by Anne Weale
On a sunny morning in May, before Memorial Day when the holiday season started, the quiet streets of Nantucket Town with their brick sidewalks and eighteenth- and nineteenth-century houses, ranging from the white-columned mansions of the whaling merchants to the more modest dwellings of the craftsmen who serviced the ships, were a delightful place to wander.
For a hundred years, Nantucket had been the world's premier whaling port. Because that historic time in the island's annals had been followed by disasters and depression, the town had escaped the modernisations which would have destroyed the original character of the place. Instead, it had survived its reverses to become one of the nation's architectural jewels; an unspoilt example of how a flourishing maritime community had lived and contributed an important chapter to the history of America.
In Nantucket, Summer and Emily lived in shorts and sneakers and went everywhere on foot or by bicycle. If the weather was cool they wore Nantucket Reds—brick-coloured yachtsmen's trousers which gradually faded in the wash to a soft pink—and handnitted black sheep's-wool sweaters from the Irish imports shop on Main Street. If it rained, they wore foul-weather gear.
The cottage was reached by a cat-walk from the end of one of the old wharves. It was built on pilings and, at night, they could lie in their bunks and listen to the water lapping against the heavy timbers which supported The Fo'c'sle. The name was a seaman's abbreviation for the forecastle or crew's quarters.
The cottage was kept in order by an energetic, cheerful widow, Hetty O'Brien. It had a double bedroom where James slept, and two smaller bedrooms with bunks, one above the other. The kitchen was tiny, like a galley on a yacht, and the living room wasn't large. However, there was also a spacious roofed balcony outside the living room and this, when the weather was fine, was where they spent most of their time, surrounded by the comings and goings of the waterfront.
There were always two or three seagulls standing on the ridge of The Fo'c'sle's shallow-pitched roof, and sometimes a gull would perch on the top of the flagpole from which, when they were in residence, they flew the Stars and Stripes.
Their third spring sojourn in Nantucket was the best yet. Everywhere they went they were recognised and given friendly greetings by the local people, and by now they had a wide circle of friends among other people 'from off' who loved Nantucket and had weekend and vacation houses there. Even when James was not with them, they had many invitations to brunches, barbecues and beach picnics.
It was from Mrs O'Brien that Summer learnt that James's liaison with Loretta Fox had come to an end.
The caretaker let fall this piece of gossip one morning while Emily was at the Atheneum, changing her library books. Mrs O'Brien looked after two other houses for their owners, and had come upon the item about James in a gossip column in a discarded copy of the New York Daily News.
'It said Mr Gardiner's close friend, Ms Loretta Fox, was moving her art gallery to California,' she told Summer. 'I never heard of her before. She never came here. Did you know her?'
'No, I didn't, Hetty.'
'She can't have been that close a friend if you didn't know her.' It was a disingenuous remark for Mrs O'Brien was perfectly aware what the term close friend implied. She appeared to be more intrigued than shocked by the discovery that James had had a mistress.
'I don't think gossip columns are ever very reliable sources of information,' said Summer. 'Half the things they print are probably inventions.'
'There's no smoke without fire, they say. I think it's time he was married and starting a family. Maybe now he'll look round for a wife. There's no shortage of nice girls who'd have him, that's for sure.'
Summer remembered the night she had asked James how he was going to found his dynasty without a wife. And his reply: That's a problem I'm working on.
Had the break-up with Loretta been impending then?
If the stories about him had some substance, she had been only the third of his long-term close friends. Which, for a man of his age, was a comparatively sedate sexual history. Many men with his looks and his means would have had women galore.
The following Friday evening he arrived on the island.
Emily was at a friend's house on Pleasant Street, and Summer was alone on the deck sewing a button on a shirt cuff, when she heard a firm tread on the cat-walk and looked up to see him striding towards her, dressed for New York, with a raincoat over his arm and a briefcase in his other hand.
'Hi! How are you doing?' was his greeting.
As usual, he hadn't let them know he was coming. The Fo'c'sle was not on the telephone, but Mrs O'Brien's house, nearby, had a telephone and he could be contacted through her if anything urgent arose.
'We're fine. It was raining this morning, but the forecast for the weekend is good. Emily's visiting with Muffy, but she'll be back soon.'
'I'll go and get changed,' said James.
He disappeared into the cottage and she heard him starting to whistle as he crossed the living room. He didn't sound like a man left in low spirits by the departure of a woman who had been important to him.
When he reappeared he was wearing a pair of Nantucket Reds so bleached by the sun and many washings that they were paler than a strawberry ice. He was carrying a bottle of red wine and two glasses.
'Are you eating in or out tonight?' he asked.
'In. We were going to have sweetcorn and steaks, but I haven't been over to the A & P to buy them yet if you'd rather we had something else.'
'That sounds fine to me—I'll come shopping with you. There's no hurry. Let's have a glass of wine first.'
He poured out the wine, put one of the glasses beside her, and settled himself in a canvas director's chair which, like all the furniture on the deck, could be folded and stacked in a store room when the place was closed up.
