Storm Tide (44 page)

When she went upstairs again, Ellen was already in bed, her clothes folded neatly on the short red chair, Teddy snuggled in the crook of her arm. Her eyes looked enormous, and her cheeks were pale.
She could be coming down with something
, Joanna thought doubtfully. She laid her hand on Ellen's forehead, but it was moist and cool.

She sat down on the edge of the bed and smiled at her daughter. “Did you know Stevie is going to send you a picture of him, in his uniform, for your own? To have up her in your room?”

“Is he?” said Ellen politely.

This would get them nowhere. Joanna asked directly, “Is something wrong, Ellen?”

Ellen turned her head uneasily on the pillow, and looked down at the teddy bear's head. “No, Mother . . .”

“Bad spelling papers? I used to have them too, Ellen.”

She waited. Again that small, courteous voice. “No, Mother . . . Is Stevie going early in the morning?”

So it was Stevie after all. Joanna felt a pleasant loosening of tension in her chest. She'd been half-afraid Ellen was going to ask her if Nils would be home for Christmas. . . . She must figure out an answer to the question, and have it ready. But for tonight, anyway, she was safe. She leaned over and kissed Ellen.

“He's going on the mailboat, so you'll be up in time to see him. Won't you be glad to have a picture of him, Ellen?”

“Yes, Mother,” said Ellen. Joanna turned off the oil heater; then, on an impulse, she went back and kissed Ellen again. This time Ellen's arms came up around her neck in a fierce, tight hug. “
Mother
—”

At the same instant Joanna heard Owen's door open, down the hall. The sound rang in her brain like an alarm bell. She laid Ellen back on the bed, careful to speak easily, “There's Owen. He may want something—I'd better go see.”

Ellen said nothing. Her big eyes remained on her mother's face as Joanna fixed the covers with a hasty automatic gesture. “Good­night, dear.” Joanna took the lamp from the chest of drawers and went out of the room, closing the door behind her.

Owen stood at the head of the stairs, one hand on the newel post, his black head bent. He was listening. . . . Joanna went toward him with the lamp, moistening her lips. She'd get him back in his room before he realized Mark was down there, or Helmi—he was in the mood to be ugly —

She spoke casually. “Owen, go back and take it easy, and I'll bring you up some coffee.”

“The hell with you,” said Owen, just as casually. “If I want coffee I'll go downsairs and get it.”

He started down the stairs, and there was nothing for her to do but follow him. He went slowly, his hand on the banister. Joanna, watching his leisurely descent in the light from the lamp, stared at the back of his head and knew with a sick certainty what awaited at the foot of the stairs.

If there's trouble
, her mind said evenly,
I'll pitch this lamp into the midst of it and walk out of the house
.

He went into the sitting room, where Helmi looked up at him from a magazine, calmly. Joanna held her breath; but Owen merely glanced at Helmi, and continued to the kitchen.

In the doorway Joanna stopped. She remembered the lighted lamp in her hand and blew it out; she was still behind Owen, but over his plaid shoulder she watched Mark and saw the instant immobility of his features. He was still sprawled comfortably before the stove, his feet on the oven hearth; but she had the impression that he had tightened in every cord and muscle.

Don't say anything, Mark!
she begged him wordlessly, and by some miracle, not even the expression of his face changed. It was a long moment, while Owen stood motionless by the table, and Mark regarded him. Then Owen walked toward the woodshed door.

When it had shut behind him, Joanna realized that the hand holding Ellen's lamp was trembling. She put the lamp on the shelf, and took a drink of water to moisten her dry throat. Behind her she heard someone's thumbnail scratch a match into flame. Stevie said normally, “Here, have one, Mark.”

When she turned around, both boys were lighting cigarettes, and from the sitting room came the sound of a magazine leaf turning gently. It was as if Owen had not appeared at all. . . . But there was a noise of hammering in the barn.

“He building pots at this time of night?” Mark said.

“The other night he got up at midnight and went to work out there,” said Stevie.

“Sounds like one of those Nils tricks,” Mark observed dryly. “What's the matter with him?”

