By The Sea, Book Three: Laura (14 page)

Still, perfection could be annoying to be
around. It annoyed Laura intensely, for example, that Colin's
positions on the chart of their course south had been plotted
within spitting distance of hers every day; every day his neat
little "x" was penciled in next to her neat little "x." She began
to think he wasn't working out his calculations at all, but taking
her accuracy for granted.

And yet he was not lazy; he carried his
share, more than his share, of the load. She could not quarrel with
him. But she wanted to quarrel with him, desperately. It seemed to
her that it would clear the air, the way thunderstorms would break
the hot stillness of their journey, and everything would be brisk
and straightforward after. But this ... this
tension.
She
couldn't bear it much longer.

She watched Billy scramble up the rope
ratlines ten or fifteen feet off the deck and, with a wild whoop,
jump into the ocean.

"I'm going for a swim to cool off," Laura
said almost angrily to Colin. "The boys are a hell of a lot smarter
than we are." She went below to her cabin to undress. It was
unbearable there, a good fifteen degrees hotter than on deck;
tonight all of them would be sleeping up on deck, not only Colin.
She peeled off her shirt, which clung to her back, and unhooked and
discarded her brassiere. Still wearing a pair of cotton drawstring
pants, she began rummaging in her drawers for the one bathing suit
she owned, which she hadn't worn in years. She found it in the back
of a drawer and held it up: it was mildewy and had at least one
moth-hole—an unattractive, rather repellent little garment.

"Oh hell," she muttered to herself.

"I don't like it either," came the voice
behind her.

Laura whirled around to see Colin standing
in the partly opened door to her cabin. Aghast, she slapped the
swimsuit up against her breasts, her nostrils filling with the
smell of mildew. "What are you doing?
Don't
look at me!" she
cried, aware that she sounded like a hysterical librarian.

"Shall I close the door?" he asked
tonelessly. It was an effort for him to speak. His glistening chest
was heaving; his eyes, dark and searing, vaporized what was left of
her clothing.

In her own mind she was naked, stripped of
power, without dignity. "What do you
want?"
she whispered
helplessly.

Two strides. He tore away the swimsuit and
threw it across the room. Then he took her in his arms, his flesh
sliding over hers, and pressed his mouth to hers in a dizzying
kiss. It was electrifying, a thunderbolt, and Laura felt her heart
split in two.

The kiss went on, and for every fractional
piece of eternity that it lasted, she knew that she was doomed to
spend a corresponding eternity in hell. Yet she could not break
free from him, any more than she could stitch up the broken halves
of her heart.

When at last he let her go she murmured,
"No." Her eyes were glazed, unfocused. In her trance she repeated
the word: "No." And a third time, like a child who has memorized a
simple one-word lesson: "No."

"Laura!"
It was a gasp more than a
name, the soul-shaking rumble before an earthquake.

She stood there, trembling with fear and
fascination, waiting for the earth to open up and swallow her.

"Laura ... oh, God."

She lowered her head and shook it almost
imperceptibly.

He took her by her shoulders and with a kind
of fierceness said, "Look at me—look at
me
—and tell me
no."

She raised her eyes to his, but hers were
filled with tears. Her lip trembled; she could not speak.

He held her, but she felt him withdraw into
himself. "I was wrong, then," he whispered, and he left her
alone.

****

"18 September, 1934. We have lost again!
It seems like a bad dream.
Endeavour
took the start
and she led us a waltz all around the course. We made no mistakes.
She is fast, very fast. 51 seconds between us. I am glad that Neil
was not here to see it. The men are afraid. But I say, we will see
who has the next dance."

Each morning for the next two days Billy
rubbed one of the
Virginia's
backstays and whistled
furiously, but still no winds came. The sun beat down relentlessly.
The lumber strapped on deck began to split from one end to the
other; the crew formed a bucket brigade to slosh it down with salt
water before it became useless for building. Laura continued to
take sun-sights, more for the practice than anything else, and was
astonished to see that the schooner had begun to go backwards: with
no wind to move her along, the
Virginia
was falling victim
to the Gulf Stream current.

