The Channel Shore

by Charles Bruce

  From where he sat he could see the eastern reaches of the Channel. Beyond it a long low white cloud bank shawled the Islands. He could make out a tiny whitish glint, perhaps a sail, at the entrance to the hidden dog-leg between Middle Island and the one

  they called The Barrens. Time passed over him; he was not conscious of Adam Falt’s mail-car as it rounded the turn and slowed at Josie’s gate.

  A man got out of it and came through the gate. A tall man, oddly graceful despite the slouch in all his movements. Through the screen of his puzzlement Alan saw that he was decently dressed, as if for Sunday, white shirt and blue tie, carrying the jacket of his grey flannel suit over one arm, swinging a canvas sea-bag with the other.

  Turning, oddly, to approach the back door . . . Alan heard a small sound, a gasp or a cry, a whimpered exclamation or a prayer. He turned to Josie. She had risen from the rocker and was supporting herself with both hands clenched on the table’s edge, her face turned toward him. As he stepped quickly across the floor to put an arm around her, he realized the truth.

  The door opened. The stranger who stood there was dark-haired, though grey was showing in the lock that fell across the left temple. The sardonic lines from the flare of the nose to the mouth corners were deep, the skin weathered. But he was one of those thin ageless men who do not thicken. A man whom time had dealt with lightly.

  He said, “Well, anybody glad to see me?”

  Josie said, “Anse—”

  Alan drove the pick-up out of the yard by the barn gate, turned west on the road and stopped. He took his time, walking slowly back to close the gate. He climbed into the cab again with deliberation. As he let in the clutch and the truck began to move, he questioned life with a wry annoyance and a dull resentment. Once was enough. Once, for days . . . months . . . years ... he had lived an acted part until the acting had become life itself. Until, across time, he was barely conscious of the caution, the study and the restraint he had put into it. He had gloried in it, once. Gloried in establishing for all time a kind of exalted sonship. And had established it. Established it in the sight of the Shore, until it was not second nature but nature itself—a thing you didn’t have to think of, the very soil of yourself in which you could grow to your own bent, the seed unquestioned . . . almost unquestioned . . .

  The audience of the Shore had been lulled, convinced . . . But now, a newcomer in that audience—the one, the only one, whose presence there could prove the long performance false. And now again the old cautions, the care, the foresight, the study and the restraint ... He must put them on again. Wear them with a deftness, a subtlety he had never reached before. A newcomer, and— the audience would know it—a malevolent partner in the play.

  Now, again . . .

  Almost at this minute it must begin. Had already begun, back there in Josie’s kitchen.

  This was the beginning. Why must it fall to him to be the bearer of this news?

  He had stayed in Josie’s house long enough to steady himself and to see that whatever emotion swept her, Josie was in command of it; and to show, himself, the shy excited curiosity that would be expected in anyone who had ever heard the name of Anse Gordon. The images of that half-hour were clear, but with the clearness of a remembered dream, the sense of experience evoked by a story heard or read. The look on Mrs. Josie’s face: what had it mirrored, of the three emotions he had imagined there? Love? Hope? Fear? The slouching arrogance of Anse, with the touch of mock humility as he and Josie clutched forearms in a barren reticent embrace . . . The familiarity of face and figure, and Josie, flustered but working her way to calmness. Josie saying, hurriedly. “You remember . . . No, what am I thinking . . . Alan Marshall, Grant’s boy . . . Grant’s . . .”

  Now the images began to lose their unreality, to become life, the beginning of a whole new story— a story that must fit itself by word and recollection, by glance and touch, into the pattern of the Channel Shore. What ravelling-out, what industrious re-weaving . . . Even now, in the house behind him, Josie perhaps would be telling Anse.

  With a tingle of shock he realized what it was that had given him that sense of the familiar. An inch or two in height, and thirty pounds in weight, and twenty years and he himself . . .

