Becca at Sea

  Copyright © 2007 by Deirdre Baker

  Published in Canada and the USA in 2007 by Groundwood Books

  Third paperback printing 2018

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written consent of the publisher or a license from The Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency (Access Copyright). For an Access Copyright license, visit www.accesscopyright.ca or call toll free to 1-800-893-5777.

  An excerpt from this book (“Seafire”) was originally published (as “The Cousins”) in Girls’ Own: An Anthology of Canadian Fiction for Young Readers, edited by Sarah Ellis (Penguin, 2001).

  Groundwood Books / House of Anansi Press

  groundwoodbooks.com

  We acknowledge for their financial support of our publishing program

  the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council and the Government of Canada.

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Baker, Deirdre F. (Deirdre Frances)

  Becca at sea / Deirdre Baker.

  Issued in print and electronic formats

  978-0-88899-737-1 (hardcover) –

  978-0-88899-738-8 (pbk.) –

  978-1-77306-170-2 (html) –

  978-1-77306-171-9 (mobi)

  I. Title.

  PS8603.A455B43 2007 jC813’.6 C2007-902040-2

  Cover illustration by Julianna Swaney

  Design by Michael Solomon

  for Bob Gibbs

  sine quo non

  1. Seventeen Pearls

  “Come, Becca,” said Gran.

  “Just a minute,” Rebecca said. She waved to her parents as the ferry chugged across the channel, taking them away to Tribune Island, then Vancouver Island, then Vancouver, and then to the trip in Europe.

  “Becca, it’s time to come,” Gran said.

  Not that Becca minded. It was just that she’d never stayed with Gran in February before, and with Mum and Dad so far away. And missing school! That was strange, too. And no aunts around to make life interesting, or uncles. No cousins. Well, that might be a good thing. No friends. But she was used to that on Gran’s island, where all the kids were either teenagers or babies.

  “I have to feed the cat,” Gran said.

  Becca wasn’t afraid, but she was used to summer. She was used to having neighbors on the beach, and Dad and the aunts keeping Gran busy with arguments that were sometimes cheerful and sometimes not, and long light evenings when she and Mum went fishing, casting off the point even though trolling in a boat was really the way to catch salmon. She was used to long drawn-out sunsets when she sneaked up to the allotment gardens and Kay from next door fed her sweet carrots pulled straight from the earth.

  But now it was already dim when they arrived at the cabin, and it was hardly dinnertime.

  “Come on, Frank!” Gran called to the cat. “Becca’s going to give you dinner!”

  The cabin was cold, and Gran built a fire in the stove. They ate toast and eggs at the table by the window, but Becca couldn’t even see the bay. Only her own reflection moved in the darkness, as if night were a wall that shut out the beach, the sea, and all the islands and mountains across the water.

  “It’s misting up,” Gran said when she came back from the woodpile.

  Becca fiddled with the little bottle that held the pearls Gran had collected over the years. Mum had pearls, too — a necklace that she wore when she and Dad went out somewhere fancy. Mum’s pearls were perfectly round, and elegant and party-like. They made Becca think of beautiful clothes and perfume.

  Gran’s pearls were small as blackberry seeds, nobbly and misshapen. They came straight from oysters Gran had found on the beach, and they made Becca think of wet shoes, and the sea, and the mysterious things that go on inside oysters.

  But Mum’s pearls and Gran’s had one thing in common: each one glistened with a moony shine.

  “What do you do in the dark?” she asked Gran.

  “Now that you’re here, play Scrabble.”

  Becca set out the Scrabble. They played furiously. Outside, fog left its prints on the window, and the sounds of the sea hushed and receded.

  “You can’t do poutine!” Gran said. “It’s not English. Not permitted.”

  “Well, there’s no word that means poutine in English,” Becca argued, “so I’m allowed to use it. Poutine is poutine. And look! It means I can use all my letters. And I can turn ax into axe on a triple word score.”

  “You can’t use words that aren’t English,” Gran insisted. “And anyway you can say poutine in ordinary English — chips and cheese curds and gravy. It’s just not one word.”

  “It’s in the Scrabble dictionary,” said Becca. “We looked it up once.”

  “The Scrabble dictionary!” Gran snorted. “In the good old days, we just used our brains. That’s how I play, and that’s the rule at my house. English words, and use your own brain.”

  Becca saw another word she could make somewhere else. Pouting she spelled, staring down at the board. Maybe this visit was going to be worse than she’d thought.

  Gran went on to win by about a million points.

  “See? Even if you’d got a bonus for using all your letters, I would have won,” she said.

  Becca packed up the game without saying a word.

  “Well, it’s time to go,” Gran announced.

  They were going out? It was coal-dark by now, and cold, too.

  “Go where?”

  “To get oysters. Get your boots on, Becca.”

  Gran threw the oyster shuckers and old oven mitts into her backpack.

  “In the dark?”

  “Yep.”

  A nasty Scrabble game and now Gran was taking her out into the woods in the dark and fog. It reminded Becca of a creepy fairy tale she’d read once.

  “Hold my hand,” said Gran’s voice in the dark. “You don’t want to trip.”

