The Stars Shine Down

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One of the miners explained. ‘It means Mike was on his way to work – going inbye – in a man-rake – that’s a car that takes you down to your working level. A box – that’s a coal train – jumped the track and hit him.’

‘And stopped his lamp?’ Lara asked.

The miner laughed. ‘When you’ve had your lamp stopped, it means you’ve been suspended.’

When Lara was fifteen, she entered St Michael’s High School. She was gangly and awkward, with long legs, stringy black hair, and intelligent grey eyes still too large for her pale, thin face. No one quite knew how she was going to turn out. She was on the verge of womanhood, and her looks were in a stage of metamorphosis. She could have become ugly or beautiful.

To James Cameron, his daughter was ugly. ‘Ye hae best marry the first mon fool enough to ask ye,’ he told her. ‘Ye’ll nae hae the looks to make a guid bargain.’

Lara stood there, saying nothing.

‘And tell the poor mon nae to expect a dowry frae me.’

Mungo McSween had walked into the room. He stood there listening, furious.

‘That’s all, girl,’ James Cameron said. ‘Gae back to the kitchen.’

Lara fled.

‘Why dae ye dae that to yeer daughter?’ McSween demanded.

James Cameron looked up, his eyes bleary. ‘Nane of your business.’

‘You’re drunk.’

‘Aye. And what else is there? If it isn’t women, it’s the whiskey, isn’t it?’

McSween went into the kitchen where Lara was washing dishes at the sink. Her eyes were hot with tears. McSween put his arms around her. ‘Niver ye mind, lassie,’ he said. ‘He dinna mean it.’

‘He hates me.’

‘Nae, he doesna.’

‘He’s never given me one kind word. Never once. Never!’

There was nothing McSween could say.

In the summer, the tourists would arrive at Glace Bay. They came in their expensive cars, wearing beautiful clothes, and shopped along Castle Street and dined at the Cedar House and at Jasper’s, and they visited Ingonish Beach and Cape Smoky and the Bird Islands. They were superior beings from another world, and Lara envied them and longed to escape with them when they left at the end of summer. But how?

Lara had heard stories about Grandfather Maxwell.

‘The auld bastard tried to keep me frae marryin’ his precious daughter,’ James Cameron would complain to any of the boarders who would listen. ‘He was filthy rich, but do ye think he wad gie me aught? Nae. But I took guid care of his Peggy, anyway …’

And Lara would fantasize that one day her grandfather would come to take her away to glamorous cities she had read about: London and Rome and Paris. And I’ll have beautiful clothes to wear. Hundreds of dresses and new shoes.

But as the months and the years went by, and there was no word, Lara finally came to realize that she would never see her grandfather. She was doomed to spend the rest of her life in Glace Bay.