The Ebbing Tide (17 page)

His quiet happiness in his new life tempered the ache for Nils. Each day he saw something new, and mentioned it to her and she was secretly pleased because there was someone else in this small, strait universe who saw the Island without taking it for granted.

The wild pear buds opened into white blossoms with a tenuous fragrance, the cranberry and strawberry blossoms spangled the slopes above the sea like faint, glistening drifts of snow. May was a white month.

There was a wild pear tree at the edge of the alder swamp behind the barn. It stood on a little knoll above the brook, the brook that was a real brook only in the spring, when it mirrored flying clouds and a sky the color of forget-me-nots or slate-blue with storm, and the violet branches of awakening alders, the dark green tips of the spruces; and now the wild pear tree.

Ten spotted brown ducklings paddled in the brook one morning; splintering the blue and green and white into silvery fragments. The handsome drake and his small spouse had produced a family, and Joanna contemplated them as raptly as Jamie did. They were so downy, so baby-like, and yet so complete. Dick watched them, with remote interest, Jamie with his blond eyebrows pulled together and his lower lip out, his hands behind his back.

Nils had wanted to know in his last letter if the eggs had hatched yet. Down there among those green alien islands, where the blue water covered so many skeletons of ships, and broken bodies washed up on the white beaches, Nils had written about the duck eggs. She stared at the ducklings, seeing Nils instead, Nils' mouth so quiet and steady, Nils' hand moving so evenly as he wrote, Nils' head bent. She could see it so strongly that her hand made a little unconscious gesture, as if she would run it lightly over the back of his head and rest it for an instant on his neck.

Dick stood up, his tail waving, and she came back to the moment with a start. Dennis Garland walked toward her around the corner of the barn, in overalls and shirt sleeves. He walked lightly, almost with suppressed resilience.

“Come over to the brook and see what's here,” she said softly. “Don't make a quick move.”

He reached the knoll beside her without a sound and looked down at the brook. She glanced sidewise at him; he was as absorbed as Jamie. He had a deep tan now, with no tinge of grayish pallor under it, and the lines had smoothed out almost completely. A vision of the lonely man who had come to the Island, who had stood alone by the anchor that afternoon, seemed unreal in this instant; this was the real man, who turned to her now and said, “I imagine Joe's pretty conceited about this.”

“I don't know. He's been acting as if it's all a darned nuisance.” She laughed softly. “Judy sails along ahead of them and Joe keeps fooling around behind the procession, muttering.”

“Saying, no doubt, that all the wife thinks about are those darn kids,” said Dennis.

“Do you know how we got them? My brother Charles was coming out this way to go seining, and he called up to see if we wanted a duck. We hadn't had any fresh meat for so long, so of course we said
yes
.” She contemplated the drake's smooth iridescent head. “We thought he'd bring it out all dressed, but he brought him alive. And the poor thing was so terrified, his eyes so bright, and he was so pretty—” she shrugged. “We put him in the barn until Nils could get around to kill him. But Nils kept putting it off, and Owen kept asking when we were going to have a duck dinner. . . . Well, Nils and I didn't say anything to each other at first, but after about a week somebody had to give, and believe it or not, it was Nils. Every time he went out to the barn for anything, the drake talked to him, so he couldn't kill him.”

“You could have given the job to Owen,” Dennis suggested.

“The way Owen took on when we broke the news to him, you'd have thought we were a couple of cowardly idiots. He stormed out and went to haul—and when he came back he'd been over to Brigport and gotten Cap'n Merrill's wife to sell him a duck to keep the drake company.” In the midst of their laughter she waved at the family in the brook. “Their names are Joe and Judy. I'll let Ellen think up names for the offspring.”

“Oh, is
this
where you are?” Thea came around the corner of the barn, and Joanna walked to meet her; Thea's arrival on the knoll would throw the ducks into panic. Dennis came along behind her, with Jamie, and Thea's eyes widened in careful astonishment.

“My heavens, I didn't know you was here too, or I wouldn't of barged in!” Eyes and teeth gleamed at him. “Ain't it a perfectly gorgeous day?”

