could find no comfort in the ritual, nor in the constant expressions of sympathy that came from her neighbours in Point au Gaul—not as long as Irene was out there somewhere.
The day after the funeral Lizzie’s spinning wheel, which she had been using the day of the
The newly widowed Lydia Hillier, too, grieved heavily, even as she awaited the birth of her third child. She also faced a practical problem in that the main source of her family income was gone. Her nineteen-year-old stepson, Harold, would have to be the breadwinner now. But Harold’s store and fishing gear had been swept away. And she worried that relations with her stepchildren were not always smooth. This was their house first, Lydia reminded herself worriedly, before she married their father. She reached far inside herself to comfort Caroline who cried ceaselessly for her father. Little Ben was so quiet it worried Lydia. Still a toddler, he was too young for her to know how much he understood. At least I still have my children, Lydia kept telling herself.
Her neighbour, John Walsh, no longer had anything. The sixty-six-year-old bachelor was in poor health but had somehow managed to jog up the hill to safety before the first wave cracked his little dwelling in two. Then it turned the clapboard into splinters and carried it out to sea. John Walsh turned around from the top of the hill with tears streaming down his ruddy fisherman’s cheeks. He had no bed now, he knew, no bedclothes, no sugar or tea, no stove to cook on or keep him warm. He had only the clothes on his back. He saw that, in addition to his house, his stage was demolished. He knew that his trawl lines would be gone, too, as would his 140-fathom, nine-inch manila rope. Where was his boat? He figured that was wrecked too. At his age, he’d have to start all over, somehow. Sixty-eight-year-old Manuel and sixty-one-year-old Jessie Inkpen had spent their whole lives in Stepaside, Burin, a little cove named after the home village of its first English settlers. The Inkpens had prospered and lived in a ten room, three-storey house, built near the water. By November of 1929, Manuel was in poor health and increasingly dependent on Jessie and on Bertha, their live-in maid.
Bertha had gone out visiting for the evening and the couple was having a cup of tea after their supper of fish and brewis when the first wave struck Stepaside. Manuel and Jessie found themselves knee-deep in gelid salt water as they sat at their kitchen table, and stood, shocked at the cold on their legs.
“My God!” Jessie cried.
“We’d best get out,” said Manuel, still holding his cup of tea.
“Shall we bring anything?” Jessie asked. “Shall we put our coats on?”
“I don’t think so, dear,” her husband answered. “I think we better get moving quickly before the water rises up.”
Their legs already numb with cold, they pushed one foot in front of the other, until they reached the back door, the one nearest the kitchen. Jessie, stronger than her husband at this stage in their lives, pushed against it and heaved. It opened and they stepped onto a flake, their own.
“It seems steady,” she said to Manuel. “Come on.”
She regretted listening to Manuel and not taking his cane.
As soon as the elderly couple stood on the flake it pushed off from the shore and floated to sea.
“Good God!” said Manuel.
Jessie’s face whitened. Her eyes scanned the village. Flakes and stages were destroyed. Dories were bottom up or cut in two as if giant knives had come down from the heavens. Cords of firewood drifted alongside the flake that had become their raft. Were they going to die like this? Jessie decided she had to do something.
“Help!” she cried. “Someone help us!”
“Help!” Manuel joined her.
“Don’t strain yourself, dear,” Jessie said gently. She worried about the effect of this on his health. She never imagined they’d be floating out in the bay on a flake in November.
“Help!” she yelled again.
Men began appearing from the houses on the high ground. Jessie saw them point to the old couple on the flake in the middle of the cove. In spite of her predicament, she almost smiled.
Manuel was looking behind them, out to sea.
“I wonder will there be another flood?” he said.
“Hush, now,” Jessie answered. “Our neighbours are on their way to rescue us. See how they’re getting a dory out?”
Manuel nodded. He had begun to shiver. Jessie, too, was chilled and could not feel her feet. Then the water began to rise again and the boards of the flake began to creak. The swell broke the flake in two, throwing Manuel and Jessie into the sea. Jessie screamed and trod water madly, trying to find bottom. Manuel was too stunned to speak but his feet, as numb as they were, found the sea floor. He raised a frozen arm to grab hold of Jessie but she was too far away, still screaming. Then she stopped.
“I’m all right!” she called out. “I can stand up! On my toes!”
“My God!” said Manuel. How long could they last like this? The sight of his wife’s face pointed at the sky, her hair covered in cold ocean water, tore at him.
“Hold onto a plank,” Manuel cried. “It’ll keep you afloat.”
He saw Jessie clutch one and gasp in relief as she did so.
“Are they still coming?” she called.
“They are,” said Manuel. “They’re almost here.”
Two Stepaside men hauled Jessie first and then Manuel into the dory when it arrived alongside the flake. The men rowed quickly to the beach, casting worried glances at their frozen passengers. Then they carried the Inkpens ashore and up a steep bank to a large house where most of their neighbours fearfully waited for more flooding.
Bertha was already there when Jessie and Manuel were carried in.
“A fine night for a cruise,” the maid said, her face wet with tears.
“Terrible flooding,” Manuel said, his face grey. “Our kitchen floor is all wet.”
“Mr. Inkpen,” said Bertha. “Didn’t you see the big wave? It was monstrous. Sure, it took all the stages and flakes out!”
As the women took off Jessie’s stockings and slippers and dried her feet, one of the men said, “The big wave is after receding again and will be back again soon. All the houses and everything on lower ground is in danger of being swept away.”
“Oh my goodness,” said Jessie. “I didn’t realize it was that bad.”
“It’s just as well you didn’t,” said Bertha. “There’d be no point to it, the situation you were in.”
The women took blankets off the stove and wrapped Manuel and Jessie in them. They pushed hot toddies into their hands and urged them to drink.
“Here it comes!” someone called from the window. “Here comes the wave!”
The villagers rushed outdoors to watch the wall of water crush the Inkpens’ home and virtually every stage and flake in Stepaside. The roar startled Manuel this time and the reality of his experience caused his heart to flutter and pearls of sweat to pour down his face. Still seated, he grabbed Jessie’s hand. Besides their house, furniture, linen, crockery, and clothing, the sea took Manuel’s wharf, barn, two stores, and fishing gear. The old couple’s sheep and ten hens drowned as well.
When Manuel learned all this after the second wave pulled back, he sobbed into Jessie’s breast.
“I’m too old for this,” he cried.
10
Sarah Rennie of Lord’s Cove fed her youngest children, Rita, Patrick, Margaret, and Bernard, their supper. They gobbled down their vegetables—hers were good eaters, not like some children in the village, thank God—and happily chewed their salt fish. They knew some lassie bread was waiting if they ate it all, that was her promise.
Sarah kept some potatoes, carrots, and fish in the pot for her husband, Patrick, and her older sons, Martin and Albert. She hadn’t expected them home, this being a special night for the Lord’s Cove men to get together for
