After the Fire Page 6

  “I want her to be a good dog,” Red said earnestly. “I want her to be responsible.”

  As Sally settled to discuss a training program, Sarah withdrew her attention and focused instead on Karen.

  “Well, have you gotten over Peggy by now?”

  “She wasn’t a disease,” Karen said, trying for a lightness of tone.

  “Not everyone would agree with you,” Sarah said wryly.

  “So bad-mouthing Peggy is still a local sport.”

  “She certainly never deserved your sort of loyalty.”

  Blackie, suddenly bored with the conversation between Sally and Red, bounded over to Sarah and Karen.

  “I wonder if I should get one of these,” Karen said, reaching down to the tumbling puppy. “Maybe Red and I could learn together.”

  “Are you interested in her?” Sarah asked in surprise.

  “Interested?” Karen repeated. “I like her. On this island, friendship isn’t a lost art.”

  These people were no more friends of Peggy’s than they had been of Karen’s. If she hadn’t yet made real friendships here, at least her connections with people like Red and Hen were based on the good opinion she had of them.

  “Dogs have always been more reliable than lovers,” Sarah said, amused.

  “Milly,” Henrietta said, putting down her coffee cup, “what have you got against that young woman?”

  They were sitting in Henrietta’s living room and had been watching first Karen and then two young women they didn’t know make their way across Henrietta’s boulder-and log-strewn beach.

  “I don’t have anything against her,” Milly replied. “I simply say, ‘birds of a feather flock together,’ and, unless I’m very much mistaken, those two women are queer or gay or whatever the term is these days. Have you ever seen Karen with a man?”

  “She’s with young men all the time.”

  “Of course, but trying to be one of them, making a fool of herself at fire practice, working for the ferries.”

  “She’s not the first woman to work on the ferries,” Henrietta protested.

  “Have you ever taken a good look at the others?”

  This was not the sort of conversation Henrietta liked to be involved in. More and more often recently she found herself regretting the time she spent with Milly, but then she thought, poor soul, having to go through the change on her own and now facing an operation. It was no time to think about drawing back.

  Henrietta remembered herself very well at that age, the long hours of irrational weeping. The grief had seemed to her real enough at the time, even when Hart could neither understand nor sympathize. He had always been patient. Of course he couldn’t feel the loss of those babies as she did. They had never been anything but her miscarriages to him. He could have understood if her grief had been for Peter, sixteen years old when a drunk crossed the line and killed him two weeks after he’d passed his driver’s test. She did grieve for Peter, of course, and would all her life, but he’d had a life of his own, however short, which those others had not. Her dying womb, hemorrhaging month after month, held all those past failures within it.

  “It’s a hard time,” Henrietta said to Milly, abruptly returning to their earlier conversation.

  “Did you have a hysterectomy?” Milly asked.

  “No.”

  “At least it was natural for you then.”

  “A natural disaster?” Henrietta mused.

  “Well, it’s the first thing that’s made my daughter sit up and take notice.”

  “Oh, and wouldn’t you rather they didn’t?” Henrietta asked. “Part of me dreads Hart Jr.’s visits. He always wants to do something, and there’s nothing to be done. I’d much rather he’d just be getting on with his own life and not worrying about me.”

  “I like being worried about,” Milly asserted.

  “I’m here after all,” Henrietta offered. “I can take you in and visit you and bring you home. Between us, Red and I can give you all the nursing you need.”

  “I know,” Milly said, “and I am grateful. But it doesn’t hurt Bonnie to think about someone else for a change, particularly her mother!”

  The coffee pot was empty, and Henrietta didn’t offer to make another. She was taking Miss James to the pub for lunch, and she wanted time to tidy up before she left. One of Milly’s real virtues was that she was quick to pick up such signals and good-humored about them.

  “I’ll be going along then, Hen,” she said. “You are a comfort, you know. Whenever there was anything wrong with me, Forbes was no earthly use. He called me ‘Dred’ when I was pregnant. He thought it was funny.”

