Silversword

by Phyllis A. Whitney

  I began to gather up the scraps of paper as Marla watched me.

  “What are you going to do?” she asked.

  I didn’t answer, but went on collecting them into a stack on the bed. When I looked around again, Marla had gone. I dropped the pieces into a plastic bag and went downstairs.

  Lights burned in the living room, but no one was there. The scent of night flowers drifted through from the lanai. I walked down the long hall to Noelle’s room and found the door ajar. She sat in a chair near a lamp, and when I stood still in the doorway, I realized that she was reading aloud—from a child’s book.

  She heard me as I stepped into the room and looked up, smiling. “Hello? I’m practicing reading this story aloud. Then when I read it to Linny, I can do it really well. She loves the dramatic parts, and I like to act them out.”

  Familiar sadness rose in me, but I thrust the feeling away, and went to Noelle’s bed, where I scattered the silversword poster like confetti across her spread. The pieces fell carelessly, forming no pattern.

  Noelle put her book aside and came to look. “How pretty! They might make a picture if they were put together. Is this a new sort of puzzle?”

  “It used to be the silversword poster that hung in your mother’s office.” I spoke quietly, watching her. “Someone cut it into all these pieces and arranged them on the bed in my room.”

  She turned away at once. “I hate silverswords. I always think of death when I see silverswords—though I’m not sure why.”

  “You don’t remember that trip all of you made to the crater so many years ago? You don’t remember sitting there plucking at a silversword plant after your husband died and your sister was hurt?”

  She shook her head vaguely and returned to her chair. “Don’t be silly! Keith will be home any minute now. Linny’s gone out with him, and I’ll read to her when she comes in. Please take that horrid stuff off my bed.”

  Lamplight touched her fair hair and the soft curve of her cheek. She looked heartbreakingly young as she watched me, wide-eyed and innocent—a loving young mother and wife, incapable of any crime.

  I went quickly to kneel before her and took both her hands in mine. I held her gaze, compelling her to look into my eyes.

  “It’s time for you to come back,” I said softly. “You’ve been away for much too long, and I don’t think you are really happy where you’re hiding. That trip to the crater was twenty-six years ago. Twenty-six years! Keith died when he was thrown from his horse, and Marla was kicked by her mare and badly hurt. You were there too. Your mother and Tom found you and brought you to the hospital in Kula. You really can remember this if you try. It’s all there in your brain, and before you can be well again you have to coax it out.”

  She pulled her hands away from mine. “What have you done with Linny?”

  “Listen to me!” I caught her fluttering hands and held them tightly. “I am your Linny. I was that little girl you loved so much, and you are the mother I loved and still do. Come back to me—please come back. We need each other.”

  There seemed to be some cognizance in her eyes—a hint of frightened recognition. Then she rejected the danger. “Stop making things up. I’m going to tell my mother about your lies. Whoever you are, she won’t let you stay here anymore.”

  “That’s right,” Joanna said as she came into the room. “Caroline is going away very soon. I want to talk to you, Caroline.”

  Noelle smiled at her mother, looked blankly at me, and picked up the book she was going to read to Linny. Once more defeated, I gave up. As I followed Joanna toward the door, something on Noelle’s worktable caught my eye—a pair of shears. I picked them up and saw the scrap of purple caught between the open blades.

  “Wait a minute,” I said to Joanna, and showed her the scissors. “Those pieces of colored paper on Noelle’s bed used to be your silversword poster. Someone cut it up with these scissors and left it on my bed. Nicely arranged to show the picture.”

  Joanna looked at the scraps scattered on Noelle’s bed, and marched out of the room. “Come with me right now,” she commanded.

  In her office she glanced at the empty wall space where the poster had hung, and then picked up a folder on her desk.

  “These are your plane tickets home, Caroline. They are for Monday. There’s nothing to keep you here. You may stay for your trip to Hana and for Ailina’s entertainment the following night. That’s all Maui has left to offer you. Go home to the grandmother who raised you, Caroline. You and I are two different people now, and we can’t ever find each other again. Noelle is contented and safe—and she’s better off left that way.”

