Rising Tides (26 page)

“I think Father Hugh must have wanted to die after that,” Ben said. “He volunteered for danger. He was flown into France to work with the Resistance in Lyons. It sounds like he did everything a man can to end his life without pulling the trigger himself. And when he was still alive, and the war ended, he came home and went to the men who had denied him ordination. And they agreed he was ready.”

Tears filled her eyes. She could only just begin to imagine what her uncle had felt. “And what happened to Nicky?”

“I know her story from things Phillip has said. Nicky went back to France, even though she was finally given a U.S. passport because of all the work she had done for the government.” He recounted the rest of it quickly.

“And she never knew why Uncle Hugh…?”

“Not until now. She probably believed that Father Hugh left her because of her race or some flaw in her character. She never saw him again, not even after she came to live in New Orleans. By then she was happily married, and she was careful to stay away from him. She never even told Phillip that Father Hugh Gerritsen was the Hap who had saved his life in Casablanca.”

“I can’t even absorb this. How could so many things have been hidden for such a long time?”

“I think there’s more.” Ben slipped his glasses into his pocket. Raindrops traced the curve of his jaw. “And I guess it’s time for us to go inside and find out.”

She didn’t want to go in yet. “Thanks for filling me in.”

“I can’t think of a thing I’ve said or done that you should be grateful for.”

She didn’t know how to answer.

“But I don’t have any objections if you are,” he said.

“Don’t push your luck.”

“Come on.” He covered her hand for a moment. His was warm and firm. Then he turned and started toward the cottage.

Everyone had already gathered in the morning room. Cappy, who was filing her nails, glanced up when they walked in. She made a point of looking at Dawn, then at Ben. Her expression was pensive.

Dawn took a chair next to Pelichere, and Ben stood against the wall. Nicky and her family were sitting as close to the door as possible, as if they planned to leave at the first opportunity. Dawn couldn’t blame them. She was glad to see that Nicky looked composed.

Spencer had no introduction. He stood and handed a small package to Pelichere. “Aurore said that you’d always admired this. It’s yours now.”

“I know what it is.” Pelichere shook the box, and a faint tinkle sounded from inside. She didn’t smile. “And I know why she’s given it to me.”

When Pelichere didn’t go on, Dawn prodded her. “What is it?”

“A bell. A silver bell.”

“The one she kept on her nightstand?”

“
Mais
yeah. That one.”

“But what’s the point?” Dawn imagined she spoke for everyone. “Because she rang it if she needed some thing from you?”

“No, it’s not this bell she was thinking of, but an other.”

“What bell?”

“The one at the church here on Grand Isle. It’s the same bell that rang during the hurricane on Chénière Caminada, the storm that killed so many people.” She looked at Nicky. “The storm that killed your grand mother and your father’s sister.”

“Then you know about that?” Dawn asked.

“
Mais
yeah. I know it all. And your
grandmère,
now she wants me to tell what I know.” Pelichere opened the package. She rang the bell softly. The tinkle still sounded a summons, even though Aurore was in her grave. Pelichere looked at Ferris, who had stood, as if to leave. “You should hear this. You most of all.”

He didn’t sit, but he didn’t go.

“It’s a long story, this one,” Pelichere said. “But you already know most of it, I think.”

She turned to Dawn. “I wasn’t part of it until the war, when I came to New Orleans. You were a silly little baby, and you always wanted someone to hold you. My mother died when you were just four months old, and your
grandmère
asked me to come and care for you. I think she wanted me near her because I reminded her of my mother, and she missed her friend so much. My husband was in the army, and I had no reason to stay on Lafourche. So I came. I stayed, even after the war was over and my husband came back. Ambrose, he never was much of a trapper or a fisherman. He liked to tinker with machines, and there were good jobs on the oil rigs for mechanics. We didn’t have children of our own then, so he didn’t mind staying in New Orleans when he wasn’t working.”

“Peli,” Ferris said. “What’s the point of this?”

“I saw things, and I heard things. And there are things your grandmother told me. Terrible things, about the night your father died.”

Dawn watched her father weigh Peli’s words. He was torn, and that was unusual. Then he lowered him self to his seat. Dawn could hear the ticking of an or molu clock on the table beside her and the whistling of the wind outside the windows. But the people in the room were silent as Pelichere gathered her memories.

