By The Sea, Book Three: Laura

by Stockenberg, Antoinette

  "We'd need more drinking water," he said with a smile that made her heart lurch. "And oranges."

  "We could eat breadfruit," she said wistfully, wishing that he would take her in his arms. "The mutineers planted some on Pitcairn, didn't they? Or was that Captain Cook?"

  "It isn't a fruit, more like a potato ...."

  "I wouldn't care at all ...."

  "Darling—"

  The word was pure electric current. She tensed, and Neil stirred, and suddenly Colin was saying brusquely, "Hey, mate, if you're planning to take the dog-watch with me, you'd better get on to bed."

  A sleepy smile drifted across the boy's face as he kissed his mother good night and said to Colin, "Don't forget to wake me at four."

  Laura jumped up beside her son and said, "I'll tuck you in, honey. I never get to do that anymore." Her look to Colin was filled with agony. "Don't get up—please."

  Still wobbly with desire, Laura straightened out Neil's berth in the forecastle and brushed away the crumbs. She put him to bed, held him close, drawing some strength from the act, and kissed him good night. Then she went back to her cabin and pulled off the skirt and blouse she had worn to celebrate being clean again, and—waited to fall asleep. It was hopeless. She had no more control over her desire, over her body, than a cat in heat. It staggered her, this continual yearning. She was so tired of it. It was the most compelling thing she'd ever felt, but she was so tired of it.

  It was dark outside, and airless in the cabin. Her yearning seemed to her worse in the dark, so she got up to light the small kerosene lamp that hardly swayed in its gimbals on the cabin bulkhead. She adjusted the wick downward, turned around, and he was there. She was not afraid, or even startled; a decade at sea had accustomed her, after all, to inevitability.

  Without a word she went up to him and put her arms around him. It seemed so futile to fight off the passion; a terrible waste of energy, somehow.

  His kiss was almost reluctant, heated and yet sad; he was exhausted too. "I'm sorry, Laura—" he began, but she put her hand over his mouth.

  "No, no. It's not our fault, any more than the weather is. It's ... our paths are ... coincident ... that's all. Oh, Colin—"

  They kissed: long, long and hungrily, as if the kiss were payment for a thousand miles of suffering. There was nothing tentative about it, no testing of the waters before the plunge. It was a kiss between lovers who have come to terms with their longing. He wanted her right then; his deep kiss made that clear. And she was waiting for him; the inside of her thighs was wet to his touch.

  She half opened her eyes from the kiss, drugged by its power. But his own eyes were shut tight; his jaw, square and clenched, gave him a look of agonizing pain. "Now," he said. "Before I die."

  He took away her underthings almost roughly, as though they were an affront to his sensibilities; his own clothes came off with the same careless impatience. And then they were in her berth together and her first thought was, how meltingly smooth his skin is; how young. He was kissing her everywhere, on her breasts, her neck, her stomach—as if he were desperately thirsty, and she was water. The depth of his desire overwhelmed her.

  But hers was deeper, she was sure of that. All her life she had been looking for him, and up until now she hadn't found him. When she'd run away from home, when she'd tried to go to Cuba—it was Colin Durant she was looking for. She'd found Sam and he had helped her on her way—but it was Colin she was looking for. She'd had a son whom she adored—but it was Colin, always Colin, that she was looking for. She arched her body in rhythmic response to his kisses; she had found him at last, and the joy of her discovery was inseparable from the pain.

  "Colin... Colin," she said in a soft wail. "Who are you?"

  He came back up to her then, pressing his body against hers, flat against curve, solid against soft, and cupped her face in his hands. "I'm whoever you want me to be ... whatever you need ... I'm you, Laura .... Can't you see that?" He kissed away the tear that trickled down her cheek and laughed softly. "Salt—despite all that rain."

  He skimmed her face with random, nibbling kisses, lingering at her mouth, kissing away the sorrow, leading her to the light. "I've circled the globe twice, looking for you, darling. I don't know how I missed you the first time," he said with a poignant smile.

