By The Sea, Book Three: Laura Read online

  "Pull, schmull. He's eight years old."

  "Girl, what's happening to you? Every day you tighten up a little more. We're supposed to be free spirits," said Sam, winking at his son.

  "That may be so, but our spirits are the only thing that's free. Everything else costs, Sam. We don't have money for a fine, and we can't afford to lose the yawl-boat."

  Sam's face darkened. "We'll talk about this back aboard," he said, and the rest of the way they rode in silence.

  They exchanged scarcely a word for the rest of the evening, and now it was midnight. Laura was in the small stateroom that they'd built into the port side of the spacious aft cabin. She was sitting on the inboard edge of their berth, dressed in her plainest cotton nightgown, brushing out the braids of her long brown hair.

  She'd spent the evening trying to pretend that her feelings weren't hurt. after supper Sam had dragged Billy up to the foredeck, away from Laura and the dishes, for a pipe and a pint and a rundown on the exciting events of the afternoon. For a couple of hours the drunk and cheerful conversations of the two brothers had drifted aft in tantalizing bits and snatches. No doubt Billy now knew everything about the silks and marble and gilded furnishings in Harold Vanderbilt's private yacht Vara—as if the man cared.

  At ten o'clock Sam had banged on the foredeck hatch and called down to his son, "Neil, wake up and haul yourself up here and join us for some man-talk." Which had tested Laura still more.

  But Neil had lasted about an hour in manly talk before he fell asleep, and Billy, who had no idea how to hold his liquor, had followed suit. Now there was only Sam and Laura. It would be a fair fight.

  Sam ambled into the stateroom, and it shrank to half its size. Weaving slightly, he seemed to take up even more space than usual; his breath, highly flammable, displaced the salt air in seconds. His greeting was an amiable grunt. Roughly translated, it meant, "Truce."

  Nothing was further from Laura's mind. "You never mentioned how much the job paid," she said coldly.

  "Enough for you to stop your caterwauling about money," he said, returning her tone.

  She dragged the brush over her hair more vigorously. "I have not been caterwauling."

  "You could've fooled me." He sat down heavily in an oak armchair and began pulling off his shoes.

  Suddenly she exploded, unable to hide her feelings after all. "I resent this!" she cried in injured, Midwestern tones. You make it sound as if all I care about is money!"

  He looked at her, a little bleary-eyed. "Ain't it?"

  "No, it ain't," she said, spitting the despised word back in his face. "I care about our son."

  "And I don't?"

  "I don't see how. You encourage him to be reckless and to flaunt the law—look how you were about the yawl-boat. You don't care if he can read or write—you tease him when I'm giving him his lessons. You think it's cute when he tries to imitate your foul language—"

  Here Sam objected, but Laura interrupted him. "Oh, don't deny it. I've seen you chide him for swearing, then turn around and exchange grins with your brother. What you want is a chip off the old block, and if it weren't for me that's exactly what you'd get: an illiterate, ill-mannered, brazen little hellion."

  "Whereas with you," he drawled, "what I'll be getting is a little wimp of a boy who's afraid to box his own shadow. How dandy."

  In a tone of deadly reflection Laura said, "Naturally I can see where you'd begrudge someone who can write his name without having to think about it first."

  Sam winced, as if he'd grabbed a rose by its thorns, and replied, "Tragic, ain't it? You ran away from farmers that was beneath you, only to end up with a seaman what's equally so."

  Laura pulled her hair back, binding it with a ribbon. "None of that is true, and you know it," she said without looking at him. You're ... fine the way you are, but I want more for Neil." She gave her husband a pleading look. "Don't you see, Sam? Neil is so bright, so eager to learn, so—oh, never mind," she said, embarrassed and suddenly tired of it all. "You're too drunk to understand me."

  "No, ma'am, I am not."

  Sam had the ability to will himself into a sober state. The effort cost him, of course; it made him belligerent. "I know what you're getting at," he said in a low and dangerous voice, just like I know why you married me. I was your ticket out of the cornfields, and I could give you a son. You wanted adventure, and that's what you got. You needed a child; you got that too. But there's one other thing you want and need, and I know—I always know—what it is."

