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“Well, I haven’t got your brains, I’m afraid. I need a little action to keep me happy.” She turned and started down the dock.
“Where are you going?”
“To the boathouse,” she called back. “For a flashlight.”
She returned in a moment holding this flashlight, which she aimed out to sea in the direction of Flood Rock, switching it off and on in an irregular rhythm. The air was still warm, and a slight salt-laden breeze came off the water, lifting the edges of our dresses.
“Is that Morse code?” I asked.
“Silly. It’s just a private signal.” She lowered the flashlight and stared across the channel. The moon was not quite full, but the sky was so clear that the whole world seemed gilded in silver, and the rocks of the lighthouse etched by so fine a line, I couldn’t breathe for the beauty of it. The light revolved slowly from the top of the building, streaking across our quadrant every ten or fifteen seconds. It arrived twice before Isobel lifted the flashlight and sent another signal.
“Maybe he’s asleep,” I said.
“No, he’s not. He stays up late, reading Portuguese novels to his mother.”
“That’s nice of him.”
“It’s the only thing that puts her to sleep, apparently.” She flashed the signal again and checked her watch. “She’s a queer old bag. But I guess anyone would go a little nuts, living out there on a rock.”
I cupped my elbows with my hands and watched the lighthouse. For what, I wasn’t sure. Some kind of answering signal, I guessed. For some reason, the whole exercise came as not the slightest surprise, as if I’d been expecting some communication of this nature between Isobel and the vital young inhabitant of Fleet Rock, after all that had been said and not said in the kitchen that morning. My dress was damp and dirty and stained by the grass, thanks to a game of croquet that Isobel started up right after Mama and Mr. Fisher had disappeared in their yacht around the tip of Long Island. Headed all the way to Europe together, just the two of them and a silent, devoted crew. Mama wore a beautiful suit of sky-blue summer tweed, and as she’d waved goodbye from the railing, she looked almost too perfect, like somebody had painted her there as a kind of ideal, a magazine advertisement or something, sky-blue dress matching the sky-blue sky, while the deeper hue of the sea cast them in relief. The clean white railing. I imagined I presented a wholly different image, so stained and ragged as I had made myself during the course of the ensuing hours. Now it was almost midnight, and surely we were flashing our torch into a void. Surely the whole Island had gone to sleep, and Joseph Vargas too.
A tiny light flickered from the side of the lighthouse.
Isobel made a triumphant noise and grabbed my hand. “Quick,” she said. “Before he says no.”
9.
JOSEPH VARGAS STOOD on the edge of the small wooden platform that served as the Flood Rock quay. I couldn’t see his face very well because the lighthouse blocked the moon, but I thought he was furious. His voice confirmed this. He called out, not loudly—I guess he didn’t want to wake anyone—but with terrible force.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing, Isobel? At this hour?”
“Hour, schmour. I’ve brought champagne!” She stood in the bow and held up two bottles, one in each hand.
“You don’t need any more champagne.”
“Maybe not, but I’ll bet you do. Look, I’ve brought my new sister. You remember Peaches, don’t you? From this morning?”
There was a little pause. “Of course I remember Peaches.”
“Well, it turns out she can row. Lucky for me, because I do believe I’d have just gone round in circles, in my ineb—ineeber—in my condition.”
During the course of this speech, I managed to maneuver the boat up to the quay, despite the swift, angry current that wanted to yank us in the opposite direction. Joseph reached in and grabbed the rope next to Isobel’s feet, and with his other hand he lifted her safely to the dock.
“Well, you’re a fool, that’s all. Why’d you do such a crazy thing? Might’ve drowned you both.”
