Taking a Chance on Love Page 6

  “It’s hard for me to know what she thinks. Like about me going to live with her. Is it a guilt trip or something? Does she really want to get to know me, to make up for lost time, as she says?”

  “They’ll be leaving in a couple of days. Maybe you’ll know by then, Glen.”

  “Another thing,” he went on. “Their kids don’t like to see their mother paying so much attention to me.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “They told me, the little buggers. They said it was okay for me to visit once in a while, but they don’t want me to come live with them.”

  “That’s nice, isn’t it.”

  “Yeah, but I can’t blame them. Oh, and Harold wants me to get a job this summer caddying at the University Golf Club. He says I can’t expect him to give me an allowance.”

  “Does your mother know about all this?”

  “I doubt it. They’re all careful to say these things when she’s out of earshot … One thing about their visit is that I’m not getting to see you as often as I’d like. Anyway, you and I are going to the dance together this Friday night, right? I’m not going to let them take up all my time.”

  “Okay.” I’d been hoping he’d ask, though I hadn’t forgotten how he’d acted on the bridge. For one thing, I had all these new clothes to wear. But it was a hard line walking between friendship with Glen and his wanting more. I was beginning to doubt if it could work. Perhaps you couldn’t just be friends with a boy. Well, I was going to try, anyway.

  “Friday’s too long to wait to be with you,” Glen said. “Rob said I could use his rowboat tomorrow afternoon. Would you like to go over to Shelter Island? The cove there’s supposed to be perfect for swimming, and the tide will be high.”

  It was only half-an-hour’s row from the Landing to Shelter Island. We pulled the boat up above the tide line. The sand in the cove was fine and white under our feet.

  “No one will bother us here,” Glen said, spreading out the blanket he’d brought. “I want you all to myself today.” He stripped to his bathing suit and lay on his back with a sigh. “What a relief not to pretend. I’m tired being on my best behaviour all the time. The only time I really feel all right is when I’m with you.”

  I looked at the ocean. I was hot and sweaty from the sun. “I’m going in for a swim.” I peeled off my clothes down to my bathing suit.

  The water was perfect, cool enough to be refreshing but warm enough to stay in for as long as I wanted. When I had enough, I swam into shore and lay on the blanket next to Glen. He seemed to be asleep.

  There were no sounds except for the cries of seagulls and the gentle sigh of waves at the shoreline. What bliss. I lay on my stomach, cradled my head on my hands and closed my eyes.

  I woke to find something nudging the side of my thigh. It was warm and hard and unlike anything I’d ever felt before. I raised up on my elbow and looked back.

  I was so astonished to see Glen naked in all his glory that I leaped up, grabbed my clothes and ran to the rowboat. I shoved it down into the water and pushed it away from the shore. Clambering into it, I rowed away as fast as I could. Once I was a safe distance away, I yelled back, “You bastard!”

  Glen was waving his arms wildly at me. “Come back!” he called. “You can’t leave me here!”

  I didn’t stop rowing. “I’ll tell someone to pick you up,” I shouted. “You’re lucky I don’t leave you to swim back on your own.”

  Even when I was a good distance from the shore, I could hear him still making a commotion.

  An inboard came alongside of me and cut its speed to idle. It was Bruce. “Did you just do what I think you did?” he said.

  “What’s that?” I pulled even harder on the oars.

  “You left your boyfriend behind on the island.”

  “He’s not my boyfriend. Besides, once I’ve tied up at the float, I’ll tell his brother to go get him.”

  Bruce put the engine into neutral and coasted alongside. “Do you need any help?”

  “No, thanks.”

  “You want me to just leave you alone?”

  “Yes, please.”

  “Well, I’m not going to,” he said. “Tie up behind me, and I’ll take you in.”

  “No, thanks. I’m fine.”

  He didn’t seem to hear me. He tied my boat to his, started the engine, opened the throttle and headed for the government wharf.

  Chapter Eight

  After washing and ironing the dress I’d borrowed from Mrs. Miller, I returned it. “It was just right, Mrs. Miller. Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome, Meg. I’ve got good news for you. Amy is coming home this evening.”

