The Dawning of the Day (22 page)

“That's the way in all small places.”

“There's going to be a heck of a lot of packages going around with your name on,” said Kathie with what seemed unnecessary relish. “You tolled the Webster kids into school, and so you've stepped on a lot of toes. Squashed 'em flat as those woolly caterpillars.”

Philippa said pleasantly, “The Webster children have a right to come to school. Their father pays taxes and contributes toward my salary. Everybody knows that. . . . Are you walking my way?”

“I'll walk anywhere,” said Kathie. They started along the path. “Sure, the kids have a right to come. But rights don't matter to some people, some who think the Websters shouldn't breathe the same air their kids breathe. They might taint it.”

Kathie was waiting, Philippa knew, to be asked who these people were. She made one of the veiled ambiguous answers she herself hated. “I'm sure everything will work out all right, Kathie.”

“Ayeh,” said Kathie with cheerful insincerity. They stopped by Nils's fishhouse and looked out at the harbor. The torch was out except for a falling shower of red sparks hissing into the black water, but they could hear men's voices over the soft wash on the shore.

“They're through,” said Kathie. “They must have loaded the dory. She looked to be riding pretty low in the water. Well, I'm going home. I was only supposed to go as far as the store.” She giggled as if at her thoughts. “I hope you've got a good suit of chain mail to wear under your clothes, like Joan of Arc.”

Philippa laughed. “Well,
thank
you, Kathie! Good night.” She walked home quickly, wanting to pass the long beach before the men came ashore. Her desire to see Steve had gone out like the torch; an instant of meeting could only disturb and get in the way of her thinking. When she had first known Justin, she had let herself go gladly, as if on a broad, delightful tidal stream. But Justin had been like the rock around which the stream was diverted, and now she was different.

F
riday night Steve sent her a message by Jamie, inviting her to go to haul with him the next morning. She told the Campions about it. Asanath nodded benevolently. “That's something you ought to see, and now, else you'll have to wait till spring. Good days are few and far between this time of year.”

“Everybody comes here wants to go out to haul,” said Suze fretfully. “Like it was an excursion. What they can see in it, I don't know.”

“It's local color, Mrs. Campion,” Philippa said.

“Local fiddlesticks! Going around in circles, rolling and lolloping, and the bait sinking. I can't hardly eat a lobster when I think of the stuff
they
eat!”

“Don't you grieve about your weakness, Suze,” said Asanath. “You're real brave when I bring in a mess. You always manage to choke down a few.”

Suze looked at him uncertainly, flushing. For an instant Philippa guessed at the girl whom Asanath had married; a creature with a fragile, tremulous prettiness like Sweet Alice. The quality had not ripened with the years but had become dried, insubstantial, and faintly acid.

The morning was cold and sunny, with a little breeze to riffle the water and make a lively frill of white on the shores. She was supposed to be at Mark Bennett's wharf at half-past eight. Most of the other boats had gone, leaving their skiffs bobbing at the moorings. Sometimes a gull stood nonchalantly on a punt seat, facing into the wind. Steve's boat was still at her mooring, and he was busy in the cockpit.

When she reached the wharf, Viola Goward and Mrs. Percy stood talking in the little sunny spot in front of the store. It was boat day, and they had come early to get their money orders and put in their bids for a share of the meat, fresh fruit, and vegetables that would come on the boat. They didn't see Philippa at once; they were looking out at the harbor as they talked. Philippa glanced in at the post-office window and saw Helmi working at her desk, her fair hair making a silvery glint in the dim little room.

“Good morning,” Philippa called to the others. They turned hastily. Mrs. Percy's dry, taut skin reddened, and her gaze seemed to hold guilt and then defiance. Viola laughed.

“Good morning! You're just the lady I want to see!”

“I'm flattered,” said Philippa cheerfully. Mrs. Percy sat down on the bench and took her cigarettes from a pocket of her leather jacket. She kept tapping one on the back of her hand.

