What the Heart Keeps (22 page)

“
Had I not been ambitious,” he conceded, “it might not have been hard to settle on such an island with so much to offer, but you know my feelings there. Yet take Henry Twidle now. He is in his element. Only old age and infirmity will ever make him return to the mainland.”

Lisa
’s thoughts went to Agnes. The island was as alien to a Toronto-raised woman as it was to a London exile. Both Agnes and Alan had come to Quadra Island through love for their respective partners. Alan, at least, had a chance of returning to his natural environs. Agnes did not.

It
was late afternoon when he sailed the small craft into an inlet that must have been spectacular before it had been logged out by the lumbermen and then abandoned. New trees had sprung up, but the regrowth had been hindered by a forest fire at some time, which had left a blackened scar across the landscape. High on the bluff, a slender tawny-haired woman hurried into view, waving to the approaching craft. A large dog of mixed origins darted forward from her side to bark noisily in recognition of its master’s return. Alan waved back vigorously to his wife, his expression transformed by the sight of her, all glowering looks completely banished. As soon as they were within earshot of each other, he cupped a hand about his mouth.

“
I’ve brought you a surprise! This is your new friend-to-be here with me!”

She
nodded to show she understood and, catching the dog by its collar, she turned for a nearby path that would bring her down to the shore.

Lisa
glanced at Alan. “That was a kindly introduction. I appreciate it.”

He
shrugged. “I told you before,” he said drily, “that all that matters to me is Harriet’s peace of mind. So when I smile at you, Lisa, just make sure you smile back.”

Oh,
she would smile all right, she thought, angered by him again. But it would be with her lips only and not with her eyes.

As
soon as the boat was beached and Alan had sprung ashore, he snatched his wife into his arms. They kissed with such ardency that Lisa busied herself getting out of the boat unaided, dismayed by the rush of physical yearning for Peter that had been unleashed in her at the sight of their passionate embrace. The dog, after an exuberant greeting of its master, had come across to await her without hostility. She patted its head, making friends.

“
Leo has taken to you,” Harriet said, smiling, having stepped across to meet the newcomer.

“
Now he will have two of us to guard,” Lisa smiled in return. Alan’s wife was gentle-looking, kindness in the magnificent amber eyes and a sweetness about the pretty mouth. Her face was openly sensitive, full of the light and shade of vulnerability to the pain and joy of love. Lisa thought her beautiful, but too taut with inner personal distress, nerves frayed almost through to the surface.

“
This is a great day for me.” On impulse Harriet took both of Lisa’s hands into hers, it being natural to her to give spontaneous and generous emphasis to her welcome. They faced each other in mutual respect and in the first stirrings of the friendship that each had hoped to share with the other.

Lisa
felt quite moved. “You shall never regret letting me come to your home, Harriet.”

“
I believe that with all my heart. How did it happen that you were able to get here earlier than we expected?”

“
It’s a long story.”

“
Then it shall wait until you have rested. Let’s go up to the house.”

Alan,
unloading crates of supplies he had brought in the boat, had already set Lisa’s valise down on the sandy shore. She picked it up quickly, not wanting to be beholden to him for carrying it for her, and gave Harriet the parcel from Granite Bay.

“
Agnes never lets Alan leave empty-handed,” Harriet said, turning the parcel about in an attempt to guess the contents. “I know she will have remembered that I have had a birthday since he last called there.” She made a bleak little grimace. “I’m two years older than my husband, and I was thirty. It feels like middle age when one has no children.”

They
reached the top of the path which continued across a slope to a single-storeyed cabin that had not been visible from below. Built of dark seasoned logs, it had a sloping roof and small windows. Harriet explained it was the property of the Hastings logging company for which Alan worked, which was why they had been able to rent it with its simple furnishings. Lisa paused on the threshold to look back over her shoulder in the direction of the scorched forest.

“
How long is it since the fire took place?”

“
It happened shortly before we came to live here, and the whole of the rest of the summer some of the stumps still smouldered. I used to pour water on those in the immediate vicinity right up until the snow came.” She indicated the direction the forest fire had taken. “It was lucky that the flames missed the house or else we would have had to stay longer with the Twidles while we found somewhere else to live. By a lucky chance the orchard escaped as well, which means I can pick white cherries and apples and pears in season, and in spring it’s the prettiest sight with all the blossom. I have lilac trees as well and I always count the buds as soon as they appear.”

Lisa
was suddenly assailed by a wave of homesickness. “It was spring when I left England. In a way I haven’t known a real spring since, because on the day I sailed I met someone and then parted from him again a while afterwards.”

Harriet
tilted her head with sympathetic inquiry. “Shall you tell me about him when we know each other better?”

“
I think so. A little anyway.” They smiled at each other again. Then Lisa followed Harriet into the log house.

The
living room took up the greater part of the house, with a black range and kitchen facilities at one end and at the other an open hearth. A flight of steps led up to a sleeping loft, and through a side door below was Alan’s workshop where his cinematographic equipment and tools covered every available scrap of space on the benches. Lisa could not see any room for a wall-bed to be made for Minnie. Her own sleeping quarters, entered by another door on the opposite side of the hearth, had once been a small storeroom and was far too narrow and low-ceilinged to accommodate a second bed or even a bunk bed above the one in which she would sleep. Lisa was thankful that it did have a small window for light and ventilation.