  I was down at the wharf as the Lady Alexandra blew its whistle for the Landing. Amy hadn’t written me during the four weeks she’d been away. I had hoped she would but told myself she was too busy and excited at being in Vancouver to bother. If we hadn’t been the only two girls living in the Landing, would she want to be friends with me at all?

  As I watched her come down the gangplank, I thought she looked more beautiful than ever. She held herself with such assurance. Not like me. I made a conscious effort to stand up straighter. In the long, slanting rays of the setting sun, Amy’s hair lay on her shoulders like a cape of burnished gold. She wore more eye makeup than usual, but not so much that she looked cheap, just enough to make her eyes flash in her lightly tanned face. Dressed all in white, she drew everyone’s eyes as she stepped down from the gangplank onto the wharf.

  I was at her side immediately. “Let me help,” I said, taking her suitcase. “Oh, Amy, I missed you so much!”

  She talked about her adventures in Vancouver all the way up the wharf. At the head of the wharf, we met Robert Pryce and Glen. “I was beginning to wonder if you’d ever come back,” Robert Pryce said to Amy. “Your mother sent me to help carry your suitcase.” He took it from my hand.

  He introduced Amy to Glen. “I’ve told you about Amy’s mother,” he said. What? I felt Amy stiffen beside me.

  I had wondered how Glen would act the next time we met and had rehearsed what I would say to him. He completely ignored me and stood staring at Amy Miller. His mouth went slack as his eyes travelled down her body.

  I turned to leave. I heard Amy say, “Rob, you and Glen go ahead with my suitcase to my house. I haven’t seen Meg for weeks. She’s my best friend, and I need to talk to her.”

  Best friend. She said best friend.

  “I’ve got lots to tell you,” Amy said, taking my arm. “I missed you, too! Hey, I thought you’d have more of a tan.”

  “I’ve been working at Mrs. Hanson’s, so I haven’t had that much time … Let’s go sit under the bridge.” It was one of our favourite spots to talk when we didn’t want anyone to overhear us. I decided not to say anything to Amy about Glen.

  The day still held some light, but it was darker under the bridge, dark enough that it was hard to read Amy’s face. I usually took my clues from her. Were her eyes bored? Did she look restless? If so, I would change the subject to one I thought would please her. Usually, it was about her.

  “Anything new about Robert Pryce and Mrs. Ballard?” Amy asked, once we had settled ourselves comfortably. The damp air smelled of clean creek water, ferns and alder trees. A car rumbled across the bridge over our heads.

  “No. Though Mrs. Ballard has been acting miserable about something. No one knows why. She looks kind of sick to me, all pale and thin.”

  “Has Robert Pryce been hanging around my house much?” Amy asked in an off-hand way.

  “I’ve been so busy working that I haven’t noticed,” I said.

  “Well, my dad is plenty mad about it. I don’t think he’s going to come home anymore.”

  I sat bolt-upright with shock. “You mean, ever?”

  “That’s what it sounds like. He’s talking about a divorce.”

  I didn’t know any divorced people, well, except for Dad and Glen’s mother. And Dad and Mom had married long before I was born. Peop
le separated, or lived together with someone else, but they didn’t divorce. There was a stigma even about the word. Adultery had to be proved. Some men hired a woman to be caught with them in a hotel room, had someone photograph the two of them together, and that was legal grounds for divorce. That’s the way it was, even if the wife had been the unfaithful one. It was considered gentlemanly of the husband to protect his wife’s name. The whole procedure was expensive, and people on the peninsula often didn’t bother. They just went about their business quietly, and others looked the other way.

  Amy said, “Even if he doesn’t get a divorce, he is not coming back. He’ll send money home, and I’ll still live here and go to school at Gibson’s, but it means that I’ll have to go into the city if I want to see him.”

  “Will you mind that?”

  “Not really. I sleep on the couch in the living room of his apartment, and we go lots of places together. I can’t wait to show you all the new clothes he bought me … This brother of Robert’s … What’s he like? Is there something going on between the two of you?”

