by Ann Swinfen
Pierre Lamotte went off for his annual holiday to his home in Montreal, anxious as always about leaving his assistant Matthew in charge of the Mansion House kitchen. Although the dining room was much depleted at meal times, the permanent residents remained – a number of retired wealthy bankers and lawyers with their wives, many of whom resented the changes in the menu when Pierre was away. The British airman was the only younger guest, but Pierre was of the opinion that he too would be gone before his return from Canada.
At the beginning of the last week in September, a sudden snowstorm blew in from the north-east during the night, and the Libby farm lay under three inches of snow by the morning. Simon had to wear boots to walk to Flamboro to catch the bus. In the village there was less snow, soon trampled into slush around the harbour and up the road to the schoolhouse. As the bus wound its way inland, the passengers looked out on a wintry landscape, with here and there the red splash of a barn. The dark green of the pine forests stood up stark and sinister against the glitter of the snow, the shadows between the trees black as velvet.
Two days later the snow was gone, the temperature was back to normal, and black clouds were building out at sea. The cold snap had been enough, however, to start the deciduous trees turning colour. The birches were bright yellow, the maples a fiery red-gold, and the sumacs scarlet. Offshore Mustinegus Island burned on the surface of the waves, the crimson of the blueberry bushes lying at the feet of the taller blazing trees, threaded through with the green-blacks of the pines and spruces.
The thunderstorm, like the snowstorm, swept in at night. Tirza was woken at one o’clock by a flash that lit up her room eerily, followed a few seconds later by a crack of thunder that rattled the windows in their frames. She climbed out of bed and went to the window. The ocean was hurling itself against the land furiously, smashing into the harbour walls and threatening the houses that stood along the front. Spray was thrown against their own front door with a smack like a slapping hand. The boats in the harbour leapt wildly at their moorings, as though they were struggling to break free. Tirza gripped the windowsill anxiously, straining to make out the shapes of Stormy Petrel and Louisa Mary against the heaving water. There was another flash of lightning and a crack of thunder from somewhere behind her, inland. Then the harbour lights went out.
Tirza padded over to the light switch beside the door and pressed it. Nothing happened. She opened her door and looked out. The landing had a window overlooking the sea and a faint greyish light was reflected in from the moon by fits and starts as the clouds raced across the sky. Nathan came out of his bedroom. He had put a pair of trousers on over his pyjamas, which stuck out in a frill round his ankles, and he was pulling on a heavy sweater.
‘The electricity has gone,’ said Tirza.
‘I know. I’m just going to check on the boats.’
‘I’ll come too.’
‘No need. You stay and keep dry.’
But she was already back in her room, thrusting her legs into jeans. She thudded down the stairs after him with a sweater in her hands.
‘Put that sweater on,’ he said, passing her oilskins, ‘and oil up. It’s going to be cold out there.’
They went out through the boat shed, where the dories had already been stored for the winter. At first the door seemed to be jammed. They had to thrust with their shoulders to open it, then it flung back wildly, hitting the clapboard wall with a crash. The wind was so strong they had to lean into it, and struggle to drag the door round on its hinges and hold it back so it would shut without smashing. Other figures were moving about in the driven spume and queer half-light, lit up every few seconds by the blue-white flashes of the lightning. Men were testing mooring warps and the fenders along the wharf. Arthur was struggling to roll a heavy drum of diesel against the bait shed door, which fitted badly and sagged on its hinges. If it blew open in the storm, the wind would be likely to lift the whole shed off the wharf and dump it in the sea like a load of driftwood.
Louisa Mary and Stormy Petrel strained at their moorings, but the warps were holding, and the heavy old tyres slung along the wooden sides of the wharf probably afforded better protection to the boats than the fancy red and white painted fenders round on the Mansion House pier. The hotel’s motor runabout would have been laid up by now anyway, Tirza thought. A few windows in the town began to show light – the flickering of candles or the steadier glow of kerosene lamps. The electricity supply had only reached Flamboro ten years before, and many households had kept their lamps handy, doubting the reliability of the electric. Though Tirza could only remember one other time when it had failed.
‘The line’s down somewhere inland,’ Charlie said to Nathan. ‘Probably struck by lightning, or else a tree has fallen across it. The telephone has gone too.’
‘As long as the boats are safe, I’m not worried about the electricity or the telephone,’ said Nathan. ‘We’ve done all we can here. Come on, Tirza.’
‘Mary has just put some milk on to heat,’ Charlie said. ‘Come in and warm yourselves with hot chocolate before you go back to bed.’
They followed him along the street to Flett’s Stores. The wind was easing a little as if, having brought down the supply lines, it had worn itself out. The rain too was slackening and Tirza took off her sou’wester and shook out her hair. The air smelled clean and sharp and charged, as though you could breathe in the crackling electricity which flickered under the great black clouds as they rolled away southwards.
On the store porch they pulled off their boots and followed Charlie across the shop. There was a pool of light spilling through from a lamp in the storeroom behind, but even so they bumped into sacks and boxes. Charlie picked up the lamp he had left at the bottom of the stairs and led them to the living quarters above.
