Far From Home Read online

  “There’s the Prospero,” Clarissa called excitedly, looking past a flock of snowbirds heading out over the ocean. A large schooner was sailing around the point on its way in to anchor in the basin of St. Anthony Harbour. Flags were flying from its spars; smoke from its funnels drifted into the blue sky. The ship was bringing passengers and goods, and maybe another orphan before the harbour closed for the winter. Clarissa had often heard The St. Anthony Band, as the husky dogs were called, answer the ship’s whistle with their wild, eerie howls.

  Clarissa dropped her crutches on the ground and settled on a fallen log. The stillness of the forest air hung softly around her face. Just then a leaf rustled and a bird’s song rang through the trees. A white-winged crossbill linnet hopped beneath a black spruce beside the veranda as if looking to gather seeds for its winter cache.

  Clarissa lifted her head and was sniffing the faint fragrance of Indian tea shrubs when Cora called from the Tea House, “Look what I found!” Clarissa gathered her crutches, stuck their crosspieces under her armpits and grabbed the handgrips. She made her way up the steps and into the house.

  Cora was down on her knees. Her straight, black hair, usually drawn from one side to the other and held with a barrette, hung over her. Beside her were broken boards and an opening in the floor. Cora looked up at Clarissa, her eyes popping.

  Clarissa eyed her cautiously. “Why are you puffing and blowing like a pothead whale?”

  Cora’s voice filled with wonder. “I’ve found an old box!” She leaned down, her hands moving quickly to wipe twigs and dried leaves off the brass surface. She straightened to pick up a stick lying on the floor. Then she tapped on the brass-overlaid box.

  Clarissa peeped down, puzzled. “It looks like it’s been here a long time.”

  “We were never up here this late in the year; leaves and grass likely hid it. But I can’t remember these boards being broken off. Anyway, look!” Cora leaned closer.

  Clarissa followed her look. “The box’s got scenes etched in brass and raised so that even a blind person can feel the picture and tell a story. There’s men, some standing and others sitting around a table. One man is drinking from a jug.”

  Cora tipped her head to her shoulder and squinted. “On the side there’s a crowd of men inside a place with brick walls and a fireplace with some jugs on a mantel above it. A crowd of ruffians drinking their pint and gambling – sure, that’s what it looks like to me.”

  “Well,” Clarissa said, “Peter did say his father told him yarns about an ancestor coming down from L’Anse aux Meadows on snowshoes after the rest of the Norsemen died off. If the man was a trapper and had a trapping path from here to over the hills, perhaps the box belonged to him or his relations.”

  Cora was sceptical. “There’s no Norsemen on it. Sure, there’d be horns.”

  “They didn’t all have horns; it was mostly the Viking warriors who had horns on their helmets,” Clarissa said quickly, remembering stories she had read. “Some of them wore caps like everyone else.”

  Cora hesitated. “I don’t know if I want to open the box. My mind’s splitting into wantin’ to and not wantin’ to open it.” She tightened her arms against her body and looked around. She whispered, “Someone could be watchin’ us. I want to let it be.”

  Clarissa shrugged. “A weasel or red fox might have us in its eyes. Most humans are a ways from here. We can cover the box until next summer and think about it, or next Saturday we could sneak away with a hammer and knock off the lock.”

  Cora recoiled, her blue eyes like two china platters. She whispered, “What if ’tis a fairy box?”

  “A fairy box!” Clarissa’s face screwed up in disdain. “I told you I don’t believe in fairies. I barely believe in imagining them.”

  The girls looked out through the open doorway; the sky was like an old man’s face overgrown with grey hair and a grey beard, one dull eye visible. The wind dallied in the air like a ghost. It grew stronger, moving its fingers through the fallen leaves.

  Cora shuddered. “I’m all abiver. Let’s go. It gets dark quick in the fall. We got to get down before Old Keziah finds us gone.” Old Keziah was the nickname the children stuck on Miss Elizabeth after she washed out their mouths with a hunk of lye soap.

  Cora ran outside and gathered an armful of fallen spruce branches. She hurried inside and dropped the branches as fast as she could over the box. Then she fitted the broken floorboards back in place as well as she could. Clarissa got up from her stoop reluctantly. She slipped her crutches into place, and the girls made their way down the Tea House steps.

