Of Picnics and Predicaments

This chapter takes place immediately after Chapter 17: A Chapter of Accidents in 'Anne of Avonlea', and imagines what might have happened during the proposed picnic at the shore Anne promised Davy and Dora, and also concerns a particular individual who was invited to accompany them.

It is offered in response to Anne o' the Island's prompt for a 'Disaster Concerning Water'.

This follows on narratively from 'Friendship is a Sheltering Tree'.

Anne Shirley, half past seventeen and slender in the way of certain fortunate young ladies who only thought to despair of it in their youth but would be the envy of all womanhood decades later, pursed her lips in the general direction of a particular hazel eyed individual, whose merry demeanour betrayed not a hint of the appropriate restraint one would have thought accorded to the teacher of Avonlea school from the teacher at White Sands, but was entirely too fitting for the roguish, coltish, curly haired boy of the past he was now conjuring.

Between them on the picnic rug nestled in the dunes by the vast, shining shore, Dora and Davy Keith sat, eyes agog as the fabulous tale was recounted in all its absurd, ghastly glory, from the shattering of the slate to the five years of affront the speaker endured, with the brave forbearance, as he would have it, of a knight of the realm trying to reach home after the Crusades.

Both young Keiths were still trying to get the measure of this young man, an intermittent weekend visitor during the term who, with summer now truly in full flourish, appeared to have taken up semi permanent residence either at the gate of Green Gables, the verandah surrounding the homestead itself, or even at the large kitchen table within. Dora rather liked the look of him, and he treated her with a gentlemanly courtesy that even in her tender prepubescent years she couldn't help but respond to favourably. Davy had decided that apart from the evident benefit of another man about the place he liked his easy humour and nonjudgemental approach, even as he was growing wary of the obviously admiring eye that always seemed to be trained in Anne's direction.

"Anne – is it really true? A slate over his head?" Davy asked with incredulous delight.

"I'm afraid so," Anne responded tightly, choosing to ignore Gilbert's broad grin at her discomfort.

"I had a lump on my head the size of an egg," he informed unrepentantly, to which Anne rolled her eyes, and attempted to offer round more sandwiches. Dora was sufficiently distracted but Davy refused to be swayed.

"Did you bleed?" Davy pressed for more details.

"Well, now, I don't rightly know," Gilbert appeared to consider the question carefully. "I had rather too much hair to tell. Still do." The Blythe smile poked out again.

"Did you both mention you wanted to search for sea shells?" Anne asked desperately. "You could have a perfect wander and then come back for cake and apple pie."

The dual desserts were courtesy of both Marilla and Mrs Blythe; an embarrassment of riches for their modest party, but when Gilbert had visited the previous evening at Green Gables and was pressed into service today by Anne's quiet, almost shy invitation and Davy's boisterous one, he hied back to the Blythe farm soon enough to tell of the expedition and beg the pie of his mother. And now he reclined, possibly the happiest man on the Island, with the sun on his face and the ocean breeze in his hair and Anne Shirley's beautiful look of fond exasperation.

"Sea shells! Of course!" Davy had leapt up, instantaneously forgetting anything to do with blunt force head injuries.

"How far should we go, Anne?" Dora wondered.

"Just along the shoreline a little, darling. As long as we can see you. We'll join you soon; Davy you're to go nowhere near the water, mind! Your ankles had better be the only thing wet!"

"Yes, Anne," he sighed dramatically.

"Now Davy," Gilbert stopped him with a large, long fingered hand. "There was a moral to my story, you know. Don't tease girls. Your sister included."

"All right, Gilbert," Davy was already long past the conversation, his toes itching to submerge themselves in the warm waters and his pockets already bulging with the thought of his molluscular discoveries.

"Well, thank you for nothing, Gilbert Blythe," Anne chastised as they watched the children depart, Davy careening across the sand, arms outstretched like an albatross, Dora with her skirts delicately raised, stepping with nimble care.

Gilbert's warm chuckle floated across to her.

"Come on, Miss Shirley. It's not a state secret. It's positively Avonlea folklore now. I haven't said anything about Lily Maid misadventures or climbing onto rooftops."

