The Wind and the Spray (6 page)

CHAPTER FIVE

BUT Laurel neither toured the island nor was shown the whaling station the next day. Indeed, it was over a week before she was taken on the promised campaign.

Unexpectedly, and inopportunely since the season was in full swing, the whaler, or rather the chaser as the
Clytie
was called, developed engine trouble.

Apparently it was the sort of trouble that required new parts of mechanism, something that could not be improvised in the island’s engine shop, that would have to be fetched from Anna
...
even farther still
...
Sydney perhaps.

There were a few words about it all, quiet but incisive and very much to the point. Laurel gathered that Nor Larsen blamed Peter for not anticipating the breakdown, and being Nor Larsen he made no bones about making his displeasure felt.

Although this business of whales was as yet rather foggy in her mind, Laurel had absorbed the fact that during the time the shore station was in actual operation a chaser must keep up the whale wherewithal without failure or delay.

Nor and Luke tried emergency methods on the
Clytie,
but to no avail. There was nothing else for it than to get new parts, and the quickest way on Humpback, an island where services were irregular, where anything really urgent had to be fetched and not delivered, was to go oneself.

Peter mooched moodily around the house, aware that because of his disgrace he had little chance of a trip across to the mainland.

At last, unable to keep his feelings to himself, he appealed to Laurel to put in a word.

“But, Peter, what good would that be? I’m the last one Nor would listen to. A woman!” Laurel had hunched her shoulders at the man.

“He might take notice,” said Peter, not very hopefully. “Being a new chum he might relax on a first occasion.”

“I doubt it.”

“But you will try?”

“I don’t know if I’d dare.”

“Laurel, please—”

“What good would it do, anyway? Anna is a long way from Sydney, and according to Mr. Larsen the trip will be hurried, just a matter of picking up the parts and then coming back again.”

“I don’t believe Anna will have the parts. They’ll have to get them from Melbourne or Sydney.”

“In which case you can be sure Mr. Larsen will have wired in advance and had them consigned to Anna. Really, Peter, even if I could do it, I can’t see any advantage.”

Peter said in such a miserable, woebegone voice that Laurel’s tender heart turned over, “I could ring her at least, hear her voice.”

“Nathalie?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, Peter,” Laurel said.

She rehearsed a few things she would say to Mr. Larsen, but when it came to the point she found she had not the nerve as she had admitted to Peter when he had asked.

Had Larsen not invited her on the trip, she might never have said what she then did.

“We’ll be there and back and business done in ten hours,” said Nor carelessly. “Keeping in mind that you slept through it last time, would you care to come this time and see in what corner of the Pacific you’re tucked?” She hesitated, really wishing she could go, thinking with pleasure of the trip.

“No, I don’t think so, thank you.”

“Afraid of being sick again? That was a freak sea.”

“No, it’s not that—”

“What, then?”

“I’ve practically just arrived, barely settled in.”

“But I thought you were anxious to do some moving around.”

“On the island, I said.”

He shrugged indifference. “Very well, please yourself.”

“It would please me if—
”
She paused uncomfortably. Really, she thought, Peter should not have asked me to do this.

“Yes?” he drawled, still indifferent.

“It would please me very much if Peter could take my place.”

“Peter?” The sailor blue eyes were narrowed almost to slits.

“Yes.”

“Why do you ask for him?”

“Simply because I feel he would like to go.”

“Peter can’t go, and he knows jolly well why.”

The eyes were turned directly on Laurel now, slitted no longer, and an Antarctic blue, icy, chilling, glacier-sharp. “So Peter’s been sucking up to you, getting you to beg favours.”

“Not at all.”

“The idea was your own?”

“Well—”

“Well
what,
Miss Teal? Was it? Wasn’t it? And why, even if he hadn’t mucked the schedule up, should I take him? It’s a flying visit, as I said, not a trip to Sydney with a theatre party thrown in.”

“You’re very hard, Mr. Larsen.”

“So is a humpback whale, it’s not all blubber,” Nor Larsen flung.

There was a little silence. Unhappily Laurel had broken
it
.
“He realizes, of course, that he would not have time to see his wife.”

“Nice of him to realize that.”

“But he could telephone and hear her voice.”

“As Portia or as Nathalie Blake?”

Really, this man was more than impossible. The only way not to lose your temper with him was to breathe deeply and count ten before you answered him back.

“You were kind enough to invite me across, Mr. Larsen,” Laurel said chokily after the ten. “Surely then you could permit me a further kindness, the kindness of choosing someone to take my place.”

For a moment she thought he was going to thunder out a furious “No.” Then, unexpectedly, he had crossed to the window, looked out, then said, “All right, tell Peter. Tell him that it’s only there and back, no time probably even to get to a telephone box. However, if breathing the same
mainland
air as my precious sister is what he wants,
he’s welcome to it. Warn him, though, that this is no sentimental journey. Understand?”

When Peter was told, his moodiness fled.

“I told you you could do it.”

Laurel felt a little uneasy. “You do realize, Peter, that the
Leeward
is only crossing to pick up parts. Before you get there the parts might be ready waiting. There might not even be time to step ashore.”

