After the Fire (7 page)

Sally and Sarah would only suppose she was off to her ferry duties and make themselves the more at home. How easy, even mindless that was when there were two of you. Yet why should Karen let them drive her away without even knowing they had? It was, after all, her house, her coffee, and, if she didn’t join them, they’d soon be rummaging around in her meager supplies to find something to eat.

“Good morning,” Sally said, standing in the doorway of the bedroom. “Could I bring you a cup of coffee?”

“Oh, no thanks,” Karen said, running a nervous hand through her hair. “I’ll be out in a minute. There’s bread in the freezer for toast, but I’m afraid there isn’t much else …”

“We brought our own,” Sally said. “I’m about to cook some bacon.”

It was a relief that she wouldn’t have to suggest a public breakfast. Though they’d been perfectly well behaved at the pub last night, Karen didn’t want to push that luck.

As she dressed, the smell of bacon was a simple pleasure. The fact that Sally, whom Karen liked a good deal more than she did Sarah, had brought it and was cooking it made Karen feel less invaded and taken advantage of.

“This is such a neat little place!” Sally exclaimed as she dished up breakfast for the three of them. “Do you have to work today?”

“Only at the pub tonight.”

“One night of that is about all I can take,” Sarah said.

“Imagine: Saturday night by the fire,” Sally said.

Karen had not only imagined it but suffered through it until she had learned to escape into work.

“Well, for the novelty of it,” Sarah said tentatively.

Sarah was very easily bored, but she managed to make that trait an asset, hanging it around her neck like an invitation or a challenge. Not many women had been able to resist taking Sarah up on it for a night or a month or a year. Nobody lasted longer than that, not because Sarah turned them out but because they finally ran out of ideas and energy.

Since Karen had neither the confidence nor the ambition to distract or entertain, Sarah’s charm was lost on her. Sally’s hearty good nature and natural hopefulness, in other circumstances, would have touched Karen, but she was wary of anyone so willing to waste her talents on patently incurable lethargy, like deciding to devote your life to curing the common cold. It would be kinder to the community at large if a Sarah and a Karen could be permanently paired, Karen thought ruefully, locking the bored and the boring away together out of harm’s way.

“Could you maybe tell us some of the places we ought to see?” Sally asked.

“If you’re not working,” Sarah suggested, “why don’t you show us around?”

“I guess I could,” Karen said. “At least it isn’t raining.”

In fact the sun that morning held the promise of spring, though the wind off the water was sharp as they set off on the beach walk Karen had proposed as the most scenic way to reach a small shore park where a bit of gorse was always in bloom. It was also the way least likely for them to meet other islanders at this time of year, for they inclined to turn their backs on the sea until it was time to gather seaweed for their gardens and get their boats ready to put back into the water.

“I’ve always heard about the Gulf Islands,” Sally said, “but this is the first time I’ve ever been on one.”

“You’re such a ski fanatic,” Sarah said, “you forget there are things to do on your own two feet.”

“What made you decide to come here?” Sally asked Karen.

Karen shrugged.

“Peggy said she thought some of your people were from around here,” Sarah said.

Not
family
but
people;
Peggy would have put it that way. She had tried very hard to make Karen exotic, worthy of her taste.

“I just like it here,” Karen said. “That’s all.”

Sarah skidded on a mossy rock, and Sally offered a steadying hand which Sarah then kept in hers. There was nothing really scandalous about two young women holding hands as they walked along the shore, but it made Karen uneasy. The only house they crossed in front of belonged to Henrietta Hawkins, a woman unlikely to jump to conclusions, but Karen cared about Henrietta’s good opinion. Why didn’t Sally and Sarah understand that this holiday territory for them was now home to Karen? She didn’t want it polluted with innuendoes about herself. Surely one of the few rewards of living alone should be the end of defensive secrecy.

“What’s the hurry?” Sarah called.

Karen had put a hundred yards between herself and them by the time she was scrambling over the rocks on the beach below Henrietta’s house, and she kept right on going, pretending to be deafened by the wind. When she reached the sloping rock shore of the park, she climbed up to a bench where she could sit and wait for them.

Out across the strait, Mount Baker glinted in the sun like a huge helping of ice cream.

