The Channel Shore

by Charles Bruce

  Buff said, “You won’t forget, will you? You’ll be down?”

  Alan said, “Sure. We’ll pick you up, Buff,” and turned to walk with Grant toward the car.

  Grant hesitated there, his hand on the car door, frowning slightly, his glance following Buff Katen and the others until the sound of Wilmots’ engine died down the hauling-road. He glanced again over the yard. “Not much left in the way of logs. We’ll have to haul ... Be haying time soon, anyway. Why don’t you take a few days off? While you can?”

  Alan climbed into the car, pulling Grant after him with light words. “Look, Pop. If you don’t like my sawing, say so. Take her yourself or get a real sawyer. I’ll go to work with an axe, in the woods ... But be damned if I’ll sit in the parlour ...”

  He grinned as he said it. Grant had never liked to saw; he had always said he wasn’t enough of a screwball. But Alan had taken to it from the first. Even before the war, old mill hands like Sam Freeman had said his planks looked as if they’d been through a planer.

  Grant said with a faint reserve, “All right . . . You ought to have some fun, though.”

  “I wouldn’t worry about that.” Alan was backing the car, turning. His voice was gentle and absent. Memory touched him briefly. Years ago he would have quit work and gone fishing, even if he didn’t particularly want to, if that was what Grant wanted. But he wasn’t a boy any more.

  How could you make it plain? He knew what puzzled Grant. It wasn’t natural for a person who had been through these last years in England, France, Belgium, Northwest Germany, to settle down as if he’d never been away. Such a fellow should be lazy for a while, should observe the forms of gaiety, get a girl perhaps; attend the receptions they were holding for the boys coming back; make appearances in the uniform with the sergeant’s stripes on the sleeves.

  What he could not explain was why he wanted none of that. This was all he wanted. To get up at six in the morning, eat breakfast, drive to the mill, listen to the mutter of the engine, walk up to the carriage and rip out deal. It was good enough. It was more than that. You didn’t have to bother about anything. Didn’t have to look ahead, even though each day, complete in itself, ran on always into a sense of the next. Even though there was a curious expectancy ...

  Work and tiredness. The look of Sam Freeman’s moustache. The look of Lon Katen puddling the sawdust with brown tobacco-juice. A drive on Sunday or in the evenings. Home. Down to Katen’s to hang around, kidding with Buff. Down to the mill to file and refit, with Margaret perhaps roaming the yard in the dusk. That was all.

  You might say, Look: This was what I hankered after for six years . . . But you couldn’t. That was corn. And it was not strictly true. Not when you had trained yourself to hanker after nothing,

  He said absently, “I like it this way,” and sheered away in thought.

  Grant was silent.

  As he turned out of the yard, Alan said casually, “If you’re not using the car tonight I’d like to have it for a while. Margaret and I thought we’d take a drive.”

  “Did you?” Grant spoke slowly. “Dan’s cousin’s home. Bill. I thought we might go over to Frank’s. I used to—Bill was here, once, years ago.”

  “I know,” Alan said. “Dan was telling me.” He was regretful about this, knowing the pride Grant would take in being with him at Frank Graham’s, seeing him introduced to the newcomer —Grant Marshall’s son, home from the war. But Bill Graham would be at The Head all summer. He said, “Look—if it’s all the same—Margaret and I—we thought we’d take a look at the dance. Down at The Pond.”

  After a short silence Grant said evenly, “That’s not much of a place for Margaret. You either.”

  Alan worked the car round a hole in the hauling-road. Words formed in his mind . . . When you were my age you’d been married twice. I can look after Margaret . . . The real reason the women don’t like dances . . . the real reason is, the people are Catholics. Down-shore Catholics. You and Renie get the Methodists to put on a dance and we’ll go to that.

  But that was arguing. Even though he had grown into a habit of speaking frankly, he disliked argument. Argument with Grant.. . He shook his head as he edged the car over the culvert where the hauling-road joined the highway, and straightened out for the run to The Head.

  He merely said, “Oh, they’re quiet enough these days, I guess. It’s just for a look, anyway. Something new.”