Anne looked out to the ocean, her hand brushing back the wayward strands of hair that may have darkened slightly to something approaching auburn, but still looked the same apiaceaen hued siren call to him they had done all those now-disputed years ago in the dim hush of the schoolhouse.

"I know we can laugh about it now, but it doesn't erase the memory of it," Anne's tone had turned pensive, her little furrow between auburn brows deepening to a ridge. "Not the slate," she clarified, with a quick glance back to him. "The after."

Gilbert sat forward in consternation, his own brows drawn together, chastising himself for his inadvertent blunder; he had thought to risk the oft-alluded to anecdote on the basis of their year-long friendship, but clearly hadn't accounted for her mercurial mood, being so caught by his own giddy one.

"Anne…"

"It's just…" she struggled with the words, and that alone was rather remarkable. "I was such a goose. A stubborn, silly, spiteful little goose." The words she wished to have carried off by the wind, but instead they hovered incriminatingly in the air between them.

"Anne…" he attempted again, swallowing carefully, his voice dropping a register. "You know none of that matters now."

It wasn't the whole truth; it did matter and always would do, but not in the way it had originally and not in the way she might suppose. It mattered as a lesson learned and a reminder to do better; it mattered as buffer against any future misunderstandings, which would surely pale into insignificance when cast in the light of what had gone before; it mattered as something precious now made more so by the waiting and the struggle to attain it; it mattered as a long road with many a bend to it, that had led them to this spot, sitting together companionably at the shore's edge.

"It matters to me, Gilbert…" her voice was still steeped in regret, and he wondered whether this was not just about them but about all the other concerns that currently pressed on her; of the twins, of Marilla Cuthbert's vulnerable eyesight; of the fading hope of Redmond; and more still; to the lingering sadness of the unspoken anniversary; the year since Matthew's passing.

"What matters," he announced, standing and reaching for her hand, pulling her up towards him in the one effortless motion, "is the here and now, Miss Shirley. Friendship and food and forgiveness, of ourselves, for one. We can remember the past – and the people in it," he looked into her grey eyes meaningfully, to see them cloud with surprise and sorrow, "but we can embrace the future too. And the future has my name on a slice of each dessert you are safeguarding, but first I think we need to see to our little adventurers."

There were several things about that speech that warmed her cheeks; of his firm hand holding hers and the earnest look that the twinkle in his hazel eyes couldn't quite mask and perhaps didn't try to; of the deep timbre of his voice, which always seemed to reverberate through her; of his use of our in relation to the twins; of his kind allusion to Matthew, ever considerate in its quiet delicacy. And there were a few disturbingly new things besides; the broad slant of his shoulders and the tanned forearms showing by virtue of his rolled up shirt sleeves; of the way his smile lifted at the corners, as if some secret offering that was hers alone; of the confidence and humour that he traded with her and gifted in her low moments so generously; of the exchange of shared understandings that ran so deeply beneath the surface and on which she was now already so reliant she often wondered that those five years not knowing him were not his penance, but hers.

"Right then," she breathed, laughing shakily. "The adventurers!"

When the sun, so steadfastly brilliant, began its slowly sinking migration, it heralded the time to gather the happily weary troops and set off for home.

Anne left Gilbert scratching a spelling word game in the sand with Dora, their long sticks as if quills on parchment, to fetch Davy by the rockpools in the distance. She had no doubt he would try to smuggle back any small stray crustaceans in those pockets already bulging with evidence of his other discovered treasure.

Here Anne had cause to pause; the tide was creeping back towards the shore, and Davy had positioned himself father down on the very edge of the rock formation before it jutted out to greet the sea. The waves crashed against the rocks insistently, sending up showers of spray, and there was the feeling of the sea swelling beneath and around them; a benign presence threatening to turn malevolent in minutes.

"Davy!" Anne shouted, her words already lost on the wind. He didn't even turn to acknowledge her attempt.

Anne walked around and onto the rocks, her boots an ineffectual match for the uneven, slippery surfaces. She inched closer to the too-adventurous boy, calling several more times before he finally lifted his head in answer.

"Davy!" Anne now shrilled, her rising unease making the words sound harsh. "Time to go!"

