Wealth of the Islands

by Isobel Chace

  “Oh, how could you?” she asked him miserably.

  “Very easily!” he assured her.

  “That’s what I thought,” she said bitterly. “That’s what a dress and Island music will do for you! You can’t pretend that it means a thing! Anita was quite right—”

  “Helen—”

  She put her hands over her ears. “I won’t listen! I won’t! I won’t! And I won’t dance with you again! Not ever!”

  He allowed her to leave the floor and she should have been pleased that he didn’t follow her, but she wasn’t. She saw Anita dancing with Peter and tried to smile at her, but found she couldn’t. Her whole face felt frozen and odd. She wanted to leave the party then and there, but she knew that Miss Corrigan would be hurt if she did. There was nothing to prevent her going upstairs for a moment or two, though, where she could calm herself, and tell herself what a fool she was.

  When she came downstairs again, she had resigned herself to a sober future that consisted largely of hard work and well-schooled emotions kept severely in the background where they belonged. That such a future gave her very little pleasure even to think about was something she was determined to keep entirely to her self. After all, there was more to life than floating round a ballroom, or dancing primitive dances in a spectacular and unsuitable dress. But was there, an unbidden voice inside her demanded, more to life than the subtle chemistry that passed between a man and a woman at any time? But that was another thing that, at that moment, she was in no mood to admit.

  CHAPTER TEN

  MISS CORRIGAN thought with satisfaction that it was the best party she had ever given. The music had been good, the food was better, and the American guests, with their customary generosity, had done everything they could to enjoy themselves. It had been an exhausting evening. There had been so much to do. Miss Corrigan had felt obliged to personally oversee the roasting of the sucking pigs, helping to make the clay ovens and even to wrap the pigs in the leaves that gave that special delicate flavour. Then she had had to choose the lobsters and see that they were properly dressed. And there had been the clams to bake and the Island people to entertain, because she wouldn’t have had them feel left out for worlds. But it had all ended very satisfactorily and she felt she could relax now and enjoy herself by joining in with the dancing outside.

  Miss Corrigan had lived for so long on the Islands that she felt more at home there than with the more civilised West. She was enchanted by the fairy lights that hung everywhere and the seductive music that she knew from experience would go on all night, only to die away with the first rays of the dawning sun.

  When she caught a glimpse of Helen’s dress, she thought at first that she was still with Gregory and was pleased, but then she saw that the girl was alone, leaning against a palm-tree, listening to the Island music as it went on all about her.

  “I thought you were dancing!” she said roughly to the girl, noting her startled expression as she was brought back to reality with a bump. “Does something to you, this music, doesn’t it?”

  “I prefer it out here,” Helen answered.

  Miss Corrigan nodded briskly. “Even the Islanders are growing sophisticated,” she said. “A few years ago and they would have died at the thought of playing for outsiders.”

  Helen smiled. “Out here they are playing for themselves,” she observed. “I thought at first it was the same as Hawaiian music, but it isn’t, is it?”

  “All Polynesian music is much the same,” Miss Corrigan told her. “From the Maoris to the Melongese, you get the same beautiful melodies. The same grass skirts too, some people will tell you, but I find them very different from island to island, even in this little group.”

  “You love them, don’t you?” Helen said.

  “I wouldn’t have stayed here so long if I didn’t!” Miss Corrigan said frankly. “How about you?”

  “Me?” Helen sounded startled. She didn’t want to talk about herself. “I shan’t be here for very much longer,” she said. “Tomorrow we’ll bring up the gold with any luck and then there’ll be nothing for me to stay for.”

  Miss Corrigan looked sad. “I rather hoped you might find something to stay for,” she suggested.

  But Helen shook her head .positively. “There’s nothing for me here. Nothing at all! It’s been a pleasant interlude, but now I have to get on with my life. I want to find something to do that’s worthwhile and—and suitable.”

  “Suitable?” Miss Corrigan repeated with raised eyebrows. “My dear girl, are you sure you know what you’re talking about?”

