Waiting for Time

by Bernice Morgan

  “Old fraud!” Philip and Charlotte muttered in unison at Timothy Drew's smiling face. His proposal had infuriated them both, though for different reasons, Charlotte being of the opinion that tax money should not be spent to maintain places unfit for human habitation, Philip saying that in-depth research means thirty percent of his budget would be siphoned off to fund some specious half-baked project that was probably only window dressing.

  Lav has never paid attention to politics. Saul had dismissed all politicians, called them bankers' puppets—and that night she was only amused, glad for anything that would make conversation easy in the hour or so before her mother left.

  Leavetakings. Charlotte's, Philip's—and now mine, Lav thinks.

  She had not slept well last night—woke with a headache and the imprint of some unhappy dream flickering at the corners of her eyes. Only then did she begin to pack—stuffing clothing and a few books helter-skelter into suitcases. The department would have paid to ship the furniture, even dishes and bedding. But Lav wants none of it. Never again will she eat from the smart, deep blue dinner set, never again sleep between these Liberty-print sheets she and Philip have used for years.

  She'd had a nine o'clock appointment with Nat Hornsby, Philip's lawyer—and now, she supposes, hers too. Lav reflects on why using plates and sheets she and Philip had shared seems odious while putting her affairs into the hands of his lawyer is acceptable. She left the house-key with Nat, told him Fisheries and Oceans was sending her to Newfoundland for a year, asked him to rent the house and to see that it was kept in repair. Anything left after expenses can be divided between herself and Philip. She gave him the Research Station's address so that he could forward her mail but did not ask if he had heard from Philip or what her ex-lover's Australian address is.

  Lav is tired but she continues to sit in the hotel dining room, listening to three businessmen at the next table talk of contracts and government loans—dull stuff. An habitual eavesdropper, Lav wishes she were sitting beyond the men, near the corner table where an elderly couple is being toasted by laughing children and grandchildren.

  She should phone her mother. The thought nags at her. She should stand, should go to her room and call Charlotte: “I've just had a swim in clear blue heated water,” she will say, “I've eaten a civilized meal at a table set with linen and silver and am now lying on a posture-perfect mattress in a hotel room identical to a million others all over the world—I'm in Newfoundland.” She wonders what her mother's reaction would be.

  But it is too late—too late or too early to telephone California—and so she sits on, drinking tea, eavesdropping—brooding.

  It was Ian Farman who had first mentioned the Newfoundland job. Ian was a good friend of Philip's—a friend of Lav's too, she supposes. One day in January he had stopped in the doorway of her office and told her he'd just stumbled onto something up above. Ian had rolled his eyes heavenward, as they all did when referring to the top floors of DFO's Ottawa building—offices from which the minister's staff operate, unnumbered floors to which the public is not admitted.

  “They're upgrading the PK3 research, putting a new spin on it, calling it Oceans 2000,” Ian said. “There's talk of seconding someone from here to pull the project together, head it up in Newfoundland—probably for the rest of this year. Someone who knows the scene here in Ottawa—someone with enough policy experience to oversee regional people—to work with them, pull the PK3 stuff into a cohesive package, something we can get a policy planning document out of before the next election.”

  Ian's voice dropped, “Well—listening to them talk, it occurred to me it might be just the thing for you. You're familiar with existing policy and you've worked with Philip long enough to know what's involved in producing an acceptable report. You're certainly qualified and,” he gave Lav a half-sympathetic, half-rueful smile, “and maybe you'd enjoy a few months away from this place.”

  Lav had been non-committal, but really she was intrigued by Ian's suggestion. Although she had never been there, Lav knew the Fisheries and Oceans Research Station in Newfoundland was located in St. John's. Despite this, as Ian talked she was imagining a remote community, a light-house-like building clinging to sea-battered cliffs. A place of storms, fog and brown water. The thought of how much her going to such a place would annoy her mother skipped unbidden across her mind.

