by JH Fletcher
About Wings of the Storm
Cal Jessop returns to his home on the South Australian coast, still blaming himself for what happened one fateful evening in Paris. Once he was regarded as one of Australia’s most promising young artists. Now, the future is bleak; his work, like his life, is devastated by guilt.
Kathryn Fanning’s future seems secure. Everyone, Kathryn included, expects her to marry Charles Chivers, the local doctor.
Unexpectedly, Wagner intervenes. When Cal and Kathryn meet at a performance of Rhinegold, their futures are changed irrevocably.
Kathryn brings renewed hope and purpose into Cal’s life. He journeys into the summer heat of the outback seeking emptiness and light for a new series of paintings.
Uncertain of their feelings for each other, the desert will test them both in very different ways.
From one of Australia’s most popular authors comes a story of adventure and the redemptive qualities of love.
Contents
About Wings of the Storm
Dedication
Epigraph
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
SEVEN
EIGHT
NINE
TEN
ELEVEN
TWELVE
THIRTEEN
FOURTEEN
FIFTEEN
SIXTEEN
SEVENTEEN
About JH Fletcher
Also by JH Fletcher
Copyright
To Brad, who took me there in my mind,
and to Jennie and Scott.
And to David, who also helped.
Art provides the wings that enable us to ride out
the storms of human existence.
– Marie Desmoulins (Sun in Splendour)
Love … sustains the artist.
– Henri Matisse
Amenhotep, protector of artists, guard me now.
– Ancient Egyptian invocation
ONE
The day was dying as Cal Jessop fought Jester northwards through rising seas towards the coast that had to be lying just over the horizon.
The sloop, main and genoa well-reefed, climbed the lurching waves and crashed in a welter of spray into the troughs beyond.
Two kilometres to the east, a dense bank of cloud pointed towards the invisible land. Cal kept his eye on it; when the storm came it would be from that direction and the broken waters ahead were strewn with rocks. With night falling, the sensible course would have been to put about and head back out to sea, but his hands on the wheel did not falter.
Let the gods decide, he thought.
Three days earlier, the pressures of existence once again beyond bearing, he had sailed out into the Southern Ocean. So often had he done it in the past, seeking the terminal storm to exorcise the demons that, twelve months after Gianetta’s death, still plagued him. Always he had been unsuccessful; always, after two or three or four days, he had abandoned the search and turned northwards once more.
Now, sunset buried in cloud, wind increasing with every minute, it looked as though he might have found his terminal storm at last.
The irony was that this time things were different. The storm he had been seeking had not been in a gale, but in the arms of the woman he had brought with him. Stella — waist-long black hair, lean and ardent body — was thirty-two, three years older than Cal and, for the past six months, his frenzied, soul-starred lover. She was married to Hennie Loots, a chopper pilot who worked the Outback, a trusting man who would have called Cal his friend. But Hennie hardly ever came home and Stella, a sprite of the sea with no interest in the Outback, had moved on long ago.
As though his thoughts had conjured her, there was movement below. Stella, storm anorak drawn close, stuck her nose out into the wind.
‘Where are we?’
‘Somewhere south of Bushranger.’
Bushranger Head lay to the east of Kidman’s Inlet, the tiny coastal settlement, one hundred kilometres south of Adelaide, where Cal and Stella lived — Hennie, too, when he was home. The rock-strewn harbour was no place to enter in foul weather, yet that was what they would have to do if the storm arrived before they did.
‘Somewhere?’ Stella echoed. ‘Where?’
‘We’ll be seeing it directly,’ he hoped.
Perhaps they would, if his dead reckoning was right, if the rapidly falling darkness did not beat them to it.
Stella came and sat beside him in the spray-soaked cockpit. ‘Can’t see a thing,’ she said.
Which made two of them. There was a beacon on Bushranger. It should have been visible by now but was not, which meant that in truth Cal had no idea where they were. Once again he felt the sickening lust for death that had plagued him for so long.
Perhaps this time, he thought.
He knew he could not permit it. Stella, lover or not, had nothing to do with any of this. The Bushranger was there or it wasn’t; the coastline was there or it wasn’t. Within the next hour or two, they would certainly raise them both.
Jester lurched and shook, her wooden hull complaining at the hammer blows of the sea, but still her bowsprit rose streaming from the troughs as over and over again she climbed the dizzy slopes of the waves.
Stella drew herself tighter into her anorak and shivered.
‘Why don’t you go back below?’
Cal had to shout for her to hear him above the exultant scream of the wind. She turned to stare at him; in the dying light the spray seemed to spill the blue of her eyes across the stark whiteness of her face but he saw that she was laughing, exultant.
‘And miss this? Not in a million years!’
It made sense to stay on deck, in case they capsized, but to enjoy it … It took all sorts.
A blink of light appeared through the spray. It was high up, well above the masthead.
‘There she is!’
A damn sight too close, too. Even as he spoke, the headland loomed out of the darkness. It was half a mile ahead, no more, and closing fast. Swiftly Cal spun the wheel and Jester changed course to windward.
