized her mother wasn’t listening, saw what she was staring at.

  “When did it come?”

  “An hour ago.”

  Grace drew her fingers over the unopened white envelope as if she could break a spell by touching it. She wondered how long her mother had sat here looking at the envelope. She would never have admitted to needing her daughter or her husband with her when she opened and read the telegram. But she had not opened it herself.

  “Should we wait for the Reverend?” Grace asked. She and Charley, when very young, had picked up their mother’s habit of referring to their father by his title: Mother never called him Obadiah, only the Reverend, and his children said Papa or Father only when speaking directly to him. In the third person he was always the Reverend.

  Her mother said nothing. She had not even looked up to meet Grace’s eyes; it was as if by looking at the envelope she could will the news inside to be something other than what it must be. Good news never came by telegram, not in the spring of 1917. Not to a family with a boy overseas. The best you could hope for was wounded but recovering in an army hospital in England. Out of harm’s way. Some perfect injury, severe enough to send him home for the duration of the war, yet light enough not to blight his future.

  If Grace had the power to bend fate, she would sacrifice Charley’s arm or Charley’s leg or even one of his eyes to buy his life. Would her mother make the same exchange? Grace thought so, but it was, like so many other questions, something she could not ask.