High Tide at Noon (41 page)

“I've had about enough of this!” said Alec furiously. He strode away from her and took his mackinaw from its hook. Joanna folded her arms and watched him.

“That's right,” she remarked approvingly, “go down to the shore and match pennies in Sigurd's fish house, and you won't have to listen to me. You'll never have to listen to the truth as long as you can run away from it. But you can't run away from this, Alec. Give the boys a chance to win their money back,” her voice was quiet now, almost gentle, “and then they'l give you a chance to win back, and it'll keep up like that forever—maybe. Until the time comes when you have to choose between poker and me.”

He was halfway to the door; instantly he turned, and came back toward her, his eyes wide with furious unbelief. “What's that you said?
Joanna
—” He put out his hand, almost gropingly, and her heart quailed within her. He looked stricken. She could have taken him in her arms, but she kept them folded tightly across her breast, and sweetly, sharply, through her loving pity ran a bright ray of triumph. This, then, was it. She had known there was something that would reach him.

“You heard me,” she said. “I won't live like this forever.”

He reached for her then and pulled her into his arms, buried his face against her hair. “You darling,” he muttered. “Joanna—my God, Joanna—“ His voice was quick and unsteady; pressed against his chest, she felt his hard breathing, and thought in sudden panic that he was crying.

She forced her head upward, her own eyes flooding, and caught his face between her hands as he said, still in that queer voice, “You sweet little brat, you know damn well you couldn't live without me!”

Alec went out laughing.

Joanna went upstairs and flung herself face down across the bed. The coverlet was cool against her burning cheeks, but there was nothing to cool the burning ache she felt inside. It was an ache compounded of grief and anger; which was the strongest, she didn't know. She did know that to argue with Alec was to argue with the east wind; to pin him down to anything, to make him listen and understand, was to try to catch one of the humming birds that flickered on lightning wings around Donna's honeysuckle.

Margaret had been right after all when she said gambling was a disease. It was a fever that came back again and again, and nothing was strong enough to stop it, not even love like the love she and Alec carried for each other.
Nothing
. She rolled over and looked up at the ceiling with widening eyes. Wasn't there anything in the world to knock sense into him again, and make of him the man he should be?

Alec was kind-hearted and gentle, he loved little, young things that were small enough to be protected. Foolish downy infant gulls, children. She had seen him pick up young Charles after a tumble, and wipe the button of a nose as carefully as any woman. Alec loved children; he should have some of his own. A baby that must be clothed and fed; a helpless baby whose very life depended on him—surely even a gambling fever must give way to that.

But we can't afford to have a baby, thought Joanna, looking at the ceiling. And then she said aloud, very clearly and very positively, “We can't afford
not
to have a baby.”

B
UT THERE WAS NO BABY
. Alec was too stubborn, too canny.

In the lilac dusk of a soft April day, Joanna sat on a rock in the little cove, her knees drawn up to her chin, the mild night wind stirring her hair, the green smells of the Island spring lifting to her nostrils, and decided to leave Alec.

It was not a shocking decision. She realized that she had probably been thinking about it for a long time, all through the winter that lay behind her now, that winter of fret and strain and worry, of quarrels that left her exhausted but still raging. They didn't leave Alec like that, because he didn't quarrel. He only caught her in his arms. And she hadn't known, till that ghastly winter, that she'd ever strike his hand away.

But it wasn't kisses I wanted, she mused now, hugging her knees and listening to the soft sighing breath of the sea below her. But I never could make Alec see it. He thinks if we stay lovers, that's enough.

But how could you stay lovers when there was never a moment's peace, never an instant when you weren't worrying—when fear followed you deep into sleep and then you dreamed? She thought of those dreams now; there was one that came often, especially after
The Basket
had to be towed in so many times. She would awaken crying, night after night, because she had seen too vividly the small, gray boat drifting helplessly toward the black ledges of Sou-west Point, battered brutally by winter surf that broke it into matchwood; and Alec's body lying on the shore with the gulls wailing overhead.