  “I’ve never heard a good joke about a pregnant woman,” Henrietta said as she fetched Milly’s coat.

  “And that’s the pain you don’t forget,” Milly said.

  The unhealed wound in Milly was humiliation, and Henrietta knew no cure for it. She was afraid it was like arthritis, which simply got worse. Physical pain was easier to be resigned to, and one never had the illusion that sharing it around might lessen it. Milly did really hope that by humiliating other people she might get some real relief. She might be abandoned by her husband, neglected by her children, but at least she was white, at least she wasn’t a pervert.

  “Come in and have a sherry,” Miss James said.

  Henrietta accepted the suggestion, which was ritual. In Miss James’ small living room she could hear well enough Henrietta’s shouted comments; once they got to the pub, Miss James was reduced to talking.

  The sherry glasses were crystal. All of the few things Miss James had were good, but none of them looked out of place in her modest cottage. Miss James practiced a kind of elegant simplicity Henrietta admired and secretly aspired to if great old age were to be her lot. But Miss James had been free never to acquire beyond her own needs and to give away what she no longer wanted.

  “How’s Sadie getting along?” Miss James wanted to know.

  “Very well, I think,” Henrietta reported in a loud voice. “Dickie’s friends are being wonderful. I did tell Riley they shouldn’t be too generous with the gin or we’d have another fire on our hands.”

  “She isn’t still on about Red, is she?”

  “No, I think she’s forgotten all about that. I wish Red would.”

  “Did you know Red’s got herself a dog?”

  “No!”

  “She was here to show it to me this morning,” Miss James said. “A little bit of a thing at the moment, but it’s going to be a good-sized dog.”

  “Is that a good idea?” Henrietta asked.

  “Oh, I think so,” Miss James said, and she smiled. “It makes me think Red may live long enough to learn how to be young. She’s very serious about it, of course, but nobody can help enjoying a puppy, not even Red.”

  Henrietta found herself trying to imagine Red living here with a dog.

  “She’ll have it trained before it moves in here,” Miss James said, either reading Henrietta’s mind or simply on the same track. “I’ve changed my will.”

  “I’m glad of that for Red. If we’re not the only family she’s got, we’re all she’ll admit to.”

  “I asked her the other day if Red Smith was her real name because I wanted to mention her in my will. I thought I could say that much. She said as far as she knew it was, except that Red was a nickname for Scarlet. Her mother must have seen Gone With The Wind and then decided it was too much. Or Red did it herself.”

  “Scarlet!”

  “Smith’s more likely to be made up, but I don’t think that should cause any trouble,” Miss James said. “Anybody could say Red’s the one I meant, whatever her real name is.”

  “Is she frightened of being found, even now?”

  “I wouldn’t be surprised,” Miss James said.

  They had finished their sherry. Henrietta helped Miss James on with her fur-collared coat and watched her settle her fur-trimmed hat with the aid of a mirror in an inlaid frame hanging just by the door.

 
“I had an old aunt,” Miss James said, “who said to me, ‘Lily Anne, you can choose to be poor; just don’t be shabby.’”

  “Did you choose to be poor?”

  “I chose to defy my daddy,” Miss James said in a pure Virginia accent, “which amounted to the same thing. But poor’s never been the real word for the way I’ve lived. I’ve never wanted for anything.”

  Henrietta looked forward to their hour at the pub when Miss James would tell stories of her life as a teacher, never more than a few years in the same place, always moving on until she seemed to have been nearly everywhere, even up to Alaska. It was when she came back down the inland passage and visited Victoria that she’d discovered the Gulf Islands and decided to retire on one of them. She had bought this little house years ago, but she hadn’t come to live in it until she was well into her seventies. She liked to say she’d be teaching still if her hearing hadn’t gone.

