The Seasons Hereafter (30 page)

“What about Brig?”

“He's in Bangor. Exposed himself in the bus station one night. Not that he had anything to scare anybody with, but—” She scribbled on her check pad. “Anyway, they decided he needed to be taken care of. I cleaned up his room good with Lysol, and papered it. Let it to a girl who works in here. She's not on now. . . . You having dessert?”

“No, just coffee. I wish you could have a cup with me.”

“I do too, but that's life.” She went to relieve the cashier. When Van paid, they had a few minutes more to talk, but there was nothing else to say, at least for Van. “Oh, I cleaned up a couple more rooms and let them,” Brenda said. “The other front room downstairs, and the side room upstairs, the one with the bay window. I got some second-hand furniture and scrubbed the places up, and now I get fifteen dollars a week for them, from respectable people.”

“Good for you,” Van told her, freed at last. It was one word which had done it;
respectable
. Light and air had been let in, the hours of brooding silence washed away, the caverns of dream destroyed. It was no longer hers.

Three men approached the desk, and Van turned to go. “And I've got a couple of boys cleaning up the yard,” Brenda told her hurriedly. “It'll be real nice this summer, without that jungle.” Even the lilies of the valley must be gone. “Come down and see me, Van,” Brenda called. Van waved and smiled without answering, and left.

The sensation of freedom stayed with her. She walked slowly along Main Street, looking in the windows at flowers, furniture, sporting goods, jewelry, clothing, shoes, finally at books. For Barry to tell her to buy books was one of the greatest gestures he could make. But she had her own ideas of fairness, and since she had spent more on her clothes than she'd intended, she wouldn't buy books. It was enough of a present to walk into the shop where she had never been before, and say nonchalantly, “I'm just looking around.” No one called her a deceiver or an impostor. She was alone with the books except for an elderly man ruminating happily among the nonfiction. She fingered a few bindings, unable to concentrate at first on anything inside until the fire died down and she was able to read the first page of a novel.

She was drawn into the story; it wasn't until someone brushed against her and apologized, that she was jolted back. She didn't like being so close to strangers, but her pride was too strong for her to rush out like an eccentric solitary.
Which I no longer am
, she told herself with, sarcasm. She moved on to the paperback racks and remembering guiltily the funeral pyre of the old high school volume, picked out an anthology of poems, and a book containing two stories by Joseph Conrad.

There was a men's shop next door, and she saw a blue sleeveless cablestitch pullover in the window. Philip Bennett had one which Barry admired the way he admired all Bennett possessions. She went in and bought one for him, and a matching shirt in woven plaid cotton.

In the five and ten she bought things for the Campion and Dinsmore children. It was mid-afternoon now. At the corner where she would turn off, she stopped and looked anxiously up and down Main Street, promising herself that if she saw him in the crowd she wouldn't wait to speak to him. She thought she spotted him standing outside a shop window full of musical instruments, and she remembered his saying that Holly wanted a guitar. She waited for him to turn his head; he had a way of doing it that always roused in her a reaction both tender and sensual. But when he did, it was a stranger with a red weathered face and a huge beak of a nose. She felt the cruel disappointment of a child who has been deceived, and she wondered how she could ever have taken this man, even turned away from her, for Owen. The incident shook her own opinion of herself, as if she'd discovered a flaw in her love. She walked fast up the side street toward her room.

When she was halfway up the stairs, Mrs. Marshall called from below. “Mrs. Barton, somebody called and left a number.”

The number meant nothing to her. She had never known anyone to call in Limerock. She called now because Mrs. Marshall expected her to. Owen answered.

“H-hello,” she stammered, sitting down. In the kitchen Mrs. Marshall and the elderly lady moved leisurely about. She stared at them with fascination, listening to Owen's voice by telephone for the first time.

“Listen,” he said, “I can't meet you anywhere today. I planned on it, but I've run into somebody I can't shake.”

She couldn't think of anything to say.

“Are you all right?” he demanded.

“Yes. But this is a busy place, and I shouldn't hang onto the phone for too long.”

