Wyatt’s Hurricane / Bahama Crisis

‘I don’t know if I really like Causton, after all,’ said Julie pensively. ‘Newspaper reporters remind me of vultures, somehow.’

‘I have a fellow feeling for him,’ said Wyatt. ‘He makes a living out of disaster – so do I.’

She was shocked. ‘It’s not the same at all. At least you are trying to minimize disaster.’

‘So is he, according to his lights. I’ve read some of his stuff and it’s very good; full of compassion at the damn’ silliness of the human race. I think he was truly sorry to find out he was right about the situation here – if he is right, of course. I hope to God he isn’t.’

She made an impatient movement with her shoulders. ‘Let’s forget about him, shall we? Let’s forget about him and Serrurier and – what’s-his-name – Favel.’

He slowed to avoid a wandering bullock cart loaded with rocks and jerked his head back at the armed soldier by the road. ‘It’s not so easy to forget Serrurier with that sort of thing going on.’

Julie looked back. ‘What is it?’

‘The corvé – forced labour on the roads. All the peasants must do it. It’s a hangover from pre-revolutionary France which Serrurier makes pay most handsomely. It has never stopped on San Fernandez.’ He nodded to the side of the road. ‘It’s the same with these plantations; they were once owned by foreign companies – American and French mostly. Serrurier nationalized the lot by expropriation when he came to power. He runs them as his own private preserve with convict labour – and it doesn’t take much to become a convict on this island, so he’s never short of workers. They’re becoming run down now.’

She said in a low voice, ‘How can you bear to live here – in the middle of all this unhappiness?’

‘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.’

Julie looked up at the sun-soaked hills and shivered. ‘The more I hear of the history of San Fernandez, the more it terrifies me.’

Wyatt said, ‘We West Indians laugh when you Americans and the Europeans think the Antilles are a tropical paradise. Why do you suppose New York is flooded with Puerto Ricans and London with Jamaicans? They are the true centres of paradise today. The Caribbean is rotten with poverty and strife and not only San Fernandez, although it’s just about as bad here as it can get.’ He broke off and laughed embarrassedly. ‘I was forgetting you said you would come here to live – I’m not giving the place much of a build-up, am I?’ He was silent for a few minutes, then said thoughtfully, ‘What you said about doing research in the States makes sense, after all.’

‘No, Dave,’ said Julie quietly. ‘I wouldn’t do that to you. I wouldn’t begin our lives together by breaking up your job – it wouldn’t be any good for either of us. We’ll make our home here in San Fernandez and we’ll be very happy.’ She smiled. ‘And how long do I have to wait before I have my swim?’

Wyatt started the car and drove off again. The country changed as they went higher to go over the shoulder of the mountains, plantations giving way to thick tangled green scrub broken only by an occasional clearing occupied by a ramshackle hut. Once a long snake slithered through the dust in front of the slowly moving car and Julie gave a sharp cry of disgust.

‘This is a faint shadow of what it’s like up in the mountains,’ observed Wyatt. ‘But there are no roads up there.’

Suddenly he pulled the car to a halt and stared at a hut by the side of the road. Julie also looked at it but could see nothing unusual – it was merely another of the windowless shacks made of rammed earth and with a roughly thatched roof. Near the hut a man was pounding a stake into the hard ground.

Wyatt said, ‘Excuse me, Julie – I’d like to talk to that man.’

He got out of the car and walked over to the hut to look at the roof. It was covered by a network of cords made from the local sisal. From the net hung longer cords, three of which were attached to stakes driven into the ground. He went round the hut twice, then looked thoughtfully at the man who had not ceased his slow pounding with the big hammer. Formulating his phrases carefully in the barbarous French these people used, he said, ‘Man, what are you doing?’

The man looked up, his black face shiny with sweat. He was old, but how old Wyatt could not tell – it was difficult with these people. He looked to be about seventy years of age, but was probably about fifty. ‘Blanc, I make my house safe.’

Wyatt produced a pack of cigarettes and flicked one out. ‘It is hard work making your house safe,’ he said carefully.

The man balanced the hammer on its head and took the cigarette which Wyatt offered. He bent his head to the match and, sucking the smoke into his lungs, said, ‘Very hard work, blanc, but it must be done.’ He examined the cigarette. ‘American – very good.’

Wyatt lit his own cigarette and turned to survey the hut. ‘The roof must not come off,’ he agreed. ‘A house with no roof is like a man with no woman – incomplete. Do you have a woman?’

The man nodded and puffed on his cigarette.

‘I do not see her,’ Wyatt persisted.

The man blew a cloud of smoke into the air, then looked at Wyatt with blood-flecked brown eyes. ‘She has gone visiting, blanc.’

‘With all the children?’ said Wyatt quietly.

‘Yes, blanc.’

‘And you fasten the roof of your house.’ Wyatt tapped his foot. ‘You must fear greatly.’

