eyes until she squeezed them shut to banish it. She tried to focus on the aroma of the fresh bread but she had to hurry to get to St. Lawrence. She had no idea what awaited her there. She still did not know if the outside world knew what had happened to the people of the boot of the Burin Peninsula. Or if help was on its way. Or when it would or could come. She had no bright news to bring the people of St. Lawrence. Her arms were heavy as she pulled them into her dress. My clothes need a good wash, she thought.
Nurse Cherry’s legs ached and swelled as she travelled over the road to St. Lawrence, named centuries ago by Channel Islands fishermen after a Jersey Island parish. Although the town was the largest on the lower part of the peninsula and something of a service centre, life in St. Lawrence still revolved around fishing. Nurse Cherry’s little party reached there not long before nightfall, just in time for supper and to administer some basic medicine to a few livyers alongside the priest’s house, where she was staying.
As soon as Nurse Cherry finished her breakfast of tea and hard-boiled eggs the next morning, Grace Reeves, a slip of a thing at fourteen, rushed into the priest’s kitchen to tell her that “poor Joseph Cusack’s house is all destroyed, Nurse.” Nurse Cherry let her china cup fall onto her saucer as the maid backed into the dark mahogany doorway to listen to Grace.
“Yes, Nurse,” she nodded. “’Tis true, only I forgot to tell you that.”
“Oh dear,” sighed Nurse Cherry. She knew that Cusack was a widower with three children, the older two in their early teens. Even worse, Joseph suffered badly from high blood pressure. Dorothy swallowed the last of her tea and determined to visit the Cusacks right away. This would not be good for Joseph’s health, she knew, and he was all the children had.
She glanced out the window at the snow that was still falling fast. It had been a wild night with the wind emitting war cries hour after hour. Over and over Nurse Cherry woke from the dreams that took her back to the Bolton Wanderers soccer pitch. She was a tiny girl on her father’s shoulders, clapping as the Wanderers beat mighty Manchester United. “We’re an older team than they are!” her dad called up to her. “You remember that. We’ve got four years on them.” Later that night the Burin Peninsula wind pulled her out of a Wanderers game with Ipswich Town. This time she was even smaller, not yet in school, and it was her first game. The Ipswich players came all the way from southern England—so far away!—her father had showed it to them all on a crinkled old map. Their town was on the Suffolk coast, right across from Holland in Europe! Dorothy’s heart beat with excitement as her family went through the gates for the match, surrounded by thousands of other Boltonites. She wondered about the players from Ipswich. Would they look like people in the North or would they be different? She could hardly breathe with… Then the wind pounded on the roof of the rectory, nearly tearing it off, and Nurse Cherry sat up in bed, a mess of confusion.
Nurse Cherry bundled up and faced the gale, with Grace by her side. She found the little family at James Cusack’s house, snowdrifts piled high on its side. James was in St. Pierre but his twenty-eight-year-old wife, Elizabeth, was doing her best to tend to Joseph’s three children as well as her own brood of four. Joseph had gone to look for whatever building supplies he could find. Nurse Cherry was pleased to hear that he was active and doing something about his situation; pressing on was always the best medicine, she told herself.
“We’re the lucky ones,” Elizabeth told Nurse Cherry. “We’ve lost nothing but the breastwork on our wharf. Most in the harbour have lost much more than that.”
“There’s a great deal of damage in St. Lawrence then?”
“Oh yes!” Elizabeth answered, putting bowls of porridge in front of a row of quiet children. “The businesses are in a terrible state and almost all the wharves are gone. Most have lost food and many have lost boats and coal. I don’t know what will happen the winter and next spring when they have to go fishing.”
“I suppose I thought it wasn’t that bad when most of the houses were still standing,” Nurse Cherry said.
“Well, yes, Nurse, you’re right there,” Elizabeth nodded. “Most of us have our houses and no one died, thanks be to God. I hear that’s not the case farther down the peninsula and we’ve been praying for those people and lighting candles in the church.”
“Yes, it’s the saddest sight, Taylor’s Bay,” Nurse Cherry said. “The Bonnell men, Robert and Bertram, losing their children, and Robert losing his wife, too. Bertram was driven mad with his loss when I saw him. His wife, Bessie, too, she was heartbroken, of course. And then poor Jessie Hipditch and her husband David in Point au Gaul—they lost all their children, all three of them. Jessie’s mother, too. And her sister Jemima’s daughter, Irene.”
The Cusack children stared at Nurse Cherry, trying to take in the gravity of her words. They were catatonic, like statues.
Elizabeth was silent.
“I know Jessie Hipditch. I’ve met her and she’s a good woman,” she said finally. “It’s not nice to lose your mother. But, you know, losing your children is never supposed to happen. It’s against nature.”
Nurse Cherry nodded. She could understand this. She had delivered many of them and she had closed the eyes of many old people. This was as it should be. In the past few days, everything had been upside down or backwards, just as Elizabeth Cusack had said…
“You’ll have to visit poor Michael Fitzpatrick, too,” Elizabeth said, as she cleared the dishes off the table and shooed the children away. “His house is gone, too. And his flake and that…Are you all right, Nurse Cherry?”
“Well, I’m a little woozy to be honest,” Nurse Cherry answered. Elizabeth paused and looked the nurse up and down.
“Lie down here on the daybed,” she said kindly. “Perhaps you’ve been working too hard or not eating enough or most likely both.”
“I’ve got work to do,” Nurse Cherry protested.
“Well, you can’t do it right till you rest,” Elizabeth said firmly. “Now lie down.”
Nurse Cherry moved slowly over to the daybed. Elizabeth pulled a thin woollen blanket over her legs.
“Just have a little rest now,” she said gently.
Then one of Joseph Cusack’s sons rushed back into the kitchen.
“Aunt Elizabeth!” he said urgently. “There’s a rescue ship in the harbour! The SS
“Of course you can, child,” Elizabeth said. “Just don’t get in the men’s way, but offer to help if they need it. Off you go.”
Elizabeth smiled when she saw that Nurse Cherry had fallen asleep in spite of her nephew’s gleeful news. Her guest woke up only when the dark shadow of a broad-shouldered man standing over her hauled her from the quagmire of her dreams. Two hours had passed when Dr. Mosdell, Chairman of Newfoundland’s Board of Health, appeared in Elizabeth Cusack’s kitchen.
As Nurse Cherry blinked her way to clear vision, the doctor introduced himself.
“Nurse Cherry, on behalf of the government of Newfoundland I thank you for your efforts. Now you are coming with us,” he said firmly. “We shall take you to Burin on the
Nurse Cherry looked up at Dr. Mosdell and straightened her hair as best she could. “Oh no, I can’t go with you—I have work to do, sir,” she said weakly.
“Nurse Cherry…” Mosdell began.
“I’m sorry, sir,” Nurse Cherry interrupted. “I have to respectfully decline your kind offer.”
Two days later Dr. Mosdell dipped his pen in an inkwell and began a letter to the Honourable A. Barnes, the Colonial Secretary in St. John’s. He wrote:
On board Relief Ship
