High Tide at Noon (26 page)

The store was warm, and lit by lanterns that caused mysterious shapes to materialize where in brighter weather there were only prosaic coils of rope, and rubber boots. The glass toggles hanging from the ceiling gleamed crystal and amethyst and sapphire. Below the floor the water swished and chuckled.

Pete Grant was at the telephone, mammoth in wet oilskins. Nathan Parr sat on a nail keg beside the pot-bellied stove. He looked pleased to see Joanna. “Hello, young woman. How's that stubborn, stuffy old man of yours today?” Nathan had a particulariy disrespectful brand of humor.

“He's fine,” said Joanna. “Good.”

“Good, is he?” Nathan's laughter wheezed and rattled. “Are ye sure of that? Never knew there was any good Bennetts but dead ones. That's what my brother used to say after your gaffer run him off'n here.”

Grant struggled with the telephone, alternately ringing and roaring “Hello!” with no apparent result. Joanna said above the uproar, “What did he do—your brother, I mean?”

“Somethin' about women, if I remember rightly. My brother had a fondness for 'em—failin' of the Parrs, only I didn't come by it. But Tommy—he'd chase a pretty petticoat from hell to breakfast.” Nathan looked interestedly at the toggles. “Seems he went ashore with a load of mackerel one day, and after he sold it, and moistened his parched throat a mite, he went up 'n down Wharf Street invitin' folks to come for a sail. Mostly folks of the female persuasion.”

“Hello,”
said Grant furiously. “Goddamit, why don't you
answer?”

Joanna moved closer to Nathan. “What then?”

“Well, the whole kit 'n caboodle ended up out here, feelin' very mellow. And your grampa was on the wharf.” Nathan rocked with reminiscent laughter. “He threw 'em out of here quicker'n white lightnin'—and every time I come up this wharf I think of it. Tommy down below with his ladies—Wharf Street variety—and the cap'n up there with that black Bennett face on 'im, and a way of usin' his tongue to blister the hide off ye without cussin' once. A proper gentleman, your gaffer was.”

Grant slammed the receiver into place and stamped across the floor. “Now Pete here,” said Nathan, “he ain't no gentleman, or he wouldn't of swore into that instrument.”

“Goddam thing's always out of order,” Grant rumbled.

“No wonder, with you always blattin' into it. If you stood on the shore and hollered across the bay, they'd hear you jest as good. Might have to do it yet—the gover'ment's liable to take out the cable if you keep on sullyin' the innocence of them young Coast Guard boys with, your bad language.”

“If I could raise one o' them young Coast Guard boys to answer once in a while, it'd be a help,” said Pete. “Nary a peep out of them. What'll you have, Joanna?”

A moment ago she had been laughing with Nathan, but now she felt cold and humorless. “I was going to ask you to call up the Rock—maybe they can see the boys from there, if they're coming.”

“Sorry, girl, I can't get a thing. Cable's out again.”

Joanna turned toward the door, and Nathan said after her, “Don't worry, them boys is part gull. They'll be all right. And jest think of the fun you'll have when the Coast Guard comes to fix the cable.”

Joanna smiled, but it was an effort. She shut the door behind her and stood for a moment looking across the harbor. The wharf cat came out of the shed and rubbed against her ankles, making inquiring noises. She leaned down and scratched his ears. A man came around the corner from the path, his yellow oil jacket and overalls bright and glistening in the gray day.

“Hello, Joanna,” he said pleasantly. It was Simon Bird.

She straightened up and walked past him, saying, “Hello.” It would have been superbly noncommittal except for one thing: the wharf cat had left the remains of his daily pollack in a usually secluded comer by the rain barrel. No one had ever before disturbed his fish when he left it there. Joanna, trying to walk between Simon and the barrel without brushing against Simon, stepped on the fish and slipped.

It was humiliating beyond speech to find herself thrown thus into Simon's arms. She thought distinctly,
damn
that cat! . . . and tried to twist herself free. Her face was as hot as fire, and Simon's arms were like steel around her. And he was laughing.

“Let go,” she ordered him. If only she could get one hand free to slap his mocking grin from his face.

“Aren't you goin' to thank me?” he asked gently. “I saved you from crackin' your head open.”

