A Running Tide

by Ann Swinfen

  Grimly Tirza helped him over the edge of the boat and through the shallows. She took his jacket and the food from him as she handed him his crutches, and led him to the edge of the shingle beach where short grass grew between bayberry bushes. Here he collapsed on a projecting boulder and caught her by the wrist. He pulled her down beside him and she came down awkwardly on her knees.

  ‘Tirza, I’m so sorry. It was stupid of me. I can’t think... Your name, I don’t know why, I thought it was a boy’s name. Like Ezra. And your hair is so short.’ He ran his hand over the dark stubble her father trimmed for her every Saturday night. She jerked her head away and tried to stand up, but he kept a firm grip on her wrist with the other hand.

  ‘I know I’m skinny,’ she said bitterly. ‘You don’t have to explain.’

  Sandy’s eye gleamed briefly, but she did not see it.

  ‘You’ll grow.’ He laughed softly. ‘Of course I should have realised. No boy of your age would have been so kind. Or have read so shrewdly. How old are you, anyway?’

  ‘Twelve. Going on thirteen in the fall,’ she said gruffly.

  ‘That’s a wonderful age and an awful age. Neither one thing nor t’other. Neither child nor adult. I remember it vividly. And, oh Lord! I offered you a beer! What would your mother say?’

  ‘I don’t have a mother, but my grandmother would go crazy.’ She gave a small muffled laugh.

  He slid his hand down from her wrist and took her hand in his.

  ‘Am I forgiven?’ He lifted the hand, brown and weathered but – now that he looked at it – definitely a girl’s hand. He kissed the palm lightly.

  She turned and looked at him suddenly, her lips slightly parted, her eyes astonished.

  ‘Yes,’ she said faintly. ‘Of course you’re forgiven.’

  ‘Good.’ He laid her hand tenderly on the top of the boulder and patted it, then struggled to his feet. ‘Let’s make a fresh start. Tell me about this island.’

  11

  Maine: Summer 1942

  The cove where they landed was on the north-west corner of Mustinegus. The island, a rough oval in shape running north-south, resembled a meat platter, raised on the east side and tilting down on the west. This tilting of the land meant that most of the island turned its back on the Atlantic gales, cradling the warm old farm lands to the west and south. The eastern side was still clothed with ancient woods of spruce and fir, with a few deciduous trees scattered amongst them, oak and hickory, rock maple and sumac. These woods ended abruptly at the top of the steep cliffs which dropped a hundred feet or more into roaring Atlantic breakers. Over millions of years the sea had worn hollows and caves in the eastern cliffs which echoed and redoubled the fury of the waves, so that the whole island was alive with the sound. To Sandy it felt like standing in the centre of some primaeval orchestra where both players and instruments were the forces of nature.

  Tirza led him along the faint traces of a path to the edge of the forest, above the cliff.

  ‘Be careful!’ she said, raising her voice over the sound of the waves. ‘It’s a long way down.’

  Steadying himself with a hand on a huge rock maple whose roots twined out of the side of the cliff and back again, seeking anchorage and nourishment, Sandy peered over into the boiling icy cauldron at the foot of the cliff. He thought he had no fear of heights, but a feeling of vertigo swept over him immediately. Flying itself had never worried him, though he had a healthy fear of the German fighter planes. But the sheer raw power of that pounding ocean, every hour of every day for ever... the thought of it numbed him. He eased himself back from the cliff and gripped his crutches with hands that were trembling.

  Tirza turned away from the woods and made her way back to the path.

  ‘This leads to the first of the farms. Most of the berry bushes are along here.’

  A hundred yards further on, she pointed to a great thicket of low, sprawling bushes which spread their fresh growth across a level stretch of ground and lapped around the feet of the surrounding trees like water.

  ‘Blueberries. Some of the best in these parts. Hardly anyone ever comes to pick them now, though I sailed over last year and picked for one day.’

  Sandy leaned over as far as the crutches would allow and lifted a branch.

  ‘There doesn’t seem to be much here.’

