The Wind and the Spray (2 page)

* * *

“
...
Whales,” Mr. Kittey said brightly now. But don’t be dismayed, you won’t have anything to do with them, not even any clerical work concerning them. Your position will be a sort of stand-in for the children’s mother, I understand, because the mother will not be there.”

Somehow or other Laurel found herself able to murmur,
“
Red hair,
Mr. Kittey
...
Can you explain that, please?”

“Oh, so you’ve been talking to your prospective employer, or did the lady who telephoned tell you what was required? Anyway, it doesn’t matter so long as you’re titian. Mr. Blake’s wife is titian.”—So that was the Rock’s name. Blake. “Mr. Blake believes, then, that the children will take more readily to someone of the same colouring as their mother. I said there might be a delay, but it appears he will be fortunate, the same as you.”

“I don’t think so, Mr. Kittey. I don’t want this post.”

“The salary,” said Mr. Kittey forbearingly, “is very generous.”

“I don’t want the post.”

Mr. Kittey either did not hear or pretended not to. “You are paid an extra sum for being away from the mainland,” he explained. He named the sum and Laurel knew at once that it was very generous indeed. She knew too it was so exceptional that she could not possibly refuse it, not when she had David to think about.

“Is it all right?” she blurted unhappily. “I mean—well, I mean—”

“My dear Miss Teal, if propriety is worrying you, let me put your mind at rest at once. Humpback, though an island, is not the desert variety, in fact it’s not very far distant from the coast. It is populated, if perhaps not densely, then quite agreeably, I think. Again there is a brother-in-law as well as the chief in residence, and an elderly housekeeper, Mrs. Reed. Finally, Kittey’s have known the family for many years
...
found them their staff from labourer to tally clerk ... only replaced that staff when someone was finally pensioned off through old age. That’s the kind of post you are questioning now, Miss Teal.”

Mr. Kittey went on enthusiastically, but Laurel did not hear him.

... I don’t like that man, she thought. I won’t be happy, better to turn the offer down at once for something less lucrative but more reassuring, and yet, David darling, the things I could do for you, buy for you, with money of that sort.

Mr. Kittey was saying now: “No shops to entice you ... even if you stopped only a few months you’d be financially well ahead of yourself. I can assure you, Miss Teal, you’re really fortunate. This position is quite unique. No extreme temperature either way, no stony desert, the advantages of the sea all around you—”

“And the wind and the spray,” Laurel suddenly, eagerly, thought.

Perhaps the wind and the spray did it, perhaps it was just the salary, perhaps it was David, but ten minutes later Laurel had signed an agreement, walked out of Mr. Kittey’s office, down the hall, into the lift.

In the lobby below she saw
him
rise from the bench and roll more than walk towards her. The Rock, she thought.

“Feel better now you know I have no ulterior motives?
”
Again he was rolling a cigarette. “Rather expensive reassurance, though,” he drawled, licking the edges of the paper together. “Kittey knows how to charge.”

He lit the cigarette. The sailor blue eyes were narrowed as he avoided its smoke wreaths.

“Any questions?” he asked.

“Yes. Is my hair red enough?”

“You’ve got the job, haven’t you? Today week, and the
Leeward
is moored off Blue’s Bay. Go light on social clothes, a few will probably be too many. And include sensible warm stuff, you’re not going north to some coral atoll. Here’s your first week’s wages.” He handed her an envelope he must have had ready.

‘You were very sure of yourself,” she remarked, accepting the packet distastefully.

“Sure of you,” he corrected. “There are only two things, madam, on which you can safely bet with a woman. One is cash; the other, and a vastly bigger fish, I maintain, is a man for keeps.”

She went to open her mouth, but he forestalled her.

“
Incidentally, if you’ve any ideas on the latter, forget them. There’s only one available male on Humpback Island, and he has other ideas.” The blue eyes were slits again, but this time there was no smoke to narrow them as before. “As a matrimonial bureau, then, Humpback Island is a complete wipe-off. Sorry and all
that
,
but all we can offer you is cash. Good day to you now. Ring Kittey for any extra information. I’ll be seeing you today week, Blue’s Bay, at nine a.m.”

“Not nine bells?” Her voice was caustic. She wanted to take some of the wind out of his sails, make him less of the sailor.

