said didn’t contribute except to live here and bellyache. And wait until they heard about the sign in Sudley’s pasture.
He felt a sharp jolt then in the pit of his stomach. They’d probably heard already, that’s why they were here . . . if not about Sudley, about Stan Ashton. Then he saw the foreign, yellow, midget convertible with red leather seats nosed in between the station wagons. It belonged to Arthur Dunning, one of the top-flight artists Anita knew and had down to work and be company for her, be a bit of leaven for the local dough-heads—and a black-bearded pain in the glutenus maximus so far as O’Leary was concerned. If it was a home owners’ protest meeting, Dunning wouldn’t be there. Or would he . . . always turning up where he was least expected. But the kids were shouting, streaking bare-footed in blue jeans across the field to the circle to meet him.
“Daddy! Daddy! I’ve got a contract, Daddy!”
Tip was yelling it at the top of his lungs. He and a visiting boy were racing ahead, Kitsy, nine now, red pigtails and braces on her teeth, behind them. Behind her was John Eden O’Leary, aged seven, an extravert edition of both Spig and Tip, delayed now because he had to wait for Molly Ashton’s chubby four-year-old legs to catch up with him. Mädel, the German shepherd, circled behind her to help her on.
“Daddy!” Tip’s freckled face was shining gold, but he pulled himself together with great sobriety. “Dad—this is my friend, Gregory Pappas. This is my father, Greg.” He nudged Greg’s arm. “Now you say, ‘How do you do, Mr. O’Leary?’ and shake his hand. We’re teaching him not to be so scared of grown-ups, Dad.”
Spig put his hand out. “How do you do, Greg?”
“How do you do, Mr. O’Leary?” Greg said shyly. His face was shining too. It was clear olive, finely cut, with brilliant dark eyes under a cap of hair black and glossy as a crow’s wing.
“Greg’s in my room at school, Dad. He got me my contract, for all my vegetables, Daddy! Every one of ’em!”
“My father’s going to buy them,” Greg said proudly.
“Every morning I’m going to pick them, and you’ll deliver them for me, Daddy? Till I’m old enough to drive?”
“Yes, because it’s a long-term contract. Isn’t that what my father said, Tip?”
“Yes. You’ll deliver them for me . . . won’t you, Daddy?” It was only when Tip was bursting with happiness that he said Daddy, not Dad.
“Sure I will,” said Sprig. “Glad to. Where——”
“Just down the road,” Greg put in. “The Three D. You know, my father’s——”
“Hey, wait . . .” But Kitsy was there then. “How’s my girl?” Spig caught her up and kissed her, and then came John Eden and Molly A. and he was smothered with small arms and sticky kisses, all sweaty like the little field hands they were, their blue jeans covered with top-soil, streaks of it on their glowing, freckled faces.
Not the Three D. Not after all the stink I’ve made . . .
The shining pride in all their faces was a stinging barb in his own pride of a baser nature.
“We’ll see,” he said, as cheerfully as he could. O’Leary would look great knocking on the back door of the Three D with a basket of carrots, O’Leary who was too high-minded to go in the front door.
Tip’s face had sobered. “If you don’t have time, Dad, Miss Fairlie said she’d lend me the jeep and David could drive me. She says it’s a very fine contract. Didn’t she, Greg? Mr. Pappas is paying me the retail price, isn’t he, Greg?”
“Yes—because they’re fresh and Tip’s my friend,” Greg’s face beamed.
“Come on, Tip! We’ve got to hurry! We’re busy, Daddy.” John Eden was through with all that stuff.
“And you’d better hurry, too, Daddy,” Kirsty said. “Mother’s having a cocktail party. It’s Aunt Mag’s birthday. Tippy said we could give her some squash if we finish mulching. Didn’t you, Tippy?”
They were off then, Mädel the shepherd circling them. Spig O’Leary stood there. He could see O’Leary lugging a bushel basket into the Three D and Buck Yerby standing there, grinning, the big ape. Not O’Leary. Not if he had to buy the whole bloody crop and eat it raw.
Now the kids weren’t yelling at him, he could hear the din of cocktail noises coming through the windows from the terrace. They wouldn’t be laughing if they’d heard about either Sudley or Ashton. He went into the house through the “hyphen”—the one-room passage connecting the new dining-room and kitchen with the old cottage—put the papers on the table, and went into the kids’ downstairs bathroom to wash. It would be better to go in and say hallo to people first—they might see his car and wonder. Then he decided a quick slug would be a good thing to help him face the crowd of cheerful inebriates outside, and went through into the old cottage. It had been two rooms originally. Now it was one, and where they lived mostly, especially in winter with the big, old, whitewashed fireplace glowing green and gold with driftwood from the Cove. The drinking whisky was in the cellarette on the far side, across the pine tap table Miss Fairlie had left with them . . . the table where the blood had been.
You can hardly tell it now unless you know it’s there. Blood disappears. It’s like everything else. All it takes is time.
“I always keep fresh flowers here, or laurel leaves in the winter,” Miss Fairlie said, the day she had the shutters taken down, and the O’Learys had done the same, without asking the reason, nor did she tell them. There were others who would have gladly, but it was a matter of pride to shut them up a keeping faith with both Miss Fairlie and the old judge. Until the day the rector called and they couldn’t tell him to shut up he was so sweet and so obviously meant no harm.
“Bless me, there it is . . . how well I recall it. I’d just come to Devonport, my first parish. I knew they were in love, planning to marry as soon as her father was well—he’d strained his heart in the autumn, haying. Poor child. She and her father found him here. It was bitter cold and he’d fallen overboard out at the duck blind. This was the closest place. He wouldn’t let his brother Harlan and Judge Twohey’s boy Nat come in with him, so they went on across the river, oyster tonging. The fire George made was still burning when I came out with the sheriff and old Dr. John. His clothes were there on a chair drying, and he was wrapped up in a blanket, sitting right there.”
He pointed across the bowl of flowers.
“He’d been cleaning his gun, his fingers still numb from the cold. When Celia Fairlie and her father found him, he was lying here on his gun, his great heart blown out, the table a sea of his blood. Never, my dear young friends, believe the terrible calumny some heartless people tried to spread. George Sudley never took his own life. It was a wicked and cruel thing to say.”
He shook his silvery head. “It was hours before David, the coloured boy found them. Celia wouldn’t leave and her father was too ill to force her. David called us. The sheriff carried her bodily home. You didn’t know him—Buck Yerby’s father. He was crying. We all loved George Sudley. He and Celia had known each other all their life before they suddenly fell in love. It was like a flame. It was cruel, but God knows best—I must always believe that, even when it’s difficult for us to see it. It was very hard. His brother Harlan was eighteen, going away to college. He had to stay home and manage the farm. It changed him, of course. It changed Miss Fairlie . . . But she might have accepted her changed life, as Harlan accepted his and grew with it, if it hadn’t been for the terrible tragedy of two months later. But you know that, of course.”
“We don’t, sir, but we’d rather not,” Spig said quietly. “We love Miss Fairlie as she is. We don’t want to know anything she doesn’t want to talk about.”
“That’s very wise, and very kind,” the old rector answered, not knowing they hadn’t known even this much until he told them. “How short is the time of man,” he said softly, his eyes