Against the Season (19 page)

“Has she noticed?”

“That you switched the boxes? Yes.”

“What did she say?”

“‘She will have her way,’” Cole said. “You really do get away with murder.”

“Exactly the opposite,” Agate said. “Now you tend this. I have one more small batch to get.”

Cole had begun more slowly to burn the pain of years Amelia had already endured when Agate came back with the six diaries she had found.

“What are those?”

“I found them this morning. Nobody’s going to read them.”

“Does she know?”

“No,” Agate said. “And now, Sister Bitch, whether there’s blackmail money in these or not, whether there’s excuse in them or not for your lame brain, nobody’s ever going to know.”

“What could be blackmail money?” Cole asked, disdainful.

“I think she had incestuous tendencies,” Agate said with deep melodrama.

“For whom?”

“Miss A.”

“Oh, Agate, for God’s sake!”

“Never mind. Whatever might not be fit for a young boy’s innocent eyes is now condemned to flame.”

“How can you even make up such ideas?”

“Talent. Raw talent.”

Cole found himself, for a second, tempted to snatch one of those books from Agate’s hands, and he was immediately ashamed of himself. He knew perfectly well he’d find no such lurid confessions in anything written by Cousin B. And why should he want to know anyway?

Upstairs Amelia did not quite doze, remembering Beatrice young in a hat. Then Bill Hopwood under the tree she had so often climbed as a child. He was crying. It had never been a real choice for Amelia, not after Sister came home to stay. People had always assumed it was Beatrice who gave up a life of her own for Amelia. Beatrice thought so herself, needing to. It didn’t matter. It never had. Then that fragment Agate had been singing repeated itself in Amelia’s head: “I’ve got life! life! life!” Amelia accepted that sentence and was smiling as she fell asleep.

I
T WAS SATURDAY, AND
Dina was sitting at the back door of the shop with a bottle of beer, out of habit rather than need. She had taken off her sweat shirt and rolled back her shirt sleeves. Instead of boots, she was wearing a pair of new sneakers and thinking of taking them off. She should get some sandals, why not? She didn’t always have to be dressed for moving furniture, even here in the shop. One of the cats, sniffing and then rubbing itself against her toe, took hold of a lace and pulled. Dina reached down and rubbed the base of its tail. Then she pulled off the shoe and looked at her bare foot. “The sun makes a Greek dirty,” her aunt had said. Nick didn’t take the sun either. But Rosemary had laughed at that. “Your face is a gorgeous color. Why not the rest of you?” Was she lying in the sun now? Dina shifted slightly against that thought, but the image of Rosemary’s naked back, softly rounded buttocks, and long, slightly parted legs, was easier to call up than dismiss. Dina took off her other shoe and then stretched until she could feel the edge of the step sharp against her back. She was going to buy a car, but not a sports car again. A Volvo perhaps. Charles Ries next door had one. Ann Ries liked to put the passenger seat right back and take a nap on the way home from work. If Rosemary wanted to go up into the mountains for the day, she could just put the seat back on the way home and sleep, there beside Dina while she drove. “Why don’t you spend the night?” Rosemary had suggested it as a quite ordinary idea. Perhaps, between friends, it was. Dina remembered in school that girls asked each other over for the night. Dina knew so little about being a friend, having a friend. How often, for instance, did friends meet? If you were at school, if you worked together, even if you just drank at the same place, there was no question. You saw each other, as Dina understood was the custom in Greece, every day or nearly every day. But Rosemary didn’t go to Nick’s. “How do I see you next time?” Dina had asked. “Return my invitation,” Rosemary answered simply. While Grace was still apt to drop in, it was not easy for Dina to ask Rosemary to her apartment. Getting rid of Grace was taking time, but soon, perhaps, Rosemary would come over without difficulty. Still, the apartment wasn’t right for her. Maybe, after all, Dina should buy a house, but the only house she had ever really wanted to own was Rosemary’s. One could be built. Extravagant to build a house just to entertain a friend? Not if that was what one did. Dina liked the sun on her undefended skin. One afternoon she would lie in the sun at Rosemary’s. They would have cold, fresh drinks with ice. And they would talk. Perhaps Rosemary would tell Dina about the way she had lived before she came home, the low octave of her voice easy to listen to.

“Dina?”

