Moon Island (43 page)

‘Weird.’ Ivy yawned in agreement. ‘Listen. I’m going to go and hang out for an hour with Lucas and Gail. A goodbye thing, nothing heavy. Why don’t you come with me? Maybe we could all go into town, get a drink or something?’

‘You should go. But I think I’ll stay here. I want to take Mrs Fennymore’s books back.’ It was easy to think about Lucas; May’s face curved into a surprising smile.

‘You sure?’

‘Totally.’

The old Saab was parked outside the Beams’ house. Ivy walked by without giving it a glance. The porch had been tidied somewhat, although the splintered boards were still dredged with sand.

Tom opened the door. He directed Ivy towards Lucas’s room and she slithered past him and up the stairs, raising her eyebrows at the silence in the house.

Leonie was in the kitchen, leaning against one of the countertops. She followed a crack in the floor tiles with the toe of her sneaker. Tom came back and sat down again at his place at the table. He knitted his fingers together and frowningly aligned his thumbs. They hadn’t argued or even disagreed; they had simply made arrangements about what was to be done. It was a bloodless way to end a marriage, in restrained negotiations over property and bank accounts.

Yet what more did she expect, Leonie asked herself, from a marriage such as theirs had been? Of course it would not finish with operatic quarrels, or with cleansing rage, or even the bitterness of misplaced passion. The married Leonie made sad and reasonable provisions to put her married life aside and all the time the part of her that occupied the seedy cabin in the woods sang out with illogical hope.

The practical details were surprisingly few. They would put their apartment on the market and divide the proceeds equally. They had their own careers and had always kept their incomes separate. It seemed surprising, in retrospect, that they had never realised how detached they were.

‘I don’t want anything from the restaurants,’ she said. She would have to live in a much more restricted way than she had been used to, but she did not think that would be too difficult.

Tom nodded with quick acceptance. He wasn’t known for his generosity. ‘Is there anything else?’

Leonie studied his face. The lines and hollows of it were familiar and at the same time he was a stranger, just a man she happened to know, no more and no less than he had been on the night of the beach bonfire. ‘I don’t think so,’ she said. She took the keys of the Saab out of her purse and laid them on the table close to his hands. She had already bought herself a dented old Honda from a cousin of Roger Brownlow’s up in Haselboro. It went well with the cabin.

‘Can I… drive you anywhere?’ Tom asked.

‘Elizabeth offered and I accepted. Thank you.’

‘Sure.’ The screen door that led out on to the porch creaked and slammed shut in a swirl of gritty dust, making both of them jump. The wind was getting up in fitful gusts, which just as suddenly died into stillness again.

‘Where’s Marian?’ Leonie asked. The house seemed punctured, with all the air leaked out of it.

‘Resting.’

Leonie was surprised. Marian had never been known to rest, except in the handful of minor illnesses she had suffered over the years. ‘Is she all right?’

‘I think so.’

Leonie picked up her purse and slipped the strap over her shoulder.

‘It is too late, isn’t it?’ Tom asked abruptly.

He wasn’t looking at her. She couldn’t tell if it was a question, or whether he wanted her to confirm what he already knew in order to make himself more comfortable with it. She waited for a sign, but there was nothing. The branches of the tree beyond the window began an insistent tapping on the glass. In the end she answered, ‘Yes.’

He came with her to the door, as if she had been a dinner guest, and she insisted that she didn’t need escorting beyond there.

The first flash of dry lightning briefly veined the sky. It was almost seven o’clock and the light was fading fast as towers of grey and purple cloud mounted over the sea. May and Leonie sat on Elizabeth’s porch seat with the three books on the buttoned cushion between them. In the garden beds the white faces of Japanese anemones stood out, while the brilliant reds and oranges of daytime colours dimmed into invisibility. The kitchen windows at the side of the house were open to catch the air, and the two women could hear snatches of radio music and the clinking of pans. Spencer and Alexander were cooking.

‘Are you ready for home tomorrow?’ Leonie asked. ‘I’m going to miss you.’

‘I’m glad to have been here but I’m not sorry it’s over. I’d like to sleep in my own bed and have my own stuff around me. But I’ll miss Elizabeth and you as well.’

This acknowledgement pleased Leonie deeply.