  It was the old song that one of them was always singing.

  “But she’s not contented!” I cried. “A lot of the time she’s frightened and trying to run away from herself.”

  “You don’t know anything about it!” Joanna pushed her hand through her short gray hair, scowling at me. “Take these tickets, Caroline. On Monday you’ll be on that plane. I want you away from here before something much more unfortunate happens.”

  I took the folder of tickets from her. “I don’t know whether I can use them or not,” I said, and walked out of the room. Before I went upstairs I stopped at the hall telephone to call David. There was no answer. I would try again tomorrow—it was getting late now. If he had any plan regarding Noelle, it had better be moved up and hurried along. In spite of my brave words, I might have to board that plane on Monday.

  I stayed in my room for most of the evening, going downstairs once for a sandwich. Early the next morning I phoned David again, and this time he answered.

  13

  It was midmorning and I was walking along the road to Ahinahina, where I was to meet David. When I’d phoned, he’d said he had to go over there to get another shot or two, and if I could wait for him there we could talk away from Manaolana.

  Again the morning was beautiful and the trade winds had died away, so the air was quiet. I walked along absently, my mind filled with the things I wanted to tell David. Everything except what I’d learned about Koma. That was better forgotten.

  Since I was walking on the left verge of the road toward traffic coming up, I didn’t turn when I heard a car behind me. I had no warning until it speeded up suddenly and swerved across the road toward me. I barely had time to leap out of the way, and I fell onto my knees in a tangle of spiky weeds and rough stones in the ditch. Frightened, I looked after the car as it crossed to its own side of the road and drove on down the mountain. I recognized the tan jeep from Manaolana, though I couldn’t see who was driving as it speeded off.

  I got to my feet unsteadily and took stock of the damage. One stocking was torn, and my knee bruised and bleeding. The driver must have known that I’d jump out of the way—so he probably hadn’t meant to strike me, but just to give me a good fright. I was thinking “he,” but it might have been a woman. Most likely Marla.

  There could only be one reason. Someone was sure that I was getting too close to what had happened in the crater and was warning me. Threatening me. To make sure I would be on that plane? There was no use trying to guess which one of them had driven the jeep. They could all drive it—probably even Noelle.

  I returned to the road, limping as I tried to hurry. All I wanted now was to get away from traffic.

  At Ahinahina I went around to the wide back lawn, where David had said he’d meet me. There I found a water faucet and with tissue from my handbag I dabbed dirt from my raw knee. Further repair would have to wait until I got home.

  I was just finishing when David came toward me from the house. He looked wonderful, with the sun on his hair, and a wide smile that told me he was glad to see me, no matter what the reasons that had brought me here. When he saw my knee, he looked concerned, and for just a moment I wished I could have been six years old, so he could comfort me.

  “The jeep from Manaolana tried to run me down,” I told him grimly. “I don’t know who was driving.”

  “That kn
ee looks nasty. Shall I take you home?”

  “Let’s talk first,” I said.

  “All right. Let’s go to the far end of the house.” David took my arm. “You’re sure it was your grandmother’s jeep?”

  “I’m sure. I rode up in it when I arrived.”

  Today there was activity all through the art center, and I could hear voices echoing through windows above us.

  “Tell me all of it,” David said as we sat down.

  I went back to the trip with Marla and Baldwin House, where I’d met Ailina.

  “I liked her,” I told him, “and I enjoyed staying overnight in her apartment.” I didn’t mention Koma, but skipped ahead to Honolulu and Iolani Palace. I told him about standing in the room where the last queen had been held as prisoner, when Helena Reed had come to join us.

  “Your mother’s a remarkable lady. She was very good for me. We sat outdoors for a while and she talked to me about my mother and father, and of what had happened just before they rode up to the crater.”

  “My mother’s good at pulling things together,” David said. “She liked you—she’s told me that on the phone. But she’s also concerned for you, quite aside from your mother.”