  Grant said nothing. There was no answer he could make in words. The answer was in a habit of living. He checked himself. Through some odd association in memory he had thought of James. In what he had been thinking and saying, was there something of James? Was that it? James Marshall, dead more than four years. How much of his hardness had been belief? How much of it had been regard for appearances, the kind of thing that nagged his own mind now?

  Grant didn’t know. There was no logic in his feeling. For weeks he had been urging Alan, off and on, to take things easy, have some fun. And now he could feel a futile anger because the kids were going to a dance.

  His mind turned for a moment on his own youth, the shyness of it . . . Here was Alan, grown up into a man whose confidence and ease he would have envied, years ago. And j wasting it on people like the Katens.

  He shook his head, bothered again by something from the past. He was seeing Alan in the summer of ‘thirty-eight, a boy still, without this lean maturity and ease. Seeing Alan, standing by the mill—they had moved it east that spring, but it was still out back —standing by the mill, looking north: “Some time this fall, Dad, why don’t we take a couple of packs; hit through the woods? See what’s there. Till we strike the railroad ...”

  It had been a Plan. To take a compass and belt-axes and maybe a shotgun. Cross the narrow end of the county on foot, northward to the railroad and the gulf shore. Grant felt an unaccountable lonesomeness. They had never got round to it, and now in this summer of ‘forty-six Alan hadn’t mentioned it, or anything like it, again.

  He grunted, irritated at the unreason of his thougfy.

  Alan said, “You’re talking in your sleep, Pop,” and laughed.

  “Guess I am,” Grant said. His mind tightened at the half-teasing affectionate Pop, the word he was hearing now instead of the old Dad, the occasional half-daring Grant.

  He couldn’t help it. It was like a small inner hysteria, beyond the will. He felt again the shock that had barely touched him, far back of the rush of affection, when Alan had stepped down from the train at Stoneville after more than five years away. The grave boyhood lost in maturity. The dark grin, the lock of hair falling across the left temple. And the look he had seen, or thought he had seen — afterward, in the eyes of others . ..

  In the big dining-room facing the road Margaret was setting the table.

  Gradually the family had got into the habit of using The Room as a living-room, more formal than the kitchen, less formal than the parlour. Grant had built into it a stone fireplace, and in these later years when he could afford to care less about time and money, he and Renie had begun to think about leisurely things: comfortable furniture, hardwood for the fireplace, china and silver for the table.

  In winter, the family spirit born in the kitchen continued here, and in summer, though no one was much in the house except to sleep, this was where Grant read the paper in the hour or two before bed-time, where Renie sewed and knitted, where Margaret and Alan sat for a little, relaxed and inactive, not needing any small activity to accompany passing time.

  In summer, too, for coolness, they ate supper here, Ordinarily this was a casual performance except on Sunday or when there was company, but in the weeks since her return from Halifax Margaret had been giving it a touch of formality. She spread the white cloth now, got the plates and cups and saucers from the dish closet, and went through the kitchen to the refrigerator in the pantry for sliced tongue and potato salad. She was placing knives and forks when Renie came in
from the garden, her hands full of narcissi, and began to arrange the flowers in a slender-stemmed vase in the centre of the table.

  Renie glanced across the table and smiled. She was thinking that Margaret, beyond the white cloth, looked curiously slim and childish. Odd, too, how one could look so much like another while individual features differed. Margaret and Grant . . . She saw the brown bobbed hair, like polished walnut, the dark blue eyes, the short nose slightly broadened at the base, the face narrowing to a delicate chin not quite pointed, the mouth with its over-full upper lip and curved half-hidden lower; the body small and slender and unconsciously voluptuous. Renie thought: Some man, some time . . . and almost uttered one of the off-hand observations The Head had come to expect of her. Instead, she smiled.

  It was a smile of understanding and wisdom, but of an under­standing that did not dissect, a wisdom too gentle to be analytical. Not a knowing smile, in the sense of expressing knowledge of hidden motive or feeling. All Renie’s smile expressed was that a woman has a right to her oddities, and that perhaps Margaret and herself possessed more oddities than most.

