The Glendower Legacy (32 page)

“I still can’t see a damned thing,” Chandler cried over the wind. The waves seemed heavier, higher with each sweeping crash.

“You keep it pointed that way, lad, and you soon will see something. Just keep paddling that way,” he pointed like the ancient mariner gone to sea again, soaked, windblown. “I’ll wait until you’re well under way, closing on the beach, then I’m gone. Just keep paddling.”

“Can you take off in this weather?”

“Don’t worry about me, sport, I’ll be in my own bed yet this night.”

“What do we do when we get to the house?”

Kendrick laughed, his head shaking, rain flying: “Wait. You’re stuck, the chief’ll be in touch with you … Now get going.” He turned away and fought against the rain and wind to climb back up into the plane. Before he pulled the hatch after him, he turned, gave them the thumb’s-up signal. Then the door slammed shut and he was gone.

C
HANDLER UNTIED THE RAFT WHICH
continued bobbing aggravatingly against the pontoon, keeping him off balance. He poked at the plane with the oar, pushing off, and the raft slowly broke away as if leaving a magnetic field. Polly grabbed the other oar and set to flailing away at the black water. Chandler began sweating under the raincoat and sweater, his body alternately hot and clammy. Quite suddenly, the raft was well clear of the aircraft. It seemed, as he struggled, spending his breath and beginning to ache, that he wasn’t getting anywhere, but the plane kept getting smaller, the yellow glow of the foglights further off. Polly heaved quietly away on her own oar, steadily holding her own, while Chandler felt the kind of physical stress he associated with playing football years ago in hot weather: somehow, he wanted to avoid any explosion in his chest cavity or his brain.

“You’re working too hard,” Polly called, stopping, waving at him to put up the oar. “You’re panicking. We’re going to get there all right … rest a minute, Colin. Don’t kill yourself.” Water was collecting around their feet.

Chandler looked up again. Behind him the yellow glow hung like a ghost over the water. Polly was directing the light toward the beach, breathing hard: “Hey, I see it, I see the damned beach!” She turned smiling, her face wet, hair plastered down, looking about eighteen.

After the breather, they bent to the task of rowing, watching the beach take grayish shape in the beam of light. Chandler was cold, wet, soaked through, water to his ankles, sneezing, but he forgot it all at the glorious sensation of the raft’s bottom scraping and bouncing on the rough, sandy, rocky slope of beach … He sagged inside his wet clothing, feeling old and shrunken, heart pounding: it struck him that his poor heart had been overtaxed ever since the whole insane ordeal had begun … Well, maybe it was good for you. Maybe.

“Colin, we did it, we’re here!”

He nodded, grinning.

“Darling,” she said, staggering toward him, bumping into the duffel bag, “you look just a little green about the gills—are you all right?”

Chandler nodded: “Fit as a fiddle, of course.” He stepped out of the raft, immediately sank to his knees in a foot of water, icy water that pierced him like broken glass. Sand swirled up, settled inside his shoes. He managed to right himself, grinned against his better judgment: “Just like MacArthur …” Standing in the water he reached into the raft, tugged at the duffel bag which lay on its lumpy side in the water at the bottom of the raft. Thank God Prosser had wrapped the documents and the portrait in layers of oilskin. With a final heave he yanked it out of the raft, swinging it ahead of him up onto the sand. Polly, poised on the edge of the raft, fell gratefully into his arms. Together they staggered, waded up out of the surf, dragging the raft behind them, like a pair of creatures frantically speeding up the process of evolution. He dropped the raft, pushed it away from him: “I’ll pick this up tomorrow.”

They stood, holding each other on the beach, shivering against one another, teeth chattering, their faces ice cold, the rain spitting and blowing against them, and out on the water the yellow glow was gone, without their having noticed the departure itself.

“Thank God, we’re here,” she whispered, half crying tears of relief, “and you’re holding me …”

“Well, we’re safe, anyway. Are you okay?”

“Sure. I’m a tough little bastard.” She laughed, wiped her nose. “Let’s find the path.” She picked up the flashlight and he took the duffel bag after fetching it a smart kick in the side. Damned bloody thing: it had become a grotesque extension of his right hand.

They pulled their raincoats up over their heads and leaned into the wind, trudging along the wet sand, the beam of light swinging ahead of them, pointing the way. The cliffs were laid back from the beach, a dark green blur through the rain: there was no real smell but the distinct odor of damp coldness and the wet wool of his sweater. There were slippery disks of ice in the sand and the walk toward the path was agonizingly slow, punctuated by Chandler’s loud curses which replaced the quiet, awful, windblown fear of the plane and the raft.

