G
USTY DAYS TOOK ANNA
into July, a heady mix of sun and sudden rain, mist that moved in stately lines through the strait, lit silver by the hidden sun. They’d been well into June before summer took hold of the land and she basked in the salty air. On bright afternoons the white, bulging clouds swept enormous shadows over the landscape as if it were the floor of an utterly transparent sea. The shore was reconfigured often in tides and winds, shifting sand and rock. She had a fondness for her garden scarecrow—a favourite, baggy, paint-speckled shirt she’d used at home, a pair of torn jeans, and a pummelled, limp-brimmed fedora she’d found on a nail hook inside the door—whose windy antics she could watch from her room. Its crazy flailing seemed to unnerve none of the birds, but she liked it anyway.
Above the point, looking down at the cove through a fence of spruce, was a small cemetery, and Anna wandered through it for old gravestones on whose faces she might do a rubbing. A few had lines in Gaelic and she wished to know what they said, but she settled on one for its texture and inscription: instead of doggerel sentiments, it said simply,
Some day we shall understand.
That seemed like the best that faith could offer, it covered everything. She had not grown up with religion, but her father had urged her to respect the spiritual, You’re in a kind of cathedral right here, he’d said, gesturing to the shafts of light falling through redwoods above their house, and his yoga meditation, still and serene in his room, seemed a kind of praying.
Anna taped a long sheet of paper to the stone and set to rubbing it firmly with a hard wax crayon, blackening the surface until the incised letters showed clear,
Lionel MacLennan drowned Cape Seal 18 July 1881 aged 47 years.
She worked patiently in the warm breeze, hoping that Lionel did sooner or later understand. Out past the point, terns and gulls were feeding at a white, jagged shoal, circling and crying before they dove. How had Lionel, the same age as she, drowned? Somewhere out there, fishing? Swimming? In a storm?
On her way back, she sketched a boneyard of driftwood snarled into a wide heap, and, where the last finger of the pond went dry in sand, an ossuary of sticks thin as bird bones. The wind had risen, buffeting across the point, cool out of the east, and it had weather with it, a darkening sky, she could read it now.
She didn’t remember leaving the back door open but it was wide to the wind and a note on a torn sheet of paper fluttered on the floor.
Anna, stopped in to see how you’re doing, try you later. Like your new drawings. Liv.
Her face heated with anger and disappointment. He had walked in, maybe poked around in her room? What new drawings? She couldn’t care less if he liked them or not. Weeks since she’d seen him. Damn him.
She sorted impatiently through old sketches on the kitchen table, whispering curses, trying to concentrate on what to send back home, what to revisit. Why did he have to show up
today?
She was doing just fine, thank you very much.
She had rolled up several drawings into a mailing tube when she sensed someone outside: a man, his back to the house, was standing at the head of the shore path scanning the strait through large binoculars. She held her breath until she recognized the long dark hair, the hat, the leather jacket, the lanky slouch. Her bras and faded jeans and cotton shirts streamed out on the clothesline, like flags of distress. She waited before opening the door.
“You just walk into people’s houses?” she called to him. “Go over their things?”
“Only people I know,” Livingstone said, without turning to her.
After he came in, she closed the door to her workroom. No more of that. This was a kitchen visit, as far as she was concerned. His face looked gaunt behind a new beard, giving it a thin, dark seriousness Anna was unsure of. Whiskers could turn a face, and falsely. Had Breagh bestowed upon him the Byronic shirt, or was it hanging in her shop? He spread the kitchen curtain and put the binoculars to his eyes.
“You planning a naval manoeuvre?” Anna said.
“How did you know?”
“I hope you had a good look around in here. We don’t do that where I come from.”
“We’re not scared of each other here.”
“I doubt that.”
“You have a little garden out there, I see,” he said.
“Carrots, lettuce. Good old zucchini.”
“No weed?”
“Oh, there’s lots of weeds, I can’t keep up with them.”
“Must grow like mad where you come from. Weed.”
“People don’t generally put it in their gardens. Is something on your mind, Livingstone?”
“Just you, Anna.”
“I don’t think so. I really don’t.”
Livingstone peered east, then west along the strait. “They used to bring schooners up here, into the 1930s,” he said, his voice low. “Bootlegging too, boy. Speedboats.”