  Milly supposed she would have to let Hen take her into the hospital. Otherwise her own car would be in town, available to her daughter for gallivanting around to see her own friends, to see her father, making a holiday out of what Milly wanted to be a hard and demanding vigil. But Milly disliked how often Hen managed to catch her up in good deeds. Now she would become one of them. Henrietta didn’t have real friends. People for her were projects like Red and Sadie and old Miss James. Even her husband was no more to her than a twice weekly duty. Henrietta lost interest in people without needs. Without this operation to involve herself in, she would probably be losing interest in Milly, who had noticed how often Hen simply dismissed her, as she had this morning.

  Milly hated Saturdays, nothing but the opera to listen to on the radio, nothing to watch on the one channel her TV picked up. Though the bleeding had stopped and the afternoon was sunny, she felt too weak to go out for a walk. But by dinner time boredom had conquered her fatigue. One more game of solitaire and she’d go mad!

  Though it was extravagant on her limited budget, Milly determined to treat herself to dinner at the pub. She could sit at one of the small tables so that no couple could take pity on her and join her. How Milly hated those talkative wives glad of any company to distract them from their resigned, doggedly eating husbands. But the few garrulous husbands were even worse, with nothing in their brains but jokes and facts, among which it was hard to distinguish what to laugh at. As for the young men, Milly flinched at the thought of being treated as Sadie was—a worn and blowsy drunk to be humored along. What a sorry state her life was in when even such company as she would find at the pub was better than her own.

  That Karen Tasuki was working tonight. Milly watched her with speculative interest, and, when she came to take Milly’s order, Milly decided to probe a little.

  “Where are those friends of yours?”

  “Friends?” Karen repeated.

  “The ones I saw walking on the beach this morning, the two holding hands.”

  “Oh, just friends of friends here for the weekend,” Karen said, obviously trying to distance herself from them.

  “Where are they staying?”

  “With me … just until tomorrow.”

  “Why aren’t they here at the pub?”

  “Oh, they brought their own food.”

  “I don’t suppose a place like this would appeal to them,” Milly suggested.

  “They were here last night,” Karen said. “Are you ready to order?”

  “You needn’t take offense.”

  “I’m not,” Karen said, looking around. “It’s getting pretty crowded. I don’t really have time to chat.”

  Milly ordered a small fish and chips with a carafe of white wine which, after she’d finished her meal, she could go on sipping for a couple of hours if she felt like it.

  There were more weekenders here than usual, as sure a sign of the coming of spring as snowdrops or crocuses. How young and affluent and healthy they looked, some with winter-holiday tans, their jackets and Scandinavian sweaters no older than last Christmas. If their children had come to the island with them, they were left at home with spaghetti and the choice of a hundred channels on their dish-wired TVs.

  Fifteen years ago there had been no pub, and dishes were still in the future. When she and Forbes came over with all three children, Milly had to cook, and the kids were thrown back on such old-fashioned entertainments as cards and jigsaw puzzles. City-spoiled and restless for their friends, they hated to come this early in the year. Once summer arrived they were happy enough to be here, part of a gang of summer children who didn’t mix much with the locals, though her son Martin would remember Dickie John.

  In only fifteen years, Milly wanted to call over to those young people, you’ll be just like me, an old crow in an empty nest. And in another fifteen years I’ll be just like them, Milly mused, as two old widows came in together, not friends so much as sharers of complaints about their health, their children and their pensions. She could imagine that future as she couldn’t have imagined this future for herself fifteen years ago. Then, life beyond children was going to be South American cruises and trips to Europe.

  Why under these circumstances Milly didn’t long for death she didn’t know. Even the taste of this very good fish and chips, which Karen had delivered like a bowling ball, could cheer Milly until she defined such pleasure as living for her food.

  “Why’s a good-looking girl like you sitting all by herself on a Saturday night?”

  He was Chas Kidder, a classmate of Forbes, who had bought a place here not long after they had.

  “Not waiting for my prince to come, I can assure you,” Milly said wryly.

  “Well then, maybe I’ll do. May I join you?”

