They were breathing hard. Under the roof, they began to laugh. The rain was so sudden and so wild—the change in the landscape so extreme. They could hear shouting in the other huts, everyone calling to each other. Mostly they heard the rain, how it pelted the roof and assailed the beach. The world as she had come to know it—this new world—was soon unrecognizable. It seemed all water.
For a while they were trapped like that. They called to the neighboring huts, asking who was there—and who was in the next hut over—until Sal was satisfied that everyone was accounted for. The joke that Fitzhugh had made yesterday—about the sunset being a kind of show that he had arranged for her delight—had seemed just that, a mere joke. But now she understood it in a different way. Sitting beside Sal—her clothes drenched, her face damp, her chest heaving as her breath steadied—the scene before them was as exciting as any play she’d ever seen. It changed by the second, the leaves blown across the sand, the sea now silver now black, the ocean spray leaping like dancers from the sharp rocks into froth white as snowfall.
Then, quite suddenly, the rain stopped.
The seascape before them was every kind of gray, from the dark, dense, light-absorbing variety to a metallic and reflective hue. In the distance Vida saw the movement of storm clouds, but the sky above her ceased its dramatics. Out over the ocean a column of sunlight fell, a rich marigold beam of warmth against an otherwise silvery field. Sal released an anxious breath, and Vida began to laugh again.
“Peter!” Sal called.
They heard the boy’s bright reply from some huts over: “Here, sir!”
“And your sister—still there? All right?”
“Yes!”
“Eleanor!”
“Here, with Miss Flynn, Sal; yes, we’re all right!”
“Good!” called Sal. “There may be more weather, stay put!”
For a while, they called to each other, learning how everyone had weathered the deluge. A few roofs had been damaged by the onslaught, but everyone was in one piece. It was only then that Vida noticed the pattern on the water far in the distance.
“Do you see that?” she asked.
Sal narrowed his eyes at the distant ripple on the surface of the sea. It was unlike any shape Vida had ever seen anywhere.
“Oh,” he said miserably.
“What is it?”
“A wave.”
“Just a wave?”
“A wave like that can travel halfway around the world if nothing breaks it,” he whispered to himself in a tone of such awe that she too felt a shudder rocking across her shoulders. Then he bolted to his feet. Now he seemed insensible to pain. He didn’t have to tell her. She could see it in his face: a wave like that had the power to sweep them all away. “Move!” he shouted. “Move, now! Get as high as you can!”
The others heard his urgency, and they ran in the direction Vida and Sal had gone that morning, clutching what they could. Fear wiped all expression from their faces.
Sal ran along the huts, shouting, making sure everyone had heard him. Then he grabbed Vida’s hand.
“Did you count them?”
“Yes.”
“Was that everybody?”
“I think so.”
“You think so?”
“Yes! Yes,” she cried, uncertain, but hoping it was true, and hating herself for not having counted more carefully.
Sal’s gaze swung back and forth frantically. “All right,” he said at last. “All right, come on, let’s go.”
The survivors of the Princess made their panicked, careful way up the rim of the cliff, up and up, clutching at the slick roots, keeping low to the ground so as to maintain balance, with Vida almost at the rear, and Sal behind her, urging them to keep their footing and to make haste. “There’s a cave at the top!” he shouted.
“What?” Vida fell, but managed to catch herself with her hands.
“It will be dangerous at the top if they crowd there, tell them to get into the cave!”
“There’s a cave!” she shouted at those farther up along the ridge. “Get in the cave at the top.”
The message made its way up the line.
At last Vida and then Sal reached the peak, where earlier he’d sat staring out. She saw the opening in the rock behind them—she had not noticed it before. The others had gathered there. Sal walked on his foot as though it didn’t hurt him, but his mouth was in a hard line and she guessed he must be in great pain. The wind was thick with salt and droplets and a dangerous energy, blown in from far away.
That mountain of a wave she had seen far out reared like some massive beast of myth. It loomed, crashed down. It smothered the length of the beach, smashing through their huts, flooding even the forest. Where the beach had been there was now a seething sea. Then, slowly, the ocean reeled itself back, taking with it the boards and leaves, the mats and trunks, that had been their safety and their home.
Vida felt she had to hold on to something and grabbed what was nearest, which was Sal’s shirt. A sound she’d never made before—like a groan, but far more savage—escaped her throat. Before she could take in the scope of the destruction, she heard Sal urging her in his steady way that they ought to get inside the cave lest the rain wash them away, too.
Twenty
The night they spent in the cave was the longest Vida had ever known.
During those hours of huddling and shaking and silence she had prayed for the night to end. But the next morning’s stark sun terrified her, and as she made her way down the cliff’s edge to the beach, her heart beat slowly, thudding with dread. The infinite flat sea went on and on, terrible in its stillness. For the stillness was deceptive. Vida knew now what wild destruction that unending water was capable of. As they made the final descent her chest tightened. The ruins of their makeshift homes lay in pieces on the sand.
If she hadn’t known better she would have thought it was another beach. It had been rearranged. Some rocks appeared bashed apart, and new ones had accumulated, and the belt of sand between the water and the trees had narrowed. The trees bent in the direction they had been pulled by the sea, and their roots were naked and exposed.
