High Tide at Noon (31 page)

It was the gulls, screaming and fighting overhead, that awakened Joanna to sunlight on her eyes and Alec in deep sleep beside her. There was not much of him to be seen but a sandy chest, bronze as the sun slanted across it; but one arm was under Joanna's neck and the other flung over her body. She lay contentedly for a few minutes, listening to his breathing, the wind roaring through the tall trees behind the house, the gulls. The mailboat would have it choppy today.

“Alec,” she said.

Almost instantly he awoke. “What's the matter?”

“It's late, and it's boat day today.” She rose up on one elbow and looked down at him. “Aren't you a mess,” she said fondly. She kissed him, and then snuggled against his chest. “We've got to get up. Alec, how much did you win last night?”

“Momma, Poppa didn't win. He lost.”

She felt a twinge of disappointment. It was silly, because at the most he would have won or lost only a few dollars. But it would have been an omen—a sign from Alec's gods—if he had won. She slid out from under the quilts into the cool bright air, and began to dress.

Alec lay cornerwise across the bed so he could look up into her face with twinkling hazel eyes. “Momma love Poppa?” he asked pathetically.

“Sometimes. Right now Momma needs some money to pay a bill Poppa forgot.”

“Which one was that?”

“Montgomery Ward—the last order you sent, the heavy shirts and socks.” She pinched his chin. “You're a peach of a manager. If you're taking care of the bills, you're not supposed to forget them, so they'll write stern letters.”

“I suppose a Bennett never forgets, like an elephant.” Alec's eyes laughed up at her. “Joanna my love, haven't you any money left?”

“You haven't given me my housekeeping money yet this week, and I couldn't save anything over from last week, with fixing up the spare room and all. And I don't want to touch the money box.”

“Well, darlin' mine,” he said lightly, “Montgomery's will have to wait a day or two. I'm a little broke.”

“Did you play with
all
the money you got from your lobsters yesterday?” He'd never done that before. She didn't know why she felt so empty, all at once.

“It was only about fifteen dollars, Jo. If I'd won—”

“But you didn't win, and something's got to be paid on that bill, and besides—” She couldn't keep the bitterness out of her voice. “I was going to put a dollar or two aside for the baby.”

“There's plenty of time for that, honey.” He pulled her down close to him. “I'm going out to haul this morning, and you can send off the money next boat day. How's that?”

“Next boat day is three days away,” she reminded him. “There'll probably be another stern letter by then, only worse.”

“We'll smooth 'em down. Mad with me, Jo?”

She couldn't be mad with him, ever. But she couldn't help this baffled feeling. She pulled away from him, gently. “I'm going down and start breakfast. You'd better hurry if you're going out to haul.”

He came down quickly, as amiable and carefree as if he had a pocket full of money. “I ought to get plenty today. Only hauled about forty pots yesterday. I'll go all around the Island today. And I'll bring something for you, something for the box, and something to win back my fifteen dollars with.”

“Do you think you ever really win anything back?”

“Sure! Win it back twice, three times!” On his way to the table he stopped to kiss the back of her neck. A great wave of tenderness swept over her, strong and warm, driving away some of the baffled feeling. Alec was Alec, and he was all hers.

When he had gone out, whistling, she did her small quota of housework, and sat down at the desk in the sitting room to make out her grocery list. When Alec gave her the housekeeping money, after he came in from hauling, she would go down to the store and stock up for the next week. Then she wouldn't have to buy anything else, unless Pete Grant got some fresh meat in, or something else that was out of the ordinary. She had learned from her mother to plan out a week in advance, and with her cellar shelves full of the things she had canned, she managed very successfully. She was honestly proud of her ability to serve good meals on little more than a shoestring; she herself had limited the amount of money Alec gave her.

“It'll be more for the money box,” she told him. “More for the new boat.”

