That Camden Summer
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I've travelled the world twice over5 Met the famous: saints and sinners3 Poets and artists-, kings and queens-, Old stars and hopeful beginners3
I've been where no-one's been before, Learned secrets from writers and cooks All with one library ticket
To the wonderful world of books.
Janice James.
The wisdom of the ages Is there for you and me-, The wisdom of the ages, In your local library.
There's large print books And talking books,
For those who cannot see3 The wisdom of the ages-, It's fantastic, and it's free.
Written by Sam Wood3 aged 92
THAT CAMDEN SUMMER
It is 1916 and Roberta Jewett has returned from Boston with her three young daughters, full of hope for a fresh start in the town where she was raised. But in Camden, Maine, a woman divorced is a woman shunned. Only one man treats her with respect: widowed contractor Gabriel Farley, who begins work renovating her house. Although the chemistry between them is undeniable, they fight it. Then, ironically, a brutal act of violence forces them to acknowledge the powerful feelings that have grown between them. But as they fight for justice against a town determined to prove her wrong, Roberta realises that the worst ordeal is yet to come ...
Books by LaVyrle Spencer Published by The House of Ulverscroft.
FORGIVING BYGONES NOVEMBER OF THE HEART
FAMILY BLESSINGS HOME SONG
LAVYRLE SPENCER
THAT CAMDEN SUMMER
ComPlete and Unabridged
CHARNWOOD Leicester
First published in Great Britain in 1996 by HarperCollins Publishers
London
First Charnwood Edition U V1 19-47, published 1997
by arrangement with HarperCollins Publishers London
The right of LaVyrle Spencer to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988
Copyright 1996 by LaVyrle Spencer jacket Design by Gino D'Achille
All rights reserved
British Library CIP Data
Spencer, LaVyrle
That Camden summer.-Large print ed.- Charnwood library series
1. Divorced women-Social aspects-Fiction
2. Large type books
I. Title
813.5'4 [F]
ISBN 0-7089-8949-7
To our darlings AMY & Shannon,
as you start your years of parenting . . . may they be the best years Of your lives. And to our first grandchild, Spencer McCoy Kimball . . .
may you grow up like the children in this story, knowing love and limitless possibilities and the freedom to be yourself
Published by
F. A. Thorpe (Publishing) Ltd. Anstey, Leicestershire
Set by Words & Graphics Ltd. Anstey, Leicestershire
Printed and bound in Great Britain by T. J. International Ltd., Padstow, Cornwall
This book is printed on acid-free paper
Many people rolled out red carpets for my husband and me when we visited Camden, Maine, in September 1993 to research this book. Rarely has a welcome been as total and spontaneous as the one we received in the charming seaside village. We fell in love not only with the town but also its people. These are a few of the folks who bent over backwards to help:
John Fullerton of the Camden Chamber of Commerce Elizabeth Moran of the Camden Public Library
Pat Cokinis, realtor
Captain Arthur Andrews of the lobster boat W71istler Cap'n Andy's daughter, Cheryl
Dave Machiek and John Kincaid of the Owls Head Transportation Museum
John Evrard of Merryspring Preserve
Also, thank you to Victoria magazine, whose August 1993 article on Edna St. Vincent Millay inspired this story; and to author Elisabeth Oglivie, whose books, with their sublime Maine settings, were a constant reference during the writing of my own.
Those readers who are well versed in the
history of Camden will find that I've taken many liberties with the actual dates on which some notable local events occurred. I hope my readers will overlook these liberties and enjoy the story for what it is: a work of fiction.
LAVYRLE SPENCER
Stillwater, Minnesota
Camden, Maine, 1916
OBERTA JEWETT had hoped for fair weather the day she moved her children Rback to Camden, Maine. Instead, a brew of needly rain and thready fog had followed the Boston boat all the way up the coastline. The water, tumbled to a smart chop by a persistent southwest wind, made for a hellish voyage. Poor Lydia had been sick all night.
The ten-year-old lay on the hard wooden bench with her head in Roberta's lap, eyes closed, complexion greenish. Her French braid was shredded at the edges like an old piece of rigging. Her eyes rolled open and she asked in a puling voice, "How much longer, Mother?"
Roberta looked down at her youngest and pushed the disheveled hair back from her face. Lydia had never been a sailor like the other two.
"Not long now." "V,'hat time is it?"
Roberta checked her lapel watch. "Going on seven. 53
"Will we get there on time, do you think?" "Let me check and see if I can tell where we are." She eased Lydia's head from her lap and pillowed it on a wadded-up coat. "Be right back."
She glanced at her other two girls, Susan and Rebecca, asleep nearby with their cheeks and arms flattened on a varnished tabletop. Around them other passengers dozed on the uncomfortable seating provided for those with the cheapest tickets. Some snored. Some had spittle gleaming at the corners of their mouths. Some roused now as dawn approached and the end of the run neared. Had this been a transAtlantic voyage bearing immigrants to America, this cabin would have been designated steerage. Since it was the highly estimable Eastern Steamship Line running daily up the coast from Boston to Bangor, the brochure avoided such harsh terms in favor of the overblown moniker third-class lounge. But any mother who had herded her three children aboard and watched them spend thirteen miserable hours in this spartan setting without so much as a cushion for comfort knew steerage when relegated to it.
