Donovan's Station (10 page)

It's funny what will stay in your mind—we must have had a hundred arguments like that but this is the one I remember. The flanker from his pipe burned a hole the size of a walnut in the table runner my mother had embroidered—I can see the mend from here, over on the dresser, though Kate says I did it so carefully it's invisible to anyone else. That first spat was pretty well the model for all our disagreements over the years—they almost always ended in roars and name-calling and broken crockery, with a half-hearted attempt to mend fences a few days later. He never understood that a silk shawl didn't blot out the memory of the names he called me in the heat of battle.

I think I spent half my time that first year walking the road from St. John's to Petty Harbour, so worried was I by how my father was getting on without me. He had adjusted pretty well after my mother died, but then he had me to look after things so there was very little change in his immediate domestic arrangements. Without me and Mother, he needed help not
only on the flakes but with cooking and washing, drawing water, sewing, all the small womanly skills that are not so easily acquired in old age. The day Father
realized
that I was about to become a mother myself, he forbade me to visit any more and quickly arranged for young Solomon Angel, who was promised in marriage to Margaret Lee, to move in with him. The two young ones walked back to town with me and were married that evening. Paddy got drunk as a lord at the wedding, and gave them both new boots which he'd promised to someone else for the following day.

Its hard to explain exactly what it was about Paddy that outraged me so. I suppose it was that he had so many God-given talents that he didn't use, or just plain abused. He was lively, quick, and the Lord alone knows women found him attractive, but he blew his own horn too much and too often, and he was never quite as good as he thought he was, for he cut corners and took on more than he could properly manage. Once, on a hot July day when he was working on a special order and didn't want to take the time to change into lighter clothing, he simply cut the sleeves off his best wool shirt with a clicker. He didn't even take the time to do it with a scissors, just hacked away at the cloth, and spent the rest of the week cursing himself for doing it, and me for not being able to mend what he had done.

When it came to bootmaking, however, Paddy had several advantages over the other small masters. As well as a natural dexterity that was a gift from God and no-one else, he had received first-rate training from his own master, who had refused to shorten the process from seven to five years as some did and who made him learn the business from the ground up. Then, he also owned his own tools, a gift from his father, which allowed him to move from one shop to another and learn all the secrets and tricks used to make a good business a better one.

About a week after we were married, he took me with him to buy fine hides from a Spanish captain on board his vessel. I had always associated hides with the reek of the tanneries, but these hides must have been treated in some way for they were lovely-smelling coloured leathers, soft and supple, laid out all over the cabin. When Paddy opened his mouth and began to negotiate the prices, I thought he must be speaking Irish for I had no idea he could speak foreign languages, and it was many years before I could distinguish Spanish from French or Irish or Portuguese or German. Paddy spoke a smattering of all these languages, and when his knowledge of languages left off, his enthusiasm and determination picked up the slack. He could act out a part so that someone who was deaf, dumb and blind could understand him, and he did it in such an amusing fashion, that even if he couldn't offer the best prices, he always got the best stock available. More than once he made a few extra shillings by reselling a particularly fine bit of leather to one of the more fashionable bootmakers.

What stays with me about that first visit to the harbour is not the leather, but the food. Paddy had introduced me as his new bride, and after the deal was struck and the leathers bundled up to be carried back to the shop, the Spaniard insisted that we stay for a meal. The food was so unfamiliar that I cannot say I really enjoyed it, but I was amazed at the variety of both the taste and the look of it. My mother had been an excellent cook, and varied our diet as much as was humanly possible, I thought, but the basic elements were still biscuit, fish, salt beef or pork, and root vegetables, garnished with a few spices and very little else. Herring roe and melts, fried cod roe, a jar of pickled mussels, and now and again a creamed mustard or egg sauce were the occasional frills that made my mother known around the Harbour for her fancy cooking.

