pictures do you paint?”
I explained about the sort of things I was trying to get down on canvas. “Are you interested in art?”
“I know what I like.” She looked at me under lowered lashes, her eyes narrowing slightly. I had never been close enough to see that they were green. “That’s what they say, isn’t it?” she continued. “‘I don’t know about art but I know what I like’? I like pictures, all kinds, long as they’re pretty.” She stretched lazily. “It’s a pretty village, I guess.”
“Have you always lived here?”
She laughed. “Sure, what else? Where d’you go if you’re born in the Coombe? That was our house, where you live.”
“I know. We appreciated your selling.”
She shrugged and held her fingers up and stared at her nails. “Wasn’t my idea. We needed the cash, anyway.” She went on, speaking of her father, who had lost his money through corn speculations during the last drought year. They’d had to move, then move again, always to a smaller place. This had all happened after the last Great Waste; the year Missy was born. Then Tamar’s father had died, and her mother, and the elders awarded her the position as postmistress. “I haven’t always worked at the P.O.” Her eye had fallen on my hand resting on the table top. She was staring at it. I picked up the glass and drank.
“Pretty strong, this.”
“Knock the eyes out of Justin’s rooster. Folks say it’s rare. Smoky flavor. They call it the old stuff.” She lifted the bottle again; I declined and she splashed some in her own glass and rose to add water from the tap. I watched the lines of her body move, the easy sway of her hips and breasts, the arch of the neck while she turned the faucet. “I always figured I’d get married at least five times. Have a gang of kids. Shows you how things work out, don’t it?” She looked up at the ceiling. “Well, I got one, anyhow. She’s like her father, got the same nature when she’s calm.” She studied her reflection in the mirror between the windows. “Same nature when she takes fire, too. I guess she favors him in her coloring. Most girls would’ve tried to hide it-not having a husband, I mean-but what the heck. Nobody around here cares.”
“She’s an unusual child.” I wondered who the father had been.
“Yeah. She is. She don’t make much trouble for me. We get on fine. It’s hard tryin’ to talk to her sometimes. I mean it’d be nice to have someone who understands what you’re saying.” She sat again. From the sink came the slow drip of water. “Darn that leak,” she said.
“Needs a washer.”
“Lots of things around here need lots of things.”
“You knew Gracie Everdeen?”
Her brow shifted slightly. There was a pause. Then: “You’re full of questions, aren’t you? You interested in Gracie Everdeen?”
“Just trying to get the village history straight.”
“I’ll get it straight for you. Sure I knew Gracie. If it wasn’t for her, we’d still be living where you’re living. It was her who brought the Waste, her who ruined my father, ruined so many around here. She was a sly one, Gracie. Thought she had it all. And she did, for a time. Had Roger, got to be Corn Maiden; she was queen of the May, all right. But things didn’t work out for poor Gracie. I got Roger, I got to be Corn Maiden, and there’s Gracie pushing up daisies in the churchyard. If you want to know what I think about her, I hope she burns in everlasting hell. She
“If you want to know the truth, Gracie was dippy. Pure dippy.”
“You mean crazy?”
“I mean crazy. Crazy with love for Roger, and crazy she couldn’t marry him. That’s what sent her off the deep end.”
“What happened?”
“She was supposed to marry Roger. Then Mrs. Everdeen revoked the banns. That’s what drove Gracie crazy, because her mother wouldn’t let her marry Roger.”
“Why didn’t she want her to marry him? Wasn’t he good enough for her?”
“He was a Penrose! Lived just off the Common. Roger was poor, but the Everdeens never were any great account in the Coombe. People think the Penroses are-” She touched her temple. “But in this case it was the other way around. Gracie’s brains went to pudding.”
“How?”
“Lord, Roger’d picked her for Corn Maiden. That was an honor. What did she do? She tossed the honor back in all our faces, the little fool. Nothing she wouldn’t do to shock people or make them think ill of her, she who had everything, Roger included. Know what she did on Agnes Fair? Roger was shinnying up the pole on the Common, and there goes Gracie up the flagpole in front of the post office in about the same time. They wasn’t watching the Harvest Lord then, let me tell you; they were watching her. Then, when Roger was wrestling, out comes Gracie from the platform and throws a hammer lock on him and tosses him to the ground in front of the whole village. The Corn Maiden putting down the Harvest Lord? She was crazy, I tell you. Then she marches up to old man Deming and curses him out, swearing like a trooper. It wasn’t any wonder she ran off, after that.”
“And you were Corn Maiden in her place.”
“Yes. I was. And I’d be again, if I could. Sophie Hooke, for heaven’s sakes. Why, she and Justin are
“What’re we talking about Gracie for? People’d like to stop thinking about her, if they ever could. You’re got good hands. Nice fingers. Long. I guess that means you’re an artist.” She was rubbing her fingertips over the dark hairs. “Nice,” she said in a husky voice.
“Nice?” I let go the glass. She took it to the sink and put some ice cubes in.
“Nice. I mean, sitting around my kitchen. It’s not often I have gentry sitting at my house.” The cat stirred again as she poured two stiff fingers from the stone jug and brought the glass back, bending over my shoulder to place it on the table. I could smell her scent, not just the perfume but the whole womanly, feminine scent of her. I looked up, felt her hair brush across my eyes. I started to turn away; she leaned insistently and the red mouth came closer, the lips moist, parted. She kissed me. I slid an arm around her neck and held her mouth to mine. I released her in confusion, and she shuddered, burying her lips in my shirt collar, then stepping away. “I knew,” she murmured, and her head nodded as though in private conversation. “I knew.”
It had grown dark outside. I rose. “Sorry. I guess that was starting things that shouldn’t have gotten started.”
She leaned back against the sink, her breasts straining against her blouse. “Shouldn’t have? I’ve been waiting these months for you to start something.” She was running cold water in the sink; her red-nailed fingers sparkled under the gushing faucet. She turned the tap, shook her fingers, and came to me; her arms were around my neck, her face tilted to mine. “I’ve been waiting, and now it’s happened. I knew it would.”
There was a light in her eyes that was not mere lust, but a gleam of triumph. I could feel the drops rolling from her fingertips onto the nape of my neck. I reached up and unclasped her hands. She took them away and placed them on my chest.
“I can feel your heart.” A smile grew from the corners of her mouth. I felt unsteady on my feet, locked my knees so I wouldn’t stagger. “The old stuff getting to you?” She laughed lightly. “You can have a high time on the old stuff.” The invitation was now not only in her eyes but on her lips, in the caress of her fingers as they toyed with the fabric of my shirt under my jacket.
I returned her look with the same level gaze, trying to keep my balance. “Sorry, lady-you have the wrong guy.”
“Don’t want to play?”
“In my own back yard.”
“Do you?” The curve of her brow rose, a mocking curve, questioning the truth of my statement. “Lots of play in your back yard? Sandbox and everything? Tin pail, shovel-playmate?”
“Why not? I’m married-remember?”
Her laugh became hoarse, unattractive. “Still waters don’t run very deep in your case, do they?” she said,
