Black Cat Weekly #8

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 6Sea Gulls And Shingles

WHEN they came wandering back, Steve and Linda found the rest impatiently waiting for them. The sun had started to slip down behind the pines, and nobody wanted to pick his way through that overgrown footpath in the dark.

“Where did you two disappear?” Dr. Sutton asked as they began the trek to the station wagon. “Down on the beach?”

“Close to it,” Steve said. “We went down to see Loraney’s headstone, but it’s a chore to find it. That burying ground’s pretty much of a mess, Dr. Sutton. Vines and creepers and rank grass all over it. You’re going to have a job resetting markers if they’re not cut out of that tangle soon.”

The doctor nodded. “My sins of omission are catching up with me. The list’s a mile long now, and Alex Cobb says no one around here has time to hire out to work in lobster season! I’m beginning to think I should have shipped a crew of carpenters aboard the Delight.”

“Dr. Cobb ought to know,” Steve said, grinning. “People around Harpswell do their own plumbing and carpentry, and he snaked in every man who does stuff like that for the summer people. They don’t go lobstering, so he still thinks he’s got them sewed up full time on his lab job. Wait till he learns about haying!”

“I’ll be looking forward to it,” Dr. Sutton admitted. “I understand he’s got you sewed up, too.”

“Five days a week, tight as a button,” Steve agreed.

The doctor promptly looked hopeful. “Then maybe I can get a mortgage on a couple of Saturdays and Sundays,” he suggested. “The boys on the Delight can stand a few watches with paint buckets, and I’ll scare up carpenters and paper hangers somewhere. If you’d just yank the old shingles off that roof next week end and clean out the graveyard when you get a chance, that’s all I’d ask.”

“It doesn’t sound as if it would strain me much,” Steve had to admit. “If that’s all you want, I guess I can manage.”

“Then that’s settled,” Dr. Sutton said with relief. “Use your own judgment about what to cut out down by the shore, Steve. I’ll put that problem on your shoulders.”

“And I’m signing on right now as foreman,” Linda said firmly. “If you think you’re chopping out all those wild things around Loraney, Steve Purchas, you’re fired already. The rest of the Farrs have to be tidy and ship-shape, of course, but her marker belongs in those tangles.”

Steve studied her a second. “Worse than Shubael,” he said, shaking his head. “Bewitched. Maybe you ought to get this place exorcised, Dr. Sutton. Loraney’s still working spells.”

But Linda refused to be baited. “Just remember I’ll be watching,” she said sweetly and swung around for a last look at the Head. The sun was slanting across the porch of the old garrison house, and she could almost see it catch again in the red curls of Shubael’s green-eyed witch. Loraney must have stood there often, smiling over the secret things she knew.

“Oh, Dr. Sutton, I love your Headland!” Linda had forgotten that she had ever thought the Farr house grim and forbidding. “Will you let me come here and paint sometimes?”

“Paint?” the doctor asked, his interest obvious. “Any time, anywhere you like. I never could draw a line myself so I had to turn into a collector. Do you use oils or water color?”

“I use water color, but I’ve only been in a few classes at Cooper Union so far,” she told him honestly.

The note of authority in Dr. Sutton’s voice when he mentioned painting puzzled her. She looked at him again trying to think. Where had she heard of a Dr. Sutton in Connection with art? Then suddenly she remembered, and her eyes opened wide.

“Dr. Sutton! You’re not the man in all the newspaper stories who outbid the Museum of Modern Art for those two Orrin Woods last winter, are you?”

The doctor nodded. “Guilty,” he confessed, “but I can’t say my conscience hurts. I’d have done a lot more than outbid a museum to get those two Woods into my possession. You use the Head as much as you like, Linda, I’ll be glad to have you here.”

So that’s who Dr. Sutton was! Linda turned to Steve the minute their companion strode ahead to speak to Captain Pel.

“You were certainly right,” she exclaimed. “Dr. Sutton’s not starving any. He’s one of the most famous art collectors in the country.” She looked after the doctor thoughtfully. “Isn’t it queer he hasn’t turned up on the Head before? People do make the craziest excuses for not getting around to things, Steve. He never was the kind of young surgeon who had to earn money for a vacation. According to those newspaper stories, he inherited oil wells when he was twenty. He could have come any time he wanted to—he’s always spent weeks on end in Bermuda.”

