The Body in the Kelp ff-2

by Katherine Hall Page

  Faith started to invite everyone back to the cottage for brandy or whatever one had after such an event, when she realized that the line had shifted again and the two people who had just edged through the door were attracting a few surreptitious glances. (She had already learned that no one in Maine actually displayed overt curiosity.) It was Bird with her rock musician. He looked quite ordinary, or at least for the Hard Rock Café or some other place where adolescents and post-adolescents dressed the part. He was wearing tight black leather pants and a vest with no shirt, which had to be pretty nippy Down East, and his hair was carefully arranged in careless spikes. Faith had never seen Bird up close. She was certainly dressed like a flower child, and a rather pale baby was tied in a sling on her back, but no one was noticing her dress or the baby.

  Bird was beautiful. Not striking. There would be no argument. Long shining deep black hair and luminous eyes that seemed to change from blue to purple as the light caught them. Cheeks flushed from the cold and rosy lips that were slightly parted. Absolutely beautiful.

  Faith looked across the table. Bill Fox was gazing at the door with a sudden look of intense longing on his face. Roger was looking too, a slightly blurred duplicate. They wouldn't want to go anywhere for a while.

  Princess Ardea had just walked into the room.

  3

  “Going, going, gone." The auctioneer brought his gavel down with a bang on the crate he had set on top of a chest of drawers. Another quilt had been bid up by the dealers and off-islanders. But Faith felt confident that she would get one eventually. There were so many. It seemed that generations of Prescott women had done nothing but cut up their old clothes and piece them into quilts. During the viewing in the barn, the choicest ones had been hung on the walls and suspended from the rafters like glowing pennants far a tournament. And in a way an auction was like a tournament as knight jousted with knight for the prize—a fair damsel, splinter of the true cross, or walnut five-shelf corner whatnot.

  They were holding up another quilt now, a particularly beautiful one with a huge Mariner's Compass in the center in shades of blue, surrounded by smaller ones quilted in white on white. Faith raised her card hopefully when the bidding started, then sighed, sat back, and watched.

  It was fascinating. The auctioneer spoke so rapidly she could scarcely follow, and as he rattled off the bids—"Two hundred dollahs, do I heayre two fifty?"—his partner, an elderly man who looked like he'd be more at home in a dory on Eggemoggin Reach checking his traps, reached toward the crowd and grabbed the bids out of thin air, keeping up a constant accompaniment—"Yep, yep, you have it. You have it.”

  It was all over at five hundred dollars.

  “Remember, it was one of the older ones, Faith," Pix comforted her.

  They had arrived at seven o'clock, laden with chairs, a thermos of coffee, another of cold lemonade, sandwiches, tape measures, and a firm resolve not to get carried away; if one showed signs of it, the other had solemnly sworn to push her companion's chair over. Faith could afford to bid high for what she wanted, since she had a tidy little trust fund started by her perspicacious great-grandfather. The nest egg had shrunk to plover size after she had begun her catering business, but her success had let her replace what she had taken out and a good deal more. Tom looked upon it as a golden egg—insurance for old age, and also back-up college tuition for Benjamin and whoever might follow. Faith agreed, with one exception: She would pay for her clothes. She supposed that loosely defined, that could include a quilt, but she was at the auction for bargains, unless she fell head over heels in love with something. And then there was always Pix the watchdog; if she started to bid wildly, Pix would see to it that she was literally head over heels.

  Pix could afford the high bids, too, but she had an ingrained Yankee frugality that continued to astound Faith—the kind that cut off the one leg in her pantyhose that had a run, matched the good leg with a similar survivor, and suffered two elastic waistbands and goodness only knew what kind of discomfort in the crotch. Faith had given her a pair of thigh highs, and Pix was initially enthusiastic until she went to Filene's to get more and found out the price.

  They were both dressed in layers today. The morning had started out foggy and cool, but Pix had predicted they would be down to their tank tops before noon, and she was right.

  Despite a good-sized crowd, they were able to set up camp under the tent in a prime spot—close enough to the front to follow the action there and slightly off to the side to follow any action in the crowd. They didn't have to wait long.

