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Authors: Marian Babson

BOOK: Whiskers & Smoke
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Have a nice summer—
 
Nancy
 
The tabouret held a small decanter labelled elderberry brandy and a plastic box containing thin crispy vanilla biscuits.
Shamelessly ignoring the fact that I had already cleaned my teeth and had no intention of cleaning them again, I partook of both. Both were delicious.
I slid into bed and turned out the light. In the darkness I was conscious of the small night sounds outside, no longer drowned by the noise of the air-conditioner. The wind rustled the trees, grasshoppers sang, frogs croaked softly; a soothing and pleasing lullaby.
Just as I drifted off to sleep, I identified the disquieting element I had subconsciously noticed in the telephone list. The order of importance was wrong.
I was a woman on her own with two children, one of whom had a broken arm.
Why, then, did the Fire Department lead the list of emergency numbers instead of the Doctor?
I
t wasn't the dreams that were the nightmare, it was the awakening. In sleep, John was there again. We were laughing together, planning a holiday, talking about a future beyond that. We turned to each other with love and joy …
I don't know what woke me. I opened my eyes to bright sunlight and the unfamiliar room and slowly the joy drained out of me and the bleak grey sadness took its place. John was dead and I was left to face another day.
There was no point in lying there. I threw back the sheet and automatically walked over to the window. I could see now that my room was right at the back of the house, over the kitchen. Beneath the window was the slanted wooden bulkhead door which opened into the cellar. Beyond that was the spacious back yard, then the thick ring of woodland, mostly pines and maples, and beyond that the glittering blue of Edgemarsh Lake. The sky was
clear and cloudless, the birds sang. It was a beautiful day in a beautiful country.
And what should I do in Illyria?
“No! No! Stop it!” The childrens' voices shrieked out in anguish from the kitchen below me. I ran downstairs, not waiting to put on my dressing-gown, terrified of what I might find.
I burst into the kitchen and was relieved to find Tessa and Timothy safe, although furious and upset. There was a delicious fragrance in the air, which seemed to be part of the problem.
“Mummy! Mummy!” Tessa threw herself into my arms, sobbing. “We were cooking breakfast. We wanted to surprise you. We were going to bring you breakfast in bed.”
“We made scrambled eggs—” Timothy glowered. “Only that rotten old Errol got up on the table and ate them all!”
“Oh, darlings—” I tried not to laugh, as much a hysterical reaction as Tessa's tears. “Never mind. We'll cook some more and we'll be more careful this time. Remember Nancy told us that Errol eats everything we eat—she should have warned us ‘especially if he gets there first'.”
“Rotten old Errol!” Tessa echoed Timothy, a faint smile breaking through.
“Rotten to the core,” I agreed. A trail of greasy egg fragments stretched across the table from the empty plate, across the floor and under the stove. As we gazed at the mute evidence, there came a tremendous belch from beneath the stove.
“Perhaps it will disagree with him,” I said hopefully,
then rescinded my hopes. “Errol—” I called sharply. “Come out. You can't be sick under there—” I dashed over to open the back door. “Come on—outside! Quick!”
There was no response from Errol. I left the back door open—the screen door was still closed but could be opened quickly enough—and walked over to the stove.
“Errol?” Silence. I crouched and looked under the stove. He was curled up into a tight ball and out like a light, plainly exhausted by the night's excesses.
“Is he all right?” Timothy asked doubtfully.
“Your cooking didn't kill him, if that's what you mean.”
I straightened up. “I should think he'll sleep for most of the day now. We can forget him for a while. Now … what's in the pantry for breakfast?”
 
