Her Name Will Be Faith (28 page)

Belle recalled newsreel pictures from Galveston and
Houston when Alicia had struck there a few years before. There had been shots
of vast seas, even bigger than she and Lawson had just seen, and flying debris
which had shattered plate glass windows. Yet Melba
and Josh, going
home to their little wooden house which had apparently
withstood all the hurricanes to hit Eleuthera for the past thirty years, had
not seemed too perturbed.

Most frightening of all was the way the sky to the
south-east was changing, filling with high, tumbled, hard-edged white clouds,
behind which was solid black, and the way the wind would shriek into a squall
every couple of hours, hurling raindrops at the
shutters, and then die
away into a flat calm. It was like watching the
slow, relentless approach
of a vast, ruthless
enemy army, and already having to fight off its
skirmishers.

Neal Robson's house was some
twenty feet lower down the ridge than the
Donnellys',
on the bay side, which meant that it was actually somewhat
sheltered from any winds blowing out of the
Atlantic. Babs and Melba
had been down
earlier to make sure it was adequately stocked with
candles and batteries, and the bathtub filled
with water in case they could
not pump
any up from the cistern. In fact, with Neal's new shutters on
the
windows, the house looked as well protected and prepared as it could
possibly be, but Meg still sat huddled on the
settee, starting up with a
moan every time there was a gust of wind.
"I wish we were home," she wailed. "Oh, God, why can't we be
home?"

Big Mike looked at Neal, who
looked back and shrugged. "She really
is
scared. I wish to God we could have gotten her off the island."

"Well, we tried, goddamn
it," Mike said. "Look, if it's getting you
down, you can always move up the hill with us. We have
lots of room, and I guess it could get a little scary here on your own."

"Oh, Neal..." Meg began, and then checked
herself as her husband shot her a glance.

"We'll stay with our house," Neal said with
dignity.

"Okay," Mike said.
"But remember we're just up the road. I reckon
we can talk to each other on the
CB even with our aerials down; we're
only
a few hundred yards apart, for Christ's sake. Now Babs is expecting you for
lunch, remember? See you."

He walked back up the beaten
earth path – marked on the map as a
road
– between the casuarinas on his left and the rocks and ocean on his
right, looking up at the sky, picking out the
little streaks of white alto
cirrus, the forerunners of real wind. He'd
done that at sea, as a young yachtsman, when expecting a gale. Sure, he had a
few butterflies in his
stomach, but that was
to the good. It was like waiting to drive off from
the first tee on the
morning of the club tournament, if you weren't keyed up you'd shoot a hundred.

So come on, you bastard, he
thought. Come on and do your damned
est.

Jo waited in all morning for the
phone call from Eleuthera. When at
lunch it hadn't come she called herself, and waited for
even more than
the usual hour while her
ears were deafened by clicks and thumps. "I'm
sorry," the American operator said at last. "It is quite
impossible to
get through to either
Nassau or Eleuthera. The lines are absolutely
jammed."

She felt as if she had been kicked in the stomach.
Perhaps they had got out already. But if they had got out, and reached Miami or
Fort Lauder
dale, surely they would have
called from there. Desperate for reassurance,
she called Richard.

"I'm afraid it doesn't look too good," he
told her. "Faith has just about
laid
Haiti flat. She was then packing winds of 110 miles an hour, and
let's
face it, a lot of Haiti is shantytown: almost any strong winds knock
those huts down. But first reports of the damage
are horrifying. Now she's
moving straight up the eastern Bahamas."

"Is she maintaining these wind strengths?"
Jo asked.

There was a moment's silence.
Then she heard him give a kind of gulp.
"She
could be strengthening."

"What do you mean?"

"Mark called me an hour ago;
he'd just got back from flying into the
eye,
and he reports sustained winds of 130 miles an hour. That is moving
into Category Three country. We're talking now
about a major storm.
And I mean, major."

Jo felt herself breaking out into a sweat all over.
But she kept her voice even with an effort. "Tell me."

"Well, it'll be a strong enough wind to lift a
car off the road, and that sort of thing. But Jo, from your father-in-law's
point of view, I guess as long as he's securely shuttered and has good roof,
the house'll be in no
danger. Especially as,
if the storm maintains its present course, he'll be
in the western
semi-circle. That's far and away the least dangerous place.

"But what about tidal surge?"

"Sure there'll be a tidal
surge. You could expect nine to twelve feet
above
normal. On top of the waves, of course."

"Which will be how high?"

"Well… is there deep water right up to the
point?"

"On the Atlantic side, yes."

"Then you could be talking
about thirty-, forty-feet waves. But you
told
me your father-in-law's house is on a ridge..."

"Yes," she said. "Maybe twenty-five
feet above normal sea level."

"Oh. How close to the sea itself?"

"Maybe a hundred feet."

"And there's no reef offshore? You're
certain?"

"Not on the Atlantic side. For God's sake,
Dolphin Point is part of the reef. Oh, Richard, I'm so frightened..."

"Take it easy, darling. Take it easy. That's the
worst prognostication. For the dangerous semi-circle. On the western side of
the storm the seas will be much lower. The wind strength, too. Look, I have to
go now, to
prepare the next forecast. There's
a mass of information coming in. But
I could get round later. Would you
like me to do that?"

"Oh, yes, please," she said. "I want
you here."

