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
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.
