A New Song (13 page)

That was a very nice speech, he noted, as only his wife could make.

“Absolutely!” he said, trying to mean it.

 

Their car had been unchained from its moorings, and the ramp to Whitecap cranked down. The ferry pilot stood by the ramp, a cigarette in his mouth, holding the gas lantern and signaling them off.

“Would you look at our map?” Father Tim leaned out the window. “We’re trying to get . . . here.” He pointed to the location of Dove Cottage, marked by a red arrow. “Since we’re not approaching from the bridge . . .”

The lantern was lifted to light the hand-drawn map. “No problem,” said the pilot, leaving the cigarette in place. “I’ve been around in there a few times. Go off th’ ramp, take a left, drive about a mile and a half, turn right on Tern Avenue, go straight for about a mile, then take a left on Hastings. Looks like your place is on th’ corner . . . right there.”

“Left off the ramp, a mile and a half . . .” Father Tim repeated the litany. “Any idea when the power might be restored?”

“By mornin’, most likely. Worst out was three days, back in ’89.

What line of business you in?”

“New priest at St. John’s in the Grove.”

The pilot took a heavy drag on his cigarette and pitched it over the rail. Then he reached in his pants pocket, withdrew a ten-dollar bill, and handed it through the window.

“Oh, but—”

“Godspeed,” said the ferry pilot, walking away.

 

A waxing moon drifted above them as they drove along the narrow road.

“They all look alike,” Cynthia said, peering at the darkened houses. “White, with picket fences. Some on stilts. Goodness, do you think all these people are really sleeping?”

“I saw something that looked like candles in one window.”

“Did we bring candles?”

“What do you think?”

“I think we brought candles! I’m thrilled to be married to such a predictable stick-in-the-mud. I hope you brought extra blades for my razor.”

“If I didn’t, which I did, you could find them at a store. Whitecap isn’t the Australian Outback.”

“You know one reason I love you?” she asked.

“I haven’t the foggiest.”

“Because,” she said, “you’re steady. So very steady.”

A former bishop had once said something like that, calling him a “plow horse.” The bishop made it clear, however, that it was the race-horse that clambered to the top of the church ladder and made a fine stall for himself.

Barnabas thrust his head out the window, sniffing. New smells were everywhere, there was nothing known or expected about the smells in these parts.

“Hastings Avenue should be coming up,” he said. “There! Do you hear it?”

“The ocean! Yes! Oh, stop—just for a moment.”

He slowed to a stop, and realized the great roar was out there somewhere, that just over the high dunes was a beach, and, lying beyond, a vast rink of platinum shimmering under the moon.

“ ‘Listen!’ ” he whispered, quoting Wordsworth. “ ‘The Mighty Being is awake, and doth with His eternal motion make, a sound like thunder, everlastingly.’ ”

“Lovely!” she breathed.

They moved on slowly, as if already obeying some island impulse, some new metabolism. With only the moon, stars, and headlights to illumine their way in the endless darkness, they might have been the last creatures on earth.

“Let’s put the top down!” crowed Cynthia.

“Fat chance,” he said, turning off Tern.

 

He walked back to the car with the flashlight.

“I don’t see the half-hidden street sign Marion Fieldwalker talked about. . . .”

“I can’t understand it,” she said, studying the map under the map light. “We turned right on Tern, we went left on Hastings to the corner. This must be it.”

“The overgrown hedges are definitely there.”

“Maybe the sign blew away in the storm. Should we . . . retrace our steps and try again, or do you think . . . ?”

It had all become a blasted nuisance as far as he was concerned. And he would never say so to his wife, but it was spooky out here, stumbling around on some godforsaken jut of land in the pitch-dark, miles from home and reeling from what had become a fifteen-hour trip with nothing but a pack of blasted peanuts to . . .

“We did exactly as the map said. I don’t think trying to do it all over again would help us. Why don’t we investigate?”

