Storm Tide (50 page)

The rest of the afternoon slipped by and it was time for supper. Baked beans, brown bread, home-made white bread, pickled herring and onions, cole slaw, and a hot and spicy upside-down cake; it was a lordly supper, over which Karin presided, red with heat and excitement and pride. Joanna was hungry, but her stomach wouldn't let her eat. It had been under a strain too long. And she was intensely aware of her wish to be alone with Nils; her eyes went to him again and again across the table, holding fast to him as she wished her hands might do. And while the hard-headed logical portion of her brain warned that the others might notice and tease—Owen especially—this new abandoned manifestation of Joanna did as it pleased. No, it did as it
must
. Not even with Alec had she felt this compulsion. It seemed as if Nils was her strength.

“Joanna, you're not eating!” Karin accused her. Joanna looked back at her in instant, flushed concern. Nils pushed back his chair.

“Leave her alone, Aunt Karin. I think she's coming down with a cold, and I'm going to put her to bed.” He spoke across the table to Joanna,“Come on, Jo.”

She stood up at once, conscious of Owen's wildly astonished eyebrow, and the way his black eyes shot from her to Nils, and back again. Karin got up too.

“I'll take her to the spare room if she wants to lie down, poor child. You go right on eating, Nils—y”

Nils smiled at her. “Sit down, Aunt Karin. Eat your supper.”

“Sit down, Karin,” said Eric without looking up from his plate, and she obeyed, looking flustered and nervous until Owen reached over and patted her plump wrist.

“Can I hold hands with the woman who makes such damn' good brown bread?” he asked, and Joanna and Nils left the room to the crescendo of Karin's delighted laughter.

Upstairs in the spare room Nils set the lamp on the stand beside the bed. His aunt had been up and kindled a fire in the airtight stove, and now it mulled along comfortably. The covers had been turned back on the big walnut bed, and one of Karin's best quilts had been laid across the foot.

Joanna looked at the bed and sighed. “It looks wonderful, Nils.”

Nils pulled down the shades and instantly the room became a snug and impenetrable fortress. It seemed as if even Brigport couldn't enter here. Yet she shuddered, in spite of herself, and Nils saw it. He came to her quickly and took her by the elbows. “I said I was going to put you to bed, and that's what I'm going to do.”

“My bag is downstairs with my things in it—”

“Never mind that. I'll get you something to sleep in.” He let go of her and went out.
I could be taking off my shoes
, she thought mistily, and didn't move. It was much easier to sit still and wait for Nils. . . . Wait for Nils. . . . How long had she been waiting for him? She couldn't count all the days now. But
I didn't really know what I was waiting for
, she said in wonder.

Nils was back again, holding up a tentlike nightdress. “Aunt Karin's. I helped myself out of the bureau drawer.”

“Why, Nils!” she said, and they both laughed as if they'd made a very funny joke. Joanna was still a little shaky from her laughter when Nils went down on one knee before her to untie her oxfords. She felt his light, sure touch on her foot; she looked at his bent fair head, and the wetness in her eyes was not from laughter after all. She widened them and blinked fiercely; and then, as if she had no control over it whatsoever, her hand went out to his hair.

He was about to slip her shoe from her foot. But he paused and looked up at her, and she saw it in his eyes, the thing she had once seen, the thing Helmi had mentioned. When he took her hand and held it against his lips, it was more than she could endure.

“Nils, I'm not fit, I'm not good enough!” she cried, and put her hands over her face in a passion of weeping. “Why should you take my shoes off for me? Why should you do anything for me?”

“Because you're my wife,” Nils said, and added in such a low voice that she barely caught it, “and my dear.”

He took off her other shoe then, and helped her with her clothes; she was as quiescent as a child. She could not remember having felt like this since she was very small, and even then she'd been fiercely independent—unless she'd been on an adventure that had turned out wrong, or had been spanked. . . . Aunt Karin's nightdress enveloped her and Nils held back the bedclothes while she crept in between the sheets; then he went to the commode and brought back a wet wash­cloth to sponge off her face, hot with windburn and a touch of fever. She found herself leaning her head against his shoulder, watching him with absorbed eyes.

