Away with the Fishes (19 page)

Still, the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence, and this new arrangement was satisfying Dagmore little more than the last one had. When he had hopped about islands as a boy with his father’s men, there was someone to share the findings with. Why, the men on Captain Thomson’s ship had been known to debate the merits of a particular kind of fish for two
or three nights running. Dagmore’s notebooks now stirred no such dialogue. When he found a perfect shell or saw a perfect sunset, the best he could do was reproduce a poor sketch of it. Soon Dagmore grew nostalgic for the English gatherings—“Yes, England!” Mrs. Jaymes boasted. “He studied there and lived there until his father died.”—where he had pontificated on bee nectar and Beethoven, the silked and powdered audience hanging on his every last word.

So now what? he asked himself, one fine day on Dante’s Mountain when the clouds had hung themselves over his picnic lunch, cooling his hot head and soothing his itchy feet. Abandoning his research hardly seemed the answer, but neither could he scrounge a crew with which to debate it in the evenings over cigars and spiced rum punch.

Or could he?

Dagmore had an idea. He finished his fried fish and homemade bread as quickly as his teeth would allow, put his boots back on and tied them tight, packed his things in his bag, slung it over his shoulder, then stood up and brushed himself off. With a furtive glance left and right for the too-chatty goatherd Pedro, who would certainly have cost him some time, Dagmore dashed back down the mountain and into town.

Later that night, Mrs. Jaymes couldn’t get him to eat any dinner.

“Captain, aren’t you going to have any supper?” she called up to him in his study, where he had locked himself away since returning from town earlier that day.

“Just leave it, please, Mrs. Jaymes,” Dagmore yelled down to her. “You can go, if you like.”

“Well, you leave me no choice,” Mrs. Jaymes yelled back in reply, not hiding her anger.

She wasn’t angry that Captain Dagmore had let his supper get cold, or that her own culinary efforts had gone to waste. Heavens, no! As long as Mrs. Jaymes got her pay every week, which she did, it was no concern of hers if Captain Dagmore ate her food or not. If he failed to include her in the household affairs, well, that was another matter entirely.

Mrs. Jaymes knew that something was afoot at the villa, and she was loath to set foot outside of it until she knew exactly what. The captain had come home at a very unusual hour in the middle of the afternoon (he typically conducted his research until dusk), with small but mysterious packages from town, some of them tied with delicate ribbons that gave Mrs. Jaymes an awful sense of foreboding. She dilly-dallied in the kitchen and tidied up where no tidying was needed, but no sign of the Captain (or what he was up to) came, so finally she collected her things and took herself reluctantly home.

Reluctantly, because Mrs. Jaymes had a knack for sniffing trouble. And her instincts had served her well that day at Dagmore’s. Those fancy packages of his were indeed going to be a problem, though this would not have immediately appeared the case to the innocent onlooker. They contained little more than writing materials: the finest quality paper to be found on Oh, envelopes to match, the ink of blackest black, and a stick of golden wax for sealing up the whole kit and caboodle with a capital B (a stamp of which Dagmore had inherited from his father, Thomson Bowles).

Dagmore spent all of that evening drafting and composing, folding and sealing. When Mrs. Jaymes arrived the next morning with fresh eggs for his breakfast, she found him next to a tall stack of thick envelopes, hard at work writing more letters still. He was dressed in such finery as she had never seen him. Her hunch of
the day before was full-fledged fear now, and she couldn’t hold her tongue a minute longer.

“What in the name of all things holy are you up to? And why are you dressed so?” she demanded to know.

“Calm down, Mrs. Jaymes. It’s just a few invitations,” Dagmore assured her. “Don’t worry about a thing.”

Invitations? She didn’t like the sound of this at all! Mrs. Jaymes furrowed her brow and studied the Captain. As near as she could tell, he had no inkling whatsoever that he was stirring a hornet’s nest. Funny, that, she thought to herself, her own intuition so feverishly astir that she was sure she heard the angry insects buzzing about her head.

“What sort of invitations?” she asked, skeptical and stern.

