The Whiskey Tide (22 page)

     
The maid bustled in with a tea tray. She poured the hot liquid into white cups so translucent Joe could see light through them, serving Mrs. Cole first, then Kate and then him.

     
"
Madame
was very bad to go out by herself," she clucked, her English fine now. "She is foolish sometimes, not right in the head because she doesn't eat."

     
"What is the point when you haven't an appetite?" Mrs. Cole made a gesture of weary dismissal. Her appetite seemed fine at the moment. She had wolfed down a rich looking cookie with speed that would have done Billy credit.

     
Joe balanced his cup and saucer the way the aunties had taught him. He bit into a cookie filled with apricot jam.

     
"How do you know French? You look like a fisherman." Mrs. Cole had an odd directness that made Joe wonder if her maid had been right about her not being right in the head.

     
"I am a fisherman." He smiled slowly.

     
"But fishermen are Italians. Or Portuguese."

     
"That's what I am. Portuguese and Irish."

     
She put her head to the side with a child's fascination. Though she was revealing assumptions about other classes, she meant no malice.

     
"I was in France in the war," he continued patiently. "It wasn't so hard to pick up the language if you put yourself to it, and the people there liked you better. They'd sell you food if you could speak to them a little. If you couldn't, they'd tell you they had no food themselves."

     
"The cheeses," the old woman in the Chinese robe sighed. "Little fresh cheeses. I went to France on my wedding trip. It's where I found Tatia." As if suddenly fearing she'd been too informal, she drew herself in. "How is your brother?" she asked Kate.

     
"He's — better. Not as robust as he should be, but well enough. He mentions you sometimes — how nicely you read to him."

     
Kate looked uneasy. Joe wondered whether it was the lateness of the hour which was bothering her.

     
"I've not called to express my condolences over your father," Mrs. Cole said. "You're the one who walks on the beach, aren't you?"

     
"Yes. I'm Kate."

     
"You look at gulls' nests. I watch you with my grandfather's looking glass. He was a captain in the China trade. I like to watch the beach." She edged forward, sharing a secret. "Sometimes, when I can't sleep, I step out on the balcony. I hear sounds."

     
"
Madame!
You should not be outside," scolded Tatia, who had retreated into the background.

     
"I think there are smugglers. Bringing in rum." Mrs. Cole's eyes were brighter than they had been all evening.

     
"Another reason why you shouldn't go wading at night." Joe matched her conspiratorial tone, and for reasons he couldn't fathom gave her a wink.

     
The old woman, with her wrinkly cheeks, looked delighted.

     
"And we'd better go now," he said standing. "Thank you for tea, Mrs. Cole." He hesitated, wondering how he could ask her not to mention Kate being out at this hour, when the old lady solved it herself.

     
"Perhaps...." She looked at Kate with the shyness of a child. "Perhaps I could trust your discretion about tonight?"

Fifteen

     
"You made this from an investment?" Paul Garrison stared at the money Kate counted onto his desk. The law office smelled of leather and ink and something else Kate could never identify, a quiet aroma which she equated with order. The man behind the desk let his breath out by inches.

     
"Pa gave me some money the first year I went away," she said nervously. "He said it would be good for me to learn about investing. I really think he expected me to lose it all and realize it was better just to put it in the bank."

     
Her father's partner smoothed a hand across his thinning hair.

     
"Did he have any idea you were doing this well?"

     
"No. I'd just told him that so far I was making a profit. I'd thought I'd surprise him when I graduated." She looked away with an ache in her throat, the fiction she was inventing crashing against a lost reality. "The thing is, if I took my money out, it wouldn't be enough to save our house. But if you applied this toward our loan, and told the bank we'd pay the same every month, I thought maybe they'd agree to that. And Mama wouldn't have to worry."

     
Paul Garrison's eyes were a mystery behind his spectacles. The walls of his office were lined with law books, reminding her of her father's darkened room next door. A phone on his desk connected him to his secretary. Kate had known him forever, had often stepped into this office when she was visiting her father; but this was the first time she had sat in the hard wooden chair before his desk talking business.

     
"What sort of investments are these, Kate?" he asked quietly.

     
She met his gaze without faltering. She'd expected the question. "One of them I doubt you'd approve of," she said with a laugh. "I made a loan to a lovely old couple starting a restaurant. Well, they're not so old, actually. And I never expected they'd do this well. But their food's good and they're doing booming business and they've said they can start repaying me. The others are.... " She waved a hand vaguely. "This and that."

     
The lawyer leaned back in his chair. Several moments passed before he spoke.

