A Running Tide Read online

  Calcutta streets, January 1977

  Colombia, December 1975

  Nigeria (rural), October 1973

  Cambodia, May-June 1970

  Mekong Delta, burnt-out villages, June 1964

  Alaska, March-July 1958

  She walked backwards through her life.

  At the far end in a shadowy corner were the earliest years. And earliest of all, not a file, but a shoe-box of faded grey cardboard, unmarked except for a peeling label which depicted a pair of child’s ankle-strap sandals. The very cardboard felt fragile as she ran her finger along the edge of the lid, as though it were so friable that lifting it would cause it to collapse into a heap of dust. She thought of fossil creatures, surviving only through the impressions their bodies had made on the gathering limestone of the sea-bed. And of the people of Pompeii, vainly trying to flee the eruption of Vesuvius, preserved for the voyeurs of today by hollows – life-casts of their bodies lying within the shrouding dust and lava. This box contained a hollow cast of herself.

  Tirza pondered the question of her own professional integrity. If she consented to a true retrospective of her work, then this box ought to be included. Like an artist’s childish sketches, the box held her own first essays in her art. But could she face public exposure of what lay there? Not her inexpert fumblings with her first camera, but the photographs themselves. The people looking out of her past. This box had travelled with her, from one temporary dwelling place to another, but she had not opened it for more years than she could remember. Not since she had made up her mind to leave Maine, forsake her past, make a different world elsewhere.

  Reluctantly she lifted the box. It felt unpleasant against her fingertips, as though the porous cardboard was somehow impregnated with sticky dust, a viscous residue of the life briefly glimpsed inside. On her way out of the door, she picked up her glass with her other hand and drained it. The whisky burned down into her stomach, warming, giving her the illusion of courage.

  Switching on lights as she walked through the cottage, she went into the sitting room. Mostly, during the winter, she lived in the kitchen for warmth, but she would never examine photographs where there might be traces of food. The fire was laid and she set a match to it. Gradually the pungent odour of peat seeped into the room. The window overlooking the sea was a cold square of darkness, and she jerked the curtains across it, suddenly conscious of loneliness. How different might her life have been, without the events glimpsed in the photographs contained in that dull grey box? Would she now be alone? Would she be living like an exile so far from the country of her birth?

  As if to contradict her, Grace followed her into the room and sat down in front of the fire. Striped grey and white, and of uncertain ancestry, the cat had adopted Tirza during the week she had spent at the Prince Returning, the hotel in Caillard, arranging the move into her island house. No one knew where the stray had come from. She had never been seen before in the streets of the small town, but had arrived at the same time as Tirza and with her had moved to the island. Not a young cat, but still energetic, she bore the scars of a hard life.

  When Grace had first found Tirza, sitting on the wharf-end, staring across at the island and wondering whether she had made the most expensive financial mistake of her life, the cat had looked like a scrap of fur-fabric loosely folded over a wire coat hanger. Now, with feeding and care, she had filled out and appeared to be an altogether larger animal. Tirza had not wanted to adopt her. It was not her practice to allow herself to become involved with any creature, human or animal. But – when she found that the stray had stowed away amongst her baggage in the open boat – she had been too tired, that first evening, to row back again. Grace had vanished into the night and wisely kept out of sight for the next two days. On the third she allowed herself to be fed a few tinned sardines; with dignity she had left a few scraps uneaten, indicating that she was not starving and not dependent on Tirza. By the sixth day she had permitted one brief caress of her matted pelt, and that evening ventured into the cottage. When Tirza rowed over to the town to fetch supplies at the end of her first week, Grace guarded the cottage from a chair beside the stove.

  Tirza sat looking at the shoe-box, reluctant to open it. Then the telephone bell rang, startling her and making her jump. Just before seven o’clock.

  ‘Yes?’ she said cautiously into the receiver.

  ‘Tirza? Max here.’ He sounded apologetic. ‘Look, I’m sorry. I think I came on a bit strong this morning. I was having rather a bad day. I’d no right to take it out on you. This exhibition – if you’re not feeling well enough yet, there’s no rush. I’ll phone Colin, if you like.’

  ‘I’m still thinking about it. I don’t know...’ She gazed at the shoe-box, sitting innocuously there on the table like Pandora’s casket, inviting her to open it. ‘I need a few days. There are things I have to decide. And I am still feeling a bit tired. Can I call you Monday?’

