High Tide at Noon (15 page)

But she needed the Island.

S
OME PERVERSE INSTINCT
made her take the road to the harbor, instead of the path toward the woods and solitude. She had dreaded the gossip, but now she was ready to meet it; she would handle it with an easy calm and a head carried high.

As she reached the anchor she saw Johnny Fernandez coming up from his dory, his cat at his heels. He grinned at her cheerfully, if toothlessly, from a face the color of very old, very dirty, brown leather.

“Hi, Juana!” he saluted her. “Well, you brudder bring Mateel back with him, huh?”

“That's right, Johnny.”

“Me and Theresa—” He nodded at the lean tiger cat. “We was out haulin' and we see dem come. By God, she's pretty, dat Mateel! You get a new sister some day maybe, huh?” he added slyly.

“Why not?” Joanna countered, smiling. “She's a nice girl. So long, Johnny.” She patted the cat and went along the road. She was surprised at her ease in answering him. Now for the next one, she thought defiantly.

The village looked drab and deserted in the raw, somber day. There was only the movement of smoke scudding uneasily from the chimneys, and Ned Foster, gray as the weather, getting a pail of water at the well. Joanna walked past the bait house and the boat shop, her hands in her pockets, the wind from the harbor running boisterous fingers through her hair.

It was redolent of salt and rockweed, and she sniffed with a dim stir of pleasure, and stopped to look out between the fish houses at the water. But the tide was low, and a great ledge, completely submerged at high water, now rose before her, black and shaggy with rockweed. It hid Charles' mooring and boat.

It was like a sign, she thought bitterly, and walked on—to see her uncle's wife coming along the road toward her. Joanna felt her skin tighten and her lips grow stiff.

Aunt Mary sailed when she walked. Joanna felt for a moment the same sensation of futile
littleness
she'd known the day she rowed through the harbor mouth in a punt, drifted close to the rocks to watch two young seagulls, and looked up from her deep contemplation of their speckled plumage to see the mailboat bearing down on her.

Only Aunt Mary didn't look half so handsome as the
Aurora B
. had looked to Joanna, after she'd swung the punt's bow safely into the edge of the wake.

Don't let her swamp you, Joanna, she said briskly to herself. . . . They met between the Binnacle and Karl Sorensen's fish house. In the fish house, someone was hammering vigorously.

“Hello, Aunt Mary,” she said, her smile wide and sweet.

“Good heavens, child, what are you doing, out without a hat on? Don't you know this is pneumonia weather?” Aunt Mary's eyes flashed indignantly. “I don't know what your mother's thinking of, letting you run around like that. How
is
your mother today?”

“She's fine, Aunt Mary.”

“Charles is back, I see. He picked an awful day to come out, didn't he? I met him right there by the anchor.” Her gaze sharpened. “He was walking along with Mateel Trudeau. He must've brought her out. Quite friendly they seemed, too.”

“That's not surprising, Aunt Mary,” Joanna said politely. “That they're friendly, I mean. You see, they're married.”

Aunt Mary's astonishment was a powerful and inarticulate thing. Joanna watched her with a little smile. It was very funny and she wanted to laugh aloud. She wished that someone else was there to see her take the wind out of Aunt Mary's sails.

“Imagine that!” her aunt said at last, with a creditable attempt at unconcern. She shrugged and lifted her eyebrows. “Oh, well, I'm not surprised. I kind of had an idea which way the wind was blowing!”

You liar, Joanna thought.

“I suppose your mother's fit to be tied, having Charles bring home a wife—Mateel, at that.”

“Not at all,” said Joanna sunnily. “Mateel's a nice girl. We all like her very much. Well, I'd better get to the store before Pete locks up.”

“Yes, run along, child,” Aunt Mary said absently. “Tell your mother I'll be up tomorrow—I haven't been to see her for a long time.” She resumed her course, her head bent thoughtfully; at Mrs. Arey's path she veered sharply towards the steps.

Joanna, who hadn't intended to go to the store, walked around the corner of Karl's fish house, leaned against the wall and began to laugh. The hammering stopped and Nils came out. He looked at Joanna without surprise, and grinned. “What's so funny?”

“Aunt Mary—she's so—” Joanna ached with laughter. Her eyes were streaming. “She looked so queer!” she gasped, and doubled up with mirth.

