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34

Cadence

1942

I drove the truck to see Gram at the hospital the next morning and stopped in Edgartown to drop off my column before tomorrow’s nine o’clock deadline. It was good to have some time to myself to sort through everything. New York City. Gil. As much as I loved Bess, it was hard to talk to her about those things. She just wanted Tom to come home and me to stick around the Vineyard forever, in that order.

Though Winnie had said she’d keep an eye out for jobs down the road, it would probably be a while before I could leave my responsibilities on the island, not to mention the German in our attic, and it looked like another year would slip by without a real job. To make matters worse, Mr. Wespi was called up for military service and the club abruptly closed, leaving Bess and me without an additional paycheck. I tried to focus on the good things. At least Celia and Dolores said they read my column, the thought of which had caused me to stay up half the night working on the latest one. I was especially proud of the result.

I’d looked at starting salaries in the New York newspapers, and they were pitifully low. I’d barely be able to afford a shared room, never mind decent clothes.

I rolled down the truck window and my thoughts wandered to Gil. I’d never been attracted to anyone this way. It was almost painful to think about how he’d looked on the soccer field the day before. No wonder Amelia was so desperate to hold on to him. They’d probably kissed at least, and no doubt he was good at it. Briar had said they’d been arguing, but that didn’t mean he gave a fig about me. Would he just ship out and happily leave me behind?

I parked and headed toward the Gazette offices. And as I hurried along the brick sidewalk, someone called from behind.

“You’re avoiding me, I see.”

I turned to find Mrs. Stanhope following me. She’d dressed for the ambush, in a lemon-yellow suit and white gloves.

“I didn’t see you,” I said.

“You need to be observant to make it in the publishing world. It’s a den of snakes.”

“I need to visit my grandmother in the hospital. Please make it quick.”

“Has it ever occurred to you that Bess Ann is only using you all?”

I leveled a cool gaze at her. “Is that all you have, Lydia?”

“It’s what she does. Has fun with a new concept and moves on. This time it’s playing penniless farm girl. Next week it’ll be something new.”

“Maybe new mother to a child she wants to raise in a loving house. Unlike what she had growing up.”

“Aren’t you the feisty one?” She stepped closer. “Bess Ann is going to go through a very difficult time with that baby, even under the best circumstances. I want you to convince her to come home to have it.”

“She’ll never agree to that.”

“If you tell her to, she will.”

“Why now? You never cared about her when she was growing up. Shipped her off to boarding school.”

“She’s my only child, and the thought of a grandchild changes everything. It’s a chance for us to reconcile. I can give the child everything. And with your grandmother in the hospital, poor woman, it’s not a good place for a child right now. I miss my Bess. I think you can understand that. I hear your own mother was such a lovely woman, sweet Emma, running the library and all. I think she’d side with me.”

“You didn’t even know her.”

“I simply want a second chance with my own daughter.”

“Bess has a mind of her own.”

“Just listen to my proposal. I think you’ll find it’s quite interesting.” A smile teased Mrs. Stanhope’s lips. “Why not get something out of this whole mess, a little security once Bess has gone off after the next bright shiny object? My roommate from boarding school is an executive at Simon only one third of them had made it back to Britain. But only two American Rangers had died. Was Tom one of them?

I took Bess’s hand as she sat in the visitor’s chair. “Chances are he’s fine,” I said. “They would have contacted us by now if he wasn’t.”

Bess looked up at me. “I’m just so tired of crying, Cade. We need news at this point, even if it’s bad.”

She was right. The not knowing was the worst. Not even a letter from Tom. But maybe there was one on the way. Mail coming from overseas took forever. Bess and I agreed that it was better that Gram hadn’t heard that report. We would tell her soon enough, when she recovered.

Once six o’clock came around, I gave Bess the truck keys and got ready for Gil to pick me up for a ride home.

“You know, I’ve been thinking that Major Gilbert may not be so bad after all,” Bess said. “The way that he has been so helpful with Gram. Not that he isn’t a testy sort sometimes, but who isn’t some days? And there might be a good bit of humanity in there.”

“Winnie told me I’m in love. Says she can always tell.”

Bess smiled. “Winnie is positively orphic, I tell you, and completely right, of course. We can’t help who we love. But you have to take what you want in that department, Cadence. It won’t always come to you. Especially with people like dear Amelia around.”

“I was thinking about asking him to come for a swim in the pond.”

