walk along the beach and lost their umbrellas to the wind. One of the gentlemen from Austria complained that his camera was destroyed by the rain. Mr. Burden the fiddler got drunk in someone’s car, and played his fiddle in there, with the windows up and the doors locked. They couldn’t get him out for hours. Stan Thomas’s fire pit never really took off, what with the soaked sand and the driving rain, and the women of the island held their cakes and pies close against their bodies, as if they were protecting infants. The affair was a disaster.
Mary Smith-Ellis bustled around in a borrowed fisherman’s slicker, moving chairs under trees and covering tables with bed sheets, but there was no way to salvage the day. The party had been her event to organize, and it was a calamity, but Stan Thomas liked the way she took defeat without shutting down. He liked the way she kept moving around, trying to maintain cheer. She was a nervous woman, but he liked her energy. She was a good worker. He liked that a great deal. He was a good worker himself, and he scorned idleness in any man or woman.
“You should come to my house and warm up,” he told her as she rushed past him at the end of the afternoon.
“Oh, no,” she said. “You should come with me to Ellis House and warm up.”
She repeated this invitation later, after he had helped her return the tables to the school and the pews to the church, so he drove her up to Ellis House at the top of the island. He knew where it was, of course, although he’d never been inside.
“That sure must be a nice place to live,” he said.
They were sitting in his truck in the circular driveway; the window glass was fogged from their breath and their steaming wet clothes.
“Oh, they stay here only for the summer,” Mary said.
“What about you?”
“Of course I stay here, too. I stay wherever the family stays. I take care of Miss Vera.”
“You take care of Miss Vera Ellis? All the time?”
“I’m her helpmate,” Mary said, with a wan smile.
“And what’s your last name again?”
“Ellis.”
“Ellis?”
“That’s right.”
He couldn’t figure this out exactly. He couldn’t figure out who this woman was. A servant? She sure acted like a servant, and he’d seen the way that Vera Ellis bitch harped at her. But how come her last name was Ellis? Ellis? Was she a poor relative? Who ever heard of an Ellis hauling chairs and pews all over the place and bustling around in the rain with a borrowed slicker. He thought about asking her what the hell her story was, but she was a sweetheart, and he didn’t want to antagonize her. Instead, he took her hand. She let him take it.
Stan Thomas, after all, was a good-looking young man, with a trim haircut and handsome dark eyes. He wasn’t tall, but he had a fine, lean figure and an appealing intensity, a directness, that Mary liked very much. She didn’t mind his taking her hand at all, even after so short an acquaintance.
“How long are you going to be around?” he asked.
“Until the second week of September.”
“That’s right. That’s when they—you—always leave.”
“That’s right.”
“I want to see you again,” he said.
She laughed.
“I’m serious,” he said. “I’m going to want to do this again. I like holding your hand. When can I see you again?”
Mary thought silently for a few minutes and then said, in an open way, “I’d like to see you some more, too, Mr. Thomas.”
“Good. Call me Stan.”
“Yes.”
“So when can I see you?”
“I’m not sure.”
“I’m probably going to want to see you tomorrow. What about tomorrow? How can I see you tomorrow?”
“Tomorrow?”
“Is there any reason I can’t see you tomorrow?”
“I don’t know,” Mary said, and turned to him suddenly with a look of near panic. “I don’t know!”
“You don’t know? Don’t you like me?”
“Yes, I do. I like you, Mr. Thomas. Stan.”
“Good. I’ll come by for you tomorrow around four o’clock. We’ll go for a drive.”
“Oh, my goodness.”
“That’s what we’re going to do,” said Stan Thomas. “Tell whoever you have to tell.”
“I don’t know that I have to tell anybody, but I don’t know whether I’ll have time to go for a drive.”
“Do whatever you have to do, then. Figure out a way. I really do want to see you. Hey! I insist on it!”