“I never thought you could be like this, Nils,” she said at last.

“You didn't give me a chance,” he told her gently. She would have been stung, once; now she took his head and pulled it down to hers.

“Why didn't you beat me, Nils?”

“You'd have hated me then, and never got over it.” He laid her back against the pillows, and stood looking at her. “You know,” he said, “I used to think of the way your mouth is, and the way your eyelashes curl. I thought I remembered them right. But—” He bent and kissed her swiftly. “I didn't remember your mouth right at all."”

“If you remembered it always talking, that was right,” she said bitterly. He dropped to his knees beside the bed and put his arms around her. The cool blue of his eyes darkened; and was no longer cool.

“Don't,” he said. “Joanna, don't.” He kissed her again, this time not swiftly.

After a few moments a little smile touched her mouth, and she looked at him from under her lashes, her long eyes darkly brilliant. “Aren't you hungry?“ she asked him softly. “Don't you want to go down and finish your supper?”

He got up from his knees and turned the lamp low. She watched him, her eyes widening. She held her breath, expecting to see him go to the door. Instead he came around the bed, put another chunk of birch in the stove, and lay down beside her.

“We've got too much to say to each other,” he said, “for me to think about beans.”

She opened her eyes with bewilderment; where was this room, with the lamp burning low beside the bed, and the great walnut head­board towering over her; the religious pictures, with their Swedish titles, on either side of the mirror? And the arm that lay across her—against whose side was she so firmly held? Not Alec's, surely—Alec was dead. . . . She came to full awareness then, turned her head and saw Nils' sleeping face.

She lay watching him, trying to remember when it was she had dropped off to sleep. He hadn't stayed awake for long after, she was sure. How clean and good he looked, she thought. Not remote, now; his face was still locked and faraway, as it would always be when he was asleep, and many times when he was awake. But some of its strangeness was gone, it was a face that she knew.

The last thing of which she remembered speaking had been Stevie's enlistment. She'd told him everything, up to Stevie's departure. She'd told him how they all spoke of him, and would do nothing until he came. She'd thought it would hurt to admit that; but it hadn't hurt. Once she'd begun to tell him the things that had stung her, and bruised her, in fact, the whole long story of the weeks he' been away, she had felt. an exquisite sense of relief. If they were to start again, Nils must know her as she was, stripped bare of all the small, mean resentments and the idiotic pride.

She had told him almost everything that had happened; but not about the talk of murder. It had come to her tongue, to be thrust back. Tonight wasn't the time for it.

Nils had talked too. Not much, but what he hadn't said she'd guessed; by the way he'd knelt to take off her shoes—because she was his wife; by the way something quivered i n his cheek when she called him
dear
. And she had known then what he had meant when he'd tried to talk to her on those nights at home, saying he wanted to work for her and give her his strength. In return he had craved her tenderness, the woman-tenderness he never had.

He was lying outside the covers, and the fire was almost out. She lifted his arm with infinite caution and slipped free of it, laying it down again along the coverlet. She unfolded the thick quilt from the foot of the bed and laid it over him. Tall in the full white gown, her cheeks flushed from sleep, she stood looking down at him in the dim lamp-glow.

Unbidden, her mind slipped back and for a sudden shocking moment she was in another bedroom, looking down at another sleeping face—Alec's; a narrow, lean-boned, Scottish face, with a bold nose and a wide humorous mouth that often smiled in sleep. She had watched him as she watched Nils now, but with a slow, corroding dread that made a pain in her breast. That was what Nils had wanted to save her; and when he'd tried to tell her she'd struck out at him, and cut him into silence.

She tucked the quilt more closely around his shoulders, went back to the other side of the bed. She blew out the lamp and lay down beside him, lifting his arm again to put it across her body. The darkness spread around her, but she didn't hate it tonight. She would go to sleep again, and not think of her mistakes—they were of yesterday, and had no part in tomorrow and all the tomorrows to come.

