A Place Called Bliss (3 page)

U
nchurched for the most part but certainly not a heathen, Sophia had some knowledge of the Bible. She hadn’t been on board ship long before she equated the immigrants’ move with that of the Israelites. Most of the people, particularly below decks, were escaping bondage of one sort or another, and the routes to the Promised Land, whether across arid desert or over the bounding main, were equally miserable and unendurable.

Unlike those earlier trekkers, these had an abundance of water. Water, water, everywhere, and not a drop to drink was more truth than fiction according to Kezzie, who was back and forth between the two families. Only limited amounts were supplied the horde of people in steerage. The ration of drinking water tasted of the oily barrels, and strange and awful items were fished from it. As for washing clothes—only the skimpiest attempt could be made. The Morrisons were faring poorly.

Sophia and Hugh traveled first class and were much more comfortable, though crowded. Numerous remittance men were their companions, men with funds from home who were being
urged or forced to locate far from home, having been involved in some ruckus or indiscretion and considered an embarrassment to their family. They were a jolly group, used to frivolity. The bar was well patronized, with champagne corks popping all day and far into the night. Here Saloon and Intermediate passengers mingled freely, and if Sophia had not been so obviously
enceinte
she could have joined the festivities; her “condition” forbade the indelicacy of displaying herself publicly. Hugh was thoughtful and attentive but escaped the confines of their small, cheerless quarters as often as he could.

The
Vega
, an old, slow boat, was built to carry seven hundred passengers but was crammed to the gunnels with over two thousand. The hold was stuffed with their goods, much of it laughable when the frontier was considered. Many immigrants, particularly those of the remittance men class, in their innocence imagined Canadians wore a sort of shooting costume with the usual jodphurs and shining riding boots but adding a belt and holster with revolver and a hunting knife. Advised to bring warm clothes, they substituted soft collars for hard and flannel for linen. They brought treasures such as boxing gloves, smoking humidors, stereoscopic cameras, the finest in fishing equipment—tackle boxes, patent folding canvas creels, braided waterproof landing nets and, in one instance, a frog spear—for braving the northern lakes and doing it in the style to which they were accustomed.

That their belongings might have to be transported on a creaking Red River cart or a dragging travois, none of them suspected. Babes in the woods, their fun and games would all too soon be changed to desperate reality if they dared the backwoods and to an ineffectual passage of days if they chose civilization; bustling energy was transforming hamlets to towns and towns to smoky cities with amazing speed. It was a land for the industrious and for those with a will to endure no matter what the hardship.

Sophia first realized just how bad things were below deck when, about three days after sailing, Kezzie climbed,
white-faced, from the bowels of the ship, quite obviously on the verge of retching.

Sophia, reclining on a bunk that was none too steady, braced herself, sniffed in an indelicate fashion, and wrinkled her nose.

“Kezzie, what’s that terrible stench?”

“Sorry, Mum.” Kezzie, in spite of all training to the contrary, dropped onto the side of the bed, closed her eyes, and swayed alarmingly.

Sophia’s eyes widened, as well as her nostrils. “What is it, Kezzie? Are you ill?” So far Kezzie had avoided any sign of seasickness.

“It’s down there, Mum,” and Kezzie’s eyes, a bright blue, dropped in the direction of below deck.

“What, down there?” Sophia was a little impatient.

“It . . . it stinks, Mum!”

The back part of the ship, someone had explained, was all holds, and here the single men lived . . . existed. “I haven’t been in there, Mum,” Kezzie, fanning herself, explained, “but I’m told the whitewash is fallin’ off and underneath is manure. This ship transported cattle or horses at one time. There are nearly six hundred men in there, some of them smoke, makin’ the air worse than ever. Those poor men
smell!
One wants to hold one’s nose when they are around.”

“Is it as crowded where Mary and Angus and the children are?”

