That Camden Summer

by LaVyrle Spencer

  They sat for a moment beside the town docks, rocked by the engine of Elfred’s touring car. Through the windows came the toccata of hammers from the shipyards, the polyphony of gulls, the contralto note of a lonely boat engine as the craft headed out. ‘‘Listen,’’ said Roberta to her girls. ‘‘It’s playing a composition.’’

  ‘‘What is?’’ Elfred asked, but Roberta flapped a hand to shut him up while she and her girls—who understood without question—listened to the serenade of the seaside town. The salt air pressed heavily, like a cold, damp cloth against their faces. It smelled of rocks draped with seaweed that soured at low tide, the wood of docks swelled by years of dampness and the faint stench of the lime-burning kilns that drifted up from Rockport whenever the wind was out of the southwest.

  When they’d heard enough, Roberta said, ‘‘Let’s go, Elfred. Show me Main Street.’’

  Main curved like an eel and climbed at the north end. The white wooden structures of the business section that Roberta remembered from childhood were gone, destroyed by fire in 1892. In their place were two- and three-storied buildings of red Maine brick. Though the buildings were different, the character of the town remained the same. Its roots had been put down by Calvinists, who valued hard work, Sunday worship and a sheltered seaport. If that port were of exceptional beauty, so much the better. If it faced the homeland where the town founders had left their loved ones, better still.

  Roberta, like any traveler returning home, searched for familiar landmarks. On the white spire of the Baptist church the town clock still set the pace of daily life. Beside it the Village Green remained unchanged. Down at the Bean shipyard a four-master stood on the stocks, half completed, just like when she was a child. The little Megunticook River still plummeted over the falls at the head of the harbor, still passed the woolen mills, still turned its machinery. And the mill still reigned over the entire town, presumably with children on its payroll.

  But progress had come to Camden in more than just its electric trolleys. A motor bus from the Elms Hotel came toward them, headed for the wharf with its load of outbound tourists. Telephone poles trimmed the length of Main Street. Concrete sidewalks followed the poles. There were water hydrants and streetlights and a new, expensive YMCA building. But the sign that snapped Roberta’s head around swung from a building at the north end of Main where it curved upward to become Belfast Road.

  ‘‘Elfred, did that sign say ‘Garage’?’’

  ‘‘Now, Roberta, don’t even think it.’’

  ‘‘But it did! Turn around and go back there, Elfred, I insist!’’

  ‘‘Roberta, don’t be silly.’’

  ‘‘Damn and blast you, Elfred, when I say turn this car around, I mean it!’’

  In the backseat the girls started giggling. Rebecca said, ‘‘I think she means it, Uncle Elfred.’’

  With a long-suffering sigh, Elfred braked, shifted gears and swung into a U-turn. While he waited for a carriage to pass, he said, ‘‘Roberta, I understand that you haven’t had to answer to a man for a long time, but this time you must listen. Women simply cannot own cars because they cannot operate them.’’

  ‘‘And just why not?’’

  They began rolling again, back into downtown. ‘‘ Because you can break your arm cranking them. And because gasoline is heavy and clumsy to put in, and the motors break down quite regularly, and the carburetors need constant adjusting, and the darn things are cold in the winter and have been known to catch fire and burn right to the ground! And tires need patching, sometimes right out on the road, and what if that happens when you’re all by yourself somewhere with no man to assist you? Roberta, please, be sensible.’’

  ‘‘How much does a motorcar cost, Elfred?’’

  ‘‘You aren’t listening to me.’’

  ‘‘I’m listening. I simply am not agreeing until I explore the possibility further because, you see, I’ve thought about this for a long time. It’s been a part of my plan. How much does one cost?’’

  He refused to answer.

  ‘‘I can find out quite easily.’’

  ‘‘All right,’’ he said, exasperated. ‘‘This one cost eight hundred and fifty dollars. A roadster would be about six hundred, or thereabouts.’’

  ‘‘I don’t have that much, but nevertheless, I intend to buy one. I’ll get the money somehow.’’

  ‘‘Don’t be ridiculous, Birdy. You cannot.’’

  ‘‘Why not? You have.’’

  ‘‘Yes, but I’m a man. Men can handle them.’’

  ‘‘Oh, Elfred,’’ she replied indignantly, ‘‘how you insult me without half trying.’’

