A Matter of Time (4 page)

As he spoke, he reached over her and did so. “Somehow,” he went on, “the emergency brake also came off.” He disengaged it.

She stared at him, her eyes filling with terror.

“And then, at the height of your passion, the car started to roll.”

He pushed it into motion, and she screamed. Frantically, she flung open the door and started to get out.

But he had anticipated this, too. With a swift backhand blow from the sap, he stilled her. And put her back in the car.

Straightening the wheel, he gave it a final push, and it sailed out into the night sky, nosing over and plunging down into
the dark sea. It struck the surface with such force that its occupants were killed instantly—and so fractured that the blows
to their crania would not raise suspicion.

The impact sent up a huge geyser. But the sea soon settled back, and the car sank quickly, until there was nothing visible.
In twelve meters of water, it might not be found for days. Months.

The discarded clothing would allow the police to complete the hypothesis he had just outlined. He was about to leave, when
he paused. The boy’s white boat shoes were nearly new. Picking up the right one, he measured the sole against his right foot,
and smiled. A perfect fit.

He thought for a moment, then threw the woman’s sandals over the cliff. They must have gone wading before they came up here.

4
  
  
the quarry cottage

Brother Bartholomew leaned his head against the back seat window of the very small, very old Mazda station wagon. Not feeling
much like talking, he pretended to be dozing.

Up front, Father Francis and his Bermudian friend, Brendan Goodell, a retired AME minister, were engaged in a spirited discussion
about the impact that September 11th had had on Bermuda. Seven weeks had passed, but the situation was still desperate. Bermuda’s
main industry was tourism, and the tourists had simply stopped coming. The Southampton Princess, normally at 80 percent capacity
at this time of year, was at 12. And the Delta flight Bartholomew had come down on, which at this time of year should have
had every seat filled, was flying with four-fifths of its seats empty. Restaurants were closing, hotel and retail staff were
being laid off or cut back to half wages. The island was reeling.

Bartholomew didn’t care. He was too busy wishing he wasn’t here. After the meeting with Anselm, he’d told his roommates of
his impending exile—and was taken aback at their response.

“Man, that’s tremendous!” exclaimed Clement. “And it’s only October. Still be warm enough for shorts and sandals!”

“It’s not like I’m going down there on a vacation, Clem!”

“Well, it sounds pretty good to me,” William chimed in. “In fact, it certainly was, when I was there a dozen years ago. I
came home and took my final vows.” He laughed. “You’ll probably be in the Quarry Cottage.”

“What’s that?”

“On top of the hill, behind the chapel there’s an old quarry with a ‘cottage’ in it. More like a one-room cubicle. But it’s
got a little bathroom, and a RadarRange and a little fridge… a perfect
Poustinia
.”

Bartholomew was familiar with the word. It was Russian for a hermitage so small that there was room for only one occupant—and
God.

But he still had an ace in the hole. His mother. After she’d retired from teaching English at Nauset High, she’d taken the
job of hostess at Norma’s Café. Now 74, she ran the place and enjoyed giving him a hard time whenever he stopped in, which
was not infrequently, as she made the best coffee in town. Three years ago he’d sworn off the bean, having become dependent
on it to get him through the day. But last spring he’d taken it up again—in moderation, of course; just two cups in the morning.
He despised his weakness. Caffeine was a vile, mood-altering drug, he kept reminding himself. Yet in the early morning nothing
tasted quite so good as that first sip.

For years he and his mother had been at odds. She could not forgive him for throwing away (as she saw it) the Dartmouth education
she’d labored so hard to provide—in favor of a vocation that meant that there would
be no grandchildren. But the two of them had battled through to where they could both accept and appreciate each other, and
for the past two years they’d been genuinely close.

Her health was not what it once was (whose was?), and she would be crushed to learn that he might be going away for a long,
maybe a very long time. He could imagine her pleading with him not to go, and then accusing him, telling him that his leaving
was nothing short of cruel.

So out of concern for her, he wouldn’t leave.

That was not how it had played out.

“Oh, thank God!” she’d exclaimed. “I’ve been so worried about you! I’ve been watching you get more and more tense. I almost
called Brother Ambrose, except I knew how much that would upset you.”

He was nonplused. “You think I should go?”

“Andrew,” she said, calling him by his boyhood name, “It’s God! I’m not into Him the way you are, but I do pray sometimes.”

He stared at her. This woman never failed to amaze him!

She laughed. “I prayed He’d do something about you. I guess He has.”

Never underestimate the power of a mother’s prayers, he thought dourly, as the old station wagon labored up Knapton Hill.

But as the lush greenery, punctuated by red hibiscus, pink and white oleanders, and purple morning glories passed by, and
the scent of cedar wafted in through the window, he had to admit there
was
something paradisiacal about the little island. No wonder some of those Englishmen whose shipwreck here in 1609 inspired
Shakespeare’s final play,
The Tempest
, returned to make it their home. When Bartholomew had first stepped out of the airliner and onto the passenger ramp’s steel
steps, the pleasant, soothing warmth had promised something that seemed to exist only in the basilica back home. Peace.

He began to take an interest in the passing scene. The houses were built of limestone, a material found, apparently, in endless
supply. They were mostly whitewashed, or sometimes painted in pastel shades of pink, blue, and yellow. The roofs were white,
regularly washed with lime to purify the rainwater, caught and stored in tanks beneath the houses. On each roof were many
little steps, to keep the rain from running off so quickly it would be lost. Rain was Bermuda’s principal source of drinking
water, and while tourists might lament its arrival, the locals rejoiced—especially at a hard, long “tank” rain. They would
cheer up their visitors the same way Cape Codders did: “You don’t like the weather? Wait an hour.”

