“Water's fine.”
“Nothing stronger?”
She shook her head and wondered when she'd last been in this much turmoil and declined the offer of a soothing alcoholic beverage. Curious, but she didn't feel the need.
She sat at the round oak table with her back to the pictorial gaze of Lawrence Curator. The table was an antique, a massive thing with intricately carved legs the size of yule logs. She rubbed the rough oak top with a palm.
Rod said, “That table belonged to my great-grandfather. It was handed down. The brass bed I sleep in also is an heirloom. I can't say that it's the one great-granddaddy actually slept in since they had a good-sized, well-furnished house in Norfolk.”
Pleased with his homey comments, she became engrossed in his preparations. He opened the soup can with a hand-cranked opener, got out a small pot, poured the can's contents into it, added water and hot sauce, turned on the gas heat, and stirred gently. Watching him was like watching a ballet, an inexplicable paradox for one as masculine as he was.
She said, “Norfolk? I thought your family were Bankers.”
“We’ve always been a sea-faring family,” he said, taking a bowl from the cabinet. “Since my ancestors came here in the late seventeen-hundreds, our family has lived up and down the coast from Georgia to New Jersey. After the wreck that killed my great-grandfather, my granddaddy settled his family here in the commander’s memory, but he had different duty stations – from the North Atlantic to the Keys.”
He ladled soup into a bowl and sat in the chair opposite her. He asked, “You sure you don't want a cup?”
“No, thanks,” she said, smiling at him. She enjoyed watching him blow the hot soup and delicately put the spoon in his mouth. Her own lips threatened to part at the sensuousness of his moves, unconscious as they were. Rod wasn’t the kind of man who teased overtly. Spence did, but not Rod. He was, as someone recently said, a serious man. But he was also quite genial now that he'd stopped scowling. The memory of his soft lips briefly on hers made her heart skip and she wondered if she would feel them again.
He looked up, and cocked his head. “Do I have soup on my upper lip?”
Shaking her head, she said, “Am I making you self-conscious?”
“Uh-uh. I'm used to women who don't eat much – if at all.”
Was this a paean to his wife? A jealous pang shot through her. She hoped it didn’t show.
When he finished the soup, he rinsed the bowl and spoon, along with the pan, and put them in the stainless dishwasher.
“Now,” he said, “do you want to tell your tale here, or in the parlor away from the prying eyes of great-granddaddy?”
She rose and walked to the portrait. “He's comfortable with me.” She looked at Rod. “I'm comfortable with him.”
“Will he correct you if you get the tale wrong?”
She laughed. “I hope he does.”
“Let me get you a drink. You drink gin-and-tonic, don't you?”
“I'm not much in the mood.”
“Then have a beer with me. Can't drink alone with someone else in the same room now, can I?”
Smiling, she said, “I'll drink a beer with you.”
He went to the small, rolled-steel refrigerator and brought out two Heineken's. “Bottle or glass?”
“Bottle, isn't that the way one should drink beer?
“Right you are.”
He opened a window and let the sound of the sea swell in, and then waved his hand toward a red leather chair by the fireplace. He settled in its twin opposite her.
She stared at the three-legged stool at her feet. “My God!”
“What?”
She reached down and touched the stool. It wobbled. A spark shot through her, and she let go of it. It tipped over. She cried, “That stool. It was in the afterhouse, in my stateroom.”
“What are you saying?” he asked, reaching down to set it upright.
She rose. “No let me.” She picked up the stool. Holding it, she heard the sea crashing and then realized it was the sea outside the cabin, the sound riding through the open window. She ran her fingers over the stool. This was the stool; it had the same soft texture and silver color. She put it back on the wooden floor and stood on it. It rocked a little as it had on the ship. Looking above Rod's head, she saw the porthole clearly in her mind and herself looking through it as the rumrunners loaded rum onto the steamer. Blinking to clear the image, she said, “I could be wrong, of course,” and stood down.
Rod sat back, rolling the green bottle between his palms. “Maybe. Those stools were common on ships. It's light. If it went flying, it couldn't do more than blacken an eye. This stool could have washed up on the beach, or it could have been salvaged from the Deering. The old gentleman that sold me the house purchased some of the ship's fittings. The front door, for instance, came from the captain's quarters.”
She had been right. “What else from the Deering did the old gentleman buy?”
“A set of chairs I have upstairs and a looking glass. Rope that rotted away a couple of decades after he retired from seafaring altogether. The little mattress he bought is long gone.” He laughed. “Thankfully.”
She thought about the two-by-six mattress in her stateroom.
He asked, “You going to tell me the tale?”
Resting her feet lightly on the stool, she began the story.
CHAPTER EIGHT
--
Rod was a good listener, stopping her only to make her repeat what she'd just said, as if he didn't believe it, or to express amazement. Twice he said, “Your knowledge of the ship is astounding.” He seemed to want to add: It's almost as if you were really there.
She went on, “Lawrence was a great teacher. I remember him telling me that when they built the ship, no knees were used. I said to Lawrence, 'Knees?' Lawrence laughed and explained that knees were braces at right angles, midships.” She touched her knee. “But the Deering was built with stringers that supported the beams.”
