No Other Haven (5 page)

Two hours ago the promise of a lazy day together in their own house would have meant pure bliss.

In the hall he flicked on a light.

“The servants will be out in their own quarters. I’ll get you some warm milk.”

Her nerves snapped. “I don’t need it. Sorry to have behaved so stupidly. I’ll go to bed now. Good
night
.”

Mechanically, she slipped off her dress, got into a wrap and went to the bathroom. Odd how habit bears one along when all else is collapsing. Toilet soap and tooth brush, and back to one’s own dressing table to flail the hair in the usual way and tie a ribbon round it.

She lay in bed in the darkness with the window wide. Cicadas were still busy and frogs croaked their spring song. The sheets smelled of lavender and naphtha, and the mattress yielded too much, or perhaps it was because she was unused to a bed so large.

Thought could not be staved off for ever.

So the explanation of his rare look of bitterness during the voyage was, as she might have guessed, a woman. The acid of an unfulfilled love affair had bitten deep, and he had married Lindsey, not from the conviction that soon his feeling for her would develop into soul-satisfying love, but from an indifference as to what he did with his life if he could not have the woman he wanted.

With painful persistence, Lindsey wrestled with the problem. He had left England nursing a wounded heart. A nice girl, who turned out to be the sister of young Lionel Gresham, had offered the only sort of friendship he could assimilate just then—an easy comradeship untrammelled by the impedimenta of flirtation. The unfortunate occurred. The nice girl, discovering herself penniless and without anchor, had sought his help.

On that strange, distant night Stuart had said, “I want to marry you,” his tone decisive and wholly convincing
.
He had not stated, and neither had she enquired, the reason. Chivalry? Pity? His well developed instinct for rescuing the distressed?

A few times they had talked about Lionel. Stuart had told her: “He was likeable and utterly steadfast; just like you, Lindsey.” At the time her heart had bounded, but she had contrived a flippant retort.

Now she was thankful from the depths of her being for the self-control which had often steered her through sweet and perilous seas. How easily she might have
sought his arms and his lips, and forced from him the confession of a love that had no existence! At least he did not know how his voice and firm tread, the smell of his cigarettes and the more mundane sewing on of a coat button affected her. He imagined her only as near being in love as he was himself.

She trembled. Where did one go from here? Certainly it would be unfair to be bitter with
him.
In no way had he deceived her, and she was sure that when the other affair was entirely erased his devotion would be hers. But violently, desperately, she did not want him that way. His love had to be as heartwhole and unreserved as her own. He had to need her with every sinew, go tense at her approach, ache with terrible longings that only she could assuage.

Slow, hot tears slid from under her lids and over her temples. Despairingly, she turned her face into the pillow.

Morning’s light brought a tenuous calm. Alien bird notes came from the garden, a short, liquid trill answered by a high pitched whistle some distance away. October was spring in this country; the heat already matched that of a beautiful English summer. A strong breeze soughed overhead through the trees, yet the young shoots of the hibiscus hedge scarcely quivered. The house and grounds were completely shut in by a closely-packed wall of pines and myrtle and bottle-brush.

A thump at the door announced Meta, her dark face shining with soap, her mob-cap and apron immaculately white over a pink-and-white striped cotton dress. Her short splay feet were clothed in a home knitted concoction in vari-colored wools. In her hand she held a tiny silver tray bearing a tumbler three parts full of clear topaz.

“Morning, ma’am,” with a shy giggle.

“Good morning, Meta. What have you brought?”

“Grape juice, ma’am.”

“I’d rather have tea.”

“Daniel make tea this minute. Master say you drink this before eat.”

Lindsey sat up and accepted the glass. “Where do you come from, Meta?”

“My mother live at location.”

“Do you go there often?”

“Daniel tell me go once month.”

“Only once a month? Is the location far?”

White teeth flashed. “I run there ten minute.”

“You like going home?”

“Much like. Daniel say bad. Daniel not like
ntombi na mdanso
.”

“What does that mean?”

“The dance and the girl. Daniel not like.”

Meta’s face was so merry that Lindsey felt a mild rebuke might be timely.

“Daniel is a very good boy. You may go, Meta.”

“Yas, ma’am. Soon I bring eggs and toast.”

“No eggs. Only toast and tea.”

Lindsey drank the grape juice and found it astonishingly refreshing. She must speak to Daniel about letting Meta go home once a week in future. Mustn’t come down too hard on him, though; he was a valuable boy. It was Daniel who supervised the house and garden, besides working hard himself. Presumably, it was he who had ordered sufficient food and drink to carry them through for a day or two.

Daniel also made good tea, she added to his list of accomplishments a few minutes later, and the
thin
toast triangles were delicious with the fat curls of butter. She wished she felt hungry enough to eat more than one.

Just as she finished dressing, the car started up. She hurried through to the kitchen in time to see it glide backwards down the drive.

