It did not rain or blow, and almost everybody went out to haul. Toward noon she washed herself carefully and put on a new yellow shirt, called “gold” in the catalog, and new slacks and sneakers. She found a lightweight cotton jacket of Barry’s to wear. Her raincoat hung on a hook in the entry, and she hadn’t worn it for so long that it had become like something dead; she felt a twinge of revulsion and then guilt when she brushed against it. It had been her companion for a long time; she couldn’t remember the exact moment when she had forsaken it.
Outside it was quiet and empty, except for the birds. Older children had gone back to school, and younger ones were having naps. So were some of the women, who had got up at daybreak when their husbands did. She had a thrilling sensation of invisibility as she walked through the village and then across the lower meadow toward the woods.
With the sun almost overhead there was a strange light among the spruces, and the sun’s heat brought a resinous scent that spoke of summer. Her feet moved without sound on the thick floor of old red-brown spills and dense moss. She could have been utterly alone on the island, in the world, except for the flock of crossbills that at one time accompanied her, unseen in their progress among the spruce tops but communicative.
She came out beyond the deep rock slash of Barque Cove and went along a rough trail above the black volcanic shore to Wood Cove. Here she sat on a boulder and smoked, watching two boats working close to a ledge that occasionally threw up an explosive burst of spray. She did not allow herself to think of what might or might not lie ahead in Ship Cove, but concentrated on externals: birds, boats, scents, and the long-drawn-out rattle of shingle being dragged out by the light surf.
Then she walked on, climbing up and inching down among the jagged peaks of dark rock. At last she came to Ship Cove, a gleaming slant of pale sea-smoothed stones and a great jumble of driftwood; she saw the splintered half of a skiff enmeshed in a wiry brown tangle of last year’s beach peas. She saw the fresh colors of a buoy in the rockweed, and went down to it. It was Owen’s, and the trap was nearby. She set about freeing it, working with all her strength, yanking, skidding, soaking her feet and the bottoms of her slacks. Finally she had the trap cleared and the warp unsnarled, coiled up, and put inside. She looked for another buoy; he’d said three. She found one in a crevice. She had to discard her jacket now; she was warm from her struggles. But at last she had this warp untangled from a water-soaked derelict spruce. In sodden squelching sneakers she was climbing about the rocks looking for the third buoy when all at price Owen was there. She hadn’t heard the outboard.
Suddenly lightheaded, she realized that she had hardly believed he would come. Yet he nodded up at her as if he, at least, had never been in any doubt of her.
He came to the two freed traps, each with its buoys and coiled warp tucked inside. He stood looking at them, his hands in his pockets, his head canted. Then he grinned. “Your work, by the looks of you.”
She saw then the smears of crushed rockweed on her new slacks and shirt, the wet patches, felt the stickiness of sweat on her neck and forehead. She felt ridiculous standing there, mute and dirty. But as if he didn’t notice he said, “Come on down and rest from your labors and have a cigarette.” Without watching to see if she obeyed he went up the beach and sat down in the shade. She could have disappeared while his back was turned and she felt the temptation like a great sea trying to knock her off her feet. But it receded, leaving only its roaring in her ears, and she was on her way to Owen. She saw everything with fierce clarity, and even stopped to pick up a piece of glass turned amethyst. When she sat down on the log beside him she held up the glass to her eye and looked at the sea through it.
“Better that way ? “ Owen asked her.
“A change.” She laid the glass on the log between them and took the cigarette he offered her. She had got steady again. She could even lean forward to the matter.
“You like change,” he said.
“Doesn’t everybody?”
He picked up the glass and studied her through it. “Gives you a hell of a complexion.” They both laughed. Her confidence increased. They smoked without speaking. Behind them the wood was silent except for the small twitterings that came and went. They sat in its shadow, lost in it to anyone out on the water.
“What did you come here today for?” he said suddenly.
“For a walk. I often come down this way.” She played with the glass again, watching a gull through it.
“Why just this time? Why not earlier, or later?”
“I came out when I had my work done—oh, all right,” she heard herself saying. “All right. Why were you so damned explicit about where you were going to be, and when?” She started to get up but he grabbed her forearm and pulled her down again.
