“Is she hurt?” Stanley asked.
“Not much,” Robert smiled this time. “Just needs a little care, that’s all. And to be hauled back here.”
“We’ll do that shortly,” John Purchase said. Like Stanley’s, his stage had been swept away. Four stages were gone altogether, as were two dories. But every store remained standing, as did every house in High Beach. If the wave had a kind face, it showed it here. Stanley thought of the thousand-dollar life insurance policy he had and counted himself lucky.
Jessie Hillier and the other women of High Beach had begun packing pickled cabbage, bottled rabbit, and tea buns for the men to take to their neighbours in Lamaline. Jessie was worried about them, she had kin there and elsewhere along the coast and no immediate way of knowing how they were.
“You take William Pittman and go over there,” she suggested to her husband. “As soon as there’s a break in the weather. I’m afraid they’re worse off than we are here.”
Stanley nodded.
“I’m inclined to agree,” he answered. “I wonder if they all got up to the high ground. I wonder if there was any loss of life. God, I hope not.”
“And those poor people in Taylor’s Bay,” Jessie said, pouring her umpteenth cup of tea. “Them on the flattest of land. And Point au Gaul. You know those waves had to take some of them.”
“We’ll go as soon as we can,” Stanley said.
“I hope the food will be some comfort to them,” Jessie said. “And if they need more, we got plenty of it. This was a great year for cabbage. I got all kinds of it in the store. Everyone does. Some people got dozens of heads of it—more than they know what to do with.”
In the fall of 1928, Dorothy Cherry left her native England to nurse in Lamaline. She was recruited by the recently established Newfoundland Outport Nursing and Industrial Association, more commonly known as Nonia. Nonia recruited nurses for their leadership skills and ability to work independently of physicians, since most of the regions they were going to lacked doctors. They had to be quick-thinking and devoted to duty. Nonia also insisted that they exhibit “missionary zeal” of the Christian variety.
Nurse Cherry met the requirements.
She came from Bolton, in the grey northwestern corner of England. The city of almost 200,000 was only ten miles from Manchester but, like most English, people in Bolton regarded this as a substantial distance and few ever went there. There was no need to, really, for Bolton itself had everything you needed. Straddling the wet and wild Lancashire moors, Bolton grew up as a cotton manufacturing city. It was one of the leaders of the Industrial Revolution, especially when the railway came, linking it to the other smokestack sites in the north and the rest of the country. There had been mills here, too, and mining, but these were beginning their dying days even in Dorothy Cherry’s youth. Bolton’s boom time was in the ninetenth century—everybody knew that, though no one wanted to admit it. The last great thing that happened in Bolton, Dorothy’s father often said over their Sunday roast beef and Yorkshire pudding, was the creation of the Bolton Wanderers, the city’s soccer team, in 1888. Seeing them play was just fantastic, the highlight of Dorothy’s childhood.
Much of the rest of it was darkened by the cries of Bolton women who had lost their husbands and sons in the Boer War. Dorothy was only a child with a tiny Union Jack flag someone had placed in her hand when the soldiers marched off. She waved her flag and shouted “Hurrah” because everyone else on the street did, but she didn’t understand why.
Dorothy was a married woman by the time the next great tragedy happened. Her husband Lloyd was over there, in the trenches with the other Bolton men, fighting “the war to end all wars.” It was October 26, 1917 and, like most young wartime brides, Dorothy lived with her parents. Her younger sisters were looking forward to Guy Fawkes Night in a couple of weeks. They would collect pennies for the dummy and have a big bonfire. That afternoon Dorothy entered the crowded post office and heard the postmistress say, “Oh, the most awful thing…” The nurse-in-training looked at the other customers and waited for more. “There’s been a lot of our men killed in battle,” someone spoke up. Women let out loud sobs and old men looked at each other bewildered. No one moved. Dorothy thought of Lloyd and wanted a cup of tea.
