by Alice Munro
“Just one more thing I have to ask,” he says. “What do you think of this about the fairies?”
“I think it is all nonsense,” says Walter.
“He has started again,” says Nettie crossly.
And indeed, Old James’s voice has been going this little while, breaking in determinedly and reproachfully on those of his audience who might have thought it was time for their own conversations.
“… and still another time, but in the long days in the summer, out on the hills late in the day but before it was well dark …”
The tall man nods but looks as if he had something still to inquire of Walter. Nettie reaches up and claps her hand over his mouth.
“And I will tell you and swear my life upon it that Will could not tell a lie, him that in his young days went to church to the preacher Thomas Boston, and Thomas Boston put the fear of the Lord like a knife into every man and woman, till their dying day. No, never. He would not lie.”
“SO THAT was all nonsense?” says the tall man quietly, when he is sure that the story has ended. “Well I am inclined to agree. You have a modern turn of mind?”
Walter says yes, he has, and he speaks more stoutly than he did before. He has heard these stories his father is spouting, and others like them, for the whole of his life, but the odd thing is that until they came on board this ship he never heard them from his father. The father he has known up till a short while ago would, he is certain, have had no use for them.
“This is a terrible place we live in,” his father used to say. “The people is all full of nonsense and bad habits and even our sheep’s wool is so coarse you cannot sell it. The roads are so bad a horse cannot go more than four miles in an hour. And for ploughing here they use the spade or the old Scotch plough though there has been a better plough in other places for fifty years. Oh, aye, aye, they say when you ask them, oh aye but it’s too steep hereabouts, the land is too heavy.”
“To be born in the Ettrick is to be born in a backward place,” he would say. “Where the people is all believing in old stories and seeing ghosts and I tell you it is a curse to be born in the Ettrick.”
And very likely that would lead him on to the subject of America, where all the blessings of modern invention were put to eager use and the people could never stop improving the world around them.
But harken at him now.
“I don’t believe those were fairies,” Nettie says.
“So do you think they were his neighbors all the time?” says her father. “Do you think they were playing a trick on him?”
Never has Walter heard a father speak to a child so indulgently. And fond as he has grown of Nettie he cannot approve of it. It can only make her believe that there are no opinions on the face of the earth that are more worthy of being listened to than hers.
“No I do not,” she says.
“What then?” says her father.
“I think they were dead people.”
“What do you know about dead people?” her father asks her, finally speaking with some sternness. “Dead people won’t rise up till the Day of Judgment. I don’t care to hear you making light about things of that sort.”
“I was not making light,” says Nettie carelessly.
The sailors are scrambling loose from their sails and pointing at the sky, far to the west. They must see there something that excites them. Walter makes bold to ask, “Are they English? I cannot tell what they say.”
“Some of them are English, but from parts that sound foreign to us. Some are Portuguese. I cannot make them out either but I think that they are saying they see the rotches. They all have very keen eyes.”
Walter believes that he too has very keen eyes, but it takes him a moment or two before he can see these birds, the ones that must be called rotches. Flocks and flocks of seabirds flashing and rising overhead, mere bright speckles on the air.
“You must make sure to mention those in your journal,” Nettie’s father says. “I have seen them when I made this voyage before. They feed on fish and here is the great place for them. Soon you’ll see the fishermen as well. But the rotches filling the sky are the very first sign that we must be on the Grand Banks of Newfoundland.
“You must come up and talk to us on the deck above,” he says, in bidding good-bye to Walter. “I have business to think about and I am not much company for my daughter. She is forbidden to run around because she is not quite recovered from the cold she had in the winter but she is fond of sitting and talking.”
“I don’t believe it is the rule for me to go there,” says Walter, in some confusion.
“No, no, that is no matter. My girl is lonely. She likes to read and draw but she likes company too. She could show you how to draw, if you like. That would add to your journal.”
If Walter flushes it is not noticed. Nettie remains quite composed.
SO THEY sit out in the open and draw and write. Or she reads aloud to him from her favorite book, which is The Scottish Chiefs. He already knows much about what happens in the story—who does not know about William Wallace?—but she reads smoothly and at just the proper speed and makes some things solemn and others terrifying and something else comical, so that he is as much in thrall to the book as she is herself. Even though, as she says, she has read it twelve times already.
He understands a little better now why she has all those questions to ask him. He and his folk remind her of some people in her book. Such people as there were out on the hills and valleys in the olden times. What would she think if she knew that the old fellow, the old tale-spinner spouting all over the boat and penning people up to listen as if they were the sheep and he was the sheepdog—if she knew that he was Walter’s father?
She would be delighted, probably, more curious about Walter’s family than ever. She would not look down on them, except in a way she could not help or know about.
We came on the fishing banks of Newfoundland on the 12th of July and on the 19th we saw land and it was a joyful sight to us. It was a part of Newfoundland. We sailed between Newfoundland and St. Paul’s Island and having a fair wind both the 18th and the 19th we found ourselves in the river on the morning of the 20th and within sight of the mainland of North America. We were awakened at about 1 o’clock in the morning and I think every passenger was out of bed at 4 o’clock gazing at the land, it being wholly covered with wood and quite a new sight to us. It was a part of Nova Scotia and a beautiful hilly country. We saw several whales this day such creatures as I never saw in my life.