Stevie shrugged. “I told you he was taking it hard, because the Navy turned him down.”

“I didn't know it was
that
hard.” Mark looked at the door into the shed through a cloud of cigarette smoke, his dark eyes thoughtful.

“It's been pretty awful,” Joanna said. “I've never been so sorry for anyone in my life. It was a terrible shock to him.” She felt like talking, now that the moment of dreadful strain was past. “He just can't get used to the idea that a Bennett couldn't pass the physical.”

“Whatever is wrong with him, it won't kill him, will it?”

“No,” Stevie answered. “But it's just as hard on him as if they'd told him he had only six months to live.” He studied the burning tip of his cigarette, his dark face somber. “Poor devil. Any of the rest of us could take it better than Owen.”

“I couldn't take it,” said Mark abruptly, and stood up. There was almost a savagery in his face. “When I—
if
I go, and they turn me down, I'll pull the damn' place apart around their ears.” He lifted the stovelid with a clatter, and threw his cigarette into the fire. Without another word he turned and went toward the shed door.

The latch clicked behind him, and Stevie and Joanna looked at each other. Joanna leaned weakly against the dresser; Stevie lifted an eloquent eyebrow. “I'll wait five minutes. Then if Mark doesn't come flying head first through that door, I'll go out and join the friendly congregation.”

He winked, and Joanna managed to wink back at him. She went into the sitting room. Helmi greeted her tranquilly. “Well?”

“Everythings fine,” said Joanna, and hoped with all her heart that it was so. If only Mark and Owen could be friends again, so she need not have that on her mind any longer. . . . It would be nice if they could make comrades of each other, as Mark and Stevie had done. Owen would get over his disappointment quicker, and perhaps Mark wouldn't miss Stevie so much. . . .
I didn't know Mark could be so sympathetic
, she thought.

Then she remembered what he'd said; his barely perceptible hesitation, and correction. “When I—
if
I go. . . .” Mark wanted to go; he wanted badly to go, she had seen it in his face. She looked across at Mark's wife, sitting so quietly, her head bent over her magazine so that Joanna couldn't see her face. He hair fell forward past her cheeks, fine and silky, shimmering in the lamplight.

I wonder if she'll let him go
, Joanna thought, and realized that she intended to find out.

She heard the shed door closing, and knew Stevie had gone out to join the others in the barn. Her eyes moved swiftly around the sitting room, a new sparkle in them, looking for an excuse to take her and Helmi outdoors. It was easier to talk in the dark, under the stars; easier to say things you would never say in daylight or lamplight.

T
HE EXCUSE WAS A BOOK
she wanted to return to Nora Fennell. Helmi agreed to go with her; they put on their coats and mittens, and went out. Directly the door shut behind them, they were alone in the winter night. The pure dry cold burned in their throats when they breathed, and the stars blazed with a dartling white fire.

Joanna had brought along a flashlight, but after a few moments they didn't need it. The slantwise path that sloped gently across the meadow toward the woods was well-defined under their feet, and metal-hard with frost. . . . They didn't speak at first. To Joanna, if she had not always been so conscious of the sea, they might have been on some clear, wide, inland space, the night was so still.

What had been the house was now merely a house-shaped blackness on the rise, stamping out the stars with its roof and chimneys; it was printed with tawny rectangles of lamplight, but they didn't give the house substance. The woods towards which Joanna and Helmi walked made a towering wall of more blackness, notched sharply against the sky. It appeared such a solid wall it seemed impossible to think of walking through it; and yet, here was where the meadow ended and the woods began, and already Joanna and Helmi were walking under the tall old spruces.

Now you saw the stars through shaggy boughs, or perched crazily on the tops like Christmas-tree ornaments. Christmas was too near, Joanna thought with a little shiver of dread. . . . Aloud she said, “I read a creepy story once about a man who had a crazy spell whenever he found himself in a certain combination of a cold night, stars, and pine trees. For a long time whenever I walked through here I was thankful these were all spruces.”

“Do you think you'd have a crazy spell, too?” asked Helmi.

“Well, I figured you never can tell what's in your background. Maybe one of my ancestors thought he was a wolf too, and handed on the memory. That's what the story was about.”

