By The Sea, Book Three: Laura (7 page)

"Well, mister—you don't make a girl work too
hard for her money," Marie said, sidling up to him and nudging him
with her hips.

"We're not finished," he murmured. Then he
took a roll of bills from his pocket, peeled off the top one, and
passed it over to her.

They disappeared in the shadows of the bow,
from whence they'd come.

Laura, her adrenaline overflowing, turned on
Nellie—still seated, though a little more sober—and in a shrill
voice said, "Get your friends off this boat before I kill you. I
promise I'll kill you!"

Nellie's laugh was a weary grunt. "Sure,
missy. With your feather duster." She began to gather herself
together.

"Damn
you!" Laura grabbed Nellie by
her wrist and dragged the woman, one breast hanging out, across the
decks of the
Virginia.
She catapulted Nellie toward the
boarding steps, then turned on her heel, marched up to her
astonished brother-in-law, and slammed his concertina shut.

"The party," she said with a heaving chest,
"is
over."

A dozen startled revelers mumbled and swore,
then fell in behind Nellie and began to make their way grudgingly
off the boat. Laura did not wait to see them off but hurried up to
Neil, spun him on his heel, and aimed him down the companionway

"I want you to go directly below, wash your
face, and climb into your berth. You're to forget everything you've
seen, and if you ever so much as mention this affair,
ever,
I shall thrash you within an inch of your life. Do you understand
me?"

Neil's mother had never come close to laying
a hand on him. The shock of her threat, coupled with what he had
seen, had taken his breath away. He nodded dumbly and scrambled
down the oak companionway ladder.

Laura turned to her brother-in-law. "That
goes doubly for you, Billy. Promise me. I know how you are with
Sam.
Promise."

Billy was not so much frightened as vastly
entertained. His rather puritanical sister-in-law, modest to a
fault, had pulled aside a pretty curtain and seen the gamier side
of life. Well, well. How she'd been part of the waterfront all
these years ... But of course that was the problem; she'd never
really been a part of it. "Sure, Laur. I'll be taking this one to
my grave," he said, grinning. He pulled out a pocket watch.

"Still early. No sense letting all this
excitement go for naught." Whistling a bar of "Fat, Fat Annie," he
scrambled to catch up with the motley retreating crowd.

Laura collapsed on the chair nearest her,
closing her eyes, trying to shut out a picture that she knew she,
too, would be taking to her grave: of Nellie, drunk and half-naked,
sprawled on a chair. A woman like that .... Neil was so close up,
to a woman like that ....

She heard a shuffle on deck and opened her
eyes: it was Marie, more alert than Nellie had been, taking in the
empty decks.

"My God," said Laura exhaustedly. "You."

"Yeah. Me." Marie pulled her slinky dress
high above her knees and scrambled up and over the bulwarks. On the
other side she paused, held up her middle finger to Laura, and
scurried off into the darkness.

"Nice company you keep."

Laura turned, blushing a red more deep than
any sunset, and faced the man who was technically her hero.

He came sauntering amidship, a study in
offhand elegance. Laura saw at a glance that his clothes, worn as
they were, were well cut, and that he carried them with ease. His
hair was dark, his eyes—of an indefinable color—inscrutable,
distanced. He needed a haircut, and a shave. He didn't—quite—look
disreputable; but then, he didn't look
not
disreputable. He
was coiling a heaving line that she'd noticed earlier in a tangle
on deck; she shifted her look to the heavy monkey's fist that swung
at the end of the line as he gathered up the coils.

He frightened her.

"I thought I asked everyone to leave," she
said, her voice tense.

"Ask, nothing. You shouted everyone off this
vessel," he said with a slow smile as he hung the neatly coiled
heaving line on a belaying pin.

"Without success, obviously." She watched
him cautiously as he ran his gaze up the length of the spruce mast,
itself the thickness of a man's waist, until it was lost in the
night sky.

"Wants a good oiling," he commented,
shifting that inscrutable look to her face.

She took it personally, as if he'd told her
her skin was too dry. "We keep the
Virginia
well enough,"
she answered tartly, emphasizing the "we."

"That's her name? And she was built—?"

"Thomaston, Maine."

