By The Sea, Book Three: Laura (11 page)

"Hey, Colin! She's not bad, is she?"

He glanced at Laura, then turned back to
Neil and said gravely, "Much, much better than I thought."

Laura felt her cheeks flame as her son
added, "Told you! My dad says that in the Florida boom days the
Ginny
won every race—because that's what they always ended
up doing—between here and Miami. There wasn't a faster coaster
anywhere."

Again Durant's eyes swept across Laura's
face before he said, "Your dad must be very pleased with her."

"Oh, for
sure,"
agreed the boy.

The
Virginia
settled into a groove,
working her way down the bay in the shadows of the fabulous ocean
estates, some of them boarded up, which dotted the jagged
shoreline. There was no more remarkable stretch of oceanfront on
the continent. And yet to three of the crew of the coasting
schooner it was all just a point of departure, a jumping-off spot
for an exciting new destination: a group of low-lying, barren,
windswept islands. As for Colin Durant, he took in the mansions the
way he took in everything around him: in thoughtful silence.

The schooner moved in on starboard tack as
close as she dared to Brenton Reef, then tacked away from Aquidneck
Island, bound for Long Island Sound and Connecticut to pick up its
cargo. The talk aboard was of life in the tropics, and the pros and
cons of offshore versus coastal sailing. No one noticed the tall
spar, taller than the Statue of Liberty, of Vanderbilt's J-boat
bobbing quietly offshore, several miles off Brenton Point. From
that distance no one could have told that the
Rainbow
crew
were all on deck for their lunch break.

But out of the two dozen crewmen, one aboard
the big J-boat had no trouble recognizing the gaff-rigged schooner
that bore his own life's blood away from him. Sam Powers squinted
and shaded his eyes, and swallowed hard.

The crewman next to him, with whom he'd
become friendly, said, "Why, Sam, ain't that the
Virginny
headed out for the Sound?"

Sam nodded and tore off a chunk of
bread.

"Who's runnin' her, with you here?"

"My wife," he answered, chewing slowly.

"And the mate?"

"He ain't a Maine man," Sam said. "He ain't
one of us."

Laura had promised Sam that she would keep a
log of the trip, and she did, scrupulously noting the time, course,
weather, and sea conditions at regular intervals. Sam had promised
nothing, but after the
Rainbow
was put to bed on the day the
Virginia
left Newport, he found a quiet place and took out a
small paper tablet he had bought, after much deliberation, from
Rugen's Typewriter Exchange on Thames Street. He took out a pencil,
newly sharpened, and held it in his hand for a while. He had not
put pencil to paper in nine years, not since he met Laura.

He had lied to her when he said he could not
write. He could, in an elementary way, but after seeing the way his
wife could spin out easy and endless prose, he decided that it was
simpler to admit to possessing no skill at all than to having only
a smidgeon's worth. But there was so much on his mind, his heart
was so full, that it seemed right to try to write it down. He
decided to make daily entries—his wife kept a diary, he knew—until
she came back.

Across the top of the first page he wrote,
"3 September 1934,"
and stopped to sharpen the pencil point
still more with his rigger's knife. After a while, and with a sense
that he was breaking new ground, he wrote:
"Virginia
left. Pain. I love her but so what. The islands be new. Cant
blame her. God speed."

That same night, Laura took out her own
diary, a small volume of imitation leather, with pages edged in
imitation gilt, and wrote:
"September 3, 1934. The trip so far
has made me immeasurably happy. It was as if Aeolus himself had
smiled on this venture: he held back his breath until we got away
from the dock, then blew fair down the Connecticut shore, then held
off until we were tied up again, safe and sound at a dock in New
London. That funny little Mr. Angelina was waiting for us, looking
pinker than ever. The lumber is here, and the fixtures, and much
else besides; but there is no hint of impropriety or funny
business.

"Tomorrow we load and then it's off on our
grand adventure. A cold front is coming through—there were
torrential thunderstorms this evening and we all stayed below.
Billy and Mr. Durant played checkers, and Neil was wild with
jealousy though he pretended not to care. I made muffins. We ate
all of them, and half a jar of raspberry preserves to boot. Neil
ate most of all.

