That Forgetful Shore Read online

  This is what she thinks, until he stops her just outside the door and stares at her so long and hard she wonders what’s wrong, wonders if he’s angry. Then, without a word – though with a quick glance at the window blinds, to be sure no-one is watching – he cups her jaw in his hand, tilts her face up to his, and kisses her hard on the mouth. His own mouth opens, his tongue darting inside her mouth, invading her, releasing a dark coil of something that feels a little like fear in her belly.

  He’s never done this – not this particular thing – before. Kissing until now has been something she has read of in books. The recoil of shock and the queer, heart-racing pleasure are almost evenly balanced as she lets her body lean against his, allows his mouth to explore hers.

  Joe Bishop pulls away, steps back. “Forgive me,” he says, formal and proper again. “I ought not to have …. I’ll be going now. Good luck with your studies, Kit. Everyone at home is very proud of you.”

  “Didn’t your teacher want to come in for tea?” Cousin Ethel says when Kit is inside the hall. Kit stares out the window at Joe Bishop’s retreating back as he walks down Gower Street without looking back. She tucks the memory of the kiss in with the other dark memories, the ones she doesn’t pull out and examine by daylight.

  “He was having his tea with his own people, at the house where he’s staying,” Kit says, though neither of them discussed tea.

  “Well, you sit down and have yours now, it’s ready.”

  “I’m sorry, I’m not hungry,” Kit says, and goes upstairs to her room alone.

  Triffie

  Missing Point

  November, 1904

  My Darling Peony,

  How good it is to hear from you and hear of school and all your doings in Town. I am sure if I could be there with you, you should never be lonely, and I should never be fretful as I so often am. I preach long sermons to myself about being contented with my lot in life but it seems I am a dull and hardhearted congregation for I never learn.

  Things are the same here as always… indeed, I could think of stitching that phrase on a sampler, and it would hang in the parlour and be as true when I am an old woman as it is today. The Same Yesterday, Today and Forever. Nothing changes in Missing Point, family and neighbours and church are much as ever. Aunt Rachel continues to fret about Will, with the same troubles as I wrote you about before, but otherwise all at home are well. I saw your mother at church and they are all well too…

  “Young Will is after wandering again,” Aunt Rachel says.

  “He’s not, is he? What are we going to do about that?” Trif washes the breakfast dishes as she talks, her back to her aunt, who is sweeping the floor. Uncle Albert is out fixing the shed roof. In these few weeks between the end of fishing and the first snow, all the men are busy cutting and hauling wood, and repairing houses, sheds and boats, all the work that must get squeezed into the late fall and early spring. The children are off to school, Will looking pale and tired. Makes sense, if he’s been walking in his sleep again. He’s never done it before this fall, but since he started off to school he’s been wandering two and three nights out of every week.

  For Will this is the first fall he’s had to get up and go off to school; for Triffie, it’s the first fall she can remember without the comforting routine of school in the morning. She plaits Ruth’s hair each morning, scrubs Will’s face, makes sure the children have their books ready, sends them off with a smile and a wave. She wants to tear off her apron and run up the road after them, as if there were still a place there for her. All those classes, all those examinations, all for nothing.

  She puts those thoughts away, stacks them firmly on top of the plates, lays the gravy boat on them to keep them down. This is her life. No room for regret. Not in daylight, anyway. All the thoughts she tidies away in the daytime burst out of cupboard doors at night, taunt and tease her. She lies awake for hours, with two-year-old Betty curled next to her in the bed breathing noisily. Trif watches the moon cross the sky through her window. Imagines a boat that will take her away to Kit, her Peony, to some other life they can share together.

  No. No such dreams in daylight. She, too, is tired in the mornings from her poor night’s sleep. Will falls asleep quickly, as she cannot, but some trouble disturbs his slumber and he pads around the cold floor on small bare feet, down the steps, sometimes even lifting the latch and going outside before some sound wakes his mother and she goes looking for him.

