By The Sea, Book Three: Laura (15 page)

Neil was horrified. "Not the sick-bed, Mama!
If I stay there everyone will think I'm a sissy. Colin will think
I'm still a baby!
"

Laura did not want to add to her son's
trauma, so it ended with Neil limping back to his own berth in the
forecastle. Laura tucked him in, then went back to her own cabin
and shut the door behind her. She craved a moment of privacy. For
ten minutes she gave herself up to wracking, silent sobs for all
the things that might have been. When it was over she still hadn't
the heart to go up on deck and face the others, so she took out her
neglected diary and made an entry:

"September 20, 1934. Neil was skylarking
just now and almost plunged to his death. I do not know which was
worse: the thought of having to live without him, or the crushing
guilt I would have felt in having to face Sam with the news. Add to
those a third, more horrible response: my fury at Sam—which I did
not know until now that I felt—for having abandoned his wife, his
family, and his livelihood to go off to play at yacht-racing. I see
now that I shall never forgive him for it. I have made a foolish
decision, yet no more so than he."

Laura closed her diary, turned the little
golden key, and reflected. Then she opened the book again to add,
"The worst of it all is that the substitution is absolute. Colin
has befriended him, educated him, and now he has saved his
life."

After that she crept forward for one more
peek at her son, who was sleeping soundly. She returned to her
cabin and within seconds had fallen asleep herself, fully clothed,
in the berth that her little boy would doubtless decline to share
now.

****

"20 September, 1934. What did I say! We have
won, and are only one down. We came from behind—if only Neil could
have seen us! It looked all up for us by the last leg—we was sure
the Cup was going back to the Brits—Vanderbilt threw up his hands
and gave the helm to Hoyt—and went below to eat—but Hoyt's an old
fox—fooled the Brits into thinking the finish line was somewhere
else—they got lost in the haze—all they found was a calm patch—but
Bliss and Hoyt knew just where we was all the time—we all held our
breath—and I will be damned if we did not win! It was a
miracle!"

****

The brass ship's clock in Laura's cabin
chimed seven times. Laura thought it was three-thirty; opened her
eyes; saw darkness. So it was seven-thirty, then, or even
eleven-thirty. Impossible. She staggered sleepily to the
forecastle, listened for the sound of her son's breathing, and only
then—as she reassured herself that Neil was sleeping peacefully—did
it occur to her that the
Virginia
was under sail again.
Impossible.

Laura went back aft, automatically steadying
herself on grab-rails against the lift and fall of the ship. She
looked up out of the companionway at an overcast sky. The cabin
lamp threw a few watts' worth of light on the patched and dirty
sails of the
Virginia.
There was a breeze, and the sails
were drawing. The schooner was on her way again.

She scrambled up on deck; Billy was at the
wheel. "Why didn't you wake me?" she demanded, trying not to sound
sleepy. "I've missed my watch. What time is it?"

"Eleven-thirty. It was Colin's idea," Billy
said in a low but perfectly cheerful voice. "The three of us split
up the watches among ourselves. No one even missed you," he added,
trying to reassure her.

"How nice to know." Automatically she
checked the compass course; the wind seemed to be pretty much out
of the east. "One thing about the wind this trip; when there is
any, it's fair," she said, stifling a yawn. "I can't believe I
never heard you raise sail. Where's Colin?"

"I 'spect he's curled up on deck somewheres.
Stubb's below."

"Oh." She had a choice: relieve Billy at the
helm, or check in with her first mate.

"I'll be back."

It was a dark night, damp and penetrating.
She made her way forward, scanning the deck in the dimly lit green
of the running light, looking for curled-up lumps in the
shadows.

When she found Colin he wasn't asleep at
all, but propped up against the inside of the starboard bulwark,
smoking his pipe.

"Aren't you catching some spray up here?"
she asked, sitting down beside him, afraid of waiting to be
asked.

"There's not that much wind. Sleep
well?"

"Like the dead," she replied, stretching her
arms out in front of her. "I can't account for it. Usually I'm up
at every sound. I guess ... a lot of things caught up with me."

