The Ebbing Tide (40 page)

“I didn't think there was.” Nils opened a fresh package of cigarettes, shook one out and put it between his lips. Ellen held out a match, helpfully; he took it, with a little sidewise glance of thanks.

“You was smart not to worry, because she got along just fine. Had somebody to look out for her—didn't you, Jo?” She rocked back and forth, and spoke with gusto, as if the words tasted good and she was very happy. “She and Dennis Garland—but I s'pose she wrote you about all the good times they had while you was gone.”

Nils' thumbnail moved and the match flared hissingly into life. He lit his cigarette carefully, and blew out the match. “I'm looking forward to meeting Dr. Garland,” he said.

Thea stood up and wrapped her coat around her briskly. “Well, I'll be go in'. You prob'ly ain't interested in talkin' to
me
.” She laughed, and it was an odd, jangled sound. “Good night, all.” Abruptly, she was gone, her high heels making a staccato rhythm through the sun parlor.

“My gosh,” said Ellen expressively. Nils blew out a smoke ring, watched it with peaceful blue eyes, and said, “Thea's quite a character.” He picked up his book again.

Outwardly the room was as it had been before Thea came in. But it had changed. It was as if the dank chill outdoors had come in to stay, for Joanna at least. She was not angry with Thea, but suddenly sick and weary with knowing that Thea had come for the sole purpose of making her ugly hint. Well, she had made it and gone, and now everything had changed. It
looked
the same. But Nils could be different behind that untroubled face. If he had not been away, if he had not come home lamed, she wouldn't have feared the difference, or even dreamed of it. But no man could go to war and come home the same; and where once he would have laughed at Thea's broad, transparent insinuations, who could say that he was laughing now?

The silence in the room frightened her. She said quickly, “Ellen—it's bedtime.” Then, afterwards, she wished she hadn't said it, because the silence was only more intense after Ellen had gone upstairs.

Eventually it was bedtime for herself and Nils. She moved quickly and nervously about her chores, letting Dick out, filling the oilbottle, making a mug-up of lobster sandwiches. She waited for Nils to say something about the lobster, the aromatic smell of the spruce fir for which he had been homesick, the sound of the wind and the surf when the door was open for a moment. But he had little to say. She tried to read his face; certainly there was nothing there of which to be afraid, no shadow of suspicion or brooding. But Nils had never shown anything.

When they went up to bed, she remembered how she had reached for Nils when he wasn't there, and had wept at the emptiness. She remembered what she'd thought when the letter came—the lift of pure ecstasy she'd felt, knowing that the emptiness would be gone. Tonight there'd be no need to be lonely. But Thea had come in, and so—Moving numbly, she took Jamie up from his crib while Nils watched. Jamie was befogged with sleep. He grumbled at her ominously, and when she looked up at Nils he was smiling; but at Jamie, and not at her.

They lay side by side in the dark without moving or speaking. As the darkness became familiar, she saw the spruces blowing against the moving masses of cloud. Strange to hear Nils' breathing while she watched. She began to ache, wanting to turn to him and touch him, and yet held back.
Why doesn't he speak?
she asked herself miserably. Hadn't he longed for her at night as she'd longed for him? But suppose he too felt cheated and chilled because of what Thea had said?

In another moment she would reach out to him, she wouldn't be able to help herself; and if he lay as cold and remote as granite, what would she say to him then?

She gathered herself together, steeling herself, and in that same instant he turned over and put his arms around her. She moved close to him with inarticulate gladness, waiting for the familiar possessive tightening of his arms.

“I wanted to think about it first,” he whispered against her cheek. “It's been so damned long—”

So that was it. And Thea didn't matter at all. Thea had never mattered. A sob rose in her, stifling all words. She put her arms around his neck and drew his head down until his face was against her throat. She felt his breath flow out against her skin in a long sigh. Their arms tightened around each other and they were held in a long embrace of passion tinged with desperation; it was like that first moment, on their own doorstep, except that it was more intense, hidden in the familiar safe darkness of their room.

