Over a late and unusually hearty breakfast, Frances reads about the accident in the Cape Breton Post. Jameel, well, that doesn’t much matter either way, her days as a booze queen being over, but Boutros — that is a relief. The way he looked at her. Not like the other fellas. Brooding, as if he wanted something she didn’t have for sale. What that could be, she could only imagine as rape.
“Are you sure you want more porridge, Frances?”
“Look Lily, that’s our cousin and our uncle by marriage.”
Lily refills Frances’s bowl and reads the headline, “‘Hero’s Death For Whitney Pier Man’”. The story reports that the brand-new 1932 8-cylinder Kissel swerved to avoid a carload of Congregation of Notre Dame nuns on their way back to Holy Angels from an evening spent at a massed choir practice.
“Mercedes was there!”
“So what, Lily?”
“Well she said Sister Saint Monica offered her a drive home but she said she wanted to walk, but if she’d taken the drive then the sisters wouldn’t have passed the car with our cousin and uncle in it and they wouldn’t’ve crashed.”
“Yeah Lily, and if a zillion invertebrates hadn’t died around here a trillion stupid years ago, we wouldn’t have a gravel driveway.”
Lily reads on. “It says the Mounties got to the car and knew someone else was driving because ‘Mr Jameel was lodged in the passenger side of the vehicle. Boutros Jameel was found on the rail tracks. After having crashed to avoid the nuns, he walked two miles towards New Waterford in the throes of death, presumably in order to fetch a doctor for his father.’”
Frances is thoroughly creeped. Imagine that enormous living dead man slouching towards New Waterford, set to heave himself on her with his dying breath. Just how hard it was for him to be killed is a measure of what she would have been in for if he had ever got his massive mitts on her.
The young Mountie guides his cruiser over a well-worn dirt track through the woods, following a crudely drawn map. Jameel was a half-decent businessman. He kept a strict account of all his transactions in a small leather-bound notebook that the Mountie found tucked in his breast pocket at the crash site. Jameel had been careful not to use any real names, however. His code name for James: The Enklese Bastard. The pencilled map leading to the distillery of The Enklese Bastard was an incautious but temporary measure — he drew it according to James’s instructions over the phone when Taylor quit.
X marks the spot, but when the young Mountie pulls up this morning expecting either to nab his man or to lie in wait, all that’s left of X is a charred patch of earth and some smoking planks. So much for corpus delicti. The Mountie turns round and heads back to Sydney. He doesn’t see the tan Buick sedan parked in a gully nearby.
“Is she going to holler rape?”
“No.”
The Cape Breton Post is on Teresa’s kitchen table. She and Adelaide have agreed that Ginger picked as good a time as any to quit Jameel’s. Hector is in his usual place, rocking. Teresa pours Adelaide more tea.
“What makes you so sure?” Teresa asks.
“‘Cause she got what she wanted, so she said.”
“What’s that?”
“A baby.”
Teresa is struck dizzy but doesn’t let on. She sits down carefully and commences to stir and stir her tea, asking, “Do you believe that?”
“If she timed it right, sure. You can tell if it takes, you know, I always could right from the first one.”
Adelaide feels bad suddenly because here she is talking to Teresa about how a woman knows when she’s pregnant, while Teresa herself is bound never to be so, though it’s what she wanted most.
Adelaide has always wondered how a head injury could injure a man’s sexual power. That steel bar never fell on Hector’s privates, his seed must be good as ever, and he’s not downright paralysed, just all over reduced. If it had been Adelaide, she’d have seen if he still worked, then she would have got a baby from him. Hector loves children. They could have managed. She and Ginger would’ve helped look after it. But Adelaide knows Teresa is different, altogether finer. She’s like royalty, the real kind, not snobbish, just innately fine. You can’t picture Teresa straddling a broken-down man for his seed. So if Hector still does work in that way, Adelaide’s certain Teresa hasn’t tested him out. Teresa’s in her forties. Soon she’ll be too old, if she isn’t already.
