by Isobel Chace
Anita was put out. “But Helen never—” she began.
“You mean she hasn’t yet!” Gregory corrected her gravely.
“And just what are you implying?” Helen stormed at him. She worked herself into a fine rage, for she found it very much easier to be angry than the other curious feeling, tinged with failure and embarrassment, that seemed to have dogged her all day.
“That there are a lot of things you’ve never done before, what else?” Gregory teased her.
“Like what?” she demanded.
He chuckled. “One of these days I’ll tell you exactly,” he said. “But right now, I think we ought to be going.”
The look on Anita’s face pleaded with her not to go. “Stay here with us,” she begged. “The hotel must be safer than the village. Oh, Helen, I couldn’t bear it if anything happened to you!”
“Nothing will,” Helen assured her comfortably. “Don’t worry, darling. Peter will look after you!”
Anita’s face cleared as if by magic. “Yes, he will, won’t he?” she said on a note of relief. “But I’m sure he’d look after you too!” She looked scornfully at Gregory. “He probably won’t have time!”
Helen grinned. “I thought you said he was never beastly?” she laughed.
But Anita was not amused. “I’ve changed my mind,” she said primly. “He expects too much!”
Helen swallowed. She had the uncomfortable sensation that she was getting out of her depth again. Her eyes met Gregory’s and she saw that his were full of laughter.
“Do I expect too much?” he asked her.
She shook her head, not knowing what any of them were talking about. “I don’t know,” she said foolishly, and wondered why he laughed.
Peter had busied himself lighting half a dozen storm lamps for them to take with them. It wasn’t quite dark, but the storm had brought the evening early and the light was a comfort to them all.
“Mrs. Hastings,” he said dryly, as he handed one of the lamps to Helen. “Don’t get lost!” he added.
And that summed it all up, she thought. She would be Mrs. Hastings till she died.
The trees were black and gaunt against the rain-washed, grey sky. Stripped of their leaves by the wind, what was left of them rattled and fought for survival against the driving rain. The wind moaned over the island like an evil presence. There was no place to hide from it, as it tore at one’s clothing and one’s hair. It was hard work to make any way against it, and no matter which way one turned, there it was still blowing into one’s face.
Helen struggled down the track after Gregory, glad of his solid presence in front of her. Behind her came Miss Corrigan, grumbling and weary, but game to the last.
“The village looks deserted to me,” Helen shrieked through the wind, as they approached the grass-built huts where most of the people lived.
“They’re in the long hut,” Miss Corrigan panted back. “They’ll all be together at a time like this!”
Gregory glanced impatiently behind him. He gave a tug to Helen’s sleeve to signal to her to, hurry up, but there was no hurrying Miss Corrigan. The old lady was struggling along as best she could, but with the rain in her face and the wind pulling at her bulky figure, it was as much as she could do to make any progress at all.
“Come on!” Gregory yelled at them.
Helen linked her arm round the old lady’s and hauled her along the path. It was like walking through a river, so much rain had fallen and had been unable to get away. The water rushed over their ankles, dragging at their feet and pulling them off balance. Even Gregory was having difficulty. He favoured his bad leg as much as he could, wincing away from every step, but he wanted to get them there before the typhoon came to a head, and that meant racing against time all the way.
The long hut was crowded with shivering people. There was complete silence in the long, wide room, apart from the wind beating against the fragile structure and the plaited grass of the sides slapping against the poles to which they were fixed. No one spoke. The children huddled together in fright, and the adults were almost as bad. Most of them had sunk into the silence of despair. They sat and waited for the typhoon to pass over them, shutting their ears with their hands, and moaning to themselves in competition with the wind.
Helen held her lamp high so that they could see where they were stepping and pushed Miss Corrigan through the entrance in front of her. The old lady looked round the room, completely calm and in possession of herself. “My, my, it looks like a funeral!” she said. “This will never do!”
One or two of the children came running, across to her and she spoke to them softly in their own tongue, laughing at their frightened faces. Helen, too, pushed her way further into the room and found herself in the centre of a clutch of children who held on to her with tight little hands, seeking comfort from anyone who could give it to them.
Helen did her best to reassure them. She hung the lights all down the centre of the room, talking to them as she did so. Even that small gesture seemed to make them feel better, she noticed. They gathered round Miss Corrigan in increasing numbers, while the old lady, wet to the skin and looking like a large, fat, half-drowned rat, began to tell them stories of the exploits of their ancestors. She told them of the first Polynesian sailors, who had sailed across the Pacific on boats that were little better than rafts, with only a star to guide them. She told them of how they had spread through the islands. Of how they had reached Hawaii, and Fiji, and Tonga; of how the Maoris had travelled to New Zealand, the land of the long white cloud; and how their own forefathers had come to the Islands of Melonga and had settled there.
Helen found herself listening to the stories too. Some of them she found hard to understand, but others were familiar to her and she could fill in the details for herself when she couldn’t understand the strange words that Miss Corrigan used to describe their customs and the dug-out canoes they still sailed from one island to the other in the Melonga group.