The sky was blue, but a weak blue, as though diluted. There was no rain. The wind had a bite to it, seemed to whip them with sand and particles of things broken in the night. Vida brushed her hair back from her forehead, tried not to be afraid of the gathering emptiness inside her. The ocean had given them no new treasures—only the same old boards and planks as before, more eroded now.
Then her eye caught sight of something in a bright and happy hue. A pale pink—almost like a wedding dress color, but not quite white enough.
Her throat closed. She rushed toward that burst of color, one hand pulling her skirt back from her feet, the other arm swinging crazily. When she reached the bright petticoat she sank onto her knees. The sand was damp; it soaked her skirt. She lifted the petticoat, and buried her face in it.
She told herself not to cry. She was Vida Hazzard—she was not some flimsy thing. If she lost this last principle of her old self, she feared she would be nothing, nothing at all.
But she could not hold back. The weather inside her was beyond her control. She choked, gasped; her sobs had a life of their own. They came like breakers across her chest. The ugly sound of her heaving, the way her body shook, her waist convulsing within the corseted dress she’d worn when all was fizzy and fine—she was helpless to stop any of that.
The typhoon that had come in the night had left them nothing. So how could a boat made of wood, piloted by a few men, be otherwise but buried in the depths of the ocean?
She knew what had become of them. She knew, and her heart closed around what she had lost.
Fitzhugh, who had been at first a pleasant fantasy, and then a very compelling one. And also a handsome face and an excellent story. A story of a sickly boy who had made himself strong and able. He, that grand self-invention, was surely nothing now. He had seemed a bright star, the lone man who might suit her
own impressive self, but he was no more. She had to put both hands against the sand for balance. Otherwise the convulsions of her sobs might be too much; she might break apart, too.
Somehow the weather inside her—like the weather that had come over the island—passed. When she looked up, Sal was the only person she saw. He was a few yards ahead of her, shoeless, ragged, staring out at the horizon. He seemed a person who would like to cry but can’t, who is too stunned to have the slightest idea what they feel. Vida knew she was being ridiculous. Fitz had been wonderful. But he had not really been hers—it was just a fantasy she had had, a possibility that had passed through her mind. Sal, as far as she knew, had been following Fitzhugh around the world all his life, and could follow him no more.
Fitz had been their leader. Sal was supposed to lead in his place, but he was in shock. Vida waited for one of the other men to speak up, take charge. To step forward with some brave proclamation, some inspiring plan. But several minutes passed, and no one did anything like that. Vida sighed, rose to her feet, smoothed her skirt as best she was able. She touched Sal’s shoulder. “We’ll be all right,” she told him.
His head moved around but it wasn’t exactly a nod of agreement. “It’s all over,” he said.
His eyes were dark with despair. She wanted to look away from that despair. She would have liked to throw the petticoat out to sea, but she couldn’t do that. They might need it yet. She wouldn’t give up, or abandon Sal or any of the others. She held his gaze. “I know, but we can’t let them think that. Come,” she said.
The others were scattered across the beach in various poses of shock—some sitting, some howling, some quite frighteningly still in the face of loss. Camilla was one of these. It seemed strange that once upon a time her very presence had seemed to diminish Vida’s own. Now her lips were paler than her sun-reddened face, and her light blue eyes made her seem otherworldly. Vida wanted Camilla to look up, to give her a reassuring glance, but she was absorbed in misery. The Misses Van Huysen held each other and wept. Young Peter sat apart from the rest, scowling out to sea. Vida offered Sal her arm and he took it, leaning on her as he hobbled along toward the others.
“I am sorry,” she called to them, in as loud and firm a voice as she could manage. “I hate what you have had to endure. I know you are frightened, hungry, tired. But we cannot think the worst. We must assume that Fitz and the others are safe onboard a ship and that they will be coming back for us soon. Now we must get to work, now we must collect what is useful. We must be ready for darkness.” She wasn’t sure about anything, but she could see the relief on their faces when they had someone to tell them what to do and how to think. So she did her old trick and summoned all her inner spirit so that her presence loomed impressive—larger than her actual self. She made her voice loud, crystalline: “We will survive the night if we work hard and take care of each other. If we take care of each other, we will be all right.”
Inside, she seethed. But she remembered Fitz. She thought about what he would have done, and made herself brave.
Part Three
Twenty-One
By noon everyone was red in the face, tired, and hungry, and Vida used what desiccated palm spines she could find to rope the petticoat through the eyelet perforations along the hem and hang it between two trees, and in this way created a small area of pinkish shade. Miss Flynn glanced pitifully at the modest shelter, and Vida gestured to her.
“It’s all right,” Vida said, when Miss Flynn weakly sank under the protection of the petticoat. “I’m not tired.” This was a lie, but Vida saw the relief in Miss Flynn’s face, and that made it a little more true. “Rest, the children will be back soon.”
