A Circle on the Surface Read online

  “Hannah, Hannah dear.” Una’s yard-duty voice took over. “Are you all right?” She helped the girl up the lane and her own front steps.

  In the hallway she snapped on the light. Blood seeped from a gash on Hannah’s head and smeared the front of her blouse. The girl made a noise like Tippy coughing up hairballs. She curled herself up as if to erase herself—a behaviour Una had seen exhibited often enough at school. She had gone out of her way to calm victims and shame aggressors. If she was lucky enough to be interviewed for the high school job she would make this known.

  “I never done nothing, Missus. Swear to—I done nothing—God—to them f-f-fucking little christers.” Hannah was crying now, a child in her teenager’s body, possibly much younger than Una had imagined.

  “Let’s fix you up.”

  “Why do them fuckers hate me, Missus?” In the bright glowing kitchen, a tough smile tugged at the corners of Hannah’s mouth before tears slicked it away.

  “They don’t hate you. They’re just…they just—” But they did hate her, they must, just because. So what if they didn’t know better? Knowing better was something Enman preached, not as grounds to condemn someone but to excuse them, which is why his consolations could feel pointless. The nastiness of children was old hat, though it never stopped being shocking.

  Settling Hannah at the table, Una ladled water from the bucket into a bowl and, dipping a cloth, wiped away blood. Saliva pooled around Una’s tongue. Revulsion at the boys’ behaviour had got the better of her thirst. An inch or two closer and the girl would have lost an eye.

  When she finished cleaning Hannah up she measured out two glassfuls from the bucket of water. The water from Isla’s had a mossy taste. Who knew such ordinary stuff could be so precious?

  “There now. Take your time. When you’re feeling better I’ll walk you home.”

  Sucking water through her teeth, Hannah went small again. Under her shirt’s frowzy cotton her shoulders heaved. “Uncle says them bastards just give what I got coming.”

  “Take a deep breath.” Hannah’s sobs had a nasty way of burrowing into Una.

  “Uncle hates me too.” Hannah’s voice, so tiny just then, seemed at odds with her stocky, matronly build. The shadowy look in her eyes betrayed her other features’ blandness. The small, neat chin, the smooth flatness between her nose and lips.

  It was hard to resist reaching out. Una put her arm around Hannah’s shoulders, reached for her stubby hand. She had seen kids who were slow, but none so slow their parents shunned them.

  “Now, for pity’s sake, no one hates you. Those boys—they’ll be seen to, if I have any say. Don’t you worry.” How they would be, Una hadn’t a clue, which made her feel like the mucky-mucks who boasted about beating the Germans. But Enman would take things in hand. “When Mr. Greene gets home he’ll give them a talking to.”

  Making tea, finally, she served Hannah’s in Mrs. Greene’s favourite cup and saucer, placing them into her hands. The poor thing smelled a bit; the sourness of unwashed clothes and slovenly living was nothing new, of course.

  She patted Hannah’s arm so chummily it joggled the cup.

  “Jumpin’s, Missus!” But a shy smile warmed that moonscape face. “I ’preciate all you done for me. That fooking old Finck hates me too.” The girl’s lip curled stubbornly. “Missus, tell me…tell me again, how you spell ‘Hannah.’”

  Laying out a stack of Kit’s paper, Una found a pencil and sharpened it with the paring knife. “It’s a magical name—see? A palindrome.” This time she enunciated it. Printing and naming each letter, she read them backwards. “None of those boys have a name that’ll do that, I’ll bet.” Unless there was a Bob—there must be one, though they would take after their fathers generally, of course, with handles like Robart, Sylvester, Edgar.

  Gripping the pencil like a spear, Hannah traced the letters’ shapes. Her greyish eyes gleamed. “Like this, Missus? A ladder. An iron. Two hills. An iron, a ladder. A fucky-lucky name, right?” The poor thing looked so hopeful—tongue clenched between those too-perfect teeth—it was impossible to think of Hannah as anything but a little kid as she drew the letters again.

  The girl’s obvious delight made Una feel unexpectedly giddy. “What pretty chompers you have, dear.” It seemed the opportune thing to say.