  “Can’t we use flashlights?” Becca asked. “Why can’t we get oysters from your beach?”

  “We’ll use the flashlight later. Your eyes won’t get used to the dark if we use it now. And the fog gives its own light. We’re going all the way to Mayfield Point because the beach out there has the best oyster beds. I hope you’re feeling energetic. It’s a long way.”

  “What’s that smell?”

  They stopped in the road and Gran sniffed.

  “Trees’ blood,” Gran said. “Sap. Somebody is clearing to build a cabin.”

  Trees’ blood. Becca shivered.

  Mist drifted among the trees. Sometimes Becca could see trunks, and sometimes branches. She and Gran walked the trail to Mayfield Point in a glimmering haze, breathing water droplets lighter than the night.

  “Do you hear that?” Gran stopped suddenly and pulled Becca still beside her.

  Becca listened hard. It could have been the clouds, making a tiny patter on salal leaves.

  “It’s the sound of your own self,” Gran told her. “It’s the sound of your heart in your ears — your blood flowing.”

  Then Becca heard it, a rushing noise inside her own head, as if she had a moon-snail shell to her ear and was listening to its ocean rhythms. The sound of her own heart.

  They walked on. The path curved through the forest toward the sea. Becca’s feet told her she was walking uphill, and then that she was passing the tree with the eagles’ nest.

  “Are the eagles still here?” she asked, clutching Gran’s hand.

  “Yes, but their babies are teenagers now,” Gran said. “Look, we’re coming out on the
beach.”

  But there was nothing to see, just fog all around. Becca felt pebbles underfoot and banged her shin on driftwood. She felt seaweed squish, and the crunch of oysters.

  “Can’t we use the flashlight?” she asked.

  “In a minute.”

  Gran must see in the dark, Becca thought, stumbling beside her.

  “Here’s a good rock,” Gran said, and she sat on it. “Yech! Soaked through already!”

  Becca laughed.

  “Okay! You bring me the oysters, and I’ll shuck them,” Gran directed.

  “Where do you think they are now?” Becca asked.

  “On the beach!”

  “No, I mean Mum and Dad,” Becca said. “Maybe they didn’t go because of the fog.”

  “They’re above the clouds, and we’re right in them — the very same clouds. They’re holding hands and saying, ‘Becca’s going to have a wonderful time with her old grandma. I hope they don’t get up to no good!’” Gran paused. “Well, they don’t really know we’re out on the beach in the middle of the night. Now, where are those oysters?”

  “Can I use the flashlight?”

  “Oh, yes! Now’s the time!”

  “I thought you weren’t supposed to eat oysters,” Becca said.

  “That’s in summer,” said Gran. “In February it’s okay — more than okay! But we won’t take many. Just enough for stew for the two of us and Frank.”

  Oyster stew. Ew. That, as well as totally unfair Scrabble rules and midnight walks.

  Becca stomped off into the mist. It was so still that the sudden splash of her boots in the sea surprised her.

  She stood in the water, looking down at her boots with the flashlight, and at the seaweed and snails and all the things that were so bright and clear in daylight. Now they looked weird and mysterious, as if they’d been caught by surprise in their secret night life.

  Did snails sleep? Did oysters sleep? Did seaweed breathe out at night like trees and bushes did?

  “I need oysters,” Gran reminded her out of the dark.

  Becca squelched on, shining the light down. Oysters lay loose on the beach. The shells had crusty frills that hurt her fingers.

  “Can I do it?” she asked when she’d brought some oysters. “I’ve never done it before.”

  “Why not? Just be careful.”

  Gran gave Becca the oven mitts, now sloppy with oyster liquor. She showed her how to hold the oyster, and where to pry with the knife to break its muscle.

  She put her strong hand over Becca’s and helped her twist the shucker.

  “There it goes!” Becca felt the shell give way.

  “Your very first oyster,” Gran said solemnly, suddenly not bossy at all.

  “It has a frill inside, too.”

  “The mantle — that’s how it sifts its food,” Gran explained.

  “It’s soft! But what are these specks?” Becca ran her fingers over the cold, damp oyster and felt little hard bits — grit or bits of shell, she thought.

  “Wait!” Gran shone the light on Becca’s first oyster, and then she started to laugh. “Pearls!” she cried. “You’ve got a pearl — scads of pearls!”

  “Really?” Becca was amazed, feeling the rolling bits with her fingers. “There’s a whole bunch! My very own pearls.”

  “Careful!” Gran said. “You don’t want to lose any. Here, you can put them in this.”

  She emptied the matchbox she kept in her backpack, and Becca put the pearls in it, feeling carefully so she wouldn’t miss any.

  “You’re certainly lucky, Rebecca my girl,” Gran said. “You’ve found a whole handful of pearls all in one go. I can’t believe it!”

  Becca smiled and turned off the flashlight. The mist gave off a light of its own, and in her pocket was a matchbox of pearls.

  * * *

  Later, she and Gran snuggled into Gran’s Arctic sleeping bags down on the beach, and Frank curled up to sleep at her feet.

  “That was some itchy oyster!” Gran said in wonder.

  “Seventeen pearls,” said Becca, for they had counted them together in the warmth of the cabin. “Seventeen!”

