Island Hearts (Jenny's Turn and Stray Lady)

by Vanessa Grant

  She’d looked down at them from the window of the seaplane as she flew away from them. Together, locked in each other’s arms. She’d tried not to envy them their happiness.

  Lyle’s hand stroked the curls at the back of her neck. “And what did you do?”

  “I went to Montreal for a while. Then I came back and picked up the boat, sailed south. I took my time. It was pretty nice. I was getting into the idea of meandering around and— I guess it sounds pretty purposeless, doesn’t it?”

  She felt him shrug. The skin of her neck quivered as his thumb brushed the short hairs. “It depends how you felt about it. It sounds as if you had no worries about money.”

  “No.” Her hand was imprisoned between their chests. Her fingers occupied themselves fiddling with the second button on his shirt. “Scott had a lot of life insurance. He didn’t leave it to me as a lump sum. I guess he didn’t trust me not to blow it all. So I get an annuity, a monthly check from the insurance company. I’d be better off if I had to work, I think, because as it is—”

  For the first time it occurred to her that Scott kept her dependent that way, that even now he controlled her life. The thought disturbed her.

  “Well, I sailed south, through Panama. I ended in the Caribbean, anchored at St. Thomas in Grenada. Blue seas. Sunshine. Jenny’s parents were there. Uncle Herb was teaching at the Technical Institute. They’d just had a letter from Jenny— God, Lyle! I must sound like a sour old maid!”

  He chuckled, his lips pressing against the hair at her temple. “I know the feeling. My family is filled with people who are in love, happily married. Even Con, damn him, seems to be in love with that witch he married. My own marriage was a disaster. I certainly wouldn’t wish that on anyone else, but I know how lonely you can feel looking at love from the outside.”

  She sighed. She hadn’t wanted to be jealous of their love. “Jenny was expecting a baby and… I sent them both flowers and got back on Lady Harriet. I sailed to Mexico.

  “I thought I could spend the winter there. There was— there was a man in a villa nearby.” She shrugged, ignoring the twinge of pain from her ribs. Had she really thought she could heal Scott’s desertion with a shallow affair?

  She said dully, “It didn’t work. I mean, I tried. I felt so lonely, but—” She didn’t look at Lyle. She stared at the button her fingers were twisting, felt the deep, steady motion of his breathing. “I didn’t even say goodbye. I didn’t know what to say, and I felt— well, ashamed of myself. He was a nice man and— I pulled anchor and headed north.

  “Once I got going, I couldn’t stop. I stopped in Vancouver to see Jenny, but that was all.”

  Lyle said softly, “So you just kept going until you hit Grey Islet?”

  She nodded. She’d been running. The weather hadn’t mattered. Nothing had mattered.

  “And Wednesday, when you get on that helicopter, where will you go?”

  What did it matter where she went? Everywhere was the same. Except here. This island – this man – was something she had to get away from.

  “More wandering?” he asked. “Hop on a plane and visit Paris? Montreal?”

  “Vancouver,” she said tonelessly. “Maybe— I guess I’ll buy another guitar. Mine was on Lady Harriet. I’ll go to some coffeehouses. Get into some jam sessions.”

  She thought of trying to drown her memories in music in the city; of Lyle back here on Green Island. Impulsively, she said, “Lyle, why are you here?”

  “It’s the best place for Robyn right now.” He was shifting, moving away from her. He adjusted something on the synthesizer and she felt cold, sitting alone on the chair. Her ribs had stopped hurting. There was only a dull ache left.

  “You can’t stay here forever,” she persisted, not understanding the meaning of the stillness on his face. “You can’t keep hiding yourself and Robyn away. Someday you’ve got to go outside, stop trying to protect her from the hurts and risks of the world.”

  She realized suddenly that he was coldly angry. He’d seemed so even tempered, so patient with her, she hadn’t known her words could stir him to anger.

  He said tightly, “At least, staying here, Robyn and I aren’t like you.” He made a sharp gesture towards her small frame in the chair. “What are you getting from being out in the world you make so much of? What have you got? At least Robyn and I have love, and each other.”

