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1
September 1985
Little Cove: Population 389
The battered sign came into view as my car
crested a hill on the gravel road. Only 389 people? Damn. I pulled over and got
out of the car, inhaling the moist air. Empty boats tilted against the wind in
the bay below. A big church dominated the valley, beside which squatted a low,
red building, its windows dark, like a row of rotten teeth. This was likely St.
Jude’s, where tomorrow I would begin my teaching career.
“You lost?”
I whirled around. A gaunt man, about sixty,
straddled a bike beside me. He wore denim overalls and his white hair was
combed neatly back from his forehead.
“Car broke down?” he continued.
“No,” I said. “I’m just … ” My voice
trailed off. I could hardly confide my second thoughts to this stranger.
“…admiring the view.”
He looked past me at the flinty mist now
spilling across the bay. A soft rain began to fall, causing my carefully
straightened hair to twist and curl like a mass of dark slugs.
“Might want to save that for a fine day,”
he said. His accent was strong, but lilting. “It’s right mauzy today.”
“Mossy?”
“Mauzy.” He gestured at the air around him.
Then he folded his arms across his chest and gave me a once-over. “Now then,”
he said. “What’s a young one like you doing out this way?”
“I’m not that young,” I shot back. “I’m the
new French teacher out here.”
A smile softened his wrinkled face. “Down
from Canada, hey?”
As far as I knew, Newfoundland was still
part of Canada, but I nodded.
“Phonse Flynn,” he said, holding out a
callused hand. “I’m the janitor over to St. Jude’s.”
“Rachel,” I said. “Rachel O’Brien.”
“I knows you’re staying with Lucille,” he
said. “I’ll show you where she’s at.”
With an agility that belied his age, he
dismounted and gently lowered his bike to the ground. Then he pointed across
the bay. “Lucille’s place is over there, luh.”
Above a sagging wharf, I saw a path that
cut through the rocky landscape towards a smattering of houses. I’d been
intrigued at the prospect of a boarding house; it sounded Dickensian. Now I was
uneasy. What if it was awful?
“What about your bike?” I asked, as Phonse
was now standing by the passenger-side door of my car.
“Ah, sure it’s grand here,” he said. “I’ll
come back for it by and by.”
“Aren’t you going to lock it?”
I thought of all the orphaned bike wheels
locked to racks in Toronto, their frames long since ripped away. Jake had been
livid when his racing bike was stolen. Not that I was thinking about Jake. I
absolutely was not.
“No need to lock anything ’round here,”
said Phonse.
I fumbled with my car keys, embarrassed to
have locked the car from habit.
“Need some help?”
“The lock’s a bit stiff,” I said. “I’ll get
used to it.”
Phonse waited while I jiggled in vain. Then
he walked around and held out his hand. I gave him the key, he stuck it in and
the knob on the inside of the car door popped up immediately.
“Handyman, see,” he said. “Wants a bit of
oil, I allows. But like I said, no need to lock ’er. Anyway, with that colour,
who’d steal it?” I had purchased the car over the phone, partly for its price,
partly for its colour. Green had been Dad’s favourite colour, and when the
salesman said mountain green, I’d imagined a dark, verdant shade. Instead, with
its scattered rust garnishes, the car looked like a bowl of mint chocolate chip
ice cream. Still, it would fit right in. I eyeballed the houses as we drove
along: garish orange, lime green, blinding yellow. Maybe there had been a sale
on paint.
As we passed the church, Phonse blessed
himself, fingers moving from forehead to chest, then on to each shoulder. I
kept both hands firmly on the steering wheel.
“Where’s the main part of Little Cove?” I
asked.
“You’re looking at it.”
There was nothing but a gas station and a
takeout called MJ’s, where a clump of teenagers was gathered outside, smoking.
A tall, dark-haired boy pointed at my car and they all turned to stare. A girl
in a lumber jacket raised her hand. I waved back before I realized she was
giving me the finger. Embarrassed, I peeked sideways at Phonse. If he’d
noticed, he didn’t let on.
