WHEN BEATRICE FIRST FOUND him it was a day like most, given the season. Above, gunmetal clouds were buffeted by the wind, accompanied by the squalling of seabirds.
Where land cut away to the sea, Beatrice paused and with eyes the colour of ice, she regarded the gulls as they soared and dipped and hovered. The powerful arc of their flashing wings held the wind, their soulless cries uttering from wide yellow beaks, while below, the waves receded from the shore, allowing her passage. Low tide following a storm leaves treasures among the stones: kindling, fishing buoys, bits of rope. Perhaps an oar, or a glass bottle. Kelp for drying.
A copper curl, loosed by the breeze, darted about her face. Beatrice tucked it back and with her eyes closed she counted the waves, timing them with the rhythm of her breath. A child’s game, nothing more than a moment of rest until a brother’s shout startled her back to her task. As though stung, Beatrice removed her hands from where they rested on her twitching belly, and with pounding heart she hurried, mindful of the changing tide below, of her brothers’ contempt for her. The basket slapped against her back as she clambered heavily, leather straps slack across her shoulders. The wind caught her shawl, which she grasped with one chapped hand and tugged back into place, the other hand ready to catch at stone should she slip on her way down to the shore. Once on the beach she began to fill the basket, tossing in driftwood sticks and ropey lengths of kelp, watching the ground always. Not once did she stumble among the rocks, nor did she miss her target, and as the basket filled, the leather straps pulled at her shoulders. From between the stones came the fragrance of low tide, of salt and sand and the cold northern waters. The tang of fish long dead.
Suddenly, before her lay a coffin, misshapen and impossibly small. Beatrice stumbled and cried out in fright, the weight of her basket pushing on her. She stared at the coffin, and then with salt-stung hands she reached toward it. A low moan stopped her, and looking beyond, Beatrice saw a man lying in the sand. He stared at her with eyes dark as well-water, half-crazed and pleading. Again she cried out.
“Doan’ touch ma fiddle,” came his harsh croak. He tried to stand, bearded, mad-eyed and with wild black hair, and was immediately wracked with coughing that forced him back onto the ground.
Beatrice turned to flee, slipping her arms free of the leather straps. The basket fell, its contents spilling on the sand. She moved with quick, frantic steps, and then stopped as the man’s coughing continued, jerking his prostrate form among the stones. Beatrice sized him up. A sorrier specimen she hadn’t seen since her brother William had dragged Big Reg home, raging drunk and barely alive after the pummelling he’d taken from the miner whose ancestors he had insulted. Before her now lay a wild man, bloodied and half-dead from his battle with the sea. The tide was coming in. Without her help he would surely die.
“Come on, then,” she said, grasping his scrawny arm and hoisting him to his feet, ignoring the foul smell of him. Even standing stooped, leaning against her, he was taller than her brothers, and when she reached around his waist all there was to hold onto was the knob of his hip. Beatrice shoved the fiddle case into the basket, slung it over her shoulders, and half-dragged the man along the shore away from the returning tide.
In answer to her cries, first William and then Angus scrambled down to her, followed by Robbie and lastly, Big Reg. William, the eldest, stared at the wreck of a man and then at Beatrice, whose pale eyes met his in a silent plea. At William’s nod, her flame-haired brothers, large and forceful, had the wild man up the cliff and into the house, where they undressed and washed him. Beatrice dried his hair and then dried it again, wringing the life back into him, and fed him whiskey before the fire. All the while he clasped the fiddle case to himself and stared out over the water, his head cocked as though listening.
Beatrice allowed herself a moment of stillness, but all she could hear was the wind and the pulsing of waves below the cliff. “Ya come from the sea, ya kin work on the sea,” she said to him. “You’ll fish. I’ll mind the children.” The sorrow in his eyes failed to move her.
In the peeling white church that might not last another winter before tumbling into the sea, they were wed. Beatrice’s dowry, a cow, seven chipped plates, and a woollen blanket, would do to get them started.
