The Magnificent Spinster Read online

  “My parents would say we can’t afford it,” he said shortly.

  “I have an idea you might get a scholarship.”

  “Much too late for that. School starts in six weeks!” Tom was sitting with his head bent, closed in, Jane felt.

  “So you’ve got to find some way to come to terms with family life, I guess … and that cat, Bobbie, and that tame hare, Amy.”

  “Animals would be a lot easier,” he said. “Oh well … I’m a hopeless person. “But I just don’t see that we are responsible for the whole world.”

  “I sometimes get overwhelmed, too,” Jane confessed. “When the talk gets so intense about the war, I just want to run away and be left alone.”

  “You do?” Tom looked up, relief on his face. “I didn’t think anyone but me felt like that.”

  “Is it cowardice, do you suppose? Or is it just that a human being can contain only so much pain?” She asked herself as much as him.

  “I don’t know. You’re supposed to be able to handle it if you are a Quaker. But that’s where I don’t connect.”

  “Well, we’re not alone, Tom, that’s for sure. Your parents are such extraordinary human beings, they always make me feel ashamed. Most people can’t take a great deal of reality, as someone said the other day. But there’s your mother with a large family and a job and she still seems able to open the door to every need.”

  “She does try,” Tom granted, “but I almost never see her to talk to the way we are talking … and my dad … well, he needs a lot of time to think, you know.”

  “We just have to accept—accept each person as he or she is,” Jane said, looking out to the bay, “and that, I guess, is the hardest thing of all.” Then she turned to Tom. “I have to swallow quite a lot of things I don’t like about my own family, even here on the island. Most people have no idea how much patience and tolerance is needed in a large family on a day to day basis. You know, Tom, Alix and I were the youngest of five girls, and I expect our sisters sometimes got pretty irritated with us!”

  “But you had Snooker,” Tom said, “I mean you were not on their necks all the time, were you?”

  “Yes, we had Snooker and she was the one who really brought us up—you are quite right. It’s much harder for you.”

  “I was not cut out to be a governess,” Tom said, smiling now. Somehow he was feeling a lot better. He got up and stretched. “Want to see if I can beat you at croquet?”

  Jane looked at her watch. “If we play hard and fast,” she said, “I can just make it. It’s really time to go down to the pool and see what’s going on there.”

  “Even you are caught, aren’t you?”

  “I don’t feel caught,” Jane answered, “because I suppose everything I have to do I want to do.”

  “And nothing I have to do I want to do,” Tom said wryly, daring her now.

  “Except maybe to beat me at croquet?” Jane teased. “Let’s give it a try!”

  It was one of those difficult choices she had talked about with Lucy, but Jane was not sorry that she decided to give Tom what he wanted even though they would be late for lunch. They played a mean game, with only an occasional shout of victory or a groan and the sharp click of mallet on wood. Tom had met his match, and much to his astonishment, Jane won.

  “You’re a wizard, Aunt Reedy,” he said, throwing down his mallet.

  “I’ve been practicing for about seventy years,” she said, laughing at him. “Anyway, win or lose, it’s a fine way to let off steam, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, but an even better way was to talk. Thanks, Aunt Reedy,” he said, as they walked down the field to the bathhouses in a congenial silence.

  We did have an extraordinarily carefree childhood, Jane was thinking, and that was—Tom had hit the nail on the head—in part because of the always available Snooker. Not until World War One did the world break in on the perfect heaven, and by then they were grown-up, she and Alix. Tom was far more grown-up now than perhaps she had ever been. Out of these thoughts she said, “You’re such a great person already, Tom. It took me years to grow to where you are now.”

  “Why? I don’t believe it.”

  “Because we were so safe, you know, so shielded from everything you already have to cope with and face.”

  “I don’t get it,” said Tom. “All I’ve done is complain.”

  Jane felt she had said enough, and anyway it would have taken some thinking to come out with what she was feeling about this boy, who was having to grow up very fast into a heartbreaking world, and was not afraid to be honest.

