Still Water (45 page)

Ella glanced at Matt. “You go ahead Mom, I’ll be along in a minute.” Helena hesitated, her expression still troubled. “Go on, I’ll be right there,” Ella urged her gently.

“I’ll take Kate home,” Baxter said to Matt. “You want me to come back for you?”

“I think I feel like a walk. I’ll see you later.”

“Okay.”

As the others headed back to their vehicles Matt and Ella were left alone. For a moment neither of them spoke, then they started off side by side, a slight distance between them.

“I didn’t get a chance to thank you for what you did yesterday,” Ella said.

“Forget it.”

“You don’t just forget it when somebody saves your life.” She paused, and laid a hand on his arm. “Thank you.”

They continued in silence for a while. Matt wasn’t sure how to broach what was on his mind. In the end he thought she knew what was coming and was waiting for him to say it.

“There’s something I didn’t mention back there,” he said eventually. He kept his gaze focused straight ahead, even when he felt her look at him. “I let everyone assume that the reason you didn’t say anything about seeing Kate that night, was to protect her, but that’s only partly true isn’t it?”

“Yes,” she admitted quietly.

“It hasn’t occurred to anyone to wonder what you were doing out on the point that night.”

“Why should they? Now Bryan’s been found.”

“The thing I didn’t mention was that Ben found something out near the channel when he was diving yesterday.” He looked into her eyes, but he couldn’t read what she was thinking.

“What was it?”

“He wasn’t sure. He went down to take another look this morning but the storm last night had moved it. He thinks it went into the channel. But it was some kind of bundle, wrapped in wire and weighted down.”

He was certain that she knew what he was talking about, and he was equally certain that whatever that bundle had contained was the real reason that Ella had been on the point. It was what Carl Johnson had seen hanging off her davit, and it was the main reason she had kept quiet about seeing Kate Little that night, even when she herself had been accused of murder. It was also what stood between them. The bundle was gone. Nobody would ever know about it if she chose to remain silent, but by doing so she would be shutting the door on him.

He thought she knew that, but he also knew what her answer would be.

In the end, she made the barest negative movement of her head, and though her eyes clouded with sorrow, she turned away and he stood there and watched her go.

The election had been postponed after the revelations surrounding the discovery of Bryan’s body. It was three weeks before it was finally re-scheduled, by which time a new hopeful had surfaced to replace Howard, who had dropped out and was keeping a low profile. So far Jerrod Gant hadn’t returned to the island, and Matt wondered if he ever would. The new candidate was the island’s only other lawyer, and a long time associate of Howard’s. He declared himself to be in favour of the marina, and the development that would flow on from it. On polling day Matt went to cast his vote. Both candidates were in the hall, glad handing voters and wreathed in smiles. Matt took a voting slip and marked a cross against Ella’s name, then handed it to the official at the booth. When he looked up he caught Ella’s eye across the room, and her expression faltered for a second before she went back to the conversation she was involved in with some people around her.

“Hey.”

He was startled by a voice at his side and he turned to find Sally Brewster grinning at him.

“Why the miserable look?” She followed his gaze and understanding dawned. “Don’t tell me. I think I can guess.”

“How are you Sally?”

“Aren’t you going to go over and wish her luck?”

“She looks busy right now.”

Sally regarded him with a level gaze. “You know, I ran into Ella about a week or so ago. She was pretty cool towards me,

which isn’t like her, so I asked her what was wrong. Anyway she didn’t admit it but I got the feeling from a couple of things she said that she thought there was something going on between you and me. I don’t know where she got that idea, but you might like to know I put her right.”

“I doubt that it was of much interest to her.”

“If you think that you don’t know much about women. If she didn’t care, how come she was acting so off-hand with me? Think about it,” Sally said. “I have to go, I’m on a break. I just came over to vote. I’ll see you later.”

As Sally left he glanced over at Ella again, but she had her back to him.

On the way out of the hall he met Baxter, and they walked down to the coffee shop together.

“So, who do you think will win?” Matt asked.

