Storm Tide (15 page)

Vinnie was a tireless housekeeper. She washed the outside of the windows several times a week, to clean them of the continual salt film, and took as much pride in her shining glass as some women take in their flower arrangements. Remembering Susan Yetton, Joanna always felt a burst of affection for the lightning-swift and indefatigable Vinnie.

The Caldwells were listening to the radio too. They turned it off when Joanna came in. News . . . Vinnie looked at Joanna, her small sharp face drawn in compassion, and said, “Them poor Londoners, gettin' bombed out and burned out in this weather. . . . When are we goin' to help 'em? That's what I want to know!”

“Now, Vinnie, you keep calm,” Caleb said in his slow, deep voice. He took Joanna's raincoat and beckoned her to the deep chair where he'd been sitting and whittling lobster plugs.

“I don't know when we'll get started,” said Joanna. “But we will. We always do. . . . And meantime we're having a little persecution trouble of our own.”

They both looked at her questioningly. She looked steadily back at them. Vinnie's amber eyes were wide, like Joey's. Caleb's, set in their bony hollows, met Joanna's in a long glance of comprehension.

“Brigport,” he said.

“You feel that, then,” Joanna said.

“A man can't help but put two and two together,” Caleb answered. His slow voice fell into the silence of the room like the heavy striking of a clock. “There's been enough, since I come here, for me to go on.”

“Does Joey say anything?” Joanna asked.

Vinnie said eagerly, “The Merrills are real nice people. He thinks Cap'n Merrill is about all there is. . . . He seems real contented over there, and his rank card was awful good last week.”

“I guess nothin's spread as far as the schoolyard,” Caleb said. “Seems to me, from what Jud says, it's kind of local . . . centered right around the harbor.”

“Ellen hasn't said anything either.” Joanna recognized her relief for what it was. Before, she hadn't quite dared bring her worry about the children out into the open, even in her own mind. But it had been there, just the same. Ellen was such an absorbed child, going about wrapped in her own thoughts, that she wouldn't have noticed too much what might be hurled at her in the pure, primitive cruelty of childhood. But Joey was older, he was a sensitive adolescent, he would have noticed. . . .

It was surprising how much lighter she felt. She smiled at Vinnie and Caleb, liking them very much, and told them about the new idea. Vinnie, her knitting needles flying, was excited about it. Caleb sat leaning forward, his elbows on his knees, his hands loosely clasped between them, and looked at the tiger kitten who dreamed under the stove with her white paws tucked in.

His long, weathered face was unreadable, and for an instant Joanna recalled Nils' warning. Then Caleb said, “You mean you think we ought to back down?”

“Back down?”
With an effort she kept her voice as calm as his. “No. Backing down would mean to give up to them all around. We're not backing down if we sell direct to the company who'd buy them from Ralph anyway.”

“Supposin' Ralph fixes it with the company so they don't want our lobsters unless they come by way of him?”

“There's more than one lobster company in Limerock,” Joanna retorted. “And I don't think Ralph can do anything. . . . Island men have always taken their own lobsters in when they felt like it. Besides, you get about three cents a pound extra if you're earring.”

“Well . . .” said Caleb. He took the slender stick of soft pine from which he'd been whittling pegs, and poked the cat gently. His deep-set eyes began to smile as one white paw darted out to catch the stick. It was odd how his craggy face softened.

“It sounds all right to me.”

“Then we're dependent on Brigport only when we get our mail and freight,” Joanna said happily.

Vinnie said unexpectedly, “What about food?”

In one swift instant of shock, Joanna realized she'd been so preoccupied with the lobsters, she'd forgotten food. And Marion and Jud hadn't mentioned it, either. . . . She blushed at her own thoughtlessness, vexed to be tripped up like this. And then, because Vinnie was looking at her with Joey's gentle, anxious, questioning look, she forgot her vexation.

“I didn't remember food,” she confessed. “I guess I thought we could live on lobsters.”

“Fowler's don't give us Bennett's Island stump-jumpers much in the way of service,” Caleb observed without rancor.