“Laughing kind of hard, aren't you?” Nils inquired mildly.

“I can't
help
it!” she choked. Now she was frightened. She couldn't shake off this crazy feeling, it was running away with her. There was a pain in her chest and through her sides. It deepened with each gust of laughter. Through her tears she beseeched Nils to make her stop.

At last he took her by the arm and swung the door open. “Enter, madam. And pick up your feet, or you'll land on your face.”

That was terribly funny. She laughed at the delicious humor of it, and wobbled toward a nail keg, where she sat down. She looked up at Nils with wet eyes, her nose crinkled, her mouth shaking.

“Stop it,” he ordered sharply. He put his hand on her shoulder and shook her hard. “Come on, now, stop this foolishness!”

His stern blue gaze searched out her misty dark one, and held it, and she stared back at him helplessly, while the crazy laughter ebbed away from her body. It left her weak and tired and cold. She was suddenly overcome by her weariness. With a complete surrender to shame, she covered her face with her hands, and began to cry quietly.

Nils walked back to the workbench. Joanna let herself cry a few minutes more. Then she took a long shaky breath, swallowed hard, and mopped at her eyes with her sleeve.

“What a rig,” she said unsteadily.

“Hell, yes,” said Nils, without turning around. “Laughing and crying like a crazy woman. What grabbed you, anyway?”

“I don't know. I couldn't help it.” She found a handkerchief at last, and blew her nose. “But Aunt Mary looked so funny when I told her about Charles. I guess it was the first time anything ever got by her.” She talked rapidly, fingering the handkerchief. “And she won't dare say too much about it, either, not with Jeff and his mess.”

“Here, have a cigarette,” Nils said. She took it gratefully, and moved her nail keg nearer the stove. The fish house was like a quiet harbor after storm; she was suddenly glad of its existence, and of Nils.

He whittled a piece of lath, shaping a button for the door of a new trap, and glanced at her incuriously. “What about Charles?”

“He's married. To Mateel.”

Nils grinned. “So that's why he handed her ashore as if she never got out of a boat before!”

“How did Charles look, Nils? Did he say anything?”

“Oh, he said hello, but he was too busy keeping his arm around Mateel. His jaw was stuck out, sort of.” The knife paused as Nils glanced up at her quizzically. “Know what he looked like? As if he was saying to the whole damn universe, “ ‘She's mine, and to hell with what you think about it.' ”

“How long do you think he'll feel like that? He had to marry her, Nils. Just like Marcus.” The words seemed to clog her throat. “You know Charles, he's always loved his freedom. What if he ever thinks he got cheated out of it?”

“Sure I know Charles, Jo. He liked to take a drink, and play poker, and walk the girls home, but if he's found his woman, she's his for keeps.”

“It was hell when they came to the house. You know how my father feels about the Trudeaus.”

“Sure. And I know how Grampa feels. Well, they aren't much, that's true.” Nils nailed the button to the trap with a series of quick, precise blows. “Jake got run out of his home town in Canada, so they say, and Maurice ain't what you'd call hard-working. But Mateel's all right—she's never run around, anyway. I wouldn't be surprised if Charles knew what he was doing. I'd bet any money nobody's been there before him.”

Joanna stared at her cigarette, black brows drawn and underlip caught by her teeth. “You don't like it much, do you?” said Nils.

She sprang up impatiently and began to walk back and forth between the bench and the stove. “Nils, did you ever see that kind of marriage turn out right, around here where everybody knows about it, and gossips?”

“You're all hawsed up about this, and there's no need of it.” He put his hands on her shoulders and held her still. “Jo, how do you think Sigurd came into the world?” Nils' fingers tightened. “My father had to marry my mother, Jo. And he loved her so much that when she died, he died too. Part of him did, anyway. That's why he's the way he is.”

“I didn't know about Sigurd,” she said.

“Everybody knew about it when it happened. And they talked their damn heads off, but it didn't hurt my mother, or my father either. They made out. They were the two happiest people I ever knew. Jo, listen.”

“What?” Her smile flickered at him, small and soft.

“There's a lot of chance for Charles and Mateel. Of course, I wouldn't want us to start that way—”

“Us?”