  Helen was silent. She was still smarting inwardly from her dance with Gregory and she wasn’t prepared to talk about it. “I must go to bed,” She said instead. “I want to be fresh for the morning. It’s going to be quite a day!”

  “Very well,” Miss Corrigan agreed easily. “I’ll say goodnight to you, then.”

  “Goodnight,” Helen responded. “It was a lovely party, Miss Corrigan. Thank you very much.”

  “The party was for my own pleasure,” Miss Corrigan retorted sharply. “Helen, look after Gregory tomorrow, won’t you?”

  Helen stiffened. “I’ll do my best, but he’s more than capable of looking after himself. He won’t thank me if I interfere!”

  “Is it thanks you’re looking for?” Miss Corrigan asked her innocently.

  Helen refused to answer. She watched Miss Corrigan disappear through the palm trees and be greeted by her Islanders. She was totally at home amongst them, they were like her own family, so how could she know how Helen felt, who had no family and no place of her own?

  There was no one about whom she knew when she made her way inside to the lift. There was a lot of laughter and a few people were still dancing, but with midnight the party was coming to an end. Helen stepped into the lift and pressed the button that would take her up to her floor. It hardly took a moment to remove her finery and to wash the makeup from her face. She slipped into a nightgown and. pushed back the bedclothes ready to get into bed. She was very, very tired and it was important for her to get to sleep, but sleep had never seemed further away. It seemed to her that whenever she shut her eyes she could hear Anita saying coldly, “Michael would not have approved!”

  When she slept, it was to dream of her mother-in-law. There were flashes of happiness that came to nothing as the elder Mrs. Hastings took the moments away from her, one by one. When Helen half-stirred and woke, she dismissed her firmly from her mind, but there was still Michael to point an accusing finger at her whenever Gregory’s shadow crossed her path. She was Michael’s widow, Michael’s widow! She was lost before she began.

  In the cold light of dawn she felt drawn and exhausted. She didn’t have to go to the window to see if the uncanny stillness was still with them, she could feel it all about her where she lay.

  Gregory walked along the jetty with only a stick to help him. He limped rather, but otherwise he looked much as usual, his bare feet slapping against the bamboo.

  “No Anita today?” he called out to Helen.

  “She’s helping Peter to clear up after the party,” she told him. She wondered if she should offer to help him on board, but there was something in his eyes that forbade her.

  “Have you checked the equipment?” he asked her curtly.

  She made a face. She had checked it at least half a dozen times and it still meant that they were cutting things finer than they should. If it had not been for the coming typhoon, nothing would have induced her to go out today before their fresh supplies had arrived.

  “We’ll make it—if we’re lucky!” she said awkwardly.

  His disapproval was clear to see. “Luck shouldn’t come into it. However, I suppose it can’t be helped. Na-Tinn! Taine-Mal! Jump to it! I want to leave straightaway!”

  Helen went below as soon as she could. Quite suddenly she felt better and able to laugh at herself. She rejoiced that she was dressed once more in grubby jeans and an American shirt, it was just as though her troubles had gone
with the elaborate dress of the night before. It hadn’t been her that he had kissed at all! It had been a pretty stranger in a very pretty dress who had been banished from his thoughts as easily as the music that had inspired their dance together. She had been ridiculous to worry! If he could dismiss the incident so easily, why so could she!

  She was humming as she made, herself some coffee, scraping out the instant grounds from the bottom of the tin. She couldn’t put a name to the tune, but it was pretty and she liked it.

  “Is any of that coffee for me?” Gregory asked her, coming into the saloon as the Sweet Promise slipped from the harbour.

  “It will be rather weak,” she apologised.

  “Are we running out of coffee too?” he said irritably.

  “It looks like it,” she answered cheerfully.

  He drank his coffee in silence. He drank it black, without any sugar, because otherwise he felt it would be so weak that he wouldn’t be able to taste it at all.