“Good Christ!” he muttered, craning his neck as Polly tilted the lamp. “It’s straight up …” He dropped the bag which fell over and began to roll down the beach. “Straight bloody up! I’m no mountain goat, you may have noticed—”

“Don’t grouse,” she said. “You only make yourself feel worse.” She paused, directing the light at the path. “I admit it is rather steep …”

The path rose abruptly, apparently at right angles to the beach, snaking upward among the wet, harsh shrubbery, between the rock facing which glistened treacherously on either side. Chandler picked up the bag yet again and began the climb. Occasional moss-covered stones provided handholds which he used to lever himself painstakingly onward: the footing was not only slippery and muddy but dotted with patches of ice made worse by the steady rain which coursed down the path, as well as inside his collar. His feet were raw from rubbing the inside of his wet shoes. He kept finding himself on his hands and knees, trying to keep from falling ass over duffel bag back down the hill and onto the beach. How long, oh Lord, how long?

“Why did we climb it, you ask,” Polly puffed from somewhere behind him. “Because it was there!”

Chandler tried to laugh but his mouth was dry and nothing came out. Anyway, he was too tired to laugh. The angle of ascent never seemed to lessen, just went on, wet and icy and muddy and what in the name of God had he ever done to deserve this? “Shine the goddamn light up ahead,” he shouted, “see where the hell we are—”

“Don’t be testy and ruin everything, Colin. This is an adventure—”

“Oh, shit,” he cried, slipping suddenly backward, clutching the bag, free arm flailing until he found a foothold in the rocks.

“Come on, Nimrod, we’re almost there.”

“Don’t be cheery,” he said. “I can’t bear that—not cheeriness.”

“You have mud all over your face.”

“Ah, yes, I expect that happened when I was pushing the bag ahead of me with my nose. In fact, my dear girl, I have mud in places where—”

“I never knew I had places, yes, yes. Very, very old.”

He lay panting, clutching the duffel bag to his mudpacked raincoat: “But true, nonetheless.” She sat down next to him, drew her knees up, rested her chin on them.

“Maybe we should, you know,” she said, “take a little rest for a moment.” She licked the rain off her upper lip and peeked over at him. “Every so often I can’t quite remember how we got here …”

Chandler grunted: “Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert …”

After a while she took a deep breath, said: “Well, can you start again?”

“I’m not altogether sure.”

“You take the light. I can push the bag—”

“No, my dear, I’m only out of shape, not actually dead.” He stood up, balancing precariously. “Come on.”

It went more quickly the second time. Ten minutes of hard slogging brought them to the top where they stood gasping, sucking deep gulps of cold air into tight, aching lungs. They were standing on a dark lawn and the house itself loomed indistinctly another hundred yards away, up a gently sloping rise. Steeling themselves, they set off wordlessly, trudging across the slick grass, following the jiggling beam of light as if it were a leash and they were being wound inward.

Chandler’s vision blacked out every so often, leaving him with a faint pinpoint of light and shadow, a goal, toward which he kept marching, one slogging, squishing footstep after another, shoes apparently trying to suck themselves from his feet. Polly went on, sturdy, uncomplaining, a marvel. She was slightly in the lead and he watched her, tried to absorb her determination and energy: she was the stronger at this point and it was indicative of the change he’d undergone that it never occurred to him to feel ashamed, irritated, or frustrated that she was there ahead of him, seeing him through the ordeal. He was just damned glad …

The house was a long red brick and gray-stone building, gabled somewhat excessively, fronted along its entire length by a porch with square brick pillars, backed at one end by leaded glass French windows like sleeping eyes, drapes drawn behind them; hooded chimney pots cluttered across the slate slabbed roof, heavy lead gutters, the architecture generally an example of the kind of 1920s brutality of weight and size, here for the purpose of withstanding the onslaughts of the Atlantic storms themselves, yet a building whose very overtness, like the presence of Marie Dressier in an old movie, finally overcomes its form and substance to achieve a variety of timeless grace. Lions with clawed feet sat at the corners of the second-floor balcony which was in fact the top of the porch. Standing in the rain, holding the light, Chandler imagined for just an instant a porch full of women in pastel frocks and men in white flannels, tennis racquets in hand, club ties waffling in the cool ocean breezes, a summer weekend fifty years before, but the images were soon gone and Polly was calling to him from the shelter of the porch. “Come on, crazy man, get out of the rain …”

The immense oak door, banded by black wrought-iron hinges like straps, bore a brass plate engraved with the single word in artless block capitals: STRONGHOLD. The key worked smoothly and the huge door swung back with a creak from the massive hinges … It was like a replay of their arrival at the house in Maine, only on a much grander scale, as if they were stepping through a series of ever enlarging mirrors, doomed endlessly to run away, afraid, always repeating themselves.

