old backpack against his pristine beige suit made her smile. “I can’t believe you’ve been carrying this yourself,” he remarked, leading her from the station.
“Oh, I’m deceptively sturdy,” she assured him, flexing her calf to reveal a runner’s muscle. She was remarkably slim but very well formed, with particularly beautiful skin.
“How did Louise take it when you told her where you were spending the summer?”
“I haven’t actually told her. Luckily I have a friend whose family has a cottage in P-town. She’s going to let me use it as a return address for Mother all summer.”
“Good thinking. But what if she tries to call you?”
“I told her the cottage didn’t have a phone.”
“Implausible, but original.”
“Thank you for letting me come.”
“Tell me that after dusting 117 clocks.”
“Time must really matter to you!”
“I also own an antiques shop.”
“I love old things,” she said in a rush, then immediately flushed. Hugo threw the bag in the back of his car and opened the door for Bettie.
On the way home he took her through the village, where he showed her his shop and Marguerite’s book store, up the Cliff Road to Anthony Newton’s mansion, down again to the beach and then back to his house by the road through the woods.
Bettie stared at him whenever she thought she might risk it. Then they arrived at his old stone house and he took her inside. Bettie was placed in the redecorated attic bedroom, as far away from Laura’s room as possible.
“I have a girl friend,” Hugo explained as he showed her where everything was. “She’s in New York now but she’ll be back in a week or so.”
“Is she into it?” Bettie asked before wondering whether this was a discreet question.
“She’s my illustrator.”
“Oh!”
“I’d advise you to turn her into an ally as quickly as possible,” Hugo disclosed, piling logs into her hearth for later in the evening. “And by the way,” he added, “I’m not really your uncle. Your mother was adopted. I guess she never told you that.”
“No, she never did.” Bettie sat down on the bench at the foot of the bed and stared at him in astonishment.
“She always knew about it. That’s probably why she warned you to stay away from me. She remembered that we aren’t blood relations and doesn’t trust me with you.”
Bettie Brandon was a quiet, intense, thoughtful, cautious, compulsively meticulous little creature that was seen but seldom heard for the first several days of her visit. She wrote constantly in black marble notebooks with cartridge pens and was reading Crime and Punishment. Her favorite walk was to and from the Random Point post office, where Hugo had obtained a box for her to receive correspondence over the summer.
Hugo was disappointed the first time he sat her down at a computer to input some letters, to discover that Bettie couldn’t touch type. He shook his head as she began to hunt and peck, knowing that this would never do.
“Young lady, the first thing you’re doing is going to summer school to learn how to type,” he told her firmly, and the next morning drove her to Woodbridge High School to enroll her in a class. In a couple of days he was gratified to see her attacking the pile of letters without looking at the keyboard.
One afternoon, after presenting Hugo with an almost perfect letters column for his next issue, Bettie said, “Hugo, may I ask your advice?”
“Sure, Bettie, what’s on your mind?”
“Well, obviously I’ve never met someone through an ad before and I’m going on my first date tonight. What should I expect?”
“Who are you seeing?”
“A man named John Philpot. He’s coming from Boston. We’re meeting at a coffee house in P-town.”
“Philpot, eh?” Hugo searched for the name in his customer database. “I can’t tell you too much about him, I’m afraid. He’s bought three issues of the journal. That’s about it. Did you get a photo?”
“No.”
“Bad.”
“Really?”
“You tell me after the meeting.”
“He’s 27 and a construction worker. He says he’s buff and tanned from his work.” Hugo smiled.
“Have you spoken on the phone?”
“No.”
“That was your second mistake.”
“Why?”
“He might not be your type.”
“I never thought to get a phone number,” she mused, beginning to feel less than confident about her first scene date.
“You’ll know better next time,” he told her.
“Do you think he’s going to want to, or, I mean, try to ... you know...”
“Spank you?”
Bettie nodded, her flushing rose.
“Well, I’m sure he’ll want to, but he probably won’t try unless you give him the green light.”
“Really?” she brightened. “You mean I don’t have to play with him if I don’t want to?”
“Of course not.”
“But, how do I get out of it if he asks?”
“You mean without hurting his feelings?”
“Yes!”
“I suppose you wrote him a fairly provocative letter?” Bettie nodded with embarrassment. “All right, here’s my advice: Plead youth and ignorance. Tell him you’ve suddenly realized that you’re not quite ready to play yet.”
“Do you think he’ll accept that?”
“He’ll be heartbroken but he’ll accept it.”
“Okay. Good.”
“Or, you could be a perfect angel, wear jeans, take a walk down to the coast line and take advantage of a certain fallen drift log that’s been in P-town ever since I can remember, and let him give you a dozen or so swats over your pants.”
“Really?”
“Why not? You have to get your first spanking sometime and the man’s coming all the way from Boston to meet you.”