The
only piece of furniture in the house that the Fernleys had brought with them to Quadra Island was the upright piano in the living room, which was a replacement for the one they had lost in the cinema catastrophe. Harriet explained that she had played accompanying music for the movies that Alan had shown and still played at the shows he put on for audiences from time to time. While she opened the package from Agnes, Lisa sat down at the piano and played from the sheet music on the rack. Harriet listened with appreciation.

“
You’re a pianist, too,” she declared, coming across to show Lisa the unwrapped trinket box that Henry had made and carved for her. When Lisa had admired it, Harriet went up to the sleeping loft to transfer some pieces of jewellery into her gift from the Twidles.

*

That night the muffled sounds of Alan making passionate love to his wife kept Lisa from sleep. In her white cotton nightgown she knelt on her narrow bed, her hands pressed over her ears, and looked out of the window towards the moon-dappled water, where small islets lay like risen jewels upon the surface.

When eventually she fell back onto her pillow, she was racked by a physical yearning for the man she still loved and who was lost to her. Long after the lovers overhead had fallen asleep in each others’ arms, she continued to lie awake, enduring her own personal torment.

Alan
left again next morning. Harriet went down to the shore to see him off, Leo at their heels. When she returned to the house she stayed outside and did not enter. Lisa put away the last of the breakfast dishes she had washed and went out to her.

“
Are you all right, Harriet?”

The
woman nodded, pacing restlessly. “I hate this house more every time Alan leaves it. Take no notice of me. It’s just that I never want to go back into it on my own when he has gone.”

“
You’re not on your own now. I’m here.”

“
I know. I’m not used to the idea yet.”

“
Why do you have to live in this particular place? Wouldn’t it have been better all along for you to have settled somewhere near Agnes at Granite Bay?”

“
From here Alan has swifter access to most of the camps and outlets where his skills are needed. He can travel by sea, or inland by skid-road, or track or river tugboat. If he wants to get to the camp near Granite Bay he can even travel by an old lumber train from the Lucky Jim mine that lies a distance from here.”

“
Have you no neighbours at all?”

“
There are some Lekwiltok Indians a few miles away, and an elderly missionary, officially retired, who still ministers to their spiritual welfare.”

“
Have you ever been afraid here?”

“
Of Quadra Island? Never.” Harriet seemed quite astonished by such an idea. “I was raised on a farm miles from neighbours, so isolation doesn’t alarm me. In any case, Leo would savage any intruder who attempted to attack me, and I know how to use a firearm. But this is a peaceful place. These environs are more natural to me than bricks and mortar. When Alan is in a financial position to open up a movie house again, I’ll adapt to city life as I did when I was younger.” Her voice suddenly quavered.

“It’s my own company that has become dangerous to me, particularly in the house. That’s why I needed a companion and a friend, somebody else to think about in Alan’s absences.”

Lisa
was moved by her distress. “How can I help?”

Harriet
shook her head wearily. “By talking to me and hearing me out? The truth is that I’ve brooded and wept over a miscarriage for a long time now.”

Lisa
understood that Harriet, knowing she had not led a sheltered life, felt able to speak out more freely than she would otherwise to an unmarried girl.

“
The shock you suffered through the burning down of the cinema in Winnipeg was no fault of yours,” Lisa said consolingly.

“
That was the first miscarriage. A second happened in this house. That’s why I’ve grown to hate being under its roof without Alan. He had warned me never to clamber over the rocks in his absence, but I did, and I fell getting down the bluff to collect clams.” She dropped her face into both hands in abject misery at the memory. “Somehow I managed to get back here and lost the baby that we both wanted so much. I’ve never told him about it. I can’t. Only you know the truth of my present state of mind.”

Lisa
put a companionable arm about her shoulders. “Nobody can help an accident. We all do foolish things sometimes. I only know that regret can linger on against all common sense. At least I can understand what it is to feel as you do about wishing the past undone.” It was then that she in her turn made Harriet a confidante of her secrets. She told her of the ordeal of being raped and how it had been instrumental in splitting her apart from Peter Hagen, whom she still loved dearly and could never forget. “So you see,” she concluded, “I think you and I can help each other.”

Harriet
raised her head again with an attempt at courage. “I hope so, dear Lisa,” she said. “Your suffering has been more than equal to mine.”

They
spent the rest of the day in the forest and gathering oysters from the shore, Harriet having taken a basket, stout gloves, and a knife for the purpose. During those hours together and in the days that followed, Lisa soon realised that her first impressions of Alan’s wife had been correct. Harriet was a woman, who was all emotion, guided by her heart and never by her head, loving her husband to distraction and as easily elated as she was cast down. At first it was not easy being a companion to her. Self-blame was a difficult conviction to shift, strengthened as it had been by hours of loneliness. Fortunately, throughout the rest of the summer and into the autumn there was plenty to do tending the vegetable patch, picking berries and other fruit, making preserves, and stocking up shelves for the winter months ahead. Yet there were still times when Harriet gave way to bouts of depression that seemed to drain strength and all will to move from her.

One
day, unable to find her, Lisa rushed searching from place to place, gripped by rising panic at what might have happened. To her overwhelming relief, she found Harriet sitting on the rocks from which she had fallen on a certain fateful day, staring numbly and unseeingly in front of her. Clambering down the bluff to her, Lisa sat down beside her and simply held her hand. When finally the tears gushed forth, Lisa held her as if consoling a child. The incident seemed to cement a bond between them. Afterwards Harriet never again went off on her own. The improvement in the state of her mind was almost imperceptible for a long while, but gradually it became apparent to Lisa that Harriet had emerged at last from the threat of a nervous breakdown that had been far greater than ever her husband had suspected.