That Forgetful Shore (38 page)

Triffie

ON THE FRIDAY that Katie Grace comes home from school, Triffie and little David drive the horse and cart over to Bay Roberts to meet her at the station.

On the way back they stop at Parsons' Mercantile, partly because Trif needs a few items on the slate but mostly to show off her beautiful daughter, freshly back from St. John's with her Associate Certificate and the promise of a job teaching nearby in Spaniard's Bay in the fall. On the weekend she will tow Katie to three different church services with the same thought in mind. If pride is a sin, surely pride in your children must be the smallest of sins, the easiest for God to forgive.

The Mercantile is busy this afternoon, mostly with women whose husbands and sons are on the Labrador. Minnie Mercer is at the counter getting tea, molasses and liniment. “Are you getting any relief from the rheumatism?” Triffie asks, nodding at the liniment bottle on the counter as Minnie hands over her molasses puncheon to Skipper Wilf's granddaughter Abigail, who takes it to refill.

“No, I suffers something terrible,” Minnie says. “This is the second year now I can't go fishing with Fred and the truth is I don't know if I'll ever be fit to make fish again, Trif maid.” She sounds sorry; unlikely as it still seems to Trif, there are women who relish their summers at the fishery, look forward to the annual migration. Minnie seems really to regret not being well enough to go anymore.

On the other side of the store, next to the barrels of flour and oats and beans, Katie chats to Minnie's daughter Isabel and to Lydia Snow, her friends from schooldays. “Grand girl, she is,” Minnie says, nodding in Katie's direction.

“She's a grand girl, and a good one too,” Trif says. Personally, she believes Katie to be a sheer genius and a breathtaking beauty, though she recognizes a mother's bias may be at work in making that judgement. Katie did very well in her exams, taking first-class honours in several subjects. She is also, by any standard, a fine-looking girl; she has Trif's height with Jacob John's fair colouring and sandy hair. Trif wishes Jacob John could have stayed till Katie came home; he would have been so proud of his girl. But the ship that took him and Billy to the Labrador left before Katie's examinations were finished, so Jacob John won't see his daughter till the fall.

Abby Parsons comes back to the counter and hands the molasses jug over to Minnie. Trif has her list ready, but Abby says, “Mrs. Russell, Pop wants to talk to you.” She nods toward the back room where Skipper Wilf sits smoking a pipe and looking over his accounts, coming out into the shop to talk to customers if anyone he cares to speak to comes in. Now that his brother Abe is dead and his son has taken over as a schooner captain, Skipper Wilf enjoys his position as the head of the family business. Trif has often exchanged a few pleasant words with the man while she's been in the shop, but she's never been summoned into the back room and she wonders if there can be something wrong with her account. This year they have been advanced more credit than usual because Billy is joining Jacob John on the Labrador, and Trif is always careful with figuring out how much her family owes and what's coming to them. She doesn't know what to expect when she goes into the little office.

“Have a seat, Trif. I got something to put before you,” Skipper Wilf says. “Now you know poor Isaac Morgan who passed away in the spring, he was on the School Board, right?”

“Yes.”

“I been talking to the minister about filling that place on the Board, trying to think who'd make a good job of it.” In most towns the minister is also chairman of the Church of England School Board, but since the Point shares a minister with Bay Roberts, Skipper Wilf, as the town's leading merchant, chairs the Board, though he's expected to take guidance from the clergy. “We wants someone young, not an old fellow like myself or poor Isaac, maybe someone who still got children going up through school. Someone who cares about the school and won't just be there to warm a bench. I got to thinking, what about your husband? You people have always been ready to take part and help out, and with your Katie starting up as a teacher herself, you're the kind of family we'd like to see represented on the Board.”

“Jacob John? On the School Board? Well, I suppose so – I mean, he haven't got much education himself, but he's a great believer in his children getting educated,” Trif says. “When he comes back in the fall you'll have to ask him, I s'pose, and see what he says. I can't speak for him.”

