Donovan's Station

by Robin McGrath

  “I don’t think I can do this,” I told Father as he sat me down on the stool.

  “If you can’t, then that’s all there is for it, we’ll have to ask among the neighbours. But Keziah, some things aren’t learned, they are a natural talent and this may be one of yours. Look at those hands,” he said as he held my palms upwards and began rubbing in the bag balm. “They look like they could empty the Milky Way.”

  I looked at my hands, which had always seemed so huge on the ends of my arms, and I remembered Father finding me with my hands in the chamber lye and saying “Enough!” and suddenly I knew this was what I had been waiting for, a chance to show him he’d done the right thing when everyone else said he was spoiling me. So I tried, and I can’t say I did a very efficient job but I milked the cow that evening and again in the morning and then every evening and morning after that until Mother recovered from her injury. There was something so musical about the way the milk shot into the tin bucket, and the white, foaming look as it filled higher and higher gives the same satisfaction as a full berry bucket. It wasn’t long before the cow started to let down her milk as soon as I started to wash her udders.

  When Mother was able to take over the milking again, I was reluctant to stand aside—although I was relieved that she was better—but as often as not she had to go to the flakes or do some other chore. So I continued to milk the cow, particularly in the evenings when Mother was trying to use the last of the light to mend a few clothes or read one of the rare letters from home. Eventually, I took over the milking altogether, and I enjoyed it but in a way that was different than the way Mother did. My pleasure came from the tally of the pints and gallons, which to me represented money saved, and sometimes even money earned. Mother complained about how it took her from her chores on the wharf, but I believe she found milking the cow soothing, even restful, and in the early days I often heard her whispering and singing to the cow in the voice of her childhood—she sounded like a girl when she spoke to the cow:

  Come, come, cushy cow, come when 1 call,

  Come, come, cushy cow, come to your stall,

  Come, come, cushy cow, let down your milk,

  And I will give you a. gown of fine silk.

  I knew the cow had no use for a gown, of silk or any other material, but when my mother sang that I believed the promise and was never surprised to see the milk come streaming down out of her hands into the bucket. However, my hands were large, as big as Fathers even when I was a child, and the cow liked my hands more than Mothers songs, so I became the dairymaid. Mother probably missed the milking, and I certainly missed the songs, but the cow was as contented as any dumb creature can be and served us well until she grew old and dry and we sold her, on the hoof, to the captain of a French merchant ship who wanted meat for his voyage.

  After I moved to Western Junction, I sometimes had as many as fifteen cows, but usually I had six, and I could milk those six in half the time it ever took any maid or man, including Kate who is better than most but who, for her sins, has hands the size of a normal woman. I’ve often had goats, and a goat is more interesting than a cow and easier to milk, but a goat can’t be controlled and it will get into anything. I have merely tolerated chickens, for they are the smelliest creatures the dear Lord ever put on the earth, and troublesome even with their beaks trimmed and their wings clipped. As for pigs… it was a great relief to me when the train came and I was able to stick to cows and vegetables.

  June 23

  Hot and damp. Mumma seems a little better. I was telling her what I’d heard from Mr. Miller about the Mutton boys borrowing their sisters’ clothes and performing a concert on the lawn when the professor arrived home unexpectedly, and I’m sure she laughed. Dermot has asked me to accompany him to an entertainment in Foxtrap this Saturday but I don’t think it would be appropriate.

  Kate is working too hard, I can tell. Father Roche turned up just as she had finished putting the bread to rise, so she didn’t even get a cup of tea before it was time to see to the linen. I could hear him in the kitchen, grilling her, although what it was about I couldn’t say. His voice carries but you can’t quite make out the words. Is that something they teach them in the seminary, I wonder? Very convenient for hearing confessions, no doubt. Poor Kate hates to be cornered and questioned that way—she always thinks she’s done something wrong.

  I heard the Big Galoot talking to her too, about going to a time up in Foxtrap, and she said she was too exhausted even to think about dancing. I know I discouraged her from going with him once before, and now I wish I hadn’t for she needs to get out. She’s slaving in the kitchen for the Knights of Columbus all day and sitting up with a dying old woman half the night. I used to worry that any match might turn out badly for my girls. As it happened, Johanna was more interested in business than in men, and Min was so smitten with Jim that she wouldn’t have listened if I had objected, which I never did because I knew it was hopeless. But I think I have done a disservice to Kate. I tried to keep her from becoming a slave to some man, and now she’s a slave to me instead.

  I never thought of myself as being in collar until I was twenty years old. From the age of eight, I had worked hard, but it was work I chose, and I was not taking orders from anyone. When my parents gave me direction, it was advice, and I was given liberty to ignore it though I rarely did for I well knew that blind obedience was what was normally expected from women and children, and that I was being given unusual leeway. It was in early June that Paddy first showed up at our house, late one evening, having walked out from St. John’s after finishing his own work. It was warm for June, and I was airing out the house while Father was mending the roof, so the door was open with only a bit of sacking hung in the doorway to discourage the flies. I was in the kitchen, tying up the barm, when a headful of outrageously yellow hair poked its way through the brin.

