She looked at him, helpless to explain. “I’m sorry—I have to go, we have to.”
He nodded this time. He did not ask anything at all, the dear and private heart.
“I wish you could come with us—it would be so useful to have you! But you must finish school, that is the first thing.”
He clenched his fists. “I don’t want to stay in school, school is stupid. I would learn much more by going with you. You hated school, and Aren never even finished. Why must I?”
“You can’t understand how it was for us. People feel they know you, because you’re from here.”
“I was not born at sea,” he said sadly.
“Well, neither were we, that does not matter a tick—but your parents are Yarmouth-born and ours were not.”
“But I am odd, you know.”
She laughed. She did know. “I wish I could take you,” she said.
“Perhaps you will let me know where you settle, then, and I will come and meet you,” he said, as if confirming a dinner engagement.
She laughed, as quiet as he was. “I will write to you, I promise.”
He shook his head. “With your scrawly hand? You might as well write in Greek. Please ask Aren to transcribe your letters!” He came forward in a rush and hugged her, and then vanished down the dark hallway.
Nine o’clock. Time. Kay went to Thea’s room and found her in bed already, propped on cushions with her pink leather-bound New Testament. “Francis went to town,” she said, moving the marker. “I’ve taken a holiday and put myself to bed early.”
“That’s good. You work too hard, you must be careful not to exhaust yourself.”
“Nonsense!” Thea patted the bed. “Sit down, you haven’t told me enough about Aren, how he looks, how he is. Is he very thin?”
“No, I think he is in good health. Good spirits,” Kay said, lying carefully. She must not say anything portentous, or show sadness.
“I must go down to Halifax myself, and try to persuade him to come home,” Thea said.
Kay bent to kiss her foot, and the humped length of her shin beneath the blankets. “He loves you,” she said. “And he said he misses Roddy something fierce.” A small lie; not a lie, because true.
She bent over the bed again to kiss her sister’s damask cheek, wishing she could just tell her everything but knowing she could not, and said, “Sleep well, dear Thetty.”
Thea caught her hand and kissed it. “You never call me that anymore. You were the sweetest little girl, Kay, so funny and bright. I often thought of that when you were having such a difficult—well. You were always very decisive. Such terrific frowning when your will was crossed. Your eyebrows made little ridges!”
Kay got up, patting Thea’s hand, no longer gripped by an agony of wishing to tell. Being told how grouchy you have always been is enough to cure a person of sentimentality.
Now it was time.
Jerry Melanson strained at the trunk, caught it in both hands and headed down the back staircase. Kay raced down the front stairs to delay Lena Hubbard, in case she might be coming early from Aunt Lydia’s room, where she spent the evenings seeing to the old body.
Pushing the door just ajar, Kay saw her humming to herself, busy with a cloth at the medicine table, wiping bottles, leaving everything clean and orderly. She did her job neatly. Kay stood watching for a moment.
Lena turned from the bottles to the bed. “One more half hitch for the old bitch,” she said under her breath, and she caught Aunt Lydia roughly around the waist and rolled her over a quarter, shoving a long pillow along her back to hold her in place.
A moaning exhalation came from the body’s mouth. Lena smacked the old woman’s leg and said, “None of your noise, now.”
Backing quickly away into the telephone alcove under the stairs, Kay found she had no breath. The ordinary cruelty of it shocked and did not shock her. Lena had always been one who liked to have power over others. And Aunt Lydia could not know. Did that make it all right to hurt her? Why lavish care on this old, empty body, yet consign Pilot to death?
She should tell Thea about it. But if Lena had to leave, Thea would have no help at all, and that was not tenable. All right, it meant that Kay would have to come home soon and be the help.
But first, she could go back to sea.
4
The Constellation
At 6 a.m., a white sky, bright even for May. The train shuddered into the station and Kay moved gingerly, shifting her legs to see if anything was still asleep before gathering herself and rising. Three or four other sad souls who’d made the overnight run in the one passenger carriage were stretching and finding their hats. She left her trunk in the luggage bay and walked down the timber pier, searching for the Hilton office. She’d been there once with Francis, but could not quite remember the spot.