  Milly nodded. “What brings you here so early in the year?”

  “Better than staying home and fighting with my wife,” he answered flippantly. “How are you, Milly? I mean, really, how are you?”

  She knew better than to think Chas was genuinely concerned. That tone, that emphasis, that eye contact all came from a middle-management course on how to fire people without pain.

  “Just as you can see,” she replied, knowing she’d been skillful with her rouge as well as her eye make-up.

  “Never better, eh? I saw your ex the other day, and I can’t say the same for him. A girl that young isn’t becoming to a man his age, makes him look old and foolish. ‘You know you’ve traded down, don’t you?’ I said to him.”

  “And he knew you were jealous,” Milly said.

  “No, Milly, I’m not. All he’s asking for are bills and back trouble.”

  He signaled Karen and put a possessive hand on her arm as he ordered. Chas was the kind of man to make a clear distinction between responsibility and appetite.

  “She’s a waste of your time,” Milly said when Karen had left the table.

  “I’m sure of it,” Chas said good-naturedly.

  “She’s not interested in men.”

  “I never believe that about a woman unless I get it firsthand,” Chas said and laughed.

  Milly had never realized just how humiliating it was to have the man you were with try to fondle a waitress. She wanted to get up and leave, but she couldn’t sacrifice half a carafe of wine and be more of an embarrassment to herself than to Chas.

  “How’s your wife?” Milly asked.

  “Oh, tired of me, Milly. I’ll have to work myself into the grave. If I ever retired, she’d throw me out of the house.”

  “That’s a long way off in any case,” Milly said in a kindlier tone.

  “Fifteen years,” Chas said.

  He was, like Forbes, five years older than herself, and he was seeing more realistically into the future now that the children were gone and not blocking his view.

  “She said a funny thing to me the other day. She said in a way she envied you because you were young enough still to make a life for yourself.”

  “What’s a life for yourself?” Milly asked wryly. “Well, I’ll never have to cook brussels sprouts again. There’s that.”
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  “You know, I like my wife,” Chas said. “I don’t really think she likes me. Men don’t seem to wear as well somehow, I can’t imagine living with one. How do women manage?”

  “Don’t ask me,” Milly said.

  “Don’t you really think you’re better off?”

  “Better off?” Milly asked, incredulous, “in my ’sixty-nine VW, in a house not meant to be lived in in winter, twenty years away from the old age pension?”

  “You’d rather marry again?”

  “Certainly not!” Milly said. “I’m not that hard up.”

  When they had finished dinner and their wine, someone began to play the piano, and two guitars were being taken out of their cases.

  “I’m not old enough for the sing-along,” Milly said, getting ready to go.

  Chas reached over and took her check.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  “My pleasure, Milly,” he said and made an effort to rise to his feet.

  She supposed he would drink until closing time and then try his luck. Milly was certain Karen would not disappoint her, nor would she disappoint Chas all that much. He was the sort of man to marry, and Milly couldn’t abide him.

  Chapter VI

  CHAS KIDDER WAS DRUNK at the end of the evening and clumsily direct in his approach to Karen.

  “You’re old enough to be my father,” Karen said.

  “Is Hilly right about you then? Don’t you like men?”

  “No friend of Milly’s is a friend of mine,” Karen said, anger overcoming her fear.

  “Don’t you?” Chas demanded again.

  “Don’t she what?” Adam asked, belligerent himself by this time of night.

  “Ah, nothing,” Chas said, giving Adam a friendly-jab in the arm.

  Karen saw how old Chas Kidder really was, how easily a younger man could deflect and defeat him. She thought of her father who didn’t have to try to pick up young women in bars because he had his pick among his college students.

  In fact, Karen didn’t much like men though that had nothing to do with her being attracted to women. She felt sorry for women who were attracted to men, whether they liked them or not. But, as she drove home, hoping that Sally and Sarah were already asleep, Karen admitted to herself that there weren’t many women she liked either.