OUT OF THE DARKNESS CHAPTER 5
Chapter 5
The captain
On the 8th day of May in 1949, Captain George James peeled a bit of blistered paint from the arm of the rod-iron bench that had sat there for all the years he could remember. By all accounts, it had sat there for generations before, here in the family cemetery, where one would come to pay homage to the dead, or to rest a spell and look out at the ocean. Through all the years and its seasons, harsh winters and raging storms, the bench had sat there, being none the worse for all it had endured, save for the peeling paint. A bench made of iron that had stood up against all that the world had thrown at it and survived.
Sitting here on this day, he thought about the captains who had lived in this little sea-faring town. These captains, who had often been referred to as men with an iron will, the iron men of the wooden ships, they called them, of which he had been one. He chuckled to himself as he contemplated that sentiment. Perhaps in his younger years, that might have been true, but on this day, he was more like the blistering paint he had peeled from the bench. The days of the Tall Ships and the iron men who sailed them were gone.
In these, his retirement years, he found himself coming to this place more often to be near his dear departed Elizabeth and to bury himself in the bittersweet memories of his life, hoping to make sense of it all before his own demise.
He was old now, and memories were all he had left to give him a reason for living. All those whom he loved had gone before him. He still had a few friends who lived in town, whom he had known since childhood, who thought Annabelle had died of tuberculosis. Only he knew the truth of what happened all those years ago. Only he knew that the gravestone that bore his daughter's name sat abreast an empty grave.
Looking out at the Great Atlantic Ocean on this day, he recalled days like this in years gone by, when the ocean had been dotted with the towering, billowed sails of the Tall Ships, beautiful, majestic creatures made by man that eventually fell victim to changing times and steamships. These were the ships that had brought fame and fortune to this town, and their demise had left it a place where husbands went to Halifax to work, returning home only on weekends.
The master shipbuilders of this region had built more than 700 ships from 1812, with the last one built at Fox River in 1927, but now, this once-thriving boom-town was, for the most part, forgotten by the rest of the world.
Before retiring, he had loved the sea and the power of the wind and the sails that caught it; he had loved the sensation of flying when the ship cut through the water and loved the spray and the wake it left behind, and the salty air and the wind in his hair. He had especially loved the sea when it lay flat as a board beneath a black velvet night, when there were only the moon and stars for light. But the life of a seaman was a dangerous one, as he knew so well. Some ships left the harbour, never to return. Many wives became widows, but on this day, the ocean was at peace with the rays from the sun shimmering on its blue skin.
Suddenly, a gust of wind sent millions of ripples across it. Something about that motion brought back a memory of a day long ago, back in 1887, when a sudden wind changed his life forever, while moored in the Saint John harbour, dropping off cargo, a wind-driven straw hat adorned with silk flowers suddenly landed on the deck. It lay there for a few seconds before another gust of wind lifted it and began taking it starboard. Running after it, Captain James managed to catch it before the wind took it out to sea.
Turning back to the port side, he saw her, a vision the likes of which he had never seen before, running towards him. For a moment, he forgot to breathe. With the grace of a ballerina, she ran along the pier until reaching her destination. Leaning over the bow, he extended the hat to her outstretched hand. For a moment, time stood still as he found himself looking into the most beautiful face he had ever seen.
"Thank you, kind Sir," she said, and before he could find his voice, she turned and ran back in the direction from which she had come. He watched in fascination as she made her way to the end of the pier and then rounded the corner onto King Street.
Realizing he may never see her again, he jumped ship and ran after her. By the time he turned onto King Street, she had disappeared. With a heavy heart, he finally returned to his schooner. For the rest of the afternoon, he thought of her and vowed that somehow, he would find her.
It was late afternoon when he finally made his way to the Harbour Master's Office. It had been over a year since he had last seen his uncle Conrad, and he was looking forward to their meeting and, perhaps, being invited to dinner, as so often happened. They went back a long way, he and the Harbour Master, to the days of his apprenticeship on his maiden journey with his father. He was twelve years old then, two years before the Great Fire of 1877, which destroyed a large portion of the city.
