The Seasons Hereafter (7 page)

She hoped she could move back out of sight before he should tip back his round dark head and see her up there, his logical enemy, the adult audience who spoils everything. She stepped back cautiously, waited, took another step. He swung his legs over a granite angle, leaned out and looked down, then pushed his seat forward and dropped to the next level. A large gray striped cat appeared out of the spruces above him and made a questioning sound. He said without looking back, “You just mind your own business, Louis.”

The cat began to follow him down. He was almost to the wet rock-weed now. “Any crabs I find down here are mine, Louis,” he said clearly. “And that's my starfish. That big one we saw from the wharf. You remember.” Louis joined him on a steep slant down which the boy moved on the seat of his pants and the palms of his hands.

Louis stopped at the bottom of the ledge and considered the thick growth of wet rockweed below. The boy jumped off into it. His sneakers flew out from under him, he cried out in surprise and anger rather than fear—it seemed to Vanessa—and shot toward the water, catching at the slippery weed as he went. Once he caught a good handful and it slowed him slightly; he struggled to right himself, but the strand gave way and this time he pitched headfirst, somersaulted, and hit the water. Louis crouched on his belly, staring and lashing his thick tail. Van waited for the child to rise out of the water, bawling in shocked anger, but he did not. After a moment she saw the two halves of his blue denim bottom showing on the surface.

As if in a dream of moving fishlike through a crystal element, she saw that there was a ladder on this side, the rungs too far apart for a small child, which was probably why he'd gone around by the rocks after he'd sighted his starfish. She hoped they were strong enough for an adult, and started down, each foot feeling through the slime for a worm-eaten slat that might give way under her weight. None did, though her moccasins slid on the greasy wood, and the rungs ended far enough above the water so that she had to let go, trusting to land on solid barnacled ledge rather than in mud. The water closed icily around her legs, and she wondered dispassionately if she'd been driven out of the house this morning for the purpose of dying at low tide in quicksand.

She went ankle-deep into mud, but not quicksand. The pool was deeper than it had looked—almost to her waist; and she waded across it, her stomach quivering each time she put her foot down and felt it sink so far and no farther. Her jeans wrapped her legs like sheathings of lead. She reached the boy and picked him up, finding him unexpectedly solid. He didn't move. She dangled him face down over her shoulder and scanned the woods on the point, the wharf, the sky itself. She wanted to shout but she could not. A purple finch sang out loudly from a spruce top, and Louis looked into her eyes with a penetrating green stare whose intelligence mocked her. He padded back and forth along his dry ledge like a tiger in a zoo.

“All right,” she said to him. “I'll try, you damn thing. But if you were any good you'd fetch somebody.” She laid the boy on his stomach on what seemed a level surface, remembering from God knew where something about turning the face to one side and something else about the tongue. Her hands were wet and dirty, but so was his face. She pried open his teeth and found his tongue where it should be. Then she felt around through the humps of weed for a place where she could plant her knee. Back at Seal Point she'd climbed over rockweed often enough. . . . She found what she was probing for, got one knee securely into the niche, and leaned forward on her stomach, groping for something to grip, while above her head Louis began to purr enthusiastically.

“I can do without a cheer leader,” she grunted. If she could heave herself onto the ledge where the cat was, and somehow get hold of the boy and drag him up...Louis's head bumped hers ardently. Close to her ear his purr was an asthmatic roar. Half-kneeling, half-lying in the rockweed, she felt along the edge of his rock and discovered a small depression—enough to press her fingers into—and began to haul herself up.

All she saw of the man were the slacks and loafers jumping from ledge to ledge, and they could have been an hallucination to be ignored in this desperately personal struggle. They were certainly less real than the cat. She got herself up onto the ledge and stretched down her fingers toward the back of the boy's jacket, but the man was already reaching for him. His face was suffused with dark color and rigid as a stone mask. He did not look at her or speak but went back up over the ledges carrying the child.

A woman had come down part way behind him. She put out her hands to the bobbing black head, and then she pulled her gaze away and glanced toward Vanessa. “Are you all right?” she asked in a low voice. In an absolutely white face her eyes looked as green as the cat's, and Vanessa was positive they didn't see her.