Fortunately, the children did not remember their Uncle Patrick. I was hard-pressed to hide my shock at the sight of him as I opened the door; they never could have managed it.
His cheekbones jutted out from the dark hollows under his eyes; his short-sleeved shirt and trousers had been bought for a larger man; his eyes had a haunted look and his painful smile did not quite reach them.
We may both be widows soon.
Perhaps the thought could be read too easily in my own eyes. Celia caught my arm and drew me to one side.
“It's nerves, that's all,” she said urgently. “Just nerves. The business, is going through a bad patch right now. A lot of businesses are. If we can just last through the summer …”
Patrick had gone into the living-room while we hung back in the hallway. Now he appeared in the doorway and looked at Celia questioningly.
“Yes, dear, we're coming,” Celia said, too brightly. We followed him into the living-room.
“It's good to see you again, Rosemary,” he said. He looked around the room with vague dissatisfaction, as though there were someone else he would rather see. I remembered that I was in his cousin Nancy's house and wondered if he were missing her already. “The kids, too. They sure have grown, haven't they? What are they now, six and eight?”
“Time goes on,” I said. “Timothy's nine and Tessa is seven. Y—” I broke off just in time.
You've changed, too.
If he realized it, he wouldn't appreciate being reminded of it.
“We thought we'd drive you around the lake this morning,” Celia said quickly. “We'll stop at Camp Mohigonquin and collect Luke and his friend Dexter—they're joining us for lunch. That will give you a chance to see what it's like and have a word with Greg Carter, he's the Camp Administrator and Senior Counsellor, about enrolling Tessa and Timothy as day campers.”
“I'll have to think that one over,” I said firmly. “It's much too soon to make any sort of decision. We've only just arrived.” With distance and the passing of time, I had almost forgotten Celia's tendency to arrange every moment of everyone's life for them. Her success in getting me over here had evidently gone to her head. I would need to keep reasserting my intention—and right—to order my own life and the lives of my children, even though
she was more familiar with this strange new country than I was.
“Oh, all right.” She acknowledged grudgingly that a warning shot had just been fired across her bows. “But you can't delay too long. The summer people will start flooding in next week and there won't be any places left.
They
know a good thing when they see it.”
“I haven't seen it yet,” I reminded her.
“Let's get going, then.” Patrick leaped to his feet, jingling his car keys. “We've brought the station wagon so that we can fit everyone in. Unless you'd like to try out the Harpers' car? You could follow us over—”
“No!” I froze at the thought. I hadn't driven since John's accident. I had no wish ever to get behind the wheel of a car again. “No, I'm not used to the idea of driving on the wrong side of the road. Give me some time to get acclimatized.”
“You ought to get used to a right-hand drive as soon as possible,” Celia put in swiftly, sensing weakness. “It's a full-time job hereabouts ferrying children to their various destinations.”
“All the more reason for me not to get caught up in it. This is supposed to be a holiday.”
“She's got you there,” Patrick said. “Come on, everybody. All aboard for Camp Mohigonquin.”
Camp Mohigonquin stood on a hillside on the opposite side of the lake. It would have been about a mile if one were to row across; going by road, curving through woods and past summer cottages, the distance was about six miles. We turned in at the gates and bumped up a rough track.
At the end of it were half a dozen long low wooden cabins, as many large canvas tents, all clustered around a central clearing with a flagpole from which fluttered the American flag. The camp enclosure was bordered by a tennis court, an archery range and a sports track. The remaining side was clear sweep down to the lakeshore beach; there was also a boathouse and a small dock with several canoes moored to it.
A mixed doubles match occupied the tennis courts and an informal race was in progress on the sports track. Timothy's eyes had begun to sparkle as he looked around.
While we watched, a group of children erupted from one of the tents and war-whooped their way down the slope to pile into the waiting canoes. Tessa gave a little sniff and cradled her arm protectively.
Timothy might be in his element here, but it didn't hold much promise for my poor little broken-winged bird.
“There's Luke!” Celia spotted her son and led us over to the archery range. “Luke, we're here!”
I caught my breath as the tall gangling blond boy turned and smiled at me with my father's eyes and my mother's mouth.
“Yes, I thought you'd catch that,” Celia said softly. “He does, doesn't he?”
