By the Bay (4 page)

Instead he’d wakened only a few hours later to find night still around him and his belly grumbling with hunger. He stumbled from his hiding place, smelling the familiar moist and salt of the sea as he staggered to the bay’s edge.

And he was still standing there, staring out to the moon-silvered bay and the island beyond, when the girl walked up to him.

A girl! A young woman who spoke a form of English and who was here in this place where no European woman should be. She was part of the illusion, part of the dream he’d been cast into.

As one had to be polite to a creature of his own making, he addressed her with courtesy and even escorted her back to what seemed to be her home, a magical dwelling with candlelight shining from glass windows.

He’d spent the next day walking the town
and ignoring those around him, who glanced at him in his clothing that had dried on him
and his sandy and untidy hair almost as though they actually saw him and he was not a ghost haunting their streets. One or two even spoke to him, but he ignored them, not being willing to encourage such spirits.

Like the ghost girl, they spoke a form of Eng
lish and when, in
desperation, he croaked a request for water to an older man with a pleasant face, he was given all the cool fresh water he could drink. When he was finished, the kindly stranger asked if he was hungry and when he nodded, the man came out again with a plate of warm food. Even though the items on the plate were unfamiliar to him, he ate hungrily, barely restraining his greed to eat slowly enough not to be disgusting or to make himself ill.

When he was finished, he expressed his thanks with a nod and then watched while the man went back inside after wishing him well.

He sighed. Not ghosts after all. Ghosts didn’t eat or drink. A man of his time, Philippe was willing enough to accept that he was dead and had stepped into a strange version of the afterlife, but he was still sensible enough to know that eating and drinking didn’t go on in either Heaven or hell.

His clothing was stiff and encrusted with salt, the bottle green jacket faded with sun and salt, his hair dried into sprigs, his chin grown out
with
a stubbly bristle. Usually a man of orderly habits, he didn’t let these things bother him. They were simply more signs that, in spite of everything he’d been through, he was still mortal and in spite of being cast
away
to die, still walked the earth.

When darkness fell, he went back to the spot on the bay where he’d first land
ed
. The night was warm enough and,
having
no other option, he meant to sleep in the sand. A man who had spent as many nights as he had sleeping on a tossing ship, would find such a bed acceptable enough. Disturbed by the strangeness all around him, he found he wanted to be near the cottage where the girl slept. He had an odd feeling that it was his task to oversee her, to guard her
slumber
, though he had no idea why he felt she was in danger.

Sometimes in the middle of the night, he felt he simply must talk to her and went and knocked on her door. He heard her soft footsteps, then the voice calling from the other side of the locked door.

She refused to come out, of course, no doubt thinking him a mad man. He went away, comforted by the sound of her voice. She was alive and unharmed. He could rest for a while now.

Philippe had found himself in many strange ports since he’d been driven from his native land when hardly more than a boy and he’d always landed on his feet, managed to struggle on to survive. He would do it again.

He strolled with apparent aimlessness through the little town where noisy, smelly vehicles were already moving through the streets
and
a few people walked purposefully along, appearing not to notice his presence.

From a distance, he saw the girl—his girl—neatly dressed in a revealing dress that stopped short well above her ankles, get into one of those vehicles and drive off, her red hair a flame in the sun. Thin and pale, she hardly matched the standard of beauty of his world, but he still thought her quite lovely in the way of a delicate spring flower.

His feeling of danger surrounding her had
dissipated
this morning and the only thing he feared as he watched her departure was that she would smash that strange self-propelled vehicle into a wall and injure herself.

He noticed that her clothing was not unusual. Other women wore skirts as short or even shorter, their hair was loose in the sea breeze.

Having learned long ago to quickly orient himself to a new setting, he found his way easily enough to the place where yesterday the kind-faced man had given him food. He was relieved when he saw the same man, a ruddy-faced individual in his
later
years, a little heavy, obviously not a man accustomed to physical activity. But though he did not appear to have ever
sailed the
seas as had most of
the men with whom Philip
p
e had lived his adventurous life,
he
still struck Philippe as someone to like and maybe even trust.

The man took another puff of his cigarette, watching him with bright, intelligent eyes, th
a
n nodded. “Hungry?” he asked.

Of course he was. He hadn’t eaten since that plate of food yesterday. But it was the last thing he would admit. “Looking for work,” he said instead.

The man nodded again. “What can you do?”

“I will do anything that needs being done,” Philippe said politely
. “I
must have
the employment.”

The man regarded him thoughtfully, then took a final pull from his cigarette, dropped it and ground it out in the dirt. He stuck out his hand. “
Owen
Lewis,” he said. “My friend and me, we run this café.”

“Café?” Philippe repeated the word as they shook hands.

“Not from around here, are you?”
Owen
asked, grinning. “Everybody knows
Owen’s
Café. Good food, a full plate. Nothing fancy, but the fishermen like it. You know how to cook?”

Philippe didn’t consider his own rather limited experience on board ship worth mentioning. “Not actually,” he said.

“Well, anybody can wash dishes. It’s being willing that counts.”

