A Running Tide

by Ann Swinfen

  With some difficulty, she heaved one of the big sacks over to examine the underneath. There was a small snagged patch. It might be possible to mend it. Sand trickled from the bag over her toes and was lost in the bottom of the foxhole. The tops of the bags were not secured. She had thought they might be sewn or tied in some way, and had made sure her knife was in the pocket of her shorts before she set off, but the tops of the bags were simply twisted and tucked under, the whole structure kept in place by one sandbag leaning on another. What appeared to be solid was nothing but shifting, unreliable sand, momentarily held in place by a fragile casing of loose burlap, but ready to collapse and slither away at a touch. For the blink of an eye, Tirza was seized with the joyful notion of setting the whole deceptive mile-long rampart sliding into oblivion, like a child’s sandcastle overtaken by the tide. Then she saw that, pleasing though this might be, it would destroy – in the very moment of triumph – the effectiveness of her plan, which was to steal and remain unnoticed.

  She turned over the second good sandbag. The burlap was even, unmarked, unsnagged. Perfect. She heaved the bag away from the foxhole to the top of the ledges and aimed the open end at the beach, then she hitched up the bottom so that the sand cascaded down. It stood out, a different colour, darker than the fine dry sand abutting on the base of the ledges. Probably the sand from the bag was damp, holding the rain from two nights ago at its centre. The remaining bags on the parapet she dragged around a little to disguise the fact that one had been removed, but the whole structure was so precarious she was afraid of pulling it all down. No one, she was sure, would notice the gap. She picked up the empty sandbag and jumped down on to the beach. A few well-aimed kicks dispersed the darker sand till it was barely visible, and the rising sun would soon dry it out.

  Tirza held up the empty bag and scrutinised it. If it was opened out flat, it looked plenty large enough for Miss Susanna’s rug. She gave it another shake, to get rid of the last of the sand, then folded it up and tucked it under her arm. Time she was turning back and getting out her crab line if she was to catch anything in time for her mid-morning delivery to the hotel.

  Tobias had been elected once again to head the committee organising the Independence Day party, and he was determined that, war or no war, everyone was going to have a day to remember. Even in his boyhood at the turn of the century the people of Flamboro and the surrounding farms had gathered on Libby’s Beach for the celebrations, so by long custom the Libby family were, in a manner of speaking, the hosts for the event. The essential elements had hardly changed in the last forty years: races and games on the sands for the youngsters during the day, a big campfire lit ceremonially at noon and kept going till after dark, a clam-bake and hot dog roast, and after sunset fireworks let off from a roped area of the beach by a responsible group of men. The big rockets, aimed out over the sea, brought everything to a spectacular close about ten o’clock.

  There had been trouble this year about the campfire. It might be a breach of the new wartime regulations to have a fire burning at night which could serve as a beacon for enemy ships. Tobias had been obliged to visit the army base and plead the case for the Independence Day campfire.

  ‘Seems to me,’ he had said bluntly, confronting a dubious-looking officer, ‘that we’re in this war to defend the whole notion of what we’re celebrating on the Fourth – freedom of the individual, freedom from tyranny. If Hitler can stop us celebrating Independence Day on a beach in Maine, just by being there, over in Europe, almost looks like he’s got us licked already.’

  He had been referred to another officer, and then to a third, bringing out the same argument each time, standing squarely before them, a solid, determined man in overalls and blunt, heavy work boots, until eventually they realised they would never get rid of him until they gave in. It was a victory of a kind.

  The second problem was obtaining fireworks. He had scoured local suppliers – who told him there was a war on – and had driven to Portland and Augusta and Rockland and Kennebunk, gathering fireworks one by one until he had enough to make a good show. The more difficult the quest, the more grimly determined Tobias became to make this the greatest Fourth of July celebration Flamboro had ever seen.

