High Tide at Noon (12 page)

Lights were out all around the village now, and the moonlight lay on the roofs like snow. There was silence everywhere, as if even the gulls and the sea were asleep; the air was mildly cool on her hot face, and smelled of green growing things. She walked soundlessly in a soundless world.

She found her way to the end of the old wharf and sat down on a lobster crate, her back comfortable against the wall of the long boat shop, her presence there screened from the path by a stack of traps at the corner of the building. She would wait until she heard Philip or Owen coming along . . . .

The boats gleamed whitely on the high tide that made a soft, chuckling murmur under the wharf. The silence was an enormous thing; it lay around her like a cloak, she thought fancifully, the invisible cloak in the fairy stories she used to read and believe, religiously. Suppose that while I'm looking at that spiling, she thought, suppose I should see a little creature standing there, all shimmery white, with silvery wings like a dragon fly, and a little radiance around her, all her own?

She laughed softly at herself, aloud, remembering the small sober Joanna in pigtails and overalls, who had trotted silently after her brothers up and down the west side, never breathing a word about the Little Men she expected to find in every hollow tree trunk and in every fern brake. That was why she had loved to play with Kristi when they were very young. Kristi's grandparents believed implicitly in the Little Men; when you went into the Sorensen house you had a queer, breathless feeling, because this was a place where the Little People really came, at night when the family was asleep . . . .

She started suddenly from her half-dreaming as a dory bumped gently against a spiling. The tide had risen to its flood, making a soft whisper on the stones. And someone was walking along the path by the beach, within the shadows cast by the bait house.

Who's this wandering around? Joanna thought with lively curiosity. Maybe it was Susie Yetton, running out to meet Johnny Fernandez—if she really did meet him . . . .

The footsteps on the beach stones came nearer, and two figures came out of the shadows. One was tall and dark in the moonlight; the other, held close in the curve of his arm, was tiny, scarcely reaching to his shoulder. Joanna leaned forward mischievously to watch, as she recognized the tall figure for a Bennett. But the girl . . . who in heaven's name . . . Her heart gave an odd little flip. The girl was Mateel Trudeau. And then she knew the man was Charles. When she had seen him last it had been the middle of the evening, and he'd been dancing with Mateel in a Lady of the Lake.

Joanna hugged her knees tight against her chest, and she could feel her heart thudding. The traps hid Charles and Mateel now, but she could hear their feet, coming nearer. She shrank back as she saw them come past the traps, glad of the shadows around her.

They stopped in the angle made by the pots against the wall, and she heard Charles' voice, low but distinct in the mild still air. “Don't tell me that, sweetheart. I know better. I want to know what's on your mind.”

He sounded urgent, and Joanna strained to hear Mateel's answer. She couldn't see them clearly in their shadowed corner, but she knew how Mat eel looked with her small, pale face, the short, curly brown hair with a bronze sheen to it in daylight, the faintly tilted brown eyes with their foolishly thick lashes. She'd always thought Mateel was cunning and pretty, even if she was Jake's daughter, but to see her like this, in Charles' arms, was a rather sickening shock. After all, it had only been a month ago when their father told them very clearly and finally what he thought of the Trudeaus.

“Come on, darling,” Charles said now, and suddenly Mateel was crying. It was a tiny sound, but genuine. “Is it your father?” Charles demanded. “If he's been lying around drunk again —”

“No, not 'im,” said Mateel on a choking gasp. “It's us, Charles.
Us
. Don't you see? I 'ave to go away.”

“What for?” he asked roughly. “What've you got to go away for? We'll be married, come summer.”

“Oh, Charles, don't you
see?
” the girl wailed in utter despair. Joanna wanted to escape. She realized her nails were cutting cruelly into her palms.

“What is it?” said Charles. He must have taken hold of the girl then, for she gasped. “Mateel, what is it? Mateel . . . ” His voice slowed, full of wonder. And then comprehension. “Mateel, what's the trouble? Is it—
Tell me
.”

But Mateel couldn't stop crying.

J
OANNA WATCHED THEM GO BACK
along the beach and across the marsh to the road; it would take them past Nate Bennett's farm and into the Eastern End woods. She stood up, feeling cramped and cold.

