All is Clam Read online

  Bah. Humbug.

  Chapter Eleven

  Fitz and Jared were laughing out loud, partly because it was funny and partly because they’d just smoked two giant spliffs.

  Jared had been pissing in the bushes when the villagers began spilling out of the Hall. He lit out of there, peeling off in his truck before someone could blame him for whatever it was that had happened.

  Fitz frowned, a cloud covering his face, malevolence in his eyes.

  “They’re sayin’ it was me. I’m sayin’ it was that Fraser bitch. I’ve a good mind to – ”

  He didn’t know what he had a good mind to do. He’d better think carefully. What he needed was cash. He’d made a nice bit from the lobster deal by inflating the price and skimming off the top, but he’d placed a big order with Jared. This was the sampling session, and he liked what he’d been smoking.

  If they could just find what this Oliver guy was looking for. If he could only get Jared to do most of the work.

  By the time they’d finished another reefer, they had both fallen asleep, heads slumped forward on the table, nesting in their arms, the bag of primo marijuana on the table between them.

  Fitz woke first. He eyed the pot. Grabbed it. It was his. He hadn’t paid for it yet, but that didn’t bother him. As silently as he could over the pizza boxes littering the floor, he slipped out of the house.

  “Interesting creatures, clams. Who knew?” Ian was googling when Hy stopped in before going to the Hall. The mention of clams made her feel ill. So did the prospect of facing the clean-up.

  “Some clams are hermaphrodites. The quahog starts out male, then may become female.”

  “May?” Hy edged closer to the screen.

  “It’s not easy to tell the males and females apart, so I guess they don’t always know for sure.” He scrolled down. “Oysters alternate sexes – male one year, female the next.”

  Hy scanned the screen.

  “Look at that – a giant clam that weighed 734 pounds. Nearly four feet long.” She gave Ian a shove. “That could kill you even if you didn’t eat it.”

  He grinned.

  They spent a pleasant half-hour surfing the sex lives of ocean creatures, concluding that it had nothing on human sex, and Hy finally, reluctantly, left to go down to the Hall.

  She had prepared herself for an overpowering smell of sick when she opened the Hall door. What she wasn’t prepared for was the sound of the television.

  There had never been a television in the Hall.

  Still the theme to “Hockey Night in Canada” filled the room. A soft breeze played with the lace sheers at an open window, the smell of sick gently wafting through the Hall.

  Then it was “Jeopardy.”

  “Entertainment Tonight.”

  Not a television. The piano.

  Chopin.

  A delicate, tentative touch, followed by sure, strong rippling across the keyboard, then soft again, tiptoeing on the notes, rising gradually to a swell, heartachingly beautiful, heartachingly perfect. Played by a ten-year-old gypsy of a boy. Jamie.

  That piano had never been played like that, not by anyone, Hy was sure. It had been owned originally by a local music teacher, whose style was to pound on the keys, arms rigid, back ramrod straight, producing jarring sounds. Only accuracy moved her. Her soul was not the least musical. She had willed the piano to the Hall, and, since then, generations of youngsters had banged away at it – most so pathetically that the women of the Institute had given up tuning it.

  But even on the old out-of-tune piano this boy was managing to coax beautiful music. It ended sharply. Then it was back to “Hockey Night in Canada.”

  When Hy stepped into the room, Jamie stopped playing and turned, the ancient photographs of Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip looking down on him. The photos were fifty years old, and the only ones in the Hall that had been professionally framed. They usually looked judgmental. Today, Hy thought, they appeared to be approving in a restrained British way.

  Hy came up, placing her hands on the stage. “You’re good.”

  Jamie smiled, shrugged his shoulders and slipped off the bench. The shoelaces of his sneakers were untied.

  “Don’t stop.”

  “That’s all I know.”

  “Hockey Night in Canada?”

  He nodded.

  “Jeopardy?”

  “Oh, yeah, that stuff. I can play lots of TV themes. Some pop songs.”

  “And Chopin?” Her pitch rose in curiosity.