Not half a year passed when, in the cabin built by her scowling brothers in haste and well away from the cliff, Beatrice screamed once, and then again. On a rug near the hearth, with the wind pouring through gaps between the logs, she birthed her first son. While she washed up the blood and wound rags between her legs, Duncan stared at the scrawny child. Slowly he opened his fiddle case and removed the splintered remains of another life. All that was left intact was the ebony fingerboard; this he snapped off from the violin’s warped neck and placed on a high shelf. The rest of the fiddle he tossed into the fire without a backward glance.
Duncan took the child from Beatrice and laid him in the fiddle case, and placed it before the hearth for warmth. Then he spoke the baby’s name: Neil.
Beatrice watched the adoration bloom from her black-haired husband. Then she looked at the child. His tuft of orange curls and angry red fists betrayed him, but only to Beatrice, who buried the truth of his father deep and prayed no one would notice.
Four more times Beatrice produced boys, all of them born robust and with their father’s wild, dark eyes and hair. Duncan placed each baby inside the fiddle case before the fire and then spoke his name: William. Angus. Robbie. Reginald. Each was named for one of Beatrice’s brothers, the men who had helped save his life and built a home for his family. And with each naming she shuddered, wincing as though struck.
Her days began long before sunrise with the fire to coax, ice to smash in the basin, and the day’s bread to knead, rise, and pound again before baking. From the rocky earth came potatoes, carrots and cabbage, miracles of Beatrice’s tending, battling the starved soil with dried kelp and manure from the cow. Day after day she hoed and dug and hauled rocks away from her precious crops.
From the skinny cow she managed to squeeze just enough milk. Sometimes it took an hour to fill the pail, and occasionally Beatrice emerged bruised from the shed. One time the cow kicked the pail over. Beatrice seized the nearest thing, her hoe, and flogged the bawling, stamping creature which then refused to give milk for days, despite Beatrice’s desperate pulling. Never again did she strike the cow, although when the pail was tipped over from time to time, her screams mingled with the gulls’ cries over the water.
It was Baby Neil, the first-born, upon whom Duncan lavished attention where Beatrice could not. Neil, who remained small, soon smaller than the rest, and whose vacant stare and clenched fists tore at Duncan’s shame-ridden heart. Child of his dreams, of the past he yearned for, the present that never came; doomed from the beginning, Neil never spoke, but mewled instead like an ailing cat. Duncan carried the boy on his back in one of Beatrice’s baskets, lined with wool and rebuilt so the child’s skinny legs dangled from small holes, his large head propped against the side, orange curls poking out over the top. Most days Duncan carried little Neil in his basket down to the water’s edge, carefully placing him in the bow of the dory before pushing off for the day’s fishing. Beatrice, in her frenzy to manage her chores and the other four demanding, raucous boys, had no use for the limp, useless one.
Once, when Neil was in his first days and drowning in her milk, Beatrice had thrust the child at Duncan, screaming it was best to let him die.
“For the love of God, take him outside,” she had cried. “Leave him in the snow.”
Duncan wrapped the baby and left the house, holding him close against the sleet. With pounding heart he regarded the snow drifted against the cow shed. Slowly he walked toward it, his knees having turned to water and his breath coming in scraping gasps. But then there was a sound from the shed, the moaning of the cow and the shuffling of her hooves. Duncan hurried past the snow drift and kicked the door open. He carried little Neil inside, and with great tenderness he soaked a piece of woollen rag in the cow’s milk and coaxed the mewling infant to suck.
And so, knowing his wife could spare no time for her crippled child, Duncan propped him up in the bow of the dory and sang to him the songs of his father and his grandfather while he fished.
Always Baby Neil’s ice-blue eyes brightened at the rise and fall of his father’s voice and the meaning of his words. But when land came near and the songs drew back like the tide, their brightness faded.
