She"d seen a lot of British weather forecasts and she knew me by sight, she said. She told me to get into the front cab of her orange pickup truck, standing not far ahead. She sounded accustomed to being in charge.
"Robin Darcy... Kris... " I began.
She interrupted, "Kris Ironside has gone for familiarization flights in the aircraft he"ll be flying. Get in the pickup, do.
" I sat in the cab and roasted in the heat, which allowed no respite, even with the windows open. It was the second half of October south of the Tropic of Cancer. I took off my too conventional tie and thought of a tepid shower.
"I"m Amy Ford, " the woman said, identifying herself as she drove out of the airport. "How do you do? " "Could I ask where are we going? " "I have an errand to run in George Town. Then to my , , no use
She drove a short distance into a compact and prosperous looking small town, its streets lined with shade trees and alive with camera-clicking tourists.
"This is the island"s capital, George Town, " Amy said, and added,
"It"s the only real town, actually. " "All these people... " "They come off the cruise ships, " Amy said, and pointed, as we rounded a corner, to the broad open sea where three huge pa.s.senger ships rode at anchor, and imitation pirate galleons popped off imitation cannonb.a.l.l.s, and container ships edged into the quay side bringing food and bulldozers.
Amy parked within running distance of the public library to return a book, then, after pa.s.sing important-looking bank buildings, she drove back along the harbor front where friendly drivers amazingly gave way with smiles.
"Nice place, " I said, meaning it.
Amy took the comment as natural. "My house next, " she said.
"Not far. " Her house, not far, as she"d said, must have covered eight thousand square feet of the ocean front paradise it was set in, a clone of Robin Darcy"s easy opulence but magnified by two.
She led the way into a sitting room, small by the house"s overall standard, but blessedly cool with air-conditioning and a rotating ceiling fan. There was a view through heavy sliding gla.s.s doors of intensely blue sea, there were chairs and china figures in tropically exuberant colors, and there was a man in white shorts who said
"Michael Ford" and shook my hand.
"You look bigger than on the screen. " His comment was without offense and said in roughly the same accent as his wife, though I would have placed him a shade lower in the social hierarchy, however bulging the coffers.
In between my basic weather work (and frankly to earn more in order to pay Jett van Els and her sisters), I lectured freelance and after-dinner talked, and, from a natural apt.i.tude for mimicry, I"d learned to recognize the origins of many accents.
Not nearly in such incredible detail as Shaw"s Professor Higgins, of course, but enough in the right places to amuse.
I would have put Michael Ford"s vocal roots, like my own, as somewhere in western rural Berkshire, but in his case the basic material had been polished by studied layers of gloss.
Scarcely taller than Robin Darcy, Michael Ford, with his %s tanned bare broad-shouldered torso and his strong shoe-andsockless slightly bowed brown legs, looked like the useful muscle that the rounded Robin lacked.
Amy Ford said, "Cold drink? " to me and poured orange juice lavishly onto ice cubes, and it wasn"t untii I tasted it that I realized there was a good deal of something like Bacardi in its kick.
I said, "Would you mind awfully telling me who you are and why I"m here? " And I heard Amy"s tones in my own, slightly shocking.
Amy, however, appearing not to notice, did in part explain.
"I sold Robin my airplane. As I understand it, your friend is going to fly it through this hurricane Odin, and you are here to navigate. " I thought blankly, why ever would Robin buy a doubtless expensive airplane for Kris--someone he"d casually met at a lunch party--to fly through a violent storm?
"Robin bought my airplane for Nicky, actually, " Amy said, seeing nothing odd in it, "but of course Nicky went away. " "Hurricane Nicky? " I asked.
"Naturally. Of course. But this new storm was brewing more or less on Nicky"s heels, one might say, and Robin said he"d met Kris, who was a good pilot, and Kris wanted to fly through a hurricane, so... well... here you are. " As an explanation it raised more questions than it answered.
I said over my strongly laced juice, "Where is Odin this morning, do you know? " As of two hours earlier, Odin, according to my helpful pal at the Miami Hurricane Center, had been intensifying south of Jamaica and causing the population of that island to contemplate safety in the hills.
"If you"re going towards Odin, " my pal warned, "remember that on Grand Cayman Island there aren"t any hills to go to. " "Is Odin likely to hit Cayman? " "Look, Perry, you know d.a.m.ned well that not even Odin knows where it"s going. But the report just coming in puts Odin high in Category Three, that"s a fierce hurricane, Perry, you get out of there. Disregard what I said before, and go. " "What about Trox Island? " I asked.
