by Ann Swinfen
‘My poor little boy,’ said Martha sighing and resting her cheek against the top of his head. ‘He doesn’t understand this war and he doesn’t know what is happening to him.’
Lieutenant Benson had registered the size of Billy with some surprise.
‘Why, Mrs Halstead, I couldn’t imagine you having such a big boy.’
Martha’s jaw hardened a little, but she smiled at him. ‘He’s big for his age – he’s only five. And I was just eighteen when I got married, wasn’t I, Mother?’
‘Yes, indeed,’ said Harriet, rising to clear away the plates and avoiding Tobias’s eye. She did not mention that Billy was not born until Martha was nearly twenty-one.
‘Now, gentlemen,’ she said, ‘I hope you can manage some of my dried-apple pie and cream.’
7
Maine: Spring 1942
Early morning was the best time of all to be out on Flamboro Bay. Now that the fishing season had started, Tirza was up and dressed by five each morning. Ten minutes later she carried her crab line, baited the night before, down to her dory which she kept moored just below the house, between Stormy Petrel and Louisa Mary. For bait she used eel, which she prepared herself. Sometimes she caught her own eels, but more often she traded crabs for eels from Eel Joe, an old fisherman who lived south of Todd’s Neck.
Eel Joe had been a trawlerman for fifty years, and had retired to live with his married daughter in Portland six years ago. After a couple of months he could not endure it any longer. He found an old lobsterboat wrecked on a waste stretch of shoreline south of Todd’s Neck, removed the superstructure and – with the help of his former shipmates – turned it upside down. He cut a window and a door in the stern and fitted up the inside using materials salvaged from the boat’s cabin. With an iron stove installed, its chimney poking through a hole cut in the hull, Eel Joe’s shack was a snug if somewhat odoriferous home.
To eke out his small pension and to keep himself occupied, Joe trapped eels in a small tidal lake behind his cabin. He also maintained a weir in the cove, where he caught the small herring called brit, which was the lobstermen’s favourite bait. During the fishing season he motored around the shore to Flamboro every few days with his baskets full of eels and kegs of brit to sell to the fishermen. Once a week he hitched a lift into Augusta and sold a bushel of fresh eels to an expensive new French restaurant which cooked and served them with fancy sauces swimming in wine and garlic. Flamboro declared the idea disgusting, but thought Joe had pulled off a smart deal.
Tirza didn’t think she could ever face eating eel. Not after her long and messy struggles with that most slippery and energetic of creatures. Joe sold his eels live, so the first job was to kill them, an unpleasant process which Tirza, as a fisherman’s daughter, ought to have been able to accomplish unmoved, but disliked intensely. Then the eels had to be chopped up with a small axe into short lengths and packed into big earthenware jars with coarse salt. The smell was a concentration of putrescence, as if the sea had vomited refuse, and the salt ate into her skin like caustic soda.
To bait her crab line, she scooped pieces of eel out of the stinking jar. By now they were covered with a thick, sticky slime under the outer coating of gritty salt. She tied one end of a foot-long piece of string around each segment of eel, then tied the other to the crab line, spacing them a couple of feet apart. Each end of the crab line was weighted with lead, and had a painted wooden float to act as a marker; at intervals, pieces of old cork floats were fastened along its length. Although Tirza had no licence for lobster fishing, nobody needed one for catching crabs, and the fishermen respected her claim to the small inlet below Christina’s land where she had been laying her line for the last three years.
Carrying her crab line coiled up in a bushel basket down to her dory in the early morning light, Tirza felt herself more alive than at any other time except when she was sailing Stormy Petrel. She had become oddly conscious of her body lately – its spring and strength, and its moments of aching sensitivity, when her skin became as thin and delicate as the wing of a moth. Energy fizzed inside her, making her break out into a run and building up behind her ribs like an overfilled balloon. That spring she felt as though she was buoyed up with some secret expectancy. What she was expecting, she couldn’t have said, but she woke each morning thinking, Yes, as she looked out eagerly at the new day. At times this sense of something just around the corner of her life tormented her. There seemed to be no reason for it – her days stretched ahead with no new undiscovered country on the horizon.