  “Anita will have to go!” he said at last.

  “What?” she said. Whatever she had expected him to say, it hadn’t been that!

  “She’ll have to go,” he repeated. “She’s unreliable. When we move on from here, we can’t continue to carry her.”

  Helen stared at him in silence.

  “Don’t look so surprised!” he went on irritably. “You know as well as I do that she’s done practically nothing for her pay!”

  “That isn’t fair!” Helen protested automatically.

  “Oh, isn’t it?” he retorted. “Then what would you do about her?”

  “I don’t think we’ll have to bother,” Helen heard herself saying. “She seems quite interested in the hotel.”

  Gregory laughed. “In Peter Harmon, you mean! Well, good luck to her!”

  Helen drank her coffee with dignity. She wanted to ask him where he was going when he left the Islands, and why he should include her, but she didn’t like to. She had only just recovered her balance after her run in with him the night before and she wasn’t ready to take any risks.

  “Are you sure you’ll be able to dive?” she asked instead.

  “Just as well as I can dance!” he said flatly.

  Helen swallowed. “Then you must be feeling pretty fit,” she said mildly. “I don’t fancy going down alone!” She shivered at the thought, and hoped he hadn’t noticed. But he had, of course. His eyes softened and he grinned at her.

  “Don’t worry!” he said. “I’ll be there!”

  She might have retorted that it didn’t matter to her one way or the other, but she was too honest for that. There were many things that she could do alone, but going into that black hole that she had cut in the side of the frigate was not one of them. For that she needed his presence, his presence, for no one else would do for that.

  “I think I’ll go and get ready,” she said.

  “Okay,” he drawled. “I’ll see you on deck.”

  She didn’t go up on deck though until they had sighted the marker buoys she had left above the wreck the day before. They sat there, exactly where she had left, motionless on a motionless sea.

  Taine-Mal helped her into the harness which held the cylinders of compressed air and her other equipment, and then she went over the side without waiting for Gregory, wanting to check on her work before he came. She thought she had imagined the faint breeze that seemed to cross the surface of the water, but a second later when she saw the buoys rocking, she knew that the wind was indeed getting up.

  “Are you sure the typhoon isn’t coming?” she asked the Polynesians.

  They shook their heads. “There is time yet,” they said in unison.

  Helen wasn’t entirely convinced. The breeze was rippling the surface of the water now, chasing a thousand tiny waves in patterns over the sea. It was coming, she knew that. There was not a bird to be seen, not even the usual friendly gulls who squawked overhead wherever the Sweet Promise went. She watched as Gregory slipped into the water beside her and knew that he was worried too.

  “We shall have to hurry,” she almost pleaded with him.

  He nodded, not wasting the time to talk. “Is everything ready?”

  Helen signalled to Na-Tinn to turn on the light and through the water they could see the frigate light up down below them, revealing the grey shadowy sides and the great hole that had been cut in her side. There were no fish to be seen. They had already taken cover from the great storm that was to come.

  Gregory nodded again and struck out for the depths. In the water, one could barely see that he had been injured. He sank as easily as ever, going ahead first for the bottom. Helen adjusted her breathing gear and followed him. It was a peculiar feeling, swimming through the gently stirring waters towards the cut-up wreck, with its barnacled bottom and its nose crushed into the coral shelf that held it.

  Gregory looked calm, almost indifferent, through his mask. He pointed towards the hole in the frigate and picked up one of the portable lights she had rigged up for this very moment. He held it out to her, and she took it, swathing the yards of flex over her shoulder so that she could pay it out, foot, by foot, as they ventured deep inside the frigate.

  The swell in the water was rising rapidly and she could hear the hull of the wreck grating against the coral shelf. Her heart beat so rapidly that she could feel her pulse against the rubber straps of her face mask. She was sweating with fear, but her hands didn’t tremble, she noticed proudly. She was holding that light as steady as if she had had both feet planted on mother earth! The next moment was going to be the worst one, when she saw Gregory pull himself inside the frigate and she would have to follow him, carrying the light.

