“Come, granddaughters,” said Gran. “It’s time for Scrabble.”
“But —” Alicia protested.
“No buts,” said Gran. “It’s good for the brain.” She carried the Scrabble game down to the beach in front of the cabin.
Becca was suddenly glad Lucy and Alicia were there. She didn’t want to play Scrabble with Gran on her own. And it wasn’t the right time to talk to them about putting on a play to raise money for a boat she and Jane wanted, but maybe playing Scrabble would put them in the mood.
Doing a play, even a long Shakespeare one, would be less work than playing Scrabble with Gran.
“It isn’t so much the letters you get as what you do with them,” Gran said after Lucy put down a six-letter word and only got a measly six points.
“All my letters are worth one point! What else can I do?” Lucy grumped.
“That’s when you use other people’s words,” said Gran, starting a word by adding an “s” to “axe” on a triple-word score, then using up all the rest of her tiles and making a ridiculously huge number of points.
“I feel sick,” Alicia said.
“I don’t blame you — that’s a tricky hand,” said Gran, peeking at Alicia’s letters. “But even so, in this family, honour is spelled with a u.”
“But honor is correct!” Alicia said. “And don’t look at my letters!”
“Correct, incorrect — I don’t care,” Gran said. “We’re playing Canadian spelling.”
“My teacher said Canadians spell it both ways,” Becca said.
“Not these Canadians,” said Gran. “Alicia, you’re looking green around the gills. You shouldn’t take it so seriously. A bad hand is just something that happens sometimes. It’s all about what you do with —”
“I don’t …” said Alicia, sounding more uncertain than Becca had ever heard her. “Gran, I …”
And suddenly Alicia was off and running, blundering into the cabin with a great crashing of doors and thunder of footfalls.
“Well!” said Gran. “What’s that about, I wonder? It’s not like her to be so sensitive.”
“It can’t really be about spelling,” Becca said. “Can it?”
“If she cares that much about spelling she must take after me,” said Gran, looking pleased. “Better go see what her problem is, Becca. We don’t want the game to go on forever.”
But the sounds Becca heard coming from the bathroom were not about spelling.
Unless, of course, Alicia had had alphabet soup for lunch.
And even Uncle Martin at the worst of his seasickness had not sounded as nasty as Alicia did now.
“She’s sick,” Becca reported back to Gran.
“The chicken salad,” Lucy said. “I knew we shouldn’t eat it.”
“Well, there’s not much we can do for her if she had bad food,” Gran said. “It’s a suitable start to the summer visit — out with the old. Your turn now, Lucy.”
Becca went back to Alicia.
“They’re still playing Scrabble,” she told her.
“I feel horrible,” said Alicia. “I’m never eating chicken salad again.” And with a shudder, she bent over the toilet.
It really was disgusting. Becca reached over and flushed.
“Becca! Becca! Bring me a bag!” shouted Gran. “A basin! A bucket!”
Becca hurried to the back door and snatched up a bucket. She ran back to the beach.
“Just in time!” Gran said.
Lucy clutched her stomach and groaned. Becca didn’t wait to see what happened. Anyway, she could hear all too well. The evening had become full of awful sound effects.
She ran back to Alicia.
“I can’t stop,” Alicia moaned. “It just keeps coming and coming!”
“Do you want a wet cloth for your face?” Becca asked.
Mum did that sometimes when Becca was sick. Becca started to run water in the sink.
The water ran, Alicia exploded again, and an alarm went off in the house — a great clanging and buzzing that filled the air. An ear-tearing, nose-wateringly high scream that made Becca think the firefighters would show up.
Where were Merlin and Mrs. Barker and all the rest of them with their hoses and fire extinguishers? Why would throwing up cause a fire alarm? And where was Aunt Fifi when she needed her?
Lucy’s eruptions sounded in the distance, and now Gran was bellowing from the beach again.
On and on it went — a clamor that filled the bathroom and Becca’s ears and Alicia’s, too.
It was coming from under the sink.
