High Tide at Noon (47 page)

“
The house?
” The words scraped her throat.

“Yep. Then he was scared. Left off the poker and went to work like a son of a bitch. Thought he'd pay up everything, and then he could start all over again. You been lookin' down your nose at me for a long time, Jo, but I'll be damned if I'd ever treat a wife of mine like he treated you.”

“You're not fit to talk about him,” said Joanna. There was a rod of steel where her backbone used to be. Whatever incredible thing he had told her, one thing was still clear. She would kill him if he didn't stop talking about Alec. “Where do you get the idea this house is yours? The note doesn't give it to you!”

“But you can't pay,” he said easily. “I know that much.”

“My father will pay you. I'll see him tomorrow.”

“Do you think your old man can lay hands on five or six hundred dollars cash, right off?” Simon laughed. “Why, girl, he's been throwin' away his money so long on dead wood like Marcus Yetton and some of these other fools around here, and lobsterin' fallin' off anyway, that he's right on a level with the rest of us now. I know damn well he can't do a thing. And the boys can't either. Maybe they make money—seems to me that's somethin' the Bennetts like to rub in on the rest of us—but they throw it away as soon as they make it, drinkin' and whorin' around. They ain't no help to ye, Jo.”

She stared at him, feeling the blood leave her face.

“You like this, don't you. You're having yourself quite a time. Why did you wait till now to tell me? Why didn't you come up right after the funeral? It would have been lots more fun.”

“Oh, I had my reasons. One of 'em was, I kind of liked thinkin' about you so near, movin' around in my house. I'd see you up here in the garden an' all, made me feel good.” He gave her a gleaming sidewise look. “Got used to thinkin' about it as my house, y'know—always liked it, 'specially after Alec got it fixed up—and I knew you couldn't ever pay. Course, it warn't as if I needed the money. Times ain't never been so bad but what I couldn't tide me over. Look after myself, and a woman, too—if I had one.”

He put down his cigarette on the dresser and straightened up. “I always knew Alec Douglass was a fool. Married to you and spendin' his nights playin' cards.”

“Keep on talking,” she said in a voice as soft and level as his own. “Have your fun. You'll get run out after a while. No matter what kind of filth you drag out, you can't touch Alec and me. Go on and talk, Simon.”

He walked toward her, his smile never failing. Would nothing ever get rid of it? Wouldn't his voice ever stop? . . . “Jesus, but you're handsome when you're mad, Jo.”

He won't dare touch me, she thought, and stood her ground. He won't dare go that far . . . “Look, Jo, don't worry about the house, I'm willin' to tear that note up. Tonight. Maybe I want you to keep on livin' here. It's handy, too. I can come up when I've a mind to, and never bother anybody.”

Joanna looked at him as if he were a new and loathsome sort of insect. He
was
an insect, she thought: a creepy thing with gleaming slits of eyes and red hair and a narrow mouth twisting in mockery. A thing that came close to her now. It turned her stomach. She looked at him with ineffable disgust. If she reached behind her now, there was a flatiron on the stove. It was good for mashing creepy things.

“And you ain't goin' to be stuck-up about it, Jo. You can't afford to be stuck-up any more. You've got nothin' to put your chin up about! You ain't even had a man you could be proud of talkin' about,” said Simon. “You're lucky he died young. You still got a chance to have a real man for yourself.”

Joanna took a step backward, toward the stove. Nothing moved in her face. Simon kept coming. “You don't like me here, tellin' you the truth. But you can't do a goddam thing about it. You got to stand there and take it, for once, because you can't do nothin' different.”

The lamplight slanted across his face, the lean sharp bones, the hollowed cheeks and eyes, the pallor of excitement. She put one hand behind her. Simon moved like a cat, and had her in his arms, his mouth choking off the cry from hers. He was hard put to hold her, but all at once she felt as though she had no strength; the child moved within her, and made her feel faint. With a final despairing effort she got one hand free and went for his eyes. She felt her fingernails rip the skin of his cheek, as they had done once long before. Simon lifted his mouth from hers and swore, but his eyes were shining.