  “Right now there’s nothing for me that’s aside from my mother. First I must help her—then I can look out for me, Noelle isn’t happy. I think her sudden angers grow out of her frightening confusion.”

  I told him about finding the cut-up poster on my bed—and about those moments with Noelle and Marla.

  “Joanna has bought me plane tickets for San Francisco, and she wants me to leave on Monday. So there are only a few days left for me to reach her—if I ever can. When I try to be direct and tell her the truth, she simply slips away from me.”

  “I don’t know … After this jeep incident, perhaps it’s safer for you to go. Things seem to be getting pretty mean—even dangerous.”

  “I suppose I’ll have to go. But, David, you were thinking of some plan—something we might try with Noelle. What did you mean?”

  “I wanted to try out what I had in mind—to see what you thought. It might be drastic. But now we’d better make it the real thing on the first try.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “A trip into the crater. I have a good friend in Hana who owns a helicopter and still does occasional trips. When I talked about a rehearsal, I just meant that we could fly in and see if we could locate the place where the accident happened. But now we’d better take your mother in on the first try, if we can. That’s what I had in mind.”

  This was startling and a little frightening, but at least it was direct action.

  “Do you think you could bring Noelle with you when we drive to Hana tomorrow?” David asked.

  “I’ll manage it somehow,” I promised. “Marla and Joanna never let my mother out of their sight for long, and they don’t trust me at all. So it may be hard to do.”

  “Let’s go back to Manaolana so you can take care of that knee. Maybe I’d better talk to Joanna and see if I can sell her the idea of taking Noelle to Hana.”

  “Thank you, David. You’ve done so much for me since I’ve come here. More than anyone else.”

  He was watching me, his eyes kind. “It’s what I want to do.”

  I wanted more than that. But I didn’t trust my own feelings.

  He helped me up from the bench, and I limped my way to his car and got in.

  “I won’t say anything about my near-miss with the jeep,” I told him as we drove back to my grandmother’s. “There’s so little to go on, and I don’t want to make everything worse. I’ll just say I slipped and fell into the ditch.”

  When we reached the house, Joanna was out in the stable with Tom, and David went to talk to her. I stayed outdoors to wait. Leaning against the big camphor tree, I listened to a cardinal singing to itself in the high branches. Once more I thought of my first night at Manaolana, when David and I had stood near this tree talking, and Tom had been there, listening. What had we talked about that could have mattered to Tom? I’d told David what I remembered as a child at the time of my father’s death. I’d talked about my mother and father. And David had told me about the bombed island of Kahoolawe. But there seemed nothing here that would cause Tom to run off so we wouldn’t know he’d been listening.

  Except—one more thing returned to me sharply. I had told David that my Grandmother Elizabeth believed my father had been murdered. Of course he would have told Joanna and Marla what he’d heard, and perhaps had set them on guard. In that case, he might very well not want us to guess what he’d heard. So was he making his own plans to force my leaving? The attack by the jeep seemed to point first of all to Tom.

  My knee was stinging and I wished David would come back. I tried to listen to the bright little bird on the branch above me, tried to close my mind to everything else.

  A few moments later I heard voices and saw David and Joanna coming toward me. They seemed to be talking pleasantly enough, and David smiled as they reached me.

  “Your grandmother thinks it will be a good idea for Noelle to come with us to Hana tomorrow. Noelle likes my parents and she’ll enjoy the trip.”

  “And you’ll have a last day with her,” Joanna added. “I hope you’ll use it wisely. Now then, Caro—you’ve had a fall. Let me see that knee.”

  “Take care of her,” David said. “I’ll be here at eight in the morning, Caroline. We’ll need to make an early start.”

  Joanna looked at my knee and took charge. “Come inside. This won’t be the first time I’ve patched your skinned knees.”

