Whiskers & Smoke

by Marian Babson

  Greg poured the remains of the bucket of hot chocolate on to the embers, then stamped them into the earth for good measure.

  “Okay—” Greg loomed over me; the teeth had an almost phosphorescent glow in the moonlight. “Let’s go.”

  “Where’s Luke?” I looked around uneasily. Suddenly we were suspended in space in an unfamiliar world; we might have slipped backward in time into an earlier century. The trees whispered an ancient secret language; a cloud shadowed the moon, darkening our clearing, obscuring the path back to civilization. There were shadows everywhere.

  Tessa was asleep. Timothy was nowhere in sight; he had disappeared at about the same time his cousin had. I was alone, unprotected, vulnerable. What was I doing here? Why had I come? What was the sense of it all?

  “Luke won’t be coming. He’s got permission to stay here overnight. He and Dexter are working on a project for the Fourth of July Horribles Parade next week. They want to get an early start in the morning.”

  Expertly, Greg swung two fingers into the sides of his mouth and whistled sharply, then picked up Tessa and walked towards the path to the gate. Before he reached the edge of the clearing, Timothy appeared, followed by Luke and Dexter. They indulged in some parting words, then Timothy fell into step beside me while Greg led the way down the path.

  “Dexter says there’ll be a place for me in camp on Monday,” Timothy informed me.

  “That’s right,” Greg said. “We’ll fit you in somewhere.”

  “We can, can’t we, Mum?” Timothy asked anxiously. “Luke and Dexter said I can help them with their costumes if I come.”

  “You don’t have to decide this minute,” Greg said quickly as I hesitated. “I don’t want to crowd you.”

  “Timothy can, certainly,” I agreed slowly. “But I’m not so sure it would be the best thing for Tessa. Perhaps later, after the cast comes off. I’m afraid she couldn’t keep up with the others right now.”

  “We’d keep an eye on her, of course,” Greg said, “but you’re probably right. She’d want to go swimming and join in the other activities. It wouldn’t be much fun for poor little Tessa to just stand around on the sidelines.”

  Recognizing her name, Tessa stirred in her sleep. Her head moved on his shoulder and she gave a drowsy little murmur of contentment. She lifted her head, her eyes opened and she looked up at Greg’s face.

  Suddenly she screamed, burst into tears, and began fighting to get down.

  “Hey, take it easy!” Greg let her slide to the ground and looked at me in dismay. “I know it’s not the greatest face in the world—but this is the first time it’s got that reaction.”

  “Her father used to carry her when she fell asleep,” I explained. “She must have thought—” I knew all about such awakenings. “When she saw it was a stranger—” My voice began to shake and I broke off.

  “Sure,” Greg said quickly. “Sure, I understand. Poor little kid. It’s rough—rough on all of you. I’m sorry, Mrs. Blake.”

  I nodded, still unable to trust myself to speak. Timothy had put his arm around Tessa’s shoulders and was steadying her. She kept on crying.

  We had reached the small car park just inside the camp gates. Greg opened the car door for us and we drove back to Cranberry Lane in silence.

  Chapter 8

  Luke and Dexter were already in the car when Celia drove up to collect us just before noon. Timothy leaped into the back seat with them and they were immediately deep in muttered conversation. Tessa slid into the front seat between Celia and myself. There were only two seat-belts, but there was not yet a law in America that said you had to wear them and I had noticed that Celia never bothered about hers.

  Besides, what did it really matter? The seat-belt hadn’t saved John.

  Celia seemed preoccupied throughout the drive. After a couple of abortive attempts at conversation, I gave up and contented myself with simple comments on the sights along the way. She replied with equally simple assenting noises. Only once did she show any animation.

  A long gleaming station wagon swept past us on the other side of the road. The occupants raised their hands in greeting as they passed. Celia flashed them a bright smile, but her hands tightened on the steering-wheel until her knuckles turned white.

  “Those silly people must be awfully hot,” Tessa observed. “They’re driving with the windows closed.”

  “Don’t worry about them—” Celia gave a short harsh laugh. “That’s the very latest model station wagon—they’re air-conditioned.