She lowered her basket into the dory, untied the painter and rowed out into the bay to the sound of the land birds singing the dawn chorus and the sea birds shrieking and swooping over the ocean with all the fresh enthusiasm of early morning. The sun, lying low out to sea, shot through the waves with arrows of light, cool and piercing, flicking up glittering shards of silver against the deep, melded blues and greens where the sea bed dropped steeply offshore beyond the harbour. Depending on the state of the tide and the direction of the wind, it took her between fifteen minutes and half an hour to row round to her crabbing cove. The land here dropped into the sea from the edge of the woods in a tangle of broken rocks and ledges which provided a favourite place for crabs. Tirza threw the first end of her line overboard near the inner end of the cove, then worked the dory parallel to the shore using one oar like a paddle near the stern and allowing the rest of the line to pay out slowly until she reached the other end. As each piece of bait dropped into the water it left a scummy circle of grey salt mixed with slime which slowly spread and dispersed on the surface.
Close under the lip of the land, where she laid the first end of her line, the sea lapped against a narrow, little-used path skirting the wood-shore. Christina’s wood crowded down to the water’s edge, and spring tides found their way over the path to lick around the rough trunks of the firs, and rub like a cat up against the smooth silver bark of the birches. Tirza would have known, with her eyes shut, how much of her line she had laid, for as she worked her way along it the scent of the woods gave way to the slithering smell of the rock weed that clung to the out-flung boulders lying off the end of the point. At low tide they just skimmed the surface, their heads breaking through the ringed waves. At high tide they disappeared, hiding treacherously low, so that only the dimple and flow of the water hinted at their presence. In her dory, Tirza was safe enough. The pattern they made, scattered around the point, was as familiar to her as the rooms of her home. But ships had foundered here, making for the shelter of Flamboro harbour.
School had not yet finished for the summer, so she lifted her line just three times during the day: after breakfast, during the dinner recess, and finally in the early evening. This meant that much of her bait was eaten by crabs which dropped off and swam away long before she could net them, but in a good season she managed to catch enough to sell to Charlie Flett for the store and to the Mansion House Hotel, which had been a customer since last year. The family always had all the crabs they wanted to eat, and Tirza handed over a quarter of the money she earned to Abigail.
Crabbing was an honest kind of hunting, Tirza had once said to Christina. The crabs were neither hooked nor scooped up in a trawl net. At any time they could decide to let go of the bait and simply sink to the bottom. It was greed that kept them holding on to the succulent chunks of eel as she lifted the line, and if their greed was stronger than their instinct for escape, then Tirza reckoned she had won in a fair fight.
‘Honestly, Girna,’ she said, ‘and don’t tell my dad, I think catching fish on a line or with a net is cheating. The fish has no chance to get away. Well, almost none. I know the undersized ones are thrown back. But I don’t think it’s a fair fight.’
This did not stop her helping her father, and even laying a trawl line for mackerel herself when they were abundant, as they sometimes were in that mysterious way of fish. But whenever she unhooked a fish she felt vaguely guilty. It was the same with the lobsters. A lobster, once inside a pot, could not e
scape. But she knew that it was the lobstering that kept food on the table and a roof over their heads, so she said nothing to Nathan about her quixotic notions.
Her crab line laid, that morning in May, Tirza began to row lazily back home. As she drew level with the church and burying-ground, high above her head on the flat promontory adjacent to Christina’s wood, she looked up and tried to imagine a big anti-aircraft gun up there. Tobias had come round to see Nathan after the soldiers had visited him, and at first Tirza supposed they were talking about a man sitting up there with a rifle. Tobias explained that this would be a huge gun, a kind of modern cannon, mounted on a swivel base where the gunner could sit and swing the gun from left to right and up or down to fix it on an enemy aircraft or ship.
Nathan had shaken his head at the news.
‘I can see why they would want to site a gun up there. There’s a natural platform of flat ground and it’s raised up enough to allow a good view out to sea. But to put a gun in the burying-ground – that’s going to mean trouble.’
‘I told him it’s town meeting on Friday and we would discuss it then. But I think they’ll set it up whether we agree or not.’
