Matt takes her for a drive around the point. She thinks about how they used to do this loop when he had his learner’s permit. Round and round they would go, with her adding a word of encouragement here and a gentle suggestion there. They drove mainly at dusk. That was at his request. So nobody would see. He was clearly embarrassed that it was his mother giving him the lessons, though normally he was pretty good about their special relationship, never mentioned missing having a man around the place.
The grand summer places up by the hotel look very much as they have all of Penelope’s life. Perhaps a little more prissy, more cared for, their gardens tamer. She names each one and identifies its owners for Matt as they pass. When they end up on the cul de sac where the Lodge glowers down at the bay, he claims he has made a mistake, taken the turn one road too soon. She nods, says she has made that same mistake herself, but — for good measure — she loudly thanks God that she will never have to stay in that place. Down the second left turning, the one he said he wanted all along, they admire the new houses that have sprung up above the salt marsh. Matt parks the Volvo — she has to remind him about the handbrake — and suggests a walk along the asphalt that has been laid where the railway used to run. They’ll go just past the nature preserve to the big park, he says, when she doesn’t respond.
“Big park?”
“At Pagan Point.”
“The dump.” But no, she thinks, it is not the dump anymore. It has been sanitized, bulldozed, and planted.
“I still can’t believe they would have put the garbage dump right on the bay.”
“People thought differently in those days.” Let that be enough. She walks a little faster, wanting him to see how well she is, how fit. At least to make him regret that wrong turn he said he took.
Looking across the salt marsh from the railway tracks she sees the lone figure on the beach. So he has come. His English is reasonably good, but she was not sure her directions were. She supposes that he couldn’t have gone too far wrong; there are not more than two or three places that could be described as the point. She is still surprised by the conversation when she plays it over in her mind as she has done a dozen times in the twenty-four hours since it took place.
He had come into the shop, looking, he said, for a jumper. She laughed at this side effect of his RAF tutelage. “Sweaters,” she said. “We mostly call them sweaters here. It’s Mr. Nielsen, isn’t it?”
“I did not know whether you would remember.”
She knew from his voice that he was looking for neither jumper nor sweater. It could not have been very hard for him to track her down. A few questions in the right places would do it, but she was still impressed by his initiative. Flattered.
“The men’s sizes are down this way.” The aisles suddenly felt narrower, the tiny shop even tighter. “What kind of neck do you prefer?” When he looked confused, her hands went out to show him, but she pulled them back halfway to his neck and demonstrated instead on her own. “Like a turtle?” she asked, choking herself, “or a crew?” She made a throat-cutting motion.
“Like the turtle.”
She did not dare ask cable or plain, couldn’t imagine the mime for that being anything other than running her hands over her torso, which would never do. Not in the shop.
He tried on three before he found one he seemed to like. Spruce green. There was a full-length mirror in the north wall and they both admired him in it for a full minute.
“Is it warm, this … sweater?”
“We think so. The sheep certainly weren’t shivering.” She had forgotten for a moment that his English would probably not run to jokes like this. “You can try it, if you like.” This was something her mother would have absolutely forbidden. “Wear it in the wind for an hour or two to see.” And then she had given him directions to Pagan Point. “But not now. Tomorrow, if you can.” It would not be any cooler or any windier then, but it would be Thora’s day in the shop and her own day off.
Nielsen turns away from the glittering water and sees her, waves a long familiar-coloured arm. She imagines his eyes. The blues are such a perfect match. She gestures that he should stay where he is, motions to the right to indicate that she will take the path through the woods to get to the beach. The marsh is too tricky.
“Mamma, are you all right? Do you want to sit down?”
Where has Matt come from? There is a bench, too, that should not be there. And tarmac under her feet instead of rails and ties. She wants to climb the path through the woods, but Matt will insist on going with her, so she sits.
“I love to think about the days when there were trains running here,” he says. “Summer people with their private coaches and all their servants. Trains and steamers. The place was really connected to the world. In a solid tangible way, I mean. Not just electronics.”
“I like to think about the Vikings,” she says. The remark will mean nothing to him but will maintain her connection to the beach a few moments longer. “Can you imagine the courage? To set out on the limitless seas?”
“There’s an archaeologist, a woman from I forget where, who believes they summered in the Miramichi. The Vikings. It was their summer camp from Newfoundland.”
“Oh, they came much closer than that.”
“She can’t really prove it. There are some passages from the sagas that she quotes to support her theory. And some wood she found at the settlement at L’Anse aux Meadows from trees that don’t actually grow north of New Brunswick. But nothing remains at Miramichi. She says it would all have been temporary, the encampment, so the absence of any trace actually supports her theory.”
Penelope marvels at the trivia her son can pack away, especially the historical kind. He has always been this way. She thought he would grow out of it. Instead, he turned it into a career. And used it to attract that wife of his, the professor. Shit, what is her name?
“You’re freezing. We should walk. Sorry. Without snow and ice underfoot, you can almost forget how cold it gets here in January.”
“Is it January? Oh my. The spring goes so fast.” She realizes her mistake immediately but does not correct it. Neither does Matt.