This is the day of wonders. The land is covered with trees like a head with hair and behind the ship the sun rises tipping the top trees with light. The sky is clear and shining as a china plate and the water just playfully ruffled with wind. Every wisp of fog has gone and the air is full of the resinous smell of the trees. Seabirds are flashing above the sails all golden like creatures of Heaven, but the sailors raise a few shots to keep them from the rigging.
Mary holds Young James up so that he may always remember this first sight of the continent that will forever be his home. She tells him the name of this land—Nova Scotia.
“It means New Scotland,” she says.
Agnes hears her. “Then why doesn’t it say so?”
Mary says, “It’s Latin, I think.”
Agnes snorts with impatience. The baby has been waked up early by all the hubbub and celebration, and now she is miserable, wanting to be on the breast all the time, wailing whenever Agnes tries to take her off. Young James, observing all this closely, makes an attempt to get on the other breast, and Agnes bats him off so hard that he staggers.
“Suckie-laddie,” Agnes calls him. He yelps a bit, then crawls around behind her and pinches the baby’s toes.
Another whack.
“You’re a rotten egg, you are,” his mother says. “Somebody’s been spoiling you till you think you’re the Laird’s arse.”
Agnes’s roused voice always makes Mary feel as if she is about to catch a blow herself.
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Old James is sitting with them on the deck, but pays no attention to this domestic unrest.
“Will you come and look at the country, Father?” says Mary uncertainly. “You can have a better view from the rail.”
“I can see it well enough,” Old James says. Nothing in his voice suggests that the revelations around them are pleasing to him.
“Ettrick was covered with trees in the old days,” he says. “The monks had it first and after that it was the royal forest. It was the King’s forest. Beech trees, oak trees, rowan trees.”
“As many trees as this?” says Mary, made bolder than usual by the novel splendors of the day.
“Better trees. Older. It was famous all over Scotland. The Royal Forest of Ettrick.”
“And Nova Scotia is where our brother James is,” Mary continues.
“He may be or he may not. It would be easy to die here and nobody know you were dead. Wild animals could have eaten him.”
“Come near this baby again and I’ll skin you alive,” says Agnes to Young James who is circling her and the baby, pretending that they hold no interest for him.
Agnes is thinking it would serve him right, the fellow who never even took his leave of her. But she has to hope he will show up sometime and see her married to his brother. So that he will wonder. Also he will understand that in the end he did not get the better of her.
Mary wonders how her father can talk in that way, about how wild animals could have eaten his own son. Is that how the sorrows of the years take hold on you, to turn your heart of flesh to a heart of stone, as it says in the old song? And if it is so, how carelessly and disdainfully might he talk about her, who never meant to him a fraction of what the boys did?
SOMEBODY HAS brought a fiddle on to the deck and is tuning up to play. People who have been hanging onto the rail and pointing out to each other what any one of them could see on their own—likewise repeating the name that by now everyone knows, Nova Scotia—are distracted by these sounds and begin to call for dancing. They call out the names of the reels and dances they want the fiddler to play. Space is cleared and couples line up in some sort of order and after a lot of uneasy fiddle-scraping and impatient shouts of encouragement, the music comes through and gathers its authority and the dancing begins.
Dancing, at seven o’clock in the morning.
Andrew comes up from below, bearing their supply of water. He stands and watches for a little, then surprises Mary by asking, would she dance?
“Who will look after the boy?” says Agnes immediately. “I am not going to get up and chase him.” She is fond of dancing, but is prevented now, not only by the nursing baby but by the soreness of the parts of her body that were so battered in the birth.
Mary is already refusing, saying she cannot go, but Andrew says, “We will put him on the tether.”
“No, no,” says Mary. “I’ve no need to dance.” She believes that Andrew has taken pity on her, remembering how she used to be left on the sidelines in school games and at the dancing, though she can actually run and dance perfectly well. Andrew is the only one of her brothers capable of such consideration, but she would almost rather he behaved like the others, and left her ignored as she has always been. Pity does gall her.
Young James begins to complain loudly, having recognized the word tether.
“You be still,” says his father. “Be still or I’ll clout you.”
Then Old James surprises them all by turning his attention to his grandson.
“You. Young lad. You sit by me.”
“Oh, he will not sit,” says Mary. “He will run off and then you cannot chase him, Father. I will stay.”
“He will sit,” says Old James.
“Well, settle it,” says Agnes to Mary. “Go or stay.”
Young James looks from one to the other, cautiously snuffling.
“Does he not know even the simplest word?” says his grandfather. “Sit. Lad. Here.”
“He knows all kinds of words,” says Mary. “He knows the name of the gib-boom.”
Young James repeats, “Gib-boom.”
“Hold your tongue and sit down,” says Old James. Young James lowers himself, reluctantly, to the spot indicated.
