The Crying Child, page 5
“I’m sorry about yesterday.”
“You’re entitled to your opinion.”
“But I’m not entitled to foist it on other people so loudly. I—well, to tell the truth, I’d been up all night. Lost a patient. I was in a bad mood.”
“I’m sorry. About the patient.”
He gave me a quick, sidelong glance and then his somber face lightened in one of those smiles.
“You really are sorry, aren’t you?”
“I’m sorry for the whole sad, sad world,” I said. “But at the moment I’m concentrating on Mary.”
“Look, let’s take the morning off, okay? Forget about Mary for a couple of hours.”
“You’d like to forget her altogether.”
“I don’t provoke,” Will said calmly. “Not on a day like this, when I’ve had a couple of hours sleep. I promise, I will reobserve and reconsider and anything else you want. Maybe I was wrong about Mary—and, by God, you won’t get a concession like that from me very often. But this morning I want to relax. Okay?”
“Well…”
When he said “walk,” he wasn’t kidding. We didn’t follow the road, but struck off into the woods. There was a path of sorts, but it was badly overgrown. Will admitted that it was seldom used; the old ladies hadn’t been much given to hiking after they passed seventy, and he usually drove. Even with Will preceding me, fending off the worst of the overhanging branches, I was winded and disheveled by the time we reached the edge of the woods.
I understood then why trees and vines had seemed so thick, so twisted together. Without mutual support they could not have survived. Only a few hundred yards away, the ground ended, with breathtaking abruptness, in a cliff that seemed to drop off into empty space. As soon as I stepped out of the woods I could feel the force of the wind. During a winter storm it would howl through the eaves of the forest like a banshee.
The house huddled close to the shelter of the trees. I could see the necessity for that, though I wondered whether I would like living so close to the dark pines.
The house itself was a gem, a classic example of a home-grown architectural style. I knew it must be quite old. The New England saltbox style was at its best in the mid-eighteenth century, which would make this house about two hundred years old. It wore its age well. The silvery gray surface had been weathered by that unique blend of salt sea air that is found only along this coast. Two small one-story additions had been built out from the back, and a deep porch jutted out to protect the front door. Vines covered its latticed sides, but I could see wooden benches set at right angles to the house. A single massive chimney jutted up from the center of the roof. The windows were good-sized, and the wooden shutters looked as if they had been designed for use. Even with the woods behind it, the house would endure bitter weather; except for a pair of tall pines by the front gate, it was completely exposed to the wind from the sea.
The only flaw in the scene of picturesque charm was Will’s battered blue station wagon, parked at the end of what could only be described as a track. Unpaved and rocky, it curved off to the right and vanished behind the trees.
“How on earth do you get out of here to make house calls in the winter?” I asked.
“Oh, I board in town during the worst months. But you could live here all right if you didn’t have to answer emergency calls. A jeep with four-wheel drive would get you in and out most days, and I can imagine worse fates than being snowed in for a week or two. With one shed full of firewood and the other packed with canned goods…I’ve got five hundred books I haven’t had time to read and a tape recorder I can run from batteries.”
I could understand the wistful note in his voice. The picture had a strong appeal for me too. A fire roaring up the chimney while the wintry blasts howled outside…. Books, music…and other equally cozy occupations…
“It wouldn’t work,” I said regretfully. “You couldn’t be cut off from your patients.”
“I could part of the time, if I could get another man here to share my practice. There’s work enough for two, God knows. And I have so much catching up to do. I haven’t even time to read the journals the way things are, and you can’t give your patients the best possible care unless you keep up to date.”
So that was why he wanted to be marooned in his snug little house—to read medical journals in bachelor solitude.
“If that’s what turns you on,” I said. “Personally, I’d go crazy buried in a place like this all winter.”
“It’s lucky you aren’t then, isn’t it? Come on in, and meet the beasts, as Bertha calls them.”
