A Circle on the Surface Page 8

  As they zigzagged towards Prince and Water Streets, passing gang after gang of rabble-rousing sailors, the walk stretched longer and longer, it seemed, despite their downhill momentum. Only Isaac seemed sober, creeping along as dignified as could be. He smacked his lips at just about every female going by.

  Straight up the hill behind them the Old Town Clock said five past eight. The shops had been shut for two hours. At Mrs. Finck’s, if you were desperate and banged loudly enough after hours, she might let you in. Not here, not in the big town, the East Coast Port.

  Why hadn’t he just excused himself, slipped out earlier and bought the jeezly scarf and earrings, or stockings? The ones Una liked, silk with seams like lines drawn down the backs of her calves. Lines that twisted winsomely on account of her hopping-bird gait. Goddamnit. Even if they left now he would never be back in time to stroll with her out to Cow Head, like he had mentioned doing. There was that spot where bluets dotted the grass, he could picture them. And he imagined Una and him kissing, getting the juices flowing, and, like a couple of youngsters, doing the wild thing. Right there on a grassy little knoll, and not just doing it but doing it fruitfully, tadpoles like darts. Bull’s eye!

  But then, passing the post office with its beehive tower and limp Union Jack, he glimpsed the harbour and remembered the trip ahead. How would he explain to Una the goose egg near his temple? Explaining this on top of how he’d forgotten her list—well, that would be another story, along with whatever he managed to come up with when she asked about the bank.

  8

  The sun streaming in only highlighted the kitchen’s dinginess: the big enamel sink, the calendar with its photo of dahlias, the sloping floor’s linoleum. Back from her swim, Una needed to wash her hair, the salt made it a Brillo pad. She found the precious bottle of Drene and the pail Mrs. Greene had used for picking berries; it was too awkward, trying to squeeze her head under the enamel sink’s dual faucets. The bathroom sink was simply too small.

  Deep in the cellar the pump chugged, but all that spewed from the taps was a rusty murk. She twisted them, tried again, tried the upstairs taps too, remembering Enman’s words, “If we run out we can bathe at Goodrows’. Why worry if there’s no need to?”

  Una would wait good and long before going next door for such a favour. “Normal School, what do they teach you there?” Win had said once. “Whatever it was didn’t take?”

  The lake was a hike across the barrens and through the woods. The only other option was to drive to the volunteer fire department in O’Leery, but in what? Enman could deal with the car’s quirks. She couldn’t. Rolling a sliver of soap in a towel—she wasn’t about to waste shampoo on fish—she pinned her key to her blouse.

  Twigs crackled underfoot, the woods a tinderbox. Eventually the lake’s shimmer appeared, puzzle pieces of blue framed by branches. Granite boulders ringed and studded its surface, an otherwise perfect mirror. A solitary loon skimmed by; didn’t loons travel in pairs?

  Kneeling on a rock, she peered at her reflection, like Narcissus in some old painting. Except, unlike Narcissus, she didn’t have the lake to herself. Squatting on a rock some distance away was a recognizable sight, startling all the same. It was Hannah, her faded skirt hiked to her thighs as she dipped and swished and flapped something into a basin. The flash of water was like a string of rhinestones Enman had brought home once, a cheap thing whose clasp broke when he went to fasten it at her neck, pieces flying everywhere.

  Glancing up, the girl looked just as startled, mouth agape in her sunburnt face.

  So much for a good cleansing skinny-dip. Luckily Una still had her suit on, and she slipped into the water. Shiza, it was like sinking into the pee sample the doctor had asked her to produce. Clutching the soap, she swam closer as Hannah slapped something against the rock, an enormous plaid shirt.

  “It’s for Uncle,” the girl yelled out, wading ashore. Her pasty thighs glistened. “He says make his stuff smell like a rose or else.” Hannah’s greyish eyes fixed on Una. Not since Sarty’s office or walking past the Goodrows’ had Una felt so scrutinized. Yet there was something soft and disarming about those eyes, almost familiar, their grey remotely like the colour of Enman’s.

  Treading water, Una soaped and rinsed her hair, then waded back to the patch of coarse sand where Hannah stood tracing something with a stick. Approaching her was like stalking some rare, ungainly bird. Lo and behold, Hannah had drawn the letters of her name. Looking up at her, the girl’s eyes were wary. “My other name, Missus. Can you make it?”

