High Tide at Noon (20 page)

“It was a good thing you showed them you meant business,” their father said.

“I'll say I meant business!” Owen was jubilant. “And if I ever catch one of 'em—Birds or Brigport—within ten yards of one of my pots, I'll do a little hauling on my own hook.”

“You will not,” said Stephen. “Owen, you're what Philip calls you—a rooster, always ready to rush into trouble head first and take everybody else with you. You're not happy till you've got us all by the ears.” His voice was pleasant, but there was no doubting his look. “You'll haul your own traps and no others. When you have proof—and I've told you this a hundred times already—you can go to law. But meanwhile you'll behave yourself.”

Owen's scowl slipped darkly across his face. Philip smiled quietly and stroked Winnie's ears. Stephen went on. “You cut off one trap and you'll start something that'll never end. It'll get more rotten every year, and drag the Island down to nothing but a muckhole.”

He looked at them pleasantly, and went out to the shop. Philip said, “Well, that's that.” He gathered up his oilskins. “I'm going out and pump out my boat. Coming, rooster?”

Owen picked up the latest adventure magazine, propped his feet on the oven hearth, and began to read. “All in good time, my boy.”

When Philip had gone, Donna went to set the living room in order, and Joanna inquired acidly, “Doesn't the
Old Girl
need to be pumped out?”

Owen lifted an eyebrow at her. “Don't rush me. I work cheaper.” He hunched up his shoulders and went on reading, tobacco smoke drifting around his absorbed black head. Joanna bit back the heated words on her tongue, and began to wash dishes. It took all her will power not to slat them furiously into the pan.

The teakettle sang, Winnie sighed under the stove, Owen read. Joanna finished the dishes and swept the floor, filled the lamps and polished the chimneys. Once Owen looked up, squinting at her through cigarette smoke, and said amiably, “What are you looking so ugly about?”

Joanna didn't answer. Stephen came in from the shop and paused by the stove to fill his pipe. “Working hard, son?”

Owen grinned up at him. “Cripes, you teamin' me around too? Joanna's been switching her tail around here for-god's-sakes.”

“I don't like to team anybody around. But it seems to me your boat must have plenty of water in her, after the rain last night.”

“I've just about decided the lobster business is going to hell. What's the use of fooling around with the damn boat?”

“What's wrong now?”

“I haven't had a decent haul in a week, and it's not because anybody's bothered my traps. There's just not lobsters enough to go around.”

Joanna said scornfully, “He's plain lazy, Father. He doesn't want to take his feet out of the oven and look after his boat, so he's stalling.”

“In the spring crawl,” Stephen said pleasandy, ‘you were spending money like a drunken sailor. Trouble with you, son, you're spoiled. You made a good dollar with your first string of traps, you've always had a roll in your pocket big enough to choke a cow—and the minute lobsters slack off a little, you think you're finished.”

“Wait till lobsters drop down to something like twelve cents,” said Joanna, “before you start howling.”

“Twelve cents!” Owen laughed at her. “Where'd you ever hear of twelve-cent lobsters? Ain't no such animal. Well, I'll go down and pump out the blasted tub.”

“I'm going with you,” said Joanna. ‘I need a breath of fresh air.”

He waited while she put on her boots and trench coat. “If you call this cotton-wool air, you can have all you want of it,” he muttered, looking at the opaque whiteness that hid the h bor from them.

They walked along the road through the marsh that showed green now where it had been tawny with winter. The young birches at the foot of the meadow were unfurling their new leaves, their trunks were startlingly white in the dreary day. On the brow of Schoolhouse Cove there was more green; the wild rose bushes, the beach peas, the evening primrose, the tall coarse grass.

But the fog shut in behind Joanna and Owen, and hid the meadow and the beach, and then it parted before them to show the harbor, gray and tranquil at low tide. The ledges were black with rockweed and the gentle swell broke around them in a lazy curl of white. There was a smell of salt wetness, and the sound of gulls crying aimlessly and unseen overhead.

Joanna helped Owen to push a punt down over the wet stony beach. “You don't have to go out aboard,” he said. “She'll be plenty wet.”

