The Dawning of the Day (30 page)

They put records on the old gramophone and danced, kneeling on the floor to read the labels by match light. And once as they looked at each other in the light of the tiny flame, they leaned toward each other and kissed, and the match burned Steve's fingers. He dropped it and it went out. But in the sudden blackness he caught at her shoulders and kissed her with passion.

“Have you told your boy about me?” he asked.

“Not as a special person. But I've mentioned you.”

“Tell him then.” He was like a stranger in the dark, speaking in sharp laconic phrases. “Tell whatever you want, and however you want, but he should know.”

“Yes, Steve.”

“You're devilishly meek all of a sudden.”

“It's the way I feel,” she said. He pulled her against him then, holding her tightly. He was so still she thought he was holding his breath. She could feel the heavy beating of his heart. Suddenly he set her away from him and lit another match. “Let's dance again,” he said. The match flame leaped in tiny reflections in his eyes. He picked over the records and held one out.

‘“Do I love you, do I?'” she read aloud, and looked across at him. “Dancing won't help any, Steve.”

He didn't answer but took her arm and lifted her to her feet. He put the record on and they began to dance, moving like one person in the dark.

I
n the morning she was ready to go to Brigport long before eight o'clock. Wearing slacks, a warm sweater, and a topcoat, she walked out on the point beyond the Campions. The yellow tom went with her, conversing in little wooing dulcet sounds as he jumped from rock to rock. It would be another fine day; the sun was already warm though the frost was thick and slippery in the shade of the trees. The white houses on Brigport shone in the morning sun, and the fields sloping to the shore were warm bronze. She was thinking of Steve as she went down the twisting track among the spruces. She had been thinking of him more or less steadily since he had left her at the door last night. He was always in her consciousness now, sometimes directly, and even when she was disturbed by something else, her knowledge of him was subtly reassuring.

She had awakened early this morning remembering her promise to speak to Eric, and she didn't know how to begin. She had lain in bed watching the pearly light fill her room and rehearsed all sorts of openings in her mind. They all seemed too trite. Of course the situation is trite, if you want to niggle, she thought irritably. Why couldn't I say simply,
Steve has become a great friend of mine, and I'm hoping you and he will become friends too?

She could imagine Eric's clear gaze moving slowly between her and Steve. The relationship between her and the boy was about to be changed; there was no question of admitting Steve into it. It would go, and the going would be like severing a second umbilical cord.

“Rubbish!” she said aloud. She had no right to conjecture about Eric and metaphysical cords when it was entirely possible that he would take Steve for granted and probably like him very much. Possible . . . but again she felt that faint inward quiver. How could you
know
a child? How could you guess, beyond a shadow of a doubt, what they really were inside the fragile structure of bones and flesh?

As she approached the harbor, she saw Charles coming fast from the far end of the boardwalk. She thought she saw a twitch of curtains in one of Foss Campion's front windows, but otherwise there was no sign of anyone. Foss and Perley had gone to haul. The three-colored money cat sunned herself on the high rib of granite behind the house. The fishhouse was open and empty.

She met Charles by the camps. “Coming to get me?” she asked. “Am I late?”

His brief grin was like a muscular reflex. He stood with his hands in his pockets and his legs braced in aggressive fashion, as if he wished to bar her way.

“What's the matter?” she insisted. “Is it too rough?”

“Yep. Too rough.”

She didn't believe him. He looked at her too steadily; his lips were pressed into an unnaturally stiff line.

“What ails you, Charles?” she asked curiously. “If you've changed your mind about taking me, say so. I won't throw myself down and pound my head on the beach rocks or turn blue or anything of the sort.”

His chest rose on a breath of exasperation that didn't get by his tight mouth. A dark blush flowed upward under his skin, and his eyes glistened suddenly as if with water.