“You have those bells wrong,” he drawled maddeningly back. “You mean two, not nine. Not”—again the narrowed eyes—“that I’m a nautical many myself. I’m a whaleman, an entirely different breed.”

He might not be a nautical man, but when he went it was with that characteristic roll, and the lobby, she noticed, was not full of brine any longer.

And the wind and the spray were gone.

CHAPTER TWO

A WEEK later at nine o’clock
...
Laurel had decided to steer clear of time regulations on ships until she was more sure of herself ... the new employee climbed down the hill to Blue’s Bay.

It was a small tie-up and the two boats moored to it exhausted its length.

Laurel looked at the
modern
, lissom, white and tangerine yacht on the left, and her heart soared. A smart, able, up-to-date medium-sized craft, she thought nautically
...
and lovely as a song, she added poetically.

“So sorry,” drawled a voice she well remembered, “to disillusion you, but the
Leeward
is berthed the same as its name. In other words, lady, you’re looking on the wrong side of the wharf.”

She turned and saw him before she saw the boat, or rather he stood out as a relief from the boat.

He did not wear bell-bottoms but salt-bleached khaki pants; he did not wear a cap, his salt-bleached head was bare; nonetheless he looked as much a part of the sea as the sea itself.

With an effort she focused beyond the blue eyes and saw the
Leeward
as it was—or as she found it. Not smart; if able, not apparently so; quite old-fashioned; a small craft—and about as lovely as a song out of tune, she thought.

The blue eyes were regarding her tau
n
tingly.

“What’s wrong? Scared? What would you have done on the
Tom Thumb
?”

“I’m not Mr. Bass, nor am I Mr. Flinders.”

“You surprise me. I only expected the Tudor kings from an English miss.”

“I know
The Crossing of the Blue Mountains
as well,” Laurel said calmly, “so I may be of some use imparting historical knowledge to the children.”

“They’re not up to knowledge yet, and if they were they’d be on the mainland at school.”

He still regarded her with the taunting blue eyes. “So you’re scared,” he said again.

“I am not, but I
am
”—she paused to lend effect to the words that would come after—“a little deflated.”

“Deflated?”

She turned and glanced significantly at the trim white and tangerine yacht, then back to the
Leeward
again. It had a poky raised deck forward over the forecastle, another poky deck with solid rails amidships, and a third and equally poky deck aft again. It had a clumsy, lumbering look, and her own look said so very clearly.

This time, really for the first time since she had met him, she thought with inward glee, she
had
got through the dark leather skin.

A dull red came into his cheeks. He was pierced. He was affronted.

“The
Leeward,"
he said jealously, “is roomy, for all its appearance to the contrary. It’s of strong construction, has a shallow draught, takes the ground well.”

“It also,” said Laurel pointedly, “needs a paint.”

“Any particular colour scheme in mind? And don’t say that one”—he nodded towards the yacht. “It wouldn’t blend with your hair.”

He had come on to the wharf and instantly she was aware of the rock again, wave-washed, hard, impenetrable, standing the test of the years.

He looked down at her bags. “Spread yourself, didn’t you?”

“I brought only essentials,” she said indignantly. “The other bags are to come.”

“
Other
bags?”

“By taxi-truck.” She nodded to a utility even now descending the steep road.

“Nice,” he said sarcastically, “to know I shan’t have to worry Mr. Kittey for another ten years. You must have enough there to last a decade at least. I hope you didn’t forget my warning regarding chances of matrimony and bring along a trousseau as well.”

“I did not,” she said, and seeing the truck pull in, she went across and paid the driver and asked him to stow the bags. He did so, her employer watching him go back and forth and not lifting a finger to help.
She knew he was doing it deliberately to embarrass her, to make the number of cases seem even fuller than their number.

There were quite a few, she admitted, but she had not known what to bring and what to leave behind, and Mr. Kittey, like all agents, she supposed, once he had disposed of her, found he could not spare her any more time. Undoubtedly, the empty niche at Humpback Island successfully filled, his attention now was on the Spinifex ... or the Gibber Desert ... or the Centre
...
or—

“Get aboard,” the Rock said.

S
he jumped into the
Leeward
.

A thin, gnarled, dried-up little nut of a man, so dried-up it would have been impossible to have guessed his age, came on deck and saluted her.

