The Whiskey Tide (21 page)

     
"There's no need for roast or chops except on Sunday, Peg. We can make do with stews and fish and perhaps a chicken."

     
Mrs. Hinshaw stripped off her gloves. She had been out with Aunt Helène, and Aggie was startled to see her eyes were red as if she'd been crying. She attempted a smile for her daughters.

     
"The rooms look lovely — every bit as fine as if Ethel had done them. Virtue appears to be rewarded, too, at least in Aggie's case." She stepped aside for Peg who followed after her bearing a large florist's cone filled with long-stemmed red roses.

     
"Someone's sweet on Ag," Woody crowed, rolling in after them.

     
Aggie searched excitedly for a card. She had never been sent flowers before, though a beau or two had brought her a handful of less impressive blossoms.

     
"Oh!" she said seeing what she had scarcely dared hope for. "They're from Felix!"

***

     
Three nights after leaving Salem, Joe cut the engine and they drifted silently into a cove south of the prosperous houses of Marblehead. Two rowboats came out to meet them followed by two more. Four hundred seventy-five cases of Scotch whiskey were transferred quickly to shore. The extras were willingly purchased on top of what had been promised, and a sallow faced man counted a stack of fifty dollar bills followed by ten twenties into Joe's hand. Joe had seen no reason for Kate's face to be known to the men collecting the booze; several reasons against it. She'd acquiesced with what looked like relief when he'd offered to oversee the transaction.

     
Two trucks painted like moving vans already were whisking the liquor away by the time he returned to the schooner. Like the ships they passed on the trip to Canada, the moving vans ran without lights. Once the trucks hit the road, Joe expected that the lights would go on. He wondered if protection money had been paid in case they were stopped.

     
"I'm going to sleep the clock 'round," Kate sighed when she'd divided money among them.

     
Joe laughed. Where he ought to feel weary, he felt like a rocket soaring into the air. The engine had worked. He had brought the vessel he was responsible for through fog that could have been their undoing. And beneath his shirt, secured by a safety pin, was a pouch containing more money than he'd make fishing in two years.

     
The stars shed the only light as he guided
Pa's Folly
into its mooring on the beach below the Hinshaw house. By mutual consent no one spoke now lest O'Malley or some other boy in uniform be waiting up or down the beach. Billy and Clovis had already gone ashore and he was checking a mooring line for a final time when he heard the disturbance of water and a small, mewling sound well out from shore.

     
"Holy Joseph, there's someone in trouble!" he said catching sight of a movement. Kate ran to his side as he glimpsed what was surely a hand reach out of the water and vanish again.

     
Without stopping to shed his boots, Joe swung over the railing and dived. He felt the familiar shock of cold water and the slippery caress of seaweed. Raising his head he began to make for the spot where he had seen someone drowning, but when he reached the spot there was no one there.

     
Slicing the water, Joe aimed for the bottom. In the total darkness under the surface his hand brushed something more substantial than seaweed. Gripping it tightly he made his way to the surface, fighting the weight of his boots. Seconds after the air hit his face he heard a strangling cough, then a gasp. What he held in his hand was a tangle of clothing, and inside it was a woman. Though it was too dark to make out features, Joe realized with shock that her hair looked white.

     
"Just relax now and float. I'll get you to shore," he soothed hooking an arm beneath her chin. She tensed to struggle and then, as if with great effort, relaxed.

     
It was only a dozen feet or so to where he could touch bottom, but the tide was turning and it took some effort to battle the current. When he reached water he knew would be chest deep on him, he hoisted the woman and stood. He felt the frail shoulders of the woman in his arms start to shake, but he thought she was weeping rather than shivering. Well above tide line he set her on the ground.

     
Kate came running with a blanket in hand even though the night was almost too hot for a shirt.

     
"Good heavens!" she said dropping to her knees to wrap the blanket around the woman. "It's Mrs. Cole!"

Part II

Music

Fourteen

     
The woman he'd plucked from the water wore a queer old-fashioned bathing dress the likes of which Joe had seen only in photographs. Up close he could see she was easily as old as his Irish aunties. She didn't speak as he carried her up a long flight of stairs that led to the houses above. Joe was afraid she might be unconscious, maybe already victim to a heart seizure or some other irreversible consequence of near drowning.

     
The house where he carried the old woman was a bona fide mansion. It was bigger than some downtown buildings, three stories and brick. Kate made for the front door when he would have gone to the kitchen. She rang the bell, then knocked urgently.

     
"We've got to go in." She twisted the doorknob. "Hello!" she called entering. "It's Kate Hinshaw from next door. We've brought Mrs. Cole up from the beach. She's — she's had an accident."