He said, "Where? " and after a pause added, "If that"s one of that scatter of little islands in the western Caribbean, then don"t go there, Perry, don"t. If Odin goes on developing it could hit any of those islands head on and wipe them out. " "Wind or storm surge? " "Both. " He hesitated. "We can easily be wrong, so it"s better not to guess. At the moment I"d put my money on Odin veering northwest to miss Jamaica, and as Grand Cayman, " he finally a.s.sured me, "would then be straight ahead of Odin...
it"s a place to leave, not play around in, if you have any sense.
" I suppose I had no sense.
I asked, "Where exactly is Trox Island? " "Is it important? I"ll look it up. " There was a rustling of paper. "Here we are. Islands in the West Caribbean...
Roncador Cay... Swan... Thunder Knoll. Here it is.
. Trox.
Number of inhabitants, anything from zero to twenty, mostly fishermen. Size, one mile long, half a mile wide. Highest point above sea level, two hundred feet. Volcanic? No. Constructed of bird droppings, guano, coral and limestone rock. Map coordinates, 17. 50 degrees north, 81. 44 west.
"Another rustle of paper. "There you are, then, it"s just a peak of guano-covered rock sticking up from undersea mountains. " "Any farming? Any mushrooms? " "Why mushrooms? No, if anything, you might find coconuts. It says here there are palm trees. " "Who does Trox belong to? " "It doesn"t say in this list. All it says is Ownership Disputed. " "And is that the absolute lot? " "Yes, except that it says there"s a landing for boats and an old gra.s.s strip for aircraft, but no fuel and no maintenance.
Nothing. Forget it. " He was busy at work and could talk no longer. His final advice was
"Go home", and he meant by home, England.
Michael Ford looked at the heavy gold watch weighing down his left wrist and pushed b.u.t.tons on a vast television set until he reached a noisy channel giving alarmist details of the development of Odin.
Odin had become organized into a full-grown hurricane with a central area where the winds were circling ever faster, leaving a calm small round quiet center like a hub. Odin, with this well-developed "eye, " was now circling with winds of a hundred and twenty miles an hour or more, but was still going forwards slowly at seven. The low-pressure center of winds aloft had weakened and allowed a stronger circling in the central dense overcast, resulting in the distinct formation of the eye.
Kris, at least, would be pleased to hear the development was official.
Odin was seven hundred and fifty miles south of where Evelyn peacefully sunned herself on the Sand Dollar pool deck, and even from where I stood on Grand Cayman Island, the view through the windows of sand and palm trees, two hundred miles from a major storm, was calm, sunny and without a breeze. It seemed impossible that any speed of wind could blow away a town as thoroughly as Hurricane Andrew had, or that any ocean surge could drown three hundred thousand people as in Bangladesh. I knew pretty thoroughly the paths of the winds of the world and had studied most of the devilments of nature, but like many a volcanologist I"d warmed my hands from afar without walking round an erupting rim.
As a committed fly-through prospect the satellite picture of Odin was soul-shrink daunting. Did I really intend to fly with Kris into the center of that?
I had brought with me by habit my small accurate camera, but even given the best lens in the world, I was not going to see any satellite"s-eye view. The circling top of a great hurricane, where the winds were coldest, rose to maybe fifty or sixty thousand feet. Kris and I, without oxygen, couldn"t go much higher than ten thousand, and we would fly into the quiet central hub, read and note the air pressure there, ditto the wind speeds in the eye wall, and fly out on the other side to make our way back to the home field. For most of the way, might we not be buffeted about in rain cloud? But we would be traveling faster than the wind.
How the h.e.l.l, I thought privately, did one find the eye?
How was I supposed to navigate? I"d had no rehearsals. Who would give me a quick course in hurricane dead reckoning?
Who would distract me from the word "dead"?
Why did I, all the same, want to do that fLight more than anything else?
The Weather Channel went on chattering in civilized tones about the downward march of millibars, those useful measurements of low air pressure and forthcoming disaster.
The television screen in the Ford house looked out from a clearly expensive wall fitment, and Amy, Michael and I sat around in lush armchairs glancing occasionally at the image of the wide white swirling ma.s.s while they told me that historically Grand Cayman had suffered few major direct hits, but that of course there was always a first time. Their blithe voices, though, said they didn"t believe it.
I"d heard jockeys describe the atmosphere in the changing room before they"d gone out to partner half a ton of horse in the Grand National Steeplechase over the biggest, most demanding jumps in the sport. They were going into breakneck paraplegic country, and they did it for love. I"d wondered why they felt compelled, and in the Fords" clean bright wealthy sitting room, I found I knew.