  “Is that who it is?”

  “Oh, yes.” Hy hoisted herself up on to the stage and sat on the edge of it. He dropped down beside her. “Who taught you?”

  “No one. I learned on my own.”

  “Piano at home?”

  “No. Just whenever I could, wherever there was a piano. I played what I heard.”

  “You figured it out, note by note?”

  “No, I just played what I heard.”

  “Hang on, I’ll be right back.” Hy got up and went out the side entrance of the stage, back into the Institute room, where the W.I. held its meetings. It was the kitchen. There was a radio on the counter. She turned it on to CBC Radio Two.

  Chopin.

  “That’s the same one.” Jamie recognized the musical signature. “I like her.”

  “She’s a he.”

  Jamie frowned. “Doesn’t sound like a he.”

  “Why not?”

  “Well, all kinda…”

  “Sensitive?”

  “Ya.”

  Hy smiled when she heard herself say: “Men can be sensitive, too.”

  “I guess…” Jamie dragged out the words, sounding unconvinced.

  “But you play that music. You like it. And you’re a boy. Does it make you any less of a boy to be able to play that music?”

  Jamie appeared to think about it for a moment. He squirmed, and smiled up at her. “No. The music? Course not.”

  “Now listen,” said Hy. “Listen and play it to me after. They listened for a few minutes. Hy shut it off.

  “Well?”

  Jamie got up, sat down at the piano and began to play.

  Note for note, subtlety for subtlety, fingers tripping across the keys, their touch intensifying as the music rose to a climax. Jamie had heard, and played, it all – even the parts while they’d been talking.

  A child prodigy. Hidden away in Wild Rose Cottage with a brute for a father – capable of charm, but a brute – and an ineffectual mother, faded, demoralized, and possibly, Hy suddenly thought, ill. Very ill? Did either of them know how talented their child was?

  Her answer came charging through the door, leapt up on the stage, and slammed the piano lid down. Jamie whipped his fingers out just in time.

  “What the hell are you doing in here? Fiddling about while I’m waiting on you to get back.”

  Hy placed a hand on Jamie’s shoulder.

  “We’d like Jamie to play in the Christmas Pageant. A few pieces. At intervals through the show.”

  Fitz flashed a big grin.

  “And what about me?” He leapt up in the air, flipped backward off the stage, spinning cartwheels and somersaults down the length of the Hall and back up onto the stage again, landing inches from Hy.

  “I can walk the tightrope if you like. We could hook up a trapeze…”

  Hy put up a hand. “Whoa,” she said. But she grinned with delight. Between Fitz’s acrobatics and Jamie’s music, this year’s show would easily outdo Moira Toombs’ directorial efforts last year. She wouldn’t mind putting Moira in her place. She was always trying to edge in on Ian. Hy wasn’t sure she herself wanted Ian as more than a friend, but friends can be jealous, too, she always told herself. Moira had done some pretty nasty things in the past, trying to get close to Ian and push Hy away.

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nbsp; “Where’d you learn that?”

  “The circus. Din’t I tell you I bin in the circus? In the family. Circus performers going way back. Rose, she was my spotter. Jamie was turnin’ into a right real performer.”

  Jamie responded by doing his own series of flips down the room and back.

  Fitz smiled – with pride? Again, Hy experienced a moment, an opening to the man he might have been – or was once?

  He frowned. “But circuses aren’t popular anymore.”

  “There’s Cirque de Soleil.”

  “Cirque de Soleil. Yup. They courted me after I qualified for the Olympic gymnastics team.”

  Fitz Fitpatrick claimed he’d been a star of the professional circuit.

  Hy wondered if it were true. Any of it. Still, he was obviously talented – and would be an asset to the show, as long as he was sober. She could smell rum on his breath and marijuana on his clothes, and it wasn’t noon yet.

  More overpowering than the smell of Fitz’s breath was the stale smell of vomit in the Hall. Hy got out a bucket and mop. Fitz and Jamie left – Fitz slapping the boy on the head to move him along as they went out. Rose had been whining about more wood for the woodstove. He’d come to get Jamie to collect it.