He helped her out of the car and shone the flashlight onto the porch. It was an older beach cottage, with a line of rocking chairs turned upside down to keep the wind from blowing them into the yard. A derelict shutter leaned against the shingled wall.

“Gosh,” she said, otherwise speechless.

“I don’t see a rosebush climbing up anything,” He’d been looking forward to that rosebush.

“Maybe the storm . . . ,” she suggested.

“. . . blew it down,” he said.

They went up the creaking steps to the door.

“Look, Timothy, up there.”

A sign hung lopsided above the door, dangling from a single nail.

“Oh, my,” she said quietly.

Surely this wasn’t . . . surely not, he thought.

“They said it would be unlocked,” whispered his wife. “Should we . . . try the door?”

The door swung open easily. He was afraid to look.

“Aha.”

The furnishings sat oddly jumbled in the large, paneled room. A slipcovered sofa faced away from two club chairs, card tables blocked the entrance to what appeared to be a dining room, a faded Persian carpet covered one side of the floor, but was rolled up on the other.

They went in carefully, as if walking on eggs.

Cynthia hugged herself and stared around in disbelief. “How could this
possibly
... ?”

He passed the light across one of the tables and saw a half-assembled jigsaw image of the Grand Canyon.

“Look at that lovely old fireplace,” she said. “Marion never mentioned a fireplace. . . .”

“Mildew,” he said. “Do you smell it?”

“Yes, but how odd. Marion said they’d worked like slaves to clean everything up. Timothy, this can’t be Dove Cottage.”

“It’s certainly where her map led us, and the sign above the door said . . .” He sighed, dumbfounded.

“Let’s try a lamp. Maybe the power’s back on.” It wasn’t.

Barnabas sniffed the rugs and the sofa, with special interest in an unseen trail that led to the hallway. They followed him, numb with disappointment and fatigue.

In the kitchen, the refrigerator door stood ajar, as did several cabinet doors.

“Ugh!”
she said. “I can’t believe they’d do this to us. Surely they didn’t think we were coming next week. Remember we originally told them it would be next week. Maybe somehow they got confused and the cleaning hasn’t been done, yet. . . .” Her voice trailed off.

She was trying, but he wasn’t buying. He wouldn’t live in this dump if they sent the cleaning crew from the Ritz-Carlton in Paris, France. Just wait ’til he got hold of the senior warden. He’d had a round or two with senior wardens in his time; he was no babe in the woods when it came to what’s what with senior wardens. . . .

“The phone, there must be a phone around here. We can call the Fieldwalkers, shine the light around.”

They found a wall phone on the other side of the cabinets, but the line was dead.

“The bedrooms,” she said, desperate.

At the end of the hallway, which was covered by a Persian runner, they found a cavernous bedroom, and surveyed it with the flashlight. Closet doors standing agape . . . windows open . . . curtains blowing . . . the bed made, but sopping wet.

“This can’t be right, they wouldn’t
do
this to us.” He could tell his wife was teetering on the edge of hysteria. “Wait ’til I get my hands on that fine bishop of yours who would send you out to some . . . uninhabited wasteland, after the years of faithful service you’ve given him.

“That . . . that vainglorious
dog
!”

“Nothing personal,” he told Barnabas, who was sniffing the closets.

 

Because they hadn’t known what else to do at nearly midnight on a strange, dark island with no lights and no phone, they made the double bed in the guest room and got in it, Barnabas on the floor on one side and Violet in her open crate on the other, where his inconsolable wife sighed and fumed herself to sleep as he lay staring at the pale circle cast by the flashlight onto the ceiling, muttering words and thinking thoughts he never dreamed he would say or think, and feeling distinctly waterlogged even in a perfectly dry pair of pajamas from his bureau in Mitford, thanks be to God for small favors.

CHAPTER FIVE

He sat up in bed, dazed.

Where in heaven’s name . . . ?