How Jean would laugh to see him now! But a hungry man has few options. “I will happily wash the dishes,” he agreed.

Owen
nodded. “You got a handle?”

“Handle?” Already Philippe
perceived
that many words were going to confuse him.

“What’s your moniker? Your name?”

“I am Philippe
d
e Beauvois.”

“And you’re a Frenchy?”

“Oui, I was born in la belle France,” Philippe agreed cautiously.

Owen
laughed. “Don’t worry, son, I’m not going to ask you
for any
more details
. In Port Isabel where so many man drift by, we don’t ask embarrassing questions, not as long as you’re not a spy
. We don’t cotton to spies.”

“No, I am not a spy,” Philippe responded earnestly. “Who is it who owns this land now? And what is the date?” He had seen much change in the years he was growing up so this did not seem to be an unreasonable question.

Owen
seemed truly puzzled this time. “It
’
s still the good old US of A,” he said, “and thanks to the boys in uniform likely to stay that way. And it’s
December
2, 1942 last I notice
d
.”

The date was like a shaft to his heart. Somehow he had crossed the bay into another time. Some miracle had
sprung into
his life in the middle of the dark water and he’d come out into a time
over a
hundred years later than his own. There much be some reason the bon dieu had sent him here. He had a feeling it had to do with the red-haired girl.

Owen
slapped him on the back. “Come on in, son. We’ll get some food inside you and a chance to bathe and change before we put you to work. I’d rather
Florence
not see you ‘til you’ve cleaned up a bit.”

Philippe followed him into a building redolent with the scents of good food.

Chapter Five

Feeling
that surviving
any day
she
spent teaching high school students was a
successful
, Jillian returned home to find a mother who
recognized her own daughter
. Christine insisted on helping prepare their simple supper and joined her for the meal at the little kitchen table.

“I don’t know when I’ve been so tired,” she said. “I can’t think why as all I did
today
was read and let
Florence
wait on me.”

“You’re recovering from yesterday’s headache,” Jillian reminded her. When Mother was like this, so normal and so much herself, she had a hard time not believing that she’d imagined the other behavior. She often wondered what had happened to her mother to change her from the accomplished young girl who had helped raising her sisters in such a way that they remained devoted to her, and this flame of a woman who burned first brightly and then at such a depressingly low level.

Maybe it was Dad’s death, but others had suffered worse. These days all too many wives and mothers were receiving bad news from overseas and others were constantly fearful of such news.

Most times the war seemed far away to Jillian who knew of only the most distant relatives and friends sent off to battle. Europe was a place she knew only from books and Japan
was
impossibly distant. She still didn’t understand why they’d been drawn into the conflict, though she supposed the attack on the ships at Pearl Harbor had left the president with no other option.

“I don’t remember about the other war,” she said aloud. “What was it like, Mother?”

Christine considered. “You were too young. Only a little girl. I was engaged to a soldier and he was killed. Not in the war, but in training.
It was nearly at an end. Such a waste.”

Startled Jillian studied her mother’s still lovely face. “But that was after Daddy . . .” She paused. Her mother seemed unable to bear mention of her late husband’s name most of the time.

Apparently undisturbed, Christine nodded. “I thought it might be easier to go on for both of us. I wanted you to have a father. I should have known better. I’m sure
Davis
would have been very angry if he’d come back and found me married to another man.” She leaned across the table to speak in a low confidential voice. “You see there were times back then when I almost believed they were right and
Davis
really was dead. I suppose it was a good thing he was killed, my Jerry, though he was a very nice young man.”

As so often happened, Jillian didn’t know where she was. She’d never heard her mother mention this Jerry before, or any interest in a man other than her husband.  It could be true, just something she hadn’t wanted to tell her daughter, or she could be caught once again in her delusions. With mother, she never knew.

“Don’t you think so, Jillian?”

Startled from her thoughts, Jillian responded, “Well, not so good for Jerry.”

After supper when her mother was comfortably tucked in bed with a book, Jillian walked the small living room a time or two, feeling increasingly restless. It was barely dark outside and she was beginning to feel like she’d been caged. She had to get out, even if it was only for a little while.

She told Christine, she was going to run over to see Aunt
Florence
for a little bit and when her mother didn’t protest
,
accepted that as permission. She’d always been fearful of leaving Mother alone and was more so now, but told herself it should be safe enough to
be gone
for ten minutes or so.

As she walked outside to her old car, she glanced around, hoping to see the man from the other night, but no one was in sight. The residents of the bright pink single story apartments
across the street
were apparently in for the night as were her neighbors on either side of the cottage.

The night had a
wildness about it with a wind blowing from the sea as though threatening storms. As a child she’d ridden out many a hurricane with her mother and aunt by taking refuge in one of the little town’s
stronger
buildings, but she hadn’t heard any word of serious
ly
bad weather approaching.

She drove slowly through the few blocks to the restaurant, climbed out and
walked
inside. At this hour of night, things were slow with only a scattering of customers. Uncle
Owen
was behind the counter, but Auntie was seated at a table in the
rear
with a man who had his back turned to her.