“Now go,” says Old James to Mary. And all in confusion, on the verge of tears, she is led away.
“What a suckie-laddie she’s made of him,” says Agnes, not exactly to her father-in-law but into the air. She speaks almost indifferently, teasing the baby’s cheek with her nipple.
PEOPLE ARE dancing, not just in the figure of the reel but quite outside of it, all over the deck. They are grabbing anyone at all and twirling around. They are even grabbing some of the sailors if they can get hold of them. Men dance with women, men dance with men, women dance with women, children dance with each other or all alone and without any idea of the steps, getting in the way—but everybody is in everybody’s way already and it is no matter. Some children dance in one spot, whirling around with their arms in the air till they get so dizzy they fall down. Two seconds later they are on their feet, recovered, and ready to begin the same thing all over again.
Mary has caught hands with Andrew, and is swung around by him, then passed on to others, who bend to her and fling her undersized body about. She has lost sight of Young James and cannot know if he has remained with his grandfather. She dances down at the level of the children, though she is less bold and carefree. In the thick of so many bodies she is helpless, she cannot pause—she has to stamp and wheel to the music or be knocked down.
“NOW YOU listen and I will tell you,” says Old James. “This old man, Will O’Phaup, my grandfather—he was my grandfather as I am yours—Will O’Phaup was sitting outside his house in the evening, resting himself, it was mild summer weather. All alone, he was.
“And there was three little lads hardly bigger than you are yourself, they came around the corner of Will’s house. They told him good evening. Good evening to you, Will O’Phaup, they says.
“Well good evening to you, lads, what can I do for you?
“Can you give us a bed for the night or a place to lay down, they says. And Aye, he says, Aye, I’m thinking three bits of lads like yourselves should not be so hard to find the room for. And he goes into the house with them following and they says, And by the by could you give us the key, too, the big silver key that you had of us? Well, Will looks around, and he looks for the key, till he thinks to himself, what key was that? And turns around to ask them. What key was that? For he knew he never had such a thing in his life. Big key or silver key, he never had it. What key are you talking to me about? And turns himself round and they are not there. Goes out of the house, all round the house, looks to the road. No trace of them. Looks to the hills. No trace.
“Then Will knew it. They was no lads at all. Ah, no. They was no lads at all.”
Young James has not made any sound. At his back is the thick and noisy wall of dancers, to the side his mother, with the small clawing beast that bites into her body. And in front of him is the old man with his rumbling voice, insistent but remote, and his blast of bitter breath, his sense of grievance and importance absolute as the child’s own. His nature hungry, crafty, and oppressive. It is Young James’s first conscious encounter with someone as perfectly self-centered as himself.
He is barely able to focus his intelligence, to show himself not quite defeated.
“Key,” he says. “Key?”
AGNES, WATCHING the dancing, catches sight of Andrew, red in the face and heavy on his feet, linked arm to arm with various jovial women. They are doing the “Strip the Willow” now. There is not one girl whose looks or dancing gives Agnes any worries. Andrew never gives her any worries anyway. She sees Mary tossed around, with even a flush of color in her cheeks—though she is too shy, and too short, to look anybody in the face. She sees the nearly toothless witch of a woman who birthed a child a week after her own, dancing with her hollow-cheeked man. No sore parts for her. She must have dropped the child
as slick as if it was a rat, then given it over to one or the other of her weedy-looking daughters to mind.
She sees Mr. Suter, the surgeon, out of breath, pulling away from a woman who would grab him, ducking through the dance and coming to greet her.
She wishes he would not. Now he will see who her father-in-law is, he may have to listen to the old fool’s gabble. He will get a look at their drab, and now not even clean, country clothes. He will see her for what she is.
“So here you are,” he says. “Here you are with your treasure.”
That is not a word that Agnes has ever heard used to refer to a child. It seems as if he is talking to her in the way he might talk to a person of his own acquaintance, some sort of a lady, not as a doctor talks to a patient. Such behavior embarrasses her and she does not know how to answer.
“Your baby is well?” he says, taking a more down-to-earth tack. He is still catching his breath from the dancing, and his face, though not flushed, is covered with a fine sweat.
“Aye.”
“And you yourself? You have your strength again?”
She shrugs very slightly, so as not to shake the child off the nipple.
“You have a fine color, anyway, that is a good sign.”
She thinks that he sighs as he says this, and wonders if that may be because his own color, seen in the morning light, is sickly as whey.
He asks then if she will permit him to sit and talk to her for a few moments, and once more she is confused by his formality, but says he may do as he likes.
Her father-in-law gives the surgeon—and her as well—a despising glance, but Mr. Suter does not notice it, perhaps does not even understand that the old man, and the fair-haired boy who sits straight-backed and facing this old man, have anything to do with her.
“The dancing is very lively,” he says. “And you are not given a chance to decide who you would dance with. You get pulled about by all and sundry.” And then he asks, “What will you do in Canada West?”
It seems to her the silliest question. She shakes her head—what can she say? She will wash and sew and cook and almost certainly suckle more children. Where that will be does not much matter. It will be in a house, and not a fine one.