  She had probably smiled. Ian certainly seemed encouraged, told her he would put in a word should she be interested. “Think it over,” he said, “there are a lot of plusses—your position would almost certainly be reclassified, upgraded, it would give you good experience in the regions. I'm reasonably sure the job could be yours if you want it.”

  It had seemed a casual, friendly gesture, nothing official, but Lav knew enough about the inner manoeuverings of the department to recognize the message: with Philip gone, her position was not as secure as it had been.

  Even before Ian Farman left her office Lav had decided to try for the Newfoundland job. Go away. For the first time in her life the idea of leaving seemed appealing. It was just what she needed—a few months in a new place, a hiatus between Philip and whatever her future might hold.

  Now, though, sitting in the almost empty dining room of Hotel Newfoundland, delaying sleep, icy loneliness breathes down Lav's neck: Philip has disappeared, has abandoned her for the warmth of Australia. Saul is dead, his shop sold, his books scattered. Her mother is gone, long gone—is now Charlotte Carbrillo. The new name, Lav feels, suits her better than those mundane, abandoned names: Charlotte Rosenberg, Lottie Andrews, Darling Lottie—folded like tissue and placed in some forgotten drawer with Charlotte Hinchley, the silly little factory girl who thought she was escaping to paradise.

  Perhaps it is just as well she hasn't phoned her mother. Would it matter to Charlotte Cabrillo, smiling among her pots of pink azaleas, that on this grey February day, in contravention of the only piece of advice she ever gave, her daughter has flown eastward—eastward and northward—away from the light, away from the sun, away from the safe centre of the continent?

  When she wakes next morning it is sunny. Looking down on snowy streets and out over the harbour, which is deep blue, Lav realizes she has slept without dreaming, has outdistanced her phantom fish, defied her mother, perhaps expunged Philip.

  I am alive and well, forty is not old, I'm in a new place, a place where the past is unimportant—-so she tells herself. Filled with energy, she arranges for a rented car, eats a huge breakfast and goes in search of the Department of Fisheries Research Station, which the desk clerk describes as: “that stunned-looking building up in the White Hills.”

  Driving up the steep, winding road, between hills that are, in fact, black, Lav comes upon the building suddenly. It is set in a hollow between outcroppings of rock, safely out of sight and sound of the sea. A stream splashes along between the road and front entrance so that one has to cross a kind of draw-bridge to get to the main entrance. The design suggests a walled castle, yet the total impression of the building—its curved concrete enclosure, its five towers capped with steel siding and linked by glass walkways—evokes something more bizarre—a space station perhaps, or one of those multi-tiered towers of Babel pictured in Bibles her stepfather used to rebind. Standing outside the building Lav visualizes airy laboratories, sun-filled spaces in which to work and socialize.

  When the security guard leads her through strangely sloping passageways, the walls of which are painted deep blue, livid green and purple, she realizes there are no sweeping vistas, no shiny laboratories or comfortable lounges, no army of white-smocked research assistants. Inside, the Fisheries Building resembles a series of Quonset huts joined by awkward walkways, subdivided into cramped rooms.

  Bundles of bedraggled blue notebooks tied with string are stacked haphazardly outside office doors. Since the doors are all open, Lav can see the occupants: most, dressed in cords and sweaters, tap data into computers; some make notes and prod thoughtfully at specimen trays, others stare int
o computer screens on which many-coloured graphs unroll endlessly.

  She pauses beside the door of a darkened room inside of which a tall black man is explaining video image analysis to a group of young children. Lav watches the children, their eyes move back and forth from the man's face to the pictures of cells projecting onto the wall. She thinks the children probably feel frightened, but pleasantly so, safe and frightened at the same time—and mystified, trying to make some connection between the scientist's black face and the pale translucent images floating on the wall.

  “They're too young to take it in,” her guide shakes his head and beckons Lav onwards down ramps and around circular hallways where every intersection is blocked by huge, padlocked freezers. The contents of these freezers are identified and dated by tags wired onto the locks: scum-oil scraped off fishing nets, cod livers, gullets of sea birds, genitalia of seals—all oozing the smell of formaldehyde and death.