A long line of clattering cars went screeling along black rails into dark sheds, pushed rather than pulled by a wheezing engine car. In shadowy corners, dock boys were sleeping, two or three leaning up against each other, caps down and hands shoved into their armpits for warmth. Any of them could have been Aren.
Seagulls wheeled where she walked, hoping for cake, perhaps. One big white bird stood plump ahead of her and refused to move as she bore down on it, until Kay stamped her blue boot and it deigned to lift off on spreading, lazy wings, crying sheeee, who does she think she is?
——
All right, that was done. With some relief, she stood outside on the boardwalk again. Captain Hilton’s office had been stuffy, all the windows painted shut. Probably he’d had enough sea air to last his lifetime.
Francis had telephoned ahead last evening, and Captain Hilton greeted her by saying he had found accommodation for them on the Constellation (she thought perhaps it was by turfing an officer out of a berth), sailing at 4 p.m. Two fares, one way, came to seventy-five dollars, by Hilton’s favourable reckoning.
She was worried about money: she did not intend to wire Francis for more, ever, and they would need to charter a boat at the other end, or live for who knew how long while they worked out what to do. So before going to find Aren, she took her luggage to a little shop she’d often noticed on visits to Halifax, a dusty emporium of bits and bobs with a discreet sign in the window: WE BUY FOR CASH. She must always have known she would be needing this shop.
Two men stood behind the counter, not eccentric or Dickensian, only businessmen. One with a hand-held tally, like an abacus in a Chinese shop. They bought the silver cup—that brought five dollars. Her silver brush set, ten. Her pearls, which had been Aunt Queen’s, with knots between each one, for forty.
That was more like it, but still not enough. She sold them her broadcloth coat with the muskrat collar, and her watch, and in the end her steamer trunk. A suitcase would do for her, and they offered one they had on hand as part of the deal, a lady’s case in strong butterscotch leather. Her clothes fitted easily in the case, her books in the blue valise. And of course this divestiture was not permanent, she could come back and have nice things again, anything she ever wanted or needed. She had ninety-five dollars extra now, so they were altogether a hundred and thirty to the good. She did the arithmetic again. Or rather, a hundred and twenty. Enough, anyway, to feel beforehand with the world.
Since they’d only offered a dollar and a half for it, she kept the pearl pin that Francis had given her that Christmas in Shanghai. She wondered if Francis had ever yet remembered that she was with him in Boston when he bought it for Thea, to celebrate the baby who died in Eleuthera. She tumbled her things from the trunk into the cases (slightly sad to let the steamer trunk go, a very fancy one from Paris) and went back out to the cabbie, patiently waiting, and directed him on to Gottingen Street. There, she could unload for herself—which made her glad to be freed of the trunk after all. She arranged her two cases on the stoop, hemming herself in.
She had to wait for an hour, but at last Aren came whistling around the corner.
She stood up to wave.
> “What’s this, have you run away?” he asked when he was close enough not to shout. He had his key out to open the door.
“I didn’t want to bring it all upstairs,” she said.
Now that she’d come to the point, she did not know how to broach the subject.
He forestalled her. “Don’t worry, I’m in work again. I went cap in hand to Belliveau at the yards and he took me back, working nights. I’m on my feet again, you can count on that.”
She flushed. “Did you think—I was not critical of you, only a bit worried.”
“I know,” he said. “I was angry, in a slump, you know how that is. But I have pulled on my bootstraps and I am on my way up again.”
They stood there on the stoop, silent for a moment.
Putting his key into his pocket again, he said, as if it was no matter, “What have you got in those cases?”
Kay looked up and down the street. No helpful people, no stray dogs. Better come out with it. “I had an idea,” she said.
Aren cocked his head and looked blank, waiting.
“I thought we could go home.”