Before that day ended, he had toured the city, taking in all the architectural beauty of the brick buildings on the hills that towered over the tall ships. He fell in love with the undercover city market that ran a city block long. Never before had he seen such an array of foods and merchandise brought from all parts of the world.
That evening, he enjoyed the most incredible dinner he had ever eaten, prepared by his father’s sister, his aunt Gertrude, the Harbour Master's wife. There were many more evenings like that in the years that followed.
Now, as a young man and master mariner of his father’s legacy, the three-mast schooner Angel of the Blue, these memories played like a movie in his mind as he made his way to the Harbour Master's office. The ache he felt in his heart at that moment was an ache that had begun several months before, with the sudden, unexpected passing of his father.
The aroma of salt air, fish, and pine lumber filled his nostrils as he walked down the pier. Seagulls, high overhead, screeched at a cloudless sky. The overhead doorbell jingled as he entered the office.
Would you look at what the wind blew in," Conrad chuckled, leaving his chair and coming from behind the counter to embrace his wife's nephew.
“So good to see you, George. Of course, you will be coming to dinner. I will not take no for an answer. Gertrude would never forgive me if I let you get away,” he chuckled.
After an hour or so of catching up on all the latest news and happenings since their last meeting, George left the office, anticipating the wonderful dinner and evening that lay ahead, and for the first time in a long time, the ache in his heart had stopped.
He decided he would find a bathhouse and a barbershop, then go to MRA's and buy himself a new suit. Having done all that, he made his way to the City Market, where, seeing his reflection in a storefront window, he barely recognized the handsome, clean-shaven man dressed in a white linen suit looking back at him.
There, he picked up a box of Ganong's Chocolates and a bottle of the World’s Finest rum before hailing down a horse and carriage at the head of King Street. The roads were teeming with horses, wagons, bicycles, and people from all walks of life. Skillfully, the driver maneuvered his way through the crowded heart of the city, gradually easing into the quieter outskirts where blue-collar workers resided in two-story clapboard houses known as the Jelly Bean houses because of their pretty pastel-coloured exteriors. High on the adjacent hills, the mansions sat.
With a flick of the driver's whip, the horse picked up speed as they began the long ascent up the hill to one such mansion and the occupants who awaited his arrival. As they ascended the steep incline, the city below looked magnificent from above. From this viewpoint, George could see the city's layout in all its splendour, skirting a massive, endless ocean of navy blue, where shimmering lights from the sun's rays danced on its surface.
The beat of the horse’s hoofs, clip-clopping, came to a stop upon their arrival at his destination, finally breaking the mesmerizing spell that they had held him in. He paid the driver and stepped down onto the hot pavement and proceeded to the long stairway up another hill that led up to the mansion.
It was an exceptionally hot day, and he was already sweating. He should have had the driver continue around the bend and bring him to the back entrance of the mansion to avoid having to climb all the stairs, he thought to himself.
By the time he got to the top of the last landing, sweat was running down his face. He mopped it away with his linen hanky and stuffed it back into his pocket. He sat down for a few minutes on a wicker rocker out on the veranda to let the breezes from the overhead Cuban fan cool him. When he had cooled down, he grabbed hold of the brass knocker on the door and rapped it a few times.
It was Aunt Gertrude who greeted him at the door.
“George, dear George, come in,” she said as she wrapped her arms around him, planting a kiss on his cheek before bringing him into the parlour.
For the second time that day, he forgot to breathe. There she sat on a velvet lounge, the woman with the most beautiful face, the woman on the dock who had gotten away, sat before him now. Conrad’s niece —Elizabeth— from Ireland, visiting family—this woman who would become his wife, the love of his life.
Now, all these years later, sitting on a rusty old bench in the family cemetery, overlooking the ocean, reliving the past, a tear rolled down his cheek as he looked down at her grave— Elizabeth, the love of his life, taken from him by typhoid fever, slept eternally beneath a blanket of earth.
A few years ago, while rummaging around in the barn, looking for a specific tool he needed, he came across a tin box he didn’t recognize. A petty thing — depicting a scene in Paris. Not one of his, he was certain. He kept all his paraphernalia in tobacco tins. It must be Elizabeth’s or Annabelle’s, he thought.