“Hard to say. I guess people have had a chance to take a long hard look at themselves recently,” Baxter mused. “But you never can tell.”

Sanctuary Harbor was a changed place since the bluefin had briefly turned it into something akin to a gold-rush town, Matt thought. Though visibly it remained the same, there were people who still weren’t on speaking terms. People who’d been friends and neighbours, for years. Even families had become involved in bitter disputes that would take a long time to heal.

Matt didn’t want the island to change. He’d come there to start a new life, to get away from what he’d become, and he still thought St. George was the right place for him to be. He knew that nothing stayed the same for ever, and that with fishing declining it was harder for people to make a living. He just hoped that didn’t mean the island had to become a tourist resort where the year round residents were reduced to acting as service providers for a whole new community of wealthy summer people. But whichever way it went, he thought he’d probably stay. At least for a while.

He asked Baxter if he’d seen Kate Little lately and Baxter shook his head. “She went back to New York a couple of days ago.”

Matt wasn’t sure what to say. He guessed that Baxter had discovered that he cared a lot more about Kate than even he had known himself. “Did you see her before she left?”

“Yeah, I ran into her one day. She said that she and her husband were getting a divorce.”

“Did she say if she thought she’d ever be coming back here?”

“No, but I don’t think she will,” Baxter said. He looked away, across the harbour. “I don’t think she felt as if she fitted in here. I guess she was probably right.” They reached the coffee shop and paused outside. “You spoken to Ella?”

Matt shook his head. Baxter hesitated as if he were about to say something, but then he changed his mind. “Come on, I’ll buy you a cup of coffee.”

Matt and Henry sat on the porch and watched the clouds rolling in from the east as dusk fell. It had grown noticeably cooler. Sheet lightning appeared in silent flashes far out to sea. When a truck appeared along the track through the trees, Henry got up, and put out the butt of the cigarette he’d been smoking.

“Looks like you have company. I’ll leave you to it.” He breathed deeply. The scent of pine was sharp in the evening air. “It’ll rain soon. Better shut your windows tonight.”

“You don’t need to leave, Henry,” Matt said.

“I’m kind of tired anyway.”

The old man went down the steps and paused to speak to Ella as she got out of her car. She was wearing jeans and a white shirt, and her hair was tied back. After a moment Henry raised a hand to bid her good night. Ella approached and at the bottom of the steps she smiled uncertainly.

“Hi. Can I come up?”

The moment he’d recognized her truck Matt had felt his throat constrict, and a feeling as if a band had been tightened across his chest. “Help yourself.” He offered her a seat, then a drink, both of which she accepted. His feelings towards her were complicated, but he tried to sound as if he wasn’t too surprised to see her. “I’ve got beer or wine. Or coffee if you prefer.”

“A beer would be good. Thanks.”

He went inside and re-emerged carrying a couple of bottles of Millers and two glasses. He sat down opposite her, and while he poured their beers he noticed the slight flush to her cheeks that lent her a colour like the faded pink of a rose at the edge of a dusty road. He smiled and raised his glass and she did the same.

“How did the election go?”

“The result won’t be in until later,” she said.

“Well, you got my vote.”

Thanks.”

He waited for her to tell him why she had come. She appeared to be trying to find a place to begin. Eventually she looked over and met his eye.

“My mother told me to do this three weeks ago. Actually she said it before then too.”

He could believe that. He’d thought a lot about the events leading up to the day Bryan’s body had been recovered, and why later on the beach, Ella had chosen not to tell him what it was Ben Harper had found. He knew it was because she was afraid of what his reaction might be, but he didn’t think she was afraid for herself, or for Kate as he’d once thought, which didn’t leave too many other possibilities. He was aware that she was watching him, maybe wondering how much he’d already guessed. There were slight furrows in her brow.

“You know don’t you?” she said at last.

He picked up his beer and took a sip while he considered how to answer. “I think I know some of it, but not all.”

She sighed. It was a long exhalation of things she’d kept to herself for too long. “I came here to explain it to you. I realized that if I didn’t I’d always regret it, I’d always wonder about us.”

