The Island of Love Page 8

  “I hope you have packed all the right clothes, Lydia,” Heloise said when they were alone. “I shall be extremely angry if I am not the smartest and most outstanding woman at the Coronation!”

  “Excepting the Queen,” Lydia smiled. “You can hardly want to overshadow the leading lady of the day.”

  “Why not?” Heloise asked.

  “Because it would be unkind,” Lydia explained. “Actually she will be very resplendent because the King ordered two crowns when he was in Europe from an English jeweller.”

  “Crowns or no crowns,” Heloise said, “I want everybody to look at me! The moment we arrive in Honolulu you must press all my gowns and make quite certain that my hats have not been crushed by all this tedious travelling.”

  “Don’t worry,” Lydia said. “You will look lovely! I am sure that everybody will be overwhelmed by you.”

  She thought, as Heloise was ready to leave the train, that nobody could have looked lovelier.

  Because it was quite warm in San Francisco, she was wearing a silk gown in her favourite shade of blue with a small velvet coatee over it and an elegant hat trimmed with flowers of the same colour that seemed to accentuate the gold of her hair and the translucence of her skin.

  There were Officers of the Ship’s Company to meet them on the Station, and Lydia quickly realised that from now on the Earl was being treated as the Queen’s representative and would be accorded every possible honour by the British.

  They drove in an open carriage down to the dock and she had her first glimpse of San Francisco’s fantastic roads, which went straight up and down the hills on which the town was built so that the horses had great difficulty in not slipping and on some slopes had to zigzag to reach the top.

  All too soon they reached the harbour and amongst the hundreds of ships that made up the fishing fleet with their high masts and their white sails was waiting for them, the British Battleship, HMS Victorious.

  It was, although Lydia was not aware of it, a very old ship that had been sent to the Pacific for the last years of her life before she was taken to the scrapyard.

  However, she looked extremely smart with her crew all wearing white covers on their caps and their white summer uniform with bell-bottom trousers.

  The Earl and his party were piped aboard and were welcomed by the Captain, who was wearing a large number of medals.

  He made a brief speech of welcome to the Earl, who replied and then they were taken below to their cabins.

  These were very different from those they had enjoyed on the Etruria.

  The Earl was given the Captain’s cabin, which was the largest and had a sitting room attached to it, while the rest of the party were accommodated in the cabins of the Officers.

  These Lydia learnt, had been moved down in order of seniority and she was sorry for the Midshipmen, who had obviously been pushed out into any hole or corner they could find to accommodate them.

  Her cabin was exactly the same as Heloise’s, small but well fitted and quite comfortable.

  Heloise complained volubly.

  “It’s far too tiny,” she said scornfully. “I shall feel as if I am in my coffin!”

  “Oh, Heloise, don’t say such things!” Lydia begged. “It is unlucky!”

  “At least there are Englishmen aboard,” Heloise went on, “and I have every intention of looking pretty tonight, so start unpacking my things!”

  It was impossible for Heloise’s enormous amount of luggage to fit into her cabin, so some of her trunks had to be left outside in the passage.

  Lydia had to find the one that contained the gown she wished to wear and all the accessories that went with it.

  It took her so long to get Heloise ready in time for dinner that she only had a few minutes to change her own clothes. She realised, as she did so, that the ship had already put to sea.

  There was, she thought, hardly any swell as they left harbour and moved a little way along the coast before setting out into the Pacific Ocean.

  At dinner, when she was sitting next to a young and enthusiastic Officer, who was obviously delighted to talk to her, he told her that it would take five days to reach Honolulu.

  “We are all looking forward to the Coronation,” he said, “and, if it is anything like the usual Hawaiian festivities, it will go on for days!”

  He sounded so delighted at what lay ahead that Lydia was certain he was visualising how pretty the dancers would be and that he would make the very most of his time ashore.

  She had learned from one of her books how much Hawaiians liked the English and that in the early days the women had welcomed men from overseas, offering themselves with a generosity that was unsurpassed by any other nationality.

  As she expected, every Officer on the ship was overwhelmed by Heloise.

  They stared at her as if they did not believe that she was real and their admiration made her blossom like a rose turning its face to the sun.

  She became animated and flirted charmingly with every man who spoke to her and her laughter was spontaneous and very attractive.

  Almost as if she had been touched by a magic wand, Lydia thought, she had changed from the petulant, bored young woman who had sulked on the train unless she was with the Earl.

  Even then she had continually complained about the rumble of the wheels and her feeling that she was being confined in what she described as a ‘cattle truck’.

  ‘I wish she was always like this,’ Lydia thought wistfully.

  Because she assumed that the Earl was as entranced as everybody else, she did not look at him.

  Instead she set out to make the elderly Officer who sat on her other side tell her of the voyages he had made in HMS Victorious in other parts of the Pacific.

  He did not make his experiences sound very interesting and she had to force herself not to keep thinking of the Earl or trying to listen to what he was saying.

  *

  The next day, to her surprise, Heloise rose quite early and went up on deck.