Barnabas barked wildly, and someone was knocking on a door. As the room came into focus, he remembered the predicament they were in, and counted it odd that one should wake to, rather than from, a nightmare.

He glanced at his watch—seven o’clock—and bolted into the hallway without robe or slippers. He padded through the dark, paneled living room and opened the door, feeling anger rise in him again.

“Father? Father Kavanagh?”

“Yes!” he snapped, buttoning his pajama top.

“Sam Fieldwalker, sir, your senior warden.” The tall, gentle-looking man appeared deeply puzzled.

“Sam . . .” He shook hands as Barnabas sniffed the stranger’s shoes.

“We saw your car out front, and . . . well, you see, we waited for you and Mrs. Kavanagh ’til eleven o’clock last night—”

“Waited? Where?”

“In your cottage. Over there.” He pointed off the porch.

“You mean . . . this isn’t our cottage?”

“Well, no. I’m terribly sorry, I don’t know how . . . it must have been the storm and no lights to see by . . .”

“The wrong cottage!” shouted his wife, peering around the hall door in her nightgown. “Thank heaven!”

Sam let Barnabas sniff his hand. “There you are, old fellow, smelling our little Bitsy. My gracious, Father, you all have a dog and a half there!”

“But that sign . . . ,” said Cynthia, “that sign above the door . . .”

Sam glanced up, adjusting his glasses. “Oh, my goodness. Of course. Well, you see, this is one of the old
Love
Cottages. . . .”

Cynthia looked fierce. “It certainly doesn’t live up to its name!”

“It’s owned by the Redmon Love family, who started coming here in the forties. Gracious sakes, Father, Mrs. Kavanagh, I can’t begin to tell you how
sorry
. . .”

Father Tim thought Sam Fieldwalker might burst into tears.

“Oh, no, please,” he said. “I don’t know how we could have thought for a moment . . . well, you see, it was dark as pitch, and we couldn’t find the street sign in the hedge, the one Marion told us to look for. . . .”

“Ah, now I’m getting a clear picture!” Sam brightened considerably. “You turned into Love’s old driveway, which is wide enough to look like a street—property wasn’t so dear in the forties—and, of course, there’s a shabby hedge bordering their property, as well. Oh, my, I’m sure Marion never thought of that.”

“No harm done! We’re glad the mystery is solved. But do the Loves always leave their house unlocked?”

“Hardly anyone on Whitecap locks their doors. And, of course, the Love children and their kids come and go during the summer, though not so much anymore.”

“Aha.” The sunlight was dazzling, his glasses were by the bed, and he was squinting like a monk at vespers.

“Let me help you move your things, Father. Marion’s waiting at Dove Cottage to show you around and cook your breakfast. She’s baking biscuits. . . .”

He felt covered with shame. How could he have mistrusted this kind person, believing even for a moment that this was the right cottage?
Lord, forgive me.

“. . . and,” Sam continued, looking earnest, “she’s found some nice, fresh perch, if . . . if that’s all right.”

At that moment, Father Tim heard his stomach rumble, and, at the thought of Marion Fieldwalker’s fresh perch and biscuits, felt close to tears himself.

Marion met them on the porch of Dove Cottage, a tall, large-boned woman in an apron, with a pleasant face and snow-white hair like her husband.

“In case you’d taken the ferry,” said Marion, “we waited ’til eleven. Then, when you didn’t come, we thought the storm had held you up and you’d stayed somewhere for the night.”

“When we found the bridge was out, we thought it too far to turn back for a place to sleep,” Cynthia said.

“And we nearly missed the ferry!” exclaimed Father Tim, oddly enjoying the account of their travail. “We made it with two minutes to spare.”

“Oh, my poor souls! That bridge goes out if you hold your mouth wrong. You know the state bigwigs don’t pay much attention to little specks of islands like they pay to big cities. Well, we’re thrilled you’re here, and I hope you like perch.”