By The Sea, Book Three: Laura Read online

  "Don't you miss your family?" she asked, trying to surprise him into some sort of admission.

  "Why? They don't live on the Great Salt Lake," he replied, deliberately inserting logic where she had intended none.

  She laughed self-consciously, dragging a strand of hair that had blown across her eyes out of the way. "No, I meant, with your traveling everywhere all the time."

  He took a quarter-turn on the wheel to avoid the string of buoys, then turned to her and said softly, "I'll ask a similar question: how does a beautiful, smart woman submit to a life without roots, without comfort, without any but her immediate family?"

  She ringed the edge of her coffee mug with a forefinger, then answered, "I don't submit. I choose."

  "Choose, then," he said, amiably corrected.

  She shrugged. "Why not? My father died when I was a girl, and my mother a few years ago. I've never much seen eye to eye with my two brothers. And I found farming very predictable. Every year you plant the same thing in the same rotation at the same time, and the only variety comes from the weather. It might be a hot year, or a wet year, or a dry one—I guess this last year has been the driest on record—but, don't you see? Even the disappointments are predictable. Ask my brothers. But on the Virginia, I never know what's next. Never."

  Laura brought herself up short, wondering how it was that she was babbling her heart out, and all she'd managed to find out from him was that he may or may not have sailed on the Great Salt Lake. "I'm sure I don't have to give you a speech on the attractions of a life at sea," she said, more coolly than before.

  "You want to be the captain of your fate, the master of your soul," he said without irony, not looking at her as he squinted into the sun ahead. "In that we are one, you and I."

  It was an acknowledgment, an invitation, and it had her reeling with the thrill of it. It wasn't what he said—it never seemed to be what he said—but how he said it. She opened her mouth to say something, anything, but it would have broken the spell, so she said nothing and sat back a little way, out of his peripheral vision, and studied him as he stood behind the Virginia's spoked wheel.

  She no longer believed that he was an American, and she scarcely believed that he was human. A scruffy reincarnation of Adonis, perhaps, or Eros in an earthly form, with his thickly lashed eyes, his straight Roman nose, his graceful and powerful build. Perhaps he was simply French. She sat quietly behind him, her body automatically bracing for the rise and fall of the schooner through the swells that squeezed down the east and west passages of Narragansett Bay—and mused.

  After a while Neil came up on deck, finished with the breakfast dishes which in the ship's routine were always stacked in a pan until the Virginia got underway. His face split into a cheerful grin when he saw his new friend at the helm.

  "Hey, Colin! She's not bad, is she?"

  He glanced at Laura, then turned back to Neil and said gravely, "Much, much better than I thought."

  Laura felt her cheeks flame as her son added, "Told you! My dad says that in the Florida boom days the Ginny won every race—because that's what they always ended up doing—between here and Miami. There wasn't a faster coaster anywhere."

  Again Durant's eyes swept across Laura's face before he said, "Your dad must be very pleased with her."

  "Oh, for sure," agreed the boy.

  The Virginia settled into a groove, working her way down the bay in the shadows of the fabulous ocean estates, some of them boarded up, which dotted the jagged shoreline. There was no more remarkable stretch of oceanfront on the continent. And yet to three of the crew of the coasting schooner it was all just a point of departure, a jumping-off spot for an exciting new destination: a group of low-lying, barren, windswept islands. As for Colin Durant, he took in the mansions the way he took in everything around him: in thoughtful silence.

  The schooner moved in on starboard tack as close as she dared to Brenton Reef, then tacked away from Aquidneck Island, bound for Long Island Sound and Connecticut to pick up its cargo. The talk aboard was of life in the tropics, and the pros and cons of offshore versus coastal sailing. No one noticed the tall spar, taller than the Statue of Liberty, of Vanderbilt's J-boat bobbing quietly offshore, several miles off Brenton Point. From that distance no one could have told that the Rainbow crew were all on deck for their lunch break.

  But out of the two dozen crewmen, one aboard the big J-boat had no trouble recognizing the gaff-rigged schooner that bore his own life's blood away from him. Sam Powers squinted and shaded his eyes, and swallowed hard.