  Far, far down, in what surely must be a bunker built into the cliff, she is directed to a windowless, kitchen-like room where a lanky young man is waiting. When Lav introduces herself he admits, as if every word is being forced out of him, that he is Mark Rodway, her research assistant “…and gofer,” he adds, mumbling something about being a graduate student and only available three days a week.

  Instinctively wary of this person, disliking the way he will not meet her eye, Lav turns to inspect the cupboards, poorly-built, makeshift affairs.

  “I had hoped to have a full-time assistant, someone experienced,” she peers into the cupboards—all empty.

  Her lack of attention seems to loosen his tongue. “Oh I've got all kinds of experience,” he says. “I've been workin' with DFO four years—laid off twice every year and rehired twice every year—every year since I graduated. They got no cause to complain of me here at Fisheries and Oceans—at the Department of Employment either—and they're ever so pleased with me at Statistics Canada. Yea, my name is gone abroad in all the land. You must have heard tell of me, Dr. Andrews! Why, I'm the man who's created eight new jobs in four years! Still, I let them all down—got pissed off—went back to do university last September. Blotted my copy book, Nan says—been demoted from temporary-full-time to casual-part-time.”

  This is what Mark Rodway says—or what Lav thinks he says. She will have to listen more carefully in the future. He speaks so quickly, so softly, in a low, continuous monotone—seems slow, dull, almost uninterested in the words coming out of his own mouth.

  Content does not conform to sound with Mark Rodway, listening to him is like watching a movie that is out of sync, badly written—or too well wrritten. You never catch the sharpness, the stab of sarcasm until it is gone, flung over your shoulder, flung at the wall behind you—never, surely, flung at you. Such arrows cannot come from this handsome creature slouching against the wall gazing innocently at his hands.

  Pondering the young man's speech patterns, Lav has already missed part of what seems to be a briefing on the building and its inhabitants. Mark Rodway is telling her that over six hundred people work in the five towers, that each tower is a world to itself.

  “Like unto the tower of Babel this place is—it confounded all the earth,” he says, echoing her own impression, though Mark is not speaking of spiral rooms but of the people who inhabit them. “Everyone in this building speaks a different language. Everyone sticks to his own little cubicle, guards his own little project, circulates in his own little clique. A guy I went to school with has been working in Allocations and Licensing for five years—swears he's never seen his boss or the front entrance. Of course, the senior types are paranoid as hell about their own bits of research and their own work space. They're up above holding onto all the outer ring of offices—the ones with windows. The rest of us scrunch down here in steerage. Everyone keeps their doors open—it looks friendly but really it's to keep from choking in the recycled formaldehyde they pump around to pickle our brains and keep us docile.” All this is said in the same casual, apathetic monotone.

  He glances up just once, probably assessing how far he can go with this middle-aged creature from Ottawa, this woman with her doctorate—this outsider.

  Lav begins to pace slowly around the room, keeping her face as deadpan as possible, pretending she is not really listening. This appears to be the right approach, for he continues.

  “Bein' casual part-time I don't qualify for a key to the supply room so you'll have to make out requisitions for every jeezely thing—for secretarial help, for computer software, for a phone, paper, even pencils and paperclips. There's no proper cafeteria and you notice we don't rate a perc—there's coffee in machines down the hall but you wouldn't wish it on your worst enemy.”

  He instructs her to buy a kettle: “We can make ourselves nice and comfortable down here. You get coffee and teabags and I'll bring in milk and some teabuns.” This concludes the conversation. He straightens up, raises a finger to his forehead—a gesture that in generations past might have indicated servile cap tipping but has evolved into curt dismissal—and walks out.

  He leaves Lav to contemplate the room, a marginally more comfortable occupation than dwelling on the character and background of her research assistant. There are two desks and two chairs, both chipped and worn. One computer terminal, one government issue filing case, unlocked and empty. Below the row of cupboards a steel sink is set into a wooden counter. On the opposite wall is a large, cracked cork board onto which one envelope is pinned.

  All her years of work, all her dreams—all her stepfather's dreams for her (“If you are lucky, Laviniandruss, you will live to see the beginning of civilization…”) have led to this room.

