Montauk

by Nicola Harrison

  I walked down to Jeanie’s end of the table where her shawl was draped over the chair back. I felt in the bottom of my handbag for the folded lace lingerie. I’d kept it with me, sure that I’d need it at some point before the week was out. I placed the lingerie on the seat of her chair, then unfolded it, just to make sure she didn’t miss it. And then I returned to the Manor.

  Once in my room I grew despondent. The way everyone had acted at dinner was disgusting and I had thought of myself as so different from them, but maybe they were right and I was just like them. I had spent all summer at the Manor, being waited on hand and foot. I wore expensive clothes and jewelry. I had eaten at all the best restaurants in Montauk and most of the best ones in the city, too. I’d only found Thomas because I had the luxury of doing nothing all summer long in one of the most desirable summer spots of the day. Was I just as bad as Jeanie and Harry and Winthrop?

  I took out a piece of paper and wrote down the truth I knew about every lie the Montauk city folk were telling themselves and one another, including my own. I did not spare Harry, or Jeanie or Winthrop, the investors or myself. Let it all be known. By the time this scathing piece was published everyone would be back in the city living their lives and I’d be in Montauk. I didn’t care what anyone thought of me anymore.

  I walked to the post office in the black of night and dropped the letter in the mailbox outside the main door; then I took the long way home, walking back through the fishing village along the water’s edge. I passed Elizabeth’s house, small and fragile, and yet what was inside, four boys and a couple sleeping in their beds, was complete and sturdy. It felt within my reach.

  When I got back to my room I was exhausted.

  I dreamed I was watching Thomas from a distance. He was hammering a nail into a piece of wood. The knocking of the hammer on the nail became louder and louder. And then I heard Dolly’s voice.

  “Yoo-hoo. Beatrice, it’s me.” Knock, knock, knock.

  I looked around the room completely disoriented. The sun was streaming through the gap in the curtains. It was morning, Harry had apparently been and gone—his hunting clothes were no longer on the chair in the corner—and it seemed as if I’d been asleep for days. I slipped on my robe and opened the door.

  “Darling, get dressed,” Dolly said, walking in and opening the curtains, pulling the bedsheets up, then rummaging through my chest of drawers.

  “What are you looking for, Dolly?” I sat on the edge of the bed rubbing my eyes.

  “Your swimsuit! Have you looked outside? It’s a gorgeous day! The indoor games morning has been called off because it’s clearly not raining.” She held back the sheer netting that covered the window for privacy and it was in fact the bluest, clearest sky I’d seen all summer. Everyone had been complaining that rain was expected for the last weekday of summer.

  “We’re all taking picnics down to the beach and the gents are going to meet us there after the hunt.”

  Reluctantly I began to dress, and Dolly followed me around trying to hurry me up.

  37

  The picnic hampers had already been delivered to the Beach Club when we arrived. Our wicker basket included a joint of cold roast beef, chicken and leek pies, asparagus with vinaigrette and watercress and beet salad, as well as a bottle of champagne and a bottle of white wine. There were crackers and butter wrapped in lettuce leaves to keep it cool, cookies and a fruit tart for dessert. The Manor kitchen had prepared our hamper for Harry and me and Samuel, one of his investment partners, but we had enough food to feed the entire club.

  The Manor staff had been scrambling that morning helping guests pack up to return to the city, but it turned out to be such a beautiful summer day, one of the clearest and warmest we’d seen, that almost everyone decided to enjoy one last beach day and leave later in the afternoon instead. No one seemed ready to bid Montauk farewell.

  The cabana boys brought a low table to our chaise longues on the boardwalk and dressed it in red-and-white-checked linens. This picnic was far from the sort my mother used to bring to the beach—hers were more like a tub of egg salad with crusty bread and a limp salad—but I had always loved dining outside like this, no matter how simple the food.

  We had a prime spot right in the middle of the boardwalk, at the front, with a view of the pristine beach.

  “It’s a beauty, isn’t it, Beatrice?” Harry said, stretching out on the chair, hands behind his head. “Samuel, I was telling Beatrice it’s a real beauty today,” he said to the overweight man.

  “That it is,” Samuel said, rubbing his hand on his solidly fat and hairy stomach. I wondered if his wife had ever been attracted to him. “You know what?” he said, sitting up and putting his feet on either side of his lounger, his round paunch hanging down between his legs. “We are damned smart to have found this place, and to think that when these deals go through we’ll have our hands on a nice-sized portion of Montauk.”

  “We’ve got the beaches; we’ve got the hunting; we’ve got the fishing and the boating. It’s got everything we need and it’s so close to the city. Say, Beatrice, maybe we’ll be staying in one of the new apartments next summer.” Harry reached over and squeezed my thigh. “What do you think?” he persisted.

  “I always liked the idea of a little cottage,” I said.

  “Sure, but if we could get those apartments done in time it would be far more luxurious.”

  * * *

  In the two days since the ball I had been in a constant state of flux, alternating between total calm and peace of mind, anticipating only a few more days before Thomas and I could be together, and then utter panic that Harry would find a way to stop me or that I would be too frightened to go through with it. That day, though, on the beach, warm from the sun in a cloudless sky with just the gentlest breeze, I felt at peace. There was something about having a baby growing inside me that made me feel less lonely when I was with Harry and this crowd, as if I had a constant companion and a purpose in life that I’d never felt before.

  Thomas would be in Connecticut now. He had taken the ferry that morning to see his son, then would stay with an old friend for the night so he could spend time with Tommy the next day, too. I knew he’d been discouraged by the boy’s mother from seeing him or even contacting him, she’d given Thomas the feeling he wasn’t wanted or needed, but what boy didn’t need his father? And what father could live without his son? Knowing he was with him now comforted me. I thought of Thomas as a father, as the father he always wanted to be, and I ran my hand across my stomach. All the pieces were starting to pull together like magnets, drawing themselves to where they should be.

  * * *

  After the picnics had been devoured, the drinks had flowed freely, the hampers removed and our lounge chairs moved down to the sand; the Beach Club was in a hazy siesta. The gents were all mostly sleeping in the sun, tired from the early hunt, full and fat from lunch. The women dozed or flicked through the weeklies and some of the children played by the water’s edge with their nannies. Roosevelt recently announced that some 10.5 million Americans were out of work and he’d declared the beginning of the “real drive on the depression,” and yet here in Montauk, all of us lazing about in the afternoon sun, it seemed no one had a care in the world.

  The white sand was dotted with striped umbrella after striped umbrella as far as the eye could see, and all around us were long, lean legs on lounge chairs, strong and tanned from all the summer activity. Contentment, though no one was really content. This wasn’t enough for anyone really; nothing would ever be enough, it seemed. No matter how perfect all these lives might have seemed from a distance, so full of possibilities and promise, we all wanted more.

  * * *

  Around two thirty that afternoon the wind picked up slightly and I put an extra beach towel around my shoulders. Within minutes everything began to take on a sickly yellow tint. The sky changed from the brightest blue to a cooler, almost eerie grey-yellow color, and as I looked up and out to sea it looked more and m
ore jaundiced. Some of the cabana boys and other beachgoers walked to the water’s edge and looked out to the horizon. Harry was snoring in the beach chair next to me. I got up and walked down.

  “Look at the fog rolling in,” a young waiter pointed out with an empty silver drinks tray.

  “That is a dense wall of fog coming our way,” said a dad to his two small children. “Go and tell your mother to start packing up,” he told his son. “Let’s go to Johnny’s and get ice cream.” The kids ran off shouting about what flavor they’d get and who would get the bigger scoops.

  The group of spectators grew and soon twenty or thirty people stood at the water’s edge watching the fast-moving grey sky coming closer. I heard the foghorn blare from the lighthouse, and even though I knew Thomas wasn’t there, just hearing it made me feel closer to him. We hadn’t seen fog like this all summer long. Even from Connecticut, Thomas would see it and start thinking about boats navigating their way around Montauk Point.

  The air cooled quickly and the wind picked up even more.

  “It feels like it’s going to rain after all,” I said to no one in particular, and after a few minutes I began to walk up the beach to the club. I felt a smattering of rain and looked back at the horizon. The fog now looked like a black wall closing in on us.

  “That’s not fog at all!” one of the men called out as he ran back up to the club. “That’s rain. It’s going to be one hell of a storm.”

  As the wind sent towels and newspapers flying, everyone scrambled to get their things together. The cabana boys closed the umbrellas and brought them in along with the beach chairs and tables. Some guests relocated inside to the covered bar to wait it out while others had their belongings carried to their cars.

  “George, take the women first and then come back for the rest of us,” Harry said, and we all piled into his car, Dolly, Clarissa, Mary Van de Coop, Winthrop’s wife and two others and me. We were just about on top of one another, cramming in as fast as we could as the rain was starting to come down in fat drops.

  “I’ll wait with the gents,” Jeanie said after she eyed Winthrop’s wife, Gloria, climbing in without her husband. “I’m not afraid of a bit of rain. It’s quite exciting really.”

  “Come,” Dolly said as some of the women battled for a seat, and she reached for my hand, pulling me to sit next to her. “We may not be heading back to the city today, after all, if this rain keeps up.”

  By the time we got up the hill to the Manor the pelting rain was coming down in sheets—hard and heavy and drenching—and the wind was so strong that we had to link arms and hold on to one another just to make it to the door and get inside. One minute it had been the most beautiful day of the entire summer; next it was the greyest, darkest, most ominous weather any of us had witnessed in years, or ever. The Manor staff brought us towels to dry off, but we didn’t even go up to our rooms to change. We just stared out the windows, some arms still linked.

  The wind hammered against the windows, making them rattle and us jumpy.

  “That tree’s not looking so good,” the restaurant manager from the Manor said, approaching the windows with a busboy. We all got closer to the windows and crowded around him to see what he saw. “That oak is about a hundred years old,” he said, pointing at the huge tree in the corner of the great lawn. We had spent many afternoons out there under the shade of the tree that summer. Knitting socials, decorating committee meetings, lemonade breaks from playing croquet in the hot sun. The kids spent a lot of time under that tree, too—story time, nap time—or the nannies would take shade while the children played on the lawn. Though the enormous trunk looked sturdy, the tree limbs were waving about frantically. One whole section in particular, a full third of the tree, seemed awkwardly out of synch with the rest. It was being tugged and thrown in all unnatural directions and then in an instant it cracked, ripped off and flew toward us at the window. We all gasped. “Get back!” someone shouted. Half the people ducked where they were, while the rest leapt to the back of the room. There was a thunderous thud against the exterior wall, but luckily it didn’t hit the windows.

  The crash left us all shaken and any hint of nervous laughter about getting so drenched immediately ceased. The men weren’t back yet and there were many, many others staying at the Manor who were out somewhere in the storm.

  My mind kept going to Thomas. He’d be distraught now, since he wasn’t at the lighthouse. He knew exactly what to do in times like this; this was what he lived for and lighthouses were made to withstand the worst kind of weather. The walls of the tower were thick and it was high up on Turtle Hill. Milton’s family would be safe there. I wished there were some way to contact Thomas in Connecticut, to let him know what was going on here and that I was out of harm’s way.

  “I can’t believe this,” Mary Van de Coop kept saying. “I just can’t believe it; this storm came out of nowhere!”

  When George pulled up to the front of the Manor and let out a carload of men, they muscled through the winds to get inside. Winthrop’s wife ran to him and they held each other, relieved, it seemed. They looked as they should, the two of them together. But Clark was bleeding and the side of his face was covered with tiny slivers of glass.

  “My God! What happened?” Dolly said, rushing to him. “Get us some water and a washcloth.”

  “Oh God, Dolly, we saw the rooftop peel off Shagwong’s Tavern,” Clark said. “It just lifted up on one corner, then peeled right off, and the whole side of it flew into the middle of the street. People could have been killed.”

  “That’s terrifying,” someone said standing behind Dolly.

  “What happened here?” Dolly said, starting to pick out some of the tiny splinters of glass from his cheek.

  “A slate shingle flew straight into the car’s window and smashed it in, right where I was sitting. But it could have been worse. Geez, it could have been a lot worse.”

  “Where’s Harry?” I asked.

  “He got into a different car with some others,” Clark said. “There wasn’t time to wait for George to come back; the wind was throwing things around. Maybe they went somewhere closer to wait out the storm.”

  I nodded, feeling a shot of worry and concern for him. I didn’t want harm to come to him. The lights flickered and went out. The women gasped. Someone began to cry.

  “We’ll be all right here at the Manor,” one of the men said. “This building is sturdy and we’re on high ground up here in case of any flooding.”

  “What about the fishing village?” I asked, suddenly panicked, the thoughts forming in my mind after the words. “Oh my God, what about the village?”

  Dolly looked up from tending to her husband’s face. “They could be in trouble if the water rises,” she said.

  “We need to get help to Elizabeth and the boys!” I cried, the severity of the storm suddenly sinking in.

  “George!” I called out to him across the Manor lobby. I’d never seen him look so afraid and I rushed over to him.

  “I need to get to my wife,” he said.

  Chilling sounds of sirens screamed in the distance and the thunderous roar of the wind beat against the Manor walls. Harry, Elizabeth, Patrick and their boys all out there somewhere in this horrific storm, and Thomas unreachable. The foghorn blasted over and over again and my body ached for him. It could be Milton or Worthington working the foghorn, but I envisioned Thomas. They’d be working up a sweat, searching the sea for boats, keeping the light and the horn going. Everyone had retreated from the windows and huddled in the center of the room. I glanced outside and saw George about to leave again in the car.

  “I want to go with him,” I said, rushing frantically toward the door.

  “You can’t go out there,” someone said. “You’ll be blown away!”

  With great effort, I pried open the heavy wooden front door and tried to run to the car. The driving wind was like sheets of glass pressing against me and the pounding rain so heavy it stung my skin. I couldn’t even see my h
ands in front of me, but I tried to force through toward the car. I wanted to help. I wanted to go to the village. I wanted to be at the light; I wanted to be there when Thomas returned. All reason left me.

  A tremendous gust of wind slammed against me and almost threw me to the ground. I covered my stomach with one hand and reached my other out to break my fall, but someone grabbed me under the arms and pulled me upright, then backwards. When I managed to regain my footing I turned to hold on to whoever had suspended my fall. It was Winthrop.

  “What on earth were you thinking?” he barked at me when, dripping and shivering, we were back inside.

  “I wanted to help.”

  “You’ll get yourself killed and that won’t help anyone,” he said.

  Once we were inside, his wife, Gloria, rushed to me and took over. “Think of the baby, Beatrice,” she said, guiding me into the lobby, my clothes clinging to my body, drenched with rain and a pool of water at my feet.

  “Let’s get you changed,” she said, leading me up the stairs to my room.

  “Be quick!” the manager called out. “It’s safer down here in the main room. Some windows have blown in up there.”

  I realized my stupidity as I climbed the stairs. If I’d fallen, if Winthrop hadn’t caught me, I could have hurt the baby. The thought was unfathomable. I needed to be more careful, smarter and safer. But I felt so helpless inside the Manor.

  “I know you’re upset and worried about Harry, but he’s going to be all right,” Gloria said. “He’s safer waiting it out somewhere else.” I nodded. They were all empty reassurances. None of us knew what was going on. None of us knew what was happening in the fishing village, in town or at the lighthouse or across the water in Connecticut. I wanted some assurance that Thomas was okay.

  After what seemed like hours, several carloads of folk from the fishing village made it to the back door and assembled with us in the Manor lounge.