Donovan's Station (13 page)

1880

P
ATRICK
D
ONOVAN

1880

M
ARY
& T
HOMAS
P
OWER

1898

J
AMES
& E
LIZABETH
P
OWER

1908

E
LIZABETH
P
OWER

C. 1910

K
EZIAH
D
ONOVAN

C. 1910

K
ATE
A
YLWARD
O'D
WYER
, P
ROPRIETRESS
D
ONOVAN'S
S
TATION
C. 1915

W
ESTERN
J
UNCTION

Rather doubtful looking, rain. Fr. Roche stopped on his way to town
—
just had the train stop ten minutes while he looked in at the door at Mumma. Said he'd be back on the weekend. What does he want with us?

Lizzie is full of surprises today. This is the third Sunday in a row she has come to coax me to eat. This time she appeared with a bowl into which she had put a mashed potato, a dipper of gravy, and a quantity of finely chopped chicken oysters. Some of the ladies who come for tea this afternoon are going to be disappointed when they start digging among the bones. I managed only a mouthful of it, but it was very good.

“Nan, do you remember the time out at Littledale you brought me the chicken?” She sat there with the spoon in her hand, looking very serious. How could I forget? Mrs. Walsh from down the line had been over at the convent visiting her niece who was about to take final vows, and she stopped here with a message from Lizzie: “Tell Nan they don't give us enough to eat and I'm hungry.” Mrs. Walsh said she thought Lizzie looked as plump as a partridge in a berry patch and it was all stuff and nonsense, but my heart just ached, thinking about my little girl going to bed with pains in her stomach, and first thing the next morning I set out, walked all the way, for she was only five and when you are five a day can seem terribly long.

I had a whole chicken cooked and wrapped in a bit of oilcloth,
hidden away in my basket under the ginger bread for the nuns, and they said it was breaking the rules to let the girls have visitors during the week, but since she was the youngest there, and no doubt they wanted the gingerbread for their own dinner, they let me take her out into the garden. She climbed up a tree with the chicken and ate the whole thing, dropping the bones down into my skirt where I was resting my aching feet. I swore I'd never forgive Min for sending her away, and her hardly more than a baby, but I suppose with the stepbrothers and Min newly widowed, it couldn't be helped.

“Nan, I wasn't really hungry. They gave us plenty to eat, but it didn't taste nice like your food and I was angry at Mam and I wanted to see you.”
Lizzie
was staring at the wall when she said this, like it was a great sin she was confessing. 1 tried to smile but it must have looked like something else for poor Lizzie looked very guilty and dismayed. “Oh, Nan, I'm sorry now, I didn't stop to think what a long way it was, and I didn't know you would have to walk. Mam had sent me out a pair of boots, ugly rubber boots, and I hated them so much that I wouldn't wear them, but then a few weeks later I got my feet very wet and the sisters said I had to wear them or I wouldn't be allowed out. I was longing to be with the other girls and when I went to put the boots on I found she'd filled them with Jerusalems, all done up in beautiful coloured wrappers. There was one for every girl in the school, and three left over that the nuns said I could have all for myself.”

Poor Min. I'd told her
Lizzie
would rather have one beautifully wrapped candy than a hundred common mints, or even a dozen Gibraltars, but I didn't think she'd listened to me. She is at heart a shopkeeper, and she'd rather sell her best and eat the rejects. Lord knows there were plenty of rejects when she first started the shop. Even the boys got tired of powdery bulls-eyes and scorched peppermint drops. I couldn't for the life of me figure out what she was doing with all those cabbages I was
sending out to her, and all the time she was using the leaves for wrapping the sweets until she could afford to buy waxed paper. I never thought she'd make a living selling oranges and apples, not at those prices, but the confectionary business is like the liquor trade—always a market no matter how poor people are.

Lizzies confession about Littledale was only her first surprise, but the second one I anticipated for I smelled it coming up through the grill. Min had purchased two hundredweight of green coffee and sent some out on the train with Lizzie. I could hear the big frying pan banging on the damper as she roasted the beans, and then the smell of the oil went right through the house. After Lizzie gave up on the chicken, she brought me a cup of coffee, hot and thick with cream, and I did a bit better with that, though I think I got the best of it in anticipation.

Her third surprise wasn't so pleasant, but I think I hid my feelings for Lizzie didn't seem to notice. It was a letter from Johanna to Min and Kate, saying she wasn't able to come and visit—no surprise there, for the hotel business is no different in Boston than in Newfoundland. She has offered to take Lizzie next summer, and will pay for a tutor so that Lizzie can try for entrance to the Sacred Heart College in New York. My little Lizzie at school with all the well-to-do young ladies… I'm not so sure I like that idea as much as I ought. I don't think the Sacred Heart Ladies will be as impressed by the Central Fruit Store as the girls of Littledale were. Still, Johanna has neither chick nor child of her own and it's about time she did some-thing for her sister's daughter. Lizzie wants to go, that's certain. I can't say I blame her—she can't spend the rest of her life pulling toffee on the candy hooks, and with no father and no inheritance except the little I have put by for her, she will have to look after herself. I'm glad she has taken her letter off to show Mrs. Walsh so I can think about this without her watching me all the time.

It was funny, Lizzie being so angry at her mother about the
boots and harbouring that resentment even when she was five. We have a great talent for holding a grudge, me and
Lizzie.
I was upset at Min for getting a husband who already had two boys, and then upset at him for dying and leaving her with two more children, yet I liked those Power boys well enough, better than Min did, I think. She was a good stepmother to them, gave them an education and saw they had the best she could afford, even better than her own two, but she never really warmed to them, I thought, no more than she warmed to Mr. Donovan. I swear she held a grudge against young Thomas simply because he had his fathers name so she couldn't give it to her own boy and was forced to name him James Thomas Power instead of Thomas James Power.

I like to think I'm slow to anger, which is perhaps why it takes so long for it to dissolve once it finally appears. Paddy had such a capacity for infuriating me when no-one else could, and he seemed to take a particular delight in provoking me to any open display of temper. He didn't succeed often, but even once was too often for my liking. I always felt so defeated when he got me to raise my voice or even start banging the pots in the kitchen. It s curious, but Mr. Donovan always laughed when he detected irritation in me, and it sweetened me somehow. Min's Tom was the same way—whenever she was giving him a piece of her mind, he'd stick his tongue in his cheek and roll his eyes like one of the wharf rats caught with his hand :in the apple barrel, and instead of it making her worse, it made her ease up on him. He was so comical.