The Wind and the Spray (9 page)

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 rocked 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.

“I’m tired,” she said again. “Now go out to Nor.”

N
or was still on the beach.

As she came nearer to him she saw that he was staring down at a sand castle. It was one she had helped the children build yesterday. The tide had washed away some of its foundations and it had tumbled, but you could still see that it had been a castle.

She wondered what he was thinking, standing staring there. Was he seeing the castle just as something the children had made, and missing them physically? For he had loved them, she had sensed that, for all his casual air
...
Was he seeing it as the House of Larsen, not so impregnable, weak in structure, falling humbled to the ground? “Hullo,” he said.

“Mummy Reed sent me.”

“You wouldn’t have come yourself?”

“I don’t know. You see”—Laurel looked at him uncertainly—“I don’t think I would have known what to say. I don’t know now.”

“All sympathetic contributions gratefully received,” he announced sarcastically.

“Mrs. Reed didn’t think you were taking it like that,” replied Laurel soberly. “She was worried that you were making it an alone sort of thing.”

“What else can I make it? There’s only me.”

“There needn’t be.”

She saw his sailor blue eyes narrowing.

“Meaning?”

She felt the treacherous pink climbing her cheeks. “Meaning that you mustn’t think you’re so special,” she blurted inadequately. “No one’s so special they can’t be touched.” But she hadn’t meant that at all. She did not know what she had meant, really. She did not know why she had said it. A little unsteadily she joked. “That’s what a very good doctor is called, a special.”

To her relief he grinned back.

“I’ll miss the youngsters and the things they said. They infuriated me often, but a house without children is an empty thing.”

She looked at him curiously. “You are an odd man. You say that, but still you despise women, yet without women there would be that emptiness, the emptiness we have now, everywhere.”

He shrugged. “As a whaleman I accept the female sex as anatomically and biologically necessary,” he stated crisply.

“Not mentally, spiritually?”

“I don’t know the I. Q. and the spiritual capacity of a whale,” he came tauntingly back.

He was becoming his old caustic self again. In a way she was glad. He was a fighter, and there is something infinitely desolate in a fighter cast down.

Now was the time, she thought, to tell him that with the children gone she would go too. There would not be enough for her to do. He would be spared, as well, that much expense. She sensed intrinsically that within a few days Nathalie would receive all her dues. Nor was that sort of man.

But, the words on her lips, she hesitated. It wasn’t just David and his need of everything she could earn for him here that stopped her, it was something else. This place, of course. Instinctively, right from the first, she had loved this place.

Then she heard Nor speaking, and it was almost as though he had known what she intended to say.

“It will make no difference to you. The kids being gone, I mean.”

“I was employed because of them.”

“I know, but other avenues have opened up. Already I’m compiling lists of things I want you to start, things that would have had to be curtailed if the youngsters were still here to occupy all your time.”

“What sort of things?”

“Things you mentioned talking to the women about
...
social activities, pride in their community, permanency here and being glad of that fact. It will be a hard job. Harder still with Nathalie completely out of the picture this time, through Peter, and the girls gone as well. Example is a powerful thing. But interest is powerful too, and that will be your job. Interesting these women, getting them to
want
to stop on, reluctant ever to leave.”

Laurel hesitated. “It seems to me you’ll be paying me a lot of money for something that I would have done, anyway,” she told him at length.

“I can pay it. I’m not as badly off as I’ve inferred. In fact we’re prospering. It’s just that I’ve always wanted Humpback to be something extra, something better than the next. I guess”—the big man ran his brown hand through his
salt bleached
hair—“that I’m that sort of bloke. I must expand.”

“It’s not expansion when you don’t maintain,” she reminded slyly, and was glad when he grinned once more.

“Very anxious over the high level storage and the house, aren’t you? Well, I need a new ramp, and a new flensing deck, and a—”

They had turned from the beach and were walking up now to the house.

“So you’ll stay on?” he enquired without any more preamble.

“That’s a rather curious thing for you to ask,” she could not resist baiting, “to ask of a woman. Don’t you remember telling me what an irresistible issue money was to our
sex?”

He had stopped abruptly, stopping her with him, not by a touch of the hand but by a flick of the sailor blue eyes.

“I’m sorry about that, little green duck,” he said.

She looked at him in surprise, surprised at his words, at the surprising sincerity in that usually taunting face.

“Mummy Reed told me,” he went on. “Your brother. That he’s the real reason that you’re here. I’m sorry for what I said. I’m sorry for you. For him.”

“Thank you, Mr. Larsen.”

“You better make it Nor as the others do.”

“Thank you—Nor.”

“How bad is your brother?”

Laurel told him.