You're acting
, Joanna thought.
You knew he was here all the time. You came along on his coattails so fast it's a wonder you weren't walking up his back
.

“A beautiful day,” Dennis agreed courteously.

“You must like it here, the way you're stayin',” Thea said, keeping her face turned up to his. The path was too narrow for two people to walk abreast, but Thea was managing it somehow. “Looks like somebody's loss is our gain!” She giggled, and lurched grotesquely as her ankle turned. Dennis caught her arms and steadied her.

“Oh,” she moaned softly, shutting her eyes, and leaning against him. “I think I've sprained it.”

“Try standing on it,” Dennis suggested, but Thea gripped him with shrill squeals. Over her bobbing head Dennis looked at Joanna, his face completely grave, except for his eyes, and Joanna looked back. By the way Thea was brandishing her foot around, her pain couldn't have been too intense.

“Come on, Jamie, let's get out of the way,” Joanna said, and took her son's hand. “Come on, Dick.” They went on ahead, Jamie looking over his shoulder at Thea with grim fascination. On the back doorstep Joanna stopped to examine the opening green leaves on the lilacs. She was amused by Thea, and by the glance she and Dennis had exchanged over Thea's head. Smiling faintly to herself, she waited, and presently Thea came out by the barn, limping slightly. Dennis came behind her, fishing out his pipe and tobacco pouch from his overalls pockets.

“Whaddya know?” Thea exclaimed brightly. “It's hardly sprained at all!”

“That's good,” said Joanna. “A sprained ankle is an awful nuisance.”

“Not when there's a doctor around to look after it.” Thea's glance at Dennis was all but languishing. “But I guess it's not a sprain. . . . I'll be gettin' home. Remember you're comin' to supper next Saturday night, Dennis!”

“I'll remember,” he said.

“So long, then. So long, Jo!” She beamed at Joanna, and went around the house with no trace of a limp at all.

“How did you do it?” asked Joanna. “Convince her, I mean?”

“Stood her on her own two feet before she realized. Odd little character, isn't she?”

“Very odd,” said Joanna with restraint.

“No one can say there's a certain type of Island woman, because both you and Thea are Island-bred, but you're poles apart.” He stood contemplating her in the May sunshine, her dark head against the white clapboards, her brown hand still holding the green-leaved twig, the dog pressed close against her legs, and the child playing in the sand pile at her feet. “Do you mind if I say that I never expected to find anyone like you here?”

She was pleased, but she didn't show it. “Is that a compliment, or not?”

“A compliment,” he said candidly. “I love the Island, but it makes it all the better to know someone like you lives on it. If your husband were here, I imagine I'd feel the same way about him, from all I've heard. In the meanwhile, I intend to take full advantage of our friendship.”

“It looks as if I were the one who had taken full advantage of our friendship,” Joanna said. “You've done so much already—you're always on hand when something happens—”

“Do you know what you've done for me?” He shook his head. “No, you probably don't. But I assure you—” He broke off and looked down at Jamie, who was staring at him with solemn, unwinking blue eyes. “All right, Old Hundred, I'm leaving . . . Jamie thinks I talk too much.” He grinned at Joanna, a sudden, warm grin, and left her.

She sat down on the doorstep to let the sun soak in, and remembered what he had said. Here on the Island, she was his friend. Her pleasure was as comforting, as exhilarating, as the May sunshine. None of the men on the Island really spoke his language, much as they liked him and he liked them; as for the other women, there could be no sympathy between him and Leonie, or Thea, or Nora, who was clean and good, but young. She knew how she, herself, valued the understanding that had sprung up between her and Dennis; the shared humor of a situation, the shared delight in the sky-colors at sunset, or the ducklings; the unselfconscious discussions over coffee, the lending of books and the talking-over, afterwards. It was good, and besides, it tempered the edge of her heart's loneliness for Nils.

H
ER CONSCIENCE BOTHERED HER
about Nora Fennell. She awoke one morning from a dream that Nora was the fresh, wholesome young thing she'd been when she arrived on Bennett's Island, and the contrast between the dream and the reality stung her.

