A Wedding in December_ A Novel - Anita Shreve [10]
“Dr. Fraser won’t be home until six o’clock,” she said. “He’s at hospital. A complication with a surgery. Are you hungry? Do you need a bath? You could set that by the door, and I’ll have it taken up to your room.”
Innes had yet to say a word.
A man appeared, slow and slightly sullen. He was dressed in tie and jacket, though there was no mistaking him for anything but a servant. He took the suitcase and began to climb the stairs, treading heavily, a hand on the banister, each footfall a small and unwarranted reproach.
Innes took off his gloves and set them on the table.
“The coatrack is in the corner,” Mrs. Fraser said.
“Could I give you a hand with that?” Innes asked, meaning the red yarn. He extended his arms to the twisted skein.
Mrs. Fraser hooked the coiled wool over the back of a mahogany chair. “You’d better come with me,” she said. “I’ll show you to your room. You must be wanting cocoa and a hot bath.”
It was Agnes’s opinion that at that moment in time Innes Finch wanted cocoa and a hot bath and a great deal more: challenging work and easy love; exciting risk; exceptional beauty.
Agnes didn’t think that she had been particularly lucky in her own looks. Her face was prematurely weathered, a result of having stood on the sidelines of several hundred field hockey games and practices, as well as having spent nearly thirty years on the coast of Maine. She had a strong body, but not an elegant one. She was only five feet, four inches tall, which, these days, was considered short (her varsity girls towered over her). Her hair was light brown, cropped close to the head, and lately it had begun to frizz in the humidity, which she found annoying. She did have, however, beautiful eyes—deep set and dark brown in color, the only feature about which she routinely received compliments. When she first started teaching, she used to wear wool skirts with oxford cloth shirts each day to her classes. Now, with the looser dress code, she usually put on a pair of chinos and a polo shirt. She prided herself on the fact that she still had a waist.
For twelve of the seventeen years Agnes had taught at Kidd, she had resided in school housing. Some of the faculty lived on the beach in small cottages referred to as shacks, but most lived on campus in dorm apartments. After more than a decade of duty as a dorm parent, Agnes now had a condo, leased to her until she stopped teaching, at which time it would revert to the school.
It was an unusual condo, carved from one of the larger houses, and Agnes thought she could be quite happy there until she retired. She lived in a corner of the house that included a two-story turret. On the first floor, she had a kitchen and a living room, and in the turret itself a large round table surrounded by a leather banquette and windows. She lived at that table, eating, correcting papers, and composing lineups and drills for her teams. On the second floor was a large bath and, in the turret, her bed, not round, the headboard situated so that she could look out to sea, an activity that consumed an inordinate amount of her time. She also had a small balcony off the bedroom on which she could sit and do the same with a cappuccino in hand, the expensive machine a gift from her sister, who worked for Citibank in New York.
Nearly every residence on the campus had a view—of surf, of pebbled beach, of rocky coastline. The campus land had been left untended so that it was all beach scrub and footpaths between buildings. Though there was a certain drama in being perched on a bluff overlooking the ocean, the feel of the school was more homely than grand. In winter, the wind was terrific. Whole months went by when Agnes did not open her windows for fear that the wind would blow over her plants. An old golf course had been turned into playing fields, with the gymnasium situated directly in its center. From the team’s practice field, Agnes could see not only the ocean but also the wild hydrangeas