A Sudden Sun Read online

  She dragged herself to the door, doubling over as another wave of pain rolled over her. “Reverend Collins!” she called. She had never yet called him Obadiah.

  He came and told her to get back in bed, then went himself to fetch the midwife. Lily lost track of time under waves of pain. Then the midwife was there, an old woman who muttered and shook her head. “This don’t look good,” she said. “How far along do you say you are, Missus?”

  “July 8,” Lily said through gritted teeth. That one thing she knew for certain. On the eighth of July she had lain down in a bed with her lover and conceived this child. She tried to lock her jaws against the screams but the midwife said, “Have a good holler, my love, it’ll do you good. Not much else will, now.”

  She had thought the wedding day was the worst of her life but that was only because she was a little fool, an ignoramus. An innocent girl, as her father had said. Could she be a fallen woman and an innocent girl at the same time? Now she was innocent no longer, but still falling, falling through pain and darkness and horror, screaming and pushing like a barnyard animal to give birth to something the midwife had told her would not, could not live. No one had even guessed she was having a baby. She had sold her life away for nothing. If this had happened a month earlier, on the morning of the twenty-fourth of November instead of December, everything would have been different—no wedding, no husband, no chilly parsonage in Greenspond.

  It wasn’t over ’til midnight, as Christmas Eve turned to Christmas Day. Her whole day, her child’s whole life, had been bordered by this one room, this bloody bed, this square of streaky window glass that grew light and then rain-covered and then dark again.

  “’Tis all over now, Missus,” said the midwife. She had taken the thing away to dispose of—Lily didn’t ask where or how—got Lily out of bed when she was able and scrubbed up, changed the sheets, changed Lily’s bedclothes. The room looked tidy again; a fire burned in the grate, and the midwife sat next to Lily with a bowl of beef broth, spooning it into her mouth.

  “You’ll need to rest now, a good few days. Don’t be up and about too soon. I’ll drop back Saturday or Sunday. And don’t worry—the Reverend give me extra money, but he didn’t need to, I been at this business long enough to know when to hold my tongue. Nobody will know nothing but what the minister’s wife was laid up with some female trouble. The Reverend thinks we can make it like nothing ever happened.” Another spoonful of broth. The midwife wasn’t really as old as Lily had thought. Middle-aged at best. Her dark eyes were shrewd. “There’s no better skill than learning when to keep your mouth shut and I knows it better than most. All the same, you can’t really make it like a thing never happened, especially if the thing is a baby. Whatever you does after this, however many more you has, it always happened.”

  “Yes,” Lily said. She had hoped for so long that some miracle would come along and make it un-happen. But the miracle had come too late.

  Her husband came in when the midwife had gone. He stood by the window, hands in his pockets, bouncing slightly on the balls of his feet.

  “How are you feeling?”

  “Tired. Sore. Exhausted.” Did it feel the same, Lily wondered, to birth a living child? But then you would feel full instead of empty, surely.

  “It’s a great pity. But it may prove to be for the best in the end. God moves in mysterious ways.”

  The cup that had held the beef broth was still on the side table. Lily had her hand around it before she stopped to think. She hurled it straight at his head, but he dodged aside and it shattered on the wall, shards of white crockery splintering around the room.

  “You’re very upset,” he said. His tone had not changed at all. After a moment he said, “I told Mrs. Cuff—no one needs to know about this. After you’ve recovered, it will be like a fresh start for us both. We’ll begin again.”

  “Go away.” She buried her face in the pillow. When she looked up again he was squatting on the floor, picking up pieces of the broken cup. The sight moved her for a moment, ’til she thought, He won’t want the maid to see this tomorrow, to know I’m going mad.

  Lily

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  SHE STAYED IN bed for a week. When the midwife came again she told her to get up. “You’re not the first woman to miscarry and you won’t be the last. It’s a hard thing but there’s harder things than this, you mark my words. You take to your bed and you might never get out of it again.” Her words were harsh as sandpaper but Lily felt no urge to throw a cup at her head. She got up, dressed, began to move cautiously about the house.

  She went back to church two Sundays afterwards. The ladies of the congregation showed a gentle mix of curiosity and sympathy. One older lady pulled her aside and said, “I used to have a terrible, terrible time at my time of the month when I was your age. The old granny, Mrs. Cuff’s poor mother-in-law that was, she used to make me a lovely tea to help me get through it. It will all be better once you haves a baby—it was for me.”

  A baby. Because of course she would stay here, stay in Greenspond as the minister’s wife, bear him children. She had made a vow before God.

  After dinner the Reverend went back to the church to teach Sunday School. He wanted Lily to help with that when she felt better, to take a children’s class. These were things the minister’s wife was meant to do. He wasn’t merely taking a bride, he was hiring the other member of his team. They were to be like a pair of oxen yoked together, for what church—other than a papist one—could function without the minister’s wife?

  When he was gone Lily went to his study and took down his strongbox. She searched through his desk ’til she found the key. He was not very good at hiding things, perhaps because it had never occurred to him that his wife might steal his money.