In the middle of one of these tales, Helen was horrified to observe that one of the women was weeping. She knelt down beside her, surprised as she always was when she was near to any member of the Polynesian race by the sheer size of the magnificent bronzed body that rose from the floor in a mountain of solid, ample flesh. She put her arms about the woman’s massive shape and hugged her, but the woman wept on.
“What’s the matter?” she asked her.
“The children,” the woman gasped.
“What about the children?” Helen asked her. But the woman would say no more.
“Having trouble?” Gregory whispered. Helen nodded. She pointed to the woman and explained what she had said.
“Perhaps she means her children,” he hazarded. “I’ll ask her.” He knelt down beside her on the floor, holding his hand tightly over his thigh to ease the pressure on his found. He was as gentle as Helen had ever seen him and her eyes misted over with tears as she watched him console the tearful creature between them, speaking to her in the pidgin English that all the Islanders understood as well as they did their own tongue.
“She’s lost her children,” he said to Helen, when he had finally got the story out of her. “Her husband insisted that she should come to the long hut alone. He’s still outside looking for the youngsters and she fears for their lives.”
“Where were they when she last saw them?” Helen asked.
“On the other side of the island: They’d gone to look at the place where the shark was killed.”
“Alone?” Helen was appalled by the thought. She knew the difficulty they had had in coming the short way from the hotel. How could small children find their way right across the island alone?
“What are we going to do?” she murmured.
“There’s only one thing we can do,” Gregory said in a voice that was drained of all emotion. “I shall have to go out and look for them. At least I should run into their father somewhere along the route.”
“But you can’t!”
“I mus
t,” he replied more gently still. “You don’t understand. When the eye of the typhoon passes over, who knows what it might bring with it? There may be a tidal wave that will completely submerge a small beach like that. And if it goes directly over us. there won’t be much left in its path.”
“But why does it have to be you?” she pleaded.
His eyes were as dark and as enigmatic as ever. “Would you rather that I left them to their fate?” he asked.
She shook her head and turned away from him. She hadn’t much left, but at least she had enough pride not to show him how frightened she was. She wouldn’t even look up when he stood up and tightened his leather belt round his waist. And it was too late when she turned to tell him that, after all, she knew he had to go. Gregory had already slipped out through the grass-plaited wall and was gone.
They were left in no doubt when the centre of the typhoon passed over. There was a minute’s breathless hush, when the wind dropped to a murmur and the rain ceased as abruptly as it had started. In the long hut, the chatter that Miss Corrigan had so ably encouraged muted to a startled intake of breath and ceased altogether. The waiting seemed endless.
“Pray heaven Gregory has found those children!” Miss Corrigan said. “This is what I meant when I said it would get worse!”
It was like an agony to listen and to hear nothing. Then like a roar, they heard it coming. First they could hear the churning sea, whirling into a circular pillar of water, dust and cloud that hit the land, with such a force that the whole island trembled. There was the sound of rushing water, which came so close that Helen thought it must go right over them. It reached the outskirts of the village and swept away some of the huts, before it roared out to sea again.
But if the tidal wave was to do damage, it was nothing like that wrought by the whirlwind as it circled round the island like some crazy giant, uprooting trees and tossing whole buildings from one end of the island to the other. Nothing could escape its fury. Roofs were torn off the Government buildings and corrugated iron whirled hundreds of feet into the air, to come crashing down many miles away, if it were ever to reappear at all. The whole island was shattered, trampled on, and the cultivated land ruined by the salt from the sea.
Then, as suddenly as it had ceased, the rain poured down again and. the wind buffeted against what remained as angrily as ever.
“Is it safe to go out now?” Helen asked.
Miss Corrigan nodded. “But I doubt you’ll find him,” she said. “You’d do better to wait here for him to come back to us. He’ll come, never fear. Gregory de Vaux is not the type to allow himself to be washed away.”
“But his leg was hurting him!” Helen burst out “It had started bleeding again! Didn’t you notice?”
“I noticed. I didn’t figure it would help to remark on it!”
Helen stood helplessly looking out at the stricken night. “You don’t understand—” she began.
“My dear girl, it’s as plain as the nose on your face!” Miss Corrigan contradicted her. “You’ve fallen in love with the man and you can’t bear to be apart from him! Well, that’s natural enough! But you’d do better to wait for him here all the same.”
Helen was shocked. “But that isn’t right!”
Miss Corrigan’s dewlap quivered. “What isn’t right?”
“I’ve been in love,” Helen said faintly. “I’m not in love with Gregory.”
“Then I’d like to know what you call it!” the old lady snorted.
Helen stared at her. “I work for him,” she said. “And he doesn’t like women anyway. Right from the start I’ve had to be better than anyone eke he could get, or he would have sacked me on the spot—”
“And who told you he didn’t like women?” Miss Corrigan demanded crossly. “He likes me. well enough!”
“That isn’t what I meant,” Helen said uncomfortably.
“That’s obvious!” Miss Corrigan agreed. “My, but your father would have been ashamed that any daughter of his would turn out to be so stupid, half-baked—yes, adolescent, Helen MacNeil!”
