All is Clam

by Hilary MacLeod

  He opened the door, and reeled back at the smell. Rose squeezed her nose shut and peeked in. She, too, reeled back.

  The eave was filled with raccoon shit, ancient and current, as well as urine, which gave off the powerful smell. Oliver slammed the door shut.

  “What’s that?” Rose called out just as he did so. When he didn’t respond, she insisted. “Open it again.”

  A shaft of sunlight through a hole in the fascia illuminated a book in the far corner of the eave.

  “Is that it?”

  “I think it is.” Oliver’s voice was soft and slow. “Maybe it is…” There was wonder in his words. He didn’t know why he said it, but somehow he knew it was so. But they couldn’t reach it. Hy, the slimmest, tried, but couldn’t get through the tiny door. They’d need Jamie.

  Until then they wouldn’t know if they’d found the diary. But Oliver was already sure of it – a memory of childhood tugging at his mind.

  “The diary,” he said, in a reverent whisper. “The key to The Sullivan legacy.”

  He had found it. They had. Jamie, all boy, had delighted in squirreling into the eave, oblivious to the raccoon scat.

  “Careful, careful.” Oliver peeked in after him, his sensitive nose wrinkling at the odour. Jamie had grabbed the book and begun to shuffle out when Oliver was assaulted by memory. The memory of another young child putting the book in that very place. Himself, at four, finding the diary after the adults had snatched it away, and hiding it from them. Their reaction – shouting and hitting – had frightened young Oliver into forgetting. He had denied knowing where the diary was, so many times, he no longer remembered.

  It was in his hands again. He stroked its suede leather exterior, murmuring soothing sounds as if it were a baby. With a soft touch, he turned the pages, alternating writing and blotting paper. The text, and on the facing page, smudges of ink blotted dry.

  So absorbed was he in the book that he might have been alone. He’d forgotten about Jamie, Hy, and even Rose. Soon he was alone. Touching a finger to her lips, Rose corralled the other two and eased them out of the room.

  He began to read it. The penmanship was elegant, feminine, but, even so, he was surprised to find it had been written by a woman. It was not until he had read several pages that the writer revealed herself. And not for many, many more pages was there anything said about a legacy.

  Moira had become used to Oliver’s strange ways – his caftan, his embroidered bejeweled slippers, even his cats. Not that damn rodent, though. Moira had never used the word “damn” in her life, and she used it now only mentally. It would take a lot more than a rat to make her say it out loud. Hyacinth, for instance. She could see saying it about her.

  In spite of the rat, she was catering to Oliver devotedly. Her focus on Ian seemed to have shifted to the corpulent guru occupying the back bedroom. It wasn’t a romantic interest – not like her feelings for Ian – but it was a devotion that could turn slavish, were it not checked. The checking point was the white rat.

  The shift had occurred when Oliver gave Moira a Tarot reading.

  Black magic, she had thought, when she had first seen the cards laid out on what she always thought of as her mother’s good dining room table. Word for word, that’s how she always referred to it.

  “Mother’s good dining room table” was never seen. It was covered by a protective board, overlaid with a white linen tablecloth – also too good to do its job without protection. The linen tablecloth was covered by thick plastic. When Hy had seen it on the occasion of a Women’s Institute meeting, she wondered what could go over the plastic to protect it.

  Oliver was using the table to lay out the colourful cards of the Major Arcana. He was still attempting to find clues to the Sullivan legacy. Moira tiptoed into the room – in part not to disturb Oliver, but also in fear of releasing the evil that might be in the cards.

  “Nothing to be afraid of,” Oliver said, without even looking at her behind him, able to sense her trepidation from her hesitant tread.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Amusing myself, my dear. Just simply amusing myself.”

  Moira flushed. No one had – ever – called her “my dear.” It quite flustered her and made her blush red, which was not unbecoming on her usually pasty face.

  She edged closer. She reached out a hand and touched a card. Turned it over. It was The Lovers.

  “Ah, now I know the nature of your question.”

  Moira pulled back.