After breakfast Tirza went out in Louisa Mary to help her father lift, empty and rebait his lobster pots. They could haul about a third of his gang before she had to leave for school. Louisa Mary chugged slowly from one of Nathan’s lobster floats to the other. He brought the boat softly alongside the float and put the engine into neutral as Tirza leaned over the side, reached below the float with the gaff to catch hold of the rope leading to the pot, and looped it over the winch to haul it aboard. If there was a lobster inside – and often there were none – she would remove it through the hatch in the top, then measure it with the brass rule from the eyes to the beginning of the tail and put it into one of the kegs wedged in the cockpit. There were three kegs: one for Massachusetts lobsters over three and three-eighths inches, one for Maine lobsters over three and one-eighth inches, and one for dumbies which had lost one or both claws. The bait bag then had to be refilled with the stinking bait that tempted the lobsters into the trap, and the whole set – pot, line and buoy – thrown overboard as Nathan engaged the engine again. If Nathan had been on his own – and most lobstermen work on their own – he would have had to leave the wheel each time, deal with the pot and the catch, then return to the wheel, taking about three times as long, so he was glad of her help.
‘That’s all we’ll manage before school,’ said Nathan, straightening with a grunt and pressing his hands into the small of his back.
‘Don’t you have some more, over beyond Mustinegus?’
They were a couple of miles offshore, near the west side of the island.
‘Ayuh, but I’d best get you back if you want to lift your crab line before school.’
Nathan put the wheel over and headed back in the direction of the harbour.
‘Don’t see why you don’t get Simon to help you. Pay you back for all his farm chores you do.’
Tirza laughed.
‘Well, I did try. Two years ago, when I first started seriously. But he’s useless in a boat. Clumsy as a cow. Dropping the oars overboard. Setting the dory pitching so I thought we’d go over. Lost more crabs than he netted. I gave up on him.’
‘He didn’t mind?’
‘No, sir! He told me, just a couple of months ago – soon as he steps in a boat, all he can think about is drowning. I don’t want a Jonah like that aboard.’
Half an hour later Tirza pulled her dory up to the float at one end of her crab line and shipped her oars. She reached down into the sea and took hold of the line in her left hand. With her right she picked up the crab net. The line had to be raised to the surface with infinite slowness and patience, so the crabs would notice no more movement in the water than the waves. Peering over the side Tirza could see – when the bait was three or four feet below the surface – whether there was a crab clinging to it. If there was, she lifted the line even more slowly and at the crucial moment slid the net below the crab so that when at last it let go of the bait it could be scooped up and into the boat. With all her experience Tirza still lost some crabs in those last vital seconds, and it was this uncertainty which made crab fishing exciting. She also had to be careful to work so that her shadow was not cast over the wrong patch of sea, alerting the smarter crabs.
This morning was a good day. She had landed twenty good-sized crabs and thrown back three small ones. As she rowed back again to Flamboro wharf in time to walk up to school, the crabs crashed about in the bushel basket, rattling their claws and blowing bubbles. Tirza tied up the dory, tipped the crabs into her holding cage which was anchored just below the surface next to the wharf, and grabbed her burlap bag of school books from beside the boat shed. She forgot to wash her hands, and walked unconcernedly along Schoolhouse Lane in an aromatic cloud of eel bait, crab and seaweed.
Flamboro annual town meeting was held in the town hall, a modest building about half the size of the school, which stood next to Flett’s General Stores. During the rest of the year it was used for meetings of the selectmen, the church wives’ group, the Fourth of July party committee, and occasional sociables or barn dances. On Friday morning Mary Flett and her sister-in-law Hilda, wife of Ben, swept and mopped the hall with particular care. Miss Molly arrived as they were finishing, bringing with her a big bunch of tulips from her garden.
‘I know they don’t last long in water,’ she said apologetically as she arranged the tulips in a vase on the table set up at the head of the hall, ‘but they’ll last today out. We want everything to look as good as possible, don’t we?’
