High Tide at Noon (17 page)

She glanced at his thin, clear-cut profile as he looked up the lane, and saw the deep lines of fatigue cut beside his mouth, the faint redness around his eyes from hours in the cold wind. He was very thin, and so were his faded denim trousers. He looked as if he were trying not to shiver; he looked as if he were chilled to the bone. And he looked as if he were trying to be very gay about the whole business.

She knew what her father would have done, if he'd been on the wharf when the boat came. He had brought home more than one new arrival; he said a good hot meal put heart into a man when nothing else would work. And this was Cyrus Whitcomb's grandson. That would have made up Stephen's mind for him. It made up Joanna's.

She said without hesitation, “Come up to our house for supper. My father will want to see you.”

He didn't waste time in polite protest. He said simply, “I'd like to see him, too.”

“We'll go back this way then,” Joanna said. As they went along the path by the well, she didn't regret her impulse. She knew she was taking him into a house still vibrating with the shock of Charles' marriage, a house not in the mood for hospitality. But somehow she knew it would be all right, that they would have wanted her to bring him.

They won't mind him, she thought with a curious assurance. I think they'll even be glad to see him.

T
HE SURF WAS A TUMBLING WHITENESS
in the cold April dusk as they went through the gate. From the path, they looked down on the long, glimmering curve.

“Schoolhouse Cove,” explained Joanna. “That's because the schoolhouse is right above it. Sometimes in really bad weather the tide comes over the sea wall and floods the marsh, so the kids have to be rowed to school.”

“I remember that,” Alec Douglass said. “I mean, my mother told me about it. She said that was the best part of school.”

The lights from the house streamed down across the meadow from warm yellow rectangles printed against the sea-scented dusk. There was a rattle of water pails at the well, and Joanna hailed the sound.

“Ahoy yourself!” Owen's voice came back on the wind. “What you got with you—Nils?” They heard his boots coming through the long grass and he emerged, a shadow from the shadows, beside them.

“This is my brother Owen,” Joanna said. “Alec Douglass. He's coming to supper.”

“Hello!” Owen's hand came out. “Glad to know you.”

“Thanks. I'll take one of those buckets—”

“Hell, no. Where'd you come from? You a lobsterman?”

“Jonesport way,” said Alec Douglass amiably. “I'm not much of a lobsterman. Trawling and handlining.”

“Comes in handy in the closed time,” said Owen. “Been thinking I'd do a little fishing this summer.”

They reached the back door and Joanna opened it. Owen went in first with the sloshing water pails, and the warm light and the smell of supper flowed out past him. Winnie leaped forward with her plumy tail flying, her bark a fanfare.

Donna looked up questioningly, the coffee pot in her hand.

“Company, darlin'!” said Owen, lifting the pails to the dresser. “Jo's lugged something home in the way of salvage. Haven't got a good look at him yet, myself.”

His grin was wide and friendly, but his dark eyes were keen. Stephen came out from the sitting room, and Philip turned from his absorbed contemplation of the darkness outside the seaward windows. Donna didn't move. And they all looked at Alec Douglass.

He shut the door behind him and stood looking back at them, his hat at his side. The lamplight caught and glinted in his eyes. In spite of the strong Scots nose and gaunt height, there was something oddly boyish about him, with his tumbled brown hair and his quiet, gentle smile.

“This is Alec Douglass, from Jonesport,” said Joanna. “He's Cyrus Whitcomb's grandson, and I thought—”

“Can't you see he's chilled to the bone?” Donna's voice cut in brusquely. “Get over to the stove, lad, and warm yourself. You should be spanked, running around the bay on a day like this!”

“Thank you, ma'am,” said Alec Douglass, and Joanna knew a sudden joyous warmth around her heart. It was all right to bring him home, and Donna was wonderful, she thought worshipfully.

Philip opened the oven door and pushed a chair in front of it. Stephen said, “Did you say Cyrus Whitcomb's grandson?”

“Yes, sir,” said Alec, and put out his hand.

Stephen took it, a sudden light of interest warm across his face. “Welcome to Bennett's Island. I never knew Cyrus had a grandson, but I'm glad to see him. Come down to look at the old place, have you?”

