Restless Earth/Chapter 11

A sense of utter loneliness possessed Grace Harley as she took her seat in the Hastings ’bus.

Never before had she left Joan to the care of a stranger, even for two hours, and every dire possibility raced through her mind, temporarily obscuring the aching suspense which had been hers for a month past. Some of the child’s fear had communicated itself to her, and she had difficulty in restraining an impulse to leap from the ’bus as the vehicle moved off noisily.

When they were lumbering through the outskirts of the town the conviction came to her that something was going to happen to Joan—something terrible. She caught her breath as her heart leapt in strange dread. She rose to her feet swiftly; but the curious glances of her fellow passengers, and the driver’s attitude of calm meditation as he gazed at the road ahead, revived her self-consciousness, and she sat down again, ashamed.

Nothing could possibly happen to Joan, she argued silently. Miss Whipple was one of those dear souls who delight in children, having been denied children of her own, and Joan was perfectly safe with her. Joan had all a child’s natural artfulness—“cunning” was too trenchant a word—and the “fear” and “shakiness” were doubtless artifices directed at her mother’s design of going to Hastings alone. The child loved riding in ’buses, and was naturally disappointed.

But no argument could shake off the presentiment of tragedy, and her reasoning brought Grace Harley no real peace of mind. Her fingers drummed restlessly on her handbag as he gazed through the rattling glass at the moving panorama of sun-browned pastures backed by sweeping hills.

A passionate longing for the evergreen countryside of Taranaki, for the little house upon the brink of the grass-clothed gully, for the purring of a ​tabby-cat upon a verandah-rail, for the salt westerly breeze, for the sound of the tapping of a man’s pipe against the bathroom window-sill and his soft whistling as he returned from town, for the arms that had held her and the lips that had caressed her, swept over her.

She rested her elbow upon the window-ledge of the lunging ’bus, and shielded her eyes with her hand as though to shut out the glare of the sunlight; but her shoulders were eloquent, and those who watched her knew that she wept. They wondered, and were silent.

The tyres whistled upon the concrete road. The driver dreamed contentedly in the warmth and monotony of the level miles.

****

Hastings.

The prosperous town set in the midst of fertile plains. Narrow streets which contrive to give an impression of breadth—streets laid out with uninteresting symmetry—clean streets. A town upon which the sun shines without let or hindrance; a town upon which there falls no shadow of the hills. An open-faced and open-handed town; the dreaded business rival of Napier. A town possessing, in common with the majority of New Zealand’s provincial towns, an appearance of transience due to the amount of timber used in its construction—a deceptive appearance. A town in whose parks the exile may commune with the ghost of England. A town which seems to breathe deeply and laugh.

As the ’bus slowed to a stop in Heretaunga Street, Grace remembered her errand and looked up in surprise as she realised that the journey was ended.

“At what time does the next ’bus leave for Napier?” she asked, as she alighted.

“Eleven o’clock, miss,” answered the driver, “from opposite the Post Office.”

“Thank you.”

Grace had become used to being addressed as ​“miss” in the past month. The “compliment” no longer annoyed her.

The driver looked after her with interest. Grace was unusually attractive, and he was an impressionable man married to a woman of strong character.

“Who is that?” he asked of a constable who had sauntered up.

“Who’s who?”

“The little woman with the green hand-bag.”

The constable peered under the visor of his shako at Grace’s back.

“Stranger to me,” he answered shortly. “What’s she done?”

“Nothing. But I was getting a look at her occasionally in the mirror on the way over, and she was crying about something.”

“Women usually are crying about something, aren’t they? I should have thought you had trouble enough without worrying about other people’s.”

“Yeah? But when women cry like that they’re breaking their hearts.”

“Well, it’s none of our business. Ted. How’s the old ’bus running ?”

“Fair. Coughs a bit on this second-grade juice. I wonder if somebody’s dead in her family?”

“Somebody’ll be dead in your family if your wife finds you taking an interest in other women, old man.”

The constable chuckled at his own wit as he moved away. The ’bus-driver glared after him and made a derisive noise with his lips against the base of his thumb.