“Oh, for crying in the sink!” moaned Alicia. “Oh, save me!” And once more she bent to the toilet. Tears streamed down her face.
Heave away, Johnny, Becca thought. She banged open the cupboard under the sink. Rubber gloves with holes in, empty shampoo bottles, soap as hard as stone. Why did Gran keep all this rubbish? Becca couldn’t see a thing there that would make such a noise.
“Gran!” she shouted.
She ran back to the beach.
Gran was holding the bucket for Lucy in one hand, and holding Lucy’s hair back with the other.
“What? It must be the sewage system alarm,” Gran said, looking alarmed herself. “Why would that happen? Plumbing! And Fifi’s here! It never fails. What, again, Lucy? Will this never end?”
No wonder Gran was so picky about her plumbing. But who would expect two sick-to-their-stomach people and a sewage alarm, all at the same time?
* * *
After a thousand trips back and forth, and the worst kind of familiarity with Alicia’s chicken salad, and a clamorous hour with Gran’s sewage system alarm (if that’s what it was), and a long episode of Gran showing Becca how a fuse box worked, and the successful tying up of several stinking bags of stuff now ready for the laundromat, and the swilling of several disgusting buckets in the sea (“The crabs will enjoy it,” said Gran) — Becca and Gran sat together again on the twilit beach. Alicia and Lucy were all washed up and put to bed on the back deck — outdoors, said Gran, which would make everything easier if their unfortunate condition recurred.
“Did you call Merlin?” Becca asked.
“I left a message on his machine,” said Gran. “He’s out. Of course! Thank goodness I found the fuse to turn the alarm off, but we’re going to have to use the biffy until he gives us a diagnosis.”
Merlin! Becca could ask him if he had a copy of The Tempest.
“It feels like Lucy and Alicia have been here for a very long time,” said Gran. “Is it really possible that they arrived only a couple of hours ago? Now, let’s get back to this Scrabble board. I’ll just set the lantern here so we can see, and you can play Alicia’s hand and I’ll play Lucy’s. Ew!” she added cheerfully, taking over Lucy’s letters. “What a terrible hand!”
It was going to be a long night.
4. Waterworks
In the morning Merlin was there, limping but mobile.
“It was a mild sprain,” he said. “Before you ask. And I don’t know what the problem is,” he went on, checking out the pipes and pumps of Gran’s water arrangements. “Everything here looks as usual, which is to say strange but functional. Fifi! What remarkable sleepwear.”
“I didn’t realize we’d be entertaining so early in the morning.” Aunt Fifi yawned, stalking out of the house in the world’s oldest bathing suit. “At least I’m wearing more than I was last time you came for breakfast.”
Becca remembered the morning Merlin had arrived in his fire-chief outfit to put out a chimney fire, and Aunt Fifi had appeared in nothing but a small towel.
Merlin smiled and turned to Gran. “The alarm might be for some other part of the system,” he said, and started off into a long speech that involved words like “septic field,” “discharge pump” and “thousands of dollars.”
Gran
looked more and more depressed.
Then Merlin went off and hung his head down in the manhole for the watery part of the sewage system and mumbled about this and that, while Gran yelled up from the house that the alarm was still buzzing and Becca relayed their messages.
“It could be electrical,” Merlin said, his head emerging at last. “That’s not my job. You’d better disconnect the fuse again. I can’t seem to do anything to stop it doing its alarm thing from in here.”
“You might as well stay for coffee, now that you’re here,” said Aunt Fifi. “And have some breakfast.”
“Not a good idea,” Gran said, but she put the kettle on. And Aunt Fifi made conversation in quite a civilized way.
“Somebody’s been out fishing very early,” she said. “There’s a nice runabout pulled up on the sand down there.”
Becca told Merlin about putting on a play to raise funds for a better boat.
“Of course, Lucy and Alicia are going to have to want to be part owners of a sailboat,” she said. “But maybe they’ll do it because it’ll be fun.”
