Vivian's Return

by Cooper-Posey, Tracy

  “Vivien’s going for the hull,” Jack’s voice told him.

  “I saw.” Paul found his voice was bodiless, without strength.

  But his fear for her had diminished. She had been in the water ten minutes and she was still there. Nothing had happened. In fact, he admired the quick, ordered way she had worked. The men under the hull were the priority but she couldn’t leave men in the sea without a life raft, so she had got one up and swiftly worked to set it up so that the men could see to the rest of their shipmates themselves. Only then had she gone below.

  * * * * *

  Vivien found the hull seven minutes later. It was overturned, just as the captain had told her, and lay in water barely three hundred feet deep. Her torch wasn’t powerful enough to pick up the hull that far away but the Sikorsky’s spotlight had followed her across the water and the residue of its beam picked out the regular shadow at the very limit of its reach. It could only be Paul controlling the spotlight. He was indeed watching over her and thanks to the light, she had found the hull.

  Vivien rose up to the surface, following her bubbles, lifted her head from the water and looked up at the helicopter where it hovered, fifty yards away. Another swimmer was being lifted as she looked but the helicopter cockpit was obscured to her by the dazzling light. Vivien lifted her hand high out of the water and pointed down with her finger to show that the hull was directly below her. Then she pushed down with her thumb to say she was going down again.

  Then she jackknifed and arrowed down into the water, heading for the hull.

  The section of hull was the very end portion of the bows, about fifteen yards wide at the point where it had broken across the deck. It lay point upwards, an irregular pyramid, with most of the broken and jagged edges of metal buried in the sand. If there were men alive down there in an air pocket, they would be in great danger of their oxygen running out by now. The hull just wasn’t big enough to provide a large air pocket.

  She found them huddled in a corner made by a corridor and a bulkhead, shivering with cold and shock but all alive. She broke a cylume and handed it to one of them, shone the torch on her face so they could see it and removed her mouthpiece and smiled. “Anyone speak English?” she asked hopefully.

  * * * * *

  The harbor patrol launch arrived just as Vivien emerged with the sixth man. He was carrying her spare air tank with him, which she had taken down to supply them with more air until she could guide them one by one up to the surface, buddy-breathing all the way.

  Many willing hands lifted the man out of the water and onto the launch and Vivien clung onto the iron ladder at the side of the boat and looked around her. There were no more swimmers. The passengers on the life rafts were being lifted up onto the launch.

  As she clung to the ladder, she heard the engine of the helicopter change notes and she looked up at it as it slipped to the right and circled around, back toward shore.

  Fuel, she thought. They couldn’t hover forever. If they couldn’t hover long enough to bring her back up, then they must have been low on fuel indeed. Paul had stayed long enough for the launch to arrive, then had been forced to leave.

  Wearily, Vivien pulled off her flippers and tossed them over the edge of the boat and then hauled herself up the ladder. She found herself being helped by another pair of hands and she was grateful, for full diving equipment made a person very top heavy and uncoordinated when they weren’t in the water. She dropped the tank to the deck and straightened to thank her assistant.

  “Bloody hell, you’re a woman!” he said, astonished.

  Vivien smiled. “Vivien Galloway,” she told him, holding her hand out. It was always guaranteed to put a man at ease.

  “Brad Peterson,” he said automatically, grasping her hand. “Vivien Galloway?” he repeated. “Not Dave’s little girl?”

  “The very one,” she told him.

  “Well, I’ll be....”

  “Don’t just stand there, Brad. Get the girl a seat!” came the cry from the wheelhouse. Around her, dozens of men shuffled themselves up a little tighter on the decking to make room for her.

  An Asian with silver hair held out his hand. “Please sit down, Miss Galloway,” he told her. “I would like this opportunity to thank you for saving my crew.”

  * * * * *

  The launch reached Geraldton just as the first hint of dawn was appearing in the eastern sky. It was approximately four thirty in the morning and it would be a while before the sun arrived but just seeing the first lighting in the east emphasized to Vivien the passage of time.

