Текст книги "Tsunami"

Автор книги: Maura Hanrahan

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Текущая страница: 7 (всего у книги 14 страниц)

14

Nurse Cherry swallowed hard many times that day. She forgot to eat as she went from one remaining house to another, even neglecting to get herself a cup of tea. She did her best to reset a seventy-two-year-old man’s ankle, though bone setting was never her favourite aspect of nursing. She listened as the man’s wife, Martha, talked of her six drowned hens and her root crops all washed away. Martha’s predicament was a mean one; her losses meant hungry months ahead and no apparent way around it. The boot of the Burin Peninsula wasn’t like Bolton, Nurse Cherry reflected, where you could pop down to Spencer’s green grocers on the High Street and buy a head of lettuce or a bunch of carrots.

Also on the Hillier, and less affected, side of the harbour, Nurse Cherry treated an entire family for exposure. Kenneth and Amelia Hillier barely got their four children—Lancelot, Louis, Laura, and baby Leslie—to safety as the waves rushed in. On the way out the door, Kenneth grabbed fifty dollars in cash that Amelia kept in a jar on a high shelf in the kitchen. At the time, he feared it was all the family would be left with.

Now, as Nurse Cherry examined each child in turn, Kenneth explained how, like everyone else, they lost their stage, landing slip, and wharf, as well as his dory.

“How is he going to fish?” Amelia cried out, her eyes wide. She hadn’t slept with worry since the waves had taken her husband’s boat.

The children shivered as their mother listed off the food that the tsunamistole: no less than five barrels of potatoes, three barrels of turnips, three barrels of flour, and a half barrel of salmon.

“There’s barely enough flour left in the barrel to make three loaves of bread with,” she said frantically. “I can’t feed them.” Her arms waved wildly at her children.

“And we got no coal left either,” Kenneth said. “And we’re among the lucky ones in this harbour. Our children are safe and our house is still standing.”

With the two Lamaline men standing like sentries in the Hilliers’ doorway, Nurse Cherry stood to face the couple.

“The immediate problem is that every one of you is suffering from exposure,” she said. “Now, my fear is that it could turn into something worse if you’re not careful, especially with the little ones.”

She paused while a dark silence descended in the room.

“You must keep giving the children hot tea and give baby Leslie warm water. This is very important. They’re cold to the bone and we must warm them up from the inside out. You see how drowsy Laura is? That’s not a good sign. So keep pouring hot tea into her. Don’t give any of them hot toddies or anything alcoholic, that’d be very bad for them. Cover them in blankets and heat up some bricks or large beach rocks and put them in the blankets with the children. They should warm up with a little time. I know you’re fretting about the future, but turn to the children now, and take care of their exposure.”

Amelia began gathering her little flock to her. They were dressed in their inside clothes in a frigid house, covered only by sweaters. She would take Nurse Cherry’s advice, Dorothy could see that. She needed only to be pulled out of the shock that shrouded her. The nurse moved to the stove and began boiling the kettle. She would start them off before moving on.

“Can one of you men fetch a few beach rocks that we can heat for the children?” she asked. Albert nodded and disappeared through the doorway. Nurse Cherry’s eyes scanned the house for blankets. Amelia knew what she was looking for and she ran upstairs to get them. Together, she and Nurse Cherry peeled the woollen sweaters off young Lancelot, Louis, and Laura. Nurse Cherry held baby Leslie close to her, rubbing the child’s pale skin to warm it up. Meanwhile, the kettle started to boil and Albert returned with an armload of beach rocks.

“Thank you,” the young mother said. “We’ll make sure they won’t get sick. I’ll get the hot water into them right away.”

Her husband, Kenneth, pulled a roll of bills out of his pants pocket and handed five dollars to Nurse Cherry. The nurse shook her head.

“I’ve no need of it,” she said. “Give it to one of your neighbours.” As Nurse Cherry, Albert, and Thomas walked through Taylor’s Bay, they trod over clapboard, shards of glass, scraps of felt from roofs, and torn children’s clothing. They shuddered at each new find. The head of a doll sent Thomas jumping again as the face of his own little girl appeared before him.

He gagged again when the trio entered the small home of twenty-four-year-old Hannah Bonnell, her husband, Leo, and their two little girls, Louisa and Ellen. One of the waves had dented the house, but it still stood. Now it sheltered fourteen Bonnells made homeless by the tsunami.

The unmistakable sound of a woman’s sobbing reached Nurse Cherry’s ear as Hannah Bonnell showed them into the kitchen. Elizabeth Bonnell clutched her daughter, Bessie, to her chest, so tightly that the nurse feared for the girl. Elizabeth’s cries were as primal as those of a screech owl in the middle of the night.

