“I’ll see to the lamps,” Marcus said almost harshly, and was gone before she could make her request. Roslyn shrugged and dismissed his abrupt departure as just another Marcus Moreno discourtesy.
So far, despite the high wind, the rain was still just rain, she reassured herself, heavy enough to drum on the roof and slash at the window, but not the horizontal deluge she had been warned about up here. The shrubs, too, though bending over, were taking it all bravely, the travellers palms standing up and not permitting one torn leaf.
She checked Marco again and though no better, he also seemed no worse. Perhaps it was just as well Marcus had gone out before she could ask him about the doctor; he could have put her down as someone ready to panic. Also, going across to the window, there was actually a small space of clear sky now. The wind, too, seemed to have abated. It appeared that Roberta, when it came to the sisterhood of cyclones, was only going to prove a small girl after all.
“No.” Again Marcus Moreno had entered without her noticing, again he must have read her thoughts. “What you’re seeing at this moment is only the preliminary, the real blast hasn’t yet begun. With a blow like this one is going to be, that frequently happens. A pause to gather ammunition, as it were, a cheating patch of clear sky to delude people, then wham!” He extended his hands.
“You mean—”
“I mean just that. And at any moment now. Look at those casuarinas.” He pointed to some slender trees one moment ago upright but now bending in semi-circles. So the wind had re-risen in that short a space! He nodded to the sky, clear patch gone, the giant ink bottle fast spilling its black again.
Roslyn did not speak. She was thinking that if what she feared for Marco happened, then she would be quite alone. She was not nervous, she was an experienced Sister, but always there had been someone with her ... in death.
“But I’ll be here.” It was uncanny how he read her.
“I was going to ask you to contact the doctor,” she admitted presently.
“Yes, I knew you were. That’s why I went out when I did. It was not for the lamps.”
“But—”
“It would have been too late. The cyclone was so close to us it would have been a waste of time.”
“Not where the doctor could still be now, only some miles away.”
“We’re not certain if he’s there. In fact I would say that he’s not. The Carlton I know would be back at his base, getting ready for the casualties, for casualties there will be. And that’s the main reason I forestalled you. I knew what you were going to ask, but I knew what my answer had to be.” A pause. “Marco is going, anyway, isn’t he?”
“But some poor wretches out there can, and must, be saved.”
“I see,” she said stiffly, in spite of herself. She did see, but—
“I don’t think you do.” He must have sensed her distaste, for he spoke it at once. He did not linger on the subject, though, he resumed briskly: “I’ve been in telephone touch while the service is still available. Oh, yes, it will cut off at any, moment. This general area is the target area, and in that target, Clementine is the eye.”
“The eye?”
“The core. That’s why we had that moment of calm just now, everywhere else would be going on the same as before. But we had the gathering of forces, the big breath before the onslaught. We are the ‘eye’, Sister Young. But don’t worry, everything is battened down. The chalet dwellers have been evacuated to the big brick storage barn, for nothing short of an earthquake could rock that. Clementine itself is as strong as its rock foundations.”
“What about Belinda?” she asked.
“She’s making cookies with Antonio. As well as being champion cane men, the Mediterraneans understand kids. I must take a lesson one day.”
“Yes, you should.”
“They say it’s something that comes instinctively with a child of your own.” He shrugged.
“Then you should know by now—” Roslyn started to say it, but did not finish it. At that moment the elements really broke.
The shrubs that only had bent over before began writhing, then they actually touched the ground, the great, broad leaves of the new tormented traveller’s palm torn asunder from the mother palm and scattered in all directions. Somewhere beyond the garden a tree uprooted and fell to earth with a roar like discharging metal; another followed and it sounded like some monstrous wave breaking against a rock.
At once the rain started, silver-grey javelins of rain that Roslyn could see cutting viciously at the window. Now the noise of the wind became thunderous. It shrieked, roared, screamed and shouted. But bad as it was, its breathing space between spasms as it got ready for another onslaught was the hardest to take. Roslyn found herself holding her breath just as the gale did as if to get herself ready for the next demon attack.