The man’s eyes slid away and he shuffled his feet. ‘It is a time to be afraid. No man can fight what is to come.’

‘The big wind?’ asked Wyatt softly.

The man looked up in surprise. ‘Of course, blanc, what else?’ He struck his hands together smartly and let them fly up into the air. ‘When the big wind comes – li tomber boum’

Wyatt nodded. ‘Of course. You do right to make sure of the roof of your house.’ He paused. ‘How do you know that the wind comes?’

The man’s bare feet scuffled in the hot dust and he looked away. ‘I know,’ he mumbled. ‘I know.’

Wyatt knew better than to persist in that line of questioning – he had tried before. He said, ‘When does the wind come?’

The man looked at the cloudless blue sky, then stopped and picked up a handful of dust which he dribbled from his fingers. ‘Two days,’ he said. ‘Maybe three days. Not longer.’

Wyatt was startled by the accuracy of this prediction. If Mabel were to strike San Fernandez at all then those were the time limits, and yet how could this ignorant old man know? He said matter-of-factly, ‘You have sent your woman and children away.’

‘There is a cave in the hills,’ the man said. ‘When I finish this, I go too.’

Wyatt looked at the hut. ‘When you go, leave the door open,’ he said. ‘The wind does not like closed doors.’

‘Of course,’ agreed the man. ‘A closed door is inhospitable.’ He looked at Wyatt with a glint of humour in his eyes. ‘There may be another wind, blanc, perhaps worse than the hurricane. Favel is coming down from the mountains.’

‘But Favel is dead.’

The man shrugged. ‘Favel is coming down from the mountains,’ he repeated, and swung the hammer again at the top of the stake.

Wyatt walked back to the car and got into the driving seat.

‘What was all that about?’ asked Julie.

‘He says there’s a big wind coming so he’s tying down the roof of his house. When the big wind comes – li tomber boum.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘A very free translation is that everything is going to come down with a hell of a smash.’ Wyatt looked across at the hut and at the man toiling patiently in the hot sun. ‘He knows enough to leave his door open, too – but I doubt if I could tell you why.’ He turned to Julie. ‘I’m sorry, Julie, but I’d like to get back to the Base. There’s something I must check.’

‘Of course,’ said Julie. ‘You must do what you must.’

He turned the car round in the clearing and they went down the road. Julie said, ‘Harry Hansen told me you were worried about Mabel. Has this anything to do with it?’

He said, ‘It’s against all reason, of course. It’s against everything I’ve been taught, but I think we’re going to get slammed. I think Mabel is going to hit San Fernandez.’ He laughed wryly. ‘Now I’ve got to convince Schelling.’

‘Don’t you think he’ll believe you?’

‘What evidence can I give him? A sinking feeling in my guts? An ignorant old man tying on his roof? Schelling wants hard facts – pressure gradients, adiabatic rates – figures he can measure and check in the textbooks. I doubt if I’ll be able to do it. But I’ve got to. St Pierre is in no better condition to resist a hurricane than it was in 1910. You’ve seen the shanty town that’s sprung up outside – how long do you suppose those shacks would resist a big wind? And the population has gone up – it’s now 60,000. A hurricane hitting now would be a disaster too frightening to contemplate.’

Unconsciously he had increased pressure on the accelerator and he slithered round a corner with tyres squealing in protest. Julie said, ‘You won’t make things better by getting yourself killed going down this hill.’

He slowed down. ‘Sorry, Julie; I suppose I’m a bit worked up.’ He shook his head. ‘It’s the fact that I’m helpless that worries me.’

She said thoughtfully, ‘Couldn’t you fake your figures or something so that Commodore Brooks would have to take notice? If the hurricane didn’t come you’d be ruined professionally – but I think you’d be willing to take that chance.’

‘If I thought it would work I’d do it,’ said Wyatt grimly. ‘But Schelling would see through it; he may be stupid but he’s not a damn’ fool and he knows his job from that angle. It can’t be done that way.’

‘Then what are you going to do?’

‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I don’t know.’

III

He dropped Julie at the Imperiale and headed back to the Base at top speed. He saw many soldiers in the streets of St Pierre but the fact did not impinge on his consciousness because he was busy thinking out a way to handle Schelling. When he arrived at the main gate of the Base he had still not thought of a way.

He was stopped at the gateway by a marine in full battle kit who gestured with a submachine-gun. ‘Out, buddy!’

‘What the devil’s going on?’

The marine’s lips tightened. ‘I said, “out”.’

Wyatt opened the door and got out of the car, noticing that the marine backed away from him. He looked up and saw that the towers by the gateway were fully manned and that the ugly snouts of machine-guns covered his car.

The marine said, ‘Who are you, buster?’

‘I’m in the Meteorological Section,’ said Wyatt. ‘What damned nonsense is all this?’