“Hi, Cole, You haven’t been around in a while.”

“No,” Cole said. “Working at the mill and Cousin A being so sick…”

“How is she?”

“Really better. She gets a bit tired still, but that’s all.”

“Rosemary says Agate’s working out all right.”

“Oh yes,” Cole said, sitting down on the step next to Dina. “But she hasn’t had any time off since she came. I offered to stay home so she could go to a movie or something, but I guess going out on her own wouldn’t be much fun.”

“No,” Dina said.

“Kathy never did, but Agate’s different. She’s used to having fun.”

“Mmm,” Dina said. “She looks it.”

“Well, you know what I mean.”

“You want a beer?”

“No thanks,” Cole said. “Thing is, Agate would like to go to Nick’s.”

“Well, no harm in that, is there?”

“If I took her?”

“Oh.”

“It would look funny, wouldn’t it?”

“I don’t know,” Dina said.

“It’s kind of a problem. Agate’s been really wonderful to Cousin A all these weeks she’s been sick. She’s more like a … I don’t know. She doesn’t seem like a maid. She asked me if I would take her to Nick’s.”

“Well, take her.”

“Somebody like Mrs. Montgomery might…”

“I haven’t seen Mrs. Montgomery drinking at Nick’s lately,” Dina grinned.

“And Mrs. Hill,” Cole added.

“You afraid of Grace Hill?”

“Not afraid, exactly.”

“Have you asked Miss A about it?”

“Not yet,” Cole said. “I was going to ask Peter. Then I thought maybe you …”

“It’s not exactly my field,” Dina said. “Why not ask Peter?”

“I guess I wanted to ask somebody who would say it was all right,” Cole said, smiling.

“Ask Miss A then.”

“You don’t think she’d mind or worry about it?”

“I don’t know,” Dina said, “but I don’t think she’d say no.”

“Probably not,” Cole said. “You been playing tennis?”

“No,” Dina said. “I don’t even know how to play tennis,”

“Oh.”

“These are cooler,” Dina said. “When you have them on.”

“They would be,” Cole said.

They heard the shop door open, but neither of them turned around. There were already half a dozen kids by the cold stove, and there would be more as the afternoon went on. Then the hard, high-heeled steps told them it wasn’t just another kid, but Cole and Dina kept their backs to the sound.

“Wait until you hear this!” Grace Hill announced.

Dina looked up, clear-eyed and bland. Cole looked at his feet.

“Mr. Fallidon is in jail.”

“Don’t make bad jokes,” Dina said sharply.

“He’s not,” Cole said, getting to his feet.

“Oh yes he is,” Grace said triumphantly. “With a smorgasbord of charges to choose from. Everything from aiding and abetting to indecent assault of a minor.”

“What happened?” Dina demanded.

“The police found Panayotis at Mr. Fallidon’s apartment in an ever so slightly compromising circumstance.”

“I don’t believe it!” Cole said. “I don’t believe a word of it!”

“Jealous?” Grace asked. “I wouldn’t be. You could be in jail yourself.”

Before Cole knew what he had done, he had slapped Grace Hill in the face. She stood, stunned for a moment, and then she said, “And now we can arrange that for you on an assault charge. Call the police, Dina.”

“Get out of here,” Dina said quietly.

“Call the police! I have a witness.”

“You’ve got witnesses all right, for all kinds of things. Now get out.”

“Do you mean to tell me that you’re going to side with this little…”

“I’ll break your teeth myself. Now get out, and don’t come back.”

The kids by the stove were standing now, watching and listening. A couple moved over toward the back door.

“I have witnesses,” Grace Hill shouted, gesturing to them.

“You heard her,” one of the kids said. “Get out.”

“My husband’s a lawyer! My husband is Feller Hill!”

“Poor bastard,” the kid said.

“And don’t think I can’t wipe the floor with you, you little pot-smoking punk. I’ll have you all in jail,” Grace shouted, but she was moving toward the door. “You’re going to regret this, Dina.”

Dina had turned away from her and simply stood, waiting to hear the door slam, which it did.

“Well, that’s fair warning, kids,” Dina said then. “Better clear out now and spread the word that George’s is hot, for a couple of weeks anyway.”

“What happened, Dina?” one of the kids asked.

“None of your crapping business, buddy,” another said. “Come on. Dina says out.”

