Читать книгу Secret Summers - Glynda Shaw - Страница 13

We didn’t talk next morning nor all day about the strangeness of the wakeful period we’d shared between sleeps. Our elders were still in bed. We unpinned our nighties and put on the clothes from yesterday. We were pouring milk into bowls of granola in the kitchen, earnestly planning our day’s activities when Aunt Claire, frowsy from sleep, strode past us and out onto the porch to pick up the slim local newspaper, then started a pot of water heating on the stove. ”I never got to show you the lay of the land yesterday,” she remarked to me, scanning the headlines then tossing the paper onto the table.

“I can show her,” Monique assured. ”I must know your place as well as you.”

“That’s what worries me,” Claire said with a thin smile. ”Finish your breakfast and we can all have a walk around. I’ll show you the real mysteries of Sea Cliff Manor.” Monique shot me a sidewise glance as if to say, “Who’s she kidding?” but said nothing.

We heard a shower running, and soon Monique’s mother appeared in a loose yellow robe, a towel wrapped around her head. ”I’m afraid I’m late for my client,” she said. “Are you already for the morning, Monique?” Monique nodded, her mouth full of cereal. ”Great. I should be home by noon, two o’clock latest.” She disappeared into a bedroom and reappeared without the towel and wearing sandals but with her appearance otherwise little changed.

“Dinner at my place tonight?” Claire asked.

“Sounds fine to me,” Laina said. ”Saves shopping today.” She kissed my aunt on the mouth, Monique on one full cheek, patted my shoulder, and darted out the door, down the steps, and toward the little car parked by the road.

“Could have offered us a ride,” Claire remarked, pouring granola and spooning up a dry mouthful.

The road from Monique’s house climbed steeply to the cliff top property where Aunt Clair and I lived. We puffed along the long incline, then turned off into the rather unkempt frontage of my aunt’s property along the road. Strongly now, I heard the whup-whup-whup-whup that I’d remarked several times previously. Coming around the south end of the house, I saw the row of windmills spinning in the seaside breeze and the mysterious machinery that companioned them.

“So that’s the noise I kept hearing,” I said.

“And will continue hearing,” my aunt informed. ”Nothing like this on the Pacific Coast or anywhere else probably.”

“Really?”

“Really. Let me show you.” Careful not to walk too near the spinning wooden blades now blurred by their rapid motion, we moved in from behind to inspect belts, not unlike car fan belts, which led from reels on the backs of the windmills to corresponding reels on tube-shaped devices that, in turn, were mated to square, flat tanks covered by loosely fitting lids and vented around their sides. The pans were arranged somewhat like three, shallow stair steps, the bottom of one at about the level of its next neighbor’s top.

“Do you make electricity?” I asked intrigued but confused. I recalled an article in our Weekly Reader at school about farmers during the Great Depression making their own electricity with wind power.

“No,” she laughed. ”Power’s too cheap to make it worthwhile generating electricity just for household use, but I needed heat, a lot of it.” Taking my hand, she placed it near one of the side vents on the middle pan. I felt hot dampness wafting from it. Claire lifted the lid then showing just water inside so far as I could see. Metal tubes zigzagged back and forth through the tank near the bottom, from which minute bubbles were rising.

“Why?” I began.

“Dip your finger in,” she said. ”Taste.” It was salty, real salty. Rapidly she moved from pan to pan touching each in turn. The third and final one was crusted on the bottom with white salt crystals. ”Not done yet,” she declared, “but soon.”

“So you make salt?” I said not real intelligently.

“And other things,” she said. ”Lots of demand these days for genuine sea salt with all of its health-giving benefits. Doesn’t hurt that it’s made by a genuine proclaimed witch. This first pan,” she stepped over to the highest one, “is where the sea water first comes in just after it’s filtered. It gives off the most water vapor. We condense that to make our pure Pacific Windblown Water which we sell down at the Co-op. There are the herb gardens as well. All taken together it keeps me off the street.” Monique, who’d obviously heard the lecture before and those that would follow, had slipped away. I saw her examining something near the house.

Claire led me then to where a greenhouse stood at the end of a double row of raised beds. She rattled off more names than I could comprehend, but I recall comfrey, mullein, several kinds of thyme, sage, savory, rosemary, yes, and parsley, ginger, fennel, on and on. We returned then to the south side of the house, and here were a number of fruit and nut trees, cherry, walnut, hazelnuts, apple, pear, and—what I was informed was—a grape arbor covered with vines and tiny buds, which, I was assured, would be grapes by high summer.

The carport was along the north side of the house, and my bedroom overlooked the cliff on the northwest corner. From out here I could see what hadn’t been apparent from my bedroom window. The portion of the house that comprised my room, bathroom-hallway alcove, and part of the kitchen weren’t just braced from below but were braced by structure that went down, fully enclosed, to the beach under the cliff. There was a door down there and clearly a room or rooms within the lower part of the tower, probably more than one story if I were any judge.

Aunt Claire led me along a path through the scrub brush, which grew near the cliff on this side of the house, and down a nearly concealed pathway that led downward at an angle away from my room and descended beneath rock outcroppings and between dead tree trunks down to the beach, gaining the sand just above the high water mark. ”Don’t ever try this in the dark,” Claire advised.

And why would I even think of something so stupid? I remarked, though not aloud. With my aunt leading and me doing my best not to snag my still rather unfamiliar clothes on branches and sharp rocks, we worked our way down the trail. A pebble skittering past alerted me that Monique was now catching up. Aunt Claire, reaching the sand, turned back southward to come up again abreast of the house. Monique caught my eye and pointed back toward my bedroom looking meaningful. I began a question, but she placed her finger on her lips and both of us fell into step.

“My office,” Claire said, glancing at the solid door in the downward extension of the house. I saw the “tower” was based on concrete pylons with three feet of empty space beneath the lowest floor. Even an unusually high tide wouldn’t likely swamp the lower level. A set of four aluminum stairs, whitened in the salt air, mounted to the door. ”Plenty of time for that another day,” she said. At another time I might have objected, but just now I was more interested in getting topside again to see what Monique had found. I’m afraid I heard only part of what my aunt was telling me as we continued south along the beach.

“You didn’t hear so much about the Pacific Coast as the Atlantic, back in the old days, I mean,” she told us. “There was fur trading all along this coast and shipping from China and the Hawaiian Islands. Smugglers and pirates aplenty, though the history books don’t speak much of them. It was an exciting place to be a century and a half ago.” She ran on like this for perhaps a mile or so down the beach and then back again, with us aching to turn toward home, but Monique kept her mouth shut, so I figured whatever it was it must be something not to be shared with our elders. Finally, we reached again the foot of the tower. Aunt Claire fished a ring of keys from her skirt pocket. ”You two go on up if you want to,” she said meditatively. I’ve got something to do down here.”

We didn’t need to be asked twice!