  Clearly, Oceans 2000 does not carry much weight here. How long will it take for the data she needs to be transferred from Ottawa? How will she endure working in this broom closet? How will she manage with just one, part-time, certainly insolent and probably lazy, assistant?

  In six months' time I will go back and discover I've been demoted to research assistant, Lav thinks. To distract herself she walks over and unpins the envelope from the cork board.

  The envelope contains a note from the room's former occupant. Roger Martin suggests she might like to rent his house. It is a nice house, he says, and since he and his family will be in South America for the next eighteen months Lav should at least go look at it. The key is with the security guard at the front desk.

  She feels grateful to Roger Martin. His note is sane, clear—a small, accidental welcome. Before dark she is ensconced in the Martin house.

  It is narrow, squeezed between two almost identical houses, each with blanket-sized front and back yards and no off-street parking. From outside, the house seems to consist of two storeys topped by a steep attic, but generations of floor levellings, ceiling lowerings, adjustments and additions have left every room on a different level so that Lav is constantly going up or down one or two steps.

  It is a crowded, comfortable house, cluttered with the Martin family's belongings. The front hall closet is packed tight with winter jackets, heavy boots, wool caps and scarves. Shelves overflow with books, walls with pictures. Tapes and games, Monopoly, checkers, Scrabble, are piled in corners of the living room. The mantle is lined with garish, child-made ornaments and ugly souvenir plates. Sideboards contain unmatched china and tarnished silver.

  The Martins are not neat by nature but have, Lav can see, attempted to make room for their unknown tenant. Ice skates, skis and tennis racquets have been tossed into a cupboard under the stairs. One bedroom has been taken for storage, filled with junk: piles of old records, stacks of magazines, Atlantic, National Geographic, Chatelaine, Science Report, Owl, Canadian Forum—there are even comic books—the Martins are eclectic readers. The bed in this room is piled with dolls, teddy bears, a wooden sailing ship and a hundred plastic toys. Cardboard boxes overflowing with school reports, letters, receipts, photos, cover the floor. The urge to rummage through this mass of unfiled history, this detritus of life, is so strong that La
v pushes a small bookcase across the door.

  Having the Martin house to return to makes her unpleasant work-space bearable. At night she sits in Roger Martin's easy chair debating whether she has ruined her career, if she has been manipulated by Ian Farman into coming to Newfoundland. Eventually, she bores herself and stops debating, tells herself that she will make a success of her stay and produce a report that will bury forever any suggestion that she owes her position to Philip.

  Holding to Philip's dictum—that a modicum of civilization makes all things possible—Lav spins off polite requests to Ottawa asking that all their PK3 data be transferred to St. John's, asking for more space and additional staff. She buys a kettle, she requisitions supplies.

  She suggests to Mark Rodway, carefully staring into her cup as she dabbles a teabag, that the Oceans 2000 Report might be his golden opportunity to establish a name for himself, to get that permanent government job he has informed her is the lifetime ambition of every right-thinking Newfoundlander. After saying this, Lav glances up quickly enough to see Mark regarding her with a look of astonishment. “So!” the look says, “So, this mainlander is catching my throw-away lines!”

  Lav congratulates herself. She is sure that up to now, Mark has thought her deaf.

  They do not get any more space, but by the following Monday supplies have been delivered and Lav has a key to the office. Data from Ottawa has been transferred into their computer and several dozen notebooks, all filled with notations on Zone PK3, have appeared as if by magic in the hallway outside.

  But, most important, they have been given Mrs. Alice O'Reilly. Mrs. O'Reilly is in her fifties, a formal woman who frowns on the use of first names or the wearing of cords in offices.

  “I came to the Department right out of Commercial at Mercy. I was eighteen—standards were different then—if you had a Commercial diploma it meant something. That was just after Confederation—the Provincial Government passed over its Department of Fisheries, staff, files and all to the Federal Government. Everyone was getting jobs in federal offices that year,” she told Lav on the day she arrived.