Rod said, “We Curators can bore the crap out of people when it comes to ships and things of the sea.”
She shook her head. “Not really.”
Rod smiled with his eyes. She went on. It seemed as if he couldn’t hear enough about their time in Rio. He cross-questioned her about Captain Wormell and his friend. He loved the part about the ship's christening. He said, “To launch a ship with flowers – a five-master at that – what was the woman thinking?”
“A better question is, why did the man whom the ship was named after let his wife christen it with flowers?”
Rod gave a mock shudder. “It doesn't bear thinking about.”
“Today I saw Carroll Deering's photo on the Web. He seemed a quiet, gentle man. He never went to sea.”
“Good thing.”
She recalled the strapping, sinewy crew on the Deering, and thought yes, it was a good thing.
He shared her horror at Captain Wormell's murder, and her and Lawrence's powerlessness to save him. She said, “Lawrence said we couldn't alter the course of history.”
And Rod was especially curious about their journey south of Cape Fear, when they sailed back and forth, from east to west in the Atlantic, while the Deering's mutineers waited for the rendezvous ship. He said, “You say great-grandfather was gone for days, leaving you alone with mutineers, who he said wouldn't harm 'the Swedish gentleman with an interest in the sea.' If you scoured the ship, and Lawrence wasn't on it, where did he go?”
“Perhaps I missed places,” she explained. “I didn't venture into the dark areas. The cats didn't do much to the rats. And I didn't go near the Danes.”
“Still, it doesn't seem right that he would leave you alone for so long, especially after encouraging you to come with him. We Curators aren't cads,” he grinned, “unless our credulity is stretched.”
“Is your credulity feeling stretched?”
The skin around his blue eyes crinkled. “I'm still listening, aren't I?”
“In retrospect, I've
thought about why he was gone during that time. I think he slipped back to when and where his ship went down.”
“Why?”
“Why do I think that, or why would he?”
“Only he can answer why he went back. But why do you think he did?”
“Here's why,” she said, and braced herself for a look from him that said she was stretching his credulity. “After four miserable days of him being gone, I was about to go stark raving mad. I went topside. The sea was calm, we were sloshing, drifting. No one was about. It was nearly dark. I looked up at the main mast and saw an apparition. It was dressed like Lawrence, but I couldn't see him clearly. But I made out an awful face – a face that was in pain, distress, like – I don't know how to describe a baby being born since I've never seen one, but it must take some heavy pushing to get through the birth canal. Why I tell this is because this is how I saw that face. And then the apparition disappeared.”
“And you think it was Lawrence Curator coming back from his sea grave?”
“Sounds crazy, doesn't it?”
“But you insist that Lawrence wasn't a ghost.”
“Oh he wasn't – in his own time, before the Deering crashed. It’s possible that he traveled ahead of his own time to that time after he'd died, and he was coming back.”
It was hard to read Rod's face. She looked toward the window while he absorbed the mortal impossibility of what she'd just said. Outside, the sound of the sea stirred the air. She thought of Neptune, Lawrence's favorite sea god. The Neptune who had given Lawrence to her, if only for a little while.
Rod said gravely, “If I accept the whole story, I can see how Lawrence might have had a helluva time coming back for you. He'd learned what he wanted to learn, and he knew what was coming. So his need to get to his final rest might have been more overwhelming than ...” he hesitated, “his need to return to you.”
“But he couldn't leave me, could he?”
“Goes to show, we Curators aren't cads.”
“Besides, he said he had two quests.”
“What was the second one?”
“He never told me.”
They lapsed to quietude, and she listened to the undulate sea – the breakers ravaging the shore and then sucked back into the incoming wash.
Rod broke the spell. “You ever marry?”
Puzzled by the change of subject, she answered briskly, “No.”
“Come close?”
“Once.”
“What happened?”
She hated to say it. He might connect what had happened to Boyd with her experience with his ancestor. It didn’t take a high intellect to see something in her losing one man and longing for another.
She sat straight and looked into the fire. “My fiancé was killed in a plane crash in the Alps a couple of years ago.”
Unexpectedly, he replied, “My wife was killed in a boat accident last summer. Does it take that long to get over losing someone?”
The chill that reached her seemed to emanate from Lawrence. She looked up. His photographic expression focused on Rod in a sardonic way. Funny, the different aspects of photographs. Looking back at Rod, she saw how rigid he sat. She said, “Depends on the person, I suppose. Boyd was my life. I met him when I was a young woman, fresh out of college, new to a job.”
“You're still a young woman.”
“I don't feel young any more.”
“Nor do I,” he said. “Did you date after some time went by?”
“The times I went out with men weren't dates; they were mostly business.”
“No one could take your fiancé's place?”
“I didn't want anyone to. I didn't want to – to love again. It hurts too much.” She felt the hurt strongly and said quickly, “Enough of me – what about you?”
He didn't so much as blink. “Carmen was a very special woman.”
Her eyes flicked to the photograph above the mantle. Lawrence's sardonic expression hadn't changed. “Did you grow up together?”
“I met her at UNC.”
“How long were you married?”