“All right, all right, now just calm down. One kiss'll do me for tonight. Next time things'll be different.” He held her shoulder with one hand and touched his scraped cheek with the other. “I like lots of life in my women, and you've got plenty, darlin' mine.”

He let her go, and as she reached for the iron he jerked her away and pushed her into a chair. “Don't be so foolish! What'll that kind of actions get ye? Well, I'll be goin' along. Need any wood or water?” He cocked his red head at her as he fastened his oil jacket. “No answer? Well, sulk then. You'll get over it quick enough.”

Let him laugh
, Joanna thought.
Some day I'll laugh
. Swinging his sou'wester from his fingers, Simon came back across the room. There was triumph in every line of him, the way he stood, the poise of his head, even the way his fingers dangled the sou'wester. “You don't want to fight me, Jo. Won't get you nothin'. Might as well make up your mind to like me.” He patted her cheek and she didn't flinch away at his touch. “I can do a lot for a woman if I've got a mind to, and the woman happens to be you. I'll be up tomorrow night for a while. Like some candy?”

Joanna said nothing, and she realized he took her silence for defeat. He went to the door in his brilliant, rustling oilskins and then looked back.

“Night, Jo. I'll bring some candy anyway. Be sure and have the coffee pot on.”

The door shut softly behind him.

F
OR A MOMENT SHE COULD HARDLY BELIEVE
she was really alone. It seemed as if the kitchen was full of Simon's voice and laughter. The things he had said battered at her brain and reverberated in her ears. Without moving, she looked around at the bright, lamplit kitchen.
It wasn't hers
. It hadn't been hers for a long time. Alec hadn't told her because he was working so desperately to redeem it before she should ever know.

Strength came back to her on the great wave of returning rage. She wanted to kill Simon. If she strangled him, he would stop smiling. She began to walk back and forth the length of the kitchen. I must do something, she thought. I can't go on like this. It seemed to her that such fury as she felt must be like a poison flowing through her veins. It would be bad for the baby.

She wanted to go out and walk in the rain till it soaked her to the skin, she wanted the wind to blow its wild coldness across her, she wanted to walk all night; then, perhaps, she'd feel clean again. She didn't feel clean now. The very air in the room was tainted. She stopped by the sink and scrubbed her mouth violently until she tasted blood.

Yes, get out, that was it. Get out before the four walls converged on her and suffocated her. Already it seemed as if she couldn't breathe. She'd get out and walk in the storm for a while, and then she'd be tired enough to sleep, if she could ever sleep again in this house, after tonight.

She was putting on her boots when the realization came to her that she needn't ever again sleep in this house, not even tonight. She couldn't and she needn't. She had kept something of Alec here, and she had been happy, in a way. But whatever memories it held for her were gone now. Simon had done that, without knowing it. It was the cruelest thing he could have done, but in the same way he had defeated his own purpose. For the house meant nothing to her now. Nothing at all.

What she had left of Alec now were the things in her head, and the child who grew beneath her heart. The house was . . . just a house.

She went upstairs and began to put clothes into her small suitcase. A few things would do for tonight and tomorrow. The boys would help her move out her other things—there wasn't much. Downstairs she put on a jacket and her trench coat, her boots, and sou'wester, took a flashlight, and blew out the lamp.

Outside there was a roaring and immense darkness. Rain blew its silver lines through the ray from her light; it was icy, pelting her face. The wind in the tall old spruces on the hill seemed to grow louder and louder as she listened, it mingled with the thunder on the ledges, and she felt her heart quicken and pound with the old familiar excitement. She walked along the sheltered path through the woods, the tall grass soaking the bottom of her coat, and came out in the Bennett meadow.

Here the storm reached out for her, a shrieking force in the blackness, driving in from Goose Cove with a howl and a whoop. Joanna felt very small and alone as she fought her way across the meadow and up toward the house, her suitcase banging against her legs, her trench coat soaked through, her face stinging, the rain beating on her sou'wester. As she reached the slope below the house she was bitterly cold and out of breath. But she was triumphant. This was something you could fight against; you could pit your slender strength against the wind's strength and plunge forward with all your might. This wasn't someone who came to mock you with soft laughter, and words that made you feel sick and impotent and soiled.

