The Seasons Hereafter (17 page)

Kathy came over and said Terence's aunt was going to sit with the children so she and Terence could go. “She's mellow because Foss's boat was saved the other night,” she explained. “You going?”

“I doubt it,” said Vanessa, “I never was one for dances.”

Kathy looked disappointed. “I'd think by the way you moved that you'd be a good dancer.”

She smiled and shook her head. “Two left feet.”

Kathy stayed a little while longer, talking about the storm and the rescue of Foss's boat. On her way out she met Barry coming in.

“See if you can't coax Van into coming to the dance! I've been trying to talk her into it, but I can't get anywhere.”

He said something which made her laugh, then came in to where Vanessa was. She went on with her knitting while he stood watching her. Then he said, “What crap have you been telling her?”

“Nothing except that I wasn't going to the dance.”

“Why aren't you?”

She sighed. “Your clothes are ready. All you have to do is take a bath and change.”

“If I go up there alone you know what everybody'll think.”

“That I didn't come, that's what they'll think. They'll know damn well I didn't stay home to entertain a lover. And you can have a good time prancing around Gina.”

“That's it!” He bounded at her, shaking his finger in her face. “That's it!” he shouted in triumph. “You've got a hair crossways on account of me fooling around with her the other night. I saw your face, you can't fool me! You're jealous of that little tramp.”

“I wasn't jealous. I was amused. Afterwards Gina told me she'd made fools of two old men who were both drooling to climb aboard.”

“
Old
men?” His voice climbed. “
Me
? And who wants to climb aboard
that
? Hell, no knowing what kind of a dose she's got. And Owen was just raising hell with her, same as I was.” He puckered his face into dry virtue. “I thought it might wake Willy up.”

“The Willys never wake up. They just get their hearts broken. She's Helen of Troy to him, and he's so grateful when she gives him a kind word that he falls on his face.”

“You're probably right, Van,” he said eagerly, perching on the window sill. “You know an awful lot about people. I was telling Phil just the other day, I'd trust Van's judgment before I'd trust my own. She knows people, I told him. I dunno whether it's what they call intuition or second sight, or what, but
she—knows—people
. That's all there is to it, I told him.”

“And what did he say?”

“Not a word,” Barry said. “He just looked at me. Well, what could he say?”

“That's a good question,” said Van, and Barry burst into laughter.

“Honest to God, that humor of yours.” He leaned toward her and became winningly intimate. “Ah, come on to the dance, Van. You've got something to wear. You'll look like a million dollars. And put on some of that smelly stuff I gave you last Christmas.”

She stopped knitting and looked seriously at him. He leaned forward again, his face crinkled and smiling. “No,” she said, and he sat back as if he'd just thrust his nose into a thistle.

“All right then, by God I'll go by myself.” He kicked her box of filled needles halfway down the sun parlor and went back through the house, kicking things all the way.

“Your hot water is in that kettle on the stove,” she called after him. “If you want to eat first, your supper's in the oven.” He didn't answer but something crashed. She shrugged and went on knitting.

When he had finally left the house, leaving a pungent wake of something called “Buccaneer” behind him, she leaned back in her chair suddenly exhausted, hands and arms aching, her head light. Conflict with Barry never used to do this to her. She had simply never allowed conflict, it wasn't real to her; her life was lived apart from him and from everybody else. Now that she'd been forced out of that protective world, she felt that she was disintegrating.

The process had gone far enough so that she couldn't get back into the cave or under the rock. She had books to read but to curl up in her bed was an impossibility. She walked around the house hugging her elbows, feeling for the sharp bones as if for reality. She went out the back door and heard the generators throbbing, and next door a lamp was lit in the Campions' kitchen, where Terence's aunt and uncle were watching out for the children. But in spite of this evidence of survivors she couldn't get rid of the sensation of having been left alone on an unanchored planet. Idiot, all planets are unanchored, she ridiculed herself. It's just gravity or magnetism or something that holds them in orbit.

A cold scent of rockweed and sea rose from the shore. The stars grew brighter atop the spruces. The field was filled with shadow, as if the sea were silently flowing into it from Long Cove and School-house Cove at the same time. No illumination picked out the windows across at Hillside, and in this new freedom she allowed herself to see Owen, not leaning over Gina's shoulder but coming up from the dory among the boulders and squinting at her in the glow of noon.

He had gone to the dance. That was why there were no lights. They'd have the children along too, and he would go home early, in his pretense of being tamed, when the children got sleepy. She ran into the house and got ready without lighting a lamp, dressing in the petticoat and full skirt she had ordered from the catalog when she felt indulgent toward Barry. It was moss green, and fastened around her waist with a wide belt. She wore the gold shirt, and sprayed on a mist of scent from the bottle Barry had given her at Christmas. “That name is French for lily of the valley,” he had explained. “I thought maybe you'd like it.”

Now the delicate fragrance reminded her of the plants the Bennett child had brought. They were still in the entry. Oh well, I'll stick them in somewhere, she thought as she put on lipstick. Poor little things, it's not their fault.

She had no coat, and had to put on the raincoat; yet she cringed away from the touch of it on her neck and arms and against her calves, as if the garment held the infection of the other personality.

Walking around the harbor, she met nothing but a pair of cats playing. There were no lights up at the Bennett homestead, none in Philip's house. The Dinsmore kitchen was lighted, and Tiger flew hysterically off the doorstep, stopping short when he recognized her.

Once in a while she saw another lighted window, but most places were dark. As she turned into the shrubby lane that led toward the clubhouse, she began to hear accordion music. She didn't know what she would do when she got there, but she kept walking toward the sound.