“Lucas,” the Rock said briefly. “Miss Teal, Luke.”

Lucas saluted again, smiling with the salute this time, then he turned to the younger man.

“When’s Blue Peter, Cap?”

“As soon as the lady settles in.” The man turned to Laurel and bowed her ironically into the tiny cabin that occupied half of the poky deck with the rails amidships.

“No need to tell you to stoop down,” he said, stooping down himself. “You’re dinghy-sized, like Luke.”

He looked at the clothes she had on, sun-ray skirt, paisley overblouse. “Anything more suitable than that in one of those numerous ports?”

She flushed with annoyance. How had the man wanted her to turn up—in weather-stained drill like his own khaki pants?

“I have a pair of jeans.”

“Put them on.”

She looked around. It was an exceptionally small cabin, just room enough for a minute range and a bunk. It was also a very public cabin. She saw he was grinning at her, “Take after your name, don’t you?”

“Name?”

“Teal. They’re the most retiring of all the duck family.” He grinned again. “All right, little green duck, how does this suit you?” He pulled a cord and immediately the cabin was a curtained salon, perfectly secluded, private as a locked room.

He slipped out to the deck.

“Why did you say green duck?” she called, foraging in a bag.

“I don’t know what colour laurels are in England,” he drawled back. “Here they’re of verdant hue. Right, Luke, we’ll push off now.”

Laurel wasted no time getting into jeans and tartan shirt. She wanted to see the harbour from the deck of the
Leeward.
Previously she had only seen it from city brows like the one on which Mr. Kittey’s office was situated, or from the Manly ferry on a Saturday when the office was closed.

She put on rubber thongs and came out on the forward deck.

They were passing under the Bridge; Blue’s Wharf was on the northern side of the Harbour. The
Leeward
seemed alarmingly tiny under the great dwarfing steel arch. She only hoped the boat
was
of strong construction as its captain loyally claimed.

Circular Quay was left behind, Pinchgut standing like a stone fortress, a dozen little bays with a dozen yellow beaches and red-roofed houses nestling above each beach
...
They approached the Heads.

“Ever been out of the Heads before?”

“I haven’t even been in. I flew to Australia.”

“I see.” He regarded her a moment, then regarded the horizon. He looked across to Luke.

“What do
you
say?”

The little dried-up man squinted at the horizon as well. “She’s gonna roll,” he declared at length.

Her employer turned again to Laurel.

“How do you think you’ll take it?”

“I’ve crossed the Channel quite a few times.”

“That’s no answer.”

“It is if you’ve crossed the Channel.”

“I haven’t. I’m a narrow, biased, insular islander who believes his own brand of storms are worse than any other brands. To put it succinctly, I wouldn’t be too cocksure if I were you. Take one of these.” He tossed her a packet of foiled pills.

“Thank you, I won’t need them.” She tossed them smartly back.

He seemed about to argue, changed his mind and thrust the pills in his pocket. He turned his attention to the
Leeward.
Luke was at the wheel which was immediately aft of the little cabin and he was nosing the boat carefully into a swell that was becoming wider and deeper as they approached, cleared, and slipped by South Head. In ten minutes Sydney Harbour lay behind them. They turned sharply south once more, running into a deeper swell again.

“If we kept on long enough,” drawled the man standing beside Laurel, “we’d probably go into an Antarctic iceberg. Feeling all right?”

“Of course I’m all right.” She answered indignantly. Here was an Australian, she thought with dislike, who had to have priority in everything, even in weather and water, probably in wind and spray as well.

“I warned you before, never be cocksure,” he drawled lazily. “I’ve seen even naval men caught out after years of the sea.”

“But you’re not a naval man,” she reminded him. “You’re a whaleman, an entirely different breed.”

He ignored that. “No one is charmed,” he stated. “Sure you won’t change your mind?” His hand went to his pocket where he had thrust the pills.

This time she did the ignoring.

“How far is Humpback Island?” she asked.

He raised his brows at that.

“Surely you were sufficiently interested to ask Kittey about your future headquarters? However”—glancing back to the cabin—“I expect your time was taken up with filling bags.”

She did not consider it worth while wasting her breath explaining how Mr. Kittey, once she had paid her fee, had turned the next page of his book of positions to be filled.

“I don’t know how far it is,” she said.