She waited, but Thea said nothing.
Kay went on. “At Olive’s wedding, I thought, I don’t want to care what people think of me anymore. Maybe I never did care about it much, because, except for you, the people whose good opinion I wanted were taken away, or died. I don’t care about being demure and pretty, because I’m not pretty anyway. If you look at it coldly, you must admit I have very little prospect of not being chaste.”
Thea put out her hand, shaking her head, about to recite for Kay all the ways that mere prettiness did not matter.
But that was not the point! Kay rushed on, to stop her: “All I mean is, that sort of thing doesn’t matter to me. I don’t care what other people do with their own virtue, or not-virtue—unless they are unkind to others while they do it. All I care about is kindness, I can boil it right down to that.”
Thea did not answer. Her forehead had the U-shaped wrinkle Kay seemed so often to provoke, caused by carefully trying to understand the inexplicable. Or pretending to consider the virtues of her wrong argument. After a long moment, she said, quite quietly, “If you gave yourself to the teachings of our Saviour— You do pray every night, don’t you, dear heart?”
Only Mr. Brimner, her long-lost friend, was able to mention God without causing bile to rise up in the back of Kay’s throat. “I’m trying to tell you, I don’t care about God, He means nothing to me—I don’t know if He is real or invented. All I know is the world we live on, sail on, stand on. I can use that as God, if you like. Church means nothing to me either, but I see that it sustains you, and Mr. Brimner gave his life to it, so I carry on attending, to be kind to you both.”
Thea had tears in her eyes again, because she believed that God was listening to Kay and was being very much hurt by what she said.
Kay tried again. “Long ago, when I said I wished I had the service by heart so that I did not have to hold up the prayer book, you said that it was better not to know it by rote, but to consider and mean the words of Communion freshly every time.”
“Did I say that?”
“Yes, and I thought it was very wise.”
Thea laughed a little. “I am glad to seem wise to you!”
“You always do,” Kay said, surprised.
“But you do not heed my wisdom much.” She laid her hand on Kay’s brown forearm.
“I do! I run my life by it! But if I think differently, I must attend to my own thoughts too.”
“You are so like Father,” Thea said.
And then Kay could not talk to her any longer. “I’ll get Aunt Lydia’s milk,” she said, and walked down the veranda to the far end by the kitchen door, first checking that Lena Hubbard was not there to sour everything even more.
It was time for them to be apart, Kay thought. High time for her to be out exploring. Thea loved her, but was tired of her too. You tire even those who love you best, if you are the kind of person Kay knew herself to be, unsatisfied, restless, exhausting. In the ordinary way she would have been married off by now, gone from Thea’s immediate vicinity, and perhaps be easier to bear. And she was no doubt a bad influence on Roddy, who was also willing to argue with his mother, although not yet with Francis. Not that Francis was a stern father, or brother.
She went to the back rooms in search of him, to ask which route would be best. She could not tell Thea what was in her mind, but she could tell Francis.
* * *
—
Francis was sitting in the accounts room without the lamps lit. Easy to talk in that shaded room. They did not even have to look at each other, there was no need. He was so quick to respond that Kay wondered if he might have thought of this for Aren himself.
“I can put him in the way of passage Tuesday evening, when the Prince Arthur comes in for Boston. Kinney will find us a ship in Boston.”
“He needs to leave from Halifax.” If she tried to make him come to Yarmouth, he would not.
“Ah. Well, I’d talk to Hilton, in Halifax, get him onto one of the Lakes. Lake of Flowers, that’s one of his. Or there’s the Constellation—when did I see that she is leaving…” He ran a finger down the sailing list on his desk. “Monday evening! That is quick. Might be for the best. It will be the luck of the draw. Hilton will see him fitted up and find something for Aren to do below decks. He knows his way round a ship, he’ll be useful.”
“But I want him to have proper passage, and a cabin.”
Francis shook his head. “It’s best if he finds a berth below.”
“He’s my brother. He’ll be travelling with me.”
“Oh, you are going too, are you?”
Kay looked at him, without answering.
After a pause, Francis said, “Do you want to fight the world, or do you want to send Aren back to his people?”
“I can’t send him back alone. I don’t think he’d make it.”
Francis shook his head, agreeing. “Doubt it.”
“He’s not feckless or—or irresponsible, it’s not that.”
Francis seemed surprised. “Of course not! Only he’s sad, and ashamed of himself these days, and it takes a certain gall to get around the world at a young age. Gall like yours.”
Kay decided that he’d meant that to please her, although his flat, expressionless face did not change.
“I had it too,” he said. “A good supply of gall.” He turned to open the cupboard and pulled his strongbox out of the shelf, unlocked it and lifted the papers. “You know where you’re headed?” He counted out bills to a hundred dollars, fit them together, tapped them against the desk to order their edges and then continued: “Pulo Anna, the Sonsorol group, south of Palau…”
Kay nodded. She and Aren had found Palau on the globe so often that its name had worn off.
“This will not see you the whole way there,” he said. “But it’s all I’ve got on hand. I’ll arrange a bank draft in Wellington for the same again.”