B
UT THERE WAS A STRANGE QUALITY
to the days that followed.

On the first morning Joanna had awakened to the atmosphere of pure happiness which she had missed the night before, and she could hardly wait to begin the day. There would be one day after another for years and years that would be hers, to spend with Nils. The gift of time was unbearably precious, since she had learned what it was to be deprived of time. She was humble, too, as she had never been humble, with a new tolerance for Sigurd and his drinking, even for Thea, who was what she was because she must live within her own narrow limits.
I can't judge anyone
, she thought with cold logic, knowing how her own weakness had been so nearly perilous.

So the first day had begun. The sun came out and sparkled on the snow, the wind died down, and the men went out to haul. After Ellen had gone to school, and the morning was under way, Joanna and Nils went for a leisurely walk around the shore, Jamie and Dick in advance. Neither talked much. Nils watched Jamie, who'd been so much of a baby when he left, and Joanna watched Nils, content only to look at him and not to speak.

When they went by the beach, Dennis was on the lobster car, bailing lobsters into crates. With his winter cap, his heavy plaid shirt and moleskin trousers, the rubber boots he wore now with considerable ease, he looked more like an Islander than the Islanders had ever believed possible.

Joanna made Nils stop. “There's Dennis—”

“He slings that bail-net around as if he'd done it all his life,” said Nils.

“Come and meet him.” Joanna was eager. “This is something I've been looking forward to.” Then she hesitated, remembering Nils' cane. “Or I'll call to him.”

“No, we'll go out on the wharf,” said Nils quietly. “Come here, Jamie.” He took the red-mittened hand firmly in his. Jamie made his usual violent wriggle of protest and Nils stood still. “Would you like to go home, Jamie?”

Jamie, suddenly awed, shook his head, his eyes growing round, and stopped wiggling. They walked out on the wharf at Nils' pace. Dennis looked up, narrowing his eyes against the sun's wintry brilliance, and then climbed the ladder to meet them.

“Nils, this is Dennis,” Joanna said. “Dennis—” She looked from one to the other of them, her glance quick and bright with her pleasure in this moment, and thought with instant astonishment,
Why, Dennis
is
more like Nils than I thought
. It was not in appearance, for Dennis was tall and rangy, sandy-colored, with spare, rugged features, and Nils was more compact, wheaten-blond, with an unmistakably Nordic cast. But in the moment that their hands met, she had that knowledge, and it was a comforting one.

They stood talking for a few minutes, the sun warm upon them, the sky blue. When at last they separated, Dennis to go back to the car, and Joanna and Nils to walk slowly toward the house, she could hardly wait until they were out of earshot. “What did you think of him?” she demanded. “Do you like him?”

“Why is he burying himself here, thickening his hands with bail-ing lobsters,” said Nils, “if he's a surgeon?”

He asked it mildly enough, but it was uncharacteristic of Nils, and she found to her chagrin that she wasn't sure how to answer. The explanation that she had accepted as logical seemed suddenly inadequate. She waved absently at Leonie, who stood by her kitchen window, and said, “Why, he— well, he's resting.”

“He didn't look very tired,” Nils observed. “But I know what you mean. This place probably looks like Eden to him.”

“Yes, it does,” Joanna agreed. “Can't you see why he likes it here? You should have seen him when he came.” And then she remembered, unexpectedly, that Dennis had not been obliged to walk slowly, stiffly, over ground that he had once covered as lightly and swiftly as an Indian.

She slipped her arm through Nils'. “It looks like Eden to you, doesn't it, darling? Well, it is Eden, because you're in it.” Her voice faltered. “It'll take me years to tell you just how much I've missed you—”

“You don't have to tell me, Joanna, any more than I have to tell you what I thought during all those nights when I couldn't sleep.”

She should have felt at peace; but the strangeness began to seep back.

