Beautiful Wild

by Anna Godbersen

  What had they left, then?

  Well, the answer was painfully simple. It was a death ship now.

  Up above, the lights of the Princess had begun to blink on and off. The crew was shouting that the final boat must be lowered. The others who surrounded Vida with their anxious, breathless waiting fixed their attention on that last boat of crewmembers, and when its tethers were released from the big ship, a great collective sigh escaped from the other passengers on Vida’s boat.

  That last lifeboat rowed toward them, and then both boats began to row in the direction they believed the Artemis to lie. Though no one spoke, it was not quiet. The air crackled with their fears. They were so small under that tower of ominously winking windows. And yet they were smaller still when, quite suddenly, the lights went out and the darkness surged over them.

  “The electricity’s gone!” cried one of the crewmembers in the other boat.

  “That means the water is in all the boiler rooms,” Sal called back. “She’ll be sunk soon.”

  “Is Carlton with you?” cried the crewmember in the other boat.

  “He went to the Artemis some time ago,” Fitzhugh shouted.

  Once again Vida thought that time was a very odd concept that explained nothing. It seemed to her the ship had only just been hit, but also that she had lived a whole life since then.

  The water had begun to bear them up and down more forcefully, and the crewmembers in the other boat seemed not to have heard.

  “What did you say about Carlton?” Fitzhugh shouted. “Why would he be there?”

  The man was shouting, and though the name “Carlton” came clear over the din of the water and the wind, little else did.

  “Why would Carlton have been with us?” Fitzhugh asked Sal, and Sal said he did not know. “He must have been back on the ship somehow. If he’s back on the ship, I can’t leave him.”

  Vida glanced around at the other people crowded onto the benches of the lifeboat. Their faces were immobile, and their eyes averted from Fitzhugh as though they did not want to know what he was suggesting. There must have been about twenty of them—a few crewmembers, men she recognized from the first-class dining room, several ladies in their nightdresses, and two women with hair that had never been arranged for a party, faces that had never been painted for an evening’s entertainment, holding tight to four small, frightened children. Vida swallowed to see those little bodies hiding in their mothers’ humble shawls. Vida knew what he was suggesting, and it infuriated her. She opened her mouth to tell him so, but no sound came. And suddenly she realized how terrified she herself was.

  Fitzhugh ordered the men to row. The other lifeboats had rowed hard away from the dark, listing ship, but the Farrar crewmembers obeyed Fitzhugh; they piloted their lifeboat back.

  Sal’s voice was even, but Vida thought he betrayed some anger, too. “It’s too late, Fitz. The bow is starting to lift.”

  “Oh God,” said Fitz, and the tone in his voice was enough to make the other men stop rowing.

  In the darkness Vida could see the massive form of the Princess, but no other detail, as half of the ship lifted up out of the water. She rose slowly, awesomely—she seemed almost alive. A mammoth sea creature showing its true size just before it dove deep to see what was below.

  “Hold on!” Fitzhugh shouted. “Stay low!”

  And Vida, and the others, gripped the rails of their boat. They bent low, they held tight. Stay low, stay low, Vida repeated in her mind. It was the last thing she was able to think clearly before the Princess stood on her head and began to slide out of view. In a matter of minutes the ocean swallowed the great ship whole. Her fingers ached from clinging to the wooden rails. A massive swell rose beneath their own tiny vessel, twirling them around and around and around. They were powerless—the sea had them—and they were flung into the darkness and the unknown.

  Part Two

  Eight

  Vida had not known how alien the dawn was until she saw it from a lifeboat on the high seas. She was cold, numb, hopeless, and nothing she could see seemed real.

  Of course she had seen the sunrise before, usually after a long night of dancing and a little dazed on champagne, from the stone terrace of a fine house on Telegraph Hill, through the frame of the surrounding elegant buildings. She and Bill, or Whiting, or whoever it was, would have had a whimsical notion to say good morrow to the sun, and they would do so laughing, letting their fingers graze each other’s arms, and then they would go back inside to drink the bouillon being passed by waiters in livery.

