Bodies and Sole (5 page)

Chapter Seven

The Shores. 200 Years.
The flowerbed shone the message as loud and clear as the sandwich board sign outside the hall. It was usually devoted to ceilidhs and strawberry socials, but was now one of dozens of signs around the village that proclaimed the bicentenary:

200 years and Counting

“And counting…down,” thought Marlene. It was touch and go if this village would last long enough to make the two hundred mark – one reason maybe that the tourism department wasn't putting a lot of money into it.

There was no sign of modern life at all. Not a satellite dish…not a hot tub…pool…or golf course. How could it survive? And why were they celebrating this…this backwater at all?

As it happened, it was the minister of tourism's birthplace. He hadn't set foot in it in forty years, but, in a weak moment, had given into his mother's nagging to do something for the place their family came from. She hadn't set foot there in forty years either.

Marlene grabbed a coat and scarf. It was fall weather, though it was May. Maybe she could get an idea of what to do if she took a walk around the neighbourhood. Consulting the villagers was an idea still not on her radar. And she had no real desire to liaise with that cheeky community liaison person.

Uppity local. Hy would have been pleased to be considered local, instead of always from away.

Marlene saw Gus hanging out a patchwork quilt on the line. Her neighbour Estelle Joudry was bustling from a shed with a huge canning pot, her husband Germaine struggling behind her with a box full of glass canning jars. Both women were wearing housedresses, a piece of clothing not seen anywhere else. By contrast, ladies' pants were rarely seen in the village, except on tourists or people from town, like Marlene. She'd heard them called slacks here. Who used that word anymore? Capris, skinny jeans, low rise, boot leg, dozens of names, but never slacks. These people were from another century. Only the flowerbed women wore jeans. Hy and Annabelle. Named like the clowns they were.

Marlene sighed. No raw material to work with.

That's when it struck her. Of course. Two hundred years. A Heritage Village. A Living Village. The Village that Time Forgot. They were all good, all bound to attract tourist attention.

She would have to wipe the village clean of any signs of modern life. No cars. No trucks. Excited, she stopped at Gus's house. Gus was now hanging clothes on the line. They'd never met, but that didn't stop Marlene from barging in to test her idea on the grande dame of the village.

Marlene introduced herself and explained her idea for the bicentenary.

Gus sliced it apart without taking the clothespin from her mouth.

“A Living Village? And so what is it now? Dead?”

Marlene privately thought so, but didn't say.

Disappointed, she returned to Moira's and tried “The Village that Time Forgot” on her. She got no better reception.

“Well, my father would not like to hear that. He was a man for timeliness.” Moira looked up at the face of the grandfather clock in the hall. It was the family's prized possession. Her father, a “waste management supervisor,” as she liked to call him, had pulled it out of the dump. It told time faithfully – twice a day – at six-thirty in the morning and six-thirty at night.

Chagrined, Marlene left the house again and got in the Smart car – another tourism department economy. She drove around the village to assess how hard it would be to turn time back. She was delighted to see that it wouldn't be difficult at all. Just get rid of the vehicles and barbecues. She frowned.

And ride-ons.

She drove to Big Bay Harbour, and there her imagination took off. The fishing shacks were sad-looking affairs. All grey cedar shingle, probably looking very much as they had two hundred years before. But they wouldn't do. They simply wouldn't do. A splash of paint – each a different colour, turn one into a café, others into little shops. Just what the tourists would like.

Hy was discouraged to see Gus's historical ephemera all over the kitchen floor. Gus was a doer, she liked to get things done, but she wasn't doing anything with this, other than shuffling it around the floor with her feet.

Something was stopping her.

Hy slumped down in the recliner opposite Gus.

“What is it? What's got you blocked?”

Gus said nothing. She continued to rock and knit.

“There must be something. There must be some way I can help.”

Gus darted a quick hopeful look at her, soon extinguished.

“Come on. We can do this together.”