From the corner of her eye she saw the bowl
of his pipe glow brighter. Then he said, "Waiting and watching can
take it out of you."

Somehow what he said struck a chilling note
in her. "I just remembered that I had the most horrible dream," she
said, wincing. "I dreamt of the day I first met my husband—only in
the dream he was you. And he was—or you were—loading a keg of oil,
the way he was on the day I met him. And the keg fell at my feet
and split open, just like on that day. Only instead of oil spilling
all over my dress, it was ... blood. There was blood ... all over
me." She shivered and wrapped her arms more tightly around her
knees. "It was horrible," she repeated. "I remember the sound of
the tackle as the keg was raised up and up in my dream; it seemed
to go on forever."

"You heard us hoisting the sails, I
suppose," he said thoughtfully. "As for the rest of it—you don't
have to be a psychologist to know that you were weaving what
happened today with other significant events of your life."

Laura thought about it for a moment. "I see
... the keg was really my son, was it?" Her voice had an ironic,
rather defiant edge to it. "You seem to know a lot about dream
symbolism. Before you sailed off to the Pacific, did you have a
clinic in Vienna?"

"I read a lot at sea," he said simply. "Just
like you. We don't have to talk about your dreams if it makes you
feel uncomfortable."

"No, not at all. It doesn't bother me a
bit," she lied. "Since you were in my dream, does that make
you
'significant'?"

"You tell me."

"All right, then ... I will. You
are
significant in my life—just now. I need you to get the boat to the
Bahamas. I'll need you to get it back. I needed you—desperately—to
save Neil this afternoon. It's reasonable that you should find your
way into my dreams." It was the most bald-faced lie she'd ever
told.

She watched him lift his pipe over his
shoulder and tap it on the bulwark, emptying its ashes into the
sea. He took the bowl, still warm, and placed it in the palm of her
hand, then took her other hand and wrapped it around the top.
"You're cold," he said softly, stroking her hair.

"How can I be?" she asked in a faint voice
as he began to kiss her gently on her cheek, her nose, her ear, her
neck. "We're at thirty ... degrees ... south ... latitude. Colin,
please ... I came to thank you, that's all ... for everything. I
won't ever forget it. Neither will Neil ... or Sam ...."

He took a deep breath; his back
straightened. "Right," he said, and exhaled. He stood up and held
out a hand to her. "Better dress warmly, skipper. It's your
watch."

She smiled bleakly in the darkness, not
daring to accept his outstretched hand. No one—not even Sam—had the
effect on her that this man did. She wobbled to her feet unaided;
and yet, reluctant to leave him, she asked wistfully, "Why did you
take this job, really? Was it for the money? For the hundred
dollars?"

"That helped. But I suppose it was because I
was so drawn to you the first time I saw you."

She was incredulous. "Surely not then! With
that idiot man pawing me—"

"That wasn't the first time," he said,
surprised that she thought so. "The first time, you wouldn't let my
group aboard. You were just closing up your shipboard dance, and
you thought we might not get our money's worth."

For a moment she had to think. "But that
group wore tuxedos—"

"Most of them. A couple of us were in
ordinary blazers. You look surprised," he added wryly.

"I'm dumbfounded," she confessed. "Who
are
you, Colin? Are you rich or are you poor?"

"You can be either one and get around nicely
in Newport, it turns out. That night I was actually visiting a crew
friend of mine on board a yacht at another dock. There was a
cocktail party aboard, a little too top-drawer for some of the
guests, and they decided to beat it. They left the dock at the same
time we did, and it ended with my friend and me being absorbed into
their group."

He bent his head over hers and dropped a
light, lingering kiss on her lips. "The rest is fate. Good night,
love."

Laura had no illusions about her feelings
for Colin. She wanted him the way she had been wanting the wind:
with all her heart and soul. She spent her turn at the wheel in a
trance, like someone does who drives alone on an empty highway at
night. There was time enough and more to relive Colin's kisses;
time enough, and more, to turn away desire. But her heart, like the
wheel, seemed to be turning from one side to the other: to Sam, and
the solid ties of marriage; to Colin, and the wild unknown. She
brushed away a windblown strand of her hair with her hand and
smelled
Kentucky Standard.
Sam's tobacco. Colin's
tobacco.