Flowers were not usually in evidence at town meeting, although a dollar supper in aid of the church was part of the proceedings. This evening, however, two army officers were coming to explain the plans for the anti-aircraft gun to the townspeople, and Flamboro intended to put on a good show. There had been talk of little else in the town all week, ever since Tobias had brought the news. Opinion was sharply divided between those who thought any army activity in the burying-ground was sacrilegious – the very work of the devil – and those who argued, first, that a gun up there was better than one down in the harbour if the enemy started shooting back and, second, that soldiers passing in and out of Flamboro might just bring a bit of trade to the town.
Miss Molly could see arguments on both sides. As a sea captain’s daughter, she viewed the threat of German ships as he would have regarded pirates. In an emergency, even the use of the burying-ground might be justifiable. But she did feel uneasy. The thought of careless army boots amongst the quiet mounds and furtive cigarettes stubbed out on gravestones appalled her.
There was a buzz of activity around the town hall all day, as the women carried over their contributions to the dollar supper and stayed to set out dishes and gossip. The annual town meeting marked the first community get-together of the year, and a ripple of cheerfulness ran through the town. The school children were let out a quarter of an hour before time and raced home to finish their chores so they could secure good seats. They had no official part in the proceedings and could not vote, but there was always plenty else going on. Before six o’clock the trawlers began to return, an hour or two earlier than usual for this time of year. Each boat puttered in surrounded by its own cloud of seagulls who screamed and swooped as the fish were gutted and the offal thrown overboard.
Heads turned as the two Libby families entered the hall. Martha had not walked into Flamboro since arriving back at her parents’ home, and this was the first time the town had seen her since last summer. She followed Harriet down the central aisle between the rows of folding chairs, her high-heeled sling-backs tapping sharply on the wooden floor amongst all those men’s boots and the sensible lace-up shoes of the women. The teenage girls poked each other in the ribs, whispering as they studied her flamboyantly rolled hair and her bright red jacket with its big padded shoulders – pinched in to a narrow waist and flaring in a flounced peplum that e
mphasised the curve of her hips. Her navy skirt was shorter and tighter than any of them would have dared to wear. Without the slit up the back it would have been hard for her to walk. And the seams of her silk stockings looked as though they had been drawn up the backs of her legs with a ruler and a black pen.
Abigail’s mouth was tucked in disapprovingly, but she had no opportunity to vent her feelings about her grand-daughter’s appearance. She noticed the appreciative grins of the men in the hall, and raised her chin higher. She would not tolerate being made a laughing-stock, and if Harriet did not put a stop to this flaunting behaviour, she would.
‘Good evening, gentlemen.’ Nathan greeted the two army officers, who were standing speaking to Ben Flett. ‘Nathan Libby.’ He held out his hand.
‘Captain Brian Tucker,’ said the older man, shaking it. ‘This is Lieutenant Clive Benson.’
‘How d’you do,’ said the lieutenant. ‘I believe I met your brother the other day – Mr Tobias Libby of Libby’s Farm?’
‘That right,’ said Nathan. ‘Now, if you would just like to take these two seats at the side here, while we conduct the election? Two of our selectmen have finished their term of office and we have to elect their replacements. We’ll let you have your say before we deal with some minor items of business. Afterwards we have to report on a number of financial matters, and I believe it wouldn’t be right for you to sit in on those discussions, but you’d be very welcome to join our dollar supper afterwards.’
Charlie Flett, one of the retiring selectmen, called the meeting to order, and as late arrivals found seats, Christina O’Neill made her way to the front of the hall, where a few solitary chairs were still unoccupied. Despite a warning glance from Abigail, Harriet motioned Christina towards the seat beside her. Harriet always felt obscurely guilty about Christina, as well as embarrassed by her. It was true that she was generally so busy about the farm that she had little opportunity for visiting, but that didn’t stop her lingering for a chat with Mary at the store or calling upon the Penhaligon sisters. Yet she had not visited the cabin in the woods once in the last twelve months. Christina looked perfectly respectable today. She had plaited her greying black hair and wound it round her head, and she was wearing shoes, though no stockings. Her skirt had been torn at the hem, but was mended – somewhat clumsily and with a thread which did not altogether match the fabric. Harriet smiled at her hesitantly as she sat down.