A thicket of young spruces half-filled the dooryard of the building, screening her in the black coat from the light shining through windows and the open door, and from the men who stood around on the porch. There were more men altogether, inside and out, than Bennett's Island had; a crowd had come from Brigport because the night was so quiet and so fine. She stood unseen in the lane, annoyed, making tight fists in her pockets. She should have been prepared for those who came only to watch and spin cuffers with the other watchers, and those who stood outside when they weren't dancing, to smoke and pass the bottle and dirty jokes around. She heard their feet shuffling and shifting on the porch, and saw them silhouetted against the dull-glowing windows. Someone laughed loudly above the romping rhythm of March and Circle. Dancers flashed by the door like designs in a kaleidoscope; suddenly she saw Barry whirl into view in a set with Joanna, Nils, and Kathy Campion.

While she was watching, the dance finished. Puffing and laughing, people went to their seats, children began to slide on the floor and were called back, and a small stream of men came out the door, lighting cigarettes on the way.

From the front step, a cigarette butt curved through the dark like a small meteor, and just as the accordion and violin began a waltz she realized that someone was coming out to the lane. She thought in ridiculous terror that she might put her arms over her face and thus not be seen, but the man was there too soon. Through the music she heard the words but not the voice. “Who's there?” Before she could hide her face with her black sleeves he was close enough to touch her.

“
You
,” he said under his breath. “Wait a minute.”

He turned and went back across the porch and into the hall. She felt no longer clammy or constricted as she watched for him to appear again against the light. His head almost brushed the top of the doorframe. “Where you bound for, Cap'n?” someone called alter him. “You got something stashed away to sweeten the evening?”

“For God's sake, don't broadcast it!”

“Hey, Cap'n, you mind if I dance with your wife?” That was Barry from the doorway.

“You go right ahead. Tell her I trust you both.” He came on quickly, took her by the elbow, and turned her up the lane, propelling her rapidly without speaking. To be pushed and controlled like this was new because she had never allowed it.

They went toward the pale blur of the Fennell house under the low thick stars. The breath of the spruce woods lay cold and heavy in the air. Their footsteps slid on the grass as they entered the woods. The blackness was entire. He put his arm tightly around her waist and they went forward steadily. She was not able to see where was going, and she didn't care. We could be ghosts! she thought with the joyousness she sometimes felt in dreams when she floated airily through dark places with no fear or obstruction.

Her feet were quite soaked and so was the hem of her skirt, but she was not cold. They began to climb up through the spruces where there was enough space among the trees for her to see the stars thin out the black. Suddenly they came to a clearing that had such an atmosphere of height it could have been on a mountain top. The dreamlike sensation persisted; this place bore no relationship to any other she had ever known, she knew that by day it would not exist.

He took his arm away. His shirt was lighter than his face, but when he moved his head his eyes caught a spark of light from above. The only sound was their breathing as they rested from their swift passage away from the village and up the hill. He moved and a lighter flicked on, held at eye level, and their faces sprang to life against the night, burnished and spellbound as if until then they had been spirits and had just now been materialized; as if the radiance sprang from inside them and not from the minute light.

His eyes moved over the roughened frame of her hair, the long throat, the sheen of colors where the black raincoat fell open. “Well,” he said, smiling. “
Well
.”

“What did you tell her?” It was like being letter-perfect in a part, not having to think.

“I said I had a headache and was going home. I get them when I'm short of sleep. She wasn't surprised. What about Barry?”

“He didn't expect me. I said I wasn't going.”

“So that's why he's been goddamming the women to hell all over the place. Then you changed your mind. Why?”

“I went out and saw no lights over at your place.”

The lighter clicked shut and they were dematerialized again, in a thicker darkness than before. “If I hadn't come out just then would you have come in?”

“I don't know,” she said honestly. “I was losing my courage. If you'd asked me to dance I don't know what I'd have done.”

He laughed without humor. “I wouldn't have, never fear. Of course if I'd got you in a Liberty waltz—”

“Don't worry, I'd have gone out with a headache then,” she assured him. “I couldn't stand to have you touch me with anyone looking on.”

“Don't be so damned honest,” he said with despairing violence. “As long as you don't admit it, it's not so. I told you the other day there was an end to it.”

“But you didn't believe it.” Her voice was flat. “Did you? You've been losing sleep enough so your wife doesn't question your headache.”

“I don't know what in hell I'm doing with you up here. I don't know what in hell you had to be standing out there for, wearing that whatever it is. That's what I smelled first.”

“Lily of the valley,” she said.

“I was just going down to take a look at my boat. Then I'd have gone back. I'd be dancing with my wife now, or taking my little girl through Lady of the Lake.” She could tell he was making wild, wide gestures in the dark. She stood immobile, her hands clenched in her pockets.

“Go back now,” she said. “You can make believe it never happened. You can start again, coming out to go look at your boat, and I won't be there. I didn't lie in wait for you, whatever you think.” She sounded bored and distant, a triumph of achievement because—there was a thick beating in her throat that threatened to overcome her voice. She turned her back on him. “The only thing is, I can't find my way out of this place.”

“I'll take you back,” he said behind her, “when it's time.”

O
n the southeast shores the deep swells rolled in one after another out of the fog and the invisible bell buoy clanged. The wind was wet on this side, soaked the hair, and turned sleeves sodden. But away from the sea the fog was irradiated by the sun, the grass was dry; it was very green now, with the flat blades of blue flag beginning to show in marshy spots, and there were strawberry blossoms in the lee of old stone walls and of boulders. They starred the turf that lay thin and warm on its granite bones in Van's clearing.

“They won't come to anything,” Owen said.

“
Long night succeeds thy little day
, /
Oh blighted blossom
,” said Vanessa. He rolled over on his stomach to look at her where she sat with her back against a tree.

“What's that from?”

“A man's epitaph on his baby daughter.”