Dear Doctor Lily (37 page)

‘Being a Portugee, you mean. That's worse.'

‘Oh, much worse,' Isobel agreed.

‘I don't know.' Behind the counter, talking to a giant trucker whose rear end spilled over the stool, Dodo was also sharing their conversation. ‘The Portugees run this town, is what I think.'

‘You better believe it.' Tony's ancestors came from the Cape Verde Islands, off Africa, and he told Isobel that they were royal.

They went back to mend the floor of the tree-house. ‘Better strengthen it if you're getting so fat and heavy,' Tony said. ‘There's some short pieces of two-by-twos in your barn. Maybe I can use some of those.'

‘Someone in there?' Tony heard a voice inside the barn.

‘Harry went in there to play make-believe horses.'

It was beginning to rain. Tony stood on a block of granite that lay by the wall and looked through one of the small windows where the cow stalls used to be.

Isobel stepped up beside him. She stood on tiptoe, and then
Tony pushed her down and muttered, ‘C'mon, let's get the wood from my yard.'

Isobel did not ask, ‘Why?', because before he pushed her away from the window, she had seen Harry and her mother, half in shadow, half in dusty light.

Going across the back field, Isobel had to ask. ‘Tony.' She coughed. It was hard to say. ‘What were they doing?'

‘I didn't see nothing.'

‘You did. I did. What were they doing?'

‘Oh.' Tony walked faster. ‘Just kissin'.'

Grown-ups kissed and fooled around all the time, like a sort of game. ‘But their faces weren't together. Harry looked stern, not like his usual self. She – why was my mother's face like that?'

‘Forget it.' Tony's forehead was screwed up into ridges. ‘You didn't see nothing.'

‘I'm telling my father.'

‘If you do,' Tony turned and looked at her, his dark face scowling, I'll break your little white neck.'

Then there
was
something to tell.

‘Tell me.' Isobel ran up behind him.

‘Do me a favour, will ya?' he brushed a hand backwards at her, as if she were a mosquito, or a child.

On the other side of the wall in Tony's yard, when he was turning over wood behind the open shed where his father kept the tractor, Isobel tried again.

He pulled out a couple of pieces of wood and threw them hard on the ground near her feet.

‘Cut it out.'

She did. Tony was the only person she obeyed without arguing. He was her real friend. Different from friends at school who she bickered with back and forth, and strove to defeat.

‘Tony!' Mrs Andrade shouted from the house. They could hear her from the farmhouse when she was in full cry.

‘Yeah, Ma?'

‘Bring Isobella inside. It's raining.'

When the tree-house was mended, Isobel went indoors and sat in the fascinating hot room, which had a carpet on the table and velvet chairs with lace pinned on the arms, and a gorgeously
coloured bead curtain between the dining-room and living-room. If you went through it with your hands behind your back, it massaged your face like rain.

Mrs Andrade let Isobel sew some beads on the back of the fringed jacket she was going to wear when she went to the Martha's Vineyard pow-wow at Gay Head in September.

‘I like it here.' The bead work was easy, big needle and big holes in the beads.

‘We like you to come down here.' Sitting with Isobel at the table, working on the jacket sleeve, Mrs Andrade's face was folded in fat, comfortable creases. ‘Tony always liked to be with kids younger than him. That's okay by me. Better than some of those girls at the high school.' She made a face, snarling as she bit off a thread.

In a while, she gave Isobel a root beer and sent Tony up to the farmhouse to ask if she could stay for supper.

Paul fretted at the traffic which held him up crossing the canal bridge. He badly wanted to talk to Lily.

When she ran out to him, bare feet on wet grass, he asked at once, ‘Did you see the six o'clock news?'

‘No. Why?'

‘My Dad's in a bit of trouble.'

‘On the
television?
What's he done?'

‘Nothing, of course. It's what's being done to him. Come in the house and I'll tell you.'

Before Judge Stephens in Superior Court that morning, two young black men had been charged with assault and manslaughter, after mugging an elderly white man, who died of a heart attack in the street.