  "I was probably ... delivering ... a load of cement from Portland," she murmured between kisses. "Oh, Colin, I—"

  He kissed her quickly. "Shh ... don't say it. The word isn't good enough for what we feel."

  She stared at his handsome face, awestruck. She had wanted to say, "I love you" but hesitated; she'd used the phrase before for an entirely different feeling, and it no longer did seem good enough. He understood that; even more, he seemed to feel the same.

  She drew his mouth to hers in a kiss of surpassing emotion. The kiss burned away speech, leveled thought with its fire. Second thoughts could not survive in its caldron, nor could pangs of conscience. Time withered in its heat: yesterday's memories and the threat of tomorrow became a handful of ashes in the coal-hot present.

  He came into her then, and the final meltdown began: they were no more man or woman than they were guilty or innocent, seduced or seducer. They were none of these and all of these, a bit of meteorite blazing across the night sky. They were, despite their reluctance to use the word, in love.

  Chapter 12

  Despite Laura's fervent prayers, the wind stayed fair, backing a little to the east. The sun retreated behind a cloud cover and stayed there, and Laura's sextant began to gather dust. Without the benefit of her morning and afternoon sun-sights, she began to rely more heavily on Colin's skills at dead-reckoning. The Virginia hurried on her way, and Laura watched the miles tick off on the taffrail-log with something approaching panic.

  "If only the wind wouldn't blow!" she complained to Colin. "Why must it blow, day in and day out? Why can't we just drift along in a breathless calm, the way we did before?"

  It was three in the morning, an hour in which their off-watches overlapped, a time to snatch at love. Colin traced a finger over her breast and said, "Because, my fair captain, we would surely die of thirst." He leaned over and kissed her breast, and then her lips.

  "But we have so much to say, so much to ... do," she whispered as he trailed his finger lazily down her torso. They'd made love once already, but that was frenzied. The second time, they tended to ramble.

  "It doesn't end at Pineapple Cay," he said dreamily, his head propped up on the palm of his other hand. "Have I said you're beautiful?"

  "Once or twice," she answered, coloring as she always did. "Why aren't you more upset?"

  "Why are you so upset?" he asked softly, turning the question around.

  "Because once we touch shore, I have to make decisions. Write letters. Be honest. I don't have to do that aboard the Virginia. And anyway, how do I know you won't skip on me?" she added, trying to sound light-hearted. "You could run off with an island girl, just like the crew on the Bounty."

  "As if I would." He leaned over and took a very tantalizing, very tiny nibble on the inside of her thigh.

  She shivered but was determined to go on. "And I don't know a damn thing about you, Colin, not really. For example: Have you ever been in trouble with the law? Killed anyone or anything like that?" she added, not entirely in jest.

  "Only once," he replied gravely. "In Silesia. There was a duel, I won, he died, I buried the body. Or rather, my second did. He was a material witness, so I killed and buried him as well. And, of course, the other fellow's second. I almost forgot about him."

  "Stop it, stop it!" she wailed, pulling her legs up and pushing him away. "It's always this way with you. Who are you, Colin? Who are you?"

  His laugh was more abrupt than amused. "This isn't a gothic novel, Laura," he said, exasperated. "I've kicked around a lot, that's all. You should be more worried that I'm a gigolo. At the moment I don't have a hell of a lot of money."

  "I'm too young for you to be a gigolo," she said, dismi
ssing the possibility. "What about women? Will you tell me about the women in your life?"

  "All of them? Or just the ones I married?"

  "That's not funny, Colin," she whispered.

  He looked away. "I was married once," he said, tracing a little square into the bedding with his finger. "It didn't work out. It appears she's divorced me."

  "But you're not sure?" Laura answered, shocked.

  "Does it make a hell of a lot of difference?" he asked, a look of anguish on his face. "Should I have got my domestic papers in order before I took this job?"

  She sat up, covering her eyes with her hands. "No, of course not. I'm not thinking straight anymore. I haven't been, since the day you came aboard."