She put her hands in her pockets and watched him, perplexed and compassionate. “Shall I go back home? No, on second thought, I'll take a walk around the harbor. I see Steve hasn't gone to haul, maybe he'll be more sociable.” She moved forward and he made a motion to stand in her way; then he stepped off the boardwalk, but he fell into step beside her as she started on toward the long fishhouse.

As they came to the giant fluke of the great anchor that had been imbedded in the earth above the beach so many, many years ago, she stopped and took hold of his arm and gave it a little shake.

“Something is the matter, Charles. What
is
it?”

He turned and looked out at the harbor. In the cold stream of wind all bows pointed northwest, and the dark blue water seemed to rush past the wet, rounded white or green sides of the boats. The big lobster boats rolled gently; the little skiffs jounced up and down on the water, and a gull perched on the bow of one suddenly launched himself into space with an effortless outward thrust of his wings.

“Look at Steve's boat,” Charles said. “
That's
the matter, if you want to know.”

Once she looked, she wondered why she had not seen it before, for now she could see nothing else. The color of the water, the gull pitching upward, were blotted out by the letters on the white side of Steve's boat. Crude and gigantic in black paint, the word and its meaning were nevertheless plain.

WHOREMASTER.

She laughed suddenly; the sound surprised her. “What a thing to call Steve, of all people!”

Charles stared at her, shocked and disbelieving. “Is that all you've got to say?”

“What else can I say? It's so—so foolish, somehow.”

“You're a cool one,” he said grudgingly, as if he felt his delicacy on her behalf had been wasted. “You cool enough to start off to Brigport with me, in the face and eyes of all this?”

She didn't answer. An effect like delayed shock was creeping into her. She looked at the word across the water, her face growing stiff and cold. The word was nothing; the term
whore
had lost its potency over the years; the word
whoremaster
, viewed impersonally, was rather picturesque and Elizabethan. At least it should have been. But as she looked across the bright dancing harbor, the great black letters sprawled against all the day's clean brilliance had an inevitable obscenity. And worse than the obscenity was the size of the hatred behind it. It was frightening but not in a physical sense that one could fight.

The rocks shifted under Charles's boots. He said gratingly, “I'd like to get a-hold of the critters who went out to haul early this morning and let it stand. Somebody should've gone and got Steve to tend to it. I suppose they thought it was funny.” He brought out a crumpled pack of cigarettes and lit one as if it were the first after a long and exhausting mission. In the heavy silence between them he blew out smoke and stared at the harbor.

Then he said, with a restless motion of his head, “I hope you don't think just anybody did that, Philippa. Although I did it once.” His expression was a mixture of bravado and embarrassment. “The woman
was
a whore, though. I was drunk and I thought it was a hell of a big joke. But when I saw it in daylight, I was sick enough to puke. And the poor guy had to bring his boat in and clean her up, with everybody throwing wisecracks around like—” He took another deep pull on his cigarette. “Made me sick, all right. I knew most of 'em had had their turn with her—he just happened to be the numbnuts of the moment.”

“I don't think the wisecracks will bother Steve,” Philippa said. “And I don't have to hear them.” She sounded quieter than she felt; there was a stiffness to her lips and a churning in her stomach. Suddenly she wondered if anyone were looking from Foss Campion's, if they could see Steve's boat from there, and what they were saying to see her like this on the beach, staring out into the cold wind. The thought of eyes avidly watching was more terrible than the word.

“I lay it to either Terence or Perley,” Charles said.

“Not Terence,” she said quickly, turning away to rest her aching eyes with the sight of the russet marsh grasses bending toward the east.

“Why not?” Charles said belligerently. “He's too goddamn quiet to be natural, if you ask me. There's something wrong with a guy like that.”

“I'm not asking you, I'm telling you. It may be Perley, but it's certainly not Terence.”

He shrugged. “Have it your own way. Are we going to Brigport?”

“We should, shouldn't we?” She smiled at him stiffly. “But I think not. I don't feel as excited about it as I did, somehow.”

