High Tide at Noon (24 page)

“Well, I can't forbid you. You'll never learn till you find out for yourself. But you'd better get the
Old Girl
up first. She'll be dried out by the time you get back.”

“I'll never haul from the
Old Girl
again,” Owen said. “When I go out again in September, it'll be in a boat of my own, built the way I want her.”

“Well, you're not going to start building her right now, are you?” asked Donna mildly. “Because it's dinner time.”

For a moment Owen scowled, then suddenly he smiled at his mother. “Aye, aye, sir! Got room for a couple extras?”

“Not for me, thanks just the same,” Nils said. “Kris'll be looking for me.” He went out quickly.

“Now, what ails that boy these days?” Donna wondered aloud. “We hardly ever see him, and then he's gone again before you can say hello.”

“He's a hardworking guy.” Alec retrieved a spool of thread for Donna and sat down on the window sill near her. “I've never seen him loafing since I came here.” Owen brought out a notebook and began to jot down figures for the trip. Philip and Stephen, having given up the argument, made amiable suggestions. Joanna put dinner on the table.

She felt an almost intolerable ache to be in Alec's arms again. She was so tinglingly aware of him that she didn't dare look at him. When would they have a moment alone? The thought ran wildly behind her quiet intent face.

She was beset by doubts and agonizing fears. She really didn't know Alec at all. Maybe he was in the habit of kissing a girl when he had a chance; any girl. Maybe she'd read a meaning into his gesture that he hadn't intended. The thought was a knife in her heart. She couldn't bear it, to know it was only a casual thing, as casual as the kisses Owen bestowed among the Island girls.

Quite suddenly she dreaded being alone with him.

Dinner over, the men went back to the shore and Donna lay down in her room. Joanna washed and wiped dishes in absent-minded fury. Not a word, not a look from Alec; he hadn't tried to be alone with her. He was like the others—he'd kissed her because she was a girl, and handy, and she'd fallen into his arms like a ripe plum. Oh you fool; you idiot! she thought, remembering the way ecstasy had lain all night on her lids, and how she had opened her eyes to it with the first glimmer of dawn.

The house was exceedingly still, except for the clock on the shelf and her own subdued rattle of dishes. Noon sunshine and fragrance drifted through the kitchen. It was June, and the Island was at its best. In a week or so the buttercups would strew the meadow in shining drifts, and already the first blue flag were out in the marshy spot between the fence and Goose Cove.

You could always depend on the blue flag, anyway, Joanna thought bitterly. She hung out the dish towels, took her mother's old shears, and went down toward the cove. The day glittered after the storm ; the air held a blend of sweetness and sharpness, scented with sun warmed spruce and early clover, and the racy pungence of the high tide that filled the cove with a shining and incredible blueness. High tide, and a golden noon.

And there, caught between the weather-silvered rail fence and the white beach rocks, bordering the path that curved into the deep sun-spattered shadow of the woods, the blue flag grew tall and stiffly elegant, the color of heaven.

Joanna loved them, but today she was preoccupied as she cut a good armful for the big earthen jar in the sitting room. Cold water seeped into her shoes, but she hardly noticed it; the persistent caroling of a song sparrow from the wooded hillside behind her went ignored, for Joanna, deep in confused and angry thought, was whistling absently under her breath. She realized suddenly that it was one of Alec's songs—“The Road to the Isles.”

“Damn the
Scotch!”
she said aloud, and precisely at that moment she looked up and saw Alec Douglass coming around the corner of the house.

She had a moment of panic. He had seen her, he was coming down over the grassy slope—long-legged and quick—and her heart began to beat faster. At the same time she was quite aware of the fact that he probably wanted to know the whereabouts of the new manila hawser, and that was all.

He looked curiously sober as he came along the path. “Hi, Joanna.”

“Hello.' Her dark eyes viewed him remotely across the brilliant blue of the flowers.

“I was going to help you with the dishes.”

“They were done long ago.”

They stood gazing at each other. Alec was pale under his tan, and not exactly at ease. He glanced around, and his eyes halted at the place where the path led into the woods.

“Does that go to the cemetery?”