“The middle is for married people, and they at least have bunks. I was down there, tendin’ to Mary—she’s getting terrible weak, Mum, and looks dreadful—and someone in the upper bunk just leaned over and vomited. It splashed all over Mary and Molly who was lyin’ beside her . . . missed me, but I guess I walked in it—”

Sophia shuddered. “How terrible. Please feel free to spend as much time with Mary and the children as is needed, Kezzie. I’ll manage somehow. And now I think you should change your shoes . . . perhaps wipe the floor where you’ve walked . . .”

“Aye, Mrs. Hugh. Do you know they’re fed mostly herring and potatoes down there and some soup? Fish makes Mary bilious. . . .”

“Can you take them something from our allotment, Kezzie?”

“I will, Mum, though it’s hard, with all those other big-eyed, hungry people watchin’.” Kezzie looked at the floor. “See this, Mum? It’s sawdust. That’s what they have atween the rows of beds—six inches of sawdust. When someone gets sick, it gets shovelled up.”

“Enough, Kezzie,” Sophia said faintly, the ship wallowing alarmingly and her own face paling.

That evening there was some commotion below decks, enough so that the sound of it was heard in the Galloway cabin. Sophia sent Kezzie to check on it.

Kezzie came back shaking her head. “As near as I can make out, the men in the hold are beatin’ their tables with their fists or whatever and hollerin’ ‘We want no trotters!’”

“Trotters?”

“They’ve been served pigs’ feet once again, Mum, and they’re in rebellion. I understand from Mary that they feel they are often given leftovers from the tables up here; once you get over the humiliation of it and get hungry enough, it’s rather entertainin’ to find a bit of sausage or some such delicacy in your bowl.”

Sophia sighed, sorry she’d asked. Kezzie, who occupied a small space, almost closetlike for size, was comfortable enough near her Mr. Hugh and his lady. But that she was anxious over her daughter’s condition became clear as the days came and went.

One day, at Sophia’s urging, Hugh went below decks to check on Angus and Mary and the children. He returned shaken.

“It’s desperate down there,” he said, more angry than sympathetic. “It’s hard to believe humans can live like that. Kezzie,
see that they get some of our oranges and lemons. I’m going to have a talk with the captain.”

Some improvements were noted, briefly, when Hugh Galloway raised his aristocratic voice on behalf of the steerage and hold occupants. A tub of hard-boiled eggs was transferred below and soon disappeared with insufficient to go around. Once cheese and ship’s biscuits were distributed, the biscuits being about six inches in diameter and an inch thick and hard as cement. If one could avoid breaking a rotting tooth, one could chew away for a considerable length of time, a change from the quickly and easily swallowed, half-cold mess that usually comprised their meals.

More than once Kezzie, at Sophia’s instructions, brought Cammie and Molly upstairs to be bathed and fed, with an opportunity to run around a little and breathe some fresh air. But it was painful to watch their small, pinched faces disappearing down the ladder again.

Angus spent most of his time at Mary’s side and with the children. Seeing him on deck one day, leaning on the rail and gazing with unseeing eyes to the horizon, Sophia covered her bulk with a cloak and slipped out and to his side. The breeze ruffled the black curls whose luster had dimmed from lack of enough water to keep them clean. Even Angus’s dark skin showed signs of the confinement in the sunless area below decks where he and his family were billeted.

Nevertheless, his smile was reminiscent of that first day when he had raised his face to hers, and Sophia’s heart skipped a beat.

“I’m so sorry, Angus,” she managed. “What can we do to help?”

“Just pray, Sophia.”

Whatever intimacies had been between them, to call her Mum or even Mrs. Hugh seemed absurd. And were they not all embarking on a life of freedom from the old system of class and patronage? Angus, already his own man, stood a little taller under the new realization of his worth.

Pray? It was not unheard of, though ordinarily engaged in only in the direst of circumstances. For Angus to request it made the situation serious indeed.

How long since she’d prayed? Sophia realized guiltily that all her prayers had been answered when she found herself carrying a child. Hugh—and his money—took care of all her other needs.

Far removed from the zealous John Knox, under whose leadership the Church of Scotland separated itself from the papacy, Sophia was a member of the Established Church, and as such, she believed, as privileged to pray as anyone.

