Beautiful Wild

by Anna Godbersen

  “Oh? What are you going to do? Build a boat that will take you to California?”

  “No. We only need to get as far as Hawaii.”

  She wasn’t sure why, but there was something about hearing this plan from Fitzhugh’s inscrutable servant that made it more believable than if Fitz had said it in his own confident and beautifully articulated way.

  “Meanwhile,” he went on, “we will build better shelter, and get better food. This island has resources to sustain us forever if need be.”

  Forever. Her mouth went dry. She had not thought of that. She had never thought she’d do any one thing for very long at all.

  They passed out of the shelter of the palms. The people on the beach glanced at them. Flora Flynn was sitting on the beach, arms wrapped around her legs and her head rested on her knees. A little down the way Jack, who had been a deckhand aboard the Princess and whose face was fuzzed with the beard he could not grow, and Henry Dries Stahl, who had been introduced to Vida as an inventor, were trying—not very successfully—to build a shack at the edge of the trees. It kept slanting, threatening to fall down. The notion of forever with these people made Vida’s stomach drop in despair. She gave Sal a formal little nod and said, “I do wish you luck in all your endeavors.”

  He bowed in return. Although she saw the laughter in his eyes, his reply was as formal as her own had been. “Thank you, Miss Hazzard.”

  They were about to part. But quickly, before it could seem they had been talking too long, she bent her head and asked, “Sal. Tell me the truth. Do I . . . smell?”

  His dark eyes met hers in surprise. “You will never get the sea out of that dress.”

  “Oh, damn it all.” She sighed and stepped away from him.

  “But I don’t mind it,” he murmured. Or that’s what she thought he said. As she made her way toward the huddle of ladies braiding their palm ropes, she glanced back once and saw that his dark eyes were still upon her.

  Thirteen

  In the days that followed Vida’s visit to the little pool, the girl she had been in the first days after the wreck shrank and disappeared from view. Sal’s reassurances that they would be all right here began to seem less empty. Had she really bawled in public, and run off through the jungle like a madwoman because she was afraid the famous Fitzhugh Farrar might smell her? It was true that until now her fortitude had been adapted to a very different milieu. But she found that she had fortitude still, that she was capable of surviving not only the wilds of a ballroom but also of an island far, far away.

  What Sal had said was true. They had plenty right here. In a matter of days their circumstances were transformed. Vida acknowledged, though only begrudgingly, that this was largely Fitzhugh’s leadership. He kept the survivors busy from first light till last with a multitude of tasks, and though Vida initially dismissed the smallness of their various assignments (she had privately believed he was keeping them occupied so they wouldn’t go mad), she marveled at what their steady output created in a matter of days. The children had managed to collect several large empty turtle shells which were set up to collect rainwater, as well as many useful bits of detritus that had washed up in the days since the wreck.

  Doors, planks, nets, pieces of textile, glass jars, and one fine metal platter.

  The women had managed to make so many braids of dried palm fronds that they could braid the braids together. In this way they created mats to be used as flooring in their shelters. Instead of the two small, propped-together shelters—one for females, and one for males—they had managed to construct six houses with thatched roofs in that lightly wooded area separating the jungle and the openness of the beach. These were open on the sides to the breezes, but situated far apart enough that they offered a kind of privacy. The especially delicate ladies had taken to hanging the outermost layers of their skirts from the roofs to serve as walls while they slept. When the wind ruffled those skirts, they filled like beautiful sails.

  Each day, a group of men ventured farther into the jungle and returned with the fruits of the trees. Not just coconuts, but wonderful sweet-tasting bulbous things with bright skins and gleaming seeds. There were rumors of game in the hills. But they were not ready yet for that, said Fitzhugh. He and several of the other former crewmembers had escaped the ship with blades on their persons. But they did not have weapons sufficient to protect themselves from—much less hunt—a wild beast.

  That was how Fitzhugh phrased it. He said “wild beast” and the little group of people, which he had begun assembling in the morning, gasped at the phrase.

