Forty-One

Camille heard the mallet before she saw anyone.

It was seven o’clock on Thursday, and she was crossing the flagstones with Tilly to get her dressed for the bus. Friday’s wholesale was resting in the walk-in, twenty dozen of it, the second delivery of the order. She had been thinking about butter. The sound came from the lake side of the inn. It was a flat wooden knock, repeated three times, and then it stopped.

“That’s hammering,” Tilly said. “Mr. Paquette is finished.”

“He is.”

They went round the corner of the cottage. There were four men on the lawn in orange vests. One stood behind a yellow tripod near the flagpole. Another held a striped pole down by the cedars. The third had a canvas bag over his shoulder, and as she watched he took a wooden stake out of it and drove it into Emmett’s grass with a mallet. The stake had a strip of orange plastic tied to the top, and it fluttered.

She counted nine of them already, in a line that ran from the shore toward the porch.

“Why are there sticks?” Tilly asked.

“Some men are measuring the land.”

“It’s the same size as yesterday.”

“Yes. Come and find your dress.”

She got the child into a dress and a cardigan with hands that did not feel like hers. At twenty past seven the bus pulled up. Lucille looked over Camille’s head at the lawn, and her mouth went thin, and she said nothing in front of her passenger. Tilly climbed the steps and gave her one firm wave.

When Camille came back up the drive, Winnie was on the lawn in the green cardigan with the wooden buttons. The fourth man, who seemed to be in charge, was holding out a sheet of paper.

“Alder Shore Homes,” Winnie said, as Camille reached her. Her voice was shaking with temper. “This gentleman says he has a right.”

“We do, ma’am,” the foreman said. He was a polite, heavy man of about fifty, and he looked as though he had been shouted at on lawns before. “There’s an inspection clause in the offer. Survey and soil, any business day, on notice to the seller. We sent notice last Friday. This is the reply.”

Camille read it over Winnie’s arm. It was a printed email, three lines long, from the office of the chief operating officer of Hallett Hotels. Access was confirmed for Thursday, the third of June. It was signed, in type, D. Pike.

“He didn’t tell us,” she said.

“I wouldn’t know about that. I go where the sheet says.” The foreman folded it. “Fourteen lots. We’ll be gone by eleven. I’m sorry for the hour.”

One of the stakes stood ten feet from the corner of the yellow cottage. Somebody had written on it in black marker, LOT 9 NW.

“Where’s Gideon?” Camille asked.

“He left for Burlington at half past six, for the bank. I rang him ten minutes ago.” Winnie pulled her braid forward over her shoulder and held on to it. “He was past Charlotte. He says the clause is real, he’s read it, and they’re allowed to measure. He says the notice went to New York and nobody passed it on. He was about to turn the car round. I said I’d ask you first.”

“What’s at the bank?”

“Your oven. He signs the lease at nine and the electrician’s contract at three. If he doesn’t, there’s no second oven this month.”

Camille looked at the men and the tripod. Marguerite Roy had sold out by a quarter to nine on Tuesday and telephoned, as promised. She had three people coming to try out for a baker’s job on Monday, and nothing for the one she hired to bake in.

“Can he stop them, if he comes back?”

“He says no.”

“Then tell him to get my oven,” she said. “I’ll look after this end.”

She went into her kitchen. Arlo was at the window over her bench with a whisk in his hand, and the breakfast eggs were not started.

“There’s one by the staff lot that says Lot 12,” he said. “I park in Lot 12, Chef. I’ve half a mind to go out there and—”

“You’ll leave them where they are.”

“They’re in our lawn.”

“They are. If you pull one, an employee has interfered with a buyer’s survey, and somebody in New York writes that down. I don’t want any of us giving that man a sentence to write. Eggs, Arlo. We’ve eleven rooms.”

He went to his eggs. He cracked them harder than they needed.

It was a bad morning, and it got worse. The stakes went in along the shore and up both sides of the lawn and across the croquet ground. Guests on the porch asked the waitress what was being built. Emmett Delisle came round the house on the mower at eight and saw them. He switched the engine off and sat on the machine in the middle of the grass for a long time with his hat in his hands. He had cut that lawn for forty-one years.

At half past nine the telephone rang at the front desk. Winnie came down the corridor afterward and stood in the kitchen doorway.

“That was a young woman from the paper in Burlington. Somebody’s sent her a photograph. She wanted to know whether the Larkspur is closing.”

“What did you tell her?”

