A Circle on the Surface Page 18

  If it hadn’t been Win making the offer, it might have seemed a friendly one.

  “Alrighty then. Hubby approve of you parading around in your birthday suit? I thought not. Give me a hand and I won’t breathe a word.” Win laughed more loudly than usual.

  A gaff hook of a comment, it jerked Una to attention, stopped her in her tracks.

  “Oh my, the weight of these tins’d cause tennis elbow, a double case. I’d be much obliged, Una. Stuff’s too good to leave—heck,” Win’s chuckle rang out, nervous yet light, “we could set up shop, you and me, go head to head with Iris. But for now, isn’t it nice, seeing as we’re headed the same way, to watch each other’s backs?”

  15

  The house was deserted when he got there well after lunchtime, locked up tight and no sign of Una anywhere. It felt like he had been gone for weeks, although, wouldn’t you know, the car had run like a top all the way home. As good as new, less that front fender, negotiating the turns with barely a hiccup. He had hoped to find Una watching for him from the window or running out to the yard. But in the house, dust waltzing in the sunlight was the only thing stirring. She had gone off on some day-long jaunt? Not even Tippy was there for a cuddle. A cup of tea or a waiting sandwich would’ve been nice. Then he remembered the jerry cans and tramped outside to free them from the trunk.

  Amazingly, or not, they seemed untouched, the water piss-warm when he ran some into the basin to wash off the worst of O’Leery. Then he fished the tube of glue from his pocket. It was something to do while he waited for Una. It was still a Saturday after all, and some of it, like Ma’s ornament, could yet be salvaged.

  But when he checked the parlour drawer, the figurine wasn’t there. The doily was, but not so much as a shard of porcelain. He went back out into the kitchen. Ah! There it was beside the trash, ready to be dumped. Una was nothing if not a neat nut, a tidy housekeeper—sometimes a bit too tidy. Aside from her severed head, all of the Mother but a portion of the base was intact. He pried the lid off the glue, applied the stuff with his finger. For best results, let dry for twenty-four hours before use. He had to smile. For use as what, a golden calf, an idol to pray to? Were that the case, he and Una might have launched prayers for the peaceful resolution of their small differences through its intercession.

  When the figurine was more or less repaired—barely a chip in her base, a near-invisible seam through her beneficent smile—he placed her back in her spot. He felt a pang that Ma had lived so small a life that such an object could have meaning—but then look at him, saddled once again with the car.

  He lifted the Dvořák record from its sleeve, placed the needle. No, with time on his side he would not skip to the second track but enjoy the first with all its bombast. Its triumphant noise pretty much summed up the better parts of the day. Freeing the violin from its case, he prepared to bow along to the gorgeous adagio, its gentle conjuring of a fine day’s beginning, a fresh start.

  Life isn’t all cherries, my darling, nor should you expect it to be, from wherever she was, Ma seemed to remind him. We all have to do things we don’t like. Enjoy those things you do.

  He had played through the record twice when the clock’s ticking caught him up.

  Where was she? Should he start rustling up supper? She would be ravenous after swimming and tramping all over God’s green acre. It was important that she be properly nourished. Who needed a doctor to tell them that?

  He opened some beans, sliced bread for toast and what was left of a tomato, filled the kettle—then thought better of it. Who knows what might be in the water. Anyone craven enough to steal a car, any car, might have easily tampered with it; you couldn’t put it past them. He tipped the beans into a pot, ready to heat up.

  Still no Una, and nearly five o’clock. Something must have happened; she had slipped and twisted an ankle—worse, fallen and broken something, hit her head, gotten lost? It was ridiculous letting his imagination charge ahead of itself. But at a quarter past he strolled out by the road, leaving the door open in case she’d lost her key.

  No sign of her on the road, so he kept going. His feet carried him as if they knew something he did not. Now don’t borrow trouble, Ma’s voice pursued him. A penny for your thoughts: Ma used to say that too, and so had Win, when they were kids. No doubt Win had upped it to a nickel after landing Clint—because didn’t marriage do that at times, force a fellow inside of himself?

