The Magnificent Spinster (41 page)

“Halloo, halloo,” Jane called as she climbed the porch steps. “Anyone home?”

Perfect silence. No bark even. So they must be on the mainland. John and Daisy were curators of a small marine museum, and maybe this was one of their days over there, she surmised. Had Captain Fuller made a special trip for them? Otherwise how did they get over? Jane didn't like things to happen on the island without her knowledge. Orders to Captain Fuller should go through her, so others who might want to do shopping or take a walk in town could go along. “Maybe I shouldn't be so proprietary,” she admonished herself. “I guess I can be pretty stiff-necked myself when you come right down to it.” So nothing would be said this time, she decided.

In a way it was lovely to be walking the familiar path through the blueberry bushes and up into the field alone. “Rarely, rarely comest thou, spirit of delight,” she murmured. Marian had always said that you knew who you were only when you were alone. Jane looked about her, noting once more how amazing it was that one heather plant smuggled in from Scotland by a cousin years ago had flourished and spread, so now a large area would soon be purpled over among the wild cranberries along the edge of the woods … and wondered if that statement of Marian's were true. She herself never felt as lit up alone as with a beloved friend, did she? Yet this morning, with the strong feeling aroused by Lucy's departure still alive in her, she saw that it was true. The rush of the last days, the battle with Wylie over the boat, the expedition to Baker's, the hot discussion about Vietnam, Nancy's valiant determination to get well—all this that had been stirred up on the surface now began to sink deep down, to coalesce into some large, vague question as to what life was all about. In the large arena it did often seem a very small achievement to do what she tried to do here on the island, to maintain something created long ago for the pleasure of friends … and to pass along the values it represented.

Here Jane stopped in her thoughts, for she had always found such generalities bothersome. And her instinct was to probe the words … values, for instance, a rather glib word, she felt. What did it really
mean?
It was more to the point to consider that without Sarah none of it would be possible any longer. Lucy did a wonderful job, of course, but Sarah was the pin that held it all together through the whole summer. I have always wanted to be independent, to be my own man (why do I say man, not woman, Jane asked herself?), but these last years I have had to accept how dependent I have become, and sometimes I react badly, I know. Jane had been quite sharp with Sarah about some decision she felt she ought to have been asked about only the other day. I am dependent on Lucy too, but that is different, goes back fifty years or more, is the entirely voluntary dependence of true friendship and love. Whereas Sarah and I sort of inherited each other—and there are bound to be prickly times.

So then what is life all about? Some weaving together of all this, and the values, she supposed, as she received a wave of scent from the rugosa roses by the boathouse, have to do with holding it all together, living it from moment to moment … but just then Amy ran out and hugged her round the knees. “Can we swim now?”

“Let's!”

“The others are all sailing with Sarah … Mummy's packing. I did hope you would come!”

Next morning, the day of leaving for the Speedwells, Jane woke late because it was raining and even at eight it felt very dark, and a little lonely without Lucy. But this is the morning to pay bills, she told herself, and I had better get going. Sarah had lit a blazing fire in the dining room so breakfast with Frances and Erika turned into a cozy time. When the weather was not at its best the house itself was, and became a comforting ark. Frances and Erika decided to stay downstairs and write at the big table and enjoy the warmth. Sarah put on a slicker and went off with her rucksack on her shoulder to help the Speedwells burn rubbish and get themselves together.

And Jane settled in at her father's huge roll-top desk in the office just off the big living room, picking a bunch of bills from one of the pigeonholes where everything got stuffed. She never ceased to be astonished by the grocer's bill. Pappa would not believe what food costs these days, she thought, as she made out a check. And the big cylinders of gas for the refrigerator and small auxiliary stove had gone up astronomically since Jane had taken over on the island.

The trust fund her father had left for the general maintenance took care to some extent of the three year-round men who worked there, and of the boats. The trust was run by a board composed of members of the family who made all major decisions together. Jane swallowed a smile as she considered how much heat had been generated over the golf greens. Some members felt that it was an unnecessary expense to keep the grass cut, but John and Daisy, who liked to play golf, were upset and it was finally decided to do a rough job, just enough so a real aficionado could still play, although Pappa would have snorted at how inadequate it was. “Only a lunatic would play there now,” he might have said. Sarah, on the other hand, felt it was worth all the work because a few exquisite harebells grew along the edges and would be swallowed by long grass if the greens were not kept cut.