“I will,” she now assured Angus, asking delicately, “Is Mary . . . are there indications that all is not well?”

Somberly Angus nodded. More blunt than Sophia’s fastidiousness allowed her to be, he said frankly, “She’s cramping badly. The sack of waters broke yesterday, and the baby should have come but hasn’t. Mary is struggling mightily, but there seems to be some obstruction . . . some problem—”

“The doctor—is he with her?” Sophia was horrified, not having known the situation from Kezzie’s hesitant reports, no doubt because Mrs. Hugh herself was soon to go through the same experience.

“From time to time. Kezzie is with her or I am. I just came up to get a little fresh air and to pray.” Again Angus’s eyes sought the horizon. “There doesn’t seem to be any hope of making land and getting her to a hospital, so I just pray for a safe delivery.”

Sophia crept back to her cabin, to utter her own request in words that were unfamiliar to her, to a God who was all but unknown. It was a very tentative effort and left the petitioner no more comforted than before. In spite of good intentions, her fear centered upon herself and her own unborn babe. “Oh, God,” she breathed with some desperation, “don’t let it happen to me! Let my baby be born, healthy . . . perfect. But not here, God, not here!”

Two more days passed. It was clear now, to everyone, that Mary could endure no more. She lay—Kezzie reported from
time to time, her blue eyes dull in her weary face—as one dead, all labor seemingly at a standstill after days of sweat and strain. An occasional movement indicated the baby still lived.

“The doctor,” Sophia insisted, “can’t he do something?”

“The doctor!” Kezzie half spat. “He’s worse than nothin’! He thrusts that dirty paw of his into her from time to time—with the entire bunch of people leaning over their bunks and watchin’. He sort of clucks, and shakes his head, and growls aboot the unwashed masses that breed like flies. He’s always drunk, Mum! There’s an auld grandmither down there, and she’s the main help we’ve got. She and I bathe Mary’s face, wipe up the . . . the blood—” Kezzie cast an apologetic glance at Sophia, “and try and force a little soup doon her whenever we can. Oh, Mum—” Kezzie’s iron nature crumbled, and her small frame shook with sobs.

Though Kezzie’s apron was soiled, and though there was a strong unpleasant odor emanating from her, Sophia put her arms around her serving woman. “We’ll have to move her up here, Kezzie. Now dry your tears and—”

“Oh, Mrs. Hugh, Mum, the doctor won’t allow it. He thinks steerage people aren’t human, somehow. He’ll forbid it, I know he will.”

“We’ll see about that,” Sophia said firmly. “He’ll have to deal with me.”

Sophia was reaching for her capacious cloak, fastening it around her swollen figure.

“Oh, Mum—you mustn’t!”

“Nonsense, Kezzie. I’m going down there immediately.”

“But Mum! Mr. Hugh—hasna he forbidden you to go down below?”

“This is an emergency, Kezzie. He couldn’t possibly object if he knew just how serious matters are down there. Now you get my bed ready, and we’ll have Mary up here right away.”

Still Kezzie hesitated, though a ray of hope lit her tired face.

“Those steps, Mum—you’ll be careful?”

“Of course. Now get prepared for Mary.”

Sophia hesitated only fractionally at the gaping companionway, more from the stench that rose from its dark depths than anything else. Then, gathering up the folds of her cloak with one hand, she reached for the railing with the other and began a careful descent.

It was the stench that was her undoing. Feeling as if she were about to gag, Sophia loosed her hand from the rail and put it over her nose. And then it was a combination of things—coming from bright sunlight into darkness, a fold of her cloak tangling itself in her feet, and, lastly, the slickness of the steps.

With a host of white faces staring up at her out of the dark, her two hands automatically flung out before her, and with her dark cloak billowing out behind, Sophia resembled nothing so much as a huge bat as for a split second she seemed to hang suspended between the light and the dark. With a crash she landed, face down and spread-eagled much like a diver doing a belly flop, all breath gone and nothing but one massive bolt of agony spiraling her off into darkness and silence.