"Before we parted company for the night, Mr.
Durant confided that Sam had had him on the hot seat till he felt
like a briquette, grilling him about his sailing experience. There
were a lot of vocabulary questions, and a true-or-false section,
and a 'what if' part about emergencies. Sam finished by demanding
(I can see him now) a list of half a dozen god-fearing sailors who
could vouch for Mr. Durant's character. Just like Sam! And I afraid
to ask the man how old he is. But I think he cannot be more than
thirty-five, and I believe if he were ever married he would have
spoken more cynically of the institution. As it was, when the
subject came up (Neil asked), he merely smiled that enigmatic smile
and said, 'A good woman is hard to find.' I wanted to use him for a
dart-board."

****

First light had not yet appeared when Laura
was awakened by loud knocking on the side of the
Virginia's
hull, just outside her cabin. Through a porthole she heard a voice,
loud, clear and unmistakably a woman's, hailing.

"Ahoy,
Virginia
!"

Groggy, Laura popped her head through the
open hatch to see a bright-eyed woman of middle age, slight and
trim in khaki slacks and a pink tennis shirt, standing on the dock
of the New London boatyard, hands on her hips and a grin on her
face. "Good morning. You're the skipper of this vessel, I
hear."

"Yes. Laura Powers. Good morning."

"I'm Amanda Seton, yard manager. Glad to
know you. Not many women pass through here who can claim to captain
a ship like yours. It's a privilege to meet you."

Flattered, Laura smiled and said, "But I'll
bet that's not why you're here

At 4:45 a.m."

"You're right. We're going to have to move
your boat from this dock just for a while; we need to haul a boat
that's leaking badly. Some drunken fool rammed it after midnight,
and the pumps can't keep up. It's easier to move the
Virginia
than to reposition the crane. I'm sorry about
this." She was clearly embarrassed, but clearly in a hurry.

Laura said, "Sure. Let me wake my crew—"

"Oh, no need. My husband's here, and my son,
who has his last day on the job before heading back to school
tomorrow. We'll just slide your boat out of the way, using our
launch if we need to, to make room. It's dead calm and shouldn't be
hard."

"Your whole family works here? And at this
hour?"

Amanda's laugh was easy and good-natured.
"Geoff and I own the yard," she explained, "and our son James has a
summer job here. The reason we're all here now is that the sinking
boat happens to belong to my father, Jim Fain, who built this
shipyard in the first place. We're a family business, just like
you."

Before Laura could respond to that, Durant
appeared on deck, fully dressed and ready to move. He pointed to
the crew's quarters below him, then touched a forefinger to his
lips. Clearly the others were still asleep, their last night of
being tethered to land. Durant was right, she thought. Let them
sleep.

Motioning that she'd be right out, Laura
dressed quickly and joined the others on the dock. The
Virginia's
hawsers were undone and the business of moving
her begun. Geoff Seton, Amanda's husband and a friendly Brit with
graying hair, signaled to his son, who was a few years older than
Neil and looked as at ease in the launch as Neil did in his dory.
The boy used the launch to give the schooner a gentle if slightly
undignified nudge in her behind, and the
Virginia
began to
move.

With a bit more pushing and pulling by them,
she was soon secured in her new berth, with her snoring crew
belowdecks none the wiser.

"Well done," said Geoff to all. "Right then,
James; let's get that boat out of the water before she sinks to the
bottom."

Durant dropped back below for the moment,
leaving Laura with the shipyard's co-owner, with whom she was
forming an instant bond.

"My father is going to have a conniption
when he learns about this," Amanda confided to her. "He's had that
boat forever."

"I know," Laura agreed. "Men can be so
irrational. They fall completely in love with the things—"

"And call them 'she.'"

"And hate to let anyone near them. My
husband is like that."

"Colin? His attitude seemed a little more
businesslike than that to me," Amanda said candidly.

"No, no, Mr. Durant's not my—"

"Oh, I'm sorry," Amanda interrupted. "I
misunderstood."

"Actually, my husband's sailing with Harold
Vanderbilt in the America's Cup races that are going on now—"

"Really!"