As she sat at the desk now, her mind seemed oddly vacant of ideas about food. She looked out at the bright windy day outside, the dark blue water whipped into whitecaps beyond the little cove, and remembered the odd, empty feeling she'd had when she and Alec were talking before they got up. It had been a silly way to feel, she thought now, smiling a little at her foolishness. It didn't hurt if Alec was reckless once in a poker game, or if he didn't have anything in his pockets when he went out to haul. Probably it would never happen just that way again.

Only she wasn't going to wait till next boat day to pay that bill. The letter had startled her more than she would admit, even to herself, especially when she'd believed Alec had paid up. She had left the bills to him from the start of their marriage, and it had only been by accident that she'd opened the letter.

There'd be no harm in taking the money from the box. She would put it back this afternoon, after Alec came in. She didn't want to touch the money box, for she never had; it was Alec's personal concern, set aside for their savings toward the new boat he needed so badly. But once wouldn't count, and the bill would be paid today, and off her mind. She took the small metal box from its drawer. It was never locked.

There were papers lying just under the cover, some with envelopes, some without. Receipted bills, she thought carelessly, laying them aside. But as she put them down, she glanced at the top one, picked it up and read it with rueful amusement. Another one Alec had forgotten, she thought he'd sent off the money for the kitchen cabinet months ago.

“Please Remit,” said the black letters across the paper. She riffled through the others, feeling strangely cold. The new engine for his boat, the studio couch, the pictures, radio repairs, the flannels he'd bought in the summer, three barrels of bream from a man in Port George . . . there were bills a year old. Bills dated from just before and after their marriage. They sifted through her fingers and she stared over the desk top at the brilliant day outside, seeing nothing but the words and figures that leaped at her from the papers.

“Please Remit”—“No further extension of credit”—“will be forced to put this bill in the hands of a collector”—

Alec had blithely put the bills out of sight and forgotten them. True, he had kept his Island bills paid up, but any man, getting a foothold, would do the same. She shook her head impatiently. That wasn't Alec, deliberately building up good will and ignoring the obligations that weren't near at hand. Alec wasn't sly. But he'd been working hard, and they were so desperately in love. How easy to let things slide for a little while, put the bills aside.

She remembered her father saying, “Bills are the easiest things of all to forget.” For that reason he always paid them at once . . . the empty feeling had come back to Joanna, a coldness came with it.

She added up the figures swiftly. When she had finished, the total was seven hundred and sixty-nine dollars. Almost eight hundred. Almost a thousand. She felt slightly sick. She turned back to the money box and began to count the boat savings. Fifty-five dollars.

There should be a lot more than that
, an astonished voice said in her brain.

She looked back again at the past year. There was a depression on the mainland, but not in the lobster business. The hauls had been phenomenal sometimes, and the prices were good. Once a buyer had offered eighty cents a pound! Those men who had carred their lobsters, and had a thousand or more pounds to sell at a crack, had come home with rolls of bills.

She remembered with fantastic clarity Alec's brilliant eyes, the excitement in every motion of his lean body, his gay voice. “Fifty dollars for the money box, and what do you want for a present, Jo?”

Of course, eighty was an extraordinary price, but even in the slack times, when the tides were wrong and lobsters weren't crawling, thirty cents was the average, and the hauls were always good enough to keep a man's family clothed and fed. All this Joanna knew, as well as she knew that there was no reason for eight hundred dollars' worth of bills and only fifty-five dollars in the money box. You couldn't blame it on losing traps; there'd been only one storm bad enough, in the past year, to smash any of Alec's gear, and then only a few ten- and fifteen-fathom traps.

She felt alone and lost. Alec had become a stranger. She tried to picture him, out in the rough sun-flecked waters off the Souwest Point, with the boat rolling in the white wash from the ledges as he hauled a heavy trap dripping to the gunwale, brushed off the sea-urchins, measured his lobsters with the gauge, and tossed them into a keg. As if she were perched on the engine box, she saw the way he tilted his head back and watched the seagulls soar up from the rocks in a shrieking rush. His eyes would be narrowed against the sun glare, his mouth shaped for his constant whistling. He would whistle all the time he was out there, even when he couldn't hear himself through the heavy drone of the hauling gear and the noisy chuckle and run of water against the sides. After he'd worked around the Island and about the ledges where the seals tumbled in the surf, he'd come whistling home, shaking out the bait bags and looking back at the gulls who came down like a winged snowfall in the wake.