“I get it. Eva's close by and God knows who else. But are you all right? I mean, you aren't too hawsed up because I can't meet you, are you? Not scared or worried, anything like that?”

His concern melted her. She wanted to say so then and there, to murmur I love you through this magical means of communication and send sentimental and idiotic fancies floating along the wires. “I'm fine,” she said. “Why wouldn't I be? I've got every reason in the world for it.”

“So have I. What are you doing tonight? Going to a movie?”

“I've got a good book. I may stay in and read.”

“I'll be thinking of you. Have breakfast with me tomorrow morning. Be at the Crow's Nest at six-thirty and I'll stroll in and be neighborly.”

She laughed at that, wanting eagerly to reassure him. Barry's tenderness annoyed her, Owen's turned her weak and desperately yearning. “All right. Thanks for calling. I hope the measles are better in the morning.” Mrs. Marshall was tiptoeing through the hall with an apologetic grimace. “Good-by.”

She hung up and said, “Well, I didn't really feel like going there for supper tonight anyway.”

“Young ones got measles?”

“Yes, and I've never had them.”

S
he paid Mrs. Marshall that night, and when she came downstairs in the morning, in slacks and raincoat for the boat, the sleeping house had the curious anticipatory hush that came with this time of day. Outside, the city was still given over to birds and the scents of damp lawns and early blossoms. Gulls planed over the elms where it was already full day, and their urgent cries suddenly set off some excitement in Van, like a summons. She hurried.

In the restaurant there was the smell of coffee and the early morning look of waitresses, some cheerful, some yawning, being kidded by men on stools at the counter. Van went to a booth where she could look up at the hotel's mansard roof in sunshine and the pigeons preening and courting.

“Good
morning!” There was a warm aroused burst of laughter from the girls. Vanessa sat quietly, looking at her cup, but she felt a fierce pride.

“Well, here's a face from home!” Owen came toward her. “You going out today? You must be. That's the only reason for getting up early in this goddam place.”

“Yes, I'm going out. It looks like a good trip, too.”

“Oh, it'll be finest kind. Mind if I join ye, or do you like to sulk over your breakfast and try to get up enough courage to face the day?”

She nodded at the bench opposite, and he slid in behind the table. A waitress came to them, a girl with a towering hairdo that made Vanessa think of Gina. “Sweetheart, what do you keep up there?” Owen asked her. “Your virtue?” Her make-up cracked into a youthful grin and she could do nothing better than jab her pencil at him and exclaim, “Oh,
you!”

When she left he said, “What did you do last night?”

“Went to bed and read
The Secret Sharer.”

“Appropriate title for right now. Good story?”

“I don't know if it's good or not. I kept on reading, anyway. I think I got what he was getting at. The
feel
of it.”

His breakfast came and he said to the girl, “You're a dear girl. When you grow up I'll come and claim you as my own.”

“I'll put that down in my date book.” Unexpectedly a tide of color rushed up her throat and into her face. Smiling broadly, she turned and hurried away.

“Dazzling females before breakfast, even.” said Vanessa. “Is that your form of wake-up exercises?”

“After last night I have to do something to prove that I'm alive.” He shuddered. “Drank too much, smoked too much, playing poker with a bunch of pirates. They were out to take the old man.”

“And did they?”

“Let's say I held my own.”

“Spoken with true modesty.” They smiled at each other. He lifted his coffee cup toward her as if in a toast. But they said nothing else about themselves. The talk was desultory.

When they finished and went out, he said, “How about walking down to the boat?” She nodded, and he took the bags and went back along the block to where two taxis were parked, and put the bags in one of them.

They turned down toward the harbor. In the street there was thin but constant traffic to and from the waterfront businesses, but they were the only walkers, along with occasional pigeons, sparrow, and cats.

“I wanted to talk to you,” he said, his public manner abruptly gone. “When we get back, it'll be pure hell for us, but nobody's going to know it. Agreed?”

“Of course.” She gave him a sidewise glance of mild surprise. “Did you think I was going to yell the truth at Barry the minute I got off the boat?”