“No, no, of course you can't, but I don't mind saying, Trif, if we were to get Jacob John on the Board I'd be hoping you would – well, not that you'd speak for him, of course, but that you'd be able to do your part, behind the scenes. I'd be hoping we could have the benefit of your wisdom as well.”

The retort is so immediate Trif says it before she thinks. “If you want the benefit of my experience, you might do better off to put me on the Board myself.”

There's a little silence in the room, broken only by the voices of the women and girls out in the shop. Trif takes a deep breath, inhaling the shop smell of cinnamon and cloves, turpentine and linseed oil. She considers laughing to make Skipper Wilf think she's joking.

“Well now, Trif, that's a new idea, for sure. I 'low it makes some kind of sense, but I don't mind saying I've never heard of a woman sitting on a school board.”

“I don't know that I have either, sir,” Trif says. “But we got the vote now, and they do say by the next election there could be a woman in the House of Assembly. I don't mean to be putting myself on that level, but I'm sure I could work hard and do a lot of good.”

She wonders if Skipper Wilf has any clue that a few years ago she pulled his daughter-in-law Eliza aside and told her to keep a sharp eye on young Abigail, not to let her alone with Joe Bishop in the classroom or anywhere else. Triffie has kept her promise, spreading the story of the teacher's misdeeds only to those who most needed to know, but if she were on the School Board she'd be well placed to keep an eye on him, to put limits on his power. And who knows what else she could do? She doesn't really know how much power the school trustees have, but they must have something to do with making sure the children have enough books and slates and maps. Trif's heart races as Skipper Wilf leans back in his chair.

“Well, Trif, you've given me something to think about, I don't mind saying. I'm going to have a word with Reverend Spence, see what he thinks about all this. I don't say he's ever heard tell of a woman on the School Board either, but I don't see how there can be a law against it, now that the women have the vote, like you say. We'll talk about this again, but don't mention it until then, all right?”

Out in the shop, Clara Snow is gossiping with Minnie while young Abigail fills Trif's order. Clara and Minnie stand in the doorway looking at the Katie and the other young girls, now standing outside in the sun. Clara gestures towards Katie and says to Trif, “Don't she put you in mind of Kit Saunders?”

Most people on the Point know that while Kit and Trif were once as close as sisters, they haven't kept in touch for years. Nobody has ever asked Trif the reason why; only Clara would be tactless enough to bring up Kit's name in this way. “Named for her, of course, isn't she?” Clara goes on. “Well, you'd best hope she won't get too big for her britches and think she's too good to come home like Kit did.”

Rumours of Kit's splendid career have trickled back to the Cape, more slowly in the years since Mr. Saunders died and his wife moved away. The Parsons family, her mother's relatives, know a little about Kit's doings and have made a point to post occasional news notes in the Bay Roberts paper trumpeting her accomplishments. “And you never had no clue who helped out with Katie's school fees?” Minnie asks.

Trif knows, of course. She has known ever since the letter came from the headmistress at Spencer. She and Jacob John did all they could to scrape up the money for school, but fishing was poor that year and the price of fish even worse, and all the berrypicking in the world couldn't earn Trif enough extra money to be assured of keeping Katie in school that whole year, much less for another year after that. Katie went off to town with the knowledge that she could be recalled home at any time if the money to pay her board and fees ran out. She could have finished off two years of high school in Bay Roberts, but Katie had her heart set on the fine education she'd get from Spencer and the prospects of becoming a teacher. Trif dreaded bringing her home that Christmas and telling her they couldn't afford to send her back to town.

Then came the letter saying that an anonymous donor had volunteered to pay Katherine Russell's school fees. The headmistress could tell the Russells nothing except that the donor was an old Spencer girl who had a keen interest in helping a hardworking girl from an outport family.

Trif has written her thank-you letter half a dozen times, but it's not only the lack of an address that prevents her sending it. Each time, the letter of thanks turns into an angry rant, a tirade against the injustice of a life that allows Kit to play Lady Bountiful while Trif and Jacob John have to scrabble to keep from going further into debt to the merchant. Trif adds each aborted note to the box of unsent letters she's been saving for years.

