by Ann Swinfen
Tirza turned round slowly. She could feel heat rising in her face as if a fire had been lit under her chin.
‘What did you say?’
‘You heard me. All the girls in town have bin talkin’ about it. I’d be ashamed,’ said Clarice virtuously, as if she did not spend every Friday and Saturday night jiving at the Schooner Bar.
Tirza said nothing, but she put her glass of Kool-Aid down on the step and began to bite on her thumbnail.
‘He’s much too old for you,’ Clarice said loftily. ‘He’s thirty if he’s a day. He must be mortified at the way you carry on.’
Simon had overheard her, for he turned around and stared, then he laughed.
‘Don’t be a dope, Clarice. Tirza just took him sailing a couple of times, and they went to see Christina O’Neill. You only have one thing on your mind.’
‘Sakes, Simon, I don’t know what you mean.’
Clarice, Wayne and Simon all exchanged a knowing look, then fixed their gaze pityingly on Tirza. Abruptly she got up and walked away, sticking her hands in the back pockets of her shorts and whistling one of her father’s aimless airs. She felt clumsy and humiliated, half understanding what they were talking about, but pushing it away from her mind.
‘It will do just fine,’ said Miss Susanna. She had unpicked the side and bottom seams of the sandbag and Miss Catherine had washed it. They laid it out in the sun on the grass to dry, where it steamed gently. ‘There’s even enough spare to turn the edges under. It was Tirza, of course.’
‘Do you think so?’ Miss Molly said.
‘Oh, yes.’
‘You’re probably right. The combination of audacity and kindness suggests our Tirza.’
‘It should be dry enough by mid-morning for me to mark out the pattern before we leave for the party.’
‘Susanna! You’re never planning on going.’
‘Of course I am. I’ve not missed an Independence Day party in my life, and I’m not fixing on doing so now. That nice Captain Tucker is going to collect all three of us in his jeep at eleven and drive us round through Libby’s Farm and down to the ledges. I won’t need to walk but a few hundred yards.’
‘I don’t know...’ said Miss Molly.
‘Of course she should go,’ Miss Catherine said. ‘We don’t get that many chances to have fun at our age. We’ll take three of the folding garden chairs and we’ll do just fine.’
Martha had decided she would, after all, go to the party. She kept changing her mind until the very morning. She had not been out in company since Will’s death, but she had visited the beach several times with Captain Tucker in his off-duty hours, and she knew she looked good in her new two-piece swimsuit. Lately she had begun to crave attention and admiration again. Otherwise, she would have to stay in the empty farmhouse while her family and Patience, and even Sam, spent the day eating and playing games and watching fireworks. The thought of being cooped up alone in the house while all the township was enjoying itself was too much for her. Grudgingly, as if she was doing them a favour, she told her parents she would come – for a little while, anyhow.
She chose her outfit with care. Underneath, she would wear her swimsuit, for sunbathing. It wasn’t likely she would swim. She had agreed to go in once or twice with Captain Tucker, but the sea was freezing and today it would be full of kids screaming and fooling around. Over her swimsuit she put on an outfit of shorts and a little square top made of pink seersucker and trimmed with white. The shorts were very short and showed off her long legs, and the gap between the shorts and the brief top revealed glimpses of her bronzed midriff as she moved. She brushed her long blonde hair till it gleamed, and then pinned the top hair over the net supports which raised it in two large rolls above her forehead. Carefully she scrutinised herself in the mirror. Last night she had painted her finger and toenails in a shocking pink which made them stand out when she ran her hands down the paler pink seersucker, smoothing it over her hips. She slipped her feet into sandals and put on a pair of sunglasses.
