No Other Haven (7 page)

Impatiently, thoughtlessly, he flicked a cylinder of ash on to the floor.

“We couldn’t have acted otherwise, but it has changed you. Me, too, I dare say.”

“You mean you ... like me less?”

“Idiot,” he said at once, shifting so that he could lean over and tug her hair. “Maybe I expected too much, too soon. To
think
that it’s only a month since we first met! We haven’t even had a full week in this house, yet I feel I’ve lived here half my life. Come on. Let’s have a drink to cheer ourselves up.”

He poured Martinis and switched on the radio, twiddled till he contacted the B.B.C. But reception was distorted. He altered the controls and found dance music, shoved back the table and slipped an arm about her.

“I like a room big enough to swing my Maggie in,” he said. “We haven’t danced since the boat. They tell me it’s gay at the Country Club out at Paynters Ridge most nights. We shall have to try it
.
”

Lindsey entered his mood. The light kiss that he dropped on the top of her head as the dance ended became a hoarded crumb of reassurance.

It came back to her
min
d several times during the next day or two, but always, not far away in her consciousness, lay his wounding assertion: “You can’t be in love with a woman and not make love to her.” And that went, not only for Lindsey, but also for the woman who had embittered him before he left England. He couldn’t stay in London, so near the beloved without wanting her, so he had accelerated his visit to South Africa.

There was a time when he had foreseen himself presenting a different wife to his mother. She hadn’t the right to ask
him
about that, nor would she dare reopen the matter with Mrs. Conlowe, but it would stand like a steel wall between Stuart and herself for ever.

Lindsey did not ponder whether she would have married
him
on the boat had she known then what she knew, now. Stuart’s image and personality had influenced her most impressionable years. The heart scorching reality of meeting him was the work of an inexorable but nevertheless ironical Fate.

He said he regretted nothing and she believed him. His sense of duty was as strong as his capacity for pity was wide. Duty and compassion might take a man far, but they were a
flims
y substitute for love.

Away from him, Lindsey could think reasonably like
that
.
But he had only to come into a room where she sat to start a dr
ummin
g in her pulses and a pain in her throat. At such times she told herself fiercely, “It must come right.
It must
.”

The sherry party at “Komana” passed without mishap. Adrienne supervised it beautifully, was friendly with Lindsey and accepted an invitation to “Elliotdale.” Tony Loraine was there in the role of gossip writer, and he photographed Lindsey alone and Lindsey with
Stuart, before picking on a fe
w
others who were good for circulation.

Lindsey said, “Adrienne’s coming to us for dinner tomorrow. Will you come, too, Tony?”

“I certainly will. There’s nothing I like better than Sunday dinner in the veld.” He bowed theatrically, picked up his camera and weaved away.

“What made you invite that conceited young fool?” asked Stuart.

“He isn’t conceited—his work makes
him
that way. Adrienne and he go about together, and she has to have someone to bring her.”

“I could have collected her and taken her home.”

“Four is a better number than three, and she displays little interest in anyone else. Cousins have been known to marry, you know.”

“I hope she’ll show more taste than to marry that young man.”

Inwardly convinced that Tony was much the nicer of the two, Lindsey changed the topic. She had avoided an evening of undiluted Adrienne, and was prepared to give
i
n on other points.

Adrienne came to “Elliotdale” in a black dress with a scarlet sash, a tiny scarlet flower set in gold at each ear. With great care, Lindsey had chosen a soft white dress, her only touch of color the jade bracelet Stuart had bought her in Cape Town.

“Stupendous,” sighed Tony, comparing them. “The dove and the raven. Enchantresses both.”

“You don’t have to talk shop here,” Adrienne assured him, slanting a smile at the others. “Stuart’s not the sort to hang photographs of his wife all over the house.”

“Habit,” he confessed. “But you’re still the loveliest pair a man ever saw in one look.”

“I’m afraid that’s no compliment from you, Tony. Now if Stuart were to
unbend
...
” her chin tilted in his direction, provocatively. “There was a time when
you were charmingly unconservative with your compliments, Stuart.”

“I lost the knack in the Navy,” he said pleasantly.

“Bad luck for Lindsey. A wife
needs to be told she’s pretty once in a while. Other men will do it if you don’t.”

“Why should I grudge her the admiration of other men?” he enquired suavely. “What will you drink, Adrienne?”

The chicken was just right, the potatoes crisp and golden and the creamed peas sweet and buttery. Daniel served the small chocolate puddings piping hot, and followed up with fluted ices and pawpaw sections with lemon.