"Sure, Anne," his answer was unconcerned, until he stood from his squatting position and actually properly observed his fast-changing surroundings, his eyes widening in surprise.

"Davy, just move slowly towards me, along the rocks a little way," Anne tried to instruct more calmly, reaching out her hand, knowing that with the rock face on one side of them and the sea on the other now was not the time for remonstrations.

"Right, Anne," he gamely attempted the fast perilous passage, making it almost to the point of his fingers touching hers before a crashing wave sent him cowering against the rocks.

"Davy, you can do it!" Anne breathed, beginning to shake from real fear now, knowing that he was really so small and slight that there was a very real danger of him being caught by another wave and swept out to sea.

Davy thought only for a moment before launching himself the small distance onto the rocky ledge where Anne stood, and she grabbed at him in relief, barely preventing them both from toppling over.

"Sorry, Anne! I'm sorry!" he yelped.

"It's fine, Davy. Let's just get out of here." She took his hand in a grim grasp, turning so that he was slightly sheltered behind her, seeing in dismay that the rising water was already well over the path she had just traversed, and that short of launching themselves into the sea, they were effectively trapped.

Gilbert felt the cold dread fear sweep down his neck, even before he turned to search the far beach for the two figures he could just make out in the distance, surrounded by rocks and water.

Oh, God.

"Dora – stay here," he demanded of the girl, directing her further up back towards their picnic, repacked and ready. "Don't move! I'm fetching Davy and Anne. If I'm not back…" he gulped, not allowing the thought to properly surface. "I'll be back soon."

He set off down the beach at a run.

Gilbert knew that across the rocks was a lost cause; too slippery and half covered with water already. He waded with panicked determination into the ocean, still fully clothed but for the boots he kicked off and lobbed back behind him. He was a decent swimmer, to be sure, as all Island boys were, but he didn't fancy fighting the sea whilst holding both Davy with one arm and Anne with her heavy skirts in the other.

By the time he reached them the water was nearly up to his heart, which was already bursting through his chest with a fear he hadn't encountered since some occasional moments with his father in Alberta. He looked to Anne and she looked at him, and he almost lost his nerve to do what they both knew needed to be done first.

"Gilbert! Davy!"

"Here, Davy, on my back!" Gilbert half turned, and set off once he felt the thin arms cling to him. 'Hang on!"

He waded back as fast as he could, the boy weighing next to nothing and allowing him to use his arms to help manoeuvre them through the waves. He set him down on the wet sand and Davy didn't need to wait on his gruff instruction before scampering back up the beach to his sister.

The return journey back to Anne was the longest of his life; he felt nothing but the urgency to get to her; saw nothing but her pale face and her slight form stark against the wall of rock, as the water grasped at her boots and the hem of her skirts like a hungry animal. He didn't even have the strength for her name; he reached for her and she for him, and he scooped her up in his arms, carrying her like a bride across the threshold through the water which tugged at her skirts even as she clung to him, making herself as small as possible against him to help with his balance, her arms around him, her cold cheek pressed into his throat.

He only began to breathe again when the water was waist deep and he struggled the final steps to safety. Later they would swear the children to secrecy; their joint pact to protect Marilla from unnecessary worry after the fact, themselves from censure and to protect Davy from the banning of any further excursions to the seaside for the term of his natural life. It would be a very unfortunate predicament that explained the freak wave that Anne, Gilbert and Davy had succumbed to whilst searching for sea shells, Marilla and Mrs Blythe would hear later; Dora, dry and sensible to the last, had been up in the dunes far from harm's way. Which was a semi faithful point of fact, at least.

They made not quite so merry a party as Gilbert drove them home in the buggy, Anne and Davy sharing the picnic rug, squeezed in beside him, and Dora nodding off with the picnic basket in the back.

"Do you think we'll laugh about this anecdote in time, then?" Anne asked with weary wryness, risking a glance at him.

Gilbert met her eyes across the crown of Davy's head. He nestled into Anne's shoulder, as she had with him as they fought their way through the waves.

He remembered the fear in her eyes, as she had seen in his.

His answering chuckle was as forced as her tone.

"I'm not too sure, Miss Shirley," even his Blythe smile was a tired, wavering thing. "I think we'd better stick to the slate."