Roses Collection: Boxed Set

by Freda, Paula

  He was resourceful, not skittish or unnecessarily indecisive, and this frightened her because it tempted her to want to rely on him, to trust him. And she had long ago forsworn trusting men. She ran from the temptation. "Would you like some berries?” she asked.

  "Are you sure they’re edible?” Val asked.

  "I saw several finches picking at the berry bushes earlier, and the birds appeared healthy on my return trip.

  The two castaways feasted on the wild fruit. The tiny roly-poly pulps, seedy and succulent, burst with each chew and oozed a sweet ebony juice that tickled their palates and stained their lips and their fingers. Afterwards the two knelt in front of the stream and washed the berries down by scooping handfuls of the freshwater into their mouths. The meal over, Val set to work on his axe by the light of the fire, fashioning a handle, as he had previously explained, from a thick branch, and using vines as ties. "As you said, it’s crude,” he told Harriet, "but I’ll improve on it.” And he did.

  * * *

  Days, weeks, months, no help came. Val and Harriet worked side by side and christened the island "Henderson Sands” after their surnames. Often the lynx watched them from the crest of the falls, pawing at the ground, but she did not attempt the descent. "Not yet,” she seemed to be saying. Val chopped the trees around the clearing, trimming and stacking them. With a knife that he’d fashioned from yet another rock and hafted to a wooden handle with animal sinew from the food he regularly hunted, he carved wide channels near the ends of the logs for jointing and holding together.

  The walls of a cabin went up. It was hard work and took all the strength and muscle he could wield. The skin on his shoulders and back toasted dark brown under the hot sun, and the daily exercise he derived from the outdoor labor tempered his muscles until they were as supple as leather and as enduring as the flint cores he used to make his tools.

  He split and sliced logs to form flat slabs for the pitched roof, the door and the window shutters. He carved wooden pegs to hang the door and windows. Wooden chips took the place of nai, and the blunt side of his axe served as a hammer. He sealed the outside of the cabin with mud and moss that he dug from the banks of the stream. Harriet helped wherever she could. Together they stripped the ground inside the cabin of any roots, flattening it and strewing across it twigs and grass that had been left to dry in the sun.

  Val next built two bunks, two chairs and a table. He constructed the bedrooms to face each other with the living area in between.

  Harriet cooked outside. They sat in the cabin across from each other at the rough oak table and ate their meals of meat and fruits. Val, always attentive to his personal hygiene, bathed daily, and with the aid of the flowing stream as his mirror, kept his hair neatly cut, if not perfectly even. As for shaving, after a week of merciless nicking with a homemade razor also honed from stone, he decided a short beard that would need only a weekly trim might save him from serious disfigurement. Unfortunately, his clothes did not fare as well as he did. By the end of six months, Val’s trousers were torn and faded, the weave worn thin. Harriet’s slacks were in no better shape, and her blouse — well, she would have to do something about it very soon. The rips in the material would soon leave very little to Val’s imagination. And something more ...

  At first Harriet dismissed the disturbing revelation as the product of an overanxious imagination on her part. But of late she could no longer ignore the way Val looked at her, especially in the evenings, when their meal over, he would sit outside, while she cleaned the handmade bowls and utensils in the stream. His eyes, tawny brown in the ebbing light of the half-spent cooking fire, would trace the soft lines of her lean body under the fragments of clothing. All at once he would stand and bid her good night and retreat hastily into the cabin.

  It was growing more and more difficult to avoid the issue. Val wanted her. Work’s anesthetizing deterrent was no longer available. The last project, the smokehouse, was long finished. Life was settling into a routine. Val hunted, Harriet cooked and cleaned. A time-honored connubial existence lacked nothing except the connubial bed.

