Chapter Sixteen

Tonight, Harrington Harbour.

I sprang out of bed at the thought. My long return journey was coming to an end. These last days since visiting the Foremans had, if anything, put me in fine fettle: I must have trekked a good halfway on my rackets. Heavy snows came and went as expected, and after each storm, I had to break a trail at the head of my reduced team. Two or three nights I did sleep out of doors, finding shelter among spruce trees or once, even nestling down in a snowdrift at the base of some high rock. The snow, I found out, makes a wonderful insulator. Last night, I slept the soundest of them all.

At first, I had fought the dreadful image of Grey lying on the snow, but then, I fell upon an important trick: let in a special image — that of glorious red cheeks, black eyelashes, dark eyes, glossy black hair: the lovely Lorna. Her lilting laughter made even poor Grey disappear.

Released from my torture, I felt in a better position to minister to my parishioners. Because I wore the collar and the marks of the priesthood, I had been treated with a devotion and respect I had not earned. That knowledge alone sustained me on the long, often lonely, but never boring, route home.

My memories of the settlements tended to blur into each other: the Mingan Islands, Natashquan, Kegaska with its Hudson’s Bay post and cheerful manager (called a “factor”), Saint Peter’s Harbour, and many other smaller places I visited. Some were admittedly more charming than others: Christian Bay (where happily I found that my solution had put everyone, including the Bucklands and Stubberts, in a good humour), Old Edwards, Blais, and Mainland — so-called because on the islands where they went fishing, fishermen would refer to their winter homes as Mainland.

As I set off across the bay for the island with Harrington Harbour, I grew anxious. Was it because I hoped Lorna would still be at the house of John Bobbitt? Or had she returned to Mutton Bay? And what of Phil Vatcher? Had he now won her heart? I certainly had no claim upon her myself. With a shudder I remembered how brusque I had been when she had welcomed the notion that we should travel together as man and wife.

All right then, did I really want to get married? Such an enormous subject — each time it arose, I put it aside. I recalled my mother’s second thoughts as recounted by cousin John that first Christmas of my university stint, when she’d left the day after their marriage. And I told myself, my first duty did lie here in this enormous parish. The whole drama of matrimony, with its many accoutrements, might be too diverting: learning to live with another, all the family implications, children that surely would come, no, I felt I could not handle it all just at the moment. But of course, that could change.

At last, I rounded a cape and there on the low promontory, I saw the gathering of snow-covered houses. Among them rose the skeleton of the new church building. Once the weather got warmer, I knew from the locals’ enthusiasm that the building would take shape quickly. The uprights wore jaunty caps of snow perched on interlocking rafters, only now a proud symbol but one day to be inhabited as a house of God. I swelled with pride, even though it had been the Bishop himself who had chosen the spot and the previous pastor, I.N. Kerr, who had done the organizing. Of course, our wonderful lay reader, John Bobbitt, had helped generate the energies poured into all this during the summer.

Faithful Tuck brought me right to the door of John Bobbitt’s large house. I dismounted and walked up onto his house bridge. Would Lorna’s face be at the door to greet me?

I knocked.

I glanced back at my dogs, tongues hanging out after the pull up the hill, waiting patiently. Behind me I heard the door open and whirled.

John Bobbitt held out his hand. “Mr. John, welcome! It’s good to ’ave you back. They’ll all be pleased to know you’re safe after that big trip o’ yours.”

I went inside and he put on a kettle for tea. I was dying to ask about Lorna, but John kept up a babble of information, until finally, I discovered that Lorna had only stayed three or four days. “But when she left ’arrington, this ’ere house was as spic and span as when my wife lived in it, if not even cleaner.”

I smiled. “She’s quite a worker, our Lorna.”

“That she is. We got the best of the bargain, Mr. John, when you went to rescue ’er from that there schooner.” But then John let it drop that Phil Vatcher had come over on business, and the minute he had arrived, had called in. Because the house was spotless, John had suggested Lorna return with him and the next day, off she had gone in Phillip’s komatik.

That news gave me quite a jolt.

But again, I just had to put it aside for I knew very well I had no great call upon her attentions. I did, however, want to get to Mutton Bay and see her as quickly as possible. So many disturbing questions popped into my mind. But now, Wednesday, I would have to wait for my Sunday services: Holy Communion in the morning and Vespers at night.

After I had unloaded the komatik and gotten through the various arrangements necessary at the end of my long trip, I came upon the idea of holding a sunset service in the skeleton of the church. It would help also get my mind off Lorna.

And so we did, the next night: a most beautiful evensong out on simple flooring that had been swept clear of snow. We prayed in the gentle breeze, a glorious sun throwing its crimson rays from under dark layers of cloud over these snow-covered capes. A couple of quite strong voices led us in hymns of praise and thanksgiving. I concluded with the “Song of Simeon”:

Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, according to thy word;

For mine eyes have seen thy salvation, which thou hast prepared before the face of all people:

To be a light to lighten the Gentiles, and to be the glory of thy people Israel.

And then I myself sang the lovely antiphon:

Guide us waking, O Lord,

and guard us sleeping;

that awake we may watch with Christ,

and asleep we may rest in peace.

A perfect way to end the service I thought, and a couple of parishioners even commented on it, too.

