Hannah understood too that he would despise his own grieving, because he would interpret it as weakness. She inclined her head so as to seem not to notice his tears. Her knee-bones stood out tiny and sharp under the folds of her skirt. Then she took Aaron’s arm through hers. The back of his hand when she touched it felt as brittle as a dead leaf. ‘Have you got your puffer?’ she asked.
Aaron used an inhaler to help his exhausted lungs. ‘Not using it out here,’ he reprimanded her. There was a blue tinge to the skin around his lips and the rest of his face was stone grey.
A pair of dead leaves was exactly what they were, Hannah thought, still clinging to the branch while the fat spring buds pushed out all around them. Pittsharbor was putting out new foliage in gaudy colours and they hung on at the tip of their twig, waiting for the brutal wind to dispatch them. How cruel old age turns out to be, she reflected, and a twist of sympathy for Aaron that was all wound up with love and exasperation pulled at her heart. She felt a distaste suddenly equalling his for the new Pittsharbor with its gaudy decorations and artistic shops and hand-painted signs set out to catch the summer visitors’ jaded attention.
The town that she and Aaron had grown up in had been a harsh but logical place. It was governed by the winter ice and short summer’s heat, and by fishing and making do against the weather, and the other plain rules of survival. It had been the same way since the first houses were built around the harbour. There had been no pizza and subs, or quilt shops lining Main Street, or summer visitors in their rental cottages. Except for the Freshetts to begin with and the other families who had followed them out to the bluff. It didn’t occur to Hannah that she might also let herself grieve for a way of life that was finished. She sat and held on to Aaron’s arm instead, gazing expressionlessly ahead of her.
A red jeep swung down Sunday Street and braked noisily in front of the bakery. A young man in bermudas and sneakers leapt out and ran into the store, leaving music tinnily thumping from the jeep’s speakers. Hannah knew him by sight. He came every year to stay at one of the cottages in the woods behind the bluff. The land had once belonged to Aaron, from a parcel he had bought for next to nothing right after the war. In time he had sold it again, using the money from the sale to extend and weatherproof the house where he and Hannah now lived. Over the years a series of boxy houses had been put up in clearings in the woods and the occupants’ name-boards lined the access track that had once led only to a loggers’ clearing. The young man sprinted out again and tossed a brown bag into the passenger seat. He reversed up to the top of the road and accelerated away.
As the din faded Hannah was thinking about Elizabeth Newton. If she had come home from Europe and agreed to marry Aaron, against the Freshetts’ wishes, would he be a happier man now? It seemed cruellest of all that there was no way of telling. The different paths their lives might have taken were as conclusively lost as the old Pittsharbor their possibilities had once inhabited.
‘I’m ready to walk back now,’ Aaron said.
Hannah had left the station-wagon at the other end of Sunday Street, not far from the church. Aaron had insisted that he wanted to walk down the town first thing to see what inanities were going on and that, of course, was what they had done.
They stood up and moved to where the sharp sun sliced across the sidewalk. With the warmth of it on his back Aaron put Hannah’s arm aside. They walked slowly past Edie Clark’s windows. ‘Leave them all to it,’ he said.
‘That’s right,’ Hannah agreed.
Spencer saw the station-wagon with Aaron and Hannah inside as it turned into the Fennymores’ entry from the road behind the five houses. He murmured to Alexander, ‘I’ll call on him now. I guess it’s as good a time as any.’
He waited for a few minutes, then sauntered after the car. Hannah was coming down the steps from the porch. ‘Good-morning, Mrs Fennymore. How are you?’
Spencer Newton had impeccable, slightly old-fashioned manners that went with his preppy clothes and air of unshakeable superiority. Spencer would never be rude, or even abrupt. Like his mother he made Hannah feel wrong-footed from the moment he opened his mouth, but she held her ground on the bottom step. ‘Thank you, Spencer. What can I do for you this morning?’
‘Is Aaron at home?’
‘He’s resting. Can I help you?’
Spencer put his head on one side and smiled. ‘I was hoping to discuss our proposition.’
‘No.’
The smile only broadened. ‘Mrs Fennymore, you can see the sense of it, surely? If Mr Fennymore agrees to sell the land to me it will give him – and you – a healthy capital sum that you can invest against medical expenses, nursing requirements, whatever you both may need in the future.’
Hannah said nothing, only watched him with her round bird’s eyes.
‘You both know me well. I belong to Pittsharbor and I love the beach as much as you do.’ When Hannah made no response he corrected himself, ‘Or almost as much. I wouldn’t do anything or sanction any development over there that was in any way unsuitable or intrusive. I’d like to build a small house for myself, one or at the most two others, well screened, to cover my own outlay…’ Spencer couldn’t help glancing at the coveted ground as he spoke. It was the tongue of headland that backed the southern end of Moon Island Beach, from the side of the Fennymores’ property to the curve of the bluff road as it wound towards Pittsharbor. It was prime seafront land, ripe for development. Aaron had acquired it from old man Swayne forty years ago.
‘No,’ Hannah repeated.
Spencer had been wheedling and cajoling about the land for a long time. He had tried a dozen different tacks and none of them had brought him any closer. But Aaron was tired now and his grip was loosening. ‘Why not, Mrs Fennymore? It’s just a piece of ground. It sits there. It could be utilised, put to work for you …’
‘No.’
Hannah was surprised at herself. Elizabeth was a part of all this, of course. The woman was probably lending her son the money for the deal. If she and Aaron gave way to what the Newtons wanted, a pincer movement would cut them off from the town and the space of the beach and the sea. There would be little grey shingled boxes and hammocks and barbecues under the trees, and their nearest neighbour on the town side would no longer be the shack that had turned into the Flying Fish.
The new Pittsharbor Aaron had seen this morning was swallowing up the old one and the greedy mouth of it was right here, mumbling against their own fences. Hannah saw it as only part of history’s pattern that the offensive should come in the shape of Elizabeth and her son, because Elizabeth had always been there like a shadow. For all her married life Hannah had soothed and protected and defended Aaron, but she had never succeeded in blotting out the past.
She threw up her hands and pressed the flat palms against Spencer’s crisp shirt-front. If all she had ever been able to do was defend her husband, then she wouldn’t give up the meagre role now. Her amazing strength propelled Spencer backwards, away from the house. He stumbled over his own polished loafers and his mouth gaped in an instant’s disbelief. ‘Go away. Go away right now, and don’t ever come back here.’
Spencer took two more steps backwards and raised his hands in a gesture of submission. ‘Yes. Of course not. I’m sorry you misunderstood me, I didn’t…’
‘It’s not a misunderstanding. I’ll say it again. Aaron won’t sell our land to you so’s you and your mother can build condos or whatever it is you’ve got planned. He may be ill but he won’t weaken and even if he does you still have me to contend with.’
The declaration gave Hannah a novel thrill of power. She squared her shoulders and watched Spencer continue his retreat, until he had skirted May’s tree and disappeared into the lane again.
When she turned round she