‘Now what?’ Stella asked.
‘We’re going in.’
‘Is it safe?’
He grinned at her, a ragged grimace through salt lips. When the wind backed to the east, as eventually it must, it would be very far from safe.
‘We’ll have to wait and see, won’t we?’
There were underwater rocks just off the headland but there was nothing he could do about them. Deliberately, he put them from his mind. Wheel hard over, only yards to spare, Jester rounded the corner and ran for home.
Three miles to safe harbour; they had covered less than half when the storm struck like a flail out of the south-east, putting the yacht almost flat in the water and shrouding the coast in driving spray.
Cal brought Jester up into the wind.
‘Take the wheel!’
She was an old boat with no automatic furling. He ran forward to ease the halyards and get the remaining sail off her.
The brutal thrust of the gale tore at him. He wrapped an arm around the mast, the hull rearing and bucking beneath his feet. He eased the halyard, stiff with salt; the sail thundered like cannon as it came down. He grabbed it and lashed it roughly to the boom.
The main secure, he went forward to deal with the genoa. In the bow the movement of the hull was horrendous, climbing skywards only to come crashing down again. Each time it hit the water it rattled the teeth in his head.
He was clipped to the boat by his safety harness, or the sea would have swept him away. All the same, it was not the safest of tasks, wrestling the foresail down while the gale tried to prise it from his hands and the tack’s hea
vy shackle flailed like an armoured fist. A blow from that, in this wind, could break bones.
The bucking sail subdued at last, Cal broke out the storm jib, clipped on halyard and sheets, hauled away. Even that was too much sail, but they had to have something to steer by or they would never get in.
Assuming the sea would permit them, in any case.
The wind tone had risen to a manic scream that battered the ears. No longer was it a force of nature but a vindictive, intensely personal attack upon their sanity and their lives.
That was what you wanted, wasn’t it?
Yes, but alone. It had never been the plan to take anyone else with him. Furiously he clenched his fist, yelling his challenge at the gale.
‘I’m taking this yacht in!’
Stella was watching him from the cockpit. She would be alarmed; she had been born inland but the sea ran in her blood. Superstition decreed that you never challenged the sea, particularly in the midst of a storm, but Cal cared nothing for that. Superstition implied faith, and faith had gone out of the window when his life had collapsed twelve months before. Not faith alone; humility, too, had been a victim, replaced by arrogance, and love by bitterness and anger.
At least be thankful for the anger, he thought. That’s what you’ll need to get you in now: anger, guts, skill. And luck. Lots and lots of luck. Let’s go for it, then. Let’s make our luck.
He crawled back to the cockpit, took the wheel and spun it to bring the yacht back on course.
Stella slipped the jib sheet over the winch and cranked it home. The tiny sail filled with a crack (Don’t let her blow out!) and held. The yacht heeled until the rail was buried in the water and began to surge through the waves.
In this weather the mouth of the inlet would be a wall of broken surf, turbulent and deadly. No yacht could hope to survive it, but they had no choice. Pinned between the Bushranger and the land, they had to get into Kidman or perish.
For a moment he took his eyes from the seas to glance at Stella’s face. ‘You okay?’
‘I’m fine.’
I’m fine. If the yacht broached, they would sink. If they were driven on the rocks at the harbour mouth, they would sink. If that happened, their only hope — a damn slim one — would be to be swept clear of the wreck and through the entrance into the harbour. And Stella said she was fine.
Again Cal flung his challenge at the gale. ‘I’m taking this yacht in!’
Blasphemy. Hubris. Challenging the gods of sea and wind. No other seaman he knew would dare.
But I will dare. I will challenge anything in heaven or hell. I will win, gods or no gods.
He clung to the wheel, holding the kick of the rudder against the sea’s violence, angling the yacht towards the gaping mouth of the harbour. Now he could see the white bar of surf closing the entrance, its voice audible even above the wind.
We are coming, he told the white tumult, jaws clenched so tightly that the muscles in his cheeks ached. We are coming.
Slowly, the entrance drew nearer. The gale screamed. If the storm jib blew out, they were dead. If the rudder gave beneath the assault of the sea, they were dead. If they picked up a cross-wave in the entrance, if he was out by even a fraction in his course between the rock-strewn headlands, they were dead.
Cal risked a glance at the woman crouching beside him. Water cascaded off her, but she did not move, seemingly mesmerised by the wilderness of broken water in their path.
What could live in those waters?
We can. We will.
All the same … ‘Fetch us a couple of life jackets.’ Cal bawled the words in her ear.
Stella turned to stare at him.
‘If I get it wrong and she goes over, we’ll have a chance with life jackets. We won’t manage with one of these.’ He flicked the safety harness securing him to the yacht.
Stella nodded, wrestled the hatch open and disappeared below. Almost at once she was back with the jackets.
‘Put one on.’
Stella struggled into the jacket, secured it. Silently, she proffered the other to Cal.
Cal shook his head, hands busy with the wheel, eyes on the storm jib taut as a drawn bow, on the thundering avalanche of waves.