Pleased with the meal, Lindsey rose. “Shall we have coffee in the lounge or on the stoep?”

“The lounge,” said Stuart. “Show Adrienne the wad of snaps we had developed last week.”

The men remained behind, smoking.

In the lounge, Lindsey lifted a lamp to the halfmoon table beside Adrienne’s end of the chesterfield and got out a fat wallet of snapshots from the drawer of the writing table.

“Most of them were taken on board,” she explained, “and the rest in Cape Town. I suppose really they’re only interesting to anyone who was there and acquainted with the other passengers and the Captain, but most of them have come out exceptionally clearly, in spite of hazy weather in the tropics. Stuart’s is a marvellous camera.”

While the other woman examined the snaps, Lindsey opened the french window and tied back the net curtain. She gave the elephant’s leg a fond tap with her sandal in passing, and pushed forward a low table to receive the coffee tray which Daniel brought in.

Adrienne looked up. “This is an extraordinarily good
cl
ose up of you.”

From where Lindsey stood she could see it, upside-down. “Yes, isn’t it,” she agreed readily. “We were watching the ceremony of crossing the Equator—perhaps you’ve already come across pictures of Father Neptune and his gang?—and Stuart had one film left, s
o
he just snapped the top half of me as I stood there, clasping that ridiculous doll that someone thrust at me.”

Adrienne’s expression, as she leaned nearer to the reading lamp with the photograph still held between thumb and forefinger, was disquieting. Lindsey tensed.

“That ring you’re wearing,” said Adrienne slowly, distinctly, “isn’t
li
ke wedding ring you have now.”

Lindsey put out a hand that mi
gh
t have been steadier.

“Let me see.”

“It looks like a man’s ring.”

Lindsey’s laugh was brittle. “So it is. Stuart’s. I used to wear it sometimes when he swam without me, in case it came off in the water. Quite hides my ring, doesn’t it?”

Adrienne crossed her legs and lay an arm along the back of the chesterfield. She ignored the fact that the snapshots had slid sideways between the cushioned seat.

“
Only this morning Mrs. Conlowe and I were talking about your wedding. Oddly enough, we discovered that neither of us was aware which church you were married at in London.” The dark glance rested unwaveringly upon Lindsey’s flushed cheeks. “Perhaps you went to a register office?”

“Yes ... we did.”

For the last five minutes Lindsey’s ears had been straining up the corridor. With shattering relief, she heard the click of a door and men’s voices.

“Black or white coffee, Adrienne?” she queried breathlessly.

“White, please. No sugar.” As Stuart came in she hailed him. “I was just telling Lindsey that your mother realized during the party last night—to her immense horror—that she had no notion where you were married.” She was smiling shrewdly. “My guess was Hanover Square.”

“Is Hanover Square still there?” he asked carelessly. “Black for me, Lindsey, with cognac. Here, let me do it
.
”

He took the pot from her and prepared two cups in the same way, half coffee, half brandy, one of which he set
firmly
in Lindsey’s shaking hand. The other he carried to the chesterfield.

“You should try your coffee this way, Adrienne,” he said agreeably as he sat beside her. “One can understand why the French are tireless late nighters. Lindsey finds coffee and cognac after dinner a stimulant against the enervating air of Port Acland, but she won’t take it unless I join her.”

Lindsey swallowed the coffee. A fine perspiration, not entirely due to the brandy, started up at her temples. Somehow she poured white coffee for Tony and parried his nonsense.

Obviously captured by Stuart’s attentions, Adrienne sparkled with unexpected vivacity. For her, at least, that Sunday evening was a complete success.

At about 10:30 Lindsey left her alone in a spare bedroom to touch up her face and put on her wrap. As the two women walked down to the porch where the men waited, Adrienne smiled, almost with insolence.

“Thanks for the evening; it’s been quite exciting.” A brief silence. “Stuart’s not a boy of your own age, my dear. He needs handling with more sophistication.”

Lindsey had no time to retort, for Tony saw them and begged them to hustle.

Standing in the shadowed garden, oblivious of the moon climbing over a tangle of gesticulating palms, Lindsey wilted. This precarious game of playing up to Adrienne would wear her down. She had always loathed prevarication and subterfuge, and that such a purpose should have driven her to them increased her wretchedness. She had let Adrienne
think
they were married in a. London register office, a misconception that was sure to be passed on to Mrs. Conlowe early tomorrow. What would Stuart think of that?

