In the garden Hetty’s soft hands soon blister. A sliver from the trowel handle works its way into the heel of her right hand, forcing her to dig with her left. Though the days have been warm this past week, and when the wind dies the sun has even felt hot, the ground still has the breath of winter in it. The damp cold seeps through her clothing and numbs her knees, spreading chilly fingers up her legs. She rolls her shoulders, the muscles in her back and arms deliciously tight and achy, and takes in her morning’s work. A third of the vegetable patch is weeded and hoed, the earth surprisingly dark and loamy, and there’s a fresh layer of green on the compost pile. The air smells peaty and fecund. Who would have guessed that gardening could be so therapeutic? Hetty almost smiles to herself, almost believes she has exorcised yesterday’s events, along with her muffled rage, when she hears the thud of hooves along the dirt path. Her jaw clenches. Lunchtime already? She should have been paying attention to the sun, now almost directly overhead, but had assumed in light of yesterday’s absence that Peter would be staying on at work. No, she’d been hoping he would stay on at work.
Shadow approaches at a loping canter, her dark head tossing, nostrils flared, her long mane catching the wind. Peter, sitting easily astride her, is a superb horseman. How Byronesque. An invisible touch to the rein and the mare collects herself and effortlessly clears the wall that divides the path from the field that adjoins the garden and makes up the bulk of the Douglases’ four-acre property. On sleepless early mornings Hetty has stood at the paddock gate watching as time and again Shadow canters around the field and then, tail high, gallops towards the wall. Hetty believes that shadow’s horse brain has told her she can jump in the opposite direction, out of the field as well as into it. But at the last minute she always veers away. Why? Why does she never claim the freedom that could so easily be hers? Does she not strain against the needs that bind her to Peter — a warm stable, dry hay and a bran mash? hands to break the ice on her water trough in winter? or is there some less tangible reason, some visceral connection?
Criss-crossing the field, man and animal move as one fluid rippling muscle. Hetty, despite her rancour, is compelled to watch. Peter circles back to the stable and dismounts. He loosens the girth on the mare’s saddle and removes it, unbridles her, rinses the bit, fills her water bucket, rubs her down briskly with a twist of hay, then strokes her muzzle and her long elegant face. Patting her rump he turns and advances on the wooden gate that separates garden from field.
Hetty stands, shaking pins and needles from her legs. They haven’t spoken since dinner last night, a strained affair in which all conversation filtered through Clara. When Peter left to drive clara back to truro, Hetty moved her necessities into the guest bedroom and locked the door.
“She needed a run,” he says when he’s close enough to make himself heard without shouting. “She was wound up after spending most of yesterday cooped up in the stable.” Shadow stomps her feet and tosses her head as if to underscore the fact.
“No one likes being cooped up, Peter.”
“Clara caught her train all right last night. We were at the station in plenty of time.”
“She telephoned this morning.” Opening with a litany of questions about the scene down at the wharf yesterday. About Esmeralda and the dead boy. About Hetty’s marriage. About the end of her nursing career. Awkward and largely unanswerable questions.
“We had time for an ice cream at Murphy’s. You should have been with us.”
“I had no appetite for sweets, Peter. Or anything else for that matter.” Is he just going to pretend nothing happened? Expect her to join him in the conjugal bed tonight?
“Are those my pants you’re wearing?”
Hetty glances down at her attire and then at her husband. “They were yours. But I suppose they’re mine now. They wouldn’t fit you anymore.” She’d rummaged through his closet as soon as he left for work this morning. Taken them in on his mother’s sewing machine. Increasing the seams, darts front and back through the waistband, a quick hem job, and she’d fashioned herself a practical gardening garment.
“I see.”
“I’ve never seen you wear them.”
“From a distance you look like a young man, with your short hair and everything.”
Esmeralda. Hetty has to look away. She thought he was going to say, you looked like Esmeralda. And perhaps, more than any practical considerations, this is what Hetty’s pants are really about, some act of defiance or solidarity. She’s been trying hard all morning to fend off thoughts of Esmeralda locked up in prison — Esmeralda in her men’s clothes, which Hetty fears won’t protect her the way they would a man.
“There’s nothing prepared. For lunch I mean. I wasn’t planning on stopping for a break.” Her stomach rumbles loudly,revealing her lie. She rubs the dirt from her gardening gloves; some has dried and cracks off and flies away as dust.
“Are those new?”
“I bought them in Harper’s this morning.”
“You were in harper’s?”
“Along with some seeds and a trowel. I charged them to your account.”
“There are seeds in the basement, Hetty. Did you look there first? Mother saved seeds and propagated everything she could herself. There are a couple of trowels, and there should be at least one or two pairs of gardening gloves. Your hands would be about the same size.”
Hetty shoves her hands, gloves and all, in the pockets of her trousers. “I’m already wearing her boots, isn’t that enough? You’d begrudge me my own seeds, my own things?”
Peter fixes his gaze on the patch of garden Hetty has cleared and weeded. He seems on the verge of responding, but then his face shifts and Hetty senses another retreat.
“Mrs. McMannis and Mrs. Dunstable were in the store,” she says. Staying her with disapproving glances, whispering loud enough to be heard from the far corner. “They were gossiping about the Esmeralda.”