Having disconnected his aerial,
and laid it flat beside the house, Big Mike
was
unable to use the television, but he invited the Robsons over again
that evening to listen to the news on the
portable radio. There was a great
deal of static, but they were able to
gather that Faith was now packing
winds of
over 110 mph round her center, which made her by some way
the biggest
storm to threaten the Bahamas since the 1930s, but that the center was still
well over 100 miles away and some 70 miles out to sea.
He switched off the radio, and looked around the tense faces. Already
the
house was trembling to occasional gale force gusts, and there was a
good deal of distant thunder, while every so often rainsqualls swept across the
headland.

"Okay, you guys, relax," he announced.
"We're in the safe semi-circle. Sailors call it the navigable semi-circle.
So by God, if a ship can be navigated we can sure as hell sit it out. Now, I
reckon we should break open that case of champagne. Just to put ourselves in
the mood."

"Good idea," Lawson agreed. "I'll do
it."

"I've been thinking," Meg said. She was
obviously full of Panadol and had been quite calm during the broadcast. Now her
eyes were bright.
"Wouldn't it make
sense for us all to go into Whaletown, and put up at
the hotel
there?"

"I think she has a point," Neal said,
determined not to show his own
fear, but
clearly nearly as terrified as his wife. "We can't do anything
more
to protect the houses, and no one is going to come along and break in while
there's a storm raging. And in Whaletown..."

"You'd be one hell of a lot worse off," Big
Mike pointed out. "What makes you think any house down there is safer than
ours here? Most of them are built of wood. And it's virtually at sea level,
too, more likely to be flooded."

"But there'd be other people..." Meg
groaned.

"You don't call us people?
The more people you accumulate in one
place
the more likely it is that someone's gonna get hurt."

Meg looked at her husband with
beseeching eyes, begging for guidance.

Lawson came back from the kitchen
with a tray of full champagne
glasses, and Neal drank his at a gulp. "I guess Mike is right,"
he
pronounced. "Of course we're
safer here."

"Anyway," Lawson put in. "You'd never
get across Big Leap, now. Those seas'll come way over it."

Meg gave another moan of sheer terror.

"The word is safe,"
Mike pronounced. "Here you are safe. Take my
word for it. Any place else..." he shrugged.
"I wouldn't like to say."

"This is French champagne," Babs remarked.

"So I lashed out. Actually, I forgot to tell you
with all this going on; Michael has won his class in the Bermuda Race."

"Hey," Belle cried.
"Ain't that something? Oh, I'll drink to Michael.
I bet he's so happy he raced instead of coming down
here."

"Even if Jo isn't," Dale said quietly.

"Well..." Belle flushed. "Racing, or
doing something dramatic, is Michael's life. It always has been."

"I hope he gets home before this storm reaches
Bermuda," Babs said.
She wanted to
change the subject, to avoid splitting the family into taking
sides – remembering the telephone
conversation at the hospital, she had
a terrible feeling that such a
situation was going to arise anyway, in the not too distant future.

"My God! What's that?" Meg Robson screamed
as there was a heavier than usual squall, accompanied by a crash from outside.

"A branch from a tree,"
Mike told her. "If we didn't need them for
shade, I'd cut the whole damned lot down. It's impossible to tell which
branches are getting ready to fall and which
are good and strong. Anyway,
none of them are going to do us any damage.
Now, you folks staying to supper?"

"I think we'll get on back
while we can," Neal decided. "Thanks
anyway."

"But you'll remember we're here if you need
us," Babs reminded him.

"Tell you what," Mike said. "Your
generator running?"

"I was going to put it on when I got back,"
Neal said.

"You do that. Then give me a shout on your CB, so
we can make sure we hear each other."

Neal nodded, and as it was not
actually raining at the moment, escorted
Meg
outside.

Mike closed and bolted the door. "They're scared
as shit."

"So are we all," Babs
pointed out. "115 miles an hour. That sounds
one hell of a lot of wind."

"We'll ride it, Babs," Lawson said
reassuringly, and rumpled Tamsin's hair; the little girl had been strangely
silent all evening. "Won't we, Tammy?"

"I wish Mommy were here. And Daddy," she
added as an afterthought.

"Think of all the exciting things you'll have to
tell them," Belle said.
"Now, let's
get supper." She looked at the door. "What's that roaring
noise?"

"That's the sea getting
up," Lawson told her. "The surf pounding on
the rocks. It's going to be a wild night, folks."

The CB was spluttering. "Can you hear me,
Mike?" Neal was asking.
Mike thumbed the
handset. "Sure. Loud and clear. Well, maybe not
all that loud or
clear, but I sure can hear you. Keep in touch."

"Well, hi," Jo said,
opening the door. "I didn't expect you so early."

"I came as soon as I could get away,"
Richard explained.

"And I'm glad to see you." Jo stepped back,
and shrugged. "Owen Michael," she said. "This is a friend of… of
your father's and mine, Richard Connors. You must have seen him on TV."

"Say, are you really the guy on TV?" Owen
Michael shook hands, impressed. "Will you write in my autograph
book?"

"Any time," Richard agreed.

"I'll get it." He ran for his bedroom,

Richard stared at Jo.

"It's okay," she said. "It doesn't
really matter now."

"I wasn't thinking of that."

She frowned, suddenly realizing
that he looked as if he'd seen a ghost.
"Richard?
What's the matter?"

"I came over to tell you..." he hesitated.

"What?" she almost screamed at him.