Shorecliff (12 page)

That was all Charlie and Francesca heard before the buildings cut them off from the street, but in all likelihood the next words were “Some of the Hatfield crew, I’d bet. Good-for-nothing rich brats.”

They arrived at the rattletrap panting and laughing. The night had been a success, and all they needed now was a clean getaway. They leapt into the car, the doors screeching on their hinges as they banged them shut, and Charlie started the engine.

Francesca told Isabella that they laughed like lunatics all the way back, and I was even more envious of that ride home than I had been of their ride toward Pensbottom. There are few things more satisfying than reliving danger when it is safely over. No car followed them on the road out to Shorecliff, no shouts or horns threatened to cut short their victory. Indeed they passed no car on the road at all—the route to Shorecliff almost never saw any traffic. Charlie drove at a slick pace. He was so wound up that he pressed hard on the accelerator and made it to Shorecliff in a record twenty-five minutes.

But when they pulled up at the fence and turned the engine off, they weren’t laughing anymore. The lights in Shorecliff were ablaze, and they knew they hadn’t gotten away with anything.

“It was the most crushing disappointment,” Francesca said later, and as Isabella told me the story I could feel the apprehension that must have hit Francesca and Charlie when they saw the lights shining over the lawn. It was not as if they were going to face one or two angry parents: up to nine adults might be waiting for them, reprimands at the ready.

“The first thing I wondered,” said Francesca, “was how they could have found out. I assumed that someone had checked our beds—or maybe that someone had ratted.” Here she gave Isabella a murderous glance and then laughed. “Not really, of course. I didn’t think for a moment of what it actually was. And that made it ten times more awful. Especially when Aunt Caroline described going downstairs. But anyway,” she added, pounding her fist on the bed, “let them scream! It was worth it. We had a wonderful night.”

What had happened at Shorecliff was as follows. No one had woken up to check on Francesca or Charlie. Isabella, after lying in bed for half an hour thinking of all the adventures they might have, had fallen into delightful dreams. The house got bigger at night, in the darkness and the silence. The rooms expanded into gargantuan caverns, and time moved more slowly. Even the curtains in the open windows seemed to billow against the sills at half speed. Everyone was asleep.

Then, in all that silence, the phone began to ring. Only the adults could hear it; the children on the third floor were too far away. Even imagining that shrill sound in the dead of night gave me the creeps. The number at Shorecliff was, of course, private. But the fact that the house had only one phone and that it was situated in the ornate wooden booth in the hall gave the illusion of its being a public phone. Everyone knows how mysterious it is to hear a public phone ring on the street, and when we received calls at Shorecliff the effect was reproduced on an only slightly less startling scale. During the day, we could easily laugh off the sensation that the outside world was reaching in to disrupt us; most of the time one cousin or another would dash over and snatch up the receiver after the second ring. But to hear that phantom phone ringing in the middle of the night was another matter. My mother said it jerked her out of a sound sleep. She lay rigid, willing it to stop. In a few minutes Aunt Margery appeared in her doorway and whispered, “Caroline? Who could be calling us at this hour?”

“I’ll answer it,” said my mother. She was very brave, that summer and always. I’ve never known her to turn from a crisis. But the ringing phone rattled her all the way to her bones. She couldn’t get rid of a dread that flooded through her from the first ring. As she walked down the stairs, her fears crystallized into a certainty that the phone was ringing to inform her of my father’s death. It was even more courageous of her to keep walking toward what she thought was her own bereavement, but she did, faster than ever so she could get the shock over with.

She felt an overpowering relief when she picked up the receiver and heard, after the operator’s mumbled introduction, an angry man’s voice saying, “Is that the Hatfields’ place? This is Charlie Ballantine. Two of your brood have just broken into our church.” It took her several moments and more than one repetition before she grasped what he was talking about, but at last she understood. The relief she felt at my father’s still being alive quelled most of the anger she would have felt toward Francesca and Charlie. For a long time after she hung up the phone, having apologized profusely and promised an in-person apology from the children the next day, she sat on the bench in the phone booth and rested her head against the glass.

