by Rosie Thomas
‘They would do, in the end.’
They reached the far point of the beach, where the steps led up towards the Pittsharbor road. Leonie had the sense that John was also thinking of Doone Bennison, who had not grown up in the end.
Which was worse, she wondered, for the thousandth time, to have had a child and lost her, or never to have had one at all? She didn’t know, any more than she had known on the afternoon a year ago when the fisherman brought Doone’s body ashore. She had been there, with a brown bag of shopping and a quart of ice-cream from the Ice Parlour. There had been a flurry down at the dock and one of the men had run forward with a tarpaulin and another had dashed along the harbour wall to the wooden hut where there was a telephone. At the same time there had been a hideous silence, and all the running and hoisting and sluicing of water had seemed to take place in slow motion. They had lifted the body, laid her on the dock and covered her over. Leonie remembered the white hands and feet.
The breeze off the water was cold now. Leonie and John turned and began to retrace their slow steps along the tide-line.
‘I miss their smaller selves,’ John said. ‘Even after Ali died, I was certain I could look after them. Now I don’t believe I know anything. They think I’m the enemy.’
‘You said that before. I’m sure it isn’t true.’
She had seen the girls, she wasn’t sure of anything of the sort. But you reassured parents about their children, didn’t you? That she was uncertain even of that much made Leonie aware how useless she had become around the whole business. Parents, procreation. Cut off from the chain of heredity, except via aunthood. What was there to do? she wondered. What, exactly?
Out on the island beach two tongues of fire made wavering figures that were answered by fainter reflections in the water. They stopped walking, stood still to watch. The fire torches dipped and a third flame sprang up between them. The young were lighting a bonfire.
‘Looks kind of fun. Do you think they’ll be okay out there?’ John asked.
‘The kids row or windsurf or sail across all the time. The beach on this side is safe enough and there’s not much to go over the top of the island for. A lot of thick scrub, rough ground. Once there was a whalers’ retreat out there and a Native American settlement before that. Plenty of legends about it.’
‘Tell me one.’
‘Ask Hannah Fennymore. She’s the local historian.’
John took this to mean that Leonie didn’t care enough for the place to absorb its history herself. They resumed their walk.
At the foot of the Beams’ steps Leonie said, ‘Come and have a cup of coffee. Or another drink.’ The thought of going in on her own was not inviting. She felt a connection to this man and wanted to hold on to it.
‘Perhaps another evening,’ John said politely. He was half turned towards the island, listening to the murmur of breaking waves.
‘Do you play tennis?’
‘Yes. Not quite championship standard.’
‘Good. Come and play. I need a partner, Tom’s too competitive. Marian likes to see a family tournament.’
‘I’m sure she does.’
They allowed themselves a moment’s sly amusement Oh, God, an ally, Leonie thought. I need an ally so badly.
‘Goodnight. Will you thank Marian for me?’
‘Of course.’ She went up the steps and left John to cross the remaining expanse of shingle to the Captain’s House.
The Fennymores were preparing to leave. Aaron leaned heavily on his stick with Hannah guiding him. When Marian kissed them both, Aaron submitted to her.
‘You’ll come again? You won’t let the whole summer go by this year?’
‘Time doesn’t mean as much as it once did, Marian.’ Aaron’s voice was deep and hoarse, as if it cost him an effort to propel the air from his chest.
‘All the more reason,’ she answered, patting his hand as it rested on the knob of his stick.
They passed Elizabeth, who was also making ready to go. Hannah and Elizabeth mimed a kiss, Aaron looked at her once and nodded his big head.
‘Let me help clear up,’ Elizabeth politely said to Marian.
‘Let the boys do it. Tom will walk you home, Elizabeth.’
‘Aaron has aged ten years since last summer,’ Karyn said, after they had all gone. ‘It’s quite a tribute to your new friend, Mom, that they came to meet him. I wonder if he realised it?’
‘Why should he?’ Leonie demanded, too sharply. When they looked at her in surprise she added, ‘I mean, understand all the social and historical nuances that rule this place? It takes years to figure exactly where the Fennymores stand in relation to the Newtons, who said or did what to whom twenty years ago. John Duhane’s only just got here.’