  The actuality wasn’t as bad as she had thought it would be. It was as black as ink inside, with only the single beam from the light to cast strange, grey shadows wherever she looked. But she no longer believed in strange monsters, or squids as big as whales waiting for her in one of the forsaken cabins. Now that the moment was actually upon her, she was quite interested in the ship and the curious, rather sad remnants of her former life that were still intact.

  They knew exactly where they were going from the plan of the frigate that Gregory had set out in the saloon of the Sweet Promise. In a way it detracted from their exploration of the ghostly insides of the ship, for it was all so exactly as they had thought it would be. They could find their way unerringly from one cabin to another, from wardroom to wardroom, and down to the engines.

  The crunching noise of the metal against the coral shelf was muffled by the sides of the ship, but it was loud enough to give them an increasing sense of urgency as they tried to get through to the captain’s cabin. The door had fallen shut and it was a hard struggle to pull it open against the weight of the water, but Gregory finally managed it, wedging himself against the roof of the corridor outside.

  He held the door open and waved her to go in first. Helen held the light up as high as she could and peered through the gloom into the small space which was the goal of the whole operation. The ship lurched ominously beneath their feet. Oh, hurry, hurry, Helen prayed. If the ship were to be rocked off the shelf now with them inside her, they would never get out alive. They must hurry!

  Gregory pointed to a small safe that was fastened into the wall of the cabin and Helen’s heart sank. They would never get it open, and they would never retrieve the gold. But she reckoned without Gregory’s: determination. He had picked up from somewhere a bar of solid iron and with this he attacked the safe as if his life depended on it. He managed to get a corner of the bar wedged into a crack between the safe and the wall and with a quite horrid groaning sound, the safe came free and sank into the gloomy waters.

  Helen pointed the light downwards, caught a glimpse of the precious safe, and hooked it up with her free hand. Gregory gave her a thumbs-up signal and they shot out of the cabin as fast as they could go, retracing their way back the way they had come.

  Helen thought that she would never have such a feeling of relief as she ex
perienced when they saw the hole in the side of the frigate before them. Even as they crawled out on to the coral shelf they could feel the swelling currents around them. Gregory looked round anxiously and saw that the nose of the frigate had already worked free. Without pausing even to make sure that Helen still had the safe in, her hand, he threw the light away from her and grabbed her hand, pulling her up to the surface behind him.

  Beneath them, the frigate rolled restlessly, rocking against the coral shelf and breaking off large hunks of the pretty, fragile substance, built out of the millions and millions of skeletons left behind by the tiny creatures who had once lived there. Then, almost sucking them down with her, the frigate rose and fell slowly into the bottomless depths below the shelf.

  It was a sad ending. Helen hardly noticed when Gregory took the safe from her. Her eyes stung with unshed tears and she could barely see out of her mask. It was only then that she realised that she had surfaced and that she didn’t have to hold her breath any longer. She pulled off her mask and spat out the mouthpiece, breathing in the soft, salty air as though she had never breathed fresh air before.

  Na-Tinn waved at her excitedly, almost falling off the deck.

  “You have it! You have it!” he screamed.

  “We have the safe,” Gregory Shouted to him. “We’ve yet to find out if the gold is inside!”

  But nothing could depress their spirits just then. They dragged the equipment on board with willing hands, leaving it in a dripping, tangled mess of wires, lights, cylinders and collapsed buoys, all over the deck. The wind was quite fresh by now. It was strange how quickly it had come up. It was hard to believe that it was hardly an hour since it had been so still and calm that the sea had looked more like a painting than real. It was real enough now, with the waves, though not yet big, rolling ominously as a warning of what was to come.

  Gregory took one look at Helen and sent her down below. “It’ll be blowing up quite a storm before we can make harbour,” he warned her. “You’d better stay down there and keep warm.”