Dolan of Sugar Hills (5 page)

“Be quiet, Molly, mind your own business.”

“You made it my business when you included me in it, Cane, when you confided to me what you intended doing. Now I just can’t stand by and hold my tongue.”

“That’s exactly what you will do, woman, do you understand?”

“I don’t understand at all; most of all I don’t understand you. To ask her to dance once or twice might be harmless enough, but to monopolize her, to take her completely over as you did, to draw attention to the fact that you were excluding everyone else—why, only a fool would do that. Can’t you see what trouble it can mean?”

“You’re an alarmist, Molly. We’re a long way from the island.”

“In these parts a wind can carry a message, and what a message!”

“A message that I asked a girl to dance?”

“Cane, you started this thing, remember.”

“And I’ll finish it. I’ll finish it
my
way.”

“Not if you go on like you did tonight. Don’t you see you had no right even to attend the dance?”

“Molly, get yourself to bed in one minute or else—”

“I’m going, but I still say you’d better watch your step, Cane.” Sheila heard Molly begin to move across the room. Whirling around herself, she raced down the corridor to her own room and closed the door.

Now she really needed warm milk, she thought ruefully, now she certainly would not sleep.

Lying in bed wide awake hours later, Sheila decided gravely to question Molly at the first opportunity and demanding an explanation of the strange things she had said.

What message could a wind carry to an island? And to whom? And why? Why was it wrong for Cane Dolan to ask a girl to dance with him? What was this thing Cane had started and intended to finish
his
way? Why must he watch his step?

“Tomorrow I’ll ask Molly,” murmured Sheila, feeling sleep at last catching up to her.

But Sheila didn’t ask, neither that day, nor the next. She didn’t even have time to think of the thing that had kept her worried and awake.

When she opened her heavy eyes several hours later it was to a black and menacing world.

“Harriet is on the move,” reported Molly unhappily, perching on Sheila’s bed and drinking her own tea with her, as well. “Cane received a report from the radar cyclone warning station that we’ll be right in the eye of the belt.”

CHAPTER SEVEN

Outside her window Sheila saw what Molly told her were “mare’s tails”—streaks of high cirrus cloud like the long flowing manes and tails of wild horses streaming out as they raced at full gallop across a gray sky.

Even as she watched they sped out of sight and a threatening bank of black cloud began to build instead.

Molly was saying worriedly that although it was late in the year for Harriet, with cyclones one never really could tell.

“The last big one was during an April, eighty-four inches of rain in six days. The breakwaters at Sugaropolis were destroyed, and the town was flooded.”

“Did Sugar Hills suffer?”

“It suffered, but on that occasion not like Mackay or Bowen. Cyclones are odd things; you’ll have to ask Cane about them. It’s not the first blow that does the worst damage, it’s the continued arcs coming in different directions that give the final touch to already weakened structures
and
—” Molly sighed “—the crops.”

The cloud bank was becoming formidable now.

“When you’re in the target area,” Molly related, “there is what they call an eye, or core, of dead calm after the first heavy onslaught, and I always think that that calm’s the worst of it all. It’s the waiting, the wondering what the next blow, will be.”

“How long will it take, Molly?”

“Probably the very fierce winds will be over in an hour, but there’ll be banking up before that and plenty of gusts afterward. Then there’s always the danger of secondary satellite cyclones building up from the main one. Last year Millicent came after Harriet, not so vicious, but nasty for all that.”

Molly looked at Sheila ruefully. “Am I scaring you to death,

Shelley? It’s just that I don’t want you to be taken by surprise. It’s best to be warned.”

“Molly, what can I do to help?” she begged. “There must be something; I can’t sit around and wait.”

“I think there will be plenty to do soon, Shelley, I think it’s very probable that Cane will evacuate the cottages and billet the families, some in the barracks, some here with us. The units are sturdy, but they are small, so more vulnerable. If Cane believes Harriet is going to be really fierce this time we can expect a full house.”

An hour later Cane returned to Sugar Hills. He had been down to look at the water, and he reported driving clouds no higher than a ship’s mast that shut out all the daylight. Rain and spray were blowing horizontally, he said, and the millpond that Sheila had admired for its glassy calm was already a rolling, monstrous sea.

“What about the plantation?” Sheila inquired.

“We’ve done what we can,” he shrugged. “It’s now in Harriet’s hands.”

“Are you evacuating the families?”

“Yes, I believe I will. It’s possible we might be lucky and escape the very center, but I’d feel happier with the units emptied.”

At noon the barometer was still falling steadily. A gusty wind was blowing, but it had not as yet reached gale strength.