“Addy, what if it’s true?”
“Don’t worry, Trese, I’ve got something in mind.”
“Addy —”
“Trese, don’t ask, ’cause I’m not telling anyone beforehand, I don’t want anyone changing my mind this time or driving me all over hell’s half acre.” Adelaide gives Hector a pat on the head and goes home to get supper. “Thanks for the tea, girl.”
Teresa sees her to the door and returns to the kitchen, where Hector is staring up at the top cupboard with a worried look in his eye.
“Don’t worry, honey,” she tells Hector, “it’s still there.”
But she goes to the back room to fetch the stepladder, intending to take a look just to be sure. Teresa is not one to clamber on kitchen counters.
Adelaide has told no one of what she intends to do. She has forgiven Ginger. She has forgiven Teresa for taking her off the scent last night. But it has been demonstrated that, in this matter, she can trust only herself. She has planned it carefully and this time no one is going to stop her.
Just after supper, she gets on her bicycle with the long wicker baskets attached to the sides. When her business was thriving she could carry whole bolts of fabric in them. Today she carries something else in one of them. She rides the Shore Road to New Waterford. The beginnings of a beautiful sunset.
Adelaide could wait three months and find out if Frances really is pregnant before doing what she means to do. But what’s the point? If she’s not pregnant she’s likely to start harassing him again. Coming around. The most disturbing part of Leo’s disturbing story was that Frances knew Adelaide’s secret name for him. She’d practically have to have been in bed with them to know that. And a girl who would inflict an injury on herself, risk drowning to get what she wants — wouldn’t such a girl also use blackmail? Accuse Leo of rape if he doesn’t give her what she wants? Adelaide pumps the pedals harder, ignoring the blazing sky to her right and the sparkling water to her left.
Mercedes is walking home from her talk with the priest. He has agreed to inform the bishop. His Grace will then decide whether it is appropriate to interview Lily with regard to the growing list of remarkable events — without, of course, letting Lily know the reason for his inquiry. Mercedes lifts her face to the slanting sun. Everything has turned a ruddy gold, God’s blessing at its most gentle, “all’s right with the world.” The calamities of Frances have peaked just as Lily’s sanctity is at its most evident and Mercedes is grateful to find herself up to handling both. Tomorrow she will go to confession and obtain absolution for wronging her father.
When she gets home she is disturbed to see that the car is still gone, and she withstands a wave of dread at the sight of Sister Saint Monica waiting for her in the front room. Mercedes knows Sister Saint Monica via the massed choir, where they struck up an immediate, if formal, rapport. But “bad news” is all Mercedes can think at the sight of wimple and robes at this particular moment. Lily has shown the sister in and given her a cup of tea and a date square. Mercedes seats herself in the wingback chair and gently dismisses Lily, steeling herself to receive the news of her father’s death.
But no. It’s something else altogether. Sister Saint Monica was at the wheel when Boutros went careering across their path to his death, and she had seen, moments earlier, Frances in a truck with a coloured man.
“I meant to tell you immediately, Mercedes, but the accident temporarily removed it from my thoughts.”
Mercedes confides in Sister Saint Monica as to Frances’s likely predicament.
“God forgive me.”
“Sister, you are blameless in this sit
uation.”
But both women know that no one is blameless.
“Had I reacted swiftly, it is likely Frances would not have succeeded in putting herself in the way of temptation.”
“Sister, I would not have burdened you with this knowledge, except for the fact that I must make plans for Frances and I don’t know where else to turn for sound advice.”
“Of course.”
It’s the least Sister Saint Monica can do. There is much to discuss. At what point Frances ought to leave New Waterford, the place of her lying-in…. “I’ll arrange for the convent at Mabou. They have an excellent infirmary.”
