St Leonard, where we were headed to meet the Martins, was located on a narrow peninsula bordered by the Patuxent River and the Chesapeake Bay. The Patuxent River Air Station and the Solomons Island Naval Training Base occupied the southern tip of the peninsula.
PT-boats and auxiliary Coast Guard cutters patrolled the Bay and the rivers – when they weren’t blocked by ice, that is. And the Coast Guard patrolled the beaches. The place was safe as could be.
The state road became Solomons Island Road before we got to St Leonard, a picturesque town a couple of miles from the coast.
‘We should get lunch before we find the Martins,’ Collins said. ‘It’s about that time.’
We parked in front of a shingled building that, according to the directory posted outside the main entrance, housed a general store, the post office, a library and Bertie Woods’ Cafe.
The lunchroom, decorated with crab pots, nets hanging on the wall and faux captain’s chairs, was packed with the lunch crowd, mostly men in work clothes. We were able to find an empty table for two next to the kitchen. That was okay with me; it was warmer there.
Our waitress filled our water glasses and handed each of us a menu, a single sheet with seven handwritten items, three of which were beef. Of course, we were out in the country. Beef was easier to come by.
‘You’re very busy,’ Collins said to the waitress.
‘Been that way since the war started,’ the waitress said. ‘We used to close in the winter, after the tourists left. Now the boarding houses are full of people working at the naval training station, and they got to eat.’
I ordered a hot roast beef sandwich and milk. Collins had pork chops with corn and mashed potatoes. He requested a beer too, which bothered me, since we were working.
When the waitress returned with our drinks, Collins drained half his beer in one gulp. When he noticed my disapproval, he looked flustered for a second, then shrugged. ‘This is just a routine interview,’ he said. ‘No reason I can’t have one beer.’
If there was one thing I’d picked up at OSS, it was that an agent – and we were agents, even though this was a small matter – should be ready for any situation. Alcohol just wasn’t good preparation. But I couldn’t say anything to the man in public.
‘Listen,’ Collins said, after another swig, ‘when the waitress comes back, I’m going to ask her where the Martins live.’
‘What’s our cover story?’
‘Surely we don’t need one. I’m just asking directions.’
‘But we can’t just—’
The waitress arrived with our order.
‘Thank you,’ Collins said as she set down our plates. ‘Do you have a second for me to ask you a question?’
‘Sure,’ she said.
‘Can you give us directions to the Martins’ place? Anne and Leroy Martin? Do you know them?’
The waitress crossed her arms, and a suspicious look crossed her face. ‘What do you want with them?’ She surveyed Collins’s uniform and my tailored wool dress. ‘Are you from the government?’
‘Yes,’ Collins answered easily, and I don’t think my imagination was playing tricks when I sensed a lull in the conversations at the tables around us.
‘What part of the government?’ she asked.
Collins hesitated, and the ambient noise from the lunchroom rose in volume. Goddamn the man!
‘We’re from the Office of Price Administration,’ he said. ‘Mr Martin has applied for permission to purchase two new tires. We’re here to inspect the tires he owns now. That’s all.’
A burly man in a ragged fisherman’s sweater stood up from a nearby table and almost kicked his chair aside as he moved towards us. ‘Is that nice shiny car outside yours?’ he asked. ‘The Chevy with the government plates? The one with four tires that actually got tread? Ain’t it something that we got to beg the government for new tires that we can buy with our own money and you drove all the way out here on four new ones!’
I waited for Collins to reply, but he looked unsure of himself, and I noticed that his hands, resting on the tablecloth, trembled slightly.
‘Sir,’ I said to the angry man, ‘we don’t have anything to do with the car. We got it from a motor pool. We’re just doing our jobs.’
‘It takes two people to check Leroy Martin’s tires? And you come a hundred miles to do it!’ he said. ‘If we win this goddamned war it will be a miracle!’
The man turned his gaze on Collins. ‘And you!’ he said. ‘You’re in an officer’s uniform! Why aren’t you fighting? My older boy’s just a buck private in North Africa, and I ain’t got a letter from him in two weeks. I don’t know if he’s alive or dead!’