  I went with her meekly, and sat in a chair in her rather austere bedroom. Joanna was never much for personal frippery. She hurried into the bathroom for bandages and a small bottle or two. As she cleaned and patched up my scraped knee, some of her recent stiffness toward me fell away, and she seemed more like the grandmother I remembered. I was once more a child to her, and she was fixing a hurt.

  When she was satisfied with her bandaging, she said, “Let’s sit outside on the lanai for a little while—it’s such a beautiful day.”

  For once I felt relaxed and at ease with her, and a sore knee was a small price to pay for this brief closeness. We sat together on the bamboo couch, with its bright green-and-orange cushions, and it seemed a natural gesture when she took my hand into her own.

  “I’m sorry, Caro, about the way things have gone. I should never have let you come in the first place. I was giving in to my own need to see you again. This time we’ll write to each other. Please? There’s so much I want to know that we haven’t had time to talk about. Your marriage, for one thing. What went wrong, Caro?”

  This was hard to tell her about, but perhaps I needed to. “I mixed Scott up with all the love I still felt for my father. That wasn’t fair to Scott, any more than it was to me. All I remembered, all I felt, was that I wanted someone who would love me as much as my father had. And in some ways Scott seemed like him.”

  It was good to talk to her, good to open up and free myself of the festering.

  “Your father loved you,” Joanna said. “And it’s true that no other man will ever care as much in the same way. But of course you don’t want that, do you?”

  “There’s still a pull that I’m not rid of yet.”

  “You’ll recover. You’re on the way. Just be careful about your trip tomorrow. Let it be a happy day with Noelle. I’m glad you’ve had some time with Ailina. I admire her, and the way she came out of that unhappy time with her head high.”

  I didn’t want to touch the matter of Koma. Not in this peaceful moment when we could be close. Then my grandmother herself spoiled what I was feeling.

  “I know what Marla told you about how that tapa beater was taken up to the crater—that Noelle herself carried it up there. But that isn’t entirely true.”

  At once I was back in the midst of confusion.

  “Marla would like you to believe in Noelle’s guilt when it came to your father’s death
. It would be much easier for everyone, wouldn’t it, if she was the one to blame? But it wasn’t Noelle who put the tapa beater into her saddlebag. I did that myself. Keith was in a rage, and he frightened me. I didn’t want to see a gun carried up there—much too risky. That thing was lying on my desk and was the only defensive weapon I could pick up in a hurry. By that time I knew the trip was a bad idea—too many volatile emotions around. But Keith wouldn’t call it off. He claimed that he wanted his mother to see the crater, since she’d probably never come to Maui again. She disliked Hawaii thoroughly.”

  “I was surprised that she’d even consider the trip,” I said.

  “She didn’t for long, and she tried to persuade Keith not to go. By that time, I think she was afraid of his real intentions. But even when she backed out that morning, he insisted upon going. Of course Noelle did as he wanted. She had her moments of rebellion, and she could fly into summer storms, but she went on that fatal trip as though there were no other choice. Hawaiians say, ‘There’s no stopping when the Hoolua wind opens up.’ That’s the strong north wind that nothing can stop. Events were marching that day, and it was all inevitable. Of course Marla was off in her own fantasy, and she would do anything to be with Keith, even though it was only Ailina who interested him by that time.”

  Joanna seemed lost in some distant space of her own.

  “You do know what happened,” I said flatly.

  After a moment she roused herself. “Yes. Afterwards, Tom and I misled everyone about the fact that we’d gone ahead to make camp. It’s true that we did. But I was worried, and I rode back alone to meet them. So I saw it all, Caroline.”

  She seemed to shrink into herself and grow older before my eyes.

  “Poor, poor Noelle,” she murmured.

  I took hold of her arm—hard. “Tell me the truth. Was my father murdered?”

  Even now, when she’d said so much, she didn’t answer directly. “They never knew which of two wounds Keith died from. Either might have been fatal. They decided that his head must have struck one rock as he fell, and then bounced against another. Since the cause of the accident seemed clear enough—frightened horses—there was no point in deciding. So there was no further investigation.”