  “I was just touching – ”

  “We touch the cards that have meaning to us.” Oliver picked up the cards, one by one.

  “Sit down.”

  She sat down beside him. He shuffled the cards.

  “Cut them.”

  Moira looked bewildered.

  “But, I have no scissors.”

  Oliver chuckled again.

  “No, no, my dear. Split the cards up, take a portion. Think on your question, concentrate, as you cut the cards.”

  Oliver picked the first card.

  “The nature of the question,” he said, laying it down.

  It was The Lovers.

  “See,” he said, winking. “The cards know.”

  The Lovers was upside down.

  “The Lovers,” he said. “A time of choice.” But the choice would be negative. He would not reveal that.

  He laid a card on top of it.

  “This covers you. This is what favours the situation.”

  Staring up at them was the Queen of Wands. Moira smiled. That must be a good card. That must be her. The Queen of Wands, well, mops and buckets, anyway.

  “Ah, the Queen of Wands,” said Oliver. “A card of the emotions. This is a romantic question, your silent question.”

  Moira flushed, just a bit. It made her look almost pretty, thought Oliver. Almost. This card, too, was reversed. It meant jealousy, deceit, infidelity. What could he say?

  “It is a card of success,” he lied. But not reversed, the way it was. Reversed, the emotional prognosis was not good.

  He laid a card across the two. “This crosses you. This is what will oppose you in the situation.” She’s opposed before it’s even begun, and this won’t help.

  He was looking at The Fool. Some interpreted this card of the Major Arcana positively – but to Oliver it had always meant folly – the young man standing on the edge of a cliff, oblivious to the danger. What could he say? Folly – The Fool – was staring right at them.

  “Don’t look dismayed, my dear. This means only that if the object of your affection does not reciprocate, he’s a fool.”

  She smiled tentatively.

  More fool you, he thought.

  The reading continued, and it didn’t get better. Most of the cards were reversed, which was usually not good. Oliver put the best face on it, and Moira was quite gratified by the reading. The accuracy of it. The nice things he’d said about her. At least somebody appreciated her. If Oliver saw that, maybe Ian would, too.

  By the end of the reading, Moira was a devoted follower of Oliver. She had fallen under his spell, hypnotized by his art.

  So grateful was she that Moira now laid out tea at four o’clock every afternoon in the dining room. Moira liked the idea so much – so refined – that she had taken out some of her mother’s linens and silver plate. The pot dispensed tea that tasted of silver polish. Oliver, drinking out of a china cup, could taste the metallic cleaner. The cucumber sandwiches were limp and had crusts, but he didn’t notice. He was lost in the diary.

  Moira wrinkled her nose and curled her lip when she saw and smelled the musty old book. But he was an antiquarian, so she supposed she’d have to put up with it. Moira thought having an antiquarian in her house lent it a certain dignity that would rub off on her “establishment,” as she had begun to call it.

  The diary o
f Rose Sullivan, that was, was a treasure. As Oliver sipped his metallic tea, he thought that perhaps the diary was the legacy. It drew a picture of life on the tree-covered island, a wilderness hacked out with few tools and no help from the landlords. The Sullivans had spent the first winter in a six-foot by four-foot log house, with a loft for sleeping.

  Oliver shivered when he imagined four people in such proximity, even if two of them were children. Then he smiled. An effective method of birth control.

  Oliver turned the pages impatiently, looking for a clue, a sign. It was a marvel of history. The book was valuable, not just in a monetary way, although it would fetch a bit, but in its portrayal of Island life as far back as there was island life, white human island life. This Rose Sullivan was the east coast’s Susannah Moodie, and it would be Oliver’s pleasure to introduce her to Canadian literati and historians.

  He turned the pages, brittle with age, carefully, right to the last page, where, in a different hand, the words jumped out at him: “the Sullivan legacy.” He shifted his half-moon spectacles securely onto the bridge of his nose.