  She hung back in the wheelhouse while the crew of the ship was helped up onto the dock and into a bus, to be taken to the hospital. Then she and Brad climbed up the wooden ladder to the dock and Vivien crouched down to lift up her tank and harness and other gear from the other crew members.

  “Where’s your car?” Brad asked.

  Vivien nodded toward Paul’s office. “Over there,” she said.

  “I’ll help you cart your gear over, if you like,” Brad offered, picking up one air tank in each hand, as if they were as light as a feather, which Vivien knew very well they were not, even empty. She accepted his offer of help with a nod for she was very tired. She had made six trips down to the hull and had to wriggle under the edges each time. On each ascent to the surface she had had to buddy-breathe with the man she was bringing up—sharing her air with him. It had drained her physical reserves quickly and the long trip back to shore had been cramped and uncomfortable.

  They crossed the empty wharf and over the large expanse of bitumen that joined up with the equally large concrete pad that the Batavia Coast Air Charter company offices, helipads and hangars sat on, in virtual silence. The lights were still on in the office, she saw. Perhaps Morris was still waiting.

  Vivien was too tired to think of anything to say and Brad was too busy concentrating on carrying the air bottles. After fifty yards, his arms would have been burning and after a hundred, he started to puff and blow. But he didn’t stop for a rest.

  She opened the large door at the rear of the Range Rover and slung her equipment into the back. Brad rested the bottles against the bumper and lifted them up one by one and slid them inside. The bags holding the rest of her equipment were still in the Sikorsky, which she could see sitting behind the offices, the rotors limp and still.

  She thanked Brad for his help and he shrugged it off, even though the sweat was running down his temples.

  “I’m leaving for Perth around lunchtime tomorrow,” she told him. “Do you think there will be any reports I’ll have to make?”

  Brad rubbed the back of his neck. “Don’t know,” he finally admitted. “Aren’t you living in Geraldton then?”

  Vivien shook her head. “Not for a long time,” she said.

  “How did you get mixed up in this lot, then?” he asked.

  “I trusted someone,” she said flatly and Brad laughed as if she had made a joke. He waved goodbye and walked back toward the Harbor administration building.

  Vivien crossed to the offices and pushed the glass door open by leaning against it rather than pushing it open with her arm. Inside, she was surprised to see both Morris and Jenny sitting around the desk holding the radio equipment, drinking coffee. Jenny looked outrageously incongruous in her startling pink ball gown and Vivien felt a stab of guilt when she saw the girl’s reddened eyes.

  At Vivien’s entrance, Morris jumped up and rushed around the counter toward her. “There you are, my girl,” he said, grasping her arm, still encased in damp neoprene. His wrinkled eyes examined her face. “You’re all right?”

  “Fine,” she assured him. “Tired but fine. I’m dying to get out of this wet suit. They’re like body armor when they dry.”

  Morris nodded. “Sure, girl. Jenny will be able to find something for you in the lockers. Jenny?”

  Jenny nodded and rose gracefully to her feet and with a swish of taffeta, went into the staff room to look for dry clothes.

  Mor
ris drew Vivien behind the counter. “They had to leave you to the launch, Jack said. Too low on fuel.”

  “I figured that out,” Vivien told him. “Relax, Morris, I’m not here to chew anyone out. I’m just here to pick up the rest of my gear from the Sikorsky so I don’t have to call back in before I leave.”

  “Leave?” Morris said, puzzled. “But I thought....”

  Vivien shook her head. “I’m not staying, Morris. I can’t. You saw what happened tonight. I can’t live with that.”

  “You mean you’re going to walk away over that one little thing?”

  “It’s not little, Morris. It’s the reason I left seven years ago and nothing has changed. So I’m leaving again. No, I’m going home.”

  “But Vivvy...” he protested helplessly.

  Vivien patted his arm and left him, heading for the staff room. The wet suit was beginning to pinch and cut off the circulation around her elbows and wrist.

