She hadn’t seen the Christmas baby since he had been under the tree. He was likely adopted now and shortened. She had heard the young helpers chattering among themselves that Baby Nunatik wasn’t going home to his native family because the doctors at the hospital didn’t agree with his parents’ way of treating his sickness. The father had scratched the baby’s body with needles and cut his scalp to the bone with a knife, letting the blood spurt; then his mother poured salt into the wound to clean his blood. The parents believed the baby’s screams would help stretch his lungs.
Clarissa heard sounds of banging as she pushed open the basement door. She followed the sounds to the cobbler’s shop. The older boys were busy fitting a shoe at a time over an iron last. Using a sharp knife from the cobbling box on the floor, they took a piece of tap from a larger, worn-out shoe, and sized it to fit the sole of a smaller one. Then they hammered it on with brass tacks. The patched and remade shoes would have to do the children until the Prospero squeezed its way through ice far out in the bay and sailed into the harbour. The children waited all spring for shoes to arrive from Canada and the United States, hoping to get a pair not patched. All of them except Clarissa. She got extra taps on a pair of gaiters, or a change of gaiters if she had outgrown her old ones.
Clarissa eyed the children from the doorway of the playroom. She swallowed in longing as they discarded their winter skin boots and were fitted with brown or black shoes. Treffie’s eyes brightened at the sight of her pair. She stared at her name printed on a piece of paper which would be placed in her shoes when they were in the locker she shared with two other girls. Clarissa thought about the time she had been given a pair of shoes. Someone else had worn them out, scuffing along roads, over hills, hippity-hopping through summer.
Clarissa watched Treffie, in her new shoes, join the girls in the schoolyard for a game of hopscotch. The little girl helped draw hopscotch blocks. Afterwards, she got to toss the penny into the air. It fell closest to Cora. She began the game, hopping on one leg, while kicking a flat rock. She kicked the rock from the parlour pudge square through the centre block, called the boiler, and through the next set of blocks to the parlour pudge at the end, and back again without getting her rock on the line. Treffie was so concerned about scuffing her new shoes, she went out on her first try.
Whenever Clarissa sat watching the other children running, skipping and playing hopscotch, she felt as if she were behind a glass wall. She wanted her own laughs and shouts to shatter the wall and mingle with the voices of the other children. But she sat silently, wishing, hoping – knowing that one day she would walk and run like everyone else.
Clarissa made her way to the sundeck out from the first floor of the orphanage. From there she often watched full-sailed schooners plowing through the heavy Atlantic seas to the shelter of the harbour. Today she caught a glimpse of the year’s first icebergs. It was as if a winter wind had carved them with a wild hand, and set the magnificent sculptures adrift. Far out in the bay, they towered above the sea, translucent blue lights arcing off them.
Clarissa imagined herself a mermaid, sitting with her merman on a crystal ledge of their iceberg castle as it sailed diamond-flecked waters. She stayed on the sundeck until the world took a deep breath and held it in, and the sun slid like a gold coin into the sea.
18
THE SCHOOL INSPECTOR
“Tomorrow,” Miss Ellis announced, “Mr. Spence Hayward, the school inspector, is coming. He would visit every year if he could, but circumstances sometimes get in his way. When he knocks and I open the door, you shall stand and give this greeting: ‘Good morning, Sir.’”
Peter’s hand shot up, his fingers spread wide. “Miss, do we have to salute?” he asked boldly.
The school ma’am pursed her lips. “You do not.”
“Bow?”
“No. Inspector Hayward is not King George of England.”
Jude, a harbour boy, nicknamed Lumpy because he had a big lump of a head on a short neck, asked in a timid voice, “King Cole then?”
“I declare,” said Miss Ellis, with an impatient jerk of her head that almost sent her brimmed hat flying, “some of you will go down in history in one certain way. Just do as I tell you, then sit in your seats with your backs straight, your hands on the desk and your feet flat on the floor. And mind the inspector. He has long hands and a stick to lengthen them.”
Cora raised her hand, and when Miss Ellis nodded, “Yes, Cora, what is your question?” she asked, almost in a whisper, her face reddening, “Miss, what’s a school inspector?”
