leaving Brighton to study drama in England. She had settled in St. John’s and created the travelling theatre company. Tall, blonde, with cheerful blue eyes, she was a delight to watch. Angela remembered the stories Sheila’s mother told about her great-grandmother, a vaudeville performer from Jersey Island who married an English wartime doctor stationed in India. Outspoken and defiant, this actress once sneered at the Nazis during the occupation of Jersey in the thirties. Sheila’s petite blonde great-grandmother had sat primly in her grade-school chair, held at gunpoint by several Nazi soldiers commanding her to speak German. She consistently replied in French, blatantly disrespecting them. Somehow she had been spared.
Sheila had the same resilience, and the same gift for the stage.
“Will her father come to the show?”
Angela nodded. “Yes, I’m sure he wouldn’t miss it for the world.”
Doctor Nelson had arrived in Brighton from Jersey with his small British family in the late sixties. Angela’s father, Tom Harrington, a miner who served on the town council, sang in the church choir with the doctor, each taking turns playing tricks on the choir mistress, alternating soprano and baritone behind her back, confusing her ear.
Mrs. Nelson had died a few years ago, from breast cancer. Doctor Nelson was devastated. She was the only love he’d ever known. An English orphan, he had married Mrs. Nelson when she was eighteen, the daughter of a well-travelled doctor and philanthropic stage actress. He vowed to provide for her in the same way her own father had. Earning a scholarship to medical school, he soon found work in Newfoundland after graduating from Oxford.
Angela and Sheila had met during one of Mrs. Nelson’s piano classes, each conspiring to play the wrong notes in the devilish hopes of frustrating their teacher.
Angela smiled; it would be wonderful to welcome Sheila home and take their minds off everything.
The public school gymnasium was dark. The children were quiet, except for the occasional squeak of an overexcited youngster. The yellow and white spotlight hit the stage and Jane Cranford, president of the Brighton Entertainment series, was illuminated. She was carrot-orange in the light, her freckles and ginger hair overexposed.
“Hello everyone, and welcome to today’s performance of This Autumn’s Tale, performed by Blackwater Tide Theatre, starring our very own Sheila Nelson!” Jane Cranford clapped airily, papers spilling out of her hands. She bent to pick them up and the spotlight heightened the red that had risen in her cheeks. “Now, children,” she said quietly, regaining her composure, “don’t be frightened. This is a special play for the fall festival. It’s all about a child who is far from home and …” The spotlight snapped off loudly, and after a few seconds the curtain drew back choppily, two pairs of fumbling hands on each side gripping the corners tightly. Jane mumbled apologies for the technical difficulties while being whisked off the stage by one of the primary school teachers.
The spotlight blinked on, wavered, and went out again. Finally steady, it rested on the figure standing centre stage. It was Sheila, dressed in layers of billowing white satin as the Good Fairy Princess. She held a white owl puppet on her left arm, covered by a red-velvet robe, wearing a king’s crown. Colourful, skillfully drawn murals adorned the stage, and paper foliage was draped loosely across a grand trellis and white gazebo.
Lily slept, curled on her father’s arm. Katie laughed joyously while Maggie watched it all quietly, her eyes wide with pleasure. Angela leaned on Jack’s shoulder and he smiled wanly.
“What a wonderful show!” Angela exclaimed.
“It was great, love,” Jack said.
Sheila smiled, holding Lily in her arms. Maggie and Kate hugged her legs beneath the layers of her creamy silk dress.
“Thanks, it was a lot of fun; I don’t get to do children’s theatre very often.”
“You don’t come home very often either,” Wanda interrupted. “How are you, my love?”
“Best kind today, love,” Sheila said.
“Good thing we bumped into you before we leave!”
Jack stiffened behind her.
“Where are you going?” Sheila asked.
“To the mainland. Peter found a job at that new gold mine, and we’re leaving in a month!”
Angela’s face paled, remembering Pete and Jack on her doorstep the previous evening. She clenched her jaw and turned to Jack, who avoided her gaze.
Lily fussed in Angela’s arms. Katie and Maggie were tussling over the last stick of gum they’d found in their mother’s purse.
“Lucky Wanda, you only have one.”
Wanda smiled, shifted a sleeping Susie on her hip. “But I plan to have more now that Pete’s got this job on the mainland.”
Angela’s eyes widened in panic. “Good for you….” she said and her voice trailed off weakly. Jack grabbed her hand and held it firmly.
“Come over for a drink before you leave?” Wanda asked.
Sheila nodded and smiled as Wanda walked away.
“Some glad to be rid of her,” Sheila whispered.
“Sheila!” Angela admonished.
“She stole Peter Fifield from me when I was seventeen.”
“Sheila, come on, you’ve got a theatre group in town, an up-and-coming folk musician who is completely in love with you, and you’re worried about some small-town miner with big thumbs?” Angela whispered back.
“It’s not his big thumbs I’m after,” Sheila said.
“Some bad you are,” Angela said and tried not to laugh as Sheila wistfully looked at Pete’s full back and thick, long legs.
“Pass me some screech,” Sheila whispered, drunker than she’d been in ages, or so she said.
“You’re getting right royally pissed,” Angela said, her voice slurred due to the amount of Jamaican rum she’d consumed.
They were sitting in Sheila’s bedroom after the show. Jack had taken the kids home to bed and Doctor Nelson sat sound asleep in his study, slumped over a novel.
Angela grew quiet. “Jack lost his job yesterday.”
“Oh no,” Sheila said and rolled over on the twin bed, a remnant from adolescence, still covered in a pink gingham bedspread. She rose and went to the window and struggled to open it since it was stuck in the molded pane. This reminded Angela of when they would sit here after school, blowing smoke rings out the window from the crisp, sharp-smelling English cigarettes stolen from Mrs. Nelson’s purse.
“What are you going to do?”
“Jack doesn’t want to leave home. He thinks life will be rough up there, but rough we can handle. Starvation — which is what’ll happen if we stay here — we can’t.”
“Where would you go on the mainland?”
“I don’t know,
