The Wind and the Spray (4 page)

“Want a reason?” asked Larsen of the girl.

“Not particularly.”

“All the same you’re getting it. I don’t want you to think I’m one of those anti-female obsessed characters who just go in for woman-hating for a whim. Mine is no whim.”

“No?”

“No.”

He paused, then wheeling abruptly he caught hold of her arm, quite harshly, then he veered her round to face the south.

“Look at that,” he said.

She realized that before she had only been looking at the northern end of the island, at the crags, forests, clearings and hills. Now she saw something quite different.

Here was industry
...
that was obvious from even this far
out
...
there were two docks, two jetties, a number of decks and ramps, winches, wires, booms, marker buoys, a craft much bigger than the one they were on.

He let her gaze for a few minutes before he spoke. “Around about the time New South Wales was finding its feet as a colony”—he glanced sarcastically down at her—“around the Duke of Wellington era, I’d say, for
you—”

“Thank you,” Laurel acknowledged just as sarcastically. He inclined his head.

“Around about that time, my great-great-grandfather started all that. It’s tough work now, I know that, but then, with the old primitive methods, with the uncertain market, it was endless, ruthless, demanding, pitiless, unsparing toil. The whale-boats of those days were each manned by six men. They rowed and sailed for miles after the whales, hooked them with a hand harpoon on a thin rope, and more often than not were taken for a Nantucket sleigh-ride for many miles more before they could play the whale and get a lance through its heart.”

Laurel t
ur
ned back to the crags, forests, plantations and hills again, feeling a little sick.

“So what?” she flung at him, still turned away.

“So a great-great-granddaughter, born into something sweated for her by her father and his father and his father before him, finds she doesn’t ‘like’ it
...
finds she can
’
t ‘put up’ with it
.
.
. leaves her husband and children behind her and flees the coast quick-smart.”

“You mean”—Laurel’s voice was a little shocked—“your sister deserted her husband and family?”

“I mean nothing of the sort, Nathalie’s too cunning for that. Never underestimate the cunning of a woman. No desertion for my only sister. She simply discovered she had a talent and she got herself a job.”

“A job?”

“If you can call walking about a stage a job.”

“Nathalie
...
Nathalie Blake ... but of course, I saw her the night the girls gave me my farewell party
...
” Laurel stood gazing at the island and recalling that tall fluent actress with the fluid movements and the red-gold
hair who had brought Portia to life more than any other Portia she had seen.

“
She was very good,” she said, “very good indeed.”

“She can talk and she can move, and there you have it,” said the man impatiently. “She has no especial gift that would suffer by her using it on her husband and children instead.”

“Could they not be on the mainland with her?”

“You fool,” he burst out, “don’t you see that that’s what she wants, what she’s after? She has no intention of having a career, her only intention is to abandon her birthright. She simply loathes every inch of this place.”

“Her husband likes it?”

“Peter loathes it as well.”

“Then—”

“I know what you’re going to ask. Don’t say it. I, you see, believe in succession. My great-great-grandfather started this thing. His own hands built his first boats, those hands blistered and cracked and tore as he rowed miles and miles over uncharted seas after what he believed would support him and his family and the families of the families to come. Of all the families, only two of us now are left. Accidents in the earlier days, when hazards were greater than they are now, accounted for most of the depletion; the lack of prompt medical attention—we have the radio and a visiting doctor every month—took its toll; so did several wars. And now, of the two who remain, one doesn’t ‘like’ the place.” The man flung his half
-
smoked cigarette violently on the water and it made a little hissing sound.

Laurel said quietly, “You can’t arrange people’s hearts, any more than you can arrange their lives.”

“
I
can arrange their lives.”

“Obviously you haven’t, since your sister has left.”

“Her husband and children are here.” He said it triumphantly. She saw his chin go out.

“But for how long?” she ventured boldly. “You just told me Mr. Blake also dislikes the island.”

He laughed without amusement. “I should imagine, too, that Mr. Blake dislikes even more the absence of money. I am the trustee of Humpback. It belongs to Nathalie and
myself, but by heaven, unless she stays here, or her husband stays here, she doesn’t get a penny out of me.”