  Tonight had been a very different kind of long night. Her mouth was a desert and her lips were dried leather and her dress had been soaked through with the water that had washed over them in those terrifying minutes (or hours? It was very hard to know anything for sure anymore), so that the fabric had tightened around her body (except where it was still damp in the corners), and her mind had been absolutely rinsed empty by the tears she couldn’t cry. The children—two boys and two girls, none of them older than ten years—had not cried in the rage of the storm, and so she knew it would look wrong for her to do so. But oh, oh, oh, how her insides beat with despair and horror whenever she made the mistake of wondering what had become of Nora and Mother and Father. All through the deepest darkness of night, and then the lightening of the sky, she had tried her best to be stoic and not think about any of that.

  And now across the unending plateau of the horizon the sun surged, first staining the sky and then the sea with such a multifariousness of unreal colors that it frightened Vida more than the hours of darkness. She saw Fitz and Sal, their presence taunting her with the vanities and petty ambitions of worldly existence. And there was Flora Flynn, who she had described to Nora as an ungifted conversationalist for no good reason at all. And a few members of the Princess’s crew, who were trained to survive the ocean in all sorts of ways Vida had never even bothered to think about.

  After the ship went down, the ocean had surged beneath them and their little bark had been carried away from the field of wreckage left by the Princess. The atmosphere had seemed so still and calm while the great ship took on water and tilted in the night, but afterward they caught the edge of the hurricane they had been trying to avoid. The wind and spray whipped their faces and Fitzhugh and Sal and the others strained and labored to keep the boat free of water, to steer out of the worst of it. Vida huddled with the two mothers, shielding the children from the gusts of seawater and trying to prevent their small bodies from bouncing into the swell. For stretches it seemed they were alone, the only people in all the world, with no moon, and no stars. Then they would see another ship being carried back and forth by the storm. They’d hear cries, and even once or twice glimpse a face, but these were not the kind of faces one recognized. They were faces hollowed by terror, so wide were their frightened eyes, their fearful mouths, and thus unrecognizable as anyone Vida could have met in her old life.

  While the sea had battered them, Vida had been senseless with fear. The only idea her mind managed to form was that this would all be over soon, and perhaps she would meet Nora amongst the beautiful underwater coral castles, where they could hold hands and float along as the pretty corpses of fashionable dead girls, or otherwise be entertained by the legions of strapping mermen who had saved them.

  In the relentless brightness of morning, it was almost impossible to hold a pleasant fantasy for even a passing moment. The sun was all. It hovered over them. It sparkled the crests of the little waves and sucked up what was left of the ocean within their boat. It made them thirsty, and warm, and then hot, all while reminding them, with the steady path it blazed above, that it would soon abandon them to the cold and dark of night. In the previous days, she had been consumed with different ways of holding the interest of Fitzhugh, and now here he was. He was trapped with her in a small boat. Yet she had nothing she wanted to say to him, or to anybody. No one else seemed to want to talk either. If they began talking they would have to admit what a terrible situ
ation they were in.

  Late in the day they saw a dark form against the sherbet sky. A distant ship. The others stood, screamed, made crazy motions with their arms. Vida just went on holding on to the rail. They would not be saved. There was no goodness. Everything Vida had counted on her whole life seemed reversed now.

  That the sky was blue, for instance. That water could quench thirst. Now she knew that everything was much more complicated. The riot of color that the sky displayed throughout the course of the day sickened her. She was surrounded by water yet her thirst desiccated not only her skin, her mouth, but also her brain, her bones. In a long-ago time aboard the Princess, Sal had insisted the ocean was a wonder. He didn’t now. He watched the sky, the waves, what mysterious forms swam below them, as though reading an ancient text, and said almost nothing.