  “This morning was the queerest one yet,” Aunt Rachel says. “I never heard him at all in the night, though I sleeps right on edge. Then when I got up and went in to him, he was asleep, tucked away in his bed, and I thought, oh thank the good Lord, he’s never moved, he slept through the night. Then I lifted the covers and his little feet, Triffie, you would not believe it. The bottoms of his feet was covered, all covered in mud and grass. He’d been out walking, see, and never even woke himself up, came back in and got back in his bed and never even knew he was outdoors. What do you make of that, Trif?”

  “I don’t know, I’m sure.”

  “Just the thought of him, out there in the dark, not even knowing he was out of the house. It gives me the shivers, it does.”

  “It does.” Trif tries not to picture it but the images come without volition. Will, tiny and lost, in the yard. Asleep, walking through the cold wet grass. How many steps down to the road and across to the water’s edge? What would it take to startle him awake? Would he walk right into the water, let it close over his head?

  “I finds I sleeps right light, these nights,” Trif says. “I should stay up, watch out for him. I can’t get to sleep anyway.”

  “Well, it would be a weight off my mind if you did, Triffie, I don’t mind saying.”

  Instantly, Trif shifts from concern for Will to resentment at her aunt. Not enough I works for her every waking hour and shares my bed with Betty, now I got to be on duty through the night as well. Then regrets her resentment, because she loves her cousins and would never see any harm come to them, especially Will.

  She wonders if it means anything, that his sleepwalking started just when he went off to school. Is he having trouble with the other boys? He plays with young Isaac French next door, but what about the Mercer boys from the south side? They’re a hard crowd. They seem much older, though the youngest is just Will’s age. They are all big, and every one of them tough as nails. Are they hard on him?

  “Aunt Hepsy says to tie a string to his ankle, tie it to the leg of the bed,” Aunt Rachel says. “But I don’t like the thought of keeping a child tied up, like an animal.”

  “But an animal don’t wander in its sleep,” Trif points out. “Better tied up than…lost, I suppose, or catch pneumonia from being out in the night. What about when winter comes?”

  “I could get the Mister to put a new hasp on the door, higher up where Will couldn’t get at it, maybe.”

  “You could do that,” Trif agrees.

  “But the rope? Do you think I should try it?”

  Trif is not used to her aunt treating her as an equal, seeking her opinion. It is a tacit acknowledgement that by leaving school and dedicating herself to the house and children, she has entered the adult world. Not the same adult world she wanted to enter, the one where her Peony grows, but the one her aunt respects and understands. The world of women and houses, food and children, worries and cares.

  “I allow ’tis worth a try,” Trif says now. “But talk to him first. If you don’t tell him why you’re doing it, he won’t know what to think.”

  The children are home for their dinner, when Uncle Albert comes down off the roof and joins them. After they go back, Trif puts Betty down for a nap and picks up her sewing: Uncle Albert’s credit from the summer’s fishing allowed for several yards of blue and white gingham that she is making into dresses for the little girls and herself. At half-past three she tells Aunt Rachel she is going to walk up the school to see the children home. Her thought is that she will walk along with them, to see if those
bigger boys are giving Will any trouble.

  She arrives just as the boys and girls burst from the school door, hollering and leaping with the joy of freedom. Mr. Bishop leans against the doorframe, looking weary. She wonders how all that energy, all those children, can be contained in that single room, how he can keep them all in line for so many hours.

  He smiles when he sees her, and after a word to Ruth and Will to wait for her, Triffie goes up to him. “You’ve had a long day, sir,” she says.

  “A long day and a hard one, Triffie. I have no such scholars as you and Kit this year. Sadie and Millicent are the two oldest, and Millicent is a good student, but neither of them is the kind of help you and Kit were with the little ones. Only now you’re both gone, I see how much I relied on you. I sometimes wonder you got any learning done at all yourselves, with all the time you spent hearing the children’s lessons.”

