The Body in the Lighthouse (11 page)

“Seth built our cottage, the one we're remodeling. Lyle Ames is doing that, since Seth is so busy—and taking on larger projects.”

“Well, here it is.” Linda led them in.

The cabin was basically one large room. Brightly colored braided rugs covered the floor, and there was a good-size Vermont Castings woodstove at one end, surrounded by a comfortable-looking couch and some uncomfortable-looking twig furniture. The kitchen area consisted of a small refrigerator, gas stove, white porcelain sink, and counters covered with bright blue tiles. The cabinet doors had been fashioned from old windows, and Linda's unmatched collection of china, canisters of staples, and other foodstuffs were clearly visible. A wide ship's ladder led to her sleeping loft. The most arresting thing about the whole house was not what was inside, however, but what was outside. There were no windows on one side wall and only small ones on two, but the
fourth wall was almost all glass, opening onto a deck. Linda had been modest when she'd said the view was “special” it was spectacular. If this is what Harold Hapswell is marketing, Faith thought sadly, his houses will go like proverbial hotcakes.

Linda had a prime spot on the point—far enough out so she just missed the shore on the other side of the inlet and had an unobstructed view out to Isle au Haut and the other islands. The sun wouldn't set completely for another hour and a half, but the sky had already taken on a rosy glow. Thin clouds near the horizon streamed out in long lavender ribbons. Linda was on deep water, and, in any case, the tide was still high. Sea, earth, sky—it was all one glorious whole. Linda didn't need to search for subjects.

Faith turned from the view reluctantly. “It's incredible. But we came to see your work….” The walls were covered with paintings, but none reflected the style in which Linda had painted the stage scenery.

Linda opened one of the two doors on the wall without windows, explaining the arrangement to Tom as she did so. “We had to think about insulation, especially because I wanted a wall of windows on the front. I board up all but the one over the sink in the winter, and you'd be amazed at how warm the house stays with the woodstove. I do go through a lot of wood, though. And wear my woollies.”

The door she opened revealed an oversize
closet, which was fitted on one side with racks to store canvases and had shelving for materials on the other. Several easels were pushed to the rear.

“I haven't had much time to paint this summer, but I've been doing a lot of watercolor sketches, which will keep me going this fall and winter. I like to paint outdoors, so I do these as studies for my oils.”

She began pulling paintings out, handing them to the Fairchilds, who took them over to the couch. While Tom and Faith lined the pictures up, Linda went back for a few more.

She was good, very good, as Faith had suspected. All the canvases were large, and she had a very bright palette. Some were too garish for Faith's taste, but they were still compelling. Others were quite wonderful. Linda had captured the constantly changing Maine light in innumerable ways from sunrise to sunset.

They were quick to voice their enthusiasm, and Faith could see Linda was pleased.

“I like to look at them myself, but on an everyday basis, I want to see my friends' work, or work I've collected. The exception is this piece.” She pointed to a small landscape by the door. It looked like a Gauguin, except the trees were pines, not palms. It was exquisite, and Faith instantly coveted it, but she also knew instantly that Linda would never part with it.

Tom was taking his time going from one painting to the next. The Fairchilds had some good pieces in Aleford, mostly contemporary. Since
coming to Sanpere, they'd bought some work by such local Maine artists as Siri Beckman, Francis Merritt, Jill Hoy, Penny Plumb, Mary Howe, and Ethel Clifford, the basket maker.

This part of the coast had been drawing artists for many, many years: John Marin, John Heliker, William Keinbusch, the Wyeths, Eliot and Fairfield Porter. It wasn't hard to see why. Faith looked outdoors again. The rose tones had deepened and the sinking sun was turning the islands into an endless series of dark silhouettes.

“But enough of all this. ‘Art is not meat nor drink,' remember, no matter how all in all it is.” Faith and Tom had brought a bottle of cold Sancerre, a Blondeau 2000, and soon they were sitting on the deck, sipping it and eagerly devouring the tiny pear-shaped tomatoes Linda had put out and the zucchini blossoms she'd dipped in flour and egg and fried to a delicate crisp.

