To the Wild Sky by Ivan Southall

Author:Ivan Southall [Southall, Ivan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: CLASSIC FICTION
ISBN: 9781922148858
Publisher: The Text Publishing Company
Published: 2013-10-15T04:00:00+00:00

11.

Debris

‘Jan!’ It was Carol calling her, almost in an undertone. The call had special quality that Carol had never used before in the sounding of Jan’s name. They weren’t friendly enough for that. They didn’t have much in common.

Bruce said, ‘Go on; see what she wants,’ and Jan went to her, but Carol moved several paces farther away from Bruce, drawing Jan after her. ‘What is it, Carol?’ she said.

‘Gerald . . .’

Jan pulled a face.

‘What do you think?’ Carol asked her.

Jan didn’t really think anything; all she had was a feeling and it was a feeling that she didn’t want to share with Carol.

‘Does he frighten you?’ Carol said, as though it hurt her to say it.

Jan didn’t care to explain that she’d never liked Gerald very much, anyhow. She couldn’t talk about Gerald to Carol. Gerald Hennessy was a little tin god as far as Carol was concerned.

‘And Bruce is hurt, too,’ said Carol, struggling against Jan’s lack of interest. ‘He is, isn’t he?’

‘Could be. But he won’t let anyone near enough to find out.’

‘That leaves Colin and Mark. You can wipe Mark off, so it leaves Colin. And Colin’s not much use.’

If that was what Carol thought, Jan felt duty-bound to take the opposite view. ‘He did all right last night.’

Carol was becoming annoyed. ‘I’m trying to say there are only two of us —’

‘Three. You can’t forget Colin.’

‘All right! Three. Though I’d like to know where the third is. I haven’t seen him all morning.’

Jan shrugged. Colin’s absence troubled her, too, but she wasn’t going to admit it to Carol. Then she said, ‘What’s the point of all this?’

Carol sighed. ‘It seems to me, though it mightn’t seem so to anybody else, that we’ve got to do something.’

‘Like what?’

‘Like . . . oh, I don’t know. Like looking for salvage and food and water. Even if we do find Jim . . . We can’t sit round here doing nothing.’

Jan continued to feel unco-operative, not that she had any cause to. What Carol had to say was not in the least unreasonable. It was more or less what she thought herself.

‘And we’ve got to find out where we are, as well,’ said Carol, ‘Gerald doesn’t know.’

‘Well, that’s it then, isn’t it? If he doesn’t know we’ve no hope of finding out.’

‘Look, what have I done to upset you?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Well, why can’t we pull together?’

That was the moment that Bruce started yelling, ‘Hey, you two. Come here!’ If he hadn’t been feeling sore he would never have addressed Carol so roughly (Jan didn’t count), and afterwards, when he thought back, he felt surprise that Carol hadn’t objected. Instead, she came at once, trailing Jan after her.

‘Gerald’s really round the bend, is he?’ Bruce asked.

‘Of course he isn’t,’ snapped Carol.

‘Well, what’s he sitting down there for, like a booby in a corner?’

‘He’s miserable, that’s all, like all of us. Like you, too. You’ve been doing a bit of a moan yourself.’

‘Bruce is hurt!’ Jan bristled. ‘If you had an ankle like his, you’d be moaning, too.

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