“I do have some copies of The Tempest,” Merlin said. “You’re welcome to them.”
“Jane and I and Lucy and Alicia will be the actors,” Becca said. “I hope.”
“Four people should be just enough,” said Merlin.
“The tide’s about to turn,” said Gran. “That fellow had better retrieve his boat before it’s awash.”
Merlin had toast and one of Kay-next-door’s double-yolked eggs with the bright-orange yolks. He was just like one of the family.
“What excellent marmalade,” he commented. “Homemade!”
“Most of it was scraped off Lucy’s clothes,” Becca told him.
“Sounds like family politics,” he said. “Fifi! Can we take our coffee out onto the deck? Are you having anything to do with this production of The Tempest?”
“No talking about Shakespeare!” Gran said now. “I forbid it!”
Merlin used to be a Shakespeare actor, and now he was a plumber. He still knew lots about plays, though.
And so did Aunt Fifi. She taught Shakespeare at a university. Last summer, she and Merlin had argued a lot. Becca had seen that they liked arguing, and that they even liked each other.
But Gran was always afraid. What if Aunt Fifi made Merlin seriously furious? Would he stomp off forever, leaving Gran without his vital services?
Aunt Fifi and Merlin were already out on the deck with their coffee.
“Of course I’ll help out,” Aunt Fifi declared.
Becca looked out at the bay. She was feeling like she had lived through exactly this moment before. She remembered the time Aunt Fifi and Merlin had stayed up all night, looking after Merlin’s runaway boat and arguing. Now, out in the bay, she could see the little runabout that had been pulled up on the sand, and it wasn’t pulled up on the sand anymore.
It was floating free, unmoored and unmanned.
“The wind’s blowing out of the bay, right?” she asked. “Winds from the southeast, fifteen to twenty knots?”
That’s what Dugald had said.
“If Fifi’s helping I’ll help, too,” Merlin said to her. “You can’t let literary types loose with live theater. You need someone who knows about the practical side of it.”
Did they even want Merlin and Aunt Fifi messed up in this play? Becca wondered. But out loud she said, “That boat’s drifting out to sea.”
The little boat was quite far out now, bobbing up and down in the chop whipped up by the cheerful southeasterly breeze. It was heading northwest at a steady pace. It wasn’t in danger of capsizing, but its owner was going to be stranded when he or she came back and wanted to go home. And then there would be the bother of trying to find the boat, floating around in the middle of the strait somewhere. Or someone might claim it as salvage, and the owner might never get it back.
How would Becca feel if that was Gull? Or worse, the new, glorious boat they would acquire, eventually, she hoped?
“I have no idea who owns it,” Gran said.
“We should rescue it,” said Becca.
“Yes,” said Gran. “Come along, Becca. It’s a hazard to leave Fifi and Merlin together, but someone has to bring in that boat.”
And before Becca could ask any questions, she found herself hauling Glaucous Gull down the beach with Gran, all loaded up with oars and life jackets.
Becca heard a faint cry from the deck.
“They think we should take the motor,” said Gran.
Becca thought about the motor still stowed away for the winter, locked up in the shed next to a fuel tank with an unknown amount of old fuel in it.
“It would take too long,” she said.
“Heave!” Gran instructed.
They lifted Gull over the last rocks and onto the sand.
“Push!” said Gran, shoving Gull into the sea. Even before the water was up to Becca’s knees, Gran had hopped into Gull and was fitting the oarlocks in place.
“Jump in,” she said. “You take one oar and I’ll take the other.”
Becca sat next to her and seized the oar.
“You have to row in time with me,” said Gran.
Becca tried, but Gull kept drifting broadside to the waves.
“Pull!” said Gran.
Becca got a grip on her oar. She pulled short choppy strokes, and Gran rowed with long powerful ones.
The wind wasn’t strong, but it was steady. The runaway boat bounced in the waves, tipping this way then that, heading out beyond the point.
But Gull was having trouble getting out of the shallows. Becca kept struggling to stroke together with Gran.
