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The Diamond House

Page 21

by Dianne Warren


  Theo called up to the wheelhouse and said they should be getting back. Jack herded the children down from the bow, and Estella went back to her place on the deck and waited for the sound of the diesel engine, but something was wrong and it wouldn’t start. Peter had to radio for help, and a motorboat soon came toward them across the water. It was the marina’s owner. They got the engine going again, but by the time they did it was pitch-dark. Cheryl and Paul had disappeared below deck, and the girls in bikinis were complaining about being cold, and several adults at once said, “Serves you right.” They finally made it back to the marina, and just as they docked Cheryl and Paul appeared from below looking, Estella thought, as though they’d been up to something. They were all glad the Kingwells’ motorhome was there to transport at least some of the Diamonds who had walked up the beach earlier.

  Estella saw Rose step up into the motorhome with the two boys, but Jack started out walking by himself. Instead of sending her clothes with Mathew in the car and swimming back, Estella decided to walk too, and she hurried to catch up to Jack.

  “Headache?” she asked as she fell into step with him.

  “Why does everyone seem to think I always have a headache?” he said.

  The wind was coming up and it felt like it might rain for the first time since they’d arrived. They walked along the beach instead of taking the path through the bush.

  She said, “You look like you’re in pain sometimes.”

  “Isn’t everyone, sometimes?” he said.

  She thought about it and said, “I suppose you’re right. But you’re my brother. I worry.”

  “Don’t,” he said. Then he added, “Nelly.”

  He hadn’t called her Nelly since they were teenagers.

  “You know I didn’t actually hate that,” she said.

  “I know,” he said.

  They walked the rest of the way in silence.

  THE AFTERNOON FOLLOWING the boat trip, Estella returned from the beach to find that her new car was gone from its spot beside the cottage. She assumed her father had told Mathew to move it and make room for the Oldsmobile, and she was annoyed that Mathew would help himself to her keys instead of asking her to move it. But when she went to his cottage, she saw that her car wasn’t there, either. She walked around Fosters looking for it but didn’t see it anywhere. Then a police car pulled up with the news that the hood of a white Mustang was now wrapped around a tree in the village, and that a young man named Paul Diamond had been driving, and claimed that Estella had given him the keys. He had a girl with him, Cheryl Kingwell. Neither of them was badly hurt, although Cheryl had a scrape on her cheek and Paul had jammed his knee on the steering wheel shaft. They were lucky Paul had not been driving faster than he was.

  She found Andrew to tell him. As he and Harmony and Estella all drove into the village in the Oldsmobile, Andrew tried to make excuses for his youngest son by saying you can’t really steal the car of a relative, and they should likely tell the police that he had borrowed it.

  Estella was having none of that. She had dealt with too many parents who’d refused to believe their darling children were up to no good.

  “No, Andrew,” she said. “Your son took my car without permission. If you’re asking me to tell the police I gave him the keys, no, I’m not going to. Forget it.”

  They found Paul and Cheryl sitting on a bench near the crash. Estella was sick at the sight of her new car crumpled into a tree, and furious with Paul. He said that he’d wanted to take Cheryl for a drive and he’d thought Estella would probably say no.

  “Of course I would have said no, you idiot,” she said, and Andrew had to ask her to tone it down, she might be right, but save that for later.

  Just then Miles Kingwell came up the main street of the village in the motorhome looking for Cheryl, since she hadn’t returned in the half hour he’d given her to go for a drive with Paul. He slammed to a stop when he saw the Mustang and the Diamonds gathered around, and then he saw his daughter with blood on her face and he ran from the motorhome to see what had happened. When he realized they weren’t badly hurt, he flew into a rage at Paul for being irresponsible. He said he had let Cheryl go for a drive with him, but he shouldn’t have. How could he have believed for even a minute it was a good idea when Paul looked like a delinquent in that jacket? Then Andrew stepped up to defend his son, and Estella thought a fight might break out between them. Once the police had them separated, she said it would be nice if someone—Paul, Andrew, Miles, anyone—could maybe show just a bit of concern for her car.

