Chapter 21
Market House Hill

William turned up Market House Hill. He knew men stood at the top by the courthouse. Men looking for work like him. Or not looking. These days the men mostly stood around and talked. If there was work on the snow gangs he would hear of it there.

Iris was on his mind. She was worse off than him in a way. She put faith in him. He could not live up to it. She had more hope than he did. She sat up at night, sewing on the daybed.

She loved sitting under the picture of the house her father built in Topsail. Gladiolas grew taller than the whitewashed fence. She said they were red, yellow and white. She loved the white ones. They were like snow. She said the only colour on them was purple dust in the bloom.

William made the daybed when they were first married. He made it of birch. It was filled with sea grass. Iris picked the grass at Topsail with her sister Annie. William saw them in the dunes. Their hair blew wild. He could hear them laughing. Iris had on a white dress with tiny sky blue flowers all over it. John was a baby. William minded him in his basket on the sand. Now John was in the mines.

Iris insisted she still smelled sea grass in the daybed. She had covered the mattress herself. She used flour sacks, washed and bleached soft. She had sewn two green sea-horses in the corner. She sewed a row of beach flowers along the edge Purple vetch, forget-me-nots, dog roses, and a blue flag iris.