The Victorious opposition ae-3 Read online

  I hope they do. They'd be damn fools if they didn't, Carsten thought. That cheered him, but not for long. A lifetime in the Navy had convinced him that a lot of his superiors were damn fools, and the only thing he could do about it was try to keep them from causing as much harm as possible.

  He did say, "I wonder how many spies the Confederates have in the USA."

  Nobody answered the question, which produced a chilly silence in the wardroom. He might have started talking about whorehouses he'd known at a women's club meeting. The Remembrance's officers were willing enough to think about their own spies, but not about the other fellow's.

  Commander Cressy looked thoughtful, though he didn't say anything. But then, Commander Cressy always looked thoughtful, so Sam wasn't sure how much that proved, or whether it proved anything at all.

  Every once in a while, Boston cast up a mild, springlike day, even if the calendar said it was early February. If it was a Saturday, too, well, all the better. People who'd stayed indoors as much as they could since winter slammed down emerged from their nests, blinking at the watery sunshine and the pale blue sky. They might almost have been animals coming out of hibernation.

  Sylvia Enos certainly felt that way. With the mercury in the high forties- one reckless weatherman on the wireless even talked about the fifties-she wanted to be out and doing things. She didn't need to worry about long johns or overcoat or mittens or thick wool muffler. All she had to do was throw a sweater on over her blouse and go outside. And, gratefully, she did.

  Mary Jane didn't even bother with a sweater, perhaps because her blouse was wool, perhaps because she wanted to show off while she had the chance. Sylvia minded that impulse less than she'd thought she would in a daughter. Mary Jane was heading from her mid- toward her late twenties, and hadn't snagged a husband yet. She didn't seem unduly worried about it, either. As far as Sylvia was concerned, a little display might be in order.

  They went to Quincy Market, next to Faneuil Hall. The grasshopper on the weather vane atop Faneuil Hall showed the wind coming out of the south. Pointing to it, Sylvia said, "That's the only good thing from the Confederate States: the weather, I mean." She paused to light a cigarette, then shook her head. "No, I take it back. Their tobacco's nice, too. The rest? Forget it."

  "Let me have one of those, will you?" Mary Jane said. Sylvia handed her the pack, then leaned close to give her a light. Mary Jane sucked in smoke. She blew it out and nodded. "That's pretty good, all right."

  A sailor on leave whistled at her. She ignored him. Sylvia would have ignored him, too. He was a little bowlegged fellow with a face like a ferret's. Ten seconds later, he whistled at another woman. She didn't pay any attention to him, either.

  Mary Jane said, "How's Ernie? Or don't I want to know?"

  "He's not that bad," Sylvia said defensively. "He's been… sweet lately. His writing is going better. That always helps." Ernie said it helped him starve slow instead of fast. As long as Sylvia had known him, though, he'd always managed to make at least some kind of living from his typewriter.

  "Hurrah," Mary Jane said. "Hasn't pulled a gun on you lately?"

  "Not lately," Sylvia agreed.

  "I don't care how sweet he is. He's trouble," her daughter said.

  She was probably right. No-she was right, and Sylvia knew it. That didn't mean she wanted to dump Ernie. If she'd wanted to, she would have long since. The whiff of danger he brought to things excited her. (Actually, it was a good deal more than a whiff, but Sylvia refused to dwell on that.) And, if anything, his… shortcoming posed a challenge. When she pleased him, she knew she'd accomplished something.

  How to put that into words? "He may be trouble, but he's never dull."

  "He may not be dull, but he's trouble," her daughter said.

  Again, Sylvia didn't argue. She just kept walking past the stalls and shops of Quincy Market. People sold everything from home-canned chowder and oyster stew to books to frying pans to furniture to jewelry to hats. Mary Jane admired sterling-silver cups that aped ones made by Paul Revere. Sylvia admired the cups, too, but not their prices. Those horrified her. "They're for rich tourists," she said.

  "I know," Mary Jane answered. "But they are pretty."

  Someone-not a tourist, by his accent, which was purest Boston-took a silver gravy boat up to the shopkeeper and peeled green bills out of his wallet. Sylvia sighed. "It must be fun to be able to afford nice things," she said.

