She gave him a covert look. There was something secret about him. What had she thought before of him? ... Something up his sleeve. That was it. Peter was rather transparent, really. He could not entirely hide things. There was something there now.
His innocent smile denied this, nonetheless Laurel felt oddly dubious. Surely Nor, sharp, discerning, incisive Nor, must see it too. But Nor Larsen had other things on his mind. He even nodded absentmindedly when Meredith told him lengthily about her doll-baby’s malady.
“Lumps, it is, Nor.”
“Mumps.” That was Jill, of course.
“Lumps, but no old Island doctor is going to look at my child, she’s going to Sydney Town to see a special. That’s what a very good doctor is called, Nor, a special.”
“Is it now?” yawned Nor.
Peter drew Meredith’s attention to something else. He did it too hastily, Laurel thought.
During the afternoon she experienced the same unease.
Peter did not leave the children for a moment. When Laurel suggested taking them for a walk, he came too.
He said, a little awkwardly, “Laurel, you’re a good sport, I don’t want you to think—”
“Yes Peter?”
“Well, Nathalie and I appreciate you tremendously. It’s just that in a thing like this—”
“A thing like what?”
“Daddy,” said Jill, “did you pack my shells?”
“And doll-baby’s feeding bottle?” Meredith asked.
“Last one back to the house is a duffer,” Peter said a little desperately, and he started racing off. The children raced too. Only Laurel walked home.
Something up his sleeve, something kept ticking. As she went down the hall she saw a bag on Peter’s bed and some sleeves of folded clothes hanging out of it. Children’s clothes. Jill’s and Meredith’s little things.
What am I to do? Laurel thought. She considered it the rest of the afternoon.
At dinner Nor teased her over her preoccupation and said she was working herself up even before the chase began.
“Either that or you have a guilty conscience,” he accused.
For the briefest of moments Laurel caught Peter’s eye. There was no secrecy now, there was open, desperate appeal. She could not turn away from that appeal. After all, she thought, I actually know nothing, and even if I did know, it still is not my business. It’s not my right to go to Nor Larsen and say, “I have reason to suspect that Peter is planning something, and I want to report it to you.”
Her eyes flickered back at Peter, and almost visibly he relaxed.
She was awakened at four the next morning.
“Hurry up,” Nor ordered, “the bacon and eggs are on.”
She climbed into the clothes she had put out ready. Proofed pants in as small a size as Nor could borrow, windcheater, rubber boots. She came into the lighted kitchen, carrying her sou’wester in her hand.
“I don’t want bacon and eggs.”
“You’re having them.”
“I never eat breakfast, and I certainly wouldn’t before a trip like this.”
“You certainly would. Probably that’s why you were sick last time. Nothing under your belt. Sit down and get this into you and be quiet.”
There was no getting out of it, no sneaking it away while his back was turned. She had to eat every mouthful, for he ate every mouthful of his with her. When she had finished and drunk a cup of strong coffee she thought reluctantly that perhaps he was right, you did feel stronger and more prepared with something substantial inside you.
They got into the jeep. Within five minutes they were at the station. It was still dark, but thin shafts of light were stripping the charcoal sky. Laurel looked at them unenthusiastically.
“Cheer up,” said Nor. “A dismal dawn often grows into a bright day.”
The whalemen were already on the Clyde. Laurel had met most of them, knew their wives, and she smiled a little tremulously now when they hailed her heartily and promised her a good trip.
At once they lifted anchor and were under way. The Clyde left the bay, cleared the lee of the island, got into the deep sea.
Nor stood beside Laurel and shouted into her ear. This was necessary because the wind was really something. Had she ever said she loved wind and spray?
“We’ll toss just here, little green duck,” he called, “because at the rocky corners of Humpback the opposing systems of waves, winds and currents all meet. Now you’ll see what a good chaser can do in the way of a war-dance.”
