The Ebbing Tide (24 page)

Joanna's fingers closed peacefully around a bleached sea-urchin shell she had found near her in the grass. Sou-west Point was littered with them, where the gulls had had their daily feasts. This shell was almost perfect, it might have been fashioned of fine, thin white porcelain.

She came awake again as a peapod slipped into sight from among the big ledges off the very tip of Sou-west Point. It was Young Charles, of course. No one else fished from a peapod. He handled it well, sending it forward across the bright water with long, swift strokes. She watched him with pleasure. The paint of the peapod was still clean and white, his oilpants still maintained their brilliant yellow newness. The long visor of his duck-billed cap shadowed his face; but she could tell the shape of his shoulders under the blue shirt, and she could see his arms' ruddy brown, and almost for an instant or two—she could imagine it was Owen at sixteen, or Mark. All of her brothers had hauled their pots in these coves from a peapod at one time or another, and their father before them. It was good to have a boy on the Island again, a boy and a peapod.

She'd had misgivings about Young Charles; but in the two weeks since he'd come, most of the misgivings had gone. Under Owen's supervision, he'd taken to lobstering the way a Bennett should, he had a natural instinct for the right places to set his pots, and he was lucky besides. Owen said he was a good worker in the fish house, he didn't chafe at the necessary drudgery of patching pots and knitting heads, and he wasn't squeamish about plunging his hands into bait. And it was easy for Joanna to have him in the house. He was quick to fill the water pails or the woodbox, and he had a noisy, infectious good humor that didn't plunge suddenly into gloom, as the Bennett temper was prone to do.

The peapod shot swiftly forward across the cove, and she realized that he was coming ashore. For a moment she thought that he had seen her, and then remembered that it was next to impossible to see anyone sitting where she was, from down in the cove.
He's going to explore
, she thought in quick understanding. He'd finished his hauling, and he was going to wander around for a bit before he went home. She wondered what was in his mind as he shipped his oars and beached the peapod, and climbed over the side to haul the boat on, his boots splashing in the little line of surf. She and her brothers had always been imaginative; to them, the heights of Sou-west Point rising barrenly against the sky had been every citadel, every pirate­haunted or cannibal-inhabited island they had ever read about.

He was making the painter fast around an old spar that had been there for years. She put down the sea-urchin shell and moved forward cautiously to watch him. She wouldn't interrupt him—not she, who loved her own solitude so much, and she would be going home soon anyway, now that she'd eaten and rested. But she wanted to see how he stood and looked at the timbers that reached out of the shifting beach rocks like giant whitened ribs—and ribs they were, the ribs of some ship that had once been “an able handsome lady,” like the
Lucy Foster
in the song. What dreams might a sixteen-year-old boy dream, when he was a blend of Bennett and Trudeau, and stood like this on a deserted beach, on an island where his father's and mother's people had lived before him?

She reached the edge of the bluff and looked down. He was half­running; and he went by the stark gleaming ruin of the ship, the stones rolling and clattering under his feet.

Thea was there to meet him.
Thea
. While Joanna had dreamed on the hillside above her, Thea had come along the wooded south side of the Island and out onto the beach. Joanna realized all this in the one incredulous moment before she saw her nephew take Thea into his arms. She went rigid and cold, and then her senses swung so close to the edge of actual nausea that sweat broke out icily in the palms of her hands, and she had to shut her eyes until the monstrous sickness passed by. When it had gone, she was furious. Her first impulse was to go down there, to descend upon them like a totally unexpected williwaw, to take Young Charles by the ear and send him back to his peapod with a well-aimed kick; and then she would get Thea by those
curls
, and she would shake her with her steely fingers and wrists until there was no starch left in Thea and she would drop on the beach as foolishly and flaccidly as the Raggedy Ann doll Ellen used to have.

But of course she wouldn't do it. There was the minute or so before she could get away, when she saw Thea take off the boy's cap and run her fingers through his curls; and the nausea came again, so close that the water ran in her mouth. She moved away from the edge, then, picking up her lard pails with a careful, automatic gesture, and went down over the other side of the ridge.