“Come down to live in it, sir.”

“
Live
in it!” Stephen lifted a quizzical eyebrow. “Well, we can always use new blood on the Island. Lobster fisherman, are you?”

Alec's smile was diffident. “When I was a kid, my grandfather used to tell me there were lobster fishermen and lobster catchers. Maybe I'll find out which I am.”

“That sounds like Cyrus. How did you happen to pick out the Island, though? Where've you been fishing?”

“Stephen, give the boy a chance to catch his breath,” Donna said, but Alec shook his head.

“That's all right, ma'am. Cap'n Bennett has a right to know where I hail from. I've been fishing around Jonesport way, sir. Living with my sister—there's quite a crew of sisters I've got, and I'm the only boy. Grandfather died when I was a tyke, and my dad was drowned—then my mother died when I was sixteen.” He shrugged. “I've been living with my oldest sister, but I got tired of it after a while. Grandfather always talked a lot about the Island and the Bennetts. I guess he'd never have left it if Grandma hadn't been sick and had to be near a doctor.”

He smiled faintly. “But once when I was small he took me down to Vinalhaven, and from a hill over there he pointed out the Island to me. I never forgot how it looked, way out on the horizon.”

“So one day you had to come and find it,” said Joanna. She saw in her mind the old man and the little brown-haired boy, looking out across the trackless bay at a magic blue line floating between sea and sky; and the boy, remembering, day after day, year after year.

“A young fellow like you ought to have a lot of chances on the mainland if he gets tired of fishing,” said Stephen. “It's not many who'd choose to come out to this little place. What made up your mind for you, son?”

He looked at Alec pleasantly, his voice easy. But his family knew the keen appraisal in his look.

“I was fed up,” said Alec frankly. “There wasn't any future.”

As usual it was too much for Owen to keep silent very long. “No future here, either, except hauling pots. Cripes, Alec, if I lived on the mainland I'd never come out here, twenty-five miles from nowhere.”

“Well, you like it, don't you?” Alec challenged him.

“Yes, but this is home.”

Alec smiled. “There you are! It's home for me, now. It's just what I want. So far from everything you might as well be dead.” His pleasant young voice made the words sound contented. “No one to pull and haul at you and try to team you around. In a month they don't even remember you.”

Stephen said, “In a month maybe you'll be crazy with the quiet and the long nights.” His mouth twitched. “I've heard more than one and the long nights.” His mouth twitched. “I've heard more than one say it.”

“Not me.” Alec shook his head. “This island has been on my mind for a long time, sir. The rest of them signed over the house to me, and gave me their blessing.”

“There's nothing been done to the house for years,” Philip observed.

“I'm not a bad carpenter.”

“We'll give you a hand!” said Owen exuberantly. It was easy to see he'd taken a great liking to Alec Douglass. “Say, what about your boat? Is she on Pete Grant's mooring?”

“Gosh, no. I'd better go talk to him.”

Owen picked up his jacket. “Come on, I'll go with you. We'll have to drive 'er. Once Pete gets up over the hill and takes his boots off, you can't budge him.”

They went out, and Donna said briskly, “Set another place, Joanna . . . well, Stephen?”

“Seems like a good boy.” Stephen contemplated his pipe. “Of course you can't tell now. Wait till he's been around a bit, and see how he fits into things. See how the Island likes him.” He looked up at Philip. “I still can't see why he came out here, though. There's not many boys like him, smart and well-spoken, who'd strike out in this direction when they want to make a change. They don't usually turn toward lobstering in this day and age. It's almost always the other way around.”

Joanna said swiftly, “Why shouldn't he want to come here? It suits us, doesn't it?”

“You heard what Owen said, Jo,” Philip reminded her. “He said it was home.” He turned back to his father. “Maybe he's had some woman-trouble. The way he talked, it sounded as if he wanted to clear out. Probably a girl.”

For some reason Philip's easy conjectures made her cross. “A fine pair of Islanders you are, and Bennetts at that, wondering why anybody wants to come out here! He came because of the Island, that's all. Just as he said!”

Her father looked at her in mild surprise, Philip twinkled, and Donna said, “Take out the baked potatoes, will you, Joanna? I'll finish creaming the fish. Stephen—” She paused and looked at her husband, and a flush came into her pale cheeks.

