“You can’t choose a date without consulting me.”
The sail tipped dangerously close to the water. The captain stayed his course, his crew leaning far over the opposing gunwale.
“I have consulted you for two months, Permelia. I have come to the conclusion that you will indefinitely postpone my expedition.”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, Harland. There have been—”
“Don’t bother. Please. I know what there has been. I am going to inform Mrs. Galloway and Miss Salford that I intend to go after my mid-summer sale.”
The wind strengthened as the boats passed the headland; a sloop was gaining on the leader. Partridge Island loomed over the boats, the quarantine buildings black, blocky shapes against the sky. The bell buoy clanged, dim and intermittent across the harbour.
“It will be so hot in July.”
“Yes, it would have been better to go sooner, but you expressed concern about the state of the spring roads.”
“Really, Harland. You have no reason to care about that girl, Flora. Even if she is outrageously beautiful.”
He kept his hands steady, sweeping the binoculars over the flotilla.
“Perhaps if she were a fat little thing with spots you wouldn’t care.”
She might be right, he thought, picturing Flora. Her firm, desperate expression. The fierce set of her shoulders. The competence of her hands.
He set down the binoculars. The boats were about to round the island.
“Miss Salford is the age of our own daughters. I would be shocked indeed if you were to accuse me of an attraction to such a child.”
“No, I…no. Of course not.”
“I put young Flora up for…I tire of this conversation, Permelia. Mrs. Galloway feels herself both responsible and indeed indebted to Flora. The girl has helped her a great deal. You know that Simeon’s death…”
The waiter arrived at their table, carrying a silver-plated salver. Permelia and Harland sat back as he served tea with sugar cookies and cherry bread.
“Josephine has had a dreadful time,” Permelia murmured. Prim, her face closing as she sipped. “She should not have chosen a sea captain for a husband.”
Harland watched steam spiralling from the teapot. He smelled the saloon’s sun-warmed plush. Clink of china, spoons on saucers. Permelia’s skirts filled the space beneath the table. He remembered the moment when Simeon, a new boy, had come into their classroom. Insouciant, composed, Simeon had slid behind his desk and Josephine had lowered her face to glance from beneath a fringe of hair. And he himself had felt helpless, like the regatta’s early leader, now fallen back into the flotilla.
“That comment exhibits a remarkable lack of feeling,” he said. He felt an ugliness in his nostrils, the set of his mouth.
“Oh, goodness, Harland. I feel very sorry for her. And I can see that you are too prone to exhibiting sympathy for her.”
She stroked her linen napkin, folded next to her plate. A garnet ring, too tight, compressed the wrinkles of her knuckle.
“Indeed, I have changed my opinion, just now. I have been so foolish. It is because of Josephine that you are so keen to undertake this journey, isn’t it. You have a desire to impress her. You wish her to admire you. It is shocking. It is hurtful. I do believe you are in love with her.”
They met each other’s eyes.
He remembered how, during the first year of marriage, she had strewn ill-considered opinions, and he realized that she was someone other than the small, full-fleshed, cheerful girl he had thought her. In the second year, he left her to her interests: baby, servants, dressmaker, the orchestration of status; and learned to hide his own enthusiasms—the sight of dawn’s flush on the lilies, his inordinate pleasure in the decorated shop window. He found refuge in his weather station. In his civic duties, now abandoned. And, lately, he admitted to himself, in Josephine’s need.
“I consider that comment beneath my dignity to answer,” he said.
He resumed watching the race, breath shortened by anger. The boats had disappeared behind the island. He realized a strange relief in this, the disappearance of the boats, the momentary absence of their crews’ striving, the ocean leading his eyes to the horizon.
“There is such a thing as compassion, or civility, Permelia.” He spoke to the window. “In the eyes of most people, what you call being do-gooders is, in fact, doing the right thing.”
“But you are not doing the right thing, Harland. You are using false civility to hide the truth of your attraction to a widow. If you go on this journey to seek that girl’s sister, you will prove this to me. And I will not be quiescent. I will take it as your answer to me, since you refuse to admit what is obvious.”
It occurred to Harland that they could not continue like this. He watched the coruscating light, a passionless occurrence signifying that nothing was of consequence save cause and effect.
—
The morning air was cool, although already the promise of heat warmed the veranda. Josephine noticed dew on the rocking chair and saw last year’s leaves drifted in the corner, making a musty smell beneath the sweetness of honeysuckle blossoms.
She sensed a change in herself, ever since Harland told her that Permelia refused to allow him to make the trip, and that he had acquiesced to her demand. Permelia does not want me to go, he said, she feels the store cannot afford my absence—and she realized her dread of Permelia’s smothering anger, which she had sensed ever since the trip had been proposed.
She wondered if she, herself, alone, should go to Nova Scotia. I am an independent woman, she thought, I need ask no one’s permission. It was a new perspective on widowhood, this sense of freedom; and yet she did not dare.
She stood and leaned against the veranda railings.
“Simeon?” she whispered. She realized, suddenly, with fearful honesty, that she was the only one listening.
Someone must go.
She could not imagine who it should be. She could not bear the thought of Flora’s disappointment. It was a problem she would have to solve,