I've no idea what the Spaniard served me that day aboard his ship, but I decided then and there to find out a bit more about
what people ate in town, and I think this set the groundwork for my eventual entry into the hotel business. Paddy, for all his languages, had rather pedestrian tastes, and the apprentices and journeymen didn't care what they ate so long as there was plain food and plenty of it, so I was somewhat restricted in scope, but there was still a lot of room for improvement, After a time I could serve the same four or five foods seven days in a row and never repeat myself once.

I can't take all the credit for making a success of the business, for I had my hands full with the household, but I did my best to be the “inseparable helpmeet” that I had vowed to be in the marriage service. In the house, I did all there was to be done, and I did it to as high a standard as was reasonable to hope for, and when my chores with the children were less pressing I did what I could to assist in the shop. I never made a shoe, nor ever cut or stitched one, for even if I had wanted to Paddy would not have allowed it. Paddy usually did all the clicking himself— matching the leather without wasting any was, he said, the key to a good boot at a competitive price. The closing, bottoming, lashing and sewing was done by the journeymen, assisted by the apprentice, and the polishing and finishing was done by the apprentice, assisted by me. I was taught to cut lace holes and insert eyelets, as well as to smooth down any irregularities, but even this was better done by a twelve-year-old boy than by me, for my hands were made for the plow, not the awl.

“As the Church is subject to Christ, so also let the wives be subject to their husbands in all things.” Father Troy said this to us when we were married, but I have since read the service over many times and it also says in the service “Men ought to love their wives as their own bodies, for no man ever hated his own flesh.” I tried to be subject to Paddy, but in some things it was not easy.

When I look into my heart, I confess that at the beginning I was hopeful, and even perhaps looking forward to the joys of
married intimacy, for I could see that my mother and father were fond of one another and took some pleasure in even the casual contact of daily life. My mother, when cutting my father's hair, would lean into the curve of his back and massage his scalp before wielding the scissors, and when his feet were cracked and bleeding from being too long in wet boots, she would pull them into her lap in front of the stove and rub the cod oil into them as if she were kneading bread and often she would hold them in her hands long after it was necessary. Occasionally, on a warm summer evening, I would catch a look between the two of them and I learned not to ask questions if they disappeared for a time while engaged in some small chore down on the wharf.

I do not think I had unrealistic expectations. I had, even at the age of twenty, enough contact with animals, and yes, even some humans, to know that the joys of the marriage bed did not come right away for most of God's creatures. I was willing to be patient, but patience was not a word Paddy knew in any of the many languages he spoke. Sometimes he was rough or clumsy, and sometimes I wept, and this made him ashamed and angry. At first, he tried to soothe me, bringing me extravagant gifts we could not afford, or offering me elaborate compliments that no woman who owned a mirror could accept as sincere, when really all I wanted was a little more kindness and a great deal more time. After a while he stopped noticing my distress, or if I made him notice he told me I was a sullen bitch who refused to enjoy what any other woman in the town would be delighted to get.

I know to the day when I stopped hoping to enjoy my life as a wife and resigned myself to enduring it. Johanna and Min had been born, and a third pregnancy, another girl, had resulted in a stillbirth, so I was anxious and tense when I realized I was expecting yet again. It was too soon after my loss, and I had two small children to tend to, not to mention Paddy and the
apprentices and the dinners for the journeymen. Yet I wanted this next child, wanted it very badly. All my life I had been blessed with good health, but this time nothing seemed to go right. I could not eat enough to nourish myself, let alone the infant, and day after day I bled a small amount until I could no longer be sure I was still carrying a child. The movement I felt was sporadic and weak.

I do not know how far along I was the night Paddy came home, drunk and disagreeable after a quarrel with his senior journeyman, for I had become pregnant so soon after the previous pregnancy that there had been no monthly mark for me to count from. All day I had been sick, throwing up what little food I could get down, and running back and forth to the earth-closet in the yard with the colleywobbles. The children had been difficult and uneasy, infected by the unhappy apprentice who had to work between the two quarreling men, so I got everyone off early to bed.

I was lying, exhausted and sleepless on top of the blankets, when Paddy came into the dark room. He stank of the grog-shop and had no sooner kicked off his boots than he had his hands up my skirts and when I tried to push them away and whisper an objection, he clapped his hand over my mouth. It was all over in a few moments, and I don't think he even noticed the sopping rag I had between my legs to catch the blood that was again leaking out with frightening insistence.