“Invitations for some old acquaintances of mine, from…” (Did Dagmore really start to say ‘from home’?) “…from my piano days.”

“Piano days? What’s ‘piano days’?”

“I used to play. Concerts. I’m very good, you know. Better than very good. I was quite sought-after, to tell you the truth.”

“So you’re inviting your old friends to a concert. Is that it?”

“Not exactly. I’m just inviting them to visit. I was a guest in some very fine homes and I thought it might be nice to repay some old kindnesses.”

“And when these—what did you call them?— ‘acquaintances’ turn up? Then what?” Mrs. Jaymes was unconvinced of the harmlessness in hosting old piano people.

“We will show them some island hospitality! We’ll give them a bed, and they’ll swim, and sun themselves, and in the evening we’ll have parties.”

“Parties?! Good gracious!” It was worse than she had imagined!

“What’s the matter with you? Who doesn’t like a party? We’ll get you in some extra help, if you need it. I’ll pay you extra, too.”

Mrs. Jaymes puffed her chest and put her hand to her temple and let out a long, significant sigh. Her worries had nothing to do with finger sandwiches or pineapple cake or with whatever extra cooking the presence of the guests would require. It wasn’t even the guests or a party per se that had her hot and bothered. It was a funny feeling about
these
guests and
these
parties, and in all her years (Mrs. Jaymes was not yet forty then) her funny feelings had never failed her once.

“You’ve given me an idea, though,” Captain Dagmore continued.

“An idea?” Mrs. Jaymes wrung her hands.

“What you said before about a concert. Maybe I
will
play for our guests. You’re absolutely right, you know. They’ll expect it.”

“But you never play,” she said.

She was right again. Not once since Dagmore arrived on Oh had he dared touch a key on the piano Captain Thomson had given him after his thirteenth birthday. The mere idea of it made him sad, as if to play a note were to lose his father all over again. Hundreds—thousands—of deaths on every page of every musical score. Dagmore couldn’t bear it, and yet, as he watched Mrs. Jaymes and her wringing hands and considered the company he hoped to draw to Oh, the thought of his fingers on the soft, smooth ivory struck him as a comfort, not a punishment. The memory of a life gone by—and the music that had marked it—began to buzz in Dagmore’s ears. His hands became fists, then opened, the fingers spread and taut. Dagmore looked at his palms, as if trying to place them, to remember how it was that he and they were acquainted. He looked up at Mrs. Jaymes, whose eyes awaited
his in near horror, and he hurried to the room where the piano had stood silent for nearly a year.

“Captain, no! Are you sure?” she implored him, rushing behind and grabbing at the hem of his fine coat.

“Mrs. Jaymes! Please!” he scolded her and twisted free of her grip. “Get a hold of yourself!”

Captain Dagmore gently pulled out the bench and sat down. Slowly he lifted the lid that protected the keys. As he did, a gnat lazily swooned upward from C-sharp and Dagmore flicked at it with the back of his hand.

“Captain, I really don’t think…,” Mrs. Jaymes started, but before she could finish, the room was awash in a bath of notes—two, three, four at a time, flat and sharp and jumping and pinging and splashing against the walls and onto the floor.

“We’re doomed!” she cried, raising her eyes and her hands heavenward.

The Captain, meanwhile, had grown more animated than she had ever seen him, and this only added to her discomfort. His head was bobbing up and down, his toes rising and falling on the pedals and his hands a fluttery blur that slid around the keyboard. Without skipping a beat he shouted to her, “We’ll need to find a tuner,” but she didn’t know what to say to that.

When Dagmore finally had enough, or when the song was done, Mrs. Jaymes wasn’t sure which, he got up and rubbed his hand lovingly across the flat, curved piano top.

“Not bad, eh, Mrs. Jaymes? A bit of practice every day and I’ll be as good as I ever was.” Dagmore looked the instrument over from stem to stern, as if he were noticing it there in his house for the very first time. “Now, shall we see about some breakfast? I need to get to the Post.”

