Stern Men (20 page)

—William Saville-Kent 1897

 

 

 

 

 

MISS VERA ELLIS had never wanted Ruth’s mother to marry.

When Mary Smith-Ellis was a little girl, Miss Vera would say, “You know how difficult it was for me when your mother died.”

“Yes, Miss Vera,” Mary would say.

“I barely survived without her.”

“I know, Miss Vera.”

“You look so much like her.”

“Thank you.”

“I can’t do a thing without you!”

“Yes, I know.”

“My helpmate!”

“Yes, Miss Vera.”

Ruth’s mother had a most peculiar life with Miss Vera. Mary Smith-Ellis never had close friends or sweethearts. Her life was circumscribed by service—mending, corresponding, packing, shopping, braiding, reassuring, aiding, bathing, and so on. She had inherited the very workload that once burdened her mother and had been raised into servitude, exactly as her mother had been.

Winters in Concord, summers on Fort Niles. Mary did go to school, but only until she was sixteen, and only because Miss Vera did not want a complete idiot as a companion. Other than those years of schooling, Mary Smith-Ellis’s life consisted of chores for Miss Vera. In this manner, Mary passed through childhood and adolescence. Then she was a young woman, then one not so young. She had never had a suitor. She was not unattractive, but she was busy. She had work to do.

It was at the end of the summer of 1955 that Miss Vera Ellis decided to give a picnic for the people of Fort Niles. She had guests visiting Ellis House from Europe, and she wanted to show them the local spirit, so she planned to have a lobster bake on Gavin Beach, to which all the residents of Fort Niles were to be invited. The decision was without precedent. There had never before been social occasions attended by the locals of Fort Niles and the Ellis family, but Miss Vera thought it would be a delightful event. A novelty.

Mary, of course, organized everything. She spoke with the fishermen’s wives and arranged for them to bake the blueberry pies. She had a modest, quiet manner, and the fishermen’s wives liked her well enough. They knew she was from Ellis House, but they didn’t hold that against her. She seemed a nice girl, if a bit mousy and shy. Mary also ordered corn and potatoes and charcoal and beer. She borrowed long tables from the Fort Niles grammar school, and arranged to have the pews moved from the Fort Niles church down to the beach. She talked to Mr. Fred Burden of Courne Haven, who was a decent enough fiddler, and hired him to provide music. Finally, she needed to order several hundred pounds of lobster. The fishermen’s wives suggested that she discuss this with Mr. Angus Addams, who was the most prolific fisherman on the island. She was told to wait for his boat, the
Sally Chestnut,
at the dock in the middle of the afternoon.

So Mary went down to the dock on a windy August afternoon and picked her way around the tossed stacks of wrecked wooden lobster traps and nets and barrels. As each fisherman came past her, stinking in his high boots and sticky slicker, she asked, “Excuse me, sir? Are you Mr. Angus Addams? Excuse me? Are you the skipper of the
Sally Chestnut,
sir?”

They all shook their heads or grunted crude denials and passed right by. Even Angus Addams himself passed right by, with his head down. He had no idea who the hell this woman was and what the hell she wanted, and he had no interest in finding out. Ruth Thomas’s father was another of the men who passed Mary Smith-Ellis, and when she asked, “Are you Angus Addams?” he grunted a denial like that of the other men. Except that, after he passed, he slowed down and turned to take a look at the woman. A good long look.

She was pretty. She was nice-looking. She wore tailored tan trousers and a short-sleeved white blouse, with a small round collar decorated with tiny embroidered flowers. She did not wear makeup. She had a thin silver watch on her wrist, and her dark hair was short and neatly waved. She carried a notepad and a pencil. He liked her slim waist and her clean appearance. She looked tidy. Stan Thomas, a fastidious man, liked that.

Yes, Stan Thomas really looked her over.

“Are you Mr. Angus Addams, sir?” she was asking Wayne Pommeroy, who was staggering by with a broken trap on his shoulder. Wayne looked embarrassed and then angry at his embarrassment, and he hustled past without answering.

Stan Thomas was still looking her over when she turned and caught his eye. He smiled. She walked over, and she was smiling, as well, with a sort of sweet hopefulness. It was a nice smile.