     
"I'll talk to the bank. What you've given me here should reassure them a bit. They get understandably nervous when there's no longer a man to bring in wages.

     
"But, Kate. For God's sake don't walk around with money like this in your handbag." He paused. "Get the bank to give you a check. You've been on your own. You're aware you can transfer a draft from a bank in Wellesley or Boston or wherever."

     
Kate nodded, kicking herself for not considering the legitimacy a check would convey.

     
"I thought perhaps you could tell my mother that you'd found an account you didn't know Pa had."

     
"Why not tell her the truth, Kate?"

     
"No. I think it would embarrass her, my doing something when she can't."

     
Paul Garrison smiled reluctant concurrence. "You're right. It would. She's asked my help in finding a job, but I'm afraid there's nothing she's equipped to do. Clerking in a store, perhaps, but I've tried to discourage that, at least for the moment. What little she'd make wouldn't get you out of your current plight, and your brother needs her."

     
He hesitated. "Even if you pay off the house, Kate, there are going to be ongoing expenses. It really would make sense to sell it and find someplace smaller. Rosalie will be leaving home in another year— "

     
"No."

     
He sighed. "I'll do all I can to help, then. If you're set on using this to pay off the mortgage, let me advance you the money to finish your schooling. I suppose it's too late for this term, but you know you'll find better employment if you have a degree."

     
"They... need me here." Kate stood, desperate to leave before she could taste the old yearning. "Mama and Rosalie aren't used to dealing with things apart from the house."

     
"If I can put in a word for you looking for work, then, I'd be glad to. Ginny says you've applied several places." He walked her to the door and shook her hand.

     
"Call on me day or night, Kate." He shaped the words with such precision that Kate wondered if he was suspicious. His eyes told her nothing, but that there was a sparkle to them that she'd never noticed.

***

     
"These curtains are wearing so thin they need darning even to get them back on the rod." Aunt Irene's voice floated out from the kitchen. "If I could ever get a dollar put back for material I'd let you run me up some new ones."

     
"If I had a sewing machine," Arliss said.

     
They laughed together, the comfortable sound suggesting some familiar joke.

     
Joe stood at the foot of the stairs, listening as he often did, marveling at the way the two women seemed to grow younger and freer when men weren't around. When he joined them part of that would evaporate, but part would remain. The mystery of it, the glimpse he was permitted into a world existing under the same roof as his uncles yet totally different, intrigued him.

     
They heard him and looked up, Irene from the wash boiler on the stove and his cousin Arliss from the ironing board where she was ironing a blouse that belonged to his grandmother. Arliss' two older kids were napping upstairs, he guessed, and the two youngest in a crib in the corner. It was laundry day and both women's faces were shiny with sweat and steam.

     
"Back in one piece, are you?" Irene said.

     
Joe nodded, helping himself to coffee. "Stopped in a couple of places after we got back. Hope I didn't wake you coming in."

     
Ten good hours of sleep and a shave had refreshed him, though he doubted he'd hit any nightspots tonight. The thought of the money tucked in his pocket made him smile.

     
"Tell us about it," Arliss urged without missing a stroke of her ironing. "Do you figure you ever crossed into Canada?"

     
"Judging by the charts we did." He began to expand on his tale of sailing wealthy customers to Deer Island. "If you want to know, I think they go up there so they can enjoy their liquor."

     
The women tittered, maybe at the thought of rich folks sneaking around, maybe at the thought of so much effort when Vic and Drake were capable of coming by a bottle right here in Salem.

     
Joe had told his aunt only that he'd be gone for a couple of days. He knew details of his whereabouts had spread through the household by a carefully followed chain of command. Vic had told Irene in the brief scrap of privacy they had every evening. Irene had told Arliss, probably the next morning. Most likely his aunt had told Nana too, for what he had done qualified as excitement — working for rich folks, being in charge of a strange boat, taking it farther than any of the current Santaynas ever had sailed. He saw anticipation in the women's eyes as they waited for details.

     
"Well, I didn't get inside the house," he said. "But it was fancy enough on the outside. Three stories and a big porch facing the water...."

     
It was easy enough to make up after seeing the houses where the Hinshaws lived, and others like them on the way to Canada. Joe wondered whether his habit of telling the women about things he'd seen, things which often as not wouldn't interest Vic or Drake or Sebastian, was one of the reasons he was allowed to just the edge of the secret circle occupied by his aunt and his cousin. They rarely left the house except to go to church or market or visit with relatives. Hearing about things they'd never seen themselves was a treat. He knew his accounts of France had been like a fairy tale, and this was too.

     
"Mahogany rails," said Aunt Irene shaking her head.