  She counted out banknotes. Her passport was here in the strongbox along with his. She had never carried it herself; her father had given it to the Reverend with her other important papers, in case they travelled together someday. But how much did a steamer ticket to St. John’s cost? How much more, then, a ticket to New York? She had no idea. She counted out the money and sat with it in her hand, awash in the vast ocean of her own ignorance. She could not even run away because she did not know how much a steamer ticket cost, had never been on a journey on her own before.

  And how could she sneak aboard the steamer, when everyone came out to see the passengers board, to put their mail and packages on board, to wish the travellers well? Who could ignore the minister’s wife setting foot on the boat? It was a long and tiresome journey: off the island of Greenspond itself, then on down the coast, stopping at every little port; everyone in Bonavista Bay would know that the Greenspond minister’s wife was leaving home. And on top of everything—oh, she had forgotten—it was January. No steamer service, no hope of escape, ’til spring.

  She would not live until spring.

  And yet she did. Her body, that resilient animal thing, recovered. She kept the door of her bedroom closed to him, telling him she wasn’t ready yet. She had read once, in a book, that until a man and woman came together in the marriage bed it was not really a marriage, and could be annulled. Could that be true? And if it were, who would vouch for her, when her own father believed she and the Reverend had been like man and wife long before the wedding ever took place?

  There was no one here to help her. No one in St. John’s either, yet when spring came—April, when the baby should have been born—she begged the Reverend to allow her to go home. “To visit,” she said. “I need to see my parents.” She did not even know if they would welcome her in the house, if she really were going home for a visit. She had written on the first mail-boat to tell them the baby had come early, and did not live. She had never seen it—did it even look like a baby? She pictured it with skin made of glass, so that everything inside could be seen.

  “How long will you stay?”

  “A week or two. Is that all right?”

  “I don’t want you to be away too long. I feel
you haven’t really settled here, Lily, and I need your help and support—around the house, and in the church. I feel you’re not happy here.”

  She thought of throwing something at him again but she had been so good, so docile, all winter that he had surely written off that one incident as a moment of madness brought on by the strange mystery of a woman’s body.

  He agreed to a fortnight in St. John’s. She waited ’til the morning the steamer left, when he was down at the church meeting with the Vestry, to steal the money from the strongbox and take her passport. She had asked around, in casual conversation, to try to get an idea from people of how much it cost to travel; she took more than she thought she would need.

  When she got to St. John’s, she inquired about tickets to New York before she ever left the docks. She counted out her money there in the Furness-Withy office. She had only enough to go to Halifax, with a little left over to hire a room for the night. The steamer left the next morning.

  What was the good of going to Halifax, with hardly a cent to keep her when she got there? Not enough to stay for more than a night, nor to go further on the steamer, nor to buy a train ticket. Enough, perhaps, for a meal and room—and enough to send a cable.

  The next day she stood on the deck of the ship, watching St. John’s slip away. She had spent the night in a room at the Crosbie hotel where the desk man had looked at her strangely, a young woman travelling alone. She kept her wedding band firmly on display, though she meant to drop it overboard into the sea on her way to Halifax.

  The crossing was rough and Lily was sick as she hadn’t been sick since the earliest days of her pregnancy. It was hard to believe, now, that she had really been pregnant, had carried David’s child inside her for nearly six months before letting it slip away. Maybe her husband was right. It would be like it had never happened. She could have the new start he had talked about. Not with him, of course, and not in Greenspond.

  “Lily! Is that you, Lily dear!”

  The one thing she had gambled on was that she would not know anyone on the steamer. She had gotten from the harbour to the hotel and back again this morning without seeing anyone she recognized, and that was miracle enough, St. John’s being the town it was. But here was Jessie Ohman, of all people, under a magnificent feathered hat with her hands shoved into a fur muff, strolling about the deck. She was on her way to Montreal, where her husband had already settled and opened a business.

  “And truth to tell, I’m not sorry to be leaving,” she confided to Lily as they stood in the bracing sea wind watching the grey waves roll past. “Newfoundland will always be home, but after the barriers we’ve faced these last few years I’ll be glad to be moving to a more enlightened place. The women’s cause is much more advanced in Canada.”

  Lily nodded, wondering what story she should spin for Mrs. Ohman about her presence on the ship. But Mrs. Ohman was doing her work for her: “Going to New York? Oh, you must be going down for Miss Hayward’s wedding, are you? How nice that you’re able to go. Did you get the card I sent for your marriage?”

  “Yes, I’m sorry, I didn’t send out thank-you cards,” Lily said, aware of the enormous breach of etiquette she had committed.

  “Ah well, I thought you must be very busy out there. It’s not an easy life, you know, my dear, but a minister’s wife can do so much good. It’s every bit as much a calling for her as for the minister himself. And I’m so glad, Lily, that you made a wise choice. I know it’s easy for young girls to get distracted by romantic notions, but in the end, nothing matters more than choosing a godly man.”

  It was like the moment when she had thrown the cup at the Reverend—Lily’s hand moved as if it were its own creature, darting through the icy air to slap Mrs. Ohman’s smug round cheek.

