TURN OF THE TIDE

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22320, 18 January 1936, Page 21

TURN OF THE TIDE

BY LUCIE WINN

Everybody was down on the reef when Simon arrived at the summer cottage set on the tussocky grass close to the sand. He could see their figures silhouetted against the gleaming silver of the sea. Susan as usual, was pursuing her own solitary, little way, and Virginia was bending over a rock pool with her two small sons. Simon stood a while on the wide verandah delaying the sweet moment of seeing her. He fancied he heard her laugh, 1- but she lived so much in his thoughts that he was never sure of fact or fancy. Out in the pines the locusts beat madly on the strings of their small guitars, and over the bay the seagulls wheeled and called, diving for fish in the turning tide. All about him was the dear disorder "that Virginia always left in room or garden, just as another woman would leave a handkerchief, or a dropped glove, or a subtle perfume. He trod the concrete floor softly, sand and shells crushing under his feet, while he looked round with a smile on his lips. You paused by a heap of small boys' shirts and brief print frocks flung down as they had been gathered from the line all crumpled and sun-sweet, and you saw her reaching up pulling the pegs, her head tipped back so that the shining black hair fell away from the low, broad forehead, dropping the pegs on the harsh, brown grass, hurrying with her arms full, because the children were waiting to go down to the reef, burying their toes in the hot, dry sand, and swinging their buckets impatiently. You came to a billy of pi pis—the tide had just left the smooth, wet sand, and she was down on her knees digging with her slim, brown hands, Donald and Susan making a heap of the heavy, white shells while Geoffrey ran for the billy. And the towels and bathing suits hung over the rail —there was Virginia, stripping the wet garments from the three honey-coloured, small bodies, rubbing to stay the chattering of cold little teeth, while her own wet bathing suit clung to her. Your toe caught on a branch of fading red flowers —Virginia scrambling up a crumbling cliff to a gnarled pohutukawa, while two small boys watched, her with trembling admiration^ A bathing-, cap with shells spilling from it—she was searching with the fat, solemn Susan where the spring tides had left a wide line of salttanged, dark seaweed and bleached driftwood ami 'gleaming sea-shells. Everywhere you turned you saw Virginia, gay, enchanting, carefree. * And to-morrow Timothy was coming and his first task would be to set everything in its appointed place, so that Virginia was gone, and a thousand careful housewives mocked you. For ten years he had been married to Virginia. For ten years ho had been tidying up after her with painstaking, exacting precision, as he would do tomorrow, with unspoken reproach and resignation in every action. But to-morrow —ah! merely thinking of it held Simon in a grip of ecstacv that almost crushed the breath from his body. He went down the steps, across the tussocks and the dragging, dry sand. When he came to the firm sand the sea had smoothed he began to run.~ Susan was playing in a small pool near the edge of the reef. She looked up at him with grave eyes, her hand under the rocky edge. "Feel," she whispered. Simon put his finger under the Warm water. Something tiny and soft closed on the tip of it. "It's a sea anemone, Susan." "It's a mermaid kissing my hand," answered Susan with solemn awe.

Simon nodded in equally solemn' agreement and went on. The little group round the larger pool did not see him until his shadow fell across the clear water. They looked up. startled. < "It's Mr. Copeland," said Donald, and bent over the pool again. Geoffrey caught his hand. "Come and look at our crab fight." Virginia gave him one clear, unguarded glance. "Virginia," he stammered. Her face became a laughing mask. "You've caught us, Simon. We're being horribly bloodthirsty." "See that little crab," cried Geoffrey, his thin face excited. "He owns the pool, and. wo put in the big one and now they're fighting." Simon looked across at Virginia. She had turned from the seaweed edged pool, with its terrified, darting shrimps and fighting crabs, as if it no longer interested her. He walked beside her, so close that his hand brushed hers, and he gripped it. "Timothy is coming this afternoon," said Virginia. " No, he has changed his plans. I was talking to him this morning and he won't be down till to-morrow. That is why I came. Virginia will you come away with me?" She looked at him silently and her eyes grew luminous. " You love me, Virginia." It was a statement not a question. " Yes."

" Then you will come, away with me?"

" There are the children." " They will miss you of course, but they aren't dependent on you." " I have tried to make them independent." " And Timothy will let you see them often. He is not vindictive." " No."

" 1 wish it had been any other chap but Tim." " So do I."

They had come to the edge of the reef. The little waves splashed despair-' ingly under the rocky ledge; they could not climb it.

Virginia stared out to sea. Her throat ached with unshed tears. It came to her in a flood of bitter, drowning sorrow how happy she and Timothy could have been if he had not been so busy with his fretful tidying up. But all the happiness they might have had had been dusted carefully and set away in a dark attic for fear of a muddle.

Simon bent down, feeling under the water against the reef. Presently he brought to the surface a spikey sea turned it over, examining it. " Virginia you must come," he said in a low voice. " You must. I can't go on." " I will come."

A triumphant little w&ve that had succeeded in climbing the ledge frothed about their feet. The tide had turned. They walked back silently, and Simon showed the boys his sea egg. Virginia said it was time for lunch, and sent the boys to gather drift wood for the fire that she was making between two blackened rocks at the edge of the bank. When the fire was lit the children stayed to watch the pi pis boil, but Simon followed Virginia into the little kitchen. She turned of her own accord and put her arms round his neck. It was the first time they had kissed, and ho could 'feel her trembling. " M.v dear," he said. "Am I doing 3'ou wrong?" " I want to come," she answered. Later, lying in their bathing suits on the sun-drenched sand, they made their plans for the morrow. " I must tell Timothy first, Simon." " Then von won't coine. He will—•" " No! Nothing will stop me —nothing." " I'll wait at the store." " Oh, Simon, it isn't going to bo easy!"