He'd whistle when he came up the path; he wouldn't stop until he came through the door and took her into his arms. Joanna, sitting at the desk, knew how he would come in. She knew almost everything about him. But she hadn't known about the bills and the money box. And because of that, it wouldn't be her Alec who came whistling home tonight.

She would have to talk to him, she thought, walking nervously through the rooms. Tonight she must ask him about the bills and the money he'd made in the past year, and it was going to be the hardest thing she'd ever done.

She would have given anything to forget it, but she knew that for the sake of their future together, she couldn't forget it. It was something to be brought out into the open. If she concealed it, it would poison their life together, and wipe out the unclouded happiness of the year gone by.

It was suddenly torture to stay indoors. She put on her jacket and went out into the crisp afternoon, to walk in the autumn sunshine and wind along the west side of the Island. Here the spray flew up from the red rocks, flashing in the sunlight, and the air was cold and rough and strong against her face, and the gulls rode high overhead.

When she came back to the house the lamps were lit, their yellow light streaming out into the salt-scented dusk. Alec was boiling lobsters in the kitchen. He waved one at her.

“How's for some chowder tonight? You don't have to do anything—just sit down and let the old expert take over.”

He dropped a swift kiss on her nose and went back to the stove. Joanna knew by his manner that he had made a good haul. She didn't object to his getting supper; working around the kitchen, whistling, talking, he didn't notice her restraint. She knew that sense of strangeness would lie upon her until she had talked to him, but she couldn't do it now, while he was happy and proud to be waiting on her. After supper, she promised herself.

After supper Owen drifted in with Maurice Trudeau. Later Mark and David Sorensen, David with his accordion under his arm. He worked for his father now, and had bought the accordion with his earnings. Last of all Sigurd arrived, with his guitar. Alec brought out his fiddle and they made music around the kitchen stove.

Ordinarily Joanna loved evenings like this, there was something so richly satisfactory about having the crowd come to Alec's home and hers. But tonight she was on edge. Always, in the back of her mind, she was saying what she must say to Alec when they were alone. Always she was seeing the laughter go out of his eyes and from his mouth when he heard her words. The music, the singing, the stamping feet, and the laughter were simply noises clashing against her eardrums.

It was only when she looked at Alec, his cheek against his fiddle, his fingers flying over the strings, that she felt almost eager to tell him. She loved him so much that this thing must be straightened out between them; it couldn't stay to cloud the shining, flawless surface of their love.

She made coffee for the crowd, and brought out gingerbread. They departed at last. When Alec went out to bring in some wood, she heard them singing, the sound sweet and clear in the cold stillness. She stood on the back steps, looking up at the thick, twinkling brightness overhead, the Milky Way spattered across the sky, and waited for Alec to come in from the woodpile. In a little while now, they'd talk, and she'd find out there was no reason for distrust and suspicion. Already her heart lightened miraculously.

Perhaps he'd lent the boat savings to someone who'd been in a tight spot—Forest Merrill, perhaps, or even one of her brothers—and he'd been afraid to tell her. That was so typical of Alec, helping somebody out, and how could she be angry with him for that?

When she stood back to let him pass with his armful of wood, and then followed him into the kitchen, the restraint was lifting, as fog burns off before the sun. She was glad when he put his arms around her.

“Time for bed, honey.”

“I've got to wash up those cups, first—”

“Oh, leave 'em!” Alec's lips brushed hers. “Come on, you're tired tonight.”

She laughed up at him. “I hate to have dirty dishes staring me in the face when I get up in the morning. You go along up, and I'll be there in about five minutes.”