It wasn't a beautiful world now. It was a horrible world, full of ugliness that wouldn't leave you alone or pass you by. Ugliness and shame. Charles getting a girl in trouble, and if that wasn't bad enough, it was Mateel Trudeau. Joanna's mind turned sickly away from the thought of the time when Donna and Stephen must know.

She came into the warm kitchen, where the lamp was turned low, and Winnie, under the stove, thumped her tail in a drowsy greeting. A plate of doughnuts and a pitcher of milk were set out on the dresser. Donna had put them there before she went to bed, for the hungry crew that were the joy of her life. But the thought of food turned Joanna's stomach. She went through the motions of washing her face and brushing her teeth, and went up to her room.

She thought of her mother as she undressed. Charles was the first child, born when Donna was a slender blonde slip of a girl; and though Philip had her own mildness and her gray-blue eyes, Donna held a little place in her heart for Charles. He was more like his father than any of the others.

For Stephen it was very simple. Charles was the oldest. Charles would inherit the Island. Yes, being the oldest set him apart from us, Joanna thought as she climbed into bed. He was supposed to know everything, and never do anything that wasn't fitting for Stephen Bennett's oldest son to do. It was Charles who reminded the others of their name; he'd pounded that and his own importance into the younger boys' heads from the time they could walk.

But it all came to nothing in the end. You had to be just like the others around here, didn't you? she addressed him savagely. Just as crazy after women as any of that Brigport trash you're always talking about. Couldn't leave them alone, couldn't even wait till you were married, if you were so set on marrying Mateel Trudeau! And why couldn't you have picked out someone that was fit to be a Bennett, someone we'll be proud to have in the family?

I guess all men are alike, Joanna thought with anguished contempt, only I hoped these Bennetts were a little different.

She heard Philip and Owen come in. She slipped out of bed and knelt by the register, listening to their soft laughter and amused profanity as they washed away the stains of battle, and had a mug-up of doughnuts and milk. The fight in the clubhouse kitchen seemed a hundred years ago, now. Funny, how those ten minutes on the wharf had pushed that thoughtless, lusty world an eternity away.

Philip and Owen came cautiously upstairs. She went back to bed and waited for Charles. She went over and over the scene on the old wharf. There was no escaping it.

As the moments crawled by, her angry shock changed to worry. Why didn't he come? Had they taken some crazy idea into their heads? Memories of suicide pacts floated through her brain; she imagined the gossip that would be rich meat for the village. Her room became a torture chamber.

At last she heard him in the kitchen, walking back and forth between sink and stove. It was a light, but telling, step. Charles didn't know what to do . . . . Joanna got up and put on her bathrobe.

He stood by the stove, tall in his dark suit, his hair rumpled. He held his hands over the covers with an absent-minded gesture that frightened Joanna, because there was no fire in the stove.

“Charles,” she said quickly, and he jerked around. For a moment she glimpsed the dark torment on his face, before he smiled and said, “What are you up for, this time of night?”

“I wanted a drink.” She hesitated in the doorway, blinking in the light, black hair tumbled on the shoulders of her old striped robe. How did you begin, anyway? Did you just take a long breath, and plunge?

“Charles, I was on the old wharf tonight.”

“Who was with you?” he asked lightly. “Nils? I suppose it was so romantic you didn't even smell the bait house.”

“I was alone. About midnight, Charles.” She faltered only slightly. “Remember when you came along—and stopped?”

The pretense of lightness was gone. “You heard,” he said.

“I didn't mean to listen, Charles! I was just sitting there, waiting for Philip and Owen to come along. The boys got into a row with the Brigport crew, and I left.”

“Never mind that,” he said roughly. “You didn't mean to listen, but you listened. So now you know what it's all about.”

“I'm sorry, Charles.” It was curious, but she was sorry for him, not angry any more. Her heart was wrung for him. The things that lay before Charles were not easy for him to face.

There was a strained whiteness around his mouth. “
Sorry!
What is there to be sorry about? I was going to marry her anyway. We'll just get married sooner, that's all.”