May was staring out at the sea. It was rising into a choppy swell, with threatening little wrinkles licked up by the gusty wind. ‘Will you, you know, come and see us in New York?’

Gently Leonie said, ‘If I may, I’d like to. But first I have to go some distance on my own. I don’t know yet where I’ll be taking myself.’

‘I understand that.’

Elizabeth came out with a tray and glasses. There were vodka martinis for herself and Leonie, and cranberry juice in a frosted glass for May. Elizabeth raised hers to the two of them. ‘Safe journey,’ she said.

Over the rim of her tall glass May looked again across the water. There was a sailing ship in the bay. As she watched, it silently swept past Moon Island. The tall sails glimmered against the ridge of spruces and the long, steep bowsprit raked towards the southern headland where lines of breakers guarded the passage to the open sea.

The breath stopped in May’s chest. She tore a single sidelong glance away from the ship and saw that the other women were watching it too. Another flash of lightning seemed to pin the vessel to a sheet of steel. In the darkness that fell after it Leonie whispered, ‘It’s one of the windjammers up from Rockland.’

Elizabeth shook her head just once.

May knew it was no elegant windjammer. This ship was heavy, with blunt bows and a sawn-off square transom. The fore and main masts were square-rigged, the mizzen fore-and-aft-rigged. And between the fore and main masts the deck was blocked by the looming brick try-works. She knew exactly, from the descriptions and the old engravings in
Voyages of the Dolphin
, what a whaling ship looked like. She reached out and with her fingertips stroked the book on the cushion beside her.

The ship sailed majestically away from them. It rode the breaking crests of the waves between the island and the mainland shore, and gained the open water beyond. They watched until it passed out of their sight beyond the southern headland. After it had gone they heard a sigh, distinct in the silence before the storm broke, like a breath exhaled from the beach and the rocks. It whispered in their ears and the three women sat still, not needing to speak or even to look at one another. They were connected now. The threads of understanding would grow stronger, and draw them deeper into friendship.

When May lifted her glass her teeth rattled against the rim. Elizabeth and Leonie drank too, and she noticed that under the porch lantern the lines of doubt and anxiety were smoothed out of their faces. The lightning flashed again, illuminating the deserted bay and printing its emptiness behind their eyes.

‘I’m glad I saw that. I’ve never seen a ship so beautiful,’ Leonie said. A vicious clap of thunder drowned her last word. Almost at once a scatter of raindrops ricocheted off the path. May stood up and took the books into her arms. She hunched her shoulders to protect them, then bent down and awkwardly kissed Leonie’s cheek. ‘Goodbye. Will you come and see my dad?’ she asked.

‘Yes,’ Leonie promised. ‘And you and Ivy.’

May was glad that Elizabeth got up and followed her across the garden to the side entry, past the glimmering moon-faces of the anemones and the extinguished blaze of brighter flowers. Benign raindrops spattered on their arms and shoulders. In the seclusion of the far side of the house they stopped and looked at each other.

‘I saw it,’ May said, as if Elizabeth might have doubted her.

All the windows in the Captain’s House were lit up, making it look like a boat itself, riding at anchor against the clouds. Music floated from it, flattened by the humid air. Ivy and Lucas must be at home.

‘He came for her at last,’ Elizabeth said. ‘He’s taken her away.’ She could feel that a weight had lifted from the beach. Sadness had broken up and drifted away, like fog in the sun.

‘I hope so,’ May said uncertainly. For herself she didn’t want to sense the membrane again, or to risk breaking through it to whatever lay on the other side. She held the diary tight against her, the corner digging into the fold of her arm. Quickly, not trying to choose the words, she told Elizabeth where she had found it. Nothing more than that. ‘What should I do with it?’

Elizabeth didn’t hesitate. ‘You should send it to her parents. It was hers, they would want to have it. They will know where it belongs, don’t you think?’

She nodded, grateful, and leaned forward and kissed Elizabeth’s cheek more gently and gracefully than she had managed with Leonie. It was an easier meeting and parting to negotiate. ‘Thank you,’ May said.

Her face in the house lights, young and soft-featured and full of life, made Elizabeth smile and catch her breath at the same time. ‘Thank you,’ Elizabeth echoed her.

May ran down the driveway and along the bluff road. She kept her eyes fixed ahead, but if she had looked towards the Stiegels’ she would have seen Marty lifting the last of his bags into the rental car before setting off.

