Body In The Belfry

pleasantly warm their hands. This was followed by a big salad and more sourdough bread, which was Faith's contribution. Jenny had made a blueberry cobbler with blueberries frozen the past summer to finish the meal. It was perfect. Faith would have been content to sit and bask in the sun all afternoon, but Robert was plainly eager to get going.

“Come on, come on,' he complained, 'We're going to lose the wind and the tide will be turning before we're started.'

“ Good, Daddy,' said Jenny. ' Then we can clam ! “

He turned to her in mock disgust. ' Some sailor.”

Jenny was going to watch Benjamin and at the last minute Patricia decided to stay behind and work on her latest quilt. Faith suspected she wasn't as ardent a sailor as Robert and only went to keep him company.

The three of them set out and before long the house was a pinprick in the midst of the dark green line of pines stretching far up the coast.

Robert let out a sigh of pure animal pleasure. 'Sometimes when I 'm out here I wish I never had to go back to shore.”

Clearly he was in a pensive mood. Tom said something noncommittal about wishing things like that himself sometimes. Faith knew his technique well enough by now. He would draw Robert out, unraveling the thread of his discontent, then help him knit it all back up into a more wearable garment. He really was a very good minister. She let their voices play about her and closed her eyes.

Presently she heard Robert say, ' I've been pretty stretched to the limit, Tom, what with the two houses to keep up and Robby 's tuition. And the wedding was going to set me back a good deal. I won't pretend that the money isn 't damn handy.”

Faith kept her eyes closed. She had the feeling that if she showed signs of being awake, Robert would stop talking. They were tearing across the water now at a terrific clip. Robert 's voice picked up and the words came faster.

“It sounds horrible, especially now, but I've always hated her. Maybe I resented her coming into the family when she was a child, but I like to think that if it had been a different child, I would have loved it. From thebeginning she did nothing but cause trouble. When Jenny was born, I actually feared she might harm the baby. She was about seven years old then. She knew what she was doing. We had a nurse at first and she left the room for a moment when Cindy was there playing. When she came back a few minutes later, Cindy had taken Jenny from the crib and was balancing her on the windowsill. She said she wanted to see if she could fly like baby Superman, but that was just Cindy covering up. Obviously she resented having another girl around, try as we did to avoid playing favorites. Patricia really has been a saint.

“Cindy never bothered Rob much. Well, he was a little boy to her and she was only interested in older boys. He wasn't any kind of threat to her, although she used to tease him cruelly. I had to speak sternly to her on several occasions and she would look very sorry, then start in on him again when my back was turned. You didn't know him when he was Jenny's age, but he was a bit chubby and Cindy drove him crazy. She had all sorts of names for him. You can imagine.”

Tom could and, remembering a similar phase in his own adolescence, wondered why Rob hadn't killed Cindy then.

Robert had made some minute adjustments to the sail and was back at the tiller. The Moores had an assortment of boats—the inevitable Boston Whaler ; rowboats, canoes, and dinghies for the kids to mess around with ; Robby 's boat, a Snipe, his pride and joy, which he raced, with his father as crew ; then this old Dark Harbor sloop lovingly restored and cared for by Robert. Cindy had not been interested in boats, or in New Hampshire much.

“ I was glad that Cindy didn't like to come here. She never wanted to rough it, which was all right with us. She didn 't have to and she seemed happy to go to camps with less primitive accommodations instead. Maybe we were two families : the Moores and the Moores plus Cindy. We certainly didn't intend it to be that way in the beginning. Patricia 's mother was still alive when we took Cindy and she warned us not to expect her to be like Rob. `She's been badly spoiled from the start,' she said, `Just do your Christian duty and run for the cellar when trouble comes, because she's going to bring you plenty.' Her grandmother was the only one Cindy minded and I think she was afraid of her.'

“It's too bad she couldn 't have taken her then. Maybe that 's what Cindy needed—the old-fashioned `spare the rod and spoil the child approach.' Not that I think it's right,' Tom said.