Joanna nodded. “Haven't you been up there yet?”

“No.” Almost, he fidgeted. She had never seen him so uneasy. “Look Jo—”

She lifted an eyebrow, and suddenly color came back into his lean cheeks, the twinkling smile into his eyes. “Don't look so dignified, Jo. Come up and tell me who's buried where.”

In this new cool detachment of hers, born of a knowledge that men were all alike, she didn't wish to appear too willing. She considered, staring meditatively into space as if Alec Douglass were no more than a distant gull that floated, laughing raucously, overhead. But she was poignantly conscious of him, of the line of his jaw and neck, the way his mouth was cut at the comers, the way he stood watching her, his hands in his pockets and the wind stirring his hair, his eyes bright with imminent laughter.

“Well,” she said slowly, “I was going up to get some apple blossoms, anyway.”

They went silently along the path and left the shimmering cove and the flooding sunshine behind them for the cool green shade under spruces, with only the quick rush of small birds' wings, and their voices, for sound. The path turned and twisted upward, and came out by the great maple that Joanna loved. They paused, letting the silence flow around them. The little cemetery was washed with sunlight, but all around it the ancient spruces stood tall and very dark, their pointed tops seemed to hold up the June sky. The stones were small and gray, the older ones covered with lichen; the pansies and geraniums set out on Decoration Day were vivid against the grass.

Joanna and Alec sat down on the stile, built over a fence that had been made years ago, when part of the woods served as pasture for Grandpa Bennett's cows. Wherever they looked, except toward the cemetery and the blossoming orchard beyond it, there were green and shadows, and splashes of light like warm gold; and under the oldest spruces there was cool and mysterious darkness that had a silence of its own. There the hawks moved soundlessly, but where Joanna and Alec sat, there were continual soft twittering and elfin whistling from the small birds.

“Listen to them,” Joanna said. “They sing all day, as if they never heard of a hawk.”

“Maybe they're just whistling in the dark.”

“Listen to that sparrow. If that isn't pure happiness—” She remembered her dignity. “Did you say you wanted to know who's buried where?”

“Yes. Who's buried there, where the apple tree is. There's no marker.”

She glanced at the place where every breeze brought down a lazy drift of petals on the grass, a pink and white snowfall. “Five unknown sailors who were drowned in a wreck, right after my grandfather came.”

“I wonder if there's room for one more,” Alec said. He was watching the dreamy progress of the petals fluttering down to the grass. “Do you think they ever feel the flowers coming down on them like snow, and wake up and know it's spring?”

She thought with a curious delight, it's like poetry. She couldn't imagine Owen or Philip or Nils thinking of words like that. Aloud she said, “Maybe . . . and maybe when the wind blows the apples down they wake up and know it's autumn. . . . We used to think that tree had better apples than the orchard. Owen and I used to come up here after them—we called them the Sailors' Apples.”

“I'd like an apple tree over my grave,” he said mildly. She felt cold, as if the breeze had suddenly chilled.

“You don't have to think about it yet,” she answered.

“Why not? According to Phil and your father, and Gunnar Sorensen and some of the others, we'll come back from Cash's all ready for the grave, if we don't end up in a watery one.”

His eyes were twinkling, and with relief she shook off the odd mood that had seized her. “Alec, why in heaven's name do you want to go out there? It's foolish! There's only one chance in ten that you'll make more than your expenses.”

“Don't you believe in taking chances?”

“Oh, I'm not a coward, if that's what you mean. But look, Alec, there's no need of it. You're doing all right with your trawling, doing better all the time. And there's enough boats in the family so Owen can haul until the closed time begins.”

“Owen wants to build his boat. And I'm not making money fast enough to suit me.” He said it calmly, as an irrevocable fact, but she challenged him.

“Not making money
fast
enough?”

Alec turned his head and looked down at her. “Well, if a man wants to buy furniture for a house, so it's fit to bring a woman into—if a man wants to settle down—” The color burned high on his cheekbones, and his eyes were very bright. There was a curious sensation around Joanna's heart, and she felt fire in her own cheeks, a smarting in her eyes . . . I don't know what he's talking about, she thought stubbornly.