When it opened, he found sheets of parchment paper with Annabelle's poems. For as long as he could remember, she had written poems. She was, as he had always known, a poet at heart. Forgetting about why he had come out to the barn, he sat down on the old wooden stool with the wobbly legs and read them. Each one brought back unforgettable memories of their past. She had always said that life was a journey of roses and thorns, and her poems were a testament to that profound sentiment. There were so many of them. He came to one unlike the others— this one had what he thought were water stains. It was a short poem.
Beneath a blanket of earth
With a pillow made of stone
My mother eternally sleeps
While at the foot of her bed
I stand alone
And weep, and weep, and weep
Recalling that poem now nearly broke his heart.
He had outlived all of them with perhaps one exception, his daughter, Annabelle. Was she still alive? If she were, how old would she be? Then, realizing this day was her birthday, and she would be 47, he turned his face to the sky as he had so many times before, and cursed God. Then, seeing what appeared to be a weed growing on Elizabeth’s grave, he bent down to remove it. That was when he noticed the still-blooming daisies lying at the base of Annabelle's headstone.
"Oh, God! He's been here again,” he mumbled — Conon Lee, that bloody Catholic. How he hated that worthless blaggard who had impregnated Annabelle back in 1919 when she was only seventeen years old and then sailed away. What a scandal it would have been if the townfolk had found out about it— an unwed Protestant girl carrying a Catholic’s bastard child.
He remembered the day he had found out about it. He had specifically come back from the sea earlier than expected, having agreed to drive Marion to Saint John in the morning to see her off and help her board the passenger ship for her long journey back to her homeland in Ireland.
No one was home when he arrived, so he went upstairs to his bedroom to change into some clean clothes. Within minutes after his arrival, they came. He heard the screen door slam as they entered the kitchen. He was about to go downstairs and let them know he was home when he heard them talking, and what he heard made his entire body go numb.
He heard Marion telling Annabelle she would have to tell her father she was pregnant, and Annabelle telling Marion she wouldn’t tell him until Conon returned, and together they would somehow convince her father to let him marry her.
Then he heard her tell Marion how hard it would be knowing how her father felt about Catholics and the bad blood between the Protestants and Catholics in this town, and how it was a cardinal sin for a protestant to marry a catholic or a catholic to marry a protestant.
Then, he heard her tell Marion about the time he’d gone into a fit of rage when a town catholic informed him that he and her mother were not married in the eyes of God and were living in sin and how it had cost him a night in jail.
Then he heard her tell Marion how he, to this day, believed it had been the same catholic that set fire to their home in the dead of winter while they attended Sunday church service and how they had to live at the Ottawa house until the house was livable again.
Then he heard her tell Marion how that same Catholic’s house had burned to the ground a year later on a Sunday in the dead of winter while that family were attending church services.
Yes! She told Marion she understood why her father hated Catholics and why the Catholics hated the Protestants, for from what she could see, both were guilty of committing dirty deeds against each other.
Then she told Marion how she would have to convert to Catholicism to become Conon’s legal wife and, in so doing, would break her father’s heart.
George stood there with tears running down his face as he once again suffered the crushing weight bearing down on a heart that had been broken many times before. First his sons, then Elizabeth and now Annabelle. How many times could a heart be broken before it ceased to beat forever? He wondered. Quickly and quietly, he got up and left the house by the front door, neither of them knowing he had been there.
He went to the place he had always gone to in his hour of need—the family cemetery. There he fell to his knees at Elizabeth’s grave and cried until there were no more tears to cry. Exhausted, he lay down on the grave as the sun dipped into the ocean. He watched the sea turn from blue to gold, then black as night arrived. There he lay for a long time as his grief slowly turned to rage that welled up inside him and spewed out like a volcano as he howled like a wild animal into the cool night.
He knew what he must do. They had both betrayed him. Annabelle, by being the bad seed everyone accused her of, and Marion, by allowing all of it to happen right under her nose.
He would put on a happy face and go home. In the morning, he would take both of them to Saint John.
CONTINUED IN CHAPTER 6
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