“You’re sure
you’re
not Mr. Angus Addams?” she asked.

“No. I’m Stan Thomas.”

“I’m Mary Ellis,” she said, and held out her hand. “I work at Ellis House.”

Stan Thomas didn’t respond, but he didn’t look unfriendly, so she continued.

“My Aunt Vera is giving a party next Sunday for the whole island, and she’d like to purchase several hundred pounds of lobster.”

“She would?”

“That’s right.”

“Who’s she want to buy it from?”

“I don’t suppose it matters. I was told to look for Angus Addams, but it doesn’t matter to me.”

“I could sell them to her, but she’d have to pay the retail price.”

“Have you got that much lobster?”

“I can get it. It’s right out there.” He waved his hand at the ocean and grinned. “I just have to pick it up.”

Mary laughed.

“It would have to be retail price, though,” he repeated. “If I sell it to her.”

“Oh, I’m sure that would be fine. She wants to be certain there’s plenty of it.”

“I don’t want to lose any money on the deal. I got a distributor in Rockland who expects a certain amount of lobster from me every week.”

“I’m sure your price will be fine.”

“How you plan on cooking the lobster?”

“I suppose . . . I’m sorry . . . I don’t know, really.”

“I’ll do it for you.”

“Oh, Mr. Thomas!”

“I’ll build a big fire on the beach and boil them in garbage cans, with seaweed.”

“Oh, my goodness! Is that how?”

“That’s how.”

“Oh, my goodness! Garbage cans! You don’t say.”

“The Ellis family can buy new ones. I’ll order them for you. Pick them up in Rockland couple days from now.”

“Really?”

“The corn goes right on top. And the clams. I’ll do the whole thing for you. Sister, that’s the only way!”

“Mr. Thomas, we’ll certainly pay you for all that and would be very grateful. I actually had no idea how to do it.”

“No need,” Stan Thomas said. “Hell, I’ll do it for free.” He surprised himself with this tossed-off line. Stan Thomas had never done anything for free in his life.

“Mr. Thomas!”

“You can help me. How about that, Mary? You can be my helper. That would be pay enough for me.”

He put his hand on Mary’s arm and smiled. His hands were filthy and reeked of rotting herring bait, but what the hell. He liked the shade of her skin, which was darker and smoother than he was used to seeing around the island. She wasn’t as young as he’d thought at first. Now that he was up close, he could see she was no kid. But she was slim and had nice round breasts. He liked her serious, nervous little frown. A pretty mouth, too. He gave her arm a squeeze.

“I think you’ll be a real good helper,” he said.

She laughed. “I help all the time!” she said. “Believe me, Mr. Thomas, I’m a very good helper!”

 

It poured rain on the day of the picnic, and that was the last time the Ellis family tried entertaining the whole island. It was a miserable day. Miss Vera stayed down at the beach for only an hour and sat under a tarp, griping. Her European guests went for a walk along the beach and lost their umbrellas to the wind. One of the gentlemen from Austria complained that his camera was destroyed by the rain. Mr. Burden the fiddler got drunk in someone’s car, and played his fiddle in there, with the windows up and the doors locked. They couldn’t get him out for hours. Stan Thomas’s fire pit never really took off, what with the soaked sand and the driving rain, and the women of the island held their cakes and pies close against their bodies, as if they were protecting infants. The affair was a disaster.

Mary Smith-Ellis bustled around in a borrowed fisherman’s slicker, moving chairs under trees and covering tables with bed sheets, but there was no way to salvage the day. The party had been her event to organize, and it was a calamity, but Stan Thomas liked the way she took defeat without shutting down. He liked the way she kept moving around, trying to maintain cheer. She was a nervous woman, but he liked her energy. She was a good worker. He liked that a great deal. He was a good worker himself, and he scorned idleness in any man or woman.

“You should come to my house and warm up,” he told her as she rushed past him at the end of the afternoon.

“Oh, no,” she said. “You should come with me to Ellis House and warm up.”

She repeated this invitation later, after he had helped her return the tables to the school and the pews to the church, so he drove her up to Ellis House at the top of the island. He knew where it was, of course, although he’d never been inside.

“That sure must be a nice place to live,” he said.

