The Wind and the Spray (13 page)

“Why not? Travelling is different these days. One need not raise a finger of one’s own accord. And once he is here, Laurel, you can sit back and watch him thrive.” The big man patted her shoulder in comfort and instantly she felt comforted. Nor, in this mood, was like that

“I’ll be out every day for the next month,” Nor said presently. “I’ve been wondering if you’d care to take over a chore for me.”

“What is it?”

“The pearls.”

“They’re no chore to you, you love them.”

“Would they be a chore to you?”

“Oh, no, I’d like to do it, Nor.”

He nodded. “It is fascinating. We’ll pool our pearl crops, be partners, what’s mine is yours, vice versa, all that. We can be mates in this, anyhow, mate.”

She nodded dumbly, finding no words to reply.

“Come across now,” he said, “and I’ll show you how I edge in the mother-of-pearl nuclei to start the pearl irritation. You can do the same and raise a pearl for yourself.” At the old rainwater tank she watched him anaesthetizing the oyster with menthol and then working with dental
-
like forceps in the parted shell. “You should be able to do better than that,” he observed. “Women’s hands are smaller, more deft.”

He had put the shell into a wire cage to hang at the end of the jetty then to wait for a year or so, and now he took up one of her hands and regarded it.

He looked at the plain gold ring speculatively. “One day you must become engaged, Laurel,” he said.

“Engagement after marriage?”

“And since when have you been married?”

Angry at him, at his baiting words, she pulled her hand away ... but all at once he was pulling her back to him, she was in the circle of his arms, and his lips were coming down on hers. There was no gentleness there, there was no peace, only the man’s eternal, abominable self-assurance, his love of mastery
—
but never love.

“Let me go,” she flung. “This was not in our agreement.”

“No,” he agreed, and he let her go at once.

They went back to the house.

“Don’t forget my words on Jasper,” he said coolly at the door.

“I won’t forget,” she returned.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

LAUREL did not forget.

When she met the man Jasper on a walk round the cliffs some weeks later, deliberately, provocatively, resentfully she kept the encounter to herself.

She was picking gorse at the bluff edge, and when she straightened he was upon her. Frighteningly upon her. She was only an inch from him and from the brink.

He put out his hand and took her arm. He pulled her back to safety in a manner that indicated clearly that he could just as well push as pull, that she was in his power.

When, in spite of herself, she gave a little scared gasp, he smiled thinly, a smile that only reached the lips and not his eyes.

They were small mean eyes, and they were slightly bloodshot. They calculated her. They looked her up and down. They took their time in doing it. For the rest, the man was fairly young, not tall but thickset,
unshaven
, unkempt, and there was an impression of looseness and something unsavoury about him. Laurel wanted desperately to run.

But to run would be to shout her nervousness.

As coolly as she could she said, “Thank you, I hadn’t realized I was so near the edge.”

“You can call upon me for more than that, girlie,” he answered slyly.

Again he looked her up and down.

“Who are you?” he asked.

She thought she would ignore him, then she decided it might be wiser to comply.

“Mrs. Larsen.”

“Oh, so you’re Nor’s woman.”

“I said I was Mrs. Larsen.”

“No comment,” he smiled.

To ask him to explain would have been to ask for an insolence, and yet not to ask made it horribly apparent that she understood.

And Laurel
did
understand. Several times of late she had had the feeling that someone besides Nor, Nathalie and the little girls had knowledge of the cottage.

As with all the island places there were no shut doors, no locks or keys. Nor was out from dawn to dusk, Nathalie had found some engineers’ wives who could make up a foursome at bridge, and Laurel herself and the children were seldom indoors.

She had never seen anybody, she had never missed anything, she had simply sensed that someone not entitled and not belonging had been there. It had been a distasteful feeling
—
as distasteful as this moment now, facing this entirely distasteful man.

“I must go,” she blurted.

“Certainly,
Mrs.
Larsen,” he bowed, and he stepped back and let her pass.

Deliberately she walked down the cliff, not ran. I’ll report to Nor as soon as he comes in, she thought.

But as the day went on, she knew she could not tell Nor, knew that it was not entirely resentment over Nor’s orders and the way he had delivered them that would stop her, but something else.

She did not really know the man was Jasper, he had never said so, he had only said the hateful things he had, and, too, they really had not been said, only inferred.

How could you relate something that actually had not been spoken?
...
more than that, she thought miserably, how could you broach a subject that already between the two of you, between Nor and yourself, was a deep chasm, a chasm that first must have its spanning bridge?

How to build that bridge
...
how to meet Nor face to face on the bridge of understanding and discuss this thing and the way Jasper’s mean eyes had sneered.

Nathalie arrived home; the girls ran in; Nor got back; they all had dinner together. Nor went out again.

I’ve left the telling too long to be told, Laurel thought.

Still David did not write. One evening Laurel tackled Nor about her brother.