  Colin lifted a thick lock of hair that had fallen over her bare shoulder and laid it gently along her back. "Laura," he began, "I've been trying, really trying, to describe what I feel for you, ever since we first made love. All I can come up with is: I love you. Je t'aime," he whispered, cradling her chin in his hand and turning her face to his. "Je t'adore."

  ****

  "24 September, 1934. We won again and nearly lost a man doing it. Ben the quartermaster went overboard during a gybe and could of drowned before we got back to him. But he grabbed the backstay and dragged through the water with it like a piece of bait. We got him back wet but none the worse for wear. It made me think of the Gin. Would Laura know what to do—what if it was Neil. They are babes all of them. I felt sick. I wish it all was over."

  ****

  "September 24, 1934. I love him to distraction, and I know Neil sees it. He's not blind. We try to be discreet, and yet Neil—and certainly Billy and probably Stubby—seem quieter and more withdrawn, as if they would prefer to look the other way but there is no place to do it. So they skulk about as if they are the guilty ones, and we do our best not to touch one another accidentally, or gaze into one another's eyes while we are talking to someone else, and all the time we fail miserably at it.

  "Colin says we ought to behave naturally and let the chips fall where they may; he has no idea how appalling the notion is to me. He thinks it's better for Neil to find out sooner rather than later. I tried to explain to him that Neil is just a little boy, one who has been raised in an extremely sheltered environment among a close-knit family. (Colin never knew his parents and was raised by an aunt until he was sixteen; he can't possibly understand.) He insists it is better for us to be in control, explaining things in our own way, than for Neil to deduce them with a boy's lurid imagination.

  "I am so miserable about it, and yet I can't give Colin up, any more than I can stop breathing. I would not be writing this at all, except that I feel that it somehow legitimizes what we cannot have in the eyes of the law or the church or even of those immediately around us. I'll bury this book in Pineapple Cay; it will be a memorial to a love that never should have begun but which, once begun, can no more be stopped than a boat under full sail driven by gale-force winds."

  ****

  The next day the wind backed to the northeast and began to blow in earnest. They'd been without sun for days; Laura hadn't used her sextant for all that time. Colin continued to mark precise little "x's" on their trail southward, but Laura's marks looked a little less convinced than they had before. The Virginia had been traveling at what Laura considered a disgustingly efficient clip. Now they were moving at a frightening clip. Steering was becoming tiring, and everyone's trick at the wheel was shortened to an hour.

  It was ten in the morning. Stubby was at the wheel, Billy was in his berth, and Neil was trying, without much success, to complete an exercise in multiplication: they had had to clear him away from the table to make space for the chart.

  "As near as we can make out, then, we'll be making our landfall just before dawn? We'll raise San Salvador just before dawn?" Laura's voice had lost a good deal of its confidence; this was the first landfall of which she was in charge.

  "Looks that way," said Colin, his voice sounding reassuringly casual about it as he pored over the chart with her.

  Laura knew that he'd been responsible for the safe delivery of a dozen different boats in his lifetime. But the wind, beginning really to howl through the rigging, was getting on her nerves. "The seas are running awfully high; we won't see the light on the east side until it's too close for comfort."

  As if to prove her point about the seas, the Virginia fell heavily off a wave, throwing Laura into Colin's arms. "Oh, I'm so sorry," she said with elaborate politeness, aware that her son was curled up in a cabin chair nearby, waiting to reclaim the table.

  "The lighthouse is on good elevation," Colin answered, unperturbed.

  "It may not be working; we can't rely on it."

  "I'm not planning to rely on it," he said with some surprise at her anxiety. "It'll be dawn when we sight San Salvador, and we'll make our way around to Pineapple Cay sometime around noon. By the time we get to the west side of the Cay the sun will be behind us; we should see the entrance in the reef easily. We've been through all this, Laura. What's on your mind?" He looked uncomfortable, as though he hated to question her in front of Neil.

  "I think we're farther to the southeast than we think. The rotor on the taffrail log was clogged with seaweed, after all. I think it's thrown off our calculations."

  "We cut away the sargassum soon enough," he argued.

  "I don't think we did. I know the boat; it seemed that we were going faster than the log was showing, for quite a while. I think we're farther to the southeast," she persisted.