They passed an elementary school just letting out, and Bartholomew was struck by all the children, black and white together,
in uniform. The boys wore navy blue blazers, gray flannel slacks, white shirts, and ties in what was presumably the school
tartan. The girls also wore blazers, white blouses, and tartan kilts. They looked sharp and seemed happy.

“Do all the school children wear uniforms?” he asked.

Brendan nodded.

“Why?”

“The strain it takes off the parents, not having to sacrifice to keep their darlings in the height of teen fashion. It’s also
a great equalizer. Kids from poor homes look just as good as the ones from wealthy ones.”

“
Is
there poverty?” Bartholomew asked. “I haven’t seen it.”

“We’ve enjoyed prosperity for a long, long time,” Brendan replied wistfully. “Until now.”

A large woman on a small red scooter took advantage of a rare straightaway and zipped past them. As a curve approached, another
rider, this one on a mini-motorcycle, also passed them. Suddenly a car appeared around the corner, and Brendan had to brake
sharply to allow the motorcyclist to get back in their lane.

“A little close!” exhaled Bartholomew.

“Happens all the time,” replied Brendan with a sigh.

“But—he was riding one-handed. His left arm was just dangling down.”

“That’s the brake hand. Some young locals do that. The cool ones.”

Bartholomew smiled and looked at Brendan in the rearview mirror. “D’you ever do that? I mean, in your misspent youth, before
God got ahold of you?”

Brendan glanced at the mirror. “I never rode one-handed. But—I often exceeded the national speed limit, which was twenty miles
per hour then, or as we now say, thirty-five kilometers.”

“What was the fastest you ever made it to the airport, from where we’re going in Somerset?”

Brendan hesitated. “Twenty minutes. But I wasn’t driving,” he hastily added. “I was on the back of my brother’s bike.”

Father Francis turned and stared at his friend with a surprised smile.

“My brother was so fast, the police didn’t even try to catch him. They figured one day Goodie’d kill himself, and they’d go
to his funeral.”

Coming the other way now were four careful tourists on black scooters, closely followed by a large pastel pink No.8 Bermuda
bus.

Brendan smiled. “Pink whale after minnows.”

They went by a shopping center, whose parking lot was filled with late-model cars. “You mentioned Bermuda’s prosperity,” Bartholomew
prompted him.

“Tourism’s always been our mainstay. It’s been dying gradually ever since the sixties, and recently its demise has accelerated.
In the past fifteen years, some fifty guest properties have shut down and last year bed-occupancy was off thirteen percent.
And that was
before
September 11!”

Brendan had taken the South Shore route that afforded spectacular vistas of sparkling, bright blue ocean and stretches of
beach where the sand was a startling pinkish white. Abruptly he slowed for a mother duck leading a string of eight tiny ducklings.

“Where are they going?”

“Down to Spittal Pond. That’s our largest wildlife preserve.”

“Tell him about the flamingo,” prompted Father Francis.

“
You
tell him.”

The old priest turned around to face Bartholomew. “A couple of years ago, a pair of pink flamingos escaped from the B.A.M.Z.”

“The Bermuda Aquarium, Museum and Zoo,” explained Brendan.

“They hung out at Spittal or over at Warwick Pond, which is wide but shallow. Something happened to the male, but his mate
kept looking there for him.”

“We often saw her standing in the pond as we drove by on Middle Road,” added Brendan.

“One day, a man noticed that she was in trouble,” Father Francis resumed. “She was in the middle of the pond thrashing around,
beating the water with her wings.”

Brendan picked up the story. “The man went to a nearby vet, and they got a boat and rowed out to her. The poor bird’s legs
had gotten all tangled in kite string that must have been on the bottom of the pond. They freed her and took her back to the
zoo so she wouldn’t get entangled again.”

Father Francis nodded with enthusiasm. “That’s what I like about Bermuda. Whatever that man was on his way to do, he set it
aside to rescue the bird.” He paused. “He didn’t just shake his head and think what a shame and keep going.”

Bartholomew took that in and gazed down at the sparkling, light blue water. “Why isn’t Bermuda on everyone’s top-five list?”

“For a long time, it was,” answered Brendan sadly. “After the war, this was a favorite spring-break destination for New England
college kids—it was called Easter vacation, back then. Those who came liked it enough to keep coming back. They came on their
honeymoons and as young marrieds. And then brought their kids.”

He sighed. “In the sixties, all that changed. There were other spring-break places—Ft. Lauderdale and Daytona Beach, and today,
Cancun. Plus, Disney World and eventually all of Orlando became a magnet for East Coast families. As tourism became an international
industry, other new resorts started competing—further south.”

He caught Bartholomew’s eye in the rearview mirror. “We’re off Cape Hatteras, remember; if you’re sick of
winter and want to go bake in the sun, you’re going to have to go further south than North Carolina.” Then he grinned. “But
if you want to jump-start summer or stretch it a little, we’re ideal.”

Bartholomew, now totally absorbed in the plight of the island that would be his Elba, asked, “So declining tourism is your
biggest problem?”

The men up front glanced at each other, to see who would field that one.

Brendan did. “No, it’s drugs.”

“Drugs? Here? In Paradise?”

The driver nodded, and as they passed another church, Father Francis gestured toward it. “There are sixty-two thousand Bermudians,
and they have more churches per capita than any place I’ve ever heard of. But there’s crime now.”

Brendan sighed. “Our police are good. Very good. But the drug scene is stretching them to the limit.”

For a long time they rode in silence, then slowed for what Father Francis explained was Somerset Bridge, the smallest drawbridge
in the world. The draw part was less than two feet wide—just enough to permit passage of a sailboat’s mast.

“Now we’re in Sandys,” the old priest announced. “The island’s westernmost parish. The West End is the most peaceful, yet
even here we’ve had a couple of drug murders recently.”