  “Let’s not tell anyone about the box,” Clarissa said as they started down the hill. “It’s probably just an old box with nothing in it but rotting furs left by a trapper passing through.”

  “I won’t tell,” Cora promised, crossing her fingers.

  Clarissa tried to cross her fingers and lost her balance. She winced as her body hit the ground. And then she went tumbling down the steep hill until a tree stump stopped her wild roll. Cora came running with her crutches. Clarissa, dazed and trembling, hauled herself up on them. She looked herself up and down and asked nervously, “I’m not dirty, am I; I haven’t torn my clothes?”

  “You and your crutches can stand. There’s no harm done,” Cora assured her, letting out a sigh of relief. She quickly brushed twigs from Clarissa’s red sweater and grey gimp.

  They reached the castle, and Clarissa turned to go towards it.

  “’Tis best we didn’t stop,” Cora said cautiously.

  “Come on!” Clarissa urged. “I didn’t see anyone home on our way up the hill. We’ll look through another window.”

  “I don’t want to, but you can,” Cora challenged her.

  Clarissa leaned in to look through a small window, lifting her hand to wipe away the mist that came with her warm breath. She gasped! Mrs. Grenfell was sitting in a large chair beside a handsome cabinet chock full of books. Rosamond, her little girl, was kneeling on a white polar bear rug on the polished wooden floor. She held a toy chow chow, his black tongue hanging out in a pant. The mother and her little girl looked at each other and smiled.

  Mrs. Grenfell’s hands were likely as warm as wool when she tucked in her little girl at night after reading her stories, perhaps about her father, the famous doctor who had come from England to build a hospital and orphanage in this place so far from his home. She would likely have read the “Children’s Page” in Among The Deep Sea Fishers magazine to Rosamond. Clarissa loved the story of how the orphans got their new fireproof brick home. Grenfell Leaguers and friends in the United States, England and Canada had given money to buy bricks to build it. Clarissa stared so long and leaned so heavily against the window that she slipped. Her head bumped against the pane.

  “Hurry!” urged Cora. “If Old Keziah knows we’re bothering Mrs. Grenfell, she’ll keep us from our supper.”

  Just then Mrs. Grenfell’s face lifted as if to catch an autumn glow filtering through her window. Clarissa looked into her face. The woman got up, and Clarissa turned from the window. She had peeked enough. They had better get back to the orphanage. She was lifting her crutches over the dark brown earth to go down the path when she heard the door open. She turned her head. Mrs. Grenfell was smiling at her from the doorway.

  The woman crooked her finger, indicating that Clarissa and Cora should come inside. They wiped their feet on a braided mat and followed her down a hall, past a kitchen and into the room where Rosamond sat on the floor playing with her dog. Today was the first time Clarissa had seen her since she was a bare-gummed, bald-headed baby in her mother’s arms. Then, she had reminded Clarissa of the bald, old men who sat on the harbour wharf waiting for Dr. Grenfell’s hospital ship, the Strathcona, to sail into St. Anthony. Rosamond had grown into a beautiful child. Her face had a creamy china doll look; it was framed by a mass of long, dark, curly hair, not cropped to her neck like the hair of most of the orphanage girls.

  “You must not breathe on he
r,” cautioned Mrs. Grenfell after Cora let out a raspy cough. “I’ll get both of you a little something from the kitchen, and see how the cook is doing with the cracknels she’s frying for the doctor’s fish and brewis.” She sniffed the air and left.

  The girls stood nervously staring across the room at the little girl. When Mrs. Grenfell hurried back into the room, she gave the girls a glass of water and a molasses bun each. She smiled. “The cook made the buns this morning. They will give you energy for your walk down the hill. You had better eat them quickly. The cold weather is settling in; soon it will be a jacket colder. Snow, too, I am sure of it.” She looked through the window and frowned. “The sun dogs are flanking the sun. Bad weather is coming and the leaves have not all fallen.”

  The girls finished their buns and emptied their glasses, and Mrs. Grenfell nodded at them to leave. They laid their glasses on a small table and followed Mrs. Grenfell through the hall. She pushed open the big, dark door. Her goodbye smile followed the girls like sunshine.

