I catch myself saying to her, Alison, I’m sorry. I’ve screwed up with our children. Then I’m surprised at having said her name way inside myself. I guess the truth is I don’t miss her that much, not any more. I did, but she’s so conclusively gone.’
‘I think I understand that,’ Leonie said. To be gone didn’t necessarily mean death. There were other withdrawals and disconnections that were no less final.
‘And other times I think that the two of them might still have grown into the angry, pained women they seem to be now, even if their mother had been around.’
‘Perhaps. Or perhaps their anger and pain just seem more pronounced to you, because they allow you to see it. Even expect you to deal with it for them. Which means they have faith in you.’
‘I don’t know.’ The words broke out of him. ‘I don’t know anything. I thought I did, when they were younger. Then, after Alison died everything seemed to break up and get washed away. I shouldn’t have brought them here this summer. Neither of them really wanted to come and I thought it would be good for us all.’
‘You don’t know for sure that it isn’t. And it is only a vacation.’
Leonie heard rather than saw that he was suddenly smiling. ‘You could be right. And if we hadn’t come, you and I wouldn’t have met.’
She considered this. The acknowledgement that their meeting was significant was important to her, but all the time she was aware of taking steps that she couldn’t retrace. Nor do I want to retrace any steps, she thought. I don’t want to go backwards, to anywhere I already know.
She nodded her head and let her chin rest on her knees. The day’s heat was beginning to drain out of the air. They sat in silence for a while, listening to the sea fretting at the shingle, comfortable with the beach and the sky, and with one another’s company. They had come to the good place and nothing had happened to discolour it.
In the end it was only the thought of the rocky causeway and the rising tide that made them turn back again. Leonie led the way across the top of the island, familiar with the twists of the path even in the fading light. When they reached the last headland and the secluded crescent of Moon Island Beach they stood for a moment to look at the five houses. Their roofs and gables were black and strong against the navy-blue sky.
Neither John nor Leonie said anything more before they reached the Captain’s House and bade one another good-night, but she knew they had come an extra distance together. As she went up the steps to the Beams’ house she felt happy and calm, as she had not done for a long time.
Elizabeth laid a tray with a lace cloth and three bone china cups and saucers, and set a silver cream jug beside them with a beaded net over the rim. She was folding napkins, in case her guests chose to eat fragile lemon cookies, when she heard the knock at the door.
Marian and Hannah were standing together on the porch. They looked so incongruous side by side that Elizabeth had to tuck in the corners of her mouth to conceal a smile. Marian was eye-opening in a full-skirted scarlet sun-dress, which showed the top of her freckled cleavage, and her hanks of hair were tied up with a red bandanna. Silver hoops the size of handcuffs swung in her ears
Hannah wore brown and a long-sleeved woollen cardigan that denied the heat of the day. She inclined her little round head towards the pots of marigolds and cineraria splashing over the step. ‘The garden looks fair, Elizabeth,’ she murmured.
‘Thank you. Turner Hanscom does well enough, if he’s watched.’
Marian was exclaiming that she and Hannah had met out in the road and they were both ready for business. Elizabeth led the way through the cool house to the evening room. When she brought in the coffee tray Marian was sitting back in one of the armchairs with her skirt making a creased pool of colour around her. She nodded at the cut flowers in the vases and an embroidery frame standing close to the hearth.
‘Always makes me feel I ought to be on my best behaviour, your house, Elizabeth.’
Elizabeth glanced at the other woman’s big bare feet. Marian had been wearing flipflops, but she had kicked them off. ‘Is that so, Marian?’
She handed the coffee cups that had been her mother’s and her grandmother’s before that. They were gold-rimmed with a pattern of blue flowers, and the touch of them and their fragility always gave her satisfaction, even today.
It was time to finalise their arrangements for Pittsharbor Day. The twenty-first of August was only a short time away.
The date was said to be the birthday of Benjamin Pitt, who had arrived at the coast from southern Maine in 1770 with a group of settlers in search of grazing land. There were still Pitts living in the vicinity, but the commemoration of their ancestor had been a date in the local summer calendar for little more than twenty years. It was true that the festival was regarded as something to please the tourists rather than the townspeople themselves, but the summer visitors liked it and it raised some funds for the town, so every year there were fun runs and craft stalls, exhibitions of local artwork in the library and Main Street galleries, and a Fish Fry on the town landing. Bunting was zigzagged across the street and a softball tournament was held on the green alongside the church.
Marian Beam was a great enthusiast for the day. It had become a tradition in the last few years for the houses on the bluff to run a wild blueberry bake stall. Marian had suggested the idea originally and the others had fallen in with her, because baking and selling was in the end easier than playing softball or taking a part in one of Amy Purrit’s Pittsharbor Musical Revues. Marian contributed her energy, her army of family helpers and tubs of wild blueberries bought from one of the farmers on the town road. Elizabeth lent her name and her mother’s recipes, and did some of the baking, but it was Hannah who did the bulk of the work. She was the best cook out of the three of them, although Jennifer Bennison had been a good assistant.
Marian took out a pen and began writing in a notebook. ‘I don’t suppose we can count on the Duhane girls for too much.’
Her pen stopped. The room went so quiet that the sea sounded like the steady pulse of blood in the chambers of their ears. Doone Bennison had drowned on 22 August last year. Elizabeth remembered the bunting flags hanging motionless from their strings as the police vehicle drove her body away from the town landing. Only an hour before, Jennifer Bennison had telephoned her to ask if she had happened to see her daughter sailing out of the bay. Jennifer said she must have taken her boat out early, while everyone was still asleep.
‘Don’t worry,’ Elizabeth had reassured her pointlessly. But still, she had been unable to settle to any of the tasks that were waiting for her. She had walked into town, telling herself she would collect the plates and dishes she had lent out for the bake stall. And she had been standing outside the town house as the news had run up Main Street like a freak wave.
When she heard that the child had drowned she had to grope for the nearby fence to hold herself upright. Her head turned towards Moon Island, although she couldn’t see even the harbour water from where she was standing. What had Doone seen or done? She was an awkward child with an air of melancholy about her and Elizabeth had not known her well. But now she was possessed by certainty that there was a link between Doone and the old story; one which seemingly renewed itself, generation on generation. Elizabeth’s stomach had churned with a mess of shock and guilt, as though she might have saved Doone if she had tried, as if the drowning was
