Jack whistled and the children skipped home. His mind raced with worry, fatigue, and that awful sense of dread as the knowledge of what he’d have to do, pull himself away from this town and uproot himself, became clear. Jack’s heart sank, the sky darkened, and more heavy rain fell, as if they were already aboard a sinking ship.
At the top of the hill Jack’s mouth dropped in surprise and widened into a grin at the man who stood on his front step waving wildly.
Chapter Two
“When did you get home?” Jack asked.
“A few minutes ago,” Peter said.
“Katherine and Margaret,” Angela wailed and unravelled the children from his arms, “you know you’re not supposed to leave the backyard.”
“We were almost at the end of the rainbow, but every time we moved, it moved too,” Maggie told her before she whisked them inside the warm house.
Jack and Peter shook hands briskly. Peter stood over six feet tall, bulky and hairy, with thumbs as big as the head of a hammer, one of the largest miners on the underground crew. He had a self-satisfied air about him; he’d regained his easy swagger, the comfort in his own skin that the layoff had stolen.
At Brighton Catholic School Peter had convinced Jack to skip countless classes. Peter would always get caught and was harshly punished by the nuns. Burly Pete would cry but wouldn’t squeal on anyone under the sting of the thick leather whip the nuns used liberally. Nothing could make Pete cry now; he was beaming broadly, and his muscular chest was bursting with pride.
“I didn’t find anything in St. John’s, but I got a letter yesterday, an offer of employment for a small town on the mainland, in Northern Alberta at a gold mine.”
Jack gulped. “Gold?”
“Yes, they’ve been developing this for years, and they’re finally ready to let some of us boys at her.”
“I bet there’d be a lot of jobs.”
“Yes, and homes, stuff for the kids to do.”
“You’d go?”
“Of course. There’s nothing, I’ve looked everywhere.”
“When are you leaving?”
“In a month. When your time’s up, let me know, I can help you out —”
“It happened yesterday.”
“I’m sorry, buddy. Why don’t you apply, then? Here, here’s the address.” Peter ripped the return address from the corner of an envelope he’d pulled from the back pocket of his jeans. “Call them, send them an application. You can stay with us for a while until you get yourself together.”
“Peter Fifield,” Wanda yelled from her door, “I haven’t seen you in a month, get home right now.”
“I’m coming,” Peter yelled. “Think about it,” he urged.
“Go easy on him, Wanda.”
Wanda winked. “He’s in good hands.”
The next morning Angela bundled the girls up in their fall clothes while Jack fumbled with a warm black turtleneck and an old pair of scuffed blue jeans. Combing his black hair flat, he squirted a dollop of thick white hair crème onto his open palm and fingered it gently through to his scalp. Angela hoisted a plaid wool skirt over her slender hips and wrapped a white blouse, with a bib-like ruffled collar, around her waist, tying both ends of the cloth at her side. She tied her thick black hair in a low ponytail, securing the wisps tightly behind her eyes with a tortoiseshell buckle.
A travelling theatre group from St. John’s had come to Brighton for the weekend to put on a children’s play for the Fall Community Festival. The children were excited and couldn’t wait to see the performance. It wasn’t often something like this came to Brighton; the people of the community usually did it themselves, putting on their own shows with amateur talent, lacking in virtuosity but not without enthusiasm and playfulness, so much so that they inevitably ended up laughing at themselves, which made the show more enjoyable for the adults.
“How long has it been since you’ve seen her?” Jack asked as he slowly ran a razor blade across his cheek.
“At least a year. She’s been touring non-stop.”
Angela’s childhood friend, Sheila, had become a theatre actress, leaving Brighton to study drama in England. She had settled in St. John’s and created the travelling theatre company. Tall, blonde, with cheerful blue eyes, she was a delight to watch. Angela remembered the stories Sheila’s mother told about her great-grandmother, a vaudeville performer from Jersey Island who married an English wartime doctor stationed in India. Outspoken and defiant, this actress once sneered at the Nazis during the occupation of Jersey in the thirties. Sheila’s petite blonde great-grandmother had sat primly in her grade-school chair, held at gunpoint by several Nazi soldiers commanding her to speak German. She consistently replied in French, blatantly disrespecting them. Somehow she had been spared.
Sheila had the same resilience, and the same gift for the stage.
“Will her father come to the show?”
Angela nodded. “Yes, I’m sure he wouldn’t miss it for the world.”
Doctor Nelson had arrived in Brighton from Jersey with his small British family in the late sixties. Angela’s father, Tom Harrington, a miner who served on the town council, sang in the church choir with the doctor, each taking turns playing tricks on the choir mistress, alternating soprano and baritone behind her back, confusing her ear.
Mrs. Nelson had died a few years ago, from breast cancer. Doctor Nelson was devastated. She was the only love he’d ever known. An English orphan, he had married Mrs. Nelson when she was eighteen, the daughter of a well-travelled doctor and philanthropic stage actress. He vowed to provide for her in the same way her own father had. Earning a scholarship to medical school, he soon found work in Newfoundland after graduating from Oxford.
Angela and Sheila had met during one of Mrs. Nelson’s piano classes, each conspiring to play the wrong notes in the devilish hopes of frustrating their teacher.
Angela smiled; it would be wonderful to welcome Sheila home and take their minds off everything.
The public school gymnasium was dark. The children were quiet, except for the occasional squeak of an overexcited youngster. The yellow and white spotlight hit the stage and Jane Cranford, president of the Brighton Entertainment series, was illuminated. She was carrot-orange in the light, her freckles and ginger hair overexposed.
“Hello everyone, and welcome to today’s performance of This Autumn’s Tale, performed by Blackwater Tide Theatre, starring our very own Sheila Nelson!” Jane Cranford clapped airily, papers spilling out of her hands. She bent to pick them up and the spotlight heightened the red that had risen in her cheeks. “Now, children,” she said quietly, regaining her composure, “don’t be frightened. This is a special play for the fall festival. It’s all about a child who is far from home and …” The spotlight snapped off loudly, and after a few seconds the curtain drew back choppily, two pairs of fumbling hands on each side gripping the corners tightly. Jane mumbled apologies for the technical difficulties while being whisked off the stage by one of the primary school teachers.
The spotlight blinked on, wavered, and went out again. Finally steady, it rested on the figure standing centre stage. It was Sheila, dressed in layers of billowing white satin as the Good Fairy Princess. She held a white owl puppet on her left arm, covered by a red-velvet robe,