Galore - Michael Crummey [121]
Soon enough, all the shore would hear of her would come from newspaper reports of her performances in the great opera houses of Europe, the London papers referring to her as the Northern Pearl, as the Nightingale of Paradise. The early letters would trickle off to occasional postcards and even that callous dismissal of their place in her life would seem inevitable and understandable. They would all remember her as she was at Obediah’s funeral, when she made their grief seem regal and glorious, when she still belonged to them alone.
On the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, Dr. Newman gathered the work crews in front of the cathedral’s main doors for a final photograph. One hundred and forty-seven men sitting on the steps of the building that was only days from completion, Eli in the back row beside Azariah Trim. Father Reddigan spoke to the doctor as the men wandered back to their work, asking for a print that could be framed and hung in the church.
No one could say who first took note of the anomaly and some who examined the picture in the vestibule dismissed the notion altogether. It was just a trick of shadow and light and wishful thinking, Newman said. But most swore they could see the dead man in the back row, his features indistinct but recognizable. Obediah staring out between the faces of Az and Eli. One hundred and forty-eight men on the steps of the cathedral they’d raised. Father Reddigan set a candle beneath the photograph that was lit all through Advent and there was a steady stream of visitors to see Obediah and bless themselves or whisper a prayer.
Eli had been at the foot of the scaffold when Obediah fell and he helped lift the shattered corpse into a cart. Every night since the accident the man appeared in Eli’s dreams with his marionette limbs akimbo, his broken jaw flapping uselessly east and west. The thought of Obediah standing beside him whole and unharmed seemed a ridiculous notion, but it was too great a temptation to resist in the end. He went to the cathedral just after dawn on Tibb’s Eve, hoping to find the place deserted. But Hannah Blade was there, standing at the photograph. He was about to slip out the door when she noticed him, backing away from the picture quickly, feeling caught out.
—Give you a fright, he said.
Hannah still had no man of her own. Eli heard of one or two fellows coming round to see her before Magdalen died but it seemed settled afterwards that she’d look out to her widowed father and wind up alone.
—First time in to see it? he asked.
—I been in a few mornings, she said.
Eli nodded. —Is it him there, do you think?
—Father will be wanting his breakfast, she said and she went by him with her head down.
—Say me to John, Eli called after her. He watched her awhile before he let the door close, turning toward the photograph across the vestibule, the candle alight beneath it. And without taking a step nearer it came clear to him why Hannah had been there. He leaned on the door, knocking his head against the wood, as if he might clear his mind of the realization.
He left without looking at the picture, making his way to Selina’s House and walking to the workshop Tryphie had set up in an old barn. There was a forge at one end, benches along the other cluttered with tools and wood and metal, jars of screws and nails, blueprints and sheets of paper littered with sketches and dimensions. Tryphie’s two half-brothers were both practicing physicians, one working on the Labrador coast and the other in Montreal, which made it easier for Newman to accept Tryphie’s refusal to attend medical school. He eked a living from a stream of royal patents for new and improved wrenches, new and improved school desks, new and improved can openers, new and improved acetylene lighthouse lamps. Tryphie also made a few dollars as a carpenter, building small boats and puncheon tubs and other odds and ends. But all that activity was simply a way to avoid destitution. He devoted every moment he could afford to the fanciful creatures churned up by the endlessly