by Don Hunter
They went immediately to the local pub, The Greyhound Inn, known to the locals as t’ Dog. An old collier set down his pint and said, “Hoosta gaan on, lass? Watt’s thy fettle?” It was translated. “He means, how are you going on, how are you doing, how’s your health?”
Two strangers. But not for long, as Rachel asked if there were any Spinners there.
“Canadian.” The word swirled around the barroom, and into the snug, where three women sat. “A Spinner? By lad! Get up to Number 13.”
Which was the home, in the two-street village of ninety houses, of Matt Spinner, his wife, Maggie, and their five children.
While the messenger took off, Rachel was asked by other villagers if she knew their cousins in … Winnipeg … Dawson Creek …
Rachel was given a room in the two-up, two-down Spinner house. “You lot git in together and mek room for yer … for our Rachel,” with a wide and delighted smile. Jack was put next door.
They handed over their ration books, which were gladly accepted and taken down to the co-op store for a few slices of bacon, some butter, and Spam, from America.
The next day they walked the two hundred yards down to the pit, where a shift of black-faced colliers was just coming off and another was waiting to take the cage down the four hundred feet and onto the coal face.
A line of young and less-young women wearing heavy overalls toiled at long conveyor belts piled with coal, on the pit top. “Screen lasses,” it was explained. “They sort the coal from slate and rock.” As critical to the war effort as anyone. Maud Skillings had been a screen lass, way back when …
They met more Spinners, who never left the area much even now, and who were fascinated to learn what Rachel knew about the original Samson. One of them (“I’m probably a distant fourth cousin or summat”) took her to the nearby Church of the Holy Spirit, where an amiable vicar helped them find the record of Samson and Maud’s marriage in the summer of 1854. Rachel took a photo of the page.
Matt and Maggie Spinner presented her with a miner’s miniature lamp. “Just a laal reminder, lass.”
On their return, the RAF regiment corporal at the base gates examined their passes, raised an eyebrow at their being two hours late, then raised the barrier and waved them through with a cheeky, and what he considered to be a knowing, grin.
Jack announced their engagement in the officers mess. They would be married during his next weekend leave. The announcement was enough to kick off a series of parties that lasted past dawn and where they slow danced to Vera Lynn singing “Yours,” and Glenn Miller’s “Begin the Beguine.” Members of the Women’s Land Army were recruited to partner young pilots with no close attachments of their own. They did the hokey-cokey with abandon, as if there were to be no tomorrow.
Which there would not be for so many, when the coming Battle of Britain would provoke Winston Churchill to declare, “Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.”
There was no next leave. Jack for a split-second neglected to check for the infamous “Hun in the sun” while pursuing a Focke-Wulf Fw 190 over the town of Hastings. He was shot down by a Messerschmitt and died in his flaming Spitfire.
Rachel never returned to Cumberland.
The telephone rang again, “D’ye ken John Peel …” In the kennel, Fleet raised a hopeful look. The last of the breeze slipped under the door, and the photo on the wall seemed to move once, as if adjusting, then settled back into place.
The phone went to voice mail.
Samson ordered a gravestone for Rachel, for her place in the cemetery at the Church in the Vale. It would have a pilot’s wings engraved into it and would read: “Rachel Spinner 1919–2019. Fondly remembered.”
Thelma
It seemed as though every ferry carried someone who had arrived for Rachel Spinner’s funeral. Most of them had responded to one of the emails sent on Samson’s behalf by the Clements twins, who frequently rescued Samson from issues with the computer.
The twins had followed up the emailings by taking up sentry and welcoming-committee duties at the ferry dock, where they latched onto one of the first arrivals. Aunt Jillian—their mother Julie’s older sister—was making one of her infrequent return trips to the Inlet. And as the kids fully expected, she arrived from her executive position in London, England, laden with gifts in colourful bags from the city’s best-known shops.
Of course Thelma Spooner arrived, to cry and to bid her old friend goodbye. And of course Thelma drove up to the wedding tree on Ennerdale Road, where once Samson had thwarted the plans of the provincial highways department to bring the ancient maple down. He had organized a “wedding” with himself and Thelma as the principals and had carved their initials and a heart into the thick bark. The carving had joined many more put there since Spinner’s Inlet had been named and populated. The highways crew had altered their plans: the new stretch of highway divided and ran around each side of the maple.
Thelma had taken Samson’s actions to be a promise that their romance was real and the carving a proposal. Samson seemed to have thought differently. Thelma had moved on from her job at the Spinner’s Inlet post office to a promotion and a supervisory position with Canada Post in Calgary.