“Thank you.” She was suddenly icy-calm, waiting for him to release her. For a moment that seemed like an hour he held her motionless, her arms pinned to her sides; the narrow, smoky-gray eyes looked down at her brilliant ones, and stopped at her mouth.

Simon Bird kissed her. She fought, but he only tightened his grip, and nothing could shake the hard urgency of his mouth on hers. She had never been kissed like that, with a savage hunger, with
hatred
. For it seemed to her, even as she pitted her slender wiry strength against his, that he hated her as much as she hated him.

At last he let her go. Shaken and breathless, feeling murderous, she stared at him. Her lips burned, there was a sharp stinging in the lower one. She flicked it with her tongue and tasted blood. Simon laughed, and there was unusual, excited color in his face.

“Yes, it's cut. It'll be a long time healing.”

She turned quickly and walked along the path, her hands clenched into fists in her pockets. Some day I'll kill him, she thought with deadly clarity. Her lip hurt, and Simon's voice followed her.

“That's something to remember me by.” She heard his soft laughter before a great gust of wind came across the harbor and drowned out all sound but itself.

Sometime in the night she awoke with a start from troubled dreams. There was something strange . . . She lay there in her little room under the slanting roof, and the close silence pressed against her face.
Silence
. That was it. It was perfectly still.

She slipped out of bed, and opened her window, left closed when she went to bed because of the beating rain. The breath of the Island blew gently upon her, cool and fragrant with the fresh sweetness that follows rain. There was still a subdued wash of surf on the Island's shores, but there were the stars, clear again. Orion had climbed high.

The rhythmic flash of the Rock light caught on Uncle Nate's white house. What time was it? Joanna wondered, kneeling by the window. According to the stars, it was long after midnight, and there was a ghostly streak of light over the eastern sea. And faintly—so faintly that if you strained to hear it you couldn't hear it at all—she heard a distant throbbing, as evasive as a failing pulse.

She dressed quickly and went downstairs, expecting to find the kitchen dark and cold. But the scent of coffee met her at the door, with lamplight and a crackling fire; her father stood by the stove, talking softly to Winnie.

He looked up at her and smiled, but she knew he hadn't slept much. “Father,” she said swiftly, the words tumbling out in an eager rush. “Father, I'm not sure, but I think they're coming.”

The streak over the eastern horizon had widened, and flushed delicately pink, and the darkness was fast melting away when the throbbing grew clearly audible to those on shore. Men who were going out early to haul, others who had awakened like Joanna to hear the distant engine, a few of the women and children—they stood about the beach talking and shivering a little in the cool air.

Kristi said jubilantly, “I knew they'd make it all right.”

But
are
they all right? Joanna thought. Jud Gray said, “Comin' up Old Man's Cove now. Sounds weary, don't she?”

“Limping home.” That was Karl Sorensen. “Just as I said.”

Joanna stood rigidly still beside Kristi, who was shivering, and chattering about the big breakfast she'd fixed for Nils. The mention of food turned Joanna's stomach. And all the while the engine was growing louder, until someone on the old wharf yelled, “There she is!”

There she was indeed, coming in sight around the point; she was weary and slow in the gray light, a gaunt, tired shadow of the trim boat that had gone out so gaily a few days ago, with a fair wind to help her, and her jigger sail snapping. Limping home. Limping home with her dory gone, with a splintered stub of a mast, as if she was so tired she could hardly go the last few yards, as if she could barely slip toward her mooring; as if she would never again be a gay and leaping and vital thing.

She reached her mooring, and something like a sigh went up from the watchers. Joanna felt a blinding rush of tears. She could hardly see the figure kneeling on the bow to pull up the mooring chain.

“There's Nils,” Kristi said. Now was the time for Joanna to steel herself, because Sigurd and his dory were alongside, and soon they'd be ashore. Three of them, back from Cash's. Or two . . . The sound of oarlocks was loud in the stillness as the dory slipped across the pale water, pink and mauve and silver in the growing sunrise. It came past the old wharf, it skirted Alec's boat, and a few more strokes brought it to the beach.

