A Running Tide

by Ann Swinfen

  ‘I hate horses,’ said Billy. ‘And I hate you.’

  Abigail had decreed that the house on the wharf needed repainting. The snow and winter winds, and the year-round erosion of the salt spray, had taken their toll. The surface of the paint was blistered and fading. In some places whole patches had started to peel away, revealing the silvered clapboards beneath. Nathan wished, silently, that he had never allowed his mother to persuade him to paint it in the first place, when Louisa’s health was failing after she gave birth to Tirza. When Abigail was first widowed, she had stayed on at the farm. But when Louisa fell ill she lost no time in moving into Nathan’s house on the wharf front, before anyone could suggest that Louisa’s own mother, Christina, should come to care for her. One of the first things Abigail had done was to insist that the old grey clapboard house should be smartened up with a coat of white paint and blue frames for the windows and doors.

  ‘It will cheer Louisa up,’ she had said firmly, but Louisa had not lived to see the job finished, and Nathan had gone on with the painting mechanically, too numb to give any thought to what he was doing. Several of the houses in Flamboro were painted, but the rest retained the soft dove-grey of the natural wood. Once you painted, however, you had to keep repainting, unless you were prepared to live with years of peeling paint until the wood was restored to its natural state again. Nathan painted about every four years, but for the last year before each repainting the house looked shabby and drove Abigail into bouts of irritation.

  The ice was breaking up in the harbour and the fishing season would start soon, so Nathan was devoting every available minute to the decorating. Tirza had helped with the work this time, and proved herself almost as useful as a man. She was slower than he was, but she was gradually mastering the skill of loading her brush fully without it dripping all over her clothes and wasting paint on the ground below. Unlike Abigail, Nathan had no worries about allowing Tirza to climb a ladder. She was more agile – and probably safer – than he was himself.

  She had hardly been up to the farm in the last couple of weeks. At first Nathan thought it was because she genuinely enjoyed the house painting, but he had begun to suspect it had something to do with Martha’s arrival. He knew the cousins did not get on well and was sorry for it. He didn’t find Martha easy himself. Still, it was good to have Tirza’s help. He would be able to get off to the fishing at least a week earlier than he could have done without it. This afternoon they were working on the last of the walls, the side of the house furthest from the boat shed, and would be able to start on the blue paint tomorrow.

  ‘That’s lookin’ mighty fine,’ said a voice from below Nathan’s feet. Ben Flett was peering up at him from the board sidewalk. Nathan held the brush away from himself and looked down.

  ‘Nearly done.’

  ‘That girl of yours is doin’ all right, ain’t she?’ Ben gestured at Tirza, who was balanced at the top of another ladder at the far end of the wall, slapping the paint on to the barge-board under the eaves.

  ‘Does not bad for a kid,’ Nathan agreed. ‘You been out yet?’

  ‘Fixin’ on startin’ tomorrow.’ Ben held up a bucket full of a dark grey mass. ‘George Towson owed me a bucket o’ bait from last fall. Just goin’ to bait up my pots now. How long before you’ll be ready?’

  Nathan groaned. ‘Three, four days yet, I reckon. Pesky job, this. I hate it, every time.’

  ‘Why not lay out your pots and then paint between whiles, before you haul? Kill two birds.’

  ‘Not a bad idea. I might just do that.’ Nathan shrugged comically. ‘If my mother doesn’t start creating!’

  Ben chuckled, waved to Tirza, and went on down the wharf to where his lobster pots were piled up near his boat. Nathan wedged his elbow against the side of the ladder, pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket with his free hand and wiped the sweat off his forehead and upper lip. At midday there was some heat in the sun now, and the last of the thick plates of ice lingered only in the crannies of the shore which always lay in shadow. The harbour was mostly filled with glass ice, sharp-edged enough to slice into a boat’s hull like butter. Following Ben’s progress along the harbour front, Nathan could see the sunlight glinting off the broken shell roadway. There was plenty of activity down by the boats. Somebody – probably Eli’s grandson Arthur – was stripped to the waist. Arthur had an eye for the girls and he was a good-looking fellow. Muscled like that movie actor who played Tarzan. Paint trickled down between Nathan’s fingers and along the back of his hand, and he tilted the brush in irritation. Time he was down there getting his own boat ready.