She began, in a quiet voice, to tell him the whole story. Now and then she met his eye when she paused for a moment, but for the most part she was looking backwards, her eyes focused inward on images only she could see. She started by describing her father to him, painting a picture of a quiet man, a stoic fisherman who liked to spend long periods of time alone. He was always that way, she said, but he was also a gentle man, and a good father and husband.

He began to noticeably change after Ella’s younger brother died. The loss of his only son affected him deeply, and even when she was very young Ella had sensed the depth of the grief that her father kept locked away somewhere inside himself. It seemed as if a part of him had withdrawn from the world.

“I suppose I was looking for reassurance when I started trailing him around on the docks. I didn’t consciously try to replace my brother, but maybe kids know things instinctively. Anyway, I became daughter and son all rolled into one. Or at least that’s what I tried to do.”

It was only as she grew older that Ella began to appreciate that her father was ill.

“I think he suffered from chronic depression all his life. But he would never admit it, or see anybody about it. It got worse as the years went by. My mother said there was always a part of him that she never knew. There was a lot of himself, what he was thinking, that he didn’t share with anyone. I don’t think he knew how. But the way he dwelt on Danny’s death wasn’t natural. It became too much for him and eventually he started drinking, which is something he’d never done before, and that made his mood swings more erratic.”

She went on to describe how her father’s introspection turned to occasional violence when he’d been drinking. It was a secret kept within the family over the years.

Ella paused and looked at Matt, her expression a plea for understanding. “He wasn’t a bad person. This wasn’t some bad tempered drunk throwing his fists around, my father was a sick man. But he wouldn’t let us get him help.”

She related the events of the night of the February storm when her father had drowned, when everything had finally come to a head. She’d received a call from her mother late at night, to say that Ella’s father had been drinking and they’d argued. He had hit her hard enough that she had fallen and cracked her head against the stove, and horrified at what he’d done her father had fled the house, raging with the voice of a man whose sanity had finally been tipped over the edge.

“When he got like that he always blamed my mother for Danny’s death.”

Ella had met her mother at the dock. The harbour was lashed by the storm, the seas pounding the wharf, and her father’s boat was gone.

“They found the wreckage in the morning, by the cove,” Ella said. “But there was no sign of his body.”

That night she’d left her mother to go back to the cottage where she lived to fetch some clothes. While she was away her father had returned. He was wet through, shivering with cold, and his eyes were fixed with a glazed expression of madness. He’d attacked Ella’s mother, who had defended herself with a cast iron skillet. The blow she’d aimed at him struck his head and killed him.

“I never knew what had happened. By the time I got back she had hidden his body in the garage. She kept her secret for six months.” She shook her head, the gesture almost one of disbelief. There were tears in her eyes and she paused to wipe them away.

“After the funeral she dug a shallow grave at the end of the garden, and one night she wrapped his body in a tarpaulin and dragged him out there where she buried him.”

She fell silent. For several minutes neither of them spoke until eventually Matt asked the question that he knew she was waiting for. “Why didn’t she tell anyone what had happened? From what you’ve told me, it was self-defence.” He couldn’t prevent a hard edge from creeping into his voice, and her eyes snapped to meet his.

“I can’t give you a simple answer to that,” she said. “It was partly that she was frightened. My mother comes from a very traditional background, where a wife does what her husband tells her to do, where family problems are not aired in public. She was taught that a woman’s role is to support her husband no matter what. Nobody knew what my father could be like. He only ever drank at home, or when he was alone on his boat. My mother was afraid that she wouldn’t be believed, but she was also confused. She felt guilty and ashamed, as if what had happened was really her fault. But she also loved my father, and I think in her grief she wanted to blot out what had happened. I don’t even think she was really aware of what she was doing.”

As Ella tried to explain, Matt’s reaction was almost automatic. He had heard this story before, in a thousand different guises as people tried to explain away their actions, to abdicate responsibility for something they had done. And he knew this was why until now, Ella had never felt she could tell him all of this.