Island Hearts (Jenny's Turn and Stray Lady) (18 page)

Abruptly, he moved back and she was alone in her seat, some contrary part of her wishing him closer.

The seaplane banked, turning into a wider channel. Jenny looked down and saw
Lady Harriet
waiting below.

“What time do we go through the channel?” she asked as she looked down. George’s boat looked very small from up here.

“First thing in the morning. We’ll have to wake up early for it.”

So they would stay together on the boat tonight, alone. She glanced over at Jake, but he was studying the scene below as they circled for a landing.

Where would Jake sleep?

Don’t be silly!
It wouldn’t be the first time she’d spent a night alone with him. Three years ago they’d gone up to an abandoned mill town to do a camera study that was later shown on national television. They had stayed in an empty house that had once been the mill manager’s residence. Jake had slept on the sofa and Jenny in the master bedroom.

Nothing had happened. Of course nothing had happened. She’d been very aware of him in the next room, but finally she had slept.

At night, on the boat, she could usually hear George’s breathing if she listened carefully. Tonight, she would listen for Jake’s.

“There’s the dinghy!” Jake shouted in her ear. “It’s tied to the boat. Norman must have found it.”

“Was it lost?”

Jake’s face seemed oddly pale as he answered, “George stopped breathing just as I got you two to the plane. We piled in and Luke took off – we had to leave the dinghy drifting. At the time, it didn’t matter – not nearly as much as getting to a doctor. But I’m glad it’s been found. I’d have felt badly about that.”

“There’s nothing for you to feel badly about. You saved our lives.” She stared down at the water rushing towards them, remembering the sudden dizziness that had overtaken her as she greeted Jake. She’d attributed it to seeing Jake again. “Who’s Norman?”

“A fisherman.”

“Another relative of yours? This place is loaded with your relatives.”

“I know.” He grimaced. “It makes me feel a bit intimidated, especially when my Aunt Violet starts lecturing me. I have to look in the mirror to be sure I’m not fourteen again – but no, Norman isn’t one of the relatives. I went down to the docks yesterday to see who I could find to check out
Lady Harriet
. I’d never met Norman before, but he was just leaving to go out on the afternoon tide, so he volunteered.”

She frowned. “Does anyone ever say no to you?”

“Yes.” He laughed. “Recently, a little girl named Jenny Winslow has been saying no quite consistently.”

She was five foot four, but from his height she supposed that would seem very small.

“Small only in size,” he amended. “Here we are – it’s going to be a perfect landing!”

It must have been. Jenny didn’t feel the pontoons touching the water.

“It’s calm,” the pilot called back. “There’s no reason I can’t take you right over to the boat.”

She watched Jake and Luke working together, bringing the plane in nose first. Luke stood on the pontoons and held the Beaver against the side of
Lady Harriet
. Jake stepped aboard and reached down for Jenny’s hand.

They stood on the deck together, watching the seaplane taxi away. As if they belonged together, alone on this vessel. Jenny quickly suppressed the thought.

The echoes of the engine slowly faded, leaving a silence that filled slowly… a sea bird crying from somewhere to their left… a faint, far-away echo of surf riding on the sand.

Jake pushed his hands deep into his pockets, something he often did just before delivering some deeply thought decision. But this time he only stared out at the water, then turned and said, “Let’s check the boat out. If there’s anything wrong, we should find out as soon as we can.”

Everything was just as they had left it. Even the coffeepot was still on the stove.

“Oh, Lord! The coffee! We left it on the stove!” Jenny smelled it as soon as Jake opened the sliding hatch. She followed him down below, going immediately to where the coffee pot sat on the cast iron top of the enclosed oil cooking stove. “That’s our coffee from— when? Two days ago? The pot’ll be a mess!”

“Put some water in it and let it soak,” Jake suggested.

Jenny picked up the pot and turned on the water pump at the galley sink. She already had a scouring pad out, scrubbing at the black insides of the coffee pot.

“It has to be cleaned sooner or later,” she muttered, “but this isn’t working.”

“Fill it with water and dump some dish soap into it. We’ll open up all the portholes and abandon ship while the fresh air takes over.”

Jake was prowling the insides of
Lady Harriet
restlessly.

“We’ll go ashore,” he said again.

“You were going to tell me how to test clams for poison, weren’t you?“

“Yes, well—” She thought he seemed oddly ill at ease. What was wrong? Had she said something, or was he wishing he were somewhere else – with Monica? “Clams,” he said, staring at his feet, then looking up. “It’s not a perfect system – it involves somebody being a guinea pig, but only in a limited way. That person cooks and eats one clam, then waits for an hour to see if there’s any tingling of the tongue or ears. If it’s okay, the person should test again, eating two clams. If there are any symptoms, they take a healthy dose of antacid – the organism reproduces in an acidic environment – otherwise, if there are no symptoms, you can be pretty sure the clams are okay.”

Ashore, he took a stick and dug until he had located a butter clam. He cut it open with a pocket knife, showing her the siphon which was known to be the location where the poison concentrated.

“If one clam on this beach is contaminated, they all are. The organism appears in the water in great concentration – that’s the Red Tide. The clams siphon it out – along with their other food – and the whole area is contaminated. It takes a long time for it to get back to normal.”