“You will find out soon enough,” the school ma’am replied in a crisp voice. “I caution you all to tidy yourself before you come to school tomorrow. Make sure your fingernails are clean and your hair combed. Try to appear civilized, and interested in what the inspector says.”
Once the pupils were dismissed, most of them scattered outside. Some of them hung around to talk about the school inspector. Clarissa overheard an older pupil complain that he had been put in the corner once by a school inspector for not addressing him correctly. After the inspector left, the school ma’am put him in the corner again. “You made me appear unfit for my position,” she said.
Clarissa was almost afraid to sleep that night for fear the inspector would ask her a question she didn’t know. She didn’t want to have the dunce cap placed on her head, and be put in the corner in front of a school inspector. She finally slipped into sleep and awoke long before the sound of the morning bell clanged through the dormitory.
At school, the pupils who had never seen an inspector sat fidgeting in their seats and biting their lips.
Miss Ellis raised a dark eyebrow and said pointedly, “It is not just you who are being tested. I am also being judged on how well I manage a collection of orphans, heathens and poor ragamuffins.”
The children looked at Miss Ellis and then at each other, as if they were trying to put each other in the right breed.
When the dreaded knock came, all eyes turned towards the door, including Rory’s. He was known for crossing his eyes and turning his upper eyelids inside out when Miss Ellis wasn’t looking. Today he spat quickly on his fingers and ran them through his hair, trying to batten down his red curls.
“Face the front of the schoolroom,” the school ma’am hissed as she hurried down the aisle to open the door and let in a little man whose stomach was so big he looked like an egg on legs.
Inspector Hayward’s presence filled the room. It pressed in on Clarissa, frightening her. The other children jumped up from their seats, stood at attention and said: “Good morning, Sir,” before Clarissa could get to her feet. The inspector’s eyes flickered over her.
“Hang the inspector’s coat in the cloakroom, Rory,” said Miss Ellis in a level voice.
Rory made jerky movements as he rushed to take the stranger’s coat and scarf. He looked dumbfounded as he disappeared into the cloakroom. He hurried out and back into a standing position beside his desk.
Looking at the children standing at attention, Miss Ellis reached out her hands, her fingers dipping as if to press the children back down into their places. They dropped like stones.
The inspector stood in front of the pupils, his stomach stretching his suspenders to the limit. “I assume you all know your times tables.” His voice was stern.
A hand shot up. “I do, Sir. Me farder wants me to learn me sums so no merchant can cheat me.” That was Simon, who often had to listen to chants of “Simon says” as he went up the road after school.
“I’m sure it would not make a sum of difference if he did,” the inspector drawled. “You won’t need to know how many zeros are in a nonillion, since you will likely go no farther than a fisherman’s boat and a poor man’s lot.”
“A nonillion has 30 zeros – in Britain, 54 zeros, Sir,” Simon answered quickly.
“I suppose,” the inspector said, “you all know what a cato’-nine-tails is.”
“I do, Sir,” Peter said promptly. His hand
shot up. He sat waiting, with an imprudent look, until the inspector nodded for him to go ahead. “It’s a cat with nine tails, Sir, something no one has ever seen here.”
“I’ll thank you not to be so saucy,” was the inspector’s gruff reply.
Rory’s fist reached into the air. Before the inspector could give him a nod, Jakot said, “No cat could live in this harbour with nine tails, Sir. Peter and his like would bob them. Sometimes cats lose the one tail they have. Around here cats don’t even have nine lives. What with all the dogs.”
“’Tis bad English, idn’t it, Sir, to say cat o’ nine tails?” Rory offered.
The inspector’s face turned as red as a rose fish. “Where is your grammar?”
“She’s dead, Sir.”
“Are you making fun, using a joke here?” the inspector asked, his face puffing up like a doughboy.
“No Sir, I can’t make fun. I tries to ‘ave it when I can, but wit’ all der work ter do in dis ‘arbour, ’tis ’ard to ’ave it.”
“Pronounce your h’s,” the inspector said sternly. “It is obvious that you have not been going to school long enough to have h tacked on where it belongs in your speech. Up with you in the corner to think about the word elisions.”
