Beautiful Wild

by Anna Godbersen

  “Carlton Farrar taught me everything I know,” said Fitzhugh, hands clasped behind his back and head hung low.

  Vida’s eyes darted between the two distinct rows of mourners. On one side were the fine people, of which she was one, mostly in tattered evening wear. On the other were the crew and other third-class passengers, whose appearance was slightly less ridiculous than the first-class passengers’, on account of being mostly dressed in dark fabric and adorned with a minimum of frippery. Not that she was going to be the one to call attention to a torn silk skirt’s ridiculousness. They were a morose group, and Fitzhugh’s solemn tone seemed to admonish her for thinking such things.

  “He was a man who embodied righteousness, a man of rigorous intellect. He was a husband, a son, a steward of a great enterprise. He was the keeper of the family’s values, and a man of indubitable practicality. . . .”

  Vida was stern with herself not to roll her eyes. This last bit was, as almost every member of the assembled now knew, untrue. The story of Carlton’s demise had spread rapidly throughout the long afternoon. How he had been among the first of the passengers of the Princess to evacuate, but upon realizing that the crew was abandoning ship, had insisted on returning to see that all was being done to preserve his family investment. And his wife, who had already been drinking tea in the captain’s quarters of the Artemis, had heard of his rash behavior, and insisted on going after him with two other members of the Princess’s crew. He had been ascending the side of the doomed ship when she began to sink, and he was feared lost in the following chaos. But Camilla commanded them in her husband’s name to remain close to the scene of the wreck, so they had managed to recover his body before they, too, were swept up in the storm. All night she had keened over him, and into the morning as he became rigid. And when they crashed into the rocks in the darkness she had insisted that the two young seamen carry his body ashore, where he had remained for several hours before Vida thought to climb up on the rocks and see what was on the other side.

  Nobody spoke of his reckless behavior now, of course. They lowered their eyes, polite even at the extreme edge of existence. Their heads bobbed along with Fitzhugh’s words as though they were the gospel truth.

  In her old life—in a life where her hair was straightened and arranged, where she changed her clothes three to six times a day, where she kept a luminous and very full schedule of events, most of which involved the serving of many small golden plates topped with rare and elegant bites—Vida had been a master of such displays of etiquette, such upholding of customs amongst moneyed and prominent peoples. But that had all been a mask she wore so that she might do what she pleased. She certainly felt no compunction to wear such a mask now. While the others kept their gaze piously averted, she lifted her chin and took in the scene. For one thing, she could not stand to be looked at—not with her appearance so frightful. If anyone was going to look at her, she wanted to be ready with a warning expression. But also she felt so entirely impious about everything, and could not tolerate if, along with everything else, she had to pretend that the great Carlton Farrar had perished in some noble pursuit, when everyone well knew he had died on a fool’s errand.

  There were thirty-nine survivors. Four children who with their mothers were traveling to meet their fathers (laborers on a sugar plantation in Hawaii), five members of the crew, six ladies—some of whom had been dressed for dinner, and some for a quiet night in—eight gentlemen, nine men and women who had been employed as servants to the first-class passengers, Fitzhugh, Camilla, Sal, Vida, and the celebrated gossip columnist, Dame Edna Sackville. Although she was tight-lipped about what had transpired during the sinking of the Princess, it was said that she had been among the last to evacuate because she had wanted to report the story of the event in all its gruesome detail.

  (“A shipwreck on the first page is guaranteed to sell out,” Miss Flora Flynn claimed to have overheard her say, and she said it to her lady’s maid, Eleanor, who repeated it to Vida.)

  The gentler amongst them had been warned that there might be more bodies. All afternoon, as the men had worked to build shelter, materials had been ferried in by the tide. Pieces of lifeboats, doors, trunks, and other debris. So it was possible that the people who had clung to these items in the final moments of the Princess would come, too. But the band of survivors tried to put this out of mind as they sought water, food, shelter from the sun—and from whatever came at night.