  A flush darkened Margaret’s cheek-bones. For an instant she felt a small sharp sensation, as though she had been discovered in some thought or feeling almost unknown to herself. This passed at once into a suspended moment in which she saw Renie as a woman. She was not conscious of the fact that for twenty years she had taken Renie for granted. The past didn’t come into it in deliberate memory. What she saw for an instant was a woman in a green dress, a roundish face unlined except for laugh-wrinkles; short hair that was nearly all grey; strong shoulders, large hands. A woman who had given her a look of understanding untouched by criticism.

  Once, in Halifax, Will Marshall had taken Margaret to dinner at the Young Avenue home of the man who headed the con­struction company Will worked for; a man who had occasionally bought lumber from Grant. One of the guests was the character woman of an English stock company then playing the Capitol. Margaret had been ill at ease, not at any lack of poise in herself, but at the effort her host and hostess felt they had to make to. reassure her by their manner that it was all right, Channel Shore people were all right; in time she’d get used to this sort of thing.

  She had glanced across the table and caught a glint in the Englishwoman’s eye, a slight twitch to the thin-lipped mouth; a look as personal as a guarded wink. She had felt an odd sense of intimacy, an intimacy based on recognition ...

  Something of this was what she felt briefly now about Renie, who could recognize in a smile their own differing peculiarities, without curiosity or criticism.

  Her blush faded. She giggled as Renie’s smile broke up in a husky laugh. The moment dissolved in a sense of warm silliness, leaving no sense of violated confidence. Margaret turned to the east window, reached up to part the curtains, and rested her hands on the sill, looking out.

  Renie pulled a cushioned wicker chair round to face the north windows and the roadside maples. She leaned back and crossed her ankles. The window was open, propped on a framed screen, and an air of wind touched her face lightly as half-thoughts touched her mind. The ability to enjoy doing nothing, between the activities of the house and the farm, was a quality she had always had. Since she had given up school-teaching there was more time to indulge it. She thought: minutes of rest; they’re my vice. Her mind ran idle, thinking of brief restful moments between cooking and gardening, sitting alone or with Janet Currie on Stan’s porch, or lying in the curious half-sleep before sleep, unwilling to let yourself drop away...

  This was a quality she was thankful for and she knew its rarity. Margaret, now — Margaret didn’t have it. Though all her attitudes might indicate ease and a quiet mind, it wasn’t there. Margaret and Grant were alike; they had a deliberate quietness, a detachment lightened by humour. It made you think of them as easy-going. They were easy-going. But it was a schooled ease. When you knew them, you knew their minds were never still. You knew that while Grant smoked in the kitchen or lounged on the back steps, his face untouched by anything but the moment, his mind was ranging in time and distance. Ahead to next winter’s cut, to next year and the next, back to . . . back to boyhood, perhaps. Ranging and planning. Never quite able to let things lie.

  How hard he had tried to achieve that sense of acceptance. How well, in regard to his fears for Alan, he had achieved it. How well he had preserved that calm, touched with laughter and shared, continuing love.

  But that questioning of time and space and circumstance was always there, far back. Ignored, brushed out of the mind by a kind of reckless resolution. And yet existing; brought to the surface once in years, perhaps, by some word half-caught, a glance, the look on a face. Renie was faintly worried. There was something — the way Grant seemed bothered now —

  But her worry was slight. She smiled, shaking it off. Renie understood Alan, she thought. He had grown up. Alan was a good deal like herself. More like herself than Margaret was, the child of her body.

  Her eyes came back from their surface brooding on the road and the maples to take in again, in concert with her mind, the figure of her daughter standing by the east window, watching the fields and the eastward curl of the road.

  Margaret. . . her daughter . . .

  Drawn toward the girl in that slight warm moment of wordless communication, Renie’s mind continued casually reflective.

  Margaret. . .

  In years of living with Grant she had come to know when matters other than the concerns of day-to-day living were moving in his mind. To guess a little even of what they were. But about what Margaret thought and felt, despite that recognition, the understanding that a woman’s moods were there, she realized she had no hint at all.

  Outside a car slowed and stopped under the maples.