  His mind went back and found a boy who had walked this road preoccupied on a winter evening a dozen years ago and come into the yard to the sound of Grant’s axe in the shop. He could hear the words, the off-hand tone he had found in which to say them . . .Grant, now, was washing the car in front of the house. Alan slid the pick-up into the garage and walked over to join him. Grant paused, rubbing the hood, and glanced up quizzically as if sensing something unusual. Now, Alan thought, now . . .

  He said quickly, brisk with news, “This is a hot one, Pop . . . Mrs. Josie’s got a visitor. The son. The prodigal son. He’s home.”

  Grant frowned, puzzled. His face cleared, stilled, grew lively with interest and unbelief.

  “What d’you mean? Not—it can’t be Anse?”

  Alan nodded. “Yes, sir. Anse. Its him, all right.”

  Grant said, “What . . . Where’s he been, then? What’s he been doing? Where’d he come from?”

  “Don’t know,” Alan said. “I didn’t hang around long. Didn’t like to. Josie’s—well, she’s kind of upset. Oh, she’s all right, but . . .”

  Grant began meditatively to rub a mudguard. “I can imagine . . . Well, I’m damned.”

  No false notes, Alan thought. Whatever had gone on in Grant’s mind his manner had been merely that of a man hearing unbelievable news. And knowing . . . Alan thought, he knows I know; he must . . . But he couldn’t be sure. Never once by word or glance or silence had either of them come close to breaching the long illusion. He went into the house, looking for Renie and Margaret. Whatever else, he must tell the tale, wherever it was told, as news and nothing more. In his own house he must rehearse the words and moods and manner, of a life that once again demanded the playing of a part.

  A part in which with every telling word and act he sealed a wall between himself and Margaret.

  Renie was opening the refrigerator door, bending to get at the vegetables for supper. He could hear Margaret’s light step on the stairs, coming down. She came into the kitchen through the dining- room, and for a wild moment his heart went out before him, oblivious of the story and the Shore ...

  The moment passed.

  He said, “Well, I’ve got some news.”

  As he told them, he realized that already he had accepted the renewed responsibility.

  He had seen this without thinking of it. He could not go away. No one should say that Alan Marshall had gone from the Channel Shore because Anse Gordon had returned to it. He could not go away.

  Anse sat on the open front porch in a red plush rocker he had hauled out from the unused parlour. He lay back, in shirt-sleeves, feet braced against the rail, and waited. He was oddly amused, excitement as close to him as it ever came. Amused at being back, at sitting here watching the Islands, the Channel and the road. Amused at the conflict in Josie, the swift flicker of doubtful love and wild hope that crossed at times the unreadable resolution in her face. Excited, for all his native indifference, at the position he was in. They wouldn’t talk about much these next few days at The Head and The Rocks, except Anse Gordon. Up the road at Leeds and Findlay’s Bridge, down the road at Foresters Pond and Millersville, people would be stopping Adam Falt . . .

  Idly Anse considered this. Considered Adam, and those others with business up and down the Shore. The news. Anse Gordon? The middle-aged and the old would stare, remembering. The young would ask and learn.

  Anse grinned. There was another excitement. A thing that had briefly astonished him. His mind turned with satisfaction on the brief exchange of words with Josie after Alan Marshall had left the kitchen three or four hours before.

  “Anse,” Josie said, as if trying the word over. And then,
directly, “Anse. What brings you home?”

  He had walked across the kitchen, settled in Stewart’s chair, and waited until she returned to her rocker before he answered.

  “Well, Old Lady—,” the voice was light, amused, affectionate. “I had a mind to look things over. See how you were getting on. And all my old friends.” There was mockery in that. A chiding note in what he said next. “You get to the questions fast. A fellow’d think you might be glad to see him, without too much asking. For a while, anyway.”

  Her still, alert look had puzzled him a little.

  “Glad? . . . Yes, I s’pose so. There’s something I’ve got to say. It’s a little late for coming home. The mortal sin . . . It’s been righted. Long ago. By others. Now . . . It’s a little late.”

  There seemed to be nothing in her voice but meditation and the need to say something she had to say. He said, “What d’you mean by that?”

  She told him then.