  Taking the stick, Una formed TWOMEY. Hannah beamed, rubbing the front of her blouse—pink skin gaping between buttons—and snatched back the stick. Tongue between her teeth, she slowly copied the word, held up two fingers—“Two!”—then buried them in her bosom—“Me!” The wake of a flock of gliding ducks made the lake lap away the letters, enough to make Hannah sigh.

  Finding a stick of her own, Una sketched Two = you & me.

  Never quite losing her smirk, Hannah clapped her hands.

  Pointing to the sliver of Lifebuoy on the rock, Una wrote soap. Rinsing her hands, she wrote wash. Biting her cheek, Hannah painstakingly copied each word. Una thought it was like teaching grade fives what little French she knew, or naming the Latin roots of words with Enman and his mother, a bedside game that had offered some relief from rounds of Minister’s Cat—now there were two months of Sundays she would never get back.

  Birds twittered. Horseflies buzzed over the eelgrass. From the woods squirrels nattered. Hannah couldn’t hide her delight. In spite of herself, Una let her hand encircle the girl’s wrist. “Mind you don’t get more sunburn.” It was meant as a kindness. But Hannah’s glee faded, and before the girl could be stopped she kicked away what remained of the words.

  Wading back to her basin, Hannah resumed her chore. A pair of nicotine-hued longjohns—two boneless legs—slapped the water.

  What went through a slower mind like Hannah’s? Already Una had lost her touch in dealing with a sluggish, mentally delayed student?

  A movement on the opposite shore caught her eye: a boy and a girl on a rock, sunbathing. Necking.

  “Hannah—” Una laughed, “Don’t look.”

  Hannah slubbed the longjohns over granite. Gave not so much as a giggle. “Nutting new to me, Missus.”

  The pair wasn’t close enough for Una to see their faces, but the girl made her think of Isla’s daughter. She wondered who the boy was, if he might be one of the Goodrows’ home from O’Leery. The Goodrows had several youngish sons; they had some sort of business selling things from a truck. Anyone but a local would have difficulty finding the lake. Seconds later they were gone.

  But Hannah seemed spooked by something, irked.

  “Uncle said don’t take all friggin day. Got to get this stuff dry before he gives me a lickin’.”

  That burning sun, would it ever cool off? A bath, sans suit, was out of the question, and Una’s hair was almost dry. She splashed her face and offered to help. Reluctantly Hannah nodded, so Una wrung out a shirt—just the thought of Twomey’s skin against it made her cringe—and laid it into the emptied basin.

  Just then, Win emerged from the woods with a towel over her shoulders and a net bag filled with hair curlers. She picked her way to them.

  “Got a buddy, I see, Una. Living in the stone age, are we, doing your warsh off a scuzzy old rock?” Win’s laugh wasn’t just mean, it had a certain scorn thrown in, as if to say Hardship? Well, I’ve lived it, and can I just say, you don’t know squat? And then, to Hannah, “Isn’t that sweet, Missus here helping. My goodness, least your uncle could do is buy himself a warshing machine, isn’t that right, Una?”

  Win had that knack for adding consonants that didn’t belong. Other word-butcherings of hers leapt to mind—ambublance, chimbley, ashphalt—forcing Una to stifle a smile.

  Win’s gaze was a scouring pad, a Kurly Kate made of s
teel wool.

  “Well that’s good, the teacher being put to use.”

  “How’s your water?” It was a question simply intended to keep things civil.

  “Oh land, honey,” Win laughed, shaking her bag of curlers, “I’m just here to cool off and set my hair while I’m at it—at it and to it.”

  “A bit tricky without looking in a mirror, isn’t it?” Una kept her voice light.

  Win’s severely plucked brows had the effect of making her look shocked. “Oh, now, we can’t all be in love with ourselves, can we, Una.”

  “More’s the pity.”

  Win came closer then, close enough to tap her on the wrist. “Exactly right. And how nice for hubby that you and Hannah are chummy. Wouldn’t his mum be tickled. Too bad she isn’t here to see it.” Win grinned so her gums showed. Her eyes rested on the basin. “Now, don’t let me hold youse up.”