  Hy was mopping and grumbling under her breath when Annabelle swept in, wearing her work clothes, sleeves rolled up, and began to mop alongside her.

  Another reason they were friends.

  “You’re making him supper?” Annabelle’s eyes opened wide, the edges of her mouth curved up in a suppressed smile. They were putting away the mops and brooms, preparing to leave the Hall. Annabelle had invited Hy to supper. She’d said no, she was making supper for Ian.

  “Yes.” Hy was defensive. “No big deal.”

  “But you don’t cook.”

  Hy grinned. “Not often.”

  “The way to a man’s heart…”

  “Well, yes, with Ian it would be his stomach. But I’m not after his stomach. Or his heart.”

  Annabelle had never been able to figure out what was going on with Hy and Ian. And then it came out. Just came out. The question she’d never dared ask before.

  “Are you sleeping with him?” All this time she’d held back, and there she had gone and just blurted it out.

  “No, I’m talking with you.”

  Annabelle sighed. “You know what I mean.”

  Hy said nothing. She must be, Annabelle thought, or she’d just outright deny it, and not be so coy.

  What would it matter if everyone knew?

  Maybe they still didn’t know themselves.

  She was right.

  “If you must know…” Hy paused, a long pause.

  Annabelle held her breath. Was she finally going to admit it?

  “I’m going to try out a recipe on him. I’m thinking of making Christmas dinner.”

  “For who?” Annabelle wished she hadn’t asked that the moment it came out of her mouth. Here, Christmas dinner was about family, and Hy didn’t have any family. Only friends. But the friends all had family. Except Ian.

  “Well, Ian. Buddy. Maybe Jamieson.”

  “Jamieson?” Disbelief in her tone. Buddy drooled. What must it be like when he ate? Annabelle winced. “Has she met Buddy?”

  “Well, yes, she has.” Hy told Annabelle about Jamieson’s visit to the shack and how desperate she’d been to get out.

  “Perfectly normal,” Annabelle pronounced it. “I’ve never been in there,” she said, “because the idea alone gives me claustrophobia. I bet it’s dirty and stinky.”

  Hy shook her head, slowly, thinking. “No. There was something more to it. Something more.”

  “Well, that dinner won’t be a tough test of your skills. I’m sure Buddy’s happy with anything you put in front of him. I expect Jamieson would be eating canned soup otherwise. And Ian, give him any food, he takes a bite and says, ‘Delicious.’”

  “Precisely why I’m testing it on him. And in his kitchen.”

  “In his kitchen?”

  “Well, it is better equipped than mine.” Ian’s kitchen was the best equipped in the village. He didn’t cook, but he had the latest and the best of everything – stainless steel fridge, stove, and microwave. In his cupboards was every labour-saving appliance ever advertised on late-night TV, most unused.

  With a wave, Hy crossed the road and took off up Shipwreck Hill.

  She didn’t cook dinner. Ian had just set up his new computer. His old one – two years old – sat forlorn in a corner of the room, its wires all neatly wrapped, its screen black.

  It was then Hy got the idea.

  “What are you going to do with that?” She pointed at it.

  Ian, his hands stroking his new keyboard, looked up.

  “What?”

  “That.” She pointed at the abandoned iMac more forcefully.

  “I don’t know. Do you want it?”

  “Yes.”

  He beamed. Ian was always thrilled when someone took an interest in his equipment.

  “Well, sort of. I have an idea.”

  When she explained to him, he agreed, and said he’d take care of it.

  “Elmira Fraser is dead.” Those four words telegraphed through the community with the speed of a grass fire in a high wind.

  Everyone was shocked. Elmira had been so busy dying for years, they’d given up hope it would happen.

  When someone was so foolish as to ask how she was, she would sigh, “I’ve not long now.”

  Elmira dragged her skinny, pallid self to every village event, where she would belabour the number and extent of her aches and pains.

  And yet she lived on…and on…and on.

