by JH Fletcher
She told herself that the wind was lessening but it was not, and she knew it. A tin sheet, part of someone’s roof, came cartwheeling up the street towards her. It would cut her to the bone if it struck her so she kept her eye on it, but it flew safely past and was gone. Everywhere the air was full of spray and flying debris. It served no purpose to stay here. She was soaked to the skin; it was dangerous to be out at all.
She knew no more than she had before leaving the house, yet she felt better from having done what she could. The huge seas continued to appal her, but she remembered what her father had said and was a little comforted. Of course Amy II would find shelter. Of course Charlie would be safe.
She turned her back on the grey-green maelstrom and headed for home.
2
The force of the wind was so great that it nearly drove them back below, but to leave the lugger to its fate meant death. Somehow, swaying and lurching, heads bowed against the storm, they fought their way across the wildly pitching deck to the rail.
Both masts had sheared just above the deck and now lay alongside, trapped in a tangle of rigging. The three men hung on the rail and stared in horror at the wreckage that reared wildly in the seas, crashing with terrible force against the lugger’s beam. Driven by wind and sea, the heavy spars would stave in the hull unless they managed to cut them free. It would mean climbing over the rail and using the axe to hack through the tangled shrouds, stays and halyards. One slip … It didn’t bear thinking about.
One thing was certain; standing there looking at it wasn’t going to help.
Charlie began to clamber over the rail but a hand gripped his arm and he turned. Nakamura’s eyes questioned him.
‘It’s got to be done.’ He screamed the words into the diver’s face; even so, he wondered whether the other man could hear him above the tumult. ‘If we don’t cut the masts loose they’ll sink us, for sure.’
‘Wait …’
The rain lashing him, Nakamura clawed his way up the steeply sloping deck and disappeared through the hatchway. Almost at once he was back, holding a length of stout line. He fastened it around Charlie’s waist and pulled it tight before fastening the other end to the rail. When he was satisfied all was secure, he slapped Charlie on the shoulder.
‘Okay …’
One hand hanging on to the rail, Charlie lowered himself gingerly until he could reach the broken rigging with the blade of the axe. His world lunging to and fro under him, terrified that he might, at any moment, be flung into the raging seas, he began to flail awkwardly at the knotted lines.
3
The storm pursued Wendy, even inside the house. It had swollen monstrously and now had consumed everything: her nerves, ears, eyes, the very air she breathed. It had even taken over her head, leaving space for nothing else.
When she got home her father gave her the tongue-lashing she had expected. She stood, letting his anger wash over her, then went to the bathroom, stripped off every piece of clothing and rubbed herself dry with a thick towel. She put on fresh clothes and went out to join her mother who was sitting in the middle of the living room, her back to the window, white-knuckled hands clasped in her lap.
‘Try not to think about it,’ Wendy said.
‘How can I think about anything else?’ Mrs Michaels wailed. ‘This never-ending noise …’
There seemed something almost personal about the wind’s malevolence: it was nonsense, of course, but Mrs Michaels’s susceptibilities were too delicate for such tribulations.
‘If only it would stop …’
Her father came into the room, looked at the pair of them and at once walked to the window to close the heavy curtains.
‘You need to keep them drawn. I know the wind’s from the other side of the house, but it makes sense to be careful.’
Mrs Michaels made petulant protest. ‘It makes the room so dark …’
‘Better dark than have the windows blow in on you,’ he told her.
‘Surely that won’t happen!’ Her voice was high, hysteria not far away. ‘It mustn’t happen!’
‘It might.’
He went out again. Mrs Michaels turned on her daughter. Fear made her savage. ‘It is a judgement!’
‘For what?’
‘You think I don’t know what you’ve been up to with that French diver of yours?’
Her own nerves too near the surface, Wendy shouted back at her at once. ‘How dare you talk like that! Don’t you see the danger he’s in? He’s out there in the middle of it! If his boat sinks, he’ll drown!’
‘Serve him right if he does! And you, for the way you’ve been behaving!’
Wendy slapped her hard.
A cry; Mrs Michaels’s tirade was cut off. Whimpering, she raised shocked fingers to the mark already forming on the side of her face.
‘You hit me!’
And was at once weeping. After her sudden squall of rage, Wendy also burst into tears. At once they were hugging each other, faces wet, and were, to some degree, comforted.
Another mighty gust shook the house. They clutched each other, cringing as flying debris crashed against an outside wall.
Mrs Michaels looked at her daughter through swimming eyes, but the outburst of emotion had steadied her. ‘Perhaps your father was right to draw the curtains, after all …’
Another gust, and another. Lucky the house had been so strongly built.
Suddenly both women raised their heads and listened …
To silence.
They stared at each other, barely daring to hope, to breathe. But it was true.
‘The storm is gone!’ Wendy’s mother was laughing and crying at the same time. ‘Thank goodness for that! Thank goodness!’