Molly and Sheila made up as many beds as the house could provide, then started on sofas, divans, and improvised mattresses of cushions arranged on the floor.

Molly then began a mammoth baking, and this time Sheila was invited to help. By the time the families arrived there was enough to feed them for several days.

Sheila allotted the beds, insisting on Baby Ann and her parents taking possession of her own room. They protested, but she pointed out that it would be more convenient for everyone that way.

She placed the essentials she would need herself beside a makeshift crib in the corner of the big lounge. The room was like a dormitory now, beds at all angles. She heard Marty and Truda arguing hotly over one of the beds, and intervened, “What does a bed matter, you silly little girls?”

“It does so matter, Misshelley, this bed is near Cane’s.”

“Cane’s?”

Sheila looked quickly across the room, across the cribs already purloined by Carlo, Noel and several other youngsters, and saw unmistakably that it was Cane’s. She recognized his torch placed ready for the night ... several packets of his favorite brand of cigarettes ... boxes of matches. So Cane, too, had given up his room.

Truda and Marty had reached an agreement. They smiled at Sheila in proud self-sacrifice. “We’ve decided you can sleep near him,” they beamed.

While Sheila strove for words, Cane Dolan came to the rescue. He had strolled in at that moment and summed up the position.

“Carlo will sleep here,” he ordered. “In an emergency like this men have to confer together, just as women must also plan.”

Marty and Truda began to plan at once. They went out, important little heads close together, and across the room Sheila met Cane’s enigmatic glance.

What would have happened then, who would have spoken first, what would have been said, Sheila was not to know.

Like a monstrous wave breaking against a rock, like a truck discharging a load of metal, Harriet hit Sugar Hills.

The fury of the cyclone instantly reached screeching point, the wind flogged madly, the house seemed to be shuddering, for a moment Sheila knew a nerve-paralyzing fear.

The fear passed quickly. It disappeared as Marty burst into scared tears, as Truda grabbed anxiously at her skirt. In comforting, in reassuring, Sheila forgot her own dismay. Glancing across the room again, she saw that Cane was comforting and reassuring in his turn, comforting a pale but silent Carlo, a flushed but vociferous Nino, a quietly crying Noel. Once more their eyes locked. This time Cane smiled. Sheila smiled back.

Presently Sheila went to Ann’s mother. The little mother was surprisingly calm. “That’s because of baby,” she admitted, and Sheila looked at the bed. Ann was sleeping peacefully through it all. Just to look at her made one feel calm.

As abruptly as it had come, the cyclone disappeared. It was not the end. Sheila had been told about that; it was only the eye, or the middle dead calm.

The children recovered at once, believing everything over. It was better that they think that way, Sheila decided. She knew now why Molly had said that this phase of Harriet was the worst of all. There was something uncanny in the stillness. It was like walking down a dark lane and knowing that something horrible was going to happen, but not knowing at which step...

When the gale struck again, the children, surprisingly, took little notice. It blew solidly for an hour, and then diminished to a rough squall.

“It will keep on like this now,” said Cane, “in varying arcs. There’s nothing we can do, so we may as well eat.”

They ate and waited, waited and ate, the rest of the morning and into the afternoon. Sheila saw Molly’s wisdom in being well prepared. Unconsciously everyone consumed more than they ordinarily did. Perhaps it was nature’s way of building up new nerves.

Cane phoned the barracks soon afterward. “I didn’t expect the wires still to be aloft,” he shrugged, holding the receiver. “The electricity has long given up.”

“What will we do, then?” asked Sheila.

“What our grandfathers did,” he grinned. “Use lamps and candles. Molly fortunately has always preferred the fuel stove for cooking—oh, hello there, Hans, how is it?” He listened closely, nodded, then replaced the phone.

“They’re managing all right. Can’t tell me how the crops are going because there’s no visibility. One of the unit chimneys is down.”

By three o’clock the visibility worsened. By four it was night. They lit lamps and candles and ate and sang and told yarns, and presently the children were nodding their heads, and, unmindful for once that they were going to bed hours before their usual time, crawled into their cribs.

The adults had a final meal in the kitchen, then, because there was nothing else to do, decided to go to bed, as well.

No one bothered to undress. In a case of emergency it would be better to be clothed and ready, Cane directed. He himself did not even take off his boots. “I’ll be doing the rounds during the night,” he told Sheila when she suggested that he would relax better with them off. “I’ll have to see that the battening-down is holding good.”

Carlo, Nino, Noel, Truda and Marty were sound asleep by this time. Truda tossed, Nino whimpered, Noel had a little snuffly snore like the sound of a possum.

At the other end of the room Cane lit a cigarette. Sheila heard the little scratching noise, saw the red glow.