  He was almost upon the beach before he spied her by the water—yes, it was Una, he could tell by the silhouette of her slender body—and the neighbours, Clint and Win. They were huddled over something lying at the surf’s edge. A bedroll or an extra-large ditty bag, something lumpen and dark lolling there like a washed-up seal.

  Except, it was too big to be a seal.

  As Enman got closer, he saw Clint was dandling a gaff hook and hauling whatever it was ashore. Only then did he spy two men, strangers, stumbling from the dunes, wielding what looked like a sheet of plywood. As he approached, upon them now, they heave-ho’ed the object onto it. Then, suddenly, the sight was a punch to the gut. Terrible things ran through his head as his feet dragged him closer.

  Una looked up then and her face was pinched, and Win was crying.

  “Found ’im, the gals did—some poor bastard, Christ only knows who,” Clint was yelling up at him. Una looked past Enman with numb, fixed eyes.

  The fellows with the makeshift stretcher were ARP, it quickly dawned, with their armbands and bright vests. They were both young. One of them puked into the shallows.

  He felt something inside him freeze as he pictured George Archibald.

  This body had not been in the water for long; he could see where the canvas it had been wrapped in had fallen away. If it had been, the face would have been black and bloated. But it was blue around the mouth and a gash at its throat was blackish purple, the skin at the edges a deepening grey. Then he realized that part of its head was missing.

  Good Christ.

  “Oh, my darling girl.” He reached to comfort Una. She pressed herself to him, sparrow-boned, trembling. The way he had pressed himself to her, telling her about that blazing, tar-streaked night at sea. All he could think of was a bird in a bad wind. One of Father Heaney’s maxims echoed back oddly: Better to give comfort than receive it. Be for the troubled a channel of peace.

  Una was babbling, “We were coming along, minding our own business, and saw this….”

  “Shhh now, it’s all right,” he kept saying. Though of course it wasn’t—not for this poor bugger anyway.

  He suspected that somehow, someday, Una and Win might become friends. An evening out, the drive home together, that was all it had taken for Una to look somewhat more kindly on Win.

  The ability to look more kindly on most things usually helped. But all the sympathy and pity in the world could not enhance the look of that bluish face or prevent the sight of it from reaching deeper into his gut—what in the name of?—It loosed in his mind the flares of other dead faces, eyes seeing nothing or what passed for hell.

  Or purgatory, which Ma—in moments less influenced by Father Heaney’s speculations, such as after the old man’s passing—had considered a lingerer’s stopgap. You feel them hanging around, she used to say. Like they’ve got unfinished business, so they’re not quite happy, not just yet, leaving the rest of us to fix their messes. Fix their messes so that someday somewhere they’ll be free to rollick about.

  “It’s as if your father’s still waiting for me to say, ‘I forgive you, Cleary, so go away, would you?’”

  Now Clint was clapping him on the shoulder, drawing him and Una towards himself and Win into a silly group hug. “Hey, buddy—this is the last frigging thing you need to see,” he was saying. “Look, these fellas are here. Take Una home. Win and me’ll see what’s what. They’ll want a statement, I ’magine. Who knows but the Herald’ll send a raft of reporters to grill us. Win a
nd me, we’ll handle it.”

  Clint gave Una a funny look—no pretending to himself Enman didn’t see it—a look staking a claim that the find was Win’s. That Win’s being from here made her a more credible witness. Which made some sense, but lent credence to Una’s complaints of feeling snubbed, excluded.

  “It was both gals who found him?” Enman asked just to be sure.

  “Yeah. Now, gwan—get Una out of here. Her delicate nature and all.” Clint’s eyebrows tented. “These ARP guys got everything under control.” Though this was questionable, the way the one kept gagging as they hefted the body on their plywood.

  Now Una was weeping, and no wonder. He stole a quick, final glance at the men’s burden. The longish dark hair, the shadowy beard. The stretcher-bearer stumbled and the wrapping slipped. Enman glimpsed clothing, sodden trousers and a sweater.