“I wanted to tell her nobody is closing my inn.” Winnie’s eyes were bright and angry. “I told her the owners meet on the twenty-sixth, and nothing’s decided, and if she’d like to know what the place is worth she can come and eat dinner. It was like swallowing a spoon.”

“It was the right thing.”

“I know it was. Your daughter has ruined me for the other kind.”

The surveyors packed their tripod at ten to eleven and drove away. They left the stakes.

At eleven Shelley Gebo came to the desk. She had been in housekeeping for eleven years and had two boys and a mortgage in Ferrisburgh. She put an envelope on the blotter and said that the hospital laundry was hiring, and that she had to think about September. She was crying. At ten to twelve Curtis Ladue, who washed pots and did the night porter’s rounds, brought his notice folded in four. He had been offered a job at the cheese plant in March and had turned it down. He said he had rung them at nine and it was still open.

Winnie came and told Camille. She had the two envelopes in her hand.

“I haven’t opened them. I’m putting them in the drawer with the roof invoices, and I’ve told them both I’ll read them on the twenty-seventh and not a day sooner. They can work their time. If they still want to go after that, I’ll write them the best letters in Vermont.”

“Will they wait?”

“Shelley might. Curtis has a start date.” Winnie looked at her. “Camille, they’re all standing about in corners. Doreen stripped the same bed twice. Somebody has to say something to them, and if I do it I’ll lie.”

Camille wiped down her bench. She thought about nineteen people. She had been able to name the ones with mortgages on the twelfth of April and she could still do it.

“Two o’clock,” she said. “The dining room, everybody, when lunch is cleared. Tell them I’m cooking.”

She cooked. She let the lunch service run on Arlo’s hands, and she made two chicken and leek pies the size of cartwheels with yesterday’s rough puff. There was a dish of the new potatoes and a bowl of Emmett’s lettuce. She put out the kouign-amann that had come from the rings a little crooked, because people who were frightened needed sugar.

At two they came in and sat down at four tables pushed together. All nineteen were there, and Josie, who had come in early for the weekend prep and looked scared. Shelley sat at the far end. Curtis stood by the door until Doreen pulled out a chair for him.

Camille served every plate herself. She waited until they had started eating. Then she stood at the head of the table in her whites, with her hands on the back of her own chair.

“I’m going to tell you what I know,” she said. “I’m not going to tell you what I hope, because you can’t pay a mortgage with it.”

Nobody spoke. Forks went on moving, slowly.

“A company called Alder Shore Homes has offered six point four million dollars for this land. They want fourteen house lots. The offer has been there since before Hallett bought us. It runs until the thirtieth of June. It lets them come and measure, and today they did. The man who let them in is an officer of the company, and he wants the place sold. He’s entitled to want that.”

“Is Hallett selling?” Emmett asked, from the foot.

“The owners vote on Saturday the twenty-sixth, here, in this room. Nothing is decided until then, and that’s the truth. I’ve asked the man who would know, more than once, and he’s told me the same thing each time. He’s told my daughter the same thing.”

There was a small movement round the table at that. She let it pass.

“Here’s the rest of what I know. The roof is mended and paid for. We sold twenty-two rooms for three nights last weekend, and this building took sixty-one thousand four hundred dollars. The window has beaten its best morning five times since the first of May. Forty dozen a week go to Burlington at a price I set. There’s a wedding for a hundred and twenty on the lawn the same day they vote. Winnie and Mr. Hallett and I have written one plan. I’ve been through every line of it, and the kitchen lines are mine.” She looked down the table. “I think it’s a good plan. I can’t promise you it wins. If anyone tells you today that your job is safe, they love you and they’re guessing.”

“That’s me she means,” Winnie said. A few of them laughed, not very steadily.

“Shelley. Curtis.” Camille made herself look at them. “You’ve done nothing wrong. I have a child and I know what September looks like. All I’m asking is that nobody else decides today, with those things in the lawn. You have twenty-three days. Give me those, and on the twenty-sixth you’ll get the answer from me, in here, before you read it anywhere.”

It was quiet. Then Doreen reached for the potatoes.

“Well, I’m not leaving before a wedding,” she said. “I’ve ironed forty tablecloths.”

“Eat,” Camille said. “There’s a second pie.”

They ate. It was not cheerful, but they sat for forty minutes and talked to one another, and Curtis had three helpings. When Shelley took her plate to the hatch she touched Camille’s arm above the scar and said nothing.

The stakes stood in the lawn all afternoon. Camille laminated with her back to the window.

