Hartley and Russell?went to Sherill’s Falls, climbed Macabit Mountain, fished in Bates’s Pond, and drove the old Cadillac barefoot across the pasture.
The new vicar of the Episcopal chapel in Macabit called on the Nudds the first summer after the war and asked them why they hadn’t had services read for Hartley. They couldn’t say. The vicar pressed the point. Some nights later, Mrs. Nudd dreamed that she saw Hartley as a discontented figure. The vicar stopped her on the street later in the week, and spoke to her again about a memorial service, and this time she agreed to it. Russell was the only person in Macabit she thought she should invite. Russell had also been in the Pacific. When he returned to Macabit, he went back to work in the hardware store. The land on Hewitt’s Point had been sold to real- estate developers, who were now putting up one-and two-room summer cottages.
The prayers for Hartley were read on a hot day at the end of the season, three years after he had drowned. To the relatively simple service, the vicar added a verse about death at sea. Mrs. Nudd derived no comfort whatever from the reading of the prayers. She had no more faith in the power of God than she had in the magic of the evening star. Nothing was accomplished by the service so far as she was concerned. When it was over, Mr. Nudd took her arm, and the elderly couple started for the vestry. Mrs. Nudd saw Russell waiting to speak to her outside the church, and thought: Why did it have to be Hartley? Why not Russell?
She had not seen him for years. He was wearing a suit that was too small for him. His face was red. In her shame at having wished a living man dead (for she had never experienced malevolence or bitterness without hurrying to cover it with love, and, among her friends and her family, those who received her warmest generosity were those who excited her impatience and her shame), she went to Russell impulsively and took his hand. Her face shone with tears. “Oh, it was so good of you to come; you were one of his best friends. We’ve missed you, Russell. Come see us. Can you come tomorrow? We’re leaving on Saturday. Come for supper. It will make it seem like old times. Come for supper. We can’t ask Myra and the children because we don’t have a maid this year, but we’d love to see you. Please come.” Russell said that he would.
The next day was windy and clear, with a heartening lightness, a multiplicity of changes in its moods and its lights?a day that belonged half to summer, half to autumn, precisely like the day when the pig had drowned. After lunch, Mrs. Nudd and Pamela went to an auction. The two women had reached a reasonable truce, although Pamela still interfered in the kitchen and looked on Whitebeach Camp impatiently as her just inheritance. Randy, with the best will in the world, had begun to find his wife’s body meager and familiar, his desires as keen as ever, and so he had been unfaithful to her once or twice. There had been accusations, a confession, and a reconciliation, and Pamela liked to talk all this over with Mrs. Nudd, searching, as she said, for “the truth” about men.
Randy had been left with the children that afternoon and had taken them to the beach. He was a loving but impatient father, and from the house he could be heard scolding Binxey. “When I speak to you, Binxey, I don’t speak to you because I want to hear the sound of my own voice, I speak to you because I want you to do what I say!” As Mrs. Nudd had told Russell, they had no maid that summer. Esther was doing the housework. Whenever anyone suggested getting a cleaning woman, Esther would say, “We can’t afford a cleaning woman, and anyhow I don’t have anything to do. I don’t mind doing the housework, only I just wish you all would remember not to track sand into the living room…” Esther’s husband had spent his vacation at Whitebeach Camp, but he had returned to work long since.
Mr. Nudd was sitting on the porch in the hot sun that afternoon when Joan came out to him with a letter in her hand. She smiled uneasily and began to speak in an affected singsong that always irritated her father. “I’ve decided that I won’t drive down with you tomorrow,” she said. “I’ve decided that I’ll stay here for a little while longer, Daddy. After all, there’s nothing for me to do in New York. I have no reason to go down, have I? I wrote to Helen Parker, and she’s going to come up and stay with me, so that I won’t be alone. I have her letter right here. She says that she’d like to come. I thought we would stay here until Christmas. I’ve never been here in the winter before in all these years. We’re going to write a book for children, Helen and I. She’s going to draw the pictures, and I’m going to write the story. Her brother knows a publisher, and he said?”
“Joan, dear, you can’t stay here in the winter.” Mr. Nudd spoke gently.
“Oh, yes I can, yes I can, Daddy,” Joan said. “Helen understands that it isn’t comfortable. I’ve written her all about that. We’re willing to rough it. We can get our own groceries in Macabit. We’ll take turns walking into the village. I’m going to buy some firewood and a lot of canned goods and some?”
“But, Joan, dear, this house wasn’t built to be lived in during the winter. The walls are thin. The water will be turned off.”
“Oh, we don’t care about the water?we’ll get our water out of the lake.”
“Now, Joan, dear, listen to me,” Mr. Nudd said firmly. “You cannot stay here in the winter. You would last about a week. I would have to come up here and get you, and I don’t want to close this house twice.” He had spoken with an edge of impatience, but now reason and affection surged into his voice. “Think of how it would be, dear, with no heat and no water and none of your family.”
“Daddy, I want to stay!” Joan cried. “I want to stay! Please let me stay! I’ve planned it for so long.”
“You’re being ridiculous, Joan,” Mr. Nudd cut in. “This is a summer house.”
“But, Daddy, I’m not asking very much!” Joan cried. “I’m not a child any more. I’m nearly forty years old. I’ve never asked you for anything. You’ve always been so strict. You never let me do what I want.”
“Joan, dear, please try to be reasonable, please at least try to be reasonable, please try and imagine?”
“Esther got everything she wanted. She went to Europe twice; she had that car in college; she had that fur coat.” Suddenly, Joan got down on her knees, and then sat on the floor. The movement was ugly, and it