Knowing I had annoyed him, I followed him across the lawn. I was curious about the beasts; from Mrs. Willard’s tone they might be anything from mice to rattlesnakes. The first of the menagerie was sitting on top of the porch steps. The sheer size of him made me exclaim aloud.
“Heavens, that’s the biggest cat I’ve ever seen! What is it, a lynx or something?”
The cat, a brown tabby, had hair almost as long as that of a Persian; it formed a manelike ruff around the smug feline face. The animal gave me a leisurely appraisal; then it rose to its feet, turned, and brought into view a tail so big, so bushy, and so long that it looked like a Cavalier’s plume. My gasp of admiration was the proper response; the cat gave me a coquettish leer over its shoulder and sat down with its back to me, waving the tail.
“What on earth is it?”
“She,” said Will reproachfully. “The breed is called Maine coon cats. You can see why, though of course the old story that they are a cross between cats and raccoons is nonsense. The two species don’t interbreed.”
“I’ve never seen one like it.”
“They are rare, except in New England.”
“You breed them?” I sat down on the steps. The cat promptly climbed into my lap and sat down, purring so hard that its sides pumped in and out.
“No, I don’t, really. They just keep on having kittens.”
“Yes,” I said weakly. “I see they do.”
Silently and slyly the cats had filled up the yard. There were more coon cats—a red, a silver tabby, a tortoiseshell; two Siamese; a black-and-white shorthair; and an exquisite long-haired creature with blue eyes and dark Siamese markings. Lined up along the path were more commoners—alley cats—in a startling variety of shapes, colors, and sizes. I had barely taken in this display when two dogs came stalking around the corner of the house. One was a terrier; the other, looming over his friend, was a St. Bernard. My head jerked back.
“Good heavens,” I said.
Will scooped the purring sycophant from my lap and pulled me to my feet.
“You might as well see the rest,” he said, with the air of a man who wants to get a bad job over and done with.
At least “the rest” were smaller than the cats and dogs. Two guinea pigs, a hamster, a squirrel, three snakes—one large, two small—and a parrot who, at the sight of me, let out a stream of profanity as colorful as his red-and-green plumage.
“What,” I said. “No partridge in a pear tree?”
“The partridge only comes in for chow.”
I sat down, after a wary glance at the seat of the chair. My suspicions were understandable, but unjustified. The place was surprisingly clean. Neat it definitely was not, but the clutter was an attractive kind of clutter. There were no dirty socks or unwashed dishes, only piles of records, magazines—and cats. The room was big and low-ceilinged. Three of the four walls had built-in bookcases covering all the surface that was not occupied by windows. The fourth wall consisted almost entirely of fireplace—a huge stone structure whose blackened interior testified to frequent use. There were two doors on that wall, side by side. Will had underestimated the number of books—or maybe, I thought, he actually had read all but five hundred of them. Some of the shelf space was filled by a complex assortment of hi-fi equipment. The twin speakers stood on each side of the fireplace. I glanced at the record albums piled on the table beside my chair. As I might have suspected, Will’s tastes were classical.
Will had left the front door open and it wasn’t long before the animals filtered in. The dogs flopped down on the rug in front of the fireplace. They fixed mournful eyes on Will. The hamster started running madly around in his wheel; it squeaked. The parrot continued to swear, and, as if on signal, eight or nine cats began to mew.
Looking grim, Will carried the parrot, perch and all, out through a door at the back, through which I caught a glimpse of the interior of one of the annexes—a storage area, filled with firewood and cartons. When he returned, the slam of the door reduced the parrot’s voice considerably.
“You don’t have to censor him on my account,” I said. “I’ve heard worse at work, when I made a mistake.”
“It was the volume, not the content I was trying to control.”
“Who did he belong to, a retired sea captain?”
“You’re about a century behind the times. No, he belonged to two old ladies—Ran’s great-aunts. They liked to hear him cut loose. Said he reminded them of their grandfather.”
