Her Name Will Be Faith (24 page)

"But it's not good for the Bahamas."

"No. However, it's still early days. The system
is still huge, covering such an enormous area, that it's difficult to see how
the eastern Bahamas at any rate can avoid getting at least some of it, now. If
you can get your people out of there, I most certainly would."

The phone buzzed at eleven in the
morning. Jo had deliberately stayed
in,
waiting for the call, pretending to do some more research on Andre
Previn — she had not told Ed she was still
in New York, just to be left in
peace — but she couldn't
concentrate. The weather update had revealed
no
deepening of the storm, and, as was always the case, lying in Richard's
arms had totally reassured her, but all through
the night she had been
aware of the feeling of imminent disaster hanging
over her; the system
was still drifting
north — and it was still expected to deepen. "Hello," she
gasped,
as she picked up the study phone, carefully closing the door to make sure Owen
Michael couldn't overhear.

"That Mrs Michael Donnelly, junior?"

"Yes. Yes, it is."

"Hold the line, please. I have an overseas call
for you." The American operator did not close her key, and Jo could hear
the well-known Bahamian voice saying, "You can use the firs' boot', Mr
Donnelly."

"Dad?" she shouted. "Is that you?"

"Jo? Hi, sweetheart. I got your message and came
right in. Nothing wrong, I hope? Owen Michael still okay?"

"Yes. But Dad . ."

"So how come you're not coming in today? You're
sure he's okay?"

"Yes, Owen Michael's okay. We're not coming in
because of this..."

"And Michael? Say, how did the race go?"

"He called Saturday. He's won his class, I
think."

"Attaboy!" Big Mike
shouted. "I knew he could do it. He must be over
the moon. And he's okay?"

"Yes, he's okay," Jo said wearily.

"Then what's all the fuss about? We thought you
had an emergency, that's why I came hustling into Whaletown to call."

"There is an emergency," she shouted.
"Haven't you heard about Hurricane Faith?"

"Sure," Big Mike said equably. "Seems
she gave Puerto Rico quite a clout. Mostly rain, though."

"Yes," Jo said. "Well, she's giving
Haiti quite a clout this minute. And with a lot more than just rain. Have you
heard about that?"

"The goddamned electrics
have been on the blink out at the Point,"
Big Mike explained. "And I'm having some
trouble with the generator.
So we didn't
get last night's forecast, except from the radio, which didn't say much. Didn't
sound too bad, though."

"Dad," Jo said, trying
to speak calmly. "Faith is expected to carry
winds of more than a hundred miles
an hour by tonight: that is going to
be twice as strong as we had three years ago. She's a
Category Two storm
and she could deepen
further. And she's coming straight at you."

"Is that a fact. Well, I guess I'll have Josh dig
out those shutters again. Actually, we could do with some rain; the cistern is
kind of low."

"Dad," Jo said
desperately. "We're not talking about a little bit of
rain. I think you should all get out of there while
you can."

"What, run away from a bit
of wind, bang in the middle of our vacation?
Heck, sweetheart, you're starting to sound like Meg Robson. Boy, am I
gonna have fun telling her about this."

"But Dad..." Jo felt
like screaming. "A hundred miles an hour…
"

The house can take it. So can we."

"I'm thinking about Tamsin," Jo said,
bluntly.

"You don't have to worry
about her. Do you think I'd let anything
happen
to that little girl?"

"I want my daughter brought home!" Jo
shouted.

There was a moment's silence;
she had never spoken to her father-in-law
like
that before.

At last he said, "You really are worried."

"Yes," she said. "Yes. I really am
worried. Please, Dad, please."

"Well, if you feel that way…
tell you what I'll do, sweetheart. I'll
hustle
back out to the Point and chat it over with Lawson and Belle and Babs. Then
I'll call you back tomorrow morning."

"And tell me what flight you'll be on," Jo
begged.

"Ah… yeah, I'll call you back."

The phone went dead, and Jo rested her head on her
arms in despair.

A piercing scream electrified everyone in the house.

"Holy shit! What was that?" Dale dropped the
saw on the garage floor and ran outside.

"Tamsin! Where is she?" Babs also emerged,
from the kitchen.

"Oh, my God!" the voice shouted. "Neal!
Oh, my God!"

"That's our Meg," Dale commented.

"Tamsin was with her," Babs snapped.

And at that moment the little girl called,
"Granma! Granma! Come quickly."

Barefooted, Babs ran across the heavy flagstones that
composed the
central patio of the house,
paused to accustom her eyes to the brilliant
glare of the Bahamian sun, then hurried down the path through the
hibiscus
hedges towards the sea, closely followed by her son.

Tamsin and Meg were standing
beside an old boat engine, eyes gaping,
rigid with horror… and staring back, tongue flicking
viciously as he
slid out from a rusty
aperture, was a large snake.

"Dat no problem, ma'am. He jus' a fowl
snake," Melba the cook
announced coolly,
having followed to investigate the excitement. "He
don't hurt. I
call Josh. He fix he."

"Meggie. Oh, my darling Meggie!" Neal
arrived to take his wife in his arms.

"It's horrible," Meg
sobbed. "To think it was there, all the time, when
I was looking at the engine..."

"You probably woke him up," Dale pointed
out.

"Are you quite sure he's harmless, Melba?"
Babs asked. "He looks
enormous."
She pulled Tamsin away as foot after foot of the reptile oozed
out of
the engine casing on to the path.