  * * * *

  Six months and no sign of rescue. This morning, perched on the edge of the cliff, she had felt on the edge of despair. How long before Val’s restraint gave way? How long before he tried— Harriet blanked the thought from her mind. It was very late when she finally slept that night and dreamt of Val. He wore the armor of a Viking. His blond beard and hair were untrimmed and unruly. On his head was a horned helmet and in his hand a heavy sword. The ferocity in his eyes that should have complemented the outfit, however, was missing. In its place was a deep sadness and yearning.

  Compassion overwhelmed her, a desire to comfort, to take away the sadness and fulfill the yearning. She lifted her arms to embrace him, then dropped them hastily to her sides as Val vanished and another man took his place, a stranger with grimy bristle on his face and eyes that were red-veined and swollen. He started towards her. She tried to scream but she was frozen with fear, and the smell of liquor about the stranger threatened to suffocate her. Turning wildly, she noticed her father asleep on a couch. She ducked from under the man’s reach and ran to her father, and shook him. He mumbled something in a stupor, then fell back to sleep. He smelled of liquor. The stranger loomed over her and she turned to face him.

  A young soldier came into the room. He started yelling something to the man reaching for her. The stranger ignored the soldier. The soldier began pulling him away and they struggled. At last the stranger crumbled at the younger man’s feet. Then the soldier moved toward her. Harriet turned to her father, but he continued to sleep and to smell of liquor. The young man reached for her.

  "No more!” Harriet cried, and then blessedly, she woke. She was alone in her room in the cabin, drenched in sweat and trembling violently. "No more!” she wailed, hugging herself. The nightmares had returned.

  CHAPTER THREE

  The nightmares had returned. Harriet ate little and slept fitfully. She avoided Val’s company, as much as possible for two people stranded on an island. Surprisingly, except to encourage her to eat, Val seemed almost glad that she kept her distance from him. As she did most days, today she lay on the sandy beach, watching the waves rush to shore and the wild birds skirting the surface of the sea, hunting for food. The sea breeze felt cool and soothing and she lost track of time. In the purpling horizon only a sliver of sun remained above the sea. A few feet from her a Mediterranean black-headed gull waddled along the sand, hunching its white wings, opening its banded bill and "kwirpping” a hollow call.

  She sat up and the sea gull catching her movements stood uncertain. Harriet held her breath and did not move. The sea gull resumed scavenging, dipping its hooked bill into the sand. After it had withdrawn some more tidbits and quickly eaten them, the bird flapped its wings and climbed into the air. Midway between the purpling sky and darkening sand, it spread its wings wide, embraced the wind and glided out toward the open sea.

  Val came up behind her. He carried a goatskin satchel. "I brought you dinner,” he said. "It’s wild fowl.

  She hadn’t eaten since last night. Cooking was her chore and she didn’t mind. Raised in a traditional family, she actually enjoyed preparing meals. The agreement that she cook and he hunt had evolved naturally, without prior discussion, although Val often helped or did the actual cooking if she was not feeling up to it. "Thank you,” she said, and watched as he dropped to his knees beside her and unfolded the goatskin. Succulent bird, chestnuts and wild figs beckoned. She reached for the food but a terrible sadness stayed her hand. "Thank you, but I’m not very hungry.”

  She read compassion in his eyes, tannish in the decreasing light. "Harriet, we have to talk. You’re terribly unhappy and the reason goes beyond your being stranded on this island.” He paused a moment, unsure. "Look, if it’s me that causing you distress, there’s no need to be afraid of me. I’d never hurt you or try to force myself upon you. I’m in love with you; I have been since the first day I met you
on board the ship. You’ve kept your distance from me, I respect you for that, and I’m glad, because it would be even more difficult to hold back my desire for you if you didn’t. But I can’t bear to see you this unhappy. Tell me what’s wrong and what I can do to help you.” No man had ever spoken to her so selflessly. Tears filled her eyes. Immediately Val drew her into his arms and she did not pull away. He rocked her gently to and fro, caressing her hair, and holding her, whispering comforting phrases, "It’s all right, it’s all right, sweetheart. Whatever is wrong, I’m here for you, no strings. Whatever I can do, please tell me.”