  Hastily gathering up her things, Una hurried after Hannah, who had already pushed her way through the bushes crowding the path. Once Win was behind them, reaching the barrens Una offered Hannah more help with her chore. It boosted Una’s mood to feel useful. Maybe Hannah could be a summer project? Teaching Hannah could keep her occupied until September and life got straightened out. She had heard Iris Finck go on about Twomey’s shack on the way to Cow Head and Enman mentioned it too, though he would never set foot there. Something about Hannah, something else, raised Una’s concern, though she could not quite put her finger on it. Only seeing children at school, and not their conditions at home, had spared her from witnessing the less savoury aspects of pupils’ lives.

  When they finally reached the road, the Inkpen girl came slouching towards them. Isla’s daughter was bouncing a pram over the ruts, out walking her newborn. No more than sixteen, the poor thing was the talk of Barrein, enough to curl Win Goodrow’s toes and hair, how she had partied in town with sailors—“quite the orgy,” as Mrs. Finck put it—and got herself into trouble.

  The baby was wailing. The sound had the effect of a sharp instrument probing Una’s eardrums. The girl lifted the child and thumped its back. Hannah’s face lit up. “Cute little beggar.” Hannah stuck a finger into its mouth and squealed as it sucked. It was all Una could do not to yank the unhygienic finger away, especially when Hannah eyed her—those eyes of hers milder than Enman’s. “How come you don’t got any babies, Missus?”

  The Inkpen girl smirked, laying the baby down again. Squalling, it shook its tiny fists, its bonnet twisting over its face. The mother bit back tears and cursed, pushing off.

  “If I did.” The prospect felt to Una both enticing and remote as Mars. “Maybe you’d mind it for me?”

  Shrugging till her neck all but disappeared, Hannah hiked up her basin of laundry, ambled a ways before speaking. “If I got a baby, Uncle’d beat the tar out of me.” The Inkpens could not have been pleased at how their grandbaby had come about. But they were gentler by a mile than Twomey would be, she assumed, given his reputation.

  Hannah hummed along with a hornet following them, imitating its drone. She dragged her feet when they reached the lane beyond the cemetery. It was past lunchtime, the sun dizzying. Having eaten nothing besides Enman’s orange, Una felt lightheaded. Her brain could have been a helium balloon, her body pulled along by it.

  The house stood in a swampy hollow. A keel-less dinghy rotted out front in a patch of fireweed that ringed a gigantic erratic. The boulder—which could be rocked like a cradle, Hannah said—was riven with a hook securing the clothesline to the house. One extra roll, a little extra tug to the left, and you could imagine it bringing down the structure, the whole works collapsing.

  Una hung back, watched Hannah mount the sagging step and jerk open the storm door. Slipping from her grasp, the basin clanged to the ground. Wet, twisted clothes lay everywhere. Hannah’s face went ruddy.

  “Shitshitshitshitshit.”

  Retrieving things, Una shook away bits of dirt. The girl hurried inside, abandoning her there. This was just as well, judging by what Una glimpsed from outside: a room with junk heaped everywhere. Boots, rope, broken dishes, bottles, stacks of insulators from telephone poles. In the midst of it loomed a kitchen table, a bare-bellied man—Twomey—slumped in the dimness, snoring. The reek of stale beer and cooking grease wafted towards her.

  Hannah shot her a warning gaze when, against better judgement, out of curiosity and an awkward sense of duty, Una stepped inside. Such a far cry, this place, from Mrs. Greene’s with its prissy curtains and trinkets screaming religiosity. “Gee, thanks,” she had said when the old lady “bequeathed” to her that silly figurine which even the sea hadn’t wanted, apparently.

  Hannah was frantically rooting around for something. Extracting a bowl of clothes pegs from under some rags, she shoved Una outside, whispered in a strangled voice, “Uncle will have a shitfit—he hates riffraff sniffing around, out to steal his stuff. He’ll get pissy-mad, Missus, if—”

  Una felt pure and utter relief to be out in the daylight. Yet a part of her, a small, brazen part, wanted to troop back inside and give Twomey a proper talking-to, a shaking. Pie-eyed drunk and sleeping it off, obviously, and barely past noon! What kind of guardian was he, especially for a poor child “blessed” with half a deck? she thought critically. But family is family, she remembered Mr. Sarty saying in a similar case. A child’s idea of home mightn’t be yours.