  “The spring after you left, Hazel McKee died. Sick, and she never got over the birth. The child. The boy you just saw. She was Grant Marshall’s wife.”

  Anse said nothing, letting his mind absorb it, and quelled the impulse that rose in him. The impulse to demand, “Child? What child?”

  No use protesting that. In that moment he had a prevision of the summer days to come, and the prospect was pleasant. Let them think he’d known. He didn’t give a damn for them. Let them think the final villainy, the villainy of accident and impulse, had been the villainy of a calculated will.

  Now, thinking about it on the porch, he gave a hard throaty chuckle. It made no difference. He’d have gone anyway, if he had known. Faster, likely.

  This was what he was thinking now, after an hour’s sleep sprawled on the parlour lounge, and a silent supper. Let them think what they liked and like it. In a little while they’d be dropping in. Tonight. Tomorrow. Making errands past Gordon’s place, so they could call and have a look at him.

  All of them. If he had come back a year or two or three after his departure his name would have been an obscenity then to the prim stiff-mannered women of The Head. But twenty-seven years . . . Time had woven its mellow intervention . . . There wasn’t one of them, not one, who wouldn’t stop when they met him on the road, recognizing, for all their holiness, the flare of something special. And all of them a little envious.

  Envious, and cautious. He laughed inside, thinking of Adam Falt. Adam, after his first shock of surprise, had said, “You’ll find things changed.” Anse had answered, “Yes. They do change.” He had asked no questions, and Adam had gone silent on him, volunteering nothing. He had learned from Josie of Stewart’s death and Anna’s, still without asking. But what she had told him first was the thing about Hazel McKee ...

  Josie came through the front door onto the porch, dragging a kitchen chair. Anse did not stir from his position. From up the road now, echoing against the hills, the rattle of an ancient car ... It grew louder; the car passed the screen of poplars Grant had planted twenty years ago, pulled over and stopped opposite the gate.

  Josie said, “The Wilmots. Word must’ve got around.”

  Talk at the supper table was concerned with Anse Gordon, where he could have spent the years, why he had come back, whether he would stay, what he would do . ..

  Outwardly Grant could recognize only a normal interest in himself or Renie or Alan or Margaret. Even while he made the effort of restraint, smoothly casual, his mind was touched by a wisp of thought: how odd it was that people could hold a surface naturalness, masking with unconcern the conflict of nerves and heart. The children, of course, would he oblivious. Or would they? At the edge of Grant’s mind a speculative cloud gathered and hung. Did they know? Did Alan know? He turned away from it, swept it from his thinking, as he had done a thousand times in years past. He had settled that, pushed it away from him, on a winter day twelve years ago . . .

  Oblivious. But Renie knew. And Renie’s face was serene. Behind her effortless manner worry must now be nursing at the breast of memory. Worry for him, about him. But nothing showed in the smooth tanned planes of her face. And farther back, behind the worry, that essential light-heartedness. A gift. A thing she had given him, a thing he had shared but never, really, achieved in his own being.

  After supper he stood for a minute or two by the veranda steps while the others relaxed.

  He said, “I think I’ll go down and see. I don’t know . . . Wonder whether she’ll want us to—whether we ought to bother about the work . . . Anse was never much of a hand . . . Probably leave her to do her own milking. But it’ll look odd to keep tending to her.”

  Alan said, “It is kind of awkward. I like hanging around Josie’s —”

  Grant said, “We’ll see,” and added evenly, “But you won’t be around long anyway.”

  Going down the road, he reflected that it was just as well Alan had made up his mind to go. Something about that planned departure still puzzled and disappointed him; it was all a part of the oddity of this grown-up Alan. A doubt touched him . . . Perhaps now if the boy knew, he’d be held at The Head by curiosity, by something stronger than whatever whim had turned his mind to the thought of departure . . . Suddenly, Grant wanted him out of it, away.

  He had hoped that his first meeting with Anse could be unobserved by others, except perhaps by Josie. Clem Wilmot’s battered car, standing on the shoulder of the road, halted him. He had an impulse to go into Frank Graham’s and postpone the moment. But there were people on Gordons’ porch; they had already seen him. Better, anyway, to get it over with. He went on and turned in at Josie’s gate.