Jane was interrupted by the sound of feet on the back porch. Bobbie, with Amy in tow, thundered in. “It's awfully wet out,” he announced. “Here's the boat I borrowed.”

“Well, thanks to that plastic bag, it's dry as a bone. Thanks, Bobbie.”

Amy had gone over to Alix's bear, which sat in a small rocker dressed in a middy blouse, and held it in her arms. “My bear wanted to come so badly,” she said, “to say good-bye, but I was afraid he would catch a cold.”

“You look like an owl,” Bobbie said to Jane.

“I do?” Jane wondered why, then realized it was her horn-rimmed glasses and couldn't resist giving several owl-like hoots before she took them off. This reduced Amy to helpless laughter. “We might send your bear a message,” Jane suggested. “I'll see if I can find a postcard.” And she turned back to the desk to rummage around in a pigeonhole where there should be a card.

“Mummy said to tell you that if convenient we would be ready to leave at eleven,” Bobbie interrupted.

“Good, I'll tell Captain Fuller right away. He held off going for the mail and he'll be anxious to know.” When the call was made, and Jane had looked at her watch and realized they had better hurry, she asked Amy what they might tell her bear. They decided after several tries on “See you next summer, dear Bear,” and this was written in Jane's beautiful round hand. “How shall I sign it?”

“Yourself.”

“Well, maybe Aunt Reedy for Alix's bear.” When that had been accomplished and the postcard had been carefully stowed in Amy's pocket, Jane said, “Now kids, you'd better go back. Tell your mother I'll meet you at the dock in about twenty minutes.”

Jane took a slicker from the hall closet and put a pair of scissors in her pocket with which to cut seven sprigs of spruce for the seven buttonholes on her way down, and went in to see how Erika and Frances were getting on and to warm her hands at the fire, for they were quite stiff from the cold in the office.

“I hate to see them go,” she said. “It doesn't seem possible that a whole week has flown … nor for that matter that the English family will be here tomorrow.”

“How do you ever keep it all sorted out?” Erika asked.

“Oh, I don't even try. I seem to get along very well by not looking ahead more than a day at a time!” Her eyes twinkled. “Then it's all a surprise,” she added. “Next week is the distant future. The present is what matters … and I had better run or I'll lose it.”

It was a wet search for perfect little tips of spruce, for as Jane reached up to cut, water poured down from the branch and trickled down her nose and felt very cold.

Captain Fuller had the curtains up on
West Wind
, she noted, as she came out on the pier. No sails out today, only a few motor launches and fishing boats.

Sarah was the first to emerge from the path, laden like a camel with boxes and bags of this and that. Then John, with a pipe in his mouth and an enormous rucksack on his back with Amy's bear sitting on top of it, covered by someone's jacket. Then Nancy, not carrying anything, Amy's hand in hers, and finally Bobbie, Wylie, Sylvie, and Tom, each with a canvas tote bag swinging along.

“There you all are,” Jane said, “a sight for sore eyes. You look like pilgrims, a medieval band on their way—where, I wonder?”

“It's awfully wet,” Tom said rather crossly. “Why did it have to rain?”

“Much better to leave on a rainy day,” Sylvie answered, smiling at Jane. “It would be too hard on a beautiful day.”

“I do hate to say good-bye,” Jane said as they reached the float down the long gangway, and she slipped a sprig of spruce into each buttonhole or pocket, and, when she came to Nancy, gave her a warm hug. “It's only till next summer,” she said then.

“I'll be thirteen,” Bobbie said. “It's a whole year away.”

“And I'll be six,” Amy lamented, close to tears, Jane saw. So she lifted her up and swung her around and set her down again, laughing.

“All aboard,” Captain Fuller called.

And then it was all much too quick as they passed him all the bundles and boxes and finally scrambled in themselves.

