The Seasons Hereafter (22 page)

Oh, some of them are all right, she thought carelessly. It's a profession of its own, being a Bennett or a Bennett's Islander. Sometimes, in the store or at the sewing circle, there were tiny instances, so short that one almost doubted that they'd happened, when she was startled by a recognition that her own attitudes, viewpoints, and vision were not absolutely unique. Sometimes signals flashed a readable code that showed the relationship, however tenuous, between her and them

She thought cynically, Well, we're all women. We have the same component parts, it's how we use them that's different. . . . The sparks of acknowledgment always made her uneasy, as if she were in danger of losing her nationality; her country had been swallowed up so many years before that she didn't recollect ever having been in it. She used to read about displaced persons with a dry hard rage; she knew she had suffered nothing in contrast to them, and yet she felt that if she had any kin in the world it was those people, and she did not want to become like anyone else.

It was all right to pretend, in fact it was necessary. But one must never fall into one's own trap. She remembered this as she talked with Liza Bennett about books. She admired her own fluency very much. Liza named off authors and books, and when she came to one Van hadn't read she jumped up eagerly to find it in the bookcase. “His style is so peculiar, the first few pages are likely to put you off. But he's worth persistence.” She came back, carrying four books. “You should have all four at once, but be sure to read them in order. And you'll want to keep referring back.”

“I've no education, you know,” Vanessa warned her. “I've just worked my way stack by stack through the Limerock Public Library.”

“But that's education! Listen, I know people with degrees who read only the bare minimum in college and haven't opened a book yet. You could give them an inferiority complex as far as being well-read goes.”

Vanessa gave her what she hoped was a modest smile and drank her coffee with real enjoyment. She'd got Barry's breakfast and fixed his dinner box before sunrise, and then had walked across the island to the accompaniment of the dawn chorus of birds and engines in the cold sweet air; she had hunched among the rocks at this end of Schoolhouse Cove and watched
White Lady
move out from the wharf at the other end of the cove.

From this distance Owen was an anonymous figure in oilskins, but she had kept her eyes on him till they blurred, and then the red globe of the sun rising up over Windward Point had blinded her, and blotted the boat and the man out of existence. She heard the engine speed up and, blinking her eyes against the purple blobs left by the sun, she saw the boat vanish behind one of the gulls' nesting islets.

Then she had crossed the Homestead meadow and gone into the woods, and tried to find the place where she and Owen had gone from the dance. But though she saw where the land rose, she found no signs of a track. Wherever she went the way seemed to be barred by blow-downs or thick new growth. She was soaked by cold dew, and the sun had not yet struck down into the woods to warm them. At last she followed a path that went through the orchard of ancient trees around which the spruce forest had grown up in a high wall. The trees were beginning to bud and were full of wood warblers that hushed as she passed, and then began again. The path ended at an iron gate between cement posts, and beyond lay the small cemetery.

She had no morbid thoughts about this, though it occurred to her as she stood looking at the stones that Maggie Dinsmore would have been in a fever of foreboding about finding no path in the woods but one which led to a cemetery.

Her walk had ended up at Liza's, with coffee, brioche, and Laurence Durrell. She couldn't help admiring the variety of her morning so far, as if it were a particularly complicated piece of needlework she'd created. Now she had established herself in Liza's mind as a passionate reader, and she'd keep that picture intact if it meant borrowing, reading, and discussing every book on Liza's shelves. Once at a sewing session Liza had said of someone, “Well, at least he
reads
!”

Steve Bennett's wife came in and Vanessa got up, collecting the books. “Oh, don't go,” Philippa exclaimed. “We never have a chance to talk.”

“I'm not much of a talker,” said Vanessa.

“Don't worry, you won't get much chance,” Liza said. “Sit down for a few minutes. At least for one cigarette. Here, have some more coffee.”

This was the difficult part; she wanted to rush out, but to leave the two behind meant they'd compare notes. Between them she was trapped. She laid the books back on the table and sat down.

