Free That Forgetful Shore by Trudy Morgan-Cole Page B

palled for Kit. Trif cannot quite believe that Kit is keeping a secret from her, but when she pressed Kit to explain why she wanted to leave, she found herself facing a stone wall. The same thing happened about what Kit had done to scare off Jacob John. There might be no secrets between them, as such, but there are subjects Kit is not eager to talk about.
    Trif has her suspicions, of course. She’s long thought that Kit cherished a schoolgirl crush on Joe Bishop. It must have become clear to her, over the course of her winter at home, that Dear Pedagogue was not going to come courting. It would be hurtful to press her about her reason for leaving, when the topic must surely be as painful as a sore tooth.
    When the moment to say good-bye comes, Triffie grips both Kit’s hands in hers. “You’ll write, of course,” she says.
    â€œOf course I will, my dearest. Every day.”
    A kiss on the cheek, a squeeze of their clasped hands – that is more than enough display. Any passionate feelings will be saved for paper, or for prayer.
    She has little time to commit anything to paper, though plenty of time for prayer, as the weeks of summer dwindle away. She puts in hours working in the garden, supervising Ruth and Will, which is sometimes more work than pulling the weeds herself. She hates gardening, but knows the hours scrabbling weeds out of the rocky soil will make all the difference in the long winter months when the root cellar is stocked with potatoes and turnips.
    In the evening hours, garden work and housework done, she ruins her eyesight, according to Aunt Rachel, reading by lamplight. Joe Bishop gets novels from St. John’s for the schoolroom, but lets Triffie read them first. “To see if they’d be suitable for the children,” he says, by way of explaining his kindness. She writes postcards and letters to Kit, saying as much about the books she reads as about her daily routine.
    After books, and letters to Kit, there remains God. Trif still goes to the Church of England every Sunday morning and to the Army every Sunday night, but she needs more; her desire for something beyond her daily existence drives her to her knees in long, passionate nightly prayers. She imagines that if her family were Papists she could become a nun. No-one would deny Trif’s desire for a different kind of life if she were called by God. But she’s not inclined towards the teachings of Rome, only to the idea of a convent, a life of holy dedication.
    She swallows long passages of the Bible, praying her way through the nightly Psalms in the prayer book and dipping at random into the darker and stranger corners of Scripture: Ezekiel, Daniel, Isaiah, Revelation. Their wild poetry is harder, in some ways, than Shakespeare’s, but while the Bard points inward, to the depths of the human heart, the Bible points upward and outward, to something so far beyond, so other, that she can never fully grasp it. When she reads in Revelation, Come out of her, my people , she pictures herself stepping out, moving out of the stultifying round of her existence into something larger and freer. Ezekiel’s cries of a people in exile speak to her too: Trif feels like an exile on the Point where she was born, an unheeded wanderer in a valley of dry bones.
    One Sunday night Captain Fifield at the Citadel gives a thundering sermon against deceivers and false shepherds leading people astray with strange new doctrines. The diatribe is far too heated to be general; after the meeting, Trif lingers to ask the Captain if he knows of any false prophets in particular.
    â€œThere’s two men going around – they’ve been working their way up the shore, from Holyrood to Brigus and now here. They say they’re selling religious books that will help people understand the Bible better. But beware of them, Triffie – they’re wolves in sheep’s clothing, teaching error and heresy. You watch out, now –