  The first skirmish of the day broke out between Eric and Sonny Prescott before the auction started. Eric claimed that the weather vane, an old copper one in the shape of a three-masted schooner, was part of the house and not the contentsthereof. Sonny said it was like the pictures, mirrors, and other detachable things. It could be taken off, so it was auctionable. Eric pointed out with increasing heat that the ship had raced against the wind on top of the barn since it was built and was as much a part of the house as the gazebo. Sonny replied that he didn't wonder but the gazebo could be auctioned too. One of the onlookers, a spoil-sport or good Samaritan depending on how one viewed these matters, had gone to get the lawyer.

  Mr. Foster was quite explicit, armed with foresight, experience, and a list. The gazebo stayed. The weather vane went. Eric angrily told the auction-house workers not to touch it, he was going to buy it, and the lawyer told the auctioneer he thought it could be bid upon from the ground. An uneasy peace reigned.

  Roger arrived shortly after and went with Eric into the house, possibly to make sure the Prescotts weren't removing the wainscotting in the dining room or linoleum in the kitchen.

  Now it was almost ten o'clock and it seemed that Stanley Gardiner, the auctioneer, had scarcely made a dent in the lots, even at the breakneck speed he and his runners steadily maintained. Faith sat transfixed, her index card with the number on it clutched in her hand. On the back were some sketchy notes to remind her what she wanted.

  “Lot 56—Carnival glass—a beautiful grape-and-cable compote in perfect condition, with a small flake at the base. We don't often seen them this size. What am I bid for this lovely piece? Do I heayre fifty, fifty, seventy-five? All done at seventy-five? Are we buying or renting today? Fair word and fair warning—sold for seventy-five.”

  Faith glanced down at her card. Lot 58 was a cherry cradle. After all, Benjamin was getting up there and it might be time to start thinking about another baby. Her mind instantly recoiled from the memory of all those sleepless nights and the fact that "easy childbirth" was an oxymoron.

  She thought instead about little toes and a satiny-smooth bottom, those milky smiles and gurgles. Meanwhile the cradle could hold Ben's stuffed-animal menagerie.

  “Now here's a pretty piece," the auctioneer was saying. "Lot fifty-eight, a cherry cradle. Not a scratch on it. Do I heayre twenty-five to start us off?”

  Faith raised her card fast, and the old man whom the auctioneer addressed as Walter and occasionally Wally snatched the bid in his gnarled grip. "You've got it.”

  Faith didn't look behind her, but apparently only one other person was interested in the cradle judging from Walter's movements.

  “Nobody having babies on this island anymore? I have fifty-five. Use it for a planter—look swell with petunias in it. I have seventy-five and ninety-five. Ninety-five, ninety-five. Going, going, gone at ninety-five dollars." Faith grabbed Pix's arm ecstatically. It could have been a can full of rusty nails. The point was, she was the high bidder.

  “Have cradle, will reproduce," Pix said, laughing.

  The tent was full and people had set up chairs on the lawn. Earlier, Pix had used the occasion to give Faith a rapid overview of the island population: four basic groups with numerous subdivisions. There were the year-round native islanders, an inordinate number of whom were named Prescott, Hamilton, or Sanford, and the year-round off-islanders, many like Eric and Roger—artists or writers—others wanting to get awa
y to what they thought was a simpler life. There had been a big influx of this group in the late sixties and many had stayed, but to the Prescotts et al they might have arrived a week ago. The summer people were also divided into two main groups: what Pix called the "rusticators," families who had been coming to the island for generations and marched in the annual Fourth of July parade with banners that said "Fiftieth Summer," and the newcomers, people like Faith who rented cottages for short periods of time. People who might never return to Sanpere, impossible as that was to imagine.

  Faith looked around. Once you had the labels, it was easy to stick them on. A group of rusticators sat on sturdy canvas folding stools not far away with grandmother's fitted wicker picnic basket, "the one we always take to auctions," filled with egg-salad and watercress sandwiches, the thermoses with fresh-minted iced tea at their feet. Some of the women wereknitting Fair Isle sweaters, and the men strolled purposefully down to the water to check the tide from time to time. The new people had the equipment. but their baskets lacked the patina and validation of old age. The local people were eating the hot dogs being sold, and most of the artistic group had gone home after noting Matilda's taste—a Wallace Nutting or two, Granville Fuel Oil calendars—and searching fruitlessly in the boxes from the attic for a Hiroshige.