There was a light in the kitchen, and she went around to the back door. It was never locked. As she came through the inner door into the warmth and glow, Winnie crawled out from under the stove, wriggling and whining, and came to nuzzle her hand with a moist nose. Philip, fixing the fire for the night, turned around with a stick of wood in his hand. His smile broke across his grave astonishment.

“Hello, Jo! What's up?” Then he saw her suitcase. “Come to stay with us a while?”

She nodded, stripping off her wet things. Philip pulled off her boots for her; then, still kneeling, he looked up, and his eyes were thoughtful on her face. She was glad she looked breathless and storm­beaten. She didn't want him to guess tonight that something had driven her out of that other house. She didn't want to talk about it. She only wanted peace and quiet.

“Storm too much for you down there?” he asked. “Still, you don't get much of it.”

“The wind made me nervous. Philip, look . . . I guess I'll move back again. Up here, I mean. It's lonely down there.”

He nodded. “Sure, I know. It'll be swell to have you back. Kristi won't mind, either. Peter Gray wants her to come ashore and get married.”

“And leave the Island?”

“Well, you ought to know she's been cracked about Peter ever since they were kids. How about some coffee to warm your bones?”

He went to the dresser and began to measure coffee into the pot. Joanna put her stockinged toes on the oven hearth and clasped her fingers in her lap; she gazed at her distorted reflection in the shiny teakettle. “The Grays gone, and now Kristi,” she said slowly. “Why do they want to go?”

“There'll be others, too,” her brother answered. “This Island life is old-fashioned, Jo. They want movies and stores. They think they're not living when they're out here.”

“What do
you
think?”

“Me?” Philip's eyes smiled down at her. “What do you think I think? I'm a Bennett. I've got to stick, come hell or high water. And there's a lot of people think it'll be hell, in the lobster business. We've been riding high too long.”

“Philip, it can't hurt the Island, can it?”

“How could it hurt the Island? Nope, the old place'll hold out, way it always has. Say, Jo, you ought to turn in. Your eyes look like two burnt holes in a blanket. Finish up your coffee.”

He was the big brother again, who used to whisper to her at the table to eat up her greens, because he happened to know there was chocolate pudding for dessert. She smiled at him in sudden, weary affection and stood up.

In the familiar darkness of her room, she felt her way to the narrow bed and sat down, shivering a little. She pulled her knees up under her chin and hugged them hard. The little red sailboats on the wall seemed to glow at her through the blackness. The rain blew in pattering gusts against the window, and the wind tried to shake the walls. The sound of the sea was very loud. She had lain awake listening to it so many nights before she married Alec, smiling into the dark, dreaming with open eyes.

And here she was back again. Without Alec . . . She fell over in a little heap on the bed and thrust her face hard into her pillow.
Alec, Alec
she wept in soundless desolation.

The next morning at breakfast she told them she had come to stay. Her story was neat and brief, her manner composed. She'd found out, she said, that Simon held a note on the house. He needed the money, and she couldn't pay it. The only thing to do was to turn the house over to him. The boys could help her get her things out. She didn't mention Simon's visit last night; she wasn't quite ready to tell anyone about that, and she was sure that Simon wouldn't advertise it around the shore. After all, it didn't put him in a very good light.

Oh, if she told the family about it, she'd have revenge—of a sort. But a man got over a thrashing too quickly, and he'd haul them more than ever, afterward. No, she'd save her story, for now.

Her father was quiet about the note. They all were. There was no breath of criticism of Alec, though it had been torture to tell about it because she knew what they were thinking. When she had finished, Stephen said mildly that it was unfortunate it was Simon who held the note. But they'd pay him off, and that would take care of it.

“I don't want you to pay it off,” Joanna told him bluntly. “I don't want the house.”