  When she didn't reply, he deliberately unzipped his pants and let them drop to the floor. It was not easy for a man to hold onto his dignity in the act of untrousering; Sam Powers managed to project not only dignity, but erotic menace as well. He was not a subtle man. The look he gave Laura was almost a carbon copy of the one he'd burned into her on the docks of New York nine years before. The lines had deepened in his sun-bronzed face, but his eyes blazed with the same primal confidence as they had on the day they met. That was what she could not defeat in him; it was his essential strength.

  And she was not sure, after all, whether she could bear to see that strength diminished. Sam was right. He knew what she wanted and needed—never so much as now. Why else would her heart be pounding in her breast like a kettledrum, her cheeks flushing and tingling like a virgin's? When they fought, they made love: it was as simple as that. It had got to the point lately where she thought they fought in order to make love; the marital bond was not enough to motivate them. Sometimes she hated herself for letting herself be goaded into sex; sometimes she didn't.

  Tonight she didn't. Whether it was the sultry night air, or the full moon, or her husband's intense satisfaction at being invited to sail with the best in the world, or just simple biological need (she was "due" in a couple of days), they made love with an urgency that rocked them both. Laura stifled her cries, half in pain, while Sam drove into her again and again, until he collapsed on her breast with a shuddering moan that tore at her soul.

  Chapter 3

  Sam reported for duty to Commodore Vanderbilt and the Rainbow group on the next day, and Laura went aft to their cabin and cried. She wasn't sure why, exactly, but she remained there, subdued and downhearted, for the next three hours as she worked her way through a pile of mending. She was disappointed at having to stay trapped in one harbor for so long, of course. And she was wistfully envious of the compliment to her husband's skills as a mechanic and a seaman.

  She lived in a man's world, and in a general way she was frustrated by her inability to control the direction of her life. And Neil's life too: Laura was beginning to feel strongly that he should be in school with other boys his age

  But there was something else: she was ashamed of her attraction to a man so carnal.

  What they had done the day before struck her as almost coarse. She had felt enslaved during the actual sex, but since then she'd been filled with regret. Where was the love? The deep affection between a man and his wife approaching a decade together? What they shared wasn't even passion; it was simple, animal need.

  I'm becoming like him, she realized. Crude, unimaginative, plodding. He'll never change—never aspire. He mocks my education, won't let me read aloud to him, and the only time he pays attention to his appearance is when he's stepping out with his pals for the evening.

  She sighed again and surveyed her own carelessly thrown-on clothing: a heavy serge skirt and a man's shirt, loose-cut and good for climbing, rowing, and all the other brawny movements that were part of living aboard a boat. When she was twenty it gave her a thrill to flaunt convention by wearing practical rather than pretty clothes. But now she saw her style of dress as yet more evidence that her brain was turning into porridge.

  I haven't pulled him up, she realized, dejected. He's pulled me down.

  She'd been on the water for eight years now, and the last four of them had been full of drudgery. They hadn't traveled as far as she'd hoped; the last winter had been crushingly severe; and Neil was becomi
ng more unhappy every day. The boat was an endless circuit of sanding, scrubbing, caulking and—when they could afford it—painting. A coastal schooner was the most unprofitable way imaginable to move cargo, and for years there had been little cargo to move.

  Where had the dream gone?

  ****

  "Good news," said Sam at supper on board the Virginia as he flattened a baked potato on his plate with the palm of his hand. "We can tie up the Virginia to a dock for the next few weeks; you won't have to be coming and going in the yawl-boat. I expect you'll like that," he added.

  Laura picked up his napkin and handed it to him.

  "I see it, girl," he said, annoyed.

  Billy and Neil exchanged smiles; it was back to normal at the supper table.

  "The dockage is free, of course," Sam continued, slathering his potato with oleomargarine.

  "How did you manage that?" asked Laura.

  He shrugged. "One of the Rainbow crew knows someone who knows someone. We'll move the Virginia tomorrow morning before the wind comes up. You'll have to keep an eye on her, though; put out a breast hook if it blows from the north. I don't want her bashing up against the dock."

  "Good Lord, Sam, you act as if I don't own half interest in the Virginia. I'm not a hired hand, you know," she said, smiling because they'd been kept apart for a week while he trained, and she did miss him.

  "That's as may be. Just keep a weather eye, is all I say. I'll be out on the Sound, practicin'. It's not as though I can excuse myself from the company and fly back under my own wings to help you."

  When they were first married Sam and Laura used to joke about the Virginia as if she were a well-loved but troublesome offspring who had to be watched every minute. Later Laura's maternal instincts became naturally centered on her son, and she came to regard the boat as simply a constant source of worry. But Sam's tender attitude toward the Virginia had not changed. To him the schooner would forever be a lovely, strong, but rather dim-witted child. Laura was often jealous of the boat, sometimes for her own account, sometimes for Neil's.

  But Laura was nothing if she was not diligent. "That boat is as safe with me as if it were an uncut diamond locked in a bank vault," she said with her chin set.

  "It's true, Dad," chimed in Neil. "Billy says Mama's practically as strong as he is and a lot smarter about the boat, don't you, Bill?"

  Billy, blond and gentle, nodded vigorously and added, "I ain't the only one. Ask anyone on Long Wharf. Everyone knows about Laura."

  Laura colored and said, "I guess you mean that as a compliment. Now—if you boys have had your fill of America's Cup gossip and can stop talking nonsense, maybe you'll take the time to listen: isn't that a school of snappers I hear circling the Virginia?"

  Neil's eyes opened wide. "By gosh, it is! Get our poles, Bill! I'll bring my dory around!" Neil made a dash for the companionway while his boy-uncle charged forward toward the forecastle.

  An amiable reflective silence followed. Then Laura laid her knife and fork across her empty plate as if she were dining at the Ritz—as if she would not be pumping saltwater shortly from a leaky hand pump in the galley to wash the dishes with—and said in a soft voice, "It's warm tonight. Why don't we have our coffee on the quarter-deck?"

  "Ay," said Sam, instantly responding to the invitation in her voice. "And bring what's left of the brandy. A bit of a celebration is in order, I'd say."

  They settled in on the starboard side of the wheel, Sam with his arm around his wife. "Pretty frock," he said in a quiet voice. "New?"

  "For me, anyway," Laura answered. She'd found the dress, a cool cotton summer print, in a second-hand shop on Broadway. She stuck out one leg in front of her. "Like my sandals? On sale, forty-nine cents."

  "Hmn, not the most practical footwear. So what ye you been up to, girl, besides spending my money? You well know what I've been at—pushups and sail practice. Damn if them fellers don't know how to take all the fun out of sailing. I never figured it'd be like this, somehow."

  "Like what?"

  "Like—work. You sign up figurin' to go racing in one of the biggest, fastest boats in the world, and it ends up you feel damn near like you're workin' in a ditch. Same damn thing every damn day: changing jibs, setting spinnakers, tacking and jibing, round and round and round the same buoys. 'Course, the money's good, and the crew are good Maine men. No doubt things will turn exciting when the final trial races begin on the twenty-second; it should be hot and heavy between us and Yankee over who gets to defend the Cup. But for now—well, there's not enough romance in it."

  "Romance!" cried Laura, amused. "Since when do you care about romance? I suppose there's more romance in hauling freight?

  He buried his face in the curve of her shoulder. "I'd say so," he said, nuzzling her. "For one thing, it's your own boat. You're lord of the sea—until she decides to kick your ass, leastways. No meshing gears with a couple dozen men—is that new perfume? What was I sayin'? Ayuh. Romance ... there's lots of it on the Virginia ...."

  In the deepening twilight he kissed her, a kiss rich with yearning and simple desire. Laura was young, a woman, with needs of her own; she could not resist. He expected her not to resist.

  Still, she went through the motions. When he said, "Let's go below," she answered faintly, "The boys will be back any time .... How will it look?"

  "They know better than to knock on our door. And I don't give a damned hoot, anyway. You're my wife," he said, kissing the little hollow at the base of her throat.

