Her Name Will Be Faith (22 page)

The aircraft bucked and dropped, soared again and
dropped again. The cloud seemed to be clinging to the windows, resting on the
wings, threatening to force them down. Sweat stood out on Mark's face as his
hands gripped tight on the yoke, and Landry was equally tense. Only Eisener,
his mind totally caught up in his job, was relaxed, staring ahead of them.

"There it is," he said.

The clouds parted as if a magician had waved his wand,
and they were
under blue skies. However
often Mark had flown into the eye of a tropical
storm, he never failed
to marvel at this moment, when he could look up
and up and up at the heavens, and then, on either side, at the solid
wall
of cloud surrounding him.

Eisener was looking down. "Big stuff," he
commented.

Mark looked down too, and caught
his breath. They were only a
thousand feet up, and down there the seas were nothing but white,
leaping
and churning. The thought of
coming down into that… but it would at least be quick; the plane would break up
in about five seconds.

"Take her up," Eisener commanded.

The aircraft soared, and back into the cloud. Up and
up she went in a spiraling ascent, to break out again into brilliant sunshine a
few minutes later. But now she was above the clouds, and they could look back
down
to the huge, swirling area of white.
"Fifty-three knots of wind at the
center,"
Eisener said, having checked his instruments. "We have ourselves
a
storm, gentlemen. What's her name?"

Mark looked at the list which hung by his earphones.
"I guess she's a girl named Faith," he said. "You reckon there's
any charity down there, Doc?"

"Nope. And even less hope, for those who can't
get out of the way."

The telephone jangled. Jo put it on open speech; she
had an idea who it might be. She had in fact expected this call yesterday.

"Hi," Michael said.

"Hi."

"Just got in. Well, last night."
From his voice, she had an idea he had spent most
of the night drinking.
"Aren't you going to ask me how we
did?"

"How did you do?" Jo asked.

"Well..." His voice was
triumphant. "There are a couple of protests
to be heard today, but it's as near a certainty as you can have that
we've
won our class." He waited for a
moment, then asked, "Aren't you going
to congratulate me?"

Presumably the fact of having won the race made
everything that had gone before irrelevant, at least in his eyes.
"Congratulations," she said.

"It was some race," he told her. "Flat calm
to begin with. Would you believe on Monday morning we could still see the hills
around Newport?
Then light airs. Now that's
where real skill comes in, taking advantage
of every puff of wind,
entering the Gulf Stream at just the right place... the guys all agree it
couldn't have been done without me."

"I'm sure they're right," Jo agreed.

"Then the winds picked up and
we had a good breeze for the last
couple
of days. The ship behaved like a dream. Now tell me, how's the boy?"

"Doing well."

"Still in hospital?"

"No, I collected him yesterday. But he still has
to rest. He's in bed."

"Great. Then everything has gone all right."

"Yes," she said. "Everything has gone
all right."

"Well, that's great. What are your plans?"

"Owen Michael and I are flying down to Eleuthera
on Monday."

"The doctor given you the okay on that?"

"Yes."

"Well, great. He'll like that. And it's bound to
do him good."

"What are
your
plans?"

"Well, like I told you
before we left, the guys and I thought we'd take
a week cruising around Bermuda. There's some great snorkeling and
fishing to be had here. And there's nothing for me to hurry back for, is there?
Not with Owen Michael on the mend and all of you down in the Bahamas."

"Nothing at all," Jo
said, and hung up. She gazed at Richard, who
had arrived just as the phone had rung, and was
mixing them Bloody
Marys. Now he looked
back at her. She had wanted him to hear the conversation, but she felt she had
to offer some explanation. "He has this
marvelous
facility of remembering only what he wants to remember, and
forgetting
everything else," she said. "We had the most vicious quarrel over the
phone when he wouldn't abandon the race because of Owen
Michael's illness. I called him some terrible names, virtually in
public. But now all is sweetness and light, because he's won his damned race.
Not
that he is going to change any of his plans, of course."

Richard handed her a glass. "You sound kind of
bitter."

"Don't you think I have cause to be?"

He gave one of his half smiles. "I'm a prejudiced
witness. But I would say you have every reason to be bitter."

She drank, sat on the settee,
brooded out of the undraped picture
window
at the skyline of New York, gleaming in the morning sunlight; Richard had come
here so regularly during the past week she had ceased worrying about the
porters. Now, presumably she should be worrying
about Owen Michael's reaction. On Dr Matthey's recommendation she
had given him a sedative last night to make sure
he had no ill effects after
the
excitement of coming home. But he was going to wake up any minute.
"So
what would be your solution?"

"You know it. Divorce Donnelly and marry
me."

"I wish it were as simple as that."

"Everything in life is simple, if you just make
up your mind to do it. And divorce is no more difficult than anything else. The
guy's a heel. Or he sure comes across that way. And there's no real question of
guilt, nowadays, either. Just a matter of will."

"You have got to be joking.
Don't you think I've gone over this time
and again in my mind? Guilt? There may not be any in the
eyes of the
law, but
I wouldn't have much chance with friends and family, now
would I? I commit adultery with
you, while Michael is committing
adultery with a yacht?" She sighed. "Believe me,
Richard, I'd move in
with you tomorrow,
if it weren't for the children."