"Year?"

"1872."

"And rebuilt since then, of course."

Laura nodded; she'd been through this
sequence of questions before. "The first time, in 1903; and again
when my husband bought her fifteen years ago."

"You
couldn't have been around then."
The smile again; lazy, not really interested, making small talk,
just passing through.

"Her decks were rotten. It was a big job,"
Laura said, as if he'd never spoken. She stood up. "It's been an
eventful but very long evening," she said, not without irony,
hoping that he would go away. When he did not she added, "I ... I
am grateful to you. But—"

There was no question that he was enjoying
her obvious discomfort. It was a dismaying situation. He stood, in
no hurry, between her and her cabin. She was afraid to ask him off,
but she was afraid to let him stay on.
Well, damn it all!
she thought helplessly.
Will this night ever end?

She watched him, still wary, as he ambled
across the deck-space between them—she could not retreat without
raising her skirts and climbing over the cordon. She was safe, she
insisted to herself: hadn't he just satisfied himself with Marie?
Like a cornered cat, she felt the hairs on the back of her neck
stand up as he lifted his arm and touched her right shoulder
gently.

"There will be a fair-sized bruise—one of a
matching set," he added, nodding at her other shoulder. They'll
take some explaining."

Laura eased her sleeve up and was shocked to
see that he was right: blood was gathering beneath the skin where
each of Harry's fingers had clutched at her through her fury. So it
hadn't been a dream, after all. She turned back to the stranger
with a dazed look. Was
this
a dream, then?

"I'm sorry I didn't come to your assistance
earlier, but I ... ah ..."

"That's all right," she interrupted,
mortified by the whole conversation. "You probably dislocated his
shoulder flipping him over the bulwark, and I think I broke
Nellie's wrist. I call it even," she said with nervous humor.

His brows arched appreciatively. "All in
all, it sounds like you can handle things yourself."

"I usually do.
We
do. I do." God. She
turned away, dazzled by her own confusion.

From behind her she heard him murmur, "They
say that Newport throws a good party. I guess it's true."

When she finally turned around, he was
gone.

****

Laura spent most of the night wondering how
she
was
going to explain the bruises to Sam. She wondered
about many other things: about the effect of the evening on Neil;
about the kind of woman who was drawn to the waterfront, and the
type of man; about her nonchalant rescuer; about her own almost
laughable naïveté.

But most of all she wondered about what Sam
would say when he saw the bruises.

At six a.m. she decided that she was awake,
though she'd never been asleep. Red-eyed and haggard, she dragged
herself out of her berth to make breakfast for Neil and Billy, who
on Sunday liked to get in a bit of fishing before Laura hauled Neil
off to whatever Sunday services were being held nearby.

In the Powers family it was a Sunday
tradition imported by Sam's mother, a Bermudian, to have a
breakfast of salt cod and boiled potatoes. Laura had left the
salted fish to soak overnight (nothing short of the scuttling of
the
Virginia
could have prevented her from her routine); and
now she put it in a pot to boil. Normally Neil would have been in
the galley with his mother, stealing sips of her coffee and feeling
grown-up. It was her special time alone with him, while Sam slept
in. Today, of course, Sam would not be free from his training to
join them until the afternoon; but that was not the reason that
Neil had not rushed, as he always did, to the galley on this
particular Sunday morning.

Laura slid aside the hoops of the heavy
curtain that separated the forecastle from the cargo area and
called softly to her son. "Neil? Still asleep?" In the soft morning
light she watched as her son's eyes fluttered, then remained
resolutely closed.

Billy's bunk opposite was empty; obviously
he hadn't made it back last night. For once Laura was grateful. She
stepped up on a bronze foothold, then sat alongside her son in his
narrow, cozy berth. Sweeping the blond hairs of his head back out
of his eyes she said gently, "The coffee's on."

Neil frowned, as though he were deep in
sleep, and then let his eyes flutter reluctantly open. They scanned
her face, looking for an apology for her cruel treatment of him the
night before, then opened wider. "Mama!" he whispered, aghast.
"What's happened to your arm?"