“I’m bored,” Isobel said simply, removing her shoes. She turned and started to scale the steps cut into the rock. The shoes dangled from her left hand. Joseph made a noise of frustration, torn between helping me out of the boat and helping Isobel mount the stairs. He must have figured I stood in greater danger, because he swiftly wound the rope around the bollard and held out his arms to me. I rose to my feet and did my best to appear steady and sober. I don’t think he was fooled. He put his hands on either side of my waist and hauled me through the air to solid ground. I felt a brief sensation of weightlessness, of the world disappearing around me, and then his hands were gone and I stared at the ghostliness of his shirt as he went after Isobel. When he caught her, she laughed, as quicksilver as the moonshine around us.
“What a naughty pair we are,” she said. “Don’t send us back, though. Can’t we just stay a little while?”
Joseph groaned in such a way that I knew this wasn’t the first time they’d enacted this scene. I stood there on the dock and looked up at the pair of them. Took note of the stocky line of his shoulders, covered by the white T-shirt, while the darker color of his arms sort of melted into the rocks. Both hands sat on his hips. Isobel stood a step or two above him, her blond hair made white by the moon. On her face sat an expression of triumph, even though Joseph hadn’t yet capitulated.
He lifted his right hand and dragged it through his hair. “Just a minute or two, all right? Then I’m rowing you back myself.”
“Yes, do. I love watching you row.”
Isobel turned and picked her way through the rocks around the other side of the lighthouse. Joseph turned to me and held out his hand. “Hold on. It’s kind of tricky, if you don’t know where you’re going.”
I slipped off my shoes and gathered them in my hand. “Where are we going?”
“The beach, it looks like.”
“Beach?”
“It’s not much, but it’s ours.”
I reached him on the steps and put my hand in his palm. His fingers closed around mine and he started through the rocks, the same way Isobel had gone. They were damp and slippery—the tide was on its way out—and I couldn’t see the holes and gaps between them. Couldn’t judge my steps so well. I didn’t want to rely on Joseph’s hand, but I had no choice. His palm was rough and strong, a fisherman’s palm, and he kept a solid grip as we clambered through the silvery darkness to the other side of the lighthouse. Once my foot slipped, and he caught me by the elbow. “All right?” he asked, and I was surprised by the closeness of his face, the scent of his breath that suggested toothpaste.
“Yes,” I gasped back.
He turned and led me forward, and over the corner of his shoulder the beach appeared. Beach. Just a scrap of pebble and sand, really, at the bottom of a sac formed by two outcroppings of rock, maybe fifteen feet apart. Isobel lay there, surrounded by the pale tulle waves of her bridesmaid gown, and her shoes in a small pile near her hip. As we drew near, I saw that her stocking feet pointed out to sea, and her head rested on her folded hands.
“She’s not asleep, is she?” I whispered.
“No, she’s not,” Isobel called out. “Just resting my eyes. Did you know your beach moves, Joseph?”
He released my hand and dropped into the sand beside her, propping himself up on his elbows. “I had no idea,” he said.
“Well, it does. Sort of sways back and forth. Up and down. Baby in a cradle.”
“Izzy—”
“No! That’s not it. Not a cradle.” Her voice had begun to slow and slur. “A magic carpet. That’s it. I’m flying, Joseph, flying. Don’t you feel it?”
“’Fraid not. Just good old solid ground for me.”
“Oh, that—that’s—such a shame …”
“Izzy.”
No answer.
Joseph peered briefly over her face and laughed. “Out cold. How much booze’ve you two sucked inside today?”
“Just wedding champagne. A bottle or two.”
“Between you? Then I guess Izzy must’ve taken more than her fair share.” He patted the ground beside him. “Sit down. Let her sleep it off a bit. Come on, I don’t bite.”
I sank into the coarse sand and wrapped my arms around my legs. My stockings were wet, and the grit now stuck to them like a crust. I wished I had the nerve to take them off. Along the sea before us, the moon cast a wide, phosphorescent path that disappeared mysteriously over the edge of the horizon. I said, “You’ve known each other forever, haven’t you? You and Isobel.”
“Ever since I can remember. Born a few months apart.”
“Who’s older?”