The black car came up the drive at twenty past five. She was on the kitchen porch with a crate of lettuce. He got out in the dark suit and stood by the car door, as he had on the twelfth of April, and looked. He took in the lawn and the shore, and the stake by the cottage corner.

He took off his jacket and laid it on the roof of the car. He took off his tie. He rolled his sleeves to the elbow as he walked. He went down the lawn to the stake nearest the water, got both hands round it and worked it back and forth. He drew it out of the ground and went on to the next.

The school bus came at half past. Tilly got down, saw the lawn, and walked straight across it in her red boots with her school bag on her back. Lucille followed, slowly.

“You’re taking them out,” Tilly said.

“I am.”

“Arlo wanted to and Maman said no.”

“Your mother was right. Arlo works here. I own the grass.” He pulled the third. There was mud on his cuffs already. “The people who put these in were allowed to measure. They’ve finished measuring. Nothing in their paper says I have to keep their sticks.”

“What were they measuring for?”

Camille had come down off the porch without deciding to. She stopped a few yards away. He glanced at her, and she nodded.

“If the inn were sold, somebody would build fourteen houses here,” he said to the child. “Each stick is the corner of a piece of ground for a house. It isn’t sold. I told you I’d say when I knew, and I don’t know yet. But I’m not going to make everybody look at these until then.”

Tilly looked at the stake in his hand. “How many are there?”

“I haven’t counted.”

“I’ll count.” She put her bag down on the grass. “That’s three. You have to give them to me after, or I’ll lose my place.”

He gave them to her. She laid them in a row beside her bag. He went along the shore and she walked beside him, and each time one came out of the ground she said its number aloud in a clear, carrying voice. “Seven. Eight. That one’s Lot 4. Nine.”

People had come out. Emmett stood at the edge of the terrace with a wheelbarrow. Doreen and Shelley were at an upstairs window in the north wing. Arlo was on the porch with his arms folded, and Curtis was behind him. Nobody said anything. They watched the chief executive of Hallett Hotels go the length of eleven acres in his suit trousers, bending and hauling. One had been driven in beside a root, and he had to kneel to it.

Camille watched too. His shirt had stuck to his back. He did not look up at the windows once, and he made no speech. She felt it low in her body, plain as hunger, and she did not argue with it.

“Twenty-six,” Tilly called. “Twenty-seven. Emmett, you can bring the barrow, they’re getting heavy.”

Emmett brought the barrow. The stake by the cottage corner was the thirty-eighth. The last three were by the staff lot.

“Forty-one,” Tilly said. She walked round the wheelbarrow and checked. “It’s forty-one. I counted every one and I didn’t skip.”

“Forty-one,” Gideon agreed. He was breathing hard. “Thank you. I’d have lost count at thirty.”

“What happens to them?”

“They belong to somebody else, so I’m not going to burn them, though I’d like to. They’ll go in the boathouse, tied in a bundle. Then on the twenty-sixth I know where they are.”

“I’ll tie it,” said Tilly.

He came up the lawn to Camille while the child and the gardener wheeled the barrow down. His hands were black to the wrist.

“The oven comes on the eleventh,” he said. “The sheeter with it.”

“Thank you. Two of mine gave notice this morning.”

His face tightened. “Who?”

“Shelley Gebo and Curtis Ladue. Winnie’s sitting on the letters.” She kept her voice low. “Your Mr. Pike stood in my lobby and looked at my daughter. Thirteen days later I had a stake at the corner of her bedroom. Tell me those aren’t connected.”

“The clause has been in the offer since March. He was entitled to use it.” He wiped his palms on his trousers, which did them no good. “He was not entitled to keep the notice from me. I’ll be saying so to him tonight. I don’t know yet what I think beyond that, Camille. He taught me to read a balance sheet, and I’ve never had to wonder about him before.”

“Well, you’d better start,” she said, and went in to her service.
***
His sister arrived at a quarter to seven, in the middle of the first seating.

Camille had said yes to it on Monday. Bea Hallett was the company’s head of design, and the directors were going to sit in the dining room. She could come and choose paint. She was to come as the woman who chose paint and as nothing else.

Camille saw her first through the screen door, between a lamb and two trout. A small fair woman in a striped shirt was sitting on the kitchen porch boards with her shoes off, and paint cards were fanned out all round her. Lucille was on the bench with her arms folded. Tilly stood by the post, at a distance, watching.