  Tirza climbed down her ladder and shifted it a couple of yards so she could reach a new section of wall. She tilted her head back and looked up at him.

  ‘Why don’t you go and bait your traps too, Dad? I can finish this wall by myself. Ben’s right – we can do the rest of the painting between runs if I help you on the boat as well as here.’

  ‘School on Monday.’

  ‘We could go out early to lay some of the pots, before school. And I could come home in the lunch recess to help with the painting.’

  ‘Maybe. You’re right, though. I could get the baiting done if you’ll finish this wall.’

  Nathan slapped the last yard or two of paint on his section and climbed down the ladder, a little stiff from perching so long in one position. He went into the shed to clean his brush, then came out and watched Tirza at work back up near the peak of the gable.

  ‘You’re a fine help, girl,’ he called, then set off with relief down to the wharf.

  Unlike her father, Tirza enjoyed the painting. She liked to see the tired-looking house brighten up, and she found the view of Flamboro from the top of the ladder intriguing. She could look down into back yards where people moved about thinking they were unseen; she could peer into the cockpits of the fishing boats in the harbour, and she could see further out to sea than usual. The islands offshore seemed nearer. The half-dozen houses on Crab Island stood out clearly and she could make out the end of a ruined barn on Mustinegus. The headland south of Flamboro hid Libby’s Beach and Todd’s Neck from her, but she thought that if she could climb up inside the steeple of the church to where the bell hung she might even see that far.

  The greatest advantage of helping with the painting was having a valid reason for not going up to the farm. Normally she might have felt guilty about this, because she knew Harriet was grateful for the work she did. But, she reasoned, Martha was the daughter of the house. She could help out, for once. Tirza had ridden her bike over to the farm the day after Martha had arrived, two weeks ago, out of curiosity. Perhaps her cousin might have changed. She would never admit it, but she longed for Martha to like her. Every time Martha came on a visit, she had this brief irrational hope that things might have changed.

  Martha was not on the porch when she arrived, nor in the kitchen with her mother, and certainly not anywhere about the farm buildings.

  ‘Where is she, then?’ Tirza asked Harriet.

  ‘Who?’ said Harriet crisply. ‘The cat’s aunt?’

  ‘Martha. I thought she came last night. Isn’t she up yet?’

  ‘She got up about ten, I guess. She’s in the parlour.’

  ‘In the parlour?’ Tirza gaped. The parlour was only used at Christmas. Even Martha didn’t use the parlour. She usually sat on a rocker on the porch or retreated to her room.

  Tirza padded along to the parlour in her socks and peered round the door. Martha was there all right, lounging on the horsehair-padded chaise-longue and painting her nails from a bottle of bright scarlet varnish balanced on a small side table amongst ancient family photographs in shades of sepia and cream. She looked discontented.

  ‘Hi, Martha.’

  Martha jumped and cursed as the brush slipped and ran a jagged line over her cuticle. Tirza was not familiar with the word she used.

  ‘What are you doing, creeping up like that? You’ve made me ruin this nail. I’ll have to take it all off and do it a
gain.’

  ‘Sorry,’ muttered Tirza, taking a few hesitant steps into the room and bumping into the corner of the parlour organ, which was only played when Abigail visited.

  ‘What do you want?’

  ‘Just came to say hello. Have a good trip?’ Tirza asked desperately.

  ‘We had a horrible trip,’ Martha enunciated slowly, swabbing the ruined nail with cotton soaked in varnish remover. ‘All the trains were late, we were kept waiting for a lot of stupid congressmen in Washington, and everywhere was packed full of GIs with their kit-bags tripping everyone up.’

  She peered at the nail to see if it was cleaned to her satisfaction, then picked up her cigarette from an ashtray and inhaled deeply. It was stuck into a long tortoiseshell holder, and she flourished it as she spoke.

  ‘Still as skinny as ever, I see.’ She narrowed her eyes. ‘Honestly, with that awful haircut, anyone would think you were a boy. When I was your age...’ she smiled reminiscently and drew on her cigarette, ‘there wasn’t any doubt whatsoever.’