  Chapter Seventeen

  “What a bitch!” Hy was preparing for the rehearsal of “Shores Ella” without a leading actress or actor. She’d been furious about it since she’d received an email from Moira, withdrawing herself and her sister Madeline from the Christmas skit.

  “I should be glad she’s not taking part.” Hy was shoving chairs to clear the stage at The Hall. Annabelle was in the kitchen, preparing sandwiches and a tray of squares, a “lunch” for the actors. She said nothing but let Hy rant on.

  “I don’t care about Moira. I’ll find a prince.”

  Annabelle stuck her head out the door from the kitchen. She winked: “Really?”

  Hy wasn’t in a mood to grin, but she couldn’t stop herself. “You know what I mean.” Then she frowned again.

  “I’m really angry about Madeline. Moira shouldn’t speak for her.”

  “She didn’t want to do it, anyway, Hy.”

  “I think she should be given the chance to shine. Not be pushed around by that domineering sister of hers.”

  Annabelle came through the door, put a hand on Hy’s shoulder.

  “And she should be pushed around by you?”

  Hy thrust a stubborn chin at her friend. Then they both grinned.

  “Yeah, okay. So who’s my Shores Ella?”

  Just then, Jamie came into The Hall.

  “How about me?” The sun shone onto his soft golden hair. Hy and Annabelle stared at the boy. Hy thought, Why not? She clasped her hands together and beamed.

  “It’s positively Shakespearean,” she said to Annabelle. “Boys always played girls. Might raise the tone a bit.”

  Jamie smiled his wide, partly toothless, smile.

  “Are you sure you want to do it?” Hy took in Jamie’s dirty jeans, covered in mud and ripped at the knees. “You’ll have to wear a dress.”

  He screwed up his face.

  Hy was about to suggest dungarees, when he nodded.

  “I could do that.”

  “I wanted you to play the piano.”

  “I will.”

  “I mean for the skit.”

  “We can figure that out,” Jamie responded in a remarkably adult way. And they did. Hy, Annabelle, and Jamie worked Shores Ella’s musical abilities into the plot.

  “But remember,” Hy warned Jamie, “the part does belong to Madeline if she wants it. You’re just the understudy.”

  Jamie nodded, leapt up, and kicked his heels, looking very much the little boy and very far from a princess. Hy sighed.

  They still didn’t have a prince.

  …They say the Sullivan legacy is murder, and that may be. Some say these things run in families as they have run in ours. But there is a greater legacy, fully unrealized as yet, but someday…someday. Nimble fingers hold the key to unlock the family’s hidden wealth. The secret is not in this book, but in the world, where it has always been.

  There was no more. Impatient, Oliver had skipped to the end, hoping for a conclusion, but the diary ended with the secret untold. Had the writer merely been fueling a dull life? Leaving a secret, in fact no secret at all, for future generations to puzzle over. That’s what it seemed like. He’d found the tendency in journals and diaries before. A grabbing out at the future, exercising some control, however trivial, over what was to come. Or over people like himself who ponder the past.

  But if he took it seriously?

  Oliver looked at his own sausage-like fingers. Not nimble. Why nimble? To unlock the secret. But where was the key? A new search. He went to the cards. They told him nothing. The Pentacles, wealth, were there repeatedly. The Magician, The Priestess, and The Fool.

  Was he The Fool to think there was anything in this? He gazed out the window. The secret was in the world, where it had always been. He turned and opened the book again. Nimble fingers.

  Could it be Jamie? Jamie, with his nimble fingers? The key – the keys of the piano? A special piano? Or could playing the notes of any piano bring forth the clue to the legacy? Did the fingers have to be nimble, because the sequence of notes was difficult to play? Would the clue spell out words by the names of the notes?

  Oliver was so excited his stomach was churning. A rush of energy had him standing upright, pacing the room. This was better, even, than deciphering the tarot. The trail of clues led directly to Jamie and the piano in the Hall. How close was he to discovering the great family secret? He rushed out of the room as fast as he could go. He would find Jamie. They would go to the Hall. Jamie would play for him and all, all would be revealed. Surely.

