“Look at that,” Albert said. “The saltwater comes right into the pond.”
The Bonnell side of Taylor’s Bay was a disaster. A collection of dwellings looked like they had been hit by heavy shellfire, thought Nurse Cherry. She remembered the bombs that had hit Bolton in 1916. A gigantic German airship had dropped five bombs on Kirk and John Streets, destroying six terraced houses and killing thirteen people. Even a horse was killed, Dorothy had realized in horror. The sounds of fire trucks had filled the air all day and night as the airship kept going, dropping more bombs on Washington Street and the Co-op Laundry on Back Deane Road. Would it hit them next… Nurse Cherry shook her head and fixed her eyes on the sight in front of her. The small party knocked on the door of a house that remained standing and then entered. It was the home of William and Catherine Bonnell, a couple in their twenties with four young children. Nurse Cherry’s nose wrinkled at the smell that greeted her. Then she saw a calf and six sheep in the kitchen.
“There’s nowhere else for them, Nurse Cherry,” said William. “The waves were so high they blotted out the stars.”
As soon as he spoke, the nurse’s ears tuned into a loud, erratic rattle.
“Who’s sick?” she asked.
“It’s Catherine, my wife,” William answered. “And John, our second youngest. Both of them had a cold and they got fierce wet last night. Now they’re real sick.”
Nurse Cherry noted the dampness of the linoleum floor and the hooked mats. The house must have been flooded, she thought. She instructed William to remove the damp mats. Then she bent down and folded up the one at her heels and tossed it outside. William followed suit, assisted by the Lamaline men.
“My store is gone,” William said as he worked. “And all our potatoes.”
“Leave some of the bread here for Mrs. Bonnell, Albert,” Nurse Cherry said. She dug her fingernails into her palms as she realized how little food they had brought. There seemed to be people all around her. Besides William, Catherine, and their four children, William’s parents and his two siblings were staying in the little house, along with the animals. With William’s waterfront property gone, the animals were the only bit of potential income the family had, Nurse Cherry knew. Thankfully, he still had forty dollars in his pocket. But the money didn’t mean much now. The Bonnells’ inside clothing had been ruined by seawater and there was no merchant nearby.
Meanwhile, Nurse Cherry wanted to make sure Catherine and young John were kept warm and dry. She examined mother and child, both saucer-eyed and weak. She peeled two blankets off the pile Albert had brought inside the house.
“Heat up a large beach rock or a brick,” she told William. “I’m going to wrap Catherine and John in these. They’re to stay in them, away from the rest of the family. They’ve both got bronchitis and you don’t want anyone else to get it. They’re to stay warm and dry as best they can. There’s to be no smoking in the house, and no woodsmoke either.”
Then she turned to William’s mother, sixty-eight-year-old Jane Bonnell.
“Have you got any wild cherry for an infusion, a tea?” She asked.
Jane shook her head. “You know I got nothing, Nurse.”
Nurse Cherry frowned. Bronchitis could kill a small child under these conditions.
“But I’ll see if anyone else has something,” Jane added. “Some of them still have their houses standing. Well, a few do anyway.”
Nurse Cherry smiled and closed her bag. There was nothing else she could do here. She cursed the helplessness that she had always regarded as her enemy.
14
Nurse Cherry swallowed hard many times that day. She forgot to eat as she went from one remaining house to another, even neglecting to get herself a cup of tea. She did her best to reset a seventy-two-year-old man’s ankle, though bone setting was never her favourite aspect of nursing. She listened as the man’s wife, Martha, talked of her six drowned hens and her root crops all washed away. Martha’s predicament was a mean one; her losses meant hungry months ahead and no apparent way around it. The boot of the Burin Peninsula wasn’t like Bolton, Nurse Cherry reflected, where you could pop down to Spencer’s green grocers on the High Street and buy a head of lettuce or a bunch of carrots.
Also on the Hillier, and less affected, side of the harbour, Nurse Cherry treated an entire family for exposure. Kenneth and Amelia Hillier barely got their four children—Lancelot, Louis, Laura, and baby Leslie—to safety as the waves rushed in. On the way out the door, Kenneth grabbed fifty dollars in cash that Amelia kept in a jar on a high shelf in the kitchen. At the time, he feared it was all the family would be left with.
Now, as Nurse Cherry examined each child in turn, Kenneth explained how, like everyone else, they lost their stage, landing slip, and wharf, as well as his dory.
“How is he going to fish?” Amelia cried out, her eyes wide. She hadn’t slept with worry since the waves had taken her husband’s boat.
The children shivered as their mother listed off the food that the tsunami stole: no less than five barrels of potatoes, three barrels of turnips, three barrels of flour, and a half barrel of salmon.
“There’s barely enough flour left in the barrel to make three loaves of bread with,” she said frantically. “I can’t feed them.” Her arms waved wildly at her children.
“And we got no coal left either,” Kenneth said. “And we’re among the lucky ones in this harbour. Our children are safe and our house is still standing.”
With the two Lamaline men standing like sentries in the Hilliers’ doorway, Nurse Cherry stood to face the couple.
“The immediate problem is that every one of you is suffering from exposure,” she said. “Now, my fear is that it could turn into something worse if you’re not careful, especially with the little ones.”
She paused while a dark silence descended in the room.
“You must keep giving the children hot tea and give baby Leslie warm water. This is very important. They’re cold to the bone and we must warm them up from the inside out. You see how drowsy Laura is? That’s not a good sign. So keep pouring hot tea into her. Don’t give any of them hot toddies or anything alcoholic, that’d be very bad for them. Cover them in blankets and heat up some bricks or large beach rocks and put them in the blankets with the children. They should warm up with a little time. I know you’re fretting about the future, but turn to the children now, and take care of their exposure.”
Amelia began gathering her little flock to her. They were dressed in their inside clothes in a frigid house, covered only by sweaters. She would take Nurse Cherry’s advice, Dorothy could see that. She needed only to be pulled out of the shock that shrouded her. The nurse moved to the stove and began boiling the kettle. She would start them off before moving on.
“Can one of you men fetch a few beach rocks that we can heat for the children?” she asked. Albert nodded and disappeared through the doorway. Nurse Cherry’s eyes scanned the house for blankets. Amelia knew what she was looking for and she ran upstairs to get them. Together, she and Nurse Cherry peeled the woollen sweaters off young Lancelot, Louis, and Laura. Nurse Cherry held baby Leslie close to her, rubbing the child’s pale skin to warm it up. Meanwhile, the kettle started to boil and Albert returned with an armload of beach rocks.
“Thank you,” the young mother said. “We’ll make sure they won’t get sick. I’ll get the hot water into them right away.”
Her husband, Kenneth, pulled a roll of bills out of his pants pocket and handed five dollars to Nurse Cherry. The nurse shook her head.
“I’ve no need of it,” she said. “Give it to one of your neighbours.” As Nurse Cherry, Albert, and Thomas walked through Taylor’s Bay, they trod over clapboard, shards of glass, scraps of felt from roofs, and torn children’s clothing. They shuddered at each new find. The head of a doll sent Thomas jumping again as the face of his own little girl appeared before him.