“Was the man a Finn?”

Joanna laughed. “His ancestors were Vikings.”

“I only asked,” explained Helmi indifferently, “because some people think Finns have crazy spells.” They had reached the apple orchard; there was a faint glow of starlight among the small, gnarled trees, and at the far end of the orchard the cemetery gateposts glimmered. Helmi stopped. “Did you ever feel scared to go near the cemetery at night?”

Joanna stopped too. The silence had that peculiar hushed quality she'd noticed about Island silences. A waiting stillness, in which her voice sounded clear. “No. I was never nervous about the cemetery. Not even after—”

“Not even after your first husband died?” said Helmi.

“Not even then,” said Joanna.
So you believe in being direct, my girl
, she thought, without anger at Helmi's bluntness, but rather with relief.
That will make it easier for me
.

She placed her back comfortably against the nearest apple tree's trunk. She could see Helmi quite clearly now in the starlight. They'd come without kerchiefs, and Helmi's hair had a pale sheen.

“I've been thinking about Alec lately,” she said slowly. “You see, when I'd been married to him a year—as long as you've been married to Mark—I was about your age. And I've been wondering how I'd have felt if a war had come along then. Whether I'd have been very patriotic about sending him off.”

“You probably would have been very brave,” Helmi murmured.

“Oh, I don't know.” Joanna leaned her head back against the rough trunk, and looked for Andromeda through the bare, twisted boughs. A flock of memories were whirling through her head, like a flock of blackbirds, and Alec was stronger before her than he had been for a long time. Those winter nights when sleep itself had been the essence of delight because she shared it with Alec. . . . She said, half to herself, “I might have been brave enough in the daytime. But I don't know about the nights. I was—crazy about him, Helmi. So I know what it is to be so wrapped up in a man you can be perfectly happy just looking at the back of his neck, or one of his eyebrows.”

Helmi was looking up at the sky too. “Nils has a good neck to look at,” she said in an impersonal tone. “Nice eyebrows, too.”

Joanna's fingers curled inside her mittens. She didn't want Nils brought into the conversation, least of all in that remote way of Helmi's that was so hard to fathom. Nils had nothing at all to do with this.

“Oh,
Nils
.” She made her manner light. “Nils and I are old compared to you, Helmi. We're in our thirties. We're—well, settled down. But you and Mark—”

“Mark,” said Helmi quietly, “could go and enlist tomorrow, if he wants to. That's what you're trying to find out, isn't it?”

No need to fumble now. Joanna straightened up. “He'd go, too—if he wasn't worried about you.”

“Why should he worry about me?”

“Because—” Joanna hesitated. She sensed that Helmi was like herself in one particular—she would resent her husband's discussing her with any other person. She groped for something to say, and then Helmi said it.

“Joanna,” she asked slowly, “did he say I cried in the night?”

“He only told me because he was so upset, Helmi. It frightened him. I know he wouldn't have mentioned it if he—”

Helmi drove her hands deep into her pockets in a fierce gesture. There was a sort of suppressed fury in her voice. “He didn't have to be worried. It was only once. That Sunday night, after the news came.”

Joanna said gently, and with pity: “When he told me, it had been every night for almost a week, Helmi.”

She hated having to say it. The girl was so jealous of her privacy, so locked within herself, this must be terrible for her. But say it she must. . . . “That's why he was scared. You can't really blame him, Helmi. He's afraid you can't get along without him . . . after the way you held on to him—you're the only one who can tell him it's all right.”

There was no immediate answer. It seemed like a long time, the waiting. The cold began to creep through the soles of her shoes. It nipped her ears, too.
I shouldn't have told her all he said
, she thought. But it would clear away the strain between them. She was confident of that.

“He said—I held on to him in my sleep?” It was a blind voice, feeling its way.

“Yes,” said Joanna.

Helmi turned sharply, and began to run, up through the orchard, her feet ringing on the frozen ground. It was so sudden that at first Joanna couldn't move. Then she ran after her, and caught up with her at the cemetery gate. “Helmi, it's nothing to take on about,” she said.