Gus squared her shoulders, as if resolving on something. Then they drooped, and she shook her head sadly.

“She's allus looking over my shoulder.”

“Who's she?”

“Me Ma. There.” Gus pointed to a schoolhouse photograph, lying close to Hy's feet. Hy picked it up.

“Around 1921, I think. That's me ma. In the middle.”

“The schoolteacher?”

Gus nodded and rocked.

“Thought everyone knew that.”

That was the trouble with The Shores, thought Hy. People were born knowing everything, or very quickly acquiring it so it was as if they'd always known it. It could leave information gaps for people from away like her.

“Yes, she were a schoolteacher. She were also a writer. Wrote poems and such. Wrote a book once.”

“Really?”

“Yup. Sent it to a publisher and all.”

“And?” She hardly need ask. The answer was written on Gus's face.

“Sent back.”

“And?”

“She burned it. In the wood range. Leastwise, she said, it could feed us supper. Never wrote again that I know of. Had ambitions, but she also knew how to take no for an answer.”

“She never wrote again?”

“Nope. She said she must not be good enough.”

“That's very sad.”

“Reckon it is.”

“But this is different. And it shouldn't stop you.”

“Happen it is different. But it is stoppin' me. She were smarter than me, and she couldn't do it. I can't do any more with this than I have, not with her lookin' over my shoulder.”

Hy let out a big sigh.

“Then let me, Gus. I've asked you before, and I'm asking you again.”

“You don't want to be bothered.”

“But I do. Very much. I'd be thrilled. And I can tell you that your Ma is not looking over my shoulder.”

Gus smiled. “Don't be so sure. No. Leave it. I'll get around to it.”

“Well, let me clear it up a bit for you.”

Hy began putting it in organized piles by subject matter, by whether it was a newspaper article, photo or handwritten note. She soon gave up, and began lumping it all together, just to get it off the floor.

She uncovered, stuck to a wad of bills from Macks' General Store, a sealed envelope, marked “Toombs” in a spidery handwriting.

She held it up.

“What's this?”

Gus craned forward and peered at it.

“Don't know. Can't say as I've ever seen it. Not my handwriting. Open it.”

Hy carefully slit the brittle envelope open, the old dry gum giving way easily. Inside were several pages of a letter. She began to scan it. Her eyes widened.

“Well, what does it say?” Gus, impatient.

“You'll never believe it.”

“I can't believe it if I don't know what it is.”

So Hy told her. Gus's mouth shaped into a fat round “o” of disbelief.

“Can I take this?”

“I 'spose. What are you going to do with it?”

“I'm going to tell Moira. She should know.”

“Rather you than me.” Gus rocked to the words and repeated them. “Rather you than me.”

Chapter Eight

Marlene watched the fishermen bring in their lobster catch and sell it to suppliers on the wharf. When they were finished, she launched into her attack – to cajole them into sprucing up their fish shacks.

Above them, gulls were circling and diving down for scraps of bait and broken lobster parts. On their way back up, they were squawking at each other and defecating. One fisherman earned a glare from Marlene when he shoved her out of the way of a descending deposit. Until she realized what he'd done. Then she gave him a weak smile. Miss Manners had no guide for such a social situation.

A real, working harbour, Big Bay was picturesque, but not the kind of picturesque Marlene was looking for. She wanted the fishing shacks painted bright colours – red, yellow, blue with pots of flowers lined along the dock and window boxes with trailing ivy and lobelia. Pretty and fragrant. Not damp, grey, smelling of salt water and fish, and covered in gull poo.

She'd brought sample colour swatches with her to tempt the fishermen. She'd brought pots of paint as well. A few fishermen had gathered round at the prospect of something for nothing.

“Free,” she said. “No charge. It's on the province. If you agree to paint your shacks, the paint's free.”

“And the labour?”

She shrugged her shoulders.

“As for that, it's up to you.”