“Before your time. Mine even.”
“My time is now. I think you know that.”
“Oh, I do.”
He glanced back at her. “Done any beachcombing lately?”
“Odds and ends.”
“Like what?”
“They wouldn’t interest you.”
“You’d be surprised.” He dropped the glasses to his chest.
“A rusty padlock? An old tobacco can?”
“No, nothing I’d drag home. But you’re an artist and all.” He rubbed his breath off the glass. “You’ve got a lot of shore there all to yourself, eh?”
“Not so much anymore. That beach around the point, I hear swimmers there some days. Or someone fishing or …”
“Or what?”
“Red Murdock walks the beach now and then.”
“How often?”
“You’ll have to ask him. I don’t stare out the window all day.” That Murdock had been here was no affair of his. She was not offering details of her life to Livingstone, any corner of it.
“How about at night?”
“Night? I doubt it. Who’d be out there at night? I’m at the front door so often checking to see who might show up, I don’t have much time for the back. Sorry.”
Anna sat down at the table and he let go the curtain and pulled out a chair across from her. He aimed the wrong end of the binoculars at her face for a few moments, then grinned and set them down. “Anna at a distance. I’ve been one side the Island to the next. Late-nighters. No zees.”
“You look it.”
“I didn’t mean women.” He touched his cheeks, his eyes.“You need some sleep. Are you coming from Breagh’s, or going?”
“Neither. My buddies are waiting out front. Got to get back to our boat. Anyway, she’s been on my back some, Breagh.”
“With good reason probably. Do you want tea?”
“That’s the liquid of the day, is it, Anna?”
“I’m afraid so.” She filled the teakettle with a slow, thin stream from the tap. Flower shoots on the outside sill trembled in their pot. The pane creaked. “Windy,” she said. “Your friends want tea?”
“They can wait. Southeast,” he said. “Tide’s on the ebb, it’s rough at the point.”
“White water there, I can see it.” The sun had disappeared, the sky was darkening.
“Yeah, she’s a little dirty out there. We spent the night over Englishtown, tied up to the wharf, me and Billy and fellas you don’t know. Took a beating bucking out of that bay, five-foot swells when we hit the open water.”
“Fishing?”
“We none of us fish. Bores the shit out of me. Billy got seasick. We picked up a skiff in North Sydney, towed her back here.”
“What’s that, your lifeboat?”
He smiled wearily. “You could say that, Anna, and not be lying.”
They had their tea as if they had never danced in a hot embrace, or climbed her stairs together. But her small talk—Breagh’s clothing shop, the terrible rains, her plans for flowers in the ground—soon washed up against Livingstone’s reticence and she stopped talking. He stirred more sugar into his tea, the spoon clattering in the quiet kitchen.
“I meant to stop around, Anna,” he said. “Been so goddamn busy.”
She had not wanted that business to open up, she’d hoped to get him smoothly out the door without a word of it. Yet it was on her mind too, where an apology might take them, the measure of his sincerity. Would she learn anything new? What particulars of that night was he still remembering? Were they like her own? Probably not.
“Busy with what?” she said.
“A little enterprise in the works.… Performing some, a gig or two here and there.”
“I never expected you anyway, Livingstone. And there was Breagh to consider, wasn’t there?”
“Do you keep secrets, Anna?”
“If I make them.”
“Say, if somebody was to ask, was Livingstone Campbell around today, could you answer, yeah, after dark for a couple hours, say between nine and eleven or so? Would you do that?”
“It depends why you’re asking, Livingstone.”
“Can’t tell you. Not now anyway. You want some weed?” He took a rolled baggie from an inside pocket and held it up. “Free. I owe you.”
“No, Livingstone. You don’t owe me anything. What do you owe Breagh?”
“Breagh.” He stared into his tea as if weighing her name. “Drives me nuts sometimes. She’s pretty as hell, but a big distraction.”
“From what?”
“My music. Projects.”
“None of your music comes
from
distractions?”
“Some of it, I suppose. Yeah.”
“I don’t see what you’re complaining about.”
“She gets in moods, she wants to be on the move somewhere, our Breagh. I don’t know what she wants.”
“Ordinary things, I suppose. Attention. Love.”
