Rosie Thomas 3-Book Collection

by Rosie Thomas

  She called after him, ‘Thank you for lunch,’ and he lifted his hand in acknowledgement. Leonie’s breath was jagged in her chest again as she carried the bags of groceries up to the house.

  May idly let her paddle rest across her knees and the canoe drifted, the prow turning parallel with the island’s beach. The sea was flat, like oiled glass, and the afternoon sun plastered thick layers of light across the water and over the lip of beach. The rocky crescent reminded her of a mirthless smile and the trees and scrub that fringed it became a throat, opening, ready to swallow. She hoisted herself abruptly, causing the canoe to rock violently, and stepped into the shallow water. Even at only calf-depth the shock of cold made her yelp. The water was always cold here.

  She grasped the prow and dragged the canoe up on to the stones. There was no one else on the island this afternoon, no other boat or beached sailboard and no sign of swimmers or picnickers. Once her canoe was safe above the tideline she hoisted her pack on to her shoulder and began to pick her way across the sand. In the wrack along the water’s edge she found the prehistoric-looking shell of a helmet crab. She examined it and trailed on, holding the thing by the tip of the jointed tail so that it banged dully against her thigh. There were other different shells caught in the washed-up debris. She squatted down to examine their shape and quality before pocketing them or hurling them out into the water.

  Neither Ivy nor John had come back to the house at lunchtime.

  May was used to making meals for herself, but today she had sullenly rejected the option and eaten a pack of Oreos instead. Her stomach was distended and she could still taste the sugar thick in the back of her throat. There was no wind, not even the smallest stirring to ruffle the water or cool her face. Beads of sweat pricked her top lip. She felt sick and solitary, and disgusted with herself.

  It was the day’s motionless hour when time seemed to hang for ever between early and late. Even the shade within the woodland looked bruised and resentful. May dragged a few steps away from the water and sat down in the sand. In her backpack were some more cookies, but she stopped herself from reaching for them. Instead she took out the book she had brought with her, one of the two that she had borrowed from Aaron and Hannah Fennymore. The books that Doone might, or might not, have read. Listlessly she flipped open the warped board cover and began to skim the pages.

  The ship’s log records that the Dolphin sailed from Nantucket on 1 May 1841, under the command of Captain Charles S. Gunnell. She was bound for the Cape Verde Islands and the west coast of Africa with a full crew of experienced officers and good men. Captain Gunnell was recognised as a fair master and a lucky whaleman.

  Among the crew that left the sanctuary of Nantucket harbour on that spring morning was a green hand who had signed up for the voyage only two days before. He was eighteen years old and slightly built, but he assured Mr Gunnell most vehemently that he was a strong worker and ready to learn the whaler’s craft, and that he wanted nothing more than to take his share of risk and reward aboard the Dolphin.

  The boy gave his name as William Corder. The crew-list indicated that he was a ‘down-easter’, a native of Maine.

  The early part of the Dolphin’s voyage was without incident. The new hand did indeed prove to be willing and quick to learn the duties of the ship. He possessed courage enough for a man twice his size, showing no fear when sent aloft to furl a sail. And he could keep his head and secure footing when the ship’s head fell from the wind and the sail filled with enough force to tear a man from the yard and pitch him into oblivion.

  But William Corder was sadly afflicted by seasickness. For all of his first month at sea he struggled with severe attacks, sometimes to such a degree that the first mate sent him to his bunk to groan out the worst of his trouble in peace. This perceived weakness caused some of the more experienced hands to joke about him, and to suggest that his smallness and gentlemanly demeanour would fit him better for a lady’s parlour or a draper’s shop than for the forecastle of a whaling vessel.

  Then, after the first weeks of misery, William overcame his affliction overnight. He awoke one morning in his bunk and told his companions that he would never be ill again. His prediction proved correct. However rough the seas and however viciously the stubby vessel pitched and rolled, William steadily continued in his work from that day forward. He was not a high-spirited young man, never indulging in horseplay or coarse behaviour with the other hands with whom his life in the forecastle was necessarily shared, but he was always good-humoured and willing to apply himself to whatever the officers required of him.

