High Tide at Noon (16 page)

The week was the longest the big house had ever known. Late in the afternoon, at the end of the week, Aunt Mary came up. She'd been a very constant visitor of late. Joanna went out for a walk. Her uncle's wife ruffled her much more than she did Donna, whose success as an Island schoolteacher had depended on her ability to remain serene in the face of practically everything.

Joanna had gone out for a long solitary walk every day during that long week. She avoided Kristi's company, for Kristi's blue eyes had suddenly a resemblance to Nils', and each memory of her last talk with him brought an aching sense of loss and loneliness. No, it was better to go alone, to be a remote creature. She had covered almost the entire Island except, of course, the Eastern End, where Charles was.

Today she wandered down across the dun-colored meadow and through the dark woods, past the orchard that looked as if it had forgotten how to blossom, and out across the Whitcomb property. The old white house had been empty as long as she could remember. Once she used to wish that someone mysterious and exciting would move into it.

She met no one as she passed through the lane and came to Pete Grant's store. The women were staying in their warm kitchens, the men were sleeping away the aimless hours. There were one or two in the store, talking politics in half-hearted fashion, when she asked for yeast and sugar; when she went out, she knew they'd talk about Charles. No one knew yet that he'd had to marry Mateel, but they always suspected a hurried marriage.

But she was too tired to care what they talked about. If Charles didn't care, why should she? She walked down through the long covered shed and came out on the empty wharf.

The wind moaned around the spilings and whistled across the wet, green-slimed rocks below. The tide was ebbing from the ledges that showed dreary and black, the cries of the gulls were forlorn. Joanna sat down on a log and leaned back against a hogshead.

She was desperately tired. The last week had taken more of her abundant nervous energy than she realized. But there was one thing she did realize, with a cruel vividness; she had not only lost her brother, but a friend as well. She could never again look at Nils and see him as the chum he had always been. It would all be different now. She couldn't even talk to him without a sense of strangeness, however faint it might become with time.

Her eyes smarted as she looked out across the storm-gray water, at the white surf charging the dripping ledges, sliding back into the foam-flecked swells. Between Brigport and the Island the water had a wintry chop. The whole world was wintry today. Even the gulls, floating with the wind, seemed no kin to the white-winged creatures that could soar so exultantly toward the sun, their harsh voices full of vibrant life. Today their cries drifted down to her, shrill and desolate.

The western end of Brigport was edged with moving white; that the seas were high, out there in the open, she knew when the spar buoy was sometimes hidden from sight by a wash of dark water. Between Brigport and the red spar a boat moved with painful slowness against the power of wind and sea. She watched it idly, not seeing it clearly because it was gray, and so far away; but she knew in her mind and body how the bow was plunging and dripping and how each timber would be straining to move ahead; how sometimes the boat would almost stop for a moment, the engine faltering like an overworked heart, and then would come the quick downward plunge into the trough, the nose going under the white wash of water, then coming up valiantly, to keep on fighting.

Who would be out today? Certainly no one on Brigport was foolish enough to go hauling in a sea like this. Joanna watched the uncertain progress of the small boat. It was a little nearer now, so that sometimes she saw the sprayhood. But it was rolling so that it seemed as if another sea would capsize it. It looked tiny and helpless out there, and rather too near the ledges off Brigport. And suddenly, without knowing how she knew, Joanna realized that the engine had broken down.

Her muscles tightened, and she sat forward to watch. Did anyone see him from Brigport? But no one lived at that end, it was all dark woods. And if someone put out from Bennett's, he'd be on the ledges before they could reach him, the way the wind was blowing.

He's a fool, whoever he is, she thought anxiously. It wasn't any island fisherman, taking chances with a tricky engine in this weather. Some transient fisherman, some old derelict, she thought; ever since she could remember they'd been putting into the harbor for a night or two, battered and weary and dirty, living from hand to mouth, forever wandering. She had wondered what hope kept them alive—or if there were any hope for them to live for. But still they lived, and wanted to live, and the man out there in his helpless little cockleshell would be leaning over the engine box now, praying and cursing, sweating in spite of the cold wind, working with numbed and clumsy fingers, while the ever-loudening roar of surf battered at his ears.