“What do you want to know?” he demanded almost harshly.

The harshness nettled her. “Whether you’ve actually done anything about David yet,” she flung.

“I gave you my word, didn’t I?”

“Yes, but—”

“When I’m ready, I’ll tell you, not before.” He was really angry with her. He stamped out and did not address her in any way when he returned.

The next night, however, Nor was in high spirits. “The
Windward
is finished,” he announced. “Tomorrow we’ll launch her. We’ll make an island holiday of it. You women can get to work on the refreshment side.”

To Laurel’s surprise and pleasure Nathalie actually showed enthusiasm.

“It’s a lovely thing to see a boat launched, and Nor really does it well. I suppose it’s his Navy training. He was in the Navy during the war, did you know?”

“No, I didn’t know, but he once mentioned setbacks the whaling station had had, and one of them was war, so I supposed he must have been away during that time. I supposed, too,” admitted Laurel, “that it would have to be the sea.” She thought of the sailor blue eyes.

“Yes,” nodded Nathalie, “and I’ve just thought of something. After the launching we might be able to get up a whist drive. It would be fun. Now I wonder what I can wear.”

While Nathalie wondered, Laurel prepared with the rest of the Island women. They too were looking forward to tomorrow. In the excitement and anticipation Jasper was completely forgotten. Even had she remembered, Laurel probably would have put the thoughts of him aside. There is something too clean, too inspiring, too stimulating in a boat that has been built by hands to permit the intrusion of anything less worthy. There was no room now for Jasper. It was as though she never had encountered him at all.

Nor had a beautiful morning for his launching.

It was calm, but there was a little affable wind that tossed the leaves of the trees to make chequered patterns on the grass. By the time all the islanders had assembled at the north end, the sky was so blue that it had begun spreading itself elsewhere. Even the wet sands became blue
skies. The little girls called, “We’re walking on the sky,” and scampered over the beach.

Nathalie said, “Do fetch them back, Laurel, I have high heels.”

“Laurel is stopping here,” decreed Nor. “My wife is naming the
Windward
.”

“Launching her?”

“Of course.”

Nathalie smiled. “It’s the right thing, certainly, but it’s a privilege I never thought to see
you
deprive yourself of, brother.”

“You don’t know me,” he drawled.

His sister looked at him quizzically. “I’ve never thought I wanted to, Nor. Now I’m beginning to think you may grow human even yet.”

“Thank you,” he shrugged.

The little girls came back. In the way children do, they instantly sensed solemnity, and became silent and watchful.

Nor climbed on to a dais that had been rigged by the
Windward’s
side.

“We’ll conduct this as the Navy does,” he announced. “The
Windward
is not big, but its spirit is big, so I think we can be permitted that.”

The islanders all nodded their heads.

Nor recited in a clear, strong voice:

“O Thou that sittest above the water floods, and stillest the raging of the sea, accept, we
beseech
Thee, the supplication of Thy servants for all who in this ship, now and hereafter, shall commit their lives unto the perils of the deep.”

Laurel watched him through her folded hands
...
saw his strong face through her parted fingers. I am married to him ... he is my husband, she thought.

“Watch them in their going forth and in their coming in,” said Nor, “and so through the waves of this troublesome world, bring them of Thy mercy to the sure haven of Thine everlasting kingdom.”

The sure haven, the sure haven
...
Laurel repeated it again and again to herself.

Nor was taking her hand in his, placing it around the bottle of champagne.

She had been told what to say, and she said it.

“I name you
Windward
,
and may God bless you and all who sail in you.”

She let go the bottle and it broke and smashed, and
Windward
slid down the greased slip into the sea. It was a perfect launching.

The
Clytie
and the
Leeward
and a dozen small skiffs had come round. Those without sirens had supplied themselves with clappers and bells. With the cheering and the clapping and the little girls’ delighted shouting it was a christening of which any boat could be proud.

Now the women were bustling over great drums of coffee, pouring it, passing it, pressing plates of sandwiches and cakes. The men were busy on kegs of beer.

In the middle of the rejoicing another launch came into the bay.

It was not until the passenger alighted from it that Laurel recognized Peter Blake.

Nathalie raced to him, the children not far behind her.

“Greet me, don’t eat me,” laughed Peter, well pleased. “This is a fine thing, I put in at the jetty and no one was there. Don’t you work any more, Nor, since I’ve gone away?”

Nor shook hands with his brother-in-law. “I shouldn’t really,” he observed of the handshake.

“No bad feeling?”

Nor shrugged. “Not if you take my sister off my hands.”

“That’s what I’ve come for. She had no right to intrude in the first place. Two newly-weds.” Peter smiled and turned on Laurel. “You’re a dark one,” he said.

Nathalie had her arm in his. “I’m ready to go; I’ve been ready a day after I got here, but we had to have a house.”

“We have a house.”

