High Tide at Noon (44 page)

Her pleasure lit up her face. “Come in, come in! Oh, I'm
glad
you come down!”

Joanna followed her into the small kitchen, bright in spite of the fog. She felt rather ashamed that she didn't come oftener. Though she hardly admitted it to herself it had been the children who kept her away; or rather Mateel's radiant, open pride in Charles' son and this new little girl, Donna.

Mateel was in the midst of a huge ironing. As she put Donna back into her basket, Joanna said, to her own surprise, “Let me take her, Mateel.” And there was the baby in her arms, gossamer fluff of black hair on a bobbing head, an unsurprised blue gaze, and a wide mouth that curved in an enchanting, drunken, toothless grin.

Joanna looked back at her, her own mouth twitching in an uncertain smile, and her eyes feeling queer.
Oh, darling, darling
, she thought with sudden incoherent delight, and the light warm burden in her arms, the fragrance of clean healthy baby, was intolerably sweet. But it had no evasive ache for her now, no sense of hidden hunger. Rather a new excitement pounding through her body. It was so new and strange that she was almost afraid to think about it; but it was still there, and try as she might, she couldn't look stern and uncaring and insolent when she met Mateel's eyes over the baby's head.

“You look good, wit' the baby,” said Mateel shyly. “Why don' you 'ave one, Joanna?”

Joanna laughed. “There's plenty of time.”

Young Charles and the dog came in; he clamored at his mother in a garble of French and English baby talk, and she said
no
, he was to stay by the house. Charles went out with a miniature Bennett scowl on his young brow, and a cookie clutched in his fist.

“What did he want?” Joanna asked curiously.

“To go down in the shop wit' the boys,” Mateel explained. “Mark, Stevie, David, Pierre. They talk an' fool—you know 'ow they do. The baby come 'ome and say
goddam
all over the place.”

They laughed, and talked inconsequentially while Mateel finished her ironing and made tea. Sitting in this pleasant kitchen, with the baby in her lap and Mateel the picture of contentment, Joanna remembered that other day when she had come to see Mateel; how sunk in misery they'd both been, how they had hidden it—or tried to—each from the other! And it was all for nothing, because this was how it had come out. Donna and Stephen had a warm tenderness for their oldest boy's wife.

We Bennetts have a way of falling on our feet, she thought. The teakettle sang, Mateel hummed under her breath, the baby dozed against Joanna's arm; its hands were little pink starfish, but their texture was that of flowers.

Into this peace the boys came noisily, Mark and Stevie, David Sorensen, and Mateel's younger brother Pierre. The house was suddenly crammed to bursting with boys' arms and legs, boys' exuberance. Mateel, flushed and laughing, set out more cups, and Joanna protested.

“When they're hungry they drop into the nearest house for a mugup. Why don't you make them bring their own grub?”

“Why didn't you bring yours, then?” Mark demanded. “Seems to me there was a time when you ate like a damn gannet!” He held the baby high over his head. She began to cry, and Stevie took her. He went over to the couch in the corner and sat down with the baby cradled in the curve of his arm, talking to her quietly. Joanna, watching his bent dark head, had a sudden vision of Stevie with a child of hers.

Pierre sprawled beside Stevie, with the inevitable harmonica making a sweet sharp thread of sound through the babel; David was as silent as ever. Mark said, “Know what we been talking about?”

“Women,” said Joanna.

“Women,
hell!
We been making plans. Big ones.”

“You're going to make a summer colony out of the Island.”

“Nope. Can't do it. No plumbing, no electricity. Nope, Jo, this is it. Steve and me, we're going ashore and buy a truck. Dave and Pierre will handle the business from this end—car their lobsters and we'll get some other guys to do it too, and send 'em ashore to us, and we'll peddle 'em.” He looked at her expectantly, waiting for her praise and admiration.

“Where's the profit?” she asked shrewdly. “The truck costs something. You won't get the gas free. And you have to pay for the lobsters.”

“Profit! My Jesus, woman, where's the profit in lobstering out here, with prices dropped down to sixteen cents?”

“They'll go up in the fall.”

“Sure. For about twenty minutes.” He paced the crowded kitchen, black brows heavy. He was Owen all over again. “Look, we can get a hundred per cent profit peddling lobsters ashore. The truck and the gas—that's easy handled. Once we get the business under way, it's all as simple as billy-be-damned.”

“What about Stevie?” she glanced across at him. “Do you want to leave the Island!”

Mark said impatiently, “Of course he doesn't! He's been arguing like a bastard for a week. But he's got to go where I go.”

This wasn't anything to shrug off, Joanna knew. Mark was serious; he'd go in a minute, leave the Island and drag Stevie with him. She could see his point—it was going to be hard if the lobsters kept dropping—but if these young Bennetts left the Island, what would happen to its future? She forced herself to say lightly, “When do you plan to start up this business?”

“That's the hell of it. I won't be twenty-one till next year.”

She felt an instant relief. By the time he was of age, prices would be up at their winter heights, and when he was getting seventy-five dollars at a haul, he wouldn't want to go ashore.

“Mug-up's ready!” Mateel sang out, and young Charles echoed her, scrambling up into his high chair. They drew together around the table, to drink tea and coffee and eat cold biscuits with homemade strawberry jam, and there was no more talk of plans.