“Jo, I've been thinking about it for a hell of a while. There's nothing to wait for: I'm twenty-one and you're nineteen.” His lean cheekbones were suddenly stained with red. “Jo, I want to marry you.”

She stood very still under the weight of his hands on her shoulders, the fingers tightening until they hurt through her trench coat. She searched the face before her with urgent and startled eyes; she saw the way it had grown intent and absorbed, the tiny muscle jerking in one flat cheek, the jaw set like steel. This is Nils, she told herself. This is Nils . . . old Nils . . .

“That's what I want,” he was saying. “I've always wanted it.” His mouth relaxed in a fleeting smile. “Surprised, aren't you? You look white. I didn't mean to scare you.”

“I'm not scared.” She grinned at him. “Golly, Nils, I—I don't know what to say.”

“You don't have to say anything. Just think about it.” He let her go, and she leaned unsteadily against the bench. Nils said, “I picked a devilish time to tell you about it, didn't I?”

“No,” she said absently. “I'm glad you told me. Got another cigarette?”

Nils wants to marry me, she thought. He's in love with me. . . . She said it again to herself, trying to make it real. Nils is in love with me. When I used to row his peapod he was in love with me. That night when I met Simon—

All at once she felt confused and sad. He held a lighted match to her cigarette, and as she watched him in the tiny glow, it was as if she had never really looked at him before. Each detail stood out with a new and strange clarity.

His look moved up and caught hers, and for the first time in her life, her eyes avoided his. For an instant his whole face tightened. Then he grinned suddenly, the quick boyish grin she'd always known.

“O.K., Jo. What is it?”

“I'm sorry Nils,” she said, seeking painfully for the exact words and not finding them. “But—well, I'm not in love with anybody, don't you see?” She could feel her cheeks fire.

Nils went back to his whittling. “All right, Jo. Don't say anything more.”

“But I—” She stopped helplessly. There must be something I can do or say, she thought; but at the same time she knew there was nothing. For once in her life, she was almost glad when Gunnar came in.

His cheeks rosy from the wind, a fine sparkle in his eyes, he surveyed them and sniffed.

“Ha,” he said benevolently. “You workin' hard, Nils? I bet you get dem new traps out tomorrow, the way you been drivin' 'er.”

“Hello, Grampa,” Nils said.

“Hello, Mr. Sorensen,” Joanna said in a clear, polite voice. Gunnar twinkled at her.

“Well, Yoanna. You helpin' Nils, huh? He works hard, dat boy. Half a trap a day.” Gunnar's tone grew rich with sarcasm. “He works fast. So fast he maybe gets his new traps set out by the time Closed Season begins.”

Joanna felt the familiar prickly anger Gunnar always inspired in her. Nils whittled imperturbably. “Got to make the buttons, Grampa.”

“David can make the buttons.” Gunnar's crinkling glance took in Joanna's cigarette. “Smoking, is it, Yo? First time I ever see a voman smoke, it vass on Wharf Street, and she vass a—”

“Sit down and rest a while, Grampa,” said Nils quietly. Joanna fastened her coat and went toward the door.

The old man had opened the stove door and was looking at the fire. Over his shaggy head Nils looked at Joanna, his face dispassionate, and she looked back with a sad and beseeching little smile. Stay friends with me, Nils, she thought.

“So long, Nils,” she said aloud.

T
HE RAW GRAY WEATHER
held for a week, and the Island seemed to have forgotten that it was April. Waking each day to lowering skies and wailing gulls, to the dark wall of the woods, the pewter-colored harbor and the keening wind, the Islanders talked yearningly of what they would do when the weather turned fine again. It seemed as if April, having given them only an inadequate glimpse of its usual soft blue loveliness, might slip away under this pall of gray cloud. Even the birds were late this year.

In the Bennett house the men were irritable, denied the outlet of work and a chance to get healthily tired. Donna had her household preoccupations, and she and Joanna talked constantly and carefully about everything under the sun—everything but Charles. But Stephen couldn't get out to his traps while there was such a heavy chop, and there wasn't nearly enough work in the shop to keep him occupied.

Once Donna said, “If only the sun would come out,” with a little ghost of a sigh, and Joanna echoed her bitterly. It became a symbol. If only the sun would come out, the world would begin to turn again.