Beautiful Wild - Anna Godbersen Page 0,29

the land, and no one said anything or looked at each other until they could see the sandy bottom only a few feet beneath the surface. Then Fitz jumped from the boat and began to pull them in.

But not until she felt the beach under her own feet did Vida believe they would be saved.

Then she felt solid land beneath her and all the sorrow and pity about what had happened surged up and overwhelmed her mind.

She felt, too, the ocean’s rocking. The movement of the water beneath the boat over their long night lost at sea followed her onto land. All that still moved within her body. She was dizzy and fell to her knees. For a moment it was all too much, and she gasped to hold back the tears. A few sprang to her eyes, but in moments she had mastered herself. The ocean still swayed within her, but she forced herself to stand and go to where the others had gathered.

“This way, that’s right!” Fitzhugh was saying. He went on saying such things, somewhat indiscriminately, as the men dragged palm fronds, sticks, and whatever they could find at the edge of the jungle that spread from the beach back into the interior of the island. Sal and others were erecting a few shelters with what they could find. “Ah, Vida!” Fitzhugh said when she approached. He grinned, flashed his strong teeth. He was still wearing his formal pants but his jacket was removed and his formerly white dress shirt was rolled to the elbows. “Feeling all right?”

She nodded. “What can I do?” she asked.

“Just stay in the shade. We can’t have you burned by the sun.”

She nodded obediently, and walked toward the shady spot where the other women and the children were huddled. But the way he’d sent her away rankled, and seemed somehow all of a piece with everything that had been between them. The flirtations that had obscured the cruel dismissals. She didn’t want to join the frightened huddle. She kept walking, along the place where the white sand met the dense vegetation, irritated with this young man she had pursued so energetically, and knowing full well that irritation was among the least appropriate feelings to have at a moment like this.

To her left stretched a wide, flat beach; to her right the unknown island, the dense greenery that was the way into the interior.

At sea there had been only two questions: survive or perish.

Now here she was, still alive, and she couldn’t seem to shut her mind to bothersome little thoughts.

For instance: If Fitzhugh was concerned about her getting sunburned, did that mean he had a romantic inclination for her after everything? And if so, should she allow herself to care?

For instance: Did Sal judge her for not helping with the building of the shelter?

For instance: Why had she worn this pastel dress? It had been the faintest of petal pinks, but now it was yellowed, stained by the sea water, muddied at the hem by the dark, wet sand she’d trod through to reach the safety of land. The strange lacy bell sleeves would snag the moment she headed into the jungle, which they would have to, sooner or later, for water and food. Why had she chosen a dress with so many laces, so many little details—how would she ever get it on and off properly without Nora? And meanwhile her hair had frizzed, had gone absolutely mad with the salt air, with the humid wind gusts—how would she manage to tame it, here, so far from any apothecary with a decent hair tonic for sale? And then she almost laughed. Here she was, on an improbable outcropping of land, safe—or safer than she had been—and she was concerned with her wardrobe.

But, just as soon as she had convinced herself not to dwell on such petty matters, she reached the top of the rocks at the edge of the beach, looked down into a little sheltered cove, and saw that there was a better color to have worn for a shipwreck.

Camilla Farrar was wearing it.

The color was aubergine (oh, eggplant, Vida said to herself, what does it matter now, just call it eggplant). The gown itself was as glamorous and somehow as fresh-looking as when Vida had seen her framed in the doorway of the map room with that lovely face, rosy and bright with the spirit of feminine combat. Even here, in a desperate and remote corner of the Earth,