“They must have been characters.”
“They were. An admirable pair, in their peculiar way. After Miss Tabitha died this spring, nobody would take poor old Barnaby. His vocabulary was a little too rich. Bertha always hated his guts.”
“So you took him.” I studied my host until he began to fidget nervously. “I’ll bet most of this menagerie came the same way—abandoned animals that would have been destroyed if you hadn’t adopted them. Your bark is worse than your bite.”
“I prefer some animals to some people, that’s all…. What about some beer? Or a cup of coffee?”
“I could stand some coffee. If it’s ready.”
“You’ll get instant.”
“Fine. What I’d really like is to see the rest of the house. Do you realize what you’ve got here? I’ve never seen a gambrel roof on a saltbox before.”
“They aren’t all that rare.” Will opened one of the doors, the one farthest from the fireplace. “Come see the kitchen first. I’ll put the kettle on, and then you can inspect the upstairs while the water boils.”
The kitchen was a strange mixture of the antique and the very modern, with nothing in between. The four-burner electric stove had been added within the last few years, but its predecessor—and understudy, in case of power failures—was a creaky contraption fueled by kerosene. You could cook over the fire, though, I thought, inspecting the big fireplace, which was the reverse side of the one in the living room. You could bake bread—or try to—in the bake oven set into the chimney. The benches beside the hearth would be nice on winter days, with the sleet pounding against the shuttered windows, firelight flickering on the dark wooden flooring…Rugs, that was what the place needed. Braided rugs out here, to go with the rest of the room; the plain, white-painted mantel needed a row of ornaments, not the obvious copper utensils, but some good early pottery and maybe a pair of pewter candlesticks…. Curtains on the windows, something bright, to cheer up the winter gloom. It would be fun to hand-block the material, copying old designs….
I turned to meet Will’s curious eyes, and felt myself flush slightly. It was a good thing he couldn’t know what I had been thinking. Artistic fervor might be mistaken for—something else. Men were so conceited….
The other door beside the living-room fireplace opened onto an enclosed staircase. Upstairs, there were only two rooms and a tiny hall. Both the rooms had once been bedrooms, but one had been converted into a bathroom and the potentialities of that room made my mouth water. The same back-to-back fireplaces occurred upstairs. Imagine, I thought, a bathroom with its own fireplace; with those paneled cupboards and the sloping eaves….
“Hey.” Will jogged my elbow. “Talk about crazy things that turn people on…. You look like Dracula’s daughter eyeing a juicy victim. Do you by any chance covet my house?”
“What I couldn’t do with it! That bedroom is crying for decent furniture. There are antique shops all over New England. In a couple of years I could…”
“Tear yourself away; I think I hear the kettle whistling.”
As we went down the stairs he said,
“Ran told me you studied art. But I thought you did—you know, advertising, pop art, that kind of thing.”
“You sound as if you prefer that kind of thing.”
“I don’t care for pop art, if that’s what those enlarged soup cans are. But I’ve never been able to understand the passion some people have for old things. The wormier and more ramshackle the better, I gather. I like functional things with nice clean lines. Something you can sit on without falling through it, and eat off without worrying about spilling the coffee.”
“I see what you mean,” I said, looking with unconcealed disgust at the kitchen table. “Only a barbarian would put a green Formica table with shiny aluminum legs in this room. It makes cold shudders run down my back.”
“It holds coffee cups,” Will said mildly, putting them on the tabletop. “What else is a table supposed to do? Milk? Sugar?”
“No, thanks. I don’t see how you can live in this part of the world and not be interested in history.”
“Who says I’m not interested in history? I can tell you more about the China trade than any man on the island. But what does that have to do with antiques?”
“Why, the art of a period, especially the domestic arts, like furniture and dishes and costume—that’s what makes history interesting.”
“You’ll probably enjoy the local museum, then,” Will said. “They’ve got a lot of junk—excuse me—domestic-art objects. The old ladies—the great-aunts—donated some clothes, I remember.”