Another soft chuckle. “Me. So how did everything go today?”
“Oh, the wedding? Fine. Just fine.”
“Lobster all right?”
“Sure.”
“Caught fresh just this morning. Your stepfather bought the whole catch from me and Pops.”
“Oh, did he?” I cried. “That was your lobster?”
“Caught fresh,” he said again.
“Oh. I wish I’d known.” I paused. “It was wonderful. Best lobster I ever had.”
“Aw, you’re a good sport. Don’t tell me it’s the only lobster you’ve ever had?”
“Of course not! I’ve had lobster before.” Honesty compelled me to add, in a grudging voice, “Not often, though.”
“I guess we’ll have to do a clambake for you, this summer. Like a baptism. Make a genuine New Englander out of you.”
“I’d like that very much.”
Joseph lifted himself upright from his elbows, so we sat side by side. His arm brushed against mine, warmer than I expected. “What’s with Peaches?” he said.
“Oh gosh. Nothing, really. Isobel started calling me that today, just for fun.”
“But why Peaches?”
“Ask Isobel, why don’t you. She’s the one who made it up.”
He pointed his thumb. “Her? She’s not going to remember a thing tomorrow.”
“Then I guess you’re just dumb out of luck, aren’t you?”
He flung himself back on the sand, folding his hands behind his head, and for an instant I thought I’d angered him. Then I glanced over my shoulder and saw his chest was shaking, and a grin split his face from cheekbone to cheekbone.
“You’re a peach, Peaches,” he said. “A real peach.”
“I don’t see what’s wrong with Miranda.”
“Nothing’s wrong with Miranda. It’s a heck of a name. Suits you just fine in the winter months, I’ll bet, sitting indoors with your books and your cocoa. Or dressing up for some party in your gown and long gloves. Miranda.” He said it slowly, stretching out the vowels. “In Latin, it means ‘worthy of admiration.’ That’s what Shakespeare was talking about, in that line I threw at you this morning.”
“I know.”
“Aw, of course you do. Sorry.”
“My father used to tell me things like that, when I was little.”
“Did he? I like your dad. In my head, I’ve been calling him Prospero. But I guess that’s not his real name, is it?”
“No. It was Thomas. Thomas Schuyler.”
“Thomas Schuyler. Warrior, teacher of art, father of Miranda. And maybe a bit of a Shakespeare nut, too. Right?”
I stretched out my legs and listened carefully to the rhythmic wash of the waves as they uncurled onto the beach. The air was so warm and so silvery, like a primordial dream, like we sat on a beach at the beginning of the world, and we were the only people in it. I said, out to sea: “We used to read plays out loud to each other.”
“Did you? Now that’s grand. Do you remember any of it?”
“Of course I do.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know. A lot of things.”
“Can you do Once more unto the breach?”
“That’s a man’s part.”
“So what? You’ve got it in you, I’ll bet. Thomas Schuyler didn’t raise a sissy.”
I straightened and crossed my legs, Indian-style. The tulle floated out over my knees, and as I gazed out over the gilded water, I thought, if I strained my eyes, I might actually see all the way to France. Harfleur. Did it still exist? Had anything happened there in the last five hundred years since the siege, or had it fallen into obscurity? Had my father maybe glimpsed it, in his last days? We’d received no letters from France. Any messages, any postcards he’d had time to write had disappeared along with his body, and yet I felt sure that if my father had seen Harfleur with his own eyes, he would have written to tell me.
“It’s been a while,” I said. “Since he left for the war.”
“Say, you don’t have to if you don’t want to. I mean, if it hurts too much or something.”
“No. It doesn’t hurt anymore.”
“All right. Whatever you want. I’m listening, that’s all.”
I lowered my voice and said,
Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more,
Or close the wall up with our English dead!
In peace there’s nothing so becomes a man
As modest stillness and humility,
But when the blast of war blows in our ears,
Then imitate the actions of the tiger:
