High Tide at Noon (43 page)

P
IRATE
I
SLAND GLEAMED IN THE
M
AY
sunshine; it rose, a long barren ridge of yellow rock, out of the sapphire-blue bay five miles to the north of Bennett's Island. Joanna and Alec went there in
The Basket
one brilliant morning with a good lunch stowed forward, the peapod riding astern, and Bennett's Island like a blue-violet cloud on the horizon behind them.

They anchored outside the Spanish Cove. Facing open sea, with no land between it and the coast of Spain, the cove had been scooped out of the side of a hill; steep grassy banks like the curve of a bowl went down to a small pebble beach. Everywhere along the water's edge, the same giant hand that had scooped out the cove had flung down great boulders in untidy confusion. In an easterly, when the seas broke into the shallow cove like a thousand wild stallions, the surf roared and hissed and jetted high over these boulders. But when Alec and Joanna rowed in through the mouth in the peapod, the water curled itself glitteringly around the rocks, as ingratiatingly as a cat weaves around friendly human legs.

The cove itself lay placid and bright in its solitude. The tide was low, and there on the flat rocks on bottom, basking in the sun-warmed water, they saw the flounders. It was something to see. Alec stood in the bow, and speared with his homemade harpoon the flat and sleepy fish. It was quick and easy. Poling the double-ender along was like canoeing on a millpond, and it seemed as if the bottom of the boat was deep in flounders in no time.

The bare, deserted island towering over them, the peaceful little cove, the windless sunshine, all held a queer charm for Joanna and Alec. They hardly spoke. It was as if they could relax at last, after the long hard battle of the winter. Besides, words would have spoiled this half-enchanted serenity that had caught them up.

They rowed ashore, finding an opening in the rocks big enough to let them pull the peapod up on the beach, and took out the lunch.

“Want to stay here on the beach?” Alec asked.

Joanna looked up at the curving grassy walls and shook her head. “Let's climb up there!” she suggested, a quick tide of excitement running through her. “Let's see what it's like. I'll bet you can see the whole bay.”

Alec shrugged. “You fixed up the grub, I guess you can say where we'll eat. Lead on!”

Feeling wildly happy, she attacked the slope. She had on a pair of Alec's dungarees, with the bottoms rolled up, and one of his shirts. With her strongly slender brown arms and hands, her long legs and narrow hips, she looked like an agile young boy as she went up the bank. It was steep, but there was juniper to cling to in the worst places.

She looked back over her shoulder to see Alec coming with the lunch. “Ahoy, Creepin' Moses!” she shouted down at him, and scrambled upwards. A little ground sparrow rose chirping from a clump of bushes, and she said, “Hi, there! How's the wife?” A gull went overhead, laughing, and she mimicked him. She felt half-drunk with the bright winelike air, the sunshine, the challenge of the climb . . . and being with Alec, like this, away from everything and everybody, as if they were the only people in the world. Of course Alec was quieter than he used to be. But he was still her own dear love.

Quite suddenly she reached the top, or rather a little grassy plateau with the highest ridge of the island rising above it, shutting off the wind. And in this sheltered spot, high above the blue tranquillity that was the cove, the strawberry blossoms dappled the grass like a thousand tiny fallen stars. Joanna stood still, breathless with the climb and with delight. It was like finding a grassy carpet spread for her and Alec, a carpet spangled with flowers.

She dropped down on it and shut her eyes. How nice it smelled. How warm the sunshine was on her face. When Alec came, she opened her eyes and put out her hand to him.

“Lie down and rest a while,” she murmured.

He stretched out beside her, and propped himself up on one elbow to look around. “Did you know this place was here?”

“Second sight. I'm fey.”

“You're fey, all right. Your shirt tail's out.”

Joanna promptly pulled it out all the way and rolled it up. “I want the sun to shine on my stomach. It feels good,” she explained to Alec's amused green-brown glance.

“Why don't you take it off altogether?” he asked. He pulled his own shirt off; his body was lean and muscular, and fine gold hairs glinted in the light.