“Yes, Sir. I don’t mind, Sir.” The boy jumped up.
“Did you know,” the inspector asked with a glance in the direction of Rory’s back, “that in the Middle Ages, the fat of a dead redhead was used in poison?” He looked around the classroom with a dark countenance. When no one answered him, he lifted his voice and his toes at the same time. “You came from lowly Irish and English fishermen who crossed the sea because they were starving in their own countries. They didn’t care about expanding their language or their minds. You must learn to mind your manners after coming from uncouth ancestors.”
Clarissa knew that the orphan children tried to use “the King’s English” in front of the mistresses. Inside the orphanage, they called to each other, “Where are you going?” Outside the orphanage, she often heard them ask, in relaxed voices, “Where’s yers off to?”
There were times when Clarissa wished she knew the beautiful French language in which some of her forebears had expressed themselves. The English nurses had taught her to speak “good” English. They disdained what they deemed to be Newfoundland’s corruption of Irish and English speech. Some English workers and visitors sounded as if their tongues were fastened to the roofs of their mouths. If the orphans didn’t understand them immediately, they got annoyed.
The English and Americans think they are better than us, Clarissa thought angrily. On impulse, she said, “I read that there were no forks in England until 1620. Commoners ate with their fingers, but so did kings and queens – and they went easy on bathing, too.”
Inspector Hayward looked at her as if he was wondering where she was coming from. Then he shrugged and turned back to the class, his right elbow in his left hand, his right thumb under his chin. “I shall teach you how to say three instead of tree when you are counting. Your teacher can help correct some of your elisions later. Everyone with me now.”
Clarissa looked at the pink under-thread of his tongue as he pressed it up behind his front teeth. It looked so funny she had all she could do to keep her face from splitting and letting out a laugh. She glanced at Cora, who was obviously fighting the same impulse. Just then Cora’s lips burst open and a low, quick laugh slipped out. The inspector walked to her desk. He hit the ink bottle which sat in a round slot at the corner of the desk. The ink flew into the air and splashed down on the wooden floor, spreading like a shadow. He grabbed Cora by her collar and said, “I have a mind to stand you by the hot stove.”
Clarissa was tempted to say, “She won’t be able to say three then.” Instead, she watched Cora pull away from his strong, hairy hand, coughing so hard that the inspector moved away from her.
“That boy in the corner is a noetic child, despite his disregard for standard English,” the inspector said. The children all looked at him as if he had a foreign tongue in his mouth. He shouted, “Noetic means having intellect. It is not a difficult word and it is in the dictionary. If you learn words like it, people will think you are noetic – even if you are not.” One frosty eyebrow lifted as if it were the bristling tail of a husky dog.
After admonishing Miss Ellis to uphold the English language with vigour and discipline, the inspector turned to the pupils. “That will be all for this visit,” he said solemnly. He dipped his head in the direction of the school ma’am. Then he turned quickly and started to walk towards the door. The children stood up, all of them except Clarissa. She remained seated, thinking: In future I shall stand only for a king – or a soldier back from war.
Rory, his hair sticking up from his head like a curly mop, turned from the corner with his eyelids inside out. Jakot pulled out his brown handkerchief and blew his nose, sounding like a foghorn. The inspector turned and looked at Jakot disapprovingly. “Be careful of where you make an emunctory.”
Jakot looked like he was straining to go to the toilet as he spat out the strange word the inspector had thrown at him. “E’monkey,” he said.
“Whisht!” Miss Ellis cautioned, putting a finger to the side of her mouth as if she didn’t want the inspector’s stay to be prolonged. The children stayed standing until the inspector had pulled on his coat and scarf and the door had closed behind him.
So that’s what an inspector is, Clarissa thought, someone whose stomach is so big it looks as if he swallowed a dictionary. She hoped that circumstances would get in the way of him coming again.
19
THE GOVERNOR AND
HIS LADY
Treffie’s pale face bent in wonder over a primrose peeping out of the ground. The bracelet of buttons on her wrist clattered as she picked the pink flower and lifted it to her nose before pushing it into a buttonhole. Spying an airy dandelion, she ran to it and bent down to blow the globe of knitted stars apart. She watched as they danced upon the wind.
