By The Sea, Book Three: Laura (16 page)

Soon the buckets were overflowing. There was
a sense of abundance, a feeling of abandonment. Everyone was having
a joyful time except Laura. She stole a longing—and curious—look at
the merriment. She felt deprived. She felt willing. She felt like
taking her clothes off.

And so she did. Quietly, without a lot of
fuss, alone in the cockpit, Laura stripped and let her body be
bombarded by raindrops. Nature was a big Scandinavian masseuse,
pummeling and pounding away days of tension and close calls. Laura
turned slowly round and round, relishing the cleanness, soaking up
the violence of it. She bent over double and let streams of water
run up her spine and through her hair, carrying away two weeks of
salt crystals with it. Water ran down her thighs, water ran around
her breasts, rivers of it: fresh, clean water. It seemed
inconceivable to her that she had ever felt this way by turning on
a faucet. Nothing in life ashore could approach the keen
satisfaction of that moment.

It could not last; she understood that. They
were at the whim of nature, and that gave the moment its magic.
Still, when the last of the thunder rolled away and the downpour
thinned to a sprinkle, Laura was disappointed. Over? So soon? She
sighed, then glanced forward: the others were hanging back, waiting
for her to be done. Fifty feet separated them from her, but even
from that distance she saw the intensity in Colin's face, the
coiled tension in his body. She hurried below.

****

"22 September, 1934. We have been handed
the win but at great cost. The Brits will take us to war over this
one. I can't blame them. There were two protests. In the first
Sopwith was wrong. In the second it was Vanderbilt, if you ask me.
In a tight spot he has nerves of steel. But everyone told him to
luff to avoid the
Endeavour,
and he did not. He says
there was 90 feet between the boats. The other side says 10 feet. I
say 30 feet. Sopwith pulled his
Endeavour
away—too
far—and Vanderbilt shot on by. It is not a game for boys."

****

After the rain the wind went light from the
north, which was fine with Laura. It was a comfortable course, a
lazy course, and it contributed to the sense of well-being that had
come over them all after their romp in the rain. They finished off
the last of the oranges during early evening, as the
Virginia
sailed majestically on, with her sails flung out
over either side like great white wings. Laura and Colin took turns
reading aloud to the crew from
Pitcairn's Island
until the
sun got low. Then Stubby took over the wheel from Billy, who went
below to nap, and Neil bent over his mother's lap and dozed.

"It's a wonderful sunset," Laura said
contentedly, marveling at the red-rimmed horizon. "I'd like to put
it in a basket and take it below with me."

"I'd like to weave it through your hair and
let it keep lighting up your face, the way it's doing now," said
Colin, leaning back against the cabin house and watching her
languidly.

She should have stopped him—Neil might
easily hear—but it was thrilling to listen to him. "Oh, look,
dolphins!" she cried softly as a school of them came into view,
leaping and gamboling toward the boat. "Did you know, the ancient
Greeks believed that the souls of lost sailors abided in dolphins,
waiting for rebirth? It's a lovely legend."

"Legend? It's the god's truth."

Neil shifted in her lap as she continued.
"The trip is going wonderfully well," she said, not disguising her
happiness. Knock wood. I could sail on forever like this." It hit
her at precisely that moment: she meant every word she said. She
looked away quickly, flushing as crimson as the sun.

"What would it be like, do you think?" he
pursued softly. How far would we go? Would we sail on to ...
Pitcairn? Would you—could you—leave everything that far
behind?"

Slowly she turned back to face him, her look
deeper than the ocean on which they sailed. "I think I could," she
whispered.

"We'd need more drinking water," he said
with a smile that made her heart lurch. "And oranges."

"We could eat breadfruit," she said
wistfully, wishing that he would take her in his arms. "The
mutineers planted some on Pitcairn, didn't they? Or was that
Captain Cook?"

"It isn't a fruit, more like a potato
...."

"I wouldn't care at all ...."

"Darling—"

The word was pure electric current. She
tensed, and Neil stirred, and suddenly Colin was saying brusquely,
"Hey, mate, if you're planning to take the dog-watch with me, you'd
better get on to bed."

A sleepy smile drifted across the boy's face
as he kissed his mother good night and said to Colin, "Don't forget
to wake me at four."

Laura jumped up beside her son and said,
"I'll tuck you in, honey. I never get to do that anymore." Her look
to Colin was filled with agony. "Don't get up—
please."

Still wobbly with desire, Laura straightened
out Neil's berth in the forecastle and brushed away the crumbs. She
put him to bed, held him close, drawing some strength from the act,
and kissed him good night. Then she went back to her cabin and
pulled off the skirt and blouse she had worn to celebrate being
clean again, and—waited to fall asleep. It was hopeless. She had no
more control over her desire, over her body, than a cat in heat. It
staggered her, this continual yearning. She was so tired of it. It
was the most compelling thing she'd ever felt, but she was so tired
of it.

It was dark outside, and airless in the
cabin. Her yearning seemed to her worse in the dark, so she got up
to light the small kerosene lamp that hardly swayed in its gimbals
on the cabin bulkhead. She adjusted the wick downward, turned
around, and he was there. She was not afraid, or even startled; a
decade at sea had accustomed her, after all, to inevitability.

Without a word she went up to him and put
her arms around him. It seemed so futile to fight off the passion;
a terrible waste of energy, somehow.

His kiss was almost reluctant, heated and
yet sad; he was exhausted too. "I'm sorry, Laura—" he began, but
she put her hand over his mouth.

"No, no. It's not our fault, any more than
the weather is. It's ... our paths are ... coincident ... that's
all. Oh, Colin—"

They kissed: long, long and hungrily, as if
the kiss were payment for a thousand miles of suffering. There was
nothing tentative about it, no testing of the waters before the
plunge. It was a kiss between lovers who have come to terms with
their longing. He wanted her right then; his deep kiss made that
clear. And she was waiting for him; the inside of her thighs was
wet to his touch.

She half opened her eyes from the kiss,
drugged by its power. But his own eyes were shut tight; his jaw,
square and clenched, gave him a look of agonizing pain.
"Now,"
he said. "Before I die."

He took away her underthings almost roughly,
as though they were an affront to his sensibilities; his own
clothes came off with the same careless impatience. And then they
were in her berth together and her first thought was, how meltingly
smooth his skin is; how young. He was kissing her everywhere, on
her breasts, her neck, her stomach—as if he were desperately
thirsty, and she was water. The depth of his desire overwhelmed
her.

But hers was deeper, she was sure of that.
All her life she had been looking for him, and up until now she
hadn't found him. When she'd run away from home, when she'd tried
to go to Cuba—it was Colin Durant she was looking for. She'd found
Sam and he had helped her on her way—but it was Colin she was
looking for. She'd had a son whom she adored—but it was Colin,
always Colin, that she was looking for. She arched her body in
rhythmic response to his kisses; she had found him at last, and the
joy of her discovery was inseparable from the pain.

"Colin... Colin," she said in a soft wail.
"Who are you?"

He came back up to her then, pressing his
body against hers, flat against curve, solid against soft, and
cupped her face in his hands. "I'm whoever you want me to be ...
whatever you need ... I'm you, Laura .... Can't you see that?" He
kissed away the tear that trickled down her cheek and laughed
softly. "Salt—despite all that rain."

He skimmed her face with random, nibbling
kisses, lingering at her mouth, kissing away the sorrow, leading
her to the light. "I've circled the globe twice, looking for you,
darling. I don't know how I missed you the first time," he said
with a poignant smile.

"I was probably ... delivering ... a load of
cement from Portland," she murmured between kisses. "Oh, Colin,
I—"

He kissed her quickly. "Shh ... don't say
it. The word isn't good enough for what we feel."

She stared at his handsome face, awestruck.
She had wanted to say, "I love you" but hesitated; she'd used the
phrase before for an entirely different feeling, and it no longer
did seem good enough. He understood that; even more, he seemed to
feel the same.

She drew his mouth to hers in a kiss of
surpassing emotion. The kiss burned away speech, leveled thought
with its fire. Second thoughts could not survive in its caldron,
nor could pangs of conscience. Time withered in its heat:
yesterday's memories and the threat of tomorrow became a handful of
ashes in the coal-hot present.

He came into her then, and the final
meltdown began: they were no more man or woman than they were
guilty or innocent, seduced or seducer. They were none of these and
all of these, a bit of meteorite blazing across the night sky. They
were, despite their reluctance to use the word, in love.

Despite Laura's fervent prayers, the wind
stayed fair, backing a little to the east. The sun retreated behind
a cloud cover and stayed there, and Laura's sextant began to gather
dust. Without the benefit of her morning and afternoon sun-sights,
she began to rely more heavily on Colin's skills at dead-reckoning.
The
Virginia
hurried on her way, and Laura watched the miles
tick off on the taffrail-log with something approaching panic.

"If only the wind wouldn't blow!" she
complained to Colin. "Why must it blow, day in and day out? Why
can't we just drift along in a breathless calm, the way we did
before?"

It was three in the morning, an hour in
which their off-watches overlapped, a time to snatch at love. Colin
traced a finger over her breast and said, "Because, my fair
captain, we would surely die of thirst." He leaned over and kissed
her breast, and then her lips.

"But we have so much to say, so much to ...
do," she whispered as he trailed his finger lazily down her torso.
They'd made love once already, but that was frenzied. The second
time, they tended to ramble.

"It doesn't end at Pineapple Cay," he said
dreamily, his head propped up on the palm of his other hand. "Have
I said you're beautiful?"

"Once or twice," she answered, coloring as
she always did. "Why aren't you more upset?"

"Why are you
so
upset?" he asked
softly, turning the question around.

"Because once we touch shore, I have to make
decisions. Write letters. Be honest. I don't have to do that aboard
the
Virginia.
And anyway, how do I know you won't skip on
me?" she added, trying to sound light-hearted. "You could run off
with an island girl, just like the crew on the
Bounty."

"As if I would." He leaned over and took a
very tantalizing, very tiny nibble on the inside of her thigh.

She shivered but was determined to go on.
"And I don't know a damn thing about you, Colin, not really. For
example: Have you ever been in trouble with the law? Killed anyone
or anything like that?" she added, not entirely in jest.

"Only once," he replied gravely. "In
Silesia. There was a duel, I won, he died, I buried the body. Or
rather, my second did. He was a material witness, so I killed and
buried him as well. And, of course, the other fellow's second. I
almost forgot about him."

"Stop it, stop it!" she wailed, pulling her
legs up and pushing him away. "It's always this way with you. Who
are
you, Colin? Who are you?"

His laugh was more abrupt than amused. "This
isn't a gothic novel, Laura," he said, exasperated. "I've kicked
around a lot, that's all. You should be more worried that I'm a
gigolo. At the moment I don't have a hell of a lot of money."

"I'm too young for you to be a gigolo," she
said, dismissing the possibility. "What about women? Will you tell
me about the women in your life?"

"All of them? Or just the ones I
married?"

"That's not funny, Colin," she
whispered.

He looked away. "I
was
married once,"
he said, tracing a little square into the bedding with his finger.
"It didn't work out. It appears she's divorced me."

"But you're not
sure?"
Laura
answered, shocked.

"Does it make a hell of a lot of
difference?" he asked, a look of anguish on his face. "Should I
have got my domestic papers in order before I took this job?"

She sat up, covering her eyes with her
hands. "No, of course not. I'm not thinking straight anymore. I
haven't been, since the day you came aboard."

Colin lifted a thick lock of hair that had
fallen over her bare shoulder and laid it gently along her back.
"Laura," he began, "I've been trying, really trying, to describe
what I feel for you, ever since we first made love. All I can come
up with is: I love you.
Je t'aime,"
he whispered, cradling
her chin in his hand and turning her face to his.
"Je
t'adore."

****

"24 September, 1934. We won again and
nearly lost a man doing it. Ben the quartermaster went overboard
during a gybe and could of drowned before we got back to him. But
he grabbed the backstay and dragged through the water with it like
a piece of bait. We got him back wet but none the worse for wear.
It made me think of the
Gin.
Would Laura know what to
do—what if it was Neil. They are babes all of them. I felt sick. I
wish it all was over."