Of two things she could be certain, his tact and untiring loyalty. But as Tony’s car crunched away and Stuart came back up the path, Lindsey’s heart was cold and heavy.

CHAPTER FIVE

IT was startling and comical to see tortoises, mostly about a foot long, but sometimes only hen’s egg size, scuttle across the lawn or linger for breakfast among the new green shoots of the dahlias. Lindsey was astonished how swiftly the squat, leathery legs moved, and fascinated by the look of age old wisdom in the tiny eyes.

“Their heads remind me of something, or someone,” she’d said to Stuart.

“And me,” he answered. “The family doctor when I was a kid. He was a hairless old chap with a receding chin.”

Many wild things lived in the garden. During his nocturnal prowling, Brutus had killed a snake, bitten off it head and left three feet of brown body as evidence. Rats, dassie and moles lived in the soil and among the thick growth, and down by the pool lizards darted and bull frogs dozed. One day Lindsey watched a butcherbird snap up a lizard and impale it on a twig as a meal in reserve, and Daniel said that monkeys had been known to swarm in families and infest the neighborhood for weeks.

Beyond the back of the garden lay raw veld packed densely with mimosa, wattle and bottle brush, and ten miles across country lay a forested Nature reserve, where buck of all kinds roamed in herds and deadlier beasts were known to breed.

Perhaps it was the
modern
appointments of the house, the atmosphere of polish and luxury, that made Lindsey unafraid of the dangers which crept in her own garden. She had seen Kiasa finish off an adder, and Daniel deal with Brutus at his most murderous. In both she had unlimited confidence.

On the map of Port Acland this end of the Beechwood road was shown as a byway to an inland town. Lindsey knew there were only six houses beyond “Elliotdale,” all of them so concealed among trees that only by the front walls and gates could one be sure they existed.

When, in the middle of their second week at “Elliotdale,” Mrs. Conlowe came out on her first visit, she condemned the house because of its surroundings.

“
Tropical gardens are so unhealthy and dangerous. You’ll find, Lindsey, that most of your trees will shed bloom and bear little or no fruit. What is nourishment to a banana is anathema to a peach or plum.”

“There’ll be plenty for two—if we stay that long.” They were now in the lounge. “Don’t you adore the elephant’s foot?”

Mrs. Conlowe laughed indulgently. “They have the jungle flavor for anyone new to the country, but they’re not unco
mm
on. You can often pick one up at an auction.”

Disappointing information, but Lindsey loved the thing no less.

Mrs. Conlowe’s brows rose as Meta carried the tea tray through to the stoep.

“Pure native?”

Lindsey nodded. “She goes with the house. She and I are learning a lot from each other. Meta’s disgusted because I don’t knit. She spends the bulk of her wages on bright colored wools, which she makes up into dozens of what she calls ‘tammy-bobtails’.”

“You mean the little round skull caps with rolled rims and huge pompoms dangling at the end of a crocheted
chain
?”

“Yes. Aren’t they cute
...
especially on plump girls!”

“I’ve never employed girls,” said Mrs. Conlowe, “but if I were younger I mi
gh
t experiment.”

Remembering her mother-in-law’s predilection for rich confectionery, Lindsey had cooked orange frosted
cupcakes
, pineapple fingers and walnut scones, each, of which was tried and praised.

“These are delicious, my dear. Where did you learn to cook?”

“I used to try out recipes on my brother, and later, of course, I had to look after myself. I fared better that way than I should have done in a boarding house. Anyone can cook when all the ingredients are available.”

“I can’t—not this sort of thing. I was all right with a billy can and skillet in my youth, when we used to camp in the Chimanimani Mountains, but in those open-air days anything used to taste good
...
even cinders.”

“Your family were Rhodesian settlers before they came down to Kimberley, weren’t they?” said Lindsey. “Those must have been romantic times.”

Mrs. Conlowe needed no drawing out on the subject of early Kimberley. Horses had played a much bigger part in her life than schools and tutors, and one of the saddest periods she could remember was when the horses were being sold up preparatory to a prolonged family visit to England, when she herself was twenty-five.

“At that time I was considered engaged to Horace Cadell, though there was nothing official. But in England I met and married Andrew Conlowe. We used to bring Stuart over to Kimberley for grand holidays. Horace lost his wife after only a few years
of marriage, but he remained a sober sort of man till the glamor creature got hold of him. Adrienne pretends not to mind, but I still feel incensed about it. She’s much too nice to be treated so shabbily. I’m very fond of Adrienne.”

