When Phonse reached the door, he pushed it open, calling, “Lucille? I got the new teacher here. I expect she’s wore out from the journey.” As he heaved my bags inside, a stout woman in a floral apron and slippers appeared: Lucille Hanrahan, my boarding house lady.
“Phonse, my son, bring them bags upstairs for me now,” she said.
I said I would take them but Lucille shooed me into the hall, practically flapping her tea towel at me. “No, girl,” she said. “You must be dropping, all the way down from Canada. Let’s get some grub in you before you goes over to the school to see Mr. Donovan.”
Patrick Donovan, the school principal, had interviewed me over the phone. I was eager to meet him.
“Oh, did he call?” I asked.
“No.”
Lucille smoothed her apron over her belly, then called up the stairs to ask Phonse if he wanted a cup of tea. There was a slow beat of heavy boots coming down. “I’ll not stop this time,” said Phonse. “But Lucille, that fence needs seeing to.”
Lucille batted her hand at him. “Go way with you,” she said. “It’s been falling down these twenty years or more.” But as she showed him out, they talked about possible repairs, the two of them standing outside, pointing and gesturing, oblivious to the falling rain.
A lump of mud fell from my sneaker, and I sat down on the bottom step to remove my shoes. When Lucille returned, she grabbed the pair, clacked them together outside the door to remove the remaining mud, then lined them up beside a pair of sturdy ankle boots.
I followed her down the hall to the kitchen, counting the curlers that dotted her head, pink outposts in a field of black and grey.
“Sit down over there, luh,” she said, gesturing towards a table and chairs shoved against the back window. I winced at her voice; it sounded like the classic two-pack-a-day rasp.
The fog had thickened, so nothing was visible outside; it was like watching static on TV. There were scattered cigarette burns on the vinyl tablecloth and worn patches on the linoleum floor. A religious calendar hung on the wall, a big red circle around today’s date. September’s pin-up was Mary, her veil the exact colour of Lucille’s house. I was deep in Catholic territory, all right. I hoped I could still pass for one.
“Do you have other boarders?” I asked.
“I only takes one at a time,” said Lucille. “You’re the first mainlander.”
A steady heat emanated from the wood stove and the smell of freshly baked bread almost masked the odour of stale cigarettes. Lucille dropped a tea bag into a mug, lifted a large kettle and splashed in boiling water. Then she plonked the mug in front of me, along with a can of evaporated milk. I’d seen it in grocery stores, but never tasted it.
“You take sugar?”
I shook my head, then, following Lucille’s lead, dribbled the canned milk into my mug. I took a cautious sip, wincing at the sickly sweet taste.
“Too hot, is it?” asked Lucille.
I nodded.
She sliced into a thick, white loaf of bread and my stomach growled in harmony. Then she pushed a jar of homemade blueberry jam and a tub of margarine towards me before sitting down and lighting a cigarette, turning her head to blow the smoke away. The familiar gesture and the smell of smoke were like a slap in the face. It was too soon after Dad’s death. But this was Lucille’s house, and she didn’t know about Dad, so I swallowed my outrage, washing it down with the tea.
I was on my second slice of bread when Lucille said, “I s’pose you heard what happened to the last French teacher?”
“No.”
Her lips tightened for a moment, then she said, “She run off with the priest.”
“What?” I might be a lapsed Catholic, but a priest running off with a parishioner will always be good gossip. I needed all the details, if only to share them with Sheila when next we spoke.
But Lucille pushed herself up from the table and said it was time I headed into school. “Besides you as the new teacher,” she said, reaching for my plate, “we got a new priest in the bargain. Don’t be getting any notions about him, now, he’s the back end of sixty.”
I opened my mouth, ready to swear to a lack of interest in any man of the cloth, no matter what his age, then shut it again when Lucille winked at me.
As I drove to the school, I couldn’t stop thinking about the runaway priest. No wonder Patrick Donovan had grilled me on my Catholic background during our telephone interview. He’d started by emphasizing the importance of faith for teachers in Catholic schools. Then he said, “Are you a practising arsey?”
“Pardon?”
“R.C. Roman Cat’lic.”
I had crossed my fingers behind my back before answering. “Baptized and confirmed. I attended Catholic schools and my father taught in a Catholic high school for thirty years.”
I hadn’t directly answered his question, but I hadn’t outright lied either. While he carried on talking about the vacant teaching position, I’d walked over to the kitchen bookshelf, the telephone cord uncurling behind me. I flicked through the worn pages of Dad’s old atlas and found the map of Canada. I traced the route from Toronto to Kingston, then Montreal, and on to Quebec City—the farthest east I’d ever been. My index finger splashed into the St. Lawrence Seaway and drifted over to Newfoundland, the tenth province and a place I’d never much contemplated, beyond the tired old jokes: “The world will end at ten o’clock, ten thirty in Newfoundland.”
Now I was actually in Newfoundland and on my way to meet the man who’d brought me here. The gang of teens was gone from MJ’s takeout and few people