As soon as her morning's work was done, she went out into the yard to call Jamie. He was wandering toward the alder swamp, apparently in an aimless manner, and she wondered what he was thinking as he canted his head toward the trees. Dick walked along behind him, his tail moving slowly, benignly. Joanna hesitated for a moment, to smile at the sturdy little figure in blue overalls and sweater, the round and intent yellow head, the big dog following him, and then called.

They both turned around, Dick with a quickening tail, Jamie with a scowl fantastically like Owen's, for all his blondness.

“We're going to see Nora,” she told him. “What are you looking for in the alder swamp? Birds? Chickadees?”

He made a vague, ambiguous sound which could have meant almost anything, and approached his mother at a dreamlike gait. As soon as he had placed his small firm hand in hers, with the air of royalty bestowing a favor, they walked across the Sorensen field to the lane that led to the Fennells'. They went out through a break in the raspberry thicket, opposite the clubhouse. It was a long low building settled among the trees, and the men of Bennett's Island had built it, back in the days when her father was a young man. In all Joanna's growing-up the clubhouse had been the scene of school concerts, Christmas parties, Valentine masquerades, Fourth of July suppers; dances when accordian and guitar had rung out the tunes for Boston Fancy and Lady of the Lake. Now it was locked up and looked oddly unhappy there among its spruces. But not unkempt; a year or so ago the men had assembled to tar the roof and sand it, and as proof there was still a pile of sand behind it, below the kitchen window.

Perhaps they should try to have some dances this summer; certainly there'd be a crowd over from Brigport. The dance floor was a joy to behold, and it was more of a joy when you danced on it. . . . She found herself humming softly—“Put Your Little Foot Right Out—” as she swung open the iron gate to the Fennells' field.

The Fennells owned the house now. It had been hers before that, left to her by Alec. It had been a little hard to rent the house to strangers, but later, when they wanted to buy it, she had been contented with Nils and so it wasn't hard to let the house go. She'd only hoped that they would be very happy under the roof which had sheltered the first rapture of life with Alec. But now the Fennells had been there four—or was it five—years, and as she walked up toward the old-fashioned white house, set against the spruce-banked hillside, she thought again what she had realized so many times; the Fennells weren't happy.

Nora loved Matthew with her whole being, it leaped from her eyes when she looked at him. And Matthew loved her, with the slightly bewildered love of a man who has married a tree sprite or a mermaid.

But Nora was moping because her dog had died, and Gram was gloating. Sometimes Joanna had been moved to say that it would be a blessing for the young Fennells if the old lady would quietly die. “Oh, she'll up and die one of these days,” Owen snorted, “but she won't be quiet about it. Not that one!”

Gram had brought Matthew up, and she had been old in his babyhood. Now she seemed incredibly ancient.

Matthew came to the door when Joanna knocked. His broad, patient face crinkled into a smile. “Hello, Joanna. Come in! I guess you caught me all right—I haven't gone out to haul yet.”

“Don't apologize, Matthew. A man's entitled to sleep late a couple of times in his life, isn't he?” She went past him into the long kitchen where she'd fixed so many meals while Alec played his fiddle at the end of the stove. But the kitchen was so different now, with Nora's color scheme and furniture, and a white stove instead of a black one, that there were no memories . . . except of Bosun, who until recently had always met her at the door, all frantic tail and laughing tongue and whiskery black face.

Nora was standing at the dresser, breaking eggs into a bowl. She leaned against the woodwork as if she were very tired. Her smile was subdued, her eyes heavy.

“Hi, Joanna . . . Sit down.” She'd been like a glossy young colt when she came, five years ago, always throwing back her head with an impatient vigor, her eyes forever changing like the sky on a windy bright autumn day. “Jamie with you?”

“He and Dick are outside. You don't want those two tykes in the house. . . . How've you been, Nora?”

“I've been having a cold,” Nora said vaguely. “It hangs on. It bothers my stomach, mostly.”

“Well, I have spells of being pretty dull,” Joanna said. “Why don't you come down, and we'll be dull together?”

Matthew, bringing his rubber boots in from the entry, said, “I try to get her to go out more. But she doesn't. I know it's lonesome without—”