Beautiful Wild - Anna Godbersen Page 0,39
wild, vain, and selfish. If one squinted, they might be two civilized people strolling in a particularly ill-kept corner of the Golden Gate Park.
“Yes, me.”
“Miss Hazzard, you are very grand, but you could not sink a ship like the Princess of the Pacific all by yourself. Only nature could do that.”
“I think I like it better when you laugh at me.”
“Well, there’s plenty of reason to do that.”
“Oh really?”
“No. Not really. Actually there are very few reasons to laugh at you.”
“Because I’m so awful, you mean? Having risked the lives of my dearest ones for a big lie like the love of Fitzhugh Farrar.” Sal was silent a moment. She hated the silence, and blathered on: “Oh, don’t be like that. We both knew that’s what I was up to.”
They had come through the thickest bit of jungle by then and could see the beach through the thinning trees. Beyond that: the endless marriage of sea and sky.
“Don’t worry. It doesn’t help. I can’t promise you that everything is all right. But Fitzhugh and I have been all over the world, down rivers and canyons where no man had ever been, with fewer resources than we have now, thirsty, hungry, doomed. We always find a way.”
“Oh? What are you going to do? Build a boat that will take you to California?”
“No. We only need to get as far as Hawaii.”
She wasn’t sure why, but there was something about hearing this plan from Fitzhugh’s inscrutable servant that made it more believable than if Fitz had said it in his own confident and beautifully articulated way.
“Meanwhile,” he went on, “we will build better shelter, and get better food. This island has resources to sustain us forever if need be.”
Forever. Her mouth went dry. She had not thought of that. She had never thought she’d do any one thing for very long at all.
They passed out of the shelter of the palms. The people on the beach glanced at them. Flora Flynn was sitting on the beach, arms wrapped around her legs and her head rested on her knees. A little down the way Jack, who had been a deckhand aboard the Princess and whose face was fuzzed with the beard he could not grow, and Henry Dries Stahl, who had been introduced to Vida as an inventor, were trying—not very successfully—to build a shack at the edge of the trees. It kept slanting, threatening to fall down. The notion of forever with these people made Vida’s stomach drop in despair. She gave Sal a formal little nod and said, “I do wish you luck in all your endeavors.”
He bowed in return. Although she saw the laughter in his eyes, his reply was as formal as her own had been. “Thank you, Miss Hazzard.”
They were about to part. But quickly, before it could seem they had been talking too long, she bent her head and asked, “Sal. Tell me the truth. Do I . . . smell?”
His dark eyes met hers in surprise. “You will never get the sea out of that dress.”
“Oh, damn it all.” She sighed and stepped away from him.
“But I don’t mind it,” he murmured. Or that’s what she thought he said. As she made her way toward the huddle of ladies braiding their palm ropes, she glanced back once and saw that his dark eyes were still upon her.
Thirteen
In the days that followed Vida’s visit to the little pool, the girl she had been in the first days after the wreck shrank and disappeared from view. Sal’s reassurances that they would be all right here began to seem less empty. Had she really bawled in public, and run off through the jungle like a madwoman because she was afraid the famous Fitzhugh Farrar might smell her? It was true that until now her fortitude had been adapted to a very different milieu. But she found that she had fortitude still, that she was capable of surviving not only the wilds of a ballroom but also of an island far, far away.
What Sal had said was true. They had plenty right here. In a matter of days their circumstances were transformed. Vida acknowledged, though only begrudgingly, that this was largely Fitzhugh’s leadership. He kept the survivors busy from first light till last with a multitude of tasks, and though Vida initially dismissed the smallness of their various assignments (she had privately believed he was keeping them occupied so they wouldn’t go mad), she marveled at what their steady output