“Hetty” — Peter straightens his stance though he still can’t meet her eyes — “I have no doubt the entire village is gossiping about the Esmeralda. Yesterday’s events were rather dramatic.”
“You enjoyed that, didn’t you?”
“Of course not.”
“Mrs. Dunstable said the police searched the schooner stem to stern but found no liquor other than the captain’s private supply.”
“Which proves nothing.”
“Exactly.”
Peter’s face folds like a book snapped shut. “Hetty, please, my dear, you’re being far too emotional about this. I can’t discuss it with you, and the sooner the furor dies down the better.” He walks away towards the house, turns and calls over his shoulder. “Are you coming in for lunch?”
The dining room faces north and is chilly. Hetty wishes a fire was lit or that Peter would stop his silly pretensions and eat in the kitchen as she does when alone. Still, he’s not the kind of man who expects a woman to wait on him hand and foot. By the time she has changed out of her gardening attire and scrubbed her hands, Peter has set the table and arranged a lunch of bread and butter, pickles and cold sliced ham left over from last night’s dinner.
“It’s looking good out there,” he says when the silence has grown oppressive. “I would say you’ve taken to gardening well.”
“I simply put my back into weeding, that’s all. Whether I can garden or not remains to be seen.” She picks up her cutlery and flinches. Two of her blisters have burst and the heel of her right hand throbs, the spell elusive. She’ll burn a needle with a match later this afternoon and dig it out, or, because she’s not adept with her left hand, perhaps she’ll ask Laura to do it when she returns later to prepare dinner.
“Lettuce and radish make good early crops. I would make sure to plant lettuce between the tomato plants. That way, when it gets hot and the tomatoes grow tall and bushy, they’ll throw some shade to stop your lettuce from bolting and tasting bitter.”
“Maybe you should be doing the gardening.”
“Oh, you’ll get the hang of it soon enough. Mother used to say that gardening is a patient art.”
Hetty feels suddenly and intensely impatient. “Peter, right now I don’t give a damn what your mother used to say about gardening.” Alarmed to find her hands shaking, she sets her knife and fork down. “Perhaps I am being far too emotional for your liking, call me hysterical if you like, but I can’t stop thinking about yesterday.”
Methodically, Peter trims the fat off the slice of ham on his plate. “What’s done is done. It’s water under the bridge now. You just need to put the whole messy business from your mind.”
“I’m having a difficult time with the fact that you lied to me about the purpose of your trip yesterday.”
“That I lied to you?” He dissects the meat into bite-sized pieces. Irritation shuffles along Hetty’s spine.
“We drive to Truro together, sit next to each other, pass the time of day, chat about nothing in particular, a bird here, a field there. Mill business, you said. And all the while you were planning on turning my friends over to the police.”
“Those people are not your friends.”
Hetty picks up her fork, stabs at the food set before her. “Peter Douglas, village hero and tattletale. I don’t know how you live with yourself.”
“I acted like any decent, honest and responsible citizen. They were in flagrant violation of the law. Law that I have a duty to uphold.”
“Who do you think you are? Self-appointed guardian of the village’s moral health?”
“They’re criminals. Worse. They —”
“You can’t control the whole village, you know. Remember what the captain said? If people want to drink they’ll find a way.”
“I’m not interested in controlling the village, Hetty, and I don’t care what that sorry excuse for a captain has to say.” Peter’s face has turned the colour of the bread on his plate. “Those people were armed. The police confiscated several guns and long knives yesterday.”
So she was right about J.J.’s wound.
“When I think of the danger you were in.” He shakes his head, and Hetty feels a short-lived pang of guilt. “Did you give a thought for anyone else when you went aboard that day? Amputating a criminal’s leg, indeed. Which I don’t need to remind you didn’t save him anyway. Not that he’s any great loss to society. They should all be hanged.”
“I can’t believe you’d even think such a thing. You shared a meal with them not three days ago.”
“Against my will, as well you know. They’re rum pirates, Hetty. Perhaps, to a lonely and grieving young woman, they might have seemed charming. But they are completely lawless. They could have put a gun to your head and pulled the trigger for making such a mess of things.”
Lonely? Still grieving? Of all the patronizing . . . dizzy with anger, Hetty grabs at the seat of her chair for support. How dare he even think . . . what the hell would he know about loss? About grief?
“I don’t understand why you got involved in the first place, why you willingly put yourself in so much danger. Is your life with me so dull and unappealing?”
An icy smile. “Your words, Peter, not mine.”
He holds her gaze for the first time since they left Truro yesterday. “And what would your choice of words be?”
“Meaningless might just about cover it.”
Peter wipes his mouth with his napkin and pushes his chair back. “I’m going to work now. Perhaps you should take a nap this afternoon. You’ll feel much better once you’ve had time to calm down.”
Standing in a rush of indignation, chair legs scraping, Hetty flees the dining room, heels resounding on the wooden floors. She stomps up the stairs, her anger cresting as the back door slams. In their bedroom she marches over to her dresser. Drawers open and close. Undergarments. A nightdress. A small overnight bag, something she can carry easily. She won’t be gone long. Just long enough to ensure Esmeralda is being looked after properly. Long enough to teach Peter Douglas a lesson.