  “Why makes you ask that?” I said.

  “I thought I picked up something, especially on his part. When he looks at you, he gets all tensed up, almost as if he’s mad about something.”

  “Yeah, well, he made a pass, and I didn’t like it.”

  “Oh. So the field’s clear then. I wouldn’t mind if he made a pass at me. God, the way he’s built.” Amy sighed deeply.

  “He plays tennis. It must be because of that. Come on, let’s go. The mosquitoes are eating me up.”

  “Are you going to the dance tonight, Meg?” Anna Hanson said, as she came into the kitchen the next morning. I rinsed the new potatoes I’d been scraping and put them in a pot of cold water.

  “I was going to, but I changed my mind.”

  “Don’t do that,” she said. “Bruce needs a partner, and I’ve got a date with Alfred Kallio tonight. He’s an old flame, and I’ll be dancing with him all evening. I don’t plan to let him slip through my fingers again. Twenty-five and I’m an old maid.”

  Bruce had come into the room as we were talking. He poured himself a cup of coffee and looked over at me. I never knew what he thought of me. Sometimes he seemed to like me. Like now.

  Twenty-five was old to be single all right, but I couldn’t help out Anna. “I’m really sorry,” I said to her, “but I’ve picked up another job, a Vancouver Sun paper route. The Tymac doesn’t bring the papers from Horseshoe Bay until around seven, and then I have to deliver them. That will make it too late for me to go to the dance.”

  “Bruce, you can work something out,” Anna said over her shoulder, as she left the kitchen.

  “Why are you working so hard?” Bruce said. “You’re here twice a day. And now you have a paper route, too? How much money can you make at that?”

  “Thirty cents for every dollar paper I sell. I’ve got twenty-four customers taking the weekend edition. It works out to $7.20 a week. I’ve got to work if I want to stay in school. My mother wants me to quit. She says I’m only going to get married anyway and have children. She thinks that only boys need an education. They have to support a wife and family.”

  “And? What do you think?”

  “I know I don’t want to end up married with a bunch of children and stuck here in the boonies. I want out.” I took a bowl of eggs from the fridge to hard-boil for the potato salad.

  “What do you want to do when you’re ‘out’?”

  “I’d really like to go to university. It would mean working for a year first to earn enough to pay for tuition, room and board.”

  “Have you looked into scholarships for high school students who want to go on to university?” Bruce said.

  “I asked my high school teacher, but all the scholarships are for boys. ‘Boys only.’ That’s right. It’s what my mother says, too. Boys need the education. It makes me furious.”

  “Meg, a girl like you has a future ahead of her. You can do anything you want if you make your mind up to it.”

  “I don’t know about that.”

  “I believe in you, Meg,” he said. He took my hand.

  The clock ticked loudly in the room, even though, to me, time seemed to have stopped. After a moment, Bruce dropped my hand, and my heartbeat returned to normal.

  “I’ll tell you what is going to happen tonight,” he said. “I’ll help you deliver your papers, and we’ll go to the dance together. I can’t stand by and see a kid like you work all the time, without having some fun. We’ll stay at the dance for an hour, and then I’ll drive you home. You’re working tomorrow, and you need to get your sleep.”

  Kid. Kid. Kid. “No, thanks.”

  “Meg, yes,” he said. “We’ll do it my way.”

  “I appreciate the thought, but I don’t like it when you boss me around. And I’m not a child.”

  He laughed, and I realized it was the first time I’d heard him laugh. I couldn’t help but laugh back.

  “I don’t think of you as a child,” he said. “Not at all. You are a very special young woman. For now, no more arguing.”

  The guest house owned a 1940 Ford pickup truck, and Bruce drove it down to the foot of the wharf to wait for the Tymac. The speedboat was on time, and as soon as the bundle of newspapers was thrown onto the float, I grabbed it by the rope binding the papers, ran up the ramp to the wharf and threw it into the back of the truck. Hopping in the back beside them, I began to fold the papers for delivery.