D
awn’s tiny toes turned pink as she stepped cautiously from one polished cypress board to the next, balancing carefully to avoid the cracks. Aurore watched her grand daughter’s progress from a window seat overlooking her garden. Fan palms and tall clumps of banana waved in the breeze; in a month, early azaleas and camellias would fill the shadiest areas with color. Dawn adored the garden, just as Hugh once had.

“She hasn’t had a bath,” Pelichere warned from the doorway. “And she’s been playing in the dirt.”

“Planting seeds?”

“Making mud pies.”

Aurore held out her arms, and Dawn gave up her game. Aurore lifted the little girl to her lap, ignoring the mud stains on her corduroy rompers. “Did you bake a pie for me?”

“It was pretend.” Dawn patted her grandmother’s cheek.

“Did you try one?”

“Just a little.”

Aurore laughed and hugged her. “You’d better run along and take your bath. We’re going to the office to night.”

Dawn clapped her hands. She was small for three, with an
older child’s sensitivity. Aurore blamed herself for that. She believed—alternately—that she had re moved her granddaughter too soon or too late from her mother’s care. Dawn had thrived since coming to live at the house on Prytania, but her relationship with Cappy had never blossomed. Aurore had hoped that with relief from the constant demands of childrearing, Cappy would learn to enjoy the time she spent with her daughter, but that had never come to pass.

Now that Dawn was older and Ferris was home from the war, the little girl spent as much time under her parents’ roof as under Aurore’s. To his credit, Ferris insisted that he and Cappy at least make a show of being parents. But although Dawn adored what attention her father gave her, she obviously preferred living with the grandmother who understood her so well.

“Can I see the boats?” Dawn said.

“We’ll see.” Dawn loved the river and found it endlessly fascinating. She planned to be a towboat captain and sleep on her own tug. The blue-and-white-striped cap that one of Gulf Coast’s engineers had cut down to size for her was her proudest possession.

“Can I ride on a boat?”

Aurore hugged her granddaughter again, then set her on the floor. She didn’t correct the “ride” that had emerged as “wide,” as Cappy and Ferris always did. She knew that when Dawn was older, that charming remnant of childhood would disappear. “Not tonight. But soon. I promise.”

“Can I steer?”

“You can take your bath.” Aurore firmly pointed Dawn toward Pelichere. Pelichere smiled, and the smile was her mother’s. For a moment, Aurore felt the loss of Ti’ Boo as sharply as she had on the day of her friend’s death.

“If you hurry up, there’ll be a surprise in the bath tub,” Pelichere promised.

Dawn hesitated, then temptation won, and she ran into Pelichere’s open arms. “What surprise?”

“A brand-new bar of soap.”

“I don’t like soap!”

“Even soap shaped like a flower?”

Aurore listened until the conversation was no longer audible. The house smelled of garlic and filé powder. She had asked the cook to make chicken gumbo for dinner, lightly seasoned, since Dawn would be eating with her. They would have boiled crawfish, too. Dawn had just learned how to twist off a crawfish’s head, and she twisted more than she ate. When Henry wasn’t home, their dinners were raucous affairs, with Dawn asking a thousand questions and Pelichere sitting down to join them. When Henry
was
home, Dawn ate in the nursery. Henry found little about Dawn to appreciate, even though she was Ferris’s child. If she was kept from view, he forgot he had a granddaughter, and that was the way Aurore preferred it.

Since the end of the war, Henry had been gone most evenings. Mayor Maestri was up for reelection, and Henry had thrown his weight behind him. Aurore was certain that Maestri didn’t like her husband, but the mayor needed his support. While his first administration had been sprinkled with successes, his second had been a bad dream for the people of New Orleans. With federal funds in short supply, Maestri had allowed organized crime to flourish, and graft—always a feature of Louisiana government—to step into the sunshine.

Henry had made his own deals and fought his way into the midst of the excitement. Aurore was powerless to stop him, although she made certain that nothing he did could harm Gulf
Coast. He had become more irrational over time, sometimes lashing out at those who he perceived were keeping him from power. He had toyed with the idea of running against Maestri, but even in the grip of his most serious delusions, he had realized his only chance to experience glory was to ride on Maestri’s coattails.

