Her Name Will Be Faith (59 page)

There
was no reply.

He dived, swam desperately, reaching out in all
directions, until his
lungs were exploding,
then he kicked for the surface again.

But
this time there was no surface – his head struck the ceiling.

Every few seconds Tootsie shuddered and gazed anxiously
at the lounge
window. Not that she
could see out of it, as heavy rain was hitting it
almost like waves, streaming across it horizontally,
instead of pouring
down on to the sill.

"You'd think that having called four no trumps she'd
have finessed
the..." Lila
Vail stared at the back of her sister's head and clicked her
tongue.
"You're not listening."

I am listening, but not to you, Tootsie thought. Her mind
was nearly
paralyzed with fear
that the window might blow in and her new rug
be ruined. Complaints about the inadequacies of members
of their Ladies'
Bridge
Club was not a stimulating topic in these circumstances. But she
supposed she must try to keep Lila happy; her older
sister could get quite
nasty
when irritated. "Of course I'm listening, sweetie. Go on. What did
she
play?"

Before Lila could answer there was a deafening crash from
above them
and even she was
distracted. "Shit!" she exclaimed. "That cow upstairs
must've
dropped the piano. Now, as I was saying..."

The lights flickered and faded off,
leaving them sitting in semi-darkness. “J
ees! That's the power gone. We'd better drink that coffee
while it's
still hot." Tootsie
groped over to the coffee maker.

"To hell with coffee. Let's
have some light. Flashlight? Candles? Where
do
you keep them?"

"I
don't have either."

"Oh, shit! Are you telling me we're stuck with
sitting here in darkness
tonight?
Sister, if you'd ever had to live in Florida you'd be better prepared
than
this. How'll we see to cook our dinner?"

Lila was getting tetchy, which in turn irritated Tootsie.
What right
had Lila to complain?
They were only here because she had insisted on
staying. Left to herself, Tootsie would have preferred to
have gone with
Dai Evans. That might
have been fun, even with his miserable wife along.
"Cooking dinner won't be a problem." She giggled. "No
power, no
dinner." Let old bossy boots put that in her pipe and
smoke it.

"That's
not funny," Lila snapped. "What are we supposed to eat?"

"Cheese, and fruit and crisp bread – oh, and
we have a tin of sardines
I bought for the cat..."

"Catfish?
For dinner! That's crazy..."

"Pussikins!" Tootsie called. "Where is
she? Hiding under my bed, I'll
bet. Scared stiff "

"Damn
the cat."

"Lila! Will you stop that. Pussikins has been my
little pal for years,
ever since Edgar passed
away..."

"Okay,
okay. Just stop whining..."

"I'm not the one who's whining. You were fussing
about your
dinner..."

"Shut
up!"

"No,
you shut up!"

Another deafening crash interrupted the quarrel and the
two women
sat watching in
alarm as a hail of bricks and debris fell past the window
until a sudden extra gust of wind spun through the street
and hurled the
missiles through several
windows – including theirs.

Both sisters screamed as drapes and all moveable objects
in the room
were hurled into a corner.
The table cloth carried cups, saucers, sugar and
milk
bowls with it, pictures flew off the walls, and Tootsie half ran, half fell,
about the room trying to rescue her treasures, wailing and moaning.

"Let's get out of here," Lila yelled. But the
noise was too great and
Tootsie
couldn't hear her. So the older woman grabbed her arm and tried to drag her to
the door. Tootsie got the message and with a last agonized glance around her
room turned to help Lila, who was tugging at the door
handle.

But the door wouldn't move, held solid by the pressure on
its frame:
Neither of them noticed the crack in the
wall above their heads.

As the center of the hurricane swept in towards the land,
it pushed more
and
more water in front of it. The seas climbed, higher and higher. Fifteen
miles from the Narrows, the Ambrose Lightship parted her
moorings and
was swept towards the
beach; nearer at hand the Sandy Hook Light
Tower was overwhelmed by sixty-foot waves. In Lower New
York Bay, the buoys and lights were scattered, Rockaway Beach, Jones Beach and
Coney Island were obliterated. Some of the surging water
found its way
into Jamaica Bay,
and the Wildlife Sanctuary was destroyed; waves broke
across the runways at Kennedy and smashed through the glass
doors to batter the luggage carousels to pieces. But by far the greater volume
of
water was funneled into the
Narrows, from which it exploded in a
mountainous
fifty feet of surging sea, bursting across an already turbulent
harbor to engulf the Statue of Liberty. For some minutes
the recently
rebuilt structure
defied the waves, even as they struck at the finely
chiseled face; the hand holding the torch continued to
thrust itself above
the
water. Then the tremendous force of the storm proved too much for
the foundations, and the great statue dissolved, the noise
of its fall lost
in the howl of the wind.

The storm surge continued on its way to smash into an
already
half-submerged Lower
Manhattan. Staten Island disappeared beneath
flying waves as part of the wave found its way down Kill
van Kull into
Newark Bay; the main
force tore up the East and Hudson Rivers with
the
force of a gigantic express train.

Ernie turned the motorboat in alongside a pier in Yonkers.
"This is far
enough."