Laurel scarcely listened to his explanation. All she kept on hearing was her own repetition of that little green duck.” Why had he said it? And why did it give her such absurd pleasure? Give her, too, the confidence now to meet the Clyde’s tossing not only with serenity but even open enjoyment. For she was laughing at the weather ... even revelling in it.
“See what a good breakfast does,” Nor approved.
After they had cleared the lee they were in vaster and slightly more subdued waters. But it was not to be a cruise by any means. The boat turned its direction again then again without any regard to the moods of either the wind or the sea.
“A chaser can’t stay on a course like a respectable merchant ship or trawler, it has to head off in any promising direction,” she heard Nor shout. He added, “Stomach where it should be?”
“Right here.” She patted the oilskin.
“That seems the right place to me.”
Dawn was breaking properly now. It was not going to be a bright day, but it was considerably less dismal.
“You seem to have your legs now,” nodded Nor, “so come up to the gun platform.”
The gun platform at the bow was no place for a landlubber, but Laurel decided it must be much more comfortable than the crow’s nest, or barrel as Nor called the roost of the look-out man.
Even as she gazed up, the look-out man yelled, “HVAL-BLAST!” and instantly everyone was at attention.
“Better get back, green duck,” ordered Nor peremptorily.
“Why?” She rather liked it here.
“It’s on.”
“What’s on?”
“Fish’s on.”
She stared at him and he said impatiently, “The Chase.”
“How do you know?”
“You heard the look-out man, didn’t you?”
“I didn’t hear ‘There she blows.’ ”
“Here we call ‘HVAL-BLAST!’ ”
“Why?” she asked again.
“My father did. His father did. His father before him. Now get back, there’s a good girl.”
After that it all went so quickly that Laurel could only guess what was happening. Not that she wanted to know what was happening, she felt too sad and sick. Not sick in herself, for she felt wonderful, but sick for that poor helpless, rather lovable leviathan of the deep.
She knew that Nor was on the gun platform, gesturing his helm orders to the bridge ... that he had become a ruthless hunter, the ship his horse, galloping down a quarry. She heard him yelling, but could not understand his words. The wind blew every syllable away.
She could hear the look-out man, though, for he had a megaphone.
“HVAL-BLAST! Straight ahead.”
“Spout to starboard.”
“Now he’s blowing to port.”
The boat seemed to spin in a circle. Once it swung round in such a tight turn that it seemed to be right over on its side. Above the megaphone blast Laurel could hear the engine room telegraph ringing its orders at short intervals.
She looked out piteously on the whale, and saw that they were now in the midst of a flock of whales. Fish were on, as Nor Larsen had just said.
Their wake behind them wound round like a green and glassy snake.
“HVAL-BLAST right astern,” the look-out man called.
Laurel saw the hunted whale surface, blow, then dive again. A whale dived little deeper than six hundred feet, Nor had announced.
Green seas were thundering over the forecastle. It
must be very wet indeed where Nor stood, trying to judge where the whale would surface the next time ... bending over the gun ... getting ready ...
Getting ready!
Laurel made a sudden dive herself. She dived into the cabin and shut her eyes. Tight.
When she opened them a long time after, it was over. It was over, and it was sad.
The whale had compressed air pumped into it to make it buoyant. It was a fifty-foot humpback, Nor said, coming into the cabin, quite a modest fellow, but from it they would take ten tons of oil.
“I know how you feel,” he told her in the same kindly way that Luke had spoken when she had shuddered over it all up at Dum, “but try to think of it like this: liver extractions for needed vitamins, glandular preparations, insulin, perhaps a human life saved. Think that if we don’t, someone else must. And perhaps not as humanely as us. We don’t hate whales. Apart from their being our trade, we just don’t hate them, little green duck.”
Laurel tried to be sensible, but it was hard, she found.
“What happens now? And do I have to see?”