  Mary Jane pointed to a new stall across the way. "Those look nice," she said, "and they might not be too expensive."

  Sylvia read the sign: " 'Clogston's Quilts.' " She shivered, knowing winter wasn't over in spite of this mild day. "Some of the blankets are getting pretty ratty, all right. Let's go have a look."

  The quilts on display made a rainbow under a roof of waterproof canvas. They were carefully laid out with an eye to which colors went with others, and that only made the display more enticing. Some duplicated colonial patterns, while others were brightly modern.

  "Hello, ladies," said the proprietor, a pleasant woman in her early forties with a wide smile and very white teeth. "Help you with something?"

  "Do you make all these?" Mary Jane blurted.

  "I sure do. Chris Clogston, at your service." She dipped her head in the same brisk way a man running a shop might have used. "When you don't see me here, you'll find me at the sewing machine."

  "When do you sleep, Mrs.-uh, Miss-Clogston?" Sylvia asked, awkwardly changing the question when she noticed the other woman wore no ring.

  "Sleep? What's that? I just hang myself in a corner now and then to get the wrinkles out." Chris Clogston laughed. It was a good laugh, a laugh that invited anyone who heard it to share the joke. She went on, "I do stay busy, but I like making quilts, picking out the colors and making sure everything is strong and will last. It doesn't seem like work. And it beats the stuffing"-she laughed again-"out of going to a factory every day."

  "Oh, yes." Sylvia had done her share of that and more. "What sort of living do you make, if you don't mind my asking?"

  "I'm still here," the shopkeeper answered. "Actually, I'm new here, new in Quincy Market. The rent for this space is twice what I paid where I was before, but I get a lot more customers, so it's worth it." Her gray eyes widened a little. "And what can I interest you in?"

  "That one's pretty." Sylvia pointed.

  Chris Clogston nodded, seeming pleased. "I'm glad you like it. That pattern's been in the family for I don't know how long-since before the Revolution, anyhow. I'm a ninth-generation Clogston in America. John, the first one we know about, came to Boston before 1740, out of Belfast."

  "Wow," Mary Jane said.

  "Wow is right," Sylvia said. "I can't trace my pedigree back past my great-grandfather, and I don't know much about him."

  "My granny was mad for family history, and she gave me some of the bug," Chris Clogston said. She picked up the quilt. "Now, this particular one is stuffed with cotton. I also make it stuffed with goose down if you want it extra warm. That will cost you more, though."

  "How much is this one, and how much would it be with the down?" Sylvia asked.

  "This one's $4.45," the quiltmaker answered. "It's nice and toasty, too- don't get me wrong. If you want it with goose down, though, it goes up to $7.75."

  Sylvia didn't need to think about whether she could afford the down-stuffed quilt; she knew she couldn't. The cotton… Even the cotton was a reach, but she said, "I'll take it."

  "You won't be sorry," Chris Clogston said. "It'll last you a lifetime."

  Mary Jane pointed to a small quilt in pink and blue. "Let's get that one, too, for George and Connie's baby." Sylvia hesitated, not because she didn't like the quilt but because she couldn't afford to spend the money. Mary Jane said, "Don't worry, Ma. I'll spring for it. It'll use up some overtime I got last week." She grinned. "Easy come, easy go."

  The small quilt cost $2.25. Mary Jane did pay, and didn't blink. Sylvia hadn't known about the overtime. She wondered
if it was mythical. She didn't quarrel with her daughter, though. George and Connie would be happy to have the quilt for their little boy.

  "Thank you very much, ladies," Chris Clogston called as Sylvia and Mary Jane left the stall.

  "Thank you," Sylvia answered, well pleased with the quilt she'd bought. She looked up at the blue sky and the bravely shining sun. "I wonder how long this weather will hold."

  "As long as it does," Mary Jane said. "We just have to enjoy it till it's gone."

  "I intend to," Sylvia said, and then, after a few steps through the crowded Quincy Market, "It's like that with Ernie and me, too, you know."

  Mary Jane only shrugged. "I can't talk sense into your head about that. I've tried, and it doesn't work. But I still don't think he's good for you."

  "Good for me?" Sylvia hadn't worried about that. "He's… interesting. Things happen when he's around, and you never know beforehand what they'll be."