  "Neil's at an impressionable age ... he'll be embarrassed ... everything embarrasses him nowadays ...."

  "Long as he don't walk in on us, he'll be fine. My folks used a blanket for a wall ... didn't bother me none ...."

  Laura resisted a little while longer, afraid of herself, afraid for Neil, but Sam pressed and finally they went below. When they made love it was not with the abandon of the week earlier; Laura was far too much on her guard. Sam, too, seemed a little restrained. Afterward he told her that they would have to get to know one another all over again.

  "Every week it'll be like starting over. I reckon it'll keep the marriage fresh," he said contentedly, folding his arms behind his head as he lay on his back, stretched out and relaxed.

  Laura was already scrambling for her clothes, afraid that Neil might arrive. "Are you just going to lie there naked?" she said, wondering. "You know Neil will want to show off his catch."

  "I can see fine without pants," Sam said amiably.

  "You're hopeless!" she said. "You have absolutely no natural modesty."

  "Modesty ain't natural."

  She scooped up his trousers and tossed them over his crotch. "If I have to dress you like a baby, I will," she threatened.

  "Geezuz, girl, you never let up. It's like you're in your change of life."

  "I feel as if we're all in a change of life. Neil will never be a baby again, and I'll never be naive, and even you—well, you. Who can say about you?" she asked with a smile of good-natured exasperation.

  "I'll never change."

  "For sure."

  When they were dressed Neil returned and they duly admired his catch. Neil and Billy settled down amidships to gut the small pan fish. Sam, feeling companionable, brought a frayed manila hawser down below and began the slow, hard process of splicing the damaged section, while Laura sewed on half a dozen buttons torn off her husband's shirts and pants. A kerosene lamp flickered over the table at which they both sat, dancing off the browns and golds of Laura's hair and highlighting the gray-white hairs of her husband's shaggy head.

  Sam shoved aside a vase of cut wildflowers and opened his ditty bag wide, poking around in it until he found his heavy leather sewing palm. "Dang it," he muttered. "The palm needs restitching. How can I use it to finish off the whipping on the hawser?" he asked rather helplessly, looking at his wife with a forlorn air.

  Laura sighed. "Give me the palm. I'll stitch it up for you while you finish your splice."

  He flashed her a grateful
grin. "We're a team, ain't we, girl?"

  "No, we ain't," she answered, looking severe. "Not unless you at least try to straighten up your language."

  "Best give up that dream, Laura," he said softly, without looking at her. "I am what I am."

  She had begun to drag a length of linen twine through a ball of wax before threading it through a large sailmaker's needle. Now she paused and stared thoughtfully across the width of the heavily scarred pine cabin table at her husband: past fifty, a rock of a man still. Hopefully faithful, almost a homebody, with an unquenchable love of the sea and sailing. Hard-working in an inefficient way; all in all, a decent man. Her heart softened toward him: she could have done so much worse.

  "I guess I don't really expect you to change," she said, taking his great, calloused, ham-fisted hand in hers. "But you must understand that I'm not yet thirty. I am changing. I feel so restless .... How can I sit idly on the Virginia, twiddling my thumbs, while you go off on the challenge of a lifetime?"

  "It's a very short challenge, girl, a few weeks at most," he pointed out. "You have nothing to occupy yourself until then?"

  Laura bit her lower lip as she traced the outlines of his massive knuckles with her forefinger. "As a matter of fact, a thought came to me when you said that the Virginia would be able to stay at a dock for the next several weeks. You know how people always gawk at the boat when she's tied up at a dock, as though she were a dinosaur from another age. Which of course she is. Anyway, I thought we—I—could arrange some sort of dancing parties on board, with simple refreshments. I could charge not too much per person, and people love to see the harbor lights, and I could hang lanterns all around—"

  "Nothing doing. I won't have a bunch of drunks tearing up the boat while I'm away," Sam said gruffly.

  "Drunks! I meant punch or iced tea, that's all. It would be during the early hours. Billy could play the concertina. And if it makes you feel better, maybe I could hire someone as a sort of—guard."