  ‘These little green berries, see? They’ll fatten up more yet, and turn dark blue when they’re ready.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Oh, a couple of months yet. It looks like a good year. I might come out again.’

  ‘Are there any other sorts of berries?’

  ‘There aren’t any cranberries worth picking. They need boggy ground. We have them on our marsh up behind Libby’s Beach.’

  ‘That’s your land, is it?’

  ‘My uncle and my dad own the farm. My uncle Tobias farms it and my dad is a lobsterman.’

  ‘So that’s how you come to be a crab-fisher.’

  Tirza shrugged.

  ‘You don’t need a licence for crab-fishing. I earned the money to buy Stormy Petrel that way.’

  ‘It must be hard work.’

  ‘I don’t mind hard work.’

  They walked on towards the ruined farm and Tirza pointed out cloudberries and wild raspberries.

  ‘It’s the blueberries that are the best, though.’ She stopped beside the fallen remains of a stone wall. ‘This was one of the farms.’

  It was a forlorn place, with the wooden barn collapsed and the roof of the house sliding off. Weeds grew thickly where the cows had once been brought in for milking. A faded green shutter, hanging on by one hinge, swung to and fro with a plaintive sound.

  ‘When did people last live on the island?’ Sandy asked.

  ‘I think the other two farms were abandoned about twelve-fifteen years ago. People settled here when the colonists first came to New England, and they stayed right on till then. My grandmother said that when the Depression came, two of the families decided to quit and move to the mainland. The soil is good here, but it was tough having to go back and forth by boat to the mainland with the produce.’

  ‘And this farm here?’

  ‘They were cousins of the Swansons, who own a farm near us. It was the hurricane of ‘38 that drove them out. I don’t know if you heard about it, but it did an awful lot of damage. I can remember it. I guess I was about eight or nine. Boats picked up and thrown miles inland. Pieces of straw driven into hardwood trees like nails. This family managed to get off the island with their cows and waited out the storm with the Swansons. It was a crazy storm. In some places one part of a forest was blown down flat but all around the other trees weren’t touched. Or one house would be smashed into matchsticks and the ones on either side were fine. After the storm the family came back, thinking the forest would have taken the brunt of the storm and the farm would be safe. They found there wasn’t a tree down in the woods, but most of the roof was off the farmhouse and the barn was just as ruined as you see it now. And all the sheep were gone. Not a tuft of wool to be found. Nobody knows if they were swept away or if they were so scared they ran into the sea. So the family gave up the farm and moved away.’

  ‘That’s a sad story.’

  Tirza looked at him straight. ‘It’s a hard country to live in. Folks who come here in the summer only see that it’s beautiful. They don’t understand that it’s a dangerous country too.’

  They poked around the farm for a while, then went down to a grassy space just above the low tumbled rocks of the west shore facing the mainland. Sitting here they ate the sandwiches Pierre had provided and Tirza bit into an apple while Sandy drank his beer.

  ‘Before the settlers arrived,’ said Tirza, ‘the Abenaki used to come here in the summers.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The local Indian nation. They spent their winters inland, hunting otter and beavers. At the beginning of spring they came back to their summer settlements on the coast to plant crops and catch fish. They would come out here in
their birch-bark canoes to catch seabirds and collect their eggs. And hunt seals – the seals still bask on those rocks along the cove where we landed.’

  ‘How do you know the Indians came here?’

  ‘My grandmother told me.’

  ‘The one who wouldn’t have approved of the beer?’

  ‘Oh, no. That’s my dad’s mother – my Libby grandmother. She’s lived with my dad and me since my mother died. I meant my other grandmother, Christina O’Neill. She studied law at Vassar and married the schoolteacher, and now she lives in a cabin in the woods on the far side of Flamboro. One of the Abenaki summer villages used to be in her forest, near where her house is now.’

  ‘She sounds an interesting person.’

  ‘She’s half Abenaki,’ said Tirza, a little defiantly.

  ‘Is she, indeed? So you’re...a quarter Indian? No, an eighth?’

  ‘Ayuh.’

  ‘And it was an old tradition that they used to come out here to the island?’