  All the planning and arguing and searching occupied his mind, helping to crowd out the black depression which had been settling there. When the news had first come that Will had been shot down, Tobias – unreasonably, he now saw – had clung on to the belief that it was all a mistake, that Will was just missing in action. He had always believed he was as ready as the next fellow to confront trouble and deal with it. But somehow the scrap of telegraph paper arriving that night had seemed unreal to him. He had been totally unable to connect it with any sense of Will as a person, a tall, thin young man, balding early, grave and kind, who had always seemed older than his years.

  When Martha became hysterical that night, his main reaction had been one of annoyance. The stoical women of his family had never behaved in such a way. He already disapproved of her dating the army officers. An innate fatalism now began to whisper to him that if Martha had lost her husband, she had brought it on herself. As the weeks went by and it was borne in on him that Will really had been killed, he found his emotions dulled and numb. He even began to look upon Martha’s witless flight at the first sound of a passing plane as some maddening but unavoidable natural phenomenon.

  Lately, he had become aware of other things. Harriet was looking tired. Tobias would have been the first to admit that while he noticed every detail of change on his land or in his stock, he was inclined to take his wife for granted. Thinking back over the last months, he remembered her, bright-eyed and rosy in the frosty air up at Gooseneck Lake on the day of the skating party. And laughing, licking sticky fingers at the sugaring-off party over to Frank’s place. Since then, fine lines had appeared on her face, and her eyes looked dull. Even he had noticed that she moved more slowly, as though her body hurt her, though she continued to do much of the milking, tended the chickens and helped in the fields when needed, as well as looking after the big farmhouse with only Patience Warren’s help. Billy and Martha had made a lot more work for her, he knew. More cooking, more washing, more cleaning. Now she was well into the summer canning. No wonder she was tired. He was tired himself.

  And there was Simon. The boy had always been reliable in the past, doing his chores without too much chasing, working on the farm during the busy seasons unquestioningly. Now he was forever disappearing, leaving his chores half done, avoiding the haymaking and the hoeing of the turnip and cabbage fields. Yesterday he had even complained about taking salt to the young heifers in the field over by Swansons, a job he had always loved since he was a small boy. Tirza was putting in more work on the farm this summer than Simon.

  Tobias had never thought much about Simon’s friendship with Tirza. The cousins had grown up like brother and sister, and he knew Abigail considered this had turned Tirza into a tomboy. Tobias wasn’t so sure. He reckoned that would have happened anyway. It was in Tirza’s nature. He’d never before considered what influence Tirza might have on Simon. Now the boy had no time for Tirza and was constantly hanging out around the soldiers. It made Tobias uneasy. Not that he had anything against the GIs. They were just young men a long way from home, but some of them were kind of rough, and he suspected they were filling Simon’s head with wrong notions. And he had caught a scent off the boy. Tobias had a highly developed sense of smell. It was one of the first warnings he had when one of the animals was falling sick. He could pick up a difference in the scent of the beast. It was the same with his son. He knew that the boy was smoking and drinking beer, however much he tried to disguise it with those peppermints. He hadn’t wanted to worry Harriet with the knowledge, but it was one more burden he was carrying around.

  A few days before the Fourth, Tobias had been in Flett’s, explaining to Charlie how much still needed to be done.

  ‘Spent so much time wrastling with the army and chasing all over the sta
te looking for fireworks, I’ve done nothing yet about the campfire,’ he said, half in complaint, half in apology.

  ‘Maybe I can help,’ said Julia Bennett, who was at the next counter with Mary, examining a sprigged cotton for a blouse. Her eyes were bright. A letter had come that morning from Pete – his ship was safely in port for repairs, and she had just mailed off a reply from the post office end of the store.

  ‘A lot of the schoolchildren are at loose ends this summer,’ she said. ‘When they aren’t working with the fish or on the farms, they don’t have much to do. Now the bus service has been cut back because of gas rationing, they can’t get to Portland for the movies, and there doesn’t seem to be much in Flamboro for them.’

  She smiled at Tobias.

  ‘I can round up any number of them to collect wood for the campfire. Where do you usually get it, and where do you want the fire built?’

