The Wind and the Spray (15 page)

“Do you?” she asked a little breathlessly.

He said, “I don’t cheat, either. Now let’s get going, mate, and find that tree.”

Nor did not uproot a young one, he cut off a large and suitable branch of an established fellow, then hitched it over his big shoulders.

“Isn’t it very heavy?”

“I have it balanced. You walk ahead and pick a clear path back. It has a wide beam.”

When they approached the house, they concealed the branch in a small gully. Decorating, Laurel declared, should be done when the children were in bed.

A lot of the Islanders’ families arrived the next day. At once they made the Island an entirely different place. Laurel had to change her mind after all about the tree.

A tree might be kept secret in some corners, but never on an island like this.

The children swarmed everywhere like little ants. In five minutes they had discovered the Norfolk branch and begun to decorate it in their own fashion.

Laurel hastily took over, showing them how to silver cones, make lanterns of coloured paper, bells out of old chocolate foil.

“I’m glad you weren’t a rich child,” commended Nor, looking at the results. “Where would we be now if we had to depend on baubles from a shop?”

By the time all the Island presents were hung, the tree was weighted almost to the ground. Mr. Fuccilli had been persuaded to be Santa Claus, and Louisa had put him into her red flannel dressing gown and teased rope for his beard.

The Fuccilli children looked knowing, but, well primed, did not breathe a word. Only once did one of them make a wrong step. When Maria was handed a doll’s pram she had long coveted and which had been one of the few things her mother had grabbed before the fire ate everything up, she breathed ecstatically, “Oh, ta, Pop!”

A number of the whalemen had had trinkets made of the pearls they had raised, formed into brooches and bedded in cottonwool and a small box, and they handed them proudly to their wives.

Laurel found herself thinking of Nor’s pearl, and she waited eagerly. Had Nor, like these men, had it polished and put into a brooch and packed into a little box?

Santa Claus handed a package to Laurel. She opened it eagerly. It was a lovely cameo she had seen Louisa Fuccilli often fasten on her dress.

“You shouldn’t give me this,” she protested. “I’ve seen you look at it and you love it.”

“It is since I love it I give it to you, of course,” the Italian said.

The tree was emptied. Laurel was so disappointed she could scarcely conceal her feelings. She evaded Nor during the party that followed, she evaded him at the sing-song afterwards that finished up with tired parents calling Happy Christmas to each other as they carried sleepy children home to bed.

Laurel walked behind the Fuccillis who bore one child apiece. She carried the baby Antonio herself and Nor carried small Ruggiero. Maria stumbled sleepily on her own unsteady feet.

As they neared the house, Nor took the baby from Laurel and went in and deposited it and his own burden on the sofa. Then before Laurel could follow him in, he was out again and leading her up the hill away from the house.

She resisted sulkily, but he kept on impelling her, taking no notice of her pouts.

“So you expected a gift,” he said sarcastically when they had reached the top of the slope.

“The other women received gifts.”

“Yes—other women. But their position is different from yours.”

“It’s a position of your own making,” she flung.

“And your fulfilling,” he came back. He paused.

“I’m sorry I didn’t have a brooch made for you, put in cottonwool
...
Instead I had this.”

He had opened a box and she looked down. The pearl, the pearl of milk and flame and fire, was beautifully set into a ring. She cried out in pleasure. Instinctively her hand went out to it.

He snapped the box closed and slipped it back in his pocket.

“I had that done for selling purposes,” he said coolly. “It sets it off better in a ring.”

There was a little silence.

“Why did you bring me up here?” she demanded at last.

“To give you a present after all. At least I think you’ll consider it a present.” He paused. “A present between mates,” he vouchsafed.

“Yes?”

“The school. We’re getting it.”

Gone was her disappointment, her rancour.

“Oh, Nor, that’s really wonderful. When?”

“Soon as the holidays are over. The building is going up almost at once. The Educational Department is supplying material, we’ll supply labour. Later, between classes, the building can be used for church, meetings, festivities, other things. We’re moving, mate, we’re moving at last.”

He had put his hand in his pocket, he had found the box. He half withdrew it. He glanced at her. Then he put it back.

She had seen the movements, fo
ll
owed each one, and involuntarily she stiffened.

“Nice for you, Nor,” she said correctly, “to move forward at last.”

