Strawberries in the Sea (21 page)

“Hey, how about a sneak preview?” Jamie said. “I guess I'll come up around there some of these nights.”

“I hope they're planning on something else besides me,” said Rosa.

“Oh, they ring in everybody they can,” Nils said. “Last year they even had somebody playing the spoons. Haker, staying here in the harbor. His partner played the harmonica. Pretty good, too.”

“They smelled to high heaven,” said Joanna reminiscently. “They'd been sleeping aboard that boat for weeks, and I think they lived on fried hake. But they were happy, and everybody clapped like mad. Somebody even yelled for an encore.”

“Which went on for five minutes,” said Jamie. “You see, Rosa? Any real talent'll be wasted. They clap for anybody with the guts to get up there in front of them, no matter if he doesn't do anything but recite the alphabet backwards.”

“I'd clap for that,” said Rosa. “The only way I can do it frontward is to sing it. Can
you
recite it backwards?”

“Now that you mention it, no.” He looked at his watch. “Come on. . . . You want to ride over with us?” he asked his mother.

“If I said yes, what would you do? No, thanks, I've had one moonlight sail tonight, and after
Hull's Victory
and
Lady of the Lake
with thirty couples up, I feel as if I'd been in the Boston marathon.”

“You're not admitting to age, are you?” Jamie asked.

“Only to tired feet. After all, when I was a young thing I used to sit out a few dances now and then, under a spruce tree somewhere.” Her husband listened, half-smiling. They both told Rosa to come again. Walking down to the wharf with Jamie she said, inadequately, “They're nice.”

“Ayuh, times when I think I did pretty well for myself.”

“You didn't want to tip them into the ocean along with everybody else, did you?”

“Sure, when I was mad with 'em. Didn't you ever get that mad with your old man?”

She considered. “I guess so. Yes, and with my mother too. When I was real small.”

“Well, I was real small too. When you're little you don't actually want people to die, if you know what death means when you're that age. You just want your own way and everybody out of it. When you get older you try to figure a way around people.”

And do you manage as well as Con does? she wondered. She thought not. He was too blunt and too impatient. She imagined him walking away from a capricious girl, saying, The hell with
you
, sister.

But not away from
Centurion
, to hear him talk. He wasn't walking away there. Herring again. “Rory, Rory, get the dory,” she sang softly so as not to rouse Tiger, “There's herring in the bay.”

“
What?
” said Jamie, and she laughed out loud.

T
he moonlight was so bright they could see the sheep on Tenpound. The water slid back from the base of the steep shores in long, polished swells, and she had to admit that
Valkyrie
took them almost as well as
Sea Star
. The tide was high, and they went into Brigport Harbor through the Gut, a narrow passage between guardian hills of granite. They passed silent wharves and fishhouses and into the upper harbor, where there were three times the work boats that Bennett's had, and a windjammer at rest like a specter from the past.
Valkyrie
moved almost silently toward the float at the end of a wharf. When the engine stopped they heard voices and laughter from a dory rowing among the moorings.

“I told them to be down here at quarter past twelve,” Jamie said.

“Do you think they'll make it?” She wondered what sort of evening Vic had had.

“They'd damn well better.” He brought out a couple of buoyant cushions from the cabin and put them on the stern. “Here, everything's wet with dew. Or do you want to go ashore and walk around? Up to the lily pond, over to the sand beach?”

“Right here is all right.”

There was a whoop from out in the harbor. “Somebody'll be overboard next,” he said cynically. “What are you thinking about?” He sounded genuinely curious.

“Once when I was a kid I believed what they used to say about the moonlight making you crazy. I guess I believed it for all one summer, and I kept my shades pulled right down, and I wouldn't go out in it without a hat. My folks thought I was crazy already.”

He said, “What about Fern Cliff?”

“What about it?” She was mystified. Then she remembered. “Oh. Well, yes,” she said diplomatically.

“It didn't mean anything more to you than a mosquito bite, did it?”

“Nicer,” she said. “Mosquitoes poison me sometimes.” But she was ashamed of joking and not remembering the kiss, painfully aware of male pride, and thoroughly annoyed. After all, she hadn't asked him to kiss her, so why should she feel to blame about it?

