by Ann Swinfen
Tirza laughed softly. ‘I like the snake,’ she said.
Despite a portable kerosene stove brought in for the net mending, it was bitter in Nathan Libby’s boat shed. First thing in the morning the following Saturday Nathan and Tirza between them had carried the two dories out of the big front doors of the shed and down to the wharf. They rested there now, upturned on cinder blocks near the Louisa Mary, waiting for the end of winter. They had moved Stormy Petrel to the side of the shed where the dories had been, and leaned the spars up against the wall. Although Tirza had worked at the varnishing every night after school that week, the mast and the cockpit still needed one more coat. In the meantime work on the catboat had to be put aside while the nets were mended and the lobster pots inspected for damage.
When they went back into the house, stamping their feet against the cold, Abigail put down steaming bowls of porridge in front of them. Tirza wrinkled her nose. She disliked porridge, but knew better than to complain.
‘I’ve got chilblains on all my toes,’ she said, ladling sugar on the porridge to disguise the taste, and topping up with milk. She began to drag canals through the sticky grey mass for the milk to run along.
‘You’ve been putting your feet too near the fire,’ said Abigail briskly. ‘I don’t know how many times I’ve told you not to do it when you come in from the snow with your feet cold and wet.’
‘Better ask Christina,’ said Nathan incautiously. ‘She’ll probably have a poultice for them.’
Abigail gave him a steely look and clasped her hands under her aproned bosom.
‘Don’t give the child foolish ideas, son. Those messes of hot leaves and dead flowers never did anyone any good.’
‘Oh, I don’t know,’ Nathan began, seeing the trap he had dug for himself. ‘Sometimes those old Indian remedies...’
‘Anybody home?’ Ben Flett, Charlie’s younger brother, walked into the kitchen from the front entry carrying his satchel of netting tools. ‘Mornin’ to you, Mrs Libby.’
‘Good morning, Ben. I’ll thank you not to smoke that smelly pipe in my house.’
‘Beg your pardon.’
Ben knocked out his pipe in the sink, where the smouldering dottle hit a pool of water and sent a gout of smoke and steam into the air. Nathan winked at Tirza and poured Ben a cup of coffee.
‘I’m mighty glad of your help, Ben. Tirza and Simon can mend, though the boy’s a mite cack-handed, but it needs two men to set all up.’
‘That nephew of yours is getting’ to be almost a man,’ said Ben, blowing on his coffee. ‘Saw him in church last Sunday. He’s taller than his Ma now, and not far short of his Pa.’
‘Shot up like a weed. But not much shoulder and back to him yet. He hasn’t got a man’s strength. As I say, I’m grateful. I’ll give you a hand next week.’
‘Great.’
‘I will too,’ said Tirza. ‘With your nets – and your pots too, if you want.’
‘Be glad of it.’
They started work without Simon, who arrived eventually, after they had laid out the big net over trestles in the centre of the shed. Tirza and Ben had started from opposite ends of the long tear and were working towards each other. Simon was set to mend a small hole, where his inexpert knotting could do least damage. Nathan was sorting his pots into three piles: sound, slightly damaged, and past hope.
‘How did you tear the net like that, Uncle Nathan?’ asked Simon, pulling down his repair, which had begun to unravel. It always took him a while to master the knot again.
‘I don’t rightly know. Last trip of the season, net caught on something heavy, on the bottom. Must have been metal, I guess, to do that much damage. There’s no wrecks and no sunkers where I was.’
‘Likely some new wreckage,’ said Ben, nodding to himself. ‘There’s been stuff washed up further down the shore from a German submarine.’
Tirza stopped knotting and gaped at him.
‘But the Germans are thousands of miles away. Over in Europe.’
‘Not that far away, Tirza. They shadow the British convoys right across the North Atlantic and torpedo them anywheres. They were doin’ that even before we got into the war. Now they’ll be comin’ right up to our shores.’
‘Could they come here?’ asked Simon. He seemed more excited than worried. ‘I mean, could they come right into Flamboro harbour?’
‘Don’t see why not. Not as they’d want to. Nothin’ for them here. No big naval ships to attack.’
