rapid overview of the island population: four basic groups with numerous subdivisions. There were the year-round native islanders, an inordinate number of whom were named Prescott, Hamilton, or Sanford, and the year-round off-islanders, many like Eric and Roger—artists or writers—others wanting to get away to what they thought was a simpler life. There had been a big influx of this group in the late sixties and many had stayed, but to the Prescotts et al they might have arrived a week ago. The summer people were also divided into two main groups: what Pix called the 'rusticators,' families who had been coming to the island for generations and marched in the annual Fourth of July parade with banners that said 'Fiftieth Summer,' and the newcomers, people like Faith who rented cottages for short periods of time. People who might never return to Sanpere, impossible as that was to imagine.
Faith looked around. Once you had the labels, it was easy to stick them on. A group of rusticators sat on sturdy canvas folding stools not far away with grandmother's fitted wicker picnic basket, 'the one we always take to auctions,' filled with egg-salad and watercress sandwiches, the thermoses with fresh-minted iced tea at their feet. Some of the women wereknitting Fair Isle sweaters, and the men strolled purposefully down to the water to check the tide from time to time. The new people had the equipment. but their baskets lacked the patina and validation of old age. The local people were eating the hot dogs being sold, and most of the artistic group had gone home after noting Matilda's taste—a Wallace Nutting or two, Granville Fuel Oil calendars—and searching fruitlessly in the boxes from the attic for a Hiroshige.
There was a large number of day visitors too—dealers from up and down the coast and summer people of both varieties from the mainland. Pix had spoken in a disparaging way about them—people who needed a movie theater within twenty miles.
The next couple of hours went by quickly. It got hotter under the tent, but it was worse outside in the sunshine. They ate their sandwiches and drank the lemonade. Pix had to supplement her lunch with one of the hot dogs after she smelled the one the person next to her had, heaped with sauerkraut.
“It goes with an auction,' she told Faith, who refused.
“Funny, I don't remember seeing them at Christie's,' Faith remarked, and Pix jabbed her.
“When in Rome, Faith ...'
“I know, I know. If they were selling clam rolls I might be interested, but hot dogs, no, not even for you and Sanpere.”
Pix was the successful bidder on a mixed lot of Heisey glass and almost got a repulsive Roseville jardiniere and pedestal. After that episode Faith asked her if it was permissible to overturn her chair if she bid on something hideous.
“Faith, Roseville is highly collectible, and besides it would have looked beautiful with that asparagus fern I have. I thought you liked that period.”
Before. Faith could reply that there was such a thing as selectivity, their attention was drawn away by another quilt, and again it went high. Some had been sold for lower, even bargain bids, but they did not appeal to Faith. She wanted a very special one for their bed in Aleford. The parsonage was in constant danger of slipping into New England country, and she had met the threat by bringing in modern pieces of her own; so far they coexisted happily. She thought she could safely add a quilt without fear of heart-shaped baskets, wreaths, stenciled herds of cows, and pigs in all forms following.
“Faith,' Pix whispered excitedly, 'the weather vane is next.”
It had been a relatively calm auction with only one minor altercation, when a lady wearing red heart-shaped sunglasses who was definitely not Lolita claimed she, and not the couple in front of her, had been the high bidder on a Limoges fish service. The auctioneer had backed up and started the bidding again. She got the fish service and left. The young couple found solace in a Nipon dessert set.
Now the crowd under the tent grew still, and people who had wandered off to the shade under the big oak trees came to stand on the sidelines.
Eric and Roger had been sitting in the front row, with the Prescotts filling in the chairs to either side and the rear. It was like a wedding where the bride or groom had only two friends. Eric's arms were folded across his chest, and Roger's , eyes assumed a steely glint quite unlike their everyday softness. Faith saw Jill standing to one side of the auction worker's table. She must have closed the store. Eric saw her too and raised a hand in greeting. Jill smiled encouragingly.
Walter had taken over for a while, but now Stanley Gardiner returned, took the microphone, and placed it around his neck. Walter moved to the side, his eyes darting around the tent, gearing up. You could hear a fly's wings flutter.