“ She didn 't want her. She knew she didn 't have too many years left and I think she wanted to have some peace and quiet. She liked her little house on the corner by the river. We would have been happy to have her in the big house—she had been born there and raised her children there, but she said she wanted a change and her own place. A remarkable woman. Patricia 's a lot like her—they look soft, but underneath there's that native bedrock. Besides, Patricia wanted Cindy very much. We had been married for a long time before Rob came along and Patricia always wanted lots of children. We hadn't seen a lot of Cindy. They lived in California, you know. Patricia was terribly upset about losing her sister and she had just had a miscarriage, but here was a ready-made daughter and she was excited about having her. I have to admit I was too, at first. But it didn't last, especially for me.”

He grew quiet and it seemed the conversation was at an end, but then he seemed to painfully drag an unbidden thought to the surface.

“You know, Tom, I'm sure that a man is involved in this business. Cindy had no scruples when it came tomen. It's crazy to think it's Sam, but she could have driven him to it. Hell, she could have driven me.

“I've never told Patricia this, but Cindy used to try to get me interested in her. It's abominable and I told her exactly what she was doing and why. Just like Sam, she wanted to have something on me. Several times when Patricia was up here with the other two and we were alone, she 'd come into the study with next to nothing on and put her arms around me. It makes me want to vomit when I think of it now.

“I felt sorry for Dave. He didn't know what he was getting into, but it was the happiest day of my life when she told us she was getting married and leaving home. My God, she didn't even leave to go to college, just took a few courses at Chamberlayne. You can't know how much I wanted to get rid of her.”

Behind her closed eyes, Faith seemed to see the words in boldface type. Get rid of her.

Tom was murmuring something about the burden Robert had carried and carried alone. The boat was still speeding along, faster than ever—one side almost planing out of the water. The wind was tremendous and now that Tom was speaking Faiths couldn 't hear clearly any more. She looked at. Robert through half-closed eyes. His face was slowly being drained of the angry contortions of a few minutes ago, but his hand was still tightly clenched upon the tiller. He was a large man, a powerful man. Faith felt obscurely afraid and wished they were back on dry land. Surely they were going too fast? It was impossible to distinguish the shoreline anymore, just a blur of greens and grays.

Suddenly she heard Robert shout to her, ' Faith, are you awake ? “

She sat up, 'Yes, do you want me to do something? Lower the mizzen mast or hoist the boom?”

He laughed. And there they were, just three friends on a pleasant autumn sail. 'Well, do you think you could move to the other side of the boat ? Pretty tricky, but I think you can manage. We're coming about.”

Faith knew what that meant and scampered over to the other side as they swung around. Robert handed the tiller over to Tom and went to get the thermos Patricia had sent along, which proved to be filled with strong, sweet tea, Lapsang Souchong, Patricia 's own favorite, which she drank all day long, scalding hot and strong enough to dissolve the cup. There were chocolate chip cookies too—big chewy ones with plenty of walnuts.

The rest of the sail was uneventful and after a while they headed for home. The afternoon lay stretched out as flat as the calm water that filled the inlet by the point. The wind was a breeze and they sailed slowly into port.

Back at the house, Patricia was sitting on the deck swathed in bulky cardigans, stitching away at the quilt in her lap. It was almost finished and Faith admired the beauty of the ' colors—deep purples, smoky blues, and celadon greens with touches of scarlet. The stitching was so fine, it was hard to believe the human hand could accomplish it. Faith thought of her own tribulations with buttons and a ghastly failure at hemming a skirt once.

“I'd love to be able to make something like this.' Faith sighed. 'Or rather I think I would, but in all probability I'd try it and hate it. It's like thinking how nice it would be to live on a farm, one of those tidy Scandinavian ones with the white geese, like Carl Larsson 's pictures, but I know deep inside I'm not that kind of person. It's the same