First they talked about the house. She had propane tanks for her stove, refrigerator, hot-water heater, and pump; oil lamps for reading. No phone, just a CB radio for emergencies.

“In all this time, there was only once when I was worried. It was during an unusually severe ice storm, and the trees were falling like pick-up sticks. I knew the road out wasn't passable, and getting into the car wouldn't have been any safer than the house. I didn't have a shed for it then. Seth made me put one up the following spring.”

“Seth is big on sheds,” Tom commented. “Thank goodness.”

“I stayed inside and hoped nothing would fall my way. A huge tamarack came down parallel to the house. When I ventured out the next morning, I saw it was so close, the branches were smack up against one of the shuttered windows.”

“You were lucky.”

“I guess. It was beautiful, though. I did a whole series based on that ice storm. It was as if a magician had touched everything with his wand, encasing the world in shimmering ice. By the following day, it was gone. Spring thaw.”

Well, there was no ice now, but a magician was definitely in order. One who could rid the world of insects. The mosquitoes were not fierce, merely peevish—one at a time whining close to Faith's cheek. She lifted her hand to slap one, stopping when she saw the horrified look on her hostess's face.

“Mosquitoes?” Faith protested. “Reverence for life, but surely not for mosquitoes!”

“I know.” Linda sighed. “Everyone thinks I'm nuts, but yes, even mosquitoes. And mice, which I hate, yet I can't bring myself to set traps. Rufus takes care of them, and I try not to think about the whole thing. I mean, he
is
a cat.”

Tom smiled, “I'm a fan of Albert Schweitzer myself.”

Faith kicked her husband's ankle—well out of Linda's line of vision. He was the first to start cursing—and smacking—when a mosquito invaded his territory.

“I have plenty of citronella candles, which
work very well, but it's a little hard to see what you're eating,” Linda said.

Reluctantly, they went inside for dinner.

The meal was delicious and Faith was glad to be able to see what it was. Linda had baked the halibut with fennel and white wine. The ratatouille was delicious, flavored with several varieties of thyme instead of the more traditional basil or oregano.

“Baguettes from Lily's?” Faith asked, taking another crusty piece to soak up the sauce on her plate.

“Yes, I make my own bread in the winter, but it's been so crazy lately, I haven't done any baking this summer. And between Lily's and Louella's, I don't know why I bother. To make the place smell good, I guess.”

Gradually, over coffee and the blueberry tart (see recipe in
The Body in the Basement
) Faith had brought, Linda told her story—or some of it. No mention was made of KSS.

She'd come to the island from her home state of New Jersey twelve years before as an au pair for summer people who'd rented a house for July and August. When they left, she stayed.

“I was in love—with the island and also, I thought, the fisherman who sold the family lobsters. I was right about the island and wrong about him, but it didn't matter. I would have stayed in any case.”

Faith was about to make a New Jersey remark, but then, remembering the stinging rebuttal her
aunt, who lived there, had delivered the last time Faith had deprecated the Garden State (where were all those gardens anyway?), she closed her mouth. Linda was a Jersey girl, after all, and Jersey girls were tough.

By nine o'clock, the evening was over. They were pleasantly full and the soft light of the glowing oil lamps made Faith feel ready for bed.

They thanked Linda for a lovely evening and invited her to come see what they were doing at their house. As they drove off, Faith could see lights twinkling on the opposite point of land. Those people hadn't turned the clock back the way Linda had. Probably had bug zappers, too.

“She must get lonely, especially in the winter,” Faith remarked. Nothing would ever induce her to spend that season on Sanpere. It was bad enough in Aleford. Pix once told her about a friend of theirs who had decided to live on Sanpere year-round and got such a desperate case of cabin fever that she went to every meeting on the island, even the preschooler's Story Hour, for company.

“People choose this kind of life because it suits them,” Tom said. “Don't worry, I'm not entertaining any fantasies of moving here permanently. Aside from the bleak fact that I know I'd be doing it sans wife, I wouldn't like it any better than you would. An occasional trip in the winter, though, to see how pretty the snow looks…”

“The thin end of the wedge, Tom. You can take the kids and I'll go someplace warm.”

“She was wrong about art not being meat nor drink.”