I sent the apprentice for the midwife as soon as the first light broke, and while I gave birth, Paddy sat in the kitchen and vomited into a pail between his knees. The baby was bigger than I had expected, but small enough to give me little hope that she would survive. My father, when he saw her, said she had not enough flesh on her to bait a hook. There was a penny-sized wine-coloured stain on one side of her face that covered half her nose and part of her cheek, and when the midwife went to sprinkle the burnt flour on her cord to prevent infection, she
jerked back and blessed herself for the baby had two extra tiny, pink teats below the regular ones. After that, I never let Paddy lay a finger on me except in strict compliance with my duty as a wife. I never made it easy for him to demand his conjugal right and I never pretended to like it. Like Pharaoh, I hardened my heart—I acquiesced, no more and no less.

I thought, given the circumstances, that the baby would die, and when she did not, I thought Paddy would reject her because she was neither a boy nor a pretty girl. I was wrong on both counts. Kate lived, and Paddy soon doted on her just as he doted on Johanna and Min. In time, she lost the unhuman look she had at birth, and as she grew the fading birthmark on her face did not. Even the extra teats shrank and soon looked like two little dimples that I told her were the result of bee stings suffered when she was left in her cradle on the stoop. But of my three daughters, I love Kate the most, for she cost me the love of my husband and my love for my husband, and she has grown up to be a woman of courage and compassion such as I never was nor ever could be.

Hoc and uncomfortably humid. The Methodist Choral Society were returning to town on the train, and as they passed through all the young men pelted my cows with caplin. Dermot was furious, for we had to scramble to pick them up before the cows ate them and tainted the milk. We collected four and a half buckets full, and put them in the gurry pit. I told Mumma, and said it was easier than carrying them from Topsail Beach, and she blinked in agreement. Dermot is still angry
—
molasses pie for supper should sweeten him.

Lizzie is here again today, I can smell her burning toast in the kitchen. School is over so I will see more of her now. Lizzie is such a trial at times, yet I long for the sight of her face as a shipwrecked man must long for the sight of a sail. I could hear her talking with Kate in the kitchen, and then there she was, with her solemn eyes and that tight mouth, peeping in around the door, looking for all the world like that photograph Mr. Tooton took of her out on the veranda last summer. I was awake for once, and I think I smiled because she beamed back at me. Sometimes I think I have said a word or two, or opened my eyes or mouth, but I haven't. This time I think I really smiled.

That picture of Lizzie is a treasure. He ambushed me in the kitchen, where I was plucking chickens with an old brin-sack
around my waist, but Lizzie wasn't about to be caught out. She scrambled around getting her dress ironed, and then she had to have a little spray of fresh flowers for her hat, but it was worth it—so demure and proper she looked, perched on the corner of the chair with her ankles crossed just so. No frivolous smiles for Miss Lizzie Power, not for the camera at least.

There were smiles enough afterwards when I discovered that she'd got holes in her stockings and hidden them by painting her legs with India ink. Min was beside herself, but it was much better than having the picture ruined.
Lizzie
says there's a photo of Jimmy's grade one class on the wall at St. Bon's, and he's sitting in the front row with his leg stuck out so you can see two big holes in the soles of his shoes. Min's probably saying novenas every night, hoping the Virgin Mother will take pity on her and have some boy break the glass so they take it down.

Kate said Lizzie and I look more alike every day, but Lizzie said she couldn't see it. She wouldn't, of course. Why would a young girl of fourteen want to see herself in an old woman of eighty-odd years? But I have no doubt Kate is right, for I see myself in Lizzie and it probably goes both ways. I remember during Father's last going off, he looked younger and younger every day. So frail, he was, that he should have looked old beyond his years, but instead he looked more and more like a boy each day, more and more like Richard, with his hair stuck up in pooks and that rare smile dawning so slowly over his face whenever I was able to do something to make him a little more comfortable.