“I’m not a MacNeil any longer,” Helen said flatly. “I’m Helm Hastings now!”
“And much good it’s done you! When you came here, at least you were honest enough to admit that you didn’t know whether you had been in love with Michael Hastings. It’s odd that you seem to have become more and more sure of it!”
Aware that the islanders were watching the irate old lady with open mouths, Helen swallowed her own anger, contenting herself with glaring out into the darkness. She would go back to teaching and never go diving again. Teaching was a nice, safe profession where one met nobody but eager children, who might be dull, but who didn’t expect more from their teacher than she was prepared to give.
“I’m not sure,” she said. “I’m not sure of anything!”
“Then you’d better get the children engaged in some game until you are sure!” Miss Corrigan told her tartly. She was rewarded by a rather limp smile and patted Helen hard on her arm. “Just don’t go on mooning about Michael Hastings. He isn’t worth it dead and he wasn’t worth it alive. Whatever Anita might think!” she added crushingly.
It was morning before the wind dropped. The dawn flooded over the Pacific Ocean in a haze of colour. Clouds, that had been dark and threatening the night before, were now no more than pink, apricot and yellow fluffs of cotton wool. Only the long trails of vapour across the horizon gave evidence to the trail of the typhoon which had passed that way. The sea was a strong royal blue, capped with dancing crowns of white, which had nothing in common with the tidal wave that had swept across the island the night before.
It was a second or two before Helen could remember where she was. The sun crept across the floor, casting peculiar patterns of shade as it came in in through the plaited walls. Everything in the long hut was damp and steaming and the people presented a sorry sight. Dirty puddles had gathered on the mats on the floor and the children had lain in them and were all of them muddy, tired and fractious. The grown-ups sat in silence, awed by the relief that gripped them that it was all over and that they, at least, had escaped; the fury of the storm comparatively unscathed. A dog, who taken shelter unnoticed with his young master, barked loudly, his tail wagging ferociously with sheer joy of living. Somewhere else, a woman hugged her children to her, chiding them for the mess they had got themselves into.
Helen forced herself upright and yawned. Miss Corrigan was still asleep. Her mouth had fallen open and her clothes were wet and sadly crumpled. Helen covered her with a blanket, feeling a rush of tenderness for her. How old was she, to walk uncomplainingly through the storm to bring comfort to a few of her islanders? She would be stiff and uncomfortable for days after this and yet she had probably thought it all worth it. But Helen herself couldn’t stay in the hut any longer. She stretched her arms and legs and was pleased to find that she wasn’t stiff at all. She wasn’t even tired any longer.
Outside, the sun was already warm, but the smell of the fresh air was the best part of the morning. She filled her lungs with it, while she looked around the village, to see what was left and what could be rebuilt. And then she saw him. Gregory came down the track towards her, followed by three small children. A few feet behind the children came their father, proud and smiling, but Helen hardly saw him at all. It was enough for her to know that Gregory was safe.
“Where were you?” she cried, wiping the sudden tears from her cheeks.
He grinned at her. “We managed,” he said. “How about you?”
CHAPTER TWELVE
“WHAT are you going to do now that it’s all over?” Anita asked Helen.
She prowled restlessly round the room, touching this and that as she went, never quite looking in Helen’s direction.
“I’m going back to teaching,” Helen told her.
“In England?” Anita shot at her.
Helen shrugged her shoulders. “I really don’t know.” She sighed. “I might try New Zealand—at least your mother
isn’t likely to come out and visit me there!”
To her dismay, Anita began to cry. She hunched up her shoulders and allowed the tears to pour down her cheeks, ruining her make-up and somehow destroying all of her new-found confidence and sophistication.
“But what am I to do?” she wailed.
Helen took her by the hand and pulled her to the window. “Look down there,” she said. “Look at the swimming pool and the grounds of the hotel. Isn’t that what you want? Why don’t you stay on here?”
“I want Peter!” Anita cried the harder.
“Then why don’t you go down and see if he wants you?” Helen suggested encouragingly. “You could ask him for a job here for a start and see what he says, couldn’t you?”
Anita sniffed. “D’you think he’ll mind?”
Helen smiled at her. “No, I don’t think he’ll mind,” she said. She smothered her mild feeling of irritation with her sister-in-law and made her wash her face and put on some fresh make-up. “Why don’t you go now?” she suggested.
When Anita had gone, she finished her own toilet. The electricity had been fixed immediately after breakfast, and so she had made an appointment with the hotel’s as yet untried hairdressing establishment, though what they were going to be able to do for her, she didn’t quite know. Her hair had been in and out of salt water too often recently to look its best, and the storm of the night before had just about finished it off.
The Spanish-American hairdresser, however, refused to be depressed. With scarcely a word of English, he cut and washed and finally set her hair in a style of his own improvisation, but which he assured her she would like. To Helen, it didn’t seem to matter very much. She allowed herself to be ushered from seat to seat, and did her best to follow one of the stories in a glossy American magazine, but even that couldn’t hold her interest. After the typhoon, and now that the gold was safe, nothing seemed to matter very much.