  George gasped as if he had struck her. She turned away, unable to say anything, a knot of tears gripping her throat.

  She scrambled to her feet, moving quickly towards the door. She must escape, get outside quickly before he saw how much his words had hurt.

  “George—” He reached out to hold her back and she jerked away, her face averted.

  “Let me go, Lyle! Let me out of here!”

  Then she was running, through the door, outside and down the boardwalk in her bare feet, ignoring the cramping spasms from her leg.

  She would always be alone. There’d never be another Scott, because she couldn’t bring herself to trust like that again. There were no children. No one.

  Jenny. She could hold Jenny’s baby, be an aunt.

  It wasn’t enough!

  She left the boardwalk, her bare feet cold on the wet grass. She came to a stop at the edge of the lawn, looking out over the water.

  She could hear him following, feel his presence as he came up behind her. She said bitterly, “Is there nowhere to get away from you? I can’t run away from you, can’t go anywhere. This damned island is too bloody small!”

  “George, I’m sorry.” His hands cupped her shoulders and pulled her back against his muscular chest. “I don’t know why I said a thing like that, but— I guess you must have gotten me where it hurt. I hit back without thinking. I’m sorry.”

  She wished she could cry. He was holding her and she wanted badly to put her face against his shoulder and let the tears come.

  “I’m sorry too,” she said wearily. “I didn’t mean to hurt you or— you seemed so impervious, so sure of what you were doing here.” She smiled, turning to look at him. “How was I to know you had any tender spots?”

  His arms tightened, then dropped as he saw her face in the sweep of the lighthouse beam. “Sorry, that’s hurting your ribs, isn’t it? You look so— it’s hard to keep remembering you were so badly beaten up only a few days ago. Come back and sing for me. We won’t argue anymore now.”

  She laughed, letting him take her arm and turn her towards the house. “Won’t we? I wouldn’t count on that.” The way the feelings seemed to boil up in her when he was near, she doubted if they could ever go long without some kind of argument.

  “I’ve been out here five years with Robyn.” He stared down at her, his head a dark silhouette against the sky. “When Hazel left me, Robyn was terrified that I would leave, too. She clung to me, cried whenever I went away.”

  George touched the fingers of her free hand to his lips. “You don’t need to explain to me.”

  “I was flying helicopters. I was away a lot – sometimes a charter would take two or three days, sometimes longer. I had to make a living to support Robyn. My mother wanted me to send Robyn down to stay with them, but she seemed to need me— yet my job was impossible for a single parent. I thought of the lighthouses. They seemed ideal. I could make a living, keep Robyn with me all the time.”

  George took his hands in her own. His seemed tense and unresponsive until he closed them on hers. She wanted to ease his distress. “Robyn’s getting older,” she said hesitantly. “Don’t you think—”

  “Yes,” he agreed. “But I’ve got to figure out a way to manage it. I haven’t made my fortune writing songs yet, and any flying job would still be impossible. I can’t be an absentee father to Robyn. She needs more than that.”

  “Robyn’s a lucky girl,” she said, looking around at the island, back to the man who was her father. She pulled on his hands. “Let’s go in and do your song.”

  His eyes focused on her, a smile in them. “I’v
e always wanted to find someone with a good voice to record with. I record my own voice because it’s all I’ve got to show the words, but I’m no singer.”

  “Lyle, I’m not— you’re not planning to record me, are you?”

  But he was, and she found that she didn’t really mind. She’d performed for small audiences before, but singing for Lyle had its own special magic. Lyle, watching, his fingers bringing the music up to meet her voice, down to soft silence. Then, afterwards, playing it back, their music filling the small soundproofed room.

  “It’s amazing!” breathed George. “My voice isn’t really that powerful. You must have done magic with those dials and buttons. It really sounds professional.”

  “Close,” Lyle agreed. “I’d like to take it and get it mixed down in a studio – I’ve got a friend in Victoria who could do it for us.”