When Stubby came up on deck to relieve her
he took one look around, braced himself against the boats pitching
angle, and said, "Holy cow! This is more wind than I've seen in a
while. Shouldn't we take in a reef?"

It was true. While Laura was off on another
planet, the wind had been steadily increasing. If she meant to keep
her word to Sam to be careful, she would have to turn out all hands
to shorten sail. "I suppose we must," she said, reluctant to
disturb anyone's precious hours of sleep off-watch. Besides, it was
a nerve-wracking, harrowing business, especially at night.

But shorten sail they did. Laura pointed the
Virginia's
bow up into the wind and held it there, her teeth
chattering from the noise and wind, while Colin lowered each wildly
slatting sail in turn, and Billy and Stubby bound up the lower part
of the sail in reef knots. She held her breath while Billy climbed
out along the footrope of the main boom to tie in the last few
reefs in the sail; one wrong step and he'd be in the ocean. Billy
had reefed the mainsail a hundred times before, in far worse
conditions; but Laura's nerves were still a jangled mess from the
near-miss with Neil.

At last they had the sails down to a more
manageable size. The
Virginia
moved along on a more
comfortable angle of heel, taking only occasional spray over her
decks. She seemed less like a runaway horse, more like a slow but
steady pack mule. There were no congratulations that a difficult
task had been done well; it was part of the routine at sea. With a
collective sigh of relief, Billy, Colin, and Laura went below to
salvage what sleep they could.

"This is the worst of it, I think," said
Laura quietly to Colin as she stood at the door to her cabin. "The
awful toll on one's sleep. You let me catch up all day, but who can
spare
you
for so long?"

It was a tremendous compliment, and an
acknowledgment that Colin was more valuable to the safe operation
of the schooner than she. Laura saw in his face that he was moved
by her admission. "I'm good at catnaps," he said, and again he
leaned forward, as he had earlier that night, to kiss her.

This time she did not trust herself, but
shyly averted her head. "Sleep well, Colin."

"Now that, I doubt," he answered with a
rueful smile.

In his resignation he looked handsomer than
ever. Mood by mood, minute by minute, he was becoming more
irresistible to her. "Is your berth not comfortable, then?" she
asked naively, grateful that she had painted it recently.

"Oh, you dear lady!" Colin said, almost in a
moan.

She escaped to her own cabin. The lamp
inside had run dry but she saw by the light of the saloon that Neil
was there, curled up in her berth. "Neil? Are you all right?"

She startled the boy. He bolted up and
cried, "Help!"

When he felt his mother's arms around him he
whispered, "I got afraid, Mama. The wind was blowing so, and Dad
isn't here to tell us what to do."

"No, but Colin is," she found herself
saying, a little to her amazement.

"Is Colin any good, do you think?"

Laura said, "Yes," and Neil whispered
sleepily, almost sadly, "I knew he would be .... Can I stay
here?"

"Yes. Just this once." She cradled him
against her breast and wrapped her arm around him reassuringly.
"Just this once."

****

By morning it was raining; by afternoon,
sunny again. The wind slackened and veered into the
south-southwest, the worst direction of all. They had been
incredibly lucky so far, avoiding headwinds. Not any more. They
shook out the reefs and resigned themselves to a snail's progress.
But the next morning the wind shifted a little more to the
southwest, letting them creep up closer to their course.

Then in the afternoon a cold front pushed
through, drenching them with welcome fresh water. They were ready
and waiting. As the black, rolling cloud-line approached, they
reduced sail, expecting wind. They got little of that, but the
torrents of rain that fell straight down were so cool, so clean,
that Billy and Stubby grabbed bars of soap, stripped down to the
buff and left Laura to look in some other direction while they
bathed loudly and happily. Neil followed. And Colin. Laura was left
alone in the cockpit, filling up their spare buckets, while her
four male crew pranced and hooted in the bow, engaged in some
primal rite of bonding whose essence was that she couldn't join
them.