“He never has half what I put on my list.” Vinnie knitted fast, her mouth tightening. “If you can figure us out some way to buy our groceries that'd be fine.”

Joanna was thinking hard. It was a point of honor with her, never to be at a loss. She said recklessly, “I know. We'll each have a list of everything we'll be needing for ten days or two weeks, and whoever goes in can take them up to Marston's Market in Limerock the first thing, and have the orders put up and ready for him when he's ready to leave. I think they'll even deliver them down to the Public Landing or wherever he ties up.”

Shining-eyed, now that she had caught up all the loose ends, she looked for their approval and found it.

“Marston's is a good place,” Caleb said. “Don't know why we couldn't do as well there as at Fowler's.”

“Better!” Vinnie chirped. “That Fowler over-charges somethin' awful!”

It was a successful visit, and Joanna arose to go, feeling deeply satisfied with herself and with everybody else.

“Who's goin' to make the first trip in?” Caleb said.

“Nils,” said Joanna serenely. She hadn't asked him, but it was only right that he should lead off, and thus back her up. Besides, there was no reason why he shouldn't be willing to go first.

The Caldwells didn't want her to leave so soon, but she couldn't bear to sit still and make idle conversation when her brain was teeming with ideas and excitement. She told them she must be thinking of starting dinner, with a pang of guilt at the fib, because dinner was ready except for warming up.

She walked briskly around the boardwalk and turned at the anchor into the sandy road through the marsh. The freshening wind eddied the fog thickly around her again; it was wet on her lips and smelled fresh and cold in her nostrils, mingled with the damp, decadent fragrance of the marsh. From Matinicus Rock the fog horn sounded, loud and mournful on the wind, with its little grunt on the end.

No, she couldn't go home now, there was nothing to do in the empty house, and she wanted to keep moving, to talk. When she reached the turning, where the gravelly sand wanted to sift into her shoes, she turned resolutely along the road that followed the seawall around Schoolhouse Cove. She hadn't been down to see Helmi since Mark had moved to the Eastern End. Mark might notice it, though she was sure the girl wouldn't care if no one came near her. . . .

Dreams crowded around her when she walked up between the over grownfields where almost everybody on the Island had had a garden spot back in the old days. In the long, sunny hour after supper, husbands and wives walked up there together to weed and to cultivate; there was calling back and forth, and a communal sharing of tools, and of the vegetables when they were harvested. . . . It would take a long time to get the fields, with the sea on either side, into condition for gardens again. That would be the next thing to tackle, after life settled into an uncomplicated rhythm.

Uncle Nate's barn loomed through the fog. There were some shingles off the roof; Nils would have to look out for that. The white paint of the house was scabby. She would get in touch with Uncle Nate—he was living in Thomaston now, where Aunt Mary had quite a field in which to make her presence felt—and see about painting the house in the spring.

The woods were silent and dripping, wreathed in fog. Far below the path the sea's lazy swell curled itself over shaggy black rocks that looked ugly and sharp in the half-tide. Joanna loved them. She loved the harshness of them, she loved the bristly, austere angles of the spruces, the gnarled unevenness of the wind-tortured ones, the leafless, tangled tracery of blackberry bushes on either side of the path.

She prolonged her walk; but the moment came when she let herself through the gate and walked down over the open land to the houses of the Eastern End. It was fantastic how life repeated itself. She had come down through this gate to see the girl her brother Charles had married; and she had been reluctant then, as now. Only then, her reluctance had been sick and resentful.

The boys would be in the barn, working on their new traps, and she walked past without stopping.

Smoke blew gently down from the chimney, but otherwise there was no motion from the house as she knocked at the door. After a little while, Helmi came. The first glimpse of her was always a shock. She stood silently in the doorway, with her silver hair brushing her shoulders. Then, with a little tilt of her head on its long, slim neck, she said, “Oh . . . hello, Joanna. Come in.”

Joanna said, “Am I interrupting you at anything? Cake-baking, or radio programs?” She followed Helmi's willowy, yet strong, figure through the entry into the warm, immaculate kitchen.

“No, I was just sitting down,” Helmi said. She gestured vaguely toward a chair by the window that looked out across the rolling yellow­brown field into the fog, beyond which lay the stretch of tumbled rocks and then the open sea. In that instant Joanna noticed there was no sign of knitting, sewing, book, or paper, near the chair. Did Helmi just
sit
, she wondered, and met the girl's coolly translucent blue-green gaze.

It made her faintly uncomfortable. She sat down and said at once, “Haven't you scrubbed the floor up nice and white? I haven't seen such a floor for a long time.”

Helmi shrugged. “Something to do,” she said.

“Helmi, when you get lonesome, why don't you come up to the harbor? Bring your mending and we'll have a kaffeeklatsch.” She laughed. “Isn't that what they call it?”

“Would you drink some coffee now?” Helmi demanded. She had been standing by the dresser. Now she moved, measuring coffee into a brightly polished pot with her strong, broad hands.

“I can always drink coffee,” said Joanna, determined to be at ease, wishing she could fathom what lay behind the high-cheekboned face with the slightly tilted eyes, and its frame of palely shining hair. “Nils has turned me into a real coffee-drinker. He's Swedish, you probably knew that the minute you looked at him.”

“I didn't notice,” Helmi said indifferently.

“I wish you'd come up and get acquainted with us,” Joanna said, catching Helmi's eyes and smiling straight into them. Her reaching out to the girl was almost a tangible thing; but she couldn't touch her, and she heard her own voice going on when she would have liked to get out and shake off the spell of the silent, shining kitchen, and the silent, shining girl.

“Of course anybody's husband's family is a poor substitute for your own, but we can try to be company for you, if you're lonesome for them.”

“I am not lonesome,” said Helmi, and began to pour the coffee.

It's no use, I can't talk to her
, Joanna thought. Her mind sought frantically for conversation.

“The boys will be setting their traps soon.”

“Yes.” Helmi set a coffee cup before her, milk and sugar in a squat blue pitcher and bowl. “There is no coffee cake. I'm sorry.”

“I'd rather have just coffee, anyway.” Joanna smiled, but Helmi, beginning to stir her own coffee, looked past her as if she were not there.

On an incontrollable impulse Joanna turned her own head, and looked through the long, low window over the sink. She saw what Helmi must be seeing—Mark and Stevie coming out of the barn. The fog had cleared again; and in the shadowless gray light they showed up with wonderful clarity, like figures on a movie screen. They were talking seriously, as Mark slid the heavy door shut behind them. Joanna saw him run his hand through his black hair, shake his head, and then begin to laugh. The laughter spread to Stevie, his dark face crinkled, and then was alight. It was one of their private jokes. When they were children no two persons enjoyed life and each other more than Mark and Stevie. And now that they were grown up it was the same.

Still caught up in their mirth, they started down the slope toward the house with their similar long-legged strides, as if the heavy rubber boots were no more than moccasins.

Joanna turned back to Helmi, opening her lips to speak, but she remained silent. She was astonished by the expression in Helmi's face as she watched the two brothers through the window. There was a faint stain of color along her high cheekbones, and such an intensity in her eyes that Joanna felt the tightening of shock in her throat. She saw the girl's teeth catch her under lip and whiten it.

And then, as if it had not happened at all, the expression was gone. Helmi met Joanna's glance and her eyes were cool and noncommittal, color ebbed from her cheeks and flowed redly into the bitten lip.

“Will you have some more coffee?” she asked.

“It's lovely coffee, but it's so near dinner time I'd better not have any more,” Joanna said evenly. But she felt as though her heart were beating over-hard. If she could fathom that look on Helmi's face, she would know the secret that
was
Helmi.

But what was it? In a moment now the boys would come in, and she knew she couldn't endure their noise and horseplay, she must be by herself and think this out.

“I'll be going,” she said lightly. “Here come your men, and I've got one at home who'll be looking for his dinner. Come up, won't you, Helmi?”

“I will,” said Helmi. “Some time.”

Outside the boys stopped her but she fended off their humor, laughing at them all the time. “Go get your dinner,” she told them. “I smelled it cooking. It was wonderful.”