“You don’t,” he grinned. “I’ll give you the general layout and you can shut your eyes again. The chaser attaches the whale to a hauling wire and the winch gets it in, up the ramp, on to the flensing deck. The blubber is removed and the whale oil extracted. The by-products attended to.” Nor shrugged. “Soon there is no whale,” he said.
“It’s still a shame,” persisted Laurel in spite of her determination not to be difficult.
“So is eating and what has to be sacrificed for existence,” reminded Nor reasonably. “I can’t change it. I’m sorry, my dear.”
She glanced up. Although he said the words lightly, she could see he really meant them. Although his was a tough calling, this man was not entirely tough.
Again she tried to help him by not letting her emotions run away with her.
“Do you get much money out of a whale?”
“It takes a ton of furnace to extract a ton of oil,” he shrugged, “so as a livelihood it’s not easy come. There are hazards too, apart from weather. Financial ones. Last year we collided with a sperm whale and had half the Clytie’s screw torn off. Then again there’s the market ... who knows whether demand for margarine, dubbin, candles, soup cubes, what-have-yous will continue. It’s not like a regular wage. The book-work, too, is never-ending. Every whale has to be accounted for ... fin or blue, male or female, length in feet ... and sent to the statistical department. Oh, no, green duck, it’s never pennies-from-the-sea with whales—unless, of course, you strike one of the big boys.”
“Big boys?”
“The blueys. Fifty thousand units of vitamins from a blue. But they’re not so prevalent here. They prefer the shuddering cold where they can stuff themselves undisturbed by whalemen. They’re nice fellers. Much as I like all those vitamin units and my big cheque. I still feel a little sad when the lookout man calls ‘Fish’s on’ and I see it’s a blue.”
One of the whalemen had brought steaming tea. Nor put rum in his, and, as a second thought, a dash into hers. She felt a little better soon after that.
“I’m sorry if I sounded mawkish,” she blurted shyly.
“I wouldn’t have wanted you to stand up and cheer,” he came back. “I know a lot about whales. As much as anyone can know,” he added with a grin, “short of putting one in an observation tank. I know when they leave the Antarctic and travel north they are on their honeymoon. They thin out then. Apparently live on love, though the practical-minded insist it’s lack of plankton.” Nor took a gulp of the steaming rum-laced tea.
“They’re good honest quarry,” he submitted at length. “Let’s make the epitaph that. Agreed, mate?”
“Agreed,” she said.
It was late afternoon when they came back to the house again.
Laurel had gone on deck a second and a third time, but had stood firmly at the stern, back turned, eyes closed, during the hunts.
The Clyde did not bring its harvest in now. It was in luck, so it chased its luck, it had two weeks’ work to fit into one. The captured whales were inflated and marked with a flag, and later, Nor said, they would be towed back. After the fourth operation Nor had the wireless operator contact shore, and presently the Leeward came out, took the two Of them aboard, then went back to the home bay.
Now, his day’s work done, Nor helped Laurel out of the jeep.
“Tired?” he asked.
“A bit rocky.”
“That’s land under your feet instead of water. You’ll steady down presently. You’ll be stiff tomorrow, though. Unconsciously you’ve been tensing yourself and your muscles will play up.” He looked at her sharply. “You’re pale.”
If she was pale, Laurel knew suddenly it was not because of her muscles, because she was weary, even because of the whales; it was because of something else.
During the day she had forgotten it. Now, even before she set foot in the place, she knew it. She knew what had happened while they were away.
It did not need the absence of children flying to greet them, no usual ring of voices, chattering, bickering, it did not need the adult silence to tell them that no children were here at all.
It did not need the empty rooms, empty of everything it seemed that had belonged to them, even empty of Meredith’s “lumpy” doll, to tell them they were gone.
It did not need Mummy Reed, hands clasped, eyes darting anxiously at Nor’s, to explain how at nine o’clock sharp a chartered mainland launch had called and taken all three, Peter, Jill and Meredith, and all their belongings, aboard.