  “Look at that schooner,” she said. “Isn’t that a glorious sight!” Under full sail the craft was outward bound, and watching it, tears came to Jane’s eyes.

  Early the next morning, while Frances and Erika were still asleep, Lucy, Sarah, and Jane were already busy organizing the expedition to Baker’s Island, surrounded by the large baskets they would fill with cans of corned beef hash, Thermoses of milk and coffee, enameled blue mugs, cookies, plums, peaches, bottles of ketchup, loaves of brown bread, forks, spoons.

  “What else?” Jane asked.

  “Plates,” Annie, who had been observing the goings-on closely, said firmly.

  “Of course. Where are the paper plates and napkins, Sarah?”

  “In the pantry, underneath.”

  “You’ll need a can opener,” Lucy said.

  “Mercy, what if we forgot that?” Jane laughed.

  “And the skillet,” Sarah said. She had a list in her hands and crossed items off as they were stowed away.

  “Now you’d better get out of the kitchen,” Annie said, “or you’ll get no breakfast. I can’t make pancakes in total disorder and chaos.”

  “It looks like splendid weather,” Sarah said when at last they sat down on the porch. “The fog is already melting away.”

  They would be ten, Jane figured, if Nancy decided to go, and it might be a good idea to phone down to the farm and see whether Bruce could come along in the work boat and take the boys and Sylvie with him.

  Baker’s Island faced open sea. Wilder and several other islands were sheltered by Baker’s and did not get big surf. So the bay itself was ideal for sailing, but there was excitement in going out to rough water, to the edge of the continent with no land until Spain somewhere thousands of miles away. Mr. Reid had bought a piece of Baker’s for this very purpose. One came out of thick firs and underbrush along a rough trail to soft brown rocks flattened by the winter storms, so this open place had been named “the dance floor,” so smooth and open it was, smooth enough to dance on.

  But it was a real expedition to get there, not the least hazardous part of it gathering the clan together at the dock near the pool.

  “Let’s go, kids!” Jane called. “We’ve got to catch high tide at Baker’s.”

  The boys piled into the work boat with alacrity. John lifted Amy down into West Wind and joined them, and they chugged off, towing a dinghy.

  “You’re brave to come with us,” Lucy said to Nancy. “I hope it’s wise.”

  “I just couldn’t not go. Imagine being here and not going to Baker’s!” She was pink with excitement and looked, Lucy thought, a lot younger than when they had arrived.

  Jane, standing beside Captain Fuller, was exuberant and soon they were all singing “Men of Harlech” at the top of their voices. Then for a while there was silence. Amy fell asleep half lying on her mother’s lap and Jane and Lucy sat down on either side to talk.

  “I was thinking,” Nancy said, “how many wars your island has survived. I mean, so much has happened in the world, but the island is just the same. That is rather wonderful.”

  “Yes,” Jane said, her eyes very bright. “Children have come who are grandparents now—and of course Mamma and Pappa are always somewhere in the background. When I come back in June I find them again. And Edith, Alix, and Muff.”

  “I guess that continuity is rather rare,” Nancy went on. “So many people move right away from their parents, I
mean in spirit as well as physically.”

  Jane smiled. “I guess it does seem a little strange that the furniture has not been replaced, that the same old photographs and paintings hang on the walls … and the bear rugs. We did have to replace one, you know, because it was too moth-eaten. I couldn’t believe how expensive it was!”

  Lucy was more aware than most of Jane’s friends how much the cost of living had affected things. “A lot has changed,” she said. “There used to be more help. What Jane is doing—and it takes some doing—is to manage to keep the essential machine, if one can call it that, in order and working without a lot of people who were taken for granted fifty years ago.”

  “But some things are easier—a gas-run refrigerator, for instance; there used to be an ice house in Pappa’s day. I can still smell that smell of sawdust and the freezing cold there when you opened the door!” Jane said.

  “What I sense,” Nancy said, “is that it used to be a family island for your family and now it has become an island for a lot of other families—how lucky we are!”

  “Yes, there are fewer elegant young men playing tennis and golf than when we were five young women, that’s for sure!” And she laughed. “How I resented them when I was a child! They seemed a threat then.”

