Silent Time Read Online Free Page A

bill.
    The bill lay faded and dirty in her washed and perfumed hand. She felt an impulse to throw it to the ground, but resisted for Paddy’s sake and clutched it in her fist instead.
    â€œWhat about the old man?” she asked.
    Vincy merely shrugged and looked at the ground. Then he added, “You’re better off out of it, girl,” before she could turn and walk away.
    â€œI know.”
    â€œMe an’ the boys is goin’, too, one of these days.”
    â€œOh. You’re all goin’ to marry down the Shore now, are ya?” Her tone was plainly saucy and she had to school herself to mind her tongue.
    â€œNo, girl. We’ll be goin’ to the States to work on the big boats. Cyril is leavin’ in a month an’ we’re all to follow in our own time, one by one.”
    â€œWhat does the old man think of that?”
    â€œNot much.”
    â€œNo, I don’t suppose he does,” she replied. She imagined the old man’s roars and table-pounding as he fought to get his way. “Who’ll look after him?”
    â€œMe,” he said. “It falls to the youngest. I’ll be the last to leave.”
    â€œWon’t be soon enough,” she said, disturbed, despite herself, by the brutal implication of the remark. Oh, why did Vincy have to come here at all?
    â€œYou can stay if you want,” she said, more to free herself of him than anything else. “Have a bite to eat.”
    â€œCan’t. He said to come right back, so I better get going.” He doffed his cap to Paddy who had been standing a little apart. “Goodbye, Leona.”
    â€œGoodbye, Vincy.”
    He turned away and headed across a beaten meadow path toward the road. She could tell by the dust on his boots that he was after walking the whole way. It would take him a good three or four hours to return to Three Brooks and there’d be lots of work waiting for him once he got there. She felt a little sorry for him at the thought of what he would face in the years ahead, but mostly she remained silently thankful that it was him and not her who had to face it. For her, at least, the future would be different from what the past had been.
    This thought was in keeping with one that Leona had earlier during the wedding ceremony. For despite the presence of the gaunt old priest, the intricate lacework of his snow-white alb, the sign of the cross that he formed in the air with his drooping hand, even despite the holy water, incense and candles and the fourteen hand-carved stations of the cross that lined the upper walls of the room, Leona had been more strongly aware that she was standing in a schoolhouse rather than in a church.
    She hadn’t been inside a classroom since the age of ten. In Three Brooks, as well as on the Cape Shore, girls instead of boys usually carried on in school and, in some cases, became teachers themselves. Leona had loved her time in school and, though still a small child, had hoped that she, too, might be treated differently from the boys. That hope was dashed the fall after Grade Six when the old man told her that she wouldn’t be needing her cloth bookbag any more, that she must stay at home and learn to work. She submitted to the instructions of a come-by-day housekeeper for a couple of years, but by the age of thirteen she was doing pretty well everything herself.
    It occurred to Leona that the wedding ceremony had, in a way, happened in two places at once. She had just made her vows to her husband in church. Now, she smiled whimsically to herself as she made a separate vow, this one to her future children. She vowed that not one of them, neither boy nor girl, would be kept away from school. They would come to this building, not only for obligatory Sunday Masses, but for an education, as well, and be encouraged to continue for as long as they liked.

3
    The babies came in quick succession. By the spring of 1904 Leona had two running around the house