“Yes, I'm all right,” Vanessa said loudly. The woman turned and ran up after the man. Her fair hair shimmered against the dark boughs before she disappeared among them. The silence returned; if it were not for chilled flesh, soaked clothes, and mud-coated moccasins, the whole incident could have been a fantasy. Nice to have proof that I didn't dream it, she thought. I'm not that far gone.

Louis had followed the woman, and she rather missed him. She felt for her cigarettes but they were soaked. The front of her jacket and shirt were wet where she'd lain in the rockweed. She would have to go home, but she hated to uncoil herself and straighten up where the cold air could reach her. She sat hunched passively together for a while, wondering if it had been a dead child she had held. Unexpectedly she felt a tremor at the idea.

“Good Lord,” Mrs. Sorensen said from behind her. “That's gratitude for you. Nobody gave you a thought.”

“Why should they?” Vanessa didn't look around. “I was alive, obviously.”

“Well,
he
is now. He's mad because he lost his chance at the biggest starfish in the world. Mark is swearing, and Helmi is making coffee as if twenty minutes ago she weren't positive her only child was dead.” She came down beside Vanessa, holding out a tweed topcoat. “Here, put this on and come on up to the house.”

“I think I'd better go home.”

“You can't walk around the harbor in those clothes. And my brother will lug you into the house by force if you don't come.” As a shudder seized Vanessa, she said gaily, “You
see
?”

There was no way out, with the woman standing over her like a jailer holding a horsewhip instead of a coat. Vanessa loosened the grip on her knees and shuddered again, not completely from cold. It seemed as if the time lengthened out beyond all reason. She could see it stretching to the breaking point like an elastic, and if Joanna Sorensen hadn't yet made up her mind about Vanessa, this could do it. As if I cared, Vanessa thought wearily. I don't know why I ever did care. If I hadn't, I wouldn't have gone tearing out of the house like Mrs. Bearse's aunt in her change-of-life fits, and walloped myself right into this.

But she was freezing now, and she unfolded herself and stood up, staring sternly under the wharf at the harbor, and held out her arms for the coat. “There,” said Joanna. “Come on. I could do with that coffee, couldn't you? Good Lord, if anything ever happened to that child we'd all be sick, but I think Mark and Helmi would die. They waited about twenty years for him.” Her hand under Vanessa's elbow was not to be escaped. Relentlessly it guided her along the path up through the spruces to the house. Vanessa considered making a break for it when the path branched off down the hill to the store, but the moment was lost when Mark Bennett opened the door and came out.

The stone mask had been replaced by a smile which took years from him. His black hair was gray at the temples, but his eyes, like his sister's, were lively and young. “I guess I didn't act half-civilized down there,” he said. “But he looked dead to me.”

“To me too,” she said gruffly.

“Just say it,” said his sister. “Don't keep her standing here she's—”

“I don't know how to say thank you.”

“—blue as a whetstone.”

“Take her to my room, Jo,” Helmi called from the kitchen. “I've put out some things.”

Van stepped out of the mud-laden moccasins and Mark took her arm and led her in, saying, “Hadn't she better have a stiff drink first?” Didn't they ever keep their hands to themselves? Her flesh was crawling.

“You let her get out of those clothes,” his wife said. The little boy came out of the kitchen in dry clothes, with the cat hanging limp from his arms, and his father said, “This is the lady who hauled you out, you young hell-bender. . . . He wasn't supposed to stop off anywhere. Swore to his mother he'd go straight to the house and get his dump truck and come back to the store. Well, he knows the score now. If he hadn't got his come-uppance by heaving up his guts, I'd have blistered his bottom.”

“Oh, stop growling,” said Joanna. She took Van upstairs and left her in a white-walled room that looked out across the island to the eastern horizon on one side, and to the north on another. A thick towel and clothes lay on the bed. Showing off what the upper crust wears, she thought resentfully, as she handled the flannel slacks, a woman's shirt in soft fine wool tartan, and the hand-knit socks. The underwear was also much better than her own. She wouldn't have changed except that she was cold, and besides, she didn't know a quick escape route out of the house. Stiff with self-consciousness, as if the furniture were animate and gazing ruthlessly at her poor belongings, she undressed and rubbed her chilly flesh with the towel.

