Moon Island

by Rosie Thomas

  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 beli
eved 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.

  Yet sometimes he startled her with the relevance of his train of thought. ‘What was the girl’s name?’

  ‘Which girl?’ She wasn’t sure whether he meant Doone Bennison.

  ‘I found her outside.’

  ‘Ah, that girl.’ Hannah had been thinking about her too. ‘May Duhane.’

  ‘She needs something.’

  ‘Mothering, perhaps.’ Marian Beam, of course, had told them what she knew about the death of Alison Duhane.

  For so many years Hannah had watched her husband’s uncompromising features – at first in anxiety, then in bitter resignation, and now, at last, in affectionate acceptance. She knew all the nuances of light and shade in him, and the expression he wore as he looked at her at this moment was the best because of the warmth in it. ‘You would think so.’ He smiled.

  ‘I know so,’ Hannah answered composedly.

  She had been a successful mother, that was one of her compensations. The demands of her children had seemed easy to meet and the easiness had passed itself on to them. All three of them were unremarkably grown up now, moved away and settled with partners and children of their own in Cleveland and Dallas and Burlington, Vermont. She missed them less than she had imagined she would while she
was still waiting for them to fly away. Now, as he had been at the beginning, Aaron was her central concern. Her books and papers and investigations of local history and legends were a distraction, a way of not letting him know how important he was.

  But he knew in any case. His wordless acceptance of her devotion was a measure of his arrogance. He had been arrogant as a young man, too, with an unshakeable pride in his roots and his place in Pittsharbor, which bound him to his home. He had never been tempted to wander elsewhere and his self-assurance had been overturned only once.

  He had allowed Hannah to rescue him then, and she had been glad to do it, but the history of the damage and his debt to her had been buried silently between them.

  Aaron nodded, his hands folded on the knob of his stick, apparently satisfied with this brief reference to May Duhane and her possible needs. Hannah refolded the paper and began to read a contributor’s letter about the success of the Pittsharbor Fourth of July parade.

  May wasn’t afraid that Ivy and Lucas might have been able to see her spying on them. She knew they wouldn’t look at anything except each other and the thought made a jealous knot twist in her chest, so that she had to suck hard to draw air into her lungs. She stood at the side of the road away from the houses with her arms weightily hanging at her sides, panting with the effort of drawing breath.

  May felt that whichever way she tried to direct herself there was a precipice yawning at her feet. If she focused on Lucas – and there was no conscious effort in that, the thought of him filled her head, and she saw the fall of beige-blond hair and the tattooed lovers’ knot in her contorted dreams – there was always the accompanying swell of jealousy and self-dislike, and the hopelessness of wishing that she could be like Ivy.

  Her father was even less of a resort because of Leonie Beam, who seemed always to be around him, friendly and smiling like a shark in lipstick. To see them, even to think of them together, reminded her of how it had been with Suzanne.