‘Well, yeah, okay. One for one.’ She eased her chair back from the table, awkward in the small space, and made a show of looking at her watch. ‘I’ve got to get back, you know?’
Elizabeth reached out and took her hand. May had to force herself either not to snatch it away and run and run, or to stand still and let her shoulders sag while the tears slopped down her face.
‘Can I do anything to help you?’ Elizabeth asked softly.
‘What, how d’you mean help? No, I don’t need anything. Really. Thanks, okay?’
‘Go on, then. If you’re in a hurry, that is. I walk much more slowly than you. Thank you for the tea.’
‘You’re welcome. I mean, I enjoyed it.’ May turned and almost ran down the steps and away from the Flying Fish, back towards the house on the bluff. She was almost there when Spencer Newton and his friend passed in the opposite direction, in their spiffy green Jaguar with the top down. They looked the same, in their designer shades with the breeze blowing their pale hair straight back off their foreheads. Elizabeth would be on her own in the house again.
Down on the beach there was a small group of people gathered around a trailer hitched to the Beams’ jeep. They were wrestling with the transfer of a boat from it to the sea. Tom and Karyn were there, and two other adults, and a fringe of children and teenagers milled around ignoring instructions and loudly contributing their own.
John had been wondering where his daughters were. Ivy and Lucas weren’t in the group, but he caught sight of Leonie in her black swimsuit. He strolled across from where he had been sitting on the steps up to his house. ‘Can I lend a hand here?’
‘Sure, thanks. Grab a hold,’ Tom called over his shoulder. From the driver’s seat of the jeep Elliot shouted a warning and backed the trailer closer to the water. A wave ran up and slapped against the wheels, and the younger children danced around with pleasure at being soaked.
Karyn introduced John to the newcomers, Richard and Shelly Beam. Their three children were pointed out to him.
‘Is this the complete family now?’
Richard grinned, showing a strong resemblance to his brother. ‘Nope. There’s Clayton and Gina and their two still to come. Mike and Anne are in Europe, of course.’
Leonie was on the opposite side of the trailer. When she lifted her eyes to meet John’s she saw that he had acquired the beginnings of a sun-tan and some of the lines of strain had faded from his face. Elliot was still easing the trailer deeper into the water. Leonie looked away, to where Marian had come up to watch the proceedings.
When the trailer had gone far enough Tom directed them to put their shoulders to the boat’s fibreglass hull again. They gave a concerted heave and a shout of triumph as it slid off the trailer and the keel scraped the sand in shallow water.
‘Push her out,’ Tom commanded and they ran it forward into deeper water where it floated free. Children were already swarming under the tarpaulin cover and Elliot was easing the jeep forwards up the shelving sand. John and Leonie were left alone, separated by the space where the boat had been. Among all the cries and laughter and diamond-glittering splashes of water Leonie could hear nothing but a question vibrating between them with a tuning-fork’s meticulous note.
It was absurd to go on meeting and deflecting each other.
In the time that had elapsed since their lunch together she had convinced herself that a question could have two answers. If she and Tom didn’t love each other as they once had done, they were still friends and they were knitted together by history and shared experiences. It was possible to live a calm and ordered life surrounded by siblings and their children, and to take pleasure in work and companionship.
Even as she made these measured decisions a current of revolt ran through her, snapping her shoulders back and her head upright. The opposite answer reverberated deafeningly in her head. It wasn’t enough of a life. Not enough, not enough. It was like a sour chorus to the song of the beach.
She didn’t think Tom even noticed that she handed her allegiance over to him. She was just here at the beach as a part of a landscape, not even making the foreground of the picture.
With three precise and deliberate steps Leonie crossed the barrier of stones to John’s side. She felt gleeful and reckless, as she had done with the kiss in the car-park, and at the same time as awkward as a teenager. Dressed only in a swimsuit she couldn’t find anywhere to put her hands, so she crossed her arms in front of her stomach, cupping her elbows in a stance that reminded her of May Duhane. John was no less fenced around than she was herself – almost all she knew about him was to do with his daughters and his widowhood, and the cautious path he steered through the thickets of responsibility.
A greedy longing to know more, to excavate him and at the same time to be dug out of herself, suddenly blazed up in her like ravenous hunger after a long swim in the sea. She said coolly, ‘Would you like to come for a walk this evening? There’s a good one along the cliff to the next bay and over the causeway to another island. You can do it when the tide’s right.’
Lucas and Ivy were rowing back to the beach. At least, Lucas was rowing; he bent over the oars and the muscles in his back and arms smoothly bunched and lengthened. Ivy lay back in the stem of the boat, one leg lazily hooked over the side. She looked creamy and sated, and at the same time triumphant. Just-fucked was the phrase that came to Leonie’s mind.
John watched them until Lucas shipped the oars and let the boat drift in to the shallows. Ivy sketched a little wave at her father. Leonie knew that John was also weighing the significance of small signals and the major movements they flagged.
Marian had gathered a flock of children around her and was beckoning Leonie. Tom and the jeep had driven away.
‘Yes, we could do that,’ John said. His voice was light, giving nothing away.
The stagnant air of Doone’s bedroom breathed and sighed in May’s ears. Hannah Fennymore’s two books and Doone’s diary lay in a row beside her on the bed quilt. She let her chin fall on her chest as she stared at them, trying to imagine Doone putting her writing aside and picking up the whaling story. To mimic her actions, as if it might help her understanding, she opened the book herself.
The Dolphin’s was an uneventful voyage for the first six weeks. No whales were sighted, but favouring winds assisted the ship’s progress across the Atlantic and Captain Gunnell gave orders for the four whaleboats to be lowered from their davits at regular intervals so that the boat steerers and oarsmen might at least practise their seaborne manoeuvres as often as was practicable.
William Corder learned his part in the boat as readily as he had about the decks and masts of the Dolphin. He was assigned the position of stroke oarsman in the third mate’s crew, from which place he bent to pull his oar at the mate’s command, assisted with handling the small mast, and when the lightweight, sharp-ended craft took in water in rough seas it was his allotted task to bail her out with a canvas bucket stowed for that purpose among the copious whaling gear. The rest of the paraphernalia looked threatening enough to William – there were the tubs with their great coiled lengths of line, the razor-edged harpoon and long lances to be plunged deep into the creature’s innards, and the cutting spades with which great incisions could be sliced in the blubber for holding the whale fast while it was towed back to the ship’s side.