Come Unto These Yellow Sands (4 page)

Bernard cleared his throat. “Er…yes.” The discomfort traveled all the way from Midtown Manhattan. Such dangerous streets.

“Do they want me to repay the advance?” Swift couldn’t even remember how much it had been. Nothing wildly extravagant, safe to say. Fountainhead was a small operation, and financing poets was never a huge moneymaker. Whatever the amount, he’d blown it—literally—within a week.

Well, his teaching salary wasn’t exorbitant, but if Fountainhead would give him a little time, he should be able to figure out a way to come up with the cash. If worse came to worse, he could approach his trustees—but that would be a last resort.

“No, no,” Bernard interrupted his roiling thoughts. “Nothing like that. They just—well, we all—hope that you might be writing again.”

“No.” Swift made an effort to temper it. “Sorry. The words just aren’t there.”

Bernard didn’t seem to hear him. “In fact, given the complicated circumstances, Fountainhead is even willing to kick in another grand.”

Far from cheering Swift up, that news just made him feel all the more wretched. “That’s generous of them, but I’m not writing.”

“Ah.” Bernard’s careful tone was a dead giveaway. “What about the poems you wrote after…?”

Swift’s heart paused mid-beat. He managed to say, “After what?”

“After Norris passed away.”

Passed away
. What a feeble term for a star collapsing on itself. All that light and brightness and warmth extinguished.

He closed his eyes, and over the sick, hollow pounding of his heart said hoarsely, “No.”

“I’m sorry. What was that?”

“No.”

“Why not let me look at them?” Bernard persisted. “They might be better than you think. They almost certainly are. You were always far too harsh a—”

The laugh that tore its way out of Swift’s chest shocked them both.

But…truly? The poems he wrote after he learned his father had died? The poems that narrated the end of his two-year struggle to keep clean? The poems he wrote in that final, despairing plummet to self-destruction? How could anyone even ask?

“I can’t.”

“But—”

Just for an instant the close rein Swift kept on himself slipped. “No one is ever going to see those poems. Not while I’m alive.”

Bernard’s silence was stricken. He said, “Swift, dear boy. I didn’t mean—”

“I know.”

“I thought perhaps time had—”

“I realize. But no.”

“Of course. It’s completely your decision.” Pause. “But the poems
do
still exist?”

If Swift started laughing, it was liable to turn into something else. He flattened all emotion out of his response. “Yes. And after I’m dead you can do whatever you like with them. You’re my literary executor, Bernard.”

“Don’t joke about that.”

“It’s okay. I’m not planning on going anywhere. You’re going to have a long wait to get your clutches on my greatest works.”

He was trying to lighten the mood, but Bernard wasn’t laughing. Maybe the bad old days when Swift’s imminent self-annihilation loomed over their heads were still too close.

Bernard cleared his throat and said in apparent non sequitur, “I saw Marion in Bermuda.”

“Did you?” Swift asked without interest.

“She was vacationing there with Ralph. She looks well.”

Ralph.
Swift stared out the rain-blurred window. “She always does.”

Bernard’s hesitation stretched the distance between them. “She seems happy.”

“Good for her. Damn. There’s the bell. I’ll talk to you later, Bernard.”

“Yes, all right,” Bernard said hastily, “but Swift at least, well…at least
consider
Fountainhead’s offer.”

“I’ll think about it,” Swift lied.

There was no phone at the bungalow on Orson Island, and for the first time Swift regretted that. He wished it was possible to cancel his afternoon seminar, but sticking to his routine had become second nature by now. He didn’t like to diverge from his road into the yellow wood. It always felt slightly perilous. More perilous some days than others.

Lunch was spent at a local coffeehouse grading more papers. There was a lot more grading papers in teaching than he’d originally anticipated. He didn’t mind. He actually found a lot of the stuff kids wrote amusing. Had he ever been that young? That naïve?

He listened with half an ear to the conversations around him—most of which sooner or later touched on the murder of Mario Corelli. Corelli’s restaurant was a popular and successful one, and its owner was well known in Stone Coast. His wife Nerine was currently running for mayor, although there was speculation that she might drop out of the race now.