  Hat Wilmot, Clem, Lee, and Lee’s crippled youngster Skimp were sitting with Josie and Anse on the porch. He felt talk stop as he turned in, and walked up the path in a waiting silence.

  Anse got up from his chair grinning, saying nothing. As Grant took the outstretched hand he realized that Anse was entirely self-possessed, as if he were back from an honourable absence at honourable labour, in the States or the West.

  He said, “Well, Anse; nice to see you back,” and sat down casually on the top step. With his shoulders against a porch post, he greeted the Wilmots and Josie with an inclusive glance.

  This was the pattern. This had to be the pattern. A natural friendliness, casual, tempered perhaps with a little reserve. The reserve anyone would feel and perhaps show, for someone returning to the Shore—someone whose behaviour had been questionable, long ago. So long ago that you treated it indulgently, since there was nothing in it that touched yourself.

  He was glad now that there had been people here to see. Hat Wilmot would spread the story of this meeting. He thought with a faintly bitter amusement that Hat must be disappointed. Seeing him walk up the path, she must have hoped for drama. She would spread the story, and the tone and burden of it would be the flatness, the ordinary quality of his meeting with Anse.

  He glanced across the porch at Hat, remembering the night he had gone to Katen’s and found her there. He could recall the mischief in Anna’s eyes, and his own self-examination later as he drove Hat home in Uncle James’s buggy, with Dan and Bill Graham standing in the fly . . . And another time when he had thought of that drive, a night in the kitchen, and Renie . . . memories of memories ...

  Hat and Clem were making conversation with Anse, and Grant put in an occasional comment. It appeared that Anse had spent most of the years at sea, but he was not communicative. Unwilling, apparently, to dispel a veil of mystery that must add to his stature in the Shore’s eyes. He mentioned tersely, off-hand, a torpedoing in the North Sea, rescue by an E-boat, years in a prison camp.

  Grant thought: He hasn’t changed. Until this moment he hadn’t considered the possibility of Anse changing. Hadn’t considered the possibility that Anse might have come back—well, “repentant” was as close as Grant could come to it. Anxious to avoid hurting others, ready to live and be liked. Well, on the
evidence of manner and attitude, it was clear that no one need waste any thought on that.

  Grant joined in the conversation now and then, but he found himself almost absent-minded. Something to do with the Wilmots was there to be tracked down in his thinking, and finally he knew what it was. He had been looking at Skimp, sitting with Lee on the porch swing. Skimp had been born crooked, with one leg slightly shorter and one shoulder higher than the other. The child was withdrawn and sensitive.

  The thing about the Wilmots was that they were Currie Head people, Channel Shore people. Hat might talk, and there might be danger in her talk, in the fact that it would sharpen an old story in the minds of people who preferred to forget. But the story was going to be sharpened anyway by Anse Gordon’s presence. And no one on the Shore would blurt out a statement or a question that would pull it into the open, imperil publicly Grant

  Marshall’s relationship with his son. The pattern was being formed here, now, on Josie Gordon’s porch.

  Anse was speaking to him.

  “Would you have any pine around the mill, Grant?”

  Grant said, “Might be a stick or two. Why?”

  Anse said, “Thought maybe I’d drag the old man’s boat out of the barn and fix her up. She’ll need some patching.”

  Clem Wilmot asked bluntly, “What for?”

  Anse didn’t answer him at once, letting the moment draw out until it amounted almost to a calculated insult. He said finally, meditatively, “What for? Oh, fun.”

  After a little while the Wilmots left, piled into the wreck of a car and went on down the road to Katen’s. Hat would have some purchase to make to explain the journey, Grant thought. But the real purpose of coming down the road had been to call at Gordons’.

  Josie had risen. Anse said, lazily, “Going in, are you, Old Lady?” She did not answer him. There was something in the manner of her going that suggested to Grant she was leaving it to him. Leaving it to him to say what must be in his heart to say to Anse, or to say nothing.