The knowledge that it is to be a coloured child is most useful in determining its future. First of all, there is now no question of keeping it. Illegitimacy is a terrible but invisible blot, whereas miscegenation cannot be concealed. Neither mother nor child deserves to live thus doubly stained. Such is the charitable view. Therefore, the second issue becomes the selection of an appropriate orphanage, bearing in mind that adoption is unlikely under the circumstances, for how many good Catholic white families would be willing to take a coloured child? Particularly if it turns out to be a male child. As to good Catholic coloured families, there are few, that community being predominantly Anglican on the island and Baptist on the mainland. And perhaps it’s as well, thinks Mercedes, for doesn’t that branch of the human family commonly have difficulty raising its own children, never mind those of other people?
“Thank you, sister.”
Sister Saint Monica glides down the street in black and white, past Adelaide on her bike. Adelaide can’t for the life of her imagine how anyone could take a vow of chastity, then she flashes on Teresa and has no trouble picturing her as a nun. She lifts the lid on her wicker basket to check her cargo as she dismounts in front of the Piper house.
Back at Teresa and Hector’s, the rifle is gone from on top of the kitchen cupboard. Hector is beside himself, making squeaks that generate a little drool down his chin, all his language in his eyes. Somewhere inside his head he’s still all there, but moved into a cramped rear apartment overlooking the old brain. Teresa tries to reassure him. “Hector honey, now settle down, everything’s going to be all right.”
“Mercedes,” calls Lily from the front-room window, “there’s a lady coming up the walk.”
“Don’t holler, Lily, who is it?”
“I don’t know.”
Mercedes opens the door and is about to explain that deliveries are taken at the back when one look indicates that the woman is not here selling anything.
“May I please see Miss Frances Piper?”
Mercedes knows now precisely who this is.
“My sister is indisposed. Won’t you step in?”
Adelaide casts a glance back at her bike and Mercedes adds, “I can assure you it will be safe there, but you’re welcome to bring it onto the porch if you’d rather.”
“Yes, I’d rather do that.”
In the front room, Adelaide takes up the spot on the sofa lately vacated by Sister Saint Monica.
Frances spotted Adelaide from the attic window. Her stomach is still squirting fear as she creeps down to the upstairs hall. She would climb from a second-floor window but she dares not do anything to dislodge the new growth within her. Frances is no longer dressed as a Girl Guide. She has put on an old shift of Mumma’s from the hope chest. Shapeless and roomy. Although only one day pregnant, Frances considers it none too soon to dress the part. Faded floral print in tropical reds and greens. It still smells like Mumma — dough, rose-water, moist skin and cedar. In order to escape the house it will be necessary for Frances to descend the stairs and pass the front-room archway. But how? She hovers at the top of the stairs.
Mercedes doesn’t take her eyes off the visitor.
“Lily, go and make a fresh pot of tea, please.”
Lily leaves reluctantly. She has rarely seen a black person up close. She is fascinated by Adelaide’s freckles. Adelaide takes a good look at Lily too, the baby that came out of the gash in Kathleen Piper’s belly.
When Lily leaves the front room she is hit on the side of the head with Raggedy-Lily-of-the-Valley. She looks up to see Frances at the top of the stairs miming a zipper across her mouth. Lily picks up Raggedy-Lily-of-the-Valley and goes quietly up the stairs.
In the front room, tea has failed to materialize but Mercedes has forgotten it, mesmerized by what Mrs Taylor is saying. “We would welcome the child into the family as our own. It would never know, and neither would anyone else.” Adelaide’s eyes sharpen ever so slightly when she adds, “But you’d have to take responsibility for your sister, miss.”
With this last remark, Mercedes is stung out of the feeling of awe that stole up on her at the woman’s astonishing offer — out of the question, of course, but Christian in its intent, however misguided. A little moisture deserts Mercedes for all time and evaporates to fall as rain elsewhere.
“Mrs Taylor. Insofar as it is possible for anyone to be my sister’s keeper, I am that. As to the possibility of a child — and it is yet to be confirmed — I should likewise assume responsibility for its welfare.”
“Could you love it?”
Mercedes is, again, astonished. Her anger travels in like a thunder-head on a clear day. Adelaide isn’t afraid. She’s waiting for an answer.
