‘You gots more lip than a coal bucket, b’y,’ Ephraim says as he twists the top off his fourth bottle of Agnes’s beer. ‘You’re goin’ to make her right binicky.’
‘Boys don’t needs cake. Spoils them for no reason.’ Agnes leans over and chucks Winny under her chin. ‘Little girls is different, isn’t that right, Winny?’
‘I knows the words to ‘Happy Birthday’,’ Emmett says as he hands the forks out to the others. ‘Mrs Perkins taught us. She makes marshmallow squares when it’s someone’s birthday at school. She lets us choose the colour. I always chooses blue ’cause no one else’ll eats them ’cept me.’ Emmett eyes the double-height cake with its glistening icing and licks his lips. ‘Mam, I has a present for Winny.’
‘Do you, Emmy?’
Emmett roots around in his trouser pocket and pulls out a wood carving of a long-coated dog the size of his hand. He pushes it along the table to his mother. ‘It’s a Newfoundland dog. Like Mr Boyd’s.’
Ellie picks up the wooden dog. ‘That’s really an excellent carving, Emmy. It looks just like Thumper.’ She holds it out to Thomas. ‘Doesn’t it, Thomas? Look like Jim Boyd’s dog?’
Thomas takes the carving and squints as he inspects it. ‘Where’d you learn to do this, son?’
The boy shrugs. ‘Dunno. I just does it.’
Thomas whistles. ‘Well, aren’t you the clever clogs.’
‘Don’t you be fillin’ his head with slop, Thomas,’ Agnes says as she fishes the stub of a pink candle out of her apron pocket. ‘Put that on the cake, Emmy, then we’ll all sing ‘Happy Birthday’ and you can cuts the cake. You can pretends it’s your birthday cake, too.’
***
Thomas pulls on his yellow oilskin jacket, grabs his crutch and heads for the screen door.
Ellie sets the dirty dishes in the soapy sink water. ‘Where are you going? It’s getting late.’
‘Just going down to the store to check the boat. She had a slow leak the other day that I fixed up with some pitch.’
‘You’re not taking her out now, are you?’
‘Just for a quick run down to the lighthouse to check she’s tight. We’ve gots to get out early tomorrow before the big factory trawlers turns up. They sucks up more fish in a day then all of us b’ys here does in a month. Sun won’t be down till close to ten. There’s a good couple of hours yet.’
Emmett takes his yellow rain jacket off the coat hook by the door. ‘Can I come too, Da’?’
‘Sure, son. High time you learned about boats.’
‘But Thomas, it’s almost his bedtime. He’s only nine.
‘I was on the boat with my dad when I was eight. Time for him to learn the family business.’ Thomas grabs a couple of beer bottles out of the new refrigerator, and stuffs them into his jacket pockets.
‘My son isn’t going to be a fisherman.’
‘Something wrong with being a fisherman, maid? Maybe you wished you’d married a chocolate salesman instead?’
‘Thomas!’
‘It’s the truth, isn’t it, Ellie Mae? Don’t I knows you fell in love with a solider in a sharp uniform, and ended up the wife of a piss-poor fisherman at the back of beyond? Don’t I knows you should have had better? Don’t you knows I’ve been tryin’ to make it better for you?’
‘Thomas? What’s got into you?’
He taps his forehead with his hand. ‘I’m up to here in debt to Jim Boyd and Rod Fizzard. How’d you think you gots the fridge? And all the paint in from St John’s so I could paint you the colourful house you wanted? We has to get out fishin’ longer hours, and Dad’s not so young anymore. It’s all I can thinks to do is to get Emmy helpin’.’
‘Thomas—’
Thomas gestures to Emmett. ‘C’mon, son.’
‘Our son’s not going to be a fisherman, Thomas.’
The screen door slams, bouncing on its sprung hinges until it slowly settles back into its frame.
***
Thomas peers through the window of the bridge of the small boat and steers through the water towards the silhouette of the lighthouse on the cliff. The darkening sky is shot with streaks of yellow, red and orange, which reflect off the tops of the waves. Just like Ellie’s bakeapple and partridgeberry cobbler when she pulls it steaming hot from the oven, Thomas thinks.
He twists the cap off the second beer and takes a long gulp. He shouldn’t have set on to Ellie like that. He was lucky to have a woman like her. A lot of women would have hightailed it back to England before they learned what a scrunchion was. Jim Boyd’s cousin up in Baie Verte had just that happen to him. His Bristol bride had refused to get off the boat in Halifax when she saw the sight of it and headed straight back to England.
Still, when he looked at Ellie, in her plain dresses and her sturdy brown shoes, and her blueberry-stained aprons that never came clean no matter how much he saw her scrub at them in the sink, she was as lovely as he remembered that first time he’d laid eyes on her at the Samson and Hercules. More lovely, if that were possible. Her figure fuller, but firmed by the physical life on The Rock. Her face slimmer, her hair a deeper blonde that spun threads of gold in the summer months. Her beautiful eyes, as stormy and blue as the north Atlantic. How did he deserve this woman? How could he show her how much he loved her? How much he hated himself for giving her such a hard life, so far away from her family.
He shakes his head. One day he’d get her a proper diamond ring. He would have done, if he could have. But, the diamond rings he could afford had been so small. Not right at all for Ellie. He was lucky to have found that old pawn shop down on Elm Hill. Maybe it was only a cheap zircon, but it had the right look. One of these days, he’d get her a proper diamond ring, that’s for sure. She’d like that. He’d put her through a lot; it was the least he could do.
His mother had never taken to her, no matter how much he’d seen Ellie try with her. ‘That English wife of yours,’ Agnes would call her, not to Ellie’s face, of course. ‘Fancies herself an artist, like that’ll do a fat lot of good gettin’ food on the table out here.’ The two of them existed in an uneasy truce, he could see that, like two prisoners forced to share a cell. His mam was a hard case. He knew it’d been hard for Ellie, all these years.
Still, he’d given Ellie two beautiful children. Well, Winny, at least. But Emmy was his son, no matter how he’d come into the world. Even if George was Emmy’s real father, no matter what Ellie said. He had to let go of his jealousy. It was a small man who’d take such a thing out on a child. The war was a different world. Who was he to judge Ellie, when she hadn’t heard from him in months. When she’d thought he’d been killed in North Africa?
The boat lurches over a large swell and Thomas staggers against the wheel. His crutch and the beer bottle crash to the floor. Thomas grabs for the wheel, blinking hard as the cabin spins.
‘What was that, Da’?’
‘Nothing, son,’ Thomas calls over his shoulder. ‘How’s it holding out back there, Emmy? Any leaks?’
‘Nothing inside.’