Marian smiled at her. ‘You are very good at it yourself, Leonie. You humour us.’
Leonie lifted a bunch of dirty wineglasses on to a tray. ‘When do the Stiegels get here?’ she asked.
Elliot took it from her. ‘I bumped into Marty and Judith at a gallery opening in SoHo,’ he said. ‘They’ll be arriving in a week.’
‘Great,’ Leonie said. Although they had rented the fifth house for several years the Stiegels were outsiders too. Like John Duhane. And herself.
The younger boys brought driftwood from the ends of the stony beach, and Lucas and one of his friends knelt by the fire and fed it. The flames fanned upwards, washing their faces with lurid light. Ivy and Gail reclined on the rocks. Their long legs folded on either side of the other friend, flirtatiously penning him in. The three of them watched the fire, smoked and murmured and joked together. Lucas had brought beer in his boat, and from time to time one of them lazily tipped a can and gulped from it.
May sat apart. When Kevin and Joel were tired of collecting wood they squatted head to head and produced cigarette papers and a packet of weed wrapped in tinfoil. They offered her a draw from the resulting roll-up but she shook her head, wishing at the same time she had accepted and could melt into the group as easily as Ivy had done. It was cold at this distance from the fire, so she edged a few inches closer, feeling the meaty weight of her buttocks as she slithered a trough across the sand.
Lucas was kneeling, staring into the fire. A pale slice of hair had worked itself loose from the rubber band that held it and fell forward, bisecting his face.
May gazed at him.
To one side of her Joel coughed as he inhaled, then snorted with laughter. In her flat, slightly nasal voice Gail called for another beer.
‘What’s happening, then?’
Lucas shrugged in answer to Joel. From his place between Gail and Ivy the other boy said, ‘I’ve got a couple of ideas. How about this for a start?’ He rolled over and flopped on top of Gail, pushing his knee between hers.
Lucas briefly glanced over his shoulder at Ivy. To May he said, ‘You okay there?’ She nodded, unable to speak. The metal braces on her teeth felt like a gag. ‘How old are you anyway?’
‘Fourteen,’ she managed. She kept her lips folded down over her teeth.
‘Yeah. Well, Kevin’s fifteen and Joel’s sixteen. Not that much difference.’
From their snuffles of laughter it was plain that his brothers thought otherwise.
‘What’s with these names?’ Lucas’s friend asked. ‘I mean, Ivy and May?’
It was Ivy he was looking at but May said loudly, ‘Our mother was English, she chose them. She said they were Victorian housemaid’s names.’ She remembered the day when they talked about it.
They had been in the kitchen, the three of them, the one in the old apartment, so she must have been still small, perhaps five or six. They were baking. Ivy was running the bendy plastic blade around the mixing bowl, scraping up a pale creamy ruff of coconut cake mix, ready for licking.
Alison bent over to peer inside the oven, at the first batch of cakes. She straightened up and her face looked shiny from the heat. ‘They are English names,’ she said in her definite way that made you know whatever she said was right.
‘Old-fashioned names, not modern trendy ones like Zoe or Cassie.’ Victorian housemaids. ‘They’ll come back in style one day, you’ll see.’ May had felt proud of her name and distinguished by it.
She saw that everyone was laughing at her. Kevin and Joel had collapsed sideways in a heap and Gail and the two other boys were grinning, showing their big teeth. Ivy was glaring in fury.
Lucas stretched out a foot and stirred the logs with the toe of his boot. ‘Ivy and May,’ he mused. ‘I think they’re cute names, your mom was quite right.’
May looked at him again. The wedge of hair had fallen loose and now he pushed it back with a flat hand. The firelight neatly divided the planes of his face, light and shadow, rose and umber. Gratitude hammered in her chest, and as he turned his head their eyes briefly met and held.
In that single second May fell in love.
Adoration and devotion seeded themselves and flowered, and overwhelmed her with their cloudy scent. She felt dizzy and elated even as she watched his attention leave her and return to the fire. She didn’t care any longer what the others thought. Lucas had defended her. The island and Pittsharbor and the world itself were bearable, even beautiful, because they held Lucas. The music of amazement and awe hummed in her ears.