“You may go now, Mrs Taylor.”
Mercedes gets up but Adelaide remains seated and says, “You see, I could love it. And I have less reason to than you do, dear.”
There is nothing endearing in the “dear”.
“I don’t need you to show me where my duty lies, Mrs Taylor.”
“Girl, duty is your problem.” Now Adelaide gets up and leaves, adding, “Keep your sister away from my man or I’ll shoot her, pregnant or not.”
And she goes. Mercedes starts shaking. Luckily there’s sherry in the medicine cabinet.
On her way through New Waterford, Adelaide reflects on the strangeness of the Piper family. As if there weren’t enough indications, on her way out of the front room she encountered the girl Lily pushing a big old baby carriage, jam-packed with dolls and a live cat, out the door. She must be thirteen or fourteen and still playing house. Adelaide watched as the lame girl clunked the carriage down the porch steps, the rusty wheel-springs straining under what seemed to be an enormous weight. What the hell else has she got in there, wondered Adelaide — jugs of moonshine?
Teresa has a bicycle too. It’s Hector’s old one. It’s got a crossbar, of course, and Teresa is none too pleased to have her dress draped astride it but that can’t be helped. At least she’s tall enough not to look completely ridiculous. She used to ride this bike in the old days, but as a passenger on the handlebars in front of Hector, who pedalled and swerved to make her squeal and giggle. As she wobbles along now she marvels, was I ever that girly? She was a real girly girl. A princess. Everything had to be ladylike, the table set just so when he came to her mother’s house for supper. It was perfect because Hector was a gentleman too, or at least was growing up into one, because at that time he was still a waggy boy. They were not too young, though, to plan for the future. His education and ordination as an Anglican minister. Moving south of the border. They wanted lots of children. People like us are the ones who should have children, they agreed. Teresa had a dream of founding a dynasty of people who would be a high example not only to their own race, but to all who knew them.
Way down beneath this noble aim, at the bottom of the well, was a voice stranded without a rope or a ladder, howling up, “I’ll show them! I’ll show them all!” Exultant, exuberant; its ferocity was the strength behind her ladylike dignity and determination, though she could barely hear it. She had no awareness of the power of the hopeful rage within, which could move mountains, climb out of wells in triumph. She did not know her own strength. With Hector’s accident the voice got louder but it was still muffled by her determination to bear all patiently with the help of the Lord. At the unjust loss of her job t
here ceased to be any competition for the voice at all, and she could hear it plainly. It no longer said, “I’ll show them,” it was saying, “I’ll get them.” It had changed to hate. The hate that she prayed for Jesus to take away. But it was also part of what had kept her going so how could she do without it now? That kind of hate is a species of animated scrap metal. Rusting, corroding inside, leaching into the vital organs. Teresa is sick with it. It can kill.
Adelaide pulls up in front of MacIsaac’s Drugs and Confectionery. Mr MacIsaac is closing up for the evening, she catches him on the way out.
“Mr MacIsaac, I’m Addy Taylor from the Pier.”
“Hello, Mrs Taylor.”
He extends his old red hand and she shakes it. His eyes are clear these days but still kind.
Adelaide reaches deep into her wicker basket. “Have a swig of this, Mister Mac.”
She uncorks a brown bottle. MacIsaac shakes his head, being two years on the wagon.
“It’s the best ginger beer you ever tasted,” says Adelaide.
He smiles. Takes it and drinks. It is. Sweet up front, then sears the back of your throat till your earwax tinkles.
“What do you call it?”
“‘Clarisse’s Island Brew.’”
“Are you from the islands, Mrs Taylor?”
Adelaide laughs, “I’m from Halifax for a hundred and fifty-six years, mister, where’re you from?”
“From here for eighty or ninety years, and as far as I know before that it was the Isle of Skye, the Isle of Man and, let’s see now, the Isle of Wight.”
“Your people had a taste for islands.”
“You’d think we’d’ve learned by now, eh?”
He wheezes and she laughs. He orders three cases for the store to see how it goes.