Although Phonse was passenger to my driver,
I found myself thinking of Matthew Cuthbert driving Anne Shirley through
Avonlea en route to Green Gables. Not that I’d be assigning romantic names to
these landmarks. Anne’s “Snow Queen” cherry tree and “Lake of Shining Waters”
were nowhere to be seen. It was more like Stunted Fir Tree and Sea of Grey
Mist. And I wasn’t a complete orphan; it merely felt that way.
At the top of a hill, Phonse pointed to a
narrow dirt driveway on the right. “In there, luh.”
I parked in front of a small violet house
encircled by a crooked wooden fence. A rusty oil tank leaned into the house, as
if seeking shelter. When I got out, my nose wrinkled at the fishy smell. Phonse
joined me at the back of the car and reached into the trunk for my suitcases.
“Gentle Jaysus in the garden,” he grunted.
“What have you got in here at all? Bricks?” He lurched ahead of me towards the
house, refusing my offer of help.
The contents of my suitcases had to last me
the entire year; now I was second-guessing my choices. My swimsuit and goggles?
I wouldn’t be doing lengths in the ocean. I looked at the mud clinging to my
sneakers and regretted the suede dress boots nestled in tissue paper. But I
knew some of my decisions had been right: a raincoat, my portable cassette
player, stacks of homemade tapes, my hair straighteners and a slew of books.
When Phonse reached the door, he pushed it
open, calling, “Lucille? I got the new teacher here. I expect she’s wore out
from the journey.” As he heaved my bags inside, a stout woman in a floral apron
and slippers appeared: Lucille Hanrahan, my boarding house lady.
“Phonse, my son, bring them bags upstairs
for me now,” she said.
I said I would take them but Lucille shooed
me into the hall, practically flapping her tea towel at me. “No, girl,” she
said. “You must be dropping, all the way down from Canada. Let’s get some grub
in you before you goes over to the school to see Mr. Donovan.”
Patrick Donovan, the school principal, had
interviewed me over the phone. I was eager to meet him.
“Oh, did he call?” I asked.
“No.”
Lucille smoothed her apron over her belly,
then called up the stairs to ask Phonse if he wanted a cup of tea. There was a
slow beat of heavy boots coming down. “I’ll not stop this time,” said Phonse.
“But Lucille, that fence needs seeing to.”
Lucille batted her hand at him. “Go way
with you,” she said. “It’s been falling down these twenty years or more.” But
as she showed him out, they talked about possible repairs, the two of them
standing outside, pointing and gesturing, oblivious to the falling rain.
A lump of mud fell from my sneaker, and I
sat down on the bottom step to remove my shoes. When Lucille returned, she
grabbed the pair, clacked them together outside the door to remove the
remaining mud, then lined them up beside a pair of sturdy ankle boots.
I followed her down the hall to the
kitchen, counting the curlers that dotted her head, pink outposts in a field of
black and grey.
“Sit down over there, luh,” she said,
gesturing towards a table and chairs shoved against the back window. I winced
at her voice; it sounded like the classic two-pack-a-day rasp.
The fog had thickened, so nothing was
visible outside; it was like watching static on TV. There were scattered
cigarette burns on the vinyl tablecloth and worn patches on the linoleum floor.
A religious calendar hung on the wall, a big red circle around today’s date.
September’s pin-up was Mary, her veil the exact colour of Lucille’s house. I
was deep in Catholic territory, all right. I hoped I could still pass for one.
Excerpted from New Girl in Little
Cove by Damhnait Monaghan, Copyright © 2021 by Damhnait Monaghan
Published by Graydon House Books
About the Author
|
|
DAMHNAIT MONAGHAN was once a
mainlander who taught in a small fishing village in Newfoundland. A former
teacher and lawyer, Monaghan has almost sixty publication credits, including
flash fiction, creative non-fiction, and short stories. Her short prose has
won or placed in various writing competitions and has been nominated for a
Pushcart Prize, Best Small Fictions, and Best Microfictions. New Girl in Little Cove placed in the
top six from more than 350 entries in the 2019 International Caledonia Novel
Award. |
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