  ‘Oh, it’s more than a tradition. I’ve found arrowheads and fish-hooks here. And part of a broken cookpot once, too.’

  Sandy became excited.

  ‘Any chance we might find more? Where did you find them?’

  ‘Just a piece from where you’re sitting. Under that thicket of birch, where the ground is soft. You see that mound? There’s an Indian shell heap under there.’

  Sandy limped over to where she pointed, and began stirring up the soil with the end of his crutch. There was nothing to be seen but dead leaves and broken shells and an earthworm heaving itself hastily out of the way. Tirza watched him tolerantly for a while, then she knelt down at his feet and began patting the ground with her palms and digging gently with a piece of stick. After a few minutes, she picked something out of the ground, squinted at it, blew off the worst of the dirt, then carried it down to a rock jutting out over the water.

  ‘Have you found something?’ Sandy was incredulous.

  She did not answer, but lay on her stomach, rinsing the object in the sea. Then she rolled over and held it up to him, a glinting silver-grey object, its wet faceted sides catching and reflecting the sun.

  ‘It’s an arrowhead. Well, I’m damned! Just like that! How did you do it?’ He cradled the arrowhead in his palm, tilting it to catch the light. It was perfect, an exquisite gem not more than an inch long.

  ‘I just seem to have a feel for it,’ said Tirza, getting up and brushing the bits of dead leaf off her shorts. ‘That would be used for shooting birds – ducks and such. That’s why it’s so small.’

  ‘It’s beautiful. What workmanship! Think of making that with nothing but stone tools.’

  ‘Doesn’t make any difference. A well-made stone tool is just as good as any metal tool you care to name. Girna has an Abenaki knife made of obsidian. Don’t find it round here. Obsidian was traded hundreds of miles, it was so precious. She thinks it’s a surgeon’s knife. It cuts so fine, it makes a steel knife seem like a blunt saw. What matters in making a tool is the skill of the maker’s hands and the strength of his spirit. That is what the Indian nations believe.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, looking at her thoughtfully. ‘Yes, I’m sure you’re right.’ He held the arrowhead out to her delicately between finger and thumb.

  ‘Oh no. I want you to keep it. To remember the island.’

  ‘I shall treasure it,’ he said. He wrapped it in his handkerchief and placed it carefully in the pocket of his shirt.

  On the last morning of the Shakers’ visit, Tirza wandered around the stalls looking at the remaining goods on sale. Quite a few pieces of furniture had been sold, including the cradle and most of the chairs. The hotel guests and other summer people had bought practically all the embroidered tablecloths and oval boxes. It was on Saturday that most of the local people came, too busy during the week to spare the time. Farmers’ wives were fingering the fine woollen blankets, checked or striped in green and blue. Some of their husbands were there too, looking at the tools. She saw Walter Pelham counting out the money for a new spade.

  Abigail had sent Tirza to buy a broom. The Shakers were famous for the quality of their brooms, and Abigail bought hers nowhere else. Tirza had been given strict instructions as to width of head and length of handle, but she didn’t find brooms very enthralling. Instead she lingered by the small wooden goods: flatware trays, darning mushrooms, rolling pins, babies’ rattles, and the thin oval boxes. No one had bought the set of five boxes painted with country scenes. For the first time she noticed that the tapering pile had to be arranged the right way round, because the scene was carried on from one box to the next. Someone had disturbed the pile. Carefully she turned two of the boxes round so that they matched up with the other three.

  ‘Hi there.’ It was the girl from West Virginia.

  ‘Hi.’

  Even after nearly a week of living rough in a wagon, the girl looked immaculately clean and tidy in her floor-length mauve dress with its white collar and long white apron. Only her poke bonnet was wayward. Tirza was suddenly conscious of her work-grimed hands and less than clean shorts. She put her hands behind her back.

  ‘Have you had a good week here?’

  ‘Great. Kinda like a vacation, y’know? Not so many chores here as in the community. Y’all sure are lucky to live here all the time.’

  ‘I guess so.’