S
HE DIDN'T KNOW WHEN
N
ILS LEFT HER
; but when she awoke the room was luminous with the silvery light from the blizzard that whirled past the windows, and the fire had been built in the stove. She lay listening to the snow against the panes, and the small, soft hissing the fire made. Distantly in the house she heard the radio, and knew Karin and Eric were listening to the Sunday morning church services from Tremont Temple in Boston. It was late; she could hardly remember the last time when she had slept so late.

She felt no compulsion to get up and dress and hurry downstairs. Instead, she watched contentedly the rush of the storm, or studied with deep interest the pictures on the walls.
Cupid Awake
and
Cupid Asleep
she'd seen before, and that wretchedly lonesome wolf standing on the hill above the town. She'd always felt sorry for him but that was unreasonable; he probably liked the way he lived.

She wasn't familiar with the picture of the beautiful youth in satin and ruffles, trying to kiss the maiden while her father absentmindedly clipped roses. She was contemplating the view dreamily from half-closed eyes when Nils came in with a tray. At the sight of him in the doorway she was no longer dreamy. When she had last seen him he was asleep, and withdrawn from her. Now as they looked at each other across the room, she felt the force of his new consciousness of her, mingled with her new recognition of him.

She sat up in bed. “Hello, Nils. Why don't you dress like him?” She pointed to the boy in satin. “You'd be real purty.”

“A damn' good outfit to go hauling in,” Nils said. “Ought to wear well. I could catch some herring in all that lace.”

He put the tray down on the stand beside the bed. Then he went out into the hall again, and came in with her dressing case. “Your comb in here?” he asked. “I thought you'd want to tidy up before you ate.”

“Can't I just taste my coffee before I comb my hair?” She looked with pleasure at the tray: coffee, black and steaming, in a yellow cup; hot muffins wrapped in a napkin; butter, and Karin's currant jelly; an orange, the rind scored and turned back in four creamy-pale petals. “It's like a picture in a magazine, Nils. Did Karin fix it?”

“I fixed it,” said Nils, busy with opening her case. He found her comb and handed it across to her, and then met her bemused eyes. “What's the matter, Joanna?”

She laughed, a faint red running up under the clear translucent brown of her skin. “Nothing . . . only the tray. It's so—well, it's not the way most men are. On Bennett's Island, anyway.”

He went over to fix the stove. Over his shoulder he smiled at her. “On Sunday morning my father always fixed my mother's breakfast. Kristi and I used to trot along behind him with the milk and sugar.” He took a piece of birch from the woodbox and turned it over in his hands. “That's about the earliest thing I can remember. Kristi never could remember it at all—she couldn't even remember my mother.”

“What did your mother used to say when you all came in, Nils?”

He turned around and looked directly at her then, and spoke as though he had always kept the words fresh and green in his mind. “To my father she would say, ‘Good morning, Karl, my darling.' She always looked at him first, you see,” he explained without resentment. “Then she would take Kristi into bed with her, because she was the baby, and then she'd thank me for carrying the milk.”

“But what did she
say?
” Joanna insisted.

“She used to say, ‘Thank you, dear. Come here where I can kiss you.' ” His blond eyebrows drew together in a little frown. “Your coffee's getting cold, Jo.”

She began to butter her muffin in silence. Nils put the wood in the stove and came over to sit on the edge of the bed. “Why did you ask all that, Jo?”

She smiled at him over her cup. “Just trying to think how you looked when you were four, and all about it. I can't remember you, because I was only two. But you must have been darling, Nils. So serious, in your little blue sailor suit for Sunday best, and with your yellow hair combed just so.”

Nils said dryly, “I was always still in my nightgown.”

“Then you were even sweeter,” said Joanna, and leaned toward him. “A kiss with my breakfast, Nils? For Sunday best?”

His lips touched hers lightly, and then held fast; his hands came out and took her by the shoulders. She couldn't have squirmed free if she'd wanted to. When he let her go they smiled at each other unsteadily.

Nils sat back and took out his cigarettes. “Owen handed me out quite a line this morning,” he said. “About not coming down to supper again.”