I nodded, knowing that we mustn't mention it in front of him. Nothing annoys children more than having pieces of what they consider their personal anatomy parcelled out and attributed to ancestors they have never known. Tessa always grew twitchy if anyone pointed out that her hair grew in a widow's peak just like her paternal grandmother's. After registering the observation the first half-dozen
times, she had insisted on wearing a fringe. When she was older, she would appreciate the advantage; right now, it seemed a denial of her own personality when anyone mentioned the source of her dramatic hairline.
The cousins appraised each other silently while Celia made the introductions. A tall, lean, bronzed man stood by.
“And this is Gregory Carter—” Celia finished, indicating him. “The Camp Administrator.”
“Just Greg, please.” He flashed white perfect teeth and captured my hand in a strong firm handshake. “I've been hearing about you people. Glad to have you aboard.”
He shook hands with Timothy, but Tessa shrank back, afraid to trust her remaining good hand to this athletic giant. He hesitated, then reached out and tousled her hair. She didn't like that, either. She sent me a worried look.
“We're not quite aboard,” I said a trifle tartly. “Celia may have given you the wrong impression. We haven't decided what we're doing yet.”
“Oh, for heaven's sake,” Celia said under her breath. “Do you have to make an issue of it?”
“Oh-oh, guess I put my foot in my mouth again.” Greg smiled even more broadly, demonstrating that there was plenty of room for his foot in there despite all those large gleaming teeth. “Look, we weren't trying to railroad you into anything. Why, you haven't even seen the place yet. Let me show you around.”
He wheeled and strode off, not looking to see if we were following. Celia gave me a little push and started me forward. Luke and Timothy were already on Greg's heels. Patrick seated himself on a tree-stump beside the
archery range and appeared to go into a trance.
“Girls' dormitory here—” Greg indicated one of the long log cabins. “Boys' dorm over there. Cookhouse—one cooked meal a day, one salad meal, trained dietician supervising. Day campers usually leave at six, but if you'd like them to stay on for the evening meal so that you don't have to bother cooking, that can be arranged.”
“I don't find cooking any bother,” I said coldly. “I quite enjoy it.”
“Good, good. I wish all the Moms felt that way.” He glanced at my face and moved on quickly. “Dispensary, with a registered nurse in attendance. She also doubles as a Camp Counsellor, we don't have much for her to do, otherwise. Barring the occasional cuts or scrapes—” This time he glanced at Tessa. “Accidents will happen.”
“Show her the tents, Greg,” Celia prompted. “That's where they do crafts and handiwork,” she told me. “There's bound to be something for Tessa there.”
“Sure, there will,” Greg said heartily. “This tent is Woodwork: carving, carpentry, that sort of thing. And this tent is Artwork: clays sculpture, pottery, fingerpainting—” His voice took on a coaxing tone as he displayed a bright hotchpotch of colour. “You could do that okay, Tessa. Most of the kids only use one hand for fingerpainting, anyway.”
Tessa retreated behind me in the face of this direct onslaught, but I saw that a gleam of interest had been kindled in her eyes.
“Then there's weaving, jewellery-making—” He waved a hand, indicating the other tents. “And over there—” He stopped short, his eyes narrowed.
“Okay, Dexter, front-and-centre!” he snapped. “What were you doing in there?”
And enormous boy in shorts and T-shirt sidled to a halt in front of us, Billy Bunter to the life. I had the impression that he had come from the cookhouse. His jaws were working rapidly, then his Adam's apple bobbed several times and he spoke:
“Hi, Greg. Hi, Luke, Mrs. Meadows. I was just coming to meet you.” He flourished a gold wristwatch under his nose. “Time for us to be getting along, isn't it?”
“Not so fast, fella—” There was still a steely note in Greg's voice. “I asked you a question.”
“We ought to get going,” Luke put in hastily, addressing his mother. “Dad's getting kinda restless.”
“Oh!” Celia whirled to look at Patrick. He was pacing round the tree-stump, jingling his car keys. “Oh yes! I'm sorry, Greg, but—” She shrugged helplessly.
“Sure, I understand.” The teeth were much in evidence again, but he slanted a look at Dexter that boded ill for him in the future.
“Look, you folks—” He turned back to us, switching on the charm with an almost audible click. “Look, we're having a cookout tomorrow night. Why don't you come up and be our guests? About eight o'clock. It happens once a week—you'll like it.” He met Tessa's eyes and the coaxing note was back in his voice. “You can hold a hot dog on a stick over the campfire with one hand, can't you? No problem. We toast marshmallows, too, for dessert. And we have a sing-song. It's fun. You will come, won't you?”

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