  Through the afternoon, nobody had spoken of what might hunt them in the night.

  Whether this strange island had residents who might prey upon their humble beach encampment. How the winds might roar, or the sea surge over their lean-tos.

  When a search party led by Sal returned with fresh water, they all cheered, and said they had been saved.

  When they had managed to turn over a damaged lifeboat, and prop it on boards to create a kind of gazebo, they said they had been saved.

  And when the oldest of the children—Peter, a boy who had comported himself throughout the ordeal with a heartbreaking seriousness—managed to make a cross of two sticks, bound together with the dried centers of palm fronds, the whole band cheered that they had indeed been saved by God.

  They had labored through the day to be ready for night. Now night was falling. But they did not speak of the uncertainties. No—they spoke of Carlton Farrar, who ruled the shipping concern to whom they had all entrusted their safety. The cross that Peter had made was used to mark Carlton Farrar’s final resting place, in the soft earth between the high rocks and a great gnarled tree, with roots that spread like an octopus from jungle to beach.

  The sky blazed pink and purple as the sun mellowed to a great gold disc hazing into the watery horizon.

  The breeze picked up, whipping the already messy hair of the assembled.

  It was plain from looking at them who had worked during the day, and who had not, by the relative paleness of their skin. They wore the clothes that had marked their places in the hierarchy of the Princess—elaborate dresses, or simple ones; formal jackets, or uniform ones—although not in the smart manner of before. Now everything was tattered, dirtied, either loosened or shrunk by the assaults of the ocean and the sun. To a one they were a disheveled parody of their former selves. But none so much as Camilla. The sunburn on her face had mellowed in the course of the day, but the extreme contrast of her light eyes against the reddened skin gave her the appearance of some strange creature from the depths of the ocean. Or maybe from the clouds. She walked a little bent over all the time, as though she had just been hit hard in the stomach.

  “But to me,” Fitzhugh said, bringing the eulogy to a close, “he will always be my brave and strapping older brother. He is with God now. May his soul be at rest.”

  With this, Camilla threw back her head. A croaking sound came out of her mouth, followed by a wail. Sobs wracked her body. The first-class passengers of the Princess stared at her, not sure what to do. They were a staid sort of people, disinclined to displays of emotion. They appeared horrified by her unlovely grief. Vida wondered if someone would do something. Then she noticed that someone already had. Fitzhugh had reached for her, he had taken her hand. As he squeezed her hand, her sobs slowed and became less frequent until she made no sound at all. There was only the rise and fall of her lovely breast.

  She had, with his touch, become lovely again.

  Vida disliked herself for caring. But she had believed that Camilla was no longer the possessor of uncommon beauty, and she was disappointed to find that it had been there all along, lying in wait until she had the attention of this young man again.

  They looked like the perfect pair—rumpled by the elements, yet somehow still handsome, with their light eyes against sun-darkened faces. And Vida, who would not have thought she could be moved by anything so trivial ever again, was shocked by the sharp pain that spread from the left side of her chest.

  Fitzhugh had seemed as good as hers, but he belonged to another. The absurdity of the entir
e situation did nothing to assuage her unbearable loneliness.

  She could not let these people see her cry, so she turned away, made her way carefully back down the rocks, to the wide beach where they had arrived that morning.

  Could it really only have been that morning?

  It seemed as long ago as the beginning of time.

  At the water’s edge she sank down and gazed out. The little ripples went on forever, through crests of magenta, midnight blue, turquoise, bronze, to the mellowing sun. What a fool she had been to chase such a man. A man she thought she knew, but who she didn’t really understand at all. And where were the people she had blithely put at risk to chase a chimera? Nora, and her mother and father—where were they? Had they slept through the last hours of the Princess? Did they only realize at the final moments that the great ship was going down, when the cabins were flooded with the ocean and they could no longer escape? Vida wished them safe, but she couldn’t make herself believe they were safe. A happy ending seemed such a naïve and childish notion, now.

