Donovan's Station (21 page)

It was in January that the first train came through, a special excursion train full of judges and clergy and members of Parliament all invited by Mr. Loomis and Mr. Blackman. We only heard about it because Mrs. Fitzpatrick asked if she could borrow some of my cups and plates to feed them all. I didn't send over my best but I did send what I could afford to lose. I should have sent a hammer over, too, so they could break the biscuits without breaking their teeth. I had no intention of going to see the train come in, but the girls were so excited and they had made flags to wave as the engine went by.

We climbed up the path through what was left of our woods and stood on the bank, and you could hear the whistle all down through the valley, shrieking and howling like a banshee. All I could think was that I wasn't going to get much milk out of our cows that evening, or any other evening if this was to be a regular occurrence. Then the engine, with a dozen banners flying, came into sight, hurling along at a tremendous speed towards us, and I grabbed Kate and Min by the hand and hauled them back out of the way, and shouted at Johanna to move out of its path.

“It has to stay on the tracks, Mama,” she called over her shoulder and began waving her flags. It went off the tracks twice at Manuels in the following month, so she wasn't quite right. I suppose they were slowing down by the time they got to us, getting ready to stop over at the shed near Fitzpatricks', so I got a pretty good look at it all. There were hundreds of people crammed into the two carriages, and men in the engine packed like herrings in a barrel, all shouting and carrying on. I couldn't help it—when the children started running after the train, I went along with them, and that's when I saw the engineer with his jacket all burnt like the Bishops vest. I recognized Sir
William Whiteway, and some of the Parliamentarians, from engravings I had seen. They looked smaller and more ordinary than I had expected. In no time, the whole of the district was swarming with ladies and gentlemen.

By the time I got home with Kate, for Johanna and Mm had stayed behind to help with the teas, my own place was half overrun. You'd think those townies had never seen a common cow, the way they gawked at my six, and the ladies were clucking and looking in the windows of what they called my “quaint little cottage.” “Just like a dolls house,” one of them said. I was as polite and helpful as I knew how, but I didn't think I was going to like having a railway in my back yard if this is what it led to.

It was a fine, sunny day, not too cold, so most of the ladies and gentlemen were walking about by the river and on the road, and after a time I was able to get back to my work. Towards the latter part of the afternoon, Johanna turned up with a lady she introduced as Mrs. Sands, and said she had offered to show her about the place. I was not pleased, but didn't wish to embarrass the girl by being inhospitable, and as it turned out Mrs. Sands was a pleasant and intelligent woman, who asked sensible questions about the hens and geese and even gave me a recipe for tonic to feed to the goat, which had been out of sorts for weeks.

Johanna set the table while I showed Mrs. Sands around and I think she was favourably impressed by the tidy way we kept everything. I had a nice bakeapple tart set aside for supper, and we had fresh bread Johanna had made herself that morning, with our own butter and cream and jam. There was a dish of eggs, and beets dressed with vinegar and mustard seed, and a slice of smoked ham that I had prepared myself in the fall, for I was able to get into the root cellar without fear of the frost getting in, it being such a mild day. I was glad of that ham after, for that night the temperature dropped like a stone and I'm told the harbour froze from Chain Rock to Riverhead in just two
hours. I didn't dare open the door to the root cellar for ten days straight.

Once I discovered that Mrs. Sands knew Mrs. Smyth, I was able to relax and enjoy the unexpected company. I hadn't realized just how unused I was to receiving guests, or how much Johanna missed having someone other than myself to talk to and learn from. Later, when Johanna received an invitation to visit the Sands family in town—enclosed with a letter from Mrs. Smyth—I was happy enough to let her go, although I think I knew it was the beginning of losing my daughter. Father used to say your children are only on loan, and that is particularly true of daughters.

When the train turned and headed back to town, I stood with the girls and waved good-bye, and I felt a little differently about it than I had at the start of the day. In amongst those hundreds of people sitting on the red velvet carriage seats and standing in the aisles, was a familiar smiling face, not yet a friend perhaps but an acquaintance, that I had not had when the sun came up. Within the year, Johanna was gone to work for Mrs. Sands' friend Mrs. Pedersen, and I had married Mr. Donovan, and then Min got the school in Blackhead, even though she was only fourteen.