All that morning, the children had run back and forth to the waterfall, returning with half coconut shells brimming with fresh water for the others to drink. Everyone else was busy hauling and sorting the detritus on the beach—the planks and branches, the cloths and doors—so that they could plan what to build first. The day they arrived here, Vida had been dismissed from these labors. But Fitz had taken two of the ablest men with him on his ill-fated voyage, leaving only three former members of the crew of the Princess, and Sal, who had led the effort on that first day, couldn’t do much now. He did try, to Vida’s vexation. “Looking at that swollen ankle is giving me a headache,” she said, truthfully. He sat awhile after that.
A little later she returned to the top of the beach, hauling a piece of deck chair, and saw that the shade she had created was now crowded. Mr. and Mrs. Charles Brinkley, née Lucy Lawrence, who had been friends of Whiting’s in San Francisco, lay on their backs underneath the petticoat, and beside them sat Charlotte Coburg, whose father was in railroads and whose husband was from an old aristocratic family in Europe. Vida’s irritation flared, but she knew how these people had lived. They were not any more suited to this place than she was. They hadn’t the slightest idea how to do anything for themselves, and they had received one too many shocks. They were afraid of everything—who could blame them? Once she’d deposited the salvaged bit of wood in a pile of similar flotsam, she went behind the trunk of a palm and bent over to undo the complicated ties at the back of her skirt. She was wearing enough fabric to make shade for at least three more bodies.
The corset, as ever, squeezed her insides. Stars appeared in her vision and she exclaimed in frustration at the difficulty of removing the skirt. She was hot, her fingers ached. She was thirsty and weak. Otherwise, she rationalized, it would be easier to undo the ties. But rational thought was no match for the utter fury she felt when at last she freed herself from the heavy, embellished skirt. How had she spent so many years at the mercy of her own clothing? She could not have gotten through a morning, much less an entire day, without the assistance of a person whose entire job was to help her with such trivialities. And there was nothing to do with that fury, except contort herself until she had freed herself from the corset, too.
Removing the finery of her last night on the Princess had required almost more effort than hauling a deck chair across the length of beach. Her white bloomers and undershirt were stuck to her skin with sweat.
This shedding of old clothes had been a mad impulse, but now that she saw them lying at her feet, she could not imagine how she would ever get them back on. For modesty’s sake, for fear she would lose them, she had never fully removed her clothes since her arrival on the island. Mostly she had washed them when she washed the rest of her. The corset had been on so long it had left indentations in her skin. Without them she felt nervous and naked, but it seemed like a lot of work to dress herself again, and there was other work she knew she must do. She shooed away the thought, took a breath, and was surprised by how much air her lungs could take in when they were not constricted.
“Well,” said Dame Edna, returning from the waterfall, a new makeshift sunshade in place, the green of her skirt swaying. “You’ve given up.”
Vida blushed. “I couldn’t stand it anymore.”
“I thought we were doomed. But seeing you like that makes me a little hopeful. Maybe we will be all right. For one more day, anyway,” the older woman remarked. “But prepare yourself for judgment.”
Vida followed Dame Edna back toward the beach, where her words proved prophetic. First Camilla, and then the Misses Van Huysen, glanced at Vida, now wearing nothing but her undershirt and bloomers, and glanced away. Mrs. Brinkley stared, and so did Flora Flynn, and even Eleanor looked incredulous. Though their faces had expressed nothing but the purest fear since yesterday afternoon, now they managed to widen their eyes and part their lips in that subtle expression of horror usually reserved for some fashion faux pas of a particularly egregious nouveau riche.
Only once or twice in her social career had Vida made a mistake that warranted such censure-by-arched-brow, and she had forgotten how it scalded. She was surprised to find that even here, where no logic could possibly justify their opprobrium, it was uncomfortable to be held under the light of a gaze like that.
; Well, yes—her first impulse was to run away and find a high cliff to dive off.
But she couldn’t do that. She was in the middle of a task, and would have to see it through before she indulged in any drastic measures. The task came first. Once strung up, her skirt and petticoat together made almost a small room’s worth of shade, and Vida summoned Eleanor, and told her to rest under it, before she lost her chance and was elbowed out by the kind of people who had never risen from a dinner table with their own dirty dish.
“There,” Vida said with satisfaction. “Don’t forget to drink water. And see the children have some rest in the shade when they next come back from the waterfall.”
“Look at that,” said a high, genteel voice that almost disguised its mean edge as Vida turned away. “She’s a libertine again.”
Vida flushed with anger and embarrassment. Without glancing back to identify the speaker, she went to Sal, who was leaning against a palm trunk.
“You did good work,” he said, when she reached him. “You’ve reassured everybody.”
“What does it matter?” She wasn’t sure who she was angry at anymore, but the anger was still hot in her throat, and he was the closest person to her. “Just say it, you think I’m awful, and that this is all my fault.”
Sal let out a great laugh, sank down into the sand, flung back his arms like a child about to make a snow angel. His laughter was like the swoon of a string quartet in the afternoon.
“What?” she demanded. “What?”
“Miss Vida Hazzard, I can see you think everyone should be impressed by you. But I think you are ridiculous. You keep taking credit for events far beyond your control. How could this be any one person’s fault?”
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