Storm Tide (11 page)

But the
Donna
. . . She smiled absently at the devil's food cake cooling on its rack, inspected the beans in the oven.
There
was a boat. She'd never loved any other boat so well, unless it was the
White Lady
. Her brother Owen had designed and built the
White Lady
himself in the boatshop long since burned down. She wondered about the
White Lady
now. Somebody over in Pleasant Point had her. Owen had dreamed of her for all his life, until he could bring her into being; and then he had walked away from her without a backward glance.

Joanna could understand how one could part with people as Owen had parted from his family; she could almost understand how he could leave the Island. It had mocked him and suffocated him. But a boat . . .

She shook her head, and her brown hands were strong and swift, kneading yeast dough. Maybe it had been dreams Owen had lived for; and when the dream came true, was solid timber and paint under his touch, it was not in his system any more, and he felt an emptiness, because he had lived with the dream for so long.

Maybe he had used up all the dreams the Island could offer him, so he had gone looking for more. She hoped with all her heart that he had found them. She would never know; for it was in her blood, the conviction that she would never see him again.

The morning went swiftly and she was busy with dinner when she saw the
Donna
come into the harbor again, as unflurried and serene as the real Donna for whom the boat had been named. Mother of Joanna and the five boys, wife of Stephen, in the days of her family's youth she had been like a slender tree beset by tumultuous winds; yet a deep-rooted tree, who knew how to stand through the storms without giving way. She was the same today, keeping house for her bachelor son Philip, in Pruitt's Harbor, living close to her eldest son Charles and the robust, strong-willed brood that swirled around their grandmother like a whirlpool. They could never tarnish her shining peace, but sometimes they caught and carried a little of it away with them.

Time to stop dreaming. Ellen and Nils would be ready for fish and potatoes and pork scraps, and she'd fixed enough so they could have fish hash for breakfast Sunday morning. . . .

Ellen liked school, she liked Mrs. Robey and Whit, she was learning how to sew for Phoebe, and none of the big children in the school teased her or pulled her pigtails; if they did, Joey would fix them, she assured her mother. Meanwhile Joey spent every possible hour in Cap'n Merrill's boatshop, and talked Vinnie and Caleb deaf every weekend. He was quite definite that he was going to be a boat builder.

So everything was going all right, at least for the present. She began to set the table.

Ellen came in first. Her plaid raincoat flying open, her scarlet hood slipping back on her smooth fair head, blue eyes aglisten and cheeks almost as scarlet as her hood, she burst in and ran across the kitchen to Joanna.

“Hi, Mother!” Her laughter pealed out. She hugged Joanna tightly and Joanna hugged her back, at the same time wondering at her daughter's exuberance. Usually she came in so quietly, with all her happiness contained in her gravely delighted smile.

“Did you have a rough trip, darling?”

Ellen was pulling off her hood. Her pigtails fairly bounced. “Yes, and I stayed out all the way, and was it fun!” Off came the raincoat. Ellen seemed possessed of an excitement bigger than her body, it burst out of her in little chuckles, in the blue blaze of her eyes, in her dancing feet and flying fingers. “Mother, I brought you a surprise.”

“You're the surprise girl, aren't you? Always something new. Shall I guess?”

“You can't ever guess!” said Ellen triumphantly. Her merry brown oxfords carried her toward the entry door. “And anyway, I can't wait for you to guess, because it'd take you 'bout all day, and then you wouldn't hit it! . . . Close your eyes.”

Obediently Joanna set down the plates she was carrying, shut her eyes, and stood quite still in the middle of the kitchen. She heard Ellen's breathless chuckles, and the opening of the entry door; a faint creaking of the board that always creaked, and then a presence near her; the mingled fragrances of soft leather and tobacco smoke and the cold November air. An unbearable excitement possessed her; it was all she could do to wait for Ellen's ecstatic shriek. “
Now
you can look!”

Joanna looked, and saw her brother Stevie standing before her, smiling. It had been only a little while since he had kissed her at her wedding; yet the sight of his thin brown face and warm black eyes smiling from behind the thick lashes, in the kitchen of the house where he had grown up, was enough to send a rush of tears into her eyes.