  ‘The kids can show you where we build the fire,’ said Tobias. ‘Same place as always. There’s a kind of semicircle of rocks that makes a natural windbreak. We pick up all the driftwood we can find, and bring fallen branches from the woods beyond Flamboro. You need to ask Christina O’Neill’s permission first. The wood belongs to her. And you can borrow my logging scoot.’

  Charlie offered to take charge of the clam-bake. Everybody would be out with buckets, shovels, clam rakes and forks on the Fourth, digging clams till they had enough. But someone was needed to set up the bake itself, make sure it was built so it wouldn’t fall over, provide the tarpaulin, and collect enough seaweed to pack in layers with the clams to keep the steam in and add flavour.

  Tobias still had a million things to do, and went down to the beach straight after milking on the morning of Independence Day to check on the campfire. To his surprise he found Charlie there before him, already digging out a pit for the clam-bake about ten yards further along the beach. Together they inspected the construction of the campfire.

  ‘Not bad,’ Tobias conceded. ‘Reckon that’ll burn up all right.’

  ‘She’s no fool, that girl,’ said Charlie. ‘She got the kids to pile the extra fuel round behind the rocks away from the sparks. Should be plenty to keep it going long enough.’

  They poked at the carefully built wigwam of logs which reached above their heads. It stood firm. Most of it was fallen wood from Christina’s forest, hauled all the way to the beach by Julia Bennett’s team. Here and there the darker clumps of fir and pine were interspersed with the bleached-bone colour of driftwood. One piece rose from the apex of the pile like an outstretched arm, its polished contours rippling under the sunlight like the muscles of an athlete. Near the base of the pile Tobias could make out some pieces of broken fish box, gone overboard from a trawler, and a huge shattered timber, nine or ten inches square in section and nearly eight feet long, which had once formed part of a sizeable ship.

  ‘Ayuh.’ He was satisfied. ‘It’ll do. I calculate your Pete’s done all right for himself with that schoolteacher of his.’

  Charlie grunted. He found he was uncharacteristically superstitious these days. He did not want to talk about the future for fear of ill-wishing it. He turned back to his pit.

  ‘We’ll line this with stones now, shall we? Then there’ll be less to do later. Give me a hand to fetch them over from the pile by the ledges. That’s where we left them last year.’

  ‘So what goes on at this Independence Day party, Monsieur Lamotte?’ asked Sandy. He was breakfasting alone on the veranda of the Mansion House before the rest of the guests stirred. Pierre had personally brought the grilled trout to the table and stayed to gossip. He shrugged.

  ‘They run about on the sand and throw rusty ‘orseshoes at a post, then they eat overcooked clams and watch a few fireworks. Nothing of any interest to you, Monsieur.’

  ‘You sound very sour about it. Aren’t you in favour? It’s a bit like Bastille Day, isn’t it? They celebrate throwing us out of America and you celebrate throwing your kings out of France. You must share some common feeling.’

  Pierre shrugged again.

  ‘Me, I see no point in ruining the digestion with shellfish which could be transformed with proper care and a good sauce. It gives me pain to see the waste.’

  ‘But I heard some of the Flamboro ladies provide other edibles as well.’

  Pierre tucked in the corners of his mouth sardonically.

  ‘Eh, bien. Edible they may be, for those with taste-buds like the flannel of a lumberjack’s shirt.’

  Sandy laughed. ‘Come now, you’re surely not jealous? And I believe you even have the day off, with most of the guests going to the beach party. Isn’t Matthew going to cope in the kitchen on his own?’

  ‘It will do ‘im good to take responsibility for once. It is part of ‘is training.’

  ‘So what are you going to do on your day off? Do you have a little lady friend in Flamboro or Portland?’

  Pierre looked offended.

  ‘My fiancée is in Montreal, Monsieur. I do not betray ‘er.’

  ‘Well, come with me to the beach party, then, and we’ll sample the clams together. In fact, you could even show your generosity by contributing to the feast. I’m sure the hotel management would approve. An act of good will towards the locals. One of your famous desserts...?’

  Pierre shook his head, laughing ruefully.

  ‘You are outrageous, Monsieur. I ‘ave told you the clams are dreadful, sandy and overcooked. And the potage of the local women – old-fashioned peasant stuff.’

