The Ebbing Tide (23 page)

“I never could understand why Young Charles couldn't go with you, on the
Four Brothers
.” She watched Ellen and Jamie walking on ahead, Ellen straight and slender in her dark slacks and sweater, Jamie sturdy and square, but just as straight, in his corduroy overalls and jersey.
Nice children
, she thought.
But I work hard to make them nice and keep them that way
. . . .

“I'm not like Father,” Charles was saying impatiently. “We strike sparks from each other. He gowels me and I know I gowel the hell out of him. Well, we've got the peapod on the stern, and he'll pick up the hang of things pretty soon. You can send him in on the mail boat when he gets too much for you, and you need a few days to breathe in.”

It seemed definitely settled. She didn't mind that Charles had taken it for granted; he thought that she had the best place for Young Charles, and so he had brought the boy to her. With a gesture that had become an integral part of her, through the years, she hardened her shoulders under her blouse, tilted her chin a little higher, and accepted the responsibility.

She gave them all a mug-up when they reached the house, delaying dinner until Owen came in from hauling. Now she had four Bennett men at the table, and she was happy—as happy as she could be without Nils. When she stood at the stove taking out the vegetables, her back to the dining room, and listened to the deep Bennett voices, she made herself think, deliberately, that Nils was there, sitting in his own place, listening, smiling a little, his blue eyes moving from face to face. In a moment now there'd be a small spell of quiet and in it Nils would speak, his voice so easy, almost light, after her brothers' voices. But they would listen to him as they always did; for some reason they had never shouted Nils down, even when they didn't like what he was saying.

The break came, but Nils' voice didn't. Its absence was almost a shock. Then she said cheerfully to Ellen, “Take the mashed potatoes in, Ellen. I'll bring the lobster.”

No, nothing could bring Nils back, not even her love when she lay alone in the dark and tried to evoke him. She could remember how he spoke, and remember his hand stroking her hair in the absentminded way he had while he talked; but when she was sliding under the waves of sleep, lulled with the sense of his nearness, she might turn over and put out her arm, as if to put it over him, and the touch of the cool sheets, and the damning fact that he wasn't there, would plummet her into awareness. Then she must think with fierce concentration of the garden, of the canning she intended to do, the sewing to be done for the children, Owen's mending and the problems of rationing. . . .

But today she was lucky to have the boys here, at least, and she would make the most of it. Tonight she would write every bit of it to Nils, remembering their jokes and the way they chaffed each other, and she'd tell him that she wasn't really worried about handling Young Charles. If she told him that, he wouldn't worry either; he knew she was capable.

She sat down at the table. Owen and Charles were holding forth, in time-honored fashion.

“Good Lord, man, you can make more lobsterin' these days than you can at anything!” Owen scowled at Charles as if his older brother were slightly moronic. “Don't ask me if I want to go seinin'! I'd be pretty dumb to leave what I've got here.”

“I don't know as I want ye, now that I got time to think about it,” said Charles. “So stow it. Just answer me this—” He looked at Owen without a flicker of a smile on his dark face.

“What?” said Owen belligerently.

“Do you still get as drunk as a fiddler's bitch every Saturday night?”

“Drunker.” Owen grinned, and winked at Joanna.

“Attractive conversation,” she said. “Full of nice words for the small fry to pick up. And Ellen and I are ladies—or didn't you know?”

“I have to apologize for Charles, Jo,” said Philip. “He's lived off aboard the boat so long he's forgotten how to behave. It's a wonder he isn't eatin' mashed potatoes with his knife.”

“
I
never make excuses.” Owen stated grandly.

In the late afternoon Charles and Philip left. Ellen and Young Charles had taken Jamie and had gone for a walk over toward Goose Cove, Young Charles with Owen's. 22 under his arm. Joanna and Owen went down to the shore with their brothers. The little wind had died down, and the day was bright and still, the stillness seemed not born of emptiness but of peace. The harbor gleamed a translucent, polished blue against the red rocks, and the boats lay at their moorings like white birds resting. On the fish house roofs, on the ledges, the gulls stood sleepily in the sun; only a few circled over the Island in wide arcs, their great wings balancing with lazy power. And everywhere there was the scent of lilacs.