  “Ah well, all that practice will stand Kit in good stead now, when she finishes up her learning and starts to teach.”

  “Indeed, indeed. What do you hear from her?”

  She likes his careful, teacherly speech, his accent tugging at the edges of his voice but most of it smoothed away, made proper, dressed up with words like Indeed, indeed. She feels her own language adjust itself to match his, becoming tidier and more formal than it is at home. “I had a postal and a letter from her last week,” Triffie says. “She was studying for some big examination, something in her English grammar, I think it was.”

  “I’m sure she’ll do fine, she was always good in grammar.” He runs a hand through his hair, and again she sees how tired he is.

  “I shouldn’t trouble you, sir,” she says, “only we’re a bit worried at home, about Will. Seems there’s something the matter, something on his mind, though he won’t say what. He – he don’t sleep well at nights.” She is reluctant to confess to the actual sleepwalking. “I thought it might be something at school, some other boys giving him a hard time, perhaps.”

  Mr. Bishop shakes his head. “No, he gets on fine with the other boys – he and Isaac French and Charlie Mercer are thick as thieves, the three of them. Where Charlie’s got his two older brothers here nobody dares bother anyone who goes around with Char. But you know, Will has a hard time with the lessons. He’s not as ignorant as poor little Charlie, but he’s having a hard struggle learning his letters. Not quick like you, or even average like Ruth. He doesn’t like school because it’s hard for him, and the worst of it is, I don’t have enough time for lads like Will and Char, to give them the extra help they need.”

  It hasn’t even occurred to Triffie that Will’s trouble might be the schoolwork itself. For her, learning has always come so naturally that she forgets there are children for whom books are an enemy, rather than a joyful release. And to think her own cousin, her dear little boy, should be such a child!

  “Well, now that I know what the trouble is, sir, I’ll be sure to give him extra help at home.”

  “He couldn’t wish for a better tutor. If only I could do more here at the school. The Board has promised me they will try to find money to hire me an assistant, and I don’t see how I’ll carry on without one.”

  His eyes brighten suddenly. “If the money does come – the person wouldn’t have to be a qualified teacher. Indeed, couldn’t be, not for the money they could pay. Anyone who had done well in school could help – you could take the position, do what you were doing in school, without the bother of your own lessons, and get paid for it. Would you like that?”

  She bites back her immediate joyous assent. It’s hardly the same as going to St. John’s, being with her beloved Peony, studying at a college – but it would be something. A classroom is better than a kitchen, and earning her own money would be more than she dares hope for. “I don’t know, sir,” she says. “I mean, of course I would like to do it, but I don’t know if my uncle would allow me. I’d have to ask him.”

  “Of course, of course. And it’s all speculation, now, until we see if the money is there. Still it would be a wonderful advantage to you, and a great help to me, if it came to pass.”

  She walks down the road behind Will and Ruth, thinking of Will’s troubles with school, planning how she will teach him to read. Why did he say nothing at home about the trouble he was having? But then, she thinks, he did say he hated going to school. She had put it down to the laziness of a boy who would rather be out playing on the beach.

  What can any adult know of what goes on in a child’s mind? Trif thinks of her own childhood, how little her aunt and uncle guessed of anything that might please or trouble her. Hers was a private, stormy world, and Will’s must be too. But his private world bursts into his dreams and tears him from his quiet bed.

  That night, Aunt Rachel tries the rope cure, explaining to Will that it will stop him if he tries to walk in his sleep. About two in the morning Trif, lying awake, hears a crash from across the hall, followed by a howl of pain. She goes across to find Will lying on the floor bawling. He is tangled in blankets, his foot tethered to the bedpost. He’s gotten out of bed in his sleep, tripped in the rope and fallen hard enough to wake himself. The noise wakes Ruth, who usually sleeps soundly in the bed beside him. Aunt Rachel, arriving right behind Trif, helps calm both children down and get them back to sleep, but the fall frightens Will as much as his earlier wanderings frightened his mother and cousin. He tears at the rope, insists they take it off, refuses to lie down unless they promise never to tie him again.