  Tirza hesitated just inside the door, hurt and baffled. Nothing she did or said would ever appease Martha. Why did she go on trying? She started to sidle backwards out the door. Martha ignored her and began to repaint her nail. Suddenly Tirza was thumped hard in the back, stumbled forward, tripped over a rug and went flying on to her face. Billy ran past her and banged into Martha.

  ‘Hell!’ she said, her face furious. ‘That’s ruined it again. Get off, can’t you?’

  ‘I’m bored. What can I do? Can we go to the movies?’

  ‘There aren’t any movies here, only in Portland. Get off my foot. Take him outside, will you, Tirza, and find him something to do? I’ll never get these finished.’

  Tirza led Billy away and handed him over to Harriet in the kitchen. Sam was hitching the team up to the plough in the yard and would not appreciate Billy underfoot, getting into danger. He was a fool around horses.

  Tirza left the farm quickly and hadn’t been back since.

  Now, as she dipped her brush into the paint can, she caught sight of Simon walking down the coastal path toward Flamboro. She waved at him, but he had not seen her, up the ladder. She shouted as he drew level.

  ‘Hey, I’m up here.’

  ‘Oh, hi,’ he said, but did not slacken his pace.

  ‘Aren’t you stopping?’

  ‘Mom sent me to see Mrs Larrabee. You want to come?’

  ‘Wait a minute. I just need to paint this last few yards.’

  ‘Hurry up.’ He perched on one of the trestles that had supported the dories during the winter, while Tirza painted the last strip rapidly, backing down the ladder till she reached the ground. He fiddled impatiently while she cleaned her brush and wiped her hands on a turpentine-soaked cloth, then they set off down Shore Road towards Mrs Larrabee’s house. The oyster shells of the road crunched underfoot with their familiar warm-weather sound.

  On a curly ironwork bracket projecting from the front of one of the white-painted houses in Shore Road hung a sign which declared in flowing letters:

  Flamboro Fancy Good & Novelties

  Real Maine Crafts

  Mrs Larrabee would not be opening her store for a month yet, but anyone local who wanted to purchase something went round to the kitchen door. Simon stepped inside and called.

  ‘I’m through in the store, dusting,’ shouted Mrs Larrabee. ‘Come right on in.’

  Tirza and Simon walked through the kitchen and along the hall to the front of the house, where the parlour had been turned into a store ten years ago. After her husband had been lost at sea, Marion Larrabee had extended her interest in collecting knickknacks and ornaments into a tidy little business. There were enough summer visitors with money to spend to keep her busy during the three months she opened the store each year. She also hired a display case in the Mansion House, which brought folk over from Todd’s Neck, and her sister in Portland had a shelf of items for sale in her ladies’ dress store. Local people rarely felt the need of shell-covered boxes or peg-dolls dressed as fishermen, but Mrs Larrabee’s stock could be useful for birthdays and Christmas.

  ‘Come in, come in,’ said Mrs Larrabee. She wore a wrap-around apron covered with large pink roses. With a long-handled feather duster she was flicking delicately round her stock.

  Although Tirza could not see the point of most of Mrs Larrabee’s goods, she found some things fascinating. There was a wind-up canary in a brass cage which sang almost as well as a real one. It had stood just inside the window for as long as she could remember. She always hoped no one would buy it. When she was small she had been allowed, as a treat, to wind it up, but she felt she was too old to ask now. There were one or two paintings on the walls that she had grown fond of over the years, too. Most of the paintings were crude daubs by ‘artists’ who stayed along the coast every year. When they asked Marion Larrabee to sell their pictures on commission, she never had the heart to turn them away. These, too, lingered on the walls, but Tirza no longer noticed them.