“I always wanted to go sunbathing,” said Joanna, and shed her blouse. She lay back again, feeling the grass cool and prickly against her bare shoulders, the sun like a caress on her skin. Alec looked down at her, his eyes narrowed against the bright daylight, his mouth softening. She stretched luxuriously and smiled back at him drowsily between her lashes.

“It's kind of nice to loaf for a while, isn't it?” she said.”

“Seems to me I haven't loafed for a long time.”

“You haven't. You're either working your head off, or sleeping like the dead. I was beginning to wonder when you'd stop to take a breath and say hello to your wife.”

Alec smiled, and picked a strawberry blossom. He tucked it over her ear. “Now you look like one of those girls in the South Seas.”

This was the old, gay and romantic Alec. It was fun to have him back for a day, this run-away day that felt like an adventure even if they were only five miles from home, catching flounders. She said lazily, “And who are you?”

“I'm a beachcomber.”

“Kind of hard work, beachcombing in rubber boots—”

He pulled them off, and his socks too. “That air feels good. Those girls down there don't wear shoes and socks, either.” He took off Joanna's sneakers and she wriggled her toes ecstatically.

“Alec, do we look like a couple of old married people?”

“If Bennett's could see us now, they'd chew about it for the next six months.”

Joanna giggled. “Isn't it fun?”

“Mmm,” said Alec, and bent his head. She felt his lips on hers, gentle and firm, and her heart quickened. He kissed her twice, and lifted his head, and she took his face in her hands, and looked deeply into his eyes.

“We haven't had a lot of those lately,” she said in a low voice.

“There wasn't even time for that, Joanna,” he answered her.

“There's time today.” Her hands tightened, as she pulled him gently toward her. He slipped one arm under her head and laid the other across her body to hold her firm and close to him. This time, as his mouth came down on hers, the heart that had already quickened leaped with a sudden wild happiness. And lying as she was, against his breast, her skin warm and brown against the warm fairness of his, she felt the fierce thudding of his heart too.

“I love you, Alec,” she said against his mouth. She took his hand, the one that held her so close, and held it against her breast.

He lifted his head a little at that, and through her lashes she saw his face for an instant before he buried it against her throat. “I love you,” he answered. “Don't ever forget it, Joanna.”

It was somehow a holy instant. Joanna's fingers were quiet in his hair as she felt his mouth against her throat, his hand curving over her breast. “I love you,” he had said. “Don't ever forget it.”

She didn't know why her eyes were stinging, all at once.

For a long time they lay like this. The gulls aloft in trackless sunlit space must have seen them there, lying so close together on the tiny carpet of grass starred with white blossoms; the bare rocky ridge of the island rising above them, the cove sloping away from them below. They lay there with no thought of time. For all they cared, it could go on like this forever, brilliant and fragrant and shadowless and unpeopled, except for them.

Presently Alec stirred, lifted his head, and looked down into Joanna's face. They smiled at each other, a long slow smile without haste or urgency in it. With a small, sighing sound of content, Joanna put her arms around his neck. And his warm fingers tightened over her breast.

After sunset the west was jade and gold, the eastern sky was a pale glow of rose and lavender, melting into an amethyst sea. When the boat slipped quietly across the serene water, it left a wake of deeper amethyst and jade. The peapod astern ruffled the wake into gold.

Joanna, standing beside Alec at the wheel, said, “I've never seen it like this before. Have you?”

Alec shook his head. They stood close together against the after-sunset chill. They were quiet; their silence held more than words could ever hold. We don't need to talk, Joanna thought. We don't want to talk. But it's as if we're saying things to each other, just the same.

It was a strange but wonderful feeling. Dusk slipped down from the east, the line of sea and sky became indistinct. The amethyst was turning to gray by the time the boat slid under the shadow of the Head, passed Eastern End Cove, where the lights were already lit, and the boats lay peacefully at their moorings. The woods were black against the sky, and as the afterglow faded, one star after another came twinkling over the trees.

“Home again,” said Alec, as
The Basket
reached the mouth of the harbor.
Home again
. Lovely words, thought Joanna. A day of loveliness, and then coming into the Island's harbor at dusk. Coming home . . .

With Alec.

