Donovan's Station by Robin McGrath Read Free Book Online

minutes and hours at a time. And now, here I am rememberingthe energy and the clever hands almost as if I had loved him once. I never loved him—I never loved anyone until I loved my own sweet man. Kate is better off with no-one than with the likes of Paddy Aylward.

June 11
    Stephen Walsh’s brother-in-law was here, asking if I’d sell the hotel. Said he figured I couldn’t manage on my own and acted like he was doing me a favour to take it off my hands. The face of him, and Mumma upstairs probably hearing every word. I told him I wasn’t on my own and it isn’t my hotel to sell. Dropped and broke the large pudding bowl in cleaning it. Fine day.
    Lizzie was here, talking to amuse me. She says she has proof positive that Mr. Delgado dyes his hair. She can be a wicked gossip, but she knows when to hold her tongue. There are certain professions that require discretion, and the hotel business is one of them. “Tell the truth, the half truth, and nothing like the truth,” as Mr. Reid used to say. Sometimes I think it is the silent ones who learn most, for I’m lying here as dumb as a post and I’m learning all sorts of things I didn’t know before. If I ever get my tongue to obey me again, I’ll have a thing or two to tell Kate about that Annie in the kitchen.
    Now Father was never one to gossip, yet his twine loft drew men from all over the Harbour in the off-season. I don’t know why that would be—Father wasn’t a talker, and though he had a pleasant word for most, he wasn’t a particularly sociable man. He kept no beer or rum on the wharf and never tolerated those who brought it with them, nor did he smoke although he didn’t object to those who did. I suppose he had a dour and taciturnnature, a congenitally gloomy outlook on life. I recall once when Mother was feeling particularly optimistic about the outcome of some enterprise, a new cow or some hardy potato stock perhaps, Father kept reining her back with predictions of disaster until, in frustration, she stamped off to the other room and returned with the Bible which she thrust into his hands with the suggestion that he read the Book of Job to cheer himself up.
    Fathers dark, quiet moods seemed, if anything, to attract other men to him. When they arrived at his rooms, they would insinuate themselves into the gloom of the shed, finding a corner out of his way, and after a time they would begin to talk. He listened, I suppose, but it’s hard to say—perhaps he didn’t. Often these visitors picked up a bit of net or some item that needed work and would set to repairing it, often holding it out to Father to check that he approved or to accept direction, for if it was not done to standard Father would simply lay the object to one side, and the next time they came it would have been redone properly. He worked relentlessly, but he did it with an economy of movement that made it soothing rather than enervating, and the pace he set at the beginning of the morning was maintained right up to the moment he stopped work for the day.
    The fire in the twine loft chimney burned only when there was reason—if nets had to be mended, a fire was necessary to keep fingers from becoming stiff and clumsy. Barking and iron-work was done out of doors, but pots of glue, tar, seal oil with ochre, things related to work rather than food, were heated on the flat sheet of iron that could be slid over the grating of the twine loft chimney. Occasionally food was cooked there also. Sometimes we children would gather huge buckets of mussels that would be boiled in sea water and kelp in the twine loft, and the men would shell and beard them as they talked quietly among themselves, eating at least as many as they tossed into the crock that Mother would eventually top-up with vinegarand mustard seed and seal with wax for the coming Christmas season. I once burned the corner of my apron by using it to move a glue pot, and was