  Jenny was sorting through a cardboard box of miscellaneous garments. The lost property box. Sitting on the table beside the box was a crumpled pilot’s shirt and as Vivien stepped through the doorway, Jenny was holding up a pair of creased men’s trousers, visually measuring their size.

  “They’ll do,” Vivien said. “As long as they cover me, they’ll do. I don’t care if I have to hold them up with twine.”

  Jenny nodded and handed the trousers to her. “There’s a shirt here too,” she said, pushing it across the Formica toward Vivien. “It’s the only one with some buttons on it. There’s a belt here too. I guess someone must have left a complete change of clothes behind at some stage.” She kept her eyes averted and her tone was neutral and disinterested.

  Vivien dropped the trousers back onto the table. “Jenny, I didn’t come here to steal your man. That was never my intention.”

  Jenny kept her head turned away but Vivien saw her purse her lips tightly in reaction. “But you did, didn’t you?” Jenny whispered. “Do you think I didn’t guess where he was last night? When he should have been with me?”

  “Perhaps I did, then. Just for a little while and for that, I am sorry. I didn’t do it to hurt you. I’m going back to Perth today. I doubt I’ll ever be back in Geraldton again.”

  This news was enough for Jenny to abandon her dignity and she turned to face Vivien properly, her eyes wide. “Going back? But...” Jenny hesitated. “Why would you do that? You love each other.”

  Vivien clenched her jaw tightly and waited until her reaction had subsided before speaking. There were a lot of answers she could give the girl but some of them Jenny wouldn’t understand. Her simple question showed something that Vivien hadn’t fully realized until that moment. Jenny was the same as Kathleen and Estelle and similar to Maria as Maria had been before the death of her husband. Jenny was a woman for whom love was the ultimate priority. Everything else in their lives came a poor second.

  For a moment Vivien envied her. If Vivien could have been able to subjugate all her needs and sacrifice her wants to Paul’s demands, then perhaps she could have stayed in Geraldton. Even now a portion of her mind jumped on that possibility. There was still time. She could lie, say that she had been temporarily insane to ignore Paul’s wishes. She could say she had managed to exorcise all the adventure from her soul and she was content to live by his side and wait at home for him.

  But even as the scenario unfolded in her mind, Vivien rejected it. It simply wasn’t true. Tonight she had pitted her skills against the sea and won and despite her bone-deep weariness, she could feel the fierce glow of satisfaction at having done that and she knew she would do it again. To be deprived of that would be worse than severing a limb. It was such a fundamental part of her nature that without it she would wither and die.

  Vivien shook her head in answer to Jenny’s question. “The price of Paul’s love is too high for me.”

  Jenny considered her answer. “So you are generously giving him to me?” she asked quietly. Although there was no inflection in her tone, Vivien could feel her indignation.

  Vivien shook her head. “If you want Paul, you’ll have to win him yourself. He’s stubborn and I don’t think he’d take kindly to being bartered over like a prize cow.”

  Unexpectedly, Jenny laughed. “No, he wouldn’t,” she agreed. “I’ve learned that much myself.” Her smile faded. “I’m never going to ‘win’ him, either. Even when you’re not here, you are.”

  “You mean, he remembers me?” Vivien shrugged. “We’ve pretty well burned our bridges, Jenny. He’ll get over me again. Much faster this time.”

  “I mean I can’t compete with a legend.” Jenny grimaced. “It’s not just Paul, it’s everyone who remembers you from before. Morris was probably the worst. Vivien this, Vivien that.... My whole working life here has been peppered with people imparting the myth of Vivien Galloway, Superwoman of the west.”

  Vivien felt her eyes widening. She was stunned. “Me?”

  Jenny sighed. “All those things you did. The flying stunts, how you were always looking for the biggest wave to surf, how you would free-dive for crayfish among reefs even the scuba divers left alone, how you wouldn’t take any nonsense from any man alive. You were the wild child who would never be tamed. You always had an answer, you marched right into situations that would have others trembling, you would give as good as you got. When you died you were going to march right up to the pearly gates and thump on them with your fists and demand to be taken inside.”

