Then the frigid water rose up to the ceiling and Dorothy was covered in it again. Her arms and legs flailed about desperately as she fought off panic. With her hands she hit chairs and table legs and the walls of the family kitchen. Maybe the other houses in Kelly’s Cove are gone, too, she thought.
Then she was in the open ocean, just drifting like seaweed. She wasn’t cold anymore and, as it enveloped her, the sea began to give a comfort that felt familiar but that she could not recall exactly. The heaviness she had felt in the house had given way and her body was as light as a feather. She lazily opened her eyes and watched lobsters crawl, fish fly by, an eel scoot. It was all so beautiful.
As Dorothy sailed through the waters of the bay, she saw a light that had the brilliance of the finest cut diamond. She floated toward it, overwhelmed by its intensity. All around the light were thick glowing arms that reached for her. They called her name and pulled her to them. Without hesitation, Dorothy fell into their embrace and bathed in their warmth. At once, she felt a love even greater than the great love she had known in her short life as Frances’ beloved daughter in Kelly’s Cove, Newfoundland.
PART TWO: JOURNEY
12
On the morning of November 19, 1929 the men of High Beach pulled their coat collars tight and pointed their heads to the gale that swept into their village. Just west of Lamaline, their homes faced the French islands, where they often travelled to trade wood and caplin for rum. Theirs was a prosperous community; everyone had at least thirty dollars cash in a jar in their kitchen cupboard, some had as much as $150. A few families had bank accounts with sums of one hundred dollars or more salted away. Their larders were full, as they always were. The Bank Crash was a far off thing that had affected those poor fellows in New York and London, maybe even St. John’s, but not anyone here in High Beach.
Thirty-two-year-old Stanley Hillier was one of the men who emerged from his house that morning. He couldn’t believe that just yesterday it had been bright, almost spring-like, and the tall grasses in the meadow had been straight as arrows in the still air. After the great rumbling, his wife, Jessie, had remarked on the glow of the moon on the water. “How lovely it is!” she had said. That afternoon she had stood over the pansies and violas that still bloomed in her garden, their puckish little faces pointed at the azure sky. So small they were, but always the hardiest of her flowers. Still, she noted, she had never seen them make it halfway into November before…
Now Stanley smiled ruefully at the memory of the deceptiveness of the day before. He saw that the pansy heads were drooped, the violas flat under snow. As he walked to the waterfront he met other High Beach men. They were on their way to inspect their property. A few of them had done so after the last wave had receded and they couldn’t quite believe their luck, the damage was so minimal compared to what they expected. Now, as the snow flakes thickened, they wanted to be sure they hadn’t suffered hallucinations. It was that kind of night, Stanley thought.
When he reached the beach, he stared at the foam of the waves where his stage had been. Only a few broken sticks sloshed against the rocks. His dory was gone, too. He had no idea where it was.
“I found mine inland, in the meadow,” old Robert Pittman said, his eyes wide as he pointed to a large clearing behind the small collection of houses that made up the tiny village. “She was tossed there, the first wave, I think. She was thrown so far in the second wave never picked her up.”
“Is she hurt?” Stanley asked.
“Not much,” Robert smiled this time. “Just needs a little care, that’s all. And to be hauled back here.”
“We’ll do that shortly,” John Purchase said. Like Stanley’s, his stage had been swept away. Four stages were gone altogether, as were two dories. But every store remained standing, as did every house in High Beach. If the wave had a kind face, it showed it here. Stanley thought of the thousand-dollar life insurance policy he had and counted himself lucky.
Jessie Hillier and the other women of High Beach had begun packing pickled cabbage, bottled rabbit, and tea buns for the men to take to their neighbours in Lamaline. Jessie was worried about them, she had kin there and elsewhere along the coast and no immediate way of knowing how they were.
“You take William Pittman and go over there,” she suggested to her husband. “As soon as there’s a break in the weather. I’m afraid they’re worse off than we are here.”
Stanley nodded.
“I’m inclined to agree,” he answered. “I wonder if they all got up to the high ground. I wonder if there was any loss of life. God, I hope not.”
“And those poor people in Taylor’s Bay,” Jessie said, pouring her umpteenth cup of tea. “Them on the flattest of land. And Point au Gaul. You know those waves had to take some of them.”
“We’ll go as soon as we can,” Stanley said.
“I hope the food will be some comfort to them,” Jessie said. “And if they need more, we got plenty of it. This was a great year for cabbage. I got all kinds of it in the store. Everyone does. Some people got dozens of heads of it—more than they know what to do with.”
In the fall of 1928, Dorothy Cherry left her native England to nurse in Lamaline. She was recruited by the recently established Newfoundland Outport Nursing and Industrial Association, more commonly known as Nonia. Nonia recruited nurses for their leadership skills and ability to work independently of physicians, since most of the regions they were going to lacked doctors. They had to be quick-thinking and devoted to duty. Nonia also insisted that they exhibit “missionary zeal” of the Christian variety.
Nurse Cherry met the requirements.
She came from Bolton, in the grey northwestern corner of England. The city of almost 200,000 was only ten miles from Manchester but, like most English, people in Bolton regarded this as a substantial distance and few ever went there. There was no need to, really, for Bolton itself had everything you needed. Straddling the wet and wild Lancashire moors, Bolton grew up as a cotton manufacturing city. It was one of the leaders of the Industrial Revolution, especially when the railway came, linking it to the other smokestack sites in the north and the rest of the country. There had been mills here, too, and mining, but these were beginning their dying days even in Dorothy Cherry’s youth. Bolton’s boom time was in the ninetenth century—everybody knew that, though no one wanted to admit it. The last great thing that happened in Bolton, Dorothy’s father often said over their Sunday roast beef and Yorkshire pudding, was the creation of the Bolton Wanderers, the city’s soccer team, in 1888. Seeing them play was just fantastic, the highlight of Dorothy’s childhood.
Much of the rest of it was darkened by the cries of Bolton women who had lost their husbands and sons in the Boer War. Dorothy was only a child with a tiny Union Jack flag someone had placed in her hand when the soldiers marched off. She waved her flag and shouted “Hurrah” because everyone else on the street did, but she didn’t understand why.
Dorothy was a married woman by the time the next great tragedy happened. Her husband Lloyd was over there, in the trenches with the other Bolton men, fighting “the war to end all wars.” It was October 26, 1917 and, like most young wartime brides, Dorothy lived with her parents. Her younger sisters were looking forward to Guy Fawkes Night in a couple of weeks. They would collect pennies for the dummy and have a big bonfire. That afternoon Dorothy entered the crowded post office and heard the postmistress say, “Oh, the most awful thing…” The nurse-in-training looked at the other customers and waited for more. “There’s been a lot of our men killed in battle,” someone spoke up. Women let out loud sobs and old men looked at each other bewildered. No one moved. Dorothy thought of Lloyd and wanted a cup of tea.