Joanna stood up. Hopeless or not, somebody would have to go out there. She took one last look before she turned toward the store, and relief was like a sudden sweet breath of air in constricted lungs. The boat was on its way again, heading past those black ledges, as straight as any small boat could go in this sea. Joanna sat down on the log again. She grasped at the thought of this derelict fisherman; easier to let her mind drift idly on him, than to remember the family, Charles . . . and Nils.

There had been a good many wanderers to tie up at Pete Grant's wharf. When she was small, and believed in fairies and pirates, the sight of many an old sloop cruising into the harbor had struck delicious fear into her heart, and she would manage to be on the wharf—at a safe distance, of course—to watch the stranger swing up the ladder, his creased skin burnt black with weather and dirt, his overalls encrusted with salt and fish scales. Maybe he'd have a patch over one eye, or a long scar on his face; once there'd been a man with one arm, and she had been sure a shark had eaten it, until Owen disillusioned her. At daylight they would be gone again, and she would follow them in her mind, giving them strange adventures and mysterious deaths.

Now when she saw them come in, and go up to the store to ask about mooring for the night, and buy canned milk and beans and tobacco—Black B.L.—she still felt wonder, but there was pity in it. Why had they come to this life, so barren and futile? Had they ever been young and bright-eyed, singing to an accordion, kissing girls, getting drunk on dreams as well as whiskey? What lay behind them—and before them?

Joanna knew that, too. She'd heard the men talking of an old boat found drifting by itself, or of someone who had dropped out of sight in the fog or a storm . . . remember old Johnson? they said reminiscently. Used to come in here all the time. Well, he won't be back again. . . .

It seemed as if they vanished from the face of the waters as silently and completely as they vanished from the harbor at daybreak.

The small boat broke down again between the islands, and Joanna watched anxiously. He was away from the ledges now, but he'd drift down eventually on the reefs of Tenpound, if he didn't get the cursed engine started again. Joanna swore with him in sympathy, held her breath as the boat disappeared in a deep chasm between seas, breathed again as it rolled up into sight.

There, it was started again, plunging gallantly forward. Joanna thought of going home, but the sight and sound of the surf on the harbor ledges held her where she was. A fine mess it would be if the engine broke down in the harbor mouth. The boat would be matchwood in no time, and what if the poor old devil didn't have anything to live for? He still had a right to his wretched existence, and she'd feel guilty for the rest of her life if she didn't stay.

So she waited while the little boat tossed like a chip in the wicked top-chop raised by the wind, and the tide running against the wind. The tiller ropes would be groaning now, the timbers protesting, and the water pummeling brutally against the sides. But suddenly, with a little leap and an air of taking a long breath, the small shabby gray boat came into still water.

“You made it, brother!” said Joanna, and a gull perched on a nearby spiling gave her a startled glance and took off into the wind. Joanna waited, though there was no reason to stay. No reason except to give a friendly greeting to the man, and let him know someone had been watching in case he couldn't start his engine. Maybe it would make his day a little less lonely.

The rocky shoreline threw back the engine's pounding, and then there was silence as the boat reached the car. Joanna walked to the head of the ladder. Her father had always been cordial to transients, making them feel they were welcome to a night's anchorage, and his children were the same.

She looked down at the scarred boat with its peeling paint and mended sprayhood, and waited for the owner to come out of the cabin. He'd be biting off a good chew of tobacco, and his beard would be a week old, his teeth scarce. She saw a man in a battered felt hat bent over the open engine box.

“You had quite a time, didn't you, skipper?” she called down to him. “I thought maybe you weren't going to make port.”

“Did you have any bets on it?” he said, and looked up. She stared back at him, feeling her cheeks grow hot. This wasn't any battered derelict with a quid in his cheek, no teeth, and a week's gray stubble on his chin. This man was tall and young, and very straight. And when he looked up, answering, and saw her, he took off his hat. “Hello,” he said politely.