“Too much attention. She does what she likes.”
“Like you, you mean. You left your sweater here,” she said, instantly sorry: it touched on everything.
“That all I left?”
“Yes. It is.”
He pulled out a cigarette, waved the packet at her, but she said no, go ahead. She watched him wince into the match, inhale deeply. His dark eyes were bloodshot, his forehead scored with fine lines she’d never noticed. “I haven’t forgotten that night in April, Anna, you and me. I didn’t forget it.”
“Hard to believe that.”
“I liked you in that dress. The wine-coloured one. A knockout.”
“It isn’t mine.”
“Oh, I think it is. I like you, Anna, you know.”
“Thank you, Livingstone. That’s comforting. And I like you,” she said.
“Oh?” He gave her a tired grin. “Maybe I should leave. You’re jerking my chain.”
“I didn’t know you had a chain, Livingstone. Finish your tea. I have biscuits. Made them myself.”
“I’ll take one with me. That’s all I’m likely to get here anyway, this afternoon.”
“Likely,” she said. That was not what she wanted to say, but she had to play out the dialogue she’d begun.
He leaned toward her on his elbows. “You ever see a Mountie boat out there? In the channel?”
“A police boat? I don’t even know what one looks like.”
“Doesn’t say RCMP on it. Just an outboard boat, red. Little cabin. You might not notice it.”
“There’s not much I don’t notice, if I’m looking.”
“How about today, this afternoon?”
“Just fishing boats.”
“Breagh said she saw them out there when she was home a few days ago. I don’t always trust what she sees.”
“Nothing wrong with those beautiful eyes, Livingstone. She wouldn’t make it up.”
“They patrol here every once in a while, that’s all.”
“That worries you?”
“I got busted myself, good while back.”
“On the water?”
“No, no. Mainland. Down in Truro. After a show.”
“Cost you some time, did it?”
“Jail? You’re in Canada now, girl. You can do some nasty things here before you get serious prison time, and even then it isn’t much for what you did. Look, we’re just setting a couple of bootleg traps out there, Billy and me. You had lobster yet?”
“A couple.”
“We’ll bring you a good hefty one.”
“An illegal lobster.”
“Tastes the same, Anna.”
“Where’s your boat?”
“Off MacDermid’s Cove, up there. Anchored. We bought the skiff to row back and forth. Billy’s not too hot on the oars yet, but he’s got a good back on him. We have life jackets.”
Outside, trees were bending in the shore woods, crowns swaying, clouds crowding above the water. At the point, where the channel narrowed to half a mile, the ebbing currents roiled white against the wind.
“You aren’t setting traps in this, I hope,” she said.
“After dark, yeah. Weather’s building but slow, we’ll squeeze it in. If you see lights out there, might be us.”
“Might not, too, is what you’re saying.”
“You’re close to the water here.”
“Yes?”
“If you should see a boat like that this afternoon, red, put the glasses on it. That’s all I’m asking. If Mounties are nosing around. Stick a rag or a hanky or something on your mailbox flag. Billy’ll drive by.”
“Actually, Livingstone, the RCMP wants all of us along here to watch out for drug smugglers, suspicious activity. You probably heard about that.”
“What do you mean?” His voice went thin and hard. “You being funny?”
“I’m just telling you what they told us. Out in your boat, you might …”
“I wouldn’t tell them a damn thing. And I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t either.”
“You’ve been up all night.”
“Jesus, is it that plain?” he said angrily. “So what?” He got up and snatched his cigarettes from the table, mashed down his black brimmed hat. She would have had him stay longer, just for their give-and-take that made the day different, tense, anxious. Were it evening instead of morning, were they a little way along a certain path she missed, she might have said, Nap there on the daybed if you like. But it was afternoon, there was no background music, just themselves, mutually opaque. They’d had not so much as a drink, and Livingstone was annoyed with her and she was not sure exactly why, what, today, pale with sleeplessness, he had expected of her, or she of him. He stood at the door window and checked his wristwatch.
“I’ll crash up at Breagh’s,” he said. “She and Lorna still up at the shop, are they?”
Anna nodded. “Billy too?”
“What’s the difference? A nap and we’ll be out of there.”
“I guess you’re seamen now.”
“We’re getting there.”