The Lower Deep (5 page)

He walked into the living room, sat down unbidden, and looked around as she followed his example. "You know, you've done wonders with this place. I should come here more often."

"Don't get ideas. I mean, don't hike the rent on me, because I love it here. My heart would break if I had to move."

"Wouldn't dream," Clermont said, then leaned toward her and let a frown displace his smile. "Dannie, I'm here about Ginny Jourdan. Can we talk about her a little? I guess you know she's a patient of mine."

"Of course, Doctor:"

"Her folks didn't ask me to do this. I'm here on my own."

"I understand."

"But they're patients of mine, too, of course. You might say I'm here as a family friend."

She nodded.

"So tell me," Clermont said, "have they cause to be so worried, Dannie?
Has
the girl suddenly changed all that much?"

"There's been a change. I'm not sure I would call it a sudden one."

Clermont looked at her and waited.

"I'd say it began about a month ago," Dannie said. "Yes, at least that far back. You have to take into account that Ginny has always been a very special girl, extra pretty, extra bright, extra—well, just outstanding. But as a friend of the family you know that. I'm forgetting."

"I wish all seventeen-year-olds were as nice."

"Then about a month ago she began—I guess you'd have to say she began to lose interest. Not
only in her studies, but in all the other activities at school, too. I noticed it but didn't think too much about it because she'd acquired a boyfriend."

Clermont's bushy brows went up. "Oh? Who?"

"A boy named Eddie Forbin. A nice boy, really nice. So I thought she was probably just daydreaming."

"That's what her folks thought."

"When her grades began to fall off, though, I had a talk with her and realized it was serious. Her attitude had changed. Even her attitude toward me."

"You've always been her favorite teacher, her folks tell me."

"She liked me, I'm sure. But little by little she became—what shall I call it?—indifferent? Worse than that, really. Disdainful. Even hostile."

Clermont rubbed his Abe Lincoln beard. Could this whole business of Ginny Jourdan's personality change be an exaggeration? Leonie, the girl's mother, was inclined to be a worrier, and Maurice Jourdan had always gone along with his wife's every whim.

Yet, damn it, the child
had
changed. He himself
had noticed it, the two or three times he had run into her of late. Last time, for instance. They had bumped shopping baskets in the marketplace, and normally she would have said something like, "What's up, Doc? When are you going to break down and get married, so you can send your wife to do the shopping?" But all she'd wanted was to get away from him as fast as possible, it seemed. She'd left him standing there with his mouth open.

"I'm not helping much, am I?" Dannie André said.

"Maybe we're just looking for trouble."

"I don't know what to believe, really. Would you like me to have a talk with her boyfriend and see what he thinks? I know him well enough to approach him." Her lovely face took on a frown. "He's already told me one thing about Ginny that I didn't know. I guess you're aware that some of the kids hang out at a certain Pointe Pierre shop in the evenings."

"The place with the blaring radio. Yes."

"Well, Ginny goes there quite often with the others. But according to Eddie Forbin, she frequently slips away by herself and disappears for a time."

"What?"

"Once he followed her. She walked all the way down to Arise Douce—that cove with the big rocks, you know? Which, of course, is always deserted at night. When he caught up with her there, she was furious."

Clermont thought for a moment. "It sounds to me as though that girl has things on her mind that are troubling her. You don't suppose—it couldn't
be possible that—is this Forbin lad her first boyfriend?"

"Her first steady, I'm sure."

"But you say he's a good kid."

"I can't believe it's anything like that," Dannie protested.

"It's possible, though. Sometimes a nice quiet boy is just the kind a girl can't handle. If she
is
pregnant, it would explain quite a lot about her behavior, wouldn't it?"

"I suppose it would. But that's your department, Doctor—isn't it?"

Clermont looked at his watch and reluctantly stood up. By now he was sure to have patients waiting. "Maybe we've made a little progress. I'll talk to her folks again, first chance I get. Thanks, Dannie."

"Thank
you,
Dr. Clermont."

Wish I were thirty years younger, damn it, Clermont thought as he departed.

A
fter talking to Dr. Louis Clermont and going without lunch because of his bitten tongue, George Benson had spent the afternoon back at the Pointe Pierre pier. To his simple peasant fishermen, most of whom made their own boats or ceiba-tree dugouts, the outboard motors grudgingly provided by the island government were a major mystery.

He had spent the afternoon showing his men how to take one apart and put it together again without having half a dozen pieces left over. "No, I don't think you guys are stupid," he had said in answer to a solemn question. "Can I dance the
Rada
the way you do?" It had seemed to please them that he knew the name of one of their voodoo dances.

The day was over now as he arrived on foot at
Danielle André's cottage. Night had come down on Dame Marie like a warm, sticky-wet blanket that smelled of the sea. Before climbing the steps, he looked at his watch and frowned. He was twenty minutes later than he had expected to be, and losing that much time annoyed him. Every moment with Dannie was precious.

It was his wife's fault he was late. Scheduled to attend a meeting of the church ladies, she had deliberately, or so it seemed to George, postponed her departure until the very last moment.

She couldn't get out of going, of course. This was a country town in a West Indian island, and the church ladies were wives of fishermen, farmers, shopkeepers. As the wife of an outsider employed by the island government she had obligations, just as she had been obliged to acquiesce when asked to donate some time to teaching English at the school. But she hated it.

