4. Sea Chests

ON THE MORNING OF JUNE 24, 1862, THE SAIL HOUSE was filled with masculine clutter: chests, boots, coats, twinetied parcels, a portable writing desk. Nathaniel set his belongings down randomly—tobacco pouch on the hall table, calfskin trunk on a footstool—as if he were a visitor in Azuba and Carrie’s home.

His presence made ceilings seem lower, furniture smaller. Azuba felt a wild excitement, as if she had lost every normal habit. She stared at her husband, so close, sitting in the morning sun, pipe in his teeth as he bent forward to rummage in a satchel. A cedary tinge rose from his clothing. His cheeks were scorched, and there was a whiteness around his eyes, like salt, and flakes of dead skin on his lips. The hair on his arms was silver, glistening against dark brown skin. She had forgotten the redness of his beard, the way the long muscles in his forearms bunched and slid.

He took out a small, square package wrapped in brown paper, shifted his pipe to his back teeth.

“Ah, this now. For you.” He handed it to Carrie.

Azuba’s excitement folded, calmed. She felt that she might weep, watching his gentleness with the little girl, seeing Carrie’s joy. He put his hand to the child’s cheek, a wonder in his eyes akin to anguish.

“My little girl,” he said.

Carrie stood at the arm of his chair, gazing at him. He must seem enormous to her, Azuba thought—thick-chested, arms like branches, his eyes fanned with white squint lines that narrowed and vanished when he grinned.

Carrie opened the parcel. It was a doll-sized leather purse—brown, with a zigzag of black stitches. He pointed at it with the stem of his pipe.

“My sailmaker made it by skinning pigeon’s feet. He dried the skins and patched the shreds together.”

Carrie bent her head, stroking the black stitches. “It will be Jojo’s purse,” she said. “She’s going to keep her button collection in it.”

Nathaniel looked up at Azuba. His eyes crinkled in a smile. He is not cold and hard, Azuba thought. Relief swept over her, and she realized that in her mind he had become the man in the daguerreotype. She had forgotten both his charm and his power. He was vital, alert: an explosive mix of competence, intelligence, impatience.

“Carrie has started her own button collection,” said Azuba. “Show Papa.”

Carrie turned to run upstairs. She paused, looking at Nathaniel. “I’ll be right back,” she said.

Nathaniel took her by the shoulders, spoke gently. “Don’t worry. I will be here when you return.”

The child’s feet trampled on the stairs.

Nathaniel looked at Azuba. She took a quick breath that lifted her chest. He rummaged in the bag, came and sat next to her on the sofa. He lifted her hand and slid a bracelet over it.

“Shark’s teeth.”

In his eyes, just as Grammy had said, was the look that no one else received. Burning, direct, nothing else within it but the woman he saw before him and the wonder that she was his wife.

“You are so beautiful, Azuba,” he said. His face was softened by sleep and the cessation of exacting concerns.

Her cheeks flamed. His hand on my belly, in the curve of my back, tipping me.

“It was your letter that brought me home early,” he said. “When you wrote that you wanted to make a miracle and lift me from the seas.”

She felt a stab of terror. I have to tell him. The sooner the better. Get it over with.

He trailed his fingers up her arm, along the bone beneath her eye. His eyes followed his own finger as it traced her eyebrows and lips, looped her ear, followed the part in her hair. She watched him, fingers exploring the shark’s teeth encircling her wrist. She thought of her first sight of him. He was coming towards the wharf in a rowboat. He’d stepped up onto the wharf and their eyes had met. Their hands had flown forward. They’d gone on a whirl of visits—up to his parents’ house for wine and biscuits, then back through the village and up along the shore road, stopping at the Galloway house for tea. And then, finally, up the headland road, the right-hand turn into the lane. The house bulked against a sky pearled with summer dusk.

And this morning. They’d lain beneath the quilt. The room was cool, over the sea was a shoal of pink clouds, and the air smelled of daisies.

He had reached over and pulled her onto his shoulder. They had not spoken, but had lain listening to the cold rattle of pebbles in a bright, small surf. She felt his contentment. Hers was broken by fear. Words formed in her mind, telling him of the night on the headland, still so alive in the village, people’s eyes slying away from hers, the story like a delicious treat. How angry would he be? Surely he would understand?