Samson had watched her arrive off the ferry, had offered a smile, a “How’re you doin’?” and a tentative hug, which Thelma returned. They had arrived at the old tree at the same time. He looked sheepish as she traced the carving of their names with a finger. Samson thought Thelma looked much younger than her sixty years. He sucked in his belly and stood straighter. He sighed as he recalled a recent discussion with his young Maritimes relative, Sam Spinner. “Ignoring ‘What if?’” he had said then, “and getting on with it is a hell of a sight better than later on saying, ‘If only.’”
“Close thing,” Thelma offered, nodding to their initials, which were covered by thickening bark.
Samson nodded. “It was.” And thought, Christ!
Beside them, a slamming of a car door and an overly cheerful voice. “Thelma! I thought it was you.” Danny Sakiyama, the apparently ageless letter carrier. “Haven’t seen you since Calgary, and wasn’t that a night to remember?” He nudged her; Thelma gave him an impatient glance and stepped away.
“I was just saying …” Danny turned to Samson.
“I heard you,” Samson snapped.
Danny had always been considered a ladies’ man. But always short-term. He had never found one he wanted to stay with, nor one who wanted to stay with him, given his reputation.
Samson wondered if Thelma knew that—or if it was any of his concern to wonder.
“He was just saying,” Thelma explained, “that we had a couple of drinks last month in Calgary when we were both at a Canada Post Western employees convention. I don’t know how late Mr. Sakiyama stayed, but it sounds as though he enjoyed it.”
Samson chuckled. Then he took a closer look at Danny. The letter carrier had foregone his standard Canada Post uniform in favour of what, at a stretch, could be called a suit. It was a pinstripe item that might have been in fashion thirty years before. It was ill-fitting, leaving an impression that Danny might have dressed himself during a high wind, and possibly in the dark.
Samson smiled.
Afterward they joined a crowd at the Cedars, people squeezing in among the half-dozen tables, and a few pulling up extra chairs. They shared Rachel Spinner stories and talked of how the funeral had gone.
The cortege had been led by the veterinarian Scott McConville, with Rachel’s last setter, Fleet, on a leash in his right hand, and the late Swede’s Conrad IV on his left. The dogs had taken to each other, apparently having found a canine camaraderie in a shared sense of loss. Fleet even stopped along the way and showed remarkable patience while Conrad spent a moment at a BC Hydro pole. Constable Ravina Sidhu had taken bugle duty and played a somewhat quavering
version of “D’ye Ken John Peel?”—which she had learned from a combined YouTube video and Rachel’s cellphone ring tone. This was respectfully received.
Connie Wilson attended, on a week’s bereavement leave from the American Musical and Dramatic Academy. She had returned on a business-class ticket. This was a gift from Gilbert Chen who, knowing of Rachel’s admiration for the girl’s talents, and Rachel’s substantial but unheralded contribution to the community’s fund to help Connie get to the New York school, had phoned her and said, “Get out to LaGuardia, ASAP.” Connie had sung “Amazing Grace” to close the service, and no eye was dry when she finished.
Samson enjoyed seeing the mixture of Spinner’s Inlet’s population. Ali Hanif was involved in a game of darts with Jack Steele and Finbar O’Toole. Check your wallet, Ali, Samson thought. Ali’s wife, Aila, listened to whatever Anwen Brannigan had just said, and laughed aloud. The Hanif kids and a gang of others were lined up at table of soft drinks and cookies. Constable Ravina Sidhu leaned against the back wall, happily overseeing everything.
As Samson watched, Thelma was hugged by Sheila Martin, an old friend, and by Sheila’s daughters, Jillian and Julie, who had been toddlers when Thelma ran the post office. She had always had a treat for them behind the counter. And by the Clements twins, who were competing for attention from their Aunt Jillian. Sheila Martin said, “Almost like old times,” and wiped the corner of an eye with a tissue. Families.
He noticed Thelma looking at the familiar blue-on-white ferry schedule folded in one hand and then at her wristwatch. The Gulf Queen was due in an hour, departing for Swartz Bay. Not that it was ever on time.
Samson also noticed couples. Hyacinth Jakes and Willard Starling from the seniors complex, holding hands and nodding along to the music. Cedars’ owner Matthew Blacklock had chosen several Second World War songs from the pub’s playlist, for Rachel. Dr. Daisy Chen and Erik Karlsson, the Second Swede, slow dancing in circles off in a tiny corner. Young Sam Spinner and his bride-to-be, Cathy Sloan, soon to be living in the house Rachel had bequeathed to them, linking fingers under their table.
