‘Do you miss the privilege, then?’ one of the older hands asked mischievously. ‘Because if you do, you may certainly scrub mine for me.’
‘I’ll do it gladly,’ William replied.
So it happened that William Corder cheerfully undertook laundry duties for his crew-mates, continuing to perform the disagreeable work with a neatness and economy that did indeed speak of years of practice. William accepted whatever small payments of coin the deckhands were able to offer him in return for his services, but he had no interest whatsoever in the more common currencies of tobacco and rum.
The Dolphin continued her voyage towards the fertile whaling grounds of the Central Atlantic with William as an accepted member of the crew. It was noted that whenever the vessel drew alongside another whaling ship for an exchange of news or the barter of other sought-after shipboard commodities, William was the first of the sailors to run to the rail and scan the faces of the opposing crew.
‘Are you looking for someone, young Will?’ the mate enquired one day.
William’s face coloured up again. He was young and beardless, and his fair skin showed his blushes for everyone to see. ‘My brother. My brother Robert signed to a ship a year ago and I would be more pleased to see him than any other person in the world.’
‘What ship is he aboard, under what master?’ the mate asked curiously. Something about this story stirred his interest, although he could not have explained exactly why.
‘I don’t know the name of either,’ William said quickly, and turned away from the rail when the strange faces across the neck of water did not include the one he searched for.
Bored by the old-fashioned language and impatient with the close-set type, May looked up. A woman was standing under the trees, motionless, watching her.
At first May thought it was Ivy or Gail. But it wasn’t either of them, nor any of the other women from the houses on the bluff. She was wearing loose, wide trousers that hid her feet and a colourless shirt with some kind of deep collar. Her hair was pulled severely back from her pale face.
Stillness lay across the rocks and flattened the sea and pressed on May, so that she found she could not move. A chain of tiny cold droplets trickled down her spine. She stretched her fingers and they touched the discarded crab shell. She picked it up again and slowly, against the heavy weight of the air, she lifted her hand and arm upwards and backwards. Then, with an effort she flung the shell away from her. It flew in a great spinning arc and dropped into the sea, her eyes following it. She waited until the memory of it in her mind’s eye was swallowed up by the ripples.
When she looked again the woman had gone.
On some windless mornings, even in July, a fog closed in on the bay. The waves rolled in from the invisible distance, oily and soundless, to break in melancholy ripples on the beach shingle. Out beyond the island a foghorn sounded, spacing the seconds for shipping passing down the coast. The air held layers of salt and tar and fish smells trapped with the earthier inland scents of wet leaves and woodsmoke. The Beams and their friends took advantage of the cooler weather by stepping up the intensity of their tennis matches. Their cries of triumph or challenge drifted over the bluff.
Elizabeth heard them without listening as she followed Turner around her garden. She was convinced, even though he had worked for her for ten years, that if she didn’t watch the gardener he might inadvertently cut off the mopheads of the hydrangeas, or uproot the tender unfurling shoots of her Japanese anemones. She paused in her circuit at the head of the beach steps, where Alexander Gull was sitting with a drawingboard resting on his knees. He was trying to capture in water-colours the view of Marian Beam’s house lapped in pearly light. ‘Pretty,’ Elizabeth said, looking over his shoulder.
‘Ever heard of damning with faint praise? But you’re quite right.’ Alexander dropped his brush with a shrug of exasperation. ‘Pretty is what it is.’
Elizabeth and Alexander had grown fond of one another in the years that he and Spencer had lived together. For Elizabeth it was like having a real daughter-in-law of whom she had disapproved at first, but who had shown herself to be loyal and adept at making a happy partnership, and who was therefore to be valued. The only material difference now, Elizabeth thought, was that of course there would be no grandchildren. That was a sadness. There were plenty of Newtons, from her husband’s brother, but she and Spencer represented the last of the Freshetts. She was glad that at least the old Senator couldn’t witness the ending of his line with a lonely and regretful old widow and her homosexual son.
Unless his shadow somehow inhabited this beach house that he had built for his bride, observing his granddaughter’s solitary rituals and the occasional visits of her son and his partner. What would he have made of that, of the room and the old scroll-headed bed, and the life that the two men shared?
But Elizabeth did not think that her grandfather’s ghost haunted these rooms. She didn’t feel his presence, although he had dearly loved the house and the bay, and Pittsharbor. It was because he was so conclusively gone and because he had loved the place so much that Elizabeth wanted to strengthen the family connection with it. But Spencer didn’t much care for the beach as a place to spend his time. She was afraid that after she was gone, unless he could find some better way of using the house and making money out of it, he would sell up.
Of course, if Aaron could be persuaded to sell his land, if Spencer could build the rental condos he envisaged, that would be different. New building would change the beach and the bay, but that was progress. Old Maynard Freshett had always believed in progress.
The foghorn gave its disembodied, bleating moan out in the sea mist.
‘I hate that noise,’ Alexander said.
‘Why?’
‘For being so relentless. And so depressing. Why not a cheerful bell, or a whistle, or a happy tune?’
‘Because it’s a foghorn.’ Elizabeth smiled inwardly. There was progress and there was the pleasing counterpoint of what was fixed and enduring because it worked, because there was no need to change it. ‘You’d be glad of it if you’d lost your bearings out there in a small boat.’
Spencer had been sitting reading on the swing seat on the porch. Now his mobile rang beside him and he snapped up the antenna and began a discussion with his assistant at the gallery. One polished loafer swung from his bare foot as he talked.
Alexander sighed and closed his paintbox. ‘I’m going to make lunch, Elizabeth. Fish soup, I think.’
‘Good,’ Elizabeth said. Alexander was an excellent cook.
The fog had thinned enough for a game of tennis to be just feasible. Beyond the netting of the court the rear of the Beams’ house was still no more than a dark, formless mass, but the players were visible to each other as they paced on the back line for the knock-up.
When the game began John Duhane was partnering Marty Stiegel against Tom and Joel Beam. John was an adequate player but he was out of his class in this company. Marty was slightly built and several inches shorter than John, but his toned muscles and stamina suggested enough time spent in the gym. He was friendly and laughed easily, but there was an edge of competitiveness in him that showed whenever John dropped a point. It was clear that he and the Beams had a long and complicated history of games won and lost on this court, and that Marty was at least as eager for a victory as his opponents.
John lost his first service game and Marty turned