  There were plenty of Officers to find her a comfortable place to sit out of the sun and to talk and flirt with her whenever they had the opportunity.

  The Earl on the other hand spent quite a lot of time on the bridge with the Captain and Lydia knew that he was extremely interested in all aspects of the Battleship and was therefore escorted all over it.

  Only once did she have the chance the next day to speak to him alone.

  It was after luncheon and Heloise had been helped by one of the Officers with whom they had dined into a deckchair, making quite certain that it was sheltered from the sun and the wind and as far as possible from any movement of the sea.

  She looked particularly alluring in a white gown trimmed with green ribbons, her sunshade was green and camellias with their dark green leaves decorated the wide brim of her hat.

  She looked as if she had just stepped out of the Royal Enclosure at Ascot and it was understandable that every man on the ship was ready to lay his heart at her feet.

  Because she was not needed Lydia moved away to stand in the stern watching the churning water from their wake dwindle away into the distance.

  She thought that she could see a porpoise or was it a sea lion and was straining her eyes to decide which it was when a voice beside her said,

  “It’s a dolphin. You will see plenty of them when we reach Hawaii, and they are very playful.”

  She gave a little start and turned her face towards the Earl.

  “I was expecting porpoises, sea lions or perhaps a whale.”

  “Given the chance you will see them all!”

  “I do hope so!”

  She spoke with such enthusiasm that the Earl said,

  “Are you intending to study the flora and fauna of Hawaii, as well as everything else?”

  “Of course,” Lydia replied, “and most of all, I want to see the ‘Hawaiian honeycreepers’.”

  He gave a short laugh.

  “Again you have surprised me, Lydia. I have never y
et met a young woman who travelled to some strange country who was more interested in its Honeycreepers than its King!”

  “I mean no disrespect to His Majesty,” Lydia answered, “but that is the truth and I cannot help feeling that, however resplendently everybody may dress themselves for the Coronation, they will not equal the flowers we shall see in Hawaii, unless, of course the books you bought for me on the subject were lying!”

  She gave a little laugh and before he could speak she added,

  “And don’t dare tell me that I shall be disappointed. I am determined not to be!”

  “I would not dream of doing anything of the sort,” he said. “That would deprive you of your ‘hope’. I know that is more important to you than anything else.”

  She was surprised that he had remembered their conversation and said,

  “I have a feeling and, because of my Celtic blood my feelings are often right, that Hawaii will not only live up to my expectations and hopes but exceed them!”

  “That is exactly what I hope too,” the Earl nodded.

  Without saying any more he walked away and left her and she stared after him a little puzzled.

  There had been a serious note in his voice that was inescapable and she wondered what he was hoping for and why it was so important to him.

  ‘He has everything,’ she thought to herself, ‘and Heloise!’

  She knew that if she thought of the Earl and Heloise together there was a sharp little pain within her breast that she tried to ignore, but which seemed to grow day by day.

  ‘No couple could be more suited to each other,’ she kept telling herself. ‘He is so handsome and she is so beautiful!’

  Then some critical voice at the back of her mind asked if beauty alone would ever be enough for somebody like the Earl.

  ‘Of course it will,’ she insisted, ‘and Heloise will grace the Royston diamonds as no other woman could possibly do. When he sees her at the head of the table, he will know that she is exactly the right wife, who those who admire him would have chosen for him.’

  She was thinking of the Earl when she was joined by the young Officer who had sat next to her at dinner the first night they arrived.

  “I want to talk to you, Miss Westbury,” he began.

  “What about?” Lydia enquired.

  “What do you think? About you of course!” he replied. “I suppose you know that to have you with us in the ship is like being given a glass of water in a dry and very thirsty desert!”

  Lydia laughed.

  “Very poetic!” she said, “but you can hardly expect me to believe anything like that when I have been reading about the beauty of the girls in Hawaii and I am certain that Honolulu and any other place you call at abounds with beautiful women!”

  “But they are not English,” he said, “and while they are exotic, to me there is nothing more lovely and exciting than an English girl like yourself!”

  “You flatter me!” Lydia laughed.

  She could not take him seriously, but he tried to go on flirting with her.

  At the same time it made her feel not so insignificant as she did when she was at home.

  When she sat next to the same young man at dinner that night, he continued to pay her compliments and, although she told herself that she was being very stupid, in a way they warmed her heart.

  All too quickly for Lydia four days had passed and the Captain told her that tomorrow they would see the volcanic mountain of Hawaii.

  “If it is erupting,” he said, “it will be a bad omen for the King, which will not go unnoticed by his subjects.”

  “Does it often erupt?” Lydia enquired.

  “Fairly often,” he replied. “Sometimes it just has smoke coming out of the crater. At others there is a certain amount of burning lava rolling down the side of it. But no one takes much notice and it’s not very serious.”

  On the last evening of their voyage, the Captain arranged for a band to play after dinner.

  At first, while they sat out in the moonlight, the band played more or less classical music.

