by Isobel Chace
“Very good morning!” he laughed happily.
“Very!” she agreed, rather less sure than he had been.
“Ah, there you are!” Gregory greeted her from the top of the companionway. “I thought you were going to be late,” he said dryly.
“So did I,” Helen admitted ruefully. “I overslept.”
His face softened into a smile. “It happens to all of us. I expect you were tired—”
Helen’s head went up sharply. “Not too tired!” she interrupted him quickly, just in case he should think that the diving was going to be beyond her. “My sister-in-law rang up from New Zealand. She’s—she’s coming today—”
“And you want us to pick her up on the way back?” he finished for her.
She nodded hopefully. “If it isn’t too much trouble,” she said anxiously.
“It won’t have to be!” he grunted. “We can hardly leave her on an uninhabited island all night! Have you told her she’ll have a bit of a wait?”
“Yes. She doesn’t mind at all.”
“Well, that’s something! Come on then, if we have to be back early, we’d better get going. Check the equipment, will you, while I cast off and make sure we’re going in the right direction.”
Helen squashed past him to get down the companionway, thinking that she was not the only one who had woken up that morning with an edge to her temper. She was sorry that it had to be her first full day at work that Anita had come. It would have been easier to ask him to collect her at any time other than right at the beginning. It almost looked as if she had been waiting to get the job before bringing her sister-in-law to the Melonga Islands at all. She tried to persuade herself that it didn’t matter what he thought, but at the back of her mind she knew that it did.
They would be on top of one another from dawn to dusk for many days to come and it would be easier if they could like and respect one another and, judging from this morning’s experience, it hardly looked as though he were going to suffer her gladly at all!
It was hot by the time they reached the wreck of the frigate. Helen wedged herself between the cabins and the deck-rail and began to climb into her diving gear. The flippers were a size too large for her, but she managed to tighten them behind her heels so that there was no danger of them falling off. Taine-Mal helped her to strap the cylinders of compressed air on to her back and she fixed the belt that held the lead weights around her waist. As always she felt weighed down by the sheer weight of what she had to carry and couldn’t wait to get into the water when the load would magically turn into nothing and the lovely clear water would flow free about her.
On the other side of the Sweet Promise, Gregory was getting ready too. He had the cutting equipment with him and was carefully winding the tubes that carried the oxygen down to the blowlamp round a wooden barrel to keep them from getting twisted and tied into knots.
“Are you ready?” he asked her when he had finished and the Sweet Promise was safely anchored above the wreck. She caught a glimpse of the real concern in his eyes and realised suddenly just how anxious he was about her diving with him.
“I’m ready,” she said. She felt grotesque and awkward as she struggled down the side of the boat and into the water, but once there, she waited for him to join her, swimming out strongly to get out of his way as he entered the water beside her.
The metal-cutting equipment was handed down to them and the Polynesian sailors began unwinding the oxygen pipes that would keep them going deep down I under the water. Gregory smiled briefly at Helen, placed his mask more securely over his eyes and nose and disappeared beneath the water. In a few seconds Helen had followed him, allowing herself to sink down and down until she was level with the frigate before she pulled herself along the coral shelf to where it was lying.
Gregory took one of the lamps and started cutting through the metal plate she had been working on the day before. Helen came to a standing position on top of the fractured metal of the wrecked ship and prepared herself to attack the place from the other end. Gregory handed her a lighted lamp and she started work. It was queer to see the Aflame burning through the water to reach the metal. It gave it a peculiar blue light, but it was pretty effective all the same. In half an hour they had cut their way through one side of the square that Gregory had marked on the hull, and he signalled to her that that was enough for one session and that it was time for them to surface. She nodded her agreement and turned out the flame she had been using, wedging the blowlamp into a coral ridge that was conveniently handy, and which held it securely.
Gregory struck out for the surface and she watched his long, lean sunburned body. She knew that she ought to follow him, but she was tempted to swim right round the wreck, to move her stiff muscles and get the blood flowing again after the long time she had spent standing still in the water.
When she looked more closely at the frigate than she had the day before, she could see how badly fractured it had been when it had run aground on the reef. The whole of the front was twisted and dangerous. Worse, she suspected that underneath, somewhere in the side that was now lying on the shelf, there was a gaping hole which had caused the frigate to founder and sink. Anxious to find out, she swam as close as she could to the twisted metal, avoiding the jagged pieces that threatened any approach. She was small enough to pull herself right into one of the gaps between the ship and the coral bed and then she was sure that she was right. There was a large black hole in the metal, not big enough for her to get through now, though it must have been amply big enough before the ship had turned on to its side.
Helen shone her torch into the black interior and caught a glimpse of space and further darkness. How odd it was, she thought, that the hole was so neat. It was the only place where the metal edges were not jagged or sharp. Here, they were smooth and worn, almost as if they had been carefully designed and cut neatly out of the hull. Could someone have been there before them? she wondered. But that was scarcely possible. The Islanders would have noticed and reported anybody who had been seen messing about with the wreck. They all knew that the gold it contained belonged to them, the wages for a whole year’s work in the copra plantations. Yet she was as certain as she could be that someone had deliberately made that hole, that it was not a freak holing that had resulted in the carefully even sides.