  The crewman next to him, with whom he'd become friendly, said, "Why, Sam, ain't that the Virginny headed out for the Sound?"

  Sam nodded and tore off a chunk of bread.

  "Who's runnin' her, with you here?"

  "My wife," he answered, chewing slowly.

  "And the mate?"

  "He ain't a Maine man," Sam said. "He ain't one of us."

  Chapter 8

  Laura had promised Sam that she would keep a log of the trip, and she did, scrupulously noting the time, course, weather, and sea conditions at regular intervals. Sam had promised nothing, but after the Rainbow was put to bed on the day the Virginia left Newport, he found a quiet place and took out a small paper tablet he had bought, after much deliberation, from Rugen's Typewriter Exchange on Thames Street. He took out a pencil, newly sharpened, and held it in his hand for a while. He had not put pencil to paper in nine years, not since he met Laura.

  He had lied to her when he said he could not write. He could, in an elementary way, but after seeing the way his wife could spin out easy and endless prose, he decided that it was simpler to admit to possessing no skill at all than to having only a smidgeon's worth. But there was so much on his mind, his heart was so full, that it seemed right to try to write it down. He decided to make daily entries—his wife kept a diary, he knew—until she came back.

  Across the top of the first page he wrote, "3 September 1934," and stopped to sharpen the pencil point still more with his rigger's knife. After a while, and with a sense that he was breaking new ground, he wrote: "Virginia left. Pain. I love her but so what. The islands be new. Cant blame her. God speed."

  That same night, Laura took out her own diary, a small volume of imitation leather, with pages edged in imitation gilt, and wrote: "September 3, 1934. The trip so far has made me immeasurably happy. It was as if Aeolus himself had smiled on this venture: he held back his breath until we got away from the dock, then blew fair down the Connecticut shore, then held off until we were tied up again, safe and sound at a dock in New London. That funny little Mr. Angelina was waiting for us, looking pinker than ever. The lumber is here, and the fixtures, and much else besides; but there is no hint of impropriety or funny business.

  "Tomorrow we load and then it's off on our grand adventure. A cold front is coming through—there were torrential thunderstorms this evening and we all stayed below. Billy and Mr. Durant played checkers, and Neil was wild with jealousy though he pretended not to care. I made muffins. We ate all of them, and half a jar of raspberry preserves to boot. Neil ate most of all.

  "Before we parted company for the night, Mr. Durant confided that Sam had had him on the hot seat till he felt like a briquette, grilling him about his sailing experience. There were a lot of vocabulary questions, and a true-or-false section, and a 'what if' part about emergencies. Sam finished by demanding (I can see him now) a list of half a dozen god-fearing sailors who could vouch for Mr. Durant's character. Just like Sam! And I afraid to ask the man how old he is. But I think he cannot be more than thirty-five, and I believe if he were ever married he would have spoken more cynically of the institution. As it was, when the subject came up (Neil asked), he merely smiled that enigmatic smile and said, 'A good woman is hard to find.' I wanted to use him for a dart-board."

  ****

  First light had not yet appeared when Laura was awakened by loud knocking on the side of the Virginia's hull, just outside her cabin. Through a porthole she h
eard a voice, loud, clear and unmistakably a woman's, hailing.

  "Ahoy, Virginia!"

  Groggy, Laura popped her head through the open hatch to see a bright-eyed woman of middle age, slight and trim in khaki slacks and a pink tennis shirt, standing on the dock of the New London boatyard, hands on her hips and a grin on her face. "Good morning. You're the skipper of this vessel, I hear."

  "Yes. Laura Powers. Good morning."

  "I'm Amanda Seton, yard manager. Glad to know you. Not many women pass through here who can claim to captain a ship like yours. It's a privilege to meet you."

  Flattered, Laura smiled and said, "But I'll bet that's not why you're here

  At 4:45 a.m."

  "You're right. We're going to have to move your boat from this dock just for a while; we need to haul a boat that's leaking badly. Some drunken fool rammed it after midnight, and the pumps can't keep up. It's easier to move the Virginia than to reposition the crane. I'm sorry about this." She was clearly embarrassed, but clearly in a hurry.