Some accepted the bribe of paint, although they weren't too fussy about the colours. Pink. Purple. Marigold. Lime green. What kind of colours were those for a serious working harbour?

Encouraged by her success with the paint, Marlene floated her next idea. She wanted the fishermen to lease their shacks for the season to retailers who would open a string of crafty boutiques.

“And where does that put us?” Andy Gallant growled through the pipe perpetually dangling from his lips. “We gotta livin' to make.”

“Surely you can let it go for one year.” Marlene didn't get it. She didn't have to work. She had a private income, left by her father. This tourism job was her public duty. That there was money attached to it, she supposed was nice, but she never saw it. It went straight into the bank. She knew many people had to work for a living, but surely they didn't spend it all. They, too, must have some in the bank for occasions like this.

A couple of fishermen decided to go fish out of another harbor and put their shacks up for rent, and took the free paint. Marlene held them up as an example of entrepreneurship and civic duty.

The rest shuffled off, grumbling about how the government chose to spend their taxpayer dollars.

Paint.

Pink and lime green.

Chapter Nine

Before she left Gus, Hy reread the pages, more carefully this
time. It was several pages, handwritten, a century before, by Marie Toombs, who must have been Moira's great-great grandmother. A Frenchwoman. That would come as a shock to Moira, and so would her story.

Hy found Moira outside, washing her downstairs windows.

“I've got something to show you.” Hy held up the envelope. Moira looked at it with distaste. A dirty yellowed envelope.

“I haven't got my glasses.” Moira wanted to get the windows finished before the sun moved around the house and caused streaking.

“Come. It's important.” Hy went ahead of Moira into the house. Moira picked up her glasses off the hall table, and headed for the kitchen, the two stepping over newspapers laid out neatly over the floor. Moira washed her floors once a week and, as soon as they had dried, laid several layers of newspaper down to keep them clean.

To lend the occasion the recognition it deserved, Hy steered Moira away from the kitchen and into the front room, where the furniture had once been protected by that upholstery condom – draped in plastic, until it became yellow and brittle and too expensive to replace. The chairs and love seat still looked unused.

Hy sat Moira down in one of the needlepoint chairs, and handed her the letter.

Moira read the pages, frowning more deeply the more she absorbed. It took her a long time, so much time that Hy became agitated with waiting. She curbed her impatience because she knew Moira was a slow reader and there was a lot to digest.

Or not.

“It's not true.” Moira looked over at Hy, firm conviction etched on her face. Just as firmly, Hy responded.

“She was your ancestor.” This was not going to be easy. But she had known that.

“Marie?” Moira looked down. “Yes. She was. I never knew she was a Frenchwoman, though.” She said “Frenchwoman” as if it were a dirty word.

“Not with a name like Marie?”

“Well, we never said it that way. We said it like Mary. The way it's meant to be said.”

“Meant to be said?” No, this was not going to be easy.

“Like in the good book.”

“The good book…” Puzzlement on Hy's face, then sudden clarity. “Oh, the Bible. Of course.”

“Of course.”

“Anyway, she knew the story well, and gives proof. For one thing, that your ancestor was shipwrecked on the
Annabella
.”

Moira's spine stiffened with pride at being so connected to early island origins.

“And he survived that first winter, as many islanders did, with the help of the Mi'kmaq.”

Moira nodded, less confidently.

“And he married a Mi'kmaw woman.”

Moira stood up, the fragile letter crushed in her hand.

“No,” she said.

“Yes,” said Hy.

Moira slumped down again. Combed through the pages one more time. Looked up, disgust in her eyes.

“A Mi'kmaw?”

“Yes.” Hy was torn between keeping silent – what would be the point? – and ripping a strip off Moira. She chose the middle ground.

“You should feel privileged.”

“Privileged?” Confusion mixed with the disgust in Moira's eyes. Not diluting it, but turning it into a different kind of ugly emotion.

“Yes. To be part of the people who owned this land to begin with. If any humans ever did, they did. The originals.”