  Her eyes were always drawn to a pair of real Maine scenes. Without knowing the reason, she could sense that these paintings were of a different order. When she looked at the other pictures, she was conscious only of the texture of paint on canvas. But here the paint seemed to dissolve before the breathing life behind, like mist clearing from a pane of glass. One portrayed two barefoot boys herding the cattle home for milking. The older boy carried a thin switch and the younger one had a pail of blueberries. Both of the boys had a jaunty, devil-may-care attitude she liked. The other painting simply showed an old dory with its powdery white paint flaking off in the sun. Part of a net was draped over the gunwale, and it looked so real you could smell the hot painted wood in the sun and the tarred fishy reek of the net. There were oars and floats piled up on the shingle beside the boat, and the sea beyond was calm and brightly lit. Mrs Larrabee had told her that these two pictures were by a young man who had much admired Winslow Homer, the Maine artist who used to live not far away. The young artist had died before he was thirty. She had decided to keep the paintings for herself but hung them on the wall of the store to encourage people to come in. There was also a small painting of a wild, storm-driven sea. It was only a foot wide, but Tirza felt herself dragged into it as though the whole ocean lay just beyond the frame. She marvelled at it, but it frightened her.

  ‘It was brought in by some people who said they had found it in their attic,’ Mrs Larrabee had told her. ‘Sold it to me for twenty dollars. Too much, I guess. I’ve tried to sell it for twenty-five, but no one seems to want it.’

  Tirza noticed that several items had been taken out of the glass display case and were laid out on the counter.

  ‘What are you doing with those?’ she asked. They were mostly toys: clockwork tin cars and a fire engine, a china-headed doll with a stuffed canvas body and no clothes, a knife with several blades.

  Mrs Larrabee pulled a face.

  ‘German things. I’m not holding any more German stock now – I won’t have anything to do with the enemy. I thought I would get rid of those. Would either of you like anything?’

  ‘Can I have the knife?’ Simon swooped before Tirza could say anything. She hankered after the knife herself.

  ‘Surely. Tirza? Anything you’d like? How about this doll? That isn’t rightly stock.’

  Mrs Larrabee picked up the doll by the waist and held it aloft between her finger and thumb. It was seven or eight inches high, with the lower arms and legs as well as the head made of china. The moulded hair was glazed black, the eyes blue and the white complexion was faintly tinged with pink on the cheeks. It was a curious old-fashioned thing. Tirza had never seen anything quite like it.

  ‘This used to be a doll of mine. Oh, I had a famous collection! Over fifty dolls in every size and shape you can imagine. My favourites were the French ones with wax heads. Their faces were so soft and lifelike. And they had real hair. I had one that was dressed from top to toe in silk – bonnet, bloomers, petticoats, dre
ss, coat. Real swansdown on the muff and coat.’

  Mrs Larrabee laid the china-headed doll on Tirza’s palm.

  ‘Captain Penhaligon brought me this one back, one voyage. She came without clothes and somehow neither my mother nor I ever made any for her. I found her a few years back, wrapped up in tissue paper in my handkerchief drawer as good as new. I thought I’d add her to the stock, but no one has been interested in her. I suppose it’s all these dolls made of composition now, isn’t it? And dressed to look like Sonja Henie or Shirley Temple. Still, she’s an interesting doll with a bit of history, if you’d like to have her, Tirza.’

  Tirza mumbled embarrassed thanks and slipped the doll into her pocket. She didn’t know what she was going to do with it. She would have preferred the pocket knife.

  ‘My mom sent me to buy some table napkins,’ said Simon, shuffling his feet. ‘According to Martha only country hicks sit down at table without napkins.’ His tone was heavy with sarcasm, and Tirza realised he was furious at being sent on such a fool’s errand. Mrs Larrabee pulled open a drawer and began laying out sets of napkins – seersucker, printed cotton and embroidered linen. Simon looked at them wildly.

  ‘I don’t know.’ He held out two dollar bills. ‘That’s what Mom gave me. Can I get some with that?’

  Mrs Larrabee picked out some cream-coloured napkins printed with strawberries.

  ‘These are a dollar fifty for eight. How about these?’

  ‘Great.’

  In Flett’s General Stores, Mary Flett was showing Abigail and Miss Catherine a copy of the Portland paper which had just been delivered.

  ‘It says here that now the ground has thawed, the army is going to be setting up coastal defences along all the beaches. Do you reckon that means around here? Like Libby’s Beach?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t think so,’ said Abigail dismissively. ‘We’d have been told.’

  Miss Catherine shook her head.