  Laura said, "Sure. Let me wake my crew—"

  "Oh, no need. My husband's here, and my son, who has his last day on the job before heading back to school tomorrow. We'll just slide your boat out of the way, using our launch if we need to, to make room. It's dead calm and shouldn't be hard."

  "Your whole family works here? And at this hour?"

  Amanda's laugh was easy and good-natured. "Geoff and I own the yard," she explained, "and our son James has a summer job here. The reason we're all here now is that the sinking boat happens to belong to my father, Jim Fain, who built this shipyard in the first place. We're a family business, just like you."

  Before Laura could respond to that, Durant appeared on deck, fully dressed and ready to move. He pointed to the crew's quarters below him, then touched a forefinger to his lips. Clearly the others were still asleep, their last night of being tethered to land. Durant was right, she thought. Let them sleep.

  Motioning that she'd be right out, Laura dressed quickly and joined the others on the dock. The Virginia's hawsers were undone and the business of moving her begun. Geoff Seton, Amanda's husband and a friendly Brit with graying hair, signaled to his son, who was a few years older than Neil and looked as at ease in the launch as Neil did in his dory. The boy used the launch to give the schooner a gentle if slightly undignified nudge in her behind, and the Virginia began to move.

  With a bit more pushing and pulling by them, she was soon secured in her new berth, with her snoring crew belowdecks none the wiser.

  "Well done," said Geoff to all. "Right then, James; let's get that boat out of the water before she sinks to the bottom."

  Durant dropped back below for the moment, leaving Laura with the shipyard's co-owner, with whom she was forming an instant bond.

  "My father is going to have a conniption when he learns about this," Amanda confided to her. "He's had that boat forever."

  "I know," Laura agreed. "Men can be so irrational. They fall completely in love with the things—"

  "And call them 'she.'"

  "And hate to let anyone near them. My husband is like that."

  "Colin? His attitude seemed a little more businesslike than that to me," Amanda said candidly.

  "No, no, Mr. Durant's not my—"

  "Oh, I'm sorry," Amanda interrupted. "I misunderstood."

  "Actually, my husband's sailing with Harold Vanderbilt in the America's Cup races that are going on now—"

  "Really!"

  "And Mr. Durant—Colin—is filling in for him, but as first mate."

  Amanda glanced at the deck where Durant had last been and said only, "Ah."

  A perfectly innocent remark said in a matter-of-fact way; so why did Laura feel suddenly guilty?

  Amanda said, "Look, the men can haul my dad's boat out without our help. Let's have coffee in the office. Even for a shipyard, this is an ungodly hour to be working."

  They made their way toward a long, low building with Amanda peppering Laura with questions about living aboard a coastal schooner. How did they manage without an engine? How did they handle the paperwork? Where did they handle the paperwork? What about school? Did Laura home-school? How did they keep in touch with friends and relations? How did they manage without a telephone or a mailbox? How did they vote? Where did they vote? You couldn't vote without a permanent address. How did they get around without a car? Everyone needed a car.

  Laughing at the barrage, Laura finally threw her hands up and said, "I don't know; we just manage!"

  The pot was done percolating. While Amanda filled two mugs, Laura studied a photo that was obviously of Sir Thomas Lipton with his arm around the shoulders of a young boy in knickers. "Is that who I think it is?" she asked. His image was on practically every box of tea in the shops.

  "Yep. Sir Tom himself. The boy is my nephew. He's grown up now, with a child of his own." Amanda brought out cream from a small fridge, and set a sugar bowl down. She took a long sip and sighed. "I needed that."