“You mean you would hold the Blake family that way?” Laurel’s voice held unconcealed scorn.

“I am holding them, aren’t I?” Quite unmoved by her contempt, he was lighting another cigarette.

“There is another aspect,” he said.

She did not ask him what it was, but he told her.

“I also,” he stated baldly, “simply do not have the cash to buy Nathalie out. We were interrupted by the war. Again, demands fluctuate.”

“If you had the money would you release her?” Laurel asked it straight out.

“No.” The answer was straight out in return.

“The Larsen Succession? The Larsen Dynasty?” There was an edge to Laurel’s voice. She despised autocracy like this.

He let her sarcastic suggestion pass without an answering sarcasm.

“Not entirely .
.
.
”
He hesitated a moment. “I believe in this place, you see, Miss Teal. I believe I can still make of it what my forebears dreamed for it, but I can’t do it alone. I have to have men, and it appears men have to have women, and women must have female company, female example, female standard, and it’s no standard that another woman, the boss’s sister, just can’t stand the place and so flees to the coast. It’s no precedent at all.”

“I think,” remarked Laurel, “that an unwilling captive would be less precedent still. A pity”—her voice held a sarcasm again—“that there have to be women at all.”

“Agreed,” was all he said in reply.

“And yet,” Laurel persisted in spite of herself, “the female species
is
necessary, you must agree. Necessary for your future supply of men, Mr. Larsen
...
just as the female is necessary also, I should say, for your future supply of whales.”

“Quite,” he agreed coolly. “I can’t quarrel with nature, but by heaven I can criticize.”

“
Think
of it this way,” Laurel pointed out blandly. “As a male with ‘other ideas,’ as you’ve taken pains to tell me, there will be no succession, no dynasty from you, but your sister
is
keeping the family alive, supplying the all-essential men.”

“And how?” His voice was cool.

“Her boys.”

“
Are girls. Oh, I know they look like boys ... no use in dressing kids in anything but pants in these parts ... but they are female nonetheless. Nathalie, undoubtedly, was very satisfied over that.”

It was no use arguing, Laurel decided. It was no use repeating what she had just told him, what Laurel firmly believed herself: that you could not arrange people’s hearts, that you could not arrange their lives.

If Nathalie hated this place, that was the end of it. She herself might hate it
...
but it must not be the end of it, not until she had saved enough to cover the extra expense she had been put to for suitable clothes for this island, not until she had sent the more substantial money she would earn here back home. Back to David. He needed it. She narrowed her eyes a little to prevent the bright remembering tears.

Luke was accelerating the engine, getting ready to make the second run.

The man beside Laurel saw the narrowing of the eyes, but not the tears.

“I think,” he said suavely,
“
you
will not flee the mainland, however. The money is quite satisfactory, isn’t it, and next to matrimony that’s the important thing.”

“Why do you pay so well?” she asked crisply, ignoring the other part of his statement. “If you’re near ruin, why are you so generous in that?”

“I’
m not near ruin, I simply need Nathalie’s share for expansion, and I intend using it that way. Also, my forebears set a certain standard, and I shall retain that standard, strive for an even higher standard still.”

“
And finally for whom?” She found she could not resist that. “For two girls?” she asked.

He had no answer. He said irritably at last that there were men here on the island, men who seemed to feel about the place as he felt, men with sons. But the reply was unconvincing. That he was unconvinced himself she could see by the irritable removal of the cigarette, only half smoked again, and his tossing of it into the water that was churning now as Luke brought the
Leeward,
straight as an arrow, with dead reckoning, right to the jetty’s edge.

They tied up, and not as wobbly as she had thought she would be, Laurel stepped out on Humpback Island for the first time.

Instantly the man with the two children claimed her. She could see now that the children indeed were girls, very pretty little girls. The rest of the islanders crowded around the
Leeward,
gathering mail, stores, shopping they had ordered from Anna, talking to Larsen until he pushed his way through and past them, then talking to Luke.

“It’s lovely to have you,” Peter Blake was saying eagerly. “I’m afraid I don’t know your name.”