  For his quiet and modest demeanour he slowly gained the respect of his fellows, but their liking was bestowed on him in time for a different reason.

  By the very nature of their arduous life, the whalemen’s clothes were frequently bathed in perspiration, coated with whale oil and grease and dirt of every description, and saturated with sea water. Any cleansing of their few articles of clothing had to be performed with cold salt water and the roughest soap, so this necessary labour was among the least popular of all the deckhands’ duties.

  But William Corder, it was soon noted, went about the business of laundering his clothes in the deftest manner. He would stand up to the wooden tub containing water set aside for the purpose, and rub the soap into his loose sailor’s shirts and breeches in a shipshape fashion that betokened long familiarity with the washtub.

  One of the hands chanced to make a passing joke about this unlikely talent, and William blushed and let his shirt fall back with a splash into the water. But he quickly explained that he was the youngest of several brothers whose mother had died of the fever when he was still an infant. While his father and brothers attended to the heavier domestic chores, as William grew up it became his responsibility to launder all the family’s clothing. ‘I have had a good deal of practice,’ he said, smiling a little. ‘I could not begin to count up the number of shirts I have washed in my life.’

  ‘Do you miss the privilege, then?’ one of the older hands asked mischievously. ‘Because if you do, you may certainly scrub mine for me.’

  ‘I’ll do it gladly,’ William replied.

  So it happened that William Corder cheerfully undertook laundry duties for his crew-mates, continuing to perform the disagreeable work with a neatness and economy that did indeed speak of years of practice. William accepted whatever small payments of coin the deckhands were able to offer him in return for his services, but he had no interest whatsoever in the more common currencies of tobacco and rum.

  The Dolphin continued her voyage towards the fertile whaling grounds of the Central Atlantic with William as an accepted member of the crew. It was noted that whenever the vessel drew alongside another whaling ship for an exchange of news or the barter of other sought-after shipboard commodities, William was the first of the sailors to run to the rail and scan the faces of the opposing crew.

  ‘Are you looking for someone, young Will?’ the mate enquired one day.

  William’s face coloured up again. He was young and beardless, and his fair skin showed his blushes for everyone to see. ‘My brother. My brother Robert signed to a ship a year ago and I would be more pleased to see him than any other person in the world.’

  ‘What ship is he aboard, under what master?’ the mate asked curiously. Something about this story stirred his interest, although he could not have explained exactly why.

  ‘I don’t know the name of either,’ William said quickly, and turned away from the rail when the strange faces across the neck of water did not include the one he searched for.

  Bored by the old-fashioned language and impatient with the close-set type, May looked up. A woman was standing under the trees, motionless, watching her.

  At first May thought it was Ivy or Gail. But it wasn’t either of them, nor any of the other women from the houses on the bluff. She was wearing loose, wide trousers that hid her feet and a colourless shirt with some kind of deep collar. Her hair was pulled severely back
from her pale face.

  Stillness lay across the rocks and flattened the sea and pressed on May, so that she found she could not move. A chain of tiny cold droplets trickled down her spine. She stretched her fingers and they touched the discarded crab shell. She picked it up again and slowly, against the heavy weight of the air, she lifted her hand and arm upwards and backwards. Then, with an effort she flung the shell away from her. It flew in a great spinning arc and dropped into the sea, her eyes following it. She waited until the memory of it in her mind’s eye was swallowed up by the ripples.

  When she looked again the woman had gone.

  Four

  On some windless mornings, even in July, a fog closed in on the bay. The waves rolled in from the invisible distance, oily and soundless, to break in melancholy ripples on the beach shingle. Out beyond the island a foghorn sounded, spacing the seconds for shipping passing down the coast. The air held layers of salt and tar and fish smells trapped with the earthier inland scents of wet leaves and woodsmoke. The Beams and their friends took advantage of the cooler weather by stepping up the intensity of their tennis matches. Their cries of triumph or challenge drifted over the bluff.