“Well, Donna?”

“Are we going to let him sleep out aboard his boat on a night like this, or in that musty old vault of a house?”

Across the kitchen they considered each other, a grave question in their eyes. Joanna and Philip watched them. It seemed to Joanna that she forgot to breathe for a moment—the moment in which her mother said, with serene deliberation:

“We can put him in Charles' bed.”

“Whatever you say,” Stephen answered, and went into the sitting room. Silence fell on the kitchen, and in it the two women worked swiftly, without looking at each other. There was butter to be cut, cream to be poured, a fresh jar of pickles from the cellar, a plate heaped with soft molasses cookies.

Noise came back into the house with Owen and Alec. Their cheeks whipped red by the raw wind, their eyes still glinting from some shared joke, they returned, heralded by Winnie. A hook was cleared for Alec's jacket and hat—Charles' hook, Joanna saw with a brief constriction in her throat.

Alec sat by the stove with Winnie between his knees. Winnie was deeply infatuated; her amber eyes were maudlin as he scratched her ears.

“Look what I found aboard Alec's boat!” Owen held aloft a battered violin case. “I brought it up so he could give us a tune after a while. Nothing like having two fiddlers on the Island, in case that bastard Maurice turns up drunk at the next dance.”

“My grandfather used to tell me about the dances down here,” Alec said. He got up to take the heavy lamp from Donna's hands and put it on the table. “When I started playing my dad's fiddle I wondered if I'd ever play at a dance on Bennett's Island.”

His eyes met Joanna's and smiled, with the curious green-brown lights. “Supper's ready,” she said. “Come on, everybody.” She hurried, getting out clean towels, moving chairs, pouring coffee. Her father and mother sat in their usual places, Philip and Owen in theirs. The atmosphere was fragrant with good food and open-hearted hospitality. They were bent, each of them, on making Alec Douglass feel completely welcome. Seemingly there was no cloud in their world, no thought of Charles down at the Eastern End.

And they had put Alec Douglass in Charles' chair.

Joanna had help with the dishes that night, in spite of her protests. “I always wiped the dishes for my sister,” Alec said.

“But you're company now.”

“I'm an Islander.” He leaned against the dresser and looked at her intently. “At least I'm aiming to be one. I'm not so damn stuck on myself that I think I'm going to walk right in and be one of the boys.”

“You're not really a stranger.” Joanna pointed out. “Your grandfather had his home here and his shore privilege. It's not as if you rented a camp on the beach and started lobstering right out of a clear sky.”

“Yes, but are they all going to look at it like that?”

“I don't see why not.” She felt an illogical desire to push his hair off his forehead. “If you're honest, and you work hard, and you're willing to lend a hand—”

“And take advice,” drawled Philip from the doorway. “You'll have everybody and his brother telling what to do and how to do it. And it pays to listen, even if you do as you damn please.”

“Thanks! I'm glad to take advice from the Bennetts, and follow it. My grandfather always said they were the salt of the earth.”

“You've never done much lobstering, you said. Come out in the shop and we'll show you some of the rigging. You need a lot different gear than what they used around Jonesport—this is deep-sea lobstering.”

“Mind if I finish this first?” Alec picked up a handful of wet silver. Owen joined Philip and said in good-natured scorn, “Cripes, you'll ruin the wench, wiping dishes. Spoil her. Come on, Alec.”

“When I finish.” He grinned as they went out, and turned back to the dishes.

“You might as well go. That's the end of it.”

“Let's put them all back in the pan again,” he suggested.

“Thank you very much for helping me,” said Joanna firmly, hanging up the dish towels by the stove. “Now I'll show you the way to the shop.”

Alec stood by the dresser, very tall and very lean, and considered her with bright green-brown eyes. “You are a verra deter-r-r­mined young woman, Miss Bennett.”

“This way to the shop, please,” she said remotely. After all, he was a stranger.

When she came back to the house, she stood for a moment in the empty kitchen, hearing the murmur of her parents' voices in the next room. She laid her hands against her cheeks and felt the warmth of her skin—windburn, she thought.