Десмонд Бэгли - Wyatt's Hurricane

‘My work is here, Julie. What I do here helps to save lives all over the Caribbean and in America, and this is the best place to do it. I can’t do anything about Serrurier; if I tried I’d be killed, gaoled or deported and that would do no one any good. So, like Hansen and everyone else, I stick close to the Base and concentrate on my own job.’

He paused to negotiate a bad bend. ‘Not that I like it, of course.’

‘So you wouldn’t consider moving out — say, to a research job in the States?’

‘I’m doing my best work here,’ said Wyatt. ‘Besides, I’m a West Indian — this is my home, poor as it is.’

He drove for several miles and at last pulled off the road on to the verge. ‘Remember this?’

‘I couldn’t forget it,’ she said, and left the car to look at the panorama spread before her. In the distance was the sea, a gleaming plate of beaten silver. Immediately below were the winding loops of the dusty road they had just ascended and between the road and the sea was the magnificent Negrito Valley leading down to Santego Bay with Cap Sarrat on the far side and St Pierre, a miniature city, nestling in the curve of the bay.

Wyatt did not look at the view — he found Julie a more satisfying sight as she stood on the edge of the precipitous drop with the trade wind blowing her skirt and moulding the dress to her body. She pointed across the valley to where the sun reflected from falling water. ‘What’s that?’

‘La Cascade de l’Argent — it’s on the P’tit Negrito.’ He walked across and joined her. ‘The P’tit Negrito joins the Gran’ Negrito down in the valley. You can’t see the confluence from here.’

She took a deep breath. ‘It’s one of the most wonderful sights I’ve ever seen. I wondered if you’d show it to me again.’

‘Always willing to oblige,’ he said. ‘Is this why you came back to San Fernandez?’

She laughed uncertainly. ‘One of the reasons.’

He nodded. ‘It’s a good reason. I hope the others are as good.’

Her voice was muffled because she had dropped her head. ‘I hope so, too.’

‘Aren’t you sure?’

She lifted her head and looked him straight in the eye. ‘No, Dave, I’m not sure. I’m not sure at all.’

He put his hands on her shoulders and drew her to him. ‘A pity,’ he said, and kissed her. She came, unresisting, into his arms and her lips parted under his. He felt her arms go about him closer, until at last she broke away.

‘I don’t know about that,’ she said. ‘I’m still not sure — but I’m not sure about being not sure.’

He said, ‘How would you like to live here — on San Fernandez?’ Julie looked at him warily. ‘Is that a proposition?’

‘I suppose you could call it a proposal,’ Wyatt said, rubbing the side of his jaw. ‘I couldn’t go on living at the Base, not with you giving up the exotic life of an air hostess, so we’d have to find a house. How would you like to live somewhere up here?’

‘Oh, Dave, I’d like that very much,’ she cried, and they were both incoherent for a considerable time.

After a while Wyatt said, ‘I don’t understand why you were so standoffish; you clung on to Causton like a blood brother last night.’

‘Damn you, Dave Wyatt,’ Julie retorted. ‘I was scared. I was chasing a man and women aren’t supposed to do that. I got cold feet at the last minute and was frightened of making a fool of myself.’

‘So you did come here to see me?’

She ruffled his hair. ‘You don’t see much in people, do you, Dave? You’re so wrapped up in your hurricanes and formulas. Of course I came to see you.’ She picked up his hand and examined the fingers one by one. ‘I’ve been out with lots of guys and sometimes I’ve wondered if this time it was the one — women do think that way, you know. And every time you got in the way of my thinking, so I knew I had to come back to straighten it out. I had to have you in my heart altogether or I had to get you out of my system completely — if I could. And you kept writing those deadpan letters of yours which made me want to scream.’

He grinned. ‘I was never very good at writing passion. But I see I’ve been properly caught by a designing woman, so let’s celebrate.’ He walked over to the car. ‘I filled a Thermos with your favourite tipple — Planter’s Punch. I departed from the strict formula in the interests of sobriety and the time of day — this has less rum and more lime. It’s quite refreshing.’

They sat overlooking the Negrito and sampled the punch. Julie said, ‘I don’t know much about you, Dave. You said last night that you were born in St. Kitts — where’s that?’

Wyatt waved. ‘An island over to the south-east. It’s really St Christopher, but it’s been called St. Kitts for the last four hundred years. Christophe, the Black Emperor of Haiti, took his name from St. Kitts — he was a runaway slave. It’s quite a place.’

‘Has your family always lived there?’

‘We weren’t aborigines, you know, but there have been Wyatts on St. Kitts since the early sixteen hundreds. They were planters, fishermen — sometimes pirates, so I’m told — a motley crowd.’ He sipped the punch. ‘I’m the last Wyatt of St. Kitts.’

‘That’s a shame. What happened?’

‘A hurricane in the middle of the last century nearly did for the island. Three-quarters of the Wyatts were killed; in fact, three-quarters of the population were wiped out. Then came the period of depression in the Caribbean — competition from Brazilian coffee, East African sugar and so on, and the few Wyatts that were left moved out. My parents hung on until just after I was born, then they moved down to Grenada where I grew up.’

‘Where’s Grenada?’

‘South along the chain of islands, north of Trinidad. Just north of Grenada are the Grenadines, a string of little islands which are as close to a tropical paradise as you’ll find in the Caribbean. I’ll take you down there some day. We lived on one of those until I was ten. Then I went to England.’

‘Your parents sent you to school there, then?’

He shook his head. ‘No, they were killed. There was another hurricane. I went to live with an aunt in England; she brought me up and saw to my schooling.’

Julie said gently, ‘Is that why you hate hurricanes?’

‘I suppose it is. We’ve got to get down to controlling the damn’ things some time, and I thought I’d do my bit. We can’t do much yet beyond organizing early warning systems and so on, but the time will come when we’ll be able to stop a hurricane in its tracks, powerful though it is. There’s quite a bit of work being done on that.’ He smiled at her. ‘Now you know all about David Wyatt.’

‘Not all, but there’s plenty of time for the rest,’ she said contentedly.

‘What about your life story?’

‘That will have to wait, too,’ she said, pushing away his questing hand and jumping up. ‘What about that swim you promised?’

They got into the car and Julie stared up at the viridian-green hills of the Massif des Saints. Wyatt said, ‘That’s bad country — infertile, pathless, disease-ridden. It’s where Favel held out until he was killed. An army could get lost up there — in fact, several have.’

‘Oh! When was this?’

‘The first time was when Bonaparte tried to crush the Slave Revolt. The main effort was in Haiti, of course, but as a side-issue Le Clerc sent a regiment to San Fernandez to stifle the slave rebellion here. The regiment landed without difficulty and marched inland with no great opposition. Then it marched up there — and never came out.’

‘What happened to it?’

Wyatt shrugged. ‘Ambushes — snipers — fever — exhaustion. White men couldn’t live up there, but the blacks could. But it swallowed another army — a black one this time — not very long ago. Serrurier tried to bring Favel to open battle by sending in three battalions of the army. They never came out, either; they were on Favel’s home ground.’