Nothing was ever quite the same again. It wasn't that I minded the changes, for some of them were changes for the better, but we had been happy when there was just me and my three girls. There were times, even years later, when I looked back with longing on those days when, snowed in or storm bound or even just on a rainy winter day, we stayed close to home and fire. We'd amuse ourselves with lessons and sewing or making some new concoction on the stove, and I might take the Bible down and read them one of the stories, Ruth or Jonah or Esther, one of the exciting ones, not one of the Begot chapters. All that came to an end.

In May of that year there was another excursion for the
members of Parliament, and this time I knew Mrs. Sands would be on the train, and Mrs. Smyth, too, as well as their husbands, and I laid on a tea that I would have been happy to serve to the Queen and Prince Albert. A month later there was the first official run to Topsail, with three closed carriages and an open one for the bands. The Walshes decorated their entire house with flags and banners, and I flew the Union Jack with the Native flag directly beneath it, although you could barely see them as our house was below the line then. The bands played “The Banks of Newfoundland” as they passed through the community, and Mrs. Fitzpatrick's heifer got on the track and had its leg broken, so we all had fresh meat for Sunday dinner later in the week.

I can't say I was really surprised when the riots started later that summer, although “riot” is too big a word for what amounted to a handful of sleeveens and sluts throwing rocks. I had heard all the rumors about toll gates and expropriation of land, and I was a bit nervous about it myself, but to think of Pinkie Mercer leading the charge, her hair flying loose and those big feet of hers flapping out from under her skirts, is shameful. Those men were only trying to make a day's wage the same as the rest of us. I thought to call it “The Battle of Foxtrap” was to give it a dignity it didn't deserve, but I liked the bit in the paper where they referred to Pinkie as an “ancient virago” and said she threatened to “let daylight into the stomachs of these invaders” with a fish fork. Well, the invaders won in the long run, and the railway wasn't so bad for Pinkie or anyone else on the route.

There were some unexpected benefits from the railway, too. Where the track was put down, the trees had been cut and burnt, and when the cuts grew over with young birch and alder, it was ideal for rabbits once more. I got some hemp sail twine and set my snares again, for I discovered that Mr. Donovan loved a rabbit pie every bit as much as I did. When he'd see me
making the paste, and the pile of vegetables on the table, he'd always say “The wind did blow and the leaves did wag, along came Keziah and put me in her bag.” This was just to tease me a little, for the real words were “along came a little girl,” and I was neither little nor a girl, though when he teased me I felt as if I were both.

The railway made it easier losing the girls, as well, for they could come and go more often. After a few years, Robert Walsh gave an acre of land to Bishop Mullock for a school, and Min was given the post so we had her back at home for a time before she married. They called the school St. Ann's. Some said it was named for Ann Fitzpatrick, because the men who used to go to her place for cards and a meal didn't want their wives to know where they were and used to say they were going to St. Ann's for a meeting. If that's true, I'm sure the Bishop didn't know that when he named it.

After the Fort William station burned down in town and they built the new station, they decided to move the track down from the ridge into the valley. Then Mr. Reid and the governors had what Mr. Donovan called the Palestine Soup Summit and they decided to put the new station on O'Flanigari's land, on the other side of the river just opposite us. They built that small bridge, so passengers could get to the road, and riot comcidentally to our new hotel.

Poor Kate. The bridge went right over her favourite trouting spot and the footings destroyed the pool. While Johanna always used a rod and Min and I relied on poles, Kate had a talent for hand-catching trout, and she insisted they tasted better because they hadn't been hooked or damaged in any way. She would sit on the bank in the spring and spot the quick flash as the trout moved under a rock and then, with her petticoats dragging in the water, she would stretch her arm up under the rock until she felt the slippery prey in the farthest corner and, almost without fail, she'd have it caught behind the head and
flung up onto the bank in a second. Min tried it once and got an eel by mistake and you could hear the shrieks all the way up to Neville s Pond.