  There was a large number of day visitors too—dealers from up and down the coast and summer people of both varieties from the mainland. Pix had spoken in a disparaging way about them—people who needed a movie theater within twenty miles.

  The next couple of hours went by quickly. It got hotter under the tent, but it was worse outside in the sunshine. They ate their sandwiches and drank the lemonade. Pix had to supplement her lunch with one of the hot dogs after she smelled the one the person next to her had, heaped with sauerkraut.

  “It goes with an auction," she told Faith, who refused.

  “Funny, I don't remember seeing them at Christie's," Faith remarked, and Pix jabbed her.

  “When in Rome, Faith ..."

  “I know, I know. If they were selling clam rolls I might be interested, but hot dogs, no, not even for you and Sanpere.”

  Pix was the successful bidder on a mixed lot of Heisey glass and almost got a repulsive Roseville jardiniere and pedestal. After that episode Faith asked her if it was permissible to overturn her chair if she bid on something hideous.

  “Faith, Roseville is highly collectible, and besides it would have looked beautiful with that asparagus fern I have. I thought you liked that period.”

  Before. Faith could reply that there was such a thing as selectivity, their attention was drawn away by another quilt, and again it went high. Some had been sold for lower, even bargain bids, but they did not appeal to Faith. She wanted a very special one for their bed in Aleford. The parsonage was in constant danger of slipping into New England country, and she had met the threat by bringing in modern pieces of her own; so far they coexisted happily. She thought she could safely add a quilt without fear of heart-shaped baskets, wreaths, stenciled herds of cows, and pigs in all forms following.

  “Faith," Pix whispered excitedly, "the weather vane is next.”

  It had been a relatively calm auction with only one minor altercation, when a lady wearing red heart-shaped sunglasses who was definitely not Lolita claimed she, and not the couple in front of her, had been the high bidder on a Limoges fish service. The auctioneer had backed up and started the bidding again. She got the fish service and left. The young couple found solace in a Nipon dessert set.

  Now the crowd under the tent grew still, and people who had wandered off to the shade under the big oak trees came to stand on the sidelines.

  Eric and Roger had been sitting in the front row, with the Prescotts filling in the chairs to either side and the rear. It was like a wedding where the bride or groom had only two friends. Eric's arms were folded across his chest, and Roger's , eyes assumed a steely glint quite unlike their everyday softness. Faith saw Jill standing to one side of the auction worker's table. She must have closed the store. Eric saw her too and raised a hand in greeting. Jill smiled encouragingly.

  Walter had taken over for a while, but now Stanley Gardiner returned, took the microphone, and placed it around his neck. Walter moved to the side, his eyes darting around the tent, gearing up. You could hear a fly's wings flutter.

  “Lot two twenty-five. Copper weather vane. As trim a vessel as ever set sail—thirty-six inches long. You've all seen it, ladies and gentlemen. Right on top of the barn. I can tell you there are no patched-up bullet holes in this one. It is in the original condition. A beauty. Fifty to open.”

  Eric raised his card high, and immediately one of the Prescotts countered with a bid of seventy-five dollars. There was a lot of interest in the vane, and the bidding went high. At nine hundred dollars everyone had dropped out except the Prescotts and Eric and Roger. Eric bid nine hundred and fifty. The Prescotts looked grim and bid a thousand. Thecrowd was gasping. Eric bid twelve hundred and the Prescotts seemed to waver. Then Joe Prescott jumped up and rushed at Eric and Roger. Stanley Gardiner stood in his way, and Joe began shouting around him, "It's the gold! Why do you think they're bidding so high! You bastards! She told you, didn't she!? It's got to be gold underneath or something. "

  “Are you out of your mind!?" Roger yelled at him. He and Eric were on their feet. Sonny Prescott stepped next to the beleaguered auctioneer. "Now Joe might have an ideah here. I'd say we better have a closer look at the hull of that boat."

