Annabel - Kathleen Winter [19]
The minister’s name was Julian Taft — such an English name. He had a square little face, and his body, hidden under his white robe, had no curves. The thought popped into Jacinta’s mind, He is made of wood. He is a little wooden minister. Part of her was glad he could not see into her heart. He did not know her baby’s secret, just as he did not know the secrets of anyone in Croydon Harbour. He could not see into the past, nor could he see into the future. He did not know her baby had undergone an operation at the hospital in Goose Bay, or that Jacinta’s friend Eliza would begin her affair with the geography teacher after the next community garden party, or that he himself would fall in love with the same Eliza in a couple of years’ time, after the geography teacher had temporarily moved to Assumption High on the Burin Peninsula. So it stood to reason, Jacinta hoped and prayed, that the little wooden minister would not see into the present either. She wondered at his purple scarf, the gold thread in the cloth, the stiffness of him, the royalty of the textiles and the perpendicular drape of them.
But now here they were, she and Treadway and the baby Wayne, and the whole little community gathered, somehow believing in the minister’s ability to bless them. Jacinta wanted there to be a different church: a yellow house with blue sills and an open door. She wanted a big woman to own the house, to be inside it. A woman who would not turn to page 254 of the Book of Common Prayer and recite, “Dearly beloved, forasmuch as all men are conceived and born in sin . . .” What kind of words were these to start off a baby’s life? She knew Treadway had no part in the words, yet he was here. Everyone in the harbour was here, light from the windows falling on their heads and darkness inside the church making everything but the lit-up sides and tops of their faces invisible. It was dark in here, and the minister was made of wood, and sunlight blazed and could blind you outside the open door, where freedom lay so bright and frightening.
After the service, Jacinta, Treadway, the uncles and aunts, and Thomasina moved to the font, and Reverend Taft asked the parents to name the child.
“Wayne,” Treadway said.
It’s the last moment, Jacinta thought, of my daughter’s existence. She looked at the door. Where was her little girl in a sunlit dress? Run to me, quick! But the door was empty. Jacinta closed her eyes and spoke to Isis in the cathedral window in St. John’s. Not Mary. Isis, whose son, Horus, was both child and falcon.
“I baptize you” — Julian Taft took cold water and drew a cross on the baby’s forehead — “Wayne Blake.”
Thomasina stood behind Julian Taft in her choir robe, her breast grazing his shoulder, her breath in his ear, and whispered.
Julian Taft knew how to keep his lips motionless and his voice so low only Thomasina could discern it. He concealed his real voice from the people with great skill. “What did you say?”
With skill greater than his, Thomasina whispered, “Annabel,” so low he could not hear. Thomasina believed there was power in a name.
The name Annabel settled on the child as quietly as pollen alongside the one bestowed by Treadway.
Part Two
6
Meat Cakes
THOMASINA AND TREADWAY BOTH, from the beginning, treated Wayne as a person, not a baby. Jacinta took Wayne in his carriage to have toast with Thomasina on her little back deck. While Jacinta dipped the toast in milk and fed it to Wayne, Thomasina showed him the difference between coltsfoot and dandelion. She put quartz in his hand and let him hold it glittering in the sun, then a piece of labradorite.
“See,” Thomasina told him, “you can see