Sometimes now Aurore truly feared for her life. Once Henry had slapped her in public, although not in front of anyone who knew them. They had been walking down a French Quarter street, returning from a fund-raising dinner, and he had become so outraged at some thing she said, something unimportant about the mayor’s speech, that he had slapped her and shoved her against a streetlamp. She had nearly fallen to the ground, and a passerby, a stranger, had grabbed her to steady her before he went after Henry. But Henry had climbed into their car and driven away. Terribly humiliated, Aurore had refused the man’s offer of a ride home and walked back to the hotel to call Pelichere.

She had no pity for her husband, but she knew the root of his anger. Ferris had come back from the navy with a record of distinguished service, and he was well on his way to fulfilling his own plans for his future. If he agreed with his father on the mayoral election, Henry might have taken pride in his favored son and seen a place for himself in Ferris’s climb to power.

But Ferris had taken a close look at the election and, to everyone’s surprise, had chosen the other candidate, “Chep” Morrison, a colonel who had just returned from the war, like Ferris himself. Morrison was experienced in politics, vigorous and, best of all, ambitious. He promised an end to corruption, and he was backed by a brigade of broom-carrying housewives who symbolized his mission to sweep the city clean. Ferris had no particular enthusiasm for reform, but he had taken
the pulse of the city and volunteered to help with Morrison’s campaign.

Henry was enraged at Ferris’s defection. He had taught his youngest son to put himself first, to make decisions based solely on the way they would affect his own life, and Ferris had listened well. But Henry had never realized that someday what might be best for Ferris wouldn’t be best for him. Henry needed a victory for Maestri or his personal power would end. Ferris saw a victory for Morrison as the beginning of his own power. Faced with a choice between his own interests and his father’s, Ferris hadn’t hesitated.

The only thing that had kept Henry from completely losing control was his conviction that Morrison didn’t stand a chance of winning. Maestri’s influence was vast, and his friends were legion. His supporters had benefited so greatly during his administration that even if they were the only ones to vote for him, he believed, he would still win.

The polls had opened that morning and would close soon. Henry had been gone all day, and Aurore intended to be gone all evening. She didn’t want to be caught at home if Henry returned after a Maestri defeat. More important, she didn’t want Dawn to be there. If Aurore learned that Morrison was the victor, she would take Dawn back to her parents’ house for the night. If Maestri won, as was widely expected, there would be nothing to fear, because Henry would spend the evening celebrating.

A bright red cardinal and his mate darted from magnolia to pine, then lifted toward the darkening sky. Aurore rose to gather the papers she planned to take with her that evening.

By seven o’clock, she and Dawn were settled in her spacious office. In the early forties, Gulf Coast had moved to a site near the Bienville Street Wharf, not far from where Gulf
Coast Steamship had once been located. Aurore never walked through the door without thinking of that time. The location was a reminder of her first pregnancy, and the agonizing decision to give up her daughter.

Three years had passed since she was forced to tell Hugh about Nicky and Rafe. He had disappeared into the bowels of the OSS after their meeting, to emerging only after the war. He hadn’t come home after his re turn to the U.S., and he hadn’t asked her to attend his ordination. He had written afterward—a stiff, formal note to tell her that he would be serving a small parish in Mississippi. He had never invited her to visit.

She thought of Hugh each time she came to work, of Hugh and the daughter who was lost to her as fully as she had been when Aurore believed her dead. Now she had only Dawn to live for, Dawn, who, with a child’s innocence, still saw a world of wonder.

“There’s smoke on the river.” Dawn pointed out the window.

“Fog,” Aurore said from her desk.

“I can draw it.”

“I know.” Dawn’s drawings were remarkably good for a small child. She had unusual control and what Aurore regarded as adult patience. She would stare solemnly at her subject, sitting perfectly still for minutes, as if to absorb the very soul of it before she put crayon to paper.

“I’m going to use my pencil.”

Aurore guessed what she might see when Dawn was finished, a paper filled with curling scribbles and smudges. And somehow, the picture would resemble the fog rising from the river.

“I see a boat, a dwedge boat,” Dawn said.