“I have been worried about you,” he said now. “You’re still too thin.”

I will have to tell him. Before he goes to the village and sees it in someone’s face.

“After the baby . . .” she murmured.

They sat looking at one another. She drew in his smell of tobacco, musty wool, a sear of perspiration.

“I didn’t want to eat for some time,” she said. “And I’ve been working in the garden. And all the rest.”

Her hand, erasing with a flick—firewood, hauling laundry, kneading, scrubbing. Taking care of this place, and her life, and Carrie.

Carrie ran into the room, carrying a lacquered box. She went to Nathaniel and placed it on his knees. She busied herself opening it. “I like this button,” she said. “See, Papa. This is a pretty one.”

“That is a pretty one,” he said. He held it to his eye. After opening their gifts, they hitched up the horse and went for a drive. Nathaniel wanted to go to the headland where he had proposed to Azuba.

Nathaniel turned frequently to Carrie. He grinned, told her his boyhood memories. Sliding on that hill. The bull he had been chased by. The pig shed he had hidden in, there in the hollow, half-buried in wild roses.

The words pressed in Azuba’s mouth. Where should she start?

You remember the minister, Reverend Walton.

He asked me to go . . .

One day we were up on the . . .

You know how the tide out by Davidson’s . . .

From the headland, they could see their own house on the opposite promontory. Nathaniel pointed out Traveller, like a miniature ship in the harbour. They sat in the grass and looked out over the dark blue waters of the bay, rimmed by the far-off, alluring swell of Nova Scotia; up and down the coast, red cliffs faced the sea, white scarves at their feet where waves met rock.

Nathaniel put an arm around Azuba’s waist. Carrie curled with her head on his knee.

 

 

That afternoon, Nathaniel went to the Bradstock shipyard, and still she had not told him.

 

 

At suppertime, when Nathaniel had not returned, Azuba felt fear darkening her mind, interfering with her good sense. She was busy, rushing. She snapped at Hannah, and Hannah tripped over the broom and dropped a pitcher of milk.

Azuba apologized, at the point of tears.

Carrie stood by the window waiting for Nathaniel. She cried out, “Mama, here he comes!”

Azuba went to the window. She saw Nathaniel hand the horse to Slason. She saw how he walked through the wind-whitened grass. He was resolute, yet resisted each step. Carrie ran to the door.

“Carrie,” Azuba said. “Papa is . . . Papa will be tired tonight.”

Nathaniel’s boots on the porch. The latch, lifting. He came into the kitchen. He looked down at Carrie, his glance careful to exclude Azuba. He did not smile, but put his hand on the child’s head.

“Papa?”

He walked through the kitchen, went into the parlour. Carrie began to follow.

“Papa’s tired,” Azuba said. “As I said he would be. Leave him alone.”

Azuba saw such disappointment in Carrie’s face that she felt the welling of an apology, not to Nathaniel, but to Carrie.

And Azuba thought of how there might have been Carrie’s happy shriek, and Nathaniel’s laughter, and now there was only the child’s hurt face. And the wind. A log shifting in the stove.

 

 

In the bedroom, Azuba sat with one foot tipped sideways on her lap, untying her shoe’s ankle laces.

“Nathaniel,” she said. “I was going to tell you.”

He had undressed in complete silence, his back to her. He spoke in a hard voice, without turning. “I could not have imagined you would have such bad judgment. I feel as if I did not know you.”

“Yes,” she spoke quickly. “I should not have gone. I’m sorry, Nathaniel. But that is all it was, too much lunch, falling asleep. We never—”

“Never mind,” he said. “I heard more than I wanted to.”

Now she heard the anger. Her heart thickened, her saliva tasted of blood.

“There was nothing,” she said. “Only a long, cold night sitting on the—”

He turned, took a step towards her. She saw that if Simon were present, Nathaniel would smash his fist to the young man’s head. He fixed her with his captain’s eyes. “There’s no need to explain, Azuba. I don’t want to hear. Ever.”

