Waiting for Time (18 page)

“Stunned as me arse, both of 'em!” Mary thought, but she said nothing, sensing that such foolish embroidering of the truth might be of benefit to Rachel and the baby.

Now, in late January, Mary sits sipping her cold tea, knowing she has been able to do nothing to protect her great-granddaughter. The poor maid is going to have to face life with a baby but no husband—and Mary knows how that will be. She studies the shape under the blankets trying to think what she can do, trying to calculate how long until the baby will be born, how long her own dying will take.

It is near noon and the girl has not moved. “If she keeps on like this, sleeping half the day, not eatin' nor goin' outside the door, moping about like she don't care if she lives or dies, she'll do herself harm, and the baby too, belike.” Mary has seen more than one die from not wanting to live, she remembers her own daughter Fanny and Ida Norris, poor mad women both of them, women who lived in another world.

Mary wishes Lavinia or Sarah, or even Meg, were alive to talk to, wishes her bouts of dizziness and forgetfulness had not started at such an inconvenient time, wishes she had the strength to pull Rachel from the couch, to drag her, body and bones, outdoors. A few days tramping through the snow would do the girl a world of good.

There is one thing she can do. This very night, Mary resolves, they will change sleeping places. From now on, she will sleep in the kitchen and Rachel must sleep in the bed upstairs. The top floor is so icy cold the girl will at least be forced to get up each morning.

Mary sighs, it's not much, but it's a start. She pokes more wood on the fire, adds water to the rolled oats that have been in soak since yesterday and moves the pot to the front of the stove. She leans over to study the girl's face, small and round with a little pointed chin, a child's face. Mary nudges her great-granddaughter awake, forces her to get up and eat.

The old woman spends the rest of the short winter day trying to coax Rachel out of her lethargy, mentioning things that are happening on the Cape: that Greta Way was sung-down at last night's prayer meeting, the number of traps Moses John has set for fox, the light one of the boys saw out beyond the reach, the “time” planned for Friday night in the school and the astonishing, or so it seems to Mary, news that Triff Norris is crocheting a twelve-foot-long train for her niece Joanna's wedding dress.

In the past Mary and Rachel could have spent any amount of time discussing these things. Today the girl shows not a flicker of interest. Mary, who considers curiosity well ahead of godliness or cleanliness, tries to hide her annoyance at the girl's languor, suggests Rachel go visit the schoolteacher who has come by several times. But she just shakes her head, crawls back under the quilts and appears to sleep, leaving the old woman to brood by the fire.

It is dark again before Mary thinks of something that might bestir the child. “I s'pose we could find out what Lavinia writ in her book about Charlie Vincent,” she remarks, talking as if to the cat who has curled in beside the girl but is at least keeping one eye open.

Rachel does not reply but she does move slightly.

“It just come to me how we can find out something about Char Vincent, him that was Stephen's grandfather,” Mary continued, carefully keeping amy eagerness out of her voice. “I allow, though, you'd hardly be interested in them old things happened before your time.”

The girl sat up. “What book?” she said.

“That big old book Vinnie wrote in for ages, said I was to take care of it for her,” Mary pokes at the fire, holding her breath.

“Where's the book now?”

“Stowed away somewhere—up in Vinnie's room I expects, in that old sack hung on back of the door. You can go take a look if you got a mind.”

Mary knows exactly where the journal is. She had taken it from beneath the pillow of Lavinia's deathbed and slid it into the worn and patched bag Lavinia had carried around for most of her life. Then, right after the funeral, thinking she might soon be dead herself, Mary tucked her own prized possessions down into the bag and hung it behind the door.

How often, during their last years together had she watched Lavinia turning the pages, reading and smiling to herself. It had infuriated Mary. She'd threatened more than once to burn the damned book. And Lavinia had known how she hated and distrusted writing. Still and all, a few days before she died, Lavinia told Mary to keep the book safe and pass it on to someone else who would keep it safe.

“Someday the Cape will be a big, important place, there'll be a town here with thousands of people and they'll want to know how it was in the beginning when we came. It's a testimony, Mary, to what we done. Like the Bible,” Lavinia had said, giving her that great broad smile that had never changed from the day Mary first set eyes on her.