  “You’ll meet them sooner or later.” She flashed me that same bright insincere smile. “Viv and Hank Singleton. They’re our local antique dealers. That’s why they can afford such an expensive station wagon. They use it for transporting the pieces they pick up—so it comes off their income tax as a business expense. You’ll like them, though. They’re very nice people, really.”

  “I’m sure I’ll like them,” I said, wondering if anyone that nice needed the qualifying afterthoughts.

  However, it was the most expansive Celia had been so far and I hoped for more information or local gossip.

  My hopes were dashed. Celia retreated into her former silence, lit another cigarette and concentrated on the road, which needed little or no concentration. Traffic was light to the point of non-existence. The Singletons’ was the only other vehicle we encountered.

  With a faint sigh of resignation, Celia pulled up before the house so familiar to me from all the proud photographs she had sent over.

  That had been a long time ago—several years now. The house was recognizably the same, but a faint air of shabbiness had settled over it. The paint no longer gleamed brightly; the shrubbery around the house was ragged; even the window-panes seemed dulled.

  “I suppose”—Celia sighed again—“you’d better come in.”

  Luke, Dexter and Timothy were already tumbling up the path. Tessa and I followed more slowly, while Celia took her time over locking the car.

  Patrick was standing in the hallway waiting to welcome us. His condition seemed to have deteriorated in just the short time since we had last seen him. The circles under his eyes were darker and more pronounced; there was a faint tremor in his hand as he patted Tessa’s shoulder.

  Tessa caught it, too. She looked up at me with sudden fear in her eyes. She had learned too well the lesson of the shortness of life, the swiftness with which someone could be swept away.

  “I thought we’d have chicken salad as it’s so hot.” Celia came up quickly, as though to distract us from awkward thoughts and, possibly, inquiries. “Outside on the patio. It’s usually a bit cooler out there.”

  “Not that it’s cool anywhere, these days.” Patrick seemed vaguely puzzled at the speed with which Celia led us through the house and out on to the flagstone-paved patio at the side.

  Despite the speed. I had time to notice the wallpaper was starting to peel away at the foot of the stairs, the cobweb in the corner of the ceiling, the frayed edges of the stair carpet. This, in Celia’s house! Celia, who had always been so houseproud.

  There was something else wrong about the house. I could not put my finger on it, but it added to my uneasiness.

  “Now, isn’t this better? You sit there—” Celia indicated a plastic lounger—“and Patrick will go and get us some drinks.” She raised her voice. “Patrick will get us drinks.”

  “Oh yes, sure.” Patrick came out of his trance. He had been leaning against the doorframe staring unseeingly into space. “Right away.” He stumbled blindly into the house.

  “Oh dear. I think I’d better …” Celia let her thought trail off and turned and followed him, a look of deep concern on her face.

  “You sit down,” I told Tessa. “I’ll be right back.”

  Patrick’s study seemed gloomier and even more uninviting than it had when I had simply passed through it. Two doors stood open on the far side; giving no indication of what might lie beyond them. I hesitated but could hear no sound of footsteps or voices to
guide me in the right direction. Celia and Patrick might have vanished off the face of the earth.

  For that matter, there was no trace of the boys, either. The house seemed to have swallowed up everyone.

  I started towards the door I thought I remembered. If I could find the hallway again, I ought to be able to find my way to the kitchen.

  It was the wrong door. I seemed to be in the sort of cul-de-sac one used as a box room. At one time, Celia might have intended it as a sewing-room, but semed to have abandoned the idea. An adjustable dressmaker’s dummy stood by the window. It was small, but still a size or two larger than Celia was right now. When had she lost all that weight?

  An end table with a broken leg and splintery-looking rocking-chair jostled together with an ironing board at the far end of the room. At some point, a washing-machine and spin drier had been added. A shabby wicker basket was filled to overflowing with limp clothing which had seen better days. Dark patches on the wallpaper betrayed that pictures had once hung there when the room had been used for better purposes in a previous incarnation.

  If it were mine, I would have used it as a morning room. It could still be pulled back into some sort of ordered charm despite its dispirited appearance.

