Storm Tide (16 page)

Mark made a noise like an ape and sprinted for the house with Stevie behind him, and Joanna, going through the gate, was alone again.

On the way back, she didn't look at the rocks, or notice the angles of the trees and the sparkle of moisture on the blackberry vines. She saw only Helmi's face. Odd, that when the girl's face had been so immobile, the first definite expression Joanna had seen had been so
intense
. . . Love? she wondered. A passion for Mark so great and fiery that the sight of him must change her like that? But it could have been another sort of passion . . . Hate, for instance.

Hate.
Or jealousy
. Joanna felt slightly sick and empty in the pit of her stomach. Of course. Why, she'd hardly been alone with Mark since their marriage. Stevie was there from half-past-five in the morning until dark. Perhaps she saw before her a whole lifetime of sharing Mark with Stevie, of never feeling that Mark was completely her own.

Suddenly she felt that she understood the tides of possessive love that rose and fell in Helmi. The secret was clear now. She knew a quick wave of sympathy for the girl, who in other circumstances would probably have liked Stevie for his pleasant, sunny self. But now she hated him. It made Joanna feel cold to think of anyone hating Stevie.

She wished she could take him out of the partnership with Mark now, instead of waiting till he got his own boat. But she knew there was no way to do it without telling him, and that would set a cloud between him and his brother.

No, she would have to wait until he saw the boat he wanted. She would wait, and pray that the banked fires in Mark's wife would not leap beyond the surface too soon.

T
HE FOG WENT AS QUICKLY
as it had come, and a strong gale from the north-west chased it out to sea. And the sea that had washed lazily around the rocks, pearly gray in the fog, was a wilderness of brilliant water as far as the horizon. Under the sun it looked like crumpled metal foil. Along the shores of the Island, where it rolled up on the slanting red-brown rocks, it was a dark, pure blue; but the heart of each comber that crashed toward the land was shining and translucent green. The combers rose out of the sea, fled shorewards to crash in an explosion of smoky white foam, and rainbow-catching prisms that flew up to the wood and soaked the sere brown grass. Then the prisms were flung sea-water; but in the air, against the sun, they were diamonds.

All day and all night the thunder hung around the Island, like the mist from the spray. The men worried about their traps, but not too much; they had moved most of them to the south-east of the Island where they were in the lee.

It lasted until noon of the second day, and then began to die out. The radio weather reports promised good weather for a while, and in the afternoon the men went down to the shore to bait up. They would go out early to haul in the morning.

They had enough crates between them, including several Mark found at the Eastern End—left behind by Jake Trudeau—to keep their lobsters until they had a big car ready. And that would be soon. Listening to the whole-hearted interest everybody had in the idea, Joanna felt proud and happy. Nils hadn't objected to making the first trip in, either. She hadn't expected that he would; but she'd felt a twinge—just a tiny one—of embarrassment when she'd said, “I told Jud and Caleb you were going in first. Is that all right?”

“Well, somebody has to be first,” Nils had said reasonably.

So that was all right. . . . The day the wind died down they had an early supper, and in a still, frosty sunset they had walked around Schoolhouse Cove to Nathan Bennett's place. They had the keys to the buildings, and Nils thought there might be some lumber in the barn he could use for making a car. The old cars in the marsh were rotten, after five years of idleness. Jud, who was a carpenter of sorts, having built many a boat in his day, would take charge of the building.

He came over to walk up to the barn with them and look over the lumber. Their three shadows were before them, Joanna's and Nils' grotesquely tall, Jud's short and very wide. Between puffs on his pipe he told Nils how he intended to build the car. Joanna listened to their voices, and was content to be silent.

In the dusty, chilly gloom of the barn the men at once fell into an absorbed study of the lumber. Joanna prowled around by herself. The dust lay thick on the work bench and on the farm machinery that had been Uncle Nate's pride and joy. He had run the only farm on Bennett's Island. . . . The stalls where Hugo and Jeff had milked the cows, while a sometimes roistering game of hide and-seek went on in the hayloft overhead, looked sadly empty. She thought about going up into the silo, but changed her mind. She wasn't fifteen any more, skinny and tense in dungarees, shinnying up to the hayloft on a rope and swinging out of it in the same way. She remembered Tim Gray, Jud's oldest boy, catching her once and kissing her. That had been her first kiss from a boy, and it hadn't been a very expert one, and Tim had turned so red afterwards she'd been too surprised to be mad. . . .

