by Vicki Grant
“Lots. But this is cashmere.” That took him about three minutes. “Not many out of cashmere.”
“Do you remember who you made it for?”
“The button’s broken.”
“Yes.” I opened it up. “And the lining’s torn.”
He looked at me and shook his head at this terrible tragedy.
“But it’s still beautiful. I found it, and I’d like to return it to its rightful owner.” I showed him the initials. “E.B. Something. The last letter’s gone. Any idea who that could be?”
He looked for a second like he might know, then shook his head. I took the spoon out of the pocket.
“This was in the coat too. There’s a crest on it, says loyal on the earth. Or something like that.” I showed it to him. “That mean anything to you?”
He raised his finger. “That fellow.” He looked at me. He looked at the nurse. Eyes squinting, trying to come up with the name.
“WHICH FELLOW, ALVIE?”
“You know. Good-looking one.”
“GONNA HAFTA DO BETTER THAN THAT, SWEETHEART. LOTS OF GOOD-LOOKING ONES, AS I RECALL.”
“Big one.” He was almost pleading now. “Liked the ladies. Got a medal.”
He repeated that a few times, his face edging toward mauve, a little bubble of spit frothing white at the corner of his mouth. The nurse hopped up, stroked his head, calmed him down.
“OH, THAT FELLA. WE KNOW THE ONE. THANKS, ALVIE. YOU WERE A BIG HELP.”
End of interview. I could see that.
“Yes, a big help,” I said. I reached down to thank him. His hand was dry and spotty. A small hungry animal. It wrapped around mine and pulled me close.
“Nice to see you again.” He smiled. “Been a long time.”
The nurse rolled her eyes and shouted, “NAPTIME! I’LL JUST SHOW YOUR FRIEND OUT, ALVIE, AND THEN I’LL TAKE YOU TO YOUR ROOM.”
“You got more out of him than I ever do,” she said walking back to the manor. “I know it wasn’t much, but, well, he’s not long for this world. I got a couple of ideas about that spoon for you though. Try St. Ninian’s Anglican Church. All the rich people around here get hatched, matched and dispatched there. One of the ladies on the auxiliary is bound to recognize the crest.”
“Do you know anyone on the auxiliary I could talk to?”
“Best idea would just be to pop by for one of their meetings. I’m pretty sure they’re still Fridays at seven in the church.”
“Thanks. And you said you had another idea about the spoon?”
“Melt it down. You could get yourself a nice set of earrings out of it.”
Seven
“WELL, LOOK AT you,” he said, and call me crazy, but I kind of thought everyone must have been doing exactly that.
It was Sunday at noon. I was on the dock in Lorraine Welsh’s turquoise short set and Glennie Rathburn’s white runners, and Eddie was on the deck, his hand held up to help me down into a long shiny boat with a little flag snapping at the back. Who on the beach wouldn’t be craning their neck to get a look at that? Right out of a movie.
“You bought that shirt because it matches your eyes,” he said, and I said, “No.”
“Did so.”
“Did not.”
“Only liars smile like that.” And I laughed because I was nervous and because, of course, that was the one thing I wasn’t lying to him about.
Eddie untied the boat and we put-putted to the end of the dock.
“Okay. Where to, lady?”
The sky was blue and cloudless, and the water shimmied and sparkled like a majorette’s uniform.
“I’d kind of like to see the whole lake.”
“The whole lake.”
“Yeah.”
“Well, we’re going to have to hurry then, aren’t we?” He grinned, slammed the throttle forward and the boat reared up like the Lone Ranger’s horse.
I put my hand on my head to keep my hair from flying clean off my scalp, and I laughed. Water sprayed over the side of the boat when Eddie made a fast turn and splashed over the front when we slapped through another boat’s wake. It was cool and the day was hot and nothing could have been more perfect.
Eddie knelt on the driver’s seat, head high over the little windshield, shirt puffed up like a football jersey. He’d point and scream at me over the engine. “That’s the Burnleys’ place. They’re loaded.” Or “Dead Man. That rock. Sticking out over there. That’s what they call it.” Or “Go Home Island. Covered in poison ivy.”