  Then, and perhaps it was Heloise who suggested it, they broke into dance tunes and both Heloise and Lydia were claimed at once by two eager young Officers.

  It was something Lydia had not expected, but which she enjoyed, quite content to play second fiddle to Heloise.

  She soon found that the English had adopted the American fashion of ‘cutting in’ during a dance so that she was passed from one man to another.

  She found also to her surprise that most of them were exceedingly good dancers.

  She was sure that as far as Heloise was concerned the evening could go on forever, but the Captain ended the gaieties at midnight.

  The band played God Save the Queen and they all stood to attention, after which they went to bed.

  “I have enjoyed myself!” Heloise said, as Lydia helped her out of her gown. “If it could always be like tonight, I would not mind the voyage going on for longer!”

  “It has been as calm as a millpond,” Lydia answered.

  Even as she spoke, she felt the ship give a lurch and was aware that the wind was beginning to strengthen.

  She hoped that Heloise had not noticed it and, because she was busy reciting all the many compliments she had received during the evening, she climbed into bed without complaining.

  By the time Lydia had reached her own cabin the ship was beginning to pitch and toss.

  She thought with dismay that Heloise would be ill again and she would have to attend to her instead of, as she had hoped, being able to see the ship coming into Port at Honolulu.

  The wind was certainly getting up and by the time she was in bed the whole structure seemed to be creaking almost deafeningly and her shoes, which she had not put away in the cupboard, were sliding backwards and forwards on the floor of her cabin.

  She listened, but could not hear Heloise calling for her and was sure therefore that she had not yet been disturbed.

  ‘It has been lovely weather up until now,’ she thought.

  But she knew from her books that sudden squalls and very strong winds could get up at a moment’s notice around the Hawaiian Islands and the weather could change, as one said, in the twinkling of an eye”.

  ‘I am sure it will be calm again by tomorrow,’ Lydia told herself consolingly.

  Instead the wind seemed to be increasing and growing really violent.

  She was, however, not in the least frightened, thinking it impossible to feel anything but secure in a British Battleship.

  Then quite suddenly there was a ringing of bells in a way that seemed almost deafening and the sound of raised voices.

  The next minute the door to her cabin burst open and a voice shouted out,

  “Fire! Get up on deck immediately!”

  Lydia gave a cry of horror and jumped out of bed.

  She groped her way in the darkness to the door and moved into Heloise’s cabin.

  Her sister was sitting up in bed having been awakened in the same way and she was screaming,

  “What’s happening? What’s happening? Where is the fire?”

  “It’s all right, dearest,” Lydia said calmly. “But we have to go up on deck as we have been told to do.”

  “I am – frightened!”

  “I know, but you will be quite safe! You may have to get into a small boat, but I am sure that we are not far from land.”

  “I shall drown – I know I shall!” Heloise wailed.

  Even as she spoke, the Earl’s authoritative voice came from the doorway,

  “Hurry! I am waiting to take you up on deck. Put on a warm coat, but don’t worry about anything else.”

  Then Lydia heard her father say,

  “I will go ahead to see that the boat is ready for the two girls.”

  The way he spoke told Lydia all too clearly that things were very serious.

  Chapter Five

  The Earl had a lantern with him and, while he lit the cabin with it, Lydia opened t
he door of the wardrobe and groped amongst the clothes for Heloise’s sable coat.

  By the time she had with difficulty found it, Heloise was screaming.

  “I am not going in a – small boat!” she cried. “I shall – drown in the s-sea! I want to s-stay here.”

  The Earl did not speak and Lydia forced her sister’s arms into the arms of the coat as she said quietly,

  “You will be quite safe, Heloise, everybody will look after you.”

  “I will not go – I will – not!” Heloise shrieked and now her voice was completely hysterical.

  Lydia looked towards the Earl.

  “I think you will have to carry her, my Lord.”

  Still without saying anything he handed her the lantern and picked Heloise up in his arms.

  For a moment she tried to struggle against him, then half-sobbing and half-screaming she put her face against his shoulder.

  He carried her out into the passage and, walking behind them, Lydia lit the way.

  As she passed her cabin door, she realised that she was wearing only the nightgown she had slept in.

  As if the Earl was aware of it at the same time, he said,

  “Put on a thick coat and follow as quickly as you can.”

  For a moment Lydia hesitated, thinking that it might be difficult for him to reach the companionway in the dark.

  Then she saw lights at the top of it and knew that other people on the ship were carrying lanterns.

  The ship gave a lurch as she entered her cabin and almost threw her to the floor, but she managed to prop the lantern up on the dressing table before she reached for the wardrobe.

  Now the ship was rolling so badly that she thought it would be a mistake to linger and, instead of finding her coat, she merely took a blanket off the bed and threw it over her shoulders.

  She picked up the lantern again and went back into the passage.

  She could see ahead that the Earl with Heloise in his arms had just reached the top of the companionway.

  She was about to follow him when she heard a voice calling,

  “Help! Help!”

  She paused on the bottom step wondering if she should go on and then again there was a faint cry for help.