It was late afternoon. The sun hung low on the horizon, and from the ground came the awakening scent of the day’s thaw, when Beatrice banged her cast-iron pot with a wooden spoon. From all directions came her strapping boys, William and Angus bearing wood to stack by the door, and Robbie dragging a squalling Reg by his sleeve from the shed, where the cat had hidden six new kittens. Duncan and the baby, as she still thought of Neil, and more importantly, the day’s catch, were nowhere in sight. She had used the last of the cod in a watery stew, heads, eyes, and fins floating among potato pieces. Without fish, it would be cabbage soup and bread, and not for the first time. With a strength borne of fury, Beatrice struck the spoon against the pot. The spoon splintered, and she stared at what remained of it in her hand. For Beatrice, anger was never far from worry. Like all fishermen’s wives, she carried the knowledge that at day’s end her husband might not return to her.
Their faces grim with apprehension, the boys lined up at the basin and scrubbed their hands in tepid water rimed with a film of grease. They waited in silence while Beatrice ladled steaming fish stew into bowls.
“You’ll say grace, William, as your father’s not here to do it.”
William opened his mouth to speak.
“Go on, then. What are you waiting for?”
Beatrice’s fury hummed beneath her words. Under the planks Angus kicked his older brother.
“F-for what we are about to receive may the Lord make us truly thankful, amen.”
“Amen,” muttered the others, wary of their mother’s mood.
Wordlessly they ate, slurping the stew and tearing off bits of crusty bread to sop the juices. Beneath the table’s planks Angus’ swinging foot again caught William’s shin. William passed along the nudge to Robbie, who covered his grin with a chapped hand and then tapped Little Reg’s foot. Around and around, out of their mother’s sight and in silence, the brothers’ feet carried their message: All is well. Only once did Reg, the youngest, drop his spoon.
“Sorry, Mam,” said Robbie, coming to his brother’s aid and diving for the spoon.
The door swung open, and again the spoon clattered to the floor. Duncan’s lanky form filled the doorway with Neil dozing in his basket, his head flopped to one side, a thin glisten of drool threading from his opened mouth. On the ground, tied with rope, was the better part of a tree trunk.
“The catch, where is the catch?” Beatrice’s voice pierced the silence. The answer hung in the air, unspoken, as Duncan looked past her to his four sons.
“Give us a hand, boys,” he said quietly.
The two eldest rushed to help drag the trunk inside.
“Are we to eat the tree, then?” Beatrice shouted.
The boys stopped short, looking from their mother’s ashen face, her eyes bright with rage, to their father, and back. Duncan spoke in a low voice.
“Before the fire, to help it dry.”
The boys moved carefully toward the log. Beatrice breathed deeply once. Then, in her terrible silence, she placed a bowl of stew at the head of the table.
For weeks the spruce log dried. Each morning it was shoved out of the way of her cooking by Beatrice, and later on moved back by Duncan. Every night Duncan ran his hand over the rough-hewn end, stroked his beard, and then he turned it over so the other end might dry further.
At last it was time for Duncan to take up his knife and chisel. Night after night while Beatrice mended the nets, he carved by lamplight, with Baby Neil gazing from his basket nearby. Under Neil’s watchful eyes the fiddle took shape, a thistle growing at one end of it. The thistle annoyed Beatrice, who wondered aloud more than once why Duncan couldn’t make it look like a regular fiddle, with a simple scroll at the top like the one her father had played. Duncan had merely smiled sadly and looked at the floor.
The hours he spent carving and polishing took Duncan further from Beatrice, cast him back to his earlier, unknowable life before his appearance on the rocky shore, before she had rescued them both from their pasts.
“Who was he, Duncan, who was Neil named for?” Beatrice once asked, her words scored by irritation.
“I once had a brother, Neil, and now I haven’t. Better ya doan’ know more,” was his careful reply before he delved deeper into the secrets of the spruce.