No panoramic views here, only minuscule portholes.
Roberta made her way to one and found it beaten by plashes of rain that streamed astern as if thrown. The glass was fogged. She cleared it with her coat sleeve and peered through.
Going on 7 A.M. and the sky was becoming murkily light. They should have already rounded Beauchamp Point off Rockport Bay. Putting her forehead to the chilly glass, she peered sharply astern but saw only a dark, hulking shoreline so blurred by weather it might have been there, might not. A bell buoy clanged and she peered
/I
in the other direction. Yes-, there was Negro Island light. Almost home.
As they passed between the light and Sherman's Point the sound of the buoy changed from a distant question to a nearby statement-, and she watched it rock in the waves. Beyond it, the village at the head of the harbor was smudged by the downpour but visible. She studied it pragmatically, stirred less by nostalgia than by defensiveness.
Inside the protected harbor the water was calmer and the steamer leveled off. The featureless huddle on the shore took on identity: Mount Battie3 which rose behind Camden like a great-, black, breaching whale; the wharf where the Belfast would land; the skeins of streets climbing the eastern skirt of the mountain; the spires of familiar churches
- Episcopal, Baptist and the Congregational where she had gone until she moved away; the omnipresent smokestack of the Knox Woolen Mill that supported most of the town and where she'd probably still be working today if Mother had had her way.
Somewhere out there the morning shift was heading toward the mill, probably to turn out Wool for the uniforms of the boys over there. Other workers were heading to the lime kilns in Rockport. Grace had written that Camden had a trolley line now-, and that the men traveled to Rockport on it.
Some of those men Roberta knew-, she Supposed_, or had known when they were classmates in school. Some of their wives-, too.
What would they think of her now, returning as a divorced woman? Probably the same thing Mother did. What a disappointment Mother had been, her letters outspoken and bold: No decent woman sunders a marriage, Roberta, surely you realize that.
To hell with them all, she thought, let them think what they will. If women could go to the battlefront as nurses, they could divorce as well.
Mother would not have come down to the wharf this early - her lumbago or some other convenient complaint would be keeping her in bed - but Roberta's sister, Grace, would be waiting when the steamer landed, along with Grace's husband, Elfred, whom Roberta remembered only vaguely.
The lights of the little seaside village poked through the blur, and she returned to her children.
"Rebecca, Susan, wake up." She shook each of them, then went to the bench to tip Lydia upright. "We're almost there." She sat down and tucked her youngest beneath an arm. "We're just entering Camden Harbor. How're you feeling?" "Terrible."
At the table, sixteen-year-old Rebecca dragged herself vertical. A yawn and a stretch distorted her voice. "Is Lydia still sick?"
"No dog has ever been sicker," Lydia herself replied.
Roberta slicked a hand down Lydia's ragged braid "Not for long. She'll feel better once we're on dry land"
"I never want to ride on this barnacle breeder again." Lydia's head fell to the hollow of her mother's shoulder.
"You shouldn't have to. This time we're staying. The house is bought and the job is mine and nothing short of a hurricane will force us to move again-, agree&"
Nobody answered. Roberta appealed to the pair at the table but they were slump-shouldered yet from sleep, their enthusiasm sapped by the long night at sea.
"Girls, come here." She gestured the two older ones over. They rose with limp resignation and sat down at her right-, her fourteen-year-old, Susan5 resting against her mother's arm while Roberta spoke to all three.
"Listen, all of you ... I'm sorry I couldn't rent a stateroom. I know it's been an awful ride-, but we need every penny for the house and to get started here. You understand don't you?" "It's all right
_, Mother," Rebecca reassured. Becky never complained about anything. Instead, when the younger ones did, she chastised them. Lydia tried it now, with a slight whine in her voice.
"But I wanted to see the staterooms. The brochure said they have private bunks and real brass washbowls."
"Mother's doing the best she can-,5' Rebecca chided. "And besides, what difference does it make if You puke in a brass sink or that galvanized bucket? Puke is puke."
"Mother5 make her stop." That was Susan, becoming lucid.
"Enough, Becky. Now listen3" Roberta said to all three, "straighten your skirts, fix your hair and gather up your things because we'll be at the landing soon. Feel that, Lydie? It's getting smoother. That means we're getting close."
They stood, shook their skirts down and buttoned their coats, but little repair was done on hair, and their mother neither badgered nor reminded them again. When the first blast of the steam whistle shuddered the floorboards, they looked as unkempt as if they had never touched combs or irons.
The knock of the engines slowed and they braced their feet wide.
"Make sure you've got everything," Roberta said, "especially your umbrellas, and let's go forward." They gathered up their belongings and moved to the part of the lounge giving onto a companionway that emptied onto the first-floor deck. Here the windows were more generous and other passengers already crowded, peering out-, waiting to disembark. The girls stretched their necks to see above the heads in front of them.
"That's the Baptist church tower, see? And the smokestack from the mill. Remember I told you how my mother wanted me to work there? Do you see it?"
"Yes, Mother, we see." Becky replied for all three of them.
"I wonder if the children will be with Grace and Elfred. "
"How old are they again?" Lydia asked. "Very nearly the same as the three of you.
"Marcelyn is sixteen-, Trudys thirteen and Corinda, I believe, is ten."