‘Ayuh,’ said Nathan, dismantling a broken lobster pot to use for spares. ‘But they might try to land men anywhere along this coast. That’s what they do – bring the submarines close inshore at night, then surface and send out their spies and saboteurs in rubber dinghies. They could do it easily along that stretch of Libby’s Beach below your dad’s farm, Simon. Can’t even see the beach from your bedroom windows, hidden below the ledges. And with nobody at the Tremayne place, the coast would be clear for them right from here to Todd’s Neck. Easy.’
Tirza wondered why they sounded so chipper about it. She thought of German soldiers – dressed in black they would be – hauling their rubber dinghies up the pure silver sand of the beach under a small moon. They would let the air out of the boats and hide them in the marsh behind the ledges and then they would just melt into the countryside. They could walk straight into this house, if it came to that. Nobody ever locked a door in Flamboro. Her skin crawled.
‘What’s the matter, Tirza?’ Simon teased. ‘Scared of a few Krauts? I wouldn’t be. I’d just get my hunting rifle...’
‘That’s enough, Simon,’ said Nathan sharply. ‘The war isn’t some boys’ game. It’s real, and men are getting killed.’
Simon flushed an ugly red and bent over his netting needle. Tirza felt sorry for him.
‘I don’t think Simon meant it was a game, Dad. I think he’d be as brave as anyone if he had to be.’
‘Oh, forget it,’ said Simon. ‘It doesn’t matter.’
4
Maine: Winter 1942
Harriet Libby leaned her cheek against the rounded side of the cow and pulled rhythmically at the teats. Snowball was a temperamental milker. She would allow herself to be milked by Tobias or Simon or Sam, but she merely tolerated them – her legs tensed, and the yield poor. She loved Harriet with the simple, unquestioning love of an orphan who has been hand-reared and has never since questioned where her loyalty lay. She turned her head as far as the halter rope would allow and blew affectionately in Harriet’s direction.
‘Good girl,’ said Harriet. Her hands were raw with chilblains and split with broken skin across the knuckles. No amount of cold cream soothed them, and there was never time for them to heal during the hard months of the Maine winter. She hunkered down on the old three-legged milking stool which had been here in the tie-up in Tobias’s father’s day, and his father’s before that. There was a dusting of snow on the shoulders of her threadbare navy woollen coat, which had once been her Sunday best but which, by degrees, had dwindled to her town visiting coat and now to her working coat. Underneath it she wore thick underwear, a flannelette blouse, a tweed skirt and an old sweater of Tobias’s with the sleeves turned up, but she was still cold. The winter penetrated her to the bones and she knew she would not feel warm again until May. The warmth of the cow’s belly against her cheek made a small point of contact between them. She crooned to Snowball and the cow sighed and relaxed, and the milk came down easily into the bucket.
If only, thought Harriet, the children were as easy to deal with as the animals. Simon had been jumpy and difficult all winter, but he was evasive about what was troubling him. He said so little these days. Usually he was a talker, needing to be prodded to get on with his chores or his homework, or to set off to school on time. It wasn’t that he was surly now. Just shut in. For a time she thought he’d fallen out with Tirza, but that didn’t seem to be the problem. Only this morning she had tackled Tobias.
‘Have you and Simon quarrelled?’ she asked.
Tobias looked baffled.
‘Me? I thought you’d been laying down the rules to him. Seems a mite moody.’
Harriet shook her head.
‘I’ve hardly spoken to him this last month. Moment he’s home from school he’s shut away in his room. And you know he doesn’t listen to the radio with us in the evening any more.’
‘Ayuh. Maybe he’s just getting bored with our company. That age, they start getting restless. Don’t fret.’
Harriet carried the bucket over to the end of the cow barn into the milk room, and poured the milk through the strainer into the can. Then she swabbed down Snowball’s teats and gave her an affectionate pat on the rump. The cow twitched her tail and lowered her head to the hay in her manger.
Then there was Martha. Two days ago she had telephoned to say that Will was going to be sent abroad soon, probably at the end of the month.
‘I can’t decide whether or not to come down Maine,’ Martha said crossly.