  3

  A FORBIDDEN VISIT

  The girls made their way down Tea House Hill to Fox Farm Hill. Clarissa moved carefully through the knotted brush of the uneven path. “Someday,” she said, holding her head primly, “I am going to grow out of my paralysis and walk without crutches. I shall be a nurse and wear a black-striped white cap or a white veil. Later I shall get married and be a lady like Mrs. Grenfell and have beautiful children.”

  Clarissa was not going to marry a doctor. The plight of other people was always tugging on the minds of doctors, taking them away from their families. Sometimes they risked their lives. Dr. Grenfell went adrift on an ice pan in 1908 and almost died, even though he was called a man of whipcord sinew and wire nerves. He killed Spy, Watch and Moody, three of his beloved dogs, and used their hides to keep him warm and save his life. Everyone knew that story.

  Cora sighed. “I don’t know about gettin’ married. If men come from the likes of orphanage boys, I’d just as soon keep my distance. I just want to grow up – to be past my mother’s shoulder. Even when I’m on my tippytoes, grownups never hear me. Anyway, ’tis no good to write the future in the air.”

  “It’s getting colder,” Clarissa said, looking up. “I can see the sun dogs Mrs. Grenfell spoke about – dusty arcs of rainbow bringing bad weather.”

  Cora let out a squeal and tipped up her head. She poked out her tongue to catch a snowflake, her pale face flushing. The first snow of the year was tumbling down in a shower of tiny, silver stars.

  The sun became a dusty face drawn behind grey whiskers of cloud, and the October wind that had begun to stir when the girls were on Tea House Hill now cut them like a whip. Clarissa’s crutches wavered in its gusts as she trudged over the light snow. The exertion of climbing and descending the steep hill had left a jangled torment inside her limbs. She was glad to reach the base of the path.

  By the side of the road at the bottom of the path was a shack. A quarter moon was painted on the door, as if the people inside liked the moon so much they wanted to see it day and night all year. On a piece of board nailed to the side of the shack was an admonition in black, clumsy-looking letters: “Don’t spit!” Clarissa had seen the same sign posted on a lot of houses and shacks. Some older men had a fashion of chewing baccy and spitting it on the ground or into the wind. They didn’t seem to pay any attention to the signs. Many of them couldn’t read them.

  “Let’s lean against the shack for a minute,” Clarissa said in a tired voice.

  Cora nodded and followed her off the road. Clarissa pressed her back against the small building, careful not to bang her head on the iron frying pan hanging on a rusty nail.

  “We’ve got to get to the orphanage,” Cora urged. She tried to mimic the tone Miss Elizabeth would use if she found out they had stopped at the shack. “I forbid you to stop at any house in the harbour. You never know what germs you might bring back to infect us all.”

  They turned quickly as the door creaked open. A white-faced, anguished-looking woman in a dark dress under a worn and stained frilled-neck apron, spoke in a flat, thin voice: “I didn’t hear the twiddle of the pin in me door latch. Come in, why don’t yer.” The girls followed her inside the small, single-room house. Clarissa’s breath caught in her throat as she stepped inside and spied a pail of slops under a bench nailed against a wall. A small child sat beside the pail, sucking on a dried, ragged caplin. The fish’s head, with its dull and beady eyes, hung out of the boy’s mouth.

  Clarissa smiled at the child and moved towards the tepid warmth of a square stove with little feet. It was cracked and had a long chain wrapped around it, keeping it together beneath a long funnel that pierced the low roof. She imagined the stove falling apart, and a tongue of fire leaping to grab at the line of clothes above her head, and then devouring the whole family.

  Clarissa noticed a framed portrait of the late Queen Victoria, white-veiled, heavy-eyed and tight-lipped, hanging on the wall of the shack. She thought: The queen wouldn’t have been amused to know her likeness was hanging in a shack. Inside the glass, the painting had swelled from the dampness seeping through the hole it covered. Up close, the distortion almost gave the queen a smile.

  Clarissa looked at a man sitting on a stool with a wool sock on one foot and another wool sock on a stump of leg. His face, the colour of an old penny, was drenched with sweat and grime under a shabby Cape Ann. A TD clay pipe leaned out over his lip, dragging it down to his whiskered chin. The old man dropped the pipe into his hand, leaving his bloodless lips half open as he looked at Clarissa and Cora without greeting them.