  She didn’t answer. Honestly, she didn’t know what was wrong herself. To tell him about her nightmares was too embarrassing, too personal. She stayed in his arms until she felt calmer and some of the depression had lifted. "Maybe I will eat a little,” she said, pulling away.

  She woke the next morning to the sound of heavy blows and splintering wood. She hurried outside and found Val chopping down one of the larger trees. "What are you building now?” she asked.

  "We’re getting off this island,” Val said. "And a boat is the only way to accomplish that, even if I know very little about navigating by the stars. But we have to chance it before we both go mad. I kept hoping someone would show. The open sea is a risk I wanted to avoid.”

  Engrossed in their emotions neither of them sensed the round black eyes leering at them from behind, sizing up its prey, deciding upon the more formidable of the two and the one to dispose of first. And when they heard the low, drawn-out snarl it was too late. The lynx lunged missile-like, the kick-off charge of her hind legs hurtling her through the air, the sheer power of her jump tripling her weight. Bristling and snarling, she came down on Val’s shoulders with the demolishing force of a steel ball, causing him to loose his grip on the axe so that it fell useless to the ground and sending him sprawling headlong against the tree’s gnarled roots.

  He cried out, and then lay unconscious while the lynx pawed and mauled the back of his neck.

  Shock can paralyze or as it affected Harriet at this moment, galvanize. She moved as if in a trance, no longer aware of herself as a person. Her actions were those of a marionette, the scene before her one-dimensional, a picture flickering on a screen. She saw herself advance, pick up the axe and coldly examine the lynx as it sought to complete its kill. Lifting the weapon high above her head with both her hands clutching the handle, she brought it down across the lynx’s back with all the strength her arms could pack. The sharpened flint core sliced through the soft silky fur and the flesh beneath, severing the spinal cord. Blood mingled with the splotches of brown fur on the lynx’s grey coat. The cat shuddered, her neck and the bushy ruff around it stiffened with her agonized death rasp.

  Stark reality burst Harriet’s momentary trance. "My God,” she cried. She left the axe imbedded in the lynx , her only concern to drag the animal’s carcass from Val’s bleeding back and help him. Falling to her knees she turned him over. His eyes were closed, his bearded face grazed and bleeding. An ugly contusion was forming on his forehead. How silent, how inert, how still he seemed.

  Harriet cried, "Oh my God! Val, please, don’t be dead.” Trembling, she pressed her ear against his chest, straining to hear, wanting to hear, for her at this moment, the most beautiful sound in the world, his heartbeat. She reeled from a stab of emotion, realizing the feel of his skin was precious to her. It felt a long time coming, but finally she heard the slow, but steady rhythm of his heartbeat. Val was alive. She uttered a prayer of thanksgiving. She left him for a moment to hurry to the stream where she tore off a piece of her blouse, dipped it in the cool water and returned to his side to wash the blood and dust from his face and beard. She returned to the stream to rinse the cloth and bathe the wounds on the back of his neck, praying that the lynx had not done internal damage. When she could do no more for him, she sat on the ground and propping his head and shoulders on her lap, smoothed the hair from his eyes. God, how she wished they would open.

  Val lay in a comatose state for days. Harriet cared intimately for his needs, keeping vigil at his side until she could no longer fight off the sleep of the exhausted. After the fourth day, certain that Val needed expert medical care, in desperation she lit the pyre.

  At first she thought it was merely the afternoon zephyrs dusting the leaves on the trees, but as the sound grew more pronounced, Harriet scanned the sky, afraid to hope and not daring to believe her eyes as a helicopter, blades fanning the wind, materialized overhead.

