Free The Wind and the Spray by Joyce Dingwell

time to eat,” he said, and they started down to the house.
    As they descended she asked him about some of the trees, and he told her.
    “These are Norfolk pines ... Norfolk Island is in that direction ... ” he pointed. “There’s a modern whaling station at Norfolk. Quite a large company.”
    “Not a dynasty,” she said.
    He gave her a quick look.
    “Here is your namesake.” He touched a generous, wide-branching, glossy-leafed tree. “A laurel.”
    “It’s not like our laurels.”
    “It’s a camphor laurel. An Australian species.”
    His fingertips went under her arm again. “There’s something else I want to show you.” He led her down a side path. Thy came to an old rainwater tank.
    “It’s filled with sea water,” he explained, “and a quantity of menthol.”
    “Menthol?”
    “To seed my oysters.”
    “Why do you want seeded oysters?”
    “For pearls.”
    “Pearls?”
    “It’s a hobby. I dip the oysters until they relax and open enough to enable me to work in mother-of-pearl nuclei. After that I suspend them in cages over the end of the jetty. Given the right conditions I have a pearl in a year.”
    “Have you done this long?”
    He nodded, and began unwrapping a bundle which he had taken from his pocket. “I took these over to an expert in Anna,” he told Laurel, “and he said they’re saleable.” She looked down with pleasure on the handful he held out for her inspection ... a handful of pale pink teardrops, she thought. She touched one gently and felt a glowing warmth.
    “They’re lovely.”
    “Not bad, taking into consideration that we’re too far south to hope to raise anything really spectacular.”
    “Yet you do hope?” she hazarded.
    He ran his fingers through his salt-bleached hair, a curiously boyish gesture she had not seen him use before. A little boyishly he said, “One feels there can always be the exception.” She could see that it was more than just a hobby with him.
    “Then,” she suggested, “your financial worries would be over.”
    “What do you know of my financial worries?”
    “I know that both your house and water storage need renewing.”
    He shrugged his great shoulders. “I see you’ve been getting around. Luke drive you up to Dum?”
    “There—and to the northern end as well.”
    He was tying up the pearls again. He did not appear at all annoyed that she had seen h is new boat.
    “So you think I should effect some repairs?” he drawled.
    “It can never be expansion if you don’t maintain.” There, she had said it. She waited for the raised eyebrows, the cool, quizzing eyes as he answered, “Oh, yes, Miss Teal, and what business is this, pray, of yours?”
    But he did not say it.
    He said instead, “I can’t do both. I can’t spend money on things that are already there.”
    “The pearl,” she suggested. “The pearl that will be the exception to the rule.”
    First I have to grow it. Then when—if—I did—”
    “Yes?”
    But he did not answer her. The silence between them grew ... and grew. Her head was not turned away this time, and all at once she found herself looking directly into the sailor blue eyes. They were not slitted now, they were staring—no, probing almost, probing into hers.
    She looked back, looked back curiously, oddly aware of something somewhere between them, something waiting, waiting to be discovered ... to be opened like the opening up for a pearl.
    The meal bell rang. He put the bundle into his pocket, still not speaking. Had he known that odd sensation, too?
    She could not tell when he did speak at last, neither by his voice nor by the topic.
    “I promised to show you the station,” he said. “I’ll do more than that, I’ll take you on a chase.”
    “On a chase?”
    “Tomorrow.”
    “On—on the Clytie ?”
    “Yes.”
    “Will—will it be ready?”
    “It was only a matter of replacing the parts. It’s out working now. We’re making up for lost time.”
    “Wouldn’t it be wiser to wait until