Her Name Will Be Faith (36 page)

"So you're going
ahead," Julian said.

"Yes."

"Attaboy," Jayme
shouted, and kissed him.

"I
can't believe it." Marcia twisted her fingers together. "The whole
place, destroyed! Lawson… my
God! I just can't believe it."

"Well,
pull yourself together," Jo told her. "They're on the ground."
She squeezed Owen
Michael's hand. "You okay?"

"Sure,
Mom," he said. But he wasn't; there were dark shadows under
his
eyes. Partly from lack of sleep, she knew. But also partly from shock. The
family had been so secure in their ebullient togetherness. The biggest
threat
that had ever hung over them had been the possible separation of
Michael
and herself, and few of them had even been aware that it was there. How
criminally irrelevant it seemed now. But Tamsin was only
moments away.

Passengers
started streaming through the gate from the Miami flight,
greeting
friends and relatives, or hurrying straight through for the taxis.
The
reporters moved closer; Jo had no idea who had told them to be here –
probably Cal Palmer; she had felt obliged to call him and let him know
Big Mike was all right.

"There they
are!" Marcia ran forward, checked.

Meg
Robson was first off, helped by Neal. They wore obviously freshly
bought
clothes, and had no luggage. They glanced at Marcia as if she
had
been a stranger, ignored Jo and Owen Michael altogether, and
hurried for the exit.

"Say,
were you on Eleuthera?" one of the reporters called, running
behind them.

"Go away," Neal
snapped. "Leave us alone."

The
reporter hesitated, then rejoined his rivals, who were moving
forward
to block the corridor as the Donnellys came out. Jo and Owen
Michael
and Marcia were in front of them as the television cameras
started to whirr.

"Oh,
Babs," Marcia cried, taking her mother into her arms. "Oh,
Babs." Like the
Robsons, the Donnellys were in new bought clothes.

"Tamsin!"
Jo swept the little girl from the floor, hugged her and kissed
her, then held her away.
"Are you okay, darling?"

"Yes,"
Tamsin said, in a small voice. "The whole house fell down. Oh,
Mommy..." She burst
into tears.

Jo
held her close again. "You're okay now, honey. You're home.
Nothing
can hurt you here. Dad!" Still holding Tamsin, Jo kissed Big
Mike, looked into his
eyes. "Oh, Dad!" She couldn't think what to say.

He
hugged her tightly, then turned his attention to Owen Michael. Jo
looked
past him at Dale, who held Belle's arm. How incredible, she
thought,
that Dale, the family lay about, had come through the ordeal
better
than anyone, while Belle… beautiful, statuesque, strong, indomi
table,
erotic, laughing, totally indestructible Belle… she might have
been looking at Babs'
older sister.

"Hi, Jo." Dale
kissed her.

"Belle..." she
put her arms around her sister-in-law.

"They
haven't found him," Belle said. "He could still be alive, you
know.
People survive." Tears spilled from those gorgeous eyes and
dribbled down her cheeks.

"How bad was it, Mr
Donnelly?" the reporters were asking.
"Was
the island really knocked flat?"

"Do you have any idea
of the loss of life?"

"How
strong would you estimate the winds were, Mr Donnelly?"

"They've
been talking about giant waves, Mr Donnelly? How high
would you say the seas
were?"

"How'd your property
make out, Mr Donnelly?"

All the while the little group,
the last off the aircraft, had been straggling
towards the exit. Now Big Mike stopped, and turned, and faced the pack
at their heels. The TV cameras zoomed in on his
face. "Yes," he said.
"It was hell. The island was
knocked flat. My property is destroyed. The
waves
were bigger than anything I have ever seen. And yes, there was
loss of
life. Now get off my fucking back."

They reached the automobiles. Marcia took Dale and
Belle. Babs and
Tamsin and Owen Michael got
into the back of the Mercedes, Big Mike
sat in front with Jo.
"We've food at the apartment," she said. "And Cal Palmer wants
you to get in touch. He says it's urgent."

"Just drive us out to Bognor," Big Mike said.
"We want to go home.
Cal can wait until
tomorrow."

"At
the earliest," Babs agreed.

Jo hesitated, then hooted to
attract Marcia's attention, and made for
the Whitestone Bridge and the New England Thruway.
"Is there any
chance..." she
hesitated, unwilling to say his name for fear of setting Tamsin off again.

"None at all," Big Mike
said, understanding. "I guess part of the roof
or some of the furniture must've
hit him on the head. We just didn't
know.
We were so busy wrestling with Meggie..."

"Belle blames us," Babs said. "She doesn't
actually say it, but she
does."

"But…
it could've happened to any of you," Jo said.

"Sure," Big Mike said. "But it happened to
Lawson. And then..."
he sighed.

"She
wanted the men to go back and look for him, right away," Babs explained.
"But they couldn't, really. They'd have been killed too."

Jo
gained a small insight into the traumas these people must have experienced
during that dreadful night.

"Neal and Meggie blame us too," Babs said.
"For persuading them to
go down there in the
first place."

