A gull screamed from the rocks down below.
“Vargas!” Clay exclaimed.
I startled up. “What? Where?”
“The lighthouse keeper’s son. Fellow who was with you last night. Don’t deny it. Vargas?”
“Joseph. Yes.”
“I think he’s in love with her.”
The sentence struck in the middle of my chest. I stepped to one side, in order to find Joseph’s sailboat on the stretch of empty sea before us. For a second or two, I thought he’d been swallowed by the water, but when I shielded my eyes and looked farther, I saw he had only angled around the eastern tip of the Island to tack down the other side. The boat was smaller now. You couldn’t make out Joseph himself, just the white, triangular sail against the navy water, as it began to disappear behind the land’s edge. I caught my breath again and said, “How do you know?”
“Oh, he’s always been crazy about her. Used to hang around the house when they were small. Take the dinghy back and forth. They had some kind of signal they used to send each other, through the windows.”
“But she doesn’t feel the same way. She’s engaged to you, not to him.”
“Another man’s ring isn’t going to stop a fellow like that.”
“I don’t think—” I checked myself.
“Don’t think what?”
“I just think he’s more honorable than that.”
“Do you? Well, I’ve known him all my life, and I wouldn’t put it past him. Not the way he’s been pining for her all these years. Sitting there in his lighthouse, watching her from the window, beckoning her over to see him.”
The tip of the sail winked out past the edge of the cliff.
“Then Isobel should put a stop to it,” I said. “Especially if it hurts you.”
“Oh, it doesn’t hurt me. Not a bit. A fellow like that …” Clay turned to face me, and his expression was so haggard, the lines so deep and painful in his fresh, young face, I forgot my anger. He took my shoulder under his hand. “It’s Izzy I’m worried about. She’s impulsive, she’s—she trusts him, God knows why. It’s because he’s not one of us. He’s—well, she knows she can’t marry him, and you know how it is with girls—” He broke off and—perhaps realizing how tightly he was gripping my shoulder—let his hand drop to his side, where he shoved it into his pocket. “And he loves her. He’s crazy about her. Last night. I should’ve—man, I should’ve gone over there myself, I should’ve socked him. If I’d known, I would have.”
“I’m glad you didn’t. Nothing happened, Clay, nothing at all. She was—we were both a little tipsy, from the champagne and all, and he was worried about us and rowed us back home. That’s all. Joseph did a good thing.”
“He could have telephoned me. I would’ve fetched her back.”
“Do they have a telephone out there?”
“Sure they do. Underground cable.”
“I didn’t realize.”
“There’s a lot you don’t realize.” He swiveled back to the sea. Ran a hand through his hair and shoved it in his pocket, like the other hand, good and deep. “Mr. Fisher—God bless him—he’s indulged her all these years. I don’t blame him. She’s had it tough, with that mother of hers, and—well and everything else. But he’s not here to protect her just now, and I hope—I don’t mean to ask you to sneak around for me, nothing like that, but I just—If you could let me know if she’s in trouble, that’s all. If she’s about to do something stupid.”
I pictured that engagement ring, three or four carats dangling above the sapphire water. “She’s not going to do anything stupid,” I said. “And if she is, I don’t think I could stop her.”
“I could. I could stop her. If you just let me know how she’s doing, what she’s doing.” He pulled his left hand out of the pocket and checked his watch. “I’ve got to be back at the firm tomorrow, but I’ll be back up here as often as I can, believe me. I’ll give you my number in the city. Call me at any time. Collect, if you need to.”
“I’m sure that won’t be necessary.”
Clay reached out and took my hand, very gently, the way he’d been taught.
“I’m just grateful you’re here, Miranda. I’m just grateful Izzy’s got someone like you around at last, a proper female influence, someone steady and sensible.”
“Thank you,” I said dryly.
Clay leaned forward and pressed my hand hard and kissed my cheek, cutting me off. He smelled of sunshine and perspiration, and his cheek, brushing mine, was hot and damp.
“Just keep her busy, all right?” he said. “For God’s sake, just keep her away from that Vargas.”
15.
ISOBEL DROVE HOME from the Monks’ house at a crawl, because she’d drunk so much gin and tonic over bridge, and the road, I think, was playing tricks on her. Overhead, the sky was gray and troubled, and a few fat drops of rain smacked against the windshield. Isobel switched the wipers on and off and peered up to check the state of the clouds.
“Peaches, darling,” she said. “Do you know what I hate most about the Island and everybody in it? Except you, I suppose.”
“What’s that?”
“Nobody ever says what they really mean. There is this vast fabric of tender little lies, and all the important things are unspoken. Boiling there underneath. We only bother telling the truth when it’s too small to count.”
“I don’t think that’s true at all.”
“You haven’t been here long enough. It’s like a sport, it’s the only real sport they know, and because I love sports I play them at their game, but I hate it. If I had my horses, now …”
“Why don’t you?”
“There isn’t room. Poor dears, they’re on Long Island, getting fat.” She paused to negotiate a sharp curve, surging and slowing the Plymouth as if she couldn’t decide her approach. She was a wholly different driver when drunk, I thought, and as I watched the bony grip of her hands on the wheel, fighting the turn, I wondered if I should offer to take over. Before I could work up the nerve, she straightened out the car and said, “Don’t you ever miss Foxcroft?”
I turned my head to stare out the window at the meadow passing by, the occasional driveway marked by stone pillars. The air was growing purple with some impending downpour, and I felt its approach in my gut. “I haven’t been gone long enough.”
“I do. When I was there, I couldn’t wait to leave. All those books and rules and studying. But now I think, at least there was something new every day. Here, everything’s the same. The same damned summer, over and over, the same day, the same people, the same small talk, the same small sports and parlor games and lies, of course. There’s no escape.”
“It’s only a few months. Sometimes it’s nice to spend a few months doing nothing.”
“But then in September we go back to the city and do nothing there. What hope is there? Tell me, Miranda. I really want to know.”
I turned to stare at her sharp profile, and for the first time I noticed a tiny bump along the bridge of her nose, as if she’d broken it some time ago. “You might have gone to college,” I said.
“That’s just putting off the inevitable. Beside, I’m not like you. Books bore me. All your Shakespeare and Dickens and old men like that. Marriage is going to bore me even more.” She