  It soon became clear that she was as free with information about her own life as she was curious about Laura's. "Sometimes when the alarm jolts me at six a.m. I think, 'I gave up the life of a Bohemian for this?' No more getting zozzled and then sleeping in; no more working when I felt like it, if I felt like it. And cigarettes! I still miss my butts. But with a child on the way, all of that had to go. And then two more arrived, and that pretty much sealed my fate—we have a nanny, in case you're wondering if I've left them home alone. But anyway, after I abandoned all of my delicious bad habits, it became only a matter of time before I took on a regular job, much to the delight of my father, damn it. I used to be a sculptor. Ask me when's the last time I sculpted. There's a half-finished bronze in Shed 6 that's mostly gathering dust. I'll get back to it. Some day. Do I sound as if I'm whining?" she finished up, finally pausing for breath.

  Laura had been sizing up the cheery office with its family photos, dog bed in the corner, highchair in another corner and official-looking citations of excellence covering the wall above the hot plate and coffee station.

  She shook her head. "It's not what you're saying, but how you're saying it. You sound pretty happy to me."

  Smiling, Amanda said, "You know what? I am. But don't tell Geoff; I like to keep him guessing."

  "Our little secret."

  Here was a woman that Laura would have liked to know more: unpretentious, genuine, full of good will … and obviously in love with her husband. "In a lot of ways, I envy you," she blurted.

  "I could say the same!" Amanda returned. She was irrepressible.

  "Thanks for the coffee," Laura said, reluctant to leave. "But I have a hungry crew to feed—as it happens, I'm captain and cook—and we have a full day ahead."

  She hurried back to the boat, feeling oddly wistful. It was true that Neil had no friends … but then, neither had she.

  ****

  Before long, the Virginia's crew had eaten and begun the grueling work of loading the heaviest cargo down into the hold. First the flagstone was carefully lowered, stone by stone and packed between layers of hay for safekeeping. Granite slabs were put down next, with the help of the donkey-engine and the boom tackle. Next came the bathtubs, which got filled with sacks of cement, and eight-foot sections of a heavy, intricate, wrought iron fence. The Virginia, a heavy vessel in her own right, inched down slowly on her lines.

  At eleven the dockhands disappeared for lunch and Colin climbed up out of the hold, his face a grimy, sweaty mockery of the dry and windy weather on deck. Laura went over and took a seat next to him on a pile of lumber waiting to be loaded.

  "I've been thinking," she began, surprised to see fatigue in his eyes. Her husband had always seemed tireless during loading; but then, it was his boat. "This is a very safe cargo; the boat is nicely ballasted; we could go directly offshore instead of along the coast. We'd save a week of time each way."

  Durant wiped his dripping brow into a sleeve. "And what will we load into the hold for ballast on the ret
urn trip? Bahamian slaves?"

  That got her Midwestern hackles up. "Mr. Durant, I don't think—"

  "It was a joke, skipper."

  "There is nothing funny about slavery. I know quite a lot about Newport's infamous Triangle Trade. I read about its ships running slaves from Africa to the Caribbean, and sugar cane from the islands to New England, and processed rum from New England back to Africa. And I didn't laugh once."

  "Sorry. And anyway," he added with a tired smile, "I got the Triangle wrong, didn't I?"

  She searched his face. "Don't you take anything seriously?"

  He stood up, winging his shoulders back with a grimace. "Yes. Lunch. Are we having any?"

  Laura served the crew dried kippers and bread, aware all over again that she was one of very few to wear a cook's cap and a captain's hat at the same time. She stayed aloof from the three, bored by her son's pesky, nonstop adoration of Colin Durant. It was a childhood disease, like chicken pox; it would have to run its course. After lunch she went up to Durant and announced her decision: they were going to sail directly offshore to the Bahamas. On the return trip they would load up with rocks for ballast, if worst came to worst.

  She finished her little speech and he said, "I signed on for a coastal trip."

  "I've changed my mind. We sail the rhumb line," she replied firmly.

  "Have you telephoned the old man for his permission?"

  "How? And besides, I don't need to," answered Laura. Then she added, "You can walk away if you want to."

  "And leave you with them for crew."

  "It's been done that way for hundreds of years."

  "Then you won't mind my tagging along to see how you pull it off."

  "Fine." She had no idea whether that meant he was coming as first mate or as an observer for the National Geographic, but at least he was still with them. For one panicky moment she thought he wouldn't be coming at all.