Dr. Cobb dropped Waity off at his own house, and the rest of the group separated almost as soon as they got back to Juniper Point. After a day of interruptions, everyone had something to finish. Steve still had to run the Maquoit out to her mooring; so he walked down to the landing with Dr. Sutton. That’s quite a guy, he thought as he watched the older man row over to the Delight. And he couldn’t find anything wrong with Linda Cobb’s batting average either. She’d been hitting home runs ever since she arrived. Thinking about her, he wondered how much he would actually see of Linda in the weeks ahead. The accident and the SOS had tossed them at each other, but once Juniper Point settled to the daily dozen, the situation might change. She didn’t seem to be allergic to Purchases so far. Just the same, she was on vacation, and she would have more in common with the summer crowd.

He certainly saw almost nothing of her the next week. The daily dozen had taken over with a vengeance. Sea and Shore Fisheries men drove in to Juniper Point early Monday morning with an experimental project in their minds, and as a result, both Steve and Dr. Cobb were swamped. They worked all day and most of the evenings building storage cupboards and setting up equipment to convert the biologist’s office into a satisfactory laboratory before the next week end. But as far as Steve could see, everyone was involved with time-consuming extras. Dr. Sutton, of course, was making Purchas Basin his headquarters while Captain Pel repaired the Delight, and he showed a positive genius for cajoling other people into helping him solve his problems. Mrs. Purchas was spending the major part of her days managing Abbey Beamish or inspecting sinks, stoves, and refrigerators; and afternoons, the Cobb station wagon, with Linda at the wheel, ran a shuttle service between the Brunswick shops and Graveyard Head.

Steve generally caught up with the day’s events at suppertime. By Tuesday he knew Linda had already met some of the summer crowd. His mother told him she had introduced her to Seth Green and a group from the Colony on Brunswick’s Maine Street, and he spotted a car with a Texas license in front of the Cobb’s house the next night. After that, he expected to hear that she was swimming or playing tennis over on the other side of Bar Island Cove, but, to his surprise, she went on with her taxi service. His mother was obviously distressed by the amount of time Linda was spending on the road, though. Steve had never seen her more pleased than she was Friday night when she announced that the doctor had ordered a Jeepster.

“He’s got a demonstration car to use in the meantime,” she told her family. “That’ll free Linda, thank goodness. Not that I won’t miss her,” she added vigorously. “There’s enough yeast in that girl to make her good company. But she’s so devoted to Dr. Sutton that she’s playing taxi when she ought to be painting. She’s got too much talent to throw time away.”

Steve remembered his mother’s comments when he shoved a ladder against the Farr house Saturday morning to begin on the shingles. According to her notions, now that Dr. Sutton had a car, Linda should have been perched on the front steps with a sketch pad, working like mad. This was her first chance to paint on the Head since Jim Moody had opened up the road with his bulldozer. From his perch on the ladder, Steve looked at the road again with approval. He had not been back since the day they had towed the Delight into port, and mere reports of progress had not prepared him for quite so much improvement.

For an easygoing Southerner, Dr. Sutton sure get things done, Steve thought as he pried shingles off the slope of the roof above the rain barrel. Of course, his turning out to be a Farr had been no liability. Jim Moody had brought his bulldozer over for the same neighborly reasons that would have made him help raise a new house for any other year-rounder the first week end after the old one had burned. Nobody knew better than Steve that the summer resident did not yet exist, no matter how sizable his bank account, who could have persuaded Jim to tackle that road after hauling lobster traps all day. The rest of the secret, however, was the doctor’s friendliness. The Neck liked him on sight, summer and winter residents both.

Through an open window below, Abby Beamish’s voice was tenting briskly on the old campground, and Steve chuckled to himself. Even Abby ate out of Dr. Sutton’s hand. For that matter, who was he to talk? Wasn’t he skidding around a roof yanking off shingles the first free day he’d had in a week?