“I don't know whether you'll be flattered or not when you hear what I've got to say,” said Viola heartily. “But somebody's got to do it, and it might as well be me. I was never one to shirk my duty, and if there's one thing I
have
got, if I do say so myself, it's a civic conscience. There's some folks, on account of being islanders all their lives, who don't know what it is to think of the
community
.” She showed her strong teeth in a smile. “With them, it's every man for himself and the devil take the hindmost.”

Mrs. Percy jabbed her cigarette at her mouth and brought out a lighter. “Dog eat dog,” she said in a shrill voice.

Philippa pushed her hands a little deeper into her raincoat pockets, and set her back against a nearby hogshead. “This is going to be interesting, I can tell.”

“There's no need of me going all around Creation and half of Brighton,” said Viola. “If you've been given the wrong advice, and been taken advantage of in your innocence, what's happened is no fault of yours.”

“Ignorance is bliss,” Mrs. Percy contributed, blowing smoke through her nostrils.

“It seems to me I'm being damned with faint praise,” said Philippa, “or praised with faint damns. And why?”

Viola pounced. “Do you know
what
you've got in your school, being allowed to associate with normal, healthy children?”

“I suppose you're referring to the Webster children?”

“I am.” Mrs. Goward's pale blue eyes glittered.

I think she hates me, Philippa thought. She's going to slash away at me and my airs and graces, my insolence and stupidity. Aloud, she said, “But there's nothing wrong with the Webster children, Mrs. Goward. I know they're nervous, and probably undernourished. But they're intelligent, and so far very well behaved. They belong in the school, and I'm glad they've come.”

“But there's things we know about that mess that you
couldn't
know,” Viola went on with a show of patient generosity. “You've had bad advice, like I said, or you'd have waited to find out how
all
the parents felt. Some of us are fussy about our young ones, Mrs. Marshall, even if you think of us as just ignorant fishermen's wives.”

“I don't think of you like that at all,” said Philippa.

“It's too bad you were encouraged to go stirring things up that are better left alone.”

“Let sleeping dogs lie,” said Mrs. Percy.

“Fools rush in, Mrs. Percy,” Philippa said. “That's another good one.” With Viola Goward she was still gentle, with the softness of controlled anger.

“No one gave me bad advice, Mrs. Goward. I'm quite capable of making my own decisions and drawing my own conclusions. I did everything in my power to get those children back into school. It's true, there are a few people on the island who were as horrified as I was to find them wandering in the woods like refugees, but they didn't know the situation until I mentioned it.” Out in the harbor Steve's engine started. The sound was sweet, but she didn't look toward it. “Their father pays his share. They have a right to come.”

Viola reached up to adjust a hairpin in the familiar violent gesture. “Rue is
unwholesome
. You'll find out what I mean. You'll find out, all right. And Edwin is dangerous. I don't want my Ellie in the same room with him.”

“I think I can control Edwin,” said Philippa. “Without a strap.”

“Daniel's under age,” said Mrs. Percy suddenly. “He's not even pre-primary age. You're not supposed to be having a nursery school.”

Surprised that Mrs. Percy could speak in anything but clichés, Philippa said, “I understood from Mr. Campion that the little children could come if the teacher wanted to bother with them.”

The boat cut toward the wharf. Gulls flew up from the ledges in a strong beating of wings. Steve stood at the wheel, his thin dark face peaceful under the duck-bill. Philippa felt a sudden lift, as if inwardly she had gone up with the gulls. The day throbs with color and life, she thought. These women don't matter, they or the things they say with their cruel tongues and their nervous ringing voices. Viola is like a sandy-colored wolf and Mrs. Percy is a little jackal, but when I turn my back on them and face Steve, they will cease to exist.

She smiled at them with a generous friendliness. “I'm going out to haul. I've never been. It'll be a lovely day on the water, don't you think?” She waved to them as airily as Kathie might have done, and went down through the long damp shed to the open part of the wharf.

When they were going out of the harbor, Steve told Philippa to take the wheel while he put on his oil clothes. “Run out past the breakwater toward that spar buoy out there,” he said. “That's Harbor Ledge buoy.”