  “Now why would anyone be holed up indoors on a gorgeous evening like this?” said the yellow head, and I almost dropped the barm in my fright. I grabbed the broomstick right away, thinking it was a thieving sailor who had jumped ship in St. Johns, and was just about to give him my opinion of his skull when Father came thumping down from the roof.

  “You must be Mr. Aylward,” said Father as he ducked in through the door. “The Bishop told me to expect a visit, but I didn’t think it would be this soon.” The Bishop? I didn’t know what was going on, but this got my attention quick enough.

  “At your service, Mr. Osborne, Miss Kezzy,” said the yellow head, and made a mock bow first to Father and then to me. None but my parents and Richard ever called me Kezzy and right away I took a scunner against that ridiculous little Irishman in the oversized coat, but it was clear Father was not unhappy to see the man. For one mad moment I thought that Father must have written to the Bishop in town and asked him to recommend a husband for me, but it was the Bishop who had written to Father, and out of respect for Mother he’d agreed to a meeting. I’d no idea he was so desperate to see me settled. Most of the young women in the Harbour were married and mothers by the time they were my age, for if the local boys didn’t court them and secure them in the winter, one of the army of visiting summer fishermen would be sure to woo them and carry them off to St. Pierre or Lisbon or some exotic location where they would never be heard from again. Nobody had come courting me.

  At mention of the Bishop, I immediately put aside the broom and listened. We had heard that his health was failing and that he had celebrated the first mass in the unfinished Cathedral on January 6th, the Epiphany of Our Lord, just in case he did not live long enough to do so at the dedication. The story Paddy told us that evening was more or less true—one of the men working on the Cathedral had been hurt when a harness had broken, and the engineer, who needed to inspect the roof, refused to go beyond the scaffolding unless someone was brought in to inspect and repair all the leatherwork. Paddy was at that time a journeyman cordwainer, and he was in the process of moving from one minor master to another—something he could afford
to do, since he owned his own tools—so he was available to do a week of labour on behalf of the greater glory of God, and for his own greater glory, no doubt.

  Paddy always had a good head for heights, and he was probably up and down the scaffolding far more than was necessary, putting on a show for the stonemasons and learning all about the pulleys that were used to move stone and men up and down the height of the building. When the harnessing was all over-hauled, he invited the engineer and the Bishop to come and inspect the results, but instead of just laying out the leather and canvas straps so they could be seen, he had the men rig up a bosun’s chair. He demonstrated his faith in his own work by being hoisted fifty-five feet up at the facade, and then flown down the length of the structure, almost three hundred feet, to land with a thump next to the two startled but impressed inspectors. Its a wonder he wasn’t killed, the foolish idiot.

  I suppose that the Bishop, seeing a good Catholic Irishman with a solid trade and a willingness to work for the church, could be forgiven for thinking he was doing Father and me a great favour by sending us Paddy. The man was lively and companionable and hard working, though neither as sober nor as clean as I would have liked, but I mistakenly thought that could be remedied and I tried to put aside my misgivings. That hair of his always had the reek of rancid butter to it, a result of his running his hands through the curls after he’d been greasing up the boots he made. I couldn’t abide the smell of it.

  Father was taken with him from the very beginning. I’ve never understood that. Father was not one to be easily impressed, but Paddy’s irrepressible energy may have reminded him a little of Mother, I suppose. Still, he was a first class journeyman, he was at least nominally a Catholic, and he was mad to have me when the rest of the world was indifferent. I made a lunch and served the two men, while Father beamed his approval and Paddy kept stealing sly glances at me and winking, and by the end of the evening it was evident that he and Father were of one mind. When Paddy finally left, Father turned and asked me what I thought of him.

  “He certainly likes the sound of his own voice/’ I answered carefully, not wanting to give offence.

  “Yes, he does, doesn’t he,” replied Father, delighted as could be. Clearly Father wanted this match to happen, and so did the Bishop or he wouldn’t have sent this man out to us. I determined to please them both, and with luck to please myself as well. Paddy and I were married in the Oratory of the Presentation Convent by Father Troy on July 18th, the day after the Bishop was buried in the crypt of his unfinished Cathedral.

  Paddy was ambitious, and marrying me improved his situation considerably, although I have to say he probably would have married me even if I’d had nothing as there were far fewer women than men on the island. I hated to leave Father, but he was anxious to see me settled, and that meant married, so I did my best to leave everything in order. Since I wasn’t going to be around to look after them, we sold the gardens to the Angel family on shares, part cash and part product, and Paddy used the money to set up his first shop, a small rented place down on the bottom of Springdale Street that had narrowly escaped the ravages of the fire in ‘46. We had the front room, with a window and door on the street, and two rooms behind, with a small linney where the apprentice slept and where they stored over-flow from the shop. He also had first one, and then two journeymen of his own, who did not live with us but who took their midday meal as part of their wages.