“There is, though,” she said. Her heart hammered. She stood, the shoe in her hand. “There is much to explain. Much to say. Reverend Walton is my minister. And my friend. Only my friend.”

“A married woman doesn’t make friends with other men.”

“I am a married woman, Nathaniel, but I am alone. I am lonely.”

He went to the open window. The sleeves of his nightshirt were rolled to his forearms, the collar open. The hollow wing-whistle of snipes stitched the darkness.

“You should make friends with other women.”

“Ah. Yes. And do I tell you what you should do?”

He said nothing.

Her voice rose. “How do I know how you live your life? How do I know if you befriend women in Paris, or Hong Kong? I have nothing to say about where you go, what you see, how you spend your days. You are not trapped in the same place day after day. Your life is one of continuous interest. Challenge. Change.”

“You are spoiled.” His lips made an ugly twist, exposed his turmoil.

“If I’m spoiled, then so are you. I’m like a pet. You come home to visit me in my pretty pen. Peacocks, Grammy calls the other captains’ wives.”

“The other captains’ wives don’t traipse out to headlands and spend nights with young men.”

“The other captains’ wives are not me, Nathaniel. Perhaps you’re right. Perhaps I’m someone other than the woman you think me.” Like the daguerreotype, she thought, suddenly. “You don’t know me.”

They held one another’s eyes, a bald stare, each making their eyes crystalline, impenetrable.

He went to the bed, picked up a pillow and then struck it with the flat of his hand and hurled it against the headboard. He went to the chest of drawers and took off his nightshirt. He began to dress, speaking rapidly.

“It seems we will get to know one another very well, Azuba. Very well, indeed.” He thrust an arm into a sleeve. Stepped into his trousers, savaged their buttons shut. “You’ll get your wish. You and Carrie will come with me.”

He went to the bedroom door.

“Nathaniel.”

“I’ve spoken to your father.”

She stood listening to his steps on the stairs. The slam of the kitchen door. The crunch of his boots, going down the lane.

No, she thought, stunned, staring at the door. I didn’t mean, I wasn’t trying . . .

She felt as if he had taken her desire like a beloved toy and torn it and thrown it in her lap. Have it, then, he’d said.

 

 

He came to bed, but left before she awoke.

The next morning, she was kneeling on the parlour rug, agitatedly pairing the animals and putting them into the ark. He came to the door, paused, then went to his desk. He picked up a paper knife.

“There was nothing,” she said, sitting on her heels. “Nathaniel, we went in the morning, meaning only to be gone for a few hours. I was helping collect—”

“There was something.” His voice was tight. “Something to set a whole village talking. I told you not to speak of it.”

She turned a giraffe in her hands. There was a silence in which they could hear Carrie talking to Hannah and the sizzle of bacon.

“Since we cannot discuss what happened, I will tell you that I am glad for your decision,” she said, finally. “I’m glad to be going with you.”

His eyes were remote, his lips pinched down at the corners. “I have no choice. Therefore, it is your choice. Remember that.”

 

 

He told Carrie at the breakfast table.

“How would you like to come to sea with your Papa?”

Carrie’s mouth fell open. She looked at Azuba.

“Mama too,” Nathaniel said. He spoke evenly. His eyes burned straight into Carrie’s. “You will have to do just as I say on the ship. I’ll be your captain as well as your father.”

That is for me, Azuba thought.

“You’ll have to live in a tiny cabin with no fields to run in. No cousins. You’ll have only Mama.”

Carrie sat so still that she trembled.

“We’ll leave in September. We’ll sail to London. Likely we’ll spend Christmas there.”

He set knife and fork to a slice of ham. Azuba watched his hands on the knife, sawing. His chewing. The muscles in his cheek. His beard, bobbing up and down.

Yesterday seemed so far away. When he had traced her lips with his finger. When she was like treasure, and he was holding her, turning her—like a jewel to light.

“Mama?” Carrie was watching Azuba. Her eyes were anxious. “Are you afraid?”

Nathaniel glanced at Azuba.

“No, darling,” Azuba said. “No, of course not.”

“What will happen to Hannah? And Slason?”

