“Did you notice that woman, Herbert?” Nan said. “I wonder why she’s crying?”
But Herbert, weighed down by the weight in his stomach, didn’t answer. He rushed into the village with his wife. In the moonlight their eyes took in the destruction along the waterfront: the wrecked stages, stores, gears, traps, and boats. Herbert could form no words. Not even the sight of the wave action in Lamaline had prepared him for this. He grabbed Nan’s elbow and turned up toward their home.
Nan’s brother, Chesley, met them at the gate. Nan saw that he was alone.
“Where are the children?” she screamed.
“They’re safe. They’re with mother on the hill,” he answered quickly. “I brought them up and came back here to meet you.”
Nan’s body went soft. She hardly heard Chesley explain how he barely had time to get the children to their grandmother’s house on high land. Her heart ached for them. She had to see them. She turned to Herbert. “Let’s go to the children,” she said.
“You can’t go, Nan,” Chesley said. “The bridge across the brook is gone.”
Herbert saw the wetness in his wife’s eyes. “You stay here with Chesley and I’ll go get the children,” he said.
Nan let out a heavy sigh. She went inside to put the kettle on. Even though Chesley told her there had been no damage to the house, she wanted to check for herself. She wondered if Jessie and David’s children were all right.
An hour earlier, eight-year-old Ruby Hillier, Nan and Herbert’s daughter, had been doing her homework at the kitchen table. Her brothers Leslie and Lawson sat alongside her: ten-year-old Leslie doing his sums and five- year-old Lawson doodling on a slate. Their uncle Chesley had already put the baby to bed.
All of a sudden Ruby heard a thunderous noise, not unlike the one that had accompanied the earth tremor earlier that evening. Ruby jumped up from her chair and ran to the window where she raised the blind and peered into the dusk. She blinked at the sight that greeted her; it was a white mass tumbling toward her house.
“Oh my!” Ruby cried. “Look at the sheep!”
She was stunned at how fast they were moving. They were half way up the meadow across the road from their house.
Chesley joined his niece at the window.
“I don’t believe they’re sheep,” he said as it dawned on him that his niece had mistaken the foamy whitecaps of the huge waves for sheep. Moments later sea water surrounded the Hillier home.
Then the general panic began. From outside, Ruby heard a roar. Chesley ran into the back bedroom to fetch baby Cyril. With the child in his left arm, Chesley shooed Ruby and the boys out the door. The little group stopped dead at the front door; the porch was filled with frigid water. They stepped gingerly over it and managed to keep their feet dry. Then they rushed up the hill, Uncle Chesley looking behind constantly. He feared another wall of water was on its way.
Near the top of the hill, they met their grandfather, whose face was wet with tears.
“Grandpa, what’s wrong?” Ruby asked. “What’s the matter?”
The old man didn’t answer, but Chesley said, “I don’t know. I suppose he’s confused.”
When the group reached the safety of the high ground, Ruby looked at the village below. It was empty of people, all of whom had rushed to the top of the hill. But the little girl’s face whitened at what she saw. The harbour was blocked with broken boats, stages and flakes that had crashed into the water, and houses that the giant wave had torn down. On top of the hill old Mrs. Walsh stood making the sign of the cross. Her family was gathered around her, intoning the “Hail Marys” of the rosary. Three-yearold Magdalen Walsh sat at her grandmother’s feet; the child was wet to her hips with sea water.
“I’ll never forget this sight,” Ruby told her older brother, Leslie. “I wonder if anyone died.”
Leslie said nothing but bit his bottom lip in response.
7
As Herbert Hillier made his way up the hill to make sure his four children were safe he made one gasp after another at the destruction that greeted him. Where his father-in-law Henry’s house had stood, there was now a barren space. Herbert stopped in his tracks and looked around; Henry’s stage was gone, too, and so was his store. Even the old man’s fence had disappeared. Herbert was gobsmacked. Henry had lived in that house as long as anyone could remember, for most, if not all, of his sixty-eight years and now there was no evidence that it had even existed.
The hairs on Herbert’s head rose and his body shook. Then his legs began moving again. He had to get up the hill to make sure the children were all right. But then he was struck with a horrific thought: where was Henry? Had he gone to the Temperance meeting that had been planned for this evening? He usually did, he was an active member. And where was Lizzie, Henry’s wife? She was Jessie’s mother, too, and Jessie had left the children with her for the night. Herbert shuddered now as he thought of Jessie and her husband, David Hipditch, racing through the darkness from the Orange Lodge meeting in Lamaline to Point au Gaul.
He plodded on with fear in every step. When he reached his mother’s house he threw the door open to hear wailing. He ran inside and flashed his eyes around to take in each of his children. He let out a whoosh of air when he saw them all, safe and warm. But the tears…
“Nan and Jessie’s mother is dead,” said his own mother. “Washed away.”
“Grandma is gone!” Ruby cried.
“But that’s not the worst of it,” old Mrs. Hillier wailed. “Jessie’s three children are gone.”
Herbert couldn’t move.
“What? The three of them?” he said. “Gone?”
“The three of them, swept away,” his mother answered. “Thomas, Henry, and Elizabeth, the baby that she was still nursing.”
Ruby emitted a great sob.
“What are we going to do, Daddy?” she cried.
Her father’s tongue was thick.
“Well,” he said finally, “we’re going to go home to your mother and help her and Aunt Jessie out.”
He went to the porch to fetch his children’s winter clothes.
Then he turned back to his mother.
“Is Henry all right?” he asked. “Did Henry get swept away too?”
“Well, that’s the only bit of good news,” came the reply. “He was at the Temperance meeting so he’s alive.”
Herbert nodded, though his heart was no lighter.
“Herbert,” his mother said. “There’s more, though.”
Herbert tilted his head in her direction. What else could there possibly be after the disaster of all disasters that had befallen Jessie and David?
“Young Irene is dead, too,” his mother said. “She was down visiting her grandmother, as you know, and she got swept away with her little cousins.”
“Good God,” said Herbert as he envisioned another of Nan’s nieces, the daughter of her other sister, Jemima. “How old was she again?”
“She was eleven,” his mother answered. “Jemima will go mad. Irene was her only daughter with all those boys. Point au Gaul will never be the same after this, Herbert.”
“No,” Herbert said as his children put on their boots. “No.”
Ruby sniffled as she thought of Irene drowning. Irene used to sit behind her in school. The girl was her favourite cousin.
“We’d best get home,” her father said, placing his hand on her shoulder.
“Good night, children,” their only living grandmother called. “God bless you.”
Nan’s grip on her tea cup was tight while she waited for the children. Chesley paced the living room. He