Though the kind of entertainment planned was not what she would have chosen for herself, Martha found she was looking forward to the day. Things seemed less black now. It was fun to have some freedom as if she was a girl again, to go out when she liked and not always be looking over her shoulder at what the other officers’ wives might be thinking. Maine and her parents’ home was boring beyond belief, but (something she kept to herself) life in married housing had begun to pall months ago, and she probably would have come up this summer anyway, just to get away from it. Will had been very kind, of course, but he was dull. For so many years her ambitions had all been focused on a huge white wedding. She had never really given a thought to what would come after. Within weeks of her honeymoon she had felt the first itch of discontent. Will was too bland, too admiring. She wanted a bit of excitement in her life. A bit of danger, even. When she had started going out with Will, it had seemed thrilling – his rich family, his big house in Boston, his long vacations at the Mansion House where he had invited her to meals involving more knives and forks than she had ever seen in her life before. But after her marriage all of that had become dreary, till her life felt just like a flat page from a magazine – apparently full of glossy life but as thin as paper.
When these thoughts skittered unbidden through her head, she would shiver suddenly, as if she had seen an omen of ill luck.
If only she could shake off the fears that came upon her, she would be all right, she would be fine. Sometimes in the night she would wake up sweating and shaking from a dream whose details fled at once, leaving nothing but a deep sense of menace. Worse was the sound of low-flying aeroplanes which patrolled the coast by day. In her saner moments, she knew she must look a fool, but blind terror seized her as soon as the thrumming of the engines filled her ears, blocking out everything else, even thought. It was like the nightmares suddenly made real, and she knew she must hide or go crazy.
Harriet, packing up her baked goods with Patience in the kitchen, and fending off Billy, who had his fingers into everything, was feeling better than she had for weeks. It seemed like a good sign, Martha agreeing to go to the Independence Day celebrations, almost like old times, when she had been one of the shrieking children running races and toasting hot dogs over the campfire. Though there was still a shadow of unease at the back of her mind. To Harriet there was something unseemly about Martha going off to the beach with Captain Tucker. Oh, she had noticed it, all right! Martha might think she could fool her mother, but Harriet had known her too long, known that particular look of calculated innocence that meant Martha was up to something. Still and all, she was thankful they were past the stage of Martha locking herself away in her room. Will’s death she tried not to think about.
Tobias was looking better, too, she thought. For a time after that awful night he had gone quiet, but the busy summer season on the farm kept him occupied in the fields, so that he had few moments for brooding. By the time he came in after evening milking and they had eaten their supper, there was only time to listen to the latest news broadcast before bed. The war news was universally grim, but at least it took their minds partly from their personal worries and made them feel a kind of companionship with the families of all the other boys.
She tried to pretend to herself, whenever she could, that nothing had happened. That Will was simply away somewhere. And sometimes, to her discomfort, she found herself forgetting about Will, no longer able to see his face properly in her memory. It was as though Martha and Billy had been living at the farm always, and Will was no more than an easily forgotten ripple in the course of their lives. She was horrified by her own callousness.
‘How do I look?’ said Martha. She stepped into the kitchen and twirled around, her flared shorts spinning out and showing her long brown legs. She looked cheerful and normal, like the teenage girl she had once been, enchanting all the young fishermen and farmers in the area.
‘Fine!’ Harriet said, too heartily.
‘Can I h
ave a cookie?’ said Billy, pulling at Harriet’s skirt and looking discontented. He was no longer as pasty-faced as he had been, but he had not lost the whining note to his voice.
‘Once we’re on our way,’ said Harriet, brisk now. ‘Grandpa and Simon have already gone down to the beach to see to all the arrangements, so we need you to help us carry the food. We’ll have a cookie when we get to the top end of the turnip field.’
Billy looked slightly mollified. Most of the time he was in the way on the farm. Too young to join Simon and his friends and bored with hanging around the women in the house, he was constantly complaining, ‘What can I do?’
The women and Billy set out with the baskets and buckets of food, leaving Sam to finish his chores and join them later. As they turned on to the track to the beach, Hector Swanson came up the drive with his wife and young baby, taking the shortcut through Libby’s farm.
‘Fine weather’s holdin’, Mrs Libby,’ said Harold cheerfully, ‘though they do say there’s a storm coming up. Tail end of one of the hurricanes down Florida way.’
‘Eh, well,’ said Harriet. ‘Long as the hurricanes themselves stay away. I’ll not forget ‘38 in a hurry.’
