By The Sea, Book Three: Laura (20 page)

Colin turned to her and gave her a rueful
smile. "Sam would never forgive us!" he yelled back.

To some it would have seemed an utterly
insane, even infuriating response, but Laura took it at its worth.
Amid all the chaos, all the danger, it struck her that that was why
she'd fallen in love with Colin Durant: because more than anyone
she'd ever met, he understood people, saw into their souls. He had
been right about Neil, and he was right about Sam. If she was going
to live with herself—if she was going to live with Colin—they had
to try to save the
Virginia.

She wondered whether she'd gone over the
edge with love for him as she nodded into the stinging spray and
shouted, "All right. Let's do it."

****

Neil had stayed in the saloon as long as he
dared, but the water was rising. It covered the leeward settee
fairly quickly, forcing him into what used to be his old sick bay,
Colin's berth. Above the fury of the storm he heard the sound of
the yawl-boat being lowered in the water. It amazed him that the
blocks could still squeak so, drenched as they must be in the
pounding surf. He tried to consider dispassionately whether it
would be hard to row the yawl-boat around to the bow to receive the
kedge. If they stayed under the lee of the
Virginia,
he
supposed it could be done. And then he remembered who "they" were,
and he began to cry again.

The
Virginia
was so far over on her
side that Colin's berth wasn't much higher than the settee; soon
the water would be over that, too. Loath as he was to go back into
his mother's cabin after what he'd seen there, he had no choice.
The high side was the safe side. He waded, then climbed, slipping
and sliding, into his parents' berth. The bunkboard kept him from
falling out; even so, he found himself nearly standing on it, so
great was the angle. Eventually he managed, by rearranging the
mattress and pillows, to keep himself secure, despite the continued
pounding of the
Virginia
on the reef.

He sat in his little nest for a long, long
time, stupefied by events, registering only good and normal data:
the ting-ting of the ship's clock in his parents' cabin; the sound
of his own voice as he hummed his father's favorite chantey; the
smell of his father's tobacco; the clank-clank of the windlass as
it payed out the anchor rope. Everything else—the mindless fury,
the pitiful destruction—he let go by. After a while he heard only
the rhythmic, peaceful sucking of his thumb.

****

No morning dawns so bright as the one after
a norther. The sky was brilliant blue, the air washed clean of the
sweat of men. It was as if Nature had said to her adversary, "If
you want to try again, you may."

Billy and Neil were standing on the side of
the
Virginia,
scanning the beach. Neil, for one, thought it
was a desecration, like standing on a dead body for a better view,
but he was looking for his mother, and he didn't know where else to
be. Billy had told Neil that when morning came they'd no doubt find
Colin and Laura on the beach, waving to them, because it was the
most logical place for them to end up. But it was morning, more
than morning, and they weren't seeing anything but white sand. Then
Stubby came up with the binoculars, which he'd somehow managed to
fish out of the flooded cabin, and handed them to Billy. Billy took
them eagerly and focused on the sand, making methodical sweeps back
and forth across the beach. But after a while he stopped, and
lowered his binoculars, and cleared his throat. So Neil took the
glasses.

He knew, without scanning, where to focus.
Something in his mind's eye had recorded a dark speck on an
otherwise virgin beach. Clear as anything he saw one of the
yawl-boat's oars, which he himself had painted bright blue to
please his mother.

****

"25 September, 1934. It's over. We have
won the race and the Cup. We almost lost it on the second leg when
we set a bad sail. Vanderbilt went below, always a bad sign. But
foxy Hoyt took over and led Sopwith down the garden path again.
Where Hoyt goes Sopwith
cannot help but
follow. After
that we beat the
Endeavour
fair and square by less
than a minute. It was a great race. Yet for me it tastes like chalk
because of race 4. This is what the Brits write about
us—
Britannia rules the waves but America waives the
rules.

So Laura you are right after all. The
money was good, I have saved nearly all of it. We can fix the
Gin
up proper now. But when you come down to it there is
not the honor I hoped there would be. I thought of your tale of
King Arthur. His dream was good and true, but it was only a
dream."

