The Wind and the Spray

by Joyce Dingwell

  There would be nothing there, she knew that. She knew there would not even be those few pitiful lines “when I come out, sis” ... “when we are together again.”

  She knew her brother was dead.

  She had known an emptiness within her during the weeks when David had not written, when his letters had come at last she had been secretly and heavily conscious that that emptiness was still there. But she had paid no heed to it ... just as she had never heeded her father when years ago he had insinuated gently that it must all come some time to this.

  No, no, no, cried her heart, not David. She had always been absent from David, it had only ever been a matter of visits to David, of outings with David, of snatched holidays with David when he was in France. But still for all of that she now knew an amputating pain.

  It seemed as she waited by the window a pain that filled all eternity. Oh, David, not to you, her heart cried out, not to me, not to us.

  She stood wrapped in the memories of the pitifully few years they had had together as children, she and David, and she yearned to suspend them in space, loved and complete, something that death could not take away from her like this.

  She was still standing at the window when Nor came in. He called her name, but she did not turn. Somehow it seemed that she was running frantically and being pursued by her own agony. She knew when she listened to what Nor would tell her that that agony would catch her up, swamp her, drown her in its pain.

  “Laurel. Laurel!”

  She turned, dull-eyed. “Yes?”

  “I’ve had a letter.”

  “Yes?”

  “It’s David ... oh, Laurel, Laurel, my dear.”

  She knew he must see by her face that she already realized, but stubbornly and cruelly she made it no easier for him.

  “Yes?” Just the monosyllable, nothing else.

  “He died three days ago. This letter”—he offered it— “tells it all.”

  “You opened it.”

  “It was addressed to me. I was asked to break it to you.”

  “You opened another letter, a letter that was addressed to me.”

  “I did that because I knew what could be in the contents.”

  “You wanted to check them first?”

  He did not hesitate. “Yes, I did.”

  She looked at him deliberately.

  “And what were the contents? No, Nor, don’t tell me. The letter, I believe, would come from David’s doctor, the doctor at the san. Louisa said it was not David’s writing but typed.”

  “Yes,” said Nor again, “it came from Frith.”

  “And the contents,” said Laurel, only dully aware of what she was saying, “were this: that David was weakening, that there was not much future, that if we were ever to be together again you’d better make it very soon, waste no time.”

  The man was looking at her incredulously. The eyes were a darker blue now, almost black-blue, and they held pain, pain at what she deliberately inferred. “No—no, you wouldn’t think that of me,” he said.

  “I would, I would,” she flung back hotly. “Why, otherwise, did David never come here? Why, otherwise, didn’t he mention some actual preparation afoot? Why did he say nothing in his letters, nothing at all, except ‘when I come out, sis,’ except ‘when we’re together again.’ Why? Why? I’ll tell you why, Nor, it’s because at no time did you really or concretely or actually or with any seriousness arrange for David. You threw out some innuendos, then conveniently withdrew them, hoping they would be enough ... enough until there was no need to worry yourself any more.

  “You never wanted David. What’s more you had no intention of ever having him. He would be no adjunct to a place like this. You’re not mean, I freely admit that, it’s simply that everything you do, every act, has to be a progressive act, and David was never progressive, he—he just slipped back and back. It would have been money wasted. I was an expense, but I brought in what you estimated was a fair to average return. I organized the women, I made them more stable—you got your money back with me, didn’t you, Nor?

  “But David would have been a dead loss ... you could see that ... All right, Nor, you need not concern yourself now, he’s not a dead loss any more, he’s dead instead.” She did not know herself what she was saying. The words tumbled out, the pent-up words of weeks of anxiety, weeks of David, Jasper ... of living that was really only bare existence. Afterwards she thought he should have stopped her, quietened her with a harsh word, but he heard her out until, exhausted, she stopped herself.

  “All you care about is your quota, how many tons of oil your victims will produce, what the market will be like. Everything, from the smallest child, kept jealously here for the sole purpose of keeping its mother here, thus keeping the husband and thus supplying more hands to catch whales, has only that in view. The House of Larsen, that’s all that matters, has ever mattered. Your sister never mattered, your sister’s children. How could David matter? And I, least of all.”

  Her voice stopped abruptly. She looked at him, horrified.

  “Nor, what have I been saying?”

  “A lot of things, but the summing up would be that I’ve been marking time to save myself the unnecessary expense of bringing out here a doomed man.”

  “I didn’t intend it like that ... I meant—”

  He crossed over to her. His hands on her shoulders were quite gentle.

  “I’m glad you said it, Laurel. We’ve been existing too long in a world of evasions and innuendos. We only reach the truth when we speak from our hearts.”

  “But it wasn’t the truth, was it, Nor?” She looked at him horrified.

  He hunched his big shoulders. “You’ve said so, girl.”“But you know it isn’t the truth, you know it. I’ve been upset ... Nor, tell me, tell me it isn’t so.”

  But he told her nothing, nothing at all. He simply hunched his big shoulders again and said, “Are you quite finished, Laurel? Because I have a few things to say now.”