“Well, I’m glad there’s some place to sit down!” Sarah said, collapsing next to Karen.

A black puppy with large feet appeared on the grass verge above them and began to bark. When Sally laughed at it and clapped her hands, it came skidding down the rock, tail wagging. Just as it reached Sally and rolled over on its back, Red appeared above them, calling, “Blackie! Blackie!” But the pup was far too enamored of its new friend to pay any attention. Red shrugged and came down slowly over the slippery surface.

“I didn’t know you had a puppy, Red,” Karen called to her.

“Only got her yesterday,” Red said.

“These are friends of mine from town, Sally and Sarah.”

Red nodded to them and turned back to Karen. “You wouldn’t know anything about training a dog, would you?”

Karen, who had never had pets, suddenly wished she did know something about them. She had to shake her head.

“I know a bit,” Sally said, as she played tug-of-war over a piece of bark with Blackie. “She’s still too young to learn much.”

“I want her to be a good dog,” Red said earnestly. “I want her to be responsible.”

As Sally settled to discuss a training program, Sarah withdrew her attention and focused instead on Karen.

“Well, have you gotten over Peggy by now?”

“She wasn’t a disease,” Karen said, trying for a lightness of tone.

“Not everyone would agree with you,” Sarah said wryly.

“So bad-mouthing Peggy is still a local sport.”

“She certainly never deserved your sort of loyalty.”

Blackie, suddenly bored with the conversation between Sally and Red, bounded over to Sarah and Karen.

“I wonder if I should get one of these,” Karen said, reaching down to the tumbling puppy. “Maybe Red and I could learn together.”

“Are you interested in her?” Sarah asked in surprise.

“Interested?” Karen repeated. “I like her. On this island, friendship isn’t a lost art.”

These people were no more friends of Peggy’s than they had been of Karen’s. If she hadn’t yet made real friendships here, at least her connections with people like Red and Hen were based on the good opinion she had of them.

“Dogs have always been more reliable than lovers,” Sarah said, amused.

“Milly,” Henrietta said, putting down her coffee cup, “what have you got against that young woman?”

They were sitting in Henrietta’s living room and had been watching first Karen and then two young women they didn’t know make their way across Henrietta’s boulder-and log-strewn beach.

“I don’t have anything against her,” Milly replied. “I simply say, ‘birds of a feather flock together,’ and, unless I’m very much mistaken, those two women are queer or gay or whatever the term is these days. Have you ever seen Karen with a man?”

“She’s with young men all the time.”

“Of course, but trying to be one of them, making a fool of herself at fire practice, working for the ferries.”

“She’s not the first woman to work on the ferries,” Henrietta protested.

“Have you ever taken a good look at the others?”

This was not the sort of conversation Henrietta liked to be involved in. More and more often recently she found herself regretting the time she spent with Milly, but then she thought, poor soul, having to go through the change on her own and now facing an operation. It was no time to think about drawing back.

Henrietta remembered herself very well at that age, the long hours of irrational weeping. The grief had seemed to her real enough at the time, even when Hart could neither understand nor sympathize. He had always been patient. Of course he couldn’t feel the loss of those babies as she did. They had never been anything but her miscarriages to him. He could have understood if her grief had been for Peter, sixteen years old when a drunk crossed the line and killed him two weeks after he’d passed his driver’s test. She did grieve for Peter, of course, and would all her life, but he’d had a life of his own, however short, which those others had not. Her dying womb, hemorrhaging month after month, held all those past failures within it.

“It’s a hard time,” Henrietta said to Milly, abruptly returning to their earlier conversation.

“Did you have a hysterectomy?” Milly asked.

“No.”

“At least it was natural for you then.”

“A natural disaster?” Henrietta mused.

“Well, it’s the first thing that’s made my daughter sit up and take notice.”

“Oh, and wouldn’t you rather they didn’t?” Henrietta asked. “Part of me dreads Hart Jr.’s visits. He always wants to
do
something, and there’s nothing to be done. I’d much rather he’d just be getting on with his own life and not worrying about me.”

“I
like
being worried about,” Milly asserted.

“I’m here after all,” Henrietta offered. “I can take you in and visit you and bring you home. Between us, Red and I can give you all the nursing you need.”