The answer of the boat to the wheel ran into her hands. She took a long breath. All her soul searchings about Steve were gone for the moment; she was caught up and enmeshed in a purely sensuous response to the cold stream of air against her face, the shimmer of sunlight on the sea, the bow's peak rising and falling against the distant hills of the mainland. Every new detail evoked more pleasure, whether it was the gull poised on the tilted spar buoy, or the sun shining on the buff-painted washboards and the green water boiling past.

Steve reached past her finally and took the wheel, heading the boat down the side of the island. “You look happy,” he said.

“I am.”

“What was all that backing and filling for, in front of the store? I saw Viola jabbing hairpins as if she was sticking a pig.”

Philippa laughed. “Woman talk, Steve. Nothing more.”

“I wouldn't have been surprised if Madam Goward told you she'd stowed away under the forward thwart of the dory the other night.”

“She didn't even drop a hint,” said Philippa. “So I guess she didn't think there was anything to find out. I have an idea that's how she gets most of her information. She does it very delicately, like a trout fisherman casting with a special sort of fly—she uses a different kind of fly for each victim—and they snap at it, and end up by giving their all.”

“That's Vi.” He put on a pair of white cotton work gloves and picked up the gaff. “The island's had 'em before. They come and they go, andthe island's still here with never a dent to show where they've been.” He steered for a yellow and white buoy, leaned out and gaffed it, and started the dripping warp around the wear-polished brass cylinder of the hauling gear. The warp spun tightly, flinging moisture in a bright shower, while the slack spiraled into a loose coil on the platform. The big trap appeared dimly in the depths, and then rose up to the side of the boat. Steve lifted it onto the washboards and brushed off the sea urchins. He reached over and gave the wheel a turn that sent the boat out away from the rocks, and then opened the door of the trap.

As he began to take out the lobsters from the dark green, spiny tangle, he gave Philippa a sideways smile. “You're no Jonah.”

She felt ridiculously pleased, and said inanely, “That's a help.”

“Four counters.” He dropped the big ones in a barrel. Two were doubtful, and he measured them and found them legal. Three more went flying overboard, and the crabs with them. He took out the empty bait bag and put in a fresh one, bulging with herring. Another turn of the wheel, and the big boat, rolling a little in the brisk chop, circled to drop the trap approximately where it had been. Then as if with a leap of eagerness personal to herself, the boat headed for the next buoy.

When they hauled around the western end of the island, they anchored in a little cove where the trees came down to the rocks in a thick growth. There was a family of old squaws paddling peacefully in the shallows where the rockweed lay gold and bronze, breathing with the tide. They flew up when the boat came into the cove, but after the engine had stopped and silence flowed back over the dying ripples, the old squaws settled down again. It was out of the wind here and so warm in the noon sun that Philippa took off her kerchief and her raincoat. Far away, among the ledges that dotted the sea at half tide, other boats moved from trap to trap. She watched them idly, not wondering who was in them; she sat quiescent in the sun and silence.

Steve got out of his oilskins, washed his hands, and opened his dinner box. “Look, a tablecloth.” His dark eyes narrowed in amusement, and he spread the big napkin on the engine box. “Jo fixed me up for a lady guest, all right. Would you care to dine at the captain's table, Madam?”

He set out lobster sandwiches and poured hot coffee into the thermos cups. There were filled cookies and two dark red winesaps polished like garnets.

“It's the most beautiful meal I've ever seen,” Philippa said. “I'd like to take a picture of it.”

“The background helps,” said Steve. “And the company.” He came around the engine box and sat down on the washboard beside Philippa. He took her hand and said soberly, “This is our first meal together. Supper at Joanna's that time doesn't count. Nothing had happened then.”

“Our first meal,” she repeated. The laughter had gone. She looked at him without defenses.

“What do you know, Philippa?” He almost whispered it. “Tell me what you know.”

“Only that this is one of the happiest days of my life.”

“I think you love me, Philippa.” He put his arm around her. “I think you do.” He took her jaw in his fingers and turned her face up toward his. She wondered for an instant if the woods were as empty and innocent as they appeared, if the flurry of chickadee voices and the squawk of crows meant anything more than a hawk. But Steve kissed her before the wonder could complete itself.