By The Sea, Book Three: Laura

by Stockenberg, Antoinette

  "This isn't the merchant marine " said Neil scornfully "This isn't the navy. Mama? Colin's just crew, isn't he?"

  It was an absurd tug of war, and Laura was getting a headache. "Oh, who cares, Neil? Do you want that berth or not, Colin?"

  His face was grim. "It's the logical thing."

  "Then it's settled," she said. "Let's all do whatever it is we have to do and get back to ... whatever it is we have to get back to. And Stubby—eat something, for God's sake!"

  After that, Neil had nothing to say to his mother. He struck her from his list of acceptable society as surely as Mrs. Astor had done any number of upstarts who'd ever dared to overstep in Newport. When Laura tried to catch Neil's eye on deck, he looked through her. When she offered to help him with his math, he declined coldly. Billy and Stubby, part of the conspiracy in his view, also got short shrift.

  Nor was he much more gracious with his erstwhile friend Colin. The shagreen pouch disappeared from sight, and a small book that Colin had lent him on poisonous fishes was placed conspicuously in the center of Colin's hateful new berth. Colin himself, brooding and preoccupied, barely noticed the pointed little gestures of the boy, but Laura did.

  Ready or not, Neil is going to grow up this trip, she told herself. The thought saddened her immensely.

  ****

  "16 September, 1934. I feel in my bones that the Ginny makes good miles. Laura will bring her through. Have got over my rage from her note that she sails off shore. It may be best. But say she has a fire on board like the Morro Castle, then what? Tomorrow we race. President Roosevelt will be here and Captain Pine from the Gertrude Thebaud. There will be 16 warships and who knows what else. Steamer tickets cost $5 to $20. For $20 you can buy a used Dodge truck. I have no heart for all of it. Bad moods on both sides. Papers are full of it. It is not what I hoped."

  ****

  On the seventeenth—the day of the first completed race for the America's Cup—the Virginia, seven hundred miles to the south, ran out of wind. She fell into a hole so big and heat so intense that crew and ship alike were soon going through the motions—what little motions there were—in a stupor. So sudden, so shocking was the transformation that by noon hardly anyone felt like eating, except to savor the oranges. It was unbearable on deck; worse below. Shade became precious. The simplest task—hauling a bucket of water up from the ocean to clean up—left one dripping with perspiration. Conversation, not all that lively the day before, dragged to a halt.

  The changing of the watch was a joke; there was nothing to watch except an oily, undulating sea, nothing to listen to except the monotonous slatting of the heavy canvas sails as they rolled limply from side to side. By Laura's reckoning they had traveled absolutely nowhere in fourteen hours. The Virginia had been moving like a freight train, but now she'd got derailed and there was nothing anyone could do about it.

  ****

  "17 September, 1934. We lost by god. By a full two minutes. The men all hang their heads like dogs. Busted gear. A black time. And now I fear for the Gin as well. These things happen in 2's and 3's."

  ****

  "We'll drop the sails. I don't see any point in listening to that damn slatting anymore. It's hard on the gear, anyway."

  "I agree. Billy! Help me get the mainsail down."

  Colin took up his position at the foot of the mast to release the peak halyard, and the throat. Hand over hand he lowered the hemp rope, letting the faded mainsail slide on its hoops down the mast. The folds of canvas were caught in the lazy jacks as neatly as a football in a young boy's arms. Billy wasn't really needed. "Want me to lower the foresail?" he asked.

  "Go ahead," replied Colin as he secured the main halyards.

  Out of habit, Laura went over to take the helm, but there was nothing she could do to control the boat, and she soon gave up the effort. Without sails, without a helmsman, the Virginia wallowed lazily, like a rust-streaked basking shark.

  Laura looked around at her heat-weary crew: no one wore a shirt, of course, and the boys had all stripped down to their shorts. Colin wore white painter's pants, in striking contrast to his deeply tanned torso. He moved with quiet economy, exerting himself as little as possible in the crushing heat. For two days she'd kept her distance from him, confining her remarks to the business at hand, but she was intensely alive to every step he took, every look he cast in her direction. She marked her awareness down to her Sioux blood and tried to push him out of her thoughts.

  And yet the logical thing would have been to sit down and talk it out with him. Now that the boat was not going anywhere, the strict regimen of watches had been relaxed; surely she could find an opportunity. She wanted to explain that attractions in close quarters were inevitable, to repeat that she was a married woman. But he knew more about such shipboard attractions than she, and he certainly understood that she was married. There didn't seem to be much new to say. So she settled for stealing wistful glances at him when he wasn't looking, and for drinking in the sound of his voice as he explained the mysteries of the Sargasso Sea to Neil and the others.

  ****

  "Colin, c'mon!" yelled Neil. "We're going swimming."

  Neil was on the bowsprit, poised for a dive into the ocean; Billy was threatening to push him off. With the sails down there was no chance of the Virginia catching a sudden puff and leaving someone behind, so Laura had permitted her young crew to cool off in their Atlantic swimming hole. Neil swam like a guppy, but Laura took Billy aside and asked him to keep an eye out for him anyway.

  "Colin! Watch this!" Neil took a flying leap off the bowsprit, curled himself into a ball, and landed in the Sargasso Sea with quite a respectable splash.

  Billy followed, and Stubby soon after, each with his own specialty, each waiting for Colin to acknowledge him with a wave. The whole crew adores him, Laura thought without surprise. Neil had long since forgiven Colin for moving out of the forecastle (especially since Colin had taken to sleeping on deck during his off-watches). It was sad: Sam was respected, even loved, but never adulated. She stared openly at Colin as he leaned over the waist-high bulwarks, exchanging banter with the younger crew. Well, who wouldn't be starry-eyed? He's been everywhere, done everything, knows everything ....

  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."

  Chapter 10

  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.