Downstairs she stood in the kitchen doorway and said crisply, “Here's the towel. Thanks for the clothes. I'll send them back later.”

“No, you don't.” Mark Bennett was in her way, broad and solid. “We've got you and you won't get away if we have to lash you to the mainm'st. Any woman that saves my son's life is stuck with me, by God.” His arm around her propelled her into the kitchen. She detested being touched without permission. Even Barry knew better, but none of these people were sensitive enough to feel her disgust. “How about that drink?” Mark was saying.

“No, thanks.” She was strangely exhilarated, almost cheerful. She smiled and sat down at the table. Coffee was set before her, sugar and cream thrust at her, a plate of warm coffee bread, butter. She was hungry enough to eat and drink, knowing the gesture would be lost on them if she refused. This kind needed everything spelled out for them, they were so snug and cozy in their arrogance. In a few minutes the impertinent questions would begin, and then by brevity and indifference she might be able to insult them.

She had finished her first cup of coffee when she realized that they hadn't asked her anything except if she was warm enough or wanted more to eat. They talked among themselves of people and events that meant nothing to her, though she dimly remembered hearing Barry say some of the names. Sometimes one of them turned to her and explained a reference, told her who the person was and where he lived. She nodded and said, “Oh?” or “I see.”

“Has Gina taken off yet?” Helmi asked. “I haven't seen her for a few days.”

“No, but I expect her to start rowing anytime now, if Willy won't give her fare for the mailboat,” said Joanna.

“Needs her bottom warmed,” growled Mark.

“Mark has one cure for everything,” Joanna said to Van. “Gina's our child bride. Her husband works for Steve and as far as Gina's concerned, this is like Death Valley, only not so nice.” They laughed at that, and Van smiled. They are so stupid, she thought. The cat leaned against her legs and she reached down and scratched behind his ears. She felt a curious relationship with him, because he had been with her as she struggled up over the ledges. The child played on the floor with his boats and cars. She was glad he was not an effusive brat who would insist on charming her as his father was trying to do.

“They live in the yellow house,” Helmi was telling her. “The one you pass on the way here, after the Binnacle. The Eastern End's too lonely for her, Willy says.”

“More people to despise up here,” said Joanna. “Keeps her toned up.”

Somebody rapped at the back door, and Mark shouted, “Don't be so formal! Come in!”

A skinny, sandy young woman put her head in and said, “The store's wide open and nobody's there. Anybody could steal you blind.”

“Anybody that hungry around here, they're welcome to it.” Mark shoved back his chair. “Hey, Maggie, you met Vanessa? Maggie Dinsmore, Van Barton.”

Maggie grinned at Van. She was freckled, and had a gap between two big front teeth. “Hi! Come in when you're out walking around. Ours is the house where the roof's always going up and down. Mark, you got any decent lean pork for beans?”

“Let's go see.”

“Coffee, Maggie?” Mrs. Mark asked.

“If I get set down, Lord knows when I'll get up again.”

“It's time for me to go,” Vanessa said. “I need some things at the store.”

Helmi got up and walked to the door with her. Her voice was still low, as it had been on the ledges, but no longer lifeless with dread. “We'll always be grateful to you for being where you were when that happened. And don't stay away. Jo says you like to read, so please, any time you run short come over and help yourself.”

“Thank you,” Vanessa murmured. In a hall mirror she saw two tall effortlessly elegant women, one in a skirt and cardigan, the other in narrow, impeccably cut slacks. She was suddenly fascinated by this stranger and wanted to look into her face and find a name there, an identity, but sane women do not stop to stare into mirrors as if at ghosts, even if the ghosts are there. When she got out into the air the wind seared her wet forehead. She picked up her moccasins and strode down the path with her bundle of clothes under her arm, while behind her Mark was telling Maggie Dinsmore what had happened.