“Look, Jamie,” she began, gently enough.

“I know, you're still in love with your husband,” he said. “Nobody else exists.”

“Anyway, I thought that was just supposed to be appreciation or something, like a hearty handshake. And that's how I took it.”

“Well, hell, I wouldn't have kissed you if a handshake would have done just as well,” he said indignantly. “But it wouldn't for what I had in mind.”

“If you kissed me because you thought I was an attractive woman, I'm more than flattered,” she said. “I'm honored. And that's the truth.”

“But you still don't know there's another man around besides the son-of-a-bitch you're married to. Excuse my language, but that's what he is. I've found out all about him.”

And about me, she thought. So I should be grateful for anything, is that it? She felt like someone jolted awake far from home and bed and the safe dark. She shivered involuntarily. Jamie said in a low voice, “I'm sorry. I didn't have any right to say that. . . . Seems as if I'm always apologizing to you about something.”

“You'll be sick of the sight of me pretty soon. Don't you wish I'd stayed home in Seal Point?”

“No.” He groped for her hand and gave it a violent squeeze. “Look, the guy must have something, for you to feel that way about him. But I'll be damned if I let him scare me off. I'm going to hang in there, Rosa. I'll have my day.”

She was shaken because he was, and for something else. “But why
me?
”

“If you don't know, you're probably the most innocent female I ever met. And if you do know, but you're acting, that makes you more like the rest. Either way, you're not shaking me loose. I don't intend to make passes.”

“That's what you said earlier.”

“Intentions are one thing. You never know what an occasion is going to call for.”

“And you never know what reaction you'll get, either. Is that understood?”

“
Understood
.” He snapped off the word. She laughed and then he did. They were interrupted by what sounded like a stampede of talking horses on the wharf. The herd sorted itself out into the Bennett's Island teen-agers and Brigport companions. The night echoed with incomprehensible merriment and uproarious good-fellowship. “They sound drunk as coots, all of 'em,” said Jamie. “Just on lemonade and dancing.”

“Don't forget midnight and moonlight,” said Rosa. She hoped Vic's evening had turned out to be a spectacular without Jamie. She tried to find her in the milling group. Linnie was easy; her head shone like silver in the moonlight. A lanky boy with long hair and an Indian headband had his arm draped over her shoulders and was talking earnestly to her.

“Hippy!” muttered Jamie. “Come on, come on! ” he called. Young Richard Bennett jumped from the wharf onto the float. “Come on, Holly!” he yelled back at his sister.

It wasn't Holly who came running down the ramp, but Vic. Her eagerly smiling face showed plainly as she crossed the float; she looked slight and graceful in her short dress, a stranger in the moonlight. When she saw Rosa she stopped. Her astonishment was as obvious as a shout. Grace deserted her, suddenly sharpened elbows pressed into her sides, her face became dulled. Rosa wished at once that she hadn't come.

“Don't say it,” she said in a loud bantering voice which she hated. “I know I said I couldn't stay awake. . . . Well, I couldn't have spent the evening dancing, I know that much.”

The girl said colorlessly, “Sure.” Her eyes went to the two cushions on the stern deck. The others came rowdily down the ramp, greeting Jamie variously as Captain Bligh, Cap'n Ahab, and the Flying Dutchman. Linnie came down last, accompanied by the insistent boy with the headband. She seemed both entertained and absorbed by what he was saying.

While the others got aboard, Vic stood on the float fumbling with her raincoat. Her wedge-shaped face had a stony pallor.

Suddenly Linnie saw Rosa. “Oh,
hi
” she said in a penetratingly clear voice. “I see you stayed awake after all.”

“Only because I wouldn't let her go home and go to bed,” said Jamie. “Come on, get aboard.”

“And if you can't get aboard, get a plank!” shouted Richard. An older boy obligingly groaned. Richard, giggling, ran up on the bow and settled himself crosslegged behind the pawl-post.

“You get back down here, Richard Bennett,” Holly commanded. When he didn't move she appealed to Jamie, who said, “
Richard
,” and cleared his throat. Richard returned to the cockpit. Linnie slipped her arm through Vic's.