Lucas scrambled up and sauntered over to sit down next to Ivy. She made room for him, curving her leg so that her hip tightened in the little skirt. Lucas put his big hand there.
Humbly May ducked her head. The moment was already forgotten, it had meant nothing to any of the others. With the tip of one fingernail she scratched minutely in the sand. Lucas, she wrote, the letters engraved on top of each other so no one could see.
Later, Lucas and Ivy strolled away from the fire. With her chin resting on her knees May watched them. As they crunched to the end of the little beach Ivy curved her pliant body inwards so that her thigh and hip and shoulder touched his. Lucas’s arm rested lightly around her waist.
Kevin and Joel tried to talk to May but she couldn’t listen. She kept saying what? or nodding her head and in the end they gave up.
After what seemed like a long time May stood up. Ivy and Lucas had climbed beyond the beach and vanished into the scrubby trees. She dragged a log to the fire and dumped it on, raising a cloud of powdery sparks. Then she slipped off from the others. She wanted to get away from Kevin and Joel and their monotonous stoned giggling, and from the two other boys tussling over Gail. Perhaps she would stumble across Ivy and Lucas. If she interrupted what they were doing, Ivy wouldn’t be able to have him all to herself.
The darkness in the shelter of the spruce trees was intense. May stood still, widening her eyes in an effort to see ahead. A path revealed itself as a just discernible glimmer of paler ground and she ducked forwards, her breath growing loud in her ears. The ground rose steeply and a claw of undergrowth ripped her calf as she climbed. When she stopped to take her bearings the silence was absolute: solid, it lay like a suffocating coat over her skin, pressing down against her lips and eyelids. She rubbed her bare forearms and felt the fine hairs prickle under her fingertips. She was breathing in little irregular gasps.
May sat down suddenly on a broken tree stump that was furred with moss. The silence swelled, rushing away from her at a speed that made her dizzy, then became a vast shell containing tiny noises – the rustle of an insect in the vegetation at her feet, the whisper of the sea, the furling of leaves and the slow surge of her own blood.
Terror suddenly expanded in the narrow space of her chest. May felt each hair at the nape of her neck rise. She stared wildly around her, fearing what might be concealed behind the trees. Every impulse told her to run but she was frozen, pinned to her log like a dead moth in a case.
Then she looked up through a gap in the trees. The stars were cold but she saw the reassuring blink of a jet making its way down the coast. Carefully, brushing her fingers against the mossy dead wood, she stood up. She could move, she could return to the beach; she would be all right if she made no sound.
May crept down the path. Her only thought was to get back from this eerie place into the firelight and warmth; she had forgotten about Lucas and Ivy. But now she came to the lip of a little hollow. She must have missed the original path because she didn’t remember it from the way up.
They were lying in the shelter of a clump of bushes. May saw the pale blur of Ivy’s discarded halter top, then Lucas’s pale profile burned itself against her eyes. He was leaning over her sister, his hands busy, and even in the thick darkness May could read his delighted absorption. Then he dipped his head and their faces greedily blurred into one. Ivy’s thin arm reached up, lazy and proprietorial, and wound around his neck like a noose.
A small sound escaped from May’s mouth. She tasted something sour and burning in her throat, forgot the need for silence and began to run.
The sudden crashing and flailing in the undergrowth flung Ivy and Lucas apart.
‘Shit,’ Ivy gasped. ‘What’s that?’
Lucas rolled on to his back and relaxed. He was laughing, his white teeth split the pale oval of his face. ‘These woods are haunted, baby.’
Tom and Leonie went to bed in the room that had been Tom’s since he was a boy. The windows overlooking the beach stood open and moist, salt-laden air washed in. Lying on her back, Leonie imagined that she could see mist wraiths sadly hanging in the corners.
‘Are you cold?’ Tom asked. He sat on the edge of the bed with his back to her, the mattress dipping under his weight.
‘Not really.’