The lawyer Ezekial Watson was being introduced to Thelma by Annabelle Bell-Atkinson, who had assumed a hostess role for the day and who, Samson had to admit, was doing a sterling job of it. She was making sure that no one was left alone, that even outside visitors were being made part of the celebration of Rachel’s life, because that’s what it had become.
Annabelle had the geeks with her but had suggested they stay in the corner with their laptops and play computer chess. She had decided to watch the pair closely ever since the “Banksy” episode in the village centre. So had Constable Ravina, Annabelle had noticed.
Samson became aware that Danny Sakiyama had insinuated himself into the group alongside Thelma. Danny’s voice was never lost in a crowd. Now he was saying to Thelma, “How about them Canada Post layoffs, eh? Wonder who they’re coming after?”
Chatter died down. Cameron Girard slipped his notebook out, which got him a nod from Silas Cotswold. Silas had been lauded for a splendid, full-page obituary on Rachel in The Tidal Times.
“We’re calling the situation ‘downsizing,’” Thelma corrected Danny.
Danny frowned, seemed to be puzzled. Then after a few seconds, “You said ‘we.’ What’s that all about?”
Thelma looked up at him. “Danny, you know that I’m part of management now. Perhaps you don’t remember?”
Samson snorted. Danny glared at him.
“That’s the ‘we.’ It’s a team decision.”
Danny nodded slowly. “And how many of the ‘team’ are being ‘downsized’?” he sneered.
“Me, for one,” Thelma retorted.
“Christ!” Samson sputtered.
“I’m going to stay with Heather for a while.” Heather was her daughter who, years ago, had moved her riding club to Sidney on Vancouver Island.
People drank up and began drifting away. They stopped when Willie Whittle put down his cellphone and called for attention. “The Gulf Queen has been delayed for …” His words were lost in the laughter that greeted his announcement. Just like old times.
Delayed. Christ! Samson made for Thelma’s group and invited her to step away for a moment. It was much later when he went home. Thelma Spooner accepted an invitation to stay over with Sheila Martin.
The Clements twins got to spend another night with their Aunt Jillian. The next day their presence was required at Samson’s place, where he advised them he needed another bunch of emails sent out, invitations to a wedding, which would be held under the ancient maple on Ennerdale Road.
Acknowledgements
Thanks, first and foremost, to my wife June—first reader, thoughtful critic, and story proposer.
To the TouchWood Editions team of dedicated professionals—publisher Taryn Boyd, marketing and publicity coordinator Tori Elliott, editorial co-ordinator Renée Layberry, designer Colin Parks, and proofreader Claire Philipson—I offer my sincere thanks. I must also express gratitude to my always patient (and relentlessly vigilant) editor, Marlyn Horsdal, who as publisher of Horsdal and Schubart brought the first Spinner’s Inlet to readers way back when.
I will always remember the Gulf Islanders we knew as part-time residents of Galiano Island. It’s been a great pleasure to recall them and their often weird and wonderful outlooks on life.
DON HUNTER grew up in Cumbria, England, attended Workington Grammar School, and served two years with 23 Parachute Field Ambulance before completing teacher training at Chester. He taught for two years before he and his wife, June, immigrated to BC in 1961.
After eight years teaching in BC and gaining a B.Ed. at the University of British Columbia, he switched to journalism and spent almost 30 years with the Province newspaper as reporter, editor, and finally senior columnist. He had earlier worked also as a farm labourer, strawberry picker, mail deliverer, taxi driver, longshoreman, construction worker, and screenwriter.
The Hunters built a home on Galiano Island, becoming part-time members of a community whose occupants inspired many of the tales from his original collection of short stories, Spinner’s Inlet. Don and his wife live in Fort Langley, BC. They have two daughters and three grandchildren.
Copyright © 2019 by Don Hunter
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. For more information, contact the publisher at TouchWood Editions, touchwoodeditions.com.
Edited by Marlyn Horsdal
Designed by Colin Parks
Proofread by Claire Philipson
LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION
Title: Return to Spinner's Inlet : stories / Don Hunter.
Names: Hunter, Don, 1937- author.
Identifiers: Canadiana 20190103604
Classification: LCC PS8565.U5785 R48 2019 | DDC C813/.54—DC23
TouchWood Editions gratefully acknowledges that the land on which we live and work is within the traditional territories of the Lkwungen (Esquimalt and Songhees), Malahat, Pacheedaht, Scia’new, T’Sou-ke, and W_SÁNEĆ (Pauquachin, Tsartlip, Tsawout, Tseycum) peoples.
We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund and the Canada Council for the Arts, and of the Province of British Columbia through the British Columbia Arts Council and the Book Publishing Tax Credit.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