He waited. Giving her nothing.
“To your real home, I mean.”
He looked up to check her face then.
“I have berths for us on the Constellation, for New Zealand, sailing at seven.”
He laughed. “The Constellation! I’ve just been victualling her.”
Then he was silent.
She couldn’t breathe. She did not know what would work to persuade him.
“It’s the best thing—the only thing that makes sense!” she said in a rush. “I’ve been thinking and thinking—it’s no good for you here, there’s nothing—”
She stopped herself. She could not interpret his face. She could not translate it.
After a minute, she said, “Well, anyway, I thought we could just go back.”
He stood looking up Gottingen Street, grey and damp. Black ooze running down one gutter, rain beginning overhead. He was still the younger brother, she thought. He would be ruled by her.
“I don’t know what Belliveau will have to say about me running out on him again,” he said at last.
Leaving the big suitcase at the bottom of the stairs, Kay went up to help Aren pack. There was not much to stow in his sea-chest. When the little room was empty, Aren looked around it. “I did not like it here,” he said.
“I am glad to be back on our travels,” Kay said, voicing her inmost thought.
A voice came scrawling up the stairs, calling Aaaaaaaa-ren! in red ink. That girl, the one with the bruised mouth and the matted red hair.
Aren locked the door of the room. “Landlady has a skeleton key,” he said, and slid the key under the door. “Why don’t you wait here for a minute until I go talk to Merissa?”
She was glad to let him go down alone, although ashamed of her cowardice. He set the sea-chest on his shoulder and trotted down the stairs, very fit still, though still shadowed under the eyes from rough living.
In a minute Kay heard him talking down below. She could not make out the words. There was a pause, and a longer pause, and then a burst of indeterminate screaming and thumping. She peeped over the balustrade, careful not to be seen.
“You scum-bucket!” the girl shouted. That was the intelligible part; the rest was lost in a long wail and in the whirling of her hands pounding on every part of Aren she could reach. “You can’t go! You can’t!” Fury breaking outward in every direction, her hard shoes kicking at the stairs and the banisters, and from the sounds of it connecting with Aren’s legs once or twice. He held her off at arm’s length and tried to set the sea-chest on the step, but she windmilled in again, crying, “No! No! No! You are a pig! I hate you! You must not go! You can’t!”
Aren got the sea-chest down and put his arms around her, his dark hair mixing with her red locks, and held her, whispering in her ear, holding her tighter when she struggled to get free. Kay crept down one flight of stairs while they were occupied, and looked again over the railing.
The girl was crying now, her body sagging in Aren’s arms. Her face tilted upward in exaggerated mourning, eyes searching, brows arced up in the centre like a tragedy mask. Kay pulled her head back.
For the best, she thought.
Kay had let the cab go hours ago, and the suitcase, valise and sea-chest were too much to manage on foot. Aren stopped a kid running along the road and asked him to find them a cart. He gave the boy a dime and Kay said that was the last they’d see of that, but soon enough a dray cart turned up the street and the driver whistled down to ask if it was them that needed a lift. At the docks, Aren helped her jump down from the cart and snagged a porter to take the suitcase and the valise, showing him the tags: “For Ward, K. Ward!”
Kay expected him to follow the porter along with her, but he shouldered his sea-chest once again.
“You made a mistake there,” he said matter-of-factly. He was not scolding her. “I am not cabin material, even on a tramp. I’ll find Hilton and get that straightened out.”
“I meant to do it,” Kay said. “I won’t have you in steerage.”
“No such thing on a tramp, only first and second—and anyhow, that’s not what I mean. I’ll find myself a job and we’ll save the price.”
“No!”
“Yes!” he said, aping her tone. “This time, it is you who doesn’t know what is right.”
She wanted to stamp her foot, for all the good that would do. “Don’t you see? It’s important.”
“It might be important for you, but for my sake, this will be better.”
He would not change his mind when in that mood. She breathed out through her nose and said, “If you must, you must.”