  ‘Of course. No need to do anything before then.’ He paused. ‘Are you all right? You sound a bit down.’

  ‘I’m fine.’

  ‘That’s what you always say. Would you like me...’ He paused again, momentously. ‘Would you like me to come up and see you?’

  Tirza laughed. The thought of Max in these surroundings was bizarre.

  ‘No. Great of you to suggest it. But I’ll be OK. I’ll call you Monday.’

  Even so, she felt bereft when he rang off, and the cottage seemed emptier and more desolate than before.

  Unlike the files, the shoe-box was not arranged and catalogued. The photographs – all black and white, with wide borders and deckled edges – lay in a heap at haphazard angles, the corner of a face peeping from under a pile of lobster pots, the hotel on Todd’s Neck (photographed somewhat askew) nestling against a dark shot, overexposed, of balsam firs, through which the ocean could be glimpsed.

  She remembered taking that photograph. Her grandmother had said, ‘Look at the spaces in between the trees. They have their own shapes, their own identity.’ And suddenly she had seen it for herself and tried to photograph it.

  Between her fingers the photograph felt unexpectedly thick. At the Portland store where her first films had finally been developed, they must have used a good quality photographic paper. Better than you would get nowadays. They were still there, the shapes between the trunks of the towering firs, caught through the lens of her grandmother’s vision.

  Slowly she began to lift the pictures from the box and lay them out on the table. A feeling half of excitement, half of dread, churned in her stomach. The lobsterboats loaded with pots. Some of the feral cats on the farm, lying in a hot patch of dust outside the cow barn. More lobster pots. Charlie Flett posing self-consciously, with ‘Flett’s General Stores and Post Office’ on the painted board above his head and someone’s foot sticking out from a rocker on the store porch. She peered at it. A big, heavy boot, much worn and mended. Maybe old Mr Swanson. Inexplicably she blew her nose. Why should she care about Charlie Flett and Bert Swanson? The beach, with the ledges behind and Simon doing something where the sea and sand met the rocks. Digging for clams, that was it. And the beach again, with her cousin Martha lovely in a two-piece swimsuit which had seemed impossibly daring at the time. Aunt Harriet had chided her, declaring the soldiers would think her fast.

  Then the other pictures. The ones she didn’t want to remember. Martha was in some of them, but not all. There was one – a young man, laughing, with his arm carelessly thrown round the mast of Tirza’s catboat as he balanced, a little unsteadily, on a thwart. The end of his sticks could just be seen above the coaming. How could he look so young?

  Tirza glanced up and caught Grace’s eye. The cat was regarding her steadily, as though she were trying to read Tirza’s thoughts.

  ‘I don’t want to do this exhibition,’ said Tirza. ‘It will be too painful. Why should I? Isn’t this just what I’ve been trying to avoid?’

  Something in her voice brought the cat to her feet. She leapt on to the
table, neatly avoiding the photographs as she landed and then stepped delicately among them. Cat and woman eyed each other. Then the cat climbed down on to Tirza’s lap and curled up. It was a moment of trust, of comfort even, for the cat usually kept her independent distance. Tirza laid one hand on her, caressing the neat dome of her head, free now of burrs and silky with grooming. With the other hand she began to sort out the photographs. Although she was not ready to admit it to herself, she had made her decision.

  2

  Maine: Winter 1942

  The New Year following Pearl Harbor had come to Maine in a deluge of bitterly cold air. January storms had blocked roads and by February most of the inland farms were cut off. Libbys’ farm, near the sea, never suffered quite as badly. The coastal path to Flamboro usually stayed clear, so Harriet Libby could walk to Flett’s for supplies, or send Simon to fetch groceries after school. Not that they would have starved even if they had been snowbound, for Harriet had grown up on a distant farm under the edge of the northern Maine forest, and she always laid up food for the winter like a siege. The treacherous night of bombing and death far away in the Pacific had reached out remotely to Flamboro through the tight voices of the newsreaders on the radio, and later in blurred images in the newspapers, but it was only during the last few weeks, as young men like Pete Flett left their homes, that the first ripples of war had truly begun to touch this remote corner.