Rachel wrinkles her nose in distaste as she puts the sack down on the kitchen table. It smells fousty, damp and mildewed. Along, long time has passed since Jennie Andrews, sitting by the window on Monk Street, had pieced the bag together for her daughter. Rachel sits opposite Mary and watches the old woman taking things from the bag, laying them out, one by one, on the kitchen table.

The largest item is the journal, which Mary puts to one side. “Vinnie's book,” she says, patting it, “I'll tell you about that after—first I wants to show ya what else is in here.”

“Now this is some old,” she pulls out a little sealskin purse, folded over and tied around with a bit of dirty twine, “I think your Great Aunt Jane gave it to me when she was learnin' to sew.” Inside the purse are three gold pieces, looking like new, the head of George III still shining bright.

Rachel fingers the coins, examining them, “‘King William was King George's son and all the royal race he run’—is this the king in that song, Nan? I wonder what the ‘royal race’ is?”

“I don't know, maid,” Mary has no interest in history. “I only knows them's sovereigns, real gold, and the longer you keeps gold the more it's worth. Here, look at this,” she unfolds a piece of flannel, “what you think of that?” she asks with glee.

The girl picks up the purple brooch, holding it with the same wonder and covetousness Mary once had: “Oh Nan, it's the beautifullist thing I ever seen! Who do it belong to?”

“'Twas Tessa's—not your Great Aunt Tessa—the Tessa who was my sister, the brooch were hers. Once I traded it to Sarah Vincent but I got it back.”

Rachel sighs, “I never thought to see such a thing!”

“Never wore it, not once. I regrets that now,” Mary says and leaning forward pins the brooch on Rachel's sweater. “Here, ‘tis yours—wear it outside where people can see and know you owns somethin’.”

She reaches into the old bag and this time pulls out a thin wad of paper money, wrinkled and soft as cloth and kept together with a rusty safety pin, it has “Newfoundland Commercial Bank” printed on it. A sheet of parchment is curled around the notes. Mary flattens the paper and passes it to Rachel, “Read it out!”

“This is to declare that the store and wharf formerly belonging to Caleb Gosse and latterly to Timothy Drew are hereby assigned to Mary Andrews nee Bundle and to her heirs or beneficiaries in perpetuity,” Rachel stumbles over the long word.

“In perpetuity!” Mary rolls the word over her tongue, “Means forever—means long as rivers run, long as fish swim!”

The girl puts the paper down beside the bank notes and stacks the gold pieces. She stares at her great-grandmother: “Why, Nan—you're rich!”

“No girl, not rich nor nothin' like it, what I got here wouldn't buy the horse and carriage off a rich man. Still, I'm not dyin' a pauper—and I'm the first in me family as can say that.” Mary surveys the collection with pride.

The ritual of counting her possessions reassures her. It always has. But tonight there is something else, a feeling of comfort just from seeing the book Lavinia used to write in and the sack she always had slung across her shoulder. The terrible sadness that came over Mary the night she found out Rachel was pregnant lifts a little. She should have brought the bag down before, not let it hang untouched for fifteen years.

“First thing tomorrow I wants you to get the teacher. Bring her down here and tell her to bring ink; and paper. I wants her to set down that you'll have this house and the store when I dies. And I wants nothing said of it, tell her that, too.”

“You're not going to die, Nan—not forever and ever!” Rachel repeats the old words she used to say as a child whenever they'd gone to a funeral. In those days Mary had agreed with her great-granddaughter. Now she tells her not to be so foolish.

“I'm over ninety, child, nobody can expect to live forever—beginning to think I don't even want to.” Even as she says this Mary knows it is not true. She does want to live forever—but not as an addled old woman. She wishes she could believe the things Meg and Sarah used to be always pratin' on about: streets of gold and robes of light, everlasting summers with Ned and Lavinia—with her sister Tessa.…

Mary shakes off such fancies. “Must be gettin' soft in me old age,” she thinks and continues with her instructions: “When I'm gone you got some things to do—I'm tellin' them to you now, so remember. When me time comes I wants you to go upstairs and hide the gold and the book away for yourself, let them find the bag and sort out who owns the rest of it, but remember, hide the gold and the book first.”