“Did the master say where he’s going?” she asked Daniel.

‘To a garage, ma’am, for gas and oil.”

She hadn’t thought of that. He’d gone without saying good morning.

“I’ll make up the grocery list first, Daniel, and Meta must do some washing.
T
h
ere’s
a case full of soiled clothing in my room. After
that, if we have the ingredients, I’ll mix some cakes.”

She switched on the oven, found pencil and notebook and took them into the dining room. When the list was ready, Daniel set out with it to the Chinaman’s shop a few avenues away. He was used to walking long distances. Soon she must open an account with a department store in town.

The oven was unconscionably long in warming Lindsey walked the house, collecting jars and vases. From the door it looked as though there were plenty of flowers in the back garden to fill the bare places left by the ferns in the hall. She must get Mrs. Conlowe to tell her the name of that long lilac bloom and the scarlet bells. Delphiniums, stocks and gladioli, though gigantic compared
with English varieties, were recognizable.

Over there, under a tree, Meta sang at her wash tub, and a long way down the garden a figure moved among the pawpaws and peach trees. It was the garden boy, in khaki jeans with sky-blue patches, L
i
ndsey returned to the kitchen and began to mix her cakes. They would have to be plain, for there was no dried fruit till her order was delivered, and only a little butter and a couple of eggs in the refrigerator. She was creaming sugar and fat when Stuart came back, loping up the path as though returning from a morning sprint. He went right round, and she heard him shouting through the door at the back stoep. “Lindsey! Are you up, Lindsey?”

Try as she might to quell it, her heart enacted its habitual somersault.

“In the kitchen,” she cried.

He came in grinning. “No hangover?”

She shook her head. “None.”

“You look good enough to eat. What’s that?” He dipped a finger into the bowl and tasted it. “Cake mixture? Can’t you leave the girl to do that? It’s such a grand morning, I thought we’d take a drive into the country.”

“There’ll be lots of grand mornings.”

“But why go all Mrs. Beeton on our first day? Whoever made those cakes we had for tea yesterday wasn’t a bad cook. Tell them to make some more.”

“I can’t waste the mixture now and Meta’s doing some laundry.”

He turned to the door. “Meta!”

The girl ambled up. “Yas, master?”

“The missus wants you to finish these cakes. You know how to do it?”

“Yas, master.”

“Good. Come on, Lindsey. There used to be an ostrich farm about twenty miles out, run by an old Army man. We became great pals.” His arm was in hers, compelling her at his pace along the path. “I’ve been there a good many mornings and cadged coffee and hot scones. Let’s try it on.”

This morning he had a virile, unconquerable look. The soft cream linen sports shirt revealing the brown strength of his throat, the point of dark hair dead centre above his forehead, turned him into the handsomest of buccaneers. Who could help being fired by him!

But in Lindsey’s eyes lurked a shadow that was not there yesterday.

CHAPTER
FOUR

THREE days later Lindsey accidentally attended her first veranda luncheon. Stuart, who had to keep an
appointment in town, had driven her to “Komana” just after noon, and left her there, promising to telephone if he were likely to be back later than four o’clock. Mrs. Conlowe was at the hairdressers, but due home for lunch, so Lindsey took a magazine into the sun lounge and made herself comfortable in one of the divans. But the journal remained unopened on her lap.

The sun lounge was raised higher than the rest of the veranda in order to command, not only a sweep of the Esplanade, but a stretch of ivory sand washed by rollers and the mighty reef of rocks far to the right, where Port Acland ended and Paynters Ridge began to thrust its jagged headlands into the incredible blue of the Indian Ocean.

Sunlight glittered over the heaving waters, glared white on the low ornamental beach wall on the other side of the road. Some children played on the sand with their dark, buxom nannies, but few people promenaded, for this was not quite the holiday season. Lindsey could not read while so much loveliness lay within her field of vision.

Presen
tl
y the door thudded softly behind her.

“Oh, I beg your pardon.”

Lindsey turned her head. “Please don’t go. Julius should have told you I was here. You’re Adrienne Cadell, aren’t you?”

The other came forward and slid into a chair opposite, her back to the garden and the sea. Her smooth dark cap of hair was drawn into a neat loop on her neck—a lovely neck. Her features, spectacularly regular, were rendered even more attractive by the creaminess of her skin. Not the sun bathing type, Lindsey catalogued. Yet her figure was nearly perfect, and her sheer silk legs and dainty gabardine sandals showed expensive good taste.

From Mrs. Conlowe’s remarks, Lindsey had pictured Adrienne Cadell as past her best, an unlucky young woman who had missed the marriage bus and, at nearly thirty, was left destitute by a wicked old father. This
soignee
person in well-cut yellow linen reversed her estimate. If Adrienne was unmarried, it was not for lack of suitors, thought Lindsey. More likely, the woman had never met a man to her taste who also possessed the right sized bank balance. Destitute, in Mrs. Conlowe’s dictionary, might mean anything up to five hundred a year.