Another white man, a witness, had refused to testify because he had broken a probation order which forbade him to leave New York state, and was afraid of bringing more trouble on himself.

‘Leave me put of it,' he had said in court. ‘I'm not going to help the Law.'

Since Even Steven could not compel the man to testify without a court order from the District Attorney, he had to throw out the charges, accepting only a charge of endangerment and attempted robbery.

The black men were free on bail, and hiding from a storm of public protest. Paul's father was accused of being ‘scared of the blacks'.

‘Even Steven?' an angry white man had shouted to reporters outside the courthouse. ‘It's Chicken Steven!'

That afternoon, a gang of white teenagers had set upon a black man in a parking lot and fractured his skull. He was in the hospital, ‘fighting for his life', as they say when someone's body is trying to die. The Judge was accused of ‘setting racial integration back twenty years'.

Paul had gone to Dedham to see his father, but a neighbour told him that the Judge was staying at his club in Boston.

Paul and Lily called him there.

‘You heard about it?' The Judge sounded a bit anxious. ‘Damnedest thing. I had no choice but to reduce the charges against those men, and now you'd think I was the criminal.'

‘Are you all right?'

‘I think so. I'm used to being attacked by people who don't understand anything about the law. I'm going to have some short ribs with old Callahan and get an early night.'

‘Sleep well,' Lily said.

‘I hope.' His voice was rather rocky.

How unfair, after all his years of scrupulous work. How damned unfair, when other men were taking bribes, peddling influence, keeping in with the boys. Paul ought to be up in Boston with him. The evening felt grey and drained of promise. The loose window over the sofa shook in a gust of rain.

‘Let's have a fire.'

Harry had brought in some wood from the barn. Paul built a fire in the big stone fireplace, carefully, so that it wouldn't smoke, and sat by it, weary, in the only chair that was remotely the shape of a human being.

‘You two have a good day?'

He had brought down an evening paper, and was reading what it said about his father. There would be a lot more tomorrow.

‘Great.' Harry handed him a drink. ‘I tried to put the make on your child bride in the barn, but she repulsed me.'

‘Tough luck,' Paul said without looking up.

Dedham Judge in Court Scandal. Racial Violence Inflamed. Manslaughter Charge Thrown Out – ‘Disgusting!'

Late news on television carried the story in some detail, going through the events in court, but skimming over the legal explanation. The black man who had been attacked in the parking lot was shown being lifted into an ambulance. A hospital spokesman said he was in critical condition. There was a five-year-old photograph of Judge Stephens, looking quizzical. There had been some minor racial incidents. Various citizens of all colours gave uninformed opinions.

Next day, Paul went early to Boston and drove his father to work. There was a small angry crowd outside the courthouse. The police cleared a way for the car, but a repulsive woman with hair like a scouring pad thrust her writhing face against the window and screamed, ‘Nigger lover!'

When his father left the court, Paul had to fight to get him through a swarm of reporters. It was frightening, unreal. It was like scenes you saw, happening to someone else. Bystanders shouted ugly things. Paul thought they were encouraged by the television people, to provide better pictures.

More reporters waited outside the house, and a television crew. Before they went inside, Paul's father turned.

‘Give us a statement, Judge!'

‘Get out of my garden.'

That evening, a brick came through one of the front windows. When the phone rang, the Judge picked it up and stood for half a minute listening. His hand was trembling when he put the receiver down.

‘Don't answer it any more,' Paul said.

When it rang again, he knew the kind of thing his father had listened to: filthy, crude. Shaming that anyone should choose words like that, should enjoy such mindless hate.

Newspapers and television stations kept calling. The doorbell rang while Paul was making coffee for his father.

‘Go away.'

Two people took Paul's picture.

‘What do you think about the rioting in Dorchester Avenue?'

‘What rioting?'

‘I guess you don't know. The black guy that the white kids beat up in the parking lot died in Intensive Care.'

‘What do you think… how do you feel… do you think your father's decision…'

Questions were thrown at him. Paul went indoors.

