Her Name Will Be Faith (27 page)

"Den what happenin'?"

"Is Nassau callin'
heah," Christabel said. "Dey tellin' me de airport
is close'. All de airports in de eastern region is
close'. You hear me?"

"Yeah," Melba said slowly. "I heah you.
Dese folks gonna be too disappointed."

"Ah can' help dat," Christabel said. "I
goin' now."

Melba replaced the microphone, and turned to face the
white people. "You heah dat?"

"We did. Thank you, Melba,
for trying." Big Mike sighed and shook
his head in exasperation. "Well, that's that, folks.
The decision's been
made for us. We sit
it out." He straightened his aching back. "Come on,
you guys, let's finish getting these shutters up
so these people can go
home."

"What about the food supplies
and the candles?" Babs asked.
"Someone'll
have to go down to Whaletown."

"Will it be safe going over Big Leap?" Dale
peered at the rain lashing across the patio, and thought of the place where the
island narrowed to such an extent that the sea came right up to the road.

"Give me a list and I'll drive down and
see," Lawson volunteered. "I shouldn't think the seas are over the
road yet; there isn't all that much wind."

"I'll come with you," Belle declared.
"If that's okay with you, Babs."

"Sure. And listen, you'd better call Jo and
explain the situation. Tell her there's nothing to worry about." She
looked at Lawson, seeking reassurance for herself.

Lawson grinned. "We'll be
snug as bugs in rugs behind these shutters."

"Can I come too?" Tamsin asked.

Belle hesitated. There was no question how exciting
the child would
find the narrow roadway. It
was always a fascinating place, with the
clear, calm, aquamarine waters
of the sound on the west while just yards
away
to the east the great dark blue swell of the Atlantic surged up to
the
rocks only feet below. But today the swell would be building to
horrendous size, thrilling, exciting, but
possibly, by the time they returned
anyway, quite dangerous, even to Big
Mike's heavy old Buick. No place for youngsters.

"No, honey," she said.
"It'll be quite nasty and certainly too wet to
get out of the car and see anything."

"Wouldn't it be quicker to take the boat across
to Palm Island?" Dale suggested.

"No way," Big Mike replied. "Cross the
entrance in that swell? Anyway, as soon as we've put the last of these shutters
up, we're taking the boat out and tying her down."

"You can't take her out until Lawson gets back
with the automobile," Dale objected.

"I'll borrow Josh's before he leaves. Now, have
you got that list ready, Babs?"

Babs had been scribbling away.
"I don't know if I've thought of
everything."

"Candles?"

"Yes."

"Batteries?"

"Yes."

"Tinned soup and beans?"

"And some more Log Cabin
Syrup for our breakfast pancakes," Tamsin
reminded her grandmother.

"Oh, lover, I nearly forgot. We'll need some more
eggs, too." Babs scribbled some more, gave Belle the list. "You
hurry, and take care."

"We'll hurry." Belle kissed her mother.
"Who's going down to tell the Robsons?"

Babs sighed. "I guess it'll have to be me. I tell
you what: add a really strong sedative to that list, if you can find one. We
may need it for Meg."

The drive down the coast wasn't
easy with the windscreen smeared by
the worn-out wipers as they were constantly deluged by
the muddy water
filling the holes in the
road – Big Mike had bought the Buick third hand from the garage in
Whaletown in preference to facing the expense of
bringing a car across from the mainland. They bounced and weaved until
a good stretch of tarmac carried them down to the
neck, where they
paused awhile,
waiting to see if an occasional rogue wave might crash
into the wide,
deep gully below and swamp the road.

"The sea hasn't worked
itself into a fuss yet," Belle said, urgency
boiling inside her; if her first reaction had been a
desire to stay and sit it
out, she had got
caught up in the general fear of the rest of the family,
and now felt as
apprehensive as them of what was coming. "Come on, Lawson, let's go."

In fact the seas were not yet high, although there was
a considerable swell building from the south-east, but with the heavy rain
clouds begin
ning to break up to allow patches
of blue and even occasional glimpses
of
the sun, it was rather a beautiful day. Only right down on the sea
horizon, hardly visible, there was a ridge of
cloud so dark as to be
almost blue black. They passed the neck without
incident and arrived at Whaletown fifteen minutes later. A very strange
Whaletown. Instead of the doors and windows of the brightly painted houses
standing open, spilling children and animals on to the street, and women in gay
dresses and bandannas sitting in the shade gossiping while they plaited straw
for the baskets and hats they sold to tourists, everything was closed tight,
windows boarded, chairs, tables and plant pots stowed away, and men working in
the mud with ropes to tie down suspect roofs.

The little wooden supermarket was filled with
chattering women in
dripping dresses, fast
emptying the shelves. Belle grabbed the last packet
of candles while
Lawson selected batteries, then they filled two store
baskets with canned food and joined the long, slow, check-out line. In
the
end, Belle left Lawson to cope and, head down against the still gusty
wind, pants soaked by the intermittent rain, made a
dash up the hill to
the post office. "I want to make an
international call," she said, pushing wet strands of yellow hair from her
eyes.

"Dere ain' no lines," the girl said,
continuing to paint her nails.

"None at all? Who's using them?"

"Nobody heah," the girl
said. "Dere ain' no lines out of Nassau.
Everybody speakin' at once."

"Oh, for God's sake. How soon will there be a
line?"

"Ah dunno. Maybe dis
afternoon. But I got a list heah of twelve people
wantin' to call out. You wan' me put you down at the
end?"

Belle hesitated. But there was no way she was hanging
about until this afternoon – or coming back into the village. Jo would
just have to wait. "No," she said, and went back to Lawson.