He took a step forward himself. His hands went heavily down on her shoulders. “Laurel—” he said a little hoarsely, “Laurel—”
...
and suddenly in that moment she knew she was not the child he had called her
...
not ever any more.

From down the slope Mama Fuccilli cried “Caffe,” remembered and corrected in English, “Coffee,” and Laurel turned at once.

What was it Nor had been going to say? If she was no longer and no more the child, then what was she?

Laurel stood a moment, confused. She only knew that she was not enough the woman yet to look back honestly and directly at this man and demand of him, “Yes, Nor?”

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

HUMPBACK, because of the
Clytie’s
week of inactivity, was still behind in its supply of whales
...
More whalemen were needed to be relieved from station work so that the Island rebuilding could go ahead
...
From Canberra had come the announcement that an extra quota of whales had been allotted. There was only one answer to it all, Nor told Laurel—extra hands from the coast.

Laurel felt sorry about the extra whale quota and said so
.
“It’s not permitted idly,” Nor informed her. “A change in quota is only ever made after long reference with overseas quotas. Whalemen all over the world are no fools. To deplete a supply would be to cut off their livelihood.”

“Luke once told me that when the total number of whales is reduced by half, the chase would be too expensive to continue.”

“That’s true. That’s why you need fear no wholesale slaughter, Laurel.”

But Laurel still felt sorry for whales.

“How much more is the quota?” she asked.

“One hundred more,” he answered, “we are a comparatively small station. Norfolk Island has one hundred and fifty more, and Camavon in Western Australia has a thousand. The report allotting us the new quota also says that whaling stocks have stood up well, so I don’t think the whale is a disappearing species.” He smiled at her, that peculiarly sweet smile Nor could flash on occasion.

“You like them too,” she said.

He shrugged. “They’re worthy,” he told her as once before. “When a big fellow gets away, I could clap my hands. And I’m not the only one of us, Laurel, by far.”

She asked him about the extra hands from the mainland
...
could they—at least
he
—afford them? Almost she had left it in the plural as he always did. She knew he had noticed, and noticed, too, her swift correction. He looked at her sidewise, one salt-bleached brow raised. “Can you afford it, Nor?” she said at once.

“No. Can any firm ever afford expansion in actual cash? In enhanced stability, yes. On the strength, then, of the extra hands and the extra quota thus the enhanced stability, I’ll be good for an extra loan. We’ll manage, mate.”

Again the plural
...
again the future
...
again the warm feeling Laurel always knew at such times.

“So,” said Nor, “you can expect an influx at any moment.”

“Where will they live?”

“We’ll have a canvas town immediately, but I expect the new houses to go up fairly promptly. There’ll be quite a junior population as well, Laurel, and that’s what I wanted to discuss with you.”

She looked enquiringly at him and he told her how in the next six weeks every hand on the island would need to work.

“The women?”

“The women too. It’s amazing just how much in building a woman can do. Will
want
to do. A home to a woman is like a child. Even if you tried you couldn’t keep her away from it. She’ll be there with her cup of tea, her advice, even her pot of paint and her brush.”

Laurel considered all that, and decided that were it her house going up she would be on the scene too.

“What is your problem, Nor?”

“The kids. Kids during an all-out effort to get established undoubtedly will prove nuisances. You know how they discovered our Christmas tree in five minutes, so just imagine how they’ll be into everything now. Climbing the scaffolding,” prophesied Nor gloomily, “making Red Indians of themselves with war-paint.”

“I presume you want me to take them off the Islanders’ hands,” suggested Laurel.

“I want you more or less to organize them until school begins,” said Nor. He looked anxiously at her.

“Of course I shall,” promised Laurel. “Though I doubt if they’ll like it, they’ll think it smacks a little of school during the holidays.”

“If they object there’ll be real smacks.”

“Oh, no, there won’t, I won’t have any child maltreated.”

“No child is going to be maltreated, it’s simply going to be justifiably, deservedly and thoroughly walloped if it doesn’t fall in with the request. There’s no time just now for individualism. Fair enough, mate?”

“Not fai
r
at all,” she came back promptly. “That’s not my idea at all.”

“Strange,” he commented succinctly, “when once you told me that no one’s so special that he can’t be touched.”