  Becca could hear Gran smiling. A lopsided moon now shone through the mist, so that they lay in a pearly light themselves.

  “And it’s the same moon,” said Becca.

  “Yes. The same moon, shining down on us all,” said Gran.

  2. Herring

  “It’s all very well living on an island, but you’ve got to have a boat,” Gran declared. “And it’s your last morning, so what better day for a sea voyage?”

  Sixteen days had whizzed by. It had rained, it had blown and sometimes the sun had shone in a thin winterish way. Becca had piled more wood than she cared to remember. She had found out about the slippery algae that grew on the sandstone in winter. She still had the bruise from that discovery. She had counted widgeons and harlequins and pigeon guillemots for Gran’s monthly bird count. Quite against her will she had taken lessons in how to turn compost. She had gone swimming although the water was polar. That had been an accident, too, and had only happened because Gran had asked her to wash vegetables in the sea. In the sea! What was wrong with the kitchen sink? But that was what chores were like at Gran’s house. They involved the great outdoors.

  Gran picked up the phone.

  “Who are you calling?” Becca asked. “The boat shop?”

  “No. I’m phoning Dugald. Ssssh!”

  “Phoning Dugald” was how Gran described the local weather update. Now she listened carefully, not saying a word.

  You didn’t talk to the weather update. It talked to you. Sometimes the recording had a woman’s voice; sometimes a man’s. But it was always “phoning Dugald,” because Dugald was the one with the nicest voice and the most interesting name. “Greetings,” he would say, full of warmth and authority about weather. “This is Dugald blah-blah with the local weather update.”

  “What did he say?” Becca asked, hanging by her arms from the ladder that led to the loft where she slept.

  “It wasn’t him,” said Gran. “But whoever it was said winds variable five to ten knots. High pressure system holding steady. A perfect day for the boat. Out!” she ordered, and Becca jumped off the ladder and hurried to pull on her boots.

  At the boat shed Gran handed Becca life jackets and a pair of oars. She heaved the motor and gas tank into the wheelbarrow and trundled it down to the sea’s edge.

  “Where’s the boat?” Becca asked. Gran’s old boat, Glaucous Gull, was in “dry-docks” — overgrown with salal and green with algae and many seasons of congealed tree pollen.

  “Under the cabin,” Gran said. “I got a new one for myself for my birthday. New to me, I mean. It was second hand. A bargain!”

  Under the cabin? Becca thought about how much trouble she had squeezing under there during games of hide-and-seek with her cousins. What kind of boat could Gran store under there?

  Gran wheeled the barrow back up the beach and hauled a huge duffel bag out from under the cabin.

  “That’s a boat?” Becca asked.

  “It’s a Zodiac.”

  Becca glanced up at the sky.

  “Not the stars,” Gran said. She heaved the duffel bag into the barrow and headed for the beach. “It’s an inflatable boat, made in France.”

  Inflatable it might be, Becca thought, but as she and Gran struggled with its pieces and parts, it seemed more like one of those puzzles teachers give you to test your brain. Even the shapes of the boards were like a skill-testing question.

  “I don’t think we’re too good at this,” she said at last. The excitement of a voyage was getting lost in the bother of figuring out how to fit pieces of board into the Zodiac’s floor — if that’s what you called it. Maybe it was a deck.

  “What do you mean?” Gran was holding
a trapezoid-shaped board and trying to read the Zodiac manual at the same time. “Montage,” she read. “Le volet avant... l’intersection du fond et des flotteurs...Where the — ?” she muttered. “If only I’d paid more attention in French. Now, where do these go? Les longerons?”

  “They go along the side,” Becca said.

  “I thought you knew French,” Gran said. “But you can’t possibly be right about les longerons, so maybe you don’t.”

  “It’s the only place they could go!” Becca shouted.

  “Hmph,” said Gran. “If you shout at me you won’t go anywhere, in or out of the Zodiac.”

  Do I really want to be stuck in a boat with her? Becca wondered.

  Les longerons fit exactly where Becca had said. There was a sweaty session with the foot pump, gaskets and valve caps that didn’t screw on quite as easily as they might have, and the fuss of fitting on the motor.

  Gran tossed the foot pump and instruction manual into the floating Zodiac.

  “I can’t be bothered to take these back up to the cabin,” she said. “We’ll just take them along.”

  Even after all that trouble, Becca liked the Zodiac, with its inflated sides and bow. She had to sit on the bottom to row because there were no seats, but the oars were short enough for her to work properly. She rowed away from shore, hardly splashing at all.

  What would her cousins Lucy and Alicia say if they could see her now? If they had been here, she would have had to argue for an hour to get a chance to row. That was one good thing about being with Gran on her own.

  Gran let down the motor, adjusted the choke and pulled the starting cord.

  “Have you done this before?” Becca asked, watching Gran’s face go red.

  Gran jerked the cord again.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  And again.

  “I could keep rowing,” Becca offered. This was even worse than arguing over Scrabble and turning compost.

  Cough! Cough! Putt! Putt!

  “Did you say something?” Gran asked, sitting up straight as a queen as she swung the tiller and headed them out to sea.