Hannah opened the door after a long interval. May held up the books, keeping the red-and-black diary in the other hand, the weak one. ‘I’ve come to return these. And to say goodbye. We’re leaving in the morning.’

The big room with its clutter of books and curios was shadowy and smelt of long-enclosed air. Aaron was in his chair next to the stove, Hannah had been sitting at the table, writing by the light of the single lamp. She took the two books from May and slotted them back into their places on the shelves.

Aaron beckoned her closer with a yellow finger. ‘You came to no harm, then?’

‘Not really.’

‘At your age you mend easily, if you’re made right. You’re nothing like the other one. Where are you going?’

‘Back home. Back to the city. The vacation’s over.’

But he had already lost interest, she saw, maybe even forgotten who she was. His mouth loosened and his eyes abandoned their focus, turning inwards instead to look at what she could not see. The terrible remoteness of old age struck her for the first time: Aaron was like a relic from another world. He seemed ten years older than the last time she had seen him, and much smaller and more palpably frail. Her legs felt like trees as she towered over him, her back like a pillar. She touched her free hand quickly to his shoulder and almost kissed the top of his head. Through the sparse hair she saw his scalp, blotched and discoloured with liver spots, and pity and distaste rose in her mouth He gave no sign in return.

Hannah was at her side. ‘Did you find them interesting?’ She nodded at the shelf where she had replaced the books.

‘I did. In a way.’

‘Yes. The
Pointed Firs
book is a Maine classic, of course. All you summer visitors like to read it. But the
Dolphin
story, that’s different. My son Bobby found it in a second-hand bookstore and bought it for me, knowing my interest in such things.’

May nodded. This was a long speech for Hannah Fennymore.

‘I often wonder if Sarah Corder was our island Sarah.’

May followed her gaze as it travelled beyond the blurred glass of the window to Moon Island. It lay low in the water, a spiny black hump against the graphite sky. ‘Perhaps,’ she said reluctantly. She wanted to shake off all these stories now. ‘Did Doone think she might have been?’

Hannah shrugged. ‘I don’t know if Doone ever read it. She kept the books for long enough, but she never gave me the impression of being much of a reader.’

Probably, May thought, she had just used
Voyages of the Dolphin
to make her code. If she wasn’t much of a reader, maybe there had been no other book conveniently to hand. Poor Doone. Whatever the truth had been, it didn’t make much difference now.

Hannah was looking at Aaron. His head was lolling in sleep.

‘I must go,’ May said quickly. Hannah came with her to the door. When they shook hands, Hannah’s felt tiny and light and brittle, like a claw. Then the door opened on to a gust of wind, which rattled the shadowy room. Rain slanted viciously beyond the porch.

‘I’ll run,’ May yelled and darted away into it. Exhilaration swept through her as the downpour plastered her hair to her head. She thrust the diary inside her sweatshirt and ran through the torrent, working her good shoulder forwards as if the wall of water were solid. Lightning stripped the darkness once more, and the bang and roll of the thunder came instantly.

Lucas and Ivy were sitting on one of the sofas watching television, and John was at the kitchen end of the room, laying out food. ‘You’re soaked,’ he exclaimed when May burst into the room. He came at once to lift the wet hair from her neck and help her to peel off her sweatshirt.

She was still laughing. ‘It felt good, amazing. Not cold at all. You should see the lightning. Better than the Pittsharbor fireworks.’

When the diary was uncovered she put it aside. The black cover was smudged with damp, but it was otherwise undamaged. John rubbed her hair with a towel. She submitted to his attentions, luxuriously stretching her neck. Afterwards he hooked the feathery wings of hair behind her ears in a gesture implicit with tenderness. May closed her eyes briefly and bent her head until her forehead touched his shoulder. He cupped her skull with one hand, holding her against him. ‘Go and change the rest of your clothes,’ he ordered when he released her. As May slowly mounted the stairs the leaf and flower carvings of the banister felt voluptuously complicated under the palm of her hand.

When she came down again Ivy was in the kitchen stirring something in a pan on the cooker. Her earphones were firmly plugged in. ‘Dad’s gone out on the bluff for some fresh air,’ she called to May in a too-loud voice over the beat drumming inside her head.