  "Maybe," Mary Jane said, "but some of the time I bet you wish you did."

  She was right. Sylvia knew it. Ernie had frightened her in ways no one else had matched, or even approached. She sometimes-often-thought he was most in earnest when his mood turned blackest. Even so… "Never a dull moment," she said. "That counts for something, too."

  "Pa would have said the same thing, wouldn't he, after his destroyer dodged a torpedo?" Mary Jane replied. "But one day the destroyer didn't dodge, and that's how come I hardly remember my own father."

  "Yes, that's right," Sylvia said. "I paid him back, though." Roger Kimball was dead, sure enough. But that didn't, wouldn't, couldn't, bring George Enos, Senior, back to life. Mary Jane would never have the memories she was missing. All Sylvia had left were her memories.

  Mary Jane changed the subject as abruptly as anyone could: "Let's go over to the Union Oyster House for an early supper. I can't remember the last time I was there."

  "Why not?" Sylvia said, thinking in for a penny, in for a pound. They'd already spent a lot of money today; after that, what was a little more? The Union Oyster House was only a couple of blocks from the market square. The building in which it operated had stood on the same spot since the early eighteenth century. The restaurant itself had been there for more than a hundred years. People said Daniel Webster had drunk at the cramped little bar.

  Almost everything about the Union Oyster House was cramped and little, from the stairs people descended to get down to the main level to the panes of glass in the windows to the tiny wooden booths into which diners squeezed. Sylvia and Mary Jane snagged a booth with no trouble-they got in ahead of the evening rush.

  The one place where the restaurant didn't stint was on the portions. The plates of fried oysters and fried potatoes a harried-looking waiter set in front of the two women would have fed a couple of lumberjacks, or possibly a couple of football teams. "How am I going to eat all that?" Sylvia asked. Then she did. Mary Jane cleaned her plate, too.

  Going home happily full, carrying things they'd wanted to buy, made a good end to a good day. And two men on the trolley car stood up to give Sylvia and her daughter their seats. That didn't happen all the time, either.

  Spread on the bed, the quilt looked even finer than it had in Chris Clogston's stall. It promised to be warm, too. Sylvia wanted to burrow under it right then and there.

  "How about that, Ma?" Mary Jane said.

  Sylvia nodded. "Yes. How about that?" She wondered what Ernie would say when he saw the quilt. Probably something sarcastic, she thought. Well, if he does, too bad for him.

  Lucien Galtier cleaned the farmhouse as if his life depended on it. He was not the sort of slob a lot of men living by themselves would have been. Marie wouldn't have liked that, and he took his wife's opinions more seriously now that she was gone than he had while she was there to enforce them. But he knew he couldn't hope to match the standard she set, and he hadn't tried. He'd set his own, less strict, standard and lived up to that.

  Now, though, he tried to match what Marie would have done. That meant a lot of extra scrubbing and dusting. It meant cleaning out corners where dirt lingered-though he still didn't attack the corners with needles, as Marie might have done. It meant putting things in closets and deciding what was too far gone even to linger in a closet any more. It meant a lot of extra work.

  He did the extra work not merely from a sense of duty but from a sense of pride. He was going to bring Йloise Granche here, and he wanted everything perfect. If she thought he lived like a pig in a sty… Well, so what? some part of him jeered. She doesn't want to marry you anyhow.

  He ignored the internal scoffing. He didn't so much think it wrong as think it irrelevant. Seeing a clean house wouldn't make Йloise change her mind and want to live here. When she spoke of patrimony and the problems marriage would cause both families, she was firm, she was decisive-and, as far as Lucien could see, she was dead right.

  That wasn't why he worked till his lungs burned and his heart pounded and his chest ached: worked harder than he did on the farm at any time of the year but harvest. He worked himself into a panting tizzy for one of the oldest reasons in the world: he wanted to impress the woman he cared about. They were already lovers; impressing her wouldn't get him anything but a smile and perhaps a quick, offhand compliment. He knew that. His mother hadn't raised a fool. Hoping to see that smile kept him slaving away with a smile on his own face.