  ‘‘Birdy, you are the most exasperating woman!’’

  ‘‘Pull over.’’ And after a beat, ‘‘Pull over, Elfred, I said!’’

  He did so, grumbling. ‘‘How you and Grace can be sisters is beyond me.’’

  Elfred pulled over and stopped in front of the Boynton Pharmacy. The sidewalk was brand-new, and the car tilted slightly toward it while the engine continued to chortle and rock the car rhythmically. On the leather roof the rain sounded like grease spattering. It scrolled down the isinglass windows and turned the view of the buildings across the street into wavery images, like a washed-out watercolor.

  Roberta squinted and put her face closer to the window. ‘‘Boynton’s Motor Car Company,’’ she read aloud. ‘‘Glory be, Elfred, you bought it right here?’’ Elfred refused to answer. The answer was obvious anyhow. Beneath that sign hung another: CAMDEN GARAGE. The smaller print on both signs was made illegible by the downpour.

  ‘‘Girls, can you read that?’’

  Rebecca tried. ‘‘Not very well.’’ She squinted. ‘‘. . . agency . . . storage . . . that’s all I can make out.’’

  ‘‘Storage? Do they store motorcars here, Elfred?’’

  ‘‘In the winter, yes, when it gets too cold to drive them and the roads become impassable.’’

  ‘‘Where does one buy gasoline?’’

  ‘‘Birdy, please . . . your sister is going to be very upset with me if she thinks I assisted you with this crazy idea.’’

  ‘‘Don’t worry, Elfred, I shall absolve you of all wrongdoing. I’ll make sure Grace knows that anything disgraceful was clearly my idea.’’

  Elfred was beginning to realize this woman had a tongue like a double-bit axe and very much enjoyed nicking him with it in the hope that he’d squirm. But Elfred was no squirmer. He liked women, and this one in particular whetted his interest, with her single state, her sassiness, occasional cursing and footloose ways. No man in his right mind would want her on a permanent basis—no wonder George Jewett had bolted— but as a distraction from a boring, overweight wife, Mrs. Birdy Jewett would do very well. Elfred began to anticipate the days ahead.

  ‘‘One buys gasoline at the hardware store. Now may I take you home?’’

  Roberta grinned smugly and settled back against the seat as if a decision had been made. ‘‘Please do.’’

  Alden Street was a mere stone’s throw above downtown. The Breckenridge house was as old as Camden itself and during the last two decades had been owned by the final survivor of the clan, one Sebastian Dougal Breckenridge. Sebastian had spent his productive years at sea, and the sea had been his only bride. He had been content to live out his last rheumatic days within view of the ocean, where he could look down and see the steamers enter the harbor, watch the fishermen go out each morning and return each evening, listen to the gulls scold as they banked past his windows and remember his salty youth plying the trade routes across the bounding main.

  People around town remembered the days when Sebastian had kept his place shipshape, when petunias had flowered in the beds beneath the front windows, when the anchor that lay scuttled in the soil of the front yard had been kept a glistening white. But many years had passed since Sebastian’s creaky old joints could endure the torture of kneeling to weed a garden, or his arthritic arms support a paintbrush, or his feeble mind remin
d him that the house needed care if it was not to tumble down the hill into Camden Harbor.

  Roberta gaped at the place and felt her stomach drop. ‘‘This is it?’’

  ‘‘Holy smut,’’ one of the girls whispered, followed by only silent disbelief from the backseat.

  ‘‘Elfred, you can’t be serious. You spent my money on that!’’

  ‘‘Two hundred dollars isn’t much, Birdy. I could have gotten you a much nicer place on Limerock Street for four hundred, but you said two was your limit.’’

  Two hundred for the house, two hundred for the motorcar, that was what she had planned. Now she owned a hovel and could afford exactly one-third of a car, and had no way of getting the rest quickly.

  ‘‘Oh, Elfred, how could you? Why, it’s nothing more than a . . . a derelict!’’

  ‘‘It’s got a good sturdy foundation, and wood stoves that work, and windows that close.’’

  ‘‘Without glass,’’ she said, looking up. On the second floor one pane had been covered with a sheet of wood. Surely the place had not been painted in a decade. Not by anything except gull shit. There was plenty of that on the shingles, and below the window ledges, and across the front of a shallow front porch where a line of birds trimmed the railing whose spokes were as irregular as an old sea dog’s teeth. Through the lowerlevel windows Roberta glimpsed the effects of Sebastian Dougal Breckenridge—predominantly what looked to be stacks of newspapers and glass floats from Portuguese fishing nets lining the sills.