“There,” Philippa said, smiling. Listening to her voice as she and Liza talked, Vanessa tried to channel her discomfort into observation. The Bennetts went in for wholesome women, it appeared—especially schoolteachers—who had a sense of humor and who never spent long nights in tantrums or nightmares or the unmoving, undreaming sleep that was worse than the other two. . . . She sipped her coffee, lids downcast, and saw against them the blazing blue of the bay and Owen's shoulders. The smell of coffee was overlaid with the orangey pungence of crushed ground pine. She wanted to laugh, thinking how shattered these two would be if they had the slightest idea of what sat at this table with them.

“Well, have you heard anything about Gina?” Liza said.

“No, but there's a new chapter.” Philippa glanced at Van. “We should fill you in on this. Otherwise you'll hear all sorts of versions. And I want to talk about it so I'll stop thinking of Willy's face.”

Van composed herself into a suitable attitude for listening. Philippa went on. “Gina went to Vinalhaven with us, you know. She was going to stay with an aunt, buy some clothes, and go to the movies. Willy wanted her to go, in fact he asked us to take her, to give her a little change. And Gina was bored all the way except when she talked to Steve.” She burst out laughing. “She had on false eyelashes. It was all she could do to lift the weight, so it gave this sort of slumbrous effect whenever she looked at Steve. He said afterward it made him nervous.”

“Poor Gina,” said Liza. “There's something pathetic about her.””

Philippa gave her a sidewise look. “Is there? . . . Well, the aunt met her—looking pretty apprehensive, I might add—and Steve told them what time to meet us on Sunday afternoon, and that was that. And on Sunday afternoon, no Gina, but the aunt, now frantic. Gina had run away to Limerock on the Saturday afternoon boat.”

“With somebody?” asked Van.

“No, she just went. Apparently the sight of the city across the bay was just too much for our street sparrow. The aunt had been running up enormous telephone bills calling everybody she could think of, but nobody had seen so much as one of those foolish eyelashes.”

“In the old days,” Liza said, “Gina's just the type who'd disappear into the white slave traffic. You know, you meet a motherly woman with a concealed hypodermic, and you wake up in Buenos Aires, the toy of Latin lechers.”

“I don't know,” said Van. “They might make her take a bath first, and she'd prefer death to dishonor.”

Liza laughed, but Philippa looked depressed. “According to Steve's low language she's probably shacking up with somebody, if those false eyelashes haven't worn her out by now. No, it's Willy who's the tragedy. He was down at the Eastern End to meet us when we came home last night. His smile practically lit up the dusk.”

“I take it back,” said Liza. “Gina isn't pathetic. She did something. She
acted
. You know something had to happen there, Philippa, the thing's been mulling too long. I'm sorry for Willy, but maybe this is the best thing in the long run.”

“Willy was desperate, making excuses for her. She must have had a toothache, he said. In fact she'd been complaining of one, poor kid, but she was brave. He kept telling us that. I didn't know whether to cry for him or shake him.”

Kick him, thought Van, and you still wouldn't get any reaction. I know, I've got one. Sometimes he gets mad, but it's like a fly buzzing on a window.

“So this morning,” said Philippa, “
he's
gone. He saw Nils on the shore, asked him to tell Steve when he saw him, and went in on the mailboat.”

“For good?” Van asked.

Philippa shrugged. “If Gina wants it, that's what it'll be. So it won't be the best thing for Willy, Liza, because he'll be making nowhere near the money he makes here, with that insatiable little monster wanting more and more. Good God!” she burst out angrily, “what kind of eyesight do these boys have that turns these grubby little wretches into Helens of Troy?”

“It's a matter of chemistry, dear,” said Liza briskly. “And I've seen more than one bright attractive girl losing her head completely over something from under a rock. What
you'd
pick out for them they wouldn't give a second look. They rush into disaster like lemmings.”

“Oh I know that. But I feel for Willy, and for Steve too, to be practical. Willy's got the makings of a good lobsterman, and Steve's got him trained to where he doesn't have to stand over him all the time. He says Willy has a real instinct for it. He's being charitable about the whole thing—you know Steve—but he knows darn well that if Gina tells Willy not to come back, Willy won't.”

Vanessa gathered the books and stood up. “I've got to be going. Thanks for the coffee and conversation and the books.”