  Fitzhugh said things. He said them in his sure and jocular way, as though this too was another adventure in a string of adventures. We’ll catch up to that ship, he said. Another will be along soon. But Vida did not listen much. She did not believe in him anymore. Like the twenty-odd others, crowded onto the benches of the boat, she huddled and stared downward, but really at nothing, not entertaining much hope, just waiting for a fate she did not dare imagine. They were only bodies now, and had lost their standing in the world of men along with their luggage and their futures. The big ship in the distance was absorbed by the falling night, and they were alone again.

  Now that the storm had passed, the dark curtain of the sky was pierced with a million stars. It might have been beautiful, Vida thought, although she no longer put much stock in beauty. Sleep seemed like one of many luxuries Vida had taken for granted in her old life and would never know again. But she must have slept, because she woke up with an ache in her neck and her chin slumped on her shoulder, and saw that it was light again, the very beginning of morning, and heard the anxious murmuring of all the others. A little life came into Vida’s limbs, but she tried to be reasonable, and not to allow anything as ridiculous as hope to enter her thoughts. The others were craning, gripping the rails. At the rear of the boat Fitzhugh and Sal were using the remaining two oars to row as hard as they could.

  “What is it?” she asked one of the mothers.

  “Mr. Farrar’s man saw a gull,” she replied.

  “So?”

  Her son, who had not said a thing during their trial, flexed his brow as though wondering if Vida were serious. “You only see birds near shore.”

  “Right, of course.”

  The mother resisted returning Vida’s gaze, and Vida thought she understood why—if their eyes met they would surely shine with excitement, and if they allowed themselves to become excited over nothing, the disappointment would break their spirits permanently.

  Nine

  The endless horizon was endless no more. At first it seemed a kind of mirage, but slowly and steadily it became more real, even as Vida blinked, shook her head to get the stars from her eyes, even as she forgot to breathe. The others had gone silent. There was only the heave of the oars, the splash and ripple of the sea, the labored sighs of the two men at the stern. As they pulled, as the floor of the boat went up and down with the water, Vida felt her blood move again, felt the wind on her face, and she was surprised by the conviction that they must reach that bit of land growing ever larger before their eyes.

  There, contrary to the direness of her heart, was an island. An island! An island with a rocky promontory, crowned with palms, toward which flew the birds that promised other forms of life. Beyond the beach rose green peaks. She gazed and gazed at it. She was afraid to look away, afraid it might disappear.

  So—she did still want to live after all.

  The waves bore them into the land, and no one said anything or looked at each other until they could see the sandy bottom only a few feet beneath the surface. Then Fitz jumped from the boat and began to pull them in.

  But not until she felt the beach under her own feet did Vida believe they would be saved.

  Then she felt solid land beneath her and all the sorrow and pity about what had happened surged up and overwhelmed her mind.

  She felt, too, the ocean’s rocking. The movement of the water beneath the boat over their long night lost at sea followed her onto land. All that still moved within her body. She was dizzy and fell to her knees. For a moment it was all too much, and she gasped to hold back the tears. A few sprang to her eyes, but in moments she had mastered herself. The ocean still swayed within her, but she forced herself to stand and go to where the others had gathered.

  “This way, that’s right!” Fitzhugh was saying. He went on saying such things, somewhat indiscriminately, as the men dragged palm fronds, sticks, and whatever they could find at the edge of the jungle that spread from the beach back into the interior of the island. Sal and others were erecting a few shelters with what they could find. “Ah, Vida!” Fitzhugh said when she approached. He grinned, flashed his strong teeth. He was still wearing his formal pants but his jacket was removed and his formerly white dress shirt was rolled to the elbows. “Feeling all right?”

  She nodded. “What can I do?” she asked.

  “Just stay in the shade. We can’t have you burned by the sun.”