  The woman who had invited them inside straightened her dark, heavy clothes and wiped her forehead with a hand that looked scalded and dried; her fingers were scrawny as pickled caplin. “Youse be from der orphanage, I can tell by yer dress,” she said. “The Doctor is highly learned, he is. You’m lucky to be in hese care.”

  “And glad to be,” Clarissa answered, surprised at her words. She knew that the orphanage, with its bright electric lights and running cold and hot water, was the envy of poor people in the harbour. Missus Frances often reminded the children that the Grenfell Mission had been kind enough to give them a warm and clean refuge. They were better dressed and better nourished than many of the local people.

  A little girl lay curled on a barrel chair under a pile of mouldy-looking rags. She called weakly, “Mammy.” Then she started hiccuping hard enough to shake her thin body.

  “Here, Child,” the woman said, lifting a wooden ladle from a bucket to the little girl’s lips. “Nine glutches of water down yer throat ’ll take care of dem hiccups.” The girl slurped nine times.

  The woman turned and pulled a worn flannel barrow down over the child’s head and tucked it around her tiny feet. The girl grabbed the edge of her mother’s stained white apron and sucked on it – mucus dribbling from her nose like a raw egg. Esther, a girl who used to come to school, stood in a corner looking embarrassed. Clarissa could see she was puffed up in her middle. Esther wasn’t smiling, and her thin fingers twirled a lock of dark, greasy hair. She knew what other children in the harbour knew: boys and girls raised in the orphanage would get an education. Esther was smart, even though she came to school for only half days; her soft brown eyes would light up like the polished glass of a lamp whenever she got her sums right. The other half of the day, Jack, her brother, came to school to learn figuring. He told the school ma’am: “I don’t want to be cheated by the merchant whose youngsters always got the smell of new clothes on ’em. Otherwise, learning t’ings I don’t need to know is a waste of good earnin’ time.”

  A woman, wrapped in a torn blanket, lay on a sack mattress on a frame beside a wall. A hole in one of her knitted leggings showed a bit of scabby, white leg above a bandaged foot. She was so thin and old-looking that wrinkles seemed to have fallen out of her face into her neck. When she moved to sit up, the girls noticed spots on her face.

  “She’s going to die soon,” Cora whispered.
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  “How do you know?” Clarissa whispered back.

  “You can tell by looking at her face. It’s started to spoil – gone mildewy.”

  “People’s faces don’t spoil.”

  Cora shrugged, and the woman who had let them in asked sharply, “Don’t der mistresses at dat cracker box tell yers dat whisperin’ is der same as crackin’ lies?”

  “But we’re not telling lies!” Clarissa insisted.

  “Then speak it out.”

  The girls looked at each other. Cora said quickly, “We gotta go.”

  “Yes,” Clarissa added, “we had better be going. Thanks for letting us get warm.” She moved across the hard clay floor. Cora quickly opened the door, letting in a blow of cold, fresh air.

  The woman put her hand on Clarissa’s shoulder. “Sure, you stepped over der back stock of a gun. You better step right back or ’twill be bad luck in yer days ahead.”

  “’Tis best not to leave der gun on der floor,” the old man called as Clarissa lifted her crutches to step back over the gun and go around it.

  “Dat it is, den,” the woman said, nodding; she glared at the man. She reached down and picked up the gun.

  Clarissa had heard that the woman was given to charming. She turned back and asked impulsively, “Can you charm someone’s life so it can be as they want it to be?”

  The woman’s sharp eyes lifted, seeming to travel. Then she turned and looked at Clarissa. “Take a piece of bark from a tree and carve yer wish in it, then leave it under yer bed. But never expect anything to be exactly.”

  Clarissa nodded. “We may come back again.”

  “So do,” the woman answered with a yellow-toothed smile. From the stool the man called after them: “Meeami Abashish.”

  Cora called back, “Goodbye for a little while to you, too.”

  The snow had stopped but the sky was low and grey. Clarissa was happy to be moving away from a home so different from the large, tidy orphanage.