“Hello,” she said. She had never seen a young man like this among the wanderers, and she felt a quick scorn. Didn't he know how to settle down and make a living for himself? She said curtly, “I was going to tell you I saw you break down. Somebody would've come for you.”

“Thanks.” His smile was oddly gentle and gay across his lean face. He swung up the ladder toward her. “But I wasn't worried. I can always throw the killick overboard.”

“It wouldn't have helped you any in that tide rip.” For a transient he was remarkably clean, and his leather jacket was good, though shabby. But that wasn't anything in his favor. “If you want the store,” she said, “it's right up there.”

“But I don't want the store. Not right away. Maybe you can tell me where the Whitcomb place is.”

“The Whitcomb place?” Joanna lifted her eyebrows. “But nobody lives there—they moved away years ago.”

Again the faint smile, and now she saw how it lit up his eyes, narrow in the thin face that was whitened by salt. They were a curious color between brown and green. She caught herself watching the play of light in them. Bennett eyes were so dark and deep.

“They moved away,” she repeated.

“I know they did. They were my grandparents. Martha was my mother.”

“Really?” She forgot to be curt; this was exciting. “Why, they were early settlers here—they came right after my grandfather and Gunnar Sorensen came. Of course Martha—that is, your mother—went away and got married before I was born, but I remember your grandfather just a little bit.”

“I hope he left a good record behind him. Did he behave himself?”

Joanna laughed. “I guess so. My father was awfully fond of him. It seemed that once when he was little, Cyrus made him a very special kind of boat out of pine from a wreck. We've still got it.”

“Gosh, I'd like to see it . . . I'm Alec Douglass. Alexander Charles-Edward Douglass.” His mouth quirked. “My father was a Scot.”

“I'm Joanna Bennett. Is the Charles-Edward for Bonnie Prince Charlie?”

“You guessed it. A couple hundred years ago some of us were chasing around with him in the Highlands and my father never forgot it.”

“I don't blame him,” said Joanna enthusiastically. “The first time I read about Bonnie Prince Charlie I went around for months wishing I was Flora MacDonald. I'd row across the harbor pretending we were escaping to Skye.” She stopped suddenly. She hadn't ever told anyone, Kristi or Nils or Owen, about those enchanted dreams. And here she was, rattling along like an idiot to a complete stranger.

Her father would say that Cyrus Whitcomb's grandson couldn't be a complete stranger. She said crisply, “I'll show you where the house is. But I don't know what condition the inside's in. The outside's pretty bad.”

They went through the shed and came out past the store. Alec Douglass glanced at it.

“I'll come back and get my supplies after I've seen the place.”

“You sound as if you were staying for a while.”

“I am,” he said easily. “What about my boat? Can I leave her tied up there?”

“When you go to the store, you'll have to talk with Pete Grant about it. He owns the wharf and he's got a mooring he lets people use.” She led him up past the Birds' and the Grays', and walked along the lane with him until the Whitcomb house showed up at the far end, white against the blackly wooded hillside, the neglected fields surrounding it a tangle of tall grass and wild berry vines. Before them sagged a rusty gate.

“There you are,” she said.

“So that's the house my mother used to tell me about,” Alec Douglass murmured, and something in his voice made Joanna glance at him. He caught her look and said, “She's dead. So is my father.”

“I'm sorry,” Joanna said. The house would be a lonely place to come to, for a man with no one but himself. “The house doesn't look very inviting, does it? This is a bad day . . . I don't even know if there's a stove. How would you cook?”

He smiled at her. “The gods will provide. They always do. Almost always . . . Thanks a lot, Joanna Bennett. Maybe I'll see that boat sometime.”

Joanna hesitated. The house looked chill and dismal up there against the woods, with the sea of brown grass before it. Closed for years, it would be as damp as a tomb. And if there were no stove, how was Alec Douglass to fix even a cup of coffee for himself?