“I didn’t mean that sort of touching,” she defended quickly
...
but she was touched sharply herself by the knowledge that he could remember things she had said.

He was looking at her speculatively and grinning. “We’ll ask Nino,” he decreed.

The Italian father, referred to, also grinned.

“When bambinos are naughty, what is done? As is done all over the world, we are all agreed on the same punishment and the same place. It is the one thing that is international, I think.”

“You see?” Nor grimaced again to Laurel.

“I sti
l
l don’t concur,” Laurel returned.

She hoped very much that all the children would be cooperative; there was something decisive about Nor that made her think he really had meant those words.

The next day she found him cutting a stick.

“What is that for?” she demanded.

“My sweet Laurel,” he drawled back, “I’m not wasting my valuable time cutting a fairy wand. I’ve spoken to the mothers and they’re all for leaving their children to you for a few weeks. I want to get this thing well organized before any new contingent of kids arrives. I want the fresh youngsters to see the old ones established, it will be half the fight. However, one small boy, name Jeff Blade, is protesting vociferously. He even mounted a log to address the rest of the gang. Told them it was unconstitutional
...
unfair
...
that we were committing a breach of the Education Act by starting before the holidays were over
...
inciting them not to turn up.”

Nor laughed, and there was a tinge of admiration in the laughter.

“I’ve no doubt that in Jeff’s bare feet I would have done the same thing,” he admitted, “but that doesn’t help me, his mother, the Island, any of us. So I’ve told him what to expect.” He kept calmly on cutting the stick.

Laurel looked at Nor aghast. “What did you tell him to expect?”

“A wallop,” Nor assured. “Just privately I’m of the opinion that Jeff is a bit bored with doing nothing, that he would like to step down and surrender, but he has made a stand and must keep to it. In this way”
—
Nor brandished the whacking stick
—
“he’ll be able to do that and with no loss of face. He’ll still be the leader, though defeated, of a Cause. Quite a hero, in fact.”

“I don’t believe,” said Laurel coldly, “in physical punishment.”

“Any alternative?”

“There are lots of alternatives to child cruelty.”

“Yes, and I can
think
of several right now,” said Nor, exasperated. “Keep out of this, young Laurel, do you
hear?”

The following morning, Fate overtook Master Jeff Blade.

Jeff was on his log again, inciting the others not to attend the holiday school, when Nor strode up the slope with the stick. Jeff saw him coming, undoubtedly with a secret gladness in his heart. Being a bright youngster he had long wearied of idle amusement; now there would be a few minutes of pain, then hours, days, even weeks of pleasant occupation. And all this with no loss of face, with no lesser degree of respect from his fellow men.

As Nor strode up, Laurel flew behind him. Nor had planned three swishes through the air near Jeff’s legs, but the air, and Jeff, received none. Laurel did instead. She jumped sharply, bit her lip with pain and humiliation, then went back to the house.

For once Mama Fuccilli was unsympathetic.

“It had to be done,” Louisa said philosophically and with the wisdom of a mother. “Could you not see that? One naughty boy had to be made what-you-say?”

“An example, only
I
got it, Louisa, not Jeff.”

“Then one naughty girl,” laughed the Italian. “Where does it hurt?”

Laurel said bitterly, “The international place.”

Nor came down soon after and called, “Right you are, teacher, they’re all yours.”

“I don’t think I’ll go.”

“Not sulking, are you? You brought it on yourself. I told you not to interfere. I was only going to brandish the thing about.”

“You did.”

“Yes, I’m sorry about that.” He grinned hatefully in a manner that indicated he was receiving more amusement over the episode than sorrow.

“Probably you could do with it,” he observed.

When she did not reply, he shrugged across to Louisa.

“I have a full day ahead. I’m going out
in
the
Clytie
this morning, this afternoon I’m lending a hand on the building.” He paused. “The kids are waiting,” he said, and strode out.

“They can wait,” Laurel called to his back.

But of course they didn’t wait.

Presently she went up, and soon the hill above the house resounded with children’s voices, guided this time, not wildly shrilling, laughing in organized games, rising in sing-songs, in little plays Laurel thought out, in the hundred and one occupied things children like to do.

From the
Clytie
putting out of the bay that morning, Nor saw Laurel’s sovereign-bright head among the brown and black and tow ones. Sitting on a new roof that afternoon, he saw her head between the distant leaves; she was showing the little girls some childish stitchery.

