Strawberries in the Sea (9 page)

“Because I got tired of shoveling my way through the Fleming variety,” she said. “At least this is a change. It wasn't thrown at me in the first place.”

“Don't give me that,” His amusement was as thin as her poise. “What's the idea of pulling this crazy stunt? Scaring the guts out of me and leaving me with no boat and five hundred traps to haul?”

“I want a drink of water,” she said, and walked by him into the house. She took a drink, then brushed the spills out of her hair, put more cold water in the basin and washed her face. When she straightened up and was drying herself, he was sitting on the edge of the table, smoking a cigarette.

“Come on back with me, honey,” he said. “We can start back just as soon as you get your stuff together. Todd brought me out, and I'll go down to the shore now and tell him not to wait.”

For an instant she thought it was all over with Phyllis, and it was happening as it happened in books; that, when he believed she was dead, he knew what he'd lost. Her face felt weak and unmanageable.

“I need the boat till the new one's ready,” he went on, “and you ought to be in your own home. You made your gesture, you ran off and upset everybody—”

“Everybody meaning
you
,” she interrupted. No, it wasn't happening as it happened in books.

“Don't you think I've got feelings?” he asked indignantly. “You were always so sensible. When you tore off like this in thick of fog, it wasn't like you—”

“How do you know whether it's like me or not? If I did it, it must be like me. After all, what you do is like you, isn't it? And I didn't run off or tear off, whatever you want to call it. I've moved, that's all. I'm renting this place for the summer with an option to buy. You should be happy to have me out of sight, out of mind.” Insolently she flapped hands like wings.

He reddened. “Well, Jesus, do you think I like knowing I've run you out of your own town? I may be a son-of-a-bitch but I'm not that bad.”

“Oh, you mean you want your mind put at rest again? I thought we had that all out the other day. I don't care what you like knowing or hate knowing, Con. I'm here and I'm staying here.” She looked speculatively around the kitchen. “There's enough work to keep me busy for weeks. After I finish the toilet I'll start puttying the windows, and then patch up the roof, and after that—”

He stood up. His face was drawn so tight he seemed to have no lips at all. “All right. You've had your fun. Speaking of shit, you've sure rubbed my nose in it. Now start picking up your gear.”

She sat down, linked her hands between her knees, and gazed at him stolidly. “Go away, Con. Go back with Todd.” He came and stood over her. She smelled cologne; Phyllis's choice again. She had to tilt her head to look at him, but she fixed her stare so it wouldn't waver.

“Let me take the boat and you come in on the mailboat when you're ready. Maybe the little change out here will do you good.”

“I'll never be ready,” she said, “and you can't have the boat. If you help yourself to her, Con, I'll be all right. I'll be back to call off the divorce.”

It was almost as if his breathing stopped. Then he put his hands in his pockets and moved away from her, sidewise, lightly, as if in a dance step. “I didn't want to tell you this, sweetie,” he said, “but everybody's either laughing or shaking their heads over what you did. A grown woman taking off like a kid in a tantrum, taking a chance on losing herself, the boat, everything.” He overdid the amazement. “I've covered up for you the best I could. Said I knew you were going, it was something you wanted to do, and if you come back with me they'll figger I was telling the truth. See?”

“You mean they're laughing at
you
,” she said gently. “Oh, I don't doubt some are snickering at me, the same ones who always did. They're tickled to death because I was conned. Hey, that's a good one, Con. Get it?” She grinned at him. “But they all know that fog or clear I can find my way anywhere with a chart and a compass, so if I took off in thick fog it was for my own reasons and no tantrum. No, it's you everybody's laughing at, isn't it? That's what you think, and it's made you sick enough to puke.”

He turned and walked out the back door and she went behind him. The sun slanting down over the spruces made his hair shine, and she looked away and went over to the lilacs. With her nose in a purple plume she said, “And of course you've got no way to haul those five hundred traps. Didn't Adam leave a couple of boats? I thought you were marrying a rich widow, Con.”