  “They cost Uncle a fooking arm and a leg. Not mine though, see?” Hannah bounced both knees, flapped her arms like wings. Next came the tale about going to Hellifax in someone’s truck and how the liquor Uncle gave her after her old ones got yanked “tasted like stink.” Then, yes, he’d taken her to Finck’s and bought her an Orange “Crushed,” telling her to “Chug it an’ if it comes back up, aim for that old bitch’s shoes.”

  “And how did you like the city?”

  “Well Missus, it wasn’t Dee-Tee-Bee. Down. Town. Barrein. Like Uncle says.”

  “Of course.” Una printed the letters—DTB—and in spite of her troubles, Hannah clapped her hands and laughed.

  “Do you remember how to spell your other name, your last name?” Una blocked out thoughts of what Twomey conjured for her, something festering and malignant.

  Without warning, fear clouded Hannah’s face. Gulping tea, she lurched up. “I got to get Uncle’s supper. He’ll be real real mad if he don’t get his supper.”

  “Oh?” It was almost nine o’clock. Startled, she slipped Hannah her paper. “This is yours. Take it, show him.” Damned if a packet of gold stars wasn’t buried somewhere upstairs.

  The girl’s hands paddled the air. The gash, a lurid purple, showed through her hair. Imagining whatever else Hannah had suffered made Una’s skin prickle.

  “I can help you, dear.” Her voice felt unnaturally high. What had she let herself in for? “I can teach you to write, and read too.” She thrust the stack of blank paper at Hannah. “Here, take it.” But the girl let the sheets flutter to the floor. She even left behind her page of printing, lumbering as fast as her thick legs would carry her out the front door.

  It was almost the new moon. Weak starlight traced Mrs. Greene’s oddments in the parlour, worthless objects gathering dust on their shelves—a tiny china basket painted with rosebuds, some kitten-shaped salt and pepper shakers keeping the Virgin Mary figurine company. Despite the sorting Una had done, it would take another month to clear out the effects of a whole lifetime. The presence of such clutter was apt to creep into and overtake, become, a person’s state of mind. In the thickening silence, Una set Hannah’s work on the shelf beside the “beautiful,” or was it “blessed,” mother. She thought of the estate auction where her parents’ possessions, and her inheritance, had been dispersed, the auction’s proceeds and most of those from the sale of their house disbursed to creditors. Why she felt such contempt for the pitiful statuette she could not say, only that she wished a draft might catch Hannah’s paper and help nudge the thing from its perch.

  Settling on the sofa, she found it hard not to brood. She pictured the superintendent of schools at his desk in the red brick Academy building, reading her letter amid wafts of Dustbane and lemon oil. The principal, Mr. Sarty, had bid on her father’s beautiful burled walnut desk. What if Sarty and the superintendent had words? Whether they did or did not, she couldn’t make a husband, a marriage, disappear. She shifted her thoughts to babies growing into full-blown people. The idea struck her anew, that a fertilized egg carried everything needed to form a being with every quality of the human race. It said so in the book Enman had stuffed under the mattress in the little room upstairs. Reading this, he had joked, “Now I really need a drink.”

  What did they say at Alcoholics Anonymous, where one of her mother’s doctors had suggested Una might find encouragement while staying with her, a lifetime before she laid eyes on Enman? The line that “crazy” was repeating over and over the very thing you hoped would change. The tendency in herself, which she had begun to see in Enman too, to acquiesce t
o things even when you meant to take charge of them.

  This sobering thought led her to reach into Mrs. Greene’s cabinet, where she found the bottle shoved behind sheet music, empty but for a drop or two. More surprising, the red-covered book was there too, The Hygiene of Marriage, which Dr. Snow had recommended and Enman had gone out and purchased. While Mrs. Greene was alive, they had both taken pains to keep it hidden: what would Marge have thought? Una paged to the section about parents. What made good ones, how mankind’s future depended on weeding out the Twomeys of the world and, by implication, its Hannahs. If you believed what they said on the news, such progress came down to science. Then Una imagined Win dropping in and seeing her reading. Those Greenes up there reading sex books—how’s that for all talk and no action?

  There was still no sign of Enman. Flinging the book aside, she trooped out to the outhouse—which meant pushing aside cobwebs, plugging her nose—then, leaving the cat outside, giving up on waiting, Una trooped upstairs to bed.