Halfway along the track, at the top of the turnip field, Harriet handed round oatmeal cookies to encourage Billy, and they met Simon coming back towards the house.
‘I’m getting a couple more shovels to dig for clams,’ he said through a mouthful. ‘And our old clam rake. Ben’s broken the handle of his, and some of the soldiers are there too, wanting to help.’
At the junction with the coast path four jeeps were parked on the torn and rutted ground, and when they climbed down between the briar roses they could see groups busy digging for clams, gathering seaweed for the clam-bake and laying out food on cloths in the shelter of the petrified trees.
‘What are those people doing on the rocks?’ said Martha. ‘Isn’t that the Cannucks with the summer house in Flamboro?’
‘Sakes,’ said Harriet, setting down her burdens and pressing her hands against the small of her back, ‘I do believe they’re collecting snails. Mary says those Frenchies eat them, common slimy snails off the rocks. I couldn’t fancy it myself.’
‘Morning,’ said Nathan, coming past with a bucket of clams to rinse in the sea. His bare feet, projecting from his rolled-up trousers, were white beside Martha’s suntan. ‘They are collecting snails. I’m surprised the Cannucks want to come to the Independence Day party, but it seems they don’t hold it against us.’
‘They don’t expect us to eat the snails too, do they?’
‘Shouldn’t think so. They’re building another small campfire over there, to boil the snails, and they’ve been gathering wild garlic to eat with them.’
‘Ugh!’ said Patience and Martha together, and grinned at each other, for once almost friendly. Then Martha dropped her bucket of cakes and pies and strolled off to join Captain Tucker and his friends. Patience knelt on the sand and began to unpack the food on to the rugs laid out by Mary Flett and Josie Pelham.
‘Where’s Tirza?’ Harriet said.
‘Gone to fetch that British airman from the Mansion House,’ Nathan said. ‘She’s bringing him round to the beach in Stormy Petrel, so he doesn’t have to climb over the rocks from Todd’s Neck.’
‘You don’t think...’ said Harriet.
‘What?’
‘That maybe she’s spending too much time with him? He’s a very good-looking young man. I thought she might be...’
Nathan laughed. ‘Our Tirza? She’s a good little fisherman and a hard worker. She isn’t like these silly girls who are always running after the fellows. No, she’s just made a kind of pet of him. Like a favourite dog.’
‘Hmm.’
More people were arriving from Flamboro now, and Harriet abandoned the subject.
‘The Fourth of July,’ said Tirza sternly, ‘celebrates our independence from England. When we broke away and became a nation.’ Her voice was emphatic. ‘If you are coming, you’d better remember that.’
They had rounded the end of Todd’s Neck and were heading in towards the beach. It was swarming with people. The whole population of Flamboro had turned out, and the farming families from miles around. A line of visitors from the Mansion House was snaking down the tumbled rocks at the southern end of the beach, and as they watched another group of soldiers arrived, their voices loud enough to be heard even over the crash of the waves.
‘Oh, I will,’ Sandy assured her. ‘I have to tell you, there are people in Scotland who’d like to regain their independence from England.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘We used to be an independent sovereign nation, with our own king and our own parliament.’
‘I didn’t know that.’
‘So I won’t be offended or tactless.’
‘OK. Now stay put while I pull her up on the beach, then I’ll give you a hand.’
‘I can manage now. Just let me get my legs over the side at my own speed.’
It must have been about noon, with the tide just beginning to run out and the first of the hot dogs, speared on straightened coat hangers, sizzling over the campfire, when Ben Flett said, ‘What’s that ship gettin’ up to?’
Only a few people nearby heard him. The younger children were running races, shrieking along the wet sand like a crowd of demented gulls. One or two heads turned to look where he pointed. Nathan frowned and shaded his eyes with his hand.
‘It’s a US navy ship. Is it one of those landing craft? It’s got that squared-off bow.’
Walter screwed up his eyes and looked.
‘Reckin it’s comin’ in. They won’t be tryin’ to land here, surely?’
The men watched in silence as the ship headed on a course directly towards them.
‘I don’t know what their draught is,’ said Nathan, ‘but that’s some old shallow just off there...’