“What do you mean? She was just being poetical, silly. It was a very good meal, too. You never know with artists. They get carried away with presentation sometimes and forget taste,” Faith said.

“It's love, not art. Edna St. Vincent Millay. A Mainer, except she couldn't wait to get away. ‘Love is not all: it is not meat nor drink.'”

Ministers were good at quotations, Faith had learned early. Her father and grandfather both usually had one handy for any given situation.

“Maybe for Linda, art is love,” she retorted.

“Mebbe; mebbe not,” Tom replied, testing his local accent, to Faith's great chagrin. He was turning into a codger before her very eyes.

They reached Ursula's and got out of the car. Tom still had to drive the sitter home. He yawned. “I hadn't realized how late it was,” he said.

“Yes, almost nine-thirty,” teased Faith.

“You forget, my sweet, that we need all the rest we can get. We have to be sharp as tacks. Tomorrow night, we go before the Planning Board, remember?”

 

Lyle had discovered that the Fairchilds could extend their existing deck by five feet without violating any ordinances, but since it hadn't been in the original proposal approved by the Planning Board, they had to go back.

“It's unlikely anybody would make you rip it out, but it's best to tell them before you do it,” Lyle advised, and the Fairchilds agreed.

The meeting room of Sanpere's Town Hall was packed. The Town Hall was a square white clapboard building on Main Street in Granville. It housed the town office, the state police, which Earl used when he was on the island, and an old jail cell, now occupied by file cabinets. Town Meeting was held in the school auditorium, although the room they were gathered in had been the site for years before that.

Faith looked around. Aside from Lyle, Seth, and Tom, she didn't recognize a soul. Wait, she thought craning her neck. There was the man with whom Linda had driven off after work last week, the man with the curly hair and beard. She nudged Lyle. “Who's that guy sitting up front next to the woman with the long braid and purple dress?”

“That's Donald Osborn.” He grinned. “And that's his wife, Terri, and a whole lot of KSS members. Guess we're going to have some fireworks tonight.” He seemed to relish the prospect.

Faith whispered the news to Tom, who wasn't pleased at all.

“If they disrupt the meeting, it will hold things up. Maybe Lyle knows where we are on the agenda. Since KSS has been making such a fuss, the Planning Board doesn't post it anymore. Just announce in the paper what's being proposed. According to the law, they don't have to do any
more than that, and when KSS started making all those accusations, the board decided they'd go by the letter of the law. Now everyone is inconvenienced, because they shot their mouths off.” Tom sounded bitter. He was definitely weighing in on the side of the native-born islanders.

He leaned over Faith and asked Lyle if he knew when they'd be up.

“Don't worry, Tom. You'll get your deck approved,” Lyle said, and winked.

The board consisted of three members, one of whom was the Code Enforcement Officer, who had held the post for as long as anyone could remember. So long as Willard was around, they didn't need to consult the files for precedents or the thick books of regulations. Willard's memory was infallible.

Things started well. The first item on the agenda was a simple request for change of use, and it was approved rapidly. Two more items were dealt with, and then it was the Fairchilds' turn. Lyle had been keeping Faith amused by his running commentary on what was happening and the participants. She made a mental note not to tell him anything she didn't want made public—very public.

Lyle made the presentation and then, after consulting Willard and recalculating the spring high-tide mark just to be sure, the Planning Board approved the expanded deck. Faith reached for her purse.

Tom appeared scandalized. “Honey, we can't
leave before the meeting is over. People will think we only came to get what we wanted.” He stopped as soon as he realized how ridiculous he sounded. “I mean, it would be rude.”

“How late do these things go?” The wooden folding chairs were almost as uncomfortable as pews.

“I don't know, but it's interesting.”

To you maybe, Faith thought, then immediately sat up straighter. One of only two men wearing a suit and tie got up and went to the front of the room. The other man followed with a large portfolio and easel stand. He unzipped the case and began arranging the contents—very sleek architectural renderings of very large houses—for all to see. The next item, a board member announced, was a request from Harold Hapswell for the construction of three additional houses on land in South Harborside, presently known as Butler's Point, called Sanpere Shores by the petitioner.