There were other things that Rachel must do. Ignoring the girl's protestations, Mary lists them. She will go over this same list time and time again in the weeks to come: “Make Nan decent, go upstairs and hide the journal and the gold, put the bag back on the hook…”

“What do ‘make Nan decent’ mean?” Rachel recites the list twice before she has courage to ask the question.

“Cover me up, child, fix me hair and, you know, see me eyes is closed—I'll do what I can meself but I got to count on you to do what's necessary before they comes traipsin' in and sees me lookin' like a witch altogether!” Mary begins to cackle at this and goes into a fit of coughing.

“Don't worry about it,” she says when she gets her breath back, “dead bodies don't feel nothin', just close me eyes and plait me hair—take me nice hairpins for yourself—plain ones is good enough for the grave.”

Rachel's shudder does not stop Mary. “You'll be surprised how easy it'll be, girl—I done worse long before I was your age.”

After the morbid conversation they became quite festive, treating themselves to leftover Christmas cake and syrup before settling on the couch like children with Lavinia's journal between them.

“It come to me today, now's me chance to find out what Vinnie put down about them all—about Charlie, and about his people, about Meg and Ben and Thomas—about Ned and me, too,” Mary told the girl.

The old woman speaks casually, turning pages, reaming off names of people long dead, her excitement is growing—with Rachel here not only can she find out everything Lavinia had written in the book—she can write something of her own! For the first time the power of written words—words that can stay behind and talk, just as if you were alive—dawns on Mary: “Sure that's why Vinnie done it!”

“I'm going to have you write something down, something of me own—at the end here, maybe,” Mary shows her great-granddaughter the empty pages and watches slyly as the girl picks up the book and squints at the lines of fading script.

“I can write, but I'm slow. Miss says I'm about the slowest in class for penmanship—and she says I writes too small.”

“I allow now you're every bit as smart as Vinnie was. We'll do it a few words at a time. If I told you what to set down, couldn't you put it in the book for me?” There is not another soul in the world she would have, could have, asked such a thing of.

Writing certainly is slow work. Mary had never realized how slow but she holds tight her impatience, makes herself repeat and repeat each sentence, watching the pen move snail-like across the thick paper, and after a week three pages are covered in Rachel's fine web-like writing.

Except for the growing bulge below the girl's waist it is almost as if Stephen Vincent had never set foot on the Cape. Rachel and her great-grandmother are together all the tinne. Mary sits in the rocker they have pulled over to the front of the stove while Rachel, curled up on the couch, reads Lavinia's words. This, too, is slow. Lavinia's writing is hard to make out, there are many misspellings, lines scratched over and dribbling into illegibility.

All in all Mary is disappointed.

“'Tis like the Bible,” Vinnie had said and Mary had believed her, had expected stories of giants and floods, of storms and bolts of lightning coming out of heaven, yams with great ringing phrases, rolling words like those that leapt from Ned's mouth when he was happy or excited. Instead Lavinia has written of women clearing gardens, of making fish, or hay, or candles—mundane things Mary would not have given the time of day to.

“Whenever is she goin' to get around to somethin' happenin'?” the old woman would ask peevishly after Rachel has been reading about berry-picking or boat building for an hour. Yet, when they do come to one of Lavinia's accounts of something happening, Mary is no better pleased, interrupting the girl's reading to insist that Lavinia has lied or completely misunderstood.

“Put the rights of it down there,” Mary orders. And pointing to the white space around the edge of the page she dictates her own version of the event.

Sometimes she feels the past pressing down on her like the lid of a coffin. All she wants is to sit alone and think about it, work out the way it really was. When this happens Mary says she is tired, wants to take a spell and contrives some message, anything that will get Rachel outdoors, breathing a bit of fresh air into her lungs. Cautioning the girl not to say a word outside the house about what they are doing, Mary sends her to borrow thread, to bring in wood or water, to check on the hens or shovel snow off the bridge.

Still, they spend most of each day huddled by the stove, reading and writing, so content that sometimes it is late evening before they realize they have not eaten since morning. Suddenly famished, they warm soup Jessie has brought or get cups of tea and thick slices of bread spread with molasses. Rachel brings the food over to the fire, carrying it on Mary's old tin tray. They eat in companionable silence, staring into the embers and thinking about Lavinia and Thomas, Meg and Ben, about Moses and Ned and the Vincents, who are becoming more real to them than the people in the surrounding houses.