  Sobs rocked her shoulders. Before she knew it, the water had crept up, had soaked the hem of her dress, of her petticoat. She glanced up at the rising tide, wiping the snot and tears from her face, trying to get control of herself, to put a stop to those heaving sobs before someone saw her.

  Too late she noticed her skin prickle, that telltale sign that someone already had seen her.

  A little way down the beach, back toward the rocks, stood a tall figure. At that hour he was just a silhouette. But she knew it was Sal—she recognized the leanness of him, the way his hair grew long around the ears. She couldn’t make out his face, but his body was turned toward her, and she could feel his gaze. So—Fitzhugh had sent his servant to see what she was doing.

  For another moment Sal watched her, and she watched back, daring him to interfere.

  After a little while he bent his head in understanding, saluted her, and returned to the others. Vida was alone. She did not want to be alone, but nor did she want to be with any of the people she’d washed up with. She had no choice but to stand apart and contemplate the vast unknown that spread out before her, on and on to the very limits of her vision.

  Eleven

  Vida blinked into the white sun of high noon, trying to think what day it was. She was relatively certain this was her third day of residence on the island. Which would have meant it was a Thursday. But it might have been the second—things did all run together.

  And she wasn’t even all that sure that they had sunk on a Tuesday.

  What was a Tuesday, anyway?

  She was very hungry, and this further confused things. And then there was the monotony. She had been braiding together the dried ribs of palm fronds, which was what Fitz had asked all the ladies to do, and it was the sort of task that dulled the mind to nothing.

  In San Francisco, she had been the celebrated habitué of what in retrospect were only a handful of well-appointed rooms. Yet, when taken together, those rooms—elaborately decorated and filled with the sort of person who practiced the art of charm and loved to talk and talk—had seemed vast. On this island she could see, from first light to last, that the world was much bigger than she had known.

  It was rather horrible how it went on and on.

  For Vida was afraid of what lay beyond those first clusters of trees at the top of the beach, how the jungle thickened and cried out with its mysterious, indescribable sounds. She could only say that the sounds the island made at night chilled her, although the atmosphere itself was mostly warm. She was afraid of the ocean that crept up and down the wide crescent of the beach twice a day. So the overall effect was that her life had shrunk down like a puddle in the sun.

  There were only these other survivors, and they were as scared as she was. They huddled together under the makeshift shelters, these little huts made of fallen palm leaves, the debris of the wreck, tablecloths, and other items that had washed up in the wake of the storm. They did not speak much, because when they spoke they would often accidentally talk of what had happened, and the memory of what had befallen them and those who had perished in the disaster worsened their misery. Vida especially did not like to think of the time before this, which led her to thoughts of her parents, and how they fretted over her. How they had gone on this fool’s errand to protect her reputation, neglecting the fact that she had probably already ruined it. Maybe she had been born ruined.

  “A word to the wise.” A voice interrupted her thoughts.

  “Yes?” She glanced up wearily at that odd phrase, which had made perfect sense in her old life, but sounded curious and all wrong here.

  “My dear, don’t take this the wrong way,” Dame Edna said as she sank down out of the sun and became visible to Vida. She was wearing what had once been an emerald-colored evening gown and a bonnet that she must have constructed for herself out of a bent palm leaf wrapped with a piece of green silk that (Vida presumed) had been repurposed from some part of her undergarments. “You’re beginning to smell.”

  “Oh.” Vida instinctively lengthened her neck and did a trick she had learned in ballrooms, which was to keep her expression very placid and relax the focus of her eyes so that she could take in who was close by and within earshot.

  “Don’t worry, I’m not trying to humiliate you, dear child. Nobody can hear.”

  It was true—they all sat far apart, as though to discourage small talk. But still. The blood surged to Vida’s face. She felt it was of the utmost importance to defend herself. She parried with: “What does such vanity matter now?”