Swift ate his clam chowder bread bowl, mechanically marked papers, and absorbed the delightfully shocked conversations flowing around him. Popular opinion was that Tad had killed his old man. Max was right. The Corellis hadn’t enjoyed quite the warm relationship Swift had with his father, but that didn’t mean Tad had killed Mario. It didn’t mean that hearing about Mario’s death wouldn’t be a terrible shock. It didn’t mean he hadn’t loved his father.

Swift needed to get to the island and talk to Tad. He wasn’t going to make his mind up about anything until he’d heard Tad out.

So he spooned his soup, graded papers and refused to think of anything else.

After lunch Swift returned to campus in time for his Reading Poems seminar. The Reading Poems course was always a mix of pleasure and pain. Pleasure because he did still passionately love poetry and the course covered a range of poetic practices and a variety of media. Pain because most of these kids read anything but their own work
very
badly.

There are few things in this life more bamboo-under-fingernails than good poetry read aloud badly—unless it is bad poetry read aloud badly.

Swift suffered stoically through renditions of Browning’s “My Last Duchess” and Lowell’s “Patterns”, and the minute the classroom was empty, locked the door and bolted for the parking lot.

It was still raining as Swift’s Jeep pulled slowly off the Casco Bay Lines ferry onto the sandy beach at Orson Island and headed up the winding road that led to the bungalow.

He’d inherited the bungalow from his father. Norris had lived there for several years before he met Marion Gilbert. It was on Orson Island that he’d written two of his most famous plays,
Name Dropping
and
Broken Bells
.

Technically, Orson Island was part of the city of Portland, Maine. It had a year-round population of 60. During the summer months the population swelled to 150. Swift’s original plan had been to live on the island year round as part of his staying-clean strategy, but the ferry commute had proved too difficult, and though he liked his privacy and the idea that his father had intended that refuge for him, the island was too isolated.

Now days he used it for a vacation home or when he needed time on his own.

There were no paved roads on the island, but the dirt roads were hard-packed and wide. Swift drove them easily, despite the rain sheeting down. White sand, white skies…the only color came from the trees lining the road, scarlet and gold foliage fading into the autumn mist.

Nothing gold can stay…

How very true.

In the early 20th century the island and its quaint, cozy inns had drawn summer folk, but these days there were no hotels. Orson Island was not on anyone’s Top Ten Vacation Getaways. A number of homes were seasonal rentals. Few people lived on the island year round. The only real public services were a post office located in Sandy’s General Store and Café, a strictly volunteer fire department and a one-room local school. As far as luxury amenities, the island boasted a community hall, a lending library and a tennis court.

Swift turned off the main road onto a loose gravel drive which led to the bungalow. He could see the rooftop and chimney through the flame-colored trees. By now Tad would know he was coming. He’d be able to hear the car engine from a mile away. The island was very quiet, as Swift knew from his own experience, and this time of year the only sounds to break the silence were the rush of waves, the wind through the trees, the cries of gulls.

At last the bungalow swung into view. It was a 1920s bungalow, gray and white clapboard with a screened porch overlooking the bay.

Swift parked in the circle of shell and pebbles, and went up the stairs. The scent of autumn and burning leaves sharpened the damp air.

He knocked. There was no response from inside the bungalow. He gave it a few seconds and then knocked again.

When there was still no reply, he unlocked the front door and stepped inside.

He knew at once that Tad was not there. The tobacco-brown curtains were drawn across the windows, the fireplace was cleaned of all ash and laid in readiness, the dust on the tabletops was undisturbed.

“Tad?” Swift called against the sinking sensation in his gut.

The bungalow smelt cold and clammy and empty as seaside places did after being uninhabited for a month or two. Wherever Tad had gone after leaving Swift’s office the previous afternoon, he had not come here.

Swift walked through the rooms, footsteps sounding troublingly loud in the extended silence. The paneled interior had been photographed many times, and as usual he had that odd sensation of seeing the past and the present overlap like double exposure on film. His father’s battered typewriter—which had belonged to his father before him—sat on a small table facing the window overlooking the beach.