  ‘You’ll come, then.’

  ‘Tiens, it will be for amusement only.’

  Miss Molly opened the back door to let Sir Percy out into the garden for his morning stroll. He was an exceptionally large black cat with a white shirt front and a good opinion of himself. In the first dewy morning he enjoyed a quiet saunter down the steps, a peaceful investigation of the boundaries of his domain and, if the sun was right, a short nap on the roof of the lumber shed. This morning, aware of an atmosphere of more activity than normal in the kitchen, he took his time stepping over the threshold, so that Miss Molly was obliged to stand waiting, holding the screen door against its spring hinge to stop it snapping shut on his tail. When he reckoned he had made his point, he stepped forward. It was unwise to try her patience too far, or she would scoop him up in an undignified position and deposit him on the grass.

  As he lowered his gaze to the second step, a great brown fuzzy thing caught his eye, and he recoiled, making a faint ‘eek’ noise. Then, recovering himself, he jumped down and sat disdainfully on it.

  ‘Heavens, Percy, what have we here?’ asked Miss Molly, easing his portly backside over on to the step and pulling the object from beneath him. She shook it out and fine dry sand cascaded over him, some of it getting in his eyes. Outraged, Sir Percy shook his head and shot off the steps to take refuge under an azalea.

  ‘Look at this, Kitty.’

  Miss Molly held up her find. Miss Catherine looked round from spooning coffee into the percolator.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘A rather sandy burlap sack. Neatly folded and left on our back step. Bearing a stamp saying US Government Property.’

  Miss Catherine put down her spoon and fingered the sack.

  ‘The sand will soon wash out, and with the seams unpicked...’

  ‘Just what I was thinking. Susanna can hook her patchwork rug after all.’

  Miss Catherine began to make toast.

  ‘It will probably be her last one.’ Her voice shook, but she went on laying the breakfast for the two of them, and a tray for their sister.

  ‘I know.’ Miss Molly caught hold of her hand and pressed it lightly. ‘She knows that too. Someone very kind has made it possible for her.’

  ‘Take it and show her,’ Miss Catherine urged. ‘She was feeling very down last night.’

  ‘I will.’ Miss Molly laughed suddenly. ‘Sand and all.’

  As the sound of her feet went sturdily upstairs, Miss Catherine felt the sand left on her
hand by her sister. She rolled the grains between her fingers, looking out of the window.

  ‘I wonder who,’ she said to herself.

  By ten o’clock Tirza had lifted her crab lines, delivered early to the hotel and sailed back to Flamboro without staying to talk to Pierre. There was too much of interest going on in Flamboro today. She joined Wayne, Simon, and Wayne’s older sister Clarice on the back steps of the Pelhams’ house. Mrs Pelham passed them out a plate of cookies and a jug of grape Kool-Aid. The cookies, part of a batch she was baking for the party, had charred along one side, so she told them they could have the better bits to eat. She had no intention of producing damaged goods in front of the other women at the picnic. Tirza picked the burnt edges off her cookie and threw them to the gulls which stood in a line along the fence. They swooped, screaming and jostling as though she had thrown them a bucket of herring. Maybe they were being sarcastic. She took a drink of her Kool-Aid. Mrs Pelham never mixed it up properly, so that gritty lumps remained undissolved which you had to squash against the roof of your mouth where they released intense bursts of flavour.

  Simon and Wayne were arguing about which of them would win the 200-yard race in the afternoon.

  ‘Bet you a dollar I win,’ said Wayne.

  ‘It’s a deal,’ said Simon. ‘I can beat you easy, any day.’

  ‘Boys!’ said Clarice contemptuously to Tirza. ‘Whadda you bet somebody else wins. Morton Harris is as fast as either of them. Wastin’ their money.’

  ‘Hmph,’ said Tirza. She wasn’t much interested.

  ‘So why aren’t you chasin’ after that English flyer today?’ said Clarice. Her voice was acid. ‘I declare, you make an exhibition of yourself, Tirza Libby.’