Now she was twice as old as that, and had a daughter all of seven years old, going on eight; she was mistress of the Bennett homestead, and the years seemed to go by so fast that she would be forty before she knew it. What was she doing, standing in a cold, empty barn and seeing it peopled with ghosts? The ghosts of stripling boys in rubber boots, and girls—one girl in particular, with Indian-black braids swinging forward as she jumped.

There was no memory of Nils in the barn, for the Sorensens had their own cows, and Nils wasn't one of the crowd who met here every night. She watched him now as he talked with Jud, and they made arrangements for getting the lumber down to the shore. She wondered what Jud thought about her and Nils.

We're a settled-down married couple
, she thought.
Both old enough to behave, and I should stop thinking foolishness
. . . .

She walked over to them and slipped her arm through Nils'. She saw, from the almost imperceptible change in his face, what her touch meant to him, and her heart contracted. Then she said lightly, “Got it all figured out, boys?”

“Yep,” said jud. “We can get it down the bank into Schoolhouse Cove—on the old wharf down there—and load it on the
Donna
, and take it around to the harbor.”

Nils' arm pressed her hand against her side. “In another week we'll have us a good big car,” he said.

“Sooner'n that,” Jud maintained stoutly. “I may be old, but I ain't lost my steam yet, b'God!”

When they walked back again, Jud left them at the turning in the road. The dusk was falling swiftly, scented with the sea and frost and dead grass, as Joanna and Nils walked up to the house. Stevie had lighted a lamp in the kitchen, and the warm yellow windows, set in the dark bulk of the house against the southern sky's graying lavender, looked down at Joanna as they had always looked in the winter dusk. Except for the intimacy of her arm linked with Nils', she could almost imagine that they would all be in the kitchen—her parents and the boys; that when the door opened and the warmth and light streamed out, the familiar, beloved voices would stream out too.

On the granite doorstep, Nils stopped her, and took her into his arms. His mouth was cool and firm on hers, he smelled of his own cleanliness and the cold, sweet air. It was pleasant to be kissed by Nils, and she gave herself to the moment with a completeness that to Nils seemed perfection. For outwardly she
had
given herself; only she knew of her innermost reserves. Only she knew how she wished with all her heart that his kiss could be more than pleasant to her.

“Is this what I get for taking your arm?” she murmured.

“That's what you get,” he told her. “You ought to know by now.”

She laughed and took his kiss again—a longer one than the first—and then went ahead of him into the house.

She heard Stevie's voice as she opened the inner door, and when she came in he was sprawled in the rocker by the stove, his long leg over the ann. Beyond him she saw Randy Fowler.

She stiffened in amazement and anger. He sat in her kitchen, perfectly at ease, talking with her brother, while his family schemed against her. She walked into the room, and Randy stood up, his bright eyes on her face.

“Hi, Jo. Surprised? It was such a pretty evenin' after the wind died out, I thought—Hi, Nils.”

His smile showed up the slashes of dimples in his thin cheeks. She was irritated to see Nils smiling too. He said, “Hello, Randy. Good to see you.”

She took a long time hanging up her coat, rearranging the jackets and sweaters on the hooks. His soft-voiced impudence echoed in her mind
All right for me to come over when the old man home?
he'd said as he'd walked out that morning. And here he was. The pure gall of him. She wanted to take him by the shoulders and shake him hard and throw him out right now. But how could she, with Nils already talking to him in a friendly manner?

She got her darning from the sitting room and sat down to work. As long as the men talked, she could be silent. Of course Nils would be nice to Randy. He didn't have any call to be rude to the boy—as far as she knew—and besides, it was policy to show that there wasn't anything in the wind. There was no mention of a lobster car. The conversation went from the lobster's winter habits into its breeding habits, and stayed right there; every fisherman seemed to have a different theory on the subject.

