‘Chocolate’s your favourite, Mam,’ Emmett says as he slides onto a wooden chair. ‘Winny never had cake before, so she can’t have a favourite.’
Thomas sets down his beer beside the other empty bottles and, picking up a knife, winks at his son as he leans over to cut the cake. ‘He’s got you there, Ellie Mae.’
Agnes sets a stack of her late mother-in-law’s best Royal Winton dessert plates on the table with several silver forks. ‘And what do you think you’re doing, Thomas? We haven’t sung ‘Happy Birthday’ yet.’
Staring at his mother, he places a hand on her forehead. Agnes pushes his hand away. ‘What in the name of all that’s holy do you think you’re doing?’
‘You don’t have a fever, so it’s not that. Did you fall, Mam? A cake and ‘Happy Birthday’? You never made me a cake, nor even Emmy here. Ellie always has to go over to Martha Fizzard’s to bake Emmy’s cake ’cause you hide the cake tins on her.’
Agnes glares at Ellie. ‘She said that, did she? She couldn’t find a fly if it was on her nose. I never hid anything.’
‘You gots more lip than a coal bucket, b’y,’ Ephraim says as he twists the top off his fourth bottle of Agnes’s beer. ‘You’re goin’ to make her right binicky.’
‘Boys don’t needs cake. Spoils them for no reason.’ Agnes leans over and chucks Winny under her chin. ‘Little girls is different, isn’t that right, Winny?’
‘I knows the words to ‘Happy Birthday’,’ Emmett says as he hands the forks out to the others. ‘Mrs Perkins taught us. She makes marshmallow squares when it’s someone’s birthday at school. She lets us choose the colour. I always chooses blue ’cause no one else’ll eats them ’cept me.’ Emmett eyes the double-height cake with its glistening icing and licks his lips. ‘Mam, I has a present for Winny.’
‘Do you, Emmy?’
Emmett roots around in his trouser pocket and pulls out a wood carving of a long-coated dog the size of his hand. He pushes it along the table to his mother. ‘It’s a Newfoundland dog. Like Mr Boyd’s.’
Ellie picks up the wooden dog. ‘That’s really an excellent carving, Emmy. It looks just like Thumper.’ She holds it out to Thomas. ‘Doesn’t it, Thomas? Look like Jim Boyd’s dog?’
Thomas takes the carving and squints as he inspects it. ‘Where’d you learn to do this, son?’
The boy shrugs. ‘Dunno. I just does it.’
Thomas whistles. ‘Well, aren’t you the clever clogs.’
‘Don’t you be fillin’ his head with slop, Thomas,’ Agnes says as she fishes the stub of a pink candle out of her apron pocket. ‘Put that on the cake, Emmy, then we’ll all sing ‘Happy Birthday’ and you can cuts the cake. You can pretends it’s your birthday cake, too.’
***
Thomas pulls on his yellow oilskin jacket, grabs his crutch and heads for the screen door.
Ellie sets the dirty dishes in the soapy sink water. ‘Where are you going? It’s getting late.’
‘Just going down to the store to check the boat. She had a slow leak the other day that I fixed up with some pitch.’
‘You’re not taking her out now, are you?’
‘Just for a quick run down to the lighthouse to check she’s tight. We’ve gots to get out early tomorrow before the big factory trawlers turns up. They sucks up more fish in a day then all of us b’ys here does in a month. Sun won’t be down till close to ten. There’s a good couple of hours yet.’
Emmett takes his yellow rain jacket off the coat hook by the door. ‘Can I come too, Da’?’
‘Sure, son. High time you learned about boats.’
‘But Thomas, it’s almost his bedtime. He’s only nine.
‘I was on the boat with my dad when I was eight. Time for him to learn the family business.’ Thomas grabs a couple of beer bottles out of the new refrigerator, and stuffs them into his jacket pockets.
‘My son isn’t going to be a fisherman.’
‘Something wrong with being a fisherman, maid? Maybe you wished you’d married a chocolate salesman instead?’
‘Thomas!’
‘It’s the truth, isn’t it, Ellie Mae? Don’t I knows you fell in love with a solider in a sharp uniform, and ended up the wife of a piss-poor fisherman at the back of beyond? Don’t I knows you should have had better? Don’t you knows I’ve been tryin’ to make it better for you?’
‘Thomas? What’s got into you?’
He taps his forehead with his hand. ‘I’m up to here in debt to Jim Boyd and Rod Fizzard. How’d you think you gots the fridge? And all the paint in from St John’s so I could paint you the colourful house you wanted? We has to get out fishin’ longer hours, and Dad’s not so young anymore. It’s all I can thinks to do is to get Emmy helpin’.’
‘Thomas—’
Thomas gestures to Emmett. ‘C’mon, son.’
‘Our son’s not going to be a fisherman, Thomas.’
The screen door slams, bouncing on its sprung hinges until it slowly settles back into its frame.
***
Thomas peers through the window of the bridge of the small boat and steers through the water towards the silhouette of the lighthouse on the cliff. The darkening sky is shot with streaks of yellow, red and orange, which reflect off the tops of the waves. Just like Ellie’s bakeapple and partridgeberry cobbler when she pulls it steaming hot from the oven, Thomas thinks.
He twists the cap off the second beer and takes a long gulp. He shouldn’t have set on to Ellie like that. He was lucky to have a woman like her. A lot of women would have hightailed it back to England before they learned what a scrunchion was. Jim Boyd’s cousin up in Baie Verte had just that happen to him. His Bristol bride had refused to get off the boat in Halifax when she saw the sight of it