  “Why?” Lucy asked.

  “I wanted our family to stay exactly as it was. I didn’t want my sisters to marry. I wanted to stay a child forever.”

  “And maybe that’s why you invite so many children now? Just imagine being able to take in seven people on a holiday!” Nancy said vehemently.

  “That’s my idea of luxury,” Jane said, “and it’s all thanks to Pappa.”

  Amy was awake now and got up to stand at Jane’s knees and look up at her, filled with curiosity. “Are you very rich?” she asked.

  Jane exchanged an amused look with Lucy. “Not very,” she said, “but rich enough to invite my friends to the island.”

  “Oh,” Amy said. It was not the exciting answer she had hoped for. But then she was distracted, as they all were, by a schooner under full sail coming into the bay.

  And within a half-hour they were approaching Baker’s and could see that the work boat had anchored and the boys and John were clambering into the dinghy. But instead of rowing toward the shore they turned about and came alongside West Wind, just as Captain Fuller was throwing out the anchor.

  “I thought we could help Nancy,” John called out. “Bruce thinks we can lift her.”

  But Nancy felt sure she would be better off doing it with just a hand from John, and indeed she managed very well, and everyone was relieved.

  “Hurrah!” Jane said. “Well done, my girl.”

  After that John lifted Amy off into the dinghy and Jane and Lucy passed the baskets to Captain Fuller, who had clambered down to West Wind’s dinghy, and all made a safe landing. With Bruce and Captain Fuller carrying the heaviest baskets and bringing up the rear they made a single file along the rather rough trail. John took charge of Amy, and when Jane saw that Nancy was moving rather cautiously over rocks and fallen branches, she asked Sarah for her knife and made a staff out of a fallen branch.

  “Take this, dearie, it may help over the rough places. I had meant to remember to take one of Pappa’s canes for you.”

  The boys had already disappeared far ahead.

  Jane adjusted her pace to Nancy’s. “Are you all right?” she asked as they came out into the cleared space around the old lighthouse and stood for a moment looking up at it.

  “I’m doing very well,” Nancy said.

  The little house beside it was all boarded up, with some wild vine creeping up along one wall and along a windowsill in a rather ominous way. And for a moment they stood and listened to the silence.

  “There’s something lonely about an abandoned lighthouse, isn’t there?”

  “A little spooky,” Jane said, taking a deep breath. “We used to bring doughnuts over for the lighthouse keeper and his wife—think what it must have been like in winter!”

  The trail now entered deep woods, a suddenly dark, wild world. “Right about now Alix and I used to pretend we were witches and made sounds as horrible as possible!”

  “Make one now,” Amy said. She and John were waiting for them at a turn in the trail and she had caught Jane’s last words.

  “Shall I?” Jane asked, and gave Lucy a conspiratorial glance. Then she took a deep breath and an extraordinarily loud, strange howl was heard ricocheting through the woods.

  “What was that?” Sylvie and Bobbie ran back to find out. “We heard an awful scream, didn’t we, Bobbie?”

  “It was Jane being a witch,” Lucy explained.

  And everyone laughed, as people do when they have been frightened a little.

  “Come on,” Jane said, “we’d better get going. Anyone who sees a dry branch for the fire had better start collecting.”

  “I’ll tell the boys,” and Sylvie ran off with Bobbie close behind her saying, “Wait for me!”

  Soon after they had traversed a marshy place at the edge of the woods and stopped once more to listen to a thrush, they found themselves spread out on “the dance floor,” great golden, flat rocks with open sea before them.

  “Isn’t it great?” Jane said, standing very tall and taking deep breaths of the salty air. “Listen to that surf!”

  Sarah was already busy laying a small pile of brush and some dry branches over the black spot which marked the site of many fires over the years, a declivity between the rocks somewhat sheltered from the wind. Bobbie and Tom had found a quite large log which they were dragging along, and very soon Bruce and Captain Fuller made their appearance with the baskets.

  “Good work,” Jane said. “Now you two can relax while we get things going.”