     
Joe wondered uneasily how they were going to explain being down on the beach at this time of night.

     
They stood in a hall as grand as a bank lobby. In spite of the hour it was lighted by electric bulbs on the walls. A double staircase curved up in two directions to the floor above and a fancy wood table where the stairs met at the bottom held a statue of a fat Chinaman carved out of something white. After a second, remembering trailing the aunties through the Peabody Museum, Joe realized he was looking at ivory.

     
At the head of one staircase a woman in a black velvet wrapper flew into view. Her hair was down in a braid and her face was only a little younger than Mrs. Cole's.

     
"Madame!"
she wailed clutching the bannister.
"Elle est morte! Mon dieu! Elle est morte!"

     
"Please— " Kate tried to interrupt.

     
The woman came a few steps toward them wringing her hands.

     
"C'est la mer — toujours la mer!"

     
Kate looked at Joe in alarm. "I don't know what she's saying."

     
"She's not dead," Joe said distinctly.

     
"Tatia...." The voice of the woman wrapped in the blanket was faint, the flutter of her hand too small to gain the attention of the woman on the stairs, who began to sob hysterically.

     
"Elle eté malade et je n'ai fâit pas rien! Pourqûoi la mer, ma chère Madame? Pourqûoi?"

     
"Elle n'est pas morte!"
Joe's voice was sharper than he'd meant it to be, but it reached the woman. Her rushing flood of despair slowed a moment and she stared at him
. "Elle a besoin de..."
He searched for a word.
"... vêstements. Sec."

     
Mrs. Cole's eyelids blinked open and Joe felt three gazes rivet to him in curiosity. The woman on the stairs nearly tripped in her haste to reach them. She made clucking sounds to her employer, stroking her face.

     
"Ah, Madame! Tu es bien? Me comprends?"

     
"Speak English, Tatia," said Mrs. Cole weakly. "It makes you less excitable. Bring me a kimono. And put on some tea."

     
"Yes,
Madame!"

     
She flew to obey and Mrs. Cole spoke to Joe for the first time. "There's a couch in the small parlor." Great diamonds flashed on her fingers as she pointed.

     
Kate went ahead of them, putting on lights, and Joe was sure his breath caught at the sight of the room with its silk settees and ornate silver clock and paintings on the walls.

     
"I'll sit, thank you," their hostess said as he bent to lower her to the couch.

     
The blanket had soaked through in spots and he wondered what dampness would do to the couch's fine fabric. By Kate's wide eyes he suspected she was thinking the same.

     
"I did not intend to kill myself," Mrs. Cole announced abruptly. She sighed and ran her thumb over the blanket she clutched. "Perhaps I did. The night was so lovely, and I kept recalling how wonderful the water had felt when I was young. Going over my toes. How the sand felt. I thought... if I went down at night... no one would see how foolish I was...." A line of wetness slipped from between her creased eyelids.

     
"Nothing foolish about going wading," Joe said gently. "But you shouldn't do it alone."
     
She studied him curiously. "I am grateful you saved me."

     
Joe nodded. She had indicated they should sit down, but he was soaked and reluctant to do so.

     
"Do have a seat," she insisted. "Silk is not so delicate as it looks, you know."

     
The other woman, Tatia, appeared with a bundle of something dark blue.

     
"Give me your hand," Mrs. Cole said to her companion, and there was soothing in her voice as if she were calming a child. "As soon as I put on my robe we'll have tea," she said to her rescuers.

     
"We mustn't— " Kate began.

     
"Tea might be nice," Joe interrupted. He wasn't sure what made him speak, the loneliness in the old woman's manner or the chance to study this room now that he was here. He grinned at Kate's expression and tried to relax in the only silk chair he'd ever sat in.

     
"It's almost three in the morning!" she said when they were alone.

     
"Those two old ladies need reassuring. It's just the two of them here alone, by the looks of it, and they're scared. Doing things they're used to and having some company will help them feel better."

     
Kate looked dubious. "I don't understand why they don't have a couple living in to take care of them. They used to, I think. Mrs. Cole has scads of money."

     
“Don't you know her, then?"

     
"Barely. She comes to church sometimes."

     
They sat for a minute listening to the ticks of the silver clock. Then there was a sound in the hall and Mrs. Cole entered swathed in the flowing silk robes of a lady from the Orient. The sight was startling. He had never seen someone decked out in such a manner before, and it reminded him of how when he and Sebastian were boys they had tied bandanas on their heads and played pirates. Something definitely to tell the aunties about, though he might have to change the circumstances of the adventure a bit.

     
"Tatia will bring the tea in a minute," Mrs. Cole said. "I frightened her badly, I'm afraid. She saw her sister drown when she was just a child. It's what made her so hysterical."