"He ain' poisonous, ma'am,
but he might squeeze'm all of us. Yeah,
he sure am a big one, all o' ten foot." Looking as
nonchalant as she could,
the large black woman backed off as well before turning to call,
"Oh,
Josh! Where you? Bring 'um yo'
big knife!”

Josh, half the size of his wife,
came running down the path behind
them.

"Mornin', borse." He
nodded to Babs, who was the senior of his
employers
present. "What seem to be de trouble?"

"Come fix dis fowl snake, man," Melba
commanded.

Josh approached, and checking
behind him that the onlookers were
well clear, swung his machete, decapitating the snake
with a single blow.
"Dere. No
problem, borse."

"Ugh, what a stink." Tamsin screwed up her
face.

"Is de blood. It powerful.
Josh, take um away, quick," his wife ordered.

The Americans watched in
fascination as the gardener balanced the long, dripping body at the end of his
knife, holding it at arm's length,
and
carried it down to the shore to fling it into the sea.

"It's horrible.
Horrible," Meg said. "Oh, Neal, this place just gets
worse and worse. We shouldn't ever
have come here. I want to go
home."

"Now, Meggie..." Neal
held her close, and looked above her head
at
Babs; they had gone through this almost every day of the vacation, as
some other incident which bore no relationship to
the cloistered existence
of Bognor, Connecticut had occurred.

"Let's all go have a rum punch," Babs
decided. "Mike'll be home from Whaletown in a minute. You can tell him all
about it."

"I want to go home," Meg wailed, as they
escorted her back up to the house.

Lawson Garr heard the scream, and
rolled on his back. "Sounds like
Meg,"
he remarked.

"Blow Meg," his wife replied, remaining on
her stomach, pale bottom turned up to the sky. Dolphin Point curved away from
the mainland of North Eleuthera to form the southern arm of a huge, shallow
bay; the
northern arm was composed of a
series of small islands which had grown
out of the reef, of which Palm
Island, on which there was a settlement,
was
the largest. There was a supermarket and a post office on Palm
Island, and at a distance of only three miles, it
was the nearest civilization
to the Point – but the Donnellys
preferred as a rule to drive the ten miles into Whaletown as opposed to getting
out the small dory Big Mike kept moored to the wooden dock, and braving the
spray as they crossed the
entrance to the
sound, where the Atlantic rollers creamed into the narrows
and could
make the passage treacherous for small boats.

Those rollers were breaking on the rocks only a few
feet below where
Belle and Lawson were
lying, for if the bay side of the Point was a stretch
of magnificent
yellow sand beach, shallow for perhaps fifty feet from the
shore to make a perfect aquatic playground, it was
also overlooked by
both the houses,
and inclined to attract snorkelers from Palm Island.
The Atlantic side
was all rock, but there were patches of sand, and these
were the Garrs' favorites. Here they could sunbathe nude, and make
love as the mood took them. Seven years into
their marriage, Lawson and
Belle still adored each other.

"You don't think I should go find out what's
troubling her?" Lawson asked.

"No, I don't. She is a pain
in the ass." Belle put out her hand to find
him, and giggled. "You have a sand-coated willy."

"Yeah, well, I'll give him a wash just now."

He remained sitting up, and after
a moment she rolled over as well,
her golden brown splendor also coated with sand.
"What do you
see?"

"Not a damn thing. Except forty-two acres of
rolling green money."

Belle sat up too, rested her head
on his shoulder. "I still can't believe
it." But she did, now. They had told Babs and
Dale when they had all
got down, and that
had seemed to make it official. Babs had been a little doubtful at first; the
thought of spending a million bucks speculating in land was against her New
England instincts, but as they had all walked over the property, and seen Neal
Robson slowly turning green, she had warmed to the idea. "When do the
diggers come in?"

"Next month," Lawson said. "I thought
we might stay on up here and keep an eye on things."

"Mmm. I'd like that. Just you
and me. We could go nuddy all the
time."

He turned his head to kiss her.
"Well… after Josh and Melba go
home,
why not? You reckon on wearing me out?"

She kissed him back, and removed some sand from where
it mattered most. "I reckon on having a damned good try."

They listened to the toot-toot of
a horn. "There's Dad!" Belle scrambled
to her feet, scooping up her towel as she did so but not bothering to
do more than drape it across her shoulder, as, like some reincarnation of
Aphrodite, she strode towards the dirt road. Lawson hurried behind her, his own
towel round his waist; there was always the chance that it might
be someone other than Big Mike – not that
the thought of his wife sending
some poor sod into a mind-boggling spin
did anything more than delight him.

Big Mike braked as he saw them emerge from the bushes
that fringed the road. "Holy shit!" he commented. "You could
cause an accident."

"That would be incest."
Belle sat beside him, and Lawson also got
into
the front seat.

"What's up with Jo? The kid all right?"
Lawson was fond of his niece and nephew, even if he was glad he and Belle had
no children of their own; there was not only the risk of that magnificent
sun-browned body being damaged, but a child would
have interfered
with their essential intimacy.

"The kid is fine," Big Mike said as he
turned into the drive beside the generator shed. "Jo's scared about this
hurricane."

"What hurricane?" Belle asked as the car
stopped.

"The one that's been knocking around Puerto Rico.
Faith."

"That's hundreds of miles away."

"Puerto Rico may be, but not
Faith, apparently. Seems she's moving
this way, and is beating the shit out of Haiti right this
minute. Jo says
she could have 100 mile
an hour winds."