  “About—about how it really was?”

  “No—that’s the past. It’s over. We can’t bring it back. It’s the future we have to talk about, your future, my dear.”

  “Yes?”

  “You’re going home.”

  “Home?” She looked at him astounded. “But here is home.”

  “Don’t overdo the remorse over what you’ve just said, Laurel, and spare me, please, your politeness, any obligation. Here, for you, is not home, it never has been, it never will be. Home is back there.”

  “Not with David gone,” she whispered.

  “Even with David gone,” he said harshly, “it’s still there.”

  “Home is where the heart is,” she offered timidly. Oh, Nor, she felt like crying, how can I live half a world away from my heart?

  His lips thinned at her words.

  “Well?” he insinuated.

  She looked at him piteously. She could not reply, “Can’t you see my heart is here, Nor?” Not to a man with ice in his eyes and a thin, unsmiling mouth.

  “You’re forgetting one thing,” she said suddenly and triumphantly.

  “Yes?”

  “We’re married.”

  “You are forgetting something, too, aren’t you?”

  She did not question him ... she had no need to, she knew the answer too well. It was no marriage, it never had been, there was nothing, nothing to hold her here.

  She said dully, “You can’t afford to send me back just now. You haven’t the extra money.”

  “I have. I have all that, and I have even more, Laurel. I have sufficient to free you, send you back to England, set you up in a career or a business, to look after you until you can look after yourself.”

  She stared at him. In a way it had been a disastrous season. There had been setback after setback. And he must be in debt with all the rebuilding, the pay sheet for the new hands.

  He saw the doubt in her eyes.

  “The pearl,” he shrugged carelessly.

  “But you sai
d that the pearl, though large and beautiful, was actually of minor value. You said no really fabulous pearls were found this far south.”

  “Yes, I said that, but I said that there was always the exception.” His voice was laconic.

  “This one is the exception?”

  “Yes.” He crossed to the shell table and took up the pearl tin. So he still kept his gleanings there, Laurel thought drearily, remembering how he had discovered her looking that day.

  She looked at the ring with him now, the pearl he had had set into a ring because he had said it would sell better that way.

  The gem shone warmly. The milk and the flame and the rose were there. Yes, it was good. She could tell that indubitably now, she could sense its value, inexperienced in such things though she was. Last time she had been upset at what Jasper had told her, but now she looked speculatively on the pearl, and she could tell.

  “You can’t use it on me like that,” she protested.

  Again the shrug.

  “Actually it is half yours, as you once took pains to tell me, remember?”

  She remembered, and flushed, hating the memory of that time when he had caught her prying in the tin.

  “It’s very valuable,” he said. “It’s indeed a little fortune. What I intend to do would only deplete your half, so you would need have no qualms as to my robbing myself.”

  “Perhaps,” she said tautly, “it might not be the manner in which I want to spend my half. Every woman has the right to spend for herself.”

  “If she knows what she is doing, yes, Laurel, but what you would propose to do is foolish, stupid, unwise.”

  “How do you know what I propose, Nor?”

  He left her side and went and sat on the edge of the big kitchen table. He took out the makings and rolled two cigarettes and gave one to her.

  “I’ll tell you, shall I?” he asked. “You would propose to stop on here, just as you’re stopping now. You’re a nice-mannered child, very polite—very remorseful because of what you’ve just said. All right, then, that’s all to your credit ... but it’s not enough, Laurel. I’m sorry, my dear.”

  Perhaps—perhaps—” she said shyly, “there’s something more than that.”

  “I doubt it,” he retorted brutally. “For all your nice manners, your kind nature, you’re still incapable of anything more than merely nice manners and kindness. You’re incapable of reaching a big decision, you’re a very pretty shell like the shells Jill and Meredith used to gather—but still only a shell for all that. You’re still a girl.”

  “Girls grow up,” she told him soberly. She wanted suddenly and urgently to cross over to him, to tell him that she might have only been a girl when he had asked her to marry him, but it was different now, it was different here in her heart.

  She did not say it. Again there was that set face, the cool reserve. He had become the mollusk again, he had retreated and he would not come out.

  She watched him replace the ring in the little tin.

  “Is it safe to leave it there like that?”

  He shrugged. “Why not? Nobody knows.”

  “This is a small island, someone could know.” She thought all at once of Jasper and his interest that day by the old rain-tank. “I wish you wouldn’t keep it by you, Nor,” she said.

  He twisted his lips in a sardonic smile. “Frightened you might lose your passage home?” he taunted.

  “It’s not that at all. I just think you’re being foolish.”

  “Then don’t worry. Whalemen are honest to the core. I don’t know why it should be, but it is. I expect it might be their preoccupation with big things.” Again he shrugged.

  Hesitantly she said, “It needn’t be a whaleman.”

  “Anyone in mind?”

  Now was her time to speak, and resolutely she said it. “Jasper.”