  “If you touch that weather vane, I'll kill you." Eric spoke in a flat measured voice, but his words reached all the way to the back rows. Jill moved away from the table and came up quietly behind him. Nobody else moved. Then the lawyer came and spoke to the auctioneer.

  “Now everybody sit down and calm down. Gorry, I've never seen anything like an auction to get people riled up." Mr. Gardiner took out a big white handkerchief and mopped his forehead. Faith felt a thin trickle of sweat make its way down her cleavage. It was hot. And it was tense.

  “What we're going to do is withdraw Lot two twenty-five for the time being until the heirs can have it appraised to everyone's satisfaction, and whether it will be done up there on the blasted roof or down on the lawn is something you can work out with Mr. Foster here." He motioned to the lawyer, who looked as cool and collected as he had at seven o'clock. "Now there's plenty left for everybody. Lot two twenty-six—Well, what do you know? An Atwater Kent in a Gothic box. Have to be a few of us here who remember this baby. Now what am I bid? Who will start the music at twenty-five?”

  The music stopped at two hundred dollars and an oak chest of drawers, a tray of spongeware, and a Seth Thomas Westminster chimes clock rapidly followed. The parlor set was put up and created some excited bidding among the Prescotts. It might have a nick or two, and the rosewood needed some elbow grease, but it had stood in splendor in the front parlor since Darnell had brought it home from Pain's in Boston as a wedding present for his bride. Nora Prescott from Granville was the high bidder at $850. Just as Matilda had promised her, only she hadn't thought she would have to buy it to get it. Nora's sister, Irene, to whom it had also been promised, decided not to bid at the last moment. Blood was thicker than Old English polish, and Nora had always been there when she needed her, taking the kids when she was up at Blue Hill having her appendix out, telling her she was well rid of him when her husband took off with a hairdresser from Belfast. Irene's noble sacrifice did not go unnoticed, and Nora decided to give her the little marble-topped table, which really wasn't going to fit in her living room anyway.

  Pix bid quickly and got a pretty spool bed for Samantha's room and a dry sink before Faith even knew she was bidding.

  And so the auction unfolded, assuming a character distinct from all the other auctions Gardiner and Company had run or the crowd attended. You never knew what was going to happen. The Warhol cookie jars turned out to be wooden lobster pots that had been in the barn. Few lobstermen used them anymore, and as the tourists and deal
ers bid them up, all the locals resolved to go clean out their sheds.

  Pix and Faith were determined to wait until the bitter end for all the real bargains, and at about four o'clock the box lots started. Faith quickly snared one with tools she had noted for three dollars and Pix bought two mystery boxes of china for four dollars each, which upon inspection proved to contain a lovely Wedgewood ironstone teapot, lots of saucers without cups, something that could possibly be a piece of Imari, some Tupperware, and other treasures. Faith grabbed another box, one filled with board games of varying vintages, which she had seen at the viewing. Tom's family was addicted to board games, and she knew they would be happy to have more, especially for a dollar fifty. She bought two more boxes of china on speculation for two dollars each and figured she was done. After the cradle she had successfully bid on an odd lot of plate serving pieces for thirty-five dollars, elegant Victoriana with elaborate scrolls etched on the knife blades and ladles and repoussé flowers on the handles. It had been a productive day.

  Just as she and Pix were packing up and getting ready to settle their accounts, the runners brought out another quilt, or actually a quilt top. It had been pieced, but not quilted to the batting and underside. Faith paused to watch as they unfolded it. It was a sampler quilt. Every square was different, connected with lattice stripping. The colors were repeated in each design, strong blues, greens, and touches of the same pink as the granite rocks by the shore.

  It was a Maine quilt. Maine colors. And Faith had to have it. She sat down and pulled Pix into her chair.

  “A beautiful quilt top here. All it needs is a back, and I'm sure a lot of you ladies out there could put this together in no time. What am I bid? Do I heayre ten dollahs?" Faith raised her card. She was so excited she felt slightly lightheaded. There was something about this quilt. It was ridiculous, really. She hadn't the slightest idea how to quilt; it was not one of her accomplishments. In fact any sewing more complicated than buttons or a running stitch went to the tailor and always had. But she'd solve that problem once she had it. And she got it. Apparently there weren't any quilters in the audience and it was hers for forty dollars.