“Five years. It took me longer than that to get her to marry me and live down here.”
“Where was she from?”
“Connecticut.”
“Long way from home.”
“And the comforts of a mansion on a lake. Trading that for a house on stilts on the sound was a big change for her.”
“You were happy?”
He hesitated. “I was.”
“You wooed and won.”
“Something like that.”
The conversation had drifted to an end. She set her green bottle, now long empty, on the stool and rose. “I must get back.”
He looked up from his chair. “I'm in no hurry for you to leave.”
She looked at the photograph. “Thanks for – everything.”
“Is it over?”
“Over?”
“This thing you had for my great-grandfather?”
He seemed hopeful. She gave it a moment's thought before she said, “It was a magic, romantic time – like a fantastic dream that you can't hold onto. I won't forget it, or him, but it's good to be back in my time.” She found that she really meant it.
He stood, and she saw uncertainty in his grin.
“I'll walk to The Pub,” she said.
“No, I'll take you.”
“I'd like to walk alone. It's not far.”
“I'll be watching. Don't go down to the sea.” He seemed worried.
She grinned. “The sea is everywhere.”
After a moment, he took her hand and led her through to the front room. “Tomorrow, after I come back from Ocracoke, I'd like to take you to a special place on the shore.”
She nodded while his face flattened with chagrin. “Sorry to say it, but the only adventure this Curator can take you on is a walk up the beach with piping plovers – no murders, no mutiny, no smoky dives in Rio – but they're pretty neat little shore birds.”
Her heart sang. They were at the door, holding hands, facing each other. She said, “I read about them in the newspaper. Not every Islander shares your enthusiasm, especially the ORV crowd.”
He kissed her forehead, “I think you will.”
“And I'm for no driving on the beach. That's why God made roads.”
He folded his arms around her and bent to kiss her lips. When their bodies were taut as bowstrings, he lifted his head. Her sweater expanded and contracted to her breathing, and he took a step back. He smiled and kneaded the base of his neck to ease his tension. “I’m happy I heard your story.”
“It’s important that you believe me.”
“I know.”
Once again she experienced a magical time with a magical man who'd kissed like he wanted her to stay with him forever. “Thank you for listening,” she said.
He took her hands in his. “I'm still listening.”
Reluctantly, she slipped over the threshold into the night. Looking back, she waved at him standing in the doorway. If he had bent his finger to summon her back, she would have dashed back to him like the wind through the moss.
But that would be rash – and much too fast. Her head filled with euphoria, yet she heard a chattering whisper and felt a rush of paranoia. Joy and fear had begun their war.
--
Rod watched her hurry up the inn’s steps and returned to his cabin.
Never, since he'd seen Carmen walk across the campus, had he been captured by a woman so quickly, so totally. He wanted Ann Gavrion like he'd wanted Carmen. The magnetism was immediate and urgent, and he remembered that it had been a while since he'd been touched by or touched a woman – and that woman had always been Carmen from the first time she spoke to him and he listened to her laugh. With her death, he thought it would be years before he experienced a desire that might come close – but never match – his desire for Carmen.
He knew he wasn't made like men who could love many women at the same time, or lust after several at once
. He wasn't like his boyhood friend, Spence, whom he loved like a brother. It wasn't within Rod to understand why Spence needed so many women. Like a collector is fascinated with his coin or stamp collection, Spence couldn't get enough of them.
He sometimes wondered why he was made the way he was. It wasn't because he was ugly or ungainly or shy. He remembered in high school when the pretty girls threw themselves at him, he couldn't make himself be more than a good friend. This had worried him then because he'd feel the itch of his loins, and know he needed a girl, but he couldn't bring himself to use a laughing trusted friend to scratch an impersonal and selfish itch.
His mother told her church friends that her “good boy” was devoted to science rather than the fleshly pleasures. But when his daddy found out that his seventeen-year-old son hadn't surrendered his virginity yet, he took him to Manteo and introduced him to a hooker. It wasn’t the worst day of his life; but he could never shake the shame that the first female hand that had caressed him was one that wanted money to do so.
And then Carmen burst into his heart and all his life force went to her. Sure, there were times when Carmen looked at him oddly. She didn't understand him. It was as if she expected him to be a stereotypical male – always on the prowl. She'd look at him sometimes when he spoke with a woman – her eyes would narrow like she scrutinized him for a small slipup to prove that he was faithless. But he'd never been faithless to Carmen, and he sensed that Ann Gavrion, like Carmen, could bind him to her with a spell so strong he'd surrender his heart and soul before he could put up any resistance, even if he wanted to.
He closed the door and went inside and looked at the portrait of his great-grandfather. His hero looked different now – remote, with a challenge in his hard jaw. Rod ran a harried hand through his hair. What was it all about? Could what Ann said be true? He'd begun to believe her when she talked. But now, with her gone, with the room devoid of her essence and her lovely voice, how could it be true?
Ann. Ann. Don't do this to me. And, great-granddaddy, don't look at me that way.
He laughed to himself. Pictures, he thought, how they fool you – the way the eyes move as you imagine their thoughts.
THE GHOST SHIP Page 13