She went to the windows and drew back the curtains. The first thing she saw: her precious garden in ruins, as though a tractor had run over it. Only one of her trees remained. The shrubs were in ruins, the lawn almost buried beneath broken twigs and leaves. The surviving tree, a little apart from the rest, had perhaps been protected from the worst of the wind by the house, yet it, too, had been destroyed. Little remained but a column of bare wood, white, shining and naked, from which the branches and even bark had been stripped by the wind.
Which now had gone; that was the main thing. The rain had stopped, the sun was shining. Barely able to believe it, the two women looked through the window at a clear sky.
In the distance they could see, like a precipice above the sea, a mass of thunderheads towering tens of thousands of feet into the sky, but here all was still. They went to the door, opened it cautiously and went outside. The ground was saturated but the sun shone warm on their backs. Wrecked garden apart, it was hard to believe that the storm had happened at all, that only minutes earlier they had both been trembling and in fear of their lives.
‘Everything is still,’ Mrs Michaels marvelled.
Indeed it was, the silence so intense that it almost hurt their ears. There was neither sound nor breath of wind. No bird sang, nothing moved among the flattened bushes. Water dripped steadily from an overflowing gutter, otherwise there was only silence. It was eerie, like something out of a dream. After the violence of the storm it was almost too quiet, and Wendy didn’t like it.
‘It doesn’t feel right,’ she said, turning restlessly on her heel. Again she looked at the sky. Illuminated here and there by shafts of yellow sunlight, stitched near their summits by flickering stabs of lightning, the dark clouds, miles high, encircled them.
At first sight the wall was motionless but, watching, she saw that its north-westerly quadrant was advancing inexorably towards them.
Her father came out of the house and strode over the drenched lawn, eyeing the cloud formation as he came. His expression was grim, his mouth a savage line. Whatever relief she and her mother might have been feeling, he obviously didn’t share it.
‘We’re in the eye,’ he said as he reached them.
Mrs Michaels turned on him her uncomprehending smile. ‘The what, dear?’
>
‘The eye,’ he repeated impatiently. ‘We’re in the centre of the storm. Get back indoors, the pair of you.’
‘Surely the storm is over?’ Wendy said. She had lived in Broome most of her life and knew how cyclones behaved, but fear for Charlie’s safety, out there on the water, made her hope quite desperately despite knowing better.
‘It’s very far from over!’ He nodded at the wall of thunderheads, which was a lot closer now. ‘When that lot gets here, we’ll have to go through the whole thing again.’
‘Surely not?’ Mrs Michaels protested. ‘As Wendy said, the storm is gone.’
Mr Michaels was not interested in argument. ‘Do what I tell you.’ And waited until, reluctantly, they followed him back indoors. He double-locked the door behind them and ushered them into the living room. ‘Stay here. I’m going to check on all the windows and doors.’
And again left them.
‘Your father is a worrier,’ said Mrs Michaels with satisfaction. ‘It’s best we humour him.’
Wendy did not answer, her thoughts focused upon her father’s words and the moving wall of cloud she had seen bearing down upon them.
When that lot gets here …
Pray not, she thought. Pray not.
The sun disappeared, swallowed by the cloud. A splatter of rain crashed like hail against the window. Wendy looked up at the boiling cloud wall, now high above the town. In the distance, a cloud of dust rose high, followed by the dark shapes of debris and something a good deal larger: what in the uncertain light looked to be a roof, flying upwards like a tin bird. Another rain squall clattered on the roof. A gust clawed the house.
The world waited, fearful and expectant. The wind fell with the force of demons upon them.
4
Charlie’s shoulder muscles screamed. They felt as though he’d been balancing on the lugger’s starboard gunwale forever. Half drowned, inundated by roaring waves, he clutched the rail with one hand, and with the other the haft of the axe with which he hacked and hacked at the tangle of lines tethering the fallen spars to the lugger’s side. Again and again they reared in the wild seas, crashing with sickening force against the wooden planking, but now, at last, he sensed that this battle, at least, was won.
He had already cut through what he thought were the halyards; with the state the rigging was in, it was hard to tell what they were. One shroud, as tight and hard as steel, had parted; now another was on the edge of going. One more good blow, two at most, would see it done. With renewed strength he lifted the axe and brought it crashing down. The broken shroud sprang apart. The masts rose on the crest of yet another wave. For a horrifying moment Charlie thought they might be about to deliver one final, battering ram blow that would spell the death of both lugger and men, but the seas sucked them clear of the hull and in a second they had vanished. The hull, freed finally from the wreckage, swayed upright.
Weariness came like another great wave to engulf him. Had it not been for the line securing him to the deck, he would have fallen. As it was, it took him long seconds to drag himself back over the rail to relative safety. He looked around him. The seas and wind were as wild as ever but he was beyond caring; utterly used up; he had reached that point of exhaustion where one thing alone mattered. Let the cyclone do what it liked. He was going below to sleep.
5
When he woke, he knew at once that the storm was past.
‘Thank God!’
Somehow he uttered the words. It took extraordinary effort but there was huge pleasure in saying it. Mauled by giant seas and winds, battered and terrified almost to death, they had come through.
For the first time since the storm began he thought of Wendy. Somehow, he had to let her know that they were safe …
And at once was again asleep.