She never knew which one of them moved first, whether without realizing it she swayed toward him, or he toward her; but she was in his arms, there on the stile by the cemetery, with the apple blossoms falling on the sailors' graves, and a song sparrow blithely singing his heart out over their heads.

It was just as she remembered it, the feel of his arms around her. Only this time they talked.

“I want to marry you as soon as I can,” Alec said. “As soon as we've got something to start on.”

“We don't need much to start on,” she murmured, “only each other . . .” She fitted so perfectly against his shoulder, and she could hear his chuckle begin in his chest.

“I know, but you've got a family that's in the habit of being prosperous. I've got to show them I'm fit to take care of you.”

“They won't think much of your fitness if you're going to keep risking your neck.” She twisted her head to look up at him. “It's such a nice neck. I like it.”

“I like yours.” This was a curiously intent and somber Alec; somber, yet his eyes were shining, his voice faintly unsteady. The touch of his fingers on her throat sent fire along her skin. She turned up her face to him; a heaviness lowered her lids until the lashes were thickly black against the warm brown of her cheeks, and her mouth was soft and full, and waiting.

He said her name in something between a groan and a laugh of pure triumphant happiness, and buried his face in her neck. His arms grew so tight that she could hardly breathe but this very breathlessness was a feeling of wonder and beauty. She was motionless in his arms, holding this perfect moment like water brimming in a cup. Then she felt his lips warmly on her throat, moving up toward her cheek, and when she could bear it no longer, when it seemed as if her whole body was one aching pulse, she turned her head and met his mouth.

This time it was not gentle.

M
ARK AND
S
TEVIE CAME ON
the
Aurora B
. for the summer vacation. Joanna was at the wharf when they arrived. They had grown just since Easter; tall and arrow-straight, they hurled their bags ashore and swarmed up after them.

Link Hall leaned out of the pilot house, a deeper red than usual, and said around his cigar, “Jo, see if you can't drown them two wild Injuns before next September.”

“Drownin's too good for 'em,” said Fred Bowers from the engine room hatch. “Though I recollect them Bennett boys always did raise hell when they come back from school.”

“You, Ash Bird,” Link yelled. “Look alive and grab that line! Look here, Jo, I don't mind common-ord'nary good spirits, but I can't say as I like findin' them boys up in the crosstrees every time I turn around.”

“Can I help it if they're part monkey?” asked Joanna politely, and an appreciative chuckle rippled across the collection of Islanders on the wharf. Stevie grinned, thumbed his nose at Fred, and yelled at David Sorensen to wait for him. They went off toward the shore. Mark stopped long enough to give Joanna a mighty hug.

“Hello, fishface. My God, the girl's got handsome! Hey, where's everybody? Nils and Owen out hauling?”

“Gone to Cash's,” said Joanna briskly. “Left at three this morning, in Nils' boat.” And her heart had gone too, following across the starlit sea. . . .

“Cripes, why couldn't they wait for me?” Mark demanded.

“Save your fight for later. You march yourself along home and see Mother.” Arm in arm they went up through the shed and found Stevie sitting on his suitcase outside the store, explaining the intricacies of basketball to David, Pierre Trudeau, and an assortment of younger children. He had grown very tall, but his shy grin at Joanna was the same endearing one that he had possessed since childhood. No hugs on the wharf for him, but later he would seek her out and tell her in detail about his year at school.

When they had started along the road, attended by a retinue of youthful admirers, Joanna went into the store to wait for the mail. Quite suddenly these commonplace duties held a new zest; it was as if with the coming of Alec into her personal life everything had taken on new colors and freshness.

When she reached the house, Mark and Stevie, already in dungarees, were rolling around in the grass by the back door, an animated mixture of black heads, long legs, and Winnie. Joanna, watching them wrestle, knew exactly how they felt. It had been like that with her, too, when she came back from school. She wanted to run out and see the whole Island at once, take it into her arms; and if she couldn't do that, simply to fling herself to the ground was the next best thing. The breath and being of the Island came into you then, with the damp warmth of the earth, and the smell, and the sunshine.