“I see.” Her voice was small and cool. “Well, I'll go back to bed.”

“No, wait a minute, Jo. Don't go—listen.” He stopped and she waited, her chin lifted. “Listen, Jo—oh, it's one damn bitchly mess! Old Man Trudeau's going to raise the roof and he's likely to boot her around some if she tells him, and you know what'll happen here. The thing that gets me is how I'm going to tell Father.”

“I don't know,” she said honestly. “You being the oldest. If it was one of the others, it wouldn't be so bad . . . . Don't tell him yet, Charles. Go ashore and get married. Don't tell either family till you get back. That'll get the worst of it all over at once.”

It seemed to her that this was the wisest thing to do. Charles looked bleak and worn-out in the lamplight. “That's what I'll do. Listen, kid, do me a favor?”

“What is it?”

“Walk down to the Eastern End and see Mateel tomorrow morning, will you? She's scared as hell, and—well, I'd be grateful.” He watched her eagerly, and she forced a smile.

“All right, Charles. We'd better be off to bed now, before we have the whole house up.”

She had to get away quickly, before she said the words that trembled on her tongue. Be nice to Mateel, he'd said. It was a funny world where you had to be nice to someone you wished had never been born.

She was utterly weary, body and soul, as she went back to bed. But for a few minutes she lay awake, listening to the familiar silence of the house. They all slept soundly except herself and Charles; they didn't know that tonight at supper had been the last time they would all be together without a cloud over them; although even then the cloud had already touched upon Charles.

O
N HER WAY To THE
E
ASTERN
E
ND
the next morning, she passed by Uncle Nate's place. Aunt Mary knocked on the sitting room window and beckoned. Feeling vicious, Joanna crossed the lawn. She disliked her uncle's wife intensely, and this morning, not at all refreshed by sleep, she wondered if she could manage to be polite.

Sometimes I wish I could wear a sign around my neck, she thought with dour amusement. A sign saying, “Don't speak to me, I bite.” She heard her voice, bleakly civil. “Hello, Aunt Mary.”

“Well, Joanna! It's not often I see you up this way!” She was a massive woman in starched percale, whose robust health was a continual affront to Joanna; thinking of Donna, she looked with distaste at the heavy coils of gleaming chestnut hair, the hard red cheeks.

“I was taking a walk,' she said.

“Oh, I see . . . . Well, there was quite a touse up at the clubhouse last night, wasn't there?”

“So I heard,” said Joanna politely. “I went home early.”

“I thought you always stayed till the last gun was fired.” Her eyes were very bright, watching the girl. “Well, I thought maybe you knew what it was about. Rachel said they just about shacked the kitchen. There'll be a row about that, now. Rachel said—”

“Where
is
Rachel this morning?” asked Joanna.

“Up doing the chamber work. You know, I had to get up for a headache pill about one o'clock this morning, and I could almost swear I saw Charles going along the road!” Aunt Mary smiled. “But I s'pose it wasn't. Your father's like Nate, about the Trudeaus; we've always been sorry we ever let ‘em in here.”

“I don't see how i t could have been Charles.” Joanna's gaze was unclouded. “The boys all came in right after midnight. . . . Well, good-by, Aunt Mary.”

She had the door open, and the crisp, windy April morning came in “Good gracious, the air sure smells good, don't it?” her aunt said heartily.

“You don't want to catch cold,” said Joanna, and shut the door decisively behind her. She walked swiftly across the lawn into the face of the sharp breeze from the cove, and turned into the road again. “Damn her,” she said between clenched teeth.

Aunt Mary would receive the news of Charles' marriage with greedy delight; she'd lick her chops over it, she'd come up across the meadow with her mouth watering to talk blandly with Donna about sheets for the bride. And all the time she would be prying, dropping little hints and leaders, and watching, watching, watching . . . .

“Hello, sweetheart!” That was Hugo, coming up from the spring. He set his water pails down in the grass and grinned at her. “What makes you look so ugly, darlin' mine?”

“My thoughts,” she said crisply. She glanced at the iodine-painted knuckles of his right hand. “Did you get in on the fun?”