Читать книгу The Summer Wives: Epic page-turning romance perfect for the beach - Beatriz Williams, Beatriz Williams - Страница 15

THERE HAS NEVER been any such thing as a hospital on Winthrop Island, as I later learned. Either you were sick enough to head for the hospital on the mainland, or you made do in your bed at home. This doctor—Dr. Huxley—didn’t have a regular practice here. He was a summer resident who made himself available for emergencies on the understanding that he wasn’t to be disturbed during cocktail hour or golf.

Lucky for Popeye, the good doctor was an early riser who just happened to live half a mile up Winthrop Road from Greyfriars. He set Popeye’s broken arm and stitched up the holes in his hide, and Mr. Fisher had him put up in one of the guest bedrooms with strict instructions to watch for signs of pneumonia.

“What about his family?” I said. “Shouldn’t we telephone them or something?”

Joseph looked down at me kindly. “He hasn’t got any family. Wife died two years ago. Kids moved to the mainland.”

“Oh, that’s a shame.”

“That’s the way it is on the Island, I guess. Kids move away.”

He was blushing a little, looking down at me, and I realized I still wore my old green flannel nightgown, which was wet with seawater and blood and stuck to my skin. I crossed my arms over my chest. Mr. Fisher and Dr. Huxley were upstairs with the maid, settling the patient in some spare bedroom or other. The kitchen was growing warm as the sun penetrated the window glass, and I noticed the smell of something baking, something sugary and vanilla-scented, something for the wedding, so I supposed the oven was on, too, adding to the general heat. I stared at the kitchen table, which Joseph had helped me clean up just now, dishcloths and hot water and vinegar that still stained the air. All immaculate, erased, you’d never know what happened. Just any old big kitchen on any old big summer estate. Two people standing in awkward proximity, like a pair of actors who’ve lost their place in the script.

Joseph started to turn away, toward the door.

“Want some coffee?” I said.

“Have you got any made? I mean you needn’t make fresh.”

“I think so.” I went to the electric percolator on the counter and lifted it. Heavy. Behind me, there was a faint scrape of a chair leg on the linoleum. I opened up a few cabinets, looking for coffee cups.

Joseph cleared his throat. “You must be the daughter, then. Mrs. Schuyler’s daughter.”

“Yes, I am.”

“Well, I’m sure sorry I ruined the big day for you.”

“Oh gosh, that’s nothing. I mean, he’s alive, isn’t he? That’s got to be good luck. Thanks to you. The day’s not ruined at all. Do you want cream or anything?”

“I’ll get it.”

The chair scraped again, and from the corner of my eye I saw him step to the icebox and open the door. He stood about an inch under six feet, and he still wore his yellow oilskin overalls atop his wet shirt, though his hair was beginning to dry in soft little waves around his ears. I turned toward him and offered the coffee cup.

“Thanks,” he said, dribbling a bit of cream from a small blue pitcher. “You?”

“Yes, please.”

He moved the pitcher over my cup and tilted it so the narrowest possible rope of yellow-white cream fell inside. “Say when.”

“When.”

He moved away, putting the cream back in the icebox, and I turned to the window so he wouldn’t catch me looking at the place where his hair met the back of his neck. I didn’t know much about boys, had hardly spent any time around a boy, and I couldn’t tell how old he was. Twenty? Twenty-one? Older than me, for certain. Though his skin was fresh and unlined, there was something fully grown about his shoulders, something wide and weight-bearing. And his voice had an easy, mature timbre, not like a boy’s voice at all.

Older than me. Maybe not all that much, but enough. Not a boy, after all, but a grown-up, a man who worked for his bread, whereas I was still a child, only just graduated from school. Eighteen last February. Eighteen going on eight, as unworldly as a kitten in a basket.

I stirred my coffee and sucked the spoon. Joseph came up next to me, not too close, and said, “How do you like the Island? You came up the other night, didn’t you?”

“Oh, it’s beautiful.” I set the spoon on the saucer. “How did you know? When I came up, I mean.”

“Miss Schuyler, here’s the first thing you need to know about the Island. Everyone knows each other’s business. All of it, about five minutes after it happens, if not sooner. Spreads through the air or something.” He paused to sip his coffee. “Also, I saw Isobel driving you back from the ferry.”

“Oh, of course.”

The window overlooked the lawn and the tents. Sometime during the fuss of the past hour, an old rust-red Ford truck had driven onto the grass, and a couple of men were now unloading crates from the back. Crystal and china, I guessed. I could just see the edge of the dock, and the tip of Popeye’s boat tethered up on the other side against the pale blue sky.

“It’s got the whole island buzzing,” Joseph said.

“What has?”

“Why, the wedding. Mr. Fisher’s a big man around here.”

I shifted my feet and looked down at the still, muddy surface of my coffee. “I don’t really know him that well. He’s been awfully nice to Mama.”