But it occurred to her, while she was sitting there, that she had fallen in with Charlie Ballantine’s accusations without making any attempt to defend her own family. This realization energized her. She raced up the stairs, knocked on Francesca’s door, and flung it open. When she saw the empty bed, she knew at once that Mr. Ballantine’s description—“two young hooligans, the girl dark-haired, the boy blond, obviously Hatfields!”—had been correct. “The most awful thing,” she told Francesca later, “was that it didn’t occur to me to doubt what he’d said. I knew you were so careless and reckless that it was not only possible but probable that you’d gone off to Pensbottom in the middle of the night.”

My mother had just enough time to rouse the other adults—with the exception of Uncle Eberhardt, who refused to leave his bed—and gather them in the kitchen before the rattletrap returned. Even Uncle Kurt was there, sleepy and resentful in his blue pajamas, his hair sticking straight up. He told me later that it had taken “a hell of a long time” for Francesca and Charlie to enter the house after they’d gotten out of the car. “But I’m not surprised,” he said with a grin. “Something like that happened to me once in the army, and when you’re heading toward trouble from a superior, nothing can speed up your feet.”

With half-frightened, half-defensive expressions, the two delinquents finally slunk into the kitchen. By this time most of the children had woken up, and they were ranged on the second floor by the stairwell, listening with all their might. The only ones still in bed were Yvette and the Delias, who sometimes slept through uproars, much to their dismay. I was there, clutching the railings of the banister. As soon as I woke up I gravitated toward Isabella as the person most likely to tell me what was going on. In a moment she had acquainted me with the main points of the case, and I strained to hear the rise and fall of the rebukes for so heinous an offense.

Aunt Rose was the one who began the scolding. Aunt Margery had tried to claim the role of spokesperson, but it had been decided in a hurried colloquy that she would overstate the case and become too agitated. Aunt Edie was rejected for the same reasons, to her annoyance. Charlie told Tom later that even though he had been “terrified” during that hour in the kitchen, the sight of Aunt Edie’s embroidered nightcap was so absurd that he kept wanting to burst out laughing. “I guess it was mostly just nervousness,” he said, “but, my God, she looked like a bad-tempered mushroom in that cap!”

The first question Aunt Rose asked was “Did you just drive to Pensbottom and break into the church?”

Both cousins had too much sense to deny the charge, and they nodded. Francesca said, “We didn’t break in. The door was open.” Then she asked what both of them had been dying to know ever since they’d seen the lights: “How did you find out?” She told Isabella that it had seemed for an awful moment as if the aunts had witchcraft on their side.

My mother answered. “Charlie Ballantine called just now and said he saw two Hatfield children emerging from the church and acting very disrespectfully on the steps. Do you know Mr. Ballantine?”

After a moment Francesca shuffled her feet and said, “He must have been that other Charlie, Charlie. The one who was running after us.”

“Running after you?” Aunt Margery repeated, her voice rising. “You started a chase?”

“Not on purpose!” Francesca protested. “We weren’t doing anything—really! We just wanted to go into Pensbottom, and we stepped into the church, but we didn’t mean to do anything wrong.”

“You haven’t even begun to get into trouble about the car,” Rose said.

Her warning started a barrage of adult commentary. “You’ve been unbelievably irresponsible,” wailed Aunt Margery.

“Do you think we make up rules just to bother you?” asked my mother.

“I’m disappointed in you, Charlie,” Uncle Frank said, adding the first man’s voice to the clamor.

“Damn stupid,” said Uncle Cedric.

“If you’re going to do something dumb, at least don’t get caught,” Uncle Kurt said, and he couldn’t resist smiling. That turned the scolding onto him. The adults shushed him violently, and for a few moments Francesca and Charlie thought they were going to get off lightly.

Finally Rose waved a hand. “Let’s get the facts straight,” she said. “Charlie Ballantine said that you, Francesca, claimed to have been praying for your dead parents in the church. Is this true?”

“I was only joking,” Francesca said, her voice breaking.

“Thank God Loretta isn’t here,” Aunt Rose muttered.

It was then that my mother told Francesca and Charlie about how frightened she had been when the phone rang. My mother could be shattering when she was upset or angry, mostly because she never lightened the solemnity by even the hint of a smile. Francesca felt a wave of guilt and started to cry.

“I’m sorry, Aunt Caroline!” she blurted out. “I didn’t know that would happen. I didn’t mean to scare you!”