“Indeed, I must.”
He kissed her cheek and went off through the crowd, back toward the Hilton office, and she was left to make her own way through the embarkation shed.
At the counter, two nicely dressed girls laughed with each other, filling out their embarkation forms opposite Kay. One dark, one very fair, of the same height and slenderness, in the same elegant clothing. Under OCCUPATION, after some repartee, they put Spinster, so Kay did too. She had no occupation and it did not seem to her that she ever would.
Pride, she had that. So she did not simper at the girls or try to be friends with them. Besides, she had a friend, she had a brother. And she had Roddy too—she would write him a postcard now, before she forgot. In the waiting room, she chose one with the Citadel on it, he would like that.
We sail this evening. I will miss you and I promise to write each week.
Give Thea my love when it seems like good timing. Don’t forget to write to me, too! always your loving Kay
Then, with more difficulty, she composed a telegram to Thea. It would not be delivered till the morning, when Jerry Melanson’s second cousin rode out on his bicycle from the telegraph office.
I AM SORRY BUT I HAVE GONE TO TAKE AREN
BACK TO HIS HOME. HE IS TOO SAD HERE.
I WILL WRITE FROM NEW ZEALAND. WE SAIL
THIS EVENING. LOVE FROM KAY.
Thirty-two words! It cost her almost a dollar to send.
Then, since she was being so practical, she sent a cable to Mr. Brimner—this one much shorter, since the fee to Tonga was formidable. As if it cost any more to beam around the seas—well, perhaps it did have to go from shore to shore more times, or whatever the cable wires did. She sent the cable to “English Church, Ha‘ano,” hoping that it would reach him. Knowing that it must be read by many other eyes than his, she was careful what she said. Ten words only:
COMING TONGA. WILL WRITE FROM NZ.
SAILING TONIGHT. LOVE KAY.
That was all right. All her necessary tasks completed, she bent to pick up her—Oh! the porter had taken the valise and the case. Well then. Off she was.
Going up the gangplank, she had the loveliest tremble in her middle, the subtle, excitable apprehension of a journey long desired.
——<
br />
Kay’s cabin suited her very well. It was on the promenade deck and had a proper window that opened, not a port, which she would have had to beg the steward to open for her, and which would most times be denied in case of heavy water. She opened the window at once, and let in the soft, faintly stinking harbour air.
It was a single, with one fixed bunk that functioned as a sofa during the day, but she needed no more. Built-in shelves with leather fittings to hold books and toiletries secure; there was a tiny washbasin closet, with a dinky little tap. Cold water only, but she was perfectly happy to wash her face in cold water. She unpacked her case and her valise while the ship’s engines changed their note and began to thrum, thrum, in a purposeful way, and by the time the big vessel eased away from the dock (to a very few cheers from dockside friends) she was finished, and sitting calmly on her sofa like an old hand when the steward knocked to inform her that she was down for the first seating, and would be at the captain’s table. That arrangement must be courtesy of Captain Hilton, and due to her long friendship with Marion. She would send Marion a card too, to let her know how kind her father had been.
The dining room was low-ceilinged but long, and ringed with mirrors. The radio played quiet music in one corner, where the carpet had been taken up to provide a tiny dance floor. One couple was already seated at the head table: a slight naval man and his companion, a middle-aged, middle-sized, middle-coloured woman in a serviceable navy satin dress, chosen to look well with a uniform beside it.
As Kay was finding her name card, the captain came to the table and introduced himself. “Captain Richard Bathurst—I sailed with your brother a time or two in our younger days.”
Kay said she knew Francis would be very happy to hear that, and the captain said he had already sent a message through “internal channels” (which she supposed to mean by way of Captain Hilton) that he was happy to have aboard any relative of Grant’s, and he heard that they had his son as well, down in the engine rooms, and that was a very good thing too. “A very good thing,” he repeated, glowering at Kay as if she had argued.
The Voyage of the Morning Light Page 28
