Fortune's rocks_ a novel - Anita Shreve [119]
“Miss Biddeford.”
By prior arrangement, Ezra has agreed to wait for her. She waves to the fisherman and then allows Philbrick to take her arm and lead her into the cottage.
“You are very polite and so will not say anything, but you are shocked that this should be my home,” Philbrick says disarmingly.
“Well, yes, rather,” she answers, smiling slightly. “I had imagined . . .”
“Indeed. I am a man of few needs, apart from my vanities, and I discovered that I much prefer living in a small house to rattling around in a manse that is clearly too large for a single man. Also, I do not care for the constant invasion of privacy that servants must necessarily cause. Therefore, I decided, some years ago, to swap grandeur for freedom, and I must say I have never regretted the trade. My housekeeping skills are minimal, not to say nonexistent, however, and so I have a housekeeper who comes in twice a week and cooks for me. But I am rambling on and on when you are standing here in need of food and drink.”
“No, no,” she protests as she gives him her parasol. “Please do not go to any trouble.”
“Nonsense. I seldom have visitors, and Mrs. Marsh has made marionberry pie. We shall go into the parlor and take a small lunch of sandwiches and so forth and then the pie. Or would you rather sit out here?”
Olympia gazes around her at the sunporch, the white beaded boards rising to the chair railing, the large windows in a bank above it. Some of the windows have been latched to the ceiling, so that breezes move through the screens. Around the sun parlor, someone has planted beach roses and flox, and to one side she can see the ocean. Through the open doorway of the cottage, she catches a glimpse of part of a kitchen. Unadorned. Yellow wood.
“Here would be lovely,” she says.
He asks her to sit in one of two wicker rockers he has drawn up to a small round table. With no discernible limp, he disappears into the kitchen. His foot must be better, she decides. She gets up and follows Philbrick into the kitchen. She asks if there is somewhere she might wash up.
“My dear. Of course. Walk straight through there, and at the end of the hallway, you will find the lavatory.”
Olympia does as she is instructed, admiring a small parlor that looks more like a man’s study than a sitting room. On an intricate walnut desk with many compartments are half a dozen silver frames of varying sizes with photographs of what must be family members, including several of handsome young men who might be Philbrick’s younger brothers. In another corner is a grand piano, too large for this modest room, and on it a sweet-scented bouquet of flox in a pink glass vase. Beside the piano, there is a small silk settee as well as an ornate captain’s chair, not unlike her father’s. A Persian rug covers the floor and even licks at the walls. It is a room filled with furniture that clearly used to belong to a larger house — pieces too cherished to abandon.
Along the hallway, papered in tasteful green-and-black stripes, are several good oil paintings. She recognizes one by Childe Hassam, another by Claude Legny. At the end of the hallway are two rooms, and she guesses that the lavatory will be on the right. She realizes her mistake at once, however; she appears to have entered Philbrick’s bedroom. Its accoutrements are obviously masculine: the double bed, ill made; a cherry dresser, bare but for a man’s hairbrushes and humidor; another bureau of bleached pine on which a bowl and pitcher sit. She turns to leave, but something odd about the room causes her to linger a second longer than she might, and it is then that she notes the second set of boar-bristle brushes, the two identical paisley silk dressing gowns on hooks beside the bureau, the two sets of striped pajamas folded, one under each of the pillows of the double bed. Two matching stained-glass lamps sit on bedside tables, and next to each are large gold glass ashtrays with the remains of cigars in each. She moves closer to one of the tables, picks up a photograph in a marquetry frame. The young man has a beautiful face, seen