Harriet could understand her hesitation. Martha had always been ambitious, had wanted the bright lights and the big city from the time she was just a little girl. With her pretty face and her lively, outspoken manner she had seemed destined to leave them young. Harriet hadn’t been surprised when she announced her engagement, but she had been surprised that Martha had fixed on Will Halstead. The Halsteads were regular summer people, who had been coming to Flamboro for years, staying at the Mansion House out on Todd’s Neck. Will’s father was a distinguished specialist in some branch of medicine Harriet did not altogether understand, and Will seemed a stolid quiet boy, not at all Martha’s type. They got acquainted at local dances during the summers of their teens. Then he had joined the air force, instead of following his father into medicine, and had turned up in Flamboro the summer Martha was eighteen, resplendent in uniform.
‘It was the uniform that did it,’ Harriet informed the next cow in the row, a placid reddish beast called Rosie. She washed down the udder and began to milk Rosie, who never gave anyone any trouble.
‘Suddenly Will seemed desirable, and Martha saw herself as a glamorous officer’s wife. Travel, excitement. Nobody thought in those days that there would be a war.’
Martha had sounded peevish and patronising on the telephone.
‘I don’t know whether I want to come, Mother. I don’t think I could endure that dreary old hole. And it would be so bad for Billy. He’s used to playing with intelligent boys and girls. He goes to the kindergarten for officers’ children, and he has his handicraft classes and his Little League. There is nothing to stimulate a child in Flamboro. And I’d be so bored. There’s nothing to do on the farm.’
‘There’s plenty to do on the farm,’ Harriet said mildly. ‘I could do with some help.’
‘Oh, Mother, you know what I mean.’
Harriet sighed. She knew exactly what Martha meant. Martha would create a lot of extra work in the house. And if last summer was anything to go by, Billy would be spoiled and difficult, throwing tantrums whenever he didn’t get his own way and alternately clinging to his mother and driving them all demented by running off to all the things from which he was banned – the farm machinery, the lime pit, the cliffs near the Tremayne place. Once, she had looked forward to being a grandmother, but it was difficult to hold her tongue and watch Martha making such mistakes with the child. She was just laying up a burden for her own back by neither disciplining him nor paying him any real attention. Harriet was fond of children, but she was clear-eyed too. The eldest of seven herself, she knew what monsters they could be if they weren’t kept reasonably in hand.
In the village store that afternoon she confided some of her worries to Mary Flett.
‘It might just do young Billy the world of good, coming here,’ said Mary consolingly. ‘If he has to mix with ordinary children instead of officers’ kids who think themselves king of the castle. Bring him down a peg or two.’
She finished counting the eggs from Harriet’s basket into the wooden crate on the counter.
‘That’s four and a half dozen, Harriet. Will you have it in goods or cash?’
‘Oh, goods, I think. I need coffee and sugar and I’ll take six of those oranges for a treat.’
Mary weighed out the coffee beans in the brass scales, then poured them into the coffee grinder and began to crank the handle.
‘Our good Maine air will set the child up too, I shouldn’t wonder. I don’t know how any child can thrive in the city. It isn’t natural. No wonder Billy was fractious last summer – he was only here three weeks, wasn’t he? He didn’t have time to get over the poor living in the city.’
She folded a sheet of brown paper swiftly into a bag and poured the ground coffee into it from the drawer in the bottom of the grinder.
‘I always think the smell of exhaust fumes in the big cities is enough to turn a person’s brains, and it must be real hurtful to a child growing up there. And the food! I stayed with my cousin in Chicago once, and you should have seen the vegetables! Potatoes turning green, carrots withered and as limp as a wet wash-cloth, and as for the cabbages, you had to throw away the half of them before you got into a few leaves in the middle that were fit to eat. My cousin got mad at me, throwing so much away, because they cost an arm and a leg, but I said, “Maisie,” I said, “I will not be a party to putting food on the table I wouldn’t give to the pig at home.” Very snooty she was about it too.’
Mary slapped down the sugar bag on the counter to emphasise her point, and then placed six oranges tenderly into Harriet’s basket.
‘You’re probably right,’ said Harriet, tucking the coffee and sugar amongst the oranges and feeling slightly comforted. ‘Billy will be old enough for school in the fall, so if Martha decides to stay on he’ll have to learn to get along with the other children.’