To which Lindsey wisely returned a smile and no comment.

“Now, Lindsey,” said Mrs. Conlowe presently. “I didn’t come this afternoon to look over this unsuitable house and eat your delectable cookies. You and I have to decide on your wedding gift.”

“But you have given us the silver tea service and quantities of lovely china!” exclaimed Lindsey.

The older woman waved a deprecatory hand. “They’re surface things. Anyone can walk into an antique shop and select silver and china. What I have in mind now is something lasting—a sort of heritage, though that sounds much too grand.” She
smil
ed comfortably. “It’s like this, my dear. I own some valuable blocks of property in the centre of the town. I don’t need the income, and when I die the whole lot might be pushed on the market and a percentage swallowed in death duties. My plan is this. The title of that property shall be transferred to you in trust for your children.”

Lindsey picked up a cup and set it down again, very carefully. She wanted to laugh lightly; even more she wanted to cry.

“You mean
...
transferred to Stuart?”

“No, to you,” said Mrs. Conlowe firmly. “Conlowe women have always had a private income.” She added, “I told Stuart about the idea when he called to see me on his way to town this morning. He
thinks
it too early to make such arrangements, but I don’t. He loved you enough to marry you, and I, Lindsey, love you for your own sake as well as his. I know Stuart will give you everything you want, but men are lazy in the way of marriage settlements. In fact, I told
him
today that
I
was shocked at his slackness.”

“He and I had
...
well, more or less agreed to leave it over for a year,” Lindsey lied bravely. She forced a short laugh
.
“After all, we’re not settled.”

“That was Stuart’s argument, too.”

Cruelly, it dawned on Lindsey that she and Stuart must share a similar outlook upon the brit
tl
e bonds that linked them. He was marking time, as she was. He, also, strongly aware of the insecurity of their position, was wary of taking any step which might cause unpleasant repercussions if they had to
...
separate.

Suddenly, sitting there on her own stoep with his mother, Lindsey saw it all with great mental clarity—Stuart, calm, restrained, waiting for something approximating love to bu
rn
in his veins; herself, desperately unhappy, waiting for the same end.

Carefully guarding her voice, she said, “Some marriages do crack up quite early.”

Mrs. Conlowe looked the nearest Lindsey had ever seen her to exasperation. “Does Stuart echo you, or you him? I don’t care to hear this same stuff from you both in one day. Have you quarrelled?”

“Of course not.”

“Then all I can say is, the
modern
attitude to marriage robs the fine old institution of its charm.” Her head turned towards the front drive. “Here’s Stuart now, and I shall tell him what I think of this.”

“Please don’t. Half what he says is only in jest.”

“Perhaps so, but he gets his own way by it.”

The convertible slid up and parked behind Mrs. Conlowe’s saloon. Stuart got out and leapt the steps.

‘Too late for tea?”

“I’ll have some fresh made for you,” said Lindsey.

“Well!” from his mother. “Aren’t you going to kiss your wife?”

Stuart was
g
rinning
.
“Am I, Lindsey?”

Frankly scarlet, she grabbed the teapot. “Think it over while I’m gone,” she said, and fled.

The flush delighted Mrs. Conlowe.

“She’s a sweet girl, Stuart, and very young. It isn’t fair of you to impose your male cynicism on her innocence.”

Stuart hooked forward a grass chair, hitched his trousers and sat.

“Just what do you mean by that, my sweet?”

“You’re ten years older and a man. You probably knew other women before Lindsey and had light affairs, but she’s never been in love before. Girls in love have dreams. Let her keep them a while, Stuart.”

With a deliberate air, he bit into a cup cake. “What makes you think I might shatter them?”

“You’re so casual. Lindsey would love you to hug her right in front of me. Pride of possession, you know. Her man. Such attentions hold the world together—always have and always will.”

He dropped the half-eaten cake back on to a plate and flicked a crumb from his knee.

“You’re still in nineteen-hundred, darling. Displayed affection is quite out of date. Lindsey would hate it”

“How do you know if you haven’t tried?”

He leaned back and opened his cigarette case.
His
head bent over the lighting of a cigarette as he answered, “You saw the way she bolted just now.”

“Yes,” said Mrs. Conlowe wonderingly. “Almost as if she were shy. Hasn’t shyness gone out of fashion, too?”

“Largely,” he replied abruptly. “The fact that I haven’t killed Lindsey’s proves that I’m not entirely insensitive.”