She caught him by his broad Bennett shoulders and hugged him hard, and he hugged her back. “Gosh, Jo, how are you?” he said in the identical way he had always said it.

“Stevie, I'm fine. . . . You look fine, too, only thin. . . .” She shook him a little, tenderly. “I don't want to ask you how long you're staying, but I want to know how long I can count on.”

“Well—” Stevie's mouth tucked up at the corner in the funny mischievous way it had. “You may get damn' sick of me before I leave, Jo. You see, Mark and I don't go line-trawlin' any more.”

“Stevie, are you going to
stay?”
She sobered quickly. “What's Mark doing? You two haven't had a fight, have you?”

“Mark's here,” said Stevie. He nodded toward the window. “There he comes now. With his wife. And Nils.”

“Isn't this a
good
surprise?” Ellen was demanding, and Joanna, with Stevie's words echoing in her head, smiled at her and said, “The best in the world, darling. . . . Let's get the table set for them all.”

Stevie hung up his jacket and washed at the sink, combed his black hair before the old mirror, as if time had gone backward and he had never been away. “Stevie, tell me about Mark's wife,” she commanded. “Quick. Before they get here. When did they get married? Mother's last letter didn't mention it.”

“It was only last week,” Stevie said. “Kind of sudden. Mark didn't know her for long. She's a good kid, about twenty. Worked in the library at Port George. She's a Finn. Her name's Helmi.”

There was no time for anything more, and no time for Joanna to contemplate the facts, because the others were coming in by then. Mark, twenty-eight, older and handsomer and noisier than Stevie, hugged Joanna fiercely. He was laughing and excited, his brown cheeks reddened by the cold wind, his black hair tumbling over his forehead, his voice vibrant and strong.

“Darlin' mine, I want you to meet my other darlin'!” he proclaimed, and with one arm still tightly around Joanna, he reached out the other to grip the shoulder of the tall girl who stood quietly beside Nils. She came forward slowly at his command, without a word or a smile. She was very blonde, blonder even than Nils; the thick hair that fell to the shoulders of her trench coat was silvery, with a glint of pale gold in the shadows of its faint wave. It was the most beautiful hair Joanna had ever seen.

“Hello, Helmi,” she said, and put out her hand.

The girl looked at her. Her apple green scarf and beret turned her eyes green too, and they saw Joanna with a cool and measuring glance. She was pale—her skin had an almost translucent pallor beside the healthy bronze of the others; in it her strange eyes and the clear, brilliant lipstick on her mouth were startling.

Joanna felt the girl's hand touch hers. “Hello,” Helmi murmured. Joanna thought,
She doesn't trust anybody. Even Mark
. She stood beside Mark as if she didn't feel his hand on her shoulder. Her tall slim body was straight and as rigid as stone.

The room seemed suddenly chilly. Nils, standing beside the bags, was lighting his pipe. Stevie stood with one foot up on the stove hearth, watching her and Helmi and Mark. She couldn't read his face. Mark was still proudly smiling.

“We've come to stay,” Mark said. “I've seen Charles. We can move into his place.”

“Way down there?” said Joanna. “That's lonely.” She smiled at Helmi, whose mouth curved only a little in response.

“We want to be lonely,” said Mark, and laughed. He was very happy.

The rest of the day went by somehow. It was a very odd day for Joanna. The wind threw itself hard against the house, and keened at the corners of the eaves like a lost soul, and the gulls were forever circling against the scudding masses of blue-black cloud. Ellen busied herself at the kitchen table with her paper dolls, and crayons and paper to make new dresses for them. The men talked, sitting around the kitchen stove; Nils told them about the Island, what had been done since Jud and Caleb came, and they added their plans to his. Stevie was quietly happy at being home again. Mark was loudly happy. Not only had he come home, but he'd brought a wife to show to the family, and they'd never seen hair like that before!

Joanna saw his eyes follow Helmi, whenever the girl was in the room. He didn't seem to mind her immobility; perhaps it was the thing that had attracted him to her. . . . At first, Joanna tried to penetrate it, to make Helmi feel welcome and at home. They made the beds together, and since time immemorial women have always exchanged confidences on opposite sides of quilts. But Helmi said nothing at all, and for once the charm which Joanna could use so well had come up against a stone wall. After a while she stopped trying. Perhaps it was just as well that Mark was going to live way down at the other end of the Island, she thought dryly, and went into the kitchen to listen to the men's conversation.