The
Clytie
had not stopped in the morning; it could not, it was under way, but Nor’s hammer did stop that afternoon. It stopped a long while while Nor gazed.

The new children knew nothing about whales. The others knew a little because their fathers were whalemen.

Laurel suggested to Nor that he tell them all a few things, and he agreed it was a good idea.

He had an appreciative audience. There is something interesting about a whale, Laurel decided, remembering how she had found it all instantly interesting herself.

Nor told his intrigued listeners how whaling, years ago, had been done in sailing brigs with rowing boats ready to chase. Lots of vessels were lost at sea, he said.

“Wasn’t there radio to call S.
O.
S.?”

“There was no radio then.”

“The English started whaling in these seas.” Nor bowed slightly to Laurel. “They taught it to the Pitcairners of Pitcairn Island, they taught the ancient art of chasing, catching, boiling, extracting. Soon other stations became established as well. Humpback was one.”

“Why was the Isla
n
d called that?” enquired a little voice.

“Because it has two mountains on it like a camel’s hump, silly,” said another scornful voice.

“Yes, it has,” admitted Nor, “Dee and Dum, but Humpback was called after a whale. There are lots of different whales—finback, sperm, white, bottle-nose, the blue which is the world’s largest, and the humpback, after which this island was called. There are bad whales too, whales we don’t like, they are grampus or killer whales.”

“Do whales eat you?”

“Nothing could be further from a whale’s mind. Whales like crabs, lobsters, cuttlefish, marine growth, not little girls and boys.”

“Have whales hoses in their noses, because water spouts out?”

“They have blow-holes, and when a whale surfaces he spouts the warm air from his lungs and it just
looks
like a jet of water.”

When Nor finished, he was surrounded by a ring of children still firing questions at him.

“Do little whales have to be taught to swim?”

“I believe they might need to be shown; mother seals show their children.”

“Are boys and girls tougher than lobsters?”

Nor had to consider that one.

While he considered the child reminded him, “You said whales ate lobsters.”

“They swallow them.”

“Without chewing!”

“Yes, that’s the way whales are made, no chewing.”

A little girl said adultly, “When I was a child I was always told to chew my food.”

Nor escaped at last, wiped his brow, and said, “Phew!” After a while he grinned, “They’re all yours again, Mrs. Larsen—thank heaven.”

“You did well, Mr. Larsen, I think you’ve started something.”

“I hope I haven’t started too much. I don’t want the kids protesting to their dads not to catch any more whales.”

“Gentleness for living things can never be an error,” said Laurel.

“I hope so,” grinned Nor.

Two episodes that afternoon helped to support the cause of the whale. The first was a report from Luke that a mother whale had given birth to twins in the next cove.

“It’s
generally only one,” Luke smiled delightedly, “but this cow has two young calves. There they are, the three of them, in the shallow waters, playing around like mother and kids, it’s a real pretty sight.”

Of course Laurel went at once, the children with her, to see.

It w
as
a pretty sight. The mother whale, a glossy blue, almost visibly preened herself, and the little babies were delicate fairies of only many tons each. The mother rolled, dived, surfaced as though showing them how to do it, but never went far from her children’s side. She even came up and blew, much to Laurel’s and the children’s hilarious joy.

“How long will she stop here?” they asked.

Laurel looked to Luke.

“A few weeks, then she’ll push off after the plankton,” he told her.

“What’s plankton?”

“You, if you were a sea plant or a sea thing,” Luke
grinned.

That afternoon just beyond the jetty something else exciting
happened.
A
whale surfaced, but hardly had the bay resounded with the look-out man’s “HVAL-BLAST!” than grampus whales, killer whales as they called them here, attacked.

Laurel saw it all clearly. She saw the dolphin-black and white killers approaching in a shoal, each one over twenty feet.

She saw the bewildered whale flounder and roll over, thresh
and
dive, surface and submerge again. The last time there was a patch of red on the water. She cried out anxiously.

“Hold on,” soothed Luke. “Nor will drive them off.”

Nor was already close on them. He was in the new
Windward.
It was faster than the
Leeward,
and the
Clytie
was too big for a job that needed close manoeuvres like this.