We passed big mansions surrounded by bright-green lawns, and shabby cabins on islands no bigger than boulders, and shirtless old men in canoes, and kids tipping sailboats, and ladies sunning on inflatable rafts, one leg bent at the knee, and everywhere we went, people waved and went, “Hey, Ed!” or “Nice boat!” or “We seeing you Tuesday?”
Farther on there was a yacht club with a floating dock out front and a bunch of kids jumping off it. Eddie sped in close, then swerved away. The kids hurled themselves into the waves, laughing, screaming, bobbing like empty soda bottles. They were all going, “Eddie! Come back! Do it again!” But he raced off, a crazy smile on his face.
I turned around and looked. The kids were swinging their arms over their heads like we’d marooned them on an ice floe. I could see a splatter of gray roofs in the distance. “Is that Dunbrae way back there?” I shouted, trying to get my bearings.
Eddie leaned down. “What was that?” His face was so close I could smell spearmint and soap and pick out each brown and red and yellow straw of his eyebrows.
I managed to say, “Dunbrae. Is it far?” He nodded, like really far and swung back up to the dashboard.
“You don’t want to go home already, do you?”
“No,” I said, which was true.
“Good.” The boat slowed down, flattened out. “’Cause we’re almost at Hidden Bay, and it’s lunchtime.”
We puttered through a narrow passageway, the water so shallow I could see tiny fish darting near the weedy bottom. Eddie’s head swayed back and forth as he maneuvered between the rocks on either side. “Got to know what you’re doing to make your way in here. That’s why nobody ever does.”
A boy I didn’t know. A place no one went. Mrs. Hazelton wouldn’t approve. And I didn’t care.
The channel bowed out into a little bay. Everything was still. Willows hanging over the banks. A patch of yellow water lilies. It was like one of those enchanted places children in English storybooks always ended up getting lost in.
Eddie threw the anchor over the side.
“Sit here.” He patted one of the seats facing backward.
I sat—and kicked my legs out like a cancan dancer when my thighs hit the hot white leather. We both laughed, Eddie as if he knew that was going to happen.
He opened a picnic basket and pulled out a couple of wax-paper bundles. “Ham or…ham?”
“Well, ham, I guess.”
“Wow. Me too. I knew we had a lot in common first time you saw me and ran screaming in the other direction.”
“Ha. Ha.”
He held up a tartan thermos. “Lemonade or…?”
“I’ll have the lemonade, if you don’t mind.”
“Same here! Why, this is positively eerie.”
He handed me a red cup, then slid down into the chair next to me, the scalding seat not seeming to bother him at all.
“Don’t suppose we’re twins separated at birth or something, do you? One of us adopted into the lap of luxury, the other into a life of grinding poverty.”
It was only a joke and it didn’t mean anything, but there was just something about it. Adopted. Orphan. The Home. I don’t know. I choked on my sandwich.
“Y’okay? Do I need to dust off my lifesaving skills?”
I shook my head, took a gulp of lemonade. Mrs. Hazelton was always telling me not to let my imagination run wild. “Good sandwich,” I said.
“I can assume, then, that the fact you gagged on it was purely coincidental?” He snickered, stretched h
is big feet out on top of the cooler and turned his face up to the sun. “So how’re you and Mrs. Smees getting on?”
“Oh, you know.”
“I told you she wasn’t that bad.” He took an enormous bite out of his sandwich and stuffed it in one cheek. “I can’t believe you fell for it.”
I gawked at him. “Could’ve warned me.”
“Then you wouldn’t have applied for the job, and we wouldn’t be sitting here now. You ask me, a little suffering was worth it.”
“’Specially since I’m the one doing the suffering.”
He smiled. I made him smile. I looked away. I don’t know why, but that little chip in his tooth got me every time.
“You know her very well?” I was just filling the air.
“Muriel? All my life. She used to come to the house when I was little. Which is no doubt the origin of my chronic nightmares.” He opened his mouth in a silent scream and tore at his hair. He was a goof. I liked that.
