Larkspur

by Sheila Simonson

  "There's no wind." Jay retrieved the paddles.

  "You could get the feel of it though." Her smile included me, too. "I'm a fanatic. It's fun around six at night when the sea-breeze comes up. Otherwise this isn't the place."

  "We'll try it," I decided. Why not?

  We had coffee and a wind-surfing lecture in the lounge. Jay finagled a cup of herb tea. About eight thirty the others started to come down, Denise first in a flowered pajama outfit and twenty pounds of assorted rings. She looked heavy-eyed and drank two cups of black coffee before she was capable of articulate speech.

  "Somebody was playing a radio this morning. At dawn."

  "Not guilty," I replied. "We didn't bring a radio. Against our religion."

  She pouted as if she weren't sure whether I was teasing or not. I decided not to tease.

  "I listened to the weather report about half an hour ago," Janey confessed.

  Not dawn.

  Denise touched her forehead in an infinitely graceful gesture that indicated, what, pain? anguish? Weltschmertz? "I'm a martyr to insomnia, darling. Could you use one of those little earplugs tomorrow?"

  Janey flushed. "Okay. Sorry."

  It was clear that Denise was about to treat us to a detailed account of her nocturnal thrashings. Fortunately Lydia bounced in, full of sparkle, and forestalled her. Lydia was wearing a droopy skirt of mauve homespun and an off-white hand-crocheted top that showed her firm arms. A chunky art major necklace hung over the crochet work, and her earrings looked like medicine bundles. There were feathers in them. Surprisingly enough she did not look ridiculous.

  "Happy Fourth!" She beamed at us all impartially. "Janey darling, was that your radio at dawn? So inconsiderate, my dear. You know Dai likes to sleep in."

  "It was not. Dawn." Janey spoke through clenched teeth.

  Lydia poured herself a cup of coffee from the gleaming urn, fiddled with the sugar and looked at the cream. "Too rich for my blood," she murmured and trotted off toward the kitchen in search of milk.

  I sipped at my own brew, luxuriating in the cream. The real thing, full of calories and cholesterol. Lovely.

  Janey drank hers black, and she was scowling into it.

  Jay seated himself on the raised hearth. "Where do you keep your board?"

  "It's still on the roof of my car." She sipped again. "I could use some help unloading it."

  "Sure."

  "Now?"

  "Okay." He set down his cup of stewed weeds. "Coming, Lark?"

  "Not before breakfast."

  Janey bounced to her feet, restored to good cheer. "See you later!" Jay trailed her out.

  I peered into my creamy coffee. Was I perhaps losing my marbles? Prudence suggested that I go wrestle with bungee cords.

  "Such a pleasant young man," said Denise. "For a policeman."

  I gritted my teeth. "I saw Dennis yesterday. It's a big fire. He thought he'd be gone through the weekend."

  "Dear Dennis," she said vaguely.

  "Morning," Bill Huff growled from the doorway. "Coffee?"

  I pointed.

  Denise and I watched as Bill made his way to the urn. He managed to fill a cup, but his hands were shaking. He drank where he stood, wincing, and poured another cup.

  "Where's Lydia?"

  "Here I am, darling." Magical Lydia, just in time.

  "I need juice."

  "They're setting up the buffet."

  "Go swipe me a glass of tomato juice. And see if Domingo has any Worcestershire sauce. Gawd." He sank into the leathery couch and spilled coffee on his bright yellow golf slacks. "Gawd. I'm too old for this business."

  Lydia had disappeared. She returned almost at once with a juice glass garnished with parsley and a slice of lemon. "There you are, darling. Just what the doctor ordered. No, don't rub the coffee in." He was dabbing at his knee. "There, there. Lyddy will take care of it."

  Oh, ick, I thought. I hoped Jay and Janey would have no problems with the sail board.

  Bill regarded his wife with pitiful gratitude and drank his tomato juice. After that he seemed to feel better--well enough, at any rate, to acknowledge my existence and Denise's.

  We talked for awhile of the fire burning fifty miles east in the national forest. Bill was up on the latest details. It was, he reported, a crown fire--that is the huge old-growth timber was 'crowning,' burning up crown and all. Ordinarily a quick brushfire was good for a conifer forest, because it cleared out the underbrush and killed off some of the insects that preyed on the big trees, but a crown fire benefited nothing and left only devastation behind.

