“What'd he have to say when he found out that you were?” Elaine asked. She, too, had leaned back in her chair — and she, too, was strained almost to the breaking point.
“For one thing,” Gwyn said, “he talked a lot about a place called Lamplight Cove.”
Neither Will nor Elaine had anything to say about that. They seemed to be fighting an urge to glance at each other for reassurance.
Gwyn put her glass down on the stand beside her chair and turned to her uncle. “Is it really true, what he says?”
“What's he say?” Will asked.
“That you've been making life very hard for the lobster fishermen hereabouts. He says you bought Lamplight Cove out from under them, and even though you haven't done anything with it yourself, you refuse to let them rent their old facilities.”
“A rather nicely twisted version of the truth,” her uncle said. He seemed to have recovered all of his normal self-assurance.
“Is it? I suspected it might be, but he sounded so — honest.”
He put down his own liqueur and folded his hands together on his upraised knee. He said, “It's true enough that I've bought Lamplight Cove,
“In the meantime,” Gwyn began.
He did not permit her to finish, but went on as if he had not even heard her speak. He said, “As soon as I acquired Lamplight Cove, I offered the fishermen the facilities there at the same rental they had always paid. Which, I might add, was precious little; the buildings were shoddy, the commercial value of them almost nil. But I did not throw them out — not as they now attempt to say I did. After all, I am a businessman, Gwyn, and I would not turn down any income so easy — no matter that it's small — as that which the dock rentals would have brought. However, included in my agreement to rent to them were several — ah, conditions.”
“Conditions?”
“They had spoiled the environment of Lamplight Cove and were well on the way toward recklessly destroying it altogether. They dumped their sludge oil from their boats right into the bay. They'd also established a complete dry dock, to paint and repair their boats, and they weren't at all concerned that so much of the poisonous products used in these repairs — scaled paint, new paint, turpentine, grease, oil, solvents — were let into the waters of the cove. You see, since they didn't live here, and since they didn't have to earn their living fishing in the cove, they didn't really much care what condition they left the place in. They didn't care whether or not they were killing off all of the underwater plant and animal life in the cove.”
“How terrible,” Gwyn said.
“But par, for most people,” he said.
She said, “Jack Younger never told me any of this.”
Elaine, in a tone of voice that made it perfectly clear she thought very little of any of the Youngers or their friends, said, “Well, my dear, I'd have been very must surprised if he had. These people show an amazing skill for twisting the truth.”
Her Uncle William said, “They've tried to make me out as a villain to everyone in the area. They've painted me as a vicious man, a money-grubbing, ruthless and pettily vindictive rich man discriminating against the poor, down-trodden laborers. You'd think I was an ogre if you heard only their side of things. But nothing's so simple as that.”
“I told him that he was wrong about you, Uncle Will,” Gwyn said.
He smiled. He took a sip of the banana liqueur, then put the glass down once again. “Thank you for your loyalty,” he said.
“It's nothing to do with loyalty,” Gwyn said. “It's just plain, common sense. You couldn't possibly be so mean and petty as he said you were. No one could be.”
“I'll wager that he didn't tell you anything about International Seafood Products, either.”
She looked perplexed.
“It's a huge concern that processes seafood and cans it. ISP has been trying to buy up seafront land and obtain government permissions to construct a fish processing factory only a mile from here. Do you realize what a plant like that would mean to this area?”
“More jobs?” Gwyn ventured.
He snorted.
“Actually, they'd employ very few people,” Elaine said. “The plant would be ninety percent automated.”
Her Uncle William leaned forward again, as if engaged in a vital argument about the affairs of the day — which, she soon saw, he was. “In point of fact,” he said, “such a processing factory would ruin Calder and the landside around it. Have you ever been anywhere near a seafood plant, a cannery?”
“No,” Gwyn admitted.
“The stench of dead and rotting fish — the guts, and other parts they can't use — carries for miles. The sea around the plant is used as a dumping grounds for organic and inorganic wastes, in huge quantities. You have an open sewer, within six months, and another dead section of the sea in a year.”
“And the lobster fishermen have been in favor of this cannery?” Gwyn asked.
“Yes,” he said. “Not just the lobster men, but all the captains. Because their own traditional grounds are so close, they'd be able to make a better profit on their catches. Add, of course, they'd have a steady market for just about everything they could bring in.”
Gwyn nodded. “I see.”
“Don't misunderstand,” Elaine said. “We're not against progress, and we're certainly not against capitalism. The seafood company should be allowed to build their plant somewhere. One of the offshore islands, north of here, would do nicely — someplace where there aren't people whose lives and property values would be lessened by such a godawful factory.”
“I'll admit,” her uncle said, “that one of my reasons for wanting to keep ISP out of Calder and the surrounding area is purely monetary. I've spent half a decade acquiring the land necessary to establish a fine seaside community of upper-class homes. I wouldn't want to see the value on all that land be cut by half because of the stench of rotting fish. But beyond this consideration, there's the other, of environmental protection. I don't want to live in a place where a good, deep breath makes me ill — or where the beaches are littered with decaying rejects from the cannery.”
“Neither would I,” Gwyn said.
“So,” Elaine said, “if you should see this Mr. Younger again, you'll be able to tell just how much of his line is pure hogwash.”
“Actually,” Will said, “I'd think it better if you don't see him again. If you notice him on the beach, avoid him. These people have made some threats — of violence, I'd feel safer if you avoided them.”
She promised that she would keep to herself, though she knew that she would take any opportunity to speak, just one more time, with Mr. Jack Younger (the younger). He had departed, this afternoon, with such a cold, abrupt attitude… He had made her feel guilty. Now, she would enjoy letting him know that she had found out exactly who the
On the stairs, when she was on her way to her room, she met Ben Groves coming the opposite direction.
“It looks great,” he said.
Confused, she said, “What does?”
“Your tan!”
She looked at her bare arms and smiled. “I'd almost forgotten it. Yes, it's rather good, but just a start. I want to be as dark as everyone else around here, before the summer's over. At least, now, I don't look like a —
