And if a robin sang for territory, who could blame it, the poor bugger, because wasn’t that what begetting and working your land and raising your children was about? Making a place for them in the world where they could be safe and grow like trees? He wished he’d done that in any country but the troubled one he’d been born in because he might yet be walking home to Tullaglas from the Bundorragha schoolhouse, a daughter on each side of him, looking forward to the thin plume of smoke in their chimney and Eilis greeting them with hot tea and a bit of barmbrack. It came again, the terrible sorrow, and he wept as he brought the skiff up above the high tide line, fastening its rope to the apple tree. He wept as he took the green cotton line from his boat to remove the strands of seaweed and to repair the breaks, took the little box of spinners to clean, took the oars, which he carefully leaned against the shake-clad wall of his cabin, along with the herring rake, and he was still weeping as he went in to start a fire so he could cook himself a meal, draping his sweat-damp pullover on a rock to dry. Some days were like this, the tears a river he could not for the life of him control.
In the distance, he could hear children, the children of the man who let him use the cabin; often they could be seen doing the work of men and women, ploughing a rough field behind a steady grey horse, washing clothing in the creek, leading a cow from one pasture to another. Encountered in this way, they looked to the ground or averted their eyes as they passed, a polite hello coaxed from the older ones. But he could tell, this time, that they were playing, their voices sounding so far away in the weather, though he knew they were only around the cove, at the mouth of a quick creek, where long grass hid the nests of geese and the passing of deer in the morning. Their voices were full of joy and youth, and he wept as he listened, for himself and for all the children of the world who would learn that no amount of love could keep grief from the door.
“Ma, the man’s crying again. I didn’t leave the milk because he looked too sad to bother with only a jug of milk.”
The child looked to his mother, who was washing a tin bucket with scalding water from a kettle sitting on a stump. “Take this to the barn, Jack, and I’ll take the milk myself. Did you spill any? I thought I’d filled the jug more than this.”
“I tripped on a root and some splashed out. I didn’t mean to. Duke licked it up before it had a chance to soak into the path, so it weren’t really wasted.”
His mother smiled at him. “That’s one way to look at it, Jack. Now, take this bucket and mind you cover it with one of the clean rags on the bench so that it’ll be ready for the evening milking. I’ll be back soon.”
She wiped her hands dry on her apron, which she then untied and hung on the pump. The trail to the cabin their tenant called World’s End led through salal and oregon grape, dipping down at one place into a reedy marsh where her husband had made a corduroy walk of young cedars stripped of their branches and scored with an axe for traction. She was careful with her footing, balancing the jug of milk in her right hand and using her left to steady herself on the logs, which were slippery despite their scorings. Up a little hill, along a bluff of arbutus in full creamy bloom this middle of April, past the midden of clam and oyster shells, and along the muddy shore to World’s End.
Declan O’Malley was inside by now, she could see smoke coming out of his chimney, the blue smoke that indicated he’d just lit a fire, using cedar kindling from the pile in the shelter of a big tree. The old oars they’d given him were standing under his eaves, sanded and oiled, and a herring rake she had seen before, too, a few strands of kelp between its tines. She knocked once on his weathered door. He came immediately.
“Jack brought this earlier but didn’t want to trouble you. I’m sorry he spilled a bit on the trail. If you need more, we can let you have another jug after the evening milking, but I’ve used the earlier milk for my baking. Fishing, were you?”
“I’m much obliged, Mrs. Neil. Aye, I’d the boat out since yesterday morning, over to Outer Kelp by the point. Caught a few, too, now that I’ve the knack of it. I’m sorry a second trip had to be made with the milk. Will ye have a cup of tea?”
She looked past him into the cabin, wondering again at the fact that he had so little with which to make a life. Nearly two months he’d been there, a shadowy presence seen occasionally from her kitchen window, rowing out to fish or for provisions. With all the work of a stump farm and five children, she had no time to seek him out in a neighbourly way as she might have liked, yet was surprised to find him still camping (that was all you could call it) in the cabin, without anything much more than had been there when he’d arrived. A table, two rough benches he’d made from stumps. A blanket laid out neatly on the old mattress that had been in the cabin since the beginning of time, or at least the beginning of the century. And there were books, a big canvas bag with paper and ink, several bottles of it she’d seen.
“A cup of tea would be welcome, Mr. O’Malley. We could sit outside. It seems a shame to be inside when this sun is such a rare treat.”
“We could of course.” They sat with their tea on warm rocks at the edge of the clearing. Declan placed the teapot on a piece of driftwood pulled up from the shore and indicated branches carrying deep cerise flowers. “Now tell what are these flowers that the hummingbirds are fierce for?”
“We call them salmonberries, those bushes. The berries, when they come, are very flavourful and look a little like salmon roe, clusters of roe, I suppose. There’s another one, too, with white blossoms, we call thimbleberry. You’ll see those soon. I make jam with them when I can persuade the children to pick enough. A softer berry, too.”
She paused, took a deep breath, and then continued. “Mr. O’Malley, I don’t want to intrude on your privacy, but if there’s anything I can do for you, will you let me know? In a small community like ours, we are used to troubles, our own and our neighbours’, and it’s no burden to help. You have only to say.”
Declan looked at his feet, then turned his mug in his hands, peering inside as though the leaves might tell a fortune, a caution. “Mrs. Neil, you are very kind. I cannot speak of my own trouble, not yet, but I do thank ye from my heart for yer concern. I’d no thought or hope at all that I would find such kindness at the end of such a journey. I’ve no biscuit to offer ye with the tea, but perhaps ye’ll take a bit of bread?”
Mrs. Neil looked at the piece of cedar shake he was holding in her direction. A round loaf with a slice or two taken from it: Quite a coarse crumb, not a yeast bread, she thought.
“However did you make bread, Mr. O’Malley? You have only that old stove the people before you rigged up from an oil barrel ...”
“I’m thinking ye have never heard of a bastable, Mrs. Neil. In Ireland the bread is often baked in the coals of an open fire in a little three-legged lad of cast iron. Well, to be sure I’ve nothing so formal as that, of course, but I found an old iron pot in the brush and scrubbed off the rust, oiled it up nicely as could be, and I’ve experimented with it, balanced on rocks in the coals of the stove, and this bread ye see is the result.”
“But the bread itself, how did you know to bake it? Most men around here could make bannock, or fry bread, but it’s hardly a bread at all, just flour and lard and leavening if they happen to have it, a mess they cook in a skillet and often as not is raw in the centre. Something to fill them up when they’re in the bush.”
“My mother taught me to bake when I was a boy as there were no sisters yet to learn, they came later, and me hanging around her, watching her work, she must’ve thought I might as well be useful. Buttermilk we used in Ireland, but sour milk, if it turns before I’ve used it in my tea, makes a good loaf with some bread soda. I’m sorry there’s no butter to offer ye, but will ye have a bit of cheese?”
Mrs. Neil took the cheese he offered and broke a corner of bread off her slice. She tasted thoughtfully. “It’s very good bread,