  Tobias Libby whistled up the cows as he let them out for a short spell into the pasture. Along one side, under the scented lee of the pine wood, there was a strip of grass kept clear of snow by the overhanging boughs. It was thin grazing and only served as a supplement to the winter hay, but he liked to see the beasts outside getting air and exercise and not cooped up in the barn. He always swore this increased his milk yield, a matter of long but amiable dispute with young Swanson, who had not long since taken over his uncle Bert’s place just inland from Libbys’. Hector Swanson had come in with his fancy college ideas, and believed you could run a farm like a factory. He didn’t like getting his hands dirty, and he thought of his cows as machines for producing milk. Couldn’t see that the creatures were like any womenfolk, subject to moods and fancies. Tobias’s milkers always perked up if they spent some time outside on winter days, barring blizzards.

  Tobias turned his back on his cows and surveyed the farm critically. Every morning he would pause like this, however many chores lay waiting. If a man never lifted his nose from the furrow or the muck heap, how could he get a feeling for how the farm was doing? The rhythm of the farm moved in his blood, and failure of crops or sickness amongst the beasts infected his very sense of himself.

  The buildings formed three sides of a square around the yard – the house with its deep porch facing west to catch the evening sun when the day’s work was over, the cow barn and tie-up with the milk room in a lean-to building beyond, the grain shed, the horse barn with half of it partitioned off as a coach house. At any rate it had been a coach house in his father’s and grandfather’s and great-grandfather’s time. Now, as well as the hayrack and other farm machinery, it held the Ford pickup and the tractor. Between the horse barn and the farmhouse was the chicken shed for Harriet’s hens and the sty where he would fatten a pig during the summer. Beyond the house itself, well away from the slurry, were the ice-pond and ice-house and further still, fenced in and sinister, the lime-pit.

  The silver-grey shingles of the house walls were dusted with frost which caught the low-lying morning sun. And the snow weighing down the roof bulged out over the eaves – like the ample flesh of a man’s white-shirted beer belly sagging over his work pants. It was nearly four years since Tobias had given the cow barn its last coat of rusty red paint, and it was faded – drab, almost. The sad look of it offended him. He would need to get on with that after the spring planting.

  ‘That’s the yard done, Dad.’ Simon came over to the rail fence, hefting his shovel. His boots were mired to the ankle with manure-stained slush.

  ‘Done the barn?’

  ‘Not yet, but Mom just blew the breakfast horn. Didn’t you hear it?’

  ‘No. Too much wind, and this darn hat!’

  Tobias pulled it off and they both laughed. At Christmas Tobias’s mother Abigail had presented him with this swanky leather hat from L. L. Bean’s mail order catalogue. It was the latest headgear for city-dwelling hunters, made of cowhide and lined with a woollen fabric in a bright yellow tartan pattern. There were earflaps which could be fastened on top of the head or let down and tied under the chin. Tobias compromised by letting the flaps hang loose. He reckoned he looked fool enough without a bow under his chin. Secretly, though, he found the hat warm, and proof against the north-east wind which regularly gave him the earache.

  Simon leaned his shovel against the back doorstep and they both prised off their boots before padding into the kitchen in their grey hand-knitted socks. The air seethed with the smell of bread proving and bacon and sausages frying.

  ‘Better day today,’ said Harriet cheerfully, piling up their plates and pouring cups of strong milky coffee.

  ‘Ayuh,’ said Tobias, spearing a sausage like a man who hadn’t eaten for a week. ‘Wind’s not as bad as yesterday and sky’s clear. It’ll stay fine today, but there’ll be bitter frost tonight.’

  ‘Can I have more bread?’ asked Simon, shovelling food in as fast as his father.

  Tobias grinned. The boy had started eating like a man lately, and was growing to match it.

  Harriet cut more slices. ‘What are you going to do today after your chores? Have you finished your homework for Monday?’

  ‘Sure.’ Simon chewed. ‘I don’t know. Might go down into Flamboro.’

  The door flew open, caught by the wind, and Sam Rolands, the hired man, came in, followed by Tirza. Patches, the three-coloured money cat, slipped in behind them. One of the feral barn cats, she had wormed her way first into Tirza’s affections and then into Harriet’s. Her presence in the house was tolerated by Tobias, though he made a point of reminding them that the farm cats were working animals and not pets.