Nils was neither surly nor restless. He was quiet, as he had always been quiet. But sometimes when he came from out-of-doors, from a walk down to the store to call up about Owen, or from Sigurd's, his eyes had grown remote, and he would speak to her briefly, and go upstairs to their room. Joanna would stop her work to listen to that slow step and the tiny sound of the cane, and her throat would tighten. Later, no matter how bitterly hard she tried to leave him alone, she would have to go up, and she would find him lying asleep on their bed. Then the fancy came to her cruelly that his face was the thin worn face of a stranger who looked like Nils but was not Nils. The war had taken Nils and sent this man back to her.

She fought to discourage the fancy. Nils was tired, that was all. It was nothing but weariness on his part, and he was counting on her to understand, to make no demands on him yet. There was no other reason for him to be like this.
No other reason
, she told herself stubbornly.

He was tired at night, and usually went to bed before she did, and appeared to be asleep when she came up; but she couldn't pick that up as a sign or an omen, for it was natural for him to be tired when he spent so much time outdoors, and had to move so awkwardly. He played with Jamie, talked with Ellen, smiled at Joanna and discussed Island and family affairs with her. But even while she assured herself that she had all she wanted— Nils home and safe— she knew she was fighting to keep that assurance.

It wasn't fair, she thought wearily. Must she always be fighting something? And Nils was no Bennett, to be challenged openly; there was no way here to bring out boldly the thing that lay between them, to spit out the corroding doubts, the hidden fears, and see them vanish as soon as the light of understanding touched them. She could not say to him bluntly, “What have you been thinking since Thea said what she did the other night?” That wouldn't work with Nils. No, she must wait for common sense, and faith, and Nils' own incorruptible belief in her, to take over. What else was there to wait for?

This was never Nils, dwelling on the cruel idiocy of Thea's remark; but the familiar Nils that she knew had never been lame, had never faced the prospect of limping for the rest of his life, of moving about his boat with difficulty, of getting awkwardly in and out of dories under the carefully indifferent eyes of the other men who were whole. He was no longer a perfectly coordinated human being; he was defenseless against stares and pity. He had taught Joanna to dance when they were children, and now he couldn't dance with her. Even little Jamie, in a few days, had learned to be careful of Papa's leg.

Nils might face death with equanimity, but not lameness. And because he never spoke of it, never complained, it would go harder for him than Owen, who could swear freely about his missing fingers, and pity himself intensely and eloquently.

Joanna found herself brooding on Nils' lameness until her own leg seemed to ache intolerably. Now, when she looked at the
Donna
, lying on her side in the grass with her shattered timbers bared and ugly, she knew at last what the shipwreck had meant; it meant this thing that was happening to their marriage now. And it was so foolish, so maddeningly simple, and she was so helpless to do anything to save herself and him.

After that first night, when they lay side by side without touch-ing, she listened to his even breathing and willed herself to lie still and not reach out to him. With a clarity that devastated her as soon as she attained it, she rehearsed his thought-processes. Dennis was whole; he was not. Dennis moved swiftly and lithely on two legs. . . . She tried to remember how Nils had looked when Dennis came up the ladder that day. But she couldn't remember because she had been watching Dennis, smiling, eager, happy. . . Perhaps Nils had been looking at her— she almost reached out to Nils then, she almost turned to him and cried out that he must listen.

But to protest, to try to explain, would only make more questions in his mind. So, lying rigidly still, she thought of other things. While Nils was gone, living in crowded, suffocating quarters where he'd been denied the long hours of solitude which he needed as men need water, Dennis and Joanna had become friends; there was no denying the atmosphere of intimacy and comprehension that lay between them. But after a while she had not mentioned Dennis in her letters again. And she couldn't explain. There was no way of explaining the long silence, and the true friend Dennis had been to them both.

Lying there one mild, windless night she talked to Nils without words,
He's your friend as much as he is mine. If I didn write about him it was because I was in torment, as you are now. If your leg wasn't lame, you'd have laughed in Thea's face
.

But there was nothing to say aloud. But could his body reject her, even if his mind had set a barrier between them? Her arms gathering him in, her warm willing body, her passion— they were all here beside him in the dark. She moved almost before she knew it, turning to put her arm across him, to lay her face against his shoulder. He'd always loved the smell of her hair.