“They’ll . . .”

She realized what she had set in motion, and how much would need to be decided. Set in a new configuration.

“They’ll be . . .” She lowered her voice, even though, in the dining room, they were out of Hannah’s hearing. “They’ll go somewhere else to work.”

“Will we come back? Will they be here when we get back?” Nathaniel put down his fork. He looked out at the bay, his mouth grim. He was motionless, as if stilled by possibilities.

“Yes, of course they will, Carrie.”

Carrie looked at her father. “Will we take my cat on the ship?”

He returned her gaze, half-smiled. “Best leave her with your Granny, Carrie. She’ll need a nice haymow for her kittens.”

“But . . .”

Carrie, Azuba saw, was bewildered by the extent of the changes.

“Carrie, my darling. We’re going to be with Papa. We’ll be with Papa every single day. We won’t have to wave goodbye to him.”

Carrie looked between her mother and father. She knows, Azuba thought. That something is missing. Or wrong. She reached for Carrie’s hand and patted it. “It will be wonderful,” she said. “We will have a wonderful time on Traveller.”

She looked out the bow window. The sea was different, more present. Its menace and its beauty filled her mind, even as the house, the garden, the horse and the village began to fade, separate, diminish.

 

 

All summer, Azuba remembered the first day of Nathaniel’s return. It grew blurred with the remembering, like a much-handled letter. She remembered the moment he had slid the bracelet onto her wrist, had traced her face with his finger—reading her, it seemed, by touch. They’d had one night in which they had slid hands on flesh, lost within one another, crying out, laughing. And one day to feel wonder.

Then she had wounded him. He would not forgive her. He was humiliated, his equanimity shattered. In his eyes, and in the set of his shoulders, she read brutal questions he would never ask. Who am I to you? On what is our marriage based?

I did not betray you, she wanted to shout. You have no reason not to trust me. But every face in the village, even those of her own parents, could not help but tell him otherwise.

Most of every day, Nathaniel was down at the wharf or at the shipyard. He became the man of the daguerreotype—brusque, impatient—leaving barely enough time to visit with Carrie before it was her bedtime. His civility to Azuba was elaborate.

Decisions had to be made. The horse, the cow and Carrie’s cat would go down the road to the Galloway house. The hens and the barn cats would be taken to Grammy Cooper’s. The pigs would be killed at the end of August. Slason was to work in the Bradstock shipyard. Hannah would move back to the village, where she had secured a job with another captain’s wife.

The rest of the summer was not for Nathaniel to rest, as he had planned, or to spend time with his wife and child. Everything tended towards departure. The garden, now, was for Traveller. Nathaniel spoke to Azuba peremptorily, motioning towards the feathery carrot tops. “We’ll need potatoes, carrots, turnips—anything that will keep in the hold. We’ll need jam, butter, relish, pickles. Put down the eggs in water-glass. I’ll purchase salt beef, lard, salt, sugar, flour.”

The house would need to be shut down for an unknown length of time. Slason hauled the beds outside, took them apart, scrubbed them with cold water and brown soap. He caulked, painted, made repairs. Azuba put her hair in a cap, wore her oldest dress, worked from morning until night. She and Hannah washed windows, dusted wallpaper, organized cupboards and closets, took up carpets and beat them and stored them away. They washed curtains, bedding and clothing, sun-dried them, folded them with twists of tobacco, sewed them into clean sheets, laid them in chests.

As she worked, she wondered about Simon. She did not dare ask anyone if he had been transferred to another parish or had given up the ministry. Every day, she intercepted the mail, even though she was certain he would not dare to write to her. She assured herself that she had never been in love with him and so was clear in her sense of righteous indignation. Truly, he had been a gentle friend. She knelt in the garden soil, hands filled with weeds, and felt an almost pleasurable sorrow that would be easy to dispel if she could write to him. She wanted to end the story; to tell him, simply, that she had enjoyed his company. And longed to know if he felt the same way about her. She hid the drawing of the lady’s slipper in a drawer beneath her corset covers.