Her twenty-seven-year-old husband, Bertram, paced across the damp floor, his quick feet making the only other sound in the hushed room. His eyes were dark brown and wide, unblinking as he stared at a distant point. In his arms were two stiff little bodies. He held them as tightly as his wife held their daughter. But Nurse Cherry could see they were as lifeless as two birch junks. Her heart swelled for the man.

In the face of such grief, Albert and Thomas felt like intruders rather than escorts and looked at the floor. Also in the room stood Bertram’s parents, whose house had also been swept away, and their four other children. Herbert and Ellen Bonnell were here, too, with their three young children. Their one storey, two room house had been destroyed; like the other Bonnells, they had absolutely nothing left. Now there was nowhere to move in Hannah’s packed little house.

As Nurse Cherry looked at Bertram’s ceaseless pacing, trying to think what to do, Hannah said of the dead children, “Their names were John, called after his brother, and Clayton.”

At that, the boys’ mother let out another wail.

The little bodies were dressed in their winter clothes, with woolen caps on their heads and mittens covering their blue hands. The nurse wondered if they might have survived if they’d had less clothes on. She had no idea of the fate of the Hipditch children of Point au Gaul, who had drowned in their pajamas, or the Rennie children of Lord’s Cove, who died in their day wear when the first wave crashed into their home.

Dorothy Cherry spoke directly to Hannah.

“Has someone told Bertram the children are dead?” she asked.

“Oh, yes,” Hannah answered quietly, releasing a sigh. “He knows they’re dead but he can’t accept it yet. We think he’ll accept it if we just give him a bit of time.”

The English nurse reflected on their wisdom. There’s nothing I can do for him, she thought. It’s his kin who will help him, not me. She remembered how one of her teachers at the Infirmary had told her that part of being a good nurse is knowing when to step back. For the first time, she realized that this wasn’t the same as helplessness.

Suddenly there was a thud. Bertram had accidentally dropped one of the stiff little bodies onto the floor. He sank to his knees and laid the other child beside his brother. Then he prostrated himself and sobbed. His brothers and sisters surrounded him, placing their hands on his shoulders, back, legs.

As Nurse Cherry moved toward the door to leave, Hannah stopped her.

“Have you got any food?” she asked quickly. “We’re famished and we’ve got nothing.”

The nurse handed her a jar of pickled cabbage, all they had left after many hours in the stricken village.

“I’m sorry,” Nurse Cherry said, but Hannah had already turned away and was opening it.

Sidney and Deborah Woodland were among the few whose houses remained standing. Set back from the harbour, their little dwelling was entirely unaffected by the waves. Sidney’s biggest problem was facing an upcoming spring with no stage, dory, moorings, or lines. But, as he took in the sight that daylight brought on November 19, he was grateful for all that he did have.

Now the Woodlands’ house, home to their own five children, was filled with no less than thirty-two homeless people. They were crammed into the low-ceilinged kitchen, where a dozen children sat on the floor and an old lady slept on the day bed. In the two bedrooms, rows of people perched on the beds, their eyes looking at nothing. The little parlour was blocked with still more of their traumatized neighbours. Goodness, thought Nurse Cherry, if just one of them gets the flu… She realized that they had lost all their winter clothing and could not go outdoors. In most cases, their indoor clothing, too, had been drenched by sea water and had dried out while still on their backs through the dark hours of November 18.

Among the Woodlands’ boarders was thirty-five-year-old Robert Bonnell whose wife, Bridget, had drowned the night before. Bridget had been mother to seven-year-old Gilbert, fouryear-old Alice, and Cyrus, a toddler. The child she had carried in her arms had been swept away, too. Now, his face buried in his hands, Robert was mad with grief.

Albert and Thomas, the Lamaline men, turned away from him. They had seen so much tragedy this day, more than they had ever seen in their entire lives. Only minutes before they had learned that another Taylor’s Bay couple, George and Jessie Piercey, had lost one of their four children to the waves. Thomas was glad that Eva, his teenage bride, was not with him, though he admonished himself for the twentieth time that day for bringing such a small quantity of food. Albert wished they had brought more blankets.

“We should have brought more horses and men,” he muttered to Thomas.

Nurse Cherry had called the Woodlands to her side for a talk.

“What have you got in the way of provisions?” she asked them, her brow furrowed.

Sidney drew his breath in, but Deborah answered before he could.

“We were fortunate, Nurse,” she said. “We lost no food. And it was a wonderful year for cabbage, all along the coast, I believe. This was the year of the cabbage. I’ve got ten dozen heads in the store. I’ve got three barrels of potatoes, a barrel of turnips, two barrels of flour, I made bread this morning—it was gone in five minutes. I’ve got a barrel of tea, twenty pounds of pork, and a barrel of salmon. The flour not lasting long is my worst fear.”