She went down the hall and looked in at Belinda, Belinda blissfully putting currant eyes into a dollop of dough. The baby was blessedly unaware.
She came back and checked Marco. He seemed to be keeping in time with the elements, she thought fancifully, his pulse, though thin, was quick and high like the wind.
“How will it be out there?” Roslyn nodded to beyond the window at Marcus, meaning beyond Clementine.
“Probably litter and wreckage everywhere already. We can only pray no human wreckage, too. But just at this moment there’ll be no misery; that comes afterwards, when people look blankly at their ruins and wonder where to begin again. The breakwater to the harbour will probably be destroyed, and it’s not so long since it was built up a second time. If that does happen—the failure of the break, I mean—the little town will flood. It all depends, of course, on the river. One April several years ago they had eighty-six inches in six days, and no small harbour and breakwater can take that from a swollen river without showing disastrous effects. How is he?” A nod to the old man.
“I ... I don’t know. I mean ... well, he almost seems to be in tune with it all.” She wondered if she sounded foolish to Marcus.
“Why not? He has been all his life.” Marcus bent over the pale face. “Haven’t you, old fellow?”
“He’s not hearing,” Roslyn said.
“Yet he heard that. Look, he’s opened his eyes.”
Marco had. Only a flutter, then they shut again.
“When the cyclone goes, he will, too,” Marcus said in a low voice, and he looked across the bed at Roslyn.
“Yes,” she nodded, for she knew he was right.
The cyclone lasted for four days and four nights. Roslyn thought of it in that Biblical fashion, for unlike any wild weather she ever had experienced, it did not slacken at evening, indeed its only cessation was that hateful waiting she could not train herself to grow accustomed to, that pause to gather up forces, then blow again. Already, Marcus reported, the river had flooded, that April record had been broken. Many of the houses in the town had been inundated. Some in the lower parts were fifty feet under.
“Will it race out as it raced in?” Roslyn asked Marcus on one of the few times they met, for they had drawn up a roster, and when one was on duty, the other rested. Belinda had been handed over entirely to Connie, but Roslyn had no time to fret about that, she had been too busy. Twice Marcus had called her down during the night, and twice, sensing something, Roslyn had come down herself. It was on one of these occasions that she asked the man if they were likely to be free of the elements as abruptly as they had been shackled with them.
“Cyclones blow in a clockwise curve,” he told her, “and I expect out-of-season ones will do the same, but after the first curve the winds continue in varying arcs of their own. That does the real harm. Weakened structures are attacked from a different direction. To come nearer home, our cane already bent over one way is thrashed into another slant.
“I see. But I asked you—”
“Yes, and that’s the answer. One by one the smaller arcs die out.”
“So there’s no sudden stop.”
“More likely a sudden
start again. But don’t be alarmed, it will only be a secondary satellite cyclone, or what we call a little sister.”
“And then?”
“Sunshine and flowers again once the havoc is cleared away. At least” ... looking at old Marco ... “it will be for some of us.” He turned his gaze directly to Roslyn. “Are you thinking that, too?”
“Yes,” she said quietly.
“Soon?”
“Yes.”
“Then of course we must have Belinda in,” he said.
“No.”
He had already made a step to the door, evidently intending to fetch the child, and he turned back at her unadorned negative.
“I’m sure you mean that in the right spirit, Sister Young, but I don’t agree. The child took to him immediately, and I would like her to see him once more. I would like Marco to see her.”
“But why? She’s very young.”
“Therefore less impressionable, wouldn’t you say? Yet even if the impression does remain, what then? It would be a good impression. She loves him, he loves her. It’s as simple and necessary as that.”
“Unnecessary,” Roslyn corrected. “For a few days they’ve become dear friends, but there it ends.” A pause. “It must end.”
“But it doesn’t,” he frowned, “not when she’s his only grandchild.”