"For
heaven's sake," Jo protested. "They're adult human beings. They
vacationed with you and loved it there..."

"I know. But all that money, just washed away… Neal
hadn't yet
taken out insurance."

"And
Lawson got drowned saving their goddamned lives," Big Mike growled.

Another
fall-out from Faith, Jo thought: the end of a forty-year friendship. "How
bad is the house?" she asked. "Your house."

"There
are a couple of walls standing," Big Mike said.

"Oh,
then you can rebuild it," Owen Michael suggested.

"Rebuild
that? Shit! I am never setting foot on that goddamned island again if I live to
be two hundred."

"What
about McKinley?" Babs asked.

"He can keep the hundred grand," Big Mike said.
"So I made a
mistake."

Jo
had no idea what they were talking about.

"Where's
Michael?" Big Mike asked.

"As far as I know, he left Bermuda last night,
for Newport."

"You been in touch?"

"Yes,"
she said. "I've been in touch."

"But
isn't that storm now heading for Bermuda?" Babs asked.

"Oh, I've told him that,
twice. And got a 'silly little woman' reply."
She didn't tell them about the abuse she had also
received when she
finally got through to the
yacht and apparently dragged Michael out of
his bunk to speak with her:
the lack of interest he had shown even in
Lawson's
death, once she had told him Tamsin was safe. "He reckons
he'll be
home long before Faith can catch up with him. Anyway, they're travelling in
different directions: he's making north-west, and the storm north-east."

"Michael
will be all right," Big Mike said. "That boy knows what he's doing.
No goddamned hurricane is gonna bother him."

Jo refused an invitation for supper, although Marcia
decided to stay; presumably to tell them of her pregnancy. Jo opted to drive
the children
back to town. She wanted
Tamsin all to herself, and she wanted the little
girl to sleep in her
own bed that night. And every other night for a long time to come.

Besides, staying out at Bognor would have meant
re-living the storm,
over and over again,
entering into Belle's angry anguish, Big Mike's sense
of failure, Babs'
bewilderment that such a thing could have happened to them. Only Dale had
accepted what had happened, and was prepared to
look forward rather than back. Jo wanted Tamsin to forget about the
whole
ghastly episode just as quickly as possible.

It was drizzling, although there
was no wind, and it was past eight
when
she regained the apartment; she fed the children and put them straight to bed.
She had been tempted, as soon as she realized that she and Owen Michael were
definitely not going to Eleuthera this year, to reclaim Nana. But the dog was
booked in for another week, and with
Florence
also away she felt she had enough on her plate with just the two
children. For
that reason too she had not yet informed Ed that she was still in New York,
although obviously he must now suspect that she had
returned: according to her answer phone he had called twice that
afternoon,
and wanted her to get in touch. Well, she thought, like Cal
Palmer, he
could wait at least until tomorrow.
Richard had also called, but she knew
by
now he would be in the studio and working up his ten o'clock forecast;
she'd
call him back after that.

She
poured herself a glass of milk, fixed a plate of salad and cottage cheese, and
sat herself in front of the TV. She didn't really care what she was watching,
knew she was merely waiting for ten o'clock; and there he
was, outlining Faith's position, which had moved
only a little north of
her midday
fixing. She was taken aback when the forecast ended and the
anchorman
said, "In view of the importance we attach to the matter, and
the amount of interest the broadcast has aroused,
we are now going
to repeat Richard's
comments of earlier this evening." Richard
promptly reappeared on
screen, but wearing a different tie; this was a recording.

"There is no doubt," he was saying, "that
from her present position
Faith can do anything
and go anywhere. There is no human habitation within five hundred miles of her
center at this moment where the utmost
precautions
should not be being taken… now! That includes this city
of New York.
With winds of approximately 150 miles an hour round the center, she could do
unimaginable damage were she to move west and come ashore here. Try to envisage
that force. A man finds difficulty in
walking
against a 25-mile-an-hour breeze; Faith represents six times that
power.

"Now,
we all hope and pray that such a catastrophe never occurs, but it would be a
serious dereliction of duty on the part of the authorities, all the way up to
the Mayor, not to have a comprehensive plan for dealing
with such an emergency, should it ever happen, and not to make that
plan
known to the public. Our experiences of the past years, particularly along the
Gulf Coast and in Florida and the southeastern states, have
proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that human
lives, at the very
least, can be saved by systematic evacuation of
low-lying areas, if those evacuations are undertaken early enough. We all
understand what an immense task it would be to evacuate Manhattan, Staten
Island, Long
Island, and Atlantic City, just
for examples, but it must be understood
too that any land below 30 feet above sea level could be at risk in the
event
of a major hurricane making a landfall in this vicinity, and even areas as high
as 50 feet could be seriously affected in the event of a
Category Five storm. And there is no use waiting
for the hurricane to arrive before ordering such an evacuation. The greater the
number of
people to be warned and moved, the earlier it should happen.
The plans for such an evacuation, street by street, with each street knowing
the exact route to take, should not only be ready and known, but should be
up-dated annually."