The Wind and the Spray (19 page)

“You mean Australian wilds,” she had said stubbornly.

“This is Australia. Humpback is Australia. Where do you think you are? Iceland? We are only a few miles from the Australian coast, we were once part of the coast, same soil, same country, same trees, vegetation, growth ... same risks, and remember that.”

Now she did remember it, but too late.

She determined not to panic. She looked slowly round and tried to pinpoint herself. Perhaps if she could hear the pattern of the sea she could push through the bush till the rhythm became clearer, the coast visible. She listened, but only heard the sound of the wind through leaves. The wind had no brine in it, either. She must have come farther inland than she thought. There was wind, she thought, but there was no spray.

Still she was determined to think calmly, rationally. The stream
...
she would go back to the stream. She would follow it to its source
...
that would be a wise move, really, for as well as extricating her it would give her something definite to report to Nor. She felt quite sure now that the water was coming from the storage tank, that the high level reservoir had a serious leak.

Encouraged, she started off again
...
but after five minutes she stopped, defeated. Not just defeated this time but really afraid. For now there was not even a stream.

She sat down and tried to compose herself. It’s nothing, really, she thought, the day is still comparatively young, and I’ve only to reach the top of somewhere and then I can look round and see where I am.

But for all her would-be confidence, deep down inside her a voice kept reminding that she had dallied long on the beach, that before that she had seen the Fuccillis off, that
she must have been several hours here in the bush, that only yesterday Nor had remarked how the days were growing small.

“And then,” jeered the hateful little voice, “where
is
the top of all this?”

She jumped to her feet and started an agitated ascent. Up is up, she thought a trifle hysterically, I can’t go wrong with that.

But the incline she chose dwindled out into another gully, the next hillock into another gully again. Was it her imagination or was it becoming faintly less light?

She was choosing her tracks without thought now. She took any at all so long as it appeared to ascend. But every time she came back into the same gully ... or was it the same gully? She could not tell any more.

Somewhere around half-dusk, scratched, blistered, dog-weary, Laurel succeeded in losing the little ravine at last and to climb and this time keep climbing. Presently, by the different note of the wind in the trees, she knew she must be close to the top.

At once she saw it—the small encampment between the bushes—and her heart leapt with relief. In her job at finding something, somebody, anybody, she did not look down on the scene that now lay before her, she simply stumbled blindly towards the little man-made clearing, sobbing softly now that her fear was past and the nightmare gone.

She did not know what halted her progress, stopped her shout. She only knew—and was glad afterwards—that she paused before she opened her lips, before the man could hear her call.

She stood still as a statue in the enveloping tea bush, watching Jasper squatting over a sparse fire as he prepared a sketchy meal. He seemed concerned over the smoke. He kept it down to a blue feather. Obviously he wanted to send out no sign of his being there. And why was he there? Why was he concealing it even from her, from the one who had kept him in food? She had believed him gone. It had been a release, a relief, like an opening of floodgates. But all the time he had been here.

She glanced quickly around her. It did not appear a very special spot to her. Although it concealed, it did not shelter. Why, then, was Jasper on this hill?

All at once she was remembering, with a little shiver, how Jasper had told her that he possessed a spy-glass. He had said it with sly enjoyment, she recalled. But what would he find to spy on from this place?

It was only then that she saw that the encampment had a perfect view of the island settlement, more particularly of one house. Nor’s house
...
hers.

It did not come to her at once that she was lost no longer, that she had only to descend this hill, another smaller one, and she would be home.

All she could think of, worry over, puzzle about, was why this man was encamped up here over their house.

She peered down through the bushes. Even as she watched, through the semi-gloom a figure came out of the Larsen cottage. It would be Nor, of course. The whaler was always back by dusk, the whalemen in their homes. It would be Nor looking for her, wondering where she had gone, why she was so late.

Jasper stood up from the fire. He had his back to her, but she knew that he was looking down as well.

How often through the day did he stare down like this? Had he seen the Fuccillis move out this morning? Had he seen her leave soon afterwards? Did he know she had not yet returned? Why did Jasper look down at all?

It was growing quite dark now. If she did not make a move soon, she would be lost all over again, properly lost this time. Once she got into that little ravine as she had before, she felt she might never get out again.

She retraced her steps one by one, her left foot out, her right foot following it. For all her breathless care it seemed to her that she made an inordinate lot of sound. She only prayed that the man up there would dismiss it if he heard it as the usual sounds of the bush.

Whether he did or not, she did not know. She was only aware that halfway down she lost her nerve, forgot her caution, that all at once she was sobbing aloud with panic and exhaustion, that it could not matter any more whether she made a lot of noise or not so long as she ran
...
ran
...
ran.

She fell several times and cut her knees and elbows. Twigs tore her arms, and once her face. She knew her blouse was ripped. She felt giddy, lightheaded, unreal. She felt desperately afraid.

Then, as a burst of sunshine after rain, she was clear of the bush and racing like a wild thing over the cup of valley that sloped down to the settlement and to their—Nor’s house.

She was aware vaguely of someone racing up to meet her, of someone catching her up in strong arms, of a voice she recognized dully and thankfully as Nor’s saying in a tight furious voice, hard with relief and staccato from suddenly eased tension, “Where in heaven have you been? Were you lost? Were you running away? Where did you go? Has something happened? Answer me, Laurel, answer me at once.”