Virginia turned on her back and laid her arm over her eyes. The lovely hot sun made her drowsey. The sound of the sea, Simon's voice, the laughter of the children drifted away.

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Then some noise jerked her into wakefulness.

" Simon, what was that?" But Simon was not beside her. "It was a child screaming," she thought. "It was Donald." For a minute her eyes were blinded by the sunlight and her own terror, and then she saw Simon coming toward her with Donald in his arms. " It's all right," Simon told her. " He's only scared." " I told him not to go out so far. 1 told him it would tip over," Donald sobbed. Virginia soothed him and his weeping grew less. Within half an hour he was playing again. " They soon get over things," observed Simon. " That is how it will he when I leave them," sho thought. " They will soon get over it. They will be ail right." In the evening after Simon had gone she put the children to bed—washed the sand from between their toes, rubbed cold cream on their red little shoulders, buttoned them into their brief cool 'sleeping suits. /" This is the last time I "will ever put them to bed," she told herself, again and again. But, of course, they would be happy without her. The boys were growing big, and Susan always had been a] strangely self-contained, aloof child, well content with her own company. She was asleep now with her arms thrown above her head, and one foot pushed out from the bedclothes. Virginia drew the sheet over it, mainly to protect it from the mosquitoes, and then she went out into the night. She sat on the low bank listening to the murmuring of the sea. The sand between the grass tussocks was still'warm, and every stiff little grass blade cast a ' tiny, lace-like shadow in the bright moonlight. She sat alone with her happiness, with all the small, mysterious rustlings of the night about her. It was very late when the crying of one of the children disturbed her. It was Donald, sobbing in his sleep. He woke and clung to her, and the sky was flushing with the dawn when at last he fell asleep and she lay down wearily. She woke to bright day, and the children standing beside her, holding up a bundle of gleaming fish that were strung together with rushes. "Some men gave them to us," Geoffrey said. "Geoffrey's got a piece of glass in his foot. The men wanted to take it out, but he wouldn't let them. He said you would." "They would have hurt me." "I expect I shall too." "Yes, but yours is a different kind of hurt," said Geoffrey, leaning against her. Later she took the fish down to the edge of the sea to clean them. But presently her fingers became idle and sho sat back on her heels staring at" nothing. Donald had clung to her in the night, Geoffrey had come to her trusting that her hurt would be a different one. Susan dabbled her toes in the froth that a small wave had left lost on the wet sand. "I walked in the night," she said. "And I felt frightened. I sat up and saw vou. And then I wasn't."

"Oh! Not you, too,'' cried Virginia in tones of anguish. The day was a black misery. Two voices warred within her. One said: "They do not need you. A housekeeper could do for them all that you do." And the other mocked: "How do you know? How do you know?" It was very hot. The locusts strummed with ceaseless monotony. The sand was a dazzling, burning sheet, and a quivering veil almost hid the cliff and rockß at the end.of the bay. The tide was a long time coming in. And Timothy was late. Virginia went out on to the beach to wait. The little, cool, lapping waves had almost reached her feet when he stood above her. His face was drawn and every line of his body bespoke intense weariness. "He knows," thought Virginia. "Simon has told him. But he can't stop me—ho can't." Timothy sank down beside her and laid his head against her shoulder with something like a sob. "Jinny, I've failed you," ho said in a husky voice. "The business has gone 2)hut. We —I'm bankrupt." "Bankrupt," echoed Virginia, weakly. She wanted to laugh, so strange did his words sound.

"I've seen it coming for a long time. But I thought there might be a way out —probably there is, only I'm such a muddler —"

At that Virginia did give a shaken laugh. "I know that sounds funny," said Timothy. "But I am a muddler. God knows I've spent half my life tidying things up—trying to correct my muddling. But I haven't been able to tidy up my brain. I'm a born muddler and that's the end of it."

He picked up some sand and let it trickle through his fingers. "I'm one of life's failures," he said bitterly. "If it wasn't for you, Jinny, I couldn't go on. It's only the thought of your honesty, your loyalty, your sweetness —"

"Oh, no, no," whispered Virginia, tears springing to her eyes. , Timothy caught her hands. " Don't cry, sweetheart, or you'll break my heart. Jinny I I'm sorry for all this."

"It's all right, Tim. You're young," said Virginia, fighting her, tears. "You'll be on your feet before you know what has happened." Timothy glanced at the sea moving the shells at their feet with a soft fretting. "We'll bo getting wet. The tide's coming in." "Not now, it is on the turn," answered Virginia, quietly.

She rose to her feet. "I must go up to the store," she said, in a curiously breathless voice. "Let Geoffrey go."_ "He has a cut on his foot. I—l Won't be long." She knelt down for a moment and they kissed with tenderness.

As soon as she turned the corner and walked toward him, Simon knew she was not going with him. He kept his hungry eyes on her as she approached, and the pain in his heart was almost unbearable. She paused by his side almost touching him, and looked at him mutely. "You are not coming," ho said. She shook her head. "They need me," she said at last, to break the terrible silence that had fallen between them. \ "I need you too." "They depend on me. They lean on me." She gave him . a clear, searching look. "You do not lean on me." He bent his head. "I love you," ho answered in a low voice. A sudden sob tore her. "And I love you, Simon." "Then, my darling—" Again she shook her head. "I have come to say good-bye—for ever —Simon—my dearest, my love." He could not answer. She turned and walked back along the^ dusty lane, and he knew she was weeping. At the corner she waved to him.