  "Well, then. What do you suggest, captain?"

  It was put to her with the utmost politeness, and it sickened her; it signaled a withdrawal, and she needed him more than ever now. She tried to catch his eye, but he was bent steadfastly over the chart, studying the island that had brought a cry of "Tierra, tierra!" from the lips of Christopher Columbus in 1492.

  "I think we should drop the sails and heave-to for the night," she said flatly. "It's the safe thing to do."

  "What! Just spin our wheels! If we heave-to, we'll slide our schedule by half a day and end up raising San Salvador tomorrow at dusk—just in time to pick our way around to Pineapple Cay in the pitch black. That may be your idea of safe, Laura, but it's not mine." The detachment had gone from his voice; in its place was rising anger and something which to Laura sounded like old-fashioned resistance to female authority.

  But she wasn't sure about his bearings. He might have been right, and she might have been wrong. She wasn't sure.

  He was sure. "At least—captain—may we wait until tonight to make the decision to heave to? We're safe enough until then. If we get within spitting distance of San Salvador in broad daylight, I'm sure Neil will let us know, won't you, mate?"

  Neil, who had been dividing his attention between his math tables and his elders, nodded uncertainly; he wasn't sure the question was genuine.

  No one spoke after that; the only sounds were of the Virginia, gasping and creaking. She was getting tired; it had been a long haul, longer than she had hauled in years. She was beginning to relax her planks—the way a middle-aged woman without a girdle will give up after a while and let her stomach hang out—and the crew was pumping her at every change of the watch.

  Laura rubbed the edge of the cabin table absently with her fingers. Don't give up now, girl. Just a little while longer.

  She had a habit of communing with the Virginia, one she had picked up from Sam. It came almost as an interruption to a conversation when Colin finally said, "If you don't need anything more from me, Laura—"

  She looked up absently, saw the burning look in his eyes, blushed, and stammered, "I ... no ... I guess not." She had not wanted there to be anything, ever, between them; and now there was. It made her almost physically sick, as if someone had cut them apart from each other with a butcher knife. But what could she do? What could she say, while Neil was in the cabin?

  "I think we should all try to rest as much as we can," she said softly. "The next twenty-four ho
urs are going to be hard."

  She threw Colin a look of abject misery. His eyes, which had made Laura whisper, "Vive la France," as he brought her to a climax last night, softened and he said, "I agree." Still holding her with a look of molten intimacy, he said to Neil, "Put away your math tables, mate. Today you get a lesson in life instead."

  "I know all about life," Neil muttered petulantly. "What I don't know is how much is eight times seven." He slid off his chair and made his way past them to the narrow passageway that joined the main cabin to the forecastle.

  "He'll never forgive me," Laura mourned as he left their view.

  Colin slipped one arm around her waist from behind and kissed the curve of her neck. "He doesn't know. And anyway, boys always forgive their mothers," he murmured. "I forgave mine."

  "Forgave her—for what?" she asked, surprised. "You never knew her."

  "Exactly." He buried his face in her hair and breathed in the scent of her. "I adore you, Laura. Don't ever leave me."

  ****

  The Virginia roared on, occasionally staggering under her load in the steep, following seas like a drunken thing. As the afternoon wore on, the crew wore out. A mere half hour at the wheel became a wet, grueling exercise in strength and coordination. Worse, it left each crew member only an hour and a half before the next trick in which to rest and complete his chores. It seemed to Laura that no sooner had she peeled away her wet foul-weather gear than she was putting it all back on again. And still the Virginia careened on her way, hell-bent for San Salvador and Pineapple Cay, while her crew got thrown around like loose cargo.

  "We can't go on. I can't go on. We must heave-to," Laura said tiredly to Colin as they passed one another on their way to and from the cursed steering wheel. "If we have to, we'll just stay hove-to for the next two nights—for the next two weeks; I don't care. What's our rush? We'll have a picnic."

  Colin took her by her shoulders and studied her face with alarm. "You're punchy. I should have realized you weren't up to this. Stay below. We'll take care of heaving-to."