  Llewellyn, dapper and neatly outfitted in cream slacks and a matching polo shirt, entered as Bill was describing the fire. They were soon off on reminiscences of the Big One, a fire both had witnessed years before. There was something constrained in Bill's response to Llewellyn, though. It puzzled me.

  Jay and Janey came in before I could decide what was going on, and I forgot about it in the general bonhomie inspired by an inspiring breakfast. Domingo had produced a delicious frittata.

  Chapter III

  We had finished breakfast except for our last cups of coffee when Angharad appeared with an invitation--ladies only--to view her garden.

  At first I thought she was making a joke, but Lydia's immediate enthusiasm and Win D'Angelo's protests at being excluded persuaded me otherwise. It seemed they were all passionate gardeners, innocent of irony.

  I knew Denise was an herbalist. Dennis was always bringing her cuttings and always making excuses not to drink the teas and tisanes she brewed for him. I'd seen the Huffs' heroic landscaping at a cocktail party they hosted in May, but I'd assumed they owed the profusion of spring greenery to Greenthumb, the local firm of landscape gardeners. Not so. Lydia, it seemed, propagated irises and had once manufactured her own line of herbal cosmetics. Winton D'Angelo, though Angharad was firm in refusing to let him come, grew prize-winning roses.

  Janey Huff looked as if she'd rather be out on the lake, but she got up obediently when the older ladies rose to go. I had to follow suit. I like to look at people's gardens, and, since I moved west, I've begun to learn how to identify the native plants. They're so different from the deciduous growth of upstate New York I find them fascinating. Even back home, though, I never tried to grow anything more complicated than a potted fern, and I hate displaying my ignorance. All the same, I went with the ladies like a meek sheep.

  We strode briskly along the path to the cabin, retracing my steps. Grisly Ted was standing on the porch as we came up and grunted something that was probably meant as a greeting. We did not dally to chat with him. The garden lay behind the house in a clearing protected by a deer fence.

  I had to admit the Peltz's display was impressive. Almost entirely annuals and biennials, the flower garden was then in the first riot of summer color. Petunias, pinks, cosmos, daisies of all heights and colors including the Shasta daisy, brilliant Mission Bell and California poppies, sweet peas, larkspur, hollyhocks, and giant sunflowers--I recognized those. There were other plants I didn't know. I decided to trust they were licit.

  Angharad insisted that her husband was a trained botanist. She was merely his handmaiden. I thought she protested too much. There was no further sign of Ted. Perhaps he was brooding over seed catalogs.

  Denise and Lydia spent a lot of time exclaiming about the herb garden. It did smell good and all that basil would be nice for pesto, but the herbs themselves were rather ugly. The bees seemed to like them.

  I found the vegetables more satisfying than the herbs and flowers. So, according to Angharad, did the rabbits. She was stern about bunnies. The Peltzes ate a lot of rabbit stew. The lettuces and other salad veggies in Mrs. McGregor's garden were interplanted in raised beds, with marigolds to keep down the insects. Everything seemed to be flourishing, though the green corn wasn't very tall. I sneaked a pea-pod.

  It was almost eleven by the time we escaped. On the way back to the lodge, Janey and I led the pack. Jay and Win D'Angelo had gon
e rowing on the lake. Janey and I put on our swimsuits and piled into a canoe.

  An ancient swimming platform floated well out in the lake and the four of us spent an hour or so swimming and sunning. The water was so frigid three feet below the surface it was necessary to climb out every ten minutes to thaw. We splashed a lot and laughed a lot, and I got a sunburn.

  After lunch I called Ginger. She and Annie had everything under control. No, she didn't need me, but if I didn't show up in the bookstore by three Saturday I was dead meat. She had sold a Collected Shakespeare to somebody heading north to Ashland. Dennis had sorted out his fire crews, the blaze was trailed, the crisis over, and he was taking her down to Lake Siskiyou for the fireworks. I applauded and made promises. Then I went upstairs to anoint my rapidly freckling shoulders.

  I wound up napping.

