High Tide at Noon (35 page)

She said, still tonelessly, “I see.” He ran lightly down the stairs to her. His hands gripped her shoulders warmly, and he put his cheek against hers.

“Don't look like that, Jo. Sure, I know I should've held on to some of it, but I was winning like crazy, and I kept thinking of what you'd say when I woke you up and showed you the roll.”

“Why didn't you stop then?”

“Aw, honey, I couldn't! You can't stop when you're winning.”

“Are you supposed to play till you've lost everything? Alec, if they'd known that money was all you had, you could have stopped.”

She knew better, but she had to keep talking without looking at him, pretending his hands weren't trying to turn her toward him. She wished he would go to bed and leave her alone. She didn't know whether she was angry or hurt, or upset because this wasn't a way of living that she liked.

“The wind's still blowing,” she said dryly. “The weather report last night said storm warnings were out along the coast. It'll likely be three or four days before you get out to haul again. You'll be sick of herring by then, Alec.”

He took his hands away from her shoulders and she felt him grow stiff and distant. She was vaguely sorry for him, through her anger. He'd been without sleep for twenty-four hours, and yesterday had been a windy and hellish day; she could have waited until he napped a few hours before she talked like this.

“Do you have to act as if I'd killed somebody, or been out all night with a woman?” Alec said coldly, and she stopped being sorry for him. She felt her chin tighten and go up, as she turned toward him. Whose fault was it that he hadn't slept? Not hers, certainly. No one forced him to go down to the Eastern End, no one pointed a gun at his head and told him to play poker.

“Why don't you go to bed?” she suggested.

Without another word he went up the stairs. Halfway to the top he spoke to her with remote politeness, as if they were strangers. “Call me at noon. I'm going down and work on Jake Trudeau's engine after dinner.”

She nodded, and the upstairs door shut behind him, with a sound of finality. She dressed before the oven door, but though her skin was warmed by the glow of heat, she felt cold. . . . You went along serenely, thinking you knew a man, and then you found out you didn't. You loved him, and you felt you were a part of him, and he was a part of you, and then all at once you were alone again, and it was a bleak, desolate feeling.

But why couldn't he have
thought?
she asked herself. He knew that money was all they had for the next few days. He knew he could very easily lose it all, if he were careless. But she could answer her own questions. Alec was too sweet-tempered, too social, too hopeful. The very qualities that had endeared him to her were the factors that made trouble for him.

But he'll have to learn, she thought, her teeth tight against her lower lip. Her mind was made up about that.

J
OANNA BROUGHT UP HERRING
from the cellar and put it to soak, and opened a jar of beet greens. At the rate they were using the canned stuff, it wouldn't last very long. She thought of the days during the summer and early fall when she had stayed in to can fruit and vegetables and fish, and had gone up to the big house to help her mother and Kristi, and the Island had been so lovely that she ached; she had wanted to stay out in that radiant world for every waking moment, she had wanted to go fishing and hauling with Alec, she had wanted to lie in the warm tawny grass on the west side watching the gulls and listening to the loons.

But she had spent those waking moments—all of them, it seemed—standing over a stove, sterilizing jars, ladling hot jam, salting fish, while the last blaze of summer drifted into the nostalgic, dreamy peace of autumn.

Donna was the only one who guessed Joanna wasn't as whole-hearted in this phase of housekeeping as she appeared. The others, coming in, looked at her apron and flushed cheeks, and neat ranks of jars, and said, “Old married woman now, ain't ye?” But Donna, who saw everything, said to her once, “It won't hurt if you run away once in a while.”

“What do you mean?”

“Go down to the shore and take a skiff, and go rowing around the harbor. It's high tide.”

“I've got to start dinner—” Her protest was feeble.

“Dinner!” Donna looked as scornful as her inherent quiet sweetness would allow. “Dinner can wait. Jo, I know you're in love with Alec and you'd like to wait on him by inches, but I'm telling you because I know—you'll have to run away sometimes, even if it's just down to the gate and back. Women aren't born housekeepers and wives. You're not helping anybody by cooping yourself in a house and letting it run you.”