"We're being dragged back to New England,"
Laura said in disgust as she and Colin pondered the chart showing
the pitiable progress of their last few days. "I really cannot
stand this," she said, seething with frustration. "It's so ...
impractical. A steamer would have been there by now." She threw a
pencil across the chart. The cabin was stifling, and her thick long
hair had begun to slip its braid and cling to her cheeks and neck.
Nothing made her more irritable. "People will think we're dead.
People will worry."

"Anyone with half a brain will understand
that the ocean is a fickle mistress," Colin argued coolly. "The
rest will be too stupid to worry."

"That is
so
easy for you to say. No
one knows where you are; no one cares."

He looked up from the chart. "Are you so
very sure of that?"

She compressed her lips. "I'm sorry.
Naturally I have no idea what your personal situation is. How could
I? You've never said a peep about it. I
assume
no one knows
or cares where you are." She went back to her chart, staring at the
tiny island that had become such an unattainable goal. "I
assume
you don't have a wife," she murmured.

"Have you always been so presumptuous?" he
asked quietly.

"You bring it out in me. And anyway,
you
should talk," she snapped, her cheeks flaming one more
time at the recollection of his kiss. She had thought of nothing
else since then, despite the fact that Colin had not once alluded
to it after he left her. And yet here she was herself—alluding. To
the kiss, to his personal life; anything to break down the wall of
professional reserve that he'd erected between them.

Laura dared to lift her eyes to his. She
saw—nothing. Where was the passion, where was the heat? No one had
that kind of control over his desire. Sam did not; and Sam was all
she knew. So it boiled down to this: Colin Durant had seen an
opportunity, and he'd tried to take advantage of it. It could have
been worse. She closed her brass parallel rules with a snap and
stowed them on a little shelf Sam had made for navigation tools.
Neither one spoke. The only sounds were of Neil and the others
laughing and splashing and diving from the bowsprit.

"I think tomorrow we'll begin to ration
water more carefully," Colin said at last.

The cautious tone in his voice, almost more
than what he actually said, sent adrenaline surging through Laura.
"What on earth for?" she demanded, offended that he should think of
it before she did. She would not have thought of it. "We've only
used a little more than one barrel; we filled three."

"We've spent days without moving. When the
wind finally does fill in it may well be from the southeast, almost
on our nose. It may take us a while still to get there; I know very
little about this boat's ability to go to weather," he explained
calmly.

It was the calmness she couldn't stand.
"This boat squares her tacks very well, thank you very much," she
said angrily. "And not only that, but I resent your implying that I
don't think ahead. I've thought about this trip from every possible
angle. I have every chart, every light-schedule, every aid to
mariners in print. I have lists of my lists!"

"You have a thirsty crew."

"And you have a lot of nerve! Who died and
left you boss, anyway?"

He began rolling up the chart, watching her
almost curiously. "Do I take that as a no? We will not ration?"

"No.
No!
We will not ration!" she
shouted, then clapped her hand over her mouth. She was becoming
hysterical. She waited a moment, breathing heavily, then bit softly
on her forefinger. "It's the heat," she explained dully. "I'd give
anything to feel a cool breeze—"

"Laura—"

A piercing scream, a little boy's scream,
froze them both in place. Laura was the first to thaw. Flinging
herself up the companionway steps, she raked the decks for evidence
of her son, expecting to find blood, seeing no one. She ran to the
bulwarks, saw Billy and Stubbs having a loud and violent
water-fight under the bowsprit, but not her son.

"MAMA!"

It came from above her, as if Neil had been
kidnapped by the gods and was resisting.

"MAMA!"

She squinted heavenward and saw his outline
black against the sun: upside-down against the sun, hanging by one
ankle, caught in one of the lines. Upside-down, five stories above
the deck. Upside-down, clinging with his small arms to one of the
nearby ratlines to keep himself from being rolled into the
foremast, and smashed ....