“Lot two twenty-five. Copper weather vane. As trim a vessel as ever set sail—thirty-six inches long. You've all seen it, ladies and gentlemen. Right on top of the barn. I can tell you there are no patched-up bullet holes in this one. It is in the original condition. A beauty. Fifty to open.”
Eric raised his card high, and immediately one of the Prescotts countered with a bid of seventy-five dollars. There was a lot of interest in the vane, and the bidding went high. At nine hundred dollars everyone had dropped out except the Prescotts and Eric and Roger. Eric bid nine hundred and fifty. The Prescotts looked grim and bid a thousand. Thecrowd was gasping. Eric bid twelve hundred and the Prescotts seemed to waver. Then Joe Prescott jumped up and rushed at Eric and Roger. Stanley Gardiner stood in his way, and Joe began shouting around him, 'It's the gold! Why do you think they're bidding so high! You bastards! She told you, didn't she!? It's got to be gold underneath or something. '
“Are you out of your mind!?' Roger yelled at him. He and Eric were on their feet. Sonny Prescott stepped next to the beleaguered auctioneer. 'Now Joe might have an ideah here. I'd say we better have a closer look at the hull of that boat.'
“If you touch that weather vane, I'll kill you.' Eric spoke in a flat measured voice, but his words reached all the way to the back rows. Jill moved away from the table and came up quietly behind him. Nobody else moved. Then the lawyer came and spoke to the auctioneer.
“Now everybody sit down and calm down. Gorry, I've never seen anything like an auction to get people riled up.' Mr. Gardiner took out a big white handkerchief and mopped his forehead. Faith felt a thin trickle of sweat make its way down her cleavage. It was hot. And it was tense.
“What we're going to do is withdraw Lot two twenty-five for the time being until the heirs can have it appraised to everyone's satisfaction, and whether it will be done up there on the blasted roof or down on the lawn is something you can work out with Mr. Foster here.' He motioned to the lawyer, who looked as cool and collected as he had at seven o'clock. 'Now there's plenty left for everybody. Lot two twenty-six—Well, what do you know? An Atwater Kent in a Gothic box. Have to be a few of us here who remember this baby. Now what am I bid? Who will start the music at twenty-five?”
The music stopped at two hundred dollars and an oak chest of drawers, a tray of spongeware, and a Seth Thomas Westminster chimes clock rapidly followed. The parlor set was put up and created some excited bidding among the Prescotts. It might have a nick or two, and the rosewood needed some elbow grease, but it had stood in splendor in the front parlor since Darnell had brought it home from Pain's in Boston as a wedding present for his bride. Nora Prescott from Granville was the high bidder at $850. Just as Matilda had promised her, only she hadn't thought she would have to buy it to get it. Nora's sister, Irene, to whom it had also been promised, decided not to bid at the last moment. Blood was thicker than Old English polish, and Nora had always been there when she needed her, taking the kids when she was up at Blue Hill having her appendix out, telling her she was well rid of him when her husband took off with a hairdresser from Belfast. Irene's noble sacrifice did not go unnoticed, and Nora decided to give her the little marble-topped table, which really wasn't going to fit in her living room anyway.
Pix bid quickly and got a pretty spool bed for Samantha's room and a dry sink before Faith even knew she was bidding.
And so the auction unfolded, assuming a character distinct from all the other auctions Gardiner and Company had run or the crowd attended. You never knew what was going to happen. The Warhol cookie jars turned out to be wooden lobster pots that had been in the barn. Few lobstermen used them anymore, and as the tourists and dealers bid them up, all the locals resolved to go clean out their sheds.
Pix and Faith were determined to wait until the bitter end for all the real bargains, and at about four o'clock the box lots started. Faith quickly snared one with tools she had noted for three dollars and Pix bought two mystery boxes of china for four dollars each, which upon inspection proved to contain a lovely Wedgewood ironstone teapot, lots of saucers without cups, something that could possibly be a piece of Imari, some Tupperware, and other treasures. Faith grabbed another box, one filled with board games of varying vintages, which she had seen at the