T
HE FOG IN
J
UNE
was a thick and windless hush, an opaque silence. You could hardly hear the foghorn at the Rock, and the sea was very calm. The men went out to haul around the Island, grumbling a little because the lobsters were falling off—it was almost time for the Closed Season and shedding—and the prices were falling off, too. Joanna and her mother listened to their menfolk and took the grumbling lightly. Island women were used to this.

They were used to the fact, also, that some of the men were always in debt by the beginning of summer and the Closed Season. Joanna, going into the big house one day during the fog mull, heard Stephen on the other side of the front door, talking to someone; she stopped on the doorstep to smell the budding white roses and in a few minutes Forest Merrill came out. He looked sheepish and relieved. She knew that look.

She spoke to him and went into the house. Her father had gone back to the sitting room; he stood by the mantel filling his pipe and looking down at it thoughtfully.

“What's the matter with Forest?” she asked him bluntly.

“Oh, Harpers' is pressing him a mite too close for the trap stuff he bought in there last winter.” Stephen shook his head. “Pete's after him too, but Harpers' is the hardest nut to crack. Pete'll still let him have food, for the kids' sake.”

“And you'll keep on letting him have money for the kids' sake,” said Joanna. “Father, if he and Marcus didn't know they could get money from you every time they got up a tree, they'd do things themselves —for the kids' sake.”

Stephen's fine black eyes crinkled in affectionate humor. “Looking out for your old man, are you? Well, Joanna, Marcus and Forest are the way they are, and a man with a little extra in his pocket doesn't like to stand around and see people in want—especially children and women that can't get out and dig for themselves.”

“Susie Yetton does a lot of digging in Johnny Fernandez' pockets!”

Her father laughed. “Susie's a case, poor fool, and Marcus is shiftless. All the more reason the rest of the Island's got to look out for the young ones.”

“Father, what if you're out on a limb sometime? You know darn well they don't intend to pay you back.”

“You're a hard-boiled little cuss, aren't you? Well, Jo, when I let 'em have it, I don't look very hard for it to come back. I've got it, and I'm not using it—”

“But you might want to use it sometime!” she said passionately. The meals of herring and potatoes were not so far behind her that she didn't remember them with humiliating clarity. “Father, I'm not stingy or tight, and I believe in helping people out, but you never refuse them
anything!
And I say they think you're an easy mark, and it's just throwing good money after bad.”

Stephen laughed at her, the deep and infectious Bennett laughter, and after a moment she had to laugh too. “Well, just the same, Cap'n Bennett—”

“They'll be calling
you
Cap'n next, the way you team folks around. The way you drive that man of yours down to the shore is a sight to behold.” He watched her quizzically. “Y'know, Jo, I always had a little hunch Alec had a lot of Scotch obstinacy—wouldn't do anything he didn't have a mind to.”

“He's working hard now because he's got a mind to.”

“I'm glad to hear it,” her father said quietly, and then Donna came in from the kitchen with Kristi and they began to talk about the strawberries on the Western End, and the possibility of the fog spoiling them.

Later in the day Joanna walked down to the Eastern End. Mateel hadn't been up to the harbor since she came back from the hospital in March, with the new baby. She'd had a hard time, and now in June she still tired easily. She worked too hard, Charles said, and it was true that their little house, at some distance from Jake's weather­beaten place, showed the affectionate care she gave to it.

Charles had shingled it and re-roofed it the summer after they were married, and they'd kept the inside painted and papered like new. If the Bennetts had been afraid Charles would go slack down among the Trudeaus, here was evidence of the truth. Young Rose­Marie, out of grammar school now and keeping house for Jake and her brothers, was so enamored of her big sister's house that she had badgered Jake into letting her and Pierre do some fixing-up in their own house. And there was a rather splendid vegetable garden in the field below the Head.

The place was quiet and sleepy in the fog when Joanna went through the gate and down to Charles' house. Young Charles played around the doorstep; the old half-blind spaniel, guarding him, flew at Joanna and then subsided into fat wigglings when he recognized her voice. Young Charles greeted her with a crow of happiness, and Mateel came to the door with the baby on her shoulder.