“Of course you didn’t know it would happen,” said my mother, “but that’s exactly why it’s dangerous to act so thoughtlessly. You can never tell what will happen because of impetuous behavior.”

There was a moment of silence, during which Francesca sobbed dramatically. I suspected her of enjoying her position as the penitent maiden—one never knew how much guilt Francesca truly felt, and it seemed unlike her to cry so easily.

Then the silence was broken in an unexpected and, for us eavesdroppers, a thrilling way. Aunt Edie, who had said nothing up to this point, suddenly burst out, “I want to speak! I’m just as much related to these children as all of you are, and I ought to get a say in what happens.”

Aunt Rose snapped, “What are you talking about, Edie? Don’t be absurd.”

“Don’t get excited, Edie,” said Uncle Cedric. “They’re both safe—that’s the main thing.”

Edie, however, paid no attention. “None of you understand!” she exclaimed. “I’m apparently the only one who can see what’s happening. And if you think I’m going to stand by while that shameless jezebel leads the other children into sin, you can think again. It’s clear to me that Charlie has been seduced by this girl here, who is an exact replica of Loretta as far as I’m concerned. And I won’t have it in this house!”

On the stairs, we were all impressed by her tirade. But, as was usual with Edie’s rants, we couldn’t take her outrage seriously. No one would deny that Francesca was a seductress—even I knew she was, though I didn’t understand the more sordid implications of the term, and when I looked up “jezebel,” the definition was “wife of Ahab, Phoenician”—but it was an insult to Charlie to suppose he had no choice in the matter.

He was the first to say it. “That’s not true, Aunt Edie,” he protested. “I’m as much to blame as Francesca is. I drove the car, after all.” A tinge of pride crept into his voice.

“She lured you into it,” Aunt Edie proclaimed. “And I’m not surprised. That girl has been on the warpath of lust ever since she got here. What did I say in the first week? What did I say about a house filled with children at this age?”

“That’s enough, Edie,” said my mother.

At the same time Uncle Frank said, “Edie, you’re being positively indecent. Let’s not blame Francesca for anything more than what actually happened. Charlie’s my son, but I’m clearheaded enough to see when he’s at fault. You made a mistake, son, and I hope you regret it.”

“I do,” said Charlie. In reaction to Edie’s hysteria, everyone else was acting very upright and reasonable and man-to-man.

“I promised Mr. Ballantine that we would take you to Pensbottom so you could apologize to him personally,” said my mother. “Are you willing to go?”

“Of course,” said Francesca angelically. Inwardly, she later reported to Isabella, she was seething. “That stupid, snotty little man,” she said. “The day I apologize to him with any sincerity is the day I die.”

Nevertheless, Aunt Margery and my mother drove Charlie and Francesca into town the next morning. By daylight, Pensbottom lost its last meager trappings of romance. The main street was covered in dust because of a recent heat wave, and the buildings that huddled on either side looked like two rows of the proverbial small potatoes. “Uncle Harold was right,” Charlie said when they came back. “Pensbottom is obscene. It wasn’t worth it.” But Francesca said, “Oh, what did Uncle Harold know?”

Charlie Ballantine was standing on the steps of the church, self-importance pouring out of him. “So here are the Hatfields,” he said. “I’m glad you saw fit to come and apologize—not too high and mighty after all. As the church warden for Pensbottom, I will be very happy to accept your apology for trespassing on this sacred property.”

“That will do, Mr. Ballantine,” said Aunt Margery. From the moment he started talking, she had bristled with indignation. “My son and niece are here to say they’re sorry, and that’s all. We’re not here to listen to your comments.”

“Well, I see that turning out destructive children hasn’t affected your pride. But perhaps the children themselves will be more polite?”

My mother took Aunt Margery’s arm to prevent her from saying anything.

“First of all, we didn’t vandalize the church,” Francesca said.

“But,” said Charlie, “we apologize for entering it at night.”

“Even though we didn’t know it wasn’t permitted.”

“And we’re sorry we were rude to you.”

“It won’t happen again,” said Francesca. She was openly wearing a malicious grin at this point, but Aunt Margery and my mother were so offended by Charlie Ballantine’s manner that they didn’t scold her.