  Having regained some of her personal dignity, Vida found herself once again in possession of her incredulity. After Fitzhugh’s morning speech, she followed him to ask what he’d meant.

  “Wild beasts?” she demanded.

  Fitzhugh looked up from the piece of bone he was whittling. “Don’t worry, Miss Hazzard, you will have something better to eat than tree fruits, soon.”

  “That’s not at all what I meant, Mr. Farrar. But I do think it’s cruel to scare everybody.”

  “Are you scared?” he asked, rising to his feet, showing her the breadth of his shoulders and the sweet puncture of his dimple and grinning at her in a way that she still found (against her will) sort of pleasing. Only on an aesthetic level, of course. “Don’t worry, we are taking every precaution, and the shelters are well situated in case of attack. . . .”

  “That’s not . . . !” Vida protested. But she only knew her desire to protest, and not precisely what it was she was protesting. She ran out of words before she succeeded in making any kind of point.

  “Don’t tell anybody. I want it to be a surprise. But we’ll have a celebration tonight. Can you and one other lady with discretion see what you can collect in the way of kindling?”

  “For a fire, you mean?”

  He only smiled at her.

  “Are you trying to call the attention of passing ships?”

  Still that evasive and annoyingly handsome smile.

  “Have you seen a ship?” she pressed on, her heart lightening and her lips curling into a smile even though she wanted to maintain her antagonism, wanted him to know how much she objected to his exaggerations, his secrecy. But she hadn’t permitted herself such a fantasy—a passing ship, a sudden salvation, a warm bath and glass of lemonade—and now she had. Her mind wrapped around this hopeful vision as surely as a suitor’s grip might grab hold of her delicate wrist. “Have you seen a ship passing close enough to see us?”

  “Even better,” he said, and strode off down the beach.

  As she watched him half run, half walk toward the water she felt the heat of the sun, which grew hotter with every passing moment. A strong, gentle breeze ruffled her skirts. The day was noisy with the whisper of human hands weaving fibers together and the smacking of planks that had once been part of the Princess as the men separated them into two piles. One for wood that might be used to build structures, and one for pieces too shattered and broken by the rocks and the coral that hemmed in the island.

  There was also the mélange of island sounds: the high rhythmic chirps of birds, the smash of a coconut falling from its lofty place, and always, always, the low sizzle of the ocean waves washing up and falling back from the beach.

  There was the turquoise water spreading forever beyond the long white beach, the cornflower blue of the sky, the big gray rocks.

  And there was herself, Vida—the same girl whose name had once appeared in society notes in newspapers—encased in that pale pink dinner dress, which had been dirtied and magically cleaned again, almost bleached white, by its trial in the elements. That lace and cotton fitted tight to her body. Her small body, which she’d walked in all her life. For long, unthinking stretches of existence that body was all she really knew. Now her physical form seemed a tiny, insignificant doll thrown against the infinite variety of sights and sounds, harsh and sweet, which themselves were nothing when compared to the incomprehensible vastness that rolled out from the bea
ch.

  How deadly, Vida thought with a shiver. I am being awfully profound.

  She turned away from the scene, and looked around for an accomplice in kindling-gathering. Ideally Eleanor, Miss Flynn’s maid, who was the most level-headed of the female survivors—the least mute with despair, and the most able when it came to almost any task. But when Vida’s eyes settled on Eleanor, she saw that Eleanor was busy drying seaweed on the rocks (unfortunately, this had become a staple of their diet). Miss Flynn would have been her second choice, for though she was not as clever as Eleanor, and tended to tire easily, her desire to be considered helpful was deep and abiding. But she caught a glimpse of Miss Flynn—who had been fated to live out her time here in a flowered nightdress—hurrying away from the group in the direction of the private grove where the ladies went when they were called by an activity that they found too shameful to name.

  The children, because of their enthusiasm, were always off collecting something or other.