He could understand this; she was acting now as he expected her to act, and his voice gentled. He touched her lightly on the shoulder. “Sure. Take a rain check on it. There'll be other good days. I'll go up and get Steve.” He looked out at the boat again. “If he was a
real
whoremaster, that'd be one thing.” He shook his head and walked away.

Philippa went across the marsh to the schoolhouse. She would sit on the worn steps and collect herself, if such a thing could be done. She came into the schoolhouse yard and stopped involuntarily as she stared at the white, wide-paneled door. The violence of the black strokes stood out even at this distance. So they had a name for her, too.

WHORE.

The word seemed to breathe a palpable malevolence, bathing the schoolhouse in an aura of evil. She thought if she went inside, its familiar chalky and firewood scents would reassure her, but she could not bring herself to touch the door. Her squeamishness in turn dismayed her the more. She turned her back on the door and sat down on the steps to watch the gulls circle over the cove.

It must have been a half hour later when Steve came. He set down the can of white paint and looked at the defaced door. “Well,” he said, “seems as if they thought you had to be included. Good thing I brought my paint can along. I'll give it a coat after I have a cigarette.” He sat down beside her and lit one before she spoke to him. Then she said in a tone of wonder, “Why did they do it, Steve?”

“Might have been because we were up at the clubhouse last night, dancing in the dark.”

“Do you think someone was following us, to see what we—” She broke off, horrified. The island night had had such a primeval purity with only the sea sounds, the stars, and sometimes the shifting specters of the northern lights. As if he guessed at her horror, he took her hand and laid it on his knee and covered it firmly with his.

“Things like this have been done before. Kids looking for deviltry or full to the gills with stories they've read. Or women with nothing better to do, and bored. If you can get something on somebody, it can liven up things for a month.”

“I'm afraid whoever looked in the clubhouse windows last night must have felt severely cheated,” said Philippa, “to put such venom in his paintbrush.” She smiled at Steve and he gripped her fingers hard. The determined ease went out of his face. There was a frightening quality to his silence.

He got up and took the paintbrush from the can. “I've already done the boat,” he said. “Now the door.” She stood watching him, her hands in her pockets, her collar turned up against the wind, feeling no warmth in the sun on her back. She thought of the moments they had had together, the bits and pieces of time they could call their own; last night in the instant when the match had gone out, she had gone past all doubt and wondering. Afterward as they danced in the dark, she had realized that what she felt for Steve was not an echo of anything she had experienced with Justin; it was unique, it belonged to the Philippa she had become since his death. She had known instinctively it would have been impossible for her to feel it before. This is second love, she thought. It could never take the place of the first; it could never exist without the first, and yet it is an absolute and perfect thing in itself.

That was last night. But this was morning. Each of the other meetings had been an instant set apart from time, like a pebble of rose quartz separated from the others on the beach to be cut and polished into a gem. This morning the glint was gone. The attack had been made on her and Steve together, and whatever action they took would be given an undeniable significance. To ignore it or protest it, it didn't matter; all the cans of paint in the world wouldn't wipe out the allusion.

Steve painted without looking around, and she felt cut off from him. He cherished the way of living that had made him almost an invisible man, and now she had brought this upon him. The attention of the island was on him now, not casually, but with a sneer. Whether he was guilty or innocent didn't matter. The joke was on him. She wondered how long the chuckles and comments would last along the beach, and her anger sprang up strong and savage, in a desire to do physical violence to any who would dare hector him with their lewdness.

But she knew even as she felt it that it was futile. Instinctively she straightened her shoulders and smoothed her features into aloofness, to meet the change that must inevitably come to his.

He said suddenly, still without looking around, “You told Charles you thought it was Perley. Any particular reason?”

Taken by surprise, she almost stammered her answer. “Yes.” Then she told him in as few words as possible, undramatically, what had happened, beginning with her discovery of Perley in the orchard and ending with yesterday's affair. He didn't interrupt. When she had finished, he laid the paintbrush across the top of the can and turned to her.