  After he couldn't find anything else left to clean, he cleaned himself. He made lavish, even extravagant, use of water he heated on the stove. On a warmer day, he could have luxuriated in the steaming tub for a long time, letting the hot water soak the kinks out of his back. But water didn't stay hot forever, not in winter in Quebec it didn't. When it started to cool off, which it did all too soon, he got out and dried off in a hurry.

  He thought about putting on his black wool suit when he went to get Йloise: thought about it and discarded the notion in the next breath. She would think someone had died, and he was on his way to the funeral. And besides, the suit smelled so strongly of mothballs, it would have made her eyes water. It stayed in the closet. He put on the clothes he would have worn to a dance-work clothes, but the best he had, and also impeccably clean. If he wouldn't go to Йloise's reeking of mothballs, he wouldn't go reeking of stale sweat, either.

  He'd just set a warm wool cap on his head and was putting on his overcoat when someone knocked on the door. "Tabernac!" he snarled. Who the devil would come bothering him now, when he had more important things to worry about than a neighbor who'd run out of chicken feed?

  Before he went to the door, he shrugged on his overcoat. I was just going out would cut any visit short. With dramatic suddenness, he threw the door open. Whoever was out there, Lucien intended to make him feel guilty.

  Dr. Leonard O'Doull stared at him, surprised but not visibly afflicted with guilt.

  "What have we here?" Galtier's son-in-law asked. "Is it that you are so eager to escape my company?"

  Yes, Galtier thought, but he couldn't say that. "I was about to go out for a drive," he replied.

  "In this?" O'Doull waved at the swirling snow. Now he sounded more than surprised; he sounded astonished. "Me, I had to come down to the hospital today, and from the hospital it is but a short hop here. But why would you go out for a drive if you don't have to?"

  "To visit a friend," Lucien replied, which was part of the truth, though he was careful to say un ami and not une amie: he didn't want O'Doull knowing his friend was of the feminine persuasion. Realizing his son-in-law wouldn't disappear in the wind, he stepped aside. "Come in. No point letting the heat out of the house."

  "No, certainly not." O'Doull did come in, and stamped snow all over the tidy entry hall. Lucien did his best not to wince. Slowly, he shed his own coat and cap. Leonard O'Doull slithered out of his overcoat with a sigh of relief. He went on, "I won't keep you long, since it's plain you have such important business elsewhere."

  Galtier pretended not to notice the sarcasm. "Unfortunately, I do," he said, which m
ade O'Doull raise a gingery eyebrow. Lucien waved him to the couch. "But sit down. What sort of gossip have you heard at the hospital?"

  "At the hospital? Nothing much." O'Doull stretched his long legs out in front of him. To Galtier's relief, he didn't put his feet up on the table, as he'd sometimes been known to do. "Still, though, gossip does come to a doctor's office."

  "Does it?" Lucien said tonelessly.

  "Well, yes, as a matter of fact, it does," his son-in-law replied. "And it could even be that the gossip that comes is true, though I did not think so before I knocked on your door."

  "Since you have not told me what this gossip is, I have no idea whether it is true or not," Lucien said. "Should I care?" Were people starting to talk about Йloise and him?

  Leonard O'Doull didn't directly answer that. Instead, he asked, "Mon beau-pиre, are you a happy man?"

  That question took Galtier by surprise. He thought for a moment, then answered, "Most of the time, I am too busy working even to wonder."

  "All right. Never mind." Dr. O'Doull smiled. "I hope, when you do have time away from your work, I hope you are happy, however you get to be that way. I hope so, and so does Nicole. And I have talked with Charles and Georges and Denise. They all feel the same way. I have not talked with your other two daughters, but I am sure they would agree."

  "Are you? Would they?" Lucien said. "And why is everyone so intimately concerned with my happiness?" That didn't quite take the bull by the horns, but it came close.

  O'Doull smiled at him. "Because of the gossip, as I said."

  "Well? And what is this gossip? And why are you acting like an old woman and listening to it?" There. Now Lucien would find out whatever there was to find out.

  So he thought, anyhow. But O'Doull only smiled and said, "That it could be you have some reason for happiness."

  "Well, if I do, that reason is not a beau-fils who comes around snooping after what I am doing," Lucien said pointedly.