Vida was alone. She did not want to be alone, but nor did she want to be with any of the people she’d washed up with. She had no choice but to stand apart and contemplate the vast unknown that spread out before her, on and on to the very limits of her vision.
Eleven
Vida blinked into the white sun of high noon, trying to think what day it was. She was relatively certain this was her third day of residence on the island. Which would have meant it was a Thursday. But it might have been the second—things did all run together.
And she wasn’t even all that sure that they had sunk on a Tuesday.
What was a Tuesday, anyway?
She was very hungry, and this further confused things. And then there was the monotony. She had been braiding together the dried ribs of palm fronds, which was what Fitz had asked all the ladies to do, and it was the sort of task that dulled the mind to nothing.
In San Francisco, she had been the celebrated habitué of what in retrospect were only a handful of well-appointed rooms. Yet, when taken together, those rooms—elaborately decorated and filled with the sort of person who practiced the art of charm and loved to talk and talk—had seemed vast. On this island she could see, from first light to last, that the world was much bigger than she had known.
It was rather horrible how it went on and on.
For Vida was afraid of what lay beyond those first clusters of trees at the top of the beach, how the jungle thickened and cried out with its mysterious, indescribable sounds. She could only say that the sounds the island made at night chilled her, although the atmosphere itself was mostly warm. She was afraid of the ocean that crept up and down the wide crescent of the beach twice a day. So the overall effect was that her life had shrunk down like a puddle in the sun.
There were only these other survivors, and they were as scared as she was. They huddled together under the makeshift shelters, these little huts made of fallen palm leaves, the debris of the wreck, tablecloths, and other items that had washed up in the wake of the storm. They did not speak much, because when they spoke they would often accidentally talk of what had happened, and the memory of what had befallen them and those who had perished in the disaster worsened their misery. Vida especially did not like to think of the time before this, which led her to thoughts of her parents, and how they fretted over her. How they had gone on this fool’s errand to protect her reputation, neglecting the fact that she had probably already ruined it. Maybe she had been born ruined.
“A word to the wise.” A voice interrupted her thoughts.
“Yes?” She glanced up wearily at that odd phrase, which had made perfect sense in her old life, but sounded curious and all wrong here.
“My dear, don’t take this the wrong way,” Dame Edna said as she sank down out of the sun and became visible to Vida. She was wearing what had once been an emerald-colored evening gown and a bonnet that she must have constructed for herself out of a bent palm leaf wrapped with a piece of green silk that (Vida presumed) had been repurposed from some part of her undergarments. “You’re beginning to smell.”
“Oh.” Vida instinctively lengthened her neck and did a trick she had learned in ballrooms, which was to keep her expression very placid and relax the focus of her eyes so that she could take in who was close by and within earshot.
“Don’t worry, I’m not trying to humiliate you, dear child. Nobody can hear.”
It was true—they all sat far apart, as though to discourage small talk. But still. The blood surged to Vida’s face. She felt it was of the utmost importance to defend herself. She parried with: “What does such vanity matter now?”
The gentle smile with which Dame Edna returned this comment was even worse than a true rebuttal.
Of course Vida still cared how she was perceived. It was only that she thought she had been keeping up appearances. She had plaited her hair and wound it at the back of her head, and she had gone with the other women to the cove to bathe in the ocean yesterday, and then Miss Flynn’s maid had helped her put her dress back