Late in the spring, he brings seeds. They are for beans and tomatoes and cabbage and carrots and other vegetables meant for summer planting. They come in crisp, tightly wound packets of waxed paper to keep from sprouting where they have lived for months, first in some barely cool cellar and then in the wetter and darker hold of a boat passing from Jamaica to Saint Kitts. They're not precious like books or pattern cotton, and what they will grow bears no resemblance whatsoever to the shrubs and flowering plants of a Lady's garden. But, he thinks, there can be such a thing as sweetness in the necessary and so is pleased with himself anyway.
(The house isn't new, but it is new to them. The garden isn't undug, but it is grown over and filled with weeds in need of uprooting. They have been on Nassau for two years and soon there will be a letter from someone Miranda once knew in England which comes by way of Port Royal and begins with, Dear Lady Hamilton, First allow me to express my regret that I have not written prior. News of your husband's regrettable passing has at last inspired me to--', but today he's come from Nassau Town where a girl of barely fourteen named Guthrie has beaten a man twice her size with the unpleasant side of a broom in full view of the street, God, and everyone, and he can't help but be amused enough by it, and satisfied with the money earned from the latest prize in addition to the seeds, and so affords the island's interior with is unfolding whispering grasses and low scrub and the life slowly taking place at the middle of it some version of charity.)
"I've a brick of tea as well," he says in the thinly furnished front room of the house, producing the thick packet of waved paper from inside his coat. The floor is faintly uneven here, but the foundation of the house has yet to shift far enough to crack any plaster. "Though I can't imagine you've made your way through the last one yet."
Miranda's acquaintance with this life has happened in the same span as James', and yet she feels as though change has come over her more slowly than he. Every time he strides through her front door (their door, but she finds she cannot help but think of the house with a sense of possession), the man he's made himself into sloughs away a little more slowly. The transformation is, perhaps, more dramatic when one encounters more of the world--or she simply spends too much time with herself to see more alteration than the calluses her palms have developed.
"I have not," she agrees, letting the words sit lightly between them as she sets the kettle on the pothook. The last brick of tea is not more than half gone, each little crumble of leaves having been steeped and resteeped more than once; the price is too dear, and James' comings and goings too unpredictable, to risk using it up quickly. She learned that lesson in the first year.
Leaving the water to heat, she comes back to the table, and to the gift he's brought. The pointed envelopes bear the names of plants, written in a careful hand; she lifts and looks at each packet in turn before setting it back on the tabletop. When she is finished, she looks up at Flint, one hand smoothing over his coat, and the familiar chest beneath it. "Thank you. I trust it was a good voyage?"
He might touch her hand then - catch her knuckles between his palm and the span of his collarbone. There could be some tender instance there. Instead, he grins and his hand doesn't float up from the chair back where it's settled. These are early days yet, and good humor and some element of self-satisfaction is a more honest thing in them. Later, when things have grown uneven and lopsided, he'll find the sometimes urge to touch (to cling to) her difficult to master.
But not today.
"It should cover the debts for the refit, in any case." It's better than that, says the certain curve of his mouth. But the particulars are specific to the crew, and there's no need to bore her with them.
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(The house isn't new, but it is new to them. The garden isn't undug, but it is grown over and filled with weeds in need of uprooting. They have been on Nassau for two years and soon there will be a letter from someone Miranda once knew in England which comes by way of Port Royal and begins with, Dear Lady Hamilton, First allow me to express my regret that I have not written prior. News of your husband's regrettable passing has at last inspired me to--', but today he's come from Nassau Town where a girl of barely fourteen named Guthrie has beaten a man twice her size with the unpleasant side of a broom in full view of the street, God, and everyone, and he can't help but be amused enough by it, and satisfied with the money earned from the latest prize in addition to the seeds, and so affords the island's interior with is unfolding whispering grasses and low scrub and the life slowly taking place at the middle of it some version of charity.)
"I've a brick of tea as well," he says in the thinly furnished front room of the house, producing the thick packet of waved paper from inside his coat. The floor is faintly uneven here, but the foundation of the house has yet to shift far enough to crack any plaster. "Though I can't imagine you've made your way through the last one yet."
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"I have not," she agrees, letting the words sit lightly between them as she sets the kettle on the pothook. The last brick of tea is not more than half gone, each little crumble of leaves having been steeped and resteeped more than once; the price is too dear, and James' comings and goings too unpredictable, to risk using it up quickly. She learned that lesson in the first year.
Leaving the water to heat, she comes back to the table, and to the gift he's brought. The pointed envelopes bear the names of plants, written in a careful hand; she lifts and looks at each packet in turn before setting it back on the tabletop. When she is finished, she looks up at Flint, one hand smoothing over his coat, and the familiar chest beneath it. "Thank you. I trust it was a good voyage?"
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But not today.
"It should cover the debts for the refit, in any case." It's better than that, says the certain curve of his mouth. But the particulars are specific to the crew, and there's no need to bore her with them.