Astra lay in bed, her burnt-brown hair spread over the pillow, her longish features haggard and colorless. She stared up at Lisa from lustreless green eyes.
“Who are you? I rang for Mrs. Herat.”
“She’ll come, but she’s run off her feet. I’m Lisa Maxwell—just a passenger. I heard you weren’t well and thought you might like to take one of these tablets. They’re exceptionally good.”
“Tablets!” The voice which had thrilled thousands cracked. “I’ve swallowed so many pills that I rattle with each roll of the damned ship. Even those the doctor sent were no good, and he hasn’t been near me himself.” According to Mrs. Herst the doctor had no time for seasickness. “Give ’em lemon tea and get ’em on deck,” was his advice to the stewardesses, and he was capable of sending aspirin or bismuth to beguile the victim into believing she bad taken a cure. In his many years at sea he had dealt with so many temperamental women, many of them well known, that he was apt to discount their sufferings.
Lisa explained how the small yellow tablets had come into her possession. “Ordinarily, they’re not obtainable without a prescription, and you positively mustn’t have more than one a day, but the correct dose is harmless. I had one at mid-morning and Nancy had a half-tablet. We both feel fine.”
“You do?” Life endeavored to seep back into Astra’s pale face. “If they’re so marvellous why doesn’t the ship’s doctor prescribe them?”
“Supplies are very short—these came from a London hospital. I suppose there’s some ingredient they can’t get. Will you take one?”
Astra struggled into a sitting position and closed her eyes as the cabin swayed. “Great God,” she wailed softly. “Three weeks of this!”
Lisa had gone to the bathroom, drawn water in a glass and returned to the bedside. “It’s not all Bay of Biscay. The steward says we’ll be through the worst by tonight.”
“Don’t be so darned bright,” came the irritable answer. “I couldn’t feel more grim so I might as well try your pill. I particularly want to be fit for this evening.”
She got the tablet down, and managed to lean forward while Lisa rearranged the pillows. Mrs. Herst came in then, tired, smiling and business like.
“So you’re sitting up, Miss Carmichael, and much the better for it, I’ll be bound. What about that lemon tea, now?”
“Lemon tea!” exclaimed Astra fretfully. “Can’t you think of anything else?”
“It’s surprisingly refreshing,” Lisa slipped in, “and soothing to the nerves.” She moved to the door. “I hope you’ll soon be feeling right.”
There was no reply from Miss Carmichael, but Lisa didn’t blame her in the least; she was too grateful for her own immunity to the distressing malady to wish to judge anyone in its toils.
Once Astra was herself again she would doubtless be an exciting person to have aboard. Lisa recalled having read that she was thirty-two and possessed of a remarkable supply of French clothes. She had a flat in Chelsea and an old cottage near Hailsham; a chauffeur drove her about in a large, expensive car. To produce as well as act a leading part in a successful play such as Vale of Tears she must be a phenomenally clever woman.
Lisa stepped into her own cabin to find Jeremy there, standing astride to keep his balance and indulging in a one-sided discussion with Nancy.
He grinned round at Lisa. “This charge of yours refuses to unbend. All I’ve wriggled out of her so far are two noes and one yes.”
“I expect she feels at a disadvantage up there,” said Lisa, with a warning glance at the child. “Sorry I didn’t meet you on deck as we arranged, but it became altogether too rough, and I decided it would be safer to heed the broadcast instructions and keep below.”
“But it’s grand up there, and I promise that you won’t collect a single bruise.” He looked up at Nancy. “You don’t want to come, do you?”
“No,” was the unequivocal reply.
“Right. Where’s your raincoat, Lisa?”
She allowed herself to be persuaded. The coat was buttoned to the throat and belted, the hood drawn up and fastened under the chin. A silky tress slipped out, and when they had traversed the corridor and he was preparing to open the after-door against the wind, he tucked it back under her hood with light, sure fingers.
“Pretty Lee,” he said. “One of these days shall have to kiss you. Will you mind?”
“I might. You can’t go around embracing people just when the mood gets you.”
“I said kiss you, not people. Why didn’t I meet you while I was still in England? I’m sure you’d have made me work harder, and I’d have done more than just worm through the exams. You’re the sort of girl my mother would take to. She’s one of those simple women with a rigid code—a bit too rigid for me!—but you’d measure up all right.”
He thrust at the narrow after-door and the wind immediately took their breath. Arms locked, they ran with the tip of the ship and arrived at the rail, panting and laughing.
Except for an elderly man who purposefully marched along the port deck, there was no one about. The seas were still high and the wind swept rain over the deck, so that one could not distinguish if it were rain or spray that stung the face. True to his promise that no harm should come to Lisa, Jeremy kept her clamped close to his side, and he talked of many things.
Though their friendship was but a day old, Lisa had learned much about Jeremy. He had lost two older brothers in the war, and though they couldn’t really afford it, his parents had financed Jeremy’s education in England because he was the only one left and they could deny him nothing. Their reward was his cable intimating that he had secured his engineering degree; he had fluffed it the previous year and felt terrible at having to take still more money from them.
“But it was the only thing to do,” he said now, with the blitheness which was never long absent from his manner. ‘‘To go home a failure was out of the question. I couldn’t have stