All is Clam

by Hilary MacLeod

  “She won’t have it. She won’t have you. And Billy won’t leave his mother.”

  Then, triumphant:

  “And you won’t leave me.”

  Madeline didn’t say anything. She couldn’t say anything. She had nothing to say. Nothing, because she knew Moira was right.

  “And I won’t have him here. You and him getting up to all sorts. It disgusts me. I won’t have it in my own house.” It occurred to neither that it was Madeline’s house, too.

  A tear spilled down Madeline’s face.

  She had no idea – not yet – how strong she could be if pushed to it. And she had no idea that her sister was weak, bitter, spiteful, jealous, and a much lesser woman than she was.

  She would find out, but it would take time.

  Until then, Moira bullied her. Her and Billy. The only two people over whom she had any power. Faced with the rest of the world, Moira became uncertain, unsure.

  For now, she had power over these two, and she wielded it. She tolerated Billy’s presence, because he was handy around the house and she got work done free.

  It was the only reason she put up with him. Physically, he was much too much man for her. That knowledge was one of the things that made her rage.

  She smiled a tight-lipped smile of satisfaction when she went into the kitchen. Billy had not spent all his time here smooching with Madeline. The six cupboard doors that had refused to close properly were now tightly shut.

  Billy had done as she had told him. He always did.

  He always did at home, too. Home was even bleaker than Moira’s house – grim in its lack of ornamentation and mean sobriety. When Moira washed the floor, she’d lay layers of newspaper down over top so it wouldn’t get dirty. If company was coming, she’d lift them off. When company left, the newspapers would go back down again. Since Moira and Madeline rarely had company, the newspapers covered the floor most of the time.

  When Billy got home, he asked the question he always asked:

  “How are you?” You’d think he’d know better.

  “How am I? How am I?” Pearl Pride responded as she always did. There was no winning. If he hadn’t asked, she’d have shoved that in his face – along with the empty mug of tea that sat in the tray in front of her.

  “I’m parched. You leave your poor old crippled mother here for hours, without so much as a bit of tea to wet her lips.”

  Billy took the mug. In the kitchen, he filled the kettle and plugged it in, stuck his head back into the front room. It was decorated for Christmas.

  Pathetically decorated.

  An aging garland hung across the fake fireplace mantel. The bough was losing its needles and turning from green to brown, hung with a few skinny pieces of tinsel, and a half-dozen glass balls, colour chipping off them. In the centre was a nativity scene – two bakelite figurines, Mary and Joseph, and a cradle, all turned yellow with age.

  “Biscuits or bread and cheese?”

  “A bit of both,” his mother replied. “And quickly, or I’ll starve to death. What are you doing in there? Growing the tea leaves?”

  Billy sighed and turned back into the kitchen. He could never leave his mother. And he couldn’t bring Madeline here.

  Oliver was frowning, having just come off a conversation with Jared. The man was getting difficult. He had assumed there was something of value in what he was looking for and was angling to get some, or all of it, for himself.

  Oliver had swatted larger flies than Jared. He’d killed a man once. It had been necessary. That’s what he’d told the judge, without guilt or shame.

  Murdo answered the first call that came to the police house when Jamieson was out on her rounds.

  “Domestic.” It was Jamieson.

  Just one curt word, the address, and she hung up.

  Murdo knew he was meant to get his ass over there right away. Jeez. They hadn’t been here two minutes and she’d already managed to find trouble. Or create it?

  He looked at the address he’d scribbled down. Then looked at it again.

  April’s house.

  He pulled on his jacket, raced out the door, and jumped in the cruiser. He didn’t have far to go – down the hill, past the Hall and Gus Mack’s house on The Shore Lane, and right next-door was April’s.

  April was lying in the driveway behind her husband Ron’s cherry red Ford Fairlane.

  Jamieson and Ron had been trying to get her to stand up.

  She had her plump little arms folded across her chest, and her chin stuck up in defiance.

  A domestic? Murdo looked confused. He looked at Jamieson. Raised an eyebrow.

  “Well, I thought…” she began defensively.

  “The way the kids was screamin’,” put in Ron, “I don’t blame you.”

  Ron had been shouting at April to get out of the driveway. He’d slammed himself into the car and edged it backward an inch or two as a threat. The kids – all six of them – had come running and begun to scream and cry. Ron had started yelling, too, just as Jamieson was coming around the corner, prompting her to phone Murdo with the dreaded word: domestic.

  It was more like a domestic comedy than a tragedy.

  Murdo squatted down and whispered a few kind words to April.

  “He’s leaving me,” she said.

  “Good riddance, I’d say.” Ron was a well-known womanizer.

  “He’s leaving the children.”

  “They’re better off without him, too.”

  “He’s leaving us.” Her hands scrunched up her apron and now pulled it over her face, depositing flour on her nose and hair.

  Murdo found her nearly irresistible when she looked like that. Other men did, too.

  “Let him go.” He dared to brush some of the flour off her forehead.

  “But the children need a father.”

  “They need their mother right now.” He took her by the elbow, and helped her sit up. Then he got her to her feet and led her over to her children. The moment they were off the driveway, Ron jumped in the car and backed up with a screech. He looked straight ahead as he sped down The Shore Lane to freedom and his blowsy, bleach-blond mistress in Winterside.

  Chapter Eight

  Hy and Annabelle were in the Hall, untangling the Christmas lights. There were boxes full of cheesy decorations, each of which had a specific place it belonged, locations Moira Toombs knew by heart. She’d picked them all. She would be over soon to boss them into doing it her way.

  Normally, the decorating would have been done by now, but there had been a memorial service for The Shores’ oldest resident, 105-year-old Agnes Cousins.

  “She could have picked a better time to die,” Annabelle grumbled. It was something she’d only dare say to Hy. She was usually good-natured and easy-going, but she was behind on her Christmas baking, shopping, and her own decorating.

  “She did pick a time.”

  Agnes Cousins had died shortly after midnight on the day of her 105th birthday. She had lived to be the oldest resident of The Shores.

  The lights were untangled and ready to hang when the door opened. From where they were in the main room, Hy and Annabelle couldn’t see who’d come in. They assumed it was Moira.

  “Ah. Indulging your heathen practices.”

  Jamieson – competing with Ian as Grinch of The Shores. Hy was no more a believer than they were, but she enjoyed the holiday season, even as a heathen.

  “Why not enjoy it, even if you’re not a Christian? The lights at the darkest time of year, bountiful food, when there might not be much in the next few months.”

  “That was then,” said Jamieson.

  “It could be now – if the snow comes and the causeway floods and freezes over.”

  The causeway provided a very tenuous link between The Shores and the rest of Red Island. It had never been sa
tisfactorily fixed after a storm surge that sliced it in two. In the winter The Shores was sometimes stormbound – bad weather making it impossible to cross the causeway. Ian, for a while, had circulated a petition for a fixed fixed link to The Shores, but people had just laughed at him, and he put it away.

  They made do with the inconvenience – just one more thing that set The Shores apart from the rest of Red Island. People like Ian had computers and high-speed Internet, but the ladies of the Women’s Institute in the village still wore only dresses, summer and winter. They had not given in to what they still called slacks.

  And then there was the weather – as brutal, as benign, as varying as in other places along the Atlantic seaboard, and more so. Last year there had been a fog of which Gus said she’d “never seen the like.” The Shores had been in a shroud of invisibility for two days.

  No surprise that many, like Hy, had stores of preserves in their cellars, some root crops and freezers full of fruit and vegetables from their gardens.

  “It could be us,” Hy repeated. “Easily.”

  Jamieson conveyed contempt and disbelief in one twist of her mouth. A city girl, though she’d experienced the perils of the causeway, she didn’t believe it could seriously interfere with modern life.

  “There hasn’t even been any snow yet.”

  “It’s going to snow. It’s winter. How can it not snow? And it will…” Hy predicted, “…by Christmas Eve. I have faith.”

  “I thought you didn’t.”

  “For Christmas I do. Light. Food. Good will toward men.”

  “And women,” said Jamieson.

  “Amen to that,” said Annabelle.

  Jamieson seemed to have come in for no reason, but she’d recognized Annabelle’s car and Hy’s bicycle outside. Might as well start community policing with people she knew.

  Jamieson said nothing more, just stood there and watched as they strung the lights, all along the shrill pink tongue-and-groove wainscoting covering the lower half of the walls, also pink, but thankfully paler. The Institute women had all agreed on the colour as soothing, and, they thought privately, flattering – but treasurer Olive MacLean, wife of Harold the carpenter, had picked the colour. Or rather, the price. The paint she’d bought was on sale for a reason. It was garish. It wasn’t soothing or flattering, but it was the right price for Olive, who was as mean with the Institute money as she was with her own.

  The lights in place and tested, Hy and Annabelle began to dig into the boxes. There were feathery angels, stars made by every child who had ever attended The Shores’ school in the past eighty years, until it had closed. Many of the ornaments showed their age. They were yellowed, flaking, but still put up every year.

  “Can’t we get rid of Conrad Kelly?” Annabelle held up a tattered star that had only two limp points left.

  “Of course not.” Moira slammed the Hall door shut. She marched in, steel wool hair lacquered onto her head, pasty face with just a smudge of colour – caused by her irritation. Conrad Kelly had been the conservative MLA for The Shores fifty years before. He’d got her father his garbage job. Her loyalty to him and his tattered star ran deep.

  Moira frowned at Annabelle and Hy digging in the boxes. She began taking things out herself, with care, holding them tenderly, mumbling, “famous photos grouping…the War Dead…Harvest Festival.”

  She was naming specific locations around the Hall where particular ornaments would be tacked to the wall or hung on the lights attached to the wainscoting. The “famous” photos, in dusty frames donated from village attics, hung haphazardly at the back of the Hall. They included Gus shaking hands with the current premier. Gus shaking hands with a former premier. A photo of Gus shaking hands with Shania Twain, both looking a bit puzzled. Shania had only stopped in during her tour of the island hoping to use the bathroom. As it turned out, the toilet had been out of order, and moments after the shot, she’d gone dashing into the bushes behind the Hall. Or so the story went.

  “The War Dead.” Moira said it with capital letters. It was a gilded document of the brave men of The Shores who’d given their lives in the two world wars. The Harvest Festival was a group of ten “Best Float” awards. That had taken on new meaning since the causeway had collapsed. One of the winning floats, tricked out by Annabelle’s son, Nathan, and his pal Dooley, was a boat with car wheels and wings. They’d called it The Shoresmobile.

  Jamieson said nothing, but stood watching them unpack the Christmas treasures. There was the suggestion of a smirk on her face at the Santa Claus made out of jelly beans, glued onto a piece of faded construction paper. The jelly beans were faded, too, and many of them lost or stolen. Not exactly a case for a police investigation, Jamieson thought.

  Hy shot Annabelle a look and mouthed, “Why’s she here?” Annabelle shrugged. They had a good laugh later when they figured out this was Jamieson’s idea of community policing. Jamieson didn’t know how to start an unofficial conversation. Hy did – or so she thought until she tried to chat with Jamieson to break the uncomfortable feeling in the room.

  “Will you be spending Christmas with the family?” There was a long pause before Jamieson answered.

  “I don’t have a family.” It wasn’t quite true.

  Both Annabelle and Moira looked up. No family? That was unheard of in The Shores.

  “I thought you had a sister. She got married last year. You showed up here for that murder investigation in a bridesmaid’s dress.”

  Jamieson did not like to be reminded of the dress or the disastrous investigation.

  “She’ll be away.” She was always gone at Christmas. Jamieson knew why. She understood. She didn’t want to celebrate with family either.

  “You must have parents.”

  “I don’t have parents.” Was this community policing? If so, Jamieson didn’t like it. Much too personal.

  Dead, thought Hy. Her parents must be dead. Like mine. But I’d never say I didn’t have them.

  “Passed away?” Hy didn’t like the phrase. It was avoiding reality, but she was trying to use a soft probe.

  “I wouldn’t call it that.”

  The conversation was over. Hy knew it. Jamieson was not prepared to say anything more, her lips shut tight in one long, disapproving line.

  Shortly after, Jamieson left.

  Annabelle took a big breath and exhaled on a deep sigh.

  “Man, she’s a piece of work.”

  “Yup,” said Hy, placing Conrad Kelly’s star where it always went, next to the wall hanging the Institute ladies had quilted to celebrate one hundred years of the W.I. The star was right above the new recycling bin. Hy tacked it loosely to the wall, hoping it might fall in.

  Chapter Nine

  “Who’s the man lives in that shed just outside the village?”

  It was Jamieson’s community policing day again, and she’d stopped in at Hy’s. She’d decided that every second day she would go on her rounds until she knew everyone in the village, their backgrounds and relationships.

  An hour or two with Gus would have told her that, but she’d have been dizzy with the tangled web of brothers and sisters, uncles and aunts – a web so large and intricate that Gus sometimes confused herself.

  “Don’t let Abel Mack hear you call it a shed.”

  “I’ve never met Abel Mack.” Jamieson made a mental note to do so.

  “He built it for Buddy.”

  Buddy meant nothing. It was a name for anyone.

  “Buddy – that’s the man?”

  “Yup. Buddy.”

  “Buddy –” She expected more. “Buddy who?”

  “That’s it. Buddy.”

  “No last name?”

  “Not that we know. He didn’t have a first name until Abel gave it to him.”

  “The name and the shed?”

  Hy nodded.

 
“I went up there to say hello but he ran off.”

  “He’s shy. A bit simple, but good-hearted and hard-working. C’mon.” Hy grabbed her jacket. “I’ll take you up to meet him.”

  Jamieson went, somewhat reluctantly. What good meeting this Buddy would be, she didn’t know. Then reminded herself: community policing.

  They trudged up the long low incline to Buddy’s. He was outside, splitting wood. There was a pair of very stiff long johns hanging from a single clothesline slumped between the house and a spruce tree. The long johns and the clothes pegs had turned the same shade of grey.

  Community policing was also getting to know the troublemakers. Jamieson sensed that she was looking at trouble. She stopped and turned to Hy.

  “How well do you know him?” Eyes now squinting at the scene.

  “Pretty well.” Hy was shaken by the question. She knew Jamieson well enough to know that she was, if not on the hunt, in stalking mode.

  “How long?”

  “Since he came.”

  “And that was when?”

  This was turning into an interrogation. Hy stiffened, defensive.

  “A while.”

  “A while?”

  “A few years.”

  “Then you don’t know anything.”

  Jamieson started up again, looking at the clothesline with distaste. It offended her fastidiousness, the long johns especially. An article of clothing unattractive at best, and the way they looked now made her turn her head away. But she had to look at Buddy, his face crumpled in a smile, saliva leaking from a side of his mouth, which, when he opened it, foamed with moisture.

  Unfortunately, some of his saliva hit Jamieson in the face when he said something she deciphered as “hello,” and stuck a fat hand out to her.

  She didn’t take it. She couldn’t. She wiped the saliva from her face with the sleeve of her uniform, and looked at it with distaste.

  His smile drooped. His bright eyes lost their shine, and he looked at Hy, an appeal for help. He didn’t speak well, but he knew how to communicate his feelings.

  “You might want this,” Hy said to Jamieson, handing her a crushed Kleenex that she had in her pocket. Jamieson looked at it with distaste as well.