“There’s some fish, too,” Sidney added, referring to the three quintals of cod that he would feed to his neighbours now rather than sell.

“We picked a lot of berries, too,” Deborah smiled. She pointed to the rows of jam jars in the pantry. “I put up blueberry and partridgeberry jam. And I’ve got some pickled beets, too.”

“It’s a relief,” Nurse Cherry said. “I don’t know how long you’ll have to feed everyone. I’m sure the telegraph operators are trying their best to get help from Burin and perhaps even St. John’s, but the weather’s not the best, as you know.”

“The crowd over at Hannah Bonnell’s have no food,” Thomas piped up. “The poor things are half-starved.”

“Yes, that’s right,” Nurse Cherry nodded. “If you think you can spare anything at all, Deborah, please do. I know you will.”

“Of course,” the young woman said. “I’ll send Sidney over by and by.”

“In the meantime, let’s make sure everyone keeps drinking hot liquids, even if’s just hot water, including the little ones,” said the nurse. “I know you’ll have to spare the tea along.”

“I think I’ll just use it ’til it runs out,” Deborah said. “No one prefers hot water over hot tea. I think help will be here before we run out of tea.”

Nurse Cherry smiled at her optimism and the pink in her cheeks.

“Let’s get started,” she said. The two women boiled pot after pot of water and made tea. They went from room to room giving the hot mugs to adults and children alike, who drank it greedily. Between them, Deborah and Nurse Cherry persuaded Robert Bonnell to drink a few sips between his incessant sobs. His young son, Gilbert, too, had some tea, while his little sister Alice napped on her father’s lap.

“You’re a brave boy,” Nurse Cherry told him, almost coaxing a smile. Then she turned to the still energetic Deborah.

“Keep the house warm but not hot,” she said. “Give the children a spoonful of jam twice a day to keep their resistance up. When help comes, people will have to move out of Taylor’s Bay. It’s a health hazard having this many people in close quarters. If one gets sick, everyone will. I’m very sorry.”

Deborah pressed her lips together. During the silence that followed, it seemed as if everyone in the house, even in the other rooms, was waiting for her to speak. When she did she said, “I wonder if Taylor’s Bay will ever be the same again?”

15

Nurse Dorothy Cherry spent the night of November 19 drifting in and out of sleep, sitting on one of Deborah Woodland’s pine kitchen chairs. Her companions, Thomas and Albert, lay curled up at her feet, part of the human mass that covered the linoleum. Dorothy dreamed of England. She was in her grandmother’s garden, rich with July violets and smiling pansies. “Enjoy the flowers while you can,” Granny said, her blue eyes sharp and lively. Swifts and swallows glided in and out of her dream, then darted across the garden this way and that, as thick as black flies in the Newfoundland woods. In her chubby childish fingers was a ha’penny with Queen Victoria’s image on it. It was one of her favourite things, something she kept in her “precious box” under her bed. But now she threw the coin in the air and caught it as it flopped back down…

“Shush, John!”

“Shush, Margaret! You’ll be all right now. Be a good girl and you can have some more jam tomorrow.”

Mothers were comforting their children and she was in a black, draughty kitchen in a remote village in Newfoundland and her grandmother was buried in a hill in Farnworth in the southwest of Bolton. She pulled the thin flannel blanket over her shoulders and stretched her back a little. From one of the bedrooms she thought she heard a low rattle, a signal that someone had the beginnings of bronchitis. “Oh no,” she muttered. Again she cursed the helplessness that dogged her. She wondered if the quake and the fierce waves that came after it had affected the telegraph wires. Goodness, she hoped not. If the cables were broken, there would be delays in getting messages out. This, of course, would postpone the arrival of any ship that might bring much needed medicine, clothing, and lumber to rebuild fallen houses.

As the first light of day began to show, Dorothy Cherry thought of these things and could not fall back to sleep. Besides, Deborah Woodland was up now and fastening her apron around her slim waist. She went into the long pantry and plunged a metal scoop into her flour barrel, emptying the flour into a large bowl. Then she tiptoed back into the kitchen and began the age old task of making bread. This day, too, the comforting smell of rising bread would awaken the mourning people of Taylor’s Bay.

The journey to Point au Gaul, which involved backtracking over familiar ground, was made arduous by the frozen mud on the road. Thomas’ mare and Albert’s bay horse hesitated and then slipped and stumbled over large ridges of earth encased in ice, shaped by the tsunamiand then the snowstorm of the day before. This time the animals carried no food or blankets; they had all been distributed at Taylor’s Bay.