Sarah untied the rope and threw it to John, and very slowly
West Wind
turned out into the bay, with everyone standing and waving, until they were out of sight and Jane and Sarah stood on the float alone, stood for a moment in the sudden immense silence.

“Well done,” Jane said then. “They really did have a good week, didn't they?”

“A splendid week,” Sarah said, “though I worked them pretty hard to get
Siren
in the water.” She chuckled. “Sylvie and Tom learned quite a lot about caulking and painting, maybe more than they wanted to learn.”

“Well, dearie, what next? I guess we'd better go down to the little house this afternoon, check the stores down there, take fresh linen down.”

“It's a perfect day for a snooze, so don't think of going till after tea. I'll meet you down there.”

It was not possible, Jane realized, to say in words to Sarah what a comfort she had become. But it was much in her mind as they walked up to the house together in companionable silence. Whatever tensions there sometimes were in the apartment in Cambridge, here on the island she and Sarah were in perfect accord. Little by little, Sarah was taking on more of the work to be done, and especially where the English families were concerned, for after Muff died she had become an intimate part of their lives in winter as well as in summer, something between a beloved governess and a mother, Jane thought, glancing over at Sarah as they walked. She had not changed in the ten years or more since they moved into the barn, looked amazingly young and boyish still, a timeless person. But such a reserved one, so deep inside herself, that even now Jane found it difficult to show the real affection she felt. Perhaps it was also, she considered, as Sarah went off by herself, no doubt to see that
Siren
was all right, that gratitude is the hardest emotion to express—and why was that? Marian would have known the answer. “I guess it is,” Jane told herself, “that I am a rather prickly character when it comes to independence. I don't really like being dependent … so it is hard for me to admit it.”

It flashed through her consciousness then, one of those moments when something in the past is suddenly illuminated by something in the present, that maybe just that reluctance had been at the root of Marian's withdrawal in London so long ago … perhaps she, too, found it next to impossible to admit the financial help Jane was providing to make that summer possible. Acknowledging that possibility brought Marian very close again, and Jane, on a wave of happiness, burst into an old French song she had sung with the children in Normandy.

The rain had almost stopped, she noted. But she must resist the temptation to walk down to the vegetable garden and must finally get the desk in order and those bills paid. There was a whole blessed hour before lunchtime and this time she would not be interrupted. “Perfect peace,” she said aloud to Alix's bear as she swiveled her chair around and began to sort papers out, and to jot down things “not to forget” on a little pad as they rose into her consciousness. “I must remember to write a birthday word to Laurel Whitman,” and that was noted down and underlined. In fact, it might be best to do it right away and get it done.

The problem on the rare days when Jane could work in the office was the number of things that should be cleared away, and this morning she finally bogged down as she went through a pile of requests for money, from Appalachia, from Africa, where there was starvation, and twenty or more others to be considered. She wondered sometimes if, in her father's day, he too had had to cope with quite so many needs?

The whole room had filled in the last half-hour with desperate human voices … and the hardest thing was to make choices. This was almost the only thing now that made Jane feel exhausted, and when she had done all she could, she got up and stretched her long arms and then took refuge in the warm kitchen to have a little talk with Annie, since Erika and Frances had gone upstairs, and the fire was almost out.

“What is that heavenly smell?” she asked. “Chocolate something?”

“Brownies,” Annie said, smiling. “I sometimes think you have a chocolate nose, Miss Jane.”

“Ah,” Jane said, inhaling the chocolate-scented air, “smelling them is almost as good as eating one.”

They had a long talk after supper about Vietnam, and read aloud an editorial from the
Times
. It was after ten when Jane got to bed. For a moment before she fell asleep it occurred to her that one of these days Esther, the daughter of one of her Vassar classmates, and her family would arrive in their boat and tie up overnight at the main dock. Esther and Dick were very independent, almost never came up to the house for a meal. Jane well understood their love of a gypsy holiday, and she herself rather enjoyed an arrival for which she had no responsibility for a change. Her last thought was about Tony, the little boy, who had had pneumonia in the spring, and whether they would be able to make the trip this year.