Laura fought back a wave of nausea and ran
to the ratlines. She climbed them barefoot, oblivious to the fact
that her feet were not as calloused as the others'; oblivious to
the fact that for all her fearlessness, she was afraid of heights.
One thought only possessed her:
if his ankle gets free, his arms
will not be strong enough to keep him from falling.

She had managed to clear the belaying-pin
racks and scramble around the light-board before she looked up:
Colin was thirty feet above her. Where he came from, how he got
there, she had no idea; nor did she stop climbing. One ratline
after another she climbed, terrified to look anywhere but at her
son, terrified even more to focus on his tenuous grip. He did not
see her, for which she was oddly grateful, but was looking at
Colin, watching his approach with eyes round with fear.

Colin was murmuring words of comfort the way
she might: "Shhh ... I'm here ... you'll be fine, mate ... almost
there ... hold on .... Okay."

Only then did it occur to Laura that Colin
was climbing up the ratlines on the inside, not the usual outside,
his body fighting the natural gravity of their inclination, so that
he could more easily grab Neil. When he was alongside the boy he
wrapped one arm around Neil's upside-down torso and said, "I've got
you, mate. Shift your hold to me ... don't be afraid ... I've got
you."

Somehow Neil found the courage to release
his arms, one at a time, and transfer them to Colin's legs.

"All right, now ... I'm going to lift you up
a little, and I want you to try to kick your ankle free of the
line. Easy does it, now ... easy ...."

Nothing happened. Neil kicked, and nothing
happened. Laura's heart dropped three more ratlines; it wasn't over
yet.

"All right. We're going to try something
else. We have to go a little higher first. Don't be afraid."

He carried Neil up two more ratlines. It was
like the
Virginia
going backwards in the Gulf
Stream—progress in reverse. But at least now there was real slack
on the line that held Neil.

"Bring your ankle toward me," said
Colin.

Laura watched as Colin shifted his free arm
around the ratline, hanging by the inside of his elbow, and then
reached toward the tangle. Everything seemed to happen in slow,
excruciating motion. She saw a quick jerk of Colin's forearm. And
Neil was free.

"Good for us, mate. Now we're going around
to the outside—you don't mind if I take the easy way down, do you?"
asked Colin, his voice infinitely relieved. "And I suppose you'd
like me to put you right side up so that you can enjoy the
view."

Once again Laura's heart beat someplace
other than in her chest as she watched the last maneuvers. But
Colin managed it, as he had managed it all so far, and he brought
Neil down slowly, while Laura moved underneath them at the same
pace, with some idea that she would catch them both, hold them
both, if they fell.

She climbed awkwardly around the pin-racks
and light-boards and stumbled onto the deck with legs of rubber.
Stubby was standing there, his face beaming with relief. Billy was
there too, his face crisscrossed with emotions: fear, horror,
happiness, guilt, awe.

When Colin and Neil landed, Laura threw
herself around her son, her face streaming with tears.

"Don't be mad, Mama. I know I wasn't
supposed to," Neil said in a small, shaky voice.

"I'll spank you some other time," Laura said
with a choking laugh. "For now let's see about that rope burn. Can
you walk, sweetheart?"

He nodded and she began to help him toward
the companionway, not all that steady herself. Then she stopped,
and turned, and said to Colin, "I ... you must know—"

"I know," he said quietly.

****

"It doesn't hurt. It really doesn't,"
insisted Neil as Laura wrapped a bandage around his bruised and
skinned ankle.

"Oh, no? Then why are you crying?" his
mother said with a sympathetic smile, touching her finger to a
rivulet that ran down his cheek.

Neil, eyes glistening, looked around the
cabin to see that no one was near. "Because I was so
scared,
Mama," he whispered.

"We were all scared, darling," Laura said,
putting one arm around him and kissing his cheek.

"No. Colin wasn't. I could tell."

Laura concentrated on rolling up the
leftover gauze. "Colin is a brave man." She looked up and smiled
determinedly. "Into bed, now. I think a little rest might be a very
good thing." She patted the berth that recently had been designated
Colin's but that in ordinary times was used as a sickbay.