Galore - Michael Crummey [83]
Lazarus was at the door when Mary Tryphena said, What does Judah think of Henley going with you?
He smiled at her, embarrassed to have the issue addressed so squarely. —Jude’s not saying one way or the other.
—Patrick will watch out to Henley if he goes, she said. And she nodded at her son, as if he might need to be encouraged in the undertaking.
—All right, Lazarus said.
Patrick settled the child on the daybed when Lazarus left, a straw pillow as a guard to keep him from rolling off the edge. He asked for the tea he’d turned down earlier and sat in the chair Laz had just vacated. Mary Tryphena puttered with cups and sugar and then leaned over the youngster to see if he needed changing. —You’re upset, she said to Patrick.
—I’m not upset, he said.
But there was no disguising the whiff, that telltale mark of his father rising up in him. —Don’t lie to me, Patrick Devine.
—Henley don’t know his arse from a hole in the wall, he said.
—Well if you haven’t got it in you to look out for your own flesh.
—Jesus Mother, he’s liable to get killed down there. Why are you taking his side in this?
Mary Tryphena couldn’t say, other than Henley needed someone to take his side where the men were concerned. Patrick was fifteen when Henley was born, old enough to do the math. He’d married Druce Trock at eighteen to get out of the house, to put that distance between himself and the truth about his brother, building a house on the edge of the Little Garden.
—You didn’t put the idea in his head to come? Patrick asked her.
Mary Tryphena looked into her lap. —I’m not that spiteful, she said.
Two hundred local men and boys loaded their gear and provisions aboard a Sellers vessel bound for the Labrador in mid-May. The clergy offered prayers to bless the summer’s enterprise before the men rowed out to the ship at anchor in a steady drizzle. Henley facing the ocean as he went, not so much as lifting a hand in farewell.
The American doctor was there to witness the exodus, shaking hands and trading stories and offering medical advice among the crowd. Mary Tryphena was at the waterfront with Bride and the baby, and Newman made a point of stopping to see them. He held his namesake in the air a moment, as if guessing his weight, before settling him back in his mother’s arms. —He’s as fat as a calf, he said.
Absalom and Levi Sellers were on the docks to oversee the loading of provisions and Mary Tryphena watched them discreetly. Levi stood with his hands on his hips, saying something to Absalom over his shoulder and gesturing out at the vessel where Henley clambered aboard with the rest of the Devines. Absalom staring off in that direction, his head weaving slightly. He turned to the crowd then, searching faces, and Mary Tryphena looked away to avoid him.
The rest of the month and the whole of June was relentless drizzle and fog. The women spent their time clearing the Big Garden of stones turned up by the winter’s frost and hauling in capelin and seaweed to fertilize the soil. Bride badgered Patrick’s wife and daughter into attending the Methodist services and they took to the faith like ducks to water, Druce and Martha converted by the time the potatoes were set. The three of them singing the seeds into the ground together.
It was gone the end of July before Absalom came to see her, though she’d been expecting him every day since the men left for Labrador. Mary Tryphena alone with Bride’s infant child while the other women were at Sunday evening service. He pushed the front door open just enough to peer inside.
—Come in if you’re coming, she said impatiently.
Absalom set his walking stick against a chair but refused to sit down, leaning to one side to favor the worst of his knees. He’d been a legendary walker in his prime, earned the nickname Mr. Gallery for the miles he covered on the