“Just let me get on that boat,” grinned Peter, “that’s all.”

“Keep in mind,” put in Laurel, more uneasy still, “that in a way I’ve stood guarantee for you.”

“Darling, I’ll never forget you for this.”

“That doesn’t matter,” said Laurel sternly, “so long as you don’t forget not to hold Nor up on the home trip.”

All the island saw the
Leeward
off
...
Laurel was to learn that comings and goings were always attended en masse
...
and they stood until the little boat had chugged out of sight.

Luke, who was not going this time because two men were sufficient to man the
Leeward,
but spending his hours on Larsen’s new boat which its builder intended to hurry up and launch as soon as he could, screwed his eyes to the horizon and said knowledgeably, “A good sea, a good wind, she’ll do it there and back under ten hours, you see if she doesn’t.”

But she didn’t.

The
Leeward
did not do it in ten
...
twenty
...
thirty hours.

It was a week before the boat returned, and though the Islanders all declared that Nor must be having trouble in securing his parts, Laurel sensed that the real trouble was Peter Blake, that once they had arrived at Anna Head Peter had taken off and so held up the return. Presumably Nor could have left without him, would have done so without a qualm had it suited him, but it didn’t suit him, so evidently he had held on. Held on very furiously, Laurel imagined, not feeling too sanguine over the affair herself.

On
the morning after the
Leeward
set out, Laurel set out, too, on an excursion to see as much of Humpback Island as she could. She did it perforce on foot.

The roads that Jill had casually told her about proved only to be jeep tracks. They wound round the little handfuls of houses, circled the few plantations, one track rimmed the island to the north, another one climbed one of the two loftier hills.

There were women sitting in the porches of their timber cottages, and they waved eagerly to Laurel and invited her in.

Presently a number of them assembled on one porch. Obviously they were pleased to see a new—and a woman’s—face.

They plied her with questions about the mainland and when she admitted she was a new chum they asked more avidly still about London
...
had it changed much since the war?
...
had it recovered?
...
what landmarks were gone?
...
would it rise greater than before?

Their interest touched and intrigued Laurel. These women were hungry for outside impressions, she thought; they might be islanders, but they were not insular islanders
...
that had been Nor Larsen’s description of himself
...
not, anyway, by choice.

As soon as she could get a word in, she questioned them on their lives.
She found that they were quite satisfied with most of the practical things, the food supply, the medical attention, but sadly missed a school.

“Couldn’t there be a school?”

“Not enough pupils.”

“Haven’t you sufficient children among you?”

“Yes, but they are on the mainland being taught.”

“But why? I mean, you’re only defeating your purpose sending them over there. If you banded together and kept them here on Humpback the mainland would
have
to supply you a teacher and school.”

The women looked at each other, each waiting for someone else to speak.

“It’s this way, Miss Teal,” one of them said at length. “We’d have to guarantee attendance.”

“Well?”

“There’s not one of us would do that. There’s not one of us not anxious to get back.”

“You just said the food and health angles were quite satisfactory.”

“So they are, but everything ends at that. There’s no social life here, nothing at all. Oh, Mr. Larsen does his best to help, shows movies sometimes, tries to arrange
a
dance, but he’s a busy man, and you can’t blame him if things aren’t a success.”

“Couldn’t one of you take over the organizing?”

“We could, but we don’t want to. We all feel we’re only temporary. Perhaps if Mrs. Blake had tried more, shown us it
could
be done, we might have stirred ourselves, but when even the boss’s sister couldn’t stand it, I guess
we
all sort of felt what was the use.”

So that was it. Nathalie. Laurel hated
to lay the
blame there, hated it all the more because it
was
what
Nor
Larsen had said right from the first, but it seemed that in failing these women Mrs. Blake had brought about their impermanency and discontent.

On the other hand, she thought, having drunk tea, eaten scones, taken her farewells, could Nathalie be blamed for not putting up with something she hated with all her heart? After all, she had only one life to live, and if life on this island was so distasteful why should
she
use up her days simply trying to appease Nor? Appeasing Mr. Larsen, Laurel decided shrewdly, would never be a successful or satisfying thing.

By this time she had climbed a fair distance up one of the higher hills, the only hill with a “road” as Jill called the track. The other companion higher hill, she noted, had no “road.” Probably its grade was not as good.

She paused to look behind her, remembering looking back only a week ago on Sydney Harbour, at the wind making fun with the inlets and bays.

The wind was making fun now, but with craggy rocks and little bitten-in creamy beaches. There was
no
grand harbour, only small difficult moorings, no soaring buildings, only little clusters of wooden cottages, but the tang and the brine were the same
...
and the shining spray.

I love it, she thought impulsively,
I
feel sympathy for Nathalie Blake, but for myself
I
love it ...
I could love it for all time.

There was a raucous hoot, and the next moment the island jeep chugged round a corner. In it were Luke and the two little girls. They waved excitedly as Luke came to a halt.

“Never walk when you can drive,” advised the little brown nut of a man. “If you’d told me you were coming up here I would have brought you all the way.”