Sometimes there was no body or boat, only an upturned punt floating aimlessly on the water.

She couldn't tell Alec about her dreams, when he woke up and tried to draw her into his arms. It wouldn't have helped anything. She couldn't tell him about the dreams of bitter cold, or hunger. He would have laughed at her and said, "We're getting along, aren't we?”

Yes, getting along because of the cellarful of canned stuff (it was empty now), and the short lobsters, and the ducks shot around the shore. And warm because she sacked home driftwood from the lonely coves on the west side, so they wouldn't have to burn too much of their precious cordwood. He had the heavy workclothes he needed, bought one article at a time, when he had a lucky streak and won a lot. He certainly wasn't making enough, lobstering, to buy much. And she had clothes enough to do; it wasn't as if she went without. But her things were on the shabby side.

It had been a lonely winter too. Gradually she had stopped going up to the big house. The frequent storms made a good excuse. It wasn't so easy to go up there and be her confident self when she knew what they were thinking, though they never gave any sign. The whole Island knew that Alec Douglass loved playing cards more than anything else in the world; that he was either playing because his luck was good and he couldn't stop, or playing because his luck was bad and he expected it to turn at any time.

Owen had come to her once in February, while Alec was out in the harbor pounding ice off his boat. Owen hadn't come to the house for a long time, neither had any of the other boys, except Philip occasionally, or Stevie. She'd been fixing salt fish for dinner when Owen walked into the kitchen, big and handsome and prosperous in a new mackinaw and moleskin breeches.

“Why haven't you come before?” she demanded.

“Sorry, Jo. I'd like to come in oftener, but—”

“But what?” She faced him, hands on her hips. “What's eating you, Owen Bennett?”

“Well, I came this morning because I saw Alec down at the shore.” He looked oddly uncomfortable. “I might's well tell you first as last. Alec don't think much of me these days. Don't think much of any of us guys.”

“Why?”

“Well, Jo, it's hard to say this to a kid sister, specially when I thought she'd married a fella who could give her more to eat than salt fish and potatoes all the year round, and keep her in shoes at least.”

She blushed furiously, conscious of the battered saddle shoes she had worn for two years now. They were getting thin in the soles, and the cold struck through them when she went out. But she'd thought Alec needed new rubber boots more than she needed shoes.

She tilted her chin at Owen. “Yes, go on,” she said dangerously.

“Now don't get mad with me, darlin' mine!” He grinned at her affectionately. “You see, we been playing poker with Alec off and on for a couple of years, and never thought much about it. But it seems like this winter Alec's gone kind of crazy on the subject.”

She nodded, and he went on. “Well, all of a sudden we came to and found out how things were going. That boat of his is no better than paper—she can't stand anything at all. And he hasn't been tending his gear, making up for pots he's lost, so what used to be a pretty sizable string that brought him in a good dollar has dwindled down quite a bit.”

So they were talking like this about Alec now; it was there for the whole Island to see, the way he was going to pieces.

“So we figured he couldn't afford to play, and we been edging him out. Lots of times when he felt like it, we haven't played, so as to discourage him.” He stared meditatively at the cigarette smoke. “But it's a funny thing about gambling. It takes hold of a man. Looks as if Alec fought it pretty good when he first got here, and then it snuck up on him.”

She said from a dry throat, “I shouldn't have gone ashore that time with Mother.”

“Maybe you're right. I don't know, Jo. But after a while Alec began to guess what we were doing, and he didn't like it. He's got to play, like a man has to have his liquor. Me, for instance. Only,” his smile flashed, “I can afford it. I haven't got a boat that needs a lot of fixing, or a broken-down string of traps—or a wife.”

“What's a wife supposed to do?” she asked lightly.

“Just hang on, I guess, Jo. We're doing our part, and maybe the craving'll wear off, if there's nobody to encourage it.” He rumpled her head with a big, kindly hand, and the rough affection of the gesture made her eyes sting. “We're looking out for you the best way we can, Jo. Well, I'll move along. Alec ought to be back pretty soon, and he won't take kindly to meeting me here.”