'I heard on the plane coming over that a house on Orange Street may be coming on the market soon,' he told her.
Orange Street was famous for having, in the space of a century, been the home of one hundred and twenty-six sea captains. The old houses in the historic part of town didn't change hands often. When they did, they fetched high prices.
'Perhaps I might buy it,' he said thoughtfully. 'The cottage is fine for short stays, but it has its limitations.'
In the light of what she had learned from Mrs O'Brien, this remark had a significance which otherwise might not have struck her. It seemed to confirm that his mind was turning towards marriage. Certainly The Fo'c'sle, poised over the waters of the harbour, with railings through which a small child could easily fall, was a place where the mother of young children would never dare to leave them alone for a moment.
She was sipping her wine, and wondering how James would go about choosing a wife, when he stopped surveying the harbour and turned his head to look searchingly at her.
'What's the matter, Summer? Pining for your boyfriend?'
'If you mean Raoul, he isn't my boy-friend and, no, I'm not pining for him or pining at all. Why should I be? I like Nantucket.'
'I know you do. But even a favourite place can lose its charm if it's a long way from one's favourite person.'
'My favourite person is right here with me,' she answered.
His tawny eyes glinted. 'You overwhelm me. I had no idea you felt so warmly towards me. There've been times when I've felt I was almost your least favourite person.'
Determined not to be flustered by his mocking glance, she said, 'I meant Emily—as you very well know.'
'Ah, I see. How disappointing. I thought for a moment you were declaring a secret tendresse for me. It is Leap Year when, by tradition, your sex are allowed to take the initiative.'
She managed a rather forced smile and, attempting to match his banter, said, 'I should think declining a proposal might tax even your savoir-faire. Or, knowing now irresistible you are, did you take the precaution, at the beginning of the year, of preparing a gracious refusal in case that contingency arose?'
He laughed; and then, slowly, his expr
ession changed until he was watching her with an intent, narrowed gaze which she found even more unnerving than his previous badinage.
'What makes you think I would refuse?' he said. 'If you were to ask me to marry you, I might say yes. Why not try me?'
She searched for a flippant riposte with which to counter this strange joke. Thank God he had no idea it wasn't a joke to her! If he had been serious, it would have been a dream come true. But of course he couldn't be serious.
To her relief she saw his niece running along the cat-walk.
'Here comes Emily,' she said.
James rose to his feet. 'You think I'm kidding, don't you?' he said, looking down at her. 'I'm not. We'll talk about it later.' Then he turned away to greet the younger girl.
Half an hour later the two of them went off to the A & P supermarket to buy the ingredients for supper. Summer had made an excuse to opt out of this expedition. She needed some time alone to recover from being thrown off balance by those extraordinary remarks before Emily's arrival. The more she thought about them, the less sense they made. What could have possessed him to tease her on such a subject. At worst it was cruel and at best in very poor taste.
They were starting their supper that night with corn on the cob when Emily suddenly stopped nibbling the sweet yellow kernels to ask, 'What do you two think about people living together?'
'What makes you ask?' James enquired.
'Muffy's sister is living with someone and her father is furious and won't let them share a room when they come to stay. That makes the boy-friend furious and he won't come with her any more. Then she doesn't enjoy herself and cries, and her mother gets upset and cries too. Muffy says it's making life miserable for the whole family, and they always used to be so happy.' James finished eating his first cob. They were all wearing lobster bibs to stop drops of melted butter from falling on their clothes.
He wiped butter from his firm lips before he said, 'I think Muffy's sister's boy-friend needs straightening out. If he's serious about her, he ought to be able to stand a few nights in separate rooms to appease her father. If he isn't serious about her, she's going to cry a lot more when he ditches her for someone else. What do you think, Summer?'
She had wondered what he would say and was faintly surprised that his assessment of the situation matched her own.
'I agree,' she said. 'How old is Muffy's sister, Emily?'
'Nineteen.'
'In that case it's hardly surprising that her father doesn't approve. She's too young to commit herself to any one boy-friend... in so far as living with someone is a commitment, which I don't think it is really. At nineteen a girl should be finding out what kind of person she is, not trying to meld her life with someone else's. That comes later, when she knows who she is.'
Emily looked thoughtfully at her. Recently she had had her hair cut short again—very short. The stylist had shown her how to blow-dry what was left of her curly mop into the kind of head-shaping cap seen on statues of ancient Greeks.
She had also had her ears pierced and now wore fine gold rings in her delicate lobes. Since hearing Rosamund Bernier's lecture, and seeing that she, too, had freckles, she had given up regretting her own. With every month that passed now, she left childhood further behind and showed more clearly the promise of lovely womanhood.
Tonight, wearing an off-white Nantucket blacksmith's shirt from Bobbi Wade's shop on North Beach Street, with a green scarf which emphasised the green in her hazel eyes knotted round her slim neck, she was like a flower ready to bloom.
'Do you know who you are yet?' she asked.
'I think so... just about. I certainly know that if my father were alive and he didn't approve of unmarried people sleeping together under his roof, I'd feel he was entitled to make the rules in his own house.'