  9

  Enman awoke, slouching in a blaze of light, to a flashlight being shone in his face. Brighter, steadier bands of light illuminated the boat’s wheelhouse, flaring, dying, flaring again. He felt the boat rocking under him like a cradle. In the searchlights’ beams he took in his friends, the patrolman who had boarded. They were just inside the anti-submarine net. Isaac was shouting, “What the hell would we be hiding?”

  Enman straightened up, groped for his satchel. His head throbbed. The satchel was by his side.

  “Routine. Got to inspect everyone coming and going.” This had not happened on their trip in. The fellow passed his light over Enman again. Enman planted his feet, closed his eyes. The spins only worsened with his eyes shut.

  After what felt like hours the patrolman let them through, and with Greeley at the helm they steamed off. At least motoring forward pushed back the sick, rocky feeling of sitting still. Enman pretended the dark sea was the sky upside down, a watery heaven or a very wet hell, and Neverfail’s blinking green was the pinprick light of some gaseous planet. At least all the coastal lights were running, a good sign—good enough that he went back to sleep.

  When he woke up next, Robart was pointing to lights—one for The Sisters, another for the Blind Sister rock, the shoal just northeast of home named for two jealous girls who had left their sightless sibling to be swept away. So the tale went. People could be cruel, even women, thought Enman, though he had never met anyone like that.

  Not soon enough, land was in sight. A solitary light twinkled from the hill. Isaac straightened his cap. “Win Goodrow on watch, boys.” Robart laughed.

  “Friggin’ Mata Hari, that one.” Edgar sounded pleased with himself.

  “Now, she’s not at all bad, poor Win.”

  Isaac snorted. “Well, you would know, wouldn’t you, Greene.”

  At the entrance to the tiny harbour, against the dark shore—was it a dream or his liquored haze?—something loomed, pale and spectral. It looked as graceful as a ballerina primed for dancing. Dancing Dvořák’s largo with movements lithe and bashful as the piece’s dawning melody, the nicest of all the music in the New World symphony. The figure stayed still, deaf to the engine’s sputter, until its shape became clear.

  A great blue heron, it was as startling and as singularly at home there as only a bird could be. The sight was a comfort, as if some gentle puppeteer stood behind it, until the creature flexed its wings and took flight. For the briefest moment, Enman imagined his ma working its strings. Then it was a ghostly arrow piercing the dark. A reminder, however unsettling, that as much as things stood still they shifted too, and in shifting sometimes returned to how they had started, not always as you expected. Neither as much to the good or to the bad, nor as quickly as you hoped.

  You did the best you could, he mused, then you died. You could belong well enough without belonging completely, which was fine too—though living in the present meant unpacking a number of emotional boxes, bags, and suitcases you were prone to lug around: a chore his Una had yet to do. Barrein was home now, he had decided, and he was determined to stay here, though he had perhaps done better for himself, earlier in life, in town. Being home didn’t exclude the possibilities of other places, nor did other places exclude those of home. Look at Dvořák, who had composed his symphony a world away from his land of the Czechs, and Benjamin Britten across the ocean from England, also writing music in America.

  Now Enman had music of his own to face: Una’s wrath. It was midnight when the hull nudged the dock; at least he was sober. He waved to the others straggling off to their wives, all but Isaac who charged jauntily ahead. Calling goodnight to him, Enman hastened up the lane. Sleepless crows nattered from the telephone wire. Playing leapfrog, they rushed him onwards, alighting from pole to pole. One before him, one behind, another sweeping right overhead: things happened in threes. It made him think of Ma’s hymn, sung by Isla and Father Heaney: Christ behind me, Christ before me, Christ beside me. The nuns came back to him too, the memory of the nuns, the pock of stones hitting bodies clothed in black. Hadn’t the sisters come to help the likes of Twomey, whose father had lost a leg in a fishing accident, then lacked the wherewithal to feed his kids?