  Win let out a strange little moan. Speechless, they gaped at the badge sewn to one sleeve: an eagle insignia against red and the black of a swastika.

  “Good Christ.” Enman caught his breath. “He wasn’t swimming out there, was he?”

  “How far offshore do you think the bastards are?” Clint gripped Win’s hand.

  “Closer than you think.” Enman pulled Una close. He would have to prod the ARP boys into quicker action. “Sure you fellas can manage?”

  “Got the fire truck up back of the pond,” one of them said.

  Una hardly uttered two words, stumbling away.

  When they got home, he sat her down and got supper and put some in front of her. Only then she warmed up enough to ask about Beulah and the Grove.

  She sighed and said how nice it would be to have a new car. Then she stood, saying the excitement had worn her out and it was time for bed. “Coming up?” he expected her to say, but after visiting the privy she slipped upstairs without a word.

  Una was more delicate than he had thought. Her delicacy proved how little Ma had known her, once pointing out to him Una’s toughness. “You have to be tough to be a dervish.” Of course, Una had appeared tough, tending Ma’s needs.

  Watching from the front room, seeing Win and Clint coming up the hill, Enman grabbed the bucket, a pretext for popping over. Clint was by himself on their porch, and licked his finger tersely, held it to the breeze. “Thought we were in for a bit of relief, earlier. But no go.”

  When he asked after Win, Clint seemed disgusted. “Well—as you might imagine, she’s beside herself. Beside herself that no one’s been listening. All these months, she’s been saying we ought to be vigilant”—this was the word Clint used; he and Win had wasted no time speaking with the paper?—“with the Jerries so near.” He sounded suddenly accusing, as if it was Enman’s fault, or Una’s, that the dead man had come ashore. “How many more, you figure, are out there, alive?”

  The bucketful of water Clint gave Enman went a long way in cleaning up the kitchen, a chore that kept his mind off the worst of this treacherous business, his memories of his ship being hit. But every time he thought of the body, the need for a drink surged with such a fierce heat it made him clammy.

  The mahogany chest was empty of liquor, of course—it wasn’t as though Una would replenish it. He rooted around inside it anyway, Ma’s figurine looking down all the while. From its place high on the shelf you couldn’t see the damage to it. Then he crept upstairs in the twilight to peek in on Una.

  She was curled on her side, her back to him, and by the sound of her breathing, in a dead sleep. That gruesome business at the beach had taken more of a toll than he had guessed. Una wasn’t as tough or as practical as Win. He hoped Win’s practicality would rub off on Una and that being practical would remedy the flightiness that contributed to her being lonely.

  With nothing to drink and no light—he hesitated even to burn a candle, having now such proof that the enemy hovered—he could either listen to music at whisper-volume or go to bed. With tomorrow aimed at making up lost hours, by dawn he would be writing up invoices, balancing payments and expenditures, forget it was the Lord’s Day—a meaningful thing to Ma and Ma alone.

  Careful not to disturb her, he crawled in next to Una. When she shifted he spooned against her and held her close. The warmth of her, her slip of a body inside that cotton nightie, was all a fellow could want. How was it that such an awkward, solitary sort as he had found himself so lucky?

  For the first time in weeks, months, he wanted, really wanted, to do the thing she was usually so greedy for. But she moved away, sighing in her sleep.

  At first light he woke. Sunday was the best day of the week to get caught up at work without Isaac peering over your shoulder.

  Una stirred. He brushed her hair from her cheek. He stroked her arm the way she liked, moved his hand to a shin tucked up under the nightie. Usually such a move made her respond. But now she flung her arm out and reached for something, swore.

  “Can you see it? My thermometer,” she mumbled, pointing vaguely to the floor, and then, “Is that the cat I hear, wanting in?” She asked when Tippy had last been fed.

  “This worries you?” He laughed, expecting her to laugh too, though she didn’t.

  He held out his arms. “I can saunter in when I like—it’s not like Isaac’s got his time clock ticking.”