“We're goin' to be in this war,” Mark was saying, through the tobacco smoke. “In it up to our necks. I'll be fightin' in it. We all will. But in the meantime, God and the draft board willin', I figure on catchin' a hell of a lot of lobsters and makin a hell of a lot of money.”

“You think the price is going up, too?” asked Nils.

“Of course it's goin' up! Sky-high. You fellers came back to old Bennett's just in time, and you started somethin'.” He leaned back in his chair, blew out a beautiful smoke ring, and laughed. “I'll bet Brigport was some goweled to have men start fishin' out of here right now, when both Randolph and Ralph Fowler stood to make a heap of money out of our waters!”

“Why?” demanded Stevie. “We have to do our buyin' and our sellin' over there, don't we? Maybe the fishermen don't think much of havin' to move out, but the Fowlers stand to make more money, with a good crowd out here.”

Mark roared. “How long do you think we're goin' to cart our lobsters over there and sell 'em to that goddamned Ralph? In another year we'll have our own buyer, right here. And a store, too. And won't that physic the Fowlers?” He chuckled. “Goddam foreigners!”

Nils was smiling, and Joanna caught his eye and winked to show her appreciation of the way he was taking Mark's proprietary air.
We Bennetts do move in
, she thought ruefully.
Move in and take over
. . . . And then she was sitting up straight in her chair, with feathers of cold astonishment brushing her backbone, and her hands gripped tight in her lap lest they show her excitement.

But that was it! That was the whole reason, the thing she'd been trying to catch and put her finger on, and couldn't. Oh, how could she be so stupid? Mark had been here less than four hours, and he had put it into words for her. Of course he didn't know that was what he had done. He had just been wondering aloud, and laughing. To Mark and the others it was practically an accomplished fact—the store, the gasoline, the buyer, the money from Bennett's Island lobsters going into Bennett's Island pockets.

But to Joanna, there was something else to be reckoned with. Didn't they realize that if Brigport didn't want that to happen, Brigport could fight? Perhaps not all of Brigport—not the old-timers, the ground-keepers like Cap'n Merrill and Whit Robey and the others. But what about the Fowlers? Surely they remembered what their father had told them of the way the Fowler brothers had come to Brigport thirty-five years ago; and without the Brigport people quite knowing how it happened, except for those immediately concerned, it seemed that Randolph Fowler was running the store there instead of Tim Merrill; and Ralph Fowler had a car out in the harbor, across from Gil Marsh's, and was buying lobsters. Little by little Gil stopped buying. Those who were loyal to him were too few. Then Randolph received the postmaster's appointment—still without anyone's realizing quite how he managed it.

Ralph was a good-hearted chap who was not above handing out a stiff drink when a man came in to the car on a cold wet day, and Randolph was always willing to sing a solo in church, and he contributed lavishly to buying the new organ. So all at once the Fowlers were solid citizens.

But there were a few who still called them foreigners. . . . who had things to remember about the Fowlers that everybody didn't know.

I still call them foreigners
, Joanna said in her mind.
But foreigners or natives, they'll keep their hands off Bennett's Island
.

She wanted to tell Nils when they went to bed that night. It burned on her lips, the thing she wanted to say. Yet, when at last everyone had settled down for the night and she and Nils were alone in their downstairs bedroom, close together for warmth and because Nils liked to go to sleep with her in his arms, she couldn't tell him.
Not yet
. There was not enough to go on for Nils' logical Swedish mind.

Everything looked all right now. Peaceful. She would wait till the Fowlers showed their hand and made even Nils suspicious. Resolutely she put the matter out of her mind and said, “What do you think of Mark's wife?”

“I don't know,” said Nils truthfully. “Now you've got two Scandinavians in the family. How about it ?”

“I don't know either,” murmured Joanna. “I like my Scandinavian, but I can't make up my mind about Helmi. Either she's very deep—”