  John helped unpack the baskets and was given the can opener to start opening cans of corned beef hash. Jane got hold of the box of matches and knelt down beside Sarah—it was she, of course, who must light the fire. That was one of the traditions.

  Nancy was lying flat on her back on the warm stone, where Amy joined her, amused by this rock bed.

  No one noticed that Bobbie had climbed down, fascinated by the waves, and was dangerously near the water until Captain Fuller, sitting smoking a cigar with Bruce beside him, called out, “Hey, Bobbie, you’d better watch out, boy!” Just then a big wave broke and covered Bobbie with spray. Sylvie ran down to pull him back.

  “I’m all wet,” he laughed. “Mummy, I’m as wet as a fish!”

  “Come and lie in the sun and dry off,” Nancy said, sitting up with some difficulty.

  “Thanks,” Jane said to Captain Fuller. “We do need someone to keep a watch!”

  Bruce said, “Kids never know how dangerous the ocean can be, do they, Captain?”

  “I’m not scared,” Bobbie boasted.

  “Well, maybe you should be,” Captain Fuller admonished him. “A boy drowned out here last summer.” He said it quite severely and Bobbie flushed. A severe word from the always kindly Captain Fuller could not be taken lightly.

  And Jane whispered to Lucy, “Good for him. I’m so glad I was not the one, for once, to scold.”

  Lucy had the mugs all out and ready for coffee or milk, with the paper plates and napkins held down by a big rock.

  “Let’s light it, shall we?” Jane said, bending to the rite, sheltering one match after another with one hand; but they all blew out in the stiff breeze. Finally a satisfactory blaze ran along through the brush. “Now if you’ll give me the skillet, I’ll start the hash.”

  By this time everyone was hungry and the whole clan had gathered to watch the proceedings, which were inevitably rather slow. Luckily the big log did catch and at last Sarah could pass a plate to Nancy and Amy, and one by one, with long intervals between, all the others were served while Lucy filled mugs and then passed bread and butter and knives and forks.

  “It’s quite an operation, isn’t it?” Sylvie said, sitting down by her mother. She was one of the last to be se
rved, as after rescuing Bobbie she had gone off by herself to read a book of Robert Frost’s poems she had tucked into her windbreaker.

  “A lot of planning and organizing, but Jane loves it. She is in her element,” Nancy said, watching Jane put another branch on the fire, her face flushed from the heat, so intent on the job she was doing that she looked a little like a priestess.

  “Fire does seem to have something sacred about it,” Sylvie said following her mother’s eyes. “Jane might be a Druid.”

  “A hungry Druid,” Jane laughed, as she caught the words. “Come along, Lucy, Sarah, this is our batch.”

  Captain Fuller and Bruce were allowed by special dispensation to cook their own, and so they did.

  “Earth, air, water, fire,” Jane murmured as she sat down with her plate and looked across to the horizon for a moment. “We seem to have all the essentials.”

  “Rocks, birds, trees,” Sarah murmured.

  “I do hope Frances and Erika are enjoying perfect peace with loved ones far away,” Jane said, smiling.

  “It was good planning to give them this day,” Sarah said.

  “I hope so—the only hard thing is that it meant Annie had to stay home.”

  “I’m going to take her for a sail,” Sarah said, “as soon as Siren is in the water.”

  “John looks very comfortable over there smoking his pipe,” Jane said, her eye roving around the group. Then the silence fell, everyone full of hash and contentment by now. Jane sighed, a long happy sigh.

  It was Sarah’s idea then, the observant Sarah, to ask Sylvie to read a Frost poem before they gathered things together for the trek back. Sylvie looked quite startled, then pleased as she leafed through the book. “I don’t know how to choose,” she said looking across at her mother.

  “How about ‘The Gift Outright’?” Nancy suggested.

  “By all means,” Jane said. “I think about that poem a lot.”

  “Maybe if you stood up,” Lucy said, “we could all hear it.”

  “I feel awfully shy,” Sylvie confessed, but she did stand and read the familiar words very well, and they all listened with the long roar of surf in their ears as well as Mr. Frost.