‘Prove it,’ said the marine flatly. He lifted the gun sharply as Wyatt made to put his hand to his breast pocket. ‘Whatever you’re pulling out, do it real slow.’

Slowly Wyatt pulled out his wallet and offered it. ‘You’ll find identification inside.’

The marine made no attempt to come closer. ‘Throw it down.’

Wyatt tossed the wallet to the ground, and the marine said, ‘Now back off.’ Wyatt slowly backed away and the marine stepped forward and picked up the wallet, keeping a wary eye on him. He flicked it open and examined the contents, then waved to the men in the tower. He held out the wallet and said, ‘You seem to be in the clear, Mr Wyatt.’

‘What the hell’s going on?’ asked Wyatt angrily.

The marine cradled the submachine-gun in his arms and stepped closer. ‘The brass have decided to hold security exercises, Mr Wyatt. I gotta go through the motions – the Lieutenant is watching me.’

Wyatt snorted and got into his car. The marine leaned against the door and said, ‘I wouldn’t go too fast through the gate, Mr Wyatt; those guns up there are loaded for real.’ He shook his head sadly. ‘Someone’s gonna get killed on this exercise for sure.’

‘It won’t be me,’ Wyatt promised.

The marine grinned and for the first time an expression of enthusiasm showed. ‘Maybe the Lieutenant will get shot in the butt.’ He drew back and waved Wyatt on.

As Wyatt drove through the Base to his office he saw that it was an armed camp. All the gun emplacements were manned and all the men in full battle kit. Trucks roared through the streets and, near the Met. Office, a rank of armoured cars were standing by with engines ticking over. For a moment he thought of what the old man had said – Favel is coming down from the mountains. He shook his head irritably.

The first thing he did in his office was to pick up the telephone and ring the clearing office. ‘What’s the latest on Mabel?’

‘Who? Oh – Mabel! We’ve got the latest shots from Tiros; they came in half an hour ago.’

‘Shoot them across to me.’

‘Sorry, we can’t,’ said the tinny voice. ‘All the messengers are tied up in this exercise.’

‘I’ll come across myself,’ said Wyatt, and slammed down the phone, fuming at the delay. He drove to the clearing office, picked up the photographs and drove back, then settled down at his desk to examine them.

After nearly an hour he had come to no firm conclusion. Mabel was moving along a little faster – eleven miles an hour – and was on her predicted course. She would approach San Fernandez no nearer than to give the island a flick of her tail – a few hours of strong breezes and heavy rain. That was what theory said.

He pondered what to do next. He had no great faith in the theory that Schelling swore by. He had seen too many hurricanes swerve on unpredictable courses, too many islands swept bare when theory said the hurricane should pass them by. And he was West Indian – just as much West Indian as the old black man up near St Michel who was guarding his house against the big wind. They had a common feeling about this hurricane; a distrust which evidenced itself in deep uneasiness. Wyatt’s people had been in the Islands a mere four hundred years, but the black man had Carib Indian in his ancestry who had worshipped at the shrine of Hunraken, the Storm God. He had enough faith in his feelings to take positive steps, and Wyatt felt he could do no less, despite the fact that he could not prove this thing in the way he had been trained.

He felt despondent as he went to see Schelling.

Schelling was apparently busy, but then, he always was apparently busy. He raised his head as Wyatt entered his office, and said, ‘I thought you had a free afternoon.’

‘I came back to check on Mabel,’ said Wyatt. ‘She’s speeded up.’

‘Oh!’ said Schelling. He put down his pen and pushed the form-pad away. ‘What’s her speed now?’

‘She’s covered a hundred miles in the last nine hours – about eleven miles an hour. She started at eight – remember?’ Wyatt thought this was the way to get at Schelling – to communicate some unease to him, to make him remember that his prediction sent to the Weather Bureau was now at variance with the facts. He said deliberately, ‘At her present speed she’ll hit the Atlantic Coast in about six days; but I think she’ll speed up even more. Her present speed is still under the average.’

Schelling looked down at the desk-top thoughtfully. ‘And how’s her course?’

This was the tricky one. ‘As predicted,’ said Wyatt carefully. ‘She could change, of course – many have.’

‘We’d better cover ourselves,’ said Schelling. ‘I’ll send a signal to the Weather Bureau; they’ll sit on it for a couple of days and then announce the Hurricane Watch in the South-Eastern States. Of course, a lot will depend on what she does in the next two days, but they’ll know we’re on the ball down here.’

Wyatt sat down uninvited. He said, ‘What about the Islands?’

‘They’ll get the warning,’ said Schelling. ‘Just as usual. Where exactly is Mabel now?’

‘She slipped in between Grenada and Tobago,’ said Wyatt. ‘She gave them a bad time according to the reports I’ve just been reading, but nothing too serious. She’s just north of Los Testigos right now.’ He paused. ‘If she keeps on her present course she’ll go across Yucatan and into Mexico and Texas just like Janet and Hilda did in 1955.’