Or perhaps it was Gran who wasn’t managing, Becca thought, as Gran dug her oar so deep that it hit the sand at the bottom of the bay.
Sometimes the waves tilted one side of Gull towards the water, and sometimes the other. Sometimes Becca’s oar was in the water, and sometimes she was pulling on air. Sometimes she had her feet braced on the boat, and sometimes the waves tried to tip her right off the thwart.
“Pull, Becca!” Gran cried.
And as she shouted, Gran pulled deeply, mightily with both of her considerably muscular arms. She pulled once, twice, three times, just as Becca’s oar lifted right out of the sea.
There was an enormous cracking bang.
Becca slid towards Gran, but Gran herself was tipping, lurching, falling — and then Becca was, too.
She felt Gull toss her off, and the cold sea closed over her head. It sucked right up into her nose and her gasping mouth.
Capsized!
She didn’t want to drown! she thought. She wanted to live! And to have adventures with Jane, and put on a play, and get a nice boat that wouldn’t throw her into the sea!
She flailed her arms and legs, and her shorts and her shirt dragged and tugged, and her head was full of sea — all the way through to her ears! — and the ocean blurred in her eyes, and seaweed caught at her hands. She could feel her sweater float wetly right up into her face.
Then she felt her knees on the sand below and she pushed her head out of the water.
“Greetings,” said Gran.
Her face streamed with sea and her own hair.
Becca saw that they were under Gull. Gran’s head and shoulders poked up out of the water and into the air trapped by Gull’s hull, and Becca’s did, too. Gran’s voice clanged as it echoed in the aluminum hull.
It was like they were in a little cabin of air surrounded by sea.
Becca could breathe.
And the water was shallow, only up to her neck.
She coughed bitter sea.
“Will you look at that crab,” said Gran, staring down into the water. “It’s huge. We should grab it for dinner.”
Aunt Fifi and Merlin appeared suddenly, hauli
ng Gull up by the gunwales.
“What are you doing under there, Mum?” Aunt Fifi asked.
Aunt Fifi and Merlin had waded right into the sea, and Merlin’s jeans billowed in the waves. The two of them didn’t seem to care that they were getting sodden.
“Are you all right, Becca?” Aunt Fifi asked.
“What happened, Isobel?” Merlin asked, holding Gull so Becca and Gran could clamber out from underneath.
“I really don’t know,” said Gran, sitting in water up to her neck.
Becca waded out through the waves, where one of Gull’s oars bobbed up and down. The oarlock had broken, she saw. Snapped off completely.
No wonder they’d heard a bang.
Well, that was that. Could there be a clearer sign that they needed another boat? She looked up and there was the runaway boat tossing in the southeasterly swell, now officially out of the bay and at sea.
Up on the rocks, Bill-and-Kay-next-door were dragging their own boat down to the water. It had its motor on and its own boat wheels, and they had launched it and Bill was off over the waves to haul in the runaway in only a few minutes. And here came a couple of neighbors, too, from over the bay, drawn from their breakfasts by the drama.
“Quite a show,” said Merlin as he and Aunt Fifi strode out of the sea carrying Gull. “What were you doing? Rehearsing The Tempest’s shipwreck?”
“No talking about Shakespeare!” said Gran. “Look! I nabbed a crab for dinner. A Dungeness!”
“Better not be too bossy,” said Aunt Fifi. “He’s the only plumber on the island. And by the way, is that crab legal? It looks kind of small to me.”
Then she and Merlin laughed as they carried Gull over the sandstone and up onto the driftwood.
“Well, that was amusing,” Gran commented after they’d changed their clothes, and Merlin had changed into Grandpa’s old mustard-colored sweater and elastic-less sweatpants.
“What a production,” said Aunt Fifi.
“Speaking of which, I’ll leave The Tempest for you in the free post at the store,” Merlin told Becca. “And don’t worry. You’re off to a great start with the opening scene.”
Becca Fair and Foul Page 3