  Cheryl said she was sorry and started to cry, and Estella had to tell her she had nothing to be sorry for except bad judgment, by which she meant Paul.

  Since the police already had a statement from Cheryl and it was clear she hadn’t stolen the car, they said she was free to go. The Kingwells were planning to move on to Alberta that afternoon, and Estella imagined they’d be doing so as quickly as Miles could get his family loaded into the motorhome. Neither Estella nor Andrew asked him for his contact information before he left with Cheryl.

  Estella eventually agreed to say that Paul had not stolen her car to keep him from getting hauled off to the detachment, although she thought that might teach him a lesson. Andrew and Harmony drove him into Prince Albert to get his knee checked out at the hospital while Estella waited around to watch her car get towed away. The guy driving the tow truck told her he thought it was likely totalled. She walked back to Fosters through the trail in the bush thinking that Andrew had better keep Paul away from her for the rest of his life.

  When she got to the cottage, she put on her bathing suit and swam to the point and back without stopping.

  THE DAY BEFORE the Diamonds were to leave once again for home, Estella received an invitation from Shirley Boone. Shirley had left a message for her at Fosters saying she was to come for supper that evening. Estella assumed that Shirley wanted to say thank you. She didn’t expect to be thanked, but she imagined that if she were in Shirley’s place she would do the same.

  When she got to the hotel at six, she was directed upstairs to Shirley’s small apartment. She could smell fried chicken. The table was set for two, not three. Peter must have gone to the marina already, she thought.

  Shirley asked Estella to sit at the table. She was soft-spoken, just as Estella remembered her from the hospital. It was hard to picture her managing a bunch of rowdy fishermen who’d had too much to drink and were set to trash their hotel room. She brought two plates of chicken and mashed potatoes from the small kitchenette and then sat down across from Estella. It was awkwardly quiet as Estella waited to hear what she had to say. Maybe she wouldn’t say it, and Estella would be relieved of having to blather about it being nothing. She told Shirley the story of Paul and her car to break the silence, leaving out the part about him stealing it. Shirley had heard about the car crashing into the tree, everyone had, and she said she was glad no one had been hurt. Estella said the chicken was delicious, there was an art to fried chicken and she hadn’t learned it. Shirley said the secret was cornflakes in the breading. It was the cornflakes that made it extra crisp. Her recipe was from Chatelaine.

  Finally Estella said, “I’m glad Peter is doing so well. And that things will work out for him here until he’s fully recovered.”

  Shirley put down her knife and fork.

  “There’s something I feel I should say.”

  “Oh,” Estella said. “No need. As I said, I’m just glad he’s done so well.”

  “You don’t understand,” Shirley said. “I appreciate what you did. Otherwise, he would have been alone. But I’m asking you to keep away from him.”

  Now Estella didn’t understand. Keep away? She was hardly following him around.

  “I’m not sure what you mean,” she said.

  “I think you know what I’m talking about.”

  “No, I really don’t.”

  “Then let me spell it out. You’re twice his age. Have you not noticed that? Or are you
one of those women who imagines she’s twenty-nine forever?”

  Estella had handled more than a few distraught or angry parents over her years as a teacher. She tried to stay calm as she defended herself.

  “Mrs. Boone, I don’t know what you think happened, but you’ve got it wrong.”

  “I don’t think so,” she said. “I know my son. And I know you took leave from your job to sit with him for hours on end. I certainly didn’t ask you to do that, so I ask myself, why?” Then she looked at Estella with eyes that were chillingly flinty and said, “I know about women like you.”

  Now Estella could see her with the fishermen. They wouldn’t have a chance.

  She stood up and said, “I’m sorry. Somehow you’ve skewed my desire to help into something it was not. Lake Claire means a lot to my family and Peter was a boy from Lake Claire. That’s all it was. I’m going to go now. Thank you for supper.”

  She left her half-finished plate of chicken and walked calmly to the staircase, and then down, through the lobby, and out the hotel’s front door.