“Teal, Laurel Teal.” A little green duck, she remembered. “May I meet your daughters, Mr. Blake?”

“Peter, Laurel. On an island of this size it has to be that. Did you see Nathalie before you left Sydney?”

“Not officially.”

“No.” Peter’s voice was bitter. “No, I suppose Nor would attend to that.”

“I assure you he didn’t prevent me from seeing her,” put in Laurel fairly.

“Also I gather he did nothing to assure that you did. He would be afraid that Nathalie might influence you from coming here, and that would be the last thing he’d want.”

Laurel looked
at the man in surprise. “He gave me the impression that
I
was the last one he wanted, that I was an intrusion, not a need.”

“You are,” said Blake with a grin, “both. I don’t know
how much you’ve been told about our affairs, Laurel
—
”

“I’ve been told that your wife dislikes it here, that you do as well, but that Mr. Larsen has other ideas.”

“ ‘Other ideas’ is a vast understatement—however, I see you have the general trend. I want to get out as soon as I can, and never come back. Nathalie decided that by her getting out first, we—the girls and I—naturally would follow. However, it hasn’t turned out that way so far. Nor evidently believes that by retaining us as sort of hostages, something to
make
his sister return, he can ultimately assure our mutual settlement here. And to what?” Peter glanced round him in disgust and despair. “To this,” he groaned.

“Do you hate it that much?”

“I, as well as Nathalie. I’m just not a whaleman, Laurel, and Nath’s no whaleman’s wife.”

“The money?” murmured Laurel.

“I see he has conned you on that as well. Naturally we want the money, but it’s not all-important. The important thing to us is not being islanders any more. That, I believe, is why you are here now. I like my brother-in-law. I like him so much I can’t tell him the truth—that I can’t stick this place any more than his sister could. So instead I’ve been adopting innuendos
...
hoping to get my goal by the softer word. One of those words was the children’s need for a younger woman, not one like Mummy Reed, not one like any of the islanders, but—”

“But one with red hair,” Laurel proffered.

He smiled ruefully at that. “When I said ‘someone like their mother’—and they were my actual words, Laurel—I meant, of course, their mother herself. Nor deliberately misunderstood. He’s clever, is Nor. By fetching you over, by conceding literally to my request, he has outwardly established himself as the sympathetic boss, yet really not given away an inch.”

“
Is
he your boss? I mean, having a wife a coinheritor—”

“Not quite co-, Laurel. Nathalie inherits large interests, but the actual place is his.”

“I see.” Laurel was silent a moment, her face puckered in thought.

“I’m sorry I’m not necessary,” she said after a while.

Peter’s smile was instant and warm. “But you are. No new face in this place, especially a young and female face, and I would have gone mad in another week.”

“But still not necessary for your children?” Laurel persisted.

He could not deny that. “Jill and Meredith are affable souls,” he admitted. “They’ll like you tremendously, but I must confess you won’t rock them. That’s the trouble, Nathalie’s absence doesn’t rock them, either. Otherwise I need not work with innuendos, I could simply place a broken-hearted kid in front of Nor and say: ‘Look what you’re doing; look what you’ve done.’ ”

Laurel looked down on the affable children. They seemed, indeed, placid souls.

“The young,” observed Peter Blake
succinctly
, “my young, anyway, are made of the same stuff as Mummy Reed’s plum duffs. Incidentally I see her on the verandah waving to us. Tea must be on.”

They walked up the hill from the jetty to the wide timber cottage, the little girls scampering around their feet.

“I must say for Nor,” admitted Peter, “that in taking me literally he did the thing properly. I mean,” he smiled, “the hair.”

“Is it the same colour?”

“Nothing like the same colour.” Nor Larsen had caught up with them. He came and walked by Laurel’s other side.

“Nathalie’s is marigold,” he said.

Laurel raised her brows at such a poetic description from him.

Either to balance the description, to spite her, or to tell what he considered was the plain, unvarnished truth, he added: “You’re red.”

He pushed the gate of a picket fence, led her up a short path, then bowed her as ironically as he had into the cabin of the
Leeward
into the timber house.