"You
reckon?" Bill asked uncertainly.

"Sure. We're 15 miles from the harbor. All the
experts say the danger is in the five miles nearest the sea, right? Besides,
I'm starving. Hey, you
guys,"
he bawled at some men who had just finished mooring their own
boat.
"Take a line."

Nancy
raised her head, slowly and sadly, unable to believe that they
had
really come to rest at last. It had taken them more than five hours
to make the journey from
Lower Manhattan – fifteen miles. She, and the children, had been violently
sick for most of the time, the wind had been
howling,
the rain had been pouring, and the waves on the river had been
high
enough to make her feel she was in a storm at sea. The boat had leaked like a
sieve through her decks, and had been leaking through her hull as well –
Ernie had had to keep the bilge pump working all the time – and the
roughness had been accentuated by the myriad wakes carved
back and forth, as it seemed everyone who owned a
boat in New York
was trying to take it to safety at the same time. Added
to which, in the Upper Harbor, and alongside the docks on Hoboken, Weehawken,
and
on the West Street side, the big ships
had their engines going as they had been swinging and heaving at their mooring
warps; many had apparently
already left the harbor that morning, before
the full force of the storm
had actually
arrived, preferring to risk themselves at sea, where they
could use
their immense turbines at full power, to remaining trussed up like ducks for
the table, with ropes and hawsers which were already beginning to part.

Nancy
wished them joy. She only wanted to get ashore, and several times on the voyage
she had consigned her soul to God, as boats had
come
perilously close, several even colliding, with much grinding of
fenders and shouting and
swearing from irate skippers and terrified
passengers.
If Ernie thought that Yonkers was safe, that was good enough
for her.

Her sister-in-law, Marge,
obviously felt the same way. "Just let Nance
and the kids and me ashore," she begged. "You can do what you
like
after."

"In one minute,
darling," Ernie promised. "Secure that bow warp,
Bill; make it good and fast."

The pier was crowded with
boats already moored or mooring up, and
with
their crews. There were a couple of restaurants across the street with
their
awnings destroyed by the wind, but their interiors could be seen to
be packed with people, either having a late lunch
or drowning their
sorrows. The wind was powerful up here, but not half
as strong as it had been down in the harbor.

As soon as the boat was
secured alongside, Marge and Nancy grabbed the children, one by each hand, and
staggered up the pier and on to the
land.
Nancy felt like kneeling down and kissing it, even in the pouring
rain.
The two women got the four children across the street and into the warmth and
forced jollity of the bar, where there appeared to be a huge, if somewhat
hysterical, party in progress; they were welcomed as if they
were the two special guests for whom everyone had
been waiting. A
jukebox was blaring, and someone bought each of the
women a beer. The children were lifted up to sit on the bar counter and given
sodas – there was apparently no question of paying.

Relief flooded through
Nancy's system, as she turned round to look at the boat, where Bill and Ernie
were still patiently securing extra warps and springers, making sure nothing
was going to damage her.

Nothing?

"Holy Mary Mother of
God," said the Irishman standing beside her.
People crowded against them, rubbing misted breath from the glass
to see better, staring in horror at the huge wave
coming up the
river.

"Just
like a bore," said someone who had obviously seen one of the
rivers in Europe acting
like a funnel for the rising tide. "What the French call the
Mascaret."

Nancy abandoned the
children and ran outside. "Bill!" she screamed, her voice dissipating
on the wind. "Ernie! Come ashore! Hurry!"

The
men, and all the others still tending their craft, had seen what was
coming, and scrambled on
to the pier. Ernie slipped and fell, and Bill
turned
back to help him. Then the tidal bore struck. It was already
carrying,
high on its 15-foot crest, an assortment of shattered boats and
pieces of driftwood and various flotsams. Now it
smashed through the pier
and the moored boats like an axe through
pastry, sweeping them on up the river, a foaming maelstrom of destruction,
boats, animals, shore side houses… and men. The last Nancy saw of Bill and
Ernie was them clinging desperately to pieces of the destroyed pier as they
were carried
out of sight. She looked up at
the heavens to scream her agony and grief…
and found herself looking at
blue sky.

The lights in the NABS
building had flickered several times before finally going out. By then Richard,
to whom everyone left in the building had instinctively turned for leadership,
had had the emergency generator
started,
and he had also assembled all the staff in the main studios, which
had
no external windows and was by far the safest place to be; all
broadcasting had naturally ceased – if they
still had the power to put out,
they knew no one in the city still had
the power to receive. They were all suffering from at least shock. In addition
to Julian, several people had been badly hurt either by flying glass as more
and more windows had
shattered, or by
falling down stairs when caught by sudden gusts of wind
rampaging
through the building. These had been treated and sedated as
far as possible. But the building itself was a
wreck; nearly all the windows
had been
blown in or sucked out, and the resulting damage to offices was shattering;
that the roof had remained on was due not only to
the strength of its con
struction
but to the prompt closing of every possible door. Those doors were
in
fact failing, one by one, but slowly, and Richard had some hope they might just
last the storm; he knew they had to be approaching the eye.