Despite his assertion that it was none of his business, the constable kept Grace in sight. He approved her figure and her lack of stature; he liked the way she wore her clothes; and he was moved to look upon her face. The tale of tears interested him. Perhaps, if she saw him, she would ask his help or advice. Accordingly, he increased the length of his ​stride and overtook her just as she turned and entered a larger corner store.

She paused just inside the door to examine her appearance in a convenient mirror. The constable caught a glimpse of her profile as she dabbed her cheeks furtively with a handkerchief. He exercised his prerogative to linger upon the kerb in the hope that she would turn and afford him an opportunity to judge her quiet beauty full-face. He was disappointed; for she turned her back upon him and disappeared into the store.

“Lost,” he told himself, nodding his head very slightly, and looking wise with the wisdom which his profession had bred in him. “She’s at a loose end and doesn’t know where to go next. I wonder what the row was all about?”

He likened her to a child he had once found sitting beneath a hedge, hopelessly lost. The child had been pale, with big brown eyes which stared into the darkening night as though the end of the world were at hand and tears no longer availing, and had been overjoyed to see him.

He waited hopefully upon the kerb. His mission in life was to be of use. Women often consulted him in their difficulties—especially their marital ones—when he happened to be handy, but his luck did not often run to women like Grace. He realised that a man of his years should have outgrown these foolish sympathies—this desire to be a sort of spiritual father to ill-used wives—but, wherein was the use of living if one did not do his best to make the wheels run easily for the unfortunate? He admitted that, had he been less free with his advice and more ready with the power which the law gave him, his hair might not have greyed while still he lacked chevrons upon his sleeve; but that was a matter for small regret when even the most hardened sinners in the town knew him by his first name.

The day was very hot, so hot that even the measured pace of a policeman was rendered laborious, ​and he was glad of the slight pretext of chivalrous curiosity which moulded his duty to standing still upon this pleasant corner. He could wait for an hour, if necessary.

Grace’s business this morning was the purchase of a middy suit for Joan. Joan had been envious of a middy suit worn by a playmate of a day, who had appeared at breakfast at the hotel one morning and had departed the same evening in an opulent limousine driven by a fat man whose neck bulged over his collar.

Joan had been vociferous in her desire for a middy suit, and Grace, fighting her desire to spoil the child utterly, had refused her. Joan had sulked for a day, then, child-like, had forgotten—or had pretended to forget. Motherlike, Grace had then commenced a surreptitious search of the Napier shops, but such a middy suit as she desired was not to be found in the town. Miss Whipple, whom Grace had taken into her confidence, pointed out an advertisement of such suits which might be had in Hastings, and Grace had decided to go and look at them before capitulating to her desire to give the child a pleasant surprise.

She was looking at them when the earth shook.

The shop-assistant, a girl with blonde hair and friendly eyes, who knew instinctively that her customer was one of those rare creatures who know exactly what they want, was unfolding a suit upon the counter.

“These are only just in,” she was saying. “They are the very latest in style, and are excellent wearing. The sleeves———”

She ceased speaking abruptly, her mouth held open. Her eyes widened and she stared into the distance. The colour drained rapidly from her face.

“What’s the matter?” asked Grace in quick concern. “Are you ill?”

Like a terror-stricken animal, the girl glanced ​wildly to right and left, and scrambled upon the counter.

Grace stepped back, under the impression that the girl had become demented. The movement saved her life.

Before she could cry out, before she could take another step backwards, the floor beneath her leapt and sank. She had not felt the slight preliminary tremor which had warned the girl upon the counter of imminent danger, and the ghastly sensation sickened her and filled her with a terrible fear.

She staggered and turned wildly towards the door.

The huge building rocked for a few moments, then crumbled.

Grace glimpsed a mighty concreted girder descending upon her, and she knew there was no escape. She cried out and crouched, throwing herself backwards against the counter. She saw the girder fall across a show-case, crushing it to matchwood. Splintered glass was thrown in her face, causing her a moment of intense agony before a blow from above rendered her unconscious.

She sank to the floor; and the girder, supported by the stout timber of the counter and the crushed body of the blonde girl with friendly eyes, sheltered her from the tons of debris which thundered down.

****

The constable found her two hours later.

The violent earth shock had roused him from a reverie induced by the sun’s warmth and thoughts of the little lost woman, and had sent him running into the middle of the street in company with a crowd of excited people, where he stood and awaited events.