  He reached the yard, stood on the patch of flat rock Ma had called “the patio.” He felt the tingle of both his legs, a tingle of gratitude. A soft light burned in the upstairs window. “Pull some blinds down over yourselves, you nose-minding ARP types,” he imagined Isaac saying. Not a wisp of a breeze stirred the jet-black beads glinting from the clothesline. Cleary’s rosary, untouched all his lifetime, hung there by Ma, her way of hanging the old man out to dry, getting some good out of it. The beads were working overtime, Enman thought, not a lick of rain, the air uncommonly soft for mid-July. Too soon, July’s arse end would be upon them. Out on the shoals, past the offing, breakers formed a thin white spit. Another month and the water would be warmed up, maybe enough to swim. He pictured the beaches at Shag’s, each crescent a pearly necklace in the dark, like the one he should have had in his pocket.

  The back door wasn’t locked, the cat followed him in, and, leaving his shoes on the mat by the threshold, he entered the kitchen. It smelled funny, like spirits—aviation fuel? The starlight sifting in gave the walls a strange glow. He didn’t bother turning on the light, better to go straight to bed. Then he recognized the odour. Turpentine? Una’s friend Kit, who painted pictures, had visited, was staying over? He peered through the window. His was the only car out there. His foot caught something, the jerry can from the cellar? Gasoline. The can’s lightness jerked his arm when he lifted the thing to take a whiff. Had Una tried to coax Beulah into starting? God forbid she had flooded her.

  Needing to rinse his mouth, he ran the tap. Nothing but a peaty smell wheezed out, the walls around him glowing like noxious gas. It was only then he spied the bucket. On the table sat a dish of shrivelled food. On the sill above the sink, just visible, was Una’s wedding ring, which she removed to do dishes.

  The pain near his temple greased his guilt. The ring looked lost as a severed finger, in need of rescue before falling down the drain. Kit Blackburn had that effect, made Una scatterbrained, absent-minded, he had noticed. Leaning against a chair was something in a frame. In his hand the ring was a hard little nugget, which he placed for safekeeping in a cup.

  Not a sound of Una stirring came from above, so she hadn’t waited up. A bit of music would melt his worries, petty as they were. When he snapped on the light, that relic from the bank, the glow through its green glass was a poultice on his damaged pride over how dispensable he was. The New World was propped beside the cabinet, it slid easily from its sleeve. He placed the needle on the second track—Una would not appreciate being wakened by the first, the adagio with its swashbuckling trumpet blasts—and, soothed by the gentle folksy largo, he settled on the sofa with Tippy on his lap, the cat purring up a storm.

  Then his eyes fell on a sheet of p
aper propped on the shelf. Manila, the type some teachers gave pupils to draw on, a child’s handiwork. Not just any child’s, but Hannah Twomey’s, he saw, the paper with her name on it rubbing shoulders with Ma’s ornament. Dear God. A clamminess came over him, that her work had crossed their threshold, Ma not fully a month dead.

  He rose to whip the paper away when Tippy leapt and tripped and made him stumble, knocking the porcelain figure from its perch. He watched in dismay as it toppled to the floor, the sharp little crash ringing out above the satiny violin. The figurine’s head snapped from its body.

  Imagining Ma’s distress, he heard Una rising and coming downstairs. To spare himself the slightest gloat in her smile, he rolled the pieces in a doily and stuffed the works into a drawer—it was nothing some glue wouldn’t fix.

  If only the same could have been said for Una’s humour. Her face was flushed with indignation.

  “So you decided to come home, I see. Better late than never, I guess?”

  “Now, now, dear, I can explain, no need to be—”

  Her eyes darted around, looked past him—What, no souvenirs?—and only then he noticed the book in her hands, the smutty one. The red of its dustjacket as lurid as the advice inside it.

  “Reading Everett, I see—Professor Millard Spencer Everett.” His face felt red too. Yet a laugh escaped him. “Professor of what, I’d like to know, wouldn’t you? I see you’ve had company. A regular rousing spelling bee with the Twomey girl, was it?”

  “As if you have the right—”

  “But I’m all for you having company, sweetpea—the kind that can read and write, talk intelligently, take care of itself, and—”

  “Fat chance of that around here. You mean, not embarrass you.”

  It was like being slapped in the head, the blow coming from nowhere.

  “Oh stop now. That’s not fair. I’m only saying—Hannah, either of those Twomeys—they’re not exactly friendship material. Not like your Kit. I suppose she was in on it, you birds playing school. What, you took it upon yourselves to go down and nab Bart’s niece? Surprised he let you in. His niece, yes. But surely you know—”