“I wouldn’t know about that” ... coldly ... “you let her call him Molly.”
“But you still knew, didn’t you, you must have, why otherwise was it so important for him to have her here?”
“It wasn’t important for you,” she retorted, but she was only answered with a shrugged:
“No, I admit it was not.”
“You’re a strange man.” She said it after a long pause, and she said it with difficulty. She could have said much more, but she was too choked up.
He looked at her a long hard moment. “I’ll get the child,” he said.
“No—wait!”
He turned irascibly. “Look, I have no intention of staging a bedside tear-jerker to upset the kid, I simply mean Belinda to see him before it’s too late.” He looked challengingly at Roslyn.
“I said wait,” submitted Roslyn, “because I wanted to have him as nice as I could for her, even, if at all possible, have him see her, too. He’s looking much better just now. As good as he has for days.”
Marcus Moreno paused, then he crossed to the bed and without a word helped Roslyn prop up the old man, sponge his fine old face now actually tinged with a warm flush, comb his fine silver hair.
“Now?” he asked at length.
“Yes.”
Belinda was brought in and she went at once and unquestioningly to Marco’s side. She began prattling something to him, possibly about the dough men she was still making in the kitchen, or something that Connie had told her, and in the middle of it all, Marco actually smiled at her.
“Dear Molly,” said Belinda.
“Grandfather,” corrected Marcus quietly.
Belinda looked at Marcus, then looked at the old man again. “Yes, Fath-er,” she said. “Dear Grandfath-er.”
Roslyn was watching Marcus. She had seen no movement in his strong face at the baby’s “Fath-er.” But how can he show nothing at all like this? she thought. Nothing to his own daughter?
Belinda climbed up to kiss Marco, then Marcus nodded for Roslyn to take her out again. They both knew that Belinda would not see him again.
Roberta whimpered out that day, but, just as Marcus had said, the satellite blew in. Old Marco should have been intravenously fed by now, Roslyn knew, but either by some miracle or some very remarkable patience and resolve that she would not have credited he possessed, Marcus managed to get a little food into the old man.
“Marianne, too, will blow out quite soon,” Marcus told Roslyn after one feeding session.
“The little sister we’re having now?”
“Yes.”
“Then we can get in Doctor Carlton at last?”
“Carlton will be run off his feet ... and anyway, I don’t think he’ll be needed here.” Marcus paused. “Not any more.”
Marcus was right.
Marianne left them that night. Roslyn had not gone upstairs. Marcus always took the night shift, but she still lingered ... and Marcus did not press her to go.
The wind grew less and less. Presently it was only a mere breath. Then even that breath stopped ... and at the same time the old heart of Marco Moreno stopped too. At the last moment he looked at the photograph of Marcus when he had been younger, less assured, less arrogant than now.
Then quietly the old man died.
“Goodbye Marco,” Marcus said. Roslyn stiffened. Surely at a time like this he could have said Father?
She crossed to the window. It was strange to look out at an untortured world again. The first stars were pricking through, she saw, the first stars in a week.
“Go to bed, Roslyn.” Marcus Moreno had come to her side.
“No, there are things to be done.”
“I’ll see to them. You go up now. After all,” as she hesitated ... “it is my shift, Sister Young.”
Very well.” She went across to Marco Moreno gently kissed him, then went out and upstairs.
But she stood for a long time at her own window before she slipped into bed. It seemed strange that those stars were in the sky again, more stars than she had ever noticed before, she thought. But of course there would be Marco Moreno s star, too, now, old Marco who was Belinda s grandfather, not just Molly.
It was all puzzling, all confusing, but Roslyn was too tired to think about it now. As she crossed at last to her bed, her final awareness before sleep took was a thankful: Tomorrow is another day. She knew exhaustedly that she needed that thought.
