Donovan's Station by Robin McGrath Read Free Book Online Page A

so mortified by the scolding Mother gave me that I threw the scorched garment down the privy hole—Richard hooked it out with a gaff, and I had to scrub the filthy thing until it gleamed white again, and then resew it for a neighbours smaller child. Mother didn’t think the twine loft was a good place for a girl.
    Sometimes one of the regulars would bring a fish or a half dozen herring which they would boil up with a bit of Hamburg biscuit that Father kept in a string bag next to the chimney. I rarely took part in these impromptu lunches but Richard would tell me about them. Once I was present when someone brought a halibut. I was thrilled to the ends of my hair when it was served out on platters of spruce shingle, for we ate it with our fingers which would never have been allowed up at the house. Almost everyone smoked except Father, so there was often a strong scent of tobacco or tar or seaweed to cut through the ever-present odour of salt fish and gurry that permeated the place. In the deep of winter, the twine lofts were where the men went to escape the oppressive domesticity of the houses, with their bawling babies, steaming kettles and harried women. Work at these times was a relief to the men, who did not know how to savour their few idle hours the way the women did. Richard virtually lived in the twine loft in winter.
    Richard had the fisherman’s instinct from the day he was born. I recall one beautiful May morning, when he was about five years old and I was perhaps nine, we were down near the shore at Maddox Cove poking about where someone had pulled a boom of spruce logs in to the beach to begin building a stage. I don’t recall what had drawn us there but Mother had warned us to stay away from the logs, which were unstable in the water and when stepped on were likely to flip upward and knock out an unwary child. Richard could not be kept from the shore forlong, and I was trying to distract him by collecting tiny starfish which we were laying out on a flat rock in the form of the big dipper and the other constellations that we recognized. Suddenly, there was a commotion in the water and before I could stop him, Richard was in among the logs, up to his waist in water.
    I don’t know what I thought it was—a mermaid perhaps. There was often talk of mermaids at school, but they were generally thought to inhabit the shore waters only when there was ice about. I suppose they were invented by our mothers to keep us off the water at such dangerous times. It was said that the mermaids would pull you into the water from the pans and cut your legs off and give you a tail, and they would never give you anything to eat but sea lice and guffies. When I heard this mighty splash and saw the silver tail flinging water everywhere, I naturally thought it was a mermaid and was sure she had come to carry Richard out to sea. Richard had no such fancies, however—he recognized a salmon when he saw one, for Father used to occasionally get them and would split them, pickle them in brine and pack them in barrels for sale in St. John’s.
    What ructions we kicked up—Richard grabbing for the salmon which was trapped in the shallow water by the logs, me grabbing for Richard, the slippery stones underfoot making every step a menace. Somehow, he managed to push the salmon up onto the beach so that I could see it really was only an ordinary fish, though the knife-like fins made it seem like some sort of glorious sea-monster, almost as exotic as a mermaid. Planting his feet securely into the shingle, Richard prevented the creature from regaining the water, but it was so slick and wet that it was impossible to get a grip on it and even with my help he was unable to move it much further up the beach. Turning to me in despair, and by this time panting with effort, he shouted “Take off your dress, Kezzy. Take it off, now.”
    Fortunately, it being so early in the year, I was wearing a petticoator Richard