Besides Sigurd, there were three men in the dory. Joanna stood very still as the others went down to the water, as the hands went out to pull the dory up. She saw her father and Philip, down there, Kristi and David. Without moving, she watched and listened. Nils was laughing, and he looked natural. Tired, perhaps, but not too badly. Owen needed a shave—his beard was very black—and there was a rip in his damp jacket. He greeted his father sheepishly.

And then there was Alec. Owen took him by the shoulder and said, “Cripes almighty, has this boy been seasick!”

“I noticed you hanging over the side a couple of times, Cap'n Owen,” Nils said dryly. “We're all pretty much of a mess. We thought we'd ride the storm out, but it pretty near rode us to pieces. Threw us all over the cuddy to hell and gone. We've been since noon yesterday coming home.” He glanced out at his boat. “There aren't many can take it like her,” he stated simply.

“Where's all them lobsters?” someone demanded maliciously.

“We had plenty, never fear,” said Alec with a grin. “But they were so damn homesick we threw 'em all overboard again.” A laugh went up, and even Owen smiled faintly. It had stung him, Joanna knew, to come home defeated, after all his planning and bragging.

He and Alec came up the beach with Stephen and Philip. “Jo's got a big hot breakfast ready for you boys,” Stephen said, “and then you can get some sleep.”

“That sounds good, sir,” Alec answered.

Owen said, “It seemed out there as if there wasn't any such thing as sleep, or quiet, or being warm. The stove fell over—you couldn't keep a coffee pot on it anyway—and a port got smashed in so the place was awash before we could fill up the hole. It was pure hell!”

Joanna watched Alec move up the beach. She ached at the sight of his gaunt pallor and his weariness. Like the other boys, he wore clothes that had been soaked with sea water and were still damp. There was a bruise on one temple and a scratch on his cheekbone, with a trickle of dried blood. He stumbled once, and staggered. She wanted passionately to take him into her arms and cradle his head against her breast until he fell asleep.

He saw her then, and paused. “Hello, Alec,” she said, her voice suddenly husky. “I see you got back.”

“I got back,” he repeated somberly. “But I haven't any money.”

She was aware of her father and brothers watching them oddly. But it didn't matter. Nothing mattered except that her man had come back to her.

“Never mind the money. You're still alive and that's what counts. You're home again.”

Alec smiled. It filled his tired, heavy eyes with light and sent a deep radiance across his thin face. “Home again,” he said simply, and without hesitation she moved into the possessive circle of his arm.

I
N
O
CTOBER THE ROSE HAWS BLOOMED
red against the gray rocks where the wild roses had bloomed, fragile and pink. The gulls drifted high over Schoolhouse Cove, and Joanna watched them from her bedroom window, her hair loose on her bare shoulders. It was the afternoon of her wedding, but she could always find time for the gulls.

They were her friends, they had always meant freedom to her. They came and went, the whole wide universe was for them; space and sun and air, an eternity of sea and sky. They mated, and raised their awkward speckled young, but soon the young birds flew, and they were all free together.

As Alec and I will be free, Joanna thought. For she never once doubted that this day was a step into freedom.

She started as Kristi came in. “Joanna, aren't you dressed yet?” she asked in a shocked voice.

“I'm dressing, Kris,” Joanna said guiltily. She had made the simple white dress herself, and she had small white chrysanthemums, from Donna's garden, for her hair. It was Alec who wanted the white flowers.

“I wouldn't be so slow getting ready if it was my wedding!” Kristi said. She left the room quickly, and Joanna was alone again. She finished her dressing without haste. She wasn't nervous, and that was queer, but there was really nothing to be nervous about. She was going to marry Alec, she had probably known it from the moment he set foot on the wharf at Bennett's Island, and that was nothing to have cold and shaking hands for.

The white dress slipped smoothly over her head, the fabric cool and silky against her warm brown skin. Joanna stood before the small mirror over the chest to put the white flowers in her hair, and remembered a night when she and Alec had walked to Sou-west Point in the moonlight, in a hushed and sleeping world. The woods were motionless and black along the Island's crest, and the rocks gleamed along the shore; the sea stretched toward the end of the world with a vast and infinite calm, but where it murmured around the rocks it was liquid light, forever changing and twinkling and whispering.