She began to protest, but Francis raised a hand. “When you run out, wire me, and I’ll arrange your passage home—and Aren’s too, if that’s how it transpires.”
“Must I get a passport for him?”
“He’ll stay on the ship most of the time—the seamen’s book will be enough.”
“That’s good, then.”
She did not know how to ask him not to tell Thea what she planned to do.
He put the bills in a little leather wallet and handed it across the desk. “I’m off to Elm Street for the night,” he said. “Things to do in town in the morning—afraid I won’t have time to discuss this with Thea before I go. But I’ll have a word with Jerry Melanson and he’ll run you in to meet the ten fifteen, if that suits you.”
Kay nodded, and held out her hand. They were formal with each other always, and did not hug or kiss, but his clasp was strong and warm. “Thank you,” she said.
“Give Aren my blessing, if it’s any use to him,” Francis told her. “He has a home here too, whenever we are fortunate enough to see him again.”
* * *
—
Kay ran quietly up the attic stairs. Dust motes moved restlessly in the last glimmer of sun through the slanted stomacher windows. Her small steamer trunk—very light, with nothing in it. She could carry it down easily, and she could ask Jerry Melanson to take it to the wagon for her once it was packed.
There on a shelf was her mother’s old valise. She put her hand through its black bone handle, felt again the clasp of a hand, like her mother’s hand holding hers. It was small—she opened the trunk and put the valise inside. It would do to hold her books.
She packed her dinner dress and two lawn dresses, white and grey-striped, and a blue serge smock, and then went to the closet and shook out the fawn linen. It had hung itself dry into an almost unwrinkled state. That went in too. She could wear her brown twill for the train. Two cotton nightdresses, underclothes, cotton hose. She p
acked her silk stockings and took them out again. Then she packed them again. Before they got there, all that way across the world, she might need silk stockings somewhere. But very little else. The small green pocket Odyssey Mr. Brimner had given her, her notebook, two books to read on the long way over (Middlemarch, good and long, and Penny Plain for light relief); her sponge bag, with her sponge from Eleuthera and a bar of the rose soap Thea had bought last year in Paris. Who knew when she would have good French soap again. The silver cup from Dawlish was on the dresser, and she added it.
Her blue linen coat and skirt, in case there was church, and two pairs of shoes—there. Three of the trunk’s fitted drawers were empty. Never mind—if the trunk was lighter, Jerry would not make noise carting it down the kitchen stairs. She went down that way to see if he was still in the kitchen. He was not, and nor was Lena Hubbard, thank goodness. Seeing smoke rising on the back step from his pipe, she stepped out and asked Jerry to help her in a while. No need to ask him not to tell; he never spoke unless spoken to, and only would answer a direct question with yes or no.
Back in her room, she remembered her toothbrush, the nice red one she’d bought at Filene’s in Boston, and added it to her sponge bag. Then, meaning to find Thea, but not to say goodbye, she opened the door again—and there was Roddy, standing in his pyjamas, his hair an upright shock. He saw the packed trunk, not yet closed.
“Are you going away?” he asked, quiet in the evening hall.
“Yes,” she said. She would not lie outright.
He stood thinking. “With Aren too?”
“Yes,” she said. “But I can’t tell Thea.”
He shook his head.
She looked at him, helpless to explain. “I’m sorry—I have to go, we have to.”
He nodded this time. He did not ask anything at all, the dear and private heart.
“I wish you could come with us—it would be so useful to have you! But you must finish school, that is the first thing.”
He clenched his fists. “I don’t want to stay in school, school is stupid. I would learn much more by going with you. You hated school, and Aren never even finished. Why must I?”
“You can’t understand how it was for us. People feel they know you, because you’re from here.”
“I was not born at sea,” he said sadly.
“Well, neither were we, that does not matter a tick—but your parents are Yarmouth-born and ours were not.”
“But I am odd, you know.”
She laughed. She did know. “I wish I could take you,” she said.
“Perhaps you will let me know where you settle, then, and I will come and meet you,” he said, as if confirming a dinner engagement.
She laughed, as quiet as he was. “I will write to you, I promise.”
He shook his head. “With your scrawly hand? You might as well write in Greek. Please ask Aren to transcribe your letters!” He came forward in a rush and hugged her, and then vanished down the dark hallway.
Nine o’clock. Time. Kay went to Thea’s room and found her in bed already, propped on cushions with her pink leather-bound New Testament. “Francis went to town,” she said, moving the marker. “I’ve taken a holiday and put myself to bed early.”
“That’s good. You work too hard, you must be careful not to exhaust yourself.”
“Nonsense!” Thea patted the bed. “Sit down, you haven’t told me enough about Aren, how he looks, how he is. Is he very thin?”
“No, I think he is in good health. Good spirits,” Kay said, lying carefully. She must not say anything portentous, or show sadness.
“I must go down to Halifax myself, and try to persuade him to come home,” Thea said.
Kay bent to kiss her foot, and the humped length of her shin beneath the blankets. “He loves you,” she said. “And he said he misses Roddy something fierce.” A small lie; not a lie, because true.
