There were weeks when Time, that old indifferent master, laid his heavy hand upon our house and would not lift it. He had promised to come, our father, and the word had been delivered with such careless ease that it seemed a small coin tossed upon our table. We gathered it at once, as poor folk gather any glitter that might pass for gold, and kept it safe in our minds. The days after such a promise were coloured strangely. Morning arrived with an air of expectancy, noon with a tightening of the chest, dusk with a pricking of the eyes, and night with a grief that mended itself just enough to be torn anew on the morrow. He would come, so he had said. He did not come. He would send word, so others whispered. He did not send. The sea roared on its own business and the gulls cried as if to laugh or lament, and our small cottage stood fast beneath the wind as though to teach us how to endure.
It began each time with rehearsal, for hope is a poor actress who must study one simple scene and perform it forever. Heath would clean the grate as if the hearth desired to welcome company. Arabella would straighten the stool she called a chair of state and lay a rag across it, pretending she had the keeping of a noble salon. I would sweep the boards with my faithful broom until the pine shone pale as bone, and then I would set the pot to warm though there was little within to justify its whispering sigh. Mother, if she was within the house, made herself busy with a quietness that was somehow louder than speech. More often she was away on business of her own, and then the three of us waited alone, a small nation of children with no ambassador to plead our cause.
The first day of waiting bore a brightness that was almost gaiety. We set our work to rights and dressed our want in manners. I braided Arabella's hair and tied it with a frayed ribbon until the pale strands lay smooth upon her back. Heath fixed his cap at an angle that he considered manful and brave. I smoothed my apron and scrubbed at a reluctant stain until it yielded. If the latch lifted then, we would be ready. If a shadow crossed the curtain, we would rise as one and greet it. If a knock sounded, we would not appear the rabble we sometimes felt ourselves to be, but a family capable of honouring a father's return. Evening brought no step up the path. Night followed and seated itself by our hearth like a fourth child, large and heedless, who jostled the rest of us in the dark. The grief of the first night was tolerable. It had the freshness of a wound that one believes will close.
On the second day the hours grew heavy like wet clothes upon a line. I kept the fire alive with little offerings, bark peeled thin as a fingernail, a stub of twine, a chip of pine. Heath wandered in and out, striking his stick against the yard gate and returning to ask if there had been a knock, if any man had called from the lane, if a neighbour had sent word that a boat had landed at the cove. Arabella arranged our poor dishes upon the shelf with a ceremony that did them more honour than they deserved, lifting each plate and saying under her breath in her theatre voice, Here sits the Duke, here sits the Lady, here sits the Page, and the last she set down softly and whispered, Here sits the child who waits. By dusk her blue eyes shone with unshed tears that made the brown fleck in the left seem like a little island drowning in its own sea. She laughed at herself then, because laughter had been her shield since the world first learned to press upon her, but the laugh rang thin, like glass struck and made to sing though it was cracked already. The second night was crueler. It had the taste of betrayal.
The third day was the worst, not because it contained more hours than its brethren, but because we had learned by then that his promise was made of smoke which stings and then vanishes. I busied my hands and would not permit them rest. The house must be neat, said I to myself. The floor must be clean, the knives in order, the cloth folded square. Perhaps he did not come because some small thing the house required was lacking. Silly reasoning, but one must give the mind bread if the heart has none. Heath grew still as a stone in a stream. He would sit at the door with his stick across his knees and his head bowed as if in prayer, though I think he spoke with no God then, only with his own silence. Arabella watched the lane until her breath fogged the pane and her cheeks grew damp with the cold of the glass. When the light at last sank and the last hope with it, I saw the collapse in her small shoulders as one sees a wave spend itself on rock. She turned to me, and I to her, and the tears came hot and sudden. We wept together as children must, a mingling of sorrow that felt too large for our thin chests. Heath did not join us. He rose, struck the hearth twice so that sparks leapt and died, and went out beneath the dark to pace the yard as if he might turn the earth upon its axis by the strength of his steps.
There were such weeks more than I like to number. Sometimes a man would pass the post with a word that Father had been seen at the wharf one evening, loud in his cups and arm in arm with companions who could scarcely steer their own weight. Sometimes a neighbour would say that he had called from a distance, shouting promises that could not reach the ear plain through the wind. Sometimes there was nothing at all, only the salt-thick air and the sound of the sea that belongs to no man, not even to those who make of it their livelihood.
After one such long week of waiting and not being found, of listening and not being called, the need in me rose like a tide and would not be resisted. If he would not come of his own power, if he would not speak soberly when he did come, then I would send him words that were not slurred and would not stagger upon the road. I would write to him. He had written me once, he had set his rough letters in a crooked line and promised that he would be there. I would meet him upon the same ground and compel honesty if I could. Words were the one inheritance I felt certain I could claim.
I told Arabella what I meant to do. We sat side by side at the window, our cheeks nearly touching, and I said that I must go to the post. Her face worked like a small sea in wind. She asked if I would take her with me. I said no, for Heath would not suffer us both to go at once, and the house should not be left empty. She tried to smile and then the smile slipped. Tears brimmed clean and full and ran down without sob or sound. The blue of her gaze was deepened by them until it seemed I was looking into some tender ocean that would overmaster both of us if we were not careful. I drew her close and pressed my cheek to hers and felt the wet upon my skin. Then my own tears came of their own liberty. We wept as sisters do when the world shows its teeth and they must show one another their hearts. Heath stood very straight with his back to us and looked a long time at the door, and his quiet was a sound that filled the room.
I set my bonnet upon my hair and took my paper and the stump of pencil I kept safe. The wind met me upon the threshold and pushed its cold fingers at my throat as if to test my resolve. I held the paper close beneath my shawl and went along the lane. Snow had been trampled into a grey rug. There were ruts in it where cart wheels had sunk and frozen. The air smelt of brine and fish and the iron of the sea. A gull cried once overhead, and the cry cut me like a thin knife and then was gone. I passed the neighbours' houses with their small windows bright as beads sewn upon dark cloth. I passed the little chapel where a bell is rung on Sundays and sometimes rung on other days for reasons the village does not discuss until after the door is shut. I came at last to the post.
It is no grand place, our post. A man keeps it with a patience learned from boredom and a shrewdness learned from necessity. There is a counter scarred by the knives of fifty years and an ink bottle that has stained it with a little black lake. There are shelves where letters lie as if they had fallen there and slept, and there is a stool where one may sit and pretend oneself steady while the heart is all motion. I stood for a little and felt small near the boots of men who did not look down. When the postmaster cleared his throat and said that if I meant to use his counter I might do it before it grew dark again next winter, I started and thanked him and climbed upon the stool.
I set the paper upon the scarred plank and smoothed it with both hands as if it were the brow of a restless child. My freckles looked like tiny seeds scattered across the skin of my fingers. I took the pencil. It is strange how the presence of ink or lead compels confession. My heart beat loudly, then calmed, as if it had found a march it could keep. The letters came crooked, awkward, as though they stumbled in the snow, but they came, and I wrote them as best I knew how.
deer Pa,
we wated and wated at the winnow. arabella cryed and i cryed too. we kep sayin you was coming but you did not. you say you will come but you dont. the pepel in town say you are at the warf with the bottel. they say you love drink more then us. i hate when they laf. it makes my face hot. i wish you wood prove them rong. why cant you come with out drink. why cant you love us more.
plese come. plese be sober. plese be our Pa like you promist.
your gurl,
Clara
I read it once with lips moving, though the letters looked crooked and starved. I could not mend them. They were mine, and they bore my hurt plain, as a wound that cannot be covered by cloth.