'But would you live with someone if you loved them?'
Summer would have found it easier to answer this question if James hadn't been with them. Although she talked frankly and freely to Emily when they were alone together, in his presence this was a topic she would have preferred to avoid.
'I don't know,' she admitted. 'I'd hope that, if I loved someone, he would love me enough to want to marry me. I feel that "Will you live with me?" is like saying "I think I love you, but I'm not sure. If I hang on, I may meet someone I like better than you."'
'How do people know for certain that they're really and truly in love?' Emily asked, looking first at Summer and then at her uncle for enlightenment.
'If they want to live happily ever after they marry for much sounder reasons than the heady state of being in love,' was his dry reply. 'That never lasts more than six months.'
His niece slowly twirled her corn holders, revolving the half-nibbled cob.
'Sometimes it does.'
Summer knew what she was thinking. Emily was in love with Skip Newman, and had been since the winter before last. Whether it was an emotion which would outlast her teens, who could say? That seemed to depend, in part, on whether he was still free when her budding looks burst into flower and he realised that she was no longer his little pal, Freckles.
'I've heard of people being in love all their lives and never being able to marry each other,' she added.
'Oh, yes—an unconsummated passion will burn indefinitely,' said James. 'But the flame soon dies down once they start sleeping together. It's like Christmas pudding; if you ate it all the time it would become as unexciting as bread.'
Summer felt this was being much too damping with a sensitive sixteen-year-old.
She said, 'That depends on the bread. You can eat lovely hot, home-baked brown bread every day of the year and not get tired of it. And that's what true love is like, Emily. Sir Walter Ralegh wrote a poem about it.
But love is a durable fire
In the mind ever burning;
Never sick, never old, never dead,
From itself never turning.'
She gave James a level look; willing him not to produce some cynical comment which would tarnish Emily's bright dreams.
At her age, romantic ideals were as right and proper as believing, at five, in Father Christmas. It was one thing to make her aware of the danger of mistaking infatuation for real love; but to make out that love never outlasted the fulfilment of desire was going too far.
Emily looked at her uncle. She said, 'I think married people can love each other all their lives. Muffy's grandmother was talking about a movie star whom she liked when she was a young girl. He was a Frenchman: Charles Boyer. Have you heard of him?'
His mouth full of corn, James nodded.
'He and his wife were married for forty-four years. A few days after she died, he killed himself. He couldn't bear to go on living without her. Forty-four years is a long time, and he was very handsome and charming and must have had lots of women throwing themselves at him. Next time we're at the apartment, or in Florida, I'm going to watch out for one of his movies being shown on late-night TV. I'd like to see what he was like.'
'And add him to your pantheon of heroes,' her uncle said teasingly.
'You have heroes, too,' she said equably. 'Washington... Dr Johnson... the Iron Duke. You even took the name of one of your heroes. Why did you change your name from Lancaster to Gardiner, James?'
Summer found herself holding her breath for fear that Emily had broached a subject better avoided. James never spoke of his pre-American life. As far as she knew, he hadn't set foot in England since the business of disclaiming his title and disposing of Cranmere had forced him to return to his birthplace.
'I thought if I ended up on Skid Row it would spare my relations any further embarrassment.'
His tone was casual, but there was something about his expression which made Summer suspect that his niece's question had been an unwelcome reminder of things he preferred to forget.
From the days when she had accompanied her aunt to church every Sunday, a text from Proverbs came into her mind. The spirit of a man will sustain his infirmity; but a wounded spirit
who can bear?
Once James had wounded her spirit but, eventually, she had got over it. What had happened to him as a boy that his wound still festered, she wondered.
With the steaks and the salad, they finished the bottle of wine he had opened earlier. For dessert they had apples and yogurt.
'I'll make the coffee,' said Emily.
She had brought the tray through to the living room—the nights were not warm enough yet to eat on the deck—when a computer nerd named Dave came by.
'If you've nothing better to do, Em, how about coming over to my place and helping me thrash out a problem.'
There was no computer at the cottage, but that didn't mean she was deprived of her favourite pastime in Nantucket.
'Sure, Dave, I'd like to. Is that okay with you two?' she asked them.
James said, 'As long as you're home by ten o'clock.'
While she went to her room to fetch a sweater, Dave began to explain his problem to James who cut him short, saying, 'Sorry to be unhelpful, Dave, but tell it to Emily, will you? I have a problem of my own to work out this weekend.'
When the two younger people had gone off to Dave's parents' guesthouse, he said to Summer, 'Let's have another bottle of wine, shall we?'
'I won't have any more, thanks. I've had three glasses already.'
'Go wild! Have four. You can afford to put on half a pound.'
It was odd that within a few minutes of believing herself to be free of all rancour towards him, he should test that belief by reminding her that he had known her when she was enormous.
The reminder didn't make her flinch. She had been slim for long enough now not to have any more nightmares, not to worry about getting fat again. Every morning she stepped on the scales. If her weight was more than a pound up she ate less and exercised harder till it was back to where it should be.