That weekend she and Katie attend church three times, going to the Adventist service, Katie's favourite, on Saturday morning, then to the Anglican Church on Sunday and over to Clarke's Beach for the Pentecostal meeting Sunday night. They drop David with Aunt Rachel for the night before driving over to Clarke's Beach, since even Trif is willing to concede that church three times in a weekend might be a bit hard on a six-year-old. Jacob John says the poor youngster is after growing up in church, to the point that if he sits to the table and somebody passes a plate in front of him he thinks he's supposed to put collection in it.

Pastor Garrigus has come from St. John's to preach, and Trif loves hearing a woman speak the Word. The Adventists have a woman prophet but it's always men up front preaching, whereas the little Pentecostal congregation in Clarke's Beach has had as many women pastors as men. There's a Pentecostal Church starting up in Bay Roberts too, now, but Trif still goes to Clarke's Beach when she can. Her Billy loves these Sunday night services, got saved when he was just ten and now, at twelve, will stand up and testify as good as anyone. “The Lord's got His hand on that one,” the Pentecostals often tell Triffie.

Trif hopes the Lord does have His hand on Billy – not just in the matter of being saved and baptized in the Spirit, but in the matter of protecting him during this, his first summer on the Labrador. Of course Triffie protested his going so young, and of course Jacob John trotted out the old reliable fact that he himself went fishing on the Labrador at eleven, as if that were any kind of a recommendation. Billy never even got to finish the school year, and while he's not as clever as Katie, he's an eager student at the subjects he likes, especially Mathematics. Triffie lost that fight, as she knew she would from the time she gave birth to a boy.

Katie sings along lustily on the hymns and listens attentively to her third sermon of the weekend, but remains in her seat when people stand to testify or kneel at the altar. Her lips are sealed while others around her prophesy and speak in tongues.

“You don't take to the Pentecostal service like our Bill does,” Triffie observes on the way home.

“No – but I don't mean to judge you, Mama. I've just never been able to believe that all their goings-on are what the Scripture means when it talks about the work of the Spirit. I've studied up on it a lot,” she adds, knowing that Bible study carries more weight with her mother than anything else. “I started going to the Adventist Church in town this year,” she adds. “I'm thinking I might get baptized.”

Trif clicks the reins to get the little horse trotting a bit faster over the rutted road that leads back toward the Point. “Well, you got to go where the Lord leads you,” she says. “That's what I've always done. If He wants you in the Adventist Church, that's where He'll put you. You likely won't be able to go on teaching in a Church of England school, though,” she adds.

“The Adventists have a school of their own in St. John's,” Katie says. “I don't want to stay on in Spaniard's Bay forever – I want to get more education. I'd love to go college.”

“I'd love that for you, girl,” Trif says. She doesn't bother stating the obvious, that she has no idea where the money would come from. Thinking of what she's just said about Katie teaching in Church of England schools, she tells her daughter about her conversation with Skipper Wilf Parsons. His warning not to say a word about it doesn't apply to Trif's own family, surely.

“Oh, you should do it, Mama! It's high time we had women on school boards, and who on the Point would do a better job than you?”

Reverend Spence pulls Triffie aside after the service a couple of weeks later and tells her that Skipper Wilf spoke to him about appointing her to the vacant seat on the Board. “I think the idea has some merit. I know you've always been a great supporter of our schools, but it is somewhat irregular.”

“I know there's never been a woman on the Board before, but the times are changing –”

“Oh, of course, of course,” says Reverend Spencer. “Very irregular, but we do live in a time of change and upheaval – to be honest, I was thinking more of your standing with the Church. Of course every Board member must be a Church member in good standing, and I know that your own religious affiliations have been – varied.” He pauses, as if hoping Trif will admit she is a heretic and withdraw her name from consideration.

But now that she's had the idea, had a couple of weeks to chew it over, Trif isn't letting go that easily. She could do some good if she were a school trustee – and even if part of it is that, as Clara Snow has been heard to say, Trif Russell isn't happy unless she's running something, what's wrong with that? If God gives you a talent, Trif thinks, whether for making jam or organizing committees, it's a sin not to use it.