I found it odd that the builder who had done so much groundwork on the structure did not attend this service, and I inquired after him from our church warden. John Bobbitt hesitated in his reply and not until I spoke to his cousin Dan Bobbitt, the husband of our tireless Sunday School teacher, did I find out the truth. The builder, Levi Wright, had been insisting that the church was higher, or taller, than need be, making it hard to heat in winter. He had proposed lowering the ceiling, which would make it cheaper and more comfortable in winter. Not from here, Dan had come over to lend his expertise. On the other hand, John Bobbitt had opted, quite rightly in my opinion, for the usual proportions that had turned out such a nice church in Mutton Bay the year previously: this conflict I saw now needed solving.

If it were not one thing, it would most certainly be another.

The next afternoon after a splendid dinner of murre stew made by his daughter, John and I received the builder, Levi Wright, whom I hadn’t met. With his prominent nose, bright eyes, and tuft of hair, he looked to me like a squirrel: a small man, strong as iron apparently, who knew his carpentry better than anyone around. John by contrast was tall and also lean, but in spite of his size had a gentle voice — I often had to lean forward to hear him, a noble-looking man, both in spirit and in body.

They both knew why I’d asked them to come, and began by defending their positions on the height of the church rather too vigorously. I got up and went out to the stove to get a teapot and cups. I needed time to think.

When I came back, I found them having happily diverted their argument into a discussion of ghosts. Not the subject, I assured them, for churchgoers. But I was curious, of course. Often the subject of the phantom ship had been broached on the Gaspé Coast.

“Well if you wanna talk about ghosts,” Levi said, “here’s the man knows more about them than anyone. He’s a great believer in tokens and phantoms.”

My interest quickened. “You John? A man of the church?”

“Well sir, it isn’t exactly that. It’s this ’ere boat I lost.”

“Called the Flying Dutchman,” said Levi, “after that there famous boat.” We all knew the legend of the ghost ship that could never make port, being doomed to sail the oceans forever. “Now after he’d lost it, ’twas seen all over the gulf at different times, oh yis yis yis.”

“You lost a boat?” I asked John. “How so?”

“Well sir, I bought this here boat in Sydney and I’s trying to take it back to Newfoundland. Bless my soul if I couldn’t find not a single man to accompany me. So I said to m’self, all right, I’ll sail ’er alone. And sail ’er across I did. But it was a long trip. And at one point, the sea got up rough, so I lashed the wheel tight, went below, and Lord ’a mercy, didn’t she run onto one o’ them shoals?”

“Oh heavens, John, what did you do?”

“Well, finally, I had to jump off, fer she was lost, fer sure. I knew how to swim, not far to the island there, you know, Levi?”

“Yes sir,” Levi went on, “but that ship, she’s seen all over, fall of the year or spring after the ice opens — whenever the weather’s bad, she’s seen in a storm or in a fog, sailing along with a ghostly figure at the ’elm. Everyone knows the story of John Bobbitt’s Flying Dutchman. Everyone on the Canadian Labrador, oh yis yis yis.” He slapped John on the shoulder.

“Maybe so, maybe so,” John said, “but I sure wish I had ’er back. And that there light was seen many times, I heard, up by Shecatica Island.”

“Was it,” I asked, “like a burning ship? We have a phantom ship in Chaleur Bay often seen from land by quite a few people. Never seen it myself, though.”

“No, this weren’t no burning ship. Just a round globe, like a puncheon.”

Well now, better face the main issue.... “Gentleman, here’s what I think. I hope you won’t mind, Levi, but I do want the church to be of a decent size. I don’t think —” I held up my hand to forestall his argument, “I don’t think the community here would like to have a little runt of a church which could be the laughingstock of the Canadian Labrador.

“You see, Levi,” I went on quickly, “what John hasn’t explained: there are pretty sound geometrical reasons for the proportions of the Mutton Bay church, and indeed most of the Anglican churches across our country. So would it not be a mistake for this noble community to find itself with a church that doesn’t match any other?”

They were both silent, polite. I waited. The onslaught would surely come. And how would I deal with that?

Well, Levi was the first to agree. He began nodding to himself. “I was just trying to save yez some money in the winter. But now that you say that, Mr. John, I’ll be behind ya one ’undred percent. And that’s the proportions I’ll build ’er to, whatever John ’ere wants, John o’ the Flying Dutchman!” He laughed and slapped John on the shoulder. And thus it was resolved to everyone’s satisfaction.

Sunday dawned, a lovely day, unusually hot. The glass rose above freezing, and the eaves and roofs of the houses began to drip with spring runoff.

“Do you think spring’s on its way already?” I asked my host.

“No sir, just a real warm spell, often lasts two to three days, and if it goes on tomorrow and Tuesday, I’d counsel you not to try and make it through that slush toward Mutton Bay. You’ll have to wait till she freezes over again.”

My heart sank. More waiting before I could get to see my Lorna. My Lorna? What was I thinking? Indeed, wasn’t she just a good friend? Why on earth should I want to rush back home and see her? I put such desires firmly out of my mind.

“We’ll have to get shoes for your dogs, o’ course,” said John. “If she freezes over, that ice there, it’ll cut their feet good. I’ll see if someone I know has pairs for ’is team that ’e could lend you, and you could send ’em back by the next komatik.”

Shoes for dogs? I’d never heard of such a thing. Of course, in the deep snow in the winter, there was no need. But now, with sharp, cutting surfaces of ice that followed a freeze-up, I had better do as I was told. For I wanted nothing to go wrong on this last stage of my journey.