20

He was saying, reasoning, “Why should it matter so much, Hazel? If people are married, or not? McAlster is only a caretaker. He doesn’t know you, or anyone who knows you.”

But Hazel Jones did not want to meet the caretaker.

“But why not, Hazel? You are here, and he knows I have guests. It’s perfectly natural. He opened the house for us, he’ll want to know if there is anything he can do for you or Zack.”

But Hazel did not want to meet the caretaker.

Running away upstairs when McAlster’s pickup approached the house.

Gallagher was amused. Gallagher was trying not to be annoyed.

He loved Hazel Jones! He did respect her. Except her quick bright laughter grated against his nerves, sometimes. When her eyes were frightened, and her mouth persisted in smiling. Her way of speaking airily and lightly and yet evasively like an actress reciting lines in which she can’t believe.

Gallagher understood: she’d been wounded in some way. Whoever was the father of the child had wounded her, surely. She was uneasy in situations that threatened to expose her. It was a wonder she hadn’t worn white gloves, pillbox hat, high-heeled shoes to Grindstone Island. Gallagher vowed to win her trust, that he might set about correcting her: for Hazel Jones’s imagination was primitive.

His Albany relatives would see through her awkward poise, at once. Gallagher dreaded the prospect.

His father! But Gallagher would not think of his father, in terms of Hazel Jones. He was determined that they would never meet.

Yet it was ironic, that he should fall in love with a woman who, in her soul, was more a Gallagher than he was. More conventional in her beliefs, her “morality.” What is good, what is bad. What is proper, what is not-proper. Hazel hid from the caretaker because she could not bear it, that a stranger might suppose she was Gallagher’s mistress, spending Easter weekend with him.

Other women whom Gallagher had brought to stay with him on Grindstone Island hadn’t been so self-conscious. These were women of a certain degree of education, experience. An employee like McAlster had no existence for them. Nor would they have cared what he thought of them, not for a moment.

Not that McAlster wasn’t the most tactful of men. All Gallagher employees, on Grindstone Island or on the mainland, were tactful. They were hardly likely to ask their employers awkward questions, or in fact any questions at all. McAlster had known Chet Gallagher’s wife Veronica for six or seven years always politely calling her “Mrs. Gallagher” and several summers ago when there apparently ceased to be a “Mrs. Chet Gallagher,” McAlster had certainly known not to inquire after her.

When McAlster drove away in his pickup truck, Gallagher called teasingly up the stairs:

“Haz-el! Hazel Jones! Coast’s clear.”

They went outside. They hiked down to the river, to the Gallaghers’ dock.

In the bright sunshine the river was starkly beautiful, a deep cobalt-blue, not so rough as usual. The wind had dropped, the temperature was 43° F. Everywhere snow was melting, there was a frenzy of melting, dripping. Gallagher wore dark glasses to shield his eyes against the sun clattering like castanets inside his skull.

Am I hungover? I am not.

A manic little tune, of castanets. Fortunately, Hazel could not hear it.

How striking the view of the St. Lawrence, from the Gallaghers’ thirty-foot dock! Gallagher, who had not been out on the dock since the previous summer, and certainly would not be there now except for his guest, pointed out the lighthouse at Malin Head Bay, several miles to the east; in the other direction, a smaller lighthouse at Gananoque, in Ontario.

Hearing himself say, who had not sailed in twelve years, “In the summer, maybe we can sail here. You and I and Zack. Would you like that, Hazel?”

Hazel said yes she would like that.

It was like Hazel to revert to her usual mood. As soon as she’d come downstairs, the issue of the caretaker was forgotten. There could be no protracted hardness or opposition in Hazel, always her moods were melting, quicksilver. Gallagher had never met so intensely feminine a woman, she was fascinating to him. Yet she would not make love with him, she held herself at a little distance from him, uneasy.

He couldn’t resist teasing her. She was shielding her eyes against the sun-glare, looking out. “He did ask after my guests. The caretaker. Asking if your rooms were all right and I told him yes, I thought so.”

Quickly Hazel said yes their rooms were fine. She was not to be baited by Gallagher. She asked if Mr. McEnnis would be coming back the next day.

Gallagher corrected her: “”McAlster.“ His name is ”McAlster.“ His people emigrated from Glasgow when he was two years old, he’s lived on Grindstone Island for more than sixty years. No, he won’t be coming back tomorrow.”

They were hiking along the river’s edge. Hazel would have descended a treacherous rocky path to the beach, where broken slabs of ice glittered in the sun like enormous teeth, and where storm debris lay in tangled heaps amid sand hardened like concrete, but Gallagher restrained her, alarmed. “Hazel, no. You’ll turn an ankle.”

They’d hiked more than a half-mile along the river and had some distance to retrace, uphill. From this perspective the Gallagher property appeared immense.

Zack had preferred to remain indoors practicing piano. Because of Easter weekend his Saturday lesson had been postponed until Tuesday after school. Hazel had told Gallagher that Zack had been outdoors for a while, earlier that morning; she spoke apologetically, as if the child’s lack of interest in the outdoors would annoy Gallagher.

Not at all! Gallagher was on the boy’s side. He intended always to be on the boy’s side. His own father had not much interest in his youngest son except to be “disappointed” at crucial times, and Gallagher did not intend to model himself after that father. I will make both of you need me and then you will love me.

Gallagher was surprised, Hazel Jones turned out to be so much more robust than he’d expected. She was hiking uphill with less effort than he, scarcely short of breath. She was sure-footed, eager. She exuded an air of happiness, well-being. The mid-April thaw was exhilarating to her, the great flaring sun did not overwhelm her but seemed to draw her forward.

Gallagher had wanted to talk with her. He must talk with her, alone. But she eased away from him, as if impatient. Slipping and sliding in the melting snow, that didn’t vex her but made her laugh. Nor did she seem to mind that evergreen boughs were dripping onto her head. She was sure-footed and exuberant as a young animal that has been penned up. Gallagher sweated inside his clothes, began to fall behind. Damned if he would call out to the woman, to wait for him. His heart beat hard in his chest.

You love me. You must love me.

Why don’t you love me!

Hazel was charmingly dressed for their hike. She wore a windbreaker and a girl’s rubber boots and on her head was a fawn-colored fedora she’d found in a closet at the lodge. Gallagher was forced to recall how when he touched Hazel, in their tender, intimate moments, when he kissed her, she went very still; like a captive animal that does not resist, yet remains slightly stiff, vigilant. You would not guess that the woman’s body was so young, supple and tremulous with life. Behind her clothes the female body, hot-skinned.

Overhead, hawks were circling. Always there were wide-winged sparrow hawks on Grindstone Island, along the river’s edge. They swooped to their prey in open areas, it was rare for a hawk to penetrate the pine woods. Now their swift shadows passed over the snow-stubbled grass and over Hazel’s figure, several hawks cruising so low that Gallagher could see the sharp outlines of their beaks.