A gust freshened and died, another gust raced in.

Except for the cigarette it was quite black.

“Sheila...”

“Yes?” She breathed it a little unevenly.

“Comfortable?”

“Yes.” She remembered herself and added as she had once before, “Thank you very much.”

“That’s better,” he said, and there was laughter in his voice. So he was remembering, too.

He smoked awhile.

“Frightened?”

“No, Cane.”

“Were you frightened?”

“For a little while.”

“Crocodiles, snakes, cyclones,” he said presently. “You’re running into a pack of trouble, aren’t you, newchum?”

“They’re not so bad,” she declared.

“I believe you mean that. You take to hazards like a cake to icing. You’re a good girl.”

It was simple praise, elementary praise, but curiously it brought a glowing warmth to Sheila, a warmth that she never would have dreamed possible before.

Then all at once she was not feeling just pleased and commended, she was feeling something else.

She was feeling the presence of this man in the opposite corner, feeling it almost as though she was haunted by it, feeling her strength ebb in some curious helpless, but strangely rapturous way, feeling so happy she could have cried out her joy.

I’ll always remember this night,
she thought,
this room, Truda’s tossing, Nino’s whimpering, Noel’s funny little snores, the gusts rattling the windows, the house shuddering ... And I’ll always remember him.

“Sheila...”

“Yes, Cane?”

A pause, a long quiet pause, then: “Good night, Sheila.”

“Good night,” Sheila said.

It was still blowing in the morning, but Cane said it was blowing out. The rain had started again. Cane contacted radar, but there was no sign of any secondary satellite cyclone.

“Let’s hope Harriet’s little sister, Millicent, spares us this time,” said Cane, “and let’s hope big sister hasn’t treated us too roughly.”

“When will you know?”

“After I inspect the fields. The way the squalls are diminishing I expect to be able to do that within a few hours.” Cane went to the phone to speak to the barracks again, and Sheila turned her attention to the job of getting the children up, washed, dressed, fed.

It was no easy task, since they were inclined to be fretful.

Cane was eating his breakfast hurriedly.

“I won’t be able to inspect the fields after all,” he announced looking up at Sheila. “There’s been word from Ivan, some thirty miles out, and Harriet has treated their village very shabbily. I’m going down to lend a hand. Care to come?”

“Won’t I be needed here?”

“Possibly, but probably, too, you’ll be more needed there. What do you say, Molly?”

“I say she must go, Cane. Ivan came to our help the year before last. I’ve packed hampers and I’ve collected all available clothes.”

Molly served Sheila the first breakfast, and Sheila, after a moment’s hesitation, sat down and ate as quickly as Cane.

They left within twenty minutes. Sheila was astounded at what they had collected and packed in so short a time. Not only was there food and clothing in big cartons but even toys had been pushed in.

“According to the report a row of houses has gone,” said Cane. “Children can accept that, but not the loss of a beloved doll, of a bear, of a windup truck ... that, anyway, I have always found.”

“Did our children—” Sheila corrected herself “—did Sugar Hills’s children contribute these?”

“A few. The rest were contributed to us a couple of years ago when Harriet reserved the bulk of her venom for Sugar Hills.”

“And now you are returning them.”

“Returning them gladly. We’re the lucky ones this time.”

“You don’t know
how
lucky yet, do you? You haven’t seen the crops.”

“My house is standing, so is the barracks, so are the units save for a chimney or two. We are all alive, so I say lucky, Sheila.”

When they reached Ivan, Sheila agreed with Cane. The town was a shambles. Everywhere were uprooted trees, blown-off roofs, shattered windows; there were three spaces where cottages had once nestled, now there was nothing there ... nothing at all.

In the public institute, Sheila helped Cane deliver their goods. She watched as Red Cross workers hurriedly measured suits and dresses against cyclone victims and soon found herself buttoning and belting and bundling up as well.

The toys were an inspiration. It did not matter that a friction tractor was minus a steering wheel, that a bride doll had a ragged veil, a bear was without an ear, they were accepted eagerly and pressed to little hearts.

“It’s all we can do now,” said Cane, “and anyway I’d better see to my own backyard.” He seemed, for the first time since the cyclone had struck, really uneasy, Sheila thought. Following him to the Land Rover, she wondered why. The wind was diminishing satisfactorily. The rain was not so sharp. He had not been in spirits like this before, so why now? But perhaps he anticipated that second cyclone. She asked him and he gave an unadorned no.

He did not speak at all during the journey from Ivan back to the plantation. When they arrived he let Sheila off at the house, then set off at once to his fields, still not saying a word.

It was several hours before he returned.