  Sam washed his hands silently in the wash-house which led off the kitchen and sat down in front of his plate. Tirza grabbed a chair, powdery blue with soft old paint, swung it round back to front and straddled it with her arms resting on the back rail. Her cheeks were red from the cold, and melting snow slithered from the folds of her dungarees. She reached down and rubbed Patches behind the ears.

  ‘You’re up here early,’ said Harriet, passing Tirza a cup of coffee.

  ‘I thought we could go skating.’ Tirza looked pointedly at Simon.

  ‘What’s so great about that? We’ve been skating on the ice-pond for a month.’

  ‘Not the ice-pond, stupid. Gooseneck Lake is frozen hard enough to bear. A whole crowd of folks are going up today. They’re taking picnics and making a campfire.’

  Simon looked enquiringly at his father. ‘You don’t need me once I clean the cow barn, do you, Dad?’

  ‘Ask your mother.’

  ‘Your room?’

  ‘It’s OK, Mom, it’s OK. I made my bed.’

  Tobias looked across at his wife. Her eyes were sparkling and she raised her eyebrows questioningly. He gazed at the ceiling.

  ‘Well, I’ve been calculating to fix that manger in Lady’s stall. Just waiting till we had a good enough day to turn the horses out with the cattle. Think I’ll spend the rest of the day fixing that.’

  ‘Tobias Libby, don’t be so provoking! You and me, we’re going skating too. If there’s going to be a skating party we’re not going to miss it.’

  ‘Now, Harriet, just because you were a neat thing on skates when you were a girl! That was a long time ago now.’

  ‘Land sakes, you fix your old manger if you want. I’m going skating with the rest of the folks from Flamboro.’

  Tirza winked at Simon. She had reckoned on Aunt Harriet coming along. That was why she had ridden her bike over first thing to the farm. If Aunt Harriet ca
me, they would have a feast, not a mug-up of wieners half charred on the end of a stick. She wasn’t fooled by the talk of fixing the manger. Her uncle had been going to fix that manger for two years now.

  ‘I’ll help you get the food ready,’ she suggested hopefully, ‘while Simon cleans the cow barn.’

  Simon laughed derisively.

  ‘Since when did you take up cooking?’

  She made a face at him.

  ‘Leave your cousin be,’ said Harriet comfortably. ‘She’ll take an interest in woman’s work soon enough, now that she’s growing on. Time she stopped running wild, crewing for her dad on the Louisa Mary and heaving lobster pots like a young lad.’

  ‘I like crewing for Dad,’ Tirza contradicted, regretting her offer to help in the kitchen. ‘I’m as good a crewman as any in Flamboro, and I can bait a crab line faster than most anybody.’

  Tobias got up from the table, wiping his mouth on a big spotted handkerchief.

  ‘Well, if we’re going off to spend a day on tomfoolery, I’ve chores to do first.’

  He went out the back door, followed silently by Sam, who always hunched his shoulders and ducked going through doors, for fear of banging his head.

  ‘You could help me in the barn first,’ said Simon cunningly. ‘Then we could both pack the food for Mom. What do you say?’

  ‘Ayuh,’ said Tirza. She was still smarting from the suggestion that she might soon be transformed into a woman, interested only in boring female chores. ‘Mind, you’d better help me next Saturday with the net-mending. If you’re capable.’

  ‘Sure,’ said Simon equably. They both knew Tirza would show him up, mending fast and neat while he tangled himself in a cat’s cradle of twine, but they took turn about to help with each other’s chores, as they’d done since they were old enough to make their way alone between Tobias’s farm and his younger brother Nathan’s mooring and lobsterboat.

  The cow barn was lofty as a young church, but instead of a clerestory it had the hayloft, sweet with the trapped scent of summer grasses. Motes of golden dust danced in the slanting light that lanced in from a slatted window high on the south side, and the mounds of manure spattered amongst the straw still steamed gently into the sharp winter air. Without the cows’ warm bodies it was chilly in here, and Tirza and Simon worked fast, shovelling the manure into a wheelbarrow and carting it out to the manure heap behind the barn. They hosed down and scrubbed the whitewashed walls and the floor, then Simon forked fresh straw from one end of the loft and Tirza spread it efficiently, making a clean carpet of bedding for the night.