“All right,” said Tina. “If we don’t like it we can always leave.”
“Then I think you’d better quickly drink your coffee. These things start early,” said Geraldine. “I’ll probably have gone to bed when you get home, so I’ll say goodnight to you now.”
“Will I see you in the morning, Mrs. Lockwood?” said Hibbard.
“Probably not, so this is goodbye, too. But come again soon. Don’t wait for some business to come up. Just come, any time,” said Geraldine.
When they had gone Geraldine said, “You ought to encourage that, George.”
“May I ask why?” said George.
“Because Tina needs someone like him. He may seem rather dull, but he has good manners, and he’s safe, if you know what I mean. Also, I think he’s fallen for Tina.”
“Fallen for her? That’s jumping to conclusions, I must say.”
“Not impossible, though. You always knew right away when you were attracted to a girl.”
“Don’t compare me to young Hibbard.”
“Oh, I don’t know. You have things in common,” she said.
“Very little. However, if you think he’d be good for Tina, as a sort of stopgap, we can have him down again.”
“Yes, and don’t let too much grass grow under your feet,” said Geraldine. “She needs someone now, or she’s liable to take up with the wrong kind.”
“She’s been confiding in you?” said George.
“Much more than she meant to,” said Geraldine.
“You being a woman of the world, of course you can read between the lines.”
“That just happens to be the truth,” said Geraldine. “Well, almost time for my French lesson.”
“Your French lesson?”
“I get Montreal on the radio, and it’s fun to see how good my French is.”
“Au ‘voir, chérie,” he said.
“Au Voir,” she said. “Don’t stay up too late. At least don’t be downstairs when they come home. Give them a chance, George.”
He was not downstairs, but he was wide awake when they got home. He heard the car—Hibbard’s Dodge—and then he saw them walk toward the beach. It was ten minutes to twelve. Two hours later he heard them again, moving about in the kitchen, closing the door of the refrigerator, chair legs moving on the linoleum, their footsteps on the stairs. He wondered how “safe” Hibbard was. He wondered about Hibbard and that gym teacher at St. Bartholomew’s. He slept badly that night. The silent house seemed to be full of people lying awake with their thoughts. So it seemed to him, at least.
At breakfast George Lockwood was the only member of the family who came down to speed the parting guest. “You’re going to see me again this weekend, Mr. Lockwood,” said Hibbard.
“I am? Here?”
Hibbard nodded. “I’m sailing down from Marblehead, some friends of mine. And Tina’s joining us. Spend Saturday night in Nantucket. Sunday we’ll be at West Chop for lunch, and then I’m coming here to spend Sunday night.”
“That ought to be nice,” said George.
“I’m hoping to persuade her to come to Maine two weeks from now. Will you put in a good word for Maine?”
“No, but I won’t put in a bad word. Tina does as she pleases, and I encourage that.”
“She has great, great admiration for you. She thinks her father is quite a fellow.”
“I think she’s quite a girl,” said George Lockwood. It was the moment, and George Lockwood sensed it, for a restrained demonstration of paternal love.
“If I may say so, so do I,” said Hibbard.
“Glad to hear it. I want her to have more friends on this side of the ocean. Europe is no place for her, not as a permanent thing.”
“She wants to live abroad?” said Hibbard.
“Oh, she’s made up her mind to. She’s only here now because of me. You know how things are between my son and me.”
“Yes,” said Hibbard.
“And my brother’s death took it out of me, more than I knew at the time. But as I said yesterday, Tina’s a very perceptive girl. Have some more coffee.”
“No more, thanks. I’ll return your shirt on Sunday,” said Hibbard.
“Don’t you dare forget,” said George Lockwood, and smiled.
Tina saw Hibbard at least once a week throughout the summer. There were so many gaps in her unsought explanations of her comings and goings that George Lockwood recognized the signs of an affair. She paid him the courtesy of her explanations, but she grew uncommunicative during their moments together. He did not press her, a strategy that was less inspired by delicacy than by a growing conviction that she had not yet committed herself to love and was mystified by her self-repression. The girl had discovered on her own the complexities in Hibbard that he had unconsciously revealed to her father. George Lockwood wanted to tell her that bisexuality was neither monstrous nor rare; but in return for the information she might laugh in his face. What did he really know of what went on in that well-shaped head or between those now sunburned thighs? Who had kissed her, where and when? Whom had she kissed? These were things he would never know, because only she could tell him.
Nevertheless he was content for her, in spite of her retreat from their previous tentative rapport. This much she was alive, engaged with the life of another human being. Superficially she bloomed, when she might instead have been wilting. She was, moreover, present instead of absent, and if she was questioning the degree of her comitment to love, her turmoil was observable and not taking place in some foreign surroundings. Whichever way her decision went, it would be made here, where her father would not have long to wait to see it, to hear it.
She came down to breakfast one morning late in August, and on her plate, on top of some letters, was a small package, insured parcel-post with the return address of a Boston jeweler-silversmith.
“I hope your mail is more interesting than mine,” said George Lockwood.
“I think it will be,” she said. She got a fruit scissors off the sideboard and opened the parcel. Out of a long, slender blue imitation-leather box she lifted a gold wristwatch and dangled it before him.
“I’ve never seen that before,” he said.
“I’ve only seen it once before myself,” she said. “It was being engraved.”
“Am I to be allowed to examine it?”
“Of course,” she said.
He laid it flat on the palm of his hand. The bracelet was of fine gold mesh, the face of the watch was surrounded by diamonds, the top of the stem was a small ruby. “Exquisite,” he said.
“You’re dying of curiosity. Go ahead and read the inscription,” she said.
He looked on the back and read aloud: “ ‘Tina—time is a-wasting—P. H.’ “ He handed the watch back to her. “He could have sent you the same message on a penny postcard. But that’s no penny postcard.”
“No,” she said, looking at the watch.
“I’m not going to ask you anything, Tina. I’ll be damned if I will,” said her father.
“Do you have to?” she said.
“Yes, I have to, but I’m not going to.”
“He wants me to marry him before school opens,” she said.
“Are you going to?” said her father.
“I think I will,” she said.
He laughed. “You think you will. School probably opens in two or three weeks.”
“Three weeks from next Tuesday, to be exact,” she said.
“Where would you be married, if you decide to be?”
“At a justice of the peace. Obviously we couldn’t have a big wedding this year, and I never wanted one anyhow.”
“You could have a small wedding in Swedish Haven. Just the two families.”