Hundreds of men from Bolton, almost all of them volunteers, had died in the Second Battle of Passchendaele. Members of the Loyal North Lancashire Regiment, they had trained for three years for this battle, which lasted just a few minutes. The two Bolton battalions were on the front line trenches with mud that came up to their waists and was almost liquid. They could not advance properly under these conditions and almost immediately all their officers became casualties. In the end, thirteen officers and 173 men from the two Bolton battalions were killed, with hundreds more wounded. Most of the bodies sank in the mud and were never found.
Lloyd Cherry’s body was among them.
After Lloyd’s death, the war seemed interminable. It was there when Dorothy baked a cake for her little sister, when her father carved the roast beef at Christmas dinner, when she went to her grandmother’s for a summer holiday. Her ears were numb now when she heard “Harry Calderley, you know, from Seattle Street, he's been killed,” or “poor David Knott’s mum’s got the bad news today. He used to work at Hulton Colliery, remember? She's in an awful state, his mum…” Dorothy tried to drink her tea. That’s what they all tried to do. That was the way of the Northern English. What could you do but just get on with it? As Granny always said to her, “Enjoy the flowers while they’re out and the rest of the time, just make the best of it.” By the time the war ended, more than 2,500 people from Bolton were dead.
Dorothy had come to Lamaline in January of 1929 when snow was general, carpeting the marshes and the beaches with a white stillness that held God’s presence. She had never been outside England; she hadn’t been much beyond Bolton and the Royal Bolton Infirmary where she trained, so she hadn’t really known what to expect, but she felt ready for anything. And now she was delighted at what she saw. In a rare unguarded moment, she let herself fill with the peacefulness of it; it was a welcome change from the smoky air and street noise of Bolton, she thought. Like all the nurses, she had signed a two year contract with Nonia. Now as she unpacked her belongings, she wondered if her life here would ever get busy. She certainly hoped so, she murmured, letting the peacefulness evaporate; above all, she wanted to be useful.
Then, on the night of November 18, Nurse Cherry found herself in the Catholic church in Lamaline, on the high ground with most of the local people trying to make sense of what was happening. After the first wave people continued to stream into the church, drawn to the fire that was kindled. There they peeled off their clothes, leaden with salt water, and tried to dry them. The paleness of their faces bespoke their terror. Young girls shrieked and children cried in confusion.
Nurse Cherry nodded at each group that entered the church. Her steel grey eyes looked them up and down, taking in every detail. She looked for glassiness in their eyes, for stillness and silence, for anything that would betray shock. She gave only the briefest of looks to those who howled and sobbed. They’ll be all right, she thought—they’re letting it out. She looked at the men and the boys who were almost men. Keeping it all in, most of them, she thought. But it’ll come out later, in a drunken rage in the spring after a trip to St. Pierre, or a heart attack in twenty years time. Thank God they weren’t all like that. She gave no thought to herself and which group she was like. She only observed.
Hannah Lake came in with her skirts dragging on the floor with sea water.
“Get them off,” Nurse Cherry ordered. “And whatever else is wet.”
“How can I do that?” Hannah asked, shifting two-year-old Leslie on her hip. “I’ve got nothing else to put on.” She turned her head to indicate that there were men in the room.
“Hannah, there are women on the way with blankets,” Nurse Cherry said. “You get out of those wet clothes the minute they get here. In th
e meantime, you get up by that fire and get your boots and stockings off. I don’t care who sees your legs, lovely though they may be. All your little ones need is a mum with pneumonia going into winter.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Hannah answered.
“Good girl,” Nurse Cherry said. Then she turned to the next arrivals. “What have we got here now?” After the second wave hit Lamaline, a great rush of people scurried up the hill to the church. One of them was a woman whose screams rose to the heavens. She had been one of a group of people trapped on one end of Lamaline between the great waves. They had been trying to get into a dory that was already stuffed with twenty people. They saw this as their only hope of escape from a third wave that they knew was coming, and did. Getting into the dory, the woman tried to carry a kerosene lamp with her and it spilled onto her forearms, severely burning both of them. She then fell into the frigid sea water and somehow waded to safety, followed by some of those who had been in the small boat. Then they ran up the hill, away from the wall of water that was heading for Lamaline.