  It was a simple statement which she somehow took umbrage to. “Oh, but we all must do things we don’t feel like.” Una spouted Ma’s expression. Perhaps she didn’t intend to be sarcastic, but her mimicry made him suddenly defensive.

  “If not for my poor ma, God knows where I’d have ended up. Living with the Twomeys? How about your mother, what kind of a mother was she?” He said it kindly, he was curious, since Una seldom mentioned either of her parents.

  She smiled glumly. “I’ve told you about her problem. That’s about all there is to know, I’m afraid.” She spoke pointedly, and he regretted bringing it up, determined not to rise to the accusation in her voice.

  “Okay, easy. Forget I asked. Look, I know it was rough, what you and Win saw. Gave you a fright. It’s a dire thing—”

  He told her how, once, he’d helped the Meades comb the shore for a relative who had fallen overboard, and he and another kid had found something wedged in the rocks—wedged like food between molars, he almost said—before Sylvester Meade could yank them away.

  “Yes—well, we can’t be Pollyannas for ever, can we.”

  She sounded disinterested. Disinterested and cross, if you could be both.

  “I only wish Clint or I’d seen it first and headed you off, you and Win, spared you both the—”

  “Ugly details?” She licked her lips, touched her fingers to them. They were likely parched, another thing somehow his fault?

  “Una. What have I done now? What is it?”

  Her laugh was almost cruel. “You have no intention of ever leaving, do you. You love it here, being back.”

  She chewed her lip, but then leaned over the bed to give him a kiss, a tight peck on the lips. “My next appointment’s supposed to be in September. Guess I’ll be driving myself there, if you won’t set foot back in town.” Her voice sounded light now, and was full of a strange but welcome resignation. “I really can’t imagine the need to see Snow then anyway, unless something changes. So—are you going to lie here all day till Inkpen comes knocking?” She moved to flick aside the blind. “The sounds in the night—sure it wasn’t rain? If you run next door and fill up the kettle, I’ll see what’s to fry up. While you’re at it, maybe Clint’ll let you haul back enough to fill the tub. I’ll go out of my head if I don’t have a proper bath.”

  What could he do but oblige, and oblige with a wink? “If he says it’s a loan, I’ll be sure to say we’ll pay him back.”

  At least she smiled then, sort of, on her way out back.

  16

  Same as with facing a rowdy class, Una decided, she would face her misgivings, her fears, about the beach. She
would not avoid it just because of what had happened there, her deed and her and Win’s discovery. The beach was her refuge, her solace. Overcoming apprehension meant diving back in to whatever made you afraid, the next day and the next and the next after that. It was foolish to think you could avoid some things, good or bad.

  Despite the morning’s being overcast, the instant Enman was safely out of sight she set off. She would skirt the first beach where, by now, the curious would likely be gathered. Let them be. Their presence might ward off interlopers. The breeze would clear her head.

  Attempting to flee Win’s company the day before, she had looped towards the water. There she had spied it. Fabric—a thick bolt of fabric, a bedroll maybe?—being dragged back and forth by the waves then pushed toward shore, never mind the surf’s reluctance to let go. Canvas draped with wrackweed, had it fallen from a vessel? Her newly hatched fear, second only to that of being caught out by Win, was stumbling upon something awful. You heard about grisly discoveries, people like Enman’s shipmates after having been hit, human vultures—Win and her ilk—swooping in after a sinking to snatch anything useful.

  It couldn’t be. She had stepped into the water to get a better look.

  Something raw poked from one end of the bundle. A seepage tinged the backwash pink. Not quickly enough to back away, she had discerned the shape. A face under wraps, a torso. Cloth. A man of the cloth: the phrase blazed through her as she’d backed up, leapt away, heels dredging sand. A fanciful notion, a trick of her overwhelmed brain.

  Una let out a shriek, she must have, because Win had come running. By now the thing had beached itself. Dropping her stash of cans, enough to do the rest of the summer and then some, Win had crouched and peeled back the canvas. What Una saw made her gag. Turning, she spat into the seafoam. “Don’t you be upsetting yourself,” Win had said, or something just as inane. Win had held her hand. Una had let her.