“The aboriginals.” Moira didn't exactly spit it out, but her tone held all the contempt of a spit.

“You can't hate your own people. You're one of them.”

“Partly.”

Hy could see it pained Moira to say it, to admit the possibility.

“It's in the blood, Moira. Your blood.”

Moira looked as if Hy had struck her. That's just what Hy wanted to do. Give her a good slap. Shake some sense into her.

“It's your heritage.”

Moira bit her lip.

Biting back words? Maybe a start.

“My heritage is this.” Moira looked around her at the cheap, tired late Victorian furnishings, love seats, hard and lumpy, armchairs stuffed with horsehair, occasional tables of more recent vintage with brown veneer surfaces. Her glance grazed over the china cabinet, her mother's pride. Her eyes fixed, finally, on the grandfather clock, her father's pride, which told its bang-on perfect time twice a day.

“This?” Hy's tone now seeped with contempt.

Moira straightened, stiff with pride.

“It is a perfectly respectable heritage.”

“If you like that sort of thing.” Hy mumbled, so that Moira did not hear clearly.

“Sure, a part of your heritage is here, within these four walls. There's no denying that. But what about that?” Hy jabbed a finger at the front window.

“The village?”

“Well, yes, the village, too. But I meant outside. All of outside. Your inheritance. Your legitimate inheritance, as a daughter of the island.”

She had struck a chord.
Daughter of the island.
It resonated with Moira. She sat up even straighter for a moment. Then lost hold of what had inspired her.

“I don't like outside. And I don't want to be Mi'kmaq. Mi'kmaq.” Moira shook her head, then buried it in her hands. She was responding as if someone had died. Perhaps someone had. Her idea of herself.

“Yes, Moira, Mi'kmaq. And European. A blend of the cultures that makes Red Island what it is. If you hate that, you hate yourself.”

Moira looked up. Despair flooded her eyes.

My God, she does. She hates herself. Mi'kmaq or white. It doesn't matter.

It was a revelation to Hy. She'd never liked Moira, but had never given the woman a lot of thought. Moira had always seemed mean-spirited and even a bit vicious to her. Underhanded. Sneaky. Now, looking at her lips trembling and her chin buckling – even though it was for all the wrong reasons – Hy felt sorry for her. Sorry for Moira's limited scope and imagination, the smallness, in every way, of her world. The newspapers guarding her floor. The fiancé who was marrying her tidy life, not her. The sister who feared her, whose affection was only dutiful.

Moira slumped, looking at the floor. “What will I tell people? The women of the Institute? This can't go in the book.”

Hy was determined that it would go in the book, if there ever were a book, but that would be a battle for another day. If she could only get Moira to reconcile herself in some small way, to begin to embrace a connection, a heritage of which the orphan in Hy was envious.

That's it. Envy. Moira understands envy.

“I envy you.”

A spark of light appeared in Moira's eyes.

“Envy? You do? Why?”

“It makes you more of an islander. A true original. A heritage princess.”

That was going over the top a bit, Hy thought, but she couldn't think of another way at the moment to get Moira to accept her very interesting ancestry.

So she repeated what she'd said, hoping to get through to Moira's pride.

“Moira, listen. This makes you the oldest family in The Shores, bar none.”

A glimmer joined the light in Moira's eyes.

“The oldest family on this side of the causeway. This part of the island. As old as anyone anywhere else. A founding daughter.”

Moira straightened. The Toombs had only ever been ordinary. Commonplace. Never the first. The only. And now – the originals? Moira read the letter again. She folded it carefully, stood up and opened the locked china cabinet that contained a few tea cups and saucers, valued because they were Royal Doulton, but chipped or cracked or desperately yellowed with age.

There was a silver cigarette box in the cabinet, polished to a shine but with a dent in it, and she reverently placed the letter in that, closed it, held her touch on it for a moment and then locked the cabinet again.

Hy could tell this was going to be a much bigger deal than the grandfather clock.