  ‘‘Glass can be replaced,’’ Elfred said of the upstairs window.

  ‘‘Not by me, it can’t. I’m no glazier, Elfred!’’ Roberta’s disillusionment was fast growing into blazing anger.

  ‘‘You said you had three good helpers, so I took you at your word, that you wanted to save money on a structure that could be fixed up. I assumed that you had set aside some money for that purpose.’’

  ‘‘Well, I didn’t! Not this much! I said fix up, Elfred, not rebuild!’’

  Roberta sat glaring at her new domicile.

  ‘‘Do you want to go in and look?’’

  ‘‘No. I want to suspend you from the tallest tree in Camden . . . by your heel tendons, Elfred Spear!’’

  ‘‘Roberta . . .’’

  ‘‘. . . then sell chances on when you’ll finally rot and drop off.’’

  Elfred covered his mouth with one hand and smiled behind it while she stewed in tight-lipped anger.

  ‘‘Oh, come on, Roberta, at least go in and have a look.’’

  She was so distraught she got out of the automobile without an umbrella and marched up the weedy yard without waiting for anyone.

  ‘‘Shoo!’’ she yelled at the gulls. ‘‘Get your streaky asses off my front porch!’’ Elfred quickly turned off the engine and rushed to catch up with her with an umbrella. He did so at the bottom of the porch steps where she had come up short and set her teeth to keep from cursing at him. Upon closer scrutiny it appeared the porch itself would rot off before Elfred did! The floor had holes in it where feet had gone right through. She stood with her hands on her hips.

  ‘‘This is deplorable. Just deplorable.’’

  Elfred urged her up the steps, picked his way across the good boards and opened the front door. She preceded him into what she supposed was a parlor.

  Wonder of wonders—it had electricity! But the wires were strung outside the walls and the bulbs hung bare. There were newspapers everywhere. The walls had been papered with them. The old man had collected them and they stood in sagging stacks around the edges of the room along with empty glass jars and more of the Portuguese floats. Soot stained the ceiling above a heater stove, and trash littered the floors. The place stank of urine and decay.

  Roberta announced, ‘‘I want my money back.’’

  ‘‘I can’t get it back,’’ Elfred told her. ‘‘The sale is conclusive.’’

  Roberta marched up to him, grabbed his folded umbrella and jabbed it smartly into his belly. Elfred doubled forward and grunted.

  ‘‘Oof! . . . Ro-Roberta . . . what in the . . .’’

  ‘‘How are we supposed to live in this? How, Elfred! Would you tell me that!’’ she yelled.

  Elfred hugged his belly and stared at her, aghast. The girls had come onto the front porch and stood looking in dubiously. Rebecca stepped over the threshold and the others followed, picking their way carefully. Susan peered up a creaky-looking stairway that divided the two downstairs rooms. Rebecca walked over to a wall and peeled a strip of newspaper off, revealing ancient water-stained wallpaper behind it. ‘‘It won’t be so bad, Mother. Once we burn the newspapers and paint the walls.’’

  Rebecca, however, was always the optimistic one.

  ‘‘It’s unfit for a polecat!’’

  A kitchen adjoined the living room. Lydia ventured into it and the others followed. She opened a door beneath a dry sink, releasing a fetid odor. What appeared to be a slop pail—empty, by some benevolent freak of fate—had left a permanent stain in the wood of the floor.

  ‘‘Close that door, Lydia!’’ Roberta snapped. ‘‘And don’t touch that filthy thing again. He probably pissed in it, for all we know!’’ To Elfred she snapped, ‘‘I suppose there’s no bathroom.’’

  ‘‘No. Just an outhouse.’’

  She turned away, too angry to face him.

  ‘‘Listen, Birdy, you said two hundred dollars. This is what you get for two hundred dollars.’’

  ‘‘Two hundred dollars I could have spent on something livable while financing the rest with a mortgage.’’

  ‘‘You told me you didn’t want a mortgage, so I figured it could be repaired with a little help.’’