At last it was ready to sing. In the dawn’s frosted shadows, Duncan slipped outside with the fiddle case tucked under his arm. He settled on the milking stool in the shed, and while the cow shuffled about in the nearby pen, he lowered his head as though in prayer. Finally, he eased the case open and smoothed his callused hand over the varnish, pausing at the thistle crowning the fiddle’s neck. So long ago, and so far away, his grandfather’s thistle had stayed with him, had made the voyage across an ocean and away from one family, moving on with him to another.
In a swift motion, Duncan tucked the fiddle beneath his chin. With his other hand he grabbed the bow, placing horsehair on string. Beads of sweat steamed on his forehead, and the only sound was of his breath whistling in and out of his nose. Finally he moved his hand and drew the bow across the string.
At first it pranced and skittered out of control like an unbroken horse, Duncan’s fingers protesting, stiff and cold and filthy from his years of fishing. For too long he had been away from his old fiddle, and his ear, refined from a lifetime of tunes heard first at his grandfather’s knee, objected to the squawks and groans of the new one. He stopped and tried to breathe some warm air onto his hands.
From the pen came a moaning crescendo as the restless cow gazed at him. Duncan laid the fiddle in its case, dragged the stool over to the cow, and hauled at her teats with awkward fingers until her milk flowed and his hands began to warm. When the pail was filled, he glanced at his hands. Fish grime was permanently lodged beneath his fingernails and etched in the creases and folds of his knuckles, and had been, according to Beatrice, one more thing to keep him from Godliness. Duncan reached for the steaming pail and touched one blackened fingertip to the white froth. Not a moment passed before he plunged both hands into the milk. All thoughts of Godliness left him as he threw back his head and gasped. The creamy warmth filled him, and later, while the sun came up, his fiddle sang.
“Mam? Mam,” came the soft cry. With a start, Beatrice opened her eyes and sat up. The shadow of a son, her youngest, stood at the door, whimpering as the fiddle’s first cry emerged from the darkness.
“What is it, child?” Beatrice registered a familiar tune wending through the pounding of her heart, causing her feet to twitch, echoing steps not danced in so many years. Little Reg whimpered and threw himself at her. Beatrice frowned, and after a moment put her arms around his thin shoulders.
“Do ya hear it, Mam?”
“Yes, Reggie. Yes, I hear it.”
“Neil says…” A sob choked Little Reg’s words.
“Neil says what?” Beatrice said sharply. Neil had never, ever spoken, not once in his life.
“Neil says it’s Papa.”
“Foolishness.” Beatrice considered the impossibility of Neil speaking his first word, Neil with his slack jaw and his hopeless baby sounds.
Then she considered the possibility of it, and wept.
She eased the shed door open so as not to make a sound. The back of her husband faced her, his skinny shoulders stooped as he embraced the fiddle, and his hair, every which way as always, bobbing with the effort of the reel he was playing. Again Beatrice felt the steps moving in her feet. When Duncan finished the tune he breathed deeply once, and coughed. Beatrice took a step forward, and then stopped as he began the slow, keening melody of a lament.
For a long time Beatrice stood there listening with her eyes closed, imagining the anguish of Duncan’s lament being carried on the backs of seabirds and out over the waves. In her husband’s music she heard the pain of his losses, of the family he’d left behind before washing up on her shore; and she heard the pain of his love, the tenderness he carried for Neil, the son who wasn’t his and yet was more his own than anyone else’s, even Beatrice herself.
When the last note faded away, Beatrice opened her mouth to speak, but no words would come. As she moved toward him, Duncan turned with a start, his dark eyes red-rimmed and ashamed. The sight of him blurred in the fog of her tears.
“I’ll not play it again, Beatrice,” he said, as he reached for the fiddle case.
She laid her hand on his wrist, felt his pulse fluttering beneath her fingers, and lifted his arm until the bow touched the strings.
“Please, Duncan,” she said. “Please.”