  Oliver’s excitement fueled him all the way to Wild Rose Cottage. He never thought of calling Nathan. He arrived, out of breath, perspiration sliding down his forehead so thick it clouded his vision. His cheeks were an unhealthy high colour of red.

  “Jamie?” he gasped when Rose opened the door.

  She shook her head. “At The Hall.” She looked concerned. “Come. Sit down.”

  “No, no,” he said. “I may have found the secret to the Sullivan legacy, but I need Jamie’s help.”

  “Jamie’s help?”

  He slipped the precious book out of his coat. He had it wrapped in fine linen – one of Moira’s mother’s napkins. It was theft, but it couldn’t be helped. He would recompense her. He opened to the passage about the Sullivan legacy and showed it to Rose.

  “What does it mean?”

  “I’ll have to work on that with Jamie. He has the nimble fingers. Perhaps the cards will help, too. I will consult them. But,” he added, “only after I see Jamie. In the meantime, take a look at this. It belongs to you. It could be worth quite a bit. I shall return.”

  He would have liked to call Nathan now, but he couldn’t. No phone. No electricity. That poor woman. And the child. And the child to come.

  She hadn’t told him that, but the cards had.

  Hy was auditioning the Institute women for the role of prince, whom she’d scripted as a buffoon. Jamie was playing the role of Shores Ella. In worn-out jeans, a plaid shirt and socks with holes, he hardly looked the part, but he delivered his lines perfectly, flashing the long eyelashes that women always said were wasted on a boy.

  Rose Rose, the minister’s wife, was hopeless as the prince. She was much too feminine – soft voice, graceful movements. Estelle Joudry was a complete ham – all fluttering eyelashes and clasped hands. More like a diva past her best-before date, thought Hy. Olive MacLean was stiff and unyielding, only able to say the lines word by word. The remaining women were too old, too ill, or going away for Christmas. Community spirit wasn’t what it had been.

  But community policing was, in the form of Jane Jamieson who, seeing so many cars outside, stuck her head in the door and herself into their dilemma.

  The moment Hy saw her, th
e idea struck, as a lot of her ideas did, suddenly and without forethought, and came spurting out of her with no hesitation.

  “Our prince. Will you be our prince?”

  “Oh, yes!” Jamie jumped up from the chair onstage, eyes glowing. Playing opposite a real cop. Even a girl cop.

  Jamieson jerked her head back in surprise.

  “Prince? What prince?”

  “In our Christmas skit. We need a prince, and you’d be perfect.”

  “Well, I couldn’t…I’m a police officer…”

  “You’d be off duty.”

  “I’m not sure when that is.”

  “It must be sometime. Like Christmas Eve.”

  “That’s one of the bad nights in policing…”

  “Not at The Shores. What could happen here?”

  “What hasn’t already happened?” Jamieson’s tone was grim.

  “Well, yes,” said Hy, thinking of the deaths and murders over the past two years. “But that was unusual. We’ve had more than our share.”

  “Indeed,” said Jamieson. And none of them to her credit. People had been killed on her watch. Repeatedly. Some people thought she’d jinxed the place.

  “Put Murdo on duty.”

  That suggestion teased at Jamieson, pleased her. Murdo on duty. That’ll be a change. A half-smile formed on her lips. She rolled the idea around in her head, felt the tense expectation. This was surely community policing. Exactly what she’d been looking for. Becoming a part of the village. A part, but still apart, she warned herself not to be getting sentimental. She still had a job to do.

  Jamie jumped down from the stage. He grabbed Jamieson’s sleeve, looked up at her with pleading in his eyes.

  “Oh, please, please.” He tugged at her arm. “Please be my prince.”

  More than any of the other arguments, this moved her beyond measure. The child’s shining eyes of expectation. She had the power to make this child happy at Christmas. She’d been a child at Christmas. That tragic Christmas. An innocent child…no, not innocent, but still a child, robbed of happiness. No one after that had ever wanted her to do something at Christmas. They had tiptoed around her. She’d pretended she didn’t care.