The woman had not said hello to the child. She had not crouched down or exclaimed. She was laying cards out and talking to herself at great speed.

“That’s too pink. That’s a hospital. That’s what they sent me for Boston, eleven beiges, I ask you. That one’s butter. Is it butter? It might be custard.”

“They’re in the wrong order,” Tilly said.

The fair head came up. Camille saw her look at the child’s face once, properly. Then she looked very quickly at the lake and breathed in through her nose.

“Are they?” she said. Her voice was nearly even. “I’ve been doing this for nine years. What’s wrong with it?”

“You’ve put a green one with the yellows.”

“That’s a yellow. It says so on the back. It’s called Meadow Light.”

“It’s got green in it. Put it next to that one and look.”

The woman put it next to that one. She looked. “Well, damn,” she said. “Sorry. Well, bother. It has.”

“You’re allowed to say damn. Winnie does.” Tilly came two steps nearer. “You talk fast.”

“I do. My brother says I talk the way other people fall downstairs.”

“Who’s your brother?”

“Gideon. I’m Bea.”

Tilly considered her. Camille stood with a plate in each hand and did not breathe.

“You don’t have a wedge,” Tilly said.

“No. He got that and I got the hair. I’ve always thought it was a poor bargain.” Bea held out a handful of cards without getting up. “I have to choose a colour for the dining room walls by Saturday, and I’m told you sort things. I’d like a second opinion, if you’re interested. If you aren’t, I’ll muddle on.”

Tilly did not take the cards at once. She looked at them and at the woman, and then she knelt down on the boards.

“The dining room faces the lake,” she said. “So it shouldn’t be any of the blues, because then it’s all the same.”

“Chef,” Arlo said, at Camille’s shoulder. “Table nine.”

She took the plates out.

It was half past nine before she had the kitchen down. Bea Hallett was waiting on the stool by the porch sink. She had left Tilly’s stool alone, and Camille noticed. She stood up when Camille came out, as her brother did.

“I’m Bea. I’ve been told I’m here about paint. I’ve been told twice, and once was in writing.”

“Camille. You were careful with her.”

“I was terrified of her. She rejected four of my whites.” Bea’s hands were moving, turning a paint card over and over. “I won’t say anything about what she looks like. I’ll say it to my brother in the car park and cry on him. I wanted to tell you one thing, and then I’ll go and bother Mrs. Ostrander about curtains.”

“Go on.”

“You should know how the vote falls, because I don’t think he’d say it to you this baldly. A sale goes to the shares. Gideon has forty-five. I have twenty-five. Our mother has twenty. Desmond has ten.” She counted them off on the card. “Forty-five isn’t fifty-one. He can’t keep this place alone. If Mother and Desmond and I go one way, that’s fifty-five, and it’s gone.”

“And which way do you go?”

“With the numbers.” Bea met her eyes. Her own were quick and very direct. “I love him. I voted against him in 2023 on a ballroom in Chicago, and I was right, and he didn’t speak to me for a week. I won’t vote for a leaky inn because my brother was happy in it, and I won’t vote for it because of who lives in that yellow house. He told me you’d despise him if he did. I gather that goes for me.”

“It does.”

“Good. Then it’s simple. He says the kitchen lines in that plan are yours, and that you made him take fifteen percent off them. So the numbers I’m voting with had better be yours, Chef, because his I’ve learned to check.”

Camille leaned against the porch post. She had a sudden unreasonable wish to laugh.

“Does your mother know anything?”

“Nothing. She has a photograph of Dad on her desk with that eye looking straight out of it, and she’s coming here on the twenty-sixth with her twenty shares. That isn’t mine to manage, and I’ve told him it had better be somebody’s.” Bea put the card in her pocket. “I was in that house some of the autumn of 2021. I never saw an envelope. I’d like to know who did. That’s all I’ll say about that.”

“That’s enough about that.”

“Understood.” She picked up her shoes. At the screen door she turned. “She chose Meadow Light, by the way, with the green in it. She said the room should look like outside came in. She’s right. I’m furious.”

She went in. Camille heard her quick voice in the corridor, asking somebody about curtain poles.

She had not meant to like any Hallett but the one she could not help. She crossed the flagstones in the dark. There was a bare patch by the cottage corner where a stake had stood. She thought about twenty-five shares that would go wherever the arithmetic went.

In the cottage she looked in at one green in a jar and four on the sill. Then she sat down at the kitchen table, opened the blue binder at the first tab, and began to check every line again.
***