  The gentle smile with which Dame Edna returned this comment was even worse than a true rebuttal.

  Of course Vida still cared how she was perceived. It was only that she thought she had been keeping up appearances. She had plaited her hair and wound it at the back of her head, and she had gone with the other women to the cove to bathe in the ocean yesterday, and then Miss Flynn’s maid had helped her put her dress back on in as proper a fashion as they could manage. It pained her not to be able to check her appearance. Not knowing precisely the depth of her hideousness felt like torture, though she knew it was a blessing. Hadn’t that always been her trick anyway? To believe herself the most beautiful girl in the room with enough verve that everyone else believed it, too?

  Well, here was Dame Edna, to tell her that she had become a stinky, slovenly mess.

  At night, crammed together in the makeshift ladies’ shelter, she had smelled such human odors as she had not known existed, but she had assured herself that these were not the emissions of her own body. Now her ears clanged with shame and she tried to think quickly back to whether or not Fitzhugh and she had been in close proximity recently.

  “There’s a lovely pool, not far beyond the trees. Fresh water that comes down in a little waterfall from the high peak of the island,” said the dame. “The trick is to bathe in fresh water, and take off all your things, give them a good rinse, and let them dry on the rocks while you do.”

  This was against everything Vida had been taught. How long did it take for an evening dress to dry in the sun? She had never seen to such a task herself, but she guessed it would take some time, and that in that time she would be uncovered in public. And as she contemplated this prospect another blush crept up the skin of her neck. Despite some notable rebellious behavior, she had been taught since birth that revealing the skin of her elbow could diminish her standing in the world. Apparently some of that sense of decorum had stuck. “How do you . . . ?”

  “I was born in the British East Indies, dear, and began my career sending dispatches from the First Boer War. There are certain situations in which you must try very hard to forget everything you know about propriety.”

  “But I would have to be . . .”

  “Naked. Out of doors, yes.”

  The word “naked” sent a sudden heat to Vida’s cheeks. She would have thought she was beyond that kind of humiliation, but no—she had blushed at a mere word.

 
The dame noticed her embarrassment.

  “Perhaps I have overestimated you.” Dame Edna’s face was like that of a faded fox. It was apparent now—without makeup, in the stark light of the island—that she was a woman with many decades behind her. But whatever lines marked her face, whatever frost had settled permanently in her hair, her eyes had the fire of eternal youth.

  Vida gazed back and wondered if the dame had esteemed her too highly. She was feeling very sorry for herself, and wished that she had stayed in San Francisco and been satisfied with making a good match and living out the life her parents expected of her. But some deep determination forced Vida to square her shoulders and say, “No, you haven’t. And thank you for telling me. I shall look forward to a nice bath—and showing you that I am still myself.”

  Edna nodded. Just then Fitzhugh bolted from the trees, dashing past them and down the sand, where he leapt and dove headlong into the next gathering wave. He emerged seconds later, pushing his hair back from his forehead, his muscles gleaming as the sunlight glimmered on his wet skin. He had rolled his dark trousers above the ankle, and went about retucking his undershirt under his waistband as he strode back up the beach.

  The ladies who sat in the shade, braiding the long, dried stalks they had spent the morning collecting, stopped what they were doing and stared openly. As he approached his mouth broke open into a hearty grin. Oh what a stupid animal is the female heart, thought Vida. Her own heart had fluttered alive at the sight of him.

  “Isn’t it a beautiful day?” he called.

  “He’s very impressive, isn’t he?” Dame Edna said at a volume only Vida could hear.

  “Don’t you mean delusional?”

  “Oh, he’s worried. I’ve seen a few men in extreme circumstances, and I can tell you delusion is a frightening thing that any sane person recognizes immediately and shrinks from. No, he knows what a bad spot we’re in. But he’s a leader, and he knows that we are in greater danger if we lose our will. Don’t you think?”