Galore - Michael Crummey [152]
—Did he hear something about Abel?
—I don’t know what’s wrong. I was thinking you might want to go look in on him.
Hannah shook her head. —I can’t be the one to do that, she said.
Tryphie looked up at the ceiling and nodded.
He could see snow still drifted up the side of the house as he crossed the garden, a footpath kicked through to the front bridge. He leaned in and called, closing the door behind him when he got no answer. The fire had guttered to ashes and he stoked it up against the chill in the air. —I’m making meself a cup of tea, he shouted. He reached for the kettle where it sat on a small table beside the stove and startled at the sight of Coaker’s portrait above it, as if it were someone flesh and blood in the room with him. —Jesus loves the little children, Tryphie whispered. It occurred to him that Eli could be lying dead up there and he forced himself to climb the stairs. Found him on the bed in Abel’s room.
—Hello Ladybug.
—You just come up from St. John’s, did you?
—Went through Port Union, he said, on the way along.
—Everything all right down there?
—How about that tea? Eli said.
Tryphie left an hour later without learning the first thing about what was troubling Eli. He packed the firebox with wood, thinking Eli didn’t have it in him to keep a bit of heat in the house. —You know where to find me, he said, you needs anything.
Eli didn’t get out of the chair to see Tryphie off. He sat and watched the portrait beside the chimney, half a mug of tea gone cold in his lap. He’d been held up in St. John’s a week after Coaker left for Port Union and wired to say he would stop in on his way to Paradise Deep. Spent half an hour on the wharf when he disembarked to make the rounds, poking his head in at the office to shake hands and ask after this or that project. He walked up past the rows of union houses to the residence Coaker had built for himself. It was the only touch of ostentation in the town, a turret and gabled windows, a sun porch screened in at the back. Coaker had packed the rooms with lavish furnishings and every time Eli came through he found some new addition—a woolen rug from one of the union’s European fish buyers, chairs from Harrods in London, a South American dining table, Italian statues. Not a soul begrudged it to him, seeing he’d built the union and the town from nothing.
The Bungalow was the only house in Port Union where people knocked before entering and a youngster answered the door. Eli had seen him once or twice on the waterfront, Bailey he thought the name was. His hair combed back from a high forehead, wool coat and tie and a high starched collar. He couldn’t be more than eighteen, Eli guessed. A mouth to make the angels jealous. —Uncle Will said to expect you, the boy told him.
There was an orphan’s look about him, Eli thought, a hint of want so sullen it was almost predatory. He could hear Coaker’s gramophone in the parlor, the music seeping past the boy into the open air.
—He’s having a little lie-down, the boy said. —You can come in and wait if you like.
Eli considered that a moment before he said, Tell Mr. Coaker I stopped by.
He heard the door close as he walked down the long concrete walkway to the road and he stopped there, still trying to take in what he’d seen in the youngster’s face. One more exotic trinket added to the Bungalow’s comforts. Two men wandered along the path and they nodded to him there, courteous and a little wary. He could see them shake their heads when they’d gone past, as if the new arrangements at the Bungalow mystified them, though they couldn’t begrudge Mr. Coaker even that.
Tryphie came by a second time two days later, standing just inside the door to tell Eli that Allied lines across the Western Front were overrun by a German offensive. Fifty killed in the Newfoundland Regiment, another sixteen unaccounted for, though the names of the dead and missing weren’t known. Eli stood from his chair and picked up his coat lying on the green leather chesterfield. —I’ll walk you back, he said.
They didn’t speak until Eli dropped Tryphie