Philippa said, “Do you think we're being pretty ruthless about Gina? Me, particularly? Liza has qualms of pity for her, by spells.”

“Not pity so much as guilt,” said Liza. “We don't know a lot about her background, but we can imagine it, can't we? None of us knows what we'd be under the same circumstances. The sight of her wandering around in those hideous sweaters and rollers, and that bored curl of the lip you get when you speak to her, can spoil the landscape for me, I admit it. But she jabs my conscience.”

“But why?” Vanessa asked bluntly. “You can't do anything for her. You couldn't even be a friend to her. She looks down on everybody.” How well I know, she thought.

“She
pretends
to look down on everybody,” said Liza. Vanessa felt a small stinging surprise. “I think we all remind her of teachers or welfare workers or church visitors, everybody who's tried to corral her in the past. She's suspicious as a cat gone wild. So she calls us squares, or whatever the word is now, and sneers, all because she's not like us. And I know what that sounds like!” Liza defended herself. “Smug—conceited—insular—”

Van sat down again. “What makes you think she wants to be like you?”

“I didn't say like
me
, I said like
us
. She thinks we're on the inside and she's outside and never can get in. If we try to bring her in, what passes for pride with her digs in with all its claws.”

“Maybe she likes it on the outside,” said Van. “Maybe she does really despise you, for not knowing what she knows, for never having to claw your way up instead of being brought up.” Stop, stop, she warned herself. They are watching you. Next they will be thinking about you. “Of course I don't know,” she said with a shrug. “We're just theorizing, aren't we?”

“I'm inclined to go along with you,” said Philippa. She turned her coffee cup slowly in the saucer, gazing into it as if for a fortune. “Gina could very well feel superior to us because she thinks we've been sheltered and protected all our lives and have never known any hard knocks. Well, we can't do anything for her and she's gone. And I'm afraid Willy's gone too. I don't like to think of what'll become of him.”

“Willy's as far beyond help as Gina is,” said Van, getting up. “It isn't as if he'd ever be anything, with or without her.”

“Only a good lobsterman,” said Philippa gloomily. “If he'd come back, he could live with us. He did before he married Gina. He's really a nice boy, Van.”

“But he'll only pick up another Gina,” she pointed out.

“This time I go along with Van,” Liza said. “Willy's a born masochist. Steve had better put an ad in the Limerock
Patriot
and see what he gets.”

“He's thinking of trying an educated chimpanzee,” said Philippa, and they all laughed. Van left after that, richly amused by their gullibility.
We. Us
. One thing with claws had got at least partway inside; and they hadn't guessed. The only thing that could possibly disturb her this morning was that they surmised what creatures existed out there and sometimes thought about them.

B
arry went out after supper, but came back soon, walking fast. “Herring,” he said tersely, pulling on his rubber boots. “Sounds like the harbor's full. We'll have to get set before the moon rises.” He gathered his oilskins from the entry. “Owen's got Jamie Sorensen and Charles's boy. He wants me along.”

“So they all come when he whistles,” she remarked.

“Huh?” He was burrowing through a drawer, trying to match up cotton gloves. “Oh hell, I've got some new ones in the fishhouse. Hey, make a pot of coffee by and by, huh?”

“No,” she said tranquilly, walking away from him with her finger marking her place in her book. “It's no emergency tonight. I'm not having a bunch tramping through here. I'm going to bed early and I want to sleep.”

“Okay,
okay
!” He gave her a revengeful look and went out, slamming doors. Next to having her make a call with him, he wanted to lead noisily into his own house, shouting at the men to sit down, calling her “woman” and quite possibly whacking her on the rear.

Left alone, she couldn't settle down to read after all.
Alexandria
called for something different from this. She blew out the lamp and went outside. The power plants throbbed gently around the harbor. Using both hands and feet she climbed among the pale-gleaming chunks and slabs of rock that rose along the harbor side of the point. After a while a band of spruces muffled the sound of generators. She sat high above the harbor, and the village lights seemed very far away. Suddenly she was homesick for the old, different isolation, for the tough-walled privacy in which she had moved, wanting no one to breach it, not even herself. She bowed her head heavily onto her knees.