The sleeves of Laura's dress were shorter
than she'd thought. Glancing carelessly at the ugly discolorations,
she said, "Oh, that. You know how we're always getting black and
blue on board the boat. I banged into something."

"It looks like a hand," he said in a voice
filled with wonder. "Does it hurt?"

"Hardly at all," she said with a smile. "Are
you getting up, sleepyhead?"

"Did they try to"—he took a deep breath—"to
kill you last night, Mama?"

"What an idea!" she said faintly.

His blue eyes were brilliant with tears. "I
heard one of them say, 'I'll kill you.' I really did."

It apparently never occurred to Neil that
his
mother
—with her low, musical voice and her soft, loving
eyes—could have been capable of the hysterical shrieking that had
floated aft over the sounds of stamping feet and the jangle of the
concertina. Not even after she threatened him. Not even after she
nearly pushed him down his own companionway.

Flushing, Laura murmured, "People—grown-ups
too—sometimes scream and say things they don't mean. You know how
you've shouted at Billy sometimes when you're mad at him. It
doesn't mean you want to
kill
him."

"But I've never said I wanted to kill him,"
Neil pursued with intractable logic.

"That's just an expression, sweetheart. It
means, 'I've had enough,' that's all."

"I was scared, Mama," he confessed, sounding
very ashamed but frightened still. "Will they come back?"

"Not ever again. I promise. Now: about that
coffee. Did I mention there's one blueberry cake left to go with
it?"

****

About an hour before Sam was due to arrive,
the
Virginia
was boarded by a rather peculiar visitor: a
neatly, almost prissily dressed gentleman of about fifty, as dainty
and precise in his movements as in his dress. So innocuous was the
visitor that Laura hesitated neither for herself nor for her son in
inviting him aboard. He said he had come "on business," and she
believed him.

Mr. Angelina, as he called himself, settled
down in a series of exquisite flutters on the cedar-decked cockpit
seat and said, "I have come on behalf of my client, whom I shall
not at this time name. He is having a retreat built on one of the
more remote Bahama Islands, and to that end needs to have a certain
amount of material—lumber, fixtures, that sort of thing—imported
from up here. He has seen your advertisement and wonders whether
your vessel would be capable of such transport."

He crossed his legs as if he'd come to
Sunday tea and leaned attentively toward Laura, waiting for her
response.

Taken aback, Laura answered, "Well,
certainly she's capable—but in all candor, why would you choose a
sailing schooner when you could have the material moved so much
more quickly by steam?"

He made a dismissive and rather pretty
gesture. "Oh, speed is not of the essence in this case. As it
happens, my client has—shall we say—alienated some of the locals by
importing virtually all of his contractors from up here. Naturally
you're aware that nearly all cargo down-island is still moved by
sail. My client feels that a vessel such as your own can come and
go more—shall we say—safely and freely than—shall we say—a
steamer."

Laura looked startled. "Oh, well—if it's a
matter of sabotage!"

"No, no, no, hardly that. Just ... possible
unpleasantness." He diverted his look to the cuff of his
well-pressed pants and picked off a microscopic fleck. When Laura
remained silent he returned his gaze to her and said through pursed
and very pink lips, "Naturally there will be compensation for that
admittedly remote possibility."

Laura found her voice again.

****

As it happened, Sam was unable to spend the
afternoon with them; a mechanical problem belowdecks on the
Rainbow
required his skills, and a messenger was sent with
his regrets to the
Virginia.
Laura, not wishing to inform
her husband by third party of their great good fortune, simply
smiled happily and said, "Thank you." Sooner or later Sam would
show up, and in the meantime there were advertisements to be posted
in the paper and around town: if Laura was to be captain, she
needed a first mate. Billy would never do: his body was agile, his
brain was not.

Laura had complete confidence in her own
skills as a navigator, but she needed a backup, and she meant to
have the best she could find. She could afford it. Mr. Angelina had
offered her a fabulous sum to deliver his client's cargo. Laura had
had to make all sorts of promises and give all kinds of warranties
(meanwhile omitting to say that her husband would not be aboard),
but she had a contract to show for her effort, and she was beside
herself with pride and joy. She had two weeks in which to staff and
prepare the
Virginia.
Plenty of time.