  I had my first argument with Paddy over the apprentice. At that time, the shoemaking industry in the colony was very much in the control of the Irish, and Paddy’s father had been able to arrange an apprenticeship for him from Ireland with a Kilkenny cordwainer who was moving out to Newfoundland. The papers were signed in Ireland, and were to hold for a full seven years, the terms including board and lodging, washing and a new suit of clothes. In return, Paddy had to keep his masters secrets, obey his commands, neither damage nor waste his master’s goods, and was further forbidden to commit fornication, contract matrimony, play cards or dice, or frequent taverns or theatres. Paddy insisted his apprentice sign the same conditions.

  I don’t know how many theatres there were in Kilkenny, but there were few enough in St. John’s and the apprentice, a nice little fellow of twelve, asked to be exempted from the condition regarding the theater because his older brother was involved in a revue being put on at the Garrison. Paddy, who never missed any of the traveling companies and who attended the Garrison theatricals with a dedication I wish he had displayed when it was time for mass on Sunday, refused permission. He said he’d been denied the theatre when he was twelve, and the boy must be denied it also. The apprentice didn’t ask me to intervene but I did, or at least I attempted to, and it would have been better for both of us if I had not.

  I gave the two of them a particularly good supper, and waited until the boy was in bed and Paddy was settled with his pipe in the kitchen. “That bedlamer is a nice little fellow, isn’t he,” I said, thinking to remind Paddy first of how fond he was of the boy.

  “Good as gold and smart as paint,” answered Paddy, or something to that effect.

  “I noticed,” I said, “that you gave him an extra helping of duff at dinner.”

  “A boy has to eat,” he replied. “There’s many a time I went to bed hungry back in Kilkenny.” Now this probably wasn’t true as his father was a respectable shopkeeper and would have placed him with a first-rate master, but I let it pass.

  “So you don’t think that just because you went hungry, he should go hungry?” I could tell from the look in his eye that Paddy knew exactly where I was headed, and he wasn’t having any of it.

  “Boiled duff is one thing, the theatre is something else. It would take his mind off his work,” he said, puffing furiously on his pipe as if to add conviction to this nonsensical statement.

  “But Paddy,” I reminded him, “when you go to the theatre or to the tavern, you say it helps you concentrate better the next day.”

  “Don’t contradict me, woman.” By now his eyes were as red and hot as the tobacco in his pipe. Paddy had the obstinacy of Balaam with his ass when he got his back up.

  “I’m not contradicting you, you’re contradicting yourself.” I could tell I was headed in the wrong direction and tried to change course. “Now, Paddy, what’s the harm in a bit of fun. You indulge the child in ways that most masters would find ridiculous, and yet…”

  Well, I got no further than that, for he gave a roar, flung the pipe down against the stove where it broke into a dozen pieces, and after calling me a name or two that I heard many times in the years to follow, was out the door. He crawled in dead drunk long after midnight and struck the poor child the next day for not remembering to close the door softly. A week later he bought me a ridicuously expensive silk shawl and let the boy off work early to attend the dress-rehearsal at the Garrison, and when I tried to say thank you he behaved as if the whole thing had been a misunderstanding brought on by my nagging ways.

  It’s funny what will stay in your mind—we must have had a hundred arguments like that but this is the one I remember. The flanker from his pipe burned a hole the size of a walnut in the table runner my mother had embroidered—I can see the mend from here, over on the dresser, though Kate says I did it so carefully it’s invisible to anyone else. That first spat was pretty well the model for all our disagreements over the years—they almost always ended in roars and name-calling and broken crockery, with a half-hearted attempt to mend fences a few days later. He never understood that a silk shawl didn’t blot out the memory of the names he called me in the heat of battle.

  I think I spent half my time that first year walking the road from St. John’s to Petty Harbour, so worried was I by how my father was getting on without me. He had adjusted pretty well after my mother died, but then he had me to look after things so there was very little change in his immediate domestic arrangements. Without me and Mother, he needed help not only on the flakes but with cooking and washing, drawing water, sewing, all the sm
all womanly skills that are not so easily acquired in old age. The day Father realized that I was about to become a mother myself, he forbade me to visit any more and quickly arranged for young Solomon Angel, who was promised in marriage to Margaret Lee, to move in with him. The two young ones walked back to town with me and were married that evening. Paddy got drunk as a lord at the wedding, and gave them both new boots which he’d promised to someone else for the following day.

  Its hard to explain exactly what it was about Paddy that outraged me so. I suppose it was that he had so many God-given talents that he didn’t use, or just plain abused. He was lively, quick, and the Lord alone knows women found him attractive, but he blew his own horn too much and too often, and he was never quite as good as he thought he was, for he cut corners and took on more than he could properly manage. Once, on a hot July day when he was working on a special order and didn’t want to take the time to change into lighter clothing, he simply cut the sleeves off his best wool shirt with a clicker. He didn’t even take the time to do it with a scissors, just hacked away at the cloth, and spent the rest of the week cursing himself for doing it, and me for not being able to mend what he had done.

  When it came to bootmaking, however, Paddy had several advantages over the other small masters. As well as a natural dexterity that was a gift from God and no-one else, he had received first-rate training from his own master, who had refused to shorten the process from seven to five years as some did and who made him learn the business from the ground up. Then, he also owned his own tools, a gift from his father, which allowed him to move from one shop to another and learn all the secrets and tricks used to make a good business a better one.