The cottage door opened to George's quiet knock, and when it closed again he was inside with Dannie in his arms. Everything was suddenly all right again then—except, of course, that his bitten tongue was still giving him fits.

All his other worries fell away, the tensions brought on by his home life fled, and he felt like a man again.

There was an almost magical sensation of peace at moments like this, when this woman freely and happily stepped into his embrace. Sex was not incidental, of course. It would come later. But it was not essential to the first warm glow.

"I'm late," he said when their mouths came apart. "And if that was only half a kiss, it's be
cause I bit my tongue again. What did you do with yourself all day?"

"You bit your tongue again?" Genuinely concerned, she stepped back to look at him. "George, we've got to do something about this." Dannie spoke English as fluently as she spoke French and St. Joe Creole.

"We are, pal. I talked to Dr. Clermont and he's going to run some tests on me Monday morning. What about your day?"

"Well, Dr. Clermont was here for a while."

"Oh? For what?" George's frown showed real concern, too. "Is something wrong?"

"He came about a girl at school."

"Oh." George actually voiced a "whew!" of relief. If anything were to happen to this woman, he wouldn't want to go on, he was certain. She had come into his life only a few months ago, just when he was free of his last illusions and ready to admit that his marriage to Alice was a disaster. In those few months Dannie had given his existence a whole new meaning.

Funny. It was Alice who had brought them together. The girls at school had worked up an evening of St. Joe folk singing and dancing. Having helped design the sets, Alice felt she had to attend the performance, and he had gone along because he was really interested. Rain was falling, so he took her in the Jeep.

The performance over, Alice had volunteered his services in driving Dannie home, saying she would wait at the school until he returned so no one would have to ride in the back. Alice enjoyed dem
onstrating her power over him in such ways, especially to other women.

So Dannie and he were alone together, and something happened. Some magic or chemistry.

To this day he could not define or explain it. It wasn't a product of anything said, for they scarcely spoke. Nor did he touch her at that point, except to take her arm while walking her to her door.

Then the rain suddenly became a downpour, and she stood with him on the veranda while he waited for a lull that would let him return to the Jeep.

A longish time passed while they waited. The rain pounded the veranda roof over their heads and turned the road into a river. And after a while he realized he was standing there in the dark with an exquisite woman who, unlike Alice, was not in any way trying to gain some advantage over him.

It was a novel experience. From time to time their hands or bodies made contact as one or the other moved. In such a situation Alice would have been coy, then turned the coyness into something that made a man feel angry but helpless. Dannie André was another kind of woman.

This different kind of woman had said presently, "We're being a little crazy, aren't we? Why don't we go inside and have some coffee?"

When he departed, an hour later, he still had not touched her except to hold her hand briefly in farewell. But they had talked. Cautiously at first, then with mutual liking and trust, they had talked of things that must have been building inside each of them separately for a long time, crying out for release. It was remarkable how many dragons they had been able to destroy in such a short time. Both knew they would see each other again as soon as possible.

At the school, when he got back there, Alice was being coquettish with the handsome young father of a student and did not even ask what had taken him so long.

"Darling, how much time do you have?" Dannie said now.

"Till eleven, at least. She's gone to a meeting at the church." Actually, he didn't have to be home when Alice returned. He could simply say he'd gone to give one of his fishermen a hand. Many of them worked their boats at night, and it was nothing unusual for someone having trouble to come around in the evening with a plea for help.

Yes, even if he got home before Alice did, he would tell her he'd been down at the pier. Then if some acquaintance of hers mentioned having seen him walking through town, he'd have an out. He almost never used the Jeep when calling on Dannie. Everyone in town knew whose Jeep it was. "Then we have all evening!" Dannie was obviously delighted. "Do something for me, George? It's so wickedly hot tonight, don't you think? Can we go to Anse Douce for a swim?"

George laughed with pleasure. "You're unbelievable. Do you know you're unbelievable? I was going to suggest that very thing. I even have my swim trunks on."

"People in love."

"Nothing else but. And I claim the right to ogle you while you get ready."

"Sexy American. That's what you are."

"Not until you came along, I wasn't. Believe me."

In the bedroom, when Dannie had taken off her clothes, George sat on the edge of the bed and pulled her to him. For a moment he held her, touching and kissing her body, then he let her go and watched while she put on a white bikini that made her look not a day older than sixteen.

"Nice," he said. "Beautiful."

She put her yellow dress on over the swimsuit. "And already I want to be back here, so let's go before I change my mind, huh? You shouldn't have kissed me like that, I guess you know."

Resisting the urge to do it again, George walked her out of the house. It had to be the hottest night in weeks, he thought. That might explain why he, too, had felt such a desire for a swim. All day long he'd been wanting one in the worst kind of way, as though some internal need were driving him to it. And this in spite of the torment caused by his bitten tongue.

Or did the bitten tongue have something to do with the urge to swim?

Why, for God's sake, did he keep biting his tongue, anyway?

There was little danger of their being seen on their way to the cove. Having done it before, more than once, they knew every turn and easily avoided using the town's main street, where a few shops that sold drinks would still be open. Dame Marie had no electric lights except at the school, which had its own power plant. People stayed at home after dark, mostly.