Read Online High Tide at Noon by Elisabeth Ogilvie - Free Book Online Page A

emptied, and Donna went to her room to lie down. Joanna worked mechanically, her mind absorbed in putting her thoughts in order. This story that Simon had begun from spite—he’d keep it going until someone stopped him. But here was the wall again, and she was already bruised from crashing against it.
    Only Nils could try to stop him. But Simon would make no secret of it, if Nils split his lip or blackened his eye; he’d flaunt the marks around the shore, and she could almost hear his easy, silky voice: “Guilty conscience, that boy. Tryin’ his damndest to shut me up. Hell, I bet anybody could take that Jo out, if they played their hand right. . . .”
    No, Nils mustn’t do anything. She washed and wiped dishes in a fury of speed. They must pretend Simon wasn’t real. Those who wanted to believe him would believe him anyway, and the others would only laugh at him. Let it die, if a story about Joanna Bennett could ever die, she thought with the desolate woe of fifteen.
    Owen came in with an armful of wood and dropped it in the box. “I guess that’ll hold ye for the rest of the day. It’s damn hot splitting spruce. Know it?” He drank a big dipperful of water and turned to go out again.
    â€œWait a minute, Owen!” she said impulsively.
    â€œHell, sis, I’m in a hurry.” He scowled and pulled away as she caught his sleeve.
    â€œCharles told me, out in the boat . . . Owen, aren’t they going to say anything?”
    â€œWhat is there to say? They don’t believe any of that trash—no sense getting goweled about it.”
    â€œBut the whole Island’s talking!”
    â€œWe can’t do anything about it, Jo. They’ll always talk about us, and it can’t hurt us so long as we know we’re all right. Talk’s cheap.” He broke away. She stood watching him, her eyes wide with imminent tears.
    At the door he turned back. “I been thinking, Jo. You didn’t chance to see anybody hanging around the clubhouse last night, did you?”
    She shook her head dumbly, her hands fumbling with plate and towel. He was already out. Through the screen door she saw him, poised against the glittering afternoon, eager and impatient to be off across the meadow to shore. “Owen, if you see Nils—”
    â€œWhat about him?”
    She turned back to her dishes. “Oh, nothing! You’re in an awful pucker for anybody as lazy as you are.”
    She heard the peculiar crunch of rubber boots going away through the grass. The silence pressed about her, a silence made up of familiar sounds: the old clock on the shelf, the constant gentle rote of the sea on the rocks, the faint far-off clamor of gulls, the sleepy noonday talk of Donna’s chickens under the windows. And in this silence the world suddenly righted itself. She would find Nils, talk it out with him, and that would be all. Her heart lifted with a swift buoyancy. Owen was right, talk was cheap, why should she listen to it or worry about it as long as it was lying talk? The family wasn’t worrying.
    In a sudden joyous reaction from despair she put away the dishes and hung up her apron. Talk’s cheap , she repeated, as if it were a magic formula, which somehow it was. Of course it was hard, knowing you were being talked about like Thea Sorensen, or Marcus Yetton’s wife, who was always making pies for Johnny Fernandez. But she wasn’t Thea or Susie. She was Joanna Bennett.
    â€œJoanna,” said her father’s unhurried voice, and she whirled with a gasp. He stood outside on the doorstep where Owen had just been. “Come out and sit with me a few minutes.”
    She sat down beside him, cross-legged in Indian fashion. The doorstep was in shadow, but out in the sun the grass was a green sea, while in the distance the ocean matched colors with the sky. Her father’s pipe smoke mingled pleasantly with the lilac’s dreamy fragrance. He looked