“Damn you,
damn you
. You're nothing but a harpy after all.” He was so upset he had a hard time lighting a cigarette, and he was very pale. She was shaken because he was, and was about to say,
Take the boat but get out of my sight
. Only he spoke first.

“You know that was theft, running off with the boat and traps like that. I could press charges and make 'em stick. That'd look fine in the
Patriot
, wouldn't it? Your father'd turn over in his grave.”

“He's been turning over in his grave ever since I married you, Conall Fleming,” she said. “Now you get off my property, and you just try coming out here with the sheriff or a U.S. Marshal and see what you get!”

He left. She knew she could have called him back, before he went by the trees in the lane, but she put her fist against her mouth and let him go. Then she tried to pick up the spade, but the yard was too full of him, and the house was no refuge, now that he'd been in the kitchen. She turned toward the path to the cove.

She had been here only late at night, in the fog and at low tide. This was high tide in the early afternoon, and the cove brimmed with shimmering, shifting blues. She went along the uneven bluff until she found a clear space of turf on a sort of prow out over the mouth of the cove. She lay on the warm, tough grass, her head in her arms, wondering how she was going to survive. It was no help to remember how many times she'd wondered the same thing since she'd first found out about Phyllis, and was still living. Always before, she had wanted to go on living, if she could only be rid of this intolerable pain. But now, like a person with a fatal illness, she was tired of being revived after each sinking spell; she wanted only to be done with it.

In a little while she heard an engine from the vicinity of the breakwater, and she sat up, her eyes blurry from all the brilliant light after the darkness inside her arms. As they cleared she recognized the Seal Point boat, with two men in the cockpit. One of them walked toward the stern and seemed to be looking back at the island. She wouldn't have known him from this distance except for the bare red head.

If only she hadn't run away from the house. He might have come back to try again with her, and she could have taken back the things she said. Oh, why had she said them anyway? Couldn't they be friends? Wasn't it better than nothing, better than this agony which was far from nothing?

She squeezed her eyes shut to hide the sight of the boat leaving. It mightn't last with Phyllis, in fact it probably wouldn't. Easy come, easy go. If she'd fallen into bed with Con so fast when she was still Adam's wife, what wouldn't she do when she was Con's wife and he was off seining?

Some women were like that. They didn't care who the man was. Con had been trapped, really. If he wasn't so innocent—because he
was
innocent, falling in love all over the place like a teen-age boy—he wouldn't have got caught like this. He'd have made damn sure Phyllis couldn't get pregnant by him. He was decent, so he wanted to make the baby legitimate. But, when that was accomplished, or maybe before, he'd see the entrapment. Maybe he saw it already, but pride kept him from telling her. If she'd given him half a chance . . .

She lay down again. Between the sun on her back and the sound of the water just below her, she was beguiled into a cozy dream wherein Con headed home to her as soon as the baby was named. In an even better version, Phyllis became mad about somebody else and wanted nothing more from Con, not even his baby, so he came back to Rosa with the baby in his arms.

It would make no difference to her that Phyllis was the physical mother. It would be Con's baby, and that was what mattered. Then it would become Con's and hers: she sighed now with longing for the small weight in her arms and her hand cupped over a tiny bottom.

T
he dream was deepening into the insulated refuge of sleep when a gull spoke distinctly into her ear. “You come away from that water, Johnny Campion!”

Johnny Campion was a funny name for a gull's child to have, and it was even funnier that he should have to stay away from the water. She rolled over and sat up. The gulls were making noises like gulls, but a small band of children were coming around the rocks from Western Harbor Point, accompanied by Tiger and a larger dog who ranged much farther in long ardent leaps over the juniper and daisies. Johnny Campion was easily identified as a small boy who was reluctantly ascending a long slant of rock from the water, while a girl with hair like a dandelion blossom scolded him in piercing tones; she was the talking gull.