  Jay woke me when it was time to take the sail board out for a spin. He caught onto the trick of keeping the mast erect right away. Janey had a wet-suit and bobbed in the water giving directions. She said we were her star pupils. When the breeze picked up around six we had several flutters across the waves, but my shoulders burned through the long-sleeved cotton shirt I wore for protection, and by the time we came ashore my legs were half-frozen from the knees down. Winton D'Angelo, who was forty-five if he was a day, had pooped out early.

  Miguel and a small cross-looking man I took to be Domingo, the cook, were already setting up a buffet table on the veranda when we came back to the lodge. Jay and I showered and changed very fast.

  With my height I look like a walking Christmas tree in frilly dresses, but I'm not dumb enough to buy frilly dresses. I slipped into a turquoise linen sheath that enhanced the color of my eyes and contrasted nicely with my black hair. I wore straw sandals (for no poet in creation would I swelter in pantyhose with the temperature above ninety), heavy silver earrings, and a wide Navajo bracelet, silver with a turquoise setting, that Jay had given me at Christmas as a guilt-offering for refusing to fly back East with me. I touched up my eyelids with turquoise shadow.

  Jay pursed his lips and whistled when I presented myself for his inspection. "Classy."

  "You look good enough to eat yourself, James B."

  He grinned. "Who needs dinner?"

  Being civilized guests, we wended our way downstairs. Everybody but Janey was also tricked out like a fashion ad. The food was, as promised, lucullan. Jay could even eat some of it.

  We ate early, around seven, and drank and talked and milled around the lawn, waiting for darkness and fireworks. Ted Peltz was there, dressed almost like a human being and very subdued. Someone had trimmed his whiskers. He had eaten everything in sight, but I think Someone was also rationing his drinks. Maybe he was. Maybe he was not entirely stupid.

  At any rate he caused no direct crises though he sulked in a lawn chair on the edge of the gathering. Angharad fetched things for him like a well-trained gun-dog.

  Miguel set up the bar as the sun sank behind the hills to the west. Twilight lingered. I wished for fireflies. Jay and Janey and I took our beers down to the boat dock and looked at the fireworks set-up then drifted back across the lawn.

  Llewellyn was sitting with Lydia and Bill in a nest of lawn chairs. He smiled at me, so I pulled an extra chair up beside him. Bill sat on my right.

  "Pleasant day?" Llewellyn was drinking Campari and soda. He toyed with the stem of his glass.

  "Fantastic. This place is paradise."

  "I thought all you young people liked fast boats and hot music." Bill, in a grumbling tease.

  "Your daughter supplied the entertainment."

  "Dear Janey," Lydia murmured from the other side of Llewellyn's chair. "She looks like a seal in that wet-suit."

  That was unkind. Janey was only a little bottom heavy. I took a sip of beer and didn't comment.

  Bill gave a snort of laughter. "Barks like a seal when you jaw at her, too, Lydia. Better lay off." He sipped at his scotch. "She's a good kid."

  Lydia sighed and rose. "I know, darling. I wish she didn't live so far away. We don't see enough of her." Janey worked in a small town up north in the Columbia Gorge, the better to wind-surf. And, I suspected, avoid her stepmother.

  Lydia strolled over to the others and sat by Denise. I could see Janey edging away from her.

  "Tell me something, Lark."

  I looked at Bill over the rim of my schooner.

  "Your mother's name, Mary Wandworth Dailey..."

  "I know." I resigned myself to answering the inevitable question. "It's too good to be true, but it's her real name. She was Mary Wandworth, and she'd published a couple of poems by the time she and Dad married, so she kept both names. It's just a coincidence that they make her sound like Wordsworth and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow."

  Llewellyn said drowsily, "Nothing would compel Mary to sound like Longfellow."

  I grinned at him. "True. She was well-taught. No bumpity-bump meters for Ma."

  He took a swallow of the bitter red wine. "You have a way with words."

  "No, sir, I do not. The Wandworth eloquence skipped a generation. Ma always says she should have named me Audrey."

  Both men looked at me.

  "You know, in As You Like It--Jacques's shepherdess."

  "'I would the gods had made thee poetical'?" Dai Llewellyn gave a crack of laughter.

  I was pleased with my little joke, though Bill had the uneasy look of one who doesn't quite get it.

  Llewellyn was still choking. It took me a second to realize he was not choking with laughter.

  I jumped up. "What's the matter?"

