The Wind and the Spray (21 page)

She remembered how everything had seemed
a
kaleidoscope of leaves and petals and smiling faces
...
how she had felt caught up in a cyclone, and then all at
once
she had stood in its windless centre, and she had felt
calm—
and she had been looking at Nor.

She had known she didn’t want to go back then
...
and now she knew the same deep warm assurance.

In a voice that brought confidence because she
was
confident, Laurel remembered aloud, “Watch them in their going forth and in their coming in, 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, she said it aloud once more,
the sure haven
.

One hour later, through a world where you could not separate sea from sky, where everything was an impenetrable black, miraculously the
Clytie
came into the bay.

They could not see it; when it tied up with almost incredible reckoning—“daylight reckoning” Luke declared
—
it was still an invisible thing, but it was safe and intact and its sailors were home from the sea again.

Laurel saw the young wife throw her arms around her husband. She saw the exchange of looks of older wives, deep, understanding, each for one man alone.

She watched, standing alone.

She heard Nor speaking briefly about what they all had undergone, how no message could be put through
...
then he told the men to get home and get some rest.

More delay, Laurel thought a little blankly, for Nor’s ill-fated schedule. Another day off a quota.

“Get
home
?” queried Luke, interrupting her thoughts. “Where
is
home skipper? Just take a look out there.”

But something had happened in those last few minutes. The dark grey had thinned to little neutral wisps, and even now the wisps were fast disappearing. Even as they stood and watched they saw the miracle of light
...
seconds later the first rays of the sun.

“It’s over,” breathed Nor, “and I don’t want to go through that ever any more.”

“Neither do I,” said Laurel.

At that he turned his eyes from the sun towards her. It was a long look
...
but it said nothing, and it asked nothing, nothing at all.

Feeling a flush mounting her cheeks, Laurel herself asked, “What made it like that, Nor?”

“It’s a long explanation—pressures, anti-pressures
...
I’ll tell you one day when I have time to spare. Meanwhile I want to sleep, I want to sleep for hours. Wait till I get my gear, then we’ll jeep it back to the house.”

He was away longer than a dog-tired man should have been away. When he came back he gave her another long look.

They drove home in silence. The weariness had got Nor now, he could scarcely drag himself from the jeep. Before he went to bed, though, he stood in the passage, one big hand on the door.

“Luke told me
...
thanks, mate,” he said.

“For what?” she asked.

“For the prayer.”

She could not meet his eyes, she must not meet them, she must not let this uncaring man see what she knew was in her own eyes.

“The—women wanted it,” she murmured.

He did not answer for a moment, and when he did his voice was quite different. Still grateful, still appreciative, still praising, but different. “I expect so,” he agreed, “I except they would want that.”

Another moment went past, then he said, “I’m asleep on my feet, Laurel. Goodnight, and thanks again.”

It was day, not night, and the thanks were not needed, not needed, anyhow, to her.

She saw him close the door behind him, and once more she knew that emptiness and hollowness ... the chasm that was the long, remote hall.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

THE morning Nor told her that David had died, Laurel knew it long before the words were said.

She knew it as she saw the launch coming into the jetty, saw the Islanders run down to collect their mail. This time she did not run down with them to collect hers.

There would be nothing there, she knew that. She knew there would not even be those few pitiful lines “when I come out, sis”
...
“when we are together again.”

She knew her brother was dead.

She had known an emptiness within her during the weeks when David had not written, when his letters had come at last she had been secretly and heavily conscious that that emptiness was still there. But she had paid no heed to it
...
just as she had never heeded her father when years ago he had insinuated gently that it must all come some time to this.

No, no, no, cried her heart, not David. She had always been absent from David, it had only ever been a matter of visits to David, of outings with David, of snatched holidays with David when he was in France. But still for all of that she now knew an amputating pain.

It seemed as she waited by the window a pain that filled all eternity. Oh, David, not to you, her heart cried out, not to me, not to us.

She stood wrapped in the memories of the pitifully few years they had had together as children, she and David, and she yearned to suspend them in space, loved and complete, something that death could not take away from her like this.

She was still standing at the window when Nor came in. He called her name, but she did not turn. Somehow it seemed that she was running frantically and being pursued by her own agony. She knew when she listened to what Nor would tell her that that agony would catch her up, swamp her, drown her in its pain.

“Laurel. Laurel!”

She turned, dull-eyed. “Yes?”

“I’ve had a letter.”

“Yes?”

“It’s David ... oh, Laurel, Laurel, my dear.”

She knew he must see by her face that she already realized, but stubbornly and cruelly she made it no easier for him.

“Yes?” Just the monosyllable, nothing else.

“He died three days ago. This letter”—he offered it— “tells it all.”

“You opened it.”

“It was addressed to me. I was asked to break it to you.”

“You opened another letter, a letter that
was
addressed to me.”

“I did that because I knew what could be in the contents.”

“You wanted to check them first?”

He did not hesitate. “Yes, I did.”

She looked at him deliberately.

“And what were the contents? No, Nor, don’t tell me. The letter, I believe, would come from David’
s
doctor, the doctor at the san. Louisa said it was not David’s writing but typed.”

“Yes,” said Nor again, “it came from Frith.”

“And the contents,” said Laurel, only dully aware of what she was saying, “were this: that David was weakening, that there was not much future, that if we were ever to be together again you’d better make it very soon, waste no time.”