The big dog would discover Rosa long before the children did, and she had a great respect for large dogs accompanying children. When they all dipped out of sight in a gully, she got up and went back along the top of the bluff to the woods. She walked quickly, for fear the dogs might follow and catch up before she reached the house.

The urgency of the escape shook the dream loose. It was still there, but its reality now was no more than that of a bright pebble picked up on the beach and carried in the pocket. One could take it out and look at it, return it to the pocket or throw it away.

She had thrown it away by the time she saw the house through the spruces. She was wide awake and seeing Con with a clarity that was cruel, not to him but to her, because it took away any hope. The man who had come and gone today hadn't felt humble or trapped. Annoyed, yes, because she'd humiliated him, and he'd have to rent or borrow a boat till he got
Sea Star
back. Even Phyllis was no good to him there. The boats were all in use, and Adam's son by his first wife had the say of them anyway.

Con should have
Sea Star
, and she was being just plain sadistic. And I like it, she thought ferociously.

There was a metallic clinking from her yard. When she came around the last twist in the path the stocky man from next door was hitching up two hundred-pound gas cylinders to the fittings on the outside wall by the kitchen windows. He had rust-colored hair, nothing like Con's.

As she approached, he looked around and called, “Hi, there!” He stepped back with a flourish of his wrench. “There, that'll do you for a while.”

“I'm much obliged,” she said. “What do you charge?”

He blew that away with a gesture. “Don't talk so foolish. I grab any excuse to play trucks.” He gestured at the little tractor and cart. “Besides, I owe you wharfage. Those are my traps on your wharf. I'll get them right off.”

“I'm not using the space, you might as well wait till you'd be taking them off anyway.”

“Well, thanks!” He shot out a thick hand. “I'm Ralph Percy. My wife would have been over before this with an invite to supper or something, but she and the kids are away.”

“I haven't been much in the mood for socializing,” said Rosa. “I've been so busy I just crawl under the kelp at sundown, and that's it.”

“That's it for everybody at this time of year, I guess. I'll light your refrigerator up now and check the stove. That oven pilot's a hell of a thing. Gracie Wylie was always coming for me to light it. She never trusted Arnold, thought he'd blow his head off.”

“I can do it—”

But he was already tramping in past her, talking the whole time and not missing a thing. “Hey, you've done some slicking up in here. You buying, or did I hear wrong?”

“No, you heard right.”

“Finest kind! An empty house right next door bothers me. The Wylies were good neighbors, and I remember when Jude lived out here too. He was always good. Great carpenter, too. Of course I was a kid then.” He opened the oven of the gas stove. “Got a wooden match?”

Silently she presented the box to him, and he hunkered before the oven. “Now you turn her on full and press in the button while I hold the match. . . . Your old man's got the right idea. Let the woman come ahead and get things ready. I suppose he'll be out to set that load of gear and take the boat in for some more. . . . There she goes. Keep holding down that button for a minute more.”

“We haven't been up before the board yet,” Rosa said.

“Huh?” He cocked his head up at her. “What board?”

“Whoever says we can fish here or not.”

“Oh hell, you're buying, aren't you? And Jude wouldn't send out any outlaw. At least I don't think he would.”

“Still, it's probably safest to take soundings before we do anything,” Rosa said.

“Go ask Mark if it'll make you any happier. He'll be the one to buy your lobsters, and damn sure nobody's going to buck him. Okay, let go the button. She'll do.” He flopped down on his belly to light the refrigerator. “Got it clean as a whistle under here, I see.” He held another match in place. “You play that guitar up there?”

“Uh-huh.” Rosa leaned against the counter with her arms folded.

“We'll have to get together. I scrape away on the fiddle some, and Pierre Bennett plays the accordion.” There was a small popping retort from the mechanism and he echoed it with a grunt of satisfaction. “There she is.”

He rolled over and sat up. “From Seal Point, huh? At least that's what the boat says.”

“She says right.”

“You know the Bartons out here? They're from Seal Point.”