“All right, you’re here. Sit still. I was explicit, as you call it, because I’m a goddam fool. I went to sleep last night knowing it, and I woke up this morning knowing it. What’s your excuse?”
“Curiosity. Did I get the message or wasn’t there a message?” They looked at each other, she steadied by the violence of his outburst against himself. “Oh, there was a message all right, but last night wasn’t the first one.”
“You said something the night you came looking for Barry to help you shut off the harbor.”
“What?”
“That Barry never knew where I was. What did you mean by that?”
“Just that. He never does know, does he? I don’t mean right now I mean even when he’s looking at you he doesn’t know.”
She moved away from him out into the sunshine, sitting on the warm stones with her back to him and began unlacing her soaked sneakers. That’s too deep for me,” she said.
“You don’t want to admit it, do you? But you give him a hell of a hard time. He praises you up to everybody. My wife this, my wife that. But underneath he’s puzzled and sometimes he’s scared foolish. He’s a nice little guy, but a nervous little guy.”
She looked back at him furiously. “How do you know all this? Are you a mind-reader? A psychiatrist? And do you talk this over with all your relatives over a cup of coffee? Got us torn into shreds and shoved under the microscope?”
His hand was on the nape of her neck. “Listen,” he said. “I’ve talked about you to nobody. Understand? What I think is my business. And right now, yours.” She shut her eyes. The light grip of his fingers sent a torrent of desire over her like warm water. She could have drowned in it easily, but pride held her up. She fumbled for words.
“B-Barry’s all right. He’s been unhappy because he never got anywhere. Now he thinks he’s in the promised land.”
His fingers gently kneaded her neck. “He’s not a kid. He wants more than money in his pocket and three meals a day.”
“I’ve been married to him for twelve years,” she said.
“And you don’t know him any more than my wife knows me,” he said. He let her go and got up from the log. She sat rigid a few moments, and listened to the grating of stones under his rubber boots as he walked. She wanted to be away from here. She sprang up angrily and went to pick up her jacket, all without looking at him.
“Vanessa,” he said. The word transfixed her. It was the first time he had ever said her name. She looked slowly around and saw him standing at the edge of the woods, his face dark and stony in its shadow. “Come here.”
“No,” she said, but she went. He put his hand and took hers and pulled her up beside him. Then they went into the woods a little way; the bank under the trees was steep, and soft with years of spruce spills. They stopped by a massive, scaly yellow birch and he took her into his arms and kissed her, at first gently and then with a kind of desperate ferocity which she returned, holding him with all her strength, half-smothered, her ribs aching, a taste of blood in her mouth. When he let her go she fell back against the birch trunk, her mouth throbbing.
“There, by God,” he said violently. “Let that be the end of it.”
He went plunging down the steep slope through the shadowy light toward the pale gleam of the beach. She slid down the trunk until she was sitting, her knees under her chin, and peered through the dark columns of spruces to watch him lug first one trap and then the other down the beach to the dory. He splashed into the water to push the dory off and then its bow disappeared from her vision, and in a moment she heard the outboard start up with a roar and then settle into a steady hum as the dory sped away.
She sat there a little while, listening to the blood beat in her ears. Her jubilation grew and grew. She couldn’t help smiling and hugging her knees. Her triumph was more than victory, it was physical metamorphosis. Her whole body felt remade, turned fluid and translucent, a thing of beauty. She sprang up and ran down the slope, jumped from the bank onto the beach stones, and went home leaping from rock to rock, climbing the steep faces by toe and finger holds when she could have gone around by them, just for the pure pleasure of using this new body. In this way she went up the high red wall of Barque Cove, crawling diagonally over it until the surf was swirling and creaming below her. At the top she lay on her back on the brown turf, out of breath but still transfixed in joy like a fly in amber.
Suddenly it came to her. The Day. This could be it. What she was born for, what she had been moving toward all the days of her life. She’d had to marry Barry, they’d had to live in a miserable crawl from one poor situation to another, so that he would be hanging around the Limerock waterfront at the right moment to meet Philip Bennett. That was why the Water Street house had to be sold, she knew now, goose-fleshed with awe; so she’d have nothing to hold her back.
The Day. This was it.