  She nodded obediently, and walked toward the shady spot where the other women and the children were huddled. But the way he’d sent her away rankled, and seemed somehow all of a piece with everything that had been between them. The flirtations that had obscured the cruel dismissals. She didn’t want to join the frightened huddle. She kept walking, along the place where the white sand met the dense vegetation, irritated with this young man she had pursued so energetically, and knowing full well that irritation was among the least appropriate feelings to have at a moment like this.

  To her left stretched a wide, flat beach; to her right the unknown island, the dense greenery that was the way into the interior.

  At sea there had been only two questions: survive or perish.

  Now here she was, still alive, and she couldn’t seem to shut her mind to bothersome little thoughts.

  For instance: If Fitzhugh was concerned about her getting sunburned, did that mean he had a romantic inclination for her after everything? And if so, should she allow herself to care?

  For instance: Did Sal judge her for not helping with the building of the shelter?

  For instance: Why had she worn this pastel dress? It had been the faintest of petal pinks, but now it was yellowed, stained by the sea water, muddied at the hem by the dark, wet sand she’d trod through to reach the safety of land. The strange lacy bell sleeves would snag the moment she headed into the jungle, which they would have to, sooner or later, for water and food. Why had she chosen a dress with so many laces, so many little details—how would she ever get it on and off properly without Nora? And meanwhile her hair had frizzed, had gone absolutely mad with the salt air, with the humid wind gusts—how would she manage to tame it, here, so far from any apothecary with a decent hair tonic for sale? And then she almost laughed. Here she was, on an improbable outcropping of land, safe—or safer than she had been—and she was concerned with her wardrobe.

  But, just as soon as she had convinced herself not to dwell on such petty matters, she reached the top of the rocks at the edge of the beach, looked down into a little sheltered cove, and saw that there was a better color to have worn for a shipwreck.

  Camilla Farrar was wearing it.

  The color was aubergine (oh, eggplant, Vida said to herself, what does it matter now, just call it eggplant). The gown itself was as glamorous and somehow as fresh-looking as when Vida had seen her framed in the doorway of the map room with that lovely face, rosy and bright with the spirit of feminine combat. Even here, in a desperate and remote corner of the Earth, her beautiful hair hung half-loose down her back, as though she had arranged it that way on purpose. Jealousy struck Vida like snake venom, and she almost turned away. Then she heard the sound—a moan like an animal dying. When she looked again she saw the scene
below for what it really was.

  Fitzhugh’s lovely sister-in-law, the girl he had been romantically attached to at some time in the not-so-distant past, was bent in a beautiful aubergine curve, her waving golden hair lifted by a gentle breeze, her head hung low, as she tried to protect the body splayed out on the beach. A dead body. Even at a distance Vida knew that body possessed no life. A body that wore a formal black tuxedo, and that belonged—or anyway, had belonged—to Fitzhugh’s brother. Again Camilla made that horrible sound, and Vida felt it, low in her stomach, and before she could help it a sense of sadness for this widow on the beach had invaded her heart.

  Very slowly Camilla lifted her head. The wind pulled her hair back from her face, and Vida saw that the woman’s beauty had been undone by loss. Anguish had drawn its paw across her features. Her mouth and gaze were ripped open. Nobody had told Camilla to stay out of the sun—her face looked charred by the elements.

  “Hello!” Vida tried, with the same verve she might have used on the top deck of the Princess. She lifted her arm and smiled wide, and then immediately thought better of it. She wrenched her arm back to her side. Camilla’s eyes were bloodred from crying—in those eyes was the whole story of their ordeal. A man was dead. Her man. The life they had lived together was an ocean and a country away and they could never go back there. The glittering world in which Vida had first encountered the grand Mrs. Carlton Farrar was gone—the ocean had swallowed their way of life whole.

  Ten

  The funeral was held at dusk on the high rocks that separated the cove from the wide, flat beach. The survivors of the wreck of the Princess gathered around and bent their heads as Fitzhugh Farrar spoke some words about his elder brother. Though Vida felt numb inside, she had no trouble looking sad. She wasn’t sure her face would ever be capable of anything but a sad expression again.