  Gus always said, with disapproval, “She’ll live forever.” Gus had been determined to outlive her. Now she had.

  Everyone noticed how Elmira had knocked back the clam chowder, lobster, and potato salad at the Hall dinner with an appetite almost as big and healthy as Ben Mack’s. But between bites, she had bemoaned her terrible health. Health that, she claimed, had been so bad since she was born, it had almost killed her from the start. She’d been eighty-eight, and perhaps had earned the right to complain.

  Gus heard the news about Elmira from her neighbour Estelle, who phoned with a sober glee. Estelle wasn’t thrilled because Elmira was dead, though she’d never liked her, but at being the first to impart the information to Gus.

  Gus shook her head and eased down onto her rocker recliner. Elmira Fraser was what Gus called a tough old bird. If she could go, what hope was there for the rest of them? What hope for her, inching toward her mid-eighties? No, not inching – propelling with a speed she was incapable of when it came to doing anything else.

  She sighed. Elmira Fraser. Dead. Of what?

  Chapter Twelve

  “My badada salad? My badada salad?”

  Even Jamieson felt a trill of discomfort, confronted by Gladys Fraser’s bulldog face, balled fists, and belligerent stance. She always looked pissed off, and usually was. She had looks that had once actually stopped a truck.

  “I’m not saying it was the potato salad. But that’s what everyone ate – except for the few who weren’t sick at all.”

  “And the lobster and the chowder,” said Gladys, jutting her chin out. Stubborn. Defensive.

  “Well…” said Jamieson. How to be diplomatic? “Not everyone.”

  “Wha’? So you are sayin’ it was my badada salad.”

  “No, not until it’s tested. Do you have a sample?”

  “Happen I don’t,” said Gladys, folding her arms across her chest, smug smile set in triumph, eyes daring Jamieson to continue the conversation.

  She dared.

  “Well, we have some of the lobster and chowder, so we can test that.”

  Gladys’s rock solid posture slumped.
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  “Well, she was a cousin, anyway.”

  Jamieson raised an eyebrow. What did that mean?

  Elmira wasn’t actually Gladys’s cousin. Only by marriage. Elmira was her husband Wally’s cousin. And when he came home, he agreed with Gladys. If…if…the potato salad had been bad, it was best it had killed one of their own.

  Gus had dozed off in her chair for a light afternoon nap, but it had been deeper than she thought. When she woke up, she thought she was still dreaming. There were fish – colourful tropical fish, swimming around under the window. Had she had a stroke? She sat up. Blinked her eyes. Blinked again.

  Nothing wrong with her eyesight, other than the usual.

  She was still looking puzzled when Hy came stomping into the mudroom, shaking her boots, kicking them off, and padding into the kitchen. The only thing that made the room a kitchen was the stove – a throwback to the time when the woodstove had been both the centre of the kitchen and the home. Gus cooked in here, but the food preparation, the fridge, and the sink were in the tiny pantry next door. Here in the kitchen were a sofa, coffee table, and Gus’s big purple chair.

  Though Gus kept the heat up, the floor was cold, and Hy was glad she was wearing her fat wool socks. Socks that Gus had made her.

  “All I’m good for anymore,” she gestured to the squares of her log cabin quilt on the floor. “Can’t seem to get it finished.”

  “You’re just spooked,” said Hy.

  “Yes, and I am. By that.” Gus nodded at the swimming fish.

  Hy smiled.

  The fish were a screen saver Ian had especially chosen for Gus. He thought she’d like them. Ian had done what he’d said he would – given Gus his old equipment as soon as he’d set up his new kit. An early Christmas present to himself. And a very strange gift for Gus.

  “Nice fish,” said Hy.

  Gus settled back in her chair, relieved.

  “You see them, too.”

  “Yes, that’s Ian’s old computer. The fish are his screen saver.”

  Gus wrinkled her brow.

  “Screen saver. Now what’s that?” She raised a hand. “No, don’t tell me. You’ll be wasting your breath. What did he give it me for?”