Clarissa watched Treffie from the orphanage steps, hoping she would get well once summer came. Then she turned her attention to Peter and Jakot, who were digging a hole to plant a maypole. They had carefully removed all the branches of a tree, except for the plume at the top. Hipper, a new orphan whose real name was Harold, and Owen were making an archway of branches and coloured bows above the orphanage gates. Cora and Imogene were waiting to decorate the maypole with ribbons and paper for good luck.
Everyone was excited about being part of the special occasion. Clarissa thought about Missus Frances’s announcement at breakfast that Sir William Allardyce, Governor of Newfoundland, was arriving from St. John’s tomorrow. There would be a reception for him at The Home. She hoped he wasn’t as full of big words as the inspector.
The next morning, Clarissa was about to get dressed when a knock came on the door. Missus Frances hurried in, smiling. “You are to dress for Sir William Allardyce today, Clarissa.”
“Me?” Clarissa’s mouth dropped open.
“Yes. You are going to meet Governor William Lamond Allardyce and Lady Elsie Elizabeth Allardyce, who are, even as we speak, tidying up at St. Anthony Inn after their voyage on The Wisaria. You can pass in any company, and so you are the child chosen to present a gift.”
Clarissa looked at her, hesitating.
“Come on, Child. Don’t falter. The Governor is a man the same as other men when he’s not in uniform and wearing badges.”
Clarissa was proud to be a Girl Guide in the Campfire Girl’s Club, even if she couldn’t do a lot of the things the other Guides did. Missus Frances helped her dress in her Girl Guide uniform: a long-sleeved navy dress with a red tie holding a gold maple leaf pin. She fastened Clarissa’s belt with its shamrock buckle, and then laid a navy hat on her bouncy curls, slipping its leather strap under her chin.
“You’re looking tidy enough,” the mistress said, giving Clarissa the eye of approval as they hurried down the stairs and out the door. Clarissa stopped o
n the steps to smile up at Eddie Goodale, the Scout Master. He had often carried her around when she was small. He nodded encouragement as she made her way down the steps.
The orphanage children were used to seeing a scruffy, old, grey horse pulling a coal cart to the orphanage. They were not prepared for the big, black horse trotting through the gates. A crowd had gathered to watch this majestic animal pull a black carriage that had huge, spoked wheels. In the carriage sat Governor Allardyce and Lady Allardyce. Horse and carriage passed under the arch of branches and bows and a black-lettered WELCOME banner surrounded by flags. The driver occasionally halted the horse and carriage for people to snap the couple.
The orphanage children were ushered inside the orphanage to wait for their guests. Soon they were listening to Governor Allardyce as he stood on a locker and spoke about a paper mill opening up in Corner Brook, not far from the railway station. Clarissa felt a lonely stir. Her home was in Humbermouth, Corner Brook. There came a sudden surge of memory, bringing the clacking sound of a train going down a track. It was gone before she could hold it close.
Maybe, she thought, there will be a railway station in St. Anthony someday, and a train track running down to Corner Brook. Then my father can drive the train right up to the orphanage, and take me home. Dr. Grenfell would be happy not to have to take his dog team on the treacherous coastal journey of more than a hundred miles to Deer Lake Station so he could catch the train to Corner Brook. He often travelled to the United States by way of Corner Brook. The people there loved to hear about the poor white and dark natives of Newfoundland and Labrador.
Finally, at the prompting of Missus Frances, who was sitting behind her, Clarissa made her way to where Sir William Allardyce stood. He was dressed in a uniform trimmed with brass buttons and shining medals. Lady Allardyce stood there as sunny as a daffodil in the prettiest dress Clarissa had ever seen. She wore a wide-brimmed hat in the same shade of yellow. She smiled at Clarissa, who was trying to steady herself on her crutches so she could free her hand that held the gift the mistress had put into it. She bowed slightly, and passed the gift to Sir William Allardyce, wondering what was in it. It was likely a carving from the window display at the mission gift shop: a polar bear or a seal carved from a walrus tusk.
Far From Home Page 11