Thea and Leonie sat on Sigurd's front piazza, sewing decorously, when the Bennetts walked by. Thea squealed, not so decorously; there were greetings, rather self-contained on the part of Charles and Philip, and Joanna introduced them to Leonie. Thea found it necessary to inquire for each member of Charles' family. Joanna, remembering the premeditated malice with which Thea had informed her of Young Charles' scrape, waited politely, her contempt for Thea leavened by her amusement at the way Thea avoided her eyes. She stood erectly by the corner of the porch, letting the mixture of voices go past her ears, and looked about her at the Island. . . . She saw, then, Dennis Garland; he was coming up the road from the Old Wharf.

She was totally unprepared for the sight of him, and for the odd quickening of her senses. She had not consciously thought of him all day, but now it was as if she saw him twice. He was coming toward her, walking briskly, the sun shining on his tanned face; but at the same time she saw him, very near herself, on the stile by the cemetery. There was that odd little jump in her breast again.

The voices around her, Thea's high-pitched gushing enthusiasm, her brothers' deep tones, seemed very far away. She watched Dennis Garland coming toward her.
I wonder how I look to him
, she thought without vanity. If he were in love with her, she did not feel vain about it, but had instead a rather hurting blend of compassion, curiosity, and tenderness. She remembered that once long ago Simon Bird had desired her, and only a few years ago a boy named Randy Fowler had been infatuated with her. She had loathed Simon, and Randy had annoyed her. She couldn't remember ever feeling about anyone as she felt now.

It's because Dennis is so fine
, she thought.
I feel almost honored
. It was a daring idea, but true. And of course, because Dennis
was
fine, their friendship would never be endangered, it would always be firm and unspoiled.

He was almost up to them now, he caught her eye and the smile began in his. She knew a surge of pride, of excitement. He should meet her brothers; and they should meet
him
.

I
T WAS A WONDERFUL
strawberry year. They grew everywhere. Jamie could take a cup and wade through the tall grass beyond the garden, to put green berries in the cup and eat the ripe ones until his mouth and his jersies were stained bright red. On Sou-west Point the berries had always grown abundantly, and this year they spread in a fantastic, fragrant carpet over the treeless slopes. They ripened in the wind and fog and sunshine, and grew to a glistening crimson in the sheltering grass, hanging in rich clusters almost too beautiful to eat.

The annual pilgrimage to the Point began, but no matter how many people picked, or how long, there were always plenty of strawberries. This year there were more than plenty, with only four women to pick them and very little sugar for canning. Joanna had managed to save some sugar, and the men on the lobster smack, who brought out everybody's grocery orders, had been clever enough to find some syrup. She wanted, almost passionately, to make some jam, even if it were no more than two or three jars. Then, when Nils came home, he could have some of this year's strawberries.

She and Ellen and Jamie went several times to Sou-west Point; Owen took them when he went out to haul, and rowed them ashore in the furthermost cove. Joanna and Ellen picked, and talked, while Jamie and Dick roved around in the grass, and they ate their lunch at noon. Then, when Owen was on the way home, he came and picked them up.

But Joanna always liked to go alone at least once during the season; from childhood she had loved to go berrying alone, and that was when the Point seemed to belong solely to her, and she could enjoy, unencumbered, her familiar sense of oneness with the Island. Those who moved around her drew from her; and as generous as she was, there were those moments when she wanted to keep herself for herself. It was a gathering-together of her strength and resources, a refreshing of the ever-welling spring of her personality.

She awoke one morning early, before dawn, and as she lay there listening to the first tentative chirpings and twitterings from the woods, she knew that she wanted to go alone to the Point on this day. And the strawberries she picked today would make the jam for Nils.

As soon as she had decided, she could stay in bed no longer. She dressed quickly in the dim room, and only Dick knew she was up. He went downstairs with her, and she fed him. Then, while her coffee bubbled, she wrote a note to Ellen and put it at the girl's place. Ellen would look after Jamie and start dinner. Owen and Young Charles had already gone to haul. They started early these summer days.

The air was cool and pale, and her feet stirred elusive scents from the wet grass. The trailing blackberry vines were in blossom, white, dew-spangled stars of heavy, exotic sweetness, almost alien against the rocky slopes of Maine. She picked a blossom and put it in her hair, behind her ear, as she had done when she was a girl. Blackberry blossoms at sunrise were something wonderful. In the moonlight they were ghost flowers, and their perfume stabbed like a knife.

