Montauk

by Nicola Harrison

  “Probably best if I sleep down here,” I said, setting the pillow on the armchair. “In case you need anything.”

  “Suit yourself,” he said, “but you’d be far more comfortable upstairs.”

  “I’d feel better here. Can I get you anything for the pain?” I asked. He picked up his whiskey glass and gave it a little shake. “Good idea,” I said.

  I came back a few minutes later with the bottle and an extra glass.

  “It’s easy to drink your head off out here,” he said, “especially in the winter when no one comes by. I’ve seen it happen, lost good keepers to booze.”

  “Even during prohibition?”

  He laughed, then grabbed his ribs. It was a stupid question; everyone drank who’d wanted to drink regardless of the law. I’d seen that everywhere.

  “We had boats come around and anchor off Scott’s Cove. They’d come in at high tide: the old assistants would run a fishing boat out to them, row in several crates of booze, store it in the basement until the next morning when someone would come pick it up and they’d get paid in bottles and cash.”

  “You were rumrunners?” I asked, fascinated.

  “I got paid for keeping my mouth shut and turning a blind eye. Could have lost my job, all of us could, but it paid a pretty price, too good to pass up. I’d never make that kind of money again in my lifetime.”

  I felt the warmth of the whiskey flowing slowly through my body, and I hoped it was loosening his muscles and easing the pain.

  “I got it all saved for a rainy day, but the others drank it all away.” His eyes were closed now and his voice was getting softer and softer. “Sometimes you just have to take the opportunity that’s in front of you, even when you know it’s not the one God would want for you.”

  Eventually he stopped talking. I watched him for a moment until his breathing got deeper, less pained. And soon I closed my eyes, too, falling deeply into what I had thought would be an impossible sleep.

  18

  It was light out when I blinked, looked around the room and took a moment to remember where I was. My neck was stiff from sitting upright in the armchair and a soft brown blanket covered me. There was no sign of Thomas; his cushions had been rearranged to their original order on the settee. I jumped up to check the grandfather clock in the hallway and on my way out the door I noticed Thomas’s uniform was gone. It was a quarter to six. I rushed to the stairway and heard movement in the room down the hall. I tiptoed back into the living room and hid behind the door unsure if it was Thomas or if it was one of the other keepers. A door opened and I heard a step, then a clunk, then a step and I knew it was Thomas using his makeshift walking stick. I peeked from behind the door and he half-smiled, all dressed and clean-shaven.

  “I didn’t want to wake you,” he said. “You looked peaceful.”

  “How did you manage to get dressed?” I asked, suddenly aware of the fact that I hadn’t brushed my teeth or my hair since the morning before.

  “It’s taken me about half an hour to get this far,” he said, standing barefoot. “Those tower stairs are going to be a real son of a bitch tomorrow night.” He sat on the edge of the settee and carefully tried to pull a sock over his ankle. “Actually, would you mind?” He nodded to his socks. “Damned humiliating that a man can’t even get his socks on.”

  I knelt down and felt around the ankle and foot. “It’s still very swollen.”

  “I’m never going to get my boots on,” he said.

  “We should wrap it; that will help with the swelling.”

  I went to the linen closet upstairs and brought down a sheet. “Mind if we cut this up? It will work as a bandage until I bring something more suitable from town.”

  He took it from me and tore it into strips, which I carefully wrapped around his ankle. “The other one looks fine,” I said, lifting his trouser leg and noticing his muscular calf and tanned skin.

  “Why, thank you,” he said, chuckling. “The other one is fine.” I quickly dropped the trouser leg, felt the blood rush to my cheeks and went back to the wrapping. “I’m just teasing,” he said.

  I smoothed my hair, mumbled something about needing a hairbrush and hoped the tingling sensation that spread all across my body wasn’t showing itself as a nervous rash.

  * * *

  We came up with a plan. I’d help Thomas get to the breezeway early, the little room that connected the house to the oil room and the radio room, where he’d conduct the morning meeting and assign duties; he’d already be standing when they arrived and then he’d send them on their way before he would head to the fog tower so they wouldn’t notice the injury or his limp. I would wait for him in the downstairs office behind closed doors and when the others left I’d help him to the fog tower; then I’d go to the upstairs bedroom and watch from the window for Elizabeth to arrive.

  I listened for my cue from the office, and when Worthington tried to lollygag in the breezeway after the brief meeting Thomas told him firmly to get on his way, something about an inspector coming that month and things needing to be in top shape. When everyone had gone I tiptoed out of the office and brought Thomas his walking stick and helped him to the engine room. Everything went according to plan; then I went up to the bedroom and waited.

  * * *

  It was almost noon when Elizabeth finally pulled up at the bottom of the hill. I had dozed in an upright wooden chair from seven until about nine o’clock but hadn’t dared to close my eyes after that in case I missed her. The night before it had all seemed so practical, to stay and care for an injured new friend, but as the morning started to bloom, the sun starting to burn the fog off Turtle Hill and making everything look clear and bright, my stomach began to tighten. My foot twitched nervously against the chair leg and I picked at my cuticles until my thumb began to bleed. Late last night, with darkness everywhere, no one around except for us, I had no choice. What good person would leave in such circumstances? But now spending the night seemed reckless, dangerous. I was disappointed with Harry and still hurt no matter what my intentions were to forgive and forget, but I was suddenly scared of being caught in this situation. He would absolutely not approve and I didn’t want to crumble whatever chance we had left of salvaging our marriage and having a child. I waited for Elizabeth to approach the front porch before I ran down the stairs to meet her.

  “Thank God you’re here,” I said, hugging her, so relieved that I’d made it through the night and those early morning hours without being seen; if anyone caught sight of me now they’d think we arrived together.

  “Oh my God, what happened to your eye?” She looked at my face and then at my muddy dress.

  I’d completely forgotten about the black eye. “It’s nothing. It was an accident.”

  She stood stiffly as I hugged her. “Beatrice, what are you doing here?” She looked around anxiously.

  “It’s fine, it’s fine; don’t worry,” I assured her. “Thomas fell and got hurt, but he’s going to be okay. I helped him,” I said in a whisper.

  “What do you mean? Why are you here? Did you fall, too?”

  “No, no.”

  I explained about the food basket and the trench that Milton had dug prematurely and the sprain and the ribs and the necessity to keep Thomas’s injuries a secret, but Elizabeth still didn’t seem to be hearing me. I told her I had the laundry bags tied up and ready by the door. “Would you mind dropping me off at the Manor on your way home?” I asked. But she still looked confused and slightly angry.

  “I know it’s a little unusual, but I really had no choice,” I said, willing her to understand. “Will you walk to the fog station with me? I just want to tell Thomas that we’re leaving.” She hesitated. I pulled at her hand gently and she followed me out the back door.

  The fog signal had been emitting a blast every fifteen seconds or so since 6:00 a.m. The morning fog had been thick and dense but had finally cleared up and the signal had become less and less frequent.

  “Well, we’re off then,”
I said.

  Thomas was sitting on a chair, ankle propped up on a pipe with six or seven glass lanterns on the floor around him, one in his hand that he was busy polishing. He looked up at Elizabeth sheepishly. “I went and fell down a godforsaken trench,” Thomas said, nodding to his propped foot. “Bruised or broken a rib and then this stupid ankle.”

  “That’s terrible,” Elizabeth said. “You should have sent for help; you know Patrick would have come up and helped you out.”

  “Appreciate that,” he said. “But your friend here has been very helpful. A real Florence Nightingale.” He laughed dryly and I looked at the ground feeling I was being made fun of.

  “Well, I saw the laundry bags by the door,” she said. “Is there anything else I can help with?”

  “No, no, I’ll be all right. It’s a pain in the neck, but I should be back on my feet in a few days, with a bit of luck.” He nodded in my direction, a nod of acknowledgment, I thought.

  “I’ll be back around dinnertime,” I said, “with something to eat. And I’ll ice and rewrap the ankle.”

  “You don’t have to,” he said, looking away from me and focusing on polishing the glass on the lantern.

  “It’s fine,” I said. “I’m happy to help.” I turned and walked toward the exit. Elizabeth lingered a moment, then followed. We walked through the house, picked up the laundry bags and headed to the car in silence.

  The engine roared, but we remained quiet. I had so much I wanted to tell Elizabeth. I wanted to tell her about the previous evening, but also about the fear and anxiety sitting in the pit of my stomach from what I had committed to. I wanted to confide in her, but she just seemed angry.

  “I was so glad to see you pull up,” I said. “I had my fingers crossed that your husband would let you use the car today, otherwise I would have taken the bike back, but I borrowed it from the Manor and I didn’t want them noticing me returning too early in the morning.” I waited. Elizabeth had kept her eyes on the road, but when I stopped talking she looked over to me.

  “What are you up to, Beatrice?”

  “I know it’s not ideal, but who else is there to help?”

  “Me, my husband. You could have contacted us; we would have helped.”

  “You have kids to take care of, you have work to do and so does your husband. You said yourself this is your busy time of year. Thomas needs assistance at odd hours; he needs someone to wait around so he can get up and down the stairs, continue his work shifts as if nothing happened. I can do that; I’ve got nothing else to do. I’m glad to be able to help.”

  “And if you get caught, then what happens?”

  “Well, it’s not as if I’m doing anything wrong!” I felt like a kid being reprimanded by her mother. “Where’s the harm in helping out someone in need?” I said. “A man, whose job it is to prevent ships from crashing into the cliffs, is injured. If he can’t work people could die.” I needed to stop talking and justifying; it was making things worse.

  “There are livelihoods on the line here,” she said. “Thomas is a good man, for God’s sake; he’s been the head keeper for years. This isn’t a game.”

  The excitement I’d felt the night before had come to a silent halt. “I’m not trying to cause trouble; I’m helping. You don’t understand. They can’t know that Thomas got hurt; otherwise they could replace him.”

  She said nothing, just drove. “Do you have any laundry?” she asked flatly.

  “Not much really, Harry didn’t bother coming out this weekend, so it can wait.”

  We pulled up to the back entrance of the Manor and Elizabeth sat still, killed the engine and turned to me. “I know you’re trying to help, Beatrice, you are a kind person, you’re not like the others who summer here, but you’re different from us whether you want to be or not.” I shook my head; I didn’t know what to say. “Please just be careful, for your sake and for Thomas’s. It might be a kind gesture, but you don’t want it to spiral into something more than you can handle.” I opened my mouth to correct her, dispute what she was saying, but there was nothing I could say that I hadn’t already. “But if you are going to do this, to help, and I can tell you are, no matter what anyone says, then you need to be smart about it. You can’t be spending the night up there. You just can’t.”

  “It wasn’t like that…,” I said.

  “It doesn’t matter. You need a way to get back here when your work is done.”

  “I’ll borrow the bicycle from the Manor again.”

  “Well, I doubt you can keep doing that without raising suspicion. I have a bicycle you can use. Come by the house later and you can take it.”

  I leaned over and hugged her. She patted my back twice and I felt her thin frame heave into a big sigh.

  “Thank you,” I said through the window as I closed the car door. “That means a lot.”

  * * *

  I walked in through the service door and took the back stairs to my room. Once inside I closed the bedroom door and leaned against it. I ran a hot bath, took off my filthy dress and wrapped myself in a towel. Then I called down to the front desk.

  “Are there any telephone messages for me?” I asked.

  “No, Mrs. Bordeaux, no message, I’m afraid.”

  “Not to worry,” I said, feeling a deep sense of relief that no one had been looking for me.

  “Oh, but Mrs. Bordeaux, you have received a letter.”

  “Oh,” I said. “Thank you; does it say who is the sender?”

  “Yes, ma’am, it’s from a Mr. Rosen in New York City. I’ll have a porter deliver it to your door.”

  “That’s all right,” I said, remembering, with a shiver of embarrassment, the hastily scribbled article about the dirty diapers I’d sent him a week earlier. “Don’t bother; I’ll collect it from the desk when I come down.”

  Now, I thought, as I stepped into the steaming water, what to make for dinner?

  19

  I didn’t have much experience in the kitchen. Harry and I dined out at restaurants often and on many occasions he had business dinners, so I didn’t bother to cook for just one. My repertoire was still mostly what I’d learned from my mother growing up. Chicken soup was served, or any soup, for that matter. In my mother’s house most meals I could think of were created to use up leftovers—stews, casseroles, soups, creamed anything on biscuits—and I could barely remember the original meals that the leftovers came from.

  When Harry and I had dinner parties we had a maid come to cook and serve; it was the way his parents had entertained. Harry made cocktails and my job was to make sure our guests were comfortable, taking their coats, making small talk. I always made a point of whipping up dessert—people liked to compliment the hostess on the dessert—but the maid always served it.

  For Thomas, I decided to buy fresh local fish from the fishmonger and make a tomato and peppers sauce from a recipe I’d seen in a magazine at the Manor. It seemed simple enough, and with the full kitchen at the lighthouse and several hours before Thomas’s shift was over, this seemed the perfect time to try it.

  The fishmonger packed the striper in ice and I rode Elizabeth’s bike to the local grocery store, where I bought ingredients for the sauce and my absolute favorite, Chocolate Cherry Fluff Pie. It was always a crowd pleaser, but as I placed the items in the basket of the bicycle and began to ride up to the light, I wondered if I should rename it something a little more sophisticated—Choc-Cherry Supreme or Cherry and Chocolate Delight.

  I let myself in through the front door and found him in his downstairs office, at the back of the house.

  “I didn’t hear you come in,” he said, startled. “Did you knock?”

  “I didn’t want you to get up to open the door,” I said. Things seemed suddenly formal between us. The air of familiarity, of drinking whiskey until we fell asleep across from each other in the living room, and our morning plan to get him to his station without anyone noticing seemed far from where we stood now.

  I took a deep breath. At the
Manor I’d been excited to return. It was the thrill of being helpful and needed, I think, probably heightened by the fact that it was this man who needed me—a man who seemed very much in control and confident in so many other ways. But there was also something about him that had me feeling out of sorts. I was a married woman and I respected that of course, but I couldn’t deny the rush I felt when I was near him and able to be useful. I supposed most women felt satisfied by cooking and caring for their families, but with no children and a husband who was rarely around, an injured patient had seemed an ideal and rather interesting distraction. Yet returning here things seemed tense and I wondered if I’d made it all up in my mind.

  “Well, I’ll start on dinner. I’ve got work to do if this is to be ready for this evening.” I nodded and turned, walking back through the house.

  “Very kind of you!” he called out softly as I took the stairs down to the basement kitchen.

  * * *

  There were no windows and a single overhead lamp glowed. I set out all the food I’d purchased on the long wooden table in the middle of the room and stared at it as the light warmed up and spread in an otherwise pitch-black room. I didn’t know where to begin; suddenly the idea of cooking a meal and dessert felt daunting. I decided to start with dessert, as it would need time to set.

  It took me about three times as long as it should have just to navigate my way around the kitchen. I opened every cupboard and drawer to see what utensils were at my disposal. I took out a glass bowl and began crushing the chocolate wafers with the end of a rolling pin; then I mixed in the butter, now perfectly softened from the sun on the ride up. I looked around for a piedish, but there wasn’t one anywhere in the kitchen. How could I make a Chocolate Cherry Fluff Pie without a piedish? And then I remembered seeing a china cabinet in the dining room the night before when I’d checked Thomas’s logbook.