He was going full tilt an hour later when someone’s whistle sent him inching upward to pop his head over the ridgepole. Linda was down in the road, looking up at him.

“I’m parking on the ledges near the graveyard,” she called. “How about bringing your lunch down when you get hungry?”

“Not a bad idea,” he agreed promptly. “I’ll gallop across at noon to see whether you’ve taken off on Loraney’s broomstick. Maybe I’ll get your lunch, too.”

He grinned down at her and watched her black curls bob on past the house before he went back to work. When he looked at her, it was hard to take Linda’s painting seriously. He knew his mother thought she was good, but when it came to Linda Cobb, his mother was transparently prejudiced. She had almost adopted the girl.

The sun was high overhead as Steve backed down the ladder, feeling as if he had earned his lunch. He had guaranteed to have the roof ready for the carpenters on Monday, and he was set to finish stripping the shingles off by the end of the afternoon. He’d have one free day out of his week end yet. Whistling contentedly, he rescued his lunch from the back porch and strolled off to find Linda on her ledges. She was still there, hunched over her sketch pad, but apparently she had forgotten that food existed. Neither his whistle nor his footsteps made the slightest impression, and he banged on his tin lunch box.

“Hey,” he called. “Come to. It’s time to put on your feed bag.”

Linda twisted around and stared up at him gloomily. “Have you ever tried to paint sea gulls?” she asked. “They keep zooming off when I want to see how they’re put together.”

Shoving her drawing pad disgustedly aside, she found her own lunch and settled down on the rocks.

Steve helped himself to the banana she offered. “What’s the matter with your gulls?” he wanted to know.

“They look like ghosts flapping their sheets, that’s what’s wrong with them. Take a look for yourself if you want.” She handed him the sketch pad, pointing. “Over there on the last pages. I’ve been practicing on them for the last hour.”

Steve turned on a critical eye on the offending gulls. “They’re bats,” he decided candidly. “Anyway, half bat. No sea gull ever grew a wing like that, Linda. Here, wait a minute.” He hunted for a pencil and turned her page over. “I can’t draw worth a hoot but I can give you the idea. A gull’s wings are made this way. See?” His pencil began moving across the paper. “That’s the bony structure; then the wing gets attached to the body like this. Got it?”

Linda was watching attentively. “I think so,” she said, “but I’d like to keep yours to study. Where on earth did you learn to do muscles and bones like that?”

“Fiddling with dead birds on the beach. It used to come in handy for biology lab.” He smiled at her, hesitant. “All right if I take a look at what you’ve been doing?”

Linda nodded, and he flipped back the pages on his lap, staring in surprise at the water color of the beach and the sandspit she had been working on. Steve nearly whistled. His mother was right; Linda Cobb could paint. You could almost feel the lazy motion in the water beyond her rocks.

“You’ve got what it takes!” he said with conviction.

There was such honest admiration in his voice that Linda’s brown eyes glowed. “Thanks, Steve,” she said softly. ‘I’ll hang on to that.”

They leaned against the ledge, finishing their last sandwiches and watching the sandpipers run on the beach. Perhaps it was time to work again, but they felt too comfortable and lazy to move.

“I hear you’ve met the Colony gang,” Steve said, and Linda grinned.

“They’re a swell crew and a bunch of owls,” she said cheerfully. “They still got a couple of hours to go after they’ve met the midnight train in Brunswick to feed lobsters to the engineer.”

Steve chuckled, but he shook his head. “I can’t keep up with them often. Seven A.M. rolls around too soon.”

“I know. I tried it this week,” Linda exclaimed. “I’d have to be on vacation to take that pace, and Dad brought me along to paint. He’s got to work in Boston next year, but I’m supposed to qualify for Art Students League by the time we get home again.”

She studied Steve with frank curiosity. “What about you?” she asked. “Your mother says she’s got one coast-guardman and one marine architect already. I know you’re going to Bowdoin. Then what? Boats?”

Steve’s smile was a trifle crooked. “Purchases always build boats or sail ’em,” he admitted, “but I can’t seem to make up my mind.”