Aurore smiled at the adult observation with the childish pronunciation and joined Dawn at the window. The outline of a boat was just visible, and her granddaughter was correct. Dredge boats scooped silt from the dockside to maintain the required depth of thirty feet, and one was moving upriver now, probably to its night mooring near Burdette Street.

“What do you like best about the river?” Aurore asked, stooping to put her arm around Dawn’s waist.

Dawn’s little body wiggled with excitement. “Banana boats.”

Once, as a diversion, Aurore had taken Dawn to see the banana boats being unloaded, and since then Dawn had insisted that they return again and again. Each time she had watched with awe as the burly men hauled bunches of bananas on their shoulders to the platform where they were sorted before being loaded into rail road cars. Sometimes now she moved bananas from the kitchen to the nursery and back again in a game that only she fully understood.

“I’m going to draw now.” Dawn broke away to run to the low table Aurore had installed for the times when Dawn joined her.

Aurore went back to her desk. Since the war’s end, her work load was substantially lighter. Converting from a war economy had its frustrations, but none as grave as those she had so recently experienced. She no longer sent ships to sea with a prayer on her lips for their safe return. And now her ships—so many more of them than she had ever dreamed of owning—carried materials to rebuild countries the war had nearly destroyed.

If her grandfather and father could have seen the company
they had worked so hard to develop, there was little they could have criticized.

“What a cozy little scene.” The door slammed to punctuate Henry’s greeting.

Aurore rose. She hadn’t considered that Henry might join them. He rarely found his way to the Gulf Coast offices anymore. She had assumed that even if the election didn’t turn out as he hoped, he would wait until she returned home to vent his anger. Her gaze flicked to Dawn. The little girl glanced up, then back down at her paper. She began to scribble again.

“Have you heard the election results yet?” Aurore asked, feigning an interest she didn’t feel.

Henry ignored her question. His striped suit was immaculate, but his tie was askew, as if he’d been pulling at it all evening. He removed his hat and tossed it on the hat rack as if he planned to stay.

“But you wouldn’t have heard yet,” Aurore went on. “It’s too early, isn’t it?”

“You’ve got Dawn with you.”

“Ferris and Cappy…” She had been about to say that Ferris and Cappy were waiting to hear election results at Morrison headquarters, but she thought better of it. “…asked me to take her tonight,” she finished lamely.

Henry crossed to his granddaughter. “What are you doing?”

“Drawing.” She didn’t look up.

He took the paper from her and glanced at it. Then he dropped it back on the table. “What is it about this child that interests you so?” he asked Aurore.

“Henry!” Aurore went to the door and opened it. “Let’s talk out here.”

“Are you trying to make her over in your image?”

“I’ll be home in a little while. Then we can talk.”

“I know why you don’t want to talk. I’m not a stupid man.”

“I don’t want to talk because our granddaughter is sit ting here.” Aurore glanced at Dawn. The little girl’s expression was bewildered.

He smiled; she was chilled by it. “Then if you don’t want to talk, let’s go for a walk instead.” He looked down at his granddaughter. “Let’s go see the river, darling.”

Dawn looked more bewildered. Henry was offering her her favorite treat, but she knew that something was wrong. “I want to stay here,” she said.

“Don’t you want to see the ships? Maybe there’s a big one docked at the wharf.”

Aurore could see her granddaughter struggling. “Henry, why don’t you go for a walk by yourself? Then go home, and I’ll meet you there. I’ll have Peli take Dawn to her house.”

“What about it, Dawn?” Henry asked, opening his arms. A foghorn sounded from the river, a tantalizing siren’s call.

Dawn went to him, still wary, but unable to resist temptation. He lifted her and set her against his hip. “Are you coming?” he asked Aurore.

“This isn’t a good idea.”

“Can’t a grandfather take his grandchild for a walk?”

“I want to see the ships,” Dawn said. “You come,
Grandmère.
”

Aurore didn’t know what to do. Henry was nearly seventy, but still stronger than she was. She couldn’t wrest Dawn from his arms without hurting her. There was no one she could easily telephone for help, and the building had emptied for the evening. “I’ll get my coat,” she said. “Dawn needs hers, too. Put her down, and I’ll help her with it.”