Following a moment of intense silence, such as he had known between the striking of a high-explosive shell and its devastating burst, had come the catastrophe. The drapery store had buckled, twisted and crumbled with a roar, shooting dense volumes of dust into the sky.

​Screams were heard above the thunder of falling masonry—the screams of the trapped, and the screams of those who fled in every direction.

For a brief moment panic seized him, then he remembered his uniform and his mission in life. While shop verandahs still crashed upon the pavements, while fragments of masonry still bounced into the roadway shedding dust like smoke, he was shouting orders and directing the work of rescue.

When he found Grace he was tattered, black with dust and sweat, and bruised in many places. He had crawled upon his stomach beneath a chaos of shattered masonry and twisted girders interlaced with streaming dress materials, through which light percolated thinly, and his lungs ached with the continual coughing which the eternal dust induced.

He swore softly when he found her, for her clothing was wet with blood, and he thought her dead. In the dim light he could just make out her crouching form. He wormed his way into the wider space which she occupied and rose to his knees, stooping his head beneath the hanging girder. Very gently he felt for her heart-beats.

“Over here!” he yelled, twisting his head and shouting into the debris above him. “Over here, some of you.”

A muffled response came immediately.

“Where?”

“Over here!”

There was a short silence, then the enquiring voice sounded a little louder.

“Where are you?”

“Over here!” he yelled.

After a little while there came the sound of sliding debris, and a shower of dust set him spluttering as it fell full upon his upturned face.

“Here?” asked the muffled voice.

“You’re right!” shouted the constable. “Carefully, now! This one’s badly injured, I think.”

“Hang on! We’re coming!”

​There were sounds of furious activity overhead, and the shouting grew ever more distinct as the self-appointed ganger directed the operations of the rescuers. The thudding of thrown fragments of concrete, the ring of axes, the splintering of timber, the clanging of roofing-iron, the rending of dress-fabrics, sounded continuously. Dust fell in a never-ending stream.

Presently it grew lighter, and the constable was able to see the little lost woman distinctly. There was no beauty in the face now. It was black with dust and streaked with blood—it was hideous, ghastly.

The constable swore a little louder and leaned over her to blow some of the dust away. The action revealed the extent of the facial injuries. He shuddered, and his heart was filled with a great pity.

“Easy, up there!” he snarled, as the dust-stream widened and re-covered the little woman’s disfigurgment.

He turned in the cramped space in search of something with which to cover her face. He grasped a length of fabric which hung from the counter upon which it was fastened by the fallen girder. He twisted his face upwards as he pulled cautiously, and looked into the dead eyes of the blonde girl.

He did not start. He was becoming inured to horrors. He desisted from his effort to secure the fabric, crossed himself reverently, and, leaning above the living woman, offered his body for her shelter. He was just in time, for a heavy fragment of concrete fell upon his shoulder and crushed him down.

“Carefully!” he yelled angrily. “You’re nearly through.”

He tried to rise, but his left arm was broken. He bared his teeth in a snarl of pain, and muttered blasphemously. With his sound arm he eased his considerable weight from the unconscious woman beneath him, but he kept his body interposed ​between her and the irony of possible death at the hands of the rescuers.

Extreme caution now marked the labours of those above. The surrounding debris was carefully tested before the removal of any obstruction lest a cave-in should defeat their efforts. Their caution galled the injured man beneath.

“Come on, for God’s sake!” he growled.

At that moment a beam of dusty sunlight fell upon the back of his head.

“You all right?” asked a husky voice.

“Me? Yes,” he answered, leaning on his sound elbow and looking upward with a faint smile. “I’m all right, except that I’m going to faint like a school-girl.”

“You’d better save it until we get you out.”

“I can’t.”

He could not.

They lifted him out carefully and with effort, for he was a man of girth.

“God only knows how he got under that far,” remarked one of his rescuers as they carried him to the middle of the street.

“His heart’s as big as his frame, that’s why,” replied the self-appointed ganger. “Lend a hand here, some of you. Two women here. One of ’em dead, I’m thinking. Two of you on those bars over there. When I give you the word, heave up gently and we’ll see if we can get ’em out.”

****