She followed the twisting path along the West Side, above the rocks. The sea made a little hushing sound; it brightened slowly as the sun lifted, and the gulls began to stir. The birds in the woods were fully awake now; the old spruces, lifting in saw-toothed silhouette against the clear, luminous pallor of the sky, echoed with the minor, persistent flutes of white-throats and phoebes, the forthrightness of the chickadees and nut-hatches, the impudent chatter of the warblers and the candid, bubbling tune of the song sparrows. A robin kept saying, “Giddy-ap, giddy-ap,” at Joanna, until a crow, sighting her, drowned out all the other birds with his hoarse alarms.

Where the path descended into a cove, she stopped to watch two seals playing lazily among the ledges, and was pleased because they did not dive out of sight when she appeared. It was as if they knew her. With her feet wet with the dew, and the scent of ripe strawberries around her, and the gulls setting out on their morning business, and hardly a boat in sight, she could almost imagine that no one else lived on the Island at all. Not that she could do without Jamie and Ellen; but still, this richness of solitude—

Sou-west Point began to rise before her, the woods thinned out except for a few wind-twisted spruces, and she came across a patch of strawberries growing on a slope that plunged forthrightly toward the sea. She dropped to her knees and her hands separated the wet leaves, sought for and found the first cluster of plump bursting-ripe berries. They made a round, pleasant sound, dropping into the pan. At once she was very happy.

She cleaned out the patch, working upwards, and eventually reached the highest part of the Point; she stood on a long ridge, and could look out across the glistening sea to the east and south, or turn and look at the cloud-blue mountains and mainland in the north and west. A light salty wind blew against her body, cooling it under the light cotton dress. She lifted her hair from the back of her damp neck, loosened if from her scalp with her fingers. The ridge was the same, the sea was the same; Matinicus Rock rose out of the water as it had always done, and even the fact that there was a gun crew out there, and newly built radio towers, couldn't change the everlastingness of the Rock itself. It was the same with the Island. It had existed before Joanna had, it would exist long afterwards. In the life of the Island her life was only a sigh.

The thought lifted and exalted her. So many times she had stood here alone, on the austere heights of Sou-west Point, and felt her insignificance. Once it had hurt her, and she had fought against it, but now she accepted it and was glad. Was this a sign of maturity? She wondered.

She hoped she would be able to write a little of this to Nils. He loved the Point too, and he loved solitude. There were ways in which Nils was suffering, even if he hadn't yet been physically hurt; he had mentioned in one of his letters that there was always someone talking aboard ship, there was never absolute silence, never the sense of being alone. . . . Nils wouldn't let himself become obsessed with a need for silence, but how he must dream of the silences he had known, the long hours alone in his boat on familiar waters, the nights when Joanna's breathing, and the far-off sighing of the sea, only deepened the hush.

When she was tired and hungry, she sat contentedly on the dry, aromatic turf under twin spruces that grew in lonely silhouette on the seaward side of the ridge. She ate her sandwiches slowly, savoring them along with the smell and sight of the day; her eyes dreamed on the horizon, she tried to make it seem possible that three thousand miles beyond the Rock there was carnage and brutal clamor and destruction. It was hard to keep the truth in her mind, when her back was comfortable against a tree trunk, her lard pails were rounding over with berries, and there was an agreeable mixture of warmth and coolness playing over her as the sun fell through the branches of the spruces, and the little wind that always blew over the Ridge moved the boughs in a continual, gentle quivering.

The crows had long since stopped their hoarse worrying about her presence and had accepted her. The gulls went about their daily business, there was an industrious chirping from the thickets where the ground sparrows nested and raised their families. A few feet beyond Joanna the grassground ended abruptly in a bluff, and the land dropped steeply to the beach below. She could lie against her spruce tree and watch through her lashes the glimmer and sparkle and shifting diamond sheen of the water that crept quietly up the beach and slipped back, only to return and retreat again. The beach, small, deep, sloping, was a dazzling and unexpected break in the volcanic black rocks of the seaward shore line; the white pebbles fairly danced with light in the sunshine. Yet, if you were on the beach, the pebbles would not be white, but every pale, sea-polished color you might name.