  And the men, for reasons everyone found too obvious to discuss, were always engaged in building a structure or a better, more elaborate water-gathering system, or something else that Fitzhugh deemed too important to be known by the group at large.

  The only idle body anywhere was that of Camilla, who sat by herself halfway down the beach, her arms wrapped around her knees and her head bent.

  So Camilla, who had not bothered to be faithful to her husband while alive, was so devastated by his death that she could now do nothing to contribute to her own quite tenuous survival, while all around her others worked?

  In her old life, Vida might have well enjoyed an hour in uncharitable analysis of Camilla’s state (though Nora, who was ever Vida’s ally, had an inner sweetness and could not abide that sort of chatter). And now, in this place, having subsisted on rainwater and kelp and the occasional coconut shard, Vida would have liked to savor the spice of another’s contemptible self-pity and hypocrisy.

  She did try.

  But before she could sink her teeth into that thought a different thought had her attention, which was that the pale skin of the back of Camilla’s neck was exposed to the sun. It would burn, and blister, if Camilla just sat there in silent mourning.

  Vida walked briskly over. She cleared her throat. “Mrs. Farrar.”

  Camilla sat motionless and the ocean waves continued to lap at the shore. “You must really hate me,” Camilla said eventually, speaking into her knees.

  “Why would you say something so stupid? Of course I don’t hate you.”

  “Oh?” Camilla raised her face and Vida saw how washed-out her eyes were and how puffy the skin around them had become. After all these days it was hardly news, but it still amazed her how different a lady appeared without the preparations of makeup, of comb and lash crimper, minus the enhancement of sparkling ornaments. “Then why would you use that name?”

  “I’m sorry,” Vida replied impatiently. “What would you prefer?”

  “What does it matter?”

  “Well, if you want to be like that. I mean, why does anything matter?”

  Camilla thought about that a while. “What do you want?”

  “Could you help me?” Vida tried to sound as entreating as possible although she wasn’t sure she really wanted Camilla’s help at all. “Fitz asked me to do something, and said I ought to find a discreet accomplice.”

  “Oh.”

  “And if you stay where you are, your neck will burn.”

  “All right.”

  “All right you want to burn?”

  “All right, what do you want my help with?” Camilla extended her hand, and though Vida felt a blush of outrage at Camilla’s expecting to be assisted in this way—when of course they were all weak and fatigued, when they all needed a hand to help them—she let herself be a steady support as Camilla rose to her feet. “Discretion,” Camilla muttered as she brushed the sand from her silk skirt. “As though I want to talk to anyone anyway.”

  “Well,” said Vida brightly, “you certainly don’t have to talk to me.”

  If Camilla was insulted by this, she didn’t show it. She just nodded and followed Vida past the first trees in search of fallen bark, leaves, twigs, and other combustible items. They didn’t talk any more than they had to, but kept always close enough to the beach that they could hear the others. Every now and then Vida would glance up to assure herself that she could catch a glimpse of the endless ocean through the trunks and hanging vines.

  They foraged a long time in silence.

  Then the sky was purple, and then pink. As they returned to the camp carrying a tattered tablecloth piled high with small, dry scraps of the forest, they saw the others gathered around a new structure. It was the bashed-up shards of the ship, propped together like a teepee. Fitzhugh beamed when he saw Camilla and Vida appear, and clapped his hands.

  “Thank you, ladies, you have brought the final ingredient,” he said. And as they stood holding the tablecloth, he and the other men began taking the kindling they’d gathered and shoving it inside the structure. When it was all gone—all their work, jammed under the old boards—Fitzhugh whipped a tinderbox from his pocket. An old-fashioned tinderbox like the ones Vida had seen in antique shops when she was slumming with Bill Halliday back in San Francisco. Fitz worked it and for a moment Vida was afraid for him, afraid the promise of the big pyre would fall flat because he couldn’t get this pathetic little antiquity to work. Then she saw the spark and her heart started. The spark initiated a small flame. His palm sheltered it as he kneeled. The flame touched a dried leaf, caught a dried branch. No one spoke. They just watched until the fire spread, became a big pyramid of fire.