She was on her way back to the surface when she first thought that perhaps the hole had been made before the frigate had run on to the reef. She was not an expert in such matters, but she could imagine that the frigate, thus holed, could have run a fair way before actually foundering. Perhaps the hole could even have been made while the frigate had been in harbour, before it had even set sail. Was it possible? She shrugged the whole idea away from her as she reached the surface and broke through the gay patterns the sun was making on the surface of the water. In a normal world of sun and sea, the fantasies of the deep seemed even more impossible. Who would want to hole the frigate? There wasn’t anyone who could possibly have benefited from such an action! She was daft even to have allowed such an idea to cross her mind.
Gregory himself helped her on board the Sweet Promise. He had already cast off his own equipment and was wearing a towelling jacket of emerald green that suited him better than anything she had seen him in. With his damp hair curling in the sun, he looked very handsome and even more dangerous to her peace of mind.
“It took you a long time to come up,” he said.
“I was just looking around,” she answered him.
His eyes narrowed a trifle.
“Indeed? Why?”
She shrugged her shoulders, laughing. “Just to see what’s there!” she told him. “Why else?”
“It’s dangerous down there,” he said flatly. “And I don’t want that frigate turning any further.”
She shivered. “I should think not! Was it ever the right way up? Or did it lie like that from the beginning? It seems so odd to me that it should have practically turned turtle.”
We had a bit of d
ifficulty down there,” Gregory answered her guardedly. “She shifted quite a bit and the entrance we had made was useless. So be careful! Any movement down there might knock her off that shelf!”
Helen longed to ask him if Michael had been there when she had shifted that last time, but she didn’t like to bring up the subject of her dead husband again. They seemed to get on a great deal better when Michael was forgotten, she thought wryly, and pulled her bathrobe on over her shoulders, staring down over the side of the boat into the deep green waters that surrounded them.
She looked over her shoulder and grinned at him. “I am careful!” she said.
Is that so?” he drawled. “You don’t seem the careful type to me!”
“Well,” she said, “since we’re being personal, you don’t to me either!”
His look of astonishment amused her. “Indeed? Well, don’t let it throw you,” he retorted. “I’m careful all right, especially when it comes to my work. I don’t approve of people fooling around with that sort of thing.”
She wondered if that was meant as a warning to her. “My father didn’t fool about either,” she answered sharply. “I don’t think I’ve given you any cause for complaint so far, have I?”
“Not so far,” he grinned at her. “D’you want something to eat?”
She accepted the sandwich he held out to her and a mug of hot coffee, and sat down contentedly on the roof of the cabin, allowing the sun and the food to warm her through.
“Of course,” she went on innocently, “if I had ever seen you in a pair of shoes, I might have a quite different impression—”
He laughed. “So you believe that clothes make the man, do you?”
“No-o,” she said softly, “but they help somewhat, don’t you think?”
Gregory stretched himself along the top of the cabin beside her, smiling to himself. “I’ll not be drawn on that topic,” he said firmly. “Tell me about this sister of yours. Is she anything like you?”
“Not a bit!” she assured him. “She’s a gentle little creature—”
“Ah now, that I’m glad to hear!” he put in at once. “I prefer my women that way. Is she pretty?”
Helen wondered why she should feel so disappointed. It was quite unreasonable of her to take his teasing seriously, she told herself. “Yes, she’s pretty,” she said in an off-hand voice. “In a pale sort of way.”
“Oh well,” he said, “I’ll be able to judge for myself soon enough. It’s practically time for the next session. We’d better start to get ready.”
They worked hard all afternoon. Helen thought that Gregory had reason to be pleased with their progress. Between them they had practically cut through the first layer of the hull of the frigate. With another day’s work they should be able to pull the plate away and start on the inside skin. In a week, they ought to be inside the ship and looking for the gold. If he was pleased, he gave no sign, however. He seemed almost reluctant to give the order to return to harbour, annoyed by the time they wasted each day going back and forth.
“If you were a man I’d have you sleeping on board as Michael did,” he told her. “We’d save a couple of hours each day.”
“I wouldn’t mind,” she said. “There are enough bunks for Anita to have one too, if necessary.”
He looked at her in sudden appreciation. “That might be an idea!” he responded enthusiastically. “I’ll think about it.”
He went aft to start the engine up and shouted to the Polynesians to lift the anchor and to get ready to take them back again. Na-Tinn ran round the boat like a scalded cat, his unfailing grin very much in evidence as he pulled up the sails to catch the evening breeze, singing softly under his breath some ancient song that his ancestors must have sung several hundreds of years before. It had a bright catchy tune, and after a few minutes Taine-Mal joined in, his big voice carrying for miles across the still water. Helen found herself humming the tune too, adding a sweeter, feminine note to the deep bass of the others.
“Very good!” Taine-Mal said appreciatively. “Very nice song too.”
“What’s it about?” Helen asked him.