She knew that Randy was watching her. At last, she deliberately met his gaze. Her own was remote, uncommunicative. It should have chilled his sparkle, but it didn't. He talked on with Stevie and Nils, and as she listened to his soft, quick voice she had to admit that he had a certain odd charm that didn't seem pure Fowler. Perhaps he got it from his mother. . . .

After a while she remembered a radio program she wanted to hear, and went into the sitting room to listen. She doubted that Randy would ever come again, when he saw that it got him nowhere. . . . She stayed on in the sitting room after her program was over, and didn't go into the kitchen until she heard Nils say, “It's airing up again. I'll walk down with you, Randy, and take a look at the punts.”

She went into the kitchen and found them putting on outdoor clothes. Randy twinkled at her. “I had a real pleasant evenin', Jo,” he said.

“You're not going' without some coffee, are you?” Stevie said sociably.

“Hell, I guess I stayed long enough.” Randy looked bland. “Don't want to wear out my welcome.”

“That bein' the case, guess I'll speed the parting guest,” said Stevie and unfolded his long legs. “Might's well walk down to the shore with you boys and keep you out of mischief. Where you tied up, Randy?”

“The old wharf. Or what's left of it.” Nils was busy with his boots and Stevie was getting his jacket from the hook; Randy tried to catch Joanna's eye again, and missed. She waited patiently for them to get out. Really, she couldn't have Nils and Stevie encouraging him, telling her he wasn't to blame for what his father was. Perhaps tonight she'd tell Nils about Randy coming when he was gone.

They went out, finally. And just as the outer door closed behind them, she saw Randy's gloves lying on the dresser. Her lips hardened. Randy was a brat, and she felt like telling him so. She wasn't surprised, after a few minutes, when the door opened, and he came through the entry and into the room.

She was putting a stick of wood into the stove, and spoke without turning toward him. “Your gloves are on the dresser, Randy. You should take better care of them.”

“You know, that's what my old lady's always sayin'.”

He was motionless in the room behind her. He wasn't picking up the gloves, then. The others were probably halfway to the gate by now. She said, “You'd better hurry.”

“No need to hurry,' his soft voice replied easily.

She swung around and faced him. “But that's just it, Randy,” she said, her words as soft and easy as his. Only a little cooler. “There is need to hurry. Will you take your gloves and get out of this house just as fast as you can?
And stay out?
”

A flush ran over his thin face, and his eyes darkened.

“You're speakin' kind of sharp, ain't you, Jo?”

“I don't like to be sharp to anyone,” she said, “unless I'm forced to be. I don't want to have to carry this to Nils.”

“Oh, I'll get out!” he said, and picked up his gloves. He sounded surprisingly good-natured, not at all sulky. He grinned at her, and again the long dimples showed. The brightness, the myriad sparkles and twinkles, came back to his eyes. He didn't appear to have been caught up very short. “So long, Jo. Sweet dreams!” He touched the gloves to the peak of his cap in an impudent salute, and went out whistling.

Joanna smiled in spite of herself. He'd taken it well, and that took care of
that
. But he seemed like a straightforward sort. She wondered if he knew what plans his father and uncle were surely laying for Bennett's Island. It passed through her mind that a boy whom most people liked could pick up a lot of casual information to pass on to others and let them know how the wind was blowing. Then she dismissed the idea from her mind. Randy wouldn't be back again. She'd nipped his romantic urge in the bud, and had actually forbidden him the house.

So—she shrugged, and decided to make a pot of coffee for Nils and Stevie when they came back from the shore.

They were a long time coming. She thought of going down to meet them. Maybe a punt had been caught down under the wharf when the tide came, and they had to get it out. . . . She looked around the kitchen, feeling wonderfully lighthearted. So many problems had been wound up successfully in the past month. Now for the next one. Which should it be? She had a whole list of problems to choose from, each one offering her a stiff and exhilarating battle.

She heard voices outside, and she began taking cups from the cupboard. She had some filled cookies to go with the coffee, Vinnie Caldwell had brought them up in the afternoon.