  When she got to the bush trail, she began to shake and had to sit on a tree stump. It was half an hour before she was able to stand and walk the rest of the way home. The paddlewheeler went by in the bay just as she arrived back at Fosters.

  She did not see Peter Boone again before they packed up, booked the cottages for next year, and left for home. She did not know what Shirley Boone thought, but it clearly involved her being a predator who liked to get her talons into young men. She went over and over the time Peter had spent in the hospital and she could think of nothing she had said or done that was improper and might have got back to Shirley. And yes, she and Peter had spent time in the last two weeks talking on the beach at night, but how would she even know about that? There was the dog walker, but that was a person neither she nor Peter knew. She had no explanation for what Shirley was thinking, but she was more than thankful that she had not invited Peter to the empty cottage.

  That night, she did not go for her usual swim, and instead packed her bathing suit away in her suitcase.

  ON THE WAY home from the lake, Mathew drove and Estella rode in the back seat with her father and Lorette. They stopped in Prince Albert to look at the photographic proofs, which Bob had processed as a rush job. Estella and her father chose what they thought was the best one. Oliver was in the middle of the photo, and the Kingwells’ daughter Cheryl was beside him. Had her father engineered that? Estella had not paid attention because she’d been fussing with the spilled Coke on her shirt. She was thankful that she was mostly covered by those in front of her and you could imagine she had worn a sundress for the photo rather than a bathing suit.

  “We ordered copies for the Kingwells, right?” Estella asked her father. “Although I don’t think anyone got their address before they left. All the fuss with Paul and the car.”

  When she got home, she spent the rest of the day unpacking and looking after Oliver—first his supper and then bedtime, the long, slow climb up the stairs.

  She missed Lorette already.

  Once Oliver was in bed, she sat down to go through the mail that had piled up while they were away. Among the bills and bank statements, she found a letter addressed to her. It was from Peter Boone, mailed three weeks earlier, before they’d travelled to the lake. There was a little enamelled pin enclosed, a loon with its red eye and black-and-white-striped necklace, the kind of thing Dot sold at the Beach Hut now that she’d expanded her inventory. There was a note thanking her for visiting him while he was in the hospital.

  She dared not write back, not even a thank-you for the pin. She took it up to her room and slipped it into one of her jewellery bags, the same one that held Salina’s beads.

  A week after Estella received the pin in the mail, the eight-by-ten prints arrived from Bob in Prince Albert. She circulated copies to the family and then framed one and set it on the china cabinet. Not long after, she found Oliver in the dining room with the framed photo in his hand and a hammer and a package of brass picture hangers on the table. He wanted to hang the picture on the wall, but had wisely decided he shouldn’t climb up on a chair.

  Estella hung the photo, with Oliver directing her, in a spot where he could see it from his place at the head of the table. In the months after, he would sometimes stare at it, and she wondered if it pleased him to look at Cheryl Kingwell and be reminded of a time when he was young and had his life ahead of him. Maybe, in a sense, he had introduced his family to Salina that night on the Claire de la Lune, and the photo spliced two parts of his life together when he had kept them separate for so long.

  On the other hand, she thought, perhaps he didn’t remember the Kingwells at all and wondered what the hell strangers were doing in the family photograph. It was possible he understood who they were about as well as Estella understood Shirley Boone’s belief that she was preying on her son. In other words, not at all.

  Estella never did figure out where Shirley Boone’s accusation had come from. She could only guess that the dog walker knew Shirley and had told her about the two of them sitting in the dark after one of her night swims, although why that might be considered a reportable offence she didn’t know. When they returned the next summer, Estella learned that Peter had decided to remain in the village, and that Allen Foster had hired him as a handyman. Between that and his job on the paddlewheeler, he had full-time work. Because Estella was so afraid of his mother, she swam during the day, and as a result she and Peter no longer met on the beach at night, although they would sometimes have coffee on the deck of Emily Carr. He was now able to run again, and she would see him cut across the grass in his running shorts and then head into the bush on the trail that led out to the point. He had the habit of addressing the guests at Fosters as Missus and Mister, perhaps from his years clearing tables at The Travellers. When he began to call Estella Missus, she couldn’t tell whether it was a polite mannerism, respectful of her increasing age, or his way of being playful, roguish even. Either way, she played along and called him Mister Boone, as she had when he was a boy saving her from the cold with a Thermos of tea. Missus Diamond and Mister Boone became a tradition, like Roy Orbison on the Claire de la Lune. It suited them more and more as they grew older, Estella thought, although she was always a good bit older than he was.

