She reminded herself of this as she tended to a man’s crushed finger and treated several lingering cases of shock. At night she went back to Alberta Fitzpatrick’s, where people had gathered once again to retell the tale of little Margaret’s rescue. They told it like a prayer and as they told it, a much-needed feeling of serenity settled upon them.
16
Albert and Thomas, Nurse Cherry’s companions from Lamaline, turned back toward home after a night at Lord’s Cove. Thomas was eager to see Ada and their daughter, Mary, and to make sure they were all right after his absence. Albert, too, wanted to see his relatives and ensure they were well. Both men were desperate to see that communications with Burin and St. John’s were established and ongoing. Above all, they wanted to alert the telegraph operators to the devastation in Taylor’s Bay and the urgent need for provisions of every kind. Nurse Cherry impressed on them that it was necessary to evacuate people from the village lest an epidemic develop.
So it was men from Lord’s Cove who accompanied Nurse Cherry on the long journey to Lawn, the next community to the east. The road to Lawn veered away from the sea, so it contained less debris deposited by the tidal wave. But without the moderating influence of the water, the air was cutting and their faces hurt when the wind blew. The horses were irritable and sluggish. The men had to push them to move on. Nurse Cherry again had visions of her grandmother’s violets; she wondered why she was thinking so much of them now. And that ha’penny with Queen Victoria’s profile on it? She bent her face to the ground and pressed on toward Lawn.
Most of the time she walked since the animals were so contrary. It made the time go faster, too, she reasoned, by giving her something to do. But sometimes she rode on one of them to give her aching legs a rest. When she stopped her calves throbbed and her feet swelled in her boots, so much that she worried if she’d be able to get them off.
The old wooden bridge that led to Lawn was down. The men called across and got some Lawn men to fetch a dory, one of the few that hadn’t been smashed to bits. They carried it from the beach to the bridge and then rowed it across the narrow river, breaking the thin ice in places. Then Nurse Cherry got aboard, laughed at her situation, and helped row across. The horses, more unpredictable than ever now, plunged their legs into the frigid water.
“They’re spooked by the tidal wave,” someone said.
“You’ll never be able to predict how they’ll act around water now,” another added.
At least there are no flattened homes in Lawn, Dorothy Cherry consoled herself as she fell asleep her first night there. And, thankfully, no one had died. She was exhausted; she had travelled at least twenty rough miles and spent another day treating people for shock, exposure, injuries, and even septic inflammations. She was relieved that some who had suffered damage here had substantial savings. Michael Tarrant, who was fifty-six, and his wife, Emma, thirty-six, gave up much of their fishing gear and rooms to the waves, but still had two thousand dollars in the bank. Even young Ernest and Loretta Connors, both thirty, had two hundred dollars saved; now they and their little Gerald would need it, and more. Other families, though, had nothing.
Nurse Cherry was in a bed under a thick quilt this time, her head lying on a pillow stuffed with the feathers of an eider duck. The last thing she saw before the blackness of slumber was a giant violet from far away England. The visions of German bombs dropping on the Co-op Laundry in Bolton had left her in Taylor’s Bay. Maybe she had seen the worst of the tidal wave’s fury.
The smell of butter smeared on fresh bread drifted into her morning dreams, only to be interrupted by a knock on her door.
“The priest wants you to go to St. Lawrence, Nurse Cherry,” said the little girl of the house in as authoritative a voice as she could muster.
Suddenly the cold, fast waters of the tidal wave washed into Dorothy Cherry’s memory and she saw the white face of Jessie Hipditch and the arms of Bertram Bonnell, swollen from carrying his dead children. She saw the first wave pull houses from their foundations and throw them inland in a thousand pieces. She saw the second wave haul away from villages, taking houses filled with women and children with it. The wrinkled telegram announcing the regrettable and heroic death of her neighbour, twenty-twoyear-old Private Harold Kettle popped in front of her eyes until she squeezed them shut to banish it. She tried to focus on the aroma of the fresh bread but she had to hurry to get to St. Lawrence. She had no idea what awaited her there. She still did not know if the outside world knew what had happened to the people of the boot of the Burin Peninsula. Or if help was on its way. Or when it would or could come. She had no bright news to bring the people of St. Lawrence. Her arms were heavy as she pulled them into her dress. My clothes need a good wash, she thought.
Nurse Cherry’s legs ached and swelled as she travelled over the road to St. Lawrence, named centuries ago by Channel Islands fishermen after a Jersey Island parish. Although the town was the largest on the lower part of the peninsula and something of a service centre, life in St. Lawrence still revolved around fishing. Nurse Cherry’s little party reached there not long before nightfall, just in time for supper and to administer some basic medicine to a few livyers alongside the priest’s house, where she was staying.
As soon as Nurse Cherry finished her breakfast of tea and hard-boiled eggs the next morning, Grace Reeves, a slip of a thing at fourteen, rushed into the priest’s kitchen to tell her that “poor Joseph Cusack’s house is all destroyed, Nurse.” Nurse Cherry let her china cup fall onto her saucer as the maid backed into the dark mahogany doorway to listen to Grace.
“Yes, Nurse,” she nodded. “’Tis true, only I forgot to tell you that.”
“Oh dear,” sighed Nurse Cherry. She knew that Cusack was a widower with three children, the older two in their early teens. Even worse, Joseph suffered badly from high blood pressure. Dorothy swallowed the last of her tea and determined to visit the Cusacks right away. This would not be good for Joseph’s health, she knew, and he was all the children had.
She glanced out the window at the snow that was still falling fast. It had been a wild night with the wind emitting war cries hour after hour. Over and over Nurse Cherry woke from the dreams that took her back to the Bolton Wanderers soccer pitch. She was a tiny girl on her father’s shoulders, clapping as the Wanderers beat mighty Manchester United. “We’re an older team than they are!” her dad called up to her. “You remember that. We’ve got four years on them.” Later that night the Burin Peninsula wind pulled her out of a Wanderers game with Ipswich Town. This time she was even smaller, not yet in school, and it was her first game. The Ipswich players came all the way from southern England—so far away!—her father had showed it to them all on a crinkled old map. Their town was on the Suffolk coast, right across from Holland in Europe! Dorothy’s heart beat with excitement as her family went through the gates for the match, surrounded by thousands of other Boltonites. She wondered about the players from Ipswich. Would they look like people in the North or would they be different? She could hardly breathe with… Then the wind pounded on the roof of the rectory, nearly tearing it off, and Nurse Cherry sat up in bed, a mess of confusion.