Cole had not moved from where he stood when he hit Grace Hill, his hand still smarting. Dina put an arm round his shoulder and shook him gently.

“Come on. Come to,” she said.

“I hit her.”

“I should have done it myself… months ago.”

“She wasn’t lying, was she?”

“I don’t know,” Dina said. “I think we’d better find out. The trouble is, Feller Hill is Peter’s lawyer.”

“Oh, God!”

“I’m going to go over to Nick,” Dina said. “If they have that kid in jail, he can’t even speak English. Nick can find out what’s happened faster than anyone.”

“What shall I do?”

Dina paused. Who could help Peter? Harriet Jameson? Not on a thing like this. Miss A? Not yet. “I think you’d better not do anything or say anything to anyone. Will you be at home later on?”

“Yes, I guess so.”

“I’ll phone you there.”

Cole helped Dina lock up the shop without further conversation. They left together and stood for a moment on the sidewalk.

“Do you want me to take you over to Nick’s?” Cole suggested.

“It might be faster,” Dina said, looking at her truck. “I’ve got to buy myself a car.”

Cole drove with his ordinary nervous care, but he felt criminal in a way he didn’t understand, as if they might be apprehended at any moment and charged with complicity of some sort.

“Don’t talk to anyone,” Dina said as she got out of the car. “I’ll call you later.”

“All right.”

“And, look, if Grace does lay a charge against you, if the police turn up, don’t say anything. Just get Miss A to call her lawyer.”

Cole nodded, trying to call up an image of himself in a cell with Peter and Panayotis, a prospect which paralyzed him momentarily. He still couldn’t believe that he had hit Grace Hill. It had not ever occurred to him as an idea, not even after he had done it. So to do something unthinkable was as simple as that. Peter and Panayotis. Cole forced his imagination to falter. He was driving out toward the beach. He mustn’t see anyone. He mustn’t speak with anyone. The criminal weight in his chest forced him forward over the steering wheel.

“Go on. Do what you want to do,” Peter had told him.

Peter in jail. Indecent assault. Had Panayotis been with him all these days and nights?

Cole turned off the road and parked in the tall, dry grass that grew in the sandy soil. Sand dunes blocked his view of the sea.

“Peter.”

He put his head down on the steering wheel and wept, whether in jealousy or horror or fear or grief he could not have said. An unthinkable pain, the mind lost to it.

Peter Fallidon did not have a cleaning woman. “What do you want me to do?” one of his sisters had been in the habit of shouting at him. “Go out and clean people’s toilets?” That indignity had been invented by their mother, who apparently once for a week or two when they were small had taken some sort of honest job, something neither of his sisters ever intended to suffer. Though the attitude infuriated Peter, he had never been able to hire anyone to clean for him. It disturbed his privacy, he explained. Actually he didn’t mind the job, and this Saturday morning he was grateful to have something to occupy him. By noon, in that small apartment, there was nothing left to do. Without any interest in eating, he fixed himself lunch, ate it, and tidied the kitchen after himself. Then he went into the living room and sat down with a book. It would be better if he could go out, drive to the beach or up into the mountains, but he had to wait for a phone call or a pounding on the door which might come in an hour or a day or… No, Feller would almost certainly call before evening, once Nick Pyros had talked with the boy and Feller had talked with Nick.

“I can’t represent you both,” Feller had said at the police station last night. “I’ll have to get the boy another lawyer. It may take a couple of days to get all this untangled. But we will get it untangled, Peter. So just go home and try not to worry about it.”

“Right. And, Feller, thanks.”

A manly handshake, self-conscious with all that had been discussed. Without Feller’s help, the police might very well have laid charges. They could still, of course. They had only his word that he hadn’t been harboring the boy all this time, that Panayotis had been with him no more than half an hour before the police arrived. If only the boy could speak English in any useful way, but he couldn’t explain to the police any more than he could to Peter where he had been and why he had chosen to turn up at that hour at Peter’s. Oh, his hopes were crudely clear enough; he had the street language for that. He had been more genuinely baffled than Peter could understand when he was refused. All right, Peter had bought him a few beers one night. Even a kid would not assume from that that Peter might take him in, hide him from the police, keep him as a bed servant. Panayotis had been very angry when the police arrived, sure apparently that Peter had called them, arranged this trap.