“So you grew up here.”
“A townie through and through. And my father before me and his father before him. Etcetera. Etcetera.”
“Seems like a nice place to live.”
He lowered his sandwich and stopped chewing. “You pulling my leg?”
“No. The lake, the town. It’s pretty.”
He spun his hand like go on. “Pretty what? Dull? Deadly?”
“No. Not yet anyway. Just pretty.”
“Well, that’s a first. You high-class girls always hate it here. I understand there isn’t a decent place for miles to get one’s hair done.” He patted the side of his head, his pinky crooked.
“Not my sort of thing.”
“Another first! You’re an unusual girl, Dot. A near encyclopedic knowledge of amphibians, a disdain for shallow standards of beauty, a—”
Then suddenly he was standing up and swearing.
“What?”
“You hear that?”
I shook my head.
He swore again, biffed his sandwich into the water, grabbed the anchor.
“What is it?” I thought he was joking.
“Looks like we’re in for it,” he said, jerking his head over his shoulder. I peered out beyond the bay. The sun was still lighting up the water, but the sky to the right had gone black-eyed purple.
I knew what skies like that meant. Thunderstorm. The Seven all racing to close windows, latch gates, scoop up Little Ones, get everyone inside before it hit. One year, on a scorcher just like this, we’d lost the barn.
“C’mon, c’mon,” Eddie said, either to me or the motor, which didn’t seem to want to turn over no matter how much he cursed it.
I pushed the picnic basket into a nook at the back and slid into the front seat. By the time the engine caught, fat blobs of rain were bouncing off the deck and the surface of the bay.
He edged the boat around, and we crawled through the channel. We were the only ones I could see on the lake, but given the way the rain was suddenly coming down in sheets, that wasn’t saying much.
He gunned the motor, veered left. “We’re not making it back to the Arms in this.”
Lightning flashed, and then, seconds later, the thunder, loud and angry. Eddie went, “Yikes,” but he was laughing. “That was a little too close for comfort. You all right?”
Maybe for a second there, I looked as if I wasn’t. That boom. Like the crack of the rafters when the fire brought down the ceiling. I suddenly remembered everyone screaming, and the smoke and the panic, but that’s all it was. A memory. I was okay. I shrugged like it was no big deal. Eddie went, “My kind of girl.”
He flicked the water out of his eyes and leaned over the windshield to see. When we came to a big green buoy clanging wildly in the storm, he slowed down, made a hard turn, then headed through a narrow channel. He glided up to a dock, cut the motor and jumped off, the boat still moving.
He was tying it up when lightning, then thunder, hit again. One, two. Fast as that. Right overhead.
“Go, go, go.” He dragged me up slick, spongy steps to a cottage, its screen door thrashing against the shingles. He pulled it closed behind us. We skidded through the water on the floor, racing to shut windows, tie back shutters, upturn fallen furniture. Glass pinged in the wind and dishes still rattled, but with the windows shut tight, the sound of the storm wasn’t much more than a dull roar. A train in the distance.
And then we were sopping wet and suddenly aware of it, our hair stuck to our faces like spaghetti after a food fight, our arms out to our sides like gunslingers before a duel.
“Sorry,” he said.
“What? Why?”
“I should have seen it coming. Not my first time on the lake.” The grin. “But you distracted me.”
“Sure. Me or the ham sandwich.”
“I’ve had my share of ham sandwiches before. Don’t think it was that.” I had a sudden urge to inspect my shoes. “Anyway. Welcome to my humble abode.”
I looked around—or, at least, away from him. “Nice. Cozy.”
But not what I expected. The cottage was old, dark, dusty as a chicken coop. Nothing much to it. A horsehair chesterfield sagging like a fat lady at a bus stop on a hot day. A table and a couple of mismatched chairs. A big stone fireplace, singed black to the mantelpiece.
Eddie picked a towel off the back of the chesterfield and sniffed it. “Not sure how clean this is.” He tossed it to me.
“That’s okay.” I wiped my face and hair. When I looked up, he was gone.
“Eddie?” I’d never said his name out loud.