“I hear they met at your school? Your mother and Mr. Fisher?”

“Yes. Last year.” I paused, and the silence seemed so heavy and almost rude, given the tender, friendly way he’d asked the question, I rushed on. “At Isobel’s graduation? One of the events. I don’t really know which one, there’s so many of them, ceremonies and parties and things. My mother was a secretary in the president’s office, you see, ever since my father—well, since my father …” I stuttered to a stop, brought up short in the middle of all that flustered babbling by the thought of my father.

“Killed in the war, wasn’t he?” Joseph said, without embarrassment.

“Why, how did you know?”

“Like I said, the Island’s been talking about this for weeks, Miss Schuyler. Not that I listen to gossip much. But you can’t help hearing a few things, even without trying. My grandmother, she runs the general store in town. There’s nothing she doesn’t know.”

I glanced at him, and though he stared straight ahead, holding the cup to his lips like he was fascinated by the unloading of crystal and china, I thought he was smiling a little.

“Is that so?” I said. “What else have you heard?”

“Oh, just this and that.”

You know, it’s a funny thing. I didn’t know this boy, this man. Just his name and face and approximate age, and the fact that he trapped lobsters for a living, that he could swim, that he was the kind of fellow who would jump in the sea to save another fellow from drowning. He was a stranger, but he wasn’t. We’d held a bleeding, broken man between the two of us; we’d watched the eternity of life pass before us. Now we shared a pot of coffee. Stared out the same window, breathed the same air. So he wasn’t a stranger, but he was.

I set down my cup and turned around to hop up and sit on the counter. The clock on the opposite wall pointed its sharp black hands to a quarter past seven. A quarter past seven! I thought I’d lived a lifetime. I crossed my arms over my disgraceful nightgown and said—not to Joseph but to the room at large—“He taught at Foxcroft for eleven years. My father. He took a leave of absence to join up, so when he was killed, Miss Charlotte gave Mama a job to make ends meet. She’s like that, Miss Charlotte. Sort of tough and horsey, if you know what I mean, but heart of gold.”

“What did he teach?”

“Art. That’s why he volunteered, because he heard about what the Nazis were doing, looting and destroying all those treasures, and he couldn’t just—couldn’t stand by, he said …”

“A good man, then.”

“He was. Oh, he was. Of course, I was only eleven years old when he died. So maybe I never saw him as a real person, as somebody ordinary and fallen.”

“No,” Joseph said. “He fought for something he believed in. That’s a hero in anyone’s book.”

“Everybody fought. Mr. Fisher fought.”

“Yes, he did. Lucky for your mother, he got out alive, though.”

“Yes, lucky for her.”

“They say she’s a real beauty, your mother.”

“Mama? Oh yes. Haven’t you seen her?”

“Not up close, no. Just the photograph in the local rag.”

“Sometimes I just stare at her, you know, thinking it’s not possible anyone could be that beautiful. She was so young when she married Daddy. Only just eighteen. Can you imagine being a widow at twenty-nine? But she loved him so much, she just couldn’t look at anyone else for ever so long.”

He moved a little, turning his head to look at me. “What about you? Happy about all this?”

“Me? Of course I am. Why shouldn’t I be?”

“No reason.”

“Mama’s happy, the happiest I’ve ever seen her, at least since Daddy died. You can’t mourn forever, can you?”

“That’s true.”

“And I guess Mr. Fisher loves her back, because he’s not marrying her for money, that’s for certain.”

“A real Cinderella story, then.” He finished his coffee and moved to the sink. Rinsed out his cup. “Best be off. Got to take Silva’s tub back to the harbor. And Pops’ll be wondering where I am.”

“Can’t you signal him in or something? There’s plenty of coffee left.”

He smiled. “Pops’d never come in here. Not Greyfriars.”

“Really? Why not? Mr. Fisher’s not some kind of snob, is he?”

“A snob? No, nothing like that. I’ll say this about the Island. The Families and the locals, they respect each other, which is more than you can say of a lot of places like this.”

“The Families?”

“Summer residents. Like you.” He wiped his fingers on a dishtowel and held his hand out to me. “Real nice to meet you, Miss Schuyler. Wish it could have been under friendlier circumstances, of course, but it’s been a pleasure all the same.”

I slid down from the counter and shook his hand. “It’s Miranda.”

“Miranda.” He smiled again. “Admired Miranda! Indeed the top of admiration! Worth what’s dearest to the world.”

I snatched at the edge of the counter behind me. I think my mouth made an amazed circle. Outside the window, which was cracked open an inch or two, the birds sang like mad, thrilled to pieces at the beauty of the morning, and Joseph just stared at me like we were sharing a secret, and he was waiting for me to find out what it was.

Finally I said, “Why, how do you know—”

“Joseph! My goodness, what’s going on?”

We turned to the doorway, where Isobel Fisher stood, long limbed and done up in curlers, her yellow dressing gown belted at the waist.