‘Did you enjoy tonight?’
‘Yes,’ Leonie said truthfully.
Tom eased himself under the covers with a sigh of satisfaction and clicked off the bedside lamp. He settled down for sleep. Experimentally, Leonie rubbed her cheek against his shoulder.
‘You reckon I should just confront him then?’ Tom asked. He had been having a battle with a temperamental chef and as they undressed they had been talking about ways of dealing with the situation.
‘I guess so,’ she answered. She moved her head so that her cheek was no longer touching him. They did not often make love nowadays. When she been trying to conceive it had become one of the hurdles to be scaled on the way to a baby. Now that they had given up, Tom seemed to prefer to roll on his side and fall asleep immediately. Leonie would have welcomed the warmth and affection of familiar sex, but she no longer commanded the language in which to ask for it.
Elizabeth wound the clock in the evening room and replaced the key on the ledge where it always rested. On the way to make herself a cup of herbal tea she passed through the dining-room and stopped in front of the portrait of Maynard Freshett. He did look severe, but she remembered how patiently he had taught her to play canasta, sitting at this very table.
Grandfather Freshett had always been very sure of everything. Of his own worth and that of his family. Of his place in the world. Of what he expected of himself and everyone around him. It was this sense of order and expectation that Elizabeth had wanted to convey to May Duhane. Instead, she had come out like an old-fashioned snob. What was their family business, the child had asked. She was a sharp little creature. Smart, that was the word. Her sadness didn’t obscure how smart she was. Fishermen. The Fennymores had been fishing out of Pittsharbor for generations.
The look of Aaron had shocked her. It was her first sight of him since last fall and he had turned other-worldly, as dry and leaf-brittle as if only the most fragile stalk held him connected to life. He and Hannah had barely spoken to Elizabeth beyond expressions of politeness. Even now, it was difficult.
On the mahogany sideboard under the senator’s portrait was a silver-framed photograph. It was Spencer, Elizabeth’s only child, on the day he graduated summa cum laude from Harvard. Bob would have been proud of his boy, but he had died the year before the photograph. Elizabeth picked it up and stared into Spencer’s eyes. She could almost hear the dust, gathering and layering itself in invisible soft motes all through her empty house.
&
nbsp; Tonight she was oppressed by the relentless passing of time, by the accumulated, stifling deposits of wasted and missed opportunity.
Three
The morning sun shone into the room again, driving a bright wedge through the salt-veiled window.
May checked that the bedroom door was properly closed, then tried it again to make sure. In the absence of a lock or bolt, she came up with the idea of wedging the back of the armchair under the handle. But when she trundled it across she discovered that the chair back was too low.
Nobody would come in, logically she knew that. John was playing tennis with the Beams and Ivy was on the beach with Lucas. When she leaned on the window-sill to look for them she saw her sister wearing Lucas’s wetsuit, perched on his sailboard in the shallow water. Waves no bigger than ripples fanned around the board and ran out into the glittering shingle. Lucas himself stood alongside to encourage her, but as Ivy braced her arms and pulled on the bar, she wobbled and toppled backwards into the water.
May’s mouth curled with pleasure, but Lucas waded forward and hoisted Ivy in his arms. As he set her upright she turned her face up to his and they kissed. It was only the lightest brush of a kiss, but it filled May’s teeming imagination with images of other less public embraces. Her smile turned stiff and bitter. It felt like a Hallowe’en mask on her burning face.
Lucas.
As far as Lucas was concerned she was invisible. Since the night on the island he had hardly glanced at her. She didn’t really expect otherwise, but the glaring hopelessness of her attachment intensified the pain of it. May felt diminished and squat, trapped at the wrong end of some monstrous telescope. Sometimes it was hard to breathe when she covertly stared at him, her arms and legs seemed to waver and soften, and threaten to buckle underneath her. She didn’t know how to position herself, even how to sit or stand when he was around. The only solution seemed to be to hide in the room she shared with Doone and her secrets.
Nobody would come in.
Only there was nothing logical about her fears that someone might. May left the chair pushed hard up against the door and knelt down in front of the loose section of skirting.