“Christ, no,” he said irritably. “But I don't think we ought to try to see each other right off. It'll be hard to act halfway normal before or after. I know. I'll do pretty well if I stay away from you.”

She looked straight ahead. The street shimmered oddly in the blaze of the climbing sun. “For how long?”

“Till I tell her. And I'll know when the time is right for that.”

“Right for which of you?” They stopped at a place where the street passed by an inlet of quiet water occupied by paddling gulls, and stood by a rough rail looking down. You can see their feet move, she thought. “It's never going to be right for her,” she said coldly. “You'll keep putting it off.”

“I'm not thinking of when it's right for her. Good God, Van, I'm not even thinking of you when you come right down to it. I'm concentrating on
me
. It's my survival. It's come to that. I've got to live out a little of my own life, not somebody else's
as
somebody else, or the trying.”

The rawness got through to her, she saw it in his face. Out here on this public place she was shaken enough to want to take hold of him, to comfort him, as if that were the only way to comfort herself. No, not comfort. If ever a man were less in need of comfort—no, he would do it. He had come to that point.

“Barry's another reason why I don't want us to say anything until we're ready to walk out, clip and clean. The minute you tell Barry anything he'll be off to tell the whole thing to Father Philip.”

“And then the family'll be on your neck. I know. You'll never survive that,” she said.

“No, not the family then, just Phil.” They began walking again. “He'll think it's his duty, and looking at it from his viewpoint, it will be. But I don't figure on justifying myself to anyone, chewing it over, getting put on the defensive, argued with, reasoned with, appealed to—”

“You're furious already,” she told him. “Why? Do you really feel, underneath, that they could break you down?”

“No! But once anybody gets hold of it, it's public property—
we're
public property—the whole goddam shooting match is handled, fingerprinted, breathed on—do you want that?” He didn't give her a chance to answer. “Or wouldn't you give a hoot? You'd be showing 'em all, wouldn't you? Good enough for the arrogant bastards.”

“I don't want to fight with you, Owen,” she said gently. “You've got the hardest thing to do, and I want you to do it the way you want to. When it's all over, there'll be the island. Maybe we'll be there when the strawberries are ripe.”

He stopped on the sidewalk. “
You
,” he half-growled. “I could take hold of you now, and to hell with the world. How do you know how to do it? Swear back at me, be sarcastic, and I can almost convince myself I don't even like you, there's no love involved, just me out dragging my wing for one good illegal diddle when I've got the chance dropped in my lap. Then you pull the other on me, that voice, that look, straight past the noise and the bluff, and you say, I know what he is, and what scares him, and what makes him want to howl like a lunatic, and what eats at him till he's ready to run. You see all that and the rest and you say, So be it, I love the bastard anyway. It's in your eyes. So then I could go to hell for you.”

“You may yet,” she said. “But I'll be with you. It will be easy. Because you know me the way you say I know you. I never wanted anybody to, until you. Now I'm committed. It's as simple as that.” His eyes glistened, and his hand moved toward her, then back and into his pocket as a panel truck rattled down toward them. “You're damn right we'll be there when the strawberries are ripe,” he said. The truck went by and somebody touched the horn. “Link and the mail,” he growled without looking around. The taxi that had their bags followed, carrying passengers. They began to walk again, silently agreeing not even to brush even a sleeve.

“
The world is too much with us;
” Vanessa said drily.

“
Late and soon
,

“
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers
,” said Owen. “I told you we had one teacher for five years out there who was crazy about poetry. That one had a real racy line in it.”

“
The sea that bares her bosom to the moon
,” said Van. They both laughed, and this carried them for quite some distance.

“She was a great old girl, Minnie Lufkin,” said Owen. “She pounded the stuff into our stubborn heads, and what we couldn't understand then we still remember. It's like money in the bank, I told my kids the other day. Rich was grousing about having eight lines to memorize, and I gave 'em a few rousing stanzas of
Marco Bozzaris
. The old man surprised them. Surprised himself too.”