The next time he woke, he felt the rumble of the engine, heard the purposeful wash of water against the hull, so different from the mindless fury of the storm. Dismasted, half wrecked but despite the odds still afloat, Amy II was making her laborious way back to port.
Somehow Charlie crawled out of his bunk. He went on deck and looked around at the clear sky, at the treacherous sea that was once again hiding its latent rage. The sea had depths of anger that no one knew. From time to time it directed its fury against those who sailed across its breast, or made their living on its shores. For the moment its venom was exhausted but it would return one day; every sailor knew that. The eternal sea. He looked at it, loving and hating it. The devil sea. Then shook himself to drive such thoughts into the cleansing sunlight.
His two mates — how could you survive a storm like that together and not be mates? — embraced him silently. His work with the axe had saved them and they knew it. They were not men to talk of such things but their silence said it all.
‘When will we be back?’ Charlie asked.
‘One hour more. Maybe two.’
‘You managed to recover both anchors? And the chain?’
He had come back from that far place, so had earned respect. Even so, they could not hide their smiles: did he think he was dealing with children?
‘We got everything,’ Ito said.
Including their lives.
Charlie clung to the rail, watching with eager eyes for his first sight of the town. They had survived. Now was the time to live.
6
The port was a mess. The surface of the sea was littered with driftwood and hatch covers. They passed four luggers sunk at their moorings, only the tops of their masts showing above the water. At least half a dozen more were beached, some seemingly undamaged, others stove in and beyond salvage.
Along the waterfront, several buildings had lost their roofs. Some had collapsed entirely. There were piles of rubble everywhere. As for the jetty …
What jetty?
Nakamura cut the engine. The vessel slipped silently towards the land. The three men looked at the town and at each other.
‘Like a bomb hit this place,’ said Ito.
Like a series of bombs.
For the first time they realised that the people on land, too, had been affected by the storm.
The anchor splashed down. After her hours of torment, Amy II lay still.
‘I’m going ashore,’ said Charlie. ‘I want to see what’s been going on.’
There were people walking in a daze in the streets, trying to come to terms with what had happened. He spoke to one but could get no sense out of him.
‘Anyone injured?’
Shell-shocked eyes stared at him. ‘Injured?’ As though he’d never heard the word. ‘Eight dead, I know that much. Or so they say.’
Eight dead? Impossible. Surely?
Fear squeezing his heart, he ran.
7
He stopped, dumbfounded. The storm had changed the landscape and, for an instant, he was unsure he had come to the right place. Of course he had, but the shrubs had vanished, all the trees were gone. As for the house …
Wrecked.
He went up the drive but had gone no more than a few steps when Wendy’s father came out to meet him. Charlie looked at him and saw that overnight he had become an old man. One, moreover, without any apparent wish to be welcoming or even polite.
‘What do you want?’
If that was the way he wanted it … ‘I want to see Wendy.’
‘You can’t!’
Charlie had been through the cyclone. By rights, the lugger should have sunk. He had survived when he might have drowned. He had returned to find the town in ruins. Now Wendy’s father, to whom he had done nothing, was trying to stop him seeing his girlfriend, his love, the love of his life. It was too much.
‘I’m going to see her, whether you like it or not. I am going up to the house —’
‘Don’t you understand?’ Rage and tears burst together. Henry Michaels lifted anguished hands to his head. ‘They are dead! Both of them! They are both dead!’
The world stopped.
Dead?
It was impossible. She
had been here, safe, while he had been out in the storm. How could she be dead?
He shoved past the other man and began to run up the drive towards the house. Into which he burst, like the cyclone returned.
‘Wendy!’
The storm-gutted house echoed his voice but there was no answer, no sense of a living presence. The windows of the living room were smashed to smithereens.
‘Wendy?’
Even as he called her name he knew it was hopeless.
Michaels came in behind him. Charlie braced himself, afraid the other man might go for him, but there was no violence left in him. He saw the tears on Michaels’s face, felt them on his own.
Wendy was dead, with all his hopes, his dreams.
‘How did it happen?’
Michaels groped his way to a chair. He was a man lost, seemingly blind. He sat for a minute, eyes closed, head back, then sighed.
‘I shut the curtains in the living room, in case the windows blew in. Then, when we were in the vortex, they thought it was over. I warned them. I told them it was coming back.’ The dull voice became shrill. He wiped trembling lips, making a painful effort to control himself. ‘I got them back inside the house, but they had opened the curtains and I didn’t think to close them again. I didn’t think …’ Sobbing, now, this strong man who had dominated the town. Again he breathed deeply, commanding obedience from his body, his nerves.
‘There were the remains of one of the trees left after the first blow. The wind came back from the other direction, like a cyclone always does. It took what was left of the tree and blew it through the windows. I was in my study at the time. I heard the crash and came running but it was too late. What it did, it came through the glass like a javelin and hit them both. They didn’t have a chance.’
So the world ends, the shutters drawn down on all the dreams.
‘Where is she?’
‘In the bedroom. The undertaker’s coming later, but I’ve done my best to tidy her up. If you want to see her.’ It was something he would never have suggested before the storm.