“There you go. I bet the major looks jolly good in a swimsuit. Or out of it. He can borrow Tom’s trunks; they’re in my drawer.”

“He barely talks about anything important, though. Long stretches of silence.”

“You have that effect on men. Tom told me that in seventh grade his friend Mark Ford could barely speak in your presence. Just bring some wine and ask him about war stuff. That’ll get him chatty.”

“It doesn’t feel right leaving you here and having fun, with everything so up in the air about Tom.”

“Briar’s coming soon to keep us company, after she and Margaret stop for sandwiches to bring. It’s going to be an extraordinarily fun time here tonight at Martha’s Vineyard Hospital, so don’t worry about us. And Tom would want you to go,” Bess said, her eyes glassed with tears. “He knows all too well that the right person comes along only once, and you have to enjoy it, my dear friend, while it lasts.”

—

Gil picked me up at the hospital and brought me back to the cottage, the shadows growing long. We talked about Tom and Dieppe, and little else, on the drive home. He seemed preoccupied, and I started to question the wisdom of asking him to stay for a swim. He had Amelia to think of, after all, even if they’d been quarreling, as Briar said. And he had all of his men to take care of. Also, how uncomfortable would it be if he turned down my invitation?

Gil drove to the front gate and braked, and I gathered myself to climb out.

He turned in his seat. “You know, I’m off duty tonight, and I was wondering if you’d like to…well, take that swim you talked about.” He met my gaze directly. “In your rather magical pond.”

I smiled to myself, relieved I didn’t have to ask, and then got lost somehow, staring at his beautiful eyes. Green, but flecked with blue, I saw in that light. He must have taken my quiet as reluctance and continued, “It’s just so bloody hot. If I’m being a nuisance—”

“No,” I interrupted. “I mean, yes, let’s swim. You can use my brother’s trunks if you’d like.”

He seemed relieved and turned off the engine. “Right, then.”

We entered the house, and I switched on the lamp in the entryway. It was nice being with him in that snug cottage, just the two of us—with Peter hiding in the attic, of course, but mostly alone.

I led Gil to my bedroom, happy Bess had made our bed that morning as always, a habit she’d acquired from boarding school. I opened my bureau drawer, releasing the pine smell that had been there since it was my mother’s so long ago, when she’d used balsam sachets and lined the drawers with red reindeer Christmas wrapping paper. What would she have thought of Gil? She probably would have liked him, once he’d warmed up to her. If she’d been there to see me going off to swim, she would have said, Be a lady, her favorite advice.

I pulled out Tom’s old blue bathing suit, handed it to Gil, and then took mine out, as well, a white suit that Mrs. Jantzen had left in the club lost and found.

“I’ll leave you to it,” I said, and went to Gram’s room to change.

Halfway there I turned back, having forgotten my shorts, and watched through the slightly ajar door as he pulled his shirt over his head, then slid off his trousers and underwear. I stood riveted to the spot by the beauty of it, surpassed only by the Adonis Uffizi I’d seen in an art history textbook. Maybe Gil’s body was even handsomer, being flesh and not marble, and tanned the lovely color of worn saddle leather everywhere except where his shorts kept out the sun.

I crept away, afraid to be caught a voyeur. Then I stepped to the attic stairs, heard Peter softly snoring up there, and rushed to Gram’s bedroom to change into my suit.

Would Gil and I kiss? I slipped on the suit and glanced at myself in Gram’s mirror. My breasts weren’t perfectly symmetrical, as I’d pointed out to Bess one day when we were changing. I smiled, remembering her reply. “I would kill to be that well-endowed,” she said. “And breasts are sisters, not twins. Matching is for socks and eyeballs. Men don’t care about symmetrical.”

I skipped the shorts—Briar had said they made me look like a gym teacher, anyway—took a bottle of Gram’s beetlebung-honey wine from the icebox, and met Gil out front. He was leaning against the front gate, completely re-dressed, his uniform pants cuffed at the ankles. The wind was picking up.

“Ready?” I asked, brandishing the wine bottle. “We need to hurry. It’ll be dark soon.”

We made it to the beach and the breeze swept his hair, the last of the sun setting his face aglow. My gaze wandered to our catboat, pulled up on the beach, thankfully above the high-tide mark. Of course, Briar had taken it out and forgotten to put it back in the boathouse, again.

“Nice suit,” Gil said as we walked.