“What's a little water?”

“I always knew you were first cousin to a duck.” They pushed off and the oars cut soundlessly into the pale, glassy water. Joanna looked out at the
Old Girl
.

“Remember when you said you wouldn't have her?”

“Oh, she's not a bad old crate. After all, she's not the only boat I expect to have. Here we are, grab hold of her there!”

The punt made fast alongside, Owen began to pump, while Joanna sat on the damp engine box and smoked a hurried cigarette. Rain began to patter lightly on her sou'wester. She watched Owen somberly, wishing there were some way to approach him. But they had never confided in each other, even as small children playing together day after day.

He looked up and caught her thoughtful gaze. “Why so glum? You know one thing about the
Old Girl?
She's easy to handle. That thing of Philip's is stubborn. Bad as some women.”

“What kind of women do you like?” asked Joanna casually. “The kind that's easy to handle, or hard?”

“Well, I couldn't say offhand.” He looked at her mischievously, his grin putting a deep dimple in one brown cheek. “Some of 'em look difficult, but that's just on the surface. And some of 'em look as smooth as the ocean in a flat calm, but they're obstinate as hell. Either way you get a surprise. And that's what I like, kid. Don't ever be just what people expect you to be.”

Watching him as he talked, watching the way his right eyebrow quirked, the reckless, assured tilt of his head on his strong neck, she felt an odd little pang of knowledge; it was almost as if she understood how Leah Foster, married to an old man, must have first seen this rich and vigorous youth of Owen's. But the pang was quickly gone.

Across the harbor a man climbed down into a dory, over the side of a low-slung dark boat. He rowed among the moorings, the dory rising and falling in the long swell, and passed close to the
Old Girl
.

“Hello, folks!” he called, and Joanna called back. But Owen deliberately turned his head away.

“Why didn't you speak to Ned?” she asked quietly.

“That son of a bitch.” The venom in his voice frightened her.

“What's the matter with him? I like him.”

“You wouldn't speak to the bastard if you knew the truth about him. How a decent woman was fool enough to marry him—oh, I guess he put up a good front.” Owen's mouth was thinned and pale. “He's the kind of guy who can put a woman through hell, and make everybody think he's the one who got the dirty deal.”

“I've never heard of his making any talk. And Leah has everything she wants. She's got plenty of time to fool around with a kid like Hugo, I know that much.”

“That's all you know about it! You damn women are all alike. Cats. Ready to pick another one to pieces just because you don't like her.”

“That's not fair!” Joanna cried passionately. “How could I dislike her? All I know about her is what I've heard you boys say!”

For an incredible moment she thought Owen would strike her. His eyes widened and burned, red streaked across his face. “You never heard me say anything about her.”

“Oh, all right,” she said sulkily. “But you listened. The only reason you didn't say anything was because you didn't have anything to say. It was Hugo this time, for once!” Her voice gathered intensity as the pattern became suddenly clear to her. “It was Hugo who got there first! It was his tum to brag, and you had to listen. Yon didn't like it very well, did you?”

“
Shut up your goddam mouth!
”

They were abruptly silent, staring at each other from eyes curiously alike in their rage. Then suddenly all expression was gone from Owen's face. It was as blank as the unbroken wall of fog around them.

As they rowed back to the beach he looked through Joanna as if she didn't exist. She knew that look from past experience. It meant that at this moment he hated her. And she didn't care. She wished she could slap that locked dark face, beat the blind foolishness out of him, beat some sense into him .

The beach pebbles grated under the punt and she jumped ashore, ignoring the icy wash of sea water around her ankles.

T
HERE WAS NO ONE IN SIGHT
, but smoke drifted down from the chimney of Karl Sorensen's fish house. If Philip were still at the harbor, he would be there, and she had to talk to him, right away.

But he wasn't there. Nils looked up from the workbench when she walked in, but she was too furious to be embarrassed. “Where's Philip?” she demanded. Sigurd, whittling a minute dory with exquisite precision in his big fingers, looked at her red cheeks and laughed.