Now Nurse Cherry ordered men to fetch a bucket of cold water as fast as they could. As soon as the men laid it on the church floor in front of her, she pulled the woman’s arms into it. The great cries that followed sent children to their mothers’ skirts, their hands clapped tightly over their ears.
“Hold her there,” Nurse Cherry told the two men who happened to be closest. “Never mind the screams. Go on.”
Then she set to work rooting salve out of her black bag and preparing a dressing. She knew she had Demerol, too, and she would give the victim a shot of that to ease her terrible pain when her charred skin had been soaked enough.
When the people left the church and the others left the Orange Hall where they had gathered for the uneaten supper, two men rowed Nurse Cherry over to nearby Allan’s Island. They waited until nearly midnight, when they were certain the seas were angry no more. As they hauled the boat onto shore, a group of women were waiting.
“Nurse Cherry, come to Mrs. Lockyer’s, quick!” they said.
Inside on the kitchen day bed was eighty-two-year-old James Lockyer. His seventy-five-year-old wife, Monica, stood over him.
“We had twenty dozen heads of cabbage and it’s all gone,” she said.
“She’s going foolish,” someone whispered to Nurse Cherry.
“She’s in shock, that’s all,” Nurse Cherry answered. “Mrs. Lockyer, please sit down and this lady here will get you a cup of tea. I’ll see what I can do for Mr. Lockyer here.”
As a young woman led Monica to an old pine chair at the table, Nurse Cherry pressed her stethoscope to James’ chest. His heartbeat came slowly and reluctantly. It was irregular, too. She opened his eyes and moved her long fingers in front of them but the old man’s stare did not waver. Nurse Cherry ran her hands down his arms, legs, and trunk. He’s broken most of his ribs, she thought.
“Tell me again what happened to him,” she said to the small crowd in the room.
“Our fence is down, too,” Monica offered.
Nurse Cherry smiled kindly at her.
“Well, ma’am, the first wave shifted his store,” someone said. “Pushed it up toward his house and he got caught between the two of them.”
He’s been crushed then, Nurse Cherry realized. Probably has massive internal injuries.
“Is there anything you can do, Nurse?” a young woman asked.
“Is he still alive?” said another.
“Yes…” Nurse Cherry began.
“Is he going to live?”
“Well, he’s in no pain,” Nurse Cherry said quietly. “People in his state can’t feel anything.”
“What do you mean?” asked the young woman, her face blackening. “What’s his state? What’s…”
“I mean,” said Nurse Cherry. “I mean, he’s between this world and the next. I’m very sorry—I can’t do anything for him.”
The girl stared hard at her, her young face a mixture of anger and pain. Monica’s eyes narrowed quizzically. She looked as though she might say something but her lips stayed pressed together.
“He’s going to die,” another woman said. “There’s nothing anyone can do about it.”
“Well,” said a little girl with curly black hair. “There’s something we can do. We can pray.”
13
As the High Beach men set out for Lamaline the morning after the tsunami, Nurse Dorothy Cherry began her journey by horseback to Taylor’s Bay. East of Lamaline, Taylor’s Bay lies open-mouthed to the Atlantic Ocean. It first appears on French maps from 1744, where it is identified as Baue de Tailleur. For many years afterwards it was frequented by French fishermen on a seasonal basis.
By 1881, it had a year-round population of twenty-one, most of whom were adult men. Knowing they couldn’t rely solely on the fishery to keep hunger at bay, they cleared twenty-five acres of land, tossing rocks, pushing boulders, and pulling tuckamore off the earth so they could plant potatoes, turnips, carrots, and cabbage. In the meadows that surrounded the bay they put their one horse, seventeen sheep, fourteen cattle, and fourteen milch cows. Ten years later, there were thirty-six people in Taylor’s Bay, including more women.
Most of the settlers were nominally Church of England, but when did they ever see a minister? They didn’t have a school but one of the women could read well and she gave seven children lessons in her home during the winter. A few years before the tidal wave, Taylor’s Bay was home to eighty-two people; the men fished and the women cured fish on a flat beach that was ideal for such an enterprise. The total value of fish products was at an all-time high. The future looked bright for Taylor’s Bay.