“I know,” Milly said, “and I am grateful. But it doesn’t hurt Bonnie to think about someone else for a change, particularly her mother!”

The coffee pot was empty, and Henrietta didn’t offer to make another. She was taking Miss James to the pub for lunch, and she wanted time to tidy up before she left. One of Milly’s real virtues was that she was quick to pick up such signals and good-humored about them.

“I’ll be going along then, Hen,” she said. “You are a comfort, you know. Whenever there was anything wrong with me, Forbes was no earthly use. He called me ‘Dred’ when I was pregnant. He thought it was funny.”

“I’ve never heard a good joke about a pregnant woman,” Henrietta said as she fetched Milly’s coat.

“And that’s the pain you don’t forget,” Milly said.

The unhealed wound in Milly was humiliation, and Henrietta knew no cure for it. She was afraid it was like arthritis, which simply got worse. Physical pain was easier to be resigned to, and one never had the illusion that sharing it around might lessen it. Milly did really hope that by humiliating other people she might get some real relief. She might be abandoned by her husband, neglected by her children, but at least she was white, at least she wasn’t a pervert.

“Come in and have a sherry,” Miss James said.

Henrietta accepted the suggestion, which was ritual. In Miss James’ small living room she could hear well enough Henrietta’s shouted comments; once they got to the pub, Miss James was reduced to talking.

The sherry glasses were crystal. All of the few things Miss James had were good, but none of them looked out of place in her modest cottage. Miss James practiced a kind of elegant simplicity Henrietta admired and secretly aspired to if great old age were to be her lot. But Miss James had been free never to acquire beyond her own needs and to give away what she no longer wanted.

“How’s Sadie getting along?” Miss James wanted to know.

“Very well, I think,” Henrietta reported in a loud voice. “Dickie’s friends are being wonderful. I did tell Riley they shouldn’t be too generous with the gin or we’d have another fire on our hands.”

“She isn’t still on about Red, is she?”

“No, I think she’s forgotten all about that. I wish Red would.”

“Did you know Red’s got herself a dog?”

“No!”

“She was here to show it to me this morning,” Miss James said. “A little bit of a thing at the moment, but it’s going to be a good-sized dog.”

“Is that a good idea?” Henrietta asked.

“Oh, I think so,” Miss James said, and she smiled. “It makes me think Red may live long enough to learn how to be young. She’s very serious about it, of course, but nobody can help enjoying a puppy, not even Red.”

Henrietta found herself trying to imagine Red living here with a dog.

“She’ll have it trained before it moves in here,” Miss James said, either reading Henrietta’s mind or simply on the same track. “I’ve changed my will.”

“I’m glad of that for Red. If we’re not the only family she’s got, we’re all she’ll admit to.”

“I asked her the other day if Red Smith was her real name because I wanted to mention her in my will. I thought I could say that much. She said as far as she knew it was, except that Red was a nickname for Scarlet. Her mother must have seen
Gone With The Wind
and then decided it was too much. Or Red did it herself.”

“Scarlet!”

“Smith’s more likely to be made up, but I don’t think that should cause any trouble,” Miss James said. “Anybody could say Red’s the one I meant, whatever her real name is.”

“Is she frightened of being found, even now?”

“I wouldn’t be surprised,” Miss James said.

They had finished their sherry. Henrietta helped Miss James on with her fur-collared coat and watched her settle her fur-trimmed hat with the aid of a mirror in an inlaid frame hanging just by the door.

“I had an old aunt,” Miss James said, “who said to me, ‘Lily Anne, you can choose to be poor; just don’t be shabby.’”

“Did you choose to be poor?”

“I chose to defy my daddy,” Miss James said in a pure Virginia accent, “which amounted to the same thing. But poor’s never been the real word for the way I’ve lived. I’ve never wanted for anything.”

Henrietta looked forward to their hour at the pub when Miss James would tell stories of her life as a teacher, never more than a few years in the same place, always moving on until she seemed to have been nearly everywhere, even up to Alaska. It was when she came back down the inland passage and visited Victoria that she’d discovered the Gulf Islands and decided to retire on one of them. She had bought this little house years ago, but she hadn’t come to live in it until she was well into her seventies. She liked to say she’d be teaching still if her hearing hadn’t gone.