In a tangled heap of coastal scrub and
splintered planking, and hidden from the view of the boy and two
men standing on the wrecked remains of the
Virginia
, two
bodies lay lifeless.

The tide, having ebbed less than usual after
the storm, was continuing its relentless march up the sand,
determined to pull what it could into the sea. It went after the
woman first, tugging at her sodden clothing, wrapping its wet
warmth around her ankles, her calves, her thighs.

And after her, him. He was higher up on the
sand, but facing east where she lay west, his arm around her
shoulders, his last conscious act a defiant attempt to keep her
from being torn away from him.

A surge of sea, bolder than before, licked
at his hair, eager to claim him for its own. It wouldn't be long
now.

Perhaps deep in the dormancy of her soul,
Laura knew it. Whether her pained, improbable moan was a cry of
despair or a cry to battle, it had the effect of rousing Colin
enough for him to lift his head. The wave washed ineffectually
against his chest.

They were alive. Against all odds and
despite their deeds, it was not their time. Laura pulled herself up
and sat groggy in the sand as the waves lapped over her legs. She
might have been a child at the shore on a Sunday, innocently
enjoying the sea. She tried to stand, couldn't, sat back down.

"Neil—"

"Yes. I know," Colin said, reviving more
quickly than she. He staggered to his feet, spied the
Virginia
still high and dry on the reef, and, shading his
eyes, squinted in the harsh sun. "I see someone … two … no, three.
They're all right, Laura. They're all right."

He began waving his arms in a wide arc over
his head, trying to draw their attention.

Laura bowed her head and pressed her hands
together in fervent prayer. "Oh, thank you, God. Oh, thank you,
thank you." She tried again to stand, then fell in a crumpled heap
on the sand.

Colin stopped mid-wave and dropped to his
knees beside her. "You've lost blood, Laura," he said, eyeing the
deep gash in her shoulder. Don't move. Please. Stay where you
are."

"No … he'll need to see me … to know I'm
here."

"I understand that, but—okay, let me help
you." He lifted her to her feet and held her up with one arm while
he signaled the
Virginia
with his other.

Very quickly they were acknowledged with
wildly enthusiastic waves from the three on the boat. Laura tried
to wave back but let out a cry instead; her shoulder had other
ideas.

"We have to go to them. But I don't think I
can swim. How will we get there?" she said, unable to think
clearly. Her head felt as heavy as a bowl of potatoes.

Colin surveyed the bits and pieces of lumber
strewn around them. "Not by yawl-boat, that's for sure. Hopefully
Neil's rowing dory is intact. They'll figure it out. We'll wait for
them here while there's still a scrap of shade. Stay right
there."

She did as he said, and he lowered himself
with a grimace of pain beside her. "Well," he said with a sigh. "We
tried."

"And failed. Now we don't even have the
yawl-boat. Oh, God, the water barrels! What if they didn't make
it?"

"I'm sure they did. We'll be fine," Colin
said.

The wonder of it was, Laura could see that
he meant it. It was both reassuring and exasperating. "How can you
say that, Colin? We're shipwrecked on what looks like a spit of
sand, with no one in sight."

"You forget, there are three thousand
islands and cays in the Bahamas—"

"—of which only ten per cent are
inhabited!"

"Still pretty good odds. And besides," he
said with a tentative, rueful look, "the
Virginia
is bound
to be jumped on for salvage. Someone will see her soon. And
therefore … us."

She hadn't even considered the prospect:
salvage. It was such a dread word. And yet here they were, facing
its imminence. The boat would be stripped down to bare bones, and
anything with any value would be carried off, from the sails to the
coffee pot.

It was an utterly crushing thought. "I
wonder," she said, too ashamed to look at Colin, "if an arsonist
ever feels sorry that he's burned someone's house down."

"Laura! The comparison is absurd. You didn't
act with malice."

"I acted with arrogance. And now Sam has
nothing." She added in a murmur, "I cannot leave him with
nothing."

