by Ann Swinfen
‘Like to come along?’ he said. He smiled at her quizzically. ‘Just going for a run along the coast. Back by this evening.’
She shook her head and smiled back. ‘Thanks, but I can’t. Have a good trip.’
Shore Road, behind the harbour-front houses, held a few more shops than in the past – gifts and crafts, boating supplies, sports clothes. But there was one familiar sight. Flett’s General Stores and Post Office. The same porch with the rocking chairs. The same old men sitting there, watching the life of the village. No, not the same men, but some of them might recognise her. Tirza ducked her head a little as she went in.
The inside was changed. The pot-bellied stove was gone, and the sacks and barrels of loose goods. Probably food and health regulations had put a stop to that. There was modern shelving and a shining modern counter with electronic scales. But the post office section at the back of the shop looked exactly the same, with its glass-fronted mailboxes surrounding the grated wicket where you could buy stamps.
A grey-haired man behind the counter was leaning back against the shelves with his arms crossed and talking to two customers, a man and woman in hiking gear. When they had gone out, Tirza carried a few purchases over to the counter – some film, a packet of cookies and a pair of shoelaces. She needed none of these things, but wanted some excuse to linger here. It seemed the most familiar place in Flamboro, despite the changes in the décor. She scanned the shelves behind the man’s shoulder.
‘Do you have any anoraks? Size twelve? No, I mean ten in US size. I think.’
He lifted down three – one green, one sky blue, and one red and navy – and laid them out for her to see.
‘Not many left at the end of the season,’ he said. His voice made her hands tremble. He sounded exactly like Charlie.
She tried on the green one hastily, then took it off again.
‘I’ll have this one. Do you accept credit cards?’
‘Sure.’ He looked surprised that she should ask.
While he was filling in the slip, a woman came through from the back shop. Her hair was still brown, but it was threaded with grey, and she looked at Tirza intently. Tirza turned sideways to avoid her gaze.
‘I guess you must be English,’ the man said in the roundabout way Maine people have, avoiding the direct question.
Tirza flicked her eyes up to him, and then lowered them again as she signed the slip. ‘No. I grew up in Maine. Over there they reckon I sound American. I guess I don’t belong anywhere much any more.’
The woman came out from behind the counter and touched her arm.
‘It’s Tirza Libby, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, Miss Bennett,’ said Tirza weakly. ‘Hello, Pete.’
Julia and Pete Flett would not allow her to leave until she promised to come to supper the day after next. Tirza walked out on to the porch of Flett’s Stores unsure whether she had done a stupid thing, coming here. Or perhaps it was inevitable, from the time she had agreed to attend the opening of her exhibition in Boston, that she should fetch up here on the creaking boards of the old village store, where the retired fishermen and farmers studied her speculatively from their rocking chairs and the gulls whooped noisily around the back yard, looking for scraps. She had walked into Flamboro an hour ago an unknown outsider. Before the afternoon was over, village gossip would have spread the word that Tirza Libby, who had deserted her family the moment she was finished with school, had – as unaccountably – returned.
There was one more place she intended to visit before she walked back to Todd’s Neck. She headed north along the harbour towards the church. The Penhaligon house, standing high above its sloping garden, seemed almost unchanged. Someone was continuing to care for the garden. The railings around the widow’s walk, which thrust up from the roof, glinted in the sunlight where the arrow-shaped tips had been painted gold against the black of the posts. The steep narrow steps up to the church were the same and its clapboards had a fresh coat of paint, so that it stood out almost blindingly against the darkness of the forest behind. The first of the cold winds had begun turning the deciduous trees to their autumn colours.
Tirza did not go into the church. Instead she turned right to the burying-ground. The anti-aircraft gun was long gone. The concrete platform, erected so noisily on those spring days, remained. But it was changed. In the centre stood a war memorial, a bronze statue of a sailor with his hand shading his eyes as he looked out to sea. A plaque on the base listed the names of all the sons of Flamboro and the neighbouring farms who had perished in the war. Arthur Pelham was amongst them. Two metal seats had been set here, screwed down to the concrete to stop the gales from carrying them away. There were tubs of flowers, mostly past flowering now, but a few ivy-leafed geraniums trailed crimson and white blooms over their edges.
It was a curiously welcoming spot in what had once been the forlorn surroundings of the burying-ground. Tirza sat on one of the benches, with her hands laced together between her knees, and surveyed the prospect. The town was laid out below her like a model, and before her the view of the sea stretched well beyond Crab Island and Mustinegus. To the right she could see part of the Tremayne land. The nearer end of Libby’s Beach was hidden by the intervening headland, but the far end was visible, and that end of the marsh, and a glint of water from Libby’s Pond. On Todd’s Neck she could see part of the roof of the Mansion House. She twisted round and looked inland. Behind the coastal fields she could make out the dull red barn and the grey-shingled farmhouse at Libby’s Farm.
In the burying-ground itself, she found Wayne’s small stone first, and beside it a memorial marker for Walter and Eli, whose bodies had never been recovered. Then the elaborate gravestone, which he had brought back from Italy thirty years before his death, marking the grave of Captain Penhaligon. It was ten feet tall and visible to ships at sea. The hard white marble resisted the weather and it dominated the burying-ground with its carved ship cradled in the hands of an angel. People in Flamboro had disapproved of it at the time, Tirza had been told as a child, because it was so flamboyant and showy, but when she was small she had always liked the idea of the ship so tenderly protected. Next to Captain Penhaligon’s grave (And Also Margaret His Wife), three identical stones stood in a row. Miss Molly and Miss Catherine had joined Miss Susanna here.
Just beyond the Penhaligons was the Libby plot. Tirza averted her eyes from Martha’s stone, with its dates of a curtailed life, and knelt down beside Nathan’s grave. It was more recent than Miss Molly’s and Miss Catherine’s, but now after five years the ground had settled. Someone – perhaps Julia Flett – had recently planted it with winter pansies.
Tirza laid her hands flat on the earth amongst the pansies.
‘I’m sorry, Dad,’ she said. ‘It’s inadequate, I know. I don’t really believe you can hear me, wherever you are, but I wish I could believe you would forgive me.’
She stayed there, the ground warm beneath her hands though a cold wind played around her shoulders, until her knees began to ache and her arms to tremble. Then she got up, and sighed, and brushed off her jeans, and began the long walk back to Todd’s Neck.
Tirza lunched on the closed porch of the hotel overlooking the steep drop to the sea. In summer the folding glass screens were removed and stored away, so that it became an ordinary open porch where the guests could sit during the day in comfortable cushioned wicker chairs or dine in the evenings al fresco. Now that the cold autumn winds whipped around the end of Todd’s Neck, the glass screens had been fixed in place for the winter. Even so, it was still a pleasant place to eat, more spacious feeling than the formal dining room with its plush-covered chairs and maroon wallpaper. Apart from Tirza, only the honeymoon couple and one solitary elderly man were eating lunch out here today.
When the waiter brought her melon sorbet, Tirza detained him.
‘I see there are a lot of boats moored round at the pier. Are any of them for hire?’
‘Certainly, madam. There are several skiffs, and three
motor boats of different sizes.’
‘No sailboats?’
‘Just some small catboats we hire out to children in the summer.’
‘Are they still in the water? Could I hire one for the afternoon?’
‘Why, yes, I suppose so.’ He looked at her doubtfully. ‘We ask for a certificate of sailing competence. Some sort of proof that you know how to handle a sailboat. The sea is very treacherous around here – currents and things.’ He sounded vague, as though he had never set foot in a boat.
‘I know all about these waters. I grew up in Flamboro. I don’t have any kind of certificate, but I went out in my father’s lobsterboat as soon as I could walk.’
She could see him readjusting his ideas. The Mansion House did not normally entertain the daughters of lobstermen.
‘If you need reassurance that I can handle a boat, I’m sure Peter Flett from Flamboro would vouch for me.’
‘I’ll speak to the manager of our sports facilities, madam.’
Tirza ate her sorbet with quick impatient gestures and drank her coffee without tasting it. It had been a whim to ask about hiring a sailboat, but the thought that she might be barred from doing so made her determined. The waiter came back at last with a smile on his face.
‘That will be quite all right, madam. If you would like to speak to Mr Olson at sports reception, he will arrange everything for you.’
Mr Olson proved sensible and efficient, and half an hour later Tirza was casting off from the pier. She paddled her way out from the close-ranked boats. No one else was on the water apart from two grey-haired women rowing a skiff with rather flashy expertise along the shore. The catboat was rigged much as Stormy Petrel had been, but in other ways was very different. The hull was fibreglass instead of wood, the mast a hollow tube of metal that twanged like a primitive musical instrument. The sails and ropes were nylon, and there were buoyancy bags strapped permanently under the narrow side decks. Tirza had been told she was required to wear a life jacket, but once she was well under way she took it off again. It made her feel as though she had grown an extra, bloated body.
The wind was still blowing steadily from the south-west, and took her easily and rapidly out to Mustinegus. As the little lightweight boat skimmed over the waves, dancing to the slapping movement of the water and rushing eagerly ahead, Tirza experienced a surge of exhilaration. She felt physically stronger and more energetic than she could remember feeling for years. She reached across the wind to come round to the side of the island where the cove lay, then headed close to the wind to bring the boat in to the sandy beach.
It looked exactly the same.
Well, perhaps some of the trees were taller. And the path through the woods had been kept cleared. She walked over to the first farmhouse, the one abandoned after the hurricane of ‘38. The house and barn were totally ruined now, but there was one outbuilding in good repair, with its doors hooked open. She saw why when she walked on a little further, to the old fields. Someone was keeping sheep on the island. It wasn’t uncommon along the Maine coast, where the land for farming was scarce and poor, for a farmer to move a whole flock of sheep on to an island for most of the year. In the worst of the winter these sheep would be moved back to the farmyard until after lambing, but at the moment they roamed wild here. They ran away from Tirza at first, but then dropped their heads and began grazing again when they saw she meant to come no nearer.
The old Indian encampment, where she and Sandy had picnicked, was a little more overgrown. The mounds which covered the shell heaps were still there, but she did not search for arrowheads. Instead she retraced her steps to the north-east side of the island and found the blueberry thickets as flourishing as ever, though the crop was all but finished. She found half a dozen late berries and ate them, relishing the sweet wild flavour which had been such a part of her youth.
That evening she dined early and – escaping from a retired stockbroker and his wife, who were disposed to be friendly – she retreated to her room. She felt suddenly bone weary, and longed for bed.
She was already showered and changed into a nightgown when her bedside telephone rang, making her jump. She lifted the receiver.
‘Hello?’ she said cautiously.
‘Tirza? It’s Alex Wrycroft here. I wondered how you were. Has it been very difficult, going back?’
‘Oh, Alex.’
She kicked off her slippers and climbed into bed, pulling the patchwork quilt up over her.
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘it’s been some difficult. But so far I’ve just been wandering around, getting my bearings.’
‘Seen anyone you know?’ he asked, choosing his words carefully.
‘Only the Fletts at the store in Flamboro. Julia Flett used to be my teacher at the village school, Miss Bennett. She recognised me straight off. I didn’t think anyone would know me. I thought I could walk around incognito, as if I were wearing a mask. I wasn’t yet seventeen when I was last there.’
‘I recognised you from the photograph taken when you were twelve.’
‘It’s odd, isn’t it? We change so much inside as we grow older, it’s difficult to believe we can possibly look like our younger selves.’
‘Oh, I don’t think we change all that much inside either. I think we still carry around that same childhood self. It’s just that we build a tough carapace around it.’
She was silent.
You are still in love with him, aren’t you? he had said.
‘So you haven’t been to the farm yet?’ Alex went on, as though there had been no awkward pause.
‘I might go tomorrow. I’m not sure.’
‘I think you should go.’ His voice was warm and strong, giving her confidence. ‘I wish I could be there with you, to give you some moral support.’
‘Oh, I wish you were too!’ she cried, then remembered she had said the same thing in her letter. There was another pause, across the three thousand miles that separated them. Then she said, suddenly struck, ‘What time is it there?’
‘Half past three in the morning.’
‘Alex, you loon, go to bed!’
‘In Aberdeenshire,’ he said mildly, ‘loon means young man. And I am in bed. What about you?’
‘Just going.’
‘I’ll ring you tomorrow, probably. To see how things have gone.’
‘All right. Good-night, Alex.’
‘Good-night. Take care.’
The telephoned clicked and went dead.
ii
When Tirza met Alex by the crofts near Caillard, she invited him to come over to her island for lunch the next day. Although he said he wanted to talk to her about this supposed connection between their families, he seemed in no hurry to start, that day they first met. Instead they talked about the fishing on the loch, about her photography and his farm, where he reared pedigree Aberdeen Angus and kept a small herd of Highland cattle, a minor passion of his, he said. And then as they walked back to Caillard together, she asked him to lunch.
She had entertained no one since moving to the island, except Moira McIver who came over from the inn occasionally for coffee. But for some reason she felt in no way threatened by Alex Wrycroft. In a lifetime of dealing with potentially dangerous men in threatening situations, in countries at war or amidst total breakdown of law and order, she had learned to rely on her instincts about who could be trusted and who could not.
Alex himself said gently, ‘Perhaps you should check out that I am who I say I am?’ But she shook her head and laughed.
What did give her pause for thought, after he went back to his room in the Prince Returning, was the food she was going to provide. Fending for herself, either in urban apartment or jungle camp, she had never learned more than the most basic cookery, and had existed for years on scratch meals out of tins, or sandwiches, or eggs. If she was going to appear even moderately welcoming, she would have to do better than that for Alex Wrycroft. In the end, Moira came to her rescue with a piece of cold poached salmon, some salads which sh
e packed up in plastic ice-cream boxes, and half a cheesecake.
‘Just let me know when I can do the same for you,’ said Tirza, and Moira laughed.
They ate their excellent lunch in the kitchen with the door and window standing open to the warm summer breeze. Then they carried their mugs of coffee outside and sat together on the flat boulder by the back door, looking out over the bay, with the houses of Caillard away off to their right.
‘Now,’ said Tirza, putting down her empty mug on a cushion of moss. ‘Don’t you think it’s time to tell me what this is all about?’
Alex wedged his own mug carefully amongst the pebbles and clasped his hands around his knees.
‘There is no easy way to say this, so I won’t insult you by skirting round it.’
He turned to face her.
‘I am Sandy Fraser’s son.’
She looked at him in astonishment. She had guessed that his story must in some way relate to Sandy. She had even noticed a resemblance, particularly when he smiled. But Alex must be much the same age as she was.
‘I don’t understand. How can you possibly be? You’re much too old,’ she said bluntly.
‘He was only eighteen when I was born. My parents were childhood sweethearts. They married as soon as they left school, when they were sixteen. You do know...’ he raised a quizzical eyebrow, ‘that it’s long been possible to marry younger in Scotland than in England?’
‘Yes, I did know that.’
‘Their parents were against it. My father’s father was a doctor. He wanted his son to go to university and then follow him in his profession, join his own practice. My mother’s father was factor for the local absentee laird. I don’t suppose her parents minded so much about her finishing her education, but they thought she was too young to take on the responsibilities of marriage and children. Well, they didn’t listen to their parents. You know what teenagers are.’
‘I’ve never been a parent.’