She went to the door with him, hating to see him go, yet wanting to be alone with her shame and her bitterness. “But Alec's
good,”
she protested. “You know that, Owen. He's always been fond of you! But it's just as if he wasn't himself.”

“Sure, Jo, you don't have to explain. He'll come along all right.” Owen went away. Alone, she paced the floor, facing her despair at last. In this moment there was no way out. But she had reached the bottom of it, she thought, and now she must go up again. Owen had said the craving would wear off, if it weren't encouraged. . . .

Well, it hadn't worn off. In the bad spell that came in March, when the wind blew constantly for almost a month, day and night, and Joanna never left the house except to wander along the west side looking for wood, Alec was out almost every night. What he was playing with, she didn't know, because he wasn't going out to haul and bringing in any money. And she didn't know with whom he was playing, either. Sometimes he said he was going to the clubhouse to play pool, and from the sitting room windows she could see the light among the trees. He usually didn't come home until long after she had gone to bed.

She had new shoes at last, though; sturdy, stout shoes such as she had always worn in the Island winters. It was Nils who was responsible for that; Old Faithful, she thought with a rueful twist of her mouth as she sat in the cove in the soft April dusk, this night when she had decided finally to leave Alec.

She had seen little of Nils during the winter, until one night when she sat alone in the kitchen reading. He came in, as fresh and ruddy and yellow-haired as ever, except that his face was set in leaner, more mature lines. He brought two balls of marlin with him. He wanted her to knot some trapheads for him, he said. Kristi always did it for him, but she was so busy working up at the big house these days, she didn't have time. Nils was so simple and unembarrassed about it that it was easy for Joanna to accept the job. After that, there were always trapheads to knit. It took her two or three days, after her hands toughened up, to knit up a ball, and there was two dollars' worth of heads in it.

It was Nils, too, who told her where Alec found his card partners these days. It was the night he first brought the marlin.

“I noticed Alec in the clubhouse when I came up the lane,” he said mildly, “playing pool with Ash and Simon.”

The words caught her like a blow to the stomach. Her eyes never shifted from Nils, but he must have caught a movement of her lips, a narrowing of her lids, a change of color. He said instantly, “I wouldn't think anything of it, Jo. They just dropped in, most likely.”

“Most likely,” she repeated. But there was no one else on the Island who would play with Alec . . . none of her brothers or her friends . . .

She had wondered afterward if Nils were trying to warn her, somehow, thinking she could do something. But what was there to do? Could you catch the east wind and tie it in a sack? Could you keep Alec from going his own way? No more than the east wind.

And now it was April, and she was going to leave Alec. She had felt for a long time as if she were caught in a trap, and the steel jaws had tightened on her when she found out about the Birds. All the revulsion she had ever known for Simon was intensified now. If she met him in the road she felt a sick inarticulate rage. He came into her dreams at night; she awoke in the morning wanting to fight and knowing with utter despair that there was nothing she could openly fight against.

And now she was worn out, and there was nothing else to do but go away. She couldn't live like this, with a man to whom she was nothing but the woman he slept with. It sounded ugly, but it was true. He wanted to kiss her, to caress her and make love to her, but he didn't want to listen to her when she tried to make him understand what was happening to them.

She would tell him all that when he came home tonight, and she would be cool and dispassionate and final, and tomorrow she would go away on the boat.

Where she would go, she wasn't sure. The Island would buzz louder than it had ever buzzed, but she wouldn't be there to hear. The thought of escaping filled her with a strange relief. She had struggled and fought for so long now. It was good to give up.

She put her forehead down on her knees and let the Island breathe softly around her. The sea crept quietly up the little pebbly beach, edged with white fire in the dark, and chuckled around the rocks. There was a scent of growing things in the little cranberry bog behind her, and of damp earth. The darkness was a hushed but real thing, soft as a breath.