  Relatively less as time passed.

  OLIVER WAS THE last of the Diamonds that Estella cared for. When she followed through on her resignation and didn’t go back to teaching in the fall of 1965, she told the family that, although she was only in her forties, she had retired to look after her father. She also had to tell them that she and Clarence had broken up, and they looked neither perplexed nor pitying, as though they’d known all along it was her destiny to remain single. Not that they weren’t glad at this point of her single status and availability for care duty. They’d tried to hire Lorette as Oliver’s full-time help after they’d returned from the lake, but she’d said he was too much of a handful and turned down a generous offer.

  Over the last year of his life, Oliver grew more and more difficult. His doctor blamed it on memory loss and said he was acting out in frustration. He’d always been a powerful man, and he couldn’t accept his new dependence on others. He told Estella not to take it personally.

  The rest of the family had no idea how difficult he was because Estella hid it from them. It was obvious to everyone that his physical health was not good, but she didn’t want them to know just how diminished he’d become, that he threw temper tantrums when they weren’t around, that he ripped at the sheets because they were too tight, or behaved like a toddler and knocked his soup off the table if he thought it was too salty. She tried to adopt the patience of Lorette and come up with a few things every day that he would enjoy, at least for a short time. At night, once he was asleep, she poured herself a glass of brandy and tried to think of a way to improve the situation, but there wasn’t one. She didn’t have the energy to break in another caregiver, and he would be miser
able in a nursing home and the family would blame her for putting him there. They had no idea what went on when they weren’t around. When they were, Oliver was on his best behaviour. She forgave him and imagined what she would be like if she lived to be his age. Worse, she thought. Pity the person who got stuck looking after her.

  Once a week, she drove her father out to the brick plant. It took the entire afternoon because he moved so slowly. She had to get him in and out of the car, and then hold his arm for the walk to the main building, even as he tried to push her away. It was a precarious business, getting him up the stairs into Theo’s office—his old office—where he would promptly fall asleep in a chair. She knew that Theo was not completely pleased with Oliver coming out to have a nap, but she assumed he understood that their father did technically still own the plant, and that it was good for him to get out of the house.

  One afternoon, while Oliver slept in the chair, Theo looked up from his paperwork and said to Estella, “I don’t suppose he’d ever set foot out here anymore if it weren’t for you. Why do you think this is such a good idea?”

  Estella immediately bristled at what she thought was below the surface: that she should keep her nose out of business at the factory and care for Oliver at home, where they both belonged. She held her tongue and wondered if Theo would be surprised to learn what she thought about as she sat with her brandy at night, namely, the company’s succession plan. She was barely over forty. There was no reason why she couldn’t learn the business and replace Theo when he decided to retire. With everything she had done when she’d cared for Jack and Beatrice and now Oliver, she believed her brothers should hand her whatever she wanted on a gold platter. Later, she asked her father what he thought about the trips to the plant, and he said he didn’t care. She cut the visits to every second week, not because of what Theo had said, but because it was so much work for her to get him there.

  And caring for him only grew harder. The less he could do for himself, the more angry he became. Estella had to help him with even his most intimate acts, and she didn’t like it any more than he did. When he could no longer climb the stairs, he was forced to sleep in the sitting room and use a commode until she managed to get a proper powder room installed on the main floor. There was no dignity in his life anymore, and he took it out on her. She slept on the couch in case he needed help in the night, and tried not to give in to anger herself. By the time it was agreed that he should be moved to the hospital, she was exhausted, her head empty of thoughts about anything but her father.

 

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