‘I see,’ Leonie said. She sat down at the over-large oak table and looked through the window at the pillars of the porch and the sky, waiting for what he would say next.
Out on the deck May hesitated, blinking in the brightness, remembering the people down on the beach and her sister’s golden limbs twined around Lucas’s. There was no going back into the house either, so she slipped down the dank space that separated the Captain’s House from Elizabeth Newton’s garden. She moved quickly, because Elizabeth might be working with her pruning shears again amid the thick greenery. She didn’t want to talk to Elizabeth now, or even to be seen by her.
There was no way to go but round to the road side of the house. There was a path and dogwood bushes, and the open patch of grass and stones where John left the car. The Pittsharbor lane petered out here at the Captain’s House, the last building on the bluff.
May wandered slowly along the road. She hesitated at the sound of a car and saw a black Lexus coming round the bend. She thought it must be more members of the endless Beam family arriving, but the car slowed before their driveway and turned towards the house that stood between theirs and the Fennymores’.
The name on the mailbox was Stiegel. The occupants of the car were a couple, quite young. May waited in the shelter of the hedge. The car drew up at the door and the man got out. He had dark curly hair and wore smart New York clothes; a pink Ralph Lauren button-down shirt and polished shoes. There was a thick gold band on his wedding finger; she saw the light catch it as he opened the rear door of the car and unbuckled a baby seat. He swung the seat into the air, using two hands, as if it were a prize he had just been awarded. There was a fat, impassive-looking baby strapped into it. ‘Here we are,’ the man cooed into the baby’s face, ‘here we are at last. Was it a long way for her? A long way in the nasty car?’
The woman had got out too. She was big, May saw, and swathed in those no-colour linen clothes that some people try to hide their size inside. ‘Come on, open up the house, Marty,’ she said. ‘You know she needs her feed.’
Marty handed the baby over to her and ran up the steps to the door, tugging a bunch of keys out of a slim leather bag. He fumbled, then unlocked the door. He pushed it open and held it for the woman, who walked by with the baby lifted aloft in its seat. They all disappeared inside, but a minute later the man reemerged and began taking heavy bags from the trunk of the Lexus. May slipped out of her hiding-place and walked on aimlessly.
The Fennymores’ house was smaller than the other four. It was a plain box but the steep pitched roof and low windows made it look hunched, even forbidding. There was no suggestion of a garden, only a piece of open ground where their old tan station-wagon stood next to a dilapidated shed. Shading the car and the shed was a big tree. It had pale, almost silvery bark and branches like the fingers of an elegant woman’s hand. A sweep of leaves looked like the layers of a skirt.
May hardly knew one tree from the next, but she thought this one might be a kind of birch or maybe beech. It wasn’t exactly the same as the one in the park she called Mom’s tree, but it was quite similar. On an impulse she left the road and went to it. She rested the flat of her hand against the smooth, sun-warmed bark, then tipped her head forward so that her forehead touched it.
Alison had been tall and elegant like the tree. The rustling skirt of leaves was like one she had brought with her when she moved from England to New York in 1970. Alison had been a student of American history and part of her degree course had been a year at Columbia. She had met John Duhane sitting on a bench at the Frick and had stayed to marry him.
The skirt was made of watery tie-dyed cheesecloth, sea-green and jade, with a handkerchief-point hem sewn with tiny emerald beads. The beads had rolled and scattered as the scissor blades sliced the cheesecloth into tatters. Once, long before that, May had implored Alison to let her dress up in the skirt. She had worn it to a fancy dress party as a sea nymph and Alison had plaited green ribbons for seaweed in her hair.
May pressed her face against the bark of the new tree, but she couldn’t conjure up any words, for her mother or for anyone else. Instead, her shoulders heaved and her face contorted. She rolled and scraped her forehead against the tree as the tears came.
Aaron Fennymore had been in the shed, chiselling a new dowel to replace a split one from one of the old chairs. Hannah had been asking him for weeks to do it, and today he had felt enough of a lick of energy to attempt a job that once would have taken a matter of minutes. It was slow work now; the wood slipped in the vice and the mallet had grown almost too heavy to lift.
He saw the girl as soon as she walked in from the lane. He frowned at the sight of her, then stood with the mallet in one hand and the chisel in the other as she stretched out her arms to embrace a tree trunk. He let his spectacles slide down his nose. Old age had made him long-sighted and he could see the child’s face squeezed with suffering. Gently, he put down the tools.
She didn’t hear the creak of the shed door or his slow footsteps. When he asked, ‘Can I help?’ she leapt backwards, hand to her mouth to stifle a scream. ‘It’s all right,’ Aaron said.
May rubbed her eyes and nose with the back of her hand. They stood looking at each other, not sure what to say next.
‘Are you in trouble?’
She shook her head, sniffing. ‘Sorry. I’m in your garden.’
‘Yes. I was going to chase you away with my big stick.’ He held up his knobbled walking stick. ‘But I can’t hardly do that if you’re crying, can I?’
May had been afraid of this old man when she had seen him at the Beams’. Now, closer up, he was a little less formidable. There were silvery fans of lines around his deep-set eyes and the hand resting on the knob of his stick shook uncontrollably. Even so, he did not look particularly benign.
‘Come inside.’
She would have made an excuse if it had been more of an invitation and less of an order. Instead she followed him into the frowning house.
The door opened into a little wood-panelled lobby hung with thick old curtains that smelt of dust. May imagined that the Fennymores would need all the draught insulation possible during the winters they spent alone up here on the bluff. Aaron held open a door for her, and she passed through into the middle of the house.
There was just one big room. Around three of the walls were floor-to-ceiling shelves made of thick, rough timber and the shelves were filled with dim-looking books. On the small spaces of wall that weren’t covered with books there were framed maps, and old brown-toned photographs behind glass, and little nests of smaller shelves made to display bits of what looked like carved bone. Against one wall there was a big wood-burning stove, with a chimney alcove stacked with cut logs. The seaward windows looked out at the bay and the island, but the curtains that framed them cut out a lot of the sparkling light. The room smelt of woodsmoke like the Captain’s House, and musty book bindings and old people.
May wanted to wander around and stare at the thick deposits of things, but felt too wary of Aaron Fennymore. Instead she glanced sidelong at a small table near at hand, where a vaguely spoon-shaped piece of the bone material was laid out like an ornament. It was an ugly yellowy-cream colour and she noticed now that it was minutely carved. Without thinking she picked it up. The carvings were patterns of tiny leaves and flowers.
‘What do you think of that?’ Aaron demanded, making her jump.
‘What is it?’
‘Don’t you know?’
‘No, I don’t.’
‘It’s scrimshaw.’ Seeing that meant nothing to her either, he snapped, ‘Where have you spent your life?’
‘New York City.’
‘Well, then your ignorance is hardly surprising.’
He hobbled over to a chair beside