‘No time.’
He would just have to get it right, that was all.
The entrance loomed. To starboard, Wally’s Reef was invisible beneath the surging water. Between the narrow headlands, the waves swooped, reared and broke in a froth of foam.
We’re here. By guts. By skill. As I said. Now it’s time for the luck.
‘Come on,’ he screamed at the water. ‘One big surfing wave!’
He looked over his shoulder. A huge mass of grey water, slashed with white, reared behind them. Wally’s Reef was abeam. The tumult of the breaking seas was all around them. Waves crashed and roared along the deck. Cal set his feet, grasping the wheel with all his strength, shoulders tense, and felt the stern lift to the onrushing sea.
The surfing wave. As ordered.
It picked them up like a toy, the yacht tracking true between the headlands, and flung them like a cork into the waters of the harbour beyond.
A cathedral hush descended. The wind still blew, the waters of the harbour were alive with the chop of waves but, after all they’d been through, it was as though they were awash with silence. It was dark now, but Cal knew his way blindfolded and eased Jester between the handful of moored fishing boats, his father’s among them, until Stella could go forward with the boathook and pick up the buoy. The soft pad of her bare feet upon the deck seemed loud in the stillness.
After all the frenzy, an intense weariness had descended upon them both. Below decks was a mess. Water had come in when Stella opened the hatch and now slopped half an inch deep above the cabin sole. The contents of the cabin had been flung about by the violent movement of the yacht: clothes, cushions, sleeping bags, a saucepan — fortunately empty — all hurled together in a heap.
They pumped ship, wrung out the soaking clothes as well as they could, re-stowed the mainsail neatly along the boom. After the wind’s roar, the silence of the harbour bellowed.
‘Want anything to eat?’
She shook her head.
‘Let’s get ashore, then.’
Only after they had reached the jetty did they look at each other, sharing not simply the recent tumult but everything that had gone before, limbs entwined in what passed for love under the yellow eye of the cabin lantern. They could share the past; for the moment, the future was something that neither of them wanted to think about.
‘Well …’
She smiled — just. ‘Yes.’
He leant forward to kiss her. At the last moment she turned her mouth away. His lips grazed her cheek.
Cal was having none of that. Deliberately, possessively, his hand squeezed her breast. Then he stood back and watched as Stella picked her way up the path that led over the cliff to her house by the sea.
Her husband was supposed to be his friend. No doubt he should feel guilty, but did not. Friendship, like so many other things, meant nothing. And Stella had been at least as willing as himself. She was traumatised now but not for long. She would be back.
Up to Hennie to keep his own house in order.
Cal stood motionless, a dark-haired man clothed in dark thoughts, until Stella’s outline cut the sky at the top of the cliff. She disappeared and he turned away, walking to the car that he kept in a ramshackle lean-to near the jetty.
He climbed in, turned the key in the ignition and drove home.
The cottage stood in a hollow of the cliffs, three kilometres along the coast road from the harbour. At night, from the summit of the hill behind the house, he could see the lights of the town spilling in a blaze of diamond points around the bay; in daylight the ocean was a sunburst of azure light. That was the first thing the critics had noted about his paintings when he had begun to get a name for himself: the trademark sheen that cloaked his work in its shimmering blue mist.
C
al had bought the property with the proceeds of his first one-man show in Sydney, which had been a huge success. He had been as dazzled by it as by the all-pervasive azure light; it had opened the door to prospects that previously he had not dared imagine.
Dexter Holt had made it a success. Dexter — Dave to his friends — was world-famous, the most respected art critic in Australia. He had been behind Cal from the first, thought of him as his protege. What he had written about Cal’s work had set the international art world on fire.
The only real artist to come out of Australia within the last twenty-five years.
So he had written, with the enthusiasm that characterised everything he did, and the gurus of the visual arts had taken note. Within days Angela Scales, Cal’s agent, was getting enquiries from Paris, Tokyo, New York; Cal had sat back to watch with bemused eyes as the price of his work went into orbit.
The cottage had stone walls and a sturdy roof to withstand the winter storms that left salt encrusted over the windows in a rime of sparkling light. There was an old barn at the back that he had converted to a studio. He had bought a more reliable car. He had bought Jester.
He had won awards at Royal Melbourne, at Oyster Bay, at Mornington. Paintings were bought by galleries in Adelaide, Perth, Singapore.
With the money he had bought an air ticket, gone to Paris to study engraving. Originally he had planned on six months; in the end had stayed far longer, until catastrophe had swept him away.
Cal stopped at the gate to grab the post out of the box, then drove on to the house. In the room he used as an office, he sat at the battered desk and flipped quickly through the mail.
‘Damn …’
All the stamps were local; the letter he had been awaiting so impatiently was not there.
He grabbed the phone, dialled the number that he had known by heart for three years now, but Angela Scales was not in. He left a message on her answering machine.
‘That letter from New York still hasn’t arrived. What’s going on?’
He banged the receiver down, angry as he so often was these days and seeing no reason to hide it.