  ‘I just wish...’ The girl looked yearningly out of the window at the ocean.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Why, I just wish I could go swimmin’. Ain’t never seed the ocean before. I’d like to feel the sea water on my skin. But Brother Enoch says it ain’t seemly.’

  ‘It’s pretty cold,’ said Tirza by way of comfort.

  ‘I wouldn’t care. Used to swim nakid in the crick at home. Jumpin’ Jehozaphat but that was cold!’

  The girl suddenly seemed to hear herself and clapped her hands over her mouth. Her eyes rolled around, checking to see if she had been overheard. She mumbled something and ran off. Tirza touched the pile of boxes with her fingertip and sighed. Then she turned away to look for Abigail’s broom.

  ‘Hello there.’

  Sandy hopped across the slippery ballroom floor cautiously. He was getting more proficient, but the rubber tips of the crutches squeaked and slithered on the polished wood.

  ‘Are you interested in the boxes? I noticed them myself.’

  ‘I like the farm scenes,’ said Tirza. ‘It looks like my uncle Tobias’s farm. And these boxes are so light, you wouldn’t believe.’

  She picked up the smallest one and handed it to him. He balanced himself carefully and took it from her.

  ‘Amazing. I wonder how they make them.’

  ‘I guess they steam the wood before they bend it. Like boat building. You can do most anything with wood when it’s steamed.’

  She placed the box carefully back on the top of the pile, aligning the painting.

  ‘So long. I’ve got to buy a broom for my grandmother.’

  ‘The Indian grandmother, or the teetotal grandmother?’

  Tirza laughed.

  ‘Not my Indian grandmother.’

  She walked back along the beach, because she was stopping off at the farm to help with the start of the strawberry picking. When she reached the farm, Harriet, Tobias, Sam and Simon were all in the strawberry field which lay just inside the farm gate, next to the county road. Tirza left the broom on the porch and collected a basket from the grain shed.

  ‘There aren’t many ready yet, are there?’ she said to Harriet as she squatted down in the adjacent row.

  ‘No, but it’s going to be a good crop later. Just see how many more are coming.’

  Strawberry picking, Tirza had found, was almost the only thing that became more difficult as you grew older. She could still remember herself as a small child when she had first helped with the picking. She must have been about five. It had been easy then to squat down and pick straight into the basket – her eyes on a level, it seemed, with the plants themsel
ves. She couldn’t really have been that low down, but she knew she had never felt tired at the strawberry picking in those days, only baking hot in the sun and ready for a drink whenever one was offered.

  Nowadays she just could not find a comfortable position. It was even worse than last year – she must have grown some since then. Her clothes always seemed to be too short in the wrists and the leg, and every winter when she tried to force her feet back into her boots it caused Abigail much irritable comment on the subject of expensive shoe leather.

  The extra inches she had gained hindered her whichever way she turned. First she hunkered down with her knees up by her ears, but after a time a sharp pain started up in her thighs. Then she tried kneeling, but the ground was full of tiny stones which cut into her knees. She sat sideways in the space between the rows with her legs stretched out in front of her and twisted round to pick, but that started up a pain in her back. She saw that the others were shifting their positions as often as she did, all except Sam. Despite his lanky length and his angular elbows and knees, Sam was able to fold himself up into a compact bundle like a grasshopper sitting in the sun, and he worked his way along his row faster than any of them.

  Tirza paused for a moment and popped a particularly succulent strawberry into her mouth. She closed her eyes and chewed slowly, rolling the flavour around on her tongue. Strawberries always tasted best out here, freshly picked with the heat of the sun still on them. She leaned back on her hands and felt the soil as warm as a blanket between her fingers. She could hear a cricket chirping somewhere over near the orchard and Tobias humming softly under his breath the way her dad hummed at the lobster fishing. A herring gull wheeled and shrieked overhead, then veered off towards the ocean. With her eyes closed, she could hear the boom of the sea and in the opposite direction over on Swansons’ farm a half-grown lamb calling to its mother. For a moment she felt inexplicably happy. Then she opened her eyes, turned round to crouch over the plants and began picking again.