“There in a sec.”
I was starting to shiver. I’d been so hot, but the rain had gotten right through to my bones.
There was a copy of the Buckminster Gleaner on the coffee table, kindling and logs in a barrel by the fireplace. I scrunched up the paper, made a little teepee of wood and was running my hand along the mantelpiece, searching for matches, when Eddie walked back in.
“Well, aren’t you a busy bee.”
I turned around. His hair was combed like a kid about to have his class picture taken, and he was in dry clothes.
“These are the only things I could find that might fit you.” He held up a pair of beige shorts and a matching shirt with badges above the pocket. “I’m sure you’ll make a more fetching Boy Scout than I ever did.”
He saluted. I laughed. “Where can I change?” He pointed over his left shoulder.
The bedroom was tiny, mostly bed. A twig bookshelf was nailed to the wall, a skinny bureau tucked in the corner. I closed the door, took off my wet clothes and put on the dry ones. The shorts hung off my hips. I hadn’t been eating enough. I was a bag of bones. I tucked the shirt in and hoped that would help the shorts stay up.
There was a mirror above the bureau, chipped around the edges and peeling on the back. My reflection was dark and flecked, an old-fashioned photo. Miss Dorothy Blythe circa 1864. By the looks of it, that was around the last time I got my hair done too.
I noticed a picture tucked into the frame. A little boy, laughing, nose crinkled up—clearly Eddie—leaning against a man sitting on a dock. They were both in bathing suits. The man was missing a leg from the knee down. (I looked twice to be sure.) He had a big smile on his face too. I recognized the dimples.
When I went back into the living room, Eddie was rummaging in the fireplace, undoing everything I’d set up. The newspaper I’d used was smoothed out and lying flat on the coffee table. He lit the kindling and blew on it until the flame caught.
“Does this mean I don’t get my campfire badge?” I said.
“’Fraid not.” He turned around and whistled. “You could teach me to tie knots any day.”
I blushed. He apologized. One of us had to stop doing that.
“Make yourself at home. I’ll put some cocoa on.” He went into the kitchen, turned on the radio and rattled around in cupboards.
I sat on the couch and flipped through the newspaper Eddie’d uncrumpled.
BUCKMINSTER MAN WI
NS NATIONAL
WHITTLING COMPETITION
KINSMEN RAISE $328 TOWARD
NEW BANDSTAND
ST. NINIAN’S FASHION SHOW
DRAWS CROWDS
I’d almost finished reading before I noticed the articles were by Edward Nicholson.
“You’re a reporter?” I said.
“Sort of,” he called out from the kitchen.
“I’m impressed.”
“Oh, right. You say that, but only minutes ago you were ready to torch my entire oeuvre.”
“Sorry. I thought it was garbage.”
“Close enough.”
He’d filled the mugs too full. Cocoa sloshed over the sides. He set them on the coffee table, then licked his hand and wrist. “I just fill in during the summer so the genuine reporters can take holidays. Not my real job.”
“You have a real job?”
“’Course.”
“Doing what?”
“Following the proud Nicholson family tradition. I’m a caretaker. Look after people’s cottages, mow their lawns, take their old aunties to lunch at the Arms when they can’t be bothered doing it themselves. I even fill up their fancy boats and take attractive girls out for a spin, just to make sure everything’s in working order.”
He sat at the other end of the couch and crossed his ankles on the table. His feet were bare, and he was losing a toenail. “Disappointed?” he said.
“Why would I be?”
“Girl like you.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I saw you at the train station. Big green Caddy. Tearful goodbye with your elegant mother. Not the type of girl to date a caretaker.”
This was a date.
I shook my head. “You’re imagining things.”
“Hey. Nothing to be ashamed of.” He nudged me with his toe, and I could have told him the truth right then and there, but suddenly I liked being Mrs. Welsh’s daughter. I liked the way it made him look at me.
“I’m not,” I said.
“Take me for a drive in the Caddy someday?”
“If I get a chance.”
He’d brought his mug up to his mouth but was smiling too hard to take a sip.