“To be honest, we don’t always wear suits when it’s just us girls.” I made a mental note to slow down and let him come to me. If this was even anything more than a friendly dip.

“I’m sure the boys up at the base would be happy to hear that,” he said.

I stopped and took a sip of wine from the bottle, suddenly overwhelmed by his presence.

“Straight from the bottle, is it?” he asked with a grin.

I set the bottle between us. “Unless you brought the crystal.”

He lifted his shirt over his head and removed his trousers to reveal Tom’s trunks. They were a bit tight in the seat but still fit well. Bess was right. He really did look jolly good in a suit.

I walked the twenty yards across the beach to Copper Pond, sat at the edge, and rinsed my feet. He followed with the wine, sat next to me, and turned his face to the sky. “It’s lovely here. Twilight drops her curtain down and pins it with a star. ”

I took a deep breath. Quoting Lucy Maud Montgomery? I held myself back from straddling and kissing him.

“So this is the famous Copper Pond,” I said instead. “The minerals in the water give it that metallic shine. Make it feel like silk on your skin.”

“Brilliant.” He took a swig of the wine. “This is remarkably good.”

“My Gram’s recipe. With the honey the bees make from those trees up there. The beetlebungs.”

We were quiet for a moment, listening to the night sounds. “I’ll hate leaving here,” he said. “Only a couple more days left.”

I wasn’t crazy about the thought of him leaving, either. Was anything going to happen between us? We exchanged a long look. Perhaps he was still smarting from his failed attempt in Oak Bluffs.

“You have a scar,” I said, nodding toward his chest, just below his clavicle.

“My stab-wound souvenir. I don’t talk about it much, but we were captured by the Germans. Six of us.”

“Amelia mentioned it. You must have been terrified.”

“They ambushed us, so it all happened quickly.” He looked down at the scar. “They kept us at a POW camp near Schleswig. Two of us escaped, though. Made it back to England eventually.”

I longed to smooth my fingers over the scar; to avoid that, I changed the subject.

“Speaking of Amelia,” I said. It was the blond elephant in the room. I had to broach it.

He tossed a pebble into the pond. “She left this morning.”

I took a long sip from the bottle. “She wasn’t happy that I rode alone with you to Oak Bluffs.”

He shook his head. “She lives in her own world.”

“Your fiancée.”

He laughed. “No. In her mind, maybe. I broke it off with her a few days ago, actually. It took her this long to accept it.”

“It must be hard.”

He looked at me. “It was mostly her doing the pursuing.”

I waded into the pond, up to my chest. “I’ve never had a boyfriend, really.”

“I find that hard to believe.”

“The boys here aren’t the least bit worldly.”

He waded in. “That’s important to you?”

“I suppose. It would be nice to at least find someone who knew how to kiss properly.”

“Vineyard boys don’t know how to kiss?”

“Not in my limited experience, with Lawrence Belson at the Chappaquiddick Club bonfire.”

He swam to me. “Good to know it’s a low bar.”

I ran two fingers across the scar on his chest, bent and kissed it, letting my lips linger there.

He kissed my mouth, hard and urgent, with no pretense of softness, the stubble of his beard grazing my lips in a good way. He seemed to want it as much as I did.

I broke free first and touched my lips, bruised, and then went back for more. I lost track of time in that warm water, our bodies smooth against each other.

“Lawrence Belson doesn’t know what he’s missing,” Gil said into my ear. “But I must say, if you’d rather not go down the garden path, we should probably take a cold ocean swim or something.”

I had a feeling I knew what “the garden path” was, and nothing was keeping me from that.

“Have you ever skinny-dipped, Major? Is that what they call it across the pond?” It may have been the wine or Bess’s urging me to live a little, but I liked my newfound boldness.

He smiled, teeth white in the darkness. “They call it wild swimming.”

“It’s a much better experience without suits.”

I slid off my swimsuit and set it at the pond edge. He did the same and then pulled me close, his arms so warm around me, his chest smooth against my breasts. “You’re the most beautiful thing I’ve seen in my life,” he said as he kissed my neck, and I closed my eyes. It started to rain, the drops pattering on the water around us and wetting my upturned face.

“Perhaps we should make our way to somewhere dry,” he murmured in my ear.

I smiled. “There’s always the boat. It does have a small bed up front in the cabin.”

We hurried across the sand, hand in hand, and ducked into the catboat cabin. I lay with Gil in the darkness, the wind gently swaying the boat. And gave myself up to the glorious weight of him.