All that ended on the night of November 18, 1929, with the first of the great waves that rushed in on the low-lying lands of the village. The next morning Nurse Cherry set out just after dawn. Her breath turned into almost imperceptible ice crystals as she mounted Thomas Foote’s mare. Thomas, twenty-seven, walked alongside her, carrying a package of warm bread and tea buns his nineteen-year-old wife, Eva, had baked while it was still dark. “For the livyers in Taylor’s Bay,” Eva had said as she pressed it into her husband’s hands. The mare carried Nurse Cherry’s kit and a load of blankets. The Footes had been lucky. Thomas had lost only four quintals of fish and a half ton of coal, substantial, to be sure, but nothing compared to the losses of many of his neighbours whose dories, wharves, stages, and stores were smashed or gone altogether. Albert King, a twenty-three-year-old bachelor, followed Thomas and Nurse Cherry on his bay horse. From the East Side of Lamaline, he, too, had fared comparatively well last night, losing only some fishing gear. He’d have to make it up before the fishing started next spring, but he went to bed counting his lucky stars; things could have been much worse.
Nurse Cherry had an inkling that Lamaline was better situated than some of the neighbouring villages to withstand a tsunami. She had often been to Point au Gaul and Taylor’s Bay to deliver babies and diagnose bronchitis and even the dreaded tuberculosis. But it was Albert and Thomas who came to her last night and impressed upon her how vulnerable to strong waves these settlements really were. She gulped as she listened to them.
“Then we must go there,” she said.
“Yes, Nurse Cherry,” Thomas said. “First thing in the morning.”
“We’ll come by with the horses around dawn,” Albert said, sealing their plans. In the meantime, Eva Foote had gone from house to house gathering whatever blankets she could, just in case any houses had been swept away. Now Albert’s old horse was loaded down with them, too.
Nurse Cherry licked the snow flakes as they travelled, reminiscent of a game she had played with her brothers and sisters when it snowed back home in the northwest of England. The snow had so rarely stayed on the ground there. It seemed only to come in whispers, like a romance. Here it was as heavy as stew and so thick that it seemed to block the rest of the world out. Already she could see that these little flakes would cling to the gelid ground and lay there till the earth
began to warm many months from now.
As they walked the road from Lamaline to Point au Gaul, the little group found long splinters—from wharves and flakes that the waves had broken. They came across shards of buttercoloured pottery and sliced heads of cabbage.
“It’s as if God had a temper tantrum,” Thomas said.
Nurse Cherry laughed, but he was right, there was so much destruction. As the wet snow thickened, the ground turned slushy and the horses’ hooves fought with it. The travelling was so difficult Nurse Cherry thought she’d get seasick on Thomas’ mare. Her stomach turned even more and she couldn’t get it to stop when she thought of the Bolton men in the muddy trenches at Passchendaele.
“I’ll walk!” she said finally. It was slow going and the wind stung their necks as their scarves blew and exposed bits of skin. As they reached the top of the hill alongside Point au Gaul, Nurse Cherry said, “From what you’ve told me, I think we ought to go on to Taylor’s Bay first. I’m quite worried about the people there.”
Albert and Thomas nodded their assent. She was a quick learner, their English nurse. Albert stared at her, all eyes ahead under her scarf. How old was she? She seemed middle-aged to him, though she couldn’t have been much more than thirty-five.
The trio halted abruptly when they finally reached Taylor’s Bay. The whole village was now one sweep of ocean. Where there had been a necklace of stages, flakes and boats around the harbour, there was nothing. There was not even a harbour. All the waterfront property was gone. Even worse, so were most of the houses.
Thomas tried to picture them where they should have been. One side of the harbour was known as the Bonnell side, while the other was called the Hillier side. Jacob and Julia Bonnell’s house should be there, he thought. Gus and Dina Hillier’s should be over there. The houses must have been swept away. Where were Jacob and Julia, Gus and Dina? And their children? Were they all dead? He had known it was going to be bad, but now his stomach flopped and he struggled against the retching.
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