Mrs. Jaymes knew when she was defeated, nay, when she couldn’t even compete. There would be no conquering this great noisy beast in the sitting room. The best she could do, for now, was to dust it every day and say her prayers.

She scrambled the Captain’s eggs that morning, whisking them into a frenzy to match her own, and burnt his toast to a crisp, not from any ill will in his regard but from sheer discombobulation. After breakfast he left with his fine, fat envelopes, still wearing what Mrs. Jaymes now recognized could only be “piano clothes.” He told her he would send his letters, then would bring back a man to get the piano tuned up. To Mrs. Jaymes’s knowledge, no such man on Oh existed, and under any other circumstances, the prospect of his coming might have made her wary, even bothered. On this particular day, however, she didn’t care if the Captain brought a stranger home. Mrs. Jaymes was too preoccupied with those dratted invitations that, as she sipped her solitary tea, had already begun their journey to heaven-knew-where and -whom. Compared to the mysterious hands for which they were destined, a piano tuner (albeit unknown) was indeed a paltry affair.

26

L
unchtime was nearing, and Raoul was growing impatient. Though the story of Captain Dagmore and his research touched Raoul’s truth-seeking heart, and though he was intrigued by the Captain’s piano-playing and curious to know what came of his invitations, Raoul’s notebook was over half full, and he was not one clue closer to finding out how the Captain was connected to Rena Baker—or if he really was. He couldn’t help but wonder if his time might not be better spent scouring the island with his magnifying glass.

“Mrs. Jaymes,” he interrupted her, “this is all very interesting, and I can certainly see what a pleasure it is for you to remember your dearly departed friend, but perhaps I’ve learned all that I need to. I’m very grateful for your time.”

“Learned all you need to?” she rebutted. “You haven’t heard the half of it! You couldn’t possibly understand.”

“Understand what?”

“About Dagmore and his life on Oh. He
had
to live here, you see. Even though he never figured out how to get along with the island—he did try, believe you me—it still wouldn’t let him go.”

“I don’t understand,” Raoul admitted.

“You certainly don’t!” Mrs. Jaymes chided him. “Dagmore tried everything, but he never quite…
fit
here, if you know what I’m saying.”

As a matter of fact, Raoul did know. How many times had he asked himself why everyone around him was thinking
one
thing, while he was thinking something else? Why every islander but
he
swore by moonbeams and raindrops, while he declared loyalty to his library books and the principles of Stan Kalpi maths? (Stan Kalpi was the mathematician-musician hero of Raoul’s favorite book. Mr. Stan let his observations guide him, and kept the variables of his equations neatly in line.)

Raoul turned his attention back to Mrs. Jaymes. “I don’t see what pianos and party invitations have to do with fitting in.”

“Why, nothing at all! That’s what I’m trying to tell you. Those invitations were only the beginning of the trouble in that house. It had a mind of its own, that villa, sending the Captain messages that he refused to see or hear.”

Houses sending messages? Imagine that! Raoul knew a thing or two about houses and messages. Maybe he could learn more from Captain Dagmore than he realized. He thumbed through the remainder of his notebook and glanced at the clock on Mrs. Jaymes’s wall.

“Well,” he conceded, “I suppose I could stay a few minutes more. I
would
like to know how those invitations turned out, I admit. You say the Captain went to town for a piano tuner?”

Raoul opened his notebook to a clean page and smoothed it on his lap, then prompted Mrs. Jaymes to go on.

“He came back with Hammer,” Mrs. Jaymes said, pointing through the window at her husband. “He wasn’t my husband back then.”

Outside, Hammer had finished his gardening. He had deduced that his lunch would be delayed, and patiently he waited, swaying in a hammock, stretched between two royal palms.

As Mrs. Jaymes suspected, Hammer Coates, the piano tuner Captain Dagmore found, turned out not to be a problem. He turned out not to be a piano tuner, either. He was simply the best the Captain could find in town, where all the islanders swore that no one on Oh had ever touched the insides of such an instrument. Famed for his general handiness—he could fix almost anything with some cardboard and a piece of string, they said—Hammer was hired, and Dagmore took him home.