  Vivien stared at Jenny as this remarkable catalogue of tall tales emerged, astonished. She knew there would be stories about her. She had lived here all her life and her departure had been dramatic. Of course people would have talked about her. But these...myths?

  Yet she knew Jenny wasn’t exaggerating, for a lot of little clues and minutiae that had puzzled her since her arrival suddenly made sense. Morris’ dilemmas—should he encourage her to stay or go? Should he protect Paul, or go into battle for her? Maria’s willingness to talk to her and Paul’s cool confidence that Vivien, someone outside the family, might be able to sort out his mother when no one else dared to try. The people at the ball and their puzzlement over Jack’s presence and their avid curiosity whenever she and Paul had spoken together. There was the harbor rescue launch driver and Brad, their astonishment when they had realized she was a woman and their absolute acceptance when they knew who she was.

  There had been Jenny’s reaction to her name when they had first been introduced. Jenny had been trying to acquaint the overblown legends with Vivien Galloway in person.

  “Guess you were pretty disappointed when you finally met me, huh?” Vivien said.

  Jenny shook her head. “Frightened, actually. Never disappointed.” Jenny spread her hands. “Look at you. You’re the one who went and fished out six men from beneath the sea tonight, against Paul’s will. It takes something I just haven’t got to do that.”

  Vivien sighed. “I’ve paid for the privilege,” she replied. “Maybe you’ll end up the winner. Who knows?”

  “That will never happen,” Jenny said sadly. “That’s something I’ve learned since you came back to Geraldton. Paul has never been mine. I always suspected that was the case and now I know. He has never been mine and he never will be. Mostly he’s a free spirit, like you. If anyone has him, you do. Even if you won’t take him, his life and yours are so tangled up together no one else will ever be able to find a way in. There’s only so many women who can describe themselves as legendary.”

  “I don’t describe myself that way,” Vivien rebuffed gently.

  “Which is why I can’t quite find the courage in my heart to scratch your eyes out,” Jenny said softly. “It would have been easier if I could have hated your guts.”

  “I’m glad you don’t,” Vivien said honestly. “You’ve got some pretty legendary qualities yourself.” She lifted the clothes up. “I have to go. I’ve got to get changed and get my gear out of the Sikorsky.”

  “Paul’s out there,” Jenny warned. “He and
Jack are refueling and getting it ready in case they need to go out in a hurry again.”

  “He is?” Vivien shrugged. “I suppose I’m going to have to get it over with sooner or later. It may as well be now.”

  Jenny tried to smile. “See? I would have just run away.”

  “I did, once. It doesn’t make it any easier.”

  * * * * *

  The clothes were only three sizes too large but that was a luxury after wearing the wet suit. Vivien lashed the belt in tight around her waist and folded the excess material of the trousers over it, rolled up her sleeves and pants legs and finger-combed her hair, which had long since lost any of the newly-coifed appearance she had been so pleased with that afternoon. She didn’t bother looking in the mirror. There was no point.

  She stepped out into the office, to find Jack had returned. The shirt of his rented tuxedo was grease-smeared and rumpled and his eyes were bloodshot from tiredness but his smile was broad. He gave Vivien a gentle hug. “Well done, Vivien. Very well done,” he told her.

  “Thanks.”

  “I hear you’re heading back to Perth today. Can I look you up when I get back?”

  Vivien smiled up at him. “I’d like that,” she said gently. “You’ll have to excuse me, Jack. I want to collect my equipment and go home to bed.”

  He nodded. “Well, then. Goodbye, Vivien.”

  “Goodbye.”

  She pushed open the back door and stepped out onto the concrete, wincing as her water softened feet were jabbed by sharp little stones and dirt. The Sikorsky was silent and empty. There was no sign of Paul.