It did not need the brief note that Nor handed to Laurel to read, the three words that aplogized: “Sorry, old chap,” to confirm it all.
They were gone. You could even feel their departure ... their absence ... with a sharp immediacy. There was a sense of emptiness almost like a physical presence in the air. Poor, poor Nor, Laurel’s heart cried out.
She knew she had thought she would be glad over a broken dynasty, a fallen house, but somehow now she found as small a triumph in it as over an inflated whale with a marker flag through its back.
She watched Nor pityingly. She watched him going through the rooms, the rooms that were as empty of Peter and the girls as though they had never been there at all, as though their life on the island had been only a dream.
A whale with a marker flag through its back, she kept on thinking ... and she went into her room, the room that still breathed of Muguet instead of brine, and started to cry.
Only it was not for Peter, for the children, for the emptiness behind them, but for a big rock of a man with skin like tanned leather ... a skin she had not thought anything could pierce but now was pierced to the core, and was piercing her heart as well.
She cried for Nor.
CHAPTER EIGHT
PRESENTLY she sat down on the edge of her bed. Outside she could hear voices. They were Mummy Reed’s and Nor’s. They were subdued. One thing, she thought, Nor has taken it quietly. One would have expected roaring and ranting from him, but then he always produces the unexpected. She remembered his gentleness over her sentimentality for the whale. She had anticipated cynicism, but he had said, “I’m sorry, my dear.”
... My dear. All at once the two words seemed to hover in mid-air, awaiting recapture. Almost she could have reached up to clasp them to her. To clasp Nor Larsen’s gentle, “I’m sorry, my dear.”
Confused, bewildered at herself, Laurel got up.
She heard a door close, and looking out of the window saw Nor walking down to the beach. She went out to the kitchen to Mummy Reed.
Mrs. Reed was sitting in the old rocking chair that she had told Laurel had belonged to the first island Larsen.
“Many babies have been rocked in this chair,” she had smiled. “I have rocked Nor and Nathalie. Nathalie never rocked her two ... she was the modern mainland mother. I wonder”—with a little sigh—“if any more babies will be rocked.”
The little lady rock
ed herself now. She looked frailer than usual, very tired, but—and Laurel noted this with surprise—not as unhappy as she had thought.
She smiled at Laurel and nodded to a chair. Laurel drew it up close to her side.
“Will it distress you to tell me about it, Mrs. Reed?” “Bless you, no. In a way it’s a relief.”
A moment’s rocking, then: “It had to come, Laurel. I think down deep in Nor’s heart he always knew it. It’s his pride hurting now, hurting real hard. Even as a little boy when he had something set in his mind he would never let go of it. He wouldn’t let go now, so Peter just had to pull away himself. I’ve given Nor a good talking-to; told him he never grew up from that little boy he was. And to not grow up is to be left out of life, I said.”
“You’re very wise, Mummy Reed.”
“I’m just very old, Laurel. Afterwards I want you to go down to the beach and talk to Nor. Trouble shouldn’t be an alone sort of thing like he makes it.”
“Are you troubled, Mrs. Reed?”
“I’m content. It’s no use my denying that Nor was always nearer to my heart than Nathalie, but Nathalie was my baby too ... their mother died when they were very little, Laurel... so I’m content that she’s content. It’s what she wanted, it’s what she got.”
“Was it pre-arranged, do you think?”
“Yes, I think Peter arranged it when he went across to the coast”
“Then in a way it’s my fault—”
“Your fault for giving two children the living presence of love in a house, not the love of substitutes but of their mother, your fault for settling it all instead of dragging it on and on until I got so tired of waiting I could cry?—Oh, never, Laurel dear.”
Laurel looked at her gently. ‘Tired of waiting?” she probed.
Mummy Reed glanced quickly up to the hill where Nor’s ancestors and her own Tim rested, then looked back peacefully at Laurel.
The Wind and the Spray Page 7