Penelope is glad to be one of the few mobile and continent inmates in her new circle of hell. The attentions of the attendants — she will not call them caregivers — are consumed by those in wheelchairs who must be lifted with mechanical devices into and out of bed, and by those who no longer have control over their own bladders and bowels. She is relatively at liberty to roam the halls, although the locked front door is a reminder of the illusory nature of this freedom. And she is among the last to be readied for bed in the evening. They have insisted that she not do this for herself. It is, they have said, part of their duty of care or something. She should remember exactly; they have repeated it several times this afternoon, as if she is an idiot or struggles with English.
She thinks there can be no harm in laying out her things for the night. Matt offered to help her unpack this morning, but she sent him packing. The waves of guilt coming off him were unbearable. It was as if he were the injured party. Now, confronted with the old black suitcase on the bed and the grey metal armoire in the corner of the room, she wishes she had accepted his offer. There are so many ways in which things could be arranged. She has no idea which would be the best or where to start. Colours quickly present problems as there are not enough shelves or drawers to segregate them, and all her underthings are white and take up more than one drawer. Texture proves equally to be a dead end. Halfway through an attempt to organize by function, she gives up, wondering whether the garment she holds in her hands is even hers. She can’t begin to imagine its purpose.
The room looks as though it has been ransacked but there is nothing to be done. She sits on a pile of satin-feeling things and clutches the grotesque handbag she must have tucked in at the bottom of the suitcase.
It is remarkable how little anyone seems to care about the Molly McCann. For the first few days on board, she refrained from lighting the stove, afraid the wisps of smoke would betray her presence. She stayed below during daylight hours, emerging on deck only at sunset to empty the bucket she had pressed into service as a toilet. Whenever the wind shifted and the boat adjusted, she was afraid someone had boarded her and was taking control. She shivered for hours below decks, dreading the moment of discovery. But by early December she has become convinced that everyone has forgotten about Morris McCann’s yacht, moored in plain sight in Chamcook Harbour. She lights the stove and sits up on deck sometimes in the watery midday sun. There is no sign of life at the factory. Occasionally, she will catch a glimpse of the barn workers on Ministers Island, but if they are surprised by the presence of a lone female figure on a boat, they do not show it. They probably have become as incurious as the dairy cattle they tend.
McCann saw to it that she is well provisioned. He rowed across sack after sack of the company’s cans in the dinghy under cover of night. Also, bags of onions, which he must have actually purchased. She is to eat one a day even after they begin to feel rotten, he said. Scurvy is a threat, he seemed to think. Water will soon be a problem as the barrel is nearly half down already.
She has barely touched the rum. McCann brought that out on his last trip, the night before he was to catch the train to Montréal to get on his boat to Norway. He poured them both a glass and proposed a toast: to survival, at whatever the cost.
“I’m not very used to spirits,” she said as she put her glass to one side after taking the tiniest sip, hoping he would not contradict her, remind her of what he knew about the night after Nils disappeared.
“But you are a survivor. What will you do with your little nest egg?”
She didn’t like the way he constantly brought up the money. She was ashamed enough on her own of how she had earned it without being reminded every time they met. People like him, she supposed, were able to cross things out and move on. Nils would have been the same. Once a thing is done it is done, he would say, no amount of worrying about it can undo it. “I will start a business.”
“I know one you could get pretty cheaply.” He gestured toward the shore. The man really had no remorse.
“A smokeless factory, mine will be.” She was proud of the phrase, had hammered it out over the last few weeks. “Making beautiful things that are also useful.”
If he had not laughed, she thinks now, she would not have weakened and reached for the glass of rum. She might easily have been drinking molasses, except for the burn in her throat, the fire behind the eyes. He took a long draught from his glass and poured some more, never once taking his eyes off her.
“To beautiful things, and their beautiful makers,” he said after a minute.
She knew she should blush prettily, maybe tilt her glass toward him without drinking, look down into her lap. She knew all of the next steps too. He was a good-looking man, Morris McCann, no matter how rotten his insides. She suspected he might be a good lover. Finding that out for certain would be a natural act of gratitude for all he was doing for her: providing his boat to help her disappear, making sure she had food and water. It would also, she knew, give her another hold over him. He was a married man, with children, and one of the bosses who should never consort with the workers. The scandal of a sexual liaison with someone like her would rival the one that was sure to erupt once his financial manipulations were discovered. He would pay as dearly to cover up the sex as he had the embezzlement. But she couldn’t do it. “Time for you to row back across, I think,” she said.
He looked almost grateful. She felt sorry for him then, this spider who was also a moth that could not resist the flame. “Don’t forget to eat the onions,” he said as he slid over the side of the boat and dropped into the dinghy. She thought it was one of the oddest endings to a near seduction that anyone could have imagined. Just as he was about to cast off, she realized she would have to row him over. She would need the dinghy. It wouldn’t do to be stranded, a prisoner.
She pours half an inch of rum now and looks around the yacht’s saloon at her work. It has been a busy two months. Every available surface is covered with drawings. Skeins of wool hang in the companionway. A map of Charlotte County is spread out in the galley, with arrows and circles marked in India ink.
She has drawn from memory and sketched from the deck of the Molly McCann: scenes pared back to line, form, colour, texture, ornament, and then recreated on sheets of the twenty-pound bond paper she liberated from the office at the sardine plant. Some she has tinted with watercolours, while with others she has relied on the strokes of her pencil to suggest the light and to hint at the colours. Drawn over most of them there is a fine grid of lines that will help the embroiderer or hooker transmit the design to cloth. For the rugs, she has carefully counted the strands on four old feed bags to get an idea of a standard grid. The decorated felt handbags she has in mind will be trickier, but the principle, she knows, is sound.
The wool she has gathered is far too dull. She has festooned it around as a goad rather than an inspiration. She can hardly wait to begin trying out her ideas for dyes. The colours will be drawn from the colours of spring and summer and fall, not the dull greys of December and January. Sometimes, she sits up on the deck and squints her eyes, trying to conjure the greens of the hardwood leaves and pinks of summer sunsets. The reds of the cliffs and the mud, and the blues of the sky and the water are easy on a sunny day; they don’t change much from one season to the next.
The map of the county, like the wool, is more conceptual at this stage. She has marked it up at random. Once the winter is over, when she emerges from her water-borne chrysalis as a complete newcomer to the area, she will hire a horse and driver and cover the roads recruiting craftswomen. Each one will earn a mark on the map until she has workers in every corner. Then she will rent a shopfront in the town — the real town, not the sardine town — and start her new life.
“Hello, Penelope.”
She cringes. Strangers don’t call her that. Mrs. Reade.
“Or Penny, is it?”
Jesus. Never. Who is this woman?
“It’s time to get you ready for bed, okay, dear?”
Not dear, either.
“Things are a bit all over the place, aren’t they? Were you looking for something?”
Freedom, she wants to say.
“My, that’s an interesting bag you’ve got there. Is that a picture of something?”
“A boat. A boat I lived on before the war.”
“My grandfather was evacuated at Dunkirk. You know, like in the movie.”
“No. Before the other war. The first war.”
The young woman nods and smiles and sets about looking for nightgown and toothbrush.