The rain had virtually stopped as the car headed north
again. Belle and Lawson watched anxiously as they came down the steep hill to
the Big Leap neck, but the Atlantic was hidden from view by a high wall of
rock.

"Nothing but spray seems to be coming over,"
Lawson commented, bending over the wheel. "So let's go."

Belle braced herself, feet on
imaginary pedals, hands on the dashboard,
eyes
staring to the right, waiting for the ending of the rock wall to reveal the
ocean.

The road was quite clear as the blue automobile careered
down the hill
through the potholes and
levelled off on to the concrete surface. Then
Belle saw it – a
massive wall of surging green water rushing straight at them. "Foot
down!" she shrieked. "Go, go, go!"

A quick glance through the window, and Lawson
responded. "Jesus!" he yelled.

The giant wave crawled up the
cliff face at the far end of the neck,
higher
and higher, then burst against the concrete structure of the bridge. An
umbrella of water opened high over the road, hung there as though
waiting for the car to reach it. They were
committed; it was impossible
to brake in time – they could only
urge the Buick on, and pray.

The water descended on the roof like a mountain of
rock. They were
engulfed, swept across the
road and crushed against the concrete parapet.
Belle saw and felt it all happen as though in slow motion; felt herself
being
thrown into Lawson's lap, felt the car tip over, teetering on its
left-hand wheels, held her breath waiting to crash,
upside down, on to
the rocks beneath, but miraculously the parapet held
and she was flung
back against the passenger
door, Lawson with her, as the car righted
itself. And amazingly, the engine was still running, Lawson having
managed to keep his foot on the gas pedal. Now he
regained the wheel
and gunned her,
pressed her on, sliding, swinging through the water –
and then they were clear. The floor of the car
was awash, the wipers were
lying
distorted on the hood, and the engine spluttered as they rolled up
the
hill on the other side, where Lawson let it coast to a halt.

Several minutes passed before either of them spoke, or
moved. They had both faced an horrific death, and death is a very private
thing. Then Lawson took Belle's face between his hands and kissed her, hard, on
the mouth.

"Oh, lover," she said. "I thought we'd
had it."

He grinned at her. "We are indestructible, you
gorgeous critter. But I tell you what… I'm not crossing that bridge again until
Faith is only a memory."

Belle jumped out into the mud to
open the garage door for Lawson to
drive
the Buick in, but found the Mako had been stored in there, so he parked hard
against the back of the house. They had passed Josh, Melba
and Goodson on their way home to Whaletown just
after leaving Big
Leap, and stopped
to warn them of the possibility of a big sea crossing
the road; but they
decided not to alarm the family any further by telling
them of their experience; they were just thankful to have survived
– and
if the roof of the
automobile had been dented by the water crashing on
to it, Big Mike
would hardly notice until after the storm.

The living room was quite a shock.

"Beds?" Belle and Lawson exclaimed together.

Babs laughed. "After you'd
gone, Melba took charge. She said we'd
not be able to get across to the bedrooms when the storm
hit, so I'm
afraid it's going to be
dormitory style for the next couple of nights."

"Surely mattresses on the floor would have been
enough?" Belle re
marked, gazing at the
furniture, all pushed back against the walls to make
room for the beds.

"That's what we thought,
but Melba decided otherwise. Thank heavens
this
is a big room."

"Isn't it gloomy." Dale peered at a wedge of
daylight showing through a gap in the plywood boarding. "What the hell are
we going to do with ourselves all day?"

"Play games and read stories," Tamsin
informed her uncle gleefully.

"Oh, no, I don't believe it." His horror was
only pretence.

"There's a hell of a lot of
work to be done before we can play any
games," Big Mike announced. "The stuff Lawson
and Belle bought has
to
be unloaded and put away. And if for the next forty-eight hours we are
all six of us going to be living in one room, then
it's got to be kept tidy. Tamsin, you can help by putting the games on that
shelf and picking up
those shoes. Now, the
rest of us have to stow all the patio furniture and
get all the darned
potted plants into the garage. The men will bring them
up, and the women can put them away." He frowned at Belle.
"You
okay, sweetie? You look all shook up."

"Just wet."

"Well, change. The last thing
we want is someone sneezing all over
the
place. Say, did you get hold of Jo?"

"No chance. There will be no
lines before this afternoon at the earliest."

"Oh, heck," Babs said. "She'll be
worried out of her mind."

"So, she'll just have to worry," Big Mike
said. "Now remember, you two," he told the women, "I want the
pots placed against the far wall of the garage, beyond the boat."

"That's extra work," Babs objected.
"Why not leave them this side?"

"For everyone to climb over when they go to the
john? That's the only one this side of the house. Or do you intend to trek
outside through the storm to the bedroom every time you need a leak? Don't
argue, woman, just do it."

For a moment Babs looked ready to
retort angrily, then she grinned,
and feigned a punch to his stomach. "You big
bully," she said. "Okay,
we'll do it your way. But you have a job to do too: go on
down that
hill and
see if you can talk some sense into Meggie. She's having
hysterics."

"Christalmighty! That's all we need," Mike
growled, but he went off, while the others got to work, pretending it was
enormous fun, laughing and teasing each other as trailing vines got caught
around their feet and they tripped over the patio furniture or bumped into each
other as they
carted it inside – but
Belle knew they were all frightened. Hurricanes
were something beyond their ken; huge storms so violent that they hit
the headlines, with reports of death and
destruction left behind them. She
and
Lawson had seen the film
Hurricane,
on video, in which an entire
island
community had been reduced to an empty sandbank, and had wondered if a major
hurricane could really be that bad, or if the film had just been an horrendous
dramatization – like Jaws.