  But it was Celia’s problem, not mine, and she would not be pleased if she returned and caught me mentally rearranging one of the shabbier rooms in the house.

  I backed out hastily, tried the other door and found myself in the hallway. Celia had sent me a picture of the long, lovely hallway to show me where she had placed the Pembroke table they had bought on their first trip to England before Luke’s birth. They had gone on a buying spree in the antique shops to furnish their new house with English heirlooms.

  John and I had been aghast at the prices they had paid without a quibble, not to mention the cost of shipping things back to the States. But time and inflation had soon taught us that what had seemed mad extravagance had merely been clever buying and wise investment.

  Celia had sent triumphant photographs of the pieces in situ throughout the house: the carriage clock on the living-room mantelpiece; the Davenport desk in the corner of the living-room; the Pembroke table in the front hall just below the curve of the stairs—

  The Pembroke table was missing. That was what had registered subconsciously as I had negotiated the hallway earlier, causing my initial uneasiness.

  I looked around, not really expecting to find that it had been moved elsewhere. Celia had enthused too emphatically over the absolute perfection of every placement. Each piece seemed to her to have been designed for the exact location she had chosen and she could visualize no other spot for it. She was not a person who constantly rearranged her furniture. She furnished for the ages—at least, that was what she had intended when buying the furniture.

  There had been one of many later acquisitions, a Chinese Chippendale mirror, above the table. Again, a dark oblong patch on the fading wallpaper gave witness to radical changes in the original decor.

  It wasn’t any of my business. With a mental shake of my head, I tried to dismiss what appeared to be a long-term problem and concentrate on the immediate question.

  Where had Celia and Patrick gone? And where was the kitchen?

  I turned towards the back of the house, moving silently. I felt instinctively that it was not for me to disturb the deep hush of this house. I ignored doors on either side of the hallway, holding firmly to the theory that kitchens were usually at the rear of the house.

  The end of the hallway loomed ahead, with a door promisingly ajar and the murmur of voices beyond the door. I hurried towards it. Just as I was about to push it open and call out a greeting, something in the tone of Celia’s voice stopped me cold.

  The door silently swung farther open under my touch and revealed a scene no one was meant to see.

  Patrick was clinging to Celia, face hidden in her bosom, shaking with silent sobs. Celia cradled him in her arms, staring over his head with a look of burning desperation.

  “Please, Patrick—” she was pleading. “You promised me this summer. Please, please, darling, hold on. Until October. At least, September. Oh, please …” her voice broke. “Please let me have this one last summer …”

  I was out of breath when I reached the patio, but I had escaped unseen. Celia and Patrick need never know I had been there, if only I could keep from betraying my guiltily-acquired knowledge.

  No wonder Celia had been so anxious for me to come over. It looked as though she were going to need me more than I needed her. The worst shock of my widowhood was over—hers was still to come. Or was the shock of foreknowledge worse than the sudden appalling desolation that had befallen me? What would have been the difference if John and I had known what was to come and been able to discuss it and try to strengthen each other to face it?

  “Mummy?” Tessa’s small face was puckered with anxiety. “Mummy, are you all right?”

  “Yes, darling, I’m fine.” I saw, with relief, that the boys had returned from their mysterious mission. Of course, nothing could have happened to them in the short time they had been gone. And yet …

  “Where have you been?” I rounded on poor Timothy with more vehemence than I had intended. “What do you mean by running off like that?”

  “I’m sorry.” Timothy answered the thought, not the question, while the other two boys looked puzzled. They had not yet had that brush with the ultimate which would decipher adult fears and incomprehensible behaviour for them. “I didn’t know we were going to be gone so long, or I’d have told you. We’ve been adding to the bonfire down at the lake.”

  “We were only just down there—” Dexter waved an arm towards a towering ramshackle structure visible at the edge of the lake about half a mile away. “You could have seen us—if you’d looked.”

  I had been looking elsewhere.

  “Isn’t it a super bonfire?” Timothy came to my rescue. “They do theirs now—instead of Guy Fawkes Night—with fireworks and everything.”