  It was not that they had been very cold. They had been wet, and at night chilled occasionally. But mostly the dense air held the sun’s heat even after dark. They hadn’t been warmed like this, though. The heat off the flames warming the skin of their hands and faces. They smiled and laughed—that variety of amazed laughter which is mostly relief.

  Vida turned from them, gazed at the horizon. As the others talked, marveled at the fire, she watched that eerie strip of green, a reddish line, and above that a deepest blue. She strained to make out the silhouette of a mighty ship. But time passed, and she saw nothing. She was brought back from her disappointment by the excited exclamations of the others, and she turned to see how Sal and Fitzhugh used long sticks to carefully remove what had been hidden on the stones under the pyre. A package, wrapped in banana leaves. Before she could hope for anything specific, she saw Fitzhugh open the package. Inside was a large, blistered fish.

  Everyone lined up and each was given a steaming cut of white flesh, placed on a ripped piece of green leaf. Some went to sit on the sand, while others were too impatient and stood devouring their portion. Their first helping was gone almost before anyone noticed and then they came for seconds. Everyone buzzed happily, but Vida, overwhelmed by an emotion she had no name for, walked away from the crowd and sank down on the sand. The stars were emerging against the great, dark dome of the sky.

  “Here,” said Fitzhugh. He had sat down beside her before she could tell him not to.

  She stared at his outstretched hands offering her a piece of fish on a square of leaf. She resisted, not so much because she wanted to spite him (she did, though oddly not with the same verve as before). Mostly it just seemed bizarre to have something so like a meal offered her here.

  “Try some.”

  Before she knew what she had done, her fingertips had dug into the white flesh, the flakes had melted on her tongue, and she knew that taste of salt, of fat in her mouth, and the wonderful satisfaction of food absorbed by her belly. She had almost forgotten what it was to eat and feel satisfied.

  “It’s good, isn’t it?”

  She glanced sidelong at him. But her irritation at his having seen her eat with such abandon, at his knowing smile, was short-lived. “Yes,” she said. “Aren’t you going to have some?”

  He showed her his own banana leaf plate,
which she had not noticed in her frenzy. Her old anger at him was like internal fireworks—it soared, exploded with light, fizzled into nothing at all. She was left with only a glowing trace. Meanwhile he took bits of fish in his fingers, chewed thoughtfully, then wiped his fingers on the banana leaf, and tossed it off. He sighed and leaned back, his elbows propping him above the sand.

  “What do you think they’re eating now in the Palace Hotel?” he asked.

  She didn’t have to think about the answer. “Oysters,” she said reflexively.

  “And after that?”

  “Lobster bisque.”

  “And after that?”

  “Duck confit, followed by a walnut and celery salad, followed by squabs and madeira, followed by berries and cream, followed by baba au rhum.”

  “And then?”

  “And then everyone will moan about how uncomfortably full they are. And then they will all have to retire to their little salons—the men for cigars, the women to loosen their corset strings—and then when everyone is refreshed, they will return to dance.”

  “Do you think they’re dancing now?”

  “Oh no. Not yet. It feels late because it’s dark. But in San Francisco it’s early, they are only just beginning their evening.” She held his gaze, her lips parted, and she knew they were both thinking of that moment when they first saw each other across such a room, and forgot to talk to anybody else for the rest of the evening. “And in New York?”

  “In New York perhaps the dancing is just beginning. They are all catching their second wind, and saying a little tipsily that the night is full of possibility.”

  “And here we are.”

  “Yes.” He sighed again, not in the satisfied way of before. Now he sounded weary. “Here we are. It is good to hear your voice, Miss Hazzard, thank you. I always liked listening to your voice, to you saying anything. It makes me think we might be all right.”

  “I am surprised to hear you talk this way. You never seem to think that everything won’t be all right.”