In Point au Gaul, Nurse Cherry ministered to Jessie Hipditch, still prostrate in her sister Nan Hillier’s bed, and hysterical with grief over the deaths of all three of her children, Thomas, Henry, and baby Elizabeth. Nan’s eyes were rimmed with deep creases, betraying her own lack of sleep as she tended to Jessie. Nurse Cherry ordered Nan to bed and delegated a neighbour to stand in for her at Jessie’s bedside, at least for a day.

The nurse sat with Jessie and spoke to her.

“Jessie, do you remember me?” she asked. When there came no answer, she repeated the question, not once but three times above Jessie’s babbling. Finally Jessie calmed.

“Yes,” she whispered.

“Jessie,” Nurse Cherry said, “it’s terrible, what’s happened. It’s so very sad.” She stopped while Jessie stared at her, the young woman’s eyes great with grief.

“Your little children are all angels in Heaven now, dear,” Nurse Cherry continued softly. “You’ve got to cry for them and then you’ve got to help your husband, David.”

Jessie continued staring at her and then released a new flood of tears. She began to babble again but suddenly stopped and sobbed. Dorothy held her. By now, Nan’s eight-year-old daughter, Ruby, had joined them and she sat on the bed and crawled into her aunt’s arms. Huge tears slid down Ruby’s face.

“I miss my little cousins, Aunt Jessie,” she said.

“Oh Ruby!” Jessie cried. “I don’t know how I can go on without my babies!”

Jessie sobbed from the bottom of her gut till she flopped back down on her pillow, utterly spent. Her dark hair spread out behind her, damp with tears and sweat. As she fell into a deep sleep, Nurse Cherry stood at the foot of the bed and Jessie’s husband, David, tiptoed into the room. He eased in behind Nurse Cherry, saying nothing. Dorothy turned and smiled at him. She noticed the wet shine on his eyelashes.

“I’m so very sorry for your loss,” she whispered.

David nodded.

“Will Jessie be all right?” he asked quietly, his eyes full of fear.

Nurse Cherry nodded quickly.

“With time, with a lot of time,” she said. “And she has the love of her family. That’s so important.”

“Will we be able to have more children, Nurse Cherry?” David asked almost in a whisper, his eyes fixed on the floor.

Nurse Cherry smiled and looked at Jessie’s sleeping body.

“I think Jessie will want more children, with time. She’ll always mourn her lost children, but give her time, David. Don’t worry. There’s no reason you can’t have more children.”

David looked at his wife. Then he walked alongside the bed to her side, sat down, and stroked her long hair as she slept.

After a night in Point au Gaul, Nurse Cherry and her escorts travelled to Lord’s Cove. By now, they had heard of the miraculous rescue of toddler Margaret Rennie, whose mother, Sarah, had drowned in the family home with three of her children. Margaret had been given up for dead when Lord’s Cove men retrieved her from her house, which the first wave had thrown into an inland pond. The whole village had rejoiced when the little girl had awakened after being plunged in a tub of hot water. All along the coast stricken people were taking some comfort from this story.

The road between Point au Gaul and Lord’s Cove was all beach now. Instead of earth, it was filled with round grey, blue, and white rocks, smoothed by centuries of wave action, pitched there by the tsunami. Albert had borrowed a carriage from a Point au Gaul man and hitched his horse to it, but the animal could not stand the strain of hauling the carriage over the rocks. Before long, Albert unhitched the carriage and abandoned it. Thomas turned around and brought his mare back to Point au Gaul. When he returned to the beach road, he and Albert had to pull the horse over the rocks til they got to Lord’s Cove. Although it was a cold November day, sweat ran down their faces and backs.

In Lord’s Cove, Nurse Cherry tended to baby Margaret Rennie who, she was glad to see, was in fine shape. Alberta Fitzpatrick had taken great care of her and doted on her. The child kept asking for her mother, though, and she wanted to go home. Her father, Patrick, was in shock, having lost his wife and three children as well as their home. Nurse Cherry was a little worried that the remaining family members were split up, with Patrick staying at one home, his surviving sons, Martin and Albert, with other friends, and little Margaret with the Fitzpatricks. They needed each other now, she worried, but it was hard for a man left on his own with no house. Here again, she would have to give in to that feeling of helplessness and trust in the ways of the people, who certainly seemed to be doing everything possible for the Rennies. Letting go went against her nature, but she had already seen how their wisdom worked.

She reminded herself of this as she tended to a man’s crushed finger and treated several lingering cases of shock. At night she went back to Alberta Fitzpatrick’s, where people had gathered once again to retell the tale of little Margaret’s rescue. They told it like a prayer and as they told it, a much-needed feeling of serenity settled upon them.