‘Come on, Dennis,’ the waitress said. ‘Forget it.’
‘Yeah,’ another man from his table said. ‘These two aren’t the enemy. Finish your coffee. We’re due back at work.’
Collins and I finished our meal hurriedly, paid our bill and left the lunchroom, not without receiving more critical stares from the patrons.
Once outside Collins stopped by the car to light a cigarette. ‘We still need to get directions,’ he said, inhaling deeply. ‘Thanks to that hick.’
‘Let’s get inside the car,’ I said, trying not to sound furious.
‘But—’
‘We should not be having this conversation where someone could overhear it!’
‘All right, all right.’
Once in the car, I turned to him. ‘What was that about?’ I said. ‘You’ve made a mess of this! Gotten the attention of the entire town, and not good attention. This is what happens when you’re not prepared!’
He recoiled at my intensity. ‘What are you talking about? Those are just a bunch of rubes. We can get directions from someone else, at the filling station maybe …’
‘You’ve invented a cover story that makes no sense! What are we going to do when we get to the Martins? Ask to see their tires, then say, “By the way, there’s this postcard!”’
‘Okay, Miss Secret Agent, what would you do?’
‘You find one person, ask them for directions innocently, don’t call attention to yourself, don’t make up some story that will fall apart later!’
‘Okay, you do it if you’re such an expert!’
‘Just drive!’
‘Where?’
‘Down the street a ways.’
We had to wait for a military convoy, mostly Jeeps and a couple of trucks, their cargo covered with khaki canvas, to pass before we could turn out of the post office parking lot.
A few blocks later I spotted an older man with a cane walking his dog.
I told Collins to stop, rolled down my window and spoke to the man. ‘Sir,’ I said, ‘can you help us?’
‘I’ll try, young lady,’ he answered, tugging on the dog’s leash to bring him to a halt. The aging collie, his nose thick with white hairs, obediently sat down on the cold ground and leaned his head against his master’s knee to be scratched.
‘We’re in town to see Leroy Martin – his wife is named Anne? And I think I’ve missed the turn. Their place is right on the Bay.’
‘No problem at all,’ he said. ‘Go south on this road here, Solomons Island Road, for a piece; you’ll come to the turnoffs for Long Beach and Calvert Beach on the left. Pass those on by, and soon you’ll see the Martins’ mailbox on your left. Turn there. It’s just a dirt road, easy to miss. If you see the sign for Flag Ponds you’re near the bluffs and you’ve missed it.’
A mile down the road Collins spoke. ‘I don’t see how asking that guy for directions was so different from what I did in the restaurant,’ he said.
God, I was working with an imbecile!
‘Have you done anything like this before?’ I asked.
Collins compressed his lips. I could see he was angry.
‘Okay,’ he said. ‘No, I haven’t. I’ve been manning a desk since I got to OSS. I haven’t even been to the Farm yet. We’re so short of manpower, I got assigned to do this because there wa
s no one else. Happy now?’
‘When we get there, let me handle the interview.’
I could see Collins’s jaw clench. I didn’t care. I’d been pulled away from my desk job to back up an inexperienced officer because I had some field experience. It was up to me to salvage this visit if I could.
‘All right,’ he said, surprising me. ‘But I write the report.’
‘Sure,’ I said. Of course Collins would write the report. He was the man in charge.
We found the turn off to the Martins and made our way down the rough track paved with gravel and crushed oyster shells. A half a mile from the main road we crossed over a stream on a wooden bridge. The track meandered for over a mile longer alongside a dense stand of white cedars, finally ending at an oysterman’s cottage in a clearing. The track, which I suppose you could consider the Martins’ driveway, divided the cottage from the woods and a wide, deep inlet.
The Martins’ cottage was a weather-beaten grey, which I suspected had faded from blue, with fresh, bright, white painted trim. More crushed oyster shells paved the walkway to the front door and to the head of the pier on the inlet just yards from the house. A skipjack was moored there, frozen in place by ice. The oysterman’s boat was winter proofed, its sails furled and deck covered with canvas secured with rope. Old tires were roped to the side of the pier, which kept the skipjack from crashing against it.