  He grinned carelessly. “Jasper is gone this long time. I think the fire scared him out just as it does a snake.”

  She opened her mouth. She opened it to say, “But he hasn’t gone, Nor. He never left here at all, he climbed up on a hill up there, and pitched a camp, and he is spying down on us, even spying down at this moment. Why, why, do you think?”

  But the big man was putting down the letter.

  “I’ll go ahead with the arrangements,” he said.

  He went to the door, then turned.

  “It seems late to say it now, Laurel, but if you can bring yourself to believe me I want you to know I’m sorry—very sorry—” He nodded to the letter again.

  When he had gone she took up the letter. She took it but did not read it. She knew what Doctor Frith would have to say.

  She had known a pain before, she had thought it big enough to fill eternity, but now there was a blackness as well as the pain, and an overwhelming loneliness and despair.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  BETWEEN them after that there was a polite friendliness. Nor considered Laurel in every way; Laurel referred continually to Nor and accepted his word.

  But she did not accept it on the night that he told her that he was now making definite arrangements for her future. On the other hand, she did not rebel. She just sat and listened, eyes on the floor, her heart so full it seemed it must burst.

  “You must let me know what appeals to you, Laurel, what, if any, are your preferences. Because you have been a secretary there’s no reason for you to remain a secretary. I want you to choose something you have always wanted but perhaps believed out of your reach.”

  Flippantly she had answered, “The moon.”

  “You’re very ambitious.”

  “A star, then.” ... Stars were for love, she thought, that Star that had risen in the east had begun all love.

  He shot her a quick look, then for the time dropped the subject of her future.

  “There are no stars tonight,” he pointed out.

  “No.”—And there is no love either, Laurel thought. Aloud, she commented, “The weather has never settled down since that fog, has it, Nor?”

  “We’re still in the centre of a depression. At any moment I expect the rains to start.”

  “You sound like the wet and the dry, and there wouldn’t be those two extremes here.”

  “No, there isn’t. However, if we start autumn with unsettled weather at Humpback, you can be sure it will continue. Frankly, I’m expecting deluges. I know my Island. It’s quite probable, girl, that you won’t be able to escape as quickly as you’d like.”

  “I never wanted to escape, I’ve told you that.”

  “Yes, you’ve told me, and told it very convincingly. It’s quite polite of you to repeat it now. Don’t think I don’t appreciate it, Laurel, I do. And I agree with you that it’s a good thing that we finish the affair on an affable note like this. You’re setting me a fine example, child, considerately persisting that you don’t want to go.”

  What could she say in answer short of actually crying out her heart to him, going to him, putting her arms around him? You couldn’t make someone love you, however much you loved them. She sat silent, knowing the loneliness and despair once more.

  He finished studying the sky, then referred to a weather graph. Nor took a lot of interest in the weather. That was to be expected in a sailor, Laurel thought.

  He looked up at her, the frown that he often wore these days bringing the salt-bleached eyebrows together in one thick white line.

  “Were you born on a Wednesday, Laurel?”

  “I wouldn’t know.” She was surprised at the question. “Why?”

  He tapped the graph. “I believe you were. I believe you’re a child of woe. Wednesday’s children are—recall the nursery rhyme?”

  “Why do you say it of me, Nor?”

  “You lost your mother; you lost your father; you were obliged to work for your living; you came to Humpback and”—he gestured briefly—“all that has happened since, fire, fog ... the rest of it ... came to pass; then you lost your brother—and now, my girl, unless I’m very mistaken, and graphs and
gauges and skies and wind make no mistake I have found, you’re in for something rather special in elements.

  “It hasn’t happened like this for years; the whaling schedule hasn’t been delayed like this for so long as I remember. We’re having a bad ran.”

  “I must be the ill luck,” she said. “Never mind, Nor, your ill luck will be over soon.”

  He did not comment on that. Instead he shrugged, “You couldn’t ask more of an adventure strip heroine. What will we call the strip? ‘The Calamity Girl’?”

  She did not reply. She had gone to the window to look out for herself.

  “There is no moon, and the stars are not out, but all the same it doesn’t look like the deluges you forecast.” She turned back to him. “It isn’t even sprinkling.”

  “It’s beginning right now,” he corrected. “Listen.”

  She listened ... and it was.

  It was only the gentlest of little feet on the roof, so she had not heard it, it was only the finest of mists on the pane, so she had not noticed the drops.

  “It’s nothing,” she shrugged.

  But the next morning the noise on the roof was deafening. Although it was not obscure as it had been when the fog had settled down on them, the drops were so big they ran into each other and Laurel could not see the Clytie as it put out beyond the lee of the Island.

  It rained all day. Once when she donned mackintosh and galoshes and ran up to oust Plush from their yard she went ankle deep in black mud. She stared at her feet, and saw that a stream was flowing strongly down the slope and bringing with it all the mountain silt. “It’s the high level storage tank,” she thought. “The leak has worsened. With the rain it’s become quite a river. I must tell Nor as soon as the Clytie gets back. I should have told him before.”