"And Mr. Durant—Colin—is filling in for him,
but as first mate."

Amanda glanced at the deck where Durant had
last been and said only, "Ah."

A perfectly innocent remark said in a
matter-of-fact way; so why did Laura feel suddenly guilty?

Amanda said, "Look, the men can haul my
dad's boat out without our help. Let's have coffee in the office.
Even for a shipyard, this is an ungodly hour to be working."

They made their way toward a long, low
building with Amanda peppering Laura with questions about living
aboard a coastal schooner. How did they manage without an engine?
How did they handle the paperwork?
Where
did they handle the
paperwork? What about school? Did Laura home-school? How did they
keep in touch with friends and relations? How did they manage
without a telephone or a mailbox? How did they vote?
Where
did they vote? You couldn't vote without a permanent address. How
did they get around without a car? Everyone needed a car.

Laughing at the barrage, Laura finally threw
her hands up and said, "I don't know; we just manage!"

The pot was done percolating. While Amanda
filled two mugs, Laura studied a photo that was obviously of Sir
Thomas Lipton with his arm around the shoulders of a young boy in
knickers. "Is that who I think it is?" she asked. His image was on
practically every box of tea in the shops.

"Yep. Sir Tom himself. The boy is my nephew.
He's grown up now, with a child of his own." Amanda brought out
cream from a small fridge, and set a sugar bowl down. She took a
long sip and sighed. "I needed that."

It soon became clear that she was as free
with information about her own life as she was curious about
Laura's. "Sometimes when the alarm jolts me at six a.m. I think, 'I
gave up the life of a Bohemian for
this
?' No more getting
zozzled and then sleeping in; no more working when I felt like it,
if
I felt like it. And cigarettes! I still miss my butts.
But with a child on the way, all of that had to go. And then two
more arrived, and that pretty much sealed my fate—we have a nanny,
in case you're wondering if I've left them home alone. But anyway,
after I abandoned all of my delicious bad habits, it became only a
matter of time before I took on a regular job, much to the delight
of my father, damn it. I used to be a sculptor. Ask me when's the
last time I sculpted. There's a half-finished bronze in Shed 6
that's mostly gathering dust. I'll get back to it. Some day. Do I
sound as if I'm whining?" she finished up, finally pausing for
breath.

Laura had been sizing up the cheery office
with its family photos, dog bed in the corner, highchair in another
corner and official-looking citations of excellence covering the
wall above the hot plate and coffee station.

She shook her head. "It's not what you're
saying, but how you're saying it. You sound pretty happy to
me."

Smiling, Amanda said, "You know what? I am.
But don't tell Geoff; I like to keep him guessing."

"Our little secret."

Here was a woman that Laura would have liked
to know more: unpretentious, genuine, full of good will … and
obviously in love with her husband. "In a lot of ways, I envy you,"
she blurted.

"I could say the same!" Amanda returned. She
was irrepressible.

"Thanks for the coffee," Laura said,
reluctant to leave. "But I have a hungry crew to feed—as it
happens, I'm captain
and
cook—and we have a full day
ahead."

She hurried back to the boat, feeling oddly
wistful. It was true that Neil had no friends … but then, neither
had she.

****

Before long, the
Virginia's
crew had
eaten and begun the grueling work of loading the heaviest cargo
down into the hold. First the flagstone was carefully lowered,
stone by stone and packed between layers of hay for safekeeping.
Granite slabs were put down next, with the help of the
donkey-engine and the boom tackle. Next came the bathtubs, which
got filled with sacks of cement, and eight-foot sections of a
heavy, intricate, wrought iron fence. The
Virginia,
a heavy
vessel in her own right, inched down slowly on her lines.

At eleven the dockhands disappeared for
lunch and Colin climbed up out of the hold, his face a grimy,
sweaty mockery of the dry and windy weather on deck. Laura went
over and took a seat next to him on a pile of lumber waiting to be
loaded.

"I've been thinking," she began, surprised
to see fatigue in his eyes. Her husband had always seemed tireless
during loading; but then, it was his boat. "This is a very safe
cargo; the boat is nicely ballasted; we could go directly offshore
instead of along the coast. We'd save a week of time each way."