  Elizabeth heard them without listening as she followed Turner around her garden. She was convinced, even though he had worked for her for ten years, that if she didn’t watch the gardener he might inadvertently cut off the mopheads of the hydrangeas, or uproot the tender unfurling shoots of her Japanese anemones. She paused in her circuit at the head of the beach steps, where Alexander Gull was sitting with a drawingboard resting on his knees. He was trying to capture in water-colours the view of Marian Beam’s house lapped in pearly light. ‘Pretty,’ Elizabeth said, looking over his shoulder.

  ‘Ever heard of damning with faint praise? But you’re quite right.’ Alexander dropped his brush with a shrug of exasperation. ‘Pretty is what it is.’

  Elizabeth and Alexander had grown fond of one another in the years that he and Spencer had lived together. For Elizabeth it was like having a real daughter-in-law of whom she had disapproved at first, but who had shown herself to be loyal and adept at making a happy partnership, and who was therefore to be valued. The only material difference now, Elizabeth thought, was that of course there would be no grandchildren. That was a sadness. There were plenty of Newtons, from her husband’s brother, but she and Spencer represented the last of the Freshetts. She was glad that at least the old Senator couldn’t witness the ending of his line with a lonely and regretful old widow and her homosexual son.

  Unless his shadow somehow inhabited this beach house that he had built for his bride, observing his granddaughter’s solitary rituals and the occasional visits of her son and his partner. What would he have made of that, of the room and the old scroll-headed bed, and the life that the two men shared?

  But Elizabeth did not think that her grandfather’s ghost haunted these rooms. She didn’t feel his presence, although he had dearly loved the house and the bay, and Pittsharbor. It was because he was so conclusively gone and because he had loved the place so much that Elizabeth wanted to strengthen the family connection with it. But Spencer didn’t much care for the beach as a place to spend his time. She was afraid that after she was gone, unless he could find some better way of using the house and making money out of it, he would sell up.

  Of course, if Aaron could be persuaded to sell his land, if Spencer could build the rental condos he envisaged, that would be different. New building would change the beach and the bay, but that was progress. Old Maynard Freshett had always believed in progress.

  The foghorn gave its disembodied, bleating moan out in the sea mist.

  ‘I hate that noise,’ Alexander said.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘For being so relentless. And so depressing. Why not a cheerful bell, or a whistle, or a happy tune?’

  ‘Because it’s a foghorn.’ Elizabeth smiled inwardly. There was progress and there was the pleasing counterpoint of what was fixed and enduring because it worked, because there was no need to change it. ‘You’d be glad of it if you’d lost your bearings out there in a small boat.’

  Spencer had been sitting reading on the swing seat on the porch. Now his mobile rang beside him and he snapped up the antenna and began a discussion with his assistant at the gallery. One polished loafer swung from his bare foot as he talked.

  Alexander sighed and closed his paintbox. ‘I’m going to make lunch, Elizabeth. Fish soup, I think.’

  ‘Good,’ Elizabeth said. Alexander was an excellent cook.

  The fog had thinned enough for a game of tennis to be just feasible. Beyond the netting of the court the rear of the Beams’ house was still no more than a dark, formless mass, but the players were visible to each other as they paced on the back line for the knock-up.

  When the game began John Duhane was partnering Marty Stiegel against Tom and Joel Beam. John was an adequate player but he was out of his class in this company. Marty was slightly built and several inches shorter than John, but his toned muscles and stamina suggested enough time spent in the gym. He was friendly and laughed easily, but there was an edge of competitiveness in him that showed whenever John dropped a point. It was clear that he and the Beams had a long and complicated history of games won and lost on this court, and that Marty was at least as eager for a victory as his opponents.

  John lost his first service game and Marty turned to him with a shrug. ‘Hey, tough luck,’ he judged. ‘You get a good topspin on your first serve.’

  They were changing ends. Marty towelled the grip of his racquet and spun it aggressively.

  This display of vigour made John want to slow down even further. ‘So, you’re a photographer, I hear,’ he began.

  ‘Mostly advertising,’ Marty grinned. ‘I leave art to Judith.’