His father had hardly slept. He was feeble and coughing this morning. Paul did not want to tell him about the man dying, but the Judge was watching the news in his bedroom. He looked old and drained enough to die himself.

‘Paul.' He raised watery eyes in a doggy way, nothing like his usual straight look. ‘God help me, I don't know that I can go to work today.'

‘I wouldn't let you. We're getting out of here.'

They drove down to Cape Cod, where Lily had already repulsed two local reporters. At the end of the day, the Judge's clerk called to say that the District Attorney's Prosecutor was bringing forward the case to a grand jury, without the testimony of the cautious witness. The furore died down. Repulsive women and opinionated citizens found other things to raise Cain about, but the Judge had to spend a few days in bed, because his breathing was bad and the rhythm of his heart uneven.

‘I guess this has hit me harder than I thought.' He apologized a dozen times a day. ‘Must be getting old. Shocking weakness. Should know better.'

Each time he said he was going back to work, they persuaded him to stay one more day.

He was sitting with them on the porch, playing cards with Cathy, when the real estate agent came round.

‘I thought I should tell you,' he said to Paul and Lily. ‘You may not be able to rent this house next year.'

Paul's first thought was, ‘I don't want to go anywhere else.' He loved this place. He had not thought farther than coming back here, year after year.

The owners had decided to sell the house and land. ‘That's why I stopped by this evening.' The agent was a pleasant man, tanned and fit, more at home outdoors than in an office, working to support his racing yacht. ‘I thought you might like to hear about it first, knowing how much you love this place.'

‘Oh,
Paul.'
Lily turned to him an eager face that wanted to say, ‘We'll buy it!' without a second's thought.

Paul's heart raced to match hers, but he said noncommittally, ‘How much are they asking?'

It was far too much, out of sight for them. But the sudden dream did not retreat. It filled Paul's mind, although it had no connection with reality.

‘That's a bit beyond us, I'm afraid.' He smiled, keeping his voice level.

‘But we've always wanted to buy a summer place here,' Lily told the agent. ‘I wish it could be this.'

‘So do I. It's a steal, really, for what you'd be getting. These old houses just don't come on the market any more, and where are you going to find an acre and a half of land in the middle of a village?'

‘Need a lot spent on it, though,' the Judge put in, looking judicial, in case the young man thought anyone was fooled by his sales pitch.

‘Sure, but houses like this have been around so long, they can take their time about being done up.'

Paul and Lily did not say anything. They could not buy it. Someone else would. This was their last year here.

‘Well, think about it.' The agent pushed himself upright from the porch rail, and put down his iced-coffee glass. ‘It's not on the market yet. Incidentally,' he said before he left, ‘because this house used to be in the Harper family, the rights to use the beach at Hidden Harbor go along with it.'

All evening, Paul and Lily talked about the house and the beach and what they would have done with the land and the barn, and went on half the night, lying awake for a long time. Cathy still came into their bed sometimes if she woke, so they incorporated her into the mound of their bodies, and went on talking.

In the morning, the Judge came down to breakfast before Lily could take his tray upstairs. He looked better.

‘I'll tell you what I'm going to do,' he said in a slow, instructive voice. ‘I'm going to help you with the down-payment, so that you can buy this house.'

He would not listen to objections. ‘The money will be yours when I die anyway. Why not have some of it now, for your heart's desire?'

He had a way of occasionally using a sentimental phrase in a perfectly straight, serious way. As he looked at Paul, and Lily across the table, his thin mauve lips moved in and out, releasing and then withdrawing a smile.

It took several months of surveyors and lawyers and banks and local officials before the purchase of the house went through, but since it had no proper heating system, they could not move into it for weekends before April or May.

Meanwhile, Lily continued to talk to all the unseen voices at the Day-Nite Answering Service.

‘Dr Reed's line. No, not today. He's in Chicago at the A P A. Day-Nite. Good morning, Elizabeth. Yes, a lot, and one you won't like. Letterman Clinic, one moment please. Vandermeer & Price, one moment please. Day-Nite. I'm on four lines, I'll call you back.'