“Night, Fritz,” she said offhandedly to the boy. “Come on over if you want to. We'll be around. Bring Ken.”

She and Vic stayed astern all the way home, facing back over the wake toward Brigport. The rest clustered under the canopy, the boys close to Jamie in purely masculine formation, the girls with arms wrapped around each other for balance and singing appropriate songs.
Moonlight Bay
,
Santa Lucia
,
Over the Summer Sea
.—“Come on, Rosa,” Betsey urged, “sing with us.”

“Got laryngitis.” She faked a strained whisper. She was unhappily conscious of the two in the stern. Of course they had it figured for a put-up job; she refusing to go, Jamie refusing to stay. The disappointment for Vic must have been agony, but she had looked forward all evening to the sail home; anything could happen between Brigport harbor and the home gate, especially with Linnie's connivance. Jamie might, all at once,
see
her. She might hit upon the exact thing to say to make him wonder why he hadn't noticed her before.

How well Rosa knew. She'd been through it. And there was nothing she could say to Vic that wouldn't sound patronizing or insulting.

Back in the harbor of Bennett's, she said good night and thanks to Jamie and was the first one up the ladder, well away from the wharf before anyone else. She thought she heard Jamie call “Rosa!” and then whistle, but she kept on going and didn't stop until she reached her kitchen. Then she went quickly up to bed without lighting a lamp.

For a while she lay awake thinking about Vic. Maybe she was putting too much of herself into it because of Con; a new burn can't endure to be near heat. Vic was a realist, she'd known a long time that Jamie wouldn't notice her; she was too young, for one thing. But she was also too young to be a realist for long. At seventeen you hoped for the miracle. At seventeen? At twenty-nine, too. He was always going to change his mind. . . . He was always about to appear in a magic cloud of smoke. . . . He was always going to say,
Dear Heart, it had to be you
.

It's all a big put-on, Vic said. The songs and the stories say this is how it is. So you keep waiting for it to happen.—I know, Vic, she thought, sighing heavily. I know. . . . Tonight seemed so much worse too because it was such a waste. Vic didn't get her dance with Jamie and she'd be forever wondering what that dance might have gained her. Jamie's kiss and his statement of intentions meant nothing to Rosa, not even as a nuisance. She was simply beyond either joy or rage with any man but Con, and for the first time she saw her state as poverty. It had not been that at first; it had been an arrogant contempt for second or third best. She had been proud to believe that, having known Con, she would never again be stirred by another man. . . . Now she thought tiredly it would be nice to feel
something
so you'd know you were still alive.

The house was haunted by moonlight and sliding silver hills of water. She got up finally and pulled down all the shades, and then she could fall asleep.

T
he Bennett girls came, wanting more help with their guitars, and younger children strung along behind them; sometimes even the boys came, but never Linnie and Vic. She saw them sometimes going up the lane, rowing, crossing the island toward Schoolhouse Cove or disappearing past the Eastern End gate. They always seemed to be far away from her, and it irritated her to suspect they were avoiding her on purpose. The minute things went wrong for them, they turned on her. And she'd liked them, Vic especially. . . . Hard, self-centered little cusses. Showed what they were, all right.—She put herself out for the younger children, reinforced by their admiration.

“When do you start getting ready for the show?” she asked Holly, who gestured wild bewilderment. “We don't know! We can't seem to get hold of Linnie and Vic. They're always too busy.”

Betsey said angrily, “They're trying to avoid us. They talked it up like mad and now they don't give a darn. Well, I bet Holly and I can do something.”

“I bet you can too,” said Rosa.

One day when she went down to the harbor the two girls were just rowing ashore, and she went quickly out onto the Sorensen wharf and waited by the ladder.

Vic started up first. When she looked up and saw Rosa leaning against the hoisting mast, she stopped halfway on the ladder the way she had stopped on the float that night, and Rosa felt as if she'd hit a bird or a chipmunk on the highway. Then Vic assumed the climb. As she reached the top, Rosa said bluntly, “I've missed you two.”