“Oh, Peter, a nice one?”

“Everything you ordered—mod cons, handy to shops and shows.”

“Oh, lord,” Nor said.

However, he did not let his difference in taste spoil the festivities. He seemed more cheerful than he had been for a long time, though whether it was because the launching had been such a success or because Nathalie was going, Laurel did not know.

Probably, she thought, it was a little bit of both.

Once back in the house she had to admit to herself that she was pleased that Nathalie’s visit was nearly over too. It was good to see the rooms becoming less and less cluttered as Nathalie’s possessions, that had spilled over everywhere, were reclaimed and packed.

“When do we go, darling?” Nathalie begged Peter.

“I’ve chartered a launch first thing in the morning.”

“Then I’ll say goodbye tonight,” said Nor. “First thing in the morning won’t be as early as I am. I’ll leave Laurel to wave you off. Come back on holidays, you four. If it’s five, then all the better. And if the fifth’s a boy, all the better still. I might make Island material out of a nephew if never out of a niece.”

“My son,” said Nathalie stoutly, “is going to be anything but a whaleman. Supply your own islanders, Nor.” She laughed across at Laurel.

Nor rolled two cigarettes and gave one to Laurel.

“What about me?” pouted Nathalie.

“Ask Peter. This smoke is strictly between husband and wife.” Nor lit his own, then bent towards Laurel. His face was now only a few inches away, he fit her cigarette with his, eyes never leaving hers.

Presently he straightened up.

“Goodbye, kids.” He kissed them. “Goodbye, Peter.” He took Peter’s hand. “Goodbye, sis.” He kissed Nath.

“Now that you’re going I don’t mind you so much,” he grinned at Nathalie.

“Now I’m going, I could almost stop,” she grinned back. It was an amicable parting, and that was good, Laurel thought.

She felt cheerful herself waving them off the next day. She did not permit herself to think of the house when Nor returned tonight, the house with just the two of them, not a crowd any more.

But when thoughts did creep in, she was curiously undismayed. It will be all right. She had known that when she had married Nor: a little voice had said it. The voice said it again now.

It will be right ... it will be right. Almost gaily she decided to go across to the old rain tank and try her hand on the oysters. But first she went to the house for the instruments and mother-of-pearl.

A man was sitting on the doorstep. As she came nearer she saw that it was the man she had met on the cliff that day. Jasper, she thought.

He did not get up as she approached, and he did not move aside, so that if she was to enter the house she would have to push past him.

“Why are you here?” she said.

He rose. He took his time over it, stretching, flexing, relaxing, widening his shoulders, all the while his mean eyes never leaving hers.

“Don’t be so unneighbourly,
Mrs.
Larsen. Australians are warm-hearted people; the little English
bride
must learn to be warm-hearted as well.”

“I asked you why you were here.”

“Where’s your cordiality,
Mrs.
Larsen. I only came to ask for a tin of meat.”

“And have you taken it?” she enquired coldly—and instantly regretted her words.

The grin he perpetually wore was now a smirk, the eyes were not narrowed any more, they were flickering insolently into hers.

“I wouldn’t dream of taking anything, Mrs. Larsen
...
except, of course, a few impressions, but the impressions are free and gratis, aren’t they?” He smirked once more.

She went into the house and got the mother-of-pearl nuclei and the instruments. As before, there seemed nothing, touched, even the food cupboard was still shut, but she knew he had been here.

She glanced over her shoulder. If he came behind her, she would scream. He did not come.

For a moment she stood wondering what to do. She did not fancy stopping in the house knowing that he was just outside. The sensible thing was to go on with what she had intended ... let him see that he did not affect her.

She took up the pearl material, crossed the room and went out of the door. As she walked, she wondered if her decision was a right one. He would now have entry again into the house.

But he did not enter. Nor did he not walk away. He walked with her.

He watched as she dipped the oysters till they opened, then operated with the little needle and the nuclei.

“That’s a fool thing to do,” he commented idly. “Lightning only ever strikes once, didn’t you know?”

“I don’t understand you,” she said, still working in the nuclei.

“His nibs would,” he grinned.

She probed with the forceps.

“Mr. Larsen has the same hobby,” she announced coldly.

“Yep—but not the same pearl.” Again the thin smirk.

“I don’t understand you.” Once more she said the words. She should not have discussed Nor with this man, she knew that, but puzzlement got the better of her. What was he trying to say? Her eyes, despite herself, enquired this of him.

Jasper looked back with mock incredulity. “Don’t tell me you don’t know,
Mrs.
Larsen. That would be impossible. Doesn’t marriage make you one?” He smirked again. “Isn’t it a case of what’s yours is his, vice versa—Or does the sharing only refer to you?”

“You’re wrong to say things like that,” she blurted.

“What am I saying?”

“I think you’re saying that—Nor has found a pearl
...
a good pearl.”