“I would enjoy it. I’m anxious to see the village; I’ll bet there’s an antique shop, too.”
Will’s face went blank.
“Yes, there is,” he said; from his tone he might have been admitting the existence of a concentration camp. “You’d be better off at the museum.”
I couldn’t imagine why he was so annoyed, but I was feeling fairly kindly toward him at that moment, so I decided not to bug him.
“Tell me about the China trade,” I said.
He smiled a little sheepishly.
“I was bragging. That was my big hobby when I was a kid. You know it was the East India-China trade that made New England rich, that and the related industries—shipbuilding, the Pacific fur trade, and so on. But I haven’t done any reading in years.”
“It’s such a romantic period,” I said. “The clipper ships, beating around Cape Horn…”
“The clipper ships didn’t come into use until the very end of the period,” Will said. “They were not—”
“Oh, who cares?” I waved away this repressive comment. “It’s still romantic. I was thinking about it last night, when I was up in the cupola at the house. About the Captain, and his wife watching up there, for the ship to come back after all those months and months and—”
“Captain Hezekiah? You haven’t wasted any time, have you? Who told you about the family skeleton?”
“Mrs. Willard mentioned him, but she certainly didn’t suggest that there was anything disgraceful about him. According to her, he was the family hero.”
“He was very successful,” Will said drily. “But you won’t hear any of the good family stories from Bertha. She’s been there so long, she identifies with the Frasers. Come to think of it, I believe there is a remote connection, some great-great-great-ancestor in common.”
“Really?”
“Oh, we’re all inbred,” Will said solemnly. He gave me a look of mock alarm. “Don’t tell me you’re interested in genealogy as well as antiques.”
“Why not?”
“Somehow subjects like antiques and genealogy make me think of the Colonial Dames. Sweet old ladies in flowered hats.”
I had to laugh.
“Sorry to destroy your image, but I am interested in both. After all, me boy, the McMullens were kings of Ireland oncet.”
“They were?”
“No, they were not,” I said, abandoning the brogue. “Peasants, that’s what they were. And proud of it. But just because my granddaddy came over in the hold of a boat doesn’t mean I can’t be interested in other people’s family trees.”
“I think it’s very broad-minded of you,” Will said.
“So do I. You inbred aristocrats, with your receding chins and feeble-minded offspring, are the ones we peasants have to clean up after all the time.”
Will’s hand went up automatically to explore the contours of his chin. Then he grinned.
“Maybe you’ve got a point there.”
“Not about your chin, that was a distinctly weak argument. Hadn’t we better be getting back? If I’m late for lunch, Mrs. Willard will glare at me and I’m scared of her.”
“We’ve got plenty of time. There’s something I want to show you on the way back. With your tastes, you’ll find it absolutely fascinating.”
Instead of going back by the path we had taken to reach the house, Will led me down the track—I refused to call it a road. We went toward the cliff, shaking off cats as we proceeded. When we reached the edge of the cliff, only the two Siamese were still with us. Even the splendor of the view could not keep me from glancing uneasily at the animals as they strolled and rolled near the cliff edge. The drop was not sheer, but it was steep and rocky; down below, the green waves dissolved into rainbow-shot lather amid glistening dark flanks of rocks.
The cats continued to follow us as we walked down the road. Farther down, where the track joined an unpaved but well-graveled road, Will turned aside into the pines. The gloom cast a corresponding shadow over my spirits. The cats didn’t share my feelings; their black tails were cheerfully erect as they prowled. Suddenly one gave a hoarse chirrup and leaped a fallen log, to disappear in the underbrush. Its mate was right behind it, ears lifted and hopeful.
“Won’t they get lost?” I asked.
“They know these woods better than I do.”
An unearthly howl came echoing back through the enclosing branches, and Will shook his head sympathetically.
“She missed that one.”