  The pilot inside the glass and metal bubble ascertained the situation, and then lowered the copter, setting it down carefully a few yards from her, and jumped out. A tall man in a short-sleeved khaki uniform, he observed Harriet’s bemused expression, then saw the wounded man on the bed of twigs and dried leaves that Harriet had made for Val and herself. He scanned the grounds and the sandy beach and saw the dead lynx with the axe imbedded in her furry back and the dark dried blood beneath her rigid carcass.

  "You folks need help?” he asked by way of introduction.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  "He’s sustained a bad concussion, along with four broken ribs, deep puncture wounds on the back of his neck, and of course trauma,” the doctor on board the SS Elinor informed Harriet. The ship was docked in Nice on the French Riviera. "But he has regained consciousness, and he is very fortunate that the cat did not have the time to dig her claws and teeth deeper and cause severe internal damage. Mademoiselle, he owes you much.”

  Val lay bandaged and recovering in the sickroom adjoining the ship doctor’s office. The doctor had already told Harriet that Val would need hospitalization and careful observation for any concussive signs of headache or dizziness. "Until his wounds heal, they must be checked daily for signs of infection. I’ve already started him on medication. There will be scars. And perhaps eventually he may wish to consult a plastic surgeon. His broken ribs will mend but in the meantime will cause him a great deal of discomfort.”

  "May I see him,” Harriet asked.

  Val was awake and propped up in bed when she entered the room. He was cleanshaven, his hair trimmed and styled back neatly, and he was clothed in a green hospital gown. He beckoned to her weakly. Harriet drew near to him and he whispered, "You look lovely”.

  "One of the ship’s personnel donated this dress and the sandals to me.”

  "Pastel blue is definitely your color,” Val asserted.

  How pale he seemed. She noted the suffering lining his brow and the forced smile with which he was attempting to hide the pain.

  "Tell me, how did they find us?” he asked.

  "The pilot, he said it was pure luck, you know, him being in the right place at the right time. You needed help desperately and I didn’t know what else to do. I lit the pyre and the smoke attracted him.

  Val smiled gratefully.

  She told him, "In a little while you’ll be transferred to a hospital. The Captain cabled your parents as soon as you were brought on board. I’ve asked him, as I’m asking you, not to notify my parents. I haven’t seen or contacted them for several years.”

  "Then what are you going to do?” Val asked. "You have no money. Stay with me. My parents will help you. Besides—" He paused, then with determination, "Harriet, will you marry me?”

  Val watched her face blanche. He shouldn’t have asked her, not yet. But he had never loved anyone as he loved her. And after six months alone with her, he couldn’t imagine living without her, though he might have to learn, especially after she learned the truth about him.

  Michael Sands entered the room. He gazed at his son worriedly, and then apparently satisfied that Val had the semblance of a man whose wounds are healing, he grinned. "Hello, son,” he said and hurried to Val’s side. Father and son exchanged warm greetings. Without preamble or embarrassment they embraced, cautiously so as not to disturb the broken ribs. Michael Sands turned his attention to the girl across from him, standing quietly at his son’s bedside. She looked frightened and very tired. "You
are Harriet, aren’t you?” he asked.

  "Yes, that’s me. I’m glad to meet you.” The resemblance between father and son was undeniable.

  "The Captain told me how you saved my son’s life. Whatever my wife and I can do for you ..."

  "You don’t owe me anything.” It was her fault Val and she had been stranded on the island. "But thank you just the same.”

  "Just before you two disappeared, my son wrote to me about you. Tell me if it’s none of my business, but are you still in love?”

  Val answered. "Yes, and I’ve just asked Harriet to marry me?”

  Again Harriet blanched.

  "For my part,” Michael said, "you have my blessing. If you can still claim to love each other after six months alone on an island, then in my opinion you have an excellent chance for a good marriage.”

  The door swung open and a dark-haired woman pounced in. The royal blue pantsuit she wore was styled to hide her heavyset figure. She had a squat nose and a round chin. Exhaling heavily she bore down on the trio. "Michael, you barbarian...”