  "Wine..." He gave a convulsive shudder and leaned forward. The wine glass tipped over on the little metal table between us. Red liquid puddled the white enamel.

  I set the glass upright. As I reached out with the vague idea of helping him to his feet, he began to vomit.

  Bill shot up, overturning his chair. I took Llewellyn's shoulders. "Help me. He's sick."

  Jay was at Llewellyn's other side before the words were out. He must have seen we were in trouble.

  The poet's frail body shuddered under my hands as he retched up his dinner. Bill was making bleating noises.

  I tried to pat Llewellyn's shoulders. "Can we take him into the house?"

  Jay met my eyes briefly. He was frowning. "In a minute. Bill, go for the phone--911. Tell them to send the life-flight helicopter."

  "Good God, he's just sick, ate a bad egg or something."

  "Do it, man."

  After a moment of hesitation Bill shambled off toward the house. The others had come closer, Lydia and Denise clinging to each other, all staring. I noticed they stood out of splattering range in their finery. Miguel, crying out in Spanish, ran up with a bar towel.

  Jay took it from him and rapped out an order in the same language. Llewellyn grabbed at the damp towel and tried to wipe his face, but a second wave of nausea racked him, and the towel fell to the grass.

  Miguel picked up the Campari glass, all the while wailing in high-pitched Spanish. As he took the glass away, he called something over his shoulder.

  "Your pills, sir..." Jay bent over. "No, it's too soon. Janey, bring blankets. And check with your dad. I want that chopper."

  Janey dashed off, with Lydia trotting after her. Winton D'Angelo was holding Denise, who was weeping on his polo shirt. The Peltzes gaped. They were holding hands. Llewellyn vomited until he was heaving dryly. When Janey came back with a pillow and an armload of blankets, Jay had her spread them on the grass. She said Lydia was with Bill. The helicopter was hauling victims of a car wreck to the county hospital. They were sending an ambulance in case it took too long. She made her report in a high breathless voice while she spread the blankets a few yards away, and Jay and I held Llewellyn.

  Slowly Llewellyn's spasms eased, and he sank back on the chair, shuddering under our hands.

  "Now, sir," Jay said, "we're going to help you over to those clean blankets. Miguel said you take heart pills."

  "Digitalis. Shirt
pocket. Chest hurts." He stumbled as we half-carried him to Janey's pallet. She handed Jay a damp towel, and he wiped Llewellyn's face and shirt clean when he had eased the old man down. Llewellyn lay on his side, half-curled in a fetal crouch. Jay swaddled him with extra blankets, and I slipped the small pillow Janey had brought beneath his head. He seemed to be drowsing.

  "Should you give him the digitalis?" I had seen the outline of the little silver pillbox against the damp shirt. I eased the box out. "Do these look right?"

  Jay was taking Llewellyn's pulse. "Thready," he muttered. "Jesus."

  "Digitalis," I repeated.

  "Uh, yeah...no." He took the box and looked at the pills. "I wish I knew whether he'd taken one in the last couple of days."

  "Last night. I saw him."

  Jay frowned at me. "Are you sure?"

  "Same pillbox."

  He slipped the box in his pants pocket and began checking the pulse rate again. Llewellyn stirred. "Sir, Dai, can you hear me?"

  "Mmn."

  "Can you tell me how you feel?"

  "Mouth burns."

  No wonder--all that stomach acid.

  "Tingles," he mumbled after a moment, blinking. "Hands feel funny. Eyes all blurry." His jaunty waxed mustachios had wilted.

  Jay was muttering under his breath. Abruptly he stood up and looked around. "D'Angelo, Peltz, clear the chairs and tables off the lawn. I want you to mark off a place for the chopper to land. That flat area by the boat dock. Let's hope the damned thing gets here before dark. If not you'll have to drive cars down here to light up the grass."

  I was still kneeling by Llewellyn. I smoothed his hair. His breathing came shallow and quick. It was dusk, still fairly light out, but hard to tell colors. I was looking at his lips. If he had trouble getting enough oxygen they were supposed to turn blue.

  "Oh, God, don't let him die!" Denise moaned. She made to kneel by me.

  "Take her into the house," Jay snarled. Janey and Angharad Peltz almost had to drag Denise off Llewellyn's body, but they eventually persuaded her to go into the house with them. She moaned all the way.