She saw nothing as she walked home, and her rage carried her along much faster than she had made the trip before. The day that had started in such shining peace was shattered. The sun was high, the sky without a shred of mist across the blue, and the drone of engines mingled with the wash of water around the rocks; the birds were in full swing. But if she heard them, she didn't know that she heard them.

She passed Barque Cove and cut through the woods behind the clubhouse, thence across the lane and her own field. She didn't meet anyone, no one hailed her, and she was grateful. She saw with thanksgiving her waiting house, with delphinium a cool deep blue against the white, and the seven-sisters bush spilling out its fragile sweetness to meet her.

I
T WAS DARK
before she had a chance to speak to Young Charles and then she had to make the chance. He was in and out a dozen times, and always there was someone else there, or he was gone before she could get his attention. He was noisily exultant, teasing Ellen, carrying Jamie on his shoulder, wrestling with Dick; but then, he was always like that, especially when he'd had a good haul.

You had a good haul today, my lad
, she thought grimly. She wasn't quite sure what she was going to say to him. Several times she was on the verge of telling Owen about it, but at the end of the day she hadn't said anything at all. Owen would rant and swear, he'd take the boy by the scruFF of the neck, and he'd barge in on Thea and give her enough to talk about for the rest of her life. She'd be all outraged innocence, and Young Charles would be an abnormal child who'd made advances to her.

Joanna could imagine it all, seething, and by the time Owen had gone off through the mild evening down to Sigurd's, and Ellen had gone to bed, she had no longer any doubts as to how she would approach Young Charles. This was no time for doubt. The job must be done, it must be done tonight, and she must do it alone.

He had been out all evening, and by some peculiar coincidence there were no edges of light showing around Thea's shades. Thea hated to go to bed early; she sat up listening to the radio and drinking tea when Francis had been long in bed. But who knew if Francis was home tonight? He might have gone up to the Fennells' to play cribbage with Matthew, he might be down with Sigurd and Owen. And Young Charles was out, either wandering around in the mild, murmuring night, or—

He came in suddenly, so suddenly that she was startled, even though she had been waiting for him ever since Ellen had gone to bed. She looked up from her book and saw him standing in the kitchen doorway, beyond the rim of the Aladdin's sharp yellow light. His grin showed white, and he reached up and shoved back his cap. The gesture was so much Owen's that for an instant she felt confused, as if Time had played a trick on her.

“Hello,” she said briefly, and he came forward into the light. There was a sheen of perspiration making bronze highlights across his brown forehead, and on the fine dark down on his upper lip. His cheekbones were red, as if he'd been in the wind.

“Hi, Aunt Jo.” He gave her the grin again, and fidgeted around the room, his hands first in his pockets and then out of them. She watched him while she pretended to read. It wouldn't be hard at all to tell him she knew about Thea. The way was opening before her.

“Sit down, Charles,” she invited him. He didn't answer, but went into the dark kitchen and glanced out toward the harbor. He stood there, motionless, for a long moment; she had the impression that he was watching for something in the darkness outside, something of his taut expectancy communicated itself to her. He was like a glossy young animal, waiting in a thicket.

“What ails you?” she said casually. He came back then, loosening the already-open neck of his shirt as if it were too tight.

“Aunt Jo—” He dropped down into a chair opposite her. “Aunt Jo, if anybody comes in here, say I've been here all evenin', will ye?”

“Why?” She smiled at him, but there was an instinctive tightening of her muscles. It was all so familiar, but she would never get hardened to it. He smiled back at her. It was a smile that could have charmed the birds out of the trees, but it didn't charm Joanna, who was used to rich and blazing smiles instead of straight answers.

“You know how boys are, Aunt Jo,” he said winningly. “Lots of things there's no harm in, but—” He shrugged, and spread his hands deprecatingly. They were square brown hands that were never still. There was a blaze and a sparkle in his eyes, fiery color along his cheekbones as he talked on, vaguely but brightly, about the foolish little things the older people raised hell over. He was tremendously exhilarated; he might have been in the glorious, crest-of-the-wave stage of drunkenness in which she'd seen Owen so many times. Or he might have been in another sort of intoxication that she could also recognize. There was no liquor on his breath as he leaned toward her with a final, and very sure plea.