Ice coated the rocks that lined the shore and extended several yards out into the water, despite the lapping of tiny waves on the beach. The Chesapeake Bay was an estuary, which meant that it had tides, but even a surging tide couldn’t prevent the buildup of ice on the shoreline in these temperatures.
Patches of wispy Chesapeake Bay fog, which formed when moisture from the Bay collided with crisp air blowing in from the west, floated through the clearing, sometimes obscuring the cottage or the inlet before drifting away. A couple of miles south along the coast the beam of light from the Cove Point lighthouse reached out to sea.
A fish eagle perched on a tree limb near the head of the pier. At first I thought it was frozen solid, it was so still. But then it heard our footsteps, and after flapping its wings a few times and hopping about, it flew off. If a bird could fly stiffly, that osprey did. I wondered how birds and other wildlife could survive in this cold.
Collins knocked on the front door of the cottage. We heard light footsteps, and then the door opened.
The woman must have been a beauty when she was young, and she was still handsome. She had a good figure on a sturdy frame. She wore a simple deep-green wool dress and a perfectly pressed and starched apron. A full head of wavy light-brown hair dropped to her shoulders. Her skin was exquisite, not a line on it, and she had color in her high cheekbones. I knew she was in her early fifties, but she didn’t look it.
‘Can I help you?’ she asked.
‘Is this the home of Leroy and Anne Martin?’ I asked.
‘Yes, it is,’ she said. Then she took in Collins’s uniform, and a look of uneasiness crossed her face.
‘Is something wrong?’ she asked.
‘Not at all,’ Collins said. ‘Can we come in?’
‘Of course,’ she said. ‘We’re just finishing lunch. My husband’s shift starts at three.’
We entered a small front entryway that was used mostly for storage. It contained a coat rack hung with foul-weather gear and a bench lined with rubber boots. We crossed through it into a tiny, warm kitchen and then into a back room which ran the length of the house. Windows lined the back wall, giving a stunning view of the Bay. Several birdfeeders stood outside, crowded with nuthatches, orioles and cardinals.
Leroy Martin rose from the round table where the two of them had been eating lunch.
Unlike his wife, Martin’s face was dark and deeply lined from years in the sun. His hands were rough with callouses.
‘You’re from the government,’ he said. ‘What do you want?’
‘Come sit down,’ his wife said.
‘They’re not staying long enough,’ Leroy answered.
There appeared to be some hostility to the government around these parts, I thought.
‘They can still sit down,’ Anne said.
So we sat on the couch.
‘We’re from the Office—’ Collins began.
‘The government,’ I interrupted. ‘The censor’s office flagged a postcard addressed to you, Mr Martin, that we want to ask you a few questions about. It’s from France.’
‘France?’ Leroy said, still standing, his arms crossed across his chest. ‘We don’t know anyone in France. Do we?’ He looked at his wife, who’d taken a chair near us.
‘No,’ she said, straightening her apron over her knees. ‘Not that I can think of.’
‘You’re originally from South Africa, I believe?’ Collins asked her.
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘but I’ve been here since I was a child.’
‘You let me handle this,’ her husband said. Anne fell silent, but she didn’t seem to be afraid of her husband. ‘My wife is an American citizen,’ Leroy said. ‘She has no connections overseas at all.’
‘It’s addressed to you,’ I said. ‘Just take a look at it, please. It seems to be from a relative of yours, Mr Martin.’ I handed him the cellophane sleeve, and he inspected the postcard.
‘This is loony,’ he said. ‘I don’t have kin in France, and I don’t know any bloody Richard Martin. This must be a mistake of some kind, or a joke.’ He handed the postcard to his wife to read.
‘Where is your family from originally?’ Collins asked.
‘What are you implying?’ Leroy asked. ‘That I ain’t an American? If you weren’t wearing that uniform I’d beat you into the ground!’
‘Mr Martin,’ I said, ‘we’re not implying anything at all. We’re just trying to understand why you’d be getting a postcard from France, that’s all.’