She bent over the bed again to kiss her sister’s damask cheek, wishing she could just tell her everything but knowing she could not, and said, “Sleep well, dear Thetty.”
Thea caught her hand and kissed it. “You never call me that anymore. You were the sweetest little girl, Kay, so funny and bright. I often thought of that when you were having such a difficult—well. You were always very decisive. Such terrific frowning when your will was crossed. Your eyebrows made little ridges!”
Kay got up, patting Thea’s hand, no longer gripped by an agony of wishing to tell. Being told how grouchy you have always been is enough to cure a person of sentimentality.
Now it was time.
Jerry Melanson strained at the trunk, caught it in both hands and headed down the back staircase. Kay raced down the front stairs to delay Lena Hubbard, in case she might be coming early from Aunt Lydia’s room, where she spent the evenings seeing to the old body.
Pushing the door just ajar, Kay saw her humming to herself, busy with a cloth at the medicine table, wiping bottles, leaving everything clean and orderly. She did her job neatly. Kay stood watching for a moment.
Lena turned from the bottles to the bed. “One more half hitch for the old bitch,” she said under her breath, and she caught Aunt Lydia roughly around the waist and rolled her over a quarter, shoving a long pillow along her back to hold her in place.
A moaning exhalation came from the body’s mouth. Lena smacked the old woman’s leg and said, “None of your noise, now.”
Backing quickly away into the telephone alcove under the stairs, Kay found she had no breath. The ordinary cruelty of it shocked and did not shock her. Lena had always been one who liked to have power over others. And Aunt Lydia could not know. Did that make it all right to hurt her? Why lavish care on this old, empty body, yet consign Pilot to death?
She should tell Thea about it. But if Lena had to leave, Thea would have no help at all, and that was not tenable. All right, it meant that Kay would have to come home soon and be the help.
But first, she could go back to sea.
4
The Constellation
At 6 a.m., a white sky, bright even for May. The train shuddered into the station and Kay moved gingerly, shifting her legs to see if anything was still asleep before gathering herself and rising. Three or four other sad souls who’d made the overnight run in the one passenger carriage were stretching and finding their hats. She left her trunk in the luggage bay and walked down the timber pier, searching for the Hilton office. She’d been there once with Francis, but could not quite remember the spot.
A long line of clattering cars went screeling along black rails into dark sheds, pushed rather than pulled by a wheezing engine car. In shadowy corners, dock boys were sleeping, two or three leaning up against each other, caps down and hands shoved into their armpits for warmth. Any of them could have been Aren.
Seagulls wheeled where she walked, hoping for cake, perhaps. One big white bird stood plump ahead of her and refused to move as she bore down on it, until Kay stamped her blue boot and it deigned to lift off on spreading, lazy wings, crying sheeee, who does she think she is?
* * *
—
All right, that was done. With some relief, she stood outside on the boardwalk again. Captain Hilton’s office had been stuffy, all the windows painted shut. Probably he’d had enough sea air to last his lifetime.
Francis had telephoned ahead last evening, and Captain Hilton greeted her by saying he had found accommodation for them on the Constellation (she thought perhaps it was by turfing an officer out of a berth), sailing at 4 p.m. Two fares, one way, came to seventy-five dollars, by Hilton’s favourable reckoning.
She was worried about money: she did not intend to wire Francis for more, ever, and they would need to charter a boat at the other end, or live for who knew how long while they worked out what to do. So before going to find Aren, she took her luggage to a little shop she’d often noticed on visits to Halifax,
a dusty emporium of bits and bobs with a discreet sign in the window: WE BUY FOR CASH. She must always have known she would be needing this shop.
Two men stood behind the counter, not eccentric or Dickensian, only businessmen. One with a hand-held tally, like an abacus in a Chinese shop. They bought the silver cup—that brought five dollars. Her silver brush set, ten. Her pearls, which had been Aunt Queen’s, with knots between each one, for forty.
That was more like it, but still not enough. She sold them her broadcloth coat with the muskrat collar, and her watch, and in the end her steamer trunk. A suitcase would do for her, and they offered one they had on hand as part of the deal, a lady’s case in strong butterscotch leather. Her clothes fitted easily in the case, her books in the blue valise. And of course this divestiture was not permanent, she could come back and have nice things again, anything she ever wanted or needed. She had ninety-five dollars extra now, so they were altogether a hundred and thirty to the good. She did the arithmetic again. Or rather, a hundred and twenty. Enough, anyway, to feel beforehand with the world.
Since they’d only offered a dollar and a half for it, she kept the pearl pin that Francis had given her that Christmas in Shanghai. She wondered if Francis had ever yet remembered that she was with him in Boston when he bought it for Thea, to celebrate the baby who died in Eleuthera. She tumbled her things from the trunk into the cases (slightly sad to let the steamer trunk go, a very fancy one from Paris) and went back out to the cabbie, patiently waiting, and directed him on to Gottingen Street. There, she could unload for herself—which made her glad to be freed of the trunk after all. She arranged her two cases on the stoop, hemming herself in.
She had to wait for an hour, but at last Aren came whistling around the corner.
She stood up to wave.
The Difference Page 28