  Bruce and I soon worked out a system. I’d rap on the roof of the cab when we came to a customer’s house, take a paper and run up the many, many stairs to deliver it at the front door. Our village, which was terraced, was built on the narrow strip of land that lay between the mountains and the ocean. In the winter, the locals got their paper through the mail, but the summer people wanted the latest paper, not one three days old. And they wanted it right on their doorstep, even if that doorstep was two flights of stairs up from the bottom of their property.

  “Too bad you can’t drive,” Bruce said partway through the route. “We could change jobs halfway through.”

  “I can drive. My brother, Sam, taught me.”

  “Next time.”

  “You’re all dressed up,” said Mom. “Are you going to the dance again?” I was wearing my new red, short-sleeved sweater and white cotton skirt patterned with crimson roses.

  “Yes, and Bruce Hanson is giving me a ride home … It’s not like it’s a date or anything,” I hurried to explain as I saw a look of disapproval begin to cloud her eyes. “It’s his sister Anna. She wants him to go to the dance. She’s got a date, and she wants to spend all her time with him. She told me that Bruce won’t dance with the summer girls there because he doesn’t know them, and he doesn’t want to get to know them.”

  “Bruce is that way. Always a bit standoffish. It’s been worse since the woman he was engaged to in Halifax dumped him. She broke off their engagement soon after his ship was torpedoed.” Mom grimaced. “Burns all over,” she said, running her hands down the front of her body to indicate the extent. Then she clapped her hands to both ears. “Even inside his ears. He wasn’t expected to live, let alone live any kind of normal life. Mrs. Hanson was beside herself. The whole thing was just too bad. Some don’t blame the young woman for not wanting to marry him — the shape he was in — but he took it hard. Very hard. I’m surprised he’s dancing again. Of course, when his sister Anna makes up her mind about anything, it gets done. So if Anna has decided that Bruce is going to get back to some sort of social life, then it’s going to happen.”

  “I didn’t know all this.”

  “We don’t tell you children everything … Don’t stay out too late. You’re working in the morning.”

  The dance floor was almost full when Bruce and I arrived. Amy and Glen were dancing in the corner of the room, heads bent towards each other like two birds. I spotted Anna and her date, a tall man in a soldier’s uniform. He was holding her tightly, and she had a
dreamy smile on her face.

  Once we started to dance, I forgot all about everyone except Bruce. To be moving with the music in the soft summer night, his hand firm on my back, was my idea of heaven. They were playing Benny Goodman’s “Taking a Chance on Love.” Yes, I thought, you take a chance when you fall in love.

  The set finished about twenty minutes later, and Bruce and I stood there waiting for the next one to begin. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Amy leave Glen and head straight for us.

  “Meg, I’d like to be introduced to your partner,” Amy said. “And you can dance with Glen.” Amy stepped in closer to Bruce and smiled up at him.

  Bruce stepped back. The music started. Without even a glance of acknowledgement to Amy, Bruce took my hand, and we were out on the floor dancing before I had a chance to really register what had happened.

  I watched Amy turn and head back in Glen’s direction. Her spine was rigid. She held her shoulders so high they almost reached her ears.

  She was too late for Glen. He was already up and dancing with a summer girl, an older girl about eighteen. Her family came up to the Landing every summer in their yacht. I won’t have to worry about Amy again tonight, I thought. She’ll be too intent on getting Glen back.

  Just then, Robert Pryce came in the door with his wife and Glen’s mother and stepfather. They all began to dance. Dr. Barras, a big man, was surprising graceful.

  Without warning, the loud sounds of a man’s shouting came up the path and in the open doorway. Everyone looked over that way to see Sylvia Ballard’s husband stumble inside. He looked wildly around, his eyes finally settling on Robert Pryce.

  Mr. Ballard made a beeline for Robert.

  The next thing I knew, Bruce was pulling me through the door and outside. He took my hand and folded it around a key. “Go down to the truck, lock the doors and stay there. Ballard needs my help right now before he does something stupid. I’ll be with you as soon as I can.”

  Inside the truck, I could hear the music from the tennis court. It seemed a long time before Bruce came, but it probably wasn’t more than ten minutes. He had Mr. Ballard with him.