‘Tirza!’ Mary cried. ‘What are you doing out at this time of night?’
‘Had to see my boat was safe, Mrs Flett.’
‘Well, sit down there and get some hot chocolate inside you. And help yourself to my ginger and oatmeal cookies.’
The Fletts’ kitchen seemed as cosy and safe as a cave in the dim light from the lamp, with the tail-end of the storm battering against the outside walls. Tirza hunched sleepily over her mug of chocolate, alternately sipping and nibbling as Charlie and Nathan talked about repairing the storm damage. She longed, suddenly, to be able to go back to the time when she was small, when this sense of safety had seemed real. Now she knew it was a trick life played on you, an illusion. Reality was the darkness outside, the storm and the danger. You could pretend. You could hide behind the curtain. But outside the darkness waited implacably.
The storm damage was so bad that the school bus could not even reach Flamboro in the morning, so the older children of the town spent the day helping to clear up at home. There were shingles off roofs and debris flung by the sea all over the harbour front. Some of the boats had lost small items of gear, but considering the violence of the storm very little damage had been done to the boats themselves. What was worrying the lobstermen was the damage to their traps. Tirza went out with Nathan early in the afternoon, and they worked their way round his gang. Twelve traps had disappeared completely. They brought another twenty badly damaged ones back with them to repair at home, and mended several more aboard Louisa Mary.
Nathan was silent as they motored back to the harbour. The loss of twelve pots was serious. He would need to get to work at once cutting new laths and spruce hoops, and build replacements. As she jumped out on to the lobster car and took a turn around a post with a warp, Tirza saw Sandy standing beside the harbour, watching. She felt suddenly sickened, her throat tightened with pain, but would not look at him. Instead she took the nearly empty kegs as Nathan passed them up to her, and rolled them over to Marvin, the lobster buyer, for the catch to be weighed, then lifted the lobsters carefully into the right compartments in the car. When all the lobsters were unloaded – and there were very few of them – she untied Louisa Mary, dropped aboard, and Nathan motored rou
nd to his mooring place.
It took some time to unload the gear and the broken pots. Tirza felt that Sandy was watching her, but he made no move to approach. Eventually they had everything stored in the boat shed, and Tirza climbed into Stormy Petrel. There had been no time to bail her out before setting off to haul the traps. She was half full of rainwater and Tirza took her time, scooping it up and emptying it over the side, then soaking up the last puddles with the sponge she kept in the aft locker. When she had finished, she looked up and saw that Sandy was sitting on a bollard just above her head.
‘Could we talk?’ he said. His voice was quiet and strained.
Tirza wrung out the sponge and put it away. Then she pushed the hair out of her eyes with a damp hand and looked up at him. The sun was already beginning to sink behind the shoulder of Manenticus, and she could not read his expression against the dazzle. She shrugged, although her heart was pounding in her chest, making her feel breathless.
‘I guess so.’ She climbed up on to the wharf.
He took her by the elbow and began to walk rapidly away from her house, towards the north end of the harbour where the steep path led up to the church and the burying-ground. At the very base of the cliff a narrow path, sometimes covered at high water, led off from the end of the harbour walk. Clinging to the rocks like a ribbon of seaweed, it followed the headland round and then curved in along the shore of the cove where Tirza laid her crab lines. It was barely wide enough for them to walk abreast. On the right it crumbled away into the upper edges of the sea-washed ledges. On the left it was crowded by the fringes of Christina’s forest, which flowed down beyond the headland, covering the rising ground. Although in summer the forest appeared from a distance to be entirely composed of spruce and pine, the fall shades of the dying leaves laced it through now with colour. Against the pine needles, blackening in the ebbing light, the patchwork of hues glowed like amber and rubies, gold and blood.
Sandy no longer carried even a single stick, and he forced Tirza along at a fast pace until at last she began to resist the pressure on her arm. She was exhausted after her broken night and the heavy work of hauling all day. And she did not want this talk with Sandy. She was afraid of what she might blurt out. The scene she had witnessed in the summer house was burned on her mind, but the memory of her own part in it was confused. Had Sandy seen her? Or had he simply heard the sound of her faint cry? In the days since, she had tried with every ounce of her will-power to blot out the image of Sandy and Martha lying naked on the old threadbare seat, but it would not leave her. Sandy’s animal grunts, Martha’s cries of pain and frantic clutching movements came back to torment her, until she felt waves of revulsion rising in her stomach.
As she jerked her arm away from Sandy’s hold, she stumbled on a projecting root in the path, and he reached out again to steady her. They were deep in the shadows at the edge of the wood here, hidden by the church headland from the town and by the trees from Christina’s cabin which looked out from the other side of the slope over the sea.
‘Where are we going?’ Tirza asked, planting her feet firmly and standing still. ‘This path peters out at the end of the cove, except for a branch which leads up to my grandmother’s house.’
‘This will do fine,’ said Sandy. ‘I just wanted somewhere away from prying eyes. Villages are the same everywhere – people always wanting to know your business. Here, let’s sit on that fallen tree over there.’
He led her a few steps into the wood, where a birch tree had fallen a few years before. The festoons of bark were peeling off it in long silvery strips, but it was clean and dry. He put an arm round her shoulders, at which she stiffened, but then he said nothing for several minutes. As the silence continued, Tirza began to hear the evening murmur of the birds settling down for the night, and a squirrel, emboldened by their stillness, ran across the carpet of leaves and pine needles not a yard from their feet – Sandy’s clad in highly polished tan shoes, Tirza’s bare, brown and slender. She relaxed a little. In the silence the mournful cry of migrating wild geese floated down from the upper reaches of the sky.
At last Sandy sighed and stirred.
‘I’m afraid I won’t be able to celebrate our shared birthday with you tomorrow,’ he said.
It was the last thing she had expected him to say. Birthdays were not much celebrated in her family, and she had certainly not expected to celebrate it with him. She did not know what to say.
‘I’ve had my marching orders,’ he went on. ‘Got a cable today. I have to report to Boston tomorrow afternoon. They’ve arranged for me to travel over to England with some of your own boys from the Army Air Force who are going out. I’ll have to catch the first train from Portland tomorrow morning. The hotel is running me over in the car.’
‘You’re going back to your... your squadron, is it called?’ Tirza’s throat was constricted and her mouth felt dry.
‘I won’t know till I get there. They might give me quite a different posting. They’ve made me a wing-commander, but I assume I’ll still be flying missions. I hope they won’t put me into training or desk work.’
He stared out glumly through the scattered trees at the ocean. It was turning a deep purple-blue, except where the sun, slipping down behind them, glanced off the waves and turned the curves of the breakers into green glass.
There was silence for a moment. Then Tirza said, with difficulty, ‘I’m sorry you’re leaving.’
He squeezed her shoulders lightly. ‘I’m sorry to go, even though I’ve felt guilty, taking things easy all these weeks, while my friends are back there, risking their lives on every flight.’
‘You couldn’t help it. You had to get better.’
‘Yes, well.’ He sighed. ‘I owe you a lot, Tirza. Looking after me, being a real friend.’
Her stomach turned over, and she clasped her hands tightly between her knees. ‘I owe you a lot too. The camera...’
‘Ah, now, promise me you’ll work hard at your photography. I think you have a real talent for it. Look, I’ve had copies made of some of the other photographs I took here. There are some of your family I thought you might like.’
He pulled a yellow envelope out of his inside jacket pocket.
‘Here, keep them safe.’
He tucked the envelope into the breast pocket of her shirt. It came to her warm from contact with him, and as he touched her she shivered.
‘Are you cold? I’m a pig. I’ve dragged you off here, and you’ve nothing on but that thin shirt and shorts.’
He slipped his jacket off and wrapped it around her, then put his arm round her shoulders again.
She did not tell him that she was not cold. She wanted to ask, Will you write to me?, but did not have the courage.
‘There’s something I want you to do for me,’ he said.
Suddenly, she was suspicious. Something I want you to do for me. Not, Would you do something for me? It sounded, somehow, like an order. An adult directing a child. Her chest grew tight, and now she did feel cold, even with his jacket wrapped around her. He pulled another envelope out of his pocket, one of the stiff cream envelopes the Mansion House provided for its guests, and sat toying with it.
‘I’ve written a letter to Martha,’ he said, and cleared his throat. ‘Perhaps you’ve guessed that we... That is, we’ve been seeing each other quite a bit.’
He doesn’t realise I saw them in the summer house, she thought. The sense of relief left her shaky.
‘I’ve written her this letter, to try to explain. You see, back at home, I’ve got...’ he broke off. There was silence again.
‘Why don’t you give it to her yourself?’ Tirza asked in a tight voice. ‘Go and see her. You could easily walk over there this evening.’
I don’t want to touch your letter to her, she thought, with anger flaring up in her. Why should I have to do this?
‘I don’t think that would be a good idea. She isn’t going to be very pleased. Got a bit of a temper, hasn’t she, your cousin?’
Tirza glanced at him, then looked away. The moon was already rising, out there over the sea, although the very last of the sunset had not quite drained from the sky. Her thoughts were a tumbled confusion. Is he afraid of her? But he isn’t a coward. Why can’t he mail the letter? I’m not going to take it. Why do men always think Martha is so special? She’s stupid and selfish and cruel. Oh, please, don’t let him go away.
‘I want you to give it to her after I leave tomorrow,’ he said, holding out the envelope to her. There was nothing written on the outside. She kept her hands clasped together and her eyes fixed on the rhythmic pounding of the breakers on the ledges at their feet. The tide was rising and if they weren’t careful, they would be cut off.
‘Tirza?’ he said anxiously. ‘Please?’
Reluctantly, she took the envelope and held it with the very tips of her fingers, as though she thought it would burn her.
He tightened the arm round her shoulders.
‘I’ll never forget you, Tirza. Will you remember me, and try to think kindly of me?’
He took hold of her chin and turned her face towards him.
‘Remember how I took you for a boy, when I first met you? Lord, what a mistake! But then, you’ve grown up a lot this summer, haven’t you?’ Gently he smoothed her hair back from her face. ‘Pity you aren’t just a little older.’