  “You mean you want to try to sell this? My voice singing your song?”

  Lyle inserted another tape into the recorder. “If you stayed, we could do more – enough for an album.”

  She stood up abruptly. This was a magic room. Lyle and the music. Lyle’s eyes on her, deep and blue.

  He said, “I’d get it mixed down, send it to my talent agent. Together, I bet we could make something of it.”

  She strummed the guitar softly. It sounded like a fantasy, a dream. Making music with him, playing and singing. In this room, the music seemed to draw them together, to a closeness beyond anything physical. Inside these four walls there was only strength and closeness and— love.

  “If I stayed, singing isn’t the only thing that would happen.”

  He said softly, “That’s for damned sure!” and she laughed although her heart pounded hard and she wanted to step closer to him. If she set the guitar aside and crossed the room to him, they would be lovers. Would his strong hands tremble as they took the barrier of clothes from between them?

  “It’s time I went to bed,” she whispered, then felt heat flooding over her face as his eyes flared; but “Good night,” was all he said. She could feel his eyes on her back as she walked through the door. Upstairs, she spent a long moment standing over Robyn’s bed, looking down on the sleeping child. Below, a door closed. Lyle going outside.

  It was a long night, and she didn’t sleep well.

  The next day Robyn spent the morning at Russ’ house, where her uncle was supervising her mathematics test. Lyle worked on the malfunctioning generator again. George watched him for a while, but he didn’t seem to want or need help, so she went back to the house, looking for something to do.

  She felt the wild restlessness building. She was afraid that if she didn’t keep herself busy, she might do something crazy.

  Later, when she took coffee out to Lyle, he was elbow deep in oil and generator parts. He looked at his black hands, then the cup.

  “The cup will wash,” she said, laughing.

  He took a big mouthful of the coffee. Then he set it down and she thought he would probably forget it was there. His eyes were on the mess of parts in front of him.

  She couldn’t help feeling that he’d always been just outside the door, or just in the next room. Even the grease on his hands seemed familiar.

  She studied the engine. “I thought you were going to send for a repairman for that?”

  “Well—” He shrugged self-consciously. “—it’s not really my job, messing around with these generators, but I think I can get it going again.”

  “You’re having fun,” she accused. “You enjoy being up to your elbows in grease.”

  His eyes took on a mischievous light. “Right now, I’d enjoy kissing you. With that oversized shirt blowing around you, and your hair tumbled all around your face, I—”

  She felt her body respond to his words, said hurriedly, “There’s gray in that hair. I’m far too old to be grabbed by boys with black grease on their hands.”

  “Wanna bet?” he threatened softly, coming to his feet, his hands at his sides. “I’d say there’s a lot of fire in the old lady yet.”

  She caught his eyes and found herself laughing. “No, I’m not rising to your bait, you devious man! Go back to your engine—”

  “Generator,” he corrected mildly.

  “Generator, then. If you’re good, you can come for lunch in about an hour. The pizza should be done about then.”

  “Pizza?” He shook his head regretfully, his hands busy already with a wrench and a black-coated piece of metal. “It sounds lovely, but there’s no pizza in the freezer.”

  “You don’t get pizza from the freezer, you innocent! You make bread and take some of the dough off for pizza. You roll it out thin and spread on tomato sauce. Slice on some mushrooms and pepperoni and shavings of cheese and—”

  “Stop!” he begged. “You’re torturing me. When you talk like that, my stomach thinks it didn’t have breakfast. I thought you said you weren’t much of a cook? You told me you were a woman of the world – walk into a restaurant and order your food. Can you really make bread?”

  “One of my few culinary talents. Do a good job on that engine – generator – and I might reward you. But only if you wash up before you come to the table.”

  She went back into the house, feeling warm and content, happier than she could remember feeling in years.

  She wished he’d taken her in his arms and kissed her, grease or not.