W
HEN THE FOG MULL WAS OVER
, Brigport celebrated with a supper and dance. There was a good-sized summer colony on the larger island, made up of teachers and artists, and by the end of June enough of them had arrived to make a considerable difference in the population. Most of the Bennett's Islanders went across to these affairs, if the weather was fine.

Joanna and Alec decided to stay home this time, though at least three boatloads were going

“Let's go for a long walk and make believe we're alone in the world,” Joanna said at noontime.

He smiled at her, the gentle, gay smile she loved, his eyes full of tiny lights. “You're the skipper, honey. Y'know, Owen's right—you are sort of blooming.”

“Owen ought to mind his own business.”

“Not that boy. He couldn't do it to save his life. He's going across tonight, with bells on. Seems there's a pretty little schoolmarm on Brigport for the summer, and she came over on the
Aurora B
. this morning, just for the ride. She was flitting around on the wharf, cute as a hummingbird, and Owen struck up an acquaintance. She'll be looking for him tonight.”

“Well, it's about time for him to break out with a new woman,” said Joanna philosophically. Alec took the empty water pails down to the well; she watched him go toward the gate, lean and erect and springy-stepped, his hair ruddy in the noon sunshine. She dreamed a little, watching him. They were out of the woods now, they were seeing a little profit. Saving a dollar here, a dollar there, and they didn't need new clothes this summer. Oh, they were getting ahead now. No doubt of it.

There was something else she knew, too. That was why she wanted Alec to stay home tonight. They would take a long walk in the clear June starlight, the way they used to walk when they were first married, and stop to rest above one of those little coves on the west side, where the sea would be so still they could see the stars shimmering in the dark water, and the woods would be black and listening behind them, and then she could tell him that she was positive about the baby.

She dreamed about this baby too, as she saw Alec coming up through the lane again. Sunlight filtering through the trees glinted across his head; light and shadow dappled him alternately as he walked along swinging the pails. She saw him now as the father of their child, sharer with her of something they had themselves made. It was queer to be watching him and thinking of him like this, when he didn't know about it yet. But tomorrow he would know, and he would see her in her new part, as she was seeing him now.

She could hardly wait to tell him, but tonight would be the time. She remembered with a smile how he had objected when she first talked to him about a baby. But he'd been like a child himself then, unwilling and afraid to be responsible for another life. In the past few months he had grown so much older that he was almost not the same Alec at all.

She watched him coming up toward her, and heard his sweet, sharp whistling. It was one of those old Scotch songs of his, about Bonnie Prince Charlie. “Will Ye No' Come Back Again.” Her lips phrased the words, fitting them to the music.

This baby would be happy and blessed, growing up a child of theirs on the Island. It had been blessed already, from that day on Pirate Island. It seemed to Joanna as if her child must be born with a memory of flooding sunshine and the shy fragrance of wild strawberry blossoms. And an amethyst sea at nightfall.

Her heart seemed full to bursting. This was what it meant, in the Twenty-third Psalm . . . “My cup runneth over . . .”

Alec's feet were on the steps, and the whistle was clear and loud.

Joanna, looking every inch the practical wife of a fisherman, began to take up the potatoes.

In the late afternoon, Joanna walked down to the shore to see why Alec hadn't come home yet to supper, and found him on the wharf, lounging against a hogshead and watching the exodus of Islanders. Joanna was in time to wave off Stephen and Donna. One by one the boats were leaving the harbor for Brigport, lying long and serene across the glassy smooth Gut. Almost everyone was going to the supper and the dance. As the
Donna
slipped away from the wharf, Leah and Ned Foster were coming through the shed.

“Summer's here,” said Alec cheerfully as they came out into the late sunshine. “You can tell what time of year it is when they start gadding around.”

Leah Foster's smiling glance touched Joanna and moved toward Alec. “Are you two people too old and settled to gad around?”

“Yep!” Alec smiled back at her. “What's on Brigport that we haven't seen already?” He put his hand lightly on Joanna's shoulder, and with that warm pressure, she looked back steadily at Leah Foster, with pity behind that look. But it was never Joanna's way to pretend friendliness where it didn't exist.

Ned was more like a piece of old gray wood than ever. He touched his hat and nodded to them with his faint smile. Leah, pausing there a moment to speak to them, looked exactly the same as she had always looked, hair like smooth silk floss with not one thread of gray in it, head carried in the same way on the plump white neck—Leah never tanned up like the other Island women—eyes smiling as they had always smiled from under the thick white lids. There was not one new line in her face.

When they had gone down the ladder, and Ned's gray boat had skimmed across the mouth of the harbor, quiet came down on the Island again like a veil of warm gold light. The western sea was a sea of blazing bronze; the harbor itself lay cool and still and blue, but the few boats left at the moorings caught the late sun until it seemed to wash their white sides with gilt.

“You don't like Leah much, do you?” said Alec with a chuckle. “I've noticed it more than once.”

“Maybe I'm jealous of her charm. There's always some numbskull waiting to get her a pail of water and chop her kindling.”

“It's Ash Bird, now.” Alec's fingers turned her face toward him. “What would you say if I started being helpful to Leah, huh?”

Joanna wrinkled up her nose at him. “I'd say any man that left me for the likes of her could leave me for keeps, and I'd say good riddance!” She grinned at him. “But out of the kindness of my heart I'd warn you ‘Look out for Neddie!'”