As he spoke, they all saw the shudder which ran through the ship.
Ben jumped to his feet.
‘She’s touched.’
‘Damn fools,’ Walter said.
In the next few minutes the rest of the townsfolk on the beach became aware of what was happening offshore. The landing craft seemed to free herself for a moment, then grounded again, well out from the beach where a sand bar reached a long way into the ocean. The sand lay silted over one of the ancient mountain ridges which formed part of the underwater landscape. A little to the south or north, the naval ship would have been able to come in much closer without touching. Soldiers could be seen standing around uncertainly on deck, some of them peering apprehensively at the long drop down into the sea. Even while everyone watched, the waves curling on to the shore were receding. There was a strong ebb tide running, and the drop here was more than twenty feet.
The observers on shore saw the bow of the boat – a flat door like the back of a removal truck – drop down into the water, raising a splash as high as the deck. It led down from the ship like a ramp, its lower end hidden below the sea. Down this the soldiers made their way, some swaggering, some hesitantly, into the waist-high surf. Holding their rifles above their heads they waded ashore.
‘Wonder what they’re thinkin’ to do now,’ Eli said.
The soldiers milled about, their drab uniforms swirling into the holiday clothes of the party-goers like brown sugar stirred into some exotic drink. Within minutes they had been absorbed into the crowd. It was perhaps between twenty minutes and half an hour since the landing craft had first shivered against the sand bar, and already she was standing awkwardly out of the sea, listing a little to port as the tide sucked away from her sides.
‘Well,’ Nathan said.
‘She’ll be stuck there best part of twelve hours now,’ said Ben.
‘Ayuh. Somebody’s going to be in mighty trouble.’
The officers of the ship were keeping out of sight on the bridge, but the soldiers were laughing and piling their rifles up on the ledges out of the sand, happy to make t
he most of the unplanned vacation.
‘Hey,’ a dapper young GI said to Ben, ‘is this a Fourth of July party?’
‘Sure is. Won’t you join us?’
‘You bet. What’s that steaming heap of seaweed and tarpaulin?’
‘Clam-bake. If you and your buddies are hungry, we’d better get you digging for more clams.’
‘Sure. Lead on.’
It was not long before a second clam-bake was constructed and the pungent odour of hot clams and seaweed drifted along the beach. The soldiers stripped to the waist and ran races against the men of Flamboro. Then someone brought a rope and lined up a tug of war. By the time everyone was eating clams and bowls of Miss Catherine’s home-made Boston baked beans, it would have been difficult to separate townsfolk and summer people from soldiers. The French Canadians found some of the GIs willing to try their boiled snails. They sat in a circle round the iron pot with bent pins to excavate the snails from their shells and a dish of melted butter and garlic to dip them in. Even Mrs Larrabee, who had spent a year in Quebec as a young woman, tried the snails and declared them tasty, but no one else from Flamboro was prepared to risk it.
After dinner, which stretched on till four o’clock, most people sat around too full for energetic activity. Some of the younger children fell asleep on rugs in the shade of clumps of rock, and Miss Susanna, stretched out on a deck chair under a big golf umbrella, put back her head and closed her eyes. A few of the men had set up a game of horseshoes, and the only sounds on the beach were the soft murmur of voices and the metallic ring of the horseshoes striking each other or the goal post.
Tirza lay flat on her back with her legs in the sun and her head in the shade of the petrified trees. She had eaten so much her stomach felt stretched, and she had decided to keep very still until the overeaten feeling went away. She opened one eye to look at the horseshoe players and saw Simon throwing, his shape bordered by multicoloured lines that shimmered and danced around him, making him look as insubstantial as the rainbow on a waterfall. She closed her eyes again. Near her feet, Sandy was sitting with his sticks on the sand beside him and his arms around his drawn-up knees. He was talking to Pierre and one of the soldiers so quietly that she could only catch an occasional word, but she heard ‘Hitler’ and ‘Churchill’. War talk. The rest of her family were off to the left, at the end of the beach nearer the farm, but Tirza was staying near Stormy Petrel, to keep an eye on her.