"Not nothing," Colin said quickly, seeing
the direction she was heading. "There are the gems."

"Those?" She shook her head. "They don't
belong to us."

"Well, they damn well don't belong to
whoever is going to walk away with them!"

He checked himself, then said in a calmer
voice, "We can get the jewels back to their owner. If we can find
him. He may be grateful enough to toss a stone or two our way.
Those will go to Sam. As for us, you and I are young enough and
smart enough to make a future for ourselves and—"

"Future?" She turned back to him at that.
"How can we have a future after this?"

"How can we
not
, after this?" Colin
shot back. There it was, in his voice, in his look: that burning
urgency that melted all resolve.

Steeling herself against it, she said, "I
can't give Sam back his boat. So I have to give him back his son.
You know I do, Colin. And you also know

I'll never leave Neil. You know that,
too."

She looked away again, took a deep breath of
ocean air, and let it out slowly, surprised at how much it hurt to
do it. If only she could blame the pain on a broken rib.

They sat in numbed silence for a long
moment. In a toneless voice Colin said at last, "You can't do
that—go back to him. You can't."

"I have to."

"You're being a martyr."

"I'm not."

"You are! Can't you see that? You're like
someone out of the Middle Ages: 'I've sinned, so I must be
punished.' Because, make no mistake, this is about us and not about
the boat."

She sat without interrupting as he spoke,
allowing herself to memorize his face for all time. Despite the
trauma they'd just endured, and despite the scrapes and cuts on his
face, he looked more energized, more handsome, more darkly
captivating than ever.

"I won't argue with you," she said when he
paused for her response.

He shrugged off her non-answer. "Do you love
me, Laura?" he said with a burning look.

"How can you ask?"

"Do you love
him
?"

"In a different way."

She did not have the strength, emotional or
physical, to continue the dialogue. "Can we leave the analysis to
clergy and psychiatrists?" she said, not without some of her old
spirit. "I've made up my mind, Colin. I think I made it up when I
saw Neil at the door of our cabin—my cabin. It's no good, it won't
work. Us. And I'm just so … tired."

She struggled again to her feet, and this
time she was able to remain standing. Waving away his help, she
said, "We have to get moving. We have to retrieve the gems—and the
passage money—before someone else does, and … and … just … move on.
It's the right, the fair thing to do."

In the most difficult pivot she'd ever had
to make, Laura turned and began walking away from him, toward the
end of the reef where the
Virginia
lay spent and
motionless.

Behind her, she heard Colin call out.
"Laura! Life is not fair. If you haven't learned that yet in your
nearly three decades, then God help you. You haven't really been
living.
Laura
!"

She shook her head and kept on walking.

Laura Powers went back to Newport with her
son, what was left of the thousand-dollar down payment, and the
little marble ball of gems.

But without the
Virginia
. By the time
she and Neil left the Bahamas on a freighter bound for New York,
the vessel that had carried Laura through ecstasy and misery had
been picked clean, right down to her bones. Laura had managed to
fill a couple of duffle bags with a few personal possessions,
including her blurred and nearly illegible journal, Sam's
second-favorite pipe, and one of the
Virginia's
name boards,
missing its last two letters.

She met up with Sam in New York, at a pier
not far from where she had first laid eyes on him nearly a decade
earlier. Sam, who had been fully briefed by Laura in a letter that
went on for pages, knew what to expect: a remorseful wife who would
never be able to make up for the loss of his beloved schooner, but
who would try.

Laura, on the other hand, had no idea how
she would be received. Sam hadn't written her—she had not expected
that he would—but he had managed somehow to get through on the
telephone to the proper Bahamian authorities and have them relay
the news to her that he had received her letter and would meet her
in New York.

As Laura and Neil were disembarking, she saw
Sam before he saw them. She was shocked to see how much he had aged
in her absence. His hair looked thinner, whiter, and he was
stooping, like someone with a sore back. He wore an air of grim
defeat, as if life were no longer worth the candle. It occurred to
her that he was in a state of bereavement from the loss of his
boat.