“You won't be sorry if you tell a little fib for me, Aunt Jo—”

“It's quite a big one, it seems to me. Who's going to raise hell about this, anyway? Are you afraid it'll get back to your father? But if it's so harmless—” She shrugged her shoulders, and laughed. “I can't understand what you're fussing about, Charles! Who is it that's supposed to think you've been here all evening?”

His eyes narrowed, as if he were trying to harden his face. He got up. “Forget it, Aunt Jo.”

“Did Francis come in too soon?”

She was prepared either for sincere amazement—if he hadn't been in Thea's house—or for sudden, intense Bennett fury. Instead, he sat down again, and reached for a cigarette. She had the impression that his hand was trembling.

“How'd you know, Aunt Jo?”

“I was picking berries down on Sou-west Point this morning,” she answered honestly. “I saw you when you came ashore.”

“Does anybody else know?”

She shook her head, and a faint grin touched the boy's stiffened lips. “But Jesus, Aunt Jo, if my father ever finds out, he'll skin me alive. You ain't intendin' to tell him, are ye?”

“No, I won't tell him.” She met the boy's eyes in all candor. “But Charles, it's only a matter of time before he finds it out for himself. Thea has a cousin in Pruitt's Harbor, you know. And nobody has any private life on Bennett's Island. Everybody'll be talking in a week.”

He wiped his forehead with his arm. “God, it's a mess, ain't it? Francis did almost walk in on us tonight,” he added frankly. “If I hadn't seen him comin' up from Sig's, I guess I'd have been a dead pigeon.” His jaw tightened and a little bit of swagger came back. “Not that I'm scared of Franny. I could prob'ly knock him stiffer'n a maggot.”

He got up again. “Well, I might as well hit the hay. Got a hard day tomorrow.” He tried to say it with bravado, but standing there in the lamplight, he looked very young and subdued. He was not so much a man as he'd been thinking he was, and she felt a wave of indignant tenderness toward him; at the same time she had a strong desire to strangle Thea by her scrawny neck.

There was nothing more to say to Young Charles except a brief, “Good night.” He was scared, badly scared; perhaps his escapade didn't seem so brave a thing now that it was out in the light, and there was the chance of his father's discovering it. He'd have a new idea to sleep on tonight, and perhaps that would do the trick. She could only wait and see.

The next few days went on as July days always went; she made jam from the berries she'd picked that morning, she weeded the garden, she walked over to Schoolhouse Cove with Nora Fennell and talked about babies while Jamie dug in the coarse white sand and threw stones into the water. Yet all the time, behind her eyes, there was the thought of Young Charles; and when he was near her, she watched him without him appearing to watch, trying to find some sign. But he looked at her without equivocation, and he seemed carefree enough. She didn't want to ask him, she didn't want to refer to the whole sickening business, and she began to wonder if she wouldn't be safe in assuming that he had broken off with Thea, that the thing had ended almost as soon as it had begun.

She relaxed then, feeling incredibly fortunate, and fonder than ever of the boy, because he had been so easy to handle. Much easier than her brothers had been; Owen in particular had been as stubborn as a yearling bull.

She went out into the barn one afternoon to look over the old furniture Nils' grandmother had stored before she went to the mainland. The barn was dusty-cool, slashed through with thin blades of sunlight in which the motes swirled goldenly. Joanna, in old slacks, moved around the stacked pieces, whistling faintly. She was contented, and had no reason to be. Gunnar had been right when he said work was the poor man's blessing. When there was always something to do, something you liked to do and knew at the same time that it was necessary and useful, you could be contented—after a fashion—even when your husband was in the Pacific. Nils' last letter had been one of the best, and besides, there was a growing possibility that the Japs might surprise the world by surrendering as soon as the Germans did. D-Day had happened over a month ago, and so the Nazis ought to be tiring pretty soon.