He creased up his forehead in his efforts to translate the words for her. “It’s about a man who goes on a long journey. It will be years before he returns. He leaves his beloved behind, but one day he will come back to her.”
Helen thought of how the Polynesian people had crossed the Pacific Ocean in their tiny boats, steering back and forth by the stars, and she marvelled at their courage.
“We come to the airstrip now,” he told her as a companionable silence fell between them. “We go in, no?”
Helen stood up, holding on with one hand round the mast to keep her balance. She thought she could make out the tiny figure of Anita standing where she had stood only two days before. The figure grew larger as they drew nearer and she was jumping up and down in her excitement.
“Here, have mercy on that canvas!” Gregory rebuked her.
Helen chuckled. Nothing could damp her good humour at that moment. She waved eagerly to Anita, but there was no answering wave. Indeed, when they got close enough to make out each other’s features, she thought for a moment that she had made a mistake and that it wasn’t Anita at all, but then she saw that it was, but it was an Anita she had never seen before. This was an Anita with carefully permed hair and a tailored coat that fitted her well enough to have been bought for her rather than inherited from her mother. This was an Anita who looked suddenly well-groomed and not a bit pale and stringy.
“Anita!” she exclaimed.
Anita smiled and blushed, plainly self-conscious in her new finery. And then she saw Gregory and Gregory saw her, and her smile grew wider. “You must be Mr. de Vaux,” she said in a pretty, soft voice that Helen was sure she had never heard before. “I heard so much about you from my brother. He was such an admirer of yours!”
Helen cast Gregory an astonished glance, but apparently he found nothing grotesque about such a statement at all! He was looking at Anita as though his eyes were about to pop out of his head.
“My word,” he said, “I wish your brother had returned the compliment, Miss Hastings. It would take a long time to grow tired of hearing about you!”
“Why, thank you,” Anita smiled gently. “Do you think you could possibly help me to come on board?”
CHAPTER FIVE
“NOT in those shoes!” Helen exclaimed. “Take them off, Anita! These decks are made of canvas. You’d go straight through them!”
Anita gulped guiltily, “I suppose I ought to have chunky heels,” she said shyly. “They’re all the rage now, aren’t they? But somehow the fine heel seems so much more flattering to one’s feet What do you think, Mr. de Vaux?”
Gregory grinned. “I think they do great things for your feet!” he agreed readily. “But Helen’s right. Not to worry, I expect your bare feet are a pretty sight too!”
Helen stared hard at them both. She wouldn’t have believed it! Not if half the population of the Islands had told her, she wouldn’t have believed it that Anita could have turned out a flirt was too much! And to think that she, Helen, had brought her here to instil a little confidence into her.
Anita obediently took off her shoes and stood on the deck with her hands clasped behind her back, looking more than a little helpless. “I’ve never been on a boat like this before. I think it’s sweet!”
Gregory looked gratified. “She’s a pretty good little tub,” he said. “Why don’t you go below with Helen and I’ll give you both a drink?”
Anita hugged herself with glee. “I’d love that!” she giggled.
Helen went first down the narrow companionway into the saloon. She knew she had nothing to be furious about, but she felt furious all the same. She felt cheated. Anita wasn’t even now a raving beauty, but she certainly wasn’t the pale, stringy girl that Helen had known her sister-in-law to be. Of course, anyone who had been forced to live any length of time with that mother of hers would have become paler and strin
gier by the minute, even so the change that had come over Anita was quite phenomenal. If she were more generous, Helen told herself sternly, she would congratulate Anita on the change. As it was, she couldn’t understand her own resentment at the transformation, except that she knew that it had something to do with the look on Gregory’s face, and that in itself was ridiculous! Why should she care how he looked at anyone? Anyone at all?
Ashamed of herself, Helen set herself to making Anita feel at home. She hid her surprise when Gregory produced a bottle of Australian wine, managing to look as if she had expected something like this all along. She held the plastic tumblers that were the only receptacles that they could find while Gregory poured the rose-coloured sparkling liquid into them, and her hands didn’t shake one bit. She passed Anita one of the tumblers and smiled at her. “Well,” she said, “how was New Zealand?”
Anita’s eyes sparkled with enthusiasm. “It was lovely!” she sighed. “I know it was being in hospital and all that, but it was so peaceful! I never thought life could be like that before!”
There was no doubt about it, Helen decided to herself, she was a cad. How could she resent whatever pleasure Anita could get out of life on this side of the world?
“So it wasn’t too bad, having your appendix out?” she murmured.
Anita leaned forward, smiling gently. “I enjoyed it, Helen. I really enjoyed it. The operation was nothing! It didn’t even hurt! And the nurses were so good to me! It was they who took me out shopping and made me get my hair done too. Do you like it?”
Helen’s eyes softened. “I love it!” she said warmly. “I hardly recognised you at first!”
Anita blushed prettily. She turned to Gregory with a quick, apologetic gesture. “You should have seen me before!” she told him. “You mustn’t mind Helen teasing me a bit. My mother didn’t approve of any aids to beauty,” she added earnestly.