They were sitting in his truck in the circular driveway; the window glass was fogged from their breath and their steaming wet clothes.

“Oh, they stay here only for the summer,” Mary said.

“What about you?”

“Of course I stay here, too. I stay wherever the family stays. I take care of Miss Vera.”

“You take care of Miss Vera Ellis? All the time?”

“I’m her helpmate,” Mary said, with a wan smile.

“And what’s your last name again?”

“Ellis.”

“Ellis?”

“That’s right.”

He couldn’t figure this out exactly. He couldn’t figure out who this woman was. A servant? She sure acted like a servant, and he’d seen the way that Vera Ellis bitch harped at her. But how come her last name was Ellis? Ellis? Was she a poor relative? Who ever heard of an Ellis hauling chairs and pews all over the place and bustling around in the rain with a borrowed slicker. He thought about asking her what the hell her story was, but she was a sweetheart, and he didn’t want to antagonize her. Instead, he took her hand. She let him take it.

Stan Thomas, after all, was a good-looking young man, with a trim haircut and handsome dark eyes. He wasn’t tall, but he had a fine, lean figure and an appealing intensity, a directness, that Mary liked very much. She didn’t mind his taking her hand at all, even after so short an acquaintance.

“How long are you going to be around?” he asked.

“Until the second week of September.”

“That’s right. That’s when they—you—always leave.”

“That’s right.”

“I want to see you again,” he said.

She laughed.

“I’m serious,” he said. “I’m going to want to do this again. I like holding your hand. When can I see you again?”

Mary thought silently for a few minutes and then said, in an open way, “I’d like to see you some more, too, Mr. Thomas.”

“Good. Call me Stan.”

“Yes.”

“So when can I see you?”

“I’m not sure.”

“I’m probably going to want to see you tomorrow. What about tomorrow? How can I see you tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow?”

“Is there any reason I can’t see you tomorrow?”

“I don’t know,” Mary said, and turned to him suddenly with a look of near panic. “I don’t know!”

“You don’t know? Don’t you like me?”

“Yes, I do. I like you, Mr. Thomas. Stan.”

“Good. I’ll come by for you tomorrow around four o’clock. We’ll go for a drive.”

“Oh, my goodness.”

“That’s what we’re going to do,” said Stan Thomas. “Tell whoever you have to tell.”

“I don’t know that I have to tell anybody, but I don’t know whether I’ll have time to go for a drive.”

“Do whatever you have to do, then. Figure out a way. I really do want to see you. Hey! I insist on it!”

“Fine!” She laughed.

“Good. Am I still invited inside?”

“Of course!” Mary said. “Please do come inside!”

They got out of the truck, but Mary did not head up the walk to the grand front door. Dashing through the rain, she went around the side, and Stan Thomas chased her. She ran along the granite edge of the house, under the protection of the great eaves, and ducked inside a plain wooden door, holding it open for Stan. They were in a back hallway, and she took his slicker and hung it on a wall peg.

“We’ll go to the kitchen,” she said, and opened another door. A set of spiral iron stairs twisted down to a huge, old-fashioned cellar kitchen. There was a massive stone fireplace with iron hooks and pots and crevices that looked as though they were still being used for baking bread. One wall was lined with sinks, another with stoves and ovens. Bundled herbs hung from the ceilings, and the floor was clean worn tile. At the wide pine table in the center of the room sat a tiny middle-aged woman with short red hair and a keen face, nimbly snipping beans into a silver bowl.

“Hello, Edith,” said Mary.

The woman nodded her hello and said, “She wants you.”

“She does!”

“She keeps calling down for you.”

“Since what time?”

“Since all afternoon.”

“Oh, but I was busy returning all the chairs and tables,” Mary said, and she rushed over to one of the sinks, washed her hands in a speedy blur, and patted them dry on her slacks.

“She doesn’t know you’re back yet, Mary,” said the woman named Edith, “so you may as well have a cup of coffee and a seat.”

“I should really see what she needs.”

“What about your friend here?”

“Stan!” Mary said, and spun to look at him. Clearly, she had forgotten he was there. “I’m sorry, but I won’t be able to sit here and warm up with you, after all.”