Fortune's rocks_ a novel - Anita Shreve [29]
“Fascinating,” Catherine says.
The rain starts then, a heavy rain that slants under the eaves and beats against the panes of glass in the windows, as if it would be let in.
Olympia walks upstairs to her room and lies down on the bed in a state for which she has had no preparation and of which she cannot speak — not even to Lisette, who might have some practical advice. For how can Olympia admit to any person that she harbors such extraordinary and inappropriate feelings for a man she hardly knows? A man nearly three times her age? A man who seems to be happily married to a woman Olympia much admires?
After a time, she sits up in the bed and reaches for the volume that is still on her night table. She begins to read Haskell’s book anew. She reads until her eyes blur and her senses dull and she can contemplate with equanimity her preparations for bed.
Later she will learn that Haskell did not go to the clinic that night, but rather walked with troubled thoughts along the beach until he was surprised by the sudden storm, which almost immediately drenched him and caused him to have to run back to the house for shelter.
• • •
Just before daybreak, Olympia is awakened by a hoarse cry. For a few moments, she thinks it part of another dream she cannot quite escape, until she realizes that the shouting comes from below her bedroom window. As she climbs out of bed, the hollering grows louder, and she can hear now that it involves several men.
Because the air has become chillier, she reaches for the shawl on the chair. When she looks out her window, she sees that all along the beach of Fortune’s Rocks, bonfires have been lit and are now blazing. She does not at first understand the meaning of these fires until she notices the men in lifesaving dress and cork belts standing by the fire nearest to the cottage. Other men, among them Rufus Philbrick and her father and John Haskell, hover in their dressing gowns at the perimeter of this group. Since everyone is gesturing toward the sea, Olympia looks out to discover what it is that so excites them; and she is startled to see a large dismasted barque foundering in the white foam of the breakers not three hundred feet from shore. The bow of the vessel has shattered and has a ragged and splintered appearance. As she watches, the rudderless ship rises and rolls and hits the rocks that have been the site of not a few shipwrecks.
The doors of the Ely station, built only the year before, are flung open. A half dozen men in oilskins and crotch-high waders begin to maneuver to the water’s boisterous edge the long, slim lifesaving boat that is kept always ready for such occasions. By now, the operation has drawn a crowd, and Olympia is compelled to throw her shawl over her shoulders and make her own way down to the beach.
She stands in the cold and darkness, just beyond the revealing light of the bonfires, the gale already unraveling her patient plaiting of the night before. The wind blows sparks from the fires and threatens to extinguish the signal lights from the red-globed lanterns. In the foaming currents, Olympia can see that the disabled vessel has pitched to an unnatural angle and that men and also women are abandoning her decks for the rigging.
She feels a hand on her arm and, startled, turns. “Olympia,” Catherine Haskell says, unfolding a cloak and laying it across Olympia’s shoulders. “I saw you from the porch. You should not be out here.”
Olympia accepts the gift of the cloak by drawing it more tightly around her. “What has happened?” she asks Catherine.
“Oh my dear, it is so dreadful. Such a horror. I only hope the lifesavers can get to them.”
“Who are they?” Olympia asks.
“According to Rufus, it is an English ship out of Liverpool. They were meant to put in at Gloucester, but the storm has blown them off course.”
The gale makes conversation difficult. Catherine’s hair blows all about her face, and the skirts of Olympia’s nightdress snap at her shins.