  Mrs. Ohman gasped, put her own hand to her cheek. “Lily! Whatever do you—are you all right, my dear?” Lily turned to go but Mrs. Ohman reached out and grabbed her upper arm. “Has something happened? Talk to me, Lily. Clearly you’re upset, your mind is unbalanced.”

  “If it is, it’s all your fault!” Lily said, finding her voice, feeling as if she had been silent for months, for nearly a year, perhaps for her whole life. “What lies, what lies you told me! You told me a woman was the equal of any man, that we had the same rights as men, that all we had to do was stand up and demand those rights and that when we did so the Lord would bless us for doing His will! You told me those lies and made me believe them and you don’t even believe them yourself! Why did you let me believe they were true?”

  She was howling now, crying all the tears she had locked inside since the night her child was born and died, or perhaps since the day she sold herself to Reverend Collins in return for respectability. Tears dried on her face in the wind before they had a chance to fall.

  “My dear—you’re overwrought—you need to get down to your cabin, have a nice cup of tea, can we do that? Come, let’s go below.” Mrs. Ohman took Lily’s arm, steered her inside. “You mustn’t confuse these things—I do believe in the rights of women, but I also believe in the sanctity of Christian marriage. You mustn’t think, as some misguided women do, that if we assert our rights under the law, we throw off that Higher Law.”

  Lily wrenched her arm from Mrs. Ohman’s and turned to face her. They were in a corridor now, a narrow passage leading to the cabins, and without the howling of the wind on deck it was likely people could hear her shouting, but Lily did not care. “They are right—they are, and you are wrong! Everything you taught me, everything you said about freedom and equality—of course it leads to all the rest. Free love and fallen women. If you don’t see that then you’re blind and short-sighted! Oh, what a fool I was. I believed it all, and now I’m paying the price, and God help me, I’ll be paying it every day of my life ’til I die!” She turned to run and this time Mrs. Ohman did not grab her arm or run after her. Lily found her cabin and locked herself inside and cried ’til her eyes and throat and chest burned, and she felt scooped-out and hollow. She heard a tap-tap at her door, but ignored it, and did not see Mrs. Ohman when the ship docked at Halifax.

  When the porter had taken off her case and she had finished with the customs shed, Lily stood on the pier, watching the crowds of passengers depart. Everyone had some place to go, it seemed. Everyone had a place in the world except Lily Hunt. Lily Collins. I am all alone, Lily thought.

  “Ma’am? Do you want me to call a cab for you?”

  She had no money for a cab. She walked with her little case to a hotel near the station that didn’t look too expensive. Halifax—a different world, a foreign city. One that had not had to burn down and reinvent itself but had grown here solidly, uninterrupted by fire and disaster. She wondered what New York was like, or for that matter the rest of the world. Wondered if she would ever know.

  She took a piece of paper from the hotel desk and wrote out the two messages she would bring to the cable station. She wrote and rewrote each of them, crossing out words, not just to save money but to find the right thing to say. Finally she finished them and read over both messages.

  Have left the Reverend. Am in Halifax. No money to go further. Cable with instructions or money or come for me please.

  Sorry. Took money and ran away. Am in Halifax. If you send money for me to come home I promise to try harder.

  She sat with the two messages on the desk. She had no idea which one to send. Perhaps in the morning it would be clear.

  Part Seven

  1923–1925

  Grace

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  THE PROW OF the steamer pushed a clean line through the dark grey water, foam falling away on either side. They were far enough out to sea that no land was visible anywhere; the illusion was of being on a ship headed on an endless journey. Grace stood on deck wrapped in a sweater and a blanket. Rome had been blistering hot and New York barely cooler. She had no winter coat with her.

  “She wrote to tell me she was having a baby.” Grace could still hear David Reid’s words, see
his hands laid flat on the table in front of her. A baby. Whatever she had imagined about her mother loving and leaving another man, she had never imagined this. Never imagined that Lily Hunt, thirty years ago living in her father’s house in St. John’s, had conceived a child out of wedlock.

  She had been silent for a minute, then, more breath than speech, had said “Charley?” Her brother had been born in 1897, nearly three years after her parents’ marriage. He had been just short of his twentieth birthday when he died at Monchy. Which part of that was a lie—Charley’s birthdate or her parents’ marriage date?

  But David Reid shook his head. “The baby died. A miscarriage, I guess you’d say, or a stillbirth.”

  “You—my mother—she was going to have a baby, and she miscarried?”

  “That’s what Abby Hayward told me. The last I ever heard from your mother, after she told me she was pregnant, was that she was going to marry your father. I never got another letter, not a postcard nor a cable. It drove me crazy, wondering what had happened, so finally I looked up Abby and she told me.”

  They had stayed another hour in the little restaurant. The waiter, who was also perhaps the owner, had brought them some sweet rolls, more discreet whisky for Mr. Reid and a cup of proper English tea for Grace, to banish the taste of the Turkish coffee. Stayed talking, even though immediately after Mr. Reid’s revelation Grace had thought she would get up and leave, that she couldn’t talk with him further. But it turned out that she could.