  ‘Ready?’ Joel called from the other end. Without waiting for an answer he unleashed a powerful serve, which shot past John.

  The morning had been too foggy for the beach, so Judith Stiegel and Marian were sitting in lawn chairs drinking coffee and watching the game through the veils of mist. Marian held Ashton on her lap and Judith was nursing the baby Justine.

  The Stiegels were in their early thirties, several years younger than Leonie and Tom, but a little older than Karyn and Elliot. They fitted comfortably into the beach society; Marty was high-spirited and always ready to play any game, or to help out with a beach barbecue. Judith was more restrained, but Marian forgave her that because she was an artist. Judith was a sculptor and Marty had already told everyone that she was about to have a big show in the city. Spencer Newton had taken four of her pieces to Boston and had sold them all. She worked mostly in bronze and even when she was still single and only pleasantly plump, Judith’s best work had tended to big, swelling shapes seamed with a vague cleft or dimple. With her first pregnancy it was as if she grew into her own art. Now she was like a monumental composition of curves and cushions of flesh waiting to be cast in sumptuous metal.

  The baby, Justine, was ten months old. Judith finished feeding her and leaned forward to compress the blue-veined billow of breast into her nursing bra. Marty looked round from the net to check on her and Joel took advantage of his momentary distraction to send an overarm smash past his ear.

  ‘Tough luck,’ John took the opportunity to murmur and Marty shrugged unsmilingly. They were about to lose the set.

  Karyn had been playing with Sidonie in her sandbox near the porch steps. The little girl wore pink jellies and a vest, and her hair spiralled in damp corkscrews around her face. Now she trailed her bucket across to Judith and asked if the baby was ready to play yet.

  ‘She’s still a bit too tiny for that. And I need to change her.’

  Tom and Joel were high-fiving each other. The first set was theirs.

  Marty came over to Judith’s side. ‘We’re taking five minutes. Let me do that for you.’

  He lifted the baby and massaged her rounded little back. He was the most eager of new fathers. Judith watched
him with shining affection as he spread the baby’s rug on the tufty grass and began the business of wipes and plastic Pampers tags. Justine gave him her smile starred with new teeth and her fists balled into soft knobs. Marty blindly pressed his face against her tiny belly and blew until she wriggled with pleasure at the game.

  ‘I want that,’ Sidonie demanded. ‘Do it to me.’

  Leonie came out on to the porch. There were the babies and mothers and Tom in the background, swishing his racket at the willowherb bordering the path. She stood with one foot on the step, hesitating, feeling that if she obeyed her inner compulsion to turn round and leave she might well march through the house and out the other side, across the rocks and over the headland and never come back again.

  The fog was shimmering and turning opalescent as the sun grew hotter.

  John was at the other side of the group with Joel. To see him felt to Leonie as if someone had thrown her a rope across treacherous water. Every impulse told her to snatch at it. She nodded at him, a curt, awkward movement, and descended the second step to Marian’s side.

  Lucas and Ivy drifted round the side of the house from the direction of the beach. They were wearing faded shorts and windbreakers, so they looked like male and female versions cast from the same perfect androgynous mould.

  ‘Young love,’ Judith sighed. ‘Just look at it.’

  Marty’s head jerked as he handed Justine over to her.

  ‘They’re welcome to young love,’ he said, so sharply that his wife stared at him in momentary surprise.

  No one caught sight of May who had followed Lucas and Ivy from the beach. She found a temporary refuge in the thinning fog.

  The Fennymores’ house was out of earshot of the Beams’. Aaron was in his chair with a rug wrapped around his thin legs because even the occasional faint chill of July penetrated his bones and threatened him with the winter to come. Hannah sat opposite, wearing her old-fashioned reading glasses and with the week’s Pittsharbor Record folded in her hand. She read the more interesting titbits aloud to him, although she was not sure that he was listening. More and more often Hannah performed small services for Aaron because she had always done so, not because she was convinced that he still required them. He had withdrawn where she couldn’t follow him, into memories and the recesses of the past.