"That is a legal matter, my love, and I don't
think it will be a problem
either. I told
you, courts don't consider guilt or innocence in divorce cases
these days. The decision will be based entirely on
which parent is the
better one to have custody of the children –
for their good. Well, when Donnelly's behavior, not only about Owen Michael's
illness but over
the whole vacation scene,
the way he's always away from home, is brought
out, I don't think any right-minded judge would hesitate for a moment
as
to who should have them."

"Court," she said, and hugged herself.
"Judge. The whole thing sounds too terrible for words."

"It isn't, really."

"Because you've been
through it. I guess maybe it's different for a man.
Anyway, from what you've told me, it was a mutual
decision – and there
were no children
involved. Michael wouldn't go along with that, especially
if it meant losing Owen Michael and Tamsin. Anyway,
he's a Catholic,
so he'd thump that
tub. He'd fight tooth and nail, and he'd fight dirty,
too. Every last bit of dirty linen in our lives
would be hung out to dry.
And even
if I did get custody of the children, think of the effect the whole
thing
would have on them. Not only the split. They'd have to be allowed to spend time
with Michael every so often, and boy, would he attempt to turn them against
me."

"Like I said, the guy's a
heel. But Jo… are you going to spend the
rest
of your life in misery for fear of him and what he might do? That's emotional
blackmail, even if he hasn't started to apply it yet."

She smiled. "Then what about you? Do you really
want to take on two hooligans?"

"As long as they're your hooligans, I'd like
nothing better."

Her smile became genuinely warm. "Yes, I think
you would. I know
you'd make a good father.
Oh, Richard, how I want to… look, give me
a little time to think, will you? When I come back from Eleuthera I'll
have
it all sorted out in my mind, I promise."

He frowned. "I wanted to
talk to you about that. I don't think you
should
go down there right now."

"But I have to. I told Michael I was going. It'll
be quite all right; Dr Matthey says that as long as I make sure Owen Michael
just lazes about, does no diving or anything like that, a couple of weeks in
the Bahamas
would be the best possible thing
for him." She touched his hand. "And
for me. It's pretty difficult to make decisions about us, knowing I'm
going
to see you in half an hour. You're just too close. My mind is full
of you, rather than what's best for us. Can you understand that?"

"Sure I can. But I wasn't
thinking about Owen Michael, Jo. Or about
us.
I was thinking about Faith."

Her turn to frown. "What do you mean?"

"Haven't you been watching my forecasts?"

"I haven't really felt like watching anything
this past week."

"Well… I didn't mention it
before, because I didn't want you
worrying
about Tamsin."

Jo sat up straight. "You mean Faith's a
biggie?"

"Not yet. But she's doing everything she isn't
supposed to do. Or maybe it's everything she is supposed to do, if she means to
cause the
maximum trouble. You remember she
was moving fairly slowly, but even so she should have reached the Caribbean by
now. But she's slowed down
even more,
almost stalled in fact. Yet with no deviation in course; she
still has a bead drawn on Puerto Rico. And her winds
are increasing all
the time. We expect her to be upgraded to Hurricane
by tonight."

"You mean she could pose a threat to the
Bahamas?"

"We have no means of knowing. She could go
straight across Puerto
Rico into the
Caribbean, she could turn up north before reaching the
islands –
neither would pose any threat to Eleuthera – or she could hit Puerto Rico
and then turn north, which would carry her in a straight line
up the eastern Bahamas. I'm afraid that's the most
likely course for her
to follow."

"Oh, my God. When will this happen?"

"Well, there are storm
warnings in Puerto Rico right this minute. If
she were to do what I suggest, and travelling at
her present speed, she
could be in the
Bahamas by next Wednesday."

"Oh, Christ," Jo gasped. "I must get
hold of them."

"Don't you think they know? They'll have been
watching the Miami forecasts."

"Perhaps. But I really must try."

She was too worried to be good
company that night. She found it difficult
to
accept that North Eleuthera would ever be hit by a major storm, and
even if it was, she reminded herself that Lawson
and Belle knew all about
hurricanes,
having lived in the Bahamas for years, and Big Mike and
Babs and Dale
were also perfectly able to take care of themselves. Yet
when she remembered three years ago those seas
getting higher and
higher, until they had almost threatened to lap over
the rocks below the house… and Tamsin was there.

In the morning she telephoned the
Whaletown post office. Inevitably
it took
her over an hour to get through, and then the line was bad. "Hi, there,
Mis' Donnelly," the girl said. "I give Josh that message for Mr
Donnelly, and he got it, 'cause he tol' me so when he was in las' week."

"Thanks a million," Jo said. "I have
another one for him."

"He don' come into town on Sundays, ma'am."

"I know. But if Josh could take the message again..."

"Josh don' go out to Dolphin Point on
Sundays."

"I know that too. But if he
could perhaps make a special journey…
it's very important. I want Mr Donnelly to call me here
in New York.
Can you ask him to do
that?"

"Ah guess ah can give Josh
the message, Mis' Donnelly, when he comes
outa
church."

"I'd be most terribly grateful. And do remember
to tell him it is most urgent."