‘Leroy—’ Anne began.
‘I told you to let me handle this,’ Leroy said.
Unruffled, Anne continued. ‘What about that man who showed up, before the war, and said he was your cousin? He was from France, wasn’t he?’
‘Oh,’ Leroy said, finally sitting down, ‘him. Yeah. I forgot him.’
‘Wasn’t his name Richard?’ Anne asked.
‘Yeah, it was. I’m sorry,’ he said to us, ‘I didn’t remember. My grandfather was French Canadian, he came here to work the oyster beds and stayed. This Richard Martin guy was a merchant mariner. His ship was docked on the Potomac River for a few days, and he came over and said he was my cousin.’
‘Was he?’ I asked.
‘Yeah, when he went over the family stuff it made sense. We were distant cousins though. I forgot all about him.’
‘Why would he send you a postcard telling you he was okay?’
‘I got no idea,’ Leroy said. ‘I don’t give a good god damn if he’s okay or not, I just met the man once.’
‘Do you know his mother?’ I asked.
‘No, of course not!’ he said.
‘Dear, he talked about his mother while he was here. He said she was your father’s third cousin.’
‘He did? If you say so. I need to go to work. You need to be on your way too,’ he said to us.
‘February thirteenth is your birthday, isn’t it?’ I asked Anne.
‘Yes it is. I was born in 1890,’ she said.
‘You don’t have to answer any more questions,’ Leroy said to her. ‘We ain’t done anything wrong. I’m going,’ he said, stomping through the kitchen toward the door.
We could hear him in the entry room pulling on his coat and boots before slamming the door on his way outside.
‘I apologize for my husband,’ Anne said. ‘He seems brusque, I know, but he has little patience for anything other than his own business. It’s just his way. Excuse me, I have to get something out of the oven,’ she said. ‘Would you like some tea? I could put the kettle on.’
‘I don’t—’ Collins began.
‘If it’s
not too much trouble, that would be lovely,’ I said. With her irritable husband out of the way, perhaps Anne could tell us more about Richard Martin and his mysterious mother.
Collins leaned back onto the sofa, crossing his legs and looking resigned.
When Anne opened the oven door, the most wonderful odor of cinnamon and apples drifted into the sitting room, but what she removed from the oven looked like no apple pie I’d ever seen before. It resembled a loaf of bread.
A few minutes later Anne brought us our hot tea on a tray, with milk and sugar.
‘I hope you like it strong,’ she said, pouring us each a cup and passing around the sugar and milk.
‘Whatever you’ve baked smells wonderful,’ I said.
‘It’s stollen, a sweetbread with nuts and fruit. The only thing that does remain from my life in South Africa is my grandmother’s cookbook. I bake from it whenever I can find the ingredients.’
‘Can I ask why you emigrated?’ I said.
‘The Boer War,’ she said, but didn’t elaborate.
I set down my cup. ‘I’m curious about just one more thing,’ I said. ‘Why do you think Richard Martin mentioned the date of your birthday?’
She shrugged. ‘When he visited it was right after my birthday. In fact I think I served him leftover cake. Perhaps he just wanted to let me know he remembered it.’
Anne Martin walked us to her door and we made standard goodbyes, but then she held out her hand, palm up. When we didn’t respond, she said, ‘The postcard. I believe it belongs to us?’
‘Of course it does,’ I said, handing it to her.
She tucked it into her apron pocket and closed the door behind us as we left.
‘Why did you give her the postcard!’ Collins said, after we’d gotten back into the government car. ‘That was stupid!’
I bit my lip, waiting until my urge to speak sharply to him passed. ‘It would have looked suspicious if I hadn’t, wouldn’t it? If the postcard isn’t innocent, now they’ll think we’re satisfied with their explanation. Besides, I took photographs of it back at OSS.’
Collins changed gears badly and swore at the grinding noise. ‘What a place to live, especially in the winter!’ he said. ‘It’s so isolated! We’re only a couple of miles from St Leonard but it feels like the off end of nowhere.’
Louise's Dilemma Page 4