Lindsey pulled herself up. Such antagonism towards a woman she had never met before!

“I missed you on my two previous visits,” she said. “I expect you know already that I’m Stuart’s wife?”

An inclination of the dark head. “I saw Stuart yesterday in the car outside Rickerman’s. You’d gone in to buy some things and we had a chat about old times in Kimberley. Perhaps he told you?”

“No, he didn’t
...
”

“How extraordinary.”

“It isn’t really. I came out of the store loaded and a little excited at being able to buy so much without restriction. Possibly it slipped his mind.”

“Perhaps.” A shrug of the neat shoulders. “I’m afraid Mrs. Conlowe isn’t expecting you today. An hour or two at the hairdressers tires her considerably, and she has ordered only a very light lunch to be sent to her room when she returns.”

“In that case,” said Lindsey, carefully modulating her tones, “I’ll wait to say hello and run into town for lunch.”

A brief, uneasy pause.

“Why not come with me?” Adrienne suggested casually. “My cousin is giving a buffet lunch at his flat. You know the sort of
thin
g—a veranda scramble. I often take friends, sometimes as many as three or four.”

“It’s kind of you, but I
think
...
”

“Tony’s lunches are fun and very popular. His flat isn’t far—in one of the avenues off the Esplande, the town end. He’s the brightest light in the Port Acland younger set.”

Before Lindsey could fabricate a decisive refusal, Mrs. Conlowe’s saloon turned into the drive and came to rest a few feet from the steps. Without appearing to hu
rr
y, Adrienne got there first, and extended a helping hand.

“Well, it’s over for another week.” Her voice had miraculously gone gentle and quiet. “You really must accept Madame Rose’s offer to send a girl to do your hair here.”

“It wasn’t so bad.” Mrs. Conlowe was smiling. “Lindsey! How nice to see you. Did you tell Julius you’re staying for lunch?”

“No. I thought
...
”

Again Adrienne took the initiative. “Lindsey guessed you’d be a little tired. I’ve just invited her to Tony’s with me.”

Mrs. Conlowe laid an affectionate hand on Lindsey’s shoulder. “That will be better for you. Have a good time with the young things and come back to tea with me. What’s Stuart doing?”

“Lunching with several men and after that they go to the Town Planning Office. He should be here by four.”

“Good. Use the car, Lindsey. Can you do without the chauffeur? I promised him this afternoon off.”

Lindsey hated having to say, “I can’t drive.” But there was no alternative.

“If you’ll trust me with it,” Adrienne inserted diffidently.

“Yes, my dear. I’d forg
o
tten you’re an expert at the wheel. Off you go, then.”

With superb carelessness, Adrienne swung the big car out into the lunch hour traffic on the Esplanade.

“I’m fond of Mrs. Conlowe,” she said presently. “She knows how to carry her riches, which is more than you can say for the new wealthy who are infesting the best parts of town. Of course, your angle is somewhat different. One must always be wary of a mother-in-law, especially when one has married an only son.”

“My case happens to be an exception,” Lindsey answered swiftly. “Mrs. Conlowe and I are the best of friends.”

Adrienne laughed, a glossy little sound intended to disarm. “She was prepared to like anyone whom Stuart might choose for a wife. Secretly, of course, she hoped he’d marry a South African, but she has the tact
and
breeding to accept defeat gracefully.”

“You do her an injustice. Mrs. Conlowe is only interested in Stuart’s happiness.”

An idea struck Adrienne. It was apparent in the way her long slim fingers tightened on the wheel, and the contraction of her narrow, flame tinted lips.

“I sit rebuked,” she said softly. “So long as Stuart shows every sign of the happily married man she will clasp you to her heart like a daughter.” A gay smile. “Woe betide you, though, if you etch a single line of disillusionment on that handsome brow!”

At a large
corner
hotel they swerved into a road of spacious white boarding houses. On the first floor of one of the taller buildings, a veranda was packed with guests who seemed to be brandishing glasses and sandwiches and all talking at once. Adrienne pulled into the curb.

“Tony! Tony, are you there?”

A good-looking young man with crinkly brown
hair
and a pleasant voice appeared between two women and gazed down.

“Come on up, Adrienne. Who’s with you?”

“A potential client
.
”

“If that’s so, darling cousin, I’ll come down.”

“
Tony’s a fashionable photographer,” Adrienne told Lindsey. “He has the flair. Magnates drape their wives in jewels and send them to Tony for a better-than-life reproduction. Unfortunately, there aren’t enough proud business men to keep him in the splendor he was born to, so he throws these parties to rope in custom, and, incidentally, as grist for the social column which he writes for
the
Week-end Courier
.”

By this time Tony Loraine had reached the sidewalk, and Adrienne made the introductions. Confidingly, he took an arm of each and led the way up a flight of red, polished steps.