  Renie said, “It’s Beulah.”

  Margaret turned from the window. The screen door clicked. Beulah Marshall came through the front hall and hesitated in the dining-room door, a little flustered at seeing the table set for supper.

  She said, “Oh, Aunt Renie . . . Margaret.”

  “Come in, Beulah,” Renie said. “Sit down.”

  Margaret said indifferently, “Hello, Beu.”

  Renie felt a quirk of irritation. It wasn’t that Margaret ever said anything objectionable. But this polite stand-offishness . . . When you lived in a place you had to go out of your way to be friendly.

  She said to Beulah, “Stay around a bit; we’ll be having supper soon. The men are late tonight . . . Why don’t you eat with us?”

  Beulah shook her head. “Oh, no, Aunt Renie . . . We’ve had supper. I just drove down to .. .”

  Margaret said, with no special emphasis, “He’ll be here any minute.”

  The irritation in Renie sharpened. If Margaret wanted to tease she would have to put some laughter into it. She felt a shock of surprise. Half a dozen girls at The Head followed Alan with their eyes. Was there some kind of resentment in Margaret? She had a sense of let-down. There had been a little while ago that moment of understanding expressed in warm and foolish laughter. Now, this reasonless antagonism.

  Beulah flushed. For anyone else she would have had a bantering retort, but the acid in Margaret’s voice had sealed off banter with dislike.

  “Oh, I . . .” Beulah said. “Look, Papa’s driving up the Head of the Tide this evening to Aunt Isabel’s. I thought—we thought- some of you might like to come for the drive, and —”

  Renie said, “That’d be nice, Beulah. I don’t think we—Grant and I—perhaps Margaret and Alan would like it. Bel Falt’s fond of Alan and she hasn’t seen him . . . Don’t you think so, Margaret?”

  She could see the girl’s contrition, the self-distaste after rudeness and betrayal of personal feeling.

  “I’m sorry, Beulah,” Margaret said. “But I don’t see how we can. Alan — we’ve got something on, tonight. We’re going down to Forester’s Pond. It’s da
nce night.”

  Renie saw the eagerness drain out of Beulah’s face, and the tide of astonishment.

  Her instinct of family defence began to form. She said, “I guess they’re not as rough as they used to be. When I first came here no one would . . . They were all right for the people who believed in that kind of thing, of course.”

  Beulah said, “I s’pose so.” She had risen quickly and moved now to the hall door. “Well, I’m sorry you can’t —Well, good-bye.”

  Renie waited until she heard the sound of the motor. She said mildly, “D’you think it’s wise, Margaret? People around here . . . I don’t see anything much wrong with it myself, but . . . It’s what those dances used to be ...”

  Margaret had returned to the window. She said, “Oh, it’s not. . . It’s just something new, Renie. We’re going down to look.”

  Renie said, “Well, if I were one of the Pond people I don’t know as I’d feel too good about a bunch from The Head coming down as if they were going to a circus.”

  Margaret said impatiently, “It’s not that. You’re twisting . . . Things are always the same here. It’s just, oh, something new. Different.”

  Renie nodded. “Yes, I know. Well, there’s not much that’s new in a place like this. But . . . Well, if it’s more life you’re looking for, you know we wouldn’t put any obstacles in your way. There’s always Halifax.”

  Margaret felt the tingling flush of fear. Halifax. There was nothing now in Halifax. All she wanted now was here, on the Channel Shore. Clear and definite and denied to her.

  A car swung into sight round Gordon’s Turn. She said to Renie, “They’re coming now.” For the moment that would have to do. The daily departures, the casual arrivals. There was always time . . .

  2

  Alan shook his head at the mirror as he knotted his tie, impatient at a slight uneasiness, a shadow drifting in the quiet lake of thought.

  He was, he told himself, making too much of it. Grant’s slightest wish . . . through boyhood it had been his law, a law observed in an eager and careful ardour, a law without words. But now . . . He was twenty-six years old. Now there was an obligation to himself and to Grant to be himself, his own man. To be anything else was forced and artificial, and noticeable—the mark of a dependence that belonged to boyhood.