  She spun on him, pointing at a wall. ‘‘You repair it then, Elfred, because I don’t have time! I’ve got to go out and earn a living for my girls! And while I do it, am I supposed to leave them in this?’’ She was shouting by this time, gesturing rabidly. ‘‘ You stuck us with this skunk’s nest! You make it livable! And while you’re at it, you pay to make it livable! Lord help me, I trusted you, Elfred!’’

  Elfred was backing away because Roberta was brandishing the umbrella again. He spread both hands as if to ward her off. ‘‘All right, Birdy, all right . . . I will. I’ll take care of it.’’

  ‘‘And do it quickly, because this is no fit lodging for my girls!’’

  ‘‘Very well, I’ll see Gabriel Farley right away.’’

  ‘‘Yessir, you will,’’ said a deep voice from the front room, and Gabriel Farley himself materialized. He stepped through the doorway into the kitchen and said, ‘‘Hello again.’’

  ‘‘Well, where did you come from?’’ Elfred asked.

  ‘‘Figured you could use me. If these ladies were going to live in old Sebastian’s wake, it’d have to be fixed up some.’’ He crossed his arms, cinched his hands beneath his armpits and scanned the tops of the walls. ‘‘Wouldn’t mind giving you an estimate.’’

  Roberta brushed off her palms and shot him an acid glance. ‘‘Well, that was fast,’’ she remarked dryly.

  ‘‘Lucky thing we met at the wharf or I wouldn’t have known this place was going to be lived in again.’’

  Roberta wondered just how lucky.

  ‘‘So you’re a carpenter, Mr. Farley?’’

  ‘‘Carpenter, painter, general tradesman all rolled into one. I can fix most things.’’

  Her glance shifted from one man to the other. ‘‘Couldn’t be you two are in cahoots now, could it? Like maybe Elfred just happened to purchase this wreck for me, and maybe Mr. Farley just happened to be conveniently coming into the steamship office as we were standing there, and now he just happens to have the time on his hands to repair this piece of junk. At what kind of inflated prices, might I ask?’’

  Farley said nothing, only stood as before with his hands clamped under his armpits, studying her from beneath his wiry eyebrows. He was big, and the oilskins made him look bigger. He was calm, and his spraddlelegged sta
nce made him look calmer. He had feet the size of dories that made him look as if nothing could tip him over. But no overgrown lummox was going to intimidate Roberta Jewett.

  ‘‘Well, am I right, Mr. Farley?’’

  Gabe Farley, unruffled, turned to study Roberta Jewett more closely. First divorced woman he’d ever seen, and he wasn’t sure what to make of her. There she stood, confronting him and Elfred with her suspicions, just like a man would do. No fear, no compunctions, just out with it! Didn’t care much about her appearance either—that was evident right from the get-go. Stood there with her hair looking like a patch of swamp grass after a hurricane and her coat all crinkled and hanging unbuttoned. No hat, no gloves, no prissy posturing. She stood with her feet just about as widespread as Gabe’s own, and he thought, Whew! Are the women going to be talking about this one behind her back!

  The men, too.

  ‘‘Well, now, Mrs. Jewett, you could be right,’’ he said, one-handedly removing his cap and scratching his skull. He angled the cap across his temple again and tugged the brim down till it hid his right eyebrow. ‘‘Could be wrong though, too, so I guess it’s up to you to decide if you want my help or not.’’

  ‘‘Well, answer me straight, Mr. Farley. Are you in cahoots with my brother-in-law?’’

  ‘‘Nope.’’

  She had expected a lengthier denial. Surprised by his monosyllabic reply, she turned away and wandered the room. ‘‘Well, even if you are, I guess there’s no problem because Elfred just agreed to finance the repairs on this house, didn’t you, Elfred? You see, Mr. Farley, I don’t have any money. Well, that’s not exactly true. I had four hundred, but Elfred took two to buy this junk heap, leaving me with two hundred, which I intend to use to buy a motorcar.’’

  ‘‘A motorcar,’’ Farley repeated, the way an uncle would say to a five-year-old, ‘‘To Africa . . .’’

  ‘‘Don’t you laugh at me, Mr. Farley!’’

  ‘‘I’m not laughing at you.’’

  ‘‘Yes, you are. I’m not an idiot, nor am I incapable of making decisions for me and my girls, and I’ve decided I shall own a motorcar, come hell or high water.’’