Azuba and Nathaniel were neither companionable nor tender. Occasionally, and by mistake, they caught each other’s eye. In the dark, steady looks he cast at her from under his sun-whitened eyebrows, she guessed that in his mind she was still gathering flowers for another man. Lay, perhaps, in another man’s arms, an image so outrageous that he could not bear even to hear it disavowed. The only subject on which they could speak easily was Carrie, and her doings and accomplishments. Often, Azuba was frightened by Nathaniel’s tone and tried to hide the fact from Carrie by speaking in an offhand, pleasant voice. She heard her own falseness and hated it in herself.

There were nights of intimacy. And then, afterwards, a day when they could half-smile at one another or sit in the parlour of an evening and speak with equanimity about the day’s events.

All summer long, Azuba’s heart was heavy. Once, she apologized. She admitted that she had made a terrible misjudgment. He heard her out, and agreed with her.

“Yes,” he’d said. “You did. You and your Reverend Walton.”

She had risen from her chair, stormed from the room. Of the voyage to come, they were silent.

 

 

In September, Grace, Azuba’s mother, came up to the house to help. They stooped in the garden, skirts and shawls billowing, filling baskets: onions, potatoes, beets, carrots, squash. In the kitchen, they made jams, chutney, pickles, and packed the jars into crates. They spent hours on their knees in the autumn sunshine, laying away last-minute linens and woolens, packing china in newspaper. Slason carried chests and trunks to the attic.

In Azuba’s bedroom, they selected clothing for the voyage. There was a large sea chest for Azuba and a smaller one for Carrie.

“Best put this away,” Grace said, running her hand over the Star of Bethlehem quilt. “Pack it down with pepper. Keep it for when you come home.”

Azuba went to the window. Her mother came up to stand beside her. They watched Carrie pulling a wagon down the lane. Goldenrod and blue asters tossed beneath white cumulous clouds.

“Getting long-leggity,” Grace said. Her voice was barren. “I won’t know her when you come back.”

For the first time, Azuba realized how she had taken for granted the presence of family. Her familiarity with the hills, the harbour, the smell of the air. The spacious rooms of the house, and its sturdy timbers, and the view framed by its windows.

The reason for their departure lay exposed, everywhere.

Only recently had her father been able to look Azuba in the eyes. Only in the last week had her mother asked for a forwarding address, and then ventured her opinion that Azuba and Carrie would go only as far as London, then come straight back home on another ship. William and Benjamin had become distant, not wanting to be drawn in to family dissonance. Nathaniel was barely present, his focus cast forward.

Grammy Cooper gave Azuba her medicine book. Every October, as a child, Azuba had spent a few days at Grammy’s to help make winter medicines. Pinch of alum, tincture of rhubarb. Salve of gingered butter for erysipelas. Azuba had lined up the little glass bottles, loving how words came solid and plain from Grammy’s mouth: burned flesh, milk fever. Now, Azuba turned the pages of the small, leather-bound volume, its stained, tattered pages covered with Grammy’s handwriting. Notes, reminders, advice, recipes. She felt Grammy’s eyes studying her. Ear ache. Putrid sore throat. Toothache. Seasickness.

“Nathaniel will have a medicine chest,” Grammy said. “With the ingredients.”

And she gave Azuba a hooked rug. It was a picture of Whelan’s Cove, houses tippy on the hillsides, white-capped waves, gulls and a church.

“Don’t let Nathaniel say you can’t take that,” she said. “He does, you have him come speak to me.”

“He won’t say no, Grammy.”

“Remember us by,” Grammy added.

They said goodbye in Grammy’s kitchen. Grammy kissed Azuba’s cheek, and then Carrie’s. She turned her back and would not watch them go. She was standing at the stove, stirring apples in an iron pot.

I’m sorry, Azuba thought, to all of these people. I’m so sorry. But she would not say it, fearing that in the sound of the words would be a ring of vindication. For whatever reasons, she had fulfilled her desire. She and Carrie were leaving on Traveller, with Nathaniel. And beneath everything—Nathaniel’s anger, Simon’s disappearance, the sadness of leaving her family, her worry about Carrie’s safety and apprehension about the perils of life at sea—beneath it all was an exultant sense of release. Of freedom.