Outside the window he could hear rain ticking against a metal watering can.

Swift walked out to the back porch and gazed down at the empty beach below. Cyan-blue waves ruffled against the sand and rocks. There was no sign of anyone.

A gust of wet wind blew against his face. Mother Nature giving him the raspberry. He shivered. Shining drops beaded along the edge of the porch roof and splashed down on the steps in moody silence. Swift turned and went back inside to have another look around, not wanting to accept the obvious: that Tad had never arrived. That Tad was missing—possibly on the run.

Possibly something worse.

There was a ring of undisturbed mold around the waterline of the toilet bowl. The fridge was empty of everything but a box of baking soda and an unopened jar of blueberry preserves.

The bedroom, too, had not been used since the last time Swift had stayed on the island. The wooden blinds were closed. The pale green chenille bedspread was slightly crooked. The white dresser top was cleared of anything but the milk glass shaded lamp and a framed photo of Norris Swift’s parents, dead long before Swift was born.

The bed was one of those white antique storage beds with drawers built into the base and a bookshelf for a headboard. The shelves were crowded with Swift’s childhood collection of Choose Your Own Adventure books. One of the books was lying on the bed.
Who Killed Harlowe Thrombey?

Swift picked it up, opening to his forgotten bookmark, his smile dimming at the sight of a faded antique postcard featuring 19th century couples, parasols and Sunday best, strolling along the water’s edge. Beneath the flouncing hemlines were printed the words:
“Oh! Come Unto Those Yellow Sands.” Shakespeare.

Max had sent him that card last summer when Swift had been staying on the island for a couple of weeks. He turned the card over. Max had written in his neat, controlled handwriting,
Wish you were here.

That had to be the single most romantic gesture Max had made in the course of their relationship. It had been enough to get Swift to end his island retreat a week and a half early and head back to the mainland.

Max had been satisfyingly appreciative, but it had not been the turning point that Swift had privately hoped for. Max had been glad to see him—as he had been glad to see Max—and life had gone on as usual.

Standing in that silent, shadowy room, it suddenly hit Swift that it was probably too late now for things to move in the direction he’d have liked. Time and tide. Love had its own circadian rhythms, and it was beginning to look like he and Max had missed their chance, that they’d slipped into a comfortable somnolence. Perhaps they would continue on indefinitely, but it was all too likely one of these days they were simply going to drift gently, quietly apart.

That still might be preferable to the shrieking wake-up call Swift would have to deliver when he got back to town and told Max that he’d invited a murder suspect to stay at his bungalow—and that the murder suspect was now twenty-four hours further ahead in his escape from justice.

Chapter Four

You have wasted too much time. You must get back on track. Should you phone Inspector Pennyfeather and find out whether he has made progress on the case or should you proceed on your own?

If you phone Inspector Pennyfeather, turn to page 47.

If not, turn to page 8.

Or maybe you should just take a minute or two to think it out—seeing how much you’ve screwed things up already, you fucking idiot.

Swift gripped the ferry railing and stared bleakly down at the churning water. The rain had thinned out to a mist. It felt good against his flushed face. He’d been too restless to stay in his car, and he’d spent most of the trip back to the mainland walking up and down the slick deck.

Despite the weather he was warm enough. He was wearing the coat Max had bought him last Christmas. A hooded, lined Carhartt. It was a nice coat though Swift didn’t particularly care about its breathability and waterproofing and all the other things Max had mentioned when Swift opened the neatly wrapped parcel. Swift was sensitive to the cold, and Max had dealt with it in his usual efficient manner. Was that romantic?

Swift had given Max a seascape by Maine artist Caren-Marie Michel.

Max had smiled over the gift, held it up and given Swift a quizzical look. He’d hung it in his bedroom.

Swift had wondered what they’d do for the holiday this year. He’d toyed with the idea of suggesting they go away for a couple of days, even if it was just spending some time alone on Orson Island, but he’d never quite had the nerve and now…now it might be beside the point.