  It was all she could do to shake out the creature’s shorts and hand them up to Hannah, who pegged them to the line as if they were silk-and-cashmere.

  Thank God home visits were not a teacher’s domain. Her mother would be aghast at Una entering exactly the sort of hovel her charities assisted. Some parents deserved the strap more than their children did. And if parents would not discipline children, normal ones, not those like Hannah, someone had to. Though Una was squeamish about strapping, she had never shirked her responsibility of maintaining control, especially when punishing bullies. You couldn’t let their tears eat away power that was best safeguarded, even hoarded. There’d been a grade six who had tormented whole classes, a grade five who should have lived in the dunce’s corner. Those she had strapped deserved more than a rap on the knuckles. Even Kit said so. No one liked the whap of leather hitting small palms, but some situations called for—

  A roar broke from indoors. A slurred curse, a resounding belch. It reached the yard just as Una heaved one of Twomey’s shirts into Hannah’s grasp. “Useless piece of shit, where the fuck are ya?”

  Hannah clutched the shirt. She seemed to stop breathing, though her voice was weirdly calm. “Get going, Missus—better get your arse out of here.”

  Before Una could say or do anything, Hannah disappeared inside, out of sight, out of reach, too late to be thrown any sort of lifeline, the offer on the tip of her tongue: Could you, would you come for a lesson, a proper one this time? For the slimmest second Hannah’s face hovered at the window, her palm pressed there, visible through the grime.

  You could try and lead a horse to water, she thought. She hurried up the lane and past the cemetery, past its huge crucifix. Suffer the little children, read its inscription, which she had noted at Mrs. Greene’s burial. She hadn’t set foot since through the graveyard’s sagging gates, amongst its eerily tidy plots. Why would she? Even as she had patted Enman’s shoulder, that strange Catholic urge for embracing suffering had irked her: their Saviour’s woodenness overseeing the only patch of ground Barrein saw fit to groom. Better, so much better, Una thought, to keep suffering contained—suffering of bodies and, yes, of minds—to keep it concealed. The way her own mother had tried to, for better or for worse, keeping to her bedroom. At least all Una had had to do was see that her mother was nicely dressed and that the nurse hired to tend her was paid from the supply of money in the bank, an ample supply until Una’s father died.

  She hated the idea of ashes and dust. Yet something drew her backwards and through the cemetery’s rusty
gates. The gates were the only opening in the low spruce hedge that enclosed it. Something made her walk between the rows of headstones, which studded the burnt, mounded grass like so many crooked teeth. It was impossible not to think of what lay beneath Mrs. Greene’s polished granite stone as she gave it a wide berth. A few rows away was a stone inscribed for a Cecelia Twomey, beside it were two crude wooden crosses painted with the Twomey name, and not far off, a black marble monument for Lester Finck. A single granite marker for Enman’s father, an uncle, an aunt, and his grandparents was nearby. There had been no room to plant his mother beside them.

  The thought grazed her like a blade: could I end up here too? Marriage meant taking on not just one person but their clan and an entire place. She felt stupid for only now realizing it. Then she saw something even more sobering. There was a little marble stone for Lester Finck Jr., and another for five Inkpens who had not made it past infancy. It was cold comfort to think being childless meant being lucky.

  Una’s curls, meanwhile, had dried flat to her head. In her efforts to bathe, how had she neglected to bring a comb? The sun was giving her a headache. A tear snaked down—she couldn’t help it. God, it took real stamina to fend off a tear fest, didn’t it? The unfairness, no rhyme or reason why some had hordes of kids, kids they did not even want, while others who wanted them had none. The way some ended up as Hannahs and others Rhodes scholars. It seemed dangerous to want anything! Sometimes when Una was still teaching, a creeping sadness, like a bad cold or flu, would send her to bed, though she always rallied to face classes smiling. Still, the grief that living could generate was enough to land you in the mental, if you dwelled on it.

  Just as she was passing the Goodrows’ Win came running out, waving the Herald. Wearing a holey pair of panties on her head to keep the curlers in place, she rattled the newspaper in Una’s face. Win pointed to the headline, a shadowy photo underneath it. It showed a clutch of men in some sad excuses for uniforms, wearing handcuffs. U-Boat crew captured in the Gaspé, the cutline said.