“Philip's gone down to the Eastern End. Broke a connectin' rod this mornin' and went down to see if Charles had one.”

Nils, watching her face, said, “Anything wrong, Joanna?”

“No, I—I just wanted to speak to him. Well, thanks, kids.” She went out quickly and walked back along the road. Charles had come very infrequently to the harbor since his marriage. Maurice or one of the younger children, Rose-Marie and Pierre, came for the mail. Mateel had not come at all, and Joanna dreaded seeing her, when time had just begun to take the edge off that bitter day.

But she walked swiftly across the marsh, feeling the wet east wind against her face. Philip had gone to the Eastern End, and that was where she must go.

She moved through a deserted world, empty except for the surge and wash of water over the rocks below the path, the dripping trees, the foghorn at Matinicus Rock mooing like a disconsolate cow. Joanna usually loved the sense of mystery and adventure that surrounded her when she walked in fog; but today there was no joy in it.

The Eastern End houses looked forlorn. There was no sign of life as Joanna went through the gate and down the path. Even the old spaniel was missing. A faint wind eddied the fog and she glimpsed the boats in the cove, the filthy old
Cecile
, Maurice's weatherbeaten boat, Charles'
Sea-Gypsy
. Joanna's heart contracted. She was so pretty and pert down there between those other two.

The fog drifted again and hid the cove, and at the same time Joanna saw Philip come to the doorway of one of the old shops on the bank.

Then she needn't go in the house. She went over the wet grass, and the thought of telling Charles and Philip fanned her resentment against Owen. She was through with tact and silence. If Owen wanted to cut his own throat, that was his business. But he wasn't going to cut the family's throat as well.

She walked into the shop and slammed the door behind her.

Philip and Charles were alone, for which she was thankful. This was strictly a Bennett affair. God and the older boys willing, it would be over before one other person on the Island knew that Steve Bennett's boy had been making a fool of himself.

They stared briefly at her flushed cheeks and brilliant eyes. “Nothing like a little fog to make a beauty out of a woman,” Philip observed.

“Did you know that Owen's chasing Leah Foster?” she said bluntly.

Incredibly, Charles laughed. “Owen, after that cold fish! I'd as soon make love to a corned hake.”

Philip smiled, and she stared at their amusement with horror, as if they had suddenly become hostile strangers.

“It isn't funny,” she said in a low voice. “Do you think it's funny?”

“Of course it's funny!” Charles looked merrier than she'd seen him look for a long time. “The rooster thinks he's going to show us a thing or two—no small fry for him!”

Philip's blue eyes had a look of his mother as he dropped his hand on Joanna's shoulder. “It's natural, Jo. It's part of growing up. Don't look so scared.”

“But Leah—she's—” Joanna stopped, with anger a half wordless lump in her throat. Then she found speech again, in a hot torrent. “How do you think it'll be when the chew starts around the shore? How do you think it'll sound to Father when he hears it? Will he say it's natural, and grin like a fool? How will Mother like it, when Aunt Mary goes tearing up across the meadow with her mouth watering?”

She stood with her back against the door, her head high and her mouth furious. “Well, maybe
you
don't mind the grins and the looks and the talk about somebody with the same name as you! Maybe
you
don't care if your brother's ruining himself and disgracing the family!”

Philip shook her hard. “Hey, stop it, you young fool! Owen's not going to ruin himself. He's too damn selfish. And nobody'll know about it if you keep your mouth shut and don't go off half-cocked.”

She felt resentment spread through her body like fatigue. They didn't care, they had laughed . . . Philip put his fingers under her chin and tilted it, smiling into her eyes.

“Listen, young Jo, we've been talking to him,” he said gently. “But he thinks he's got hold of something good, and he's not letting go. So—” He shrugged. “How's for letting him stew in his own juice? He'll get over it all the sooner.”

Charles, sitting on his heels by an old sea chest containing a jumble of small engine parts, muttered, “Here's a rod, Phil.” He glanced up at Joanna with a quizzical look “Take it easy, Tiddleywinks. After all, the boy's only human. Wait till your turn comes.”