When she awoke, Roslyn was rested physically, but certainly not mentally nor emotionally. As she showered she made herself face the inescapable fact that as far as Marcus Moreno was concerned, and it appeared he was the final word, she now had completed her task up here at Clementine. She had agreed with Marcus to take over the patient, and though it had only been done with the thought that it would give her longer with Belinda, it was still binding. Unfortunately the time element had not been on her side, and instead of gaining, she had lost.
That Marcus Moreno was thinking on the same subject in the dining room and revelling in the company of the little girl after a week’s deprivation, when Marcus came in.
It was remarkable, Roslyn had been thinking proudly, how Belinda’s vocabulary had increased. She wondered , what Mrs. Maddison would have said of their silent baby now. Of course every day made a difference in a small child’s life, but it did seem to Roslyn that Belinda had progressed much quicker up here.
Belinda had been carrying on a conversation with Roslyn about Molly.
“Gone,” she had said solemnly and emotionally, still, for all her increased word-power, evidently favouring a dramatic brevity of words.
“That’s true, Belinda.”
Belinda then clasped her little hands together and said: “There’ll be lots of trains for Molly.”
“Trains?” queried Roslyn.
“Little puff trains.” Belinda pointed to the distant fields,) and her eyes shone. She had loved that ride through the tall sweet grass.
“Cane trams,” nodded Roslyn.
“Yes. In the sky. For Molly.”
“Who told you this, darling?”
“Fath-er.”
Well, if it suited the child, it was paradise enough, thought Roslyn.
It was then that Marcus entered, poured himself a cup of tea from the huge pot, sugared it liberally from the bowl of raw product, then watched as Roslyn finished off Belinda and let her go.
“You needn’t have done all that,” he objected when the child had departed. “Connie didn’t.” Roslyn wisely bit back a retort, and when she did not answer, he resumed. “But then, Miss Young, it was more for yourself than Belinda, wasn’t it?” His eyes were narrowed. “Don't lie, it’s usel
ess. You’ve been hungry for her and you couldn’t help yourself. You backed the wrong horse, didn’t you, and now you have to face no dividend.”
“How coarsely you speak!” Roslyn said it with distaste. The distasteful fact of having to leave her baby with this man, this father of Belinda, began to seep into her again. She had forgotten it in the last few days.
“It has to be said,” he shrugged. “You chose to be the old man’s nurse instead of the child’s, and it turned out a wrong choice.”
“You gave me no choice.”
“All the same, you agreed.” A pause. “When did you think of leaving?”
“I—well, I hadn’t thought of it yet. I mean, it’s still early...” She half-glanced up to the room where old Marco Moreno lay.
He held up his hand. “After Carlton comes, the patriarch will be resting where he planned to rest many years ago. It’s on a plateau to the east, near enough to the reef to hear the sea sifting the pebbles but not too far to miss the wind in the cane. I’ll show you one day.” He seemed to have forgotten his hurry to get rid of her.
“I’ll be gone,” Roslyn said stiffly.
“Yes.” There was a pause. If she had looked up Roslyn would have seen the man moistening his lips as though to say something, but the moment and Roslyn, finishing her meal, got up and said she would let him know about her departure.
“I’ll have to find out when the plane leaves,” she added.
“No plane,” he said briskly.
“None?”
“Not just now. The airfield is inundated.”
“Then train.”
“The line has been cut.”
“Then car,” she persisted.
“Whose? On a washed-out highway, as it will be now?”
“There surely will be a mail car at least,” she said desperately.
“There is ordinarily, but it won’t be running for a week, I’d say.”
“Then why did you ask me just now when I was leaving?” Roslyn burst out, exasperated.
He shrugged. “Wishful thinking, I expect. It made me forget we’re still at the tail of a cyclone. No, you can’t get out for a while, Sister Young. We never can. But be of good heart, floods drain out quickly up here. But I forgot” ... looking narrowly at her ... “that’s not the idea, is it, the idea is to stop. Well, you’ve won yourself an extra week.” He nodded at her with false pleasantry and left her still standing at the table.
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