‘Mark my words,’ said Mary wisely, ‘you tell Martha to get herself a job if she stays at home. That will keep her out of mischief and stop her getting bored. She won’t want to stay around on the farm with you all day, not after the life she’s been living.’
‘That’s true enough, but I don’t know what kind of job she could get in Flamboro. And Portland is too far away to travel every day.’
‘There’s the Mansion House.’
Harriet looked dubious. ‘I don’t think Martha would want to be a waitress, not after being an officer’s wife.’
‘I wasn’t thinking of that. Maybe something in the office?’
‘Hmm. Maybe. Do I owe you anything?’
‘I’ll check your account and tell you next time. It may be I owe you something.’
Walking back along the coast path past the Tremayne place, Harriet saw that some of the snow on the roof had started to melt in the brief period of sun the previous day, and had then frozen into great icicles which hung like three-foot swords from the eaves. The house looked more desolate and sinister than ever, yet it had been a fine place once, full of lights and laughter during the early twenties, when the Tremaynes invited half Boston society down here to evening balls and garden parties with tennis and picnics and bathing sessions on the beach. By rights, the beach belonged to the Libbys, since the Tremayne land ended in rocky shore with no sand below, but Tobias and Harriet had never liked to complain about the invasion of their property by these wealthy interlopers. Nowadays the summer people found their way over from their lodgings in Flamboro, and some of the guests at the Mansion House discovered that the wide, mile-long stretch of sand on Libby’s Beach was far better than the small cove over on the south side of Todd’s Neck. But these people were mostly well-behaved families or elderly couples and they gave no trouble. On the whole, she wasn’t sorry that the Tremaynes no longer came, but the empty house always made her feel uneasy.
‘There goes your mom,’ said Tirza.
She was in a large bedroom on the second floor of the Tremayne house, peering round the edge of a sunshade brittle with age.
‘Where?’ Simon came to join her.
‘Going ho
me from Flett’s, it looks like.’
They watched Harriet speeding up a little as she went past the end of the snow-covered lawn. She disappeared behind the neglected wood, reappeared briefly in a gap between the trees, walking more slowly as she reached the Libby property, then disappeared again.
Tirza had agreed at last to visit the house with Simon. That was yesterday, after school, when it had been a little warmer all day. Today, Saturday, it was bitter again, and their breath made frosty clouds around them in the abandoned and forlorn house. Finding herself inside it at last, Tirza did not think it was frightening so much as sad. Simon’s way into the house was through the cellars. The hinges on one of the sloping cellar doors had rusted right through so that, although the doors were still held firmly together by a padlock in the middle, at the right-hand side the rusty hinges could be prised apart and the door lifted enough for them to squeeze through.
Tirza had brought her pocket flashlight, but the batteries were low and she was reluctant to use them up, being short of funds to replace them. But Simon had a packet of white candles, which Harriet kept in copious supplies all over the house for the many occasions when the Kohler system gave trouble and the electricity failed. In the small circle of light cast by one of these candles they explored the cellars, ignored by Simon on his first visit. These did seem sinister to Tirza. It was partly the smell, an ancient, musty, earthy smell, but not the clean smell of a newly turned furrow. It had something of the charnel house about it, though it was probably no more than the underground situation of the cellars, combined with the thousands and thousands of earthenware flowerpots that filled one of the three main rooms. Everywhere cobwebs were looped as thick as fishing nets, furred over with dust.
She had never seen anywhere like this. There were two big stone sinks in the first cellar, each with a cold faucet and wooden draining boards on each side. Alone of the rooms, this one had windows – two narrow slots, nine inches high and two feet wide, on either side of the cellar door – which let in a little light through their grimy glass. In the middle of the floor was a long table of rough wood, on which a few rusty garden tools lay. And every inch of wall space was covered with racks built from unfinished two-by-fours, on which flowerpots were carefully arranged in long interlocking rows like stiffly articulated snakes. Each rack held a different size of pot. On the floor stood huge monsters, three feet across. On the lowest rack the pots were about fifteen inches in diameter, diminishing as the racks climbed to the ceiling until the highest ones were miniatures, no more than an inch and a half wide. The old whitewash from the ceiling was flaking away, settling over everything in a fine dust, like sugar on top of a cake.