  “We don’t have Guy Fawkes Night,” Luke said. “This is for the Fourth of July.”

  “Yeah,” Dexter said. “That’s when we threw the British out. We’ve been celebrating it ever since.”

  “That isn’t very polite,” Tessa reproved him primly. “We’re English.”

  “Oh, I don’t mean you,” Dexter said. “I mean history.”

  “It’s a splendid bonfire,” I intervened hastily. “But what’s that you’ve got on top instead of a Guy? It looks like a shed—or was it a tree house?”

  “It’s old man Peterson’s privy,” Luke said. “We’ve been after it for years and we’ve finally got it. Good thing, too, there aren’t many left around these parts. I suppose, by the time I’m grown up, there won’t be any at all and we’ll have to find something else to top the pile.”

  “It’s good and old!” Dexter’s eyes gleamed enthusiastically. “It ought to go up like nobody’s business! Some of them shoot off as many sparks as a rocket when the wood is that old and dry.” He sounded quite expert on the subject.

  “Not too many sparks, I hope.” I looked around uneasily; you could smell the heat in the air, leaves rustled drily in the warm wind, the woods were fast approaching the tinderbox stage. “If we haven’t had some rain by then, it could be dangerous.”

  “Don’t worry,” Luke said easily. “The Fire Department always keeps an engine standing by. When it’s like this, they wet down the area all around the bonfire before they even let us light it.”

  “Yeah—” The thought made Dexter morose. “Bunch of old killjoys.”

  “Oh, come now,” I said. “You wouldn’t want the whole town to go up in flames, would you?”

  “Wouldn’t I?” His eyes gleamed dangerously. “This whole town is nothing but one big gaolhouse—it deserves to burn down.”

  “Aw, Dex, it isn’t that bad,” Luke protested.

  “Maybe not for you—” Dexter broke off, looking over my shoulder. His features abruptly rearranged themselves i
nto a welcoming smile; he looked a different person. “Let me give you a hand with that, Mrs. Meadows.”

  “Thank you, Dexter.” Celia smiled as Dexter came forward to grasp the front of the three-tiered Victorian rosewood tea-trolley and help her ease it over the threshold. She was using her crystal punchbowl as a salad bowl, a silver-topped claret jug was filled with lemonade, cakes were piled high on a Wedgwood plate.

  I was glad to see that she still had some of her treasured antiques. Her friendly local antique dealers hadn’t got their hands on everything, then. Not yet.

  I looked at Celia searchingly in the light of my new knowledge, but her mask was back in place. Her face was untroubled, the very slight frown of concentration clearing as she and Dexter coaxed the tea-trolley over the threshold without mishap.

  “That looks great, Mrs. Meadows,” Dexter approved. “Just great.”

  “Here we are.” Patrick appeared in the doorway bearing a straw bread basket lined with a gleaming white linen table napkin. When he turned back the folds to offer me a corn muffin, a cloud of fragrant steam rose from the depths.

  His face, also, was untroubled. Well, as untroubled as I had yet seen it. Nothing was going to erase those deeply-etched lines around his mouth and eyes; they were there to stay, no matter what might happen in the future.

  If he had a future. I averted my eyes, lest he read the thought in them.

  “I saw Dr. Peterson driving through town this morning,” he informed me. “That’s Jonah’s nephew. He’s going to be living at the Peterson place for the summer, so he’ll be your nearest neighbour. I’m glad of that. He could be very useful to you.”

  “Oh, I shouldn’t think we’d need to call on him,” I said. “Tessa’s arm seems to be mending well. Anyway, Nancy left a different doctor’s name to be called in case of emergency.”

  “He’s a Doctor of Literature—” Celia laughed for the first time—“not medicine. He’s here to work on a book of local history. In any case, Nancy and Arnold never met him. He’s only been up here for the odd weekend until term ended. They’ve been rushing around so much getting ready to leave, we’ve scarcely seen them ourselves. We met Noah because Jonah brought him over to introduce him and explain he was taking over the house for the summer. Jonah always disappears into the mountains for the summer himself. But we’ll have Noah over sometime so that you can meet him. I think you’ll like him.”