Stronghold was in perfect running order: obviously someone on Cape Breton must have been engaged to come across the water at regular intervals and keep order, tend to maintaining the pipes and whatnot. An hour later Polly and Chandler were bathed, wrapped in huge bath towels, their clothes drying before the stove in the kitchen, a fire roaring in yet another library fireplace, more books gleaming darkly and gilt-stamped. “Hollywood must do Prosser’s decorating,” Polly remarked. Rain rattled like stones on the windows.

The duffel bag was unpacked upstairs where another fire was roaring. The freezer offered an array of frozen steaks, packages of vegetables, orange juice; but they settled for coffee and toast smeared with butter. They savored the steaming coffee in the library. They were grateful for the fire. They huddled close to the crackle, felt the heat full on their faces, sneezed and laughed and moaned over their exhaustion.

“You look just about done in,” she sniffled. When she turned away from the fire, he could see her breath like smoke.

“In this case, looks are not deceiving.” He leaned back against a chair, stretched his cold, damp feet to the fire, pulled his towel closer like a toga, yawned mightily. “Here is where we make our stand, my dear, and fight it out, get the wagons in a circle … I’ve run just about as far as I can …”

“You’re right, of course,” she said. “I think there’s nothing left to do but wait it out.” She made an impatient face: “I wish I understood what Prosser is up to. God, it just baffles me—everything about him sets me on edge—”

“Don’t be so hard on him. I keep thinking, what if he’s lying in the house back there, shot to hell by that crazy son of a bitch … and if he’s dead, what the hell do we do then? How do we get out of here? Wait until somebody comes over to check the pipes? Just hope for the goddamned best … I tried the telephone, it’s the one thing that doesn’t work worth a damn.” He frowned at the fire, sneezed.

Finally she said: “Come on, we’re beat. Let’s go to bed.” In the darkened bedroom they climbed into a large oak fourposter, pulled the comforters up around their chins, and watched the shadows from a newly laid fire march around the walls like sentries on guard duty. He thought back over the past few nights: the couch in Polly’s living room, Percy Davis’s inn on the Maine coast, the night spent outdoors … my God,
that
was last night. Polly whispered to him, folded sleepily within the arc of his left arm. Outside the storm cursed and hammered at the house. “I know a poem,” she said softly, “from twenty years ago, from college freshman days … listen …

Bolt and bar the shutter

For the foul winds blow:

Our minds are at their best this night,

And I seem to know

That everything outside us is

Mad as the mist and snow …”

He kissed her, said: “I’m not so sure about our minds.” Then he closed his eyes, hugged her, and went to sleep, as if it were all exactly as planned.

They made love in the early gray light, the room still snug from the heat of the embers in the fireplace. Pale shafts of iciness slid like knives through the thick leaded windowpanes; the carved lions on the balcony, watching the sea, cast bulky shadows. They slept awhile longer, then he got up and padded down the cold hallway, half awake but anxious to be up and about.

No radio, no telephone, absolutely cut off so far as he could ascertain. He took bread out of the freezer and made toast. Coffee perking: the smell of normality calmed his early morning nerves. He had climbed back into the dried-out trousers, stiff shoes, and heavy oiled sweater which had apparently flourished with the previous day’s treatment. He sat munching toast, staring out into the fog, waiting for her to come down. She finally appeared in Levis and boots and a fresh heavy wool shirt nattily tailored with epaulettes and a profusion of buttoned flaps. She smelled faintly of shampoo and had a succulent moist look, freshly showered, pink-cheeked, and ready to eat a horse. He made more toast and as she ate she watched him, smiling. He felt her protection falling softly around him, felt her pleasure in it and the bond growing between them, but neither of them was tempted to comment on it. Their relationship seemed to
be,
something which already existed. It struck him as altogether pleasant, peculiarly liberating.