Jenny shuddered, unable to imagine herself digging for – or eating – clams again.

George’s campfire was washed away. They walked along the sand, veering off through the trees. Jenny found the stunted trees fascinating.

“Even the bush is different here,” she marveled. “Anywhere else on the coast, the trees would be tangled with underbrush. Here you can walk through, just as if it had been cleared.”

“It’s like that all over the islands. Just a green carpet of moss under the trees.”

“It’s beautiful.”

She found a tree that must have been made for her to sit against. She sank down in the soft moss, curled against the trunk. She could see through the forest to the water and the beach.

Jake stopped walking, but didn’t sit. He pushed his hands into his pockets again.

“Jenny, I’ve been thinking about what I’ve been doing – at work. I’ve thought a lot about what you said.”

“What did I say?”

“That I’m sacrificing quality, taking on contracts like the Madison training series.”

She shifted uncomfortably, admitted, “I was angry, not thinking about what was coming out of my mouth.”

He nodded. “So you said things you’d never have said otherwise. That doesn’t mean there wasn’t truth in what you said. I’ve been ambitious. Trying to prove something, I guess.”

He sounded defensive, unlike the Jake she was accustomed to seeing. “What do you have to prove to anyone, Jake?”

He crouched, picked up a stick and absently started sketching in the sand. “I got a lot of opposition from my father’s people about going to art school. It wasn’t practical, and they despised the Haida part of me. Haida have always been artists, and that was enough to set them against my ambitions to make a career of art. They hadn’t wanted my father to marry my mother, and once she died they tried to pretend it hadn’t happened.

“They couldn’t stop me from spending my summers up here, and it was the summers that put me in tune with the artist in me – the tremendous heritage of Haida carving and art. My grandfather carved totem poles, you know.”

His grandfather, the Haida chief. “Yes, I knew that.”

“He was a wonderful man – full of a slow-spoken wisdom that was terribly impressive to me. He helped me – not directly, because he wouldn’t have told me to go against the wishes of my father’s family – but he gave me the perspective to realize what I should do.

“They kept the pressure up all the time I was in art school – actually, I managed to avoid seeing my uncle. He lived in Victoria – still does – and he was the worst of them. I like the old beggar, but he gave me a hell of a time back then. But once I started making a go of it, everything changed.”

She felt angry on his behalf. “They accepted your art as a good thing then? After you proved yourself?”

His smile had a tinge of bitterness. “At first I resented that, then I guess I got carried away with the success game. Deals like Madison came along and— well, the money was good, and the work—”

“You could put most of the boring work off on me,” she suggested softly.

“Yes, I was guilty there. You shouldn’t have let me get away with that.”

She was watching a raven grow beneath his stick, the design turning into a two dimensional totem pole in sand. “You don’t need those jobs, Jake. You’re doing well, making a name for yourself. You had that exhibition at the museum. Those modernistic totem pole prints from your drawings have been selling really well, and the couple of serious films you’ve done this last year have had a really good reception.”

He put a vicious beak on the raven with a swift stroke. “I know that. I’ve had my head in the sand, not seeing what was going on. I thought about Hans, too. Took a really good look at him when I was back in Vancouver this last week. You were right about that, too. And Charlotte – she’s really working out quite well. I haven’t been around much, and she’s been showing quite a talent for dealing with impatient clients. We could go back, Jenny. Send Hans on his way, go back to the way it was – just you and I running the film-making. Charlotte could take over some of your work, the parts you don’t like. We could train her— if you’d come back—”

She looked away, seeing the outline of the islands in the harbor as she thought about being back in Vancouver with Jake. It was hard to believe that he loved Monica, that he could leave her so easily if he really meant to marry her.

If she went back…

The islands in the harbor faded, and Jenny knew that she was lost if she let Jake take her back to Vancouver. Her barriers against him were crumbling, and she’d find herself helpless and miserable, watching him with other women, perhaps even reduced to begging him for some crumb of love for herself.

“Jenny?” His hand was still, the totem in the sand unfinished.

She whispered, “I can’t, Jake. I can’t go back.”

“Why not?“

He stood up, dropping the stick, his legs slightly astride to balance better. He looked like a man who never gave up, standing in front of her with the ocean behind him, his hands deep in his pockets, his face hard and deeply lined. He was dark, like the sea when it was angry.

“Not now, Jake,” she begged desperately, trying to gather her cool mask back around herself. “Let’s not talk about it now.”

She pushed herself up, slipped on the moss and found herself clinging to his hand as he supported her, helping her to her feet.

She came to her feet breathless, pulled up against his chest, pressing into the padding of his denim jacket. She stared up into his eyes. Then she was free of his arms, stumbling a little and starting to walk through the trees.

“Shall we have dinner on the beach?” she asked, not looking back at him. “Not clams,” she added, thinking the subject of shellfish might distract him. “There are potatoes on the boat. We could roast them or we could cut up stewing meat and potatoes and carrots and— you can do them all up together in tin foil in the fire – it’s delicious!”

“You must have been a boy scout,” he said, and she had the oddest feeling that he had no idea what he was saying.

“Girl guide,” she corrected. “I do know my way around a campfire.“

Jenny opened the refrigerator in the galley and found it filled with a large, fresh salmon.