  Nor does his fear lessen on future nights. He refuses to be tethered, putting up such a howl that, despite spankings, his resolve cannot be broken. Aunt Rachel tries to tie him on after he’s asleep, but the same child who can wander down to the kitchen, open a cupboard, cut himself a slice of bread and butter it without waking, wakes instantly when he feels the touch of the twine around his ankle, and howls till it is taken away.

  “So you think it’s trouble with his lessons got him so nervous?” Aunt Rachel asks Trif one Saturday as they scrub the floor together. “Do Mr. Bishop whip the youngsters if they don’t get their lessons right?”

  “No, I only ever saw him use the whip on the bigger fellows if they’re saucy or won’t listen. The little ones gets a tap on the hand with the ruler if they can’t say their lessons, but no worse than that. I ’low all Will needs is a bit of extra help like I’ve been giving him at home. Mr. Bishop don’t have the time he needs, with all them youngsters in that one room.”

  Trif is feeling her way cautiously towards the question of being hired as Mr. Bishop’s assistant; she doesn’t want to waste too much time and goodwill on it in case it never comes to anything, but if he were to come to her tomorrow and say he had the money to hire someone, she would like at least to have the ground prepared.

  She writes to Kit before bed that night, making mention of Mr. Bishop’s offer. She sleeps fitfully, dreaming of Kit far away in St. John’s, her dreams flavoured with the usual mixture of envy and concern.

  A noise wakes her before dawn, and she thinks, I must have fell asleep after all. She lies there awhile, drifting through dreams, something tugging at the edge of her mind. Finally she remembers: Will. The sound she heard – how long ago now? She turns toward the window: the sky is just graying towards dawn.

  She gets up, wraps her housecoat around her and puts on slippers against the bitter chill of the room. Now that she’s up she may as well start the fire, save Uncle Albert the trouble of doing it when he rises at five. She crosses the hall to the children’s room and sees Will’s side of the bed, the covers tumbled, empty. On the other side Ruth snores lightly.

  Downstairs, everything is still and bare. Shapes of table, chairs, crockery on the table, emerge gradually from the gloom. No sign of a little boy with bed-messed hair and bare feet.

  She goes through the hall, the parlour, back upstairs to check his parents’ room. Sometimes he gets in bed with Aunt Rachel and Uncle Albert, though Albert always brings him back to his own room. This morning, Will is not there.
His parents are both asleep and Trif hesitates a moment, wondering whether to wake them now or later.

  She puts on her boots and coat and goes out into the frost-edged yard, but there is no sign of him out there. She follows the path, unwilling, down to the beach. No signs that anyone has passed this way, but what sign would his little bare feet leave on rocks? Her heart races in her throat. Time to wake Aunt Rachel, she tells herself. But cannot bear to, because the moment she wakes her and says, “I can’t find Will,” is the moment it will be real.

  She goes back up to the house, looks everywhere again, still can’t bring herself to go into her aunt and uncle’s room. Outside once more. The sun is about to rise, a vivid line of light tracing the horizon to the east, out beyond the eastern tip of the Point. Triffie stands on the front bridge, frozen both inside and out, watching the orange disk of the sun slip up out of the sea, even though she knows in a search like the one that will begin as soon as she wakes her aunt and uncle, every minute will count. Please, God, she prays. Let him not be in the water, I’ll do anything. Any vow you want me to make…. She would promise to be a missionary in India or China if she could only figure out how…but then, that would be no sacrifice; she would love to go somewhere far and be a hero. The greatest sacrifice, perhaps, would be to stay exactly where she is, do what she’s doing, and never complain again, even silently, or in letters to Kit. Even that would be worth it, if Will is not floating face-down in the ocean.

  She shivers, shakes herself. How much time has she wasted standing here, watching the sun? A minute or two. But even that is too much. She turns back to the house, to alert the sleepers, to begin the hue and cry.