  Chapter 7

  In the afternoon, looking out through the window while Robyn worked at the table, George saw Lyle talking to Russ, standing with his thumbs hooked loosely in his belt, his hair glinting in the sunlight. She almost went down to him, to catch at his hand and feel him close.

  The day after tomorrow she’d be gone. She tried to imagine Montreal, or even Paris. She felt she should go somewhere French, but she wished she could feel more excited about going.

  Before she left, she could go to him.

  At night, if she slipped into his room—

  Tonight he would ask her down to his music room. They would work together. She’d ask to sing some of his other songs. Then, when they were sharing that special intimacy that music brought, she would—

  How did a woman go about asking a man? She’d never learned to be assertive about physical intimacies. Scott had wanted her soft and accepting. He’d always been the one to do the asking. For the first time, it occurred to her that the physical side of their life together had been geared to his needs, not hers. Surely she wouldn’t actually have to ask Lyle? He’d admitted he wanted her. And tonight, if she waited, if she didn’t run away when he came close…

  She got all the laundry done and hung out on the clothesline, thankful that Lyle didn’t seem to notice what she was doing. She didn’t want to have to defend her unaccustomed domestic urges. After lunch she started ironing Lyle’s shirts, ignoring Robyn’s protest that her dad never ironed them unless he was going to town.

  She and Robyn worked to make a newspaper pattern from Robyn’s favorite skirt, then Robyn pulled out the Sears catalog and they picked fabrics the girl could order to make the new skirt. George realized she should never have started this project. She would be gone when the fabric came, and Robyn barely knew how to use the sewing machine that was stored away in a cupboard.

  “Maybe your Aunt Dorothy could help you,” George said slowly.

  Robyn nodded, frowning. “I guess,” Robyn said flatly, closing the catalog with a slap, and coming unsteadily to her feet.

  Lyle brought Russ over for dinner. The younger man prowled the kitchen, restless and worried.

  He kept saying, “I can hardly wait to see Dorothy.”

  George managed to stop his pacing by handing him a bottle of beer and waving him into a chair, although her mind was on Lyle, wondering why he’d greeted her so abruptly. Had she done something to make him angry? “How long have you been married?” she asked Russ.

  “Just a year.” Russ had been yearning for a chance to talk about Dorothy. He’d met her at a going away party for a friend who was moving to
Australia. She was a year older than him, and beautiful – at least he thought so.

  “She is beautiful,” George agreed. “I’ve seen your wedding picture. Robyn showed me.”

  He cupped his hands around the beer bottle. “The night I met her, I told her I wished I’d stayed at university.” He laughed. “The next thing I knew I was married to her, and applying for a job as a lightkeeper so I could support us while I finished my degree through the Open Learning Institute.” He chuckled again, grinning as he admitted, “She’s got me wrapped around her little finger. I do whatever she tells me.”

  Russ kept talking all through dinner. His conversation covered Lyle’s silence.

  Robyn, at first silently glum, cheered up as they ate.

  “When you’ve got the baby I could baby sit,” she offered her uncle shyly.

  “You sure could!” Russ agreed.

  Encouraged, she asked suddenly, “Can I come see the baby being born?” Russ choked on his beer.

  Lyle stayed silent through it all. George kept glancing at him, then looking away quickly because his eyes weren’t on her and she didn’t want to be caught staring as if she were a young girl with a painful crush. He seemed to come to life as George got up to clear the table. “Sit down, George. I’ll do that.”

  She shook her head, but she let him help her stack the dishes. Russ and Robyn moved into the living room with the dog. George’s eyes followed them as she started to wash the dishes. “I think Russ and Dorothy are lucky,” she said softly to Lyle.

  He carefully polished the glass she had just washed. “How long were you and Scott married?”

  For once, she didn’t mind talking about Scott. He’s gone, she thought, and it didn’t hurt. Even his memory seemed to be losing its sharpness.

  “Nine years. Almost ten.” She moved a stack of plates into the dishwater. “What about you and Hazel?”

  “Four,” he said abruptly. “Why didn’t you have any children? You wanted them.”