The man was looking at her incredulously. The eyes were a darker blue now, almost black-blue, and they held pain, pain at what she deliberately inferred. “No—no, you wouldn’t think that of me,” he said.

“I would, I would,” she flung back hotly. “Why, otherwise, did David never come here? Why, otherwise, didn’t he mention some actual preparation afoot? Why did he say nothing in his letters, nothing at all, except ‘when I come out, sis,’ except ‘when we’re together again.’ Why? Why? I’ll tell you why, Nor, it’s because at no time did you really or concretely or actually or with any seriousness arrange for David. You threw out some innuendos, then conveniently withdrew them, hoping they would be enough
...
enough until there was no need to worry yourself any more.

“You never wanted David. What’s more you had no intention of ever having him. He would be no adjunct to a place like this. You’re not mean, I freely admit that, it’s simply that everything you do, every act, has to be a progressive act, and David was never progressive, he—he just slipped back and back. It would have been money wasted.
I
was an expense, but I brought in what you estimated was a fair to average return. I organized the women, I made them more stable—you got your money back with me, didn’t you, Nor?

“But David would have been a dead loss
...
you could see
that ...
All right, Nor, you need not concern yourself now, he’s not a dead loss any more, he’s dead instead.” She did not know herself what she was saying. The words tumbled out, the pent-up words of weeks of anxiety, weeks of David, Jasper ... of living that was really only bare existence. Afterwards she thought he should have stopped her, quietened her with a harsh word, but he heard her out until, exhausted, she stopped herself.

“All you care about is your quota, how many tons of oil your victims will produce, what the market will be like. Everything, from the smallest child, kept jealously here for the sole purpose of keeping its mother here, thus keeping the husband and thus supplying more hands to catch whales, has only that in view. The House of Larsen, that’s all that matters, has ever mattered. Your sister never mattered, your sister’s children. How could David matter? And I, least of all.”

Her voice stopped abruptly. She looked at him, horrified.

“Nor, what have I been saying?”

“A lot of things, but the summing up would be that I’ve been marking time to save myself the unnecessary expense of bringing out here a doomed man.”

“I didn’t intend it like that ... I meant—”

He crossed over to her. His hands on her shoulders were quite gentle.

“I’m glad you said it, Laurel. We’ve been existing too long in a world of evasions and innuendos. We only reach the truth when we speak from our hearts.”

“But it wasn’t the truth, was it, Nor?” She looked at him horrified.

He hunched his big shoulders. “You’ve said so, girl.”
\
“But you know it isn’t the truth, you
know
it. I’ve been upset
...
Nor, tell me, tell me it isn’t so.”

But he told her nothing, nothing at all. He simply hunched his big shoulders again and said, “Are you quite finished, Laurel? Because I have a few things to say now.”

“About
—
about how it
really
was?”

“No
—
that’s the past. It’s over. We can’t bring it back. It’s the future we have to talk about, your future, my dear.”

“Yes?”

“You’re going home.”

“Home?” She looked at him astounded. “But here is home.
”

“Don’t overdo the remorse over what you’ve just said, Laurel, and spare me, please, your politeness, any obligation. Here, for you, is not home, it never has been, it never will be. Home is back there.”

“Not with David gone
,
” she whispered.

“Even with David gone,” he said harshly, “it’s still there.”

“Home is where the heart is,” she offered timidly. Oh, Nor, she felt like crying, how can I live half a world away from my heart?

His lips thinned at her words.

“
Well
?” he insinuated.

She looked at him piteously. She could not reply, “Can’t you see my heart is here, Nor?” Not to
a
man with ice in his eyes and a thin, unsmiling mouth.

“You’re forgetting one thing,” she said suddenly and triumphantly.

“Yes?”

“We’re married.”

“You are forgetting something, too, aren’t you?”

She did not question him
...
she had no need to, she knew the answer too well. It was no marriage, it never had been, there was nothing,
nothing
to hold her here.

She said dully, “You can’t afford to send me back just now. You haven’t the extra money.”

“I have. I have all that, and I have even more, Laurel.
I have sufficient to free you, send you back to England, set you up in a career or a business, to look after you until you can look after yourself.”

She stared at him. In a way it had been a disastrous season. There had been setback after setback. And he must be in debt with all the rebuilding, the pay sheet for the new hands.

He saw the doubt in her eyes.

“The pearl,” he shrugged carelessly.

“But you said that the pearl, though large and beautiful, was actually of minor value. You said no really fabulous pearls were found this far south.”

“Yes, I said that, but I said that there was always the exception.” His voice was laconic.

“This one is the exception?”

“Yes.” He crossed to the shell table and took up the pearl tin. So he still kept his gleanings there, Laurel thought drearily, remembering how he had discovered her looking that day.

She looked at the ring with him now, the pearl he had had set into a ring because he had said it would sell better that way.

The gem shone warmly. The milk and the flame and the rose were there. Yes, it was good. She could tell that indubitably now, she could sense its value, inexperienced in such things though she was. Last time she had been upset at what Jasper had told her, but now she looked speculatively on the pearl, and she could tell.

“You can’t use it on me like that,” she protested.

Again the shrug.

“Actually it is half yours, as you once took pains to tell me, remember?”

She remembered, and flushed, hating the memory of that time when he had caught her prying in the tin.