But she could not answer him, she could only wring her hands and sob.

Infuriated, he shook her. It was almost a brutish shake. He realized she was agitated, and he realized that this was no way to help an agitated, half-hysterical girl, but it helped him to rid himself of some of that unbearable, pent-up anxiety, that brimming and flowing over emotion with which, all at once, he found he could neither cope
...
nor understand.

He shook her again, not so angrily this time. Then he picked her up in his arms and carried her to the house.

All Laurel thought was. “I’m glad it’s dark and that Jasper can’t see.”

When they reached the cottage, Nor laid Laurel on the sofa in the kitchen. Then he went and poured some hot water from the kettle into a basin. He must have started getting the evening meal.

He came across with the water and a towel and began bathing her face and hands. His fingers were careful over her injuries. He took off her shoes and cleaned the bleeding feet. With a sterilized needle he let out the blisters and applied adhesive tape. He bound up her knees.

All this he did without speaking one word. Then he got up from his knees and made tea.

She sipped it gratefully, lingeringly, longing to confide in him, aching to tell him of the nightmare it had been up there surrounded by those identical musks and eucalyptus, same dark green bracken, same sage green bush, the dozen similar knolls. She yearned to spill out the fear that had choked her when she had seen Jasper’s encampment on that concealed spot on the top of the hill.

But he not only asked no questions, invited no confidences, he even repelled, without actually opening his lips to do so, any eager enunciation she would have made.

When her cup was empty, he filled it again. Then he sat by her side.

“Listen, Laurel,” he said as remotely as though she was not even distantly related to him, “there was no need for you to clear out like that tonight. I thought you understood. I thought you realized that everything, our way of living I mean, would be just as it was before. Perhaps it’s been my fault that all this happened.” He gestured briefly to her blistered feet, her injured knees.

“Perhaps, unintentionally, unconsciously really, I unwittingly gave you the wrong impression that we had built up something, founded something. You see what I’m trying to say, child?”

“No,” she said.

With infinite patience he went on.

“I indicated we were partners
...
mates. It scared you
...
terrified you ... it made you fear I was expecting something from you that you could never give. “So”—he paused—“you ran away.”

She was looking at him piteously. Had Nor looked back at her, really looked back, he might have found in her
harassed
eyes and trembling lips not the reluctance and distaste that he thought—but something else.

For all at once it was there, and in that moment Laurel recognized it. Even with her doubts about David, about Nor’s entire truthfulness regarding David, her doubts about Nor himself, there was still a sudden largeness in her heart, an almost suffocating largeness, what she had faintly known but never admitted was no longer a fitful little glimmer within her, it was a steady shining flame.

She loved this man.

The cup that was hot against her fingers brought no real contact at all. She seemed to be drained of everything—everything save the sudden sweet certainty of her heart.

She had the sensation that she had loved Nor all along; that that was why she had come so unfalteringly to a place she knew nothing at all about; that that was why she had listened so eagerly to that inner voice assuring her, “It will be right
... it will be right
...
” She had the feeling that it had been there all along, waiting for discovery, waiting for
this.

Then Laurel heard Nor speaking quietly, almost detachedly, in a kindly, considerate, but quite untouched voice.

“A few odd times I did think we might start off, after the Fuccillis left, differently, but what would have been the use?”

He rolled a cigarette, gave it to her, rolled one himself, lit both.

“We were agreed partners, mates, and that for a while blinded me, set me off, made me believe falsely that there was something, something that I know, that you know, there is not. But when I sat down and thought about it sanely, rationally, clearly, I could see you as you are, very young, very inexperienced, bewildered, a long way from home—rootless, really, accepting what I offered simply because, although you didn’t realize it, the urge was there to become stable. It’s the natural urge of all human things, stability, but it’s not, it never has been, and it never will be, something else. Then I realized this, Laurel: I realized I wanted something better than that.”

“You mean”—Laurel found her voice at last—
“
than what we had?”

“Yes.”

“Than—than me?”

“If you want to put it like that, yes again. You see”—he exhaled—“the Larsens I come from were not particularly clever perhaps, never particularly polished, but they believed implicitly in good things, they employed good people, ran a good industry, paid good wages—and they got good wives. By that I mean
wives,
Laurel.” He flickered away an ash.

“I knew,” he said, after a
pause
, “that I, another Larsen, would not want anything short of that. I’m not blaming you, child, I’m blaming myself. It’s simply that, just as they did, I’d want nothing short of the best, and when I say that I’m not slamming you, Laurel, I’m simply stating that that thing that is between us, that way I feel, you feel, we both feel, just wouldn’t last the distance, see?”

“Nor, I—” How could she say it, and yet she must, she must tell this man now, she must try to make him comprehend.

But he had risen, taken her cigarette and pressed it in the ash tray, stubbed his own.

“Please, Nor, I—”

“You’re tired, little one,” he said quietly, and his voice was gentle and solicitous, but quite as indifferent and incurious and uncaring as though he was speaking to a total stranger.

“Think you can hobble off to bed, or shall I carry you?”

“I can walk, Nor.”

He nodded, and watched her as she limped to her room.

Presently he went to his room. She heard the door shut.

She felt the emptiness and the hollowness between them
—
the void that was the dividing hall.