But of course the biggest change the railway brought was Mr. Donovan. I can hardly remember how I managed without him. It wasn't just the work, though the Lord knows that it was wonderful to have a man around for the heavy hauling, especially one who was so quick and clever with his hands as Mr. Donovan. It was more that I had someone I could be weak in front of. He teased me a lot, but not about the things that really hurt, and I never knew him to say an unkind word about me or anyone else. Just as Kate had a gift for catching trout and Johanna had a gift for putting a flower in a glass or pinning a brooch on a dress so that it was perfectly placed, Mr. Donovan had a gift for forgiveness. He saw all the weaknesses in my too-human heart and he forgave every one of them.

Donovan's Station

August 18th, 1914

Dear Aunt Johanna,

Auntie Kate has gone to town for supplies and I am looking after Nanny, but she has been asleep all afternoon and I can't find the book I was reading. I think Dermot put it in the stove as I found what looked like the boards when I went to make tea for a customer. Poor Aunt Kate has enough to worry about so I didn't tell her, and besides I think perhaps I deserved to lose it as I was so absorbed in reading that I forgot to check on the cows and the new one got out onto the track. Dermot found her just in time so at least we won't be eating salt beef all winter. He didn't tell on me about the cow, so I won't tell about the book.

Nancy Walsh calls Dermot ‘Blue Eyes' (one blew east and one blew west), which is rather mean as he can't help being born wall-eyed, but it does make me laugh when I think of it. As you may have guessed, we are still fighting but I have rather gotten over my intense dislike of him, which is just as well as I think we are all going to see even more of him in the future. The very last thing Nan said to me before she became ill was that I was to stop teasing Kate about him, and now that I've stopped I realize how much it hurt her. I wish I would hurry and grow out of being thoughtless half as fast as I am growing out of my shoes.

Mama told me that I might be able to go to you next summer, and oh, how dearly I would love that. I really can be quite useful around a hotel—just not one that has cows—and I can't bear the idea of coming here when Nan is gone. I think Aunt Kate will be making new domestic arrangements before long, and Mama is so absorbed in the shop and with Jimmy that she hardly notices me these days.

I wish I had something cheerful to say to you, but it all
seems to be bad news these days. Nan is so thin now you would hardly recognize her. The talk in town is of nothing but recruiting for the new regiment (Mrs. Miller says I might as well go to the Boston States, as when I grow up there will be nobody left here for me to marry because they will all have been killed by the Huns, which is not very flattering to our soldiers). There is bread pudding for afters, my least-favourite. But you-know-who likes it so we must all suffer.

The blueberries are very good this year so Mama will be sending you a case of jam, which I guess is cheerful news, but that's about the only nice thing I can think of so perhaps I had better end here.

Please don't worry about Nanny. She doesn't seem unhappy. She just sleeps or talks to herself all the time, though it is such a mumble I can hardly ever make out the words. Auntie Kate tends to her as if she were a newborn baby, so gentle and kind. Now I've made myself cry, and I've probably made you cry as well. So much for trying to end on a cheerful note.

Mama says to write and tell me what I will need to bring when I come to Boston so that I can begin the sewing this winter. I am longing to see you. It is so quiet and sad around here now, not like it was when Nanny was well.

Your loving niece,
Elizabeth

P.S. The girl has quit again, and I shall have to tell Auntie Kate when she gets home.

P.P.S. Is it true that the Sacred Heart girls do all their lessons in white gloves? I shall need at least a hundred pairs as I find it impossible to keep them clean even when I'm doing nothing whatsoever.

Lizzie spent the day here. Mumma dictated her recipe for Black Currant Jelly which went something like this:

“Put berries and a little water in skillet. Bring to boil and let simmer. You will know yourself when they should be taken off the stove. Strain and add sugar which has been previously warmed. You will judge for yourself how much sugar. Now bring strained juice and sugar to a boil and let boil for as long as you think right. Put in crocks and seal. This jelly should be clear and firm and of good flavour. It will keep for years.”