She smiled at Joanna. “If some of the women on this Island heard me talking like this, they'd be horrified, but underneath they'd agree with me. Start Alec's dinner, and can beans this afternoon the way you planned. But take yourself rowing first. It's noon, and high tide, and that's the time you like best.”

They were not a demonstrative pair, but Joanna, in passing, stopped to kiss Donna. “I've known you twenty-one years, and you still surprise me,” she said, and went out as if her feet had wings, straight down to the gate and from there to the beach where the skiffs were tied.

But she hadn't run away often, and she hadn't shirked on her canning, and she was glad now. They had lived for days from these jars, but by April the shelves would be almost bare.

At noon she set the table, looking at it with distaste. Herring were good when you wanted to eat them, but not when you had to. Tomorrow it would be creamed codfish and pork scraps—also good when you ate it from choice. She had two eggs to put into it, and there wouldn't be any more eggs until Alec hauled again. She could get them any time from Uncle Nate, but to charge them would be an admission to the whole Bennett family that she and Alec were short. More than short.
Broke
.

There was always the money box, but she put the thought out of her head. The money box was not to be touched until the time came to pay for the lumber for the boat. She remembered what Alec had said about Jake's engine, and the tight wire of anger, that had kept her tense, loosened. Why, Alec had taken on a job to tide them over, and she'd been calling him careless and improvident.

She ran upstairs and called him, feeling a sweet rush of penitence. She'd behaved like what Owen called one of those Aunt Mary wives.

He looked faintly surprised as she leaned over and kissed him, and then he reached up to pull her down against his chest, his eyes alight with their curious radiance.

“Love me?”

“I love you,” she said meekly. “Do you love me?”

“Sometimes. Right now is one of them. Jo . . . still mad at me?”

She traced his nose with her forefinger. “I wasn't mad.”

“You were damn mad, and I don't blame you. But I won't do it again, Jo honey.” His voice pleaded to be believed. “Honest, I promise—”

She didn't know what whim, what impulse, made her put her hand over his mouth. “No, Alec. Don't ever make promises.”

The storm broke that night, and was a week blowing itself out. At the end of the week, there were no herring left, and very little dried fish. Also, it seemed that Jake Trudeau couldn't pay Alec right away for the six hours' work on his engine.

Alec was lighthearted about it. “He'll pay me when he can,” he told Joanna. “But if he'd given me anything, it meant the youngsters would go hungry till he got out to haul again.”

“Did he offer to pay?”

“Oh, yes. Sure, Jake's all right. He looks like a hi-jacker, but he's straight.” Alec wandered to the stove and looked with interest in the kettle of fish chowder. “I told him not to worry about it.”

“I suppose you didn't tell him we'd go hungry too.”

“What, with a cellar full of grub?” He twinkled at her, but she turned away from him.

“It's not very full, I can tell you that.” She felt tired and dispirited, as she stood by the window, looking down across the sodden brown field toward the gate. Beyond the dark barrier of Gunnar Sorensen's spruces, the harbor was slate-gray in the growing dusk. There was no one to be seen, no sign of anything human except the lighted window of Gunnar's kitchen, down there beyond his garden.

Alec was whistling softly, and she heard him sit down at the table. Still watching the coming dusk outside the windows, she said, “Alec, do I sound as if all I cared about was money? Because that's not so, and you know it.”

“Sure I know it, honey. You feel low because you think it's not decent to live without plenty put away in the teapot in the cupboard.” His voice was soft and warm around her heart. He did understand, then, and it was good to know. “Give me time. We're in the doldrums right now, but what I said goes—I'll be good. Believe me?”

She smiled out at the barren field. “Uh-huh . . .”

“And we'll have a big steak dinner tomorrow, and you'll forget all about herring. I'm damn sick of 'em myself.”

She couldn't resist it. “What'll we buy it with? Charm and a sweet smile?”

“Money, my dear!” he said gaily. “Because I'm going down to the Eastern End tonight and lick the pants off Charles and Owen, and get back all I lost.”

She spun around and saw him sitting at the table, his hair bright in the lamplight. He was playing solitaire. Almost, in that instant, Joanna heard Margaret's voice. “I wished it was girls instead of cards. In love with 'em, he was. There was always a pack in his pocket.”

Joanna found her voice. “You're going to play again, after you told me you wouldn't?”

“Well, I meant to get my money back first.” He leaned back in his chair. “I've got a quarter and Owen'll give me something to make a start with, and the Douglasses will be in the money again. Don't look like that, Jo, honey.” He stood up and came toward her. “Don't you believe me when I say I know when to stop?”

His eyes, his voice, his mouth appealed to her, and she wanted with all her heart to tell him she believed him, to send him out tonight with a flip “Good luck!” and to stop this nagging anxiety in her brain. Now he was hugging her with a rough, little boy's hug, rubbing his cheek against hers.

“Believe me, honey?” he whispered. “Tell me you do.”

And then she knew she couldn't tell him that she was afraid. It was selfish and suspicious, not to have faith in him. She wanted to have faith in him. With a small, unheard sigh she said, “I believe you, Alec,” and felt the pure exuberance of his kiss.

While she set the supper table, he sat at the end of the stove playing his fiddle for her, one old song after another; sad ones, melancholy old ballads whose bitter words he sang as he played, his Scotch jigs and reels, Swedish tunes learned from Sigurd, and pure Yankee ones. Whenever she looked at him, soft brown hair tumbled over his forehead, green-brown eyes narrow and bright, she felt with new force her love for him. But it was mingled with something new and confusing. Something like sadness.

She went up to see her parents while he was out, and when he called for her, and came into the warm sitting room, he wore the air of taut and jubilant excitement that told her he'd been winning. Owen wasn't so good-natured. Apparently he'd lost.

They had no sooner got away from the house than Alec told her. “Enough for steak?” she said dryly.

“Steak, and that suit I've seen you looking at in the catalog, and all the stuff to go with it. And a new sweater for me, maybe.”

She halted in the path, regardless of the sweep of wind from Goose Cove, and looked at him in the clear starlight. “Alec, how much did you get?”

“Thirty dollars. More than I lost last night.”

“Thirty dollars is a lot,” she said without enthusiasm.

“Owen was flush. Charles dropped out—it was Owen and Maurice and me.” He laughed aloud, it was an exultant sound on the wind. “Lord, it was some game! Here, Jo, you take it. Come on, open up your hand.”

Her fingers seemed cramped and unwilling as he forced the money into them. “Tomorrow you make out the order and get that suit, with shoes and everything to go with it. We're going ashore on a spree when the weather comes good, and I want you to look special. You've worn that old sweater and skirt long enough.”

“Oh, Alec,” she said softly, and felt the sting of tears in her eyes. He thought it was pleasure in her voice, and he put his arm around her shoulders and hugged her. They walked like that all the way home, through the woods and past the bare apple trees, out to their own house again.

He slept in her arms that night, his face warm against her throat. She knew that he was completely happy when he fell asleep, and thought she was happy too. But she lay awake for a long time, her arms tight around him even when she could have let him go. It seemed to her as if she must hold him fast, as if her arms could protect him. Against what, she didn't know.

A
LL AT ONCE, AFTER A WINTER
that seemed to last forever, it was April. It was still cold, but on a gray and streaming day the bluebirds came to Joanna's field, winged jewels of heartshaking blue against the drab, sodden grass; they perched on swaying reeds, and for all they cared, the sun might have been shining and the sea as blue as they were.

They were only the beginning. As April slipped into May, there were mornings when the woods behind the house were alive with bird calls and flashing wings. It was migration time, and the sparrows, nuthatches, kinglets, and crossbills, the finches and the warblers, and many an unfamiliar stranger who was only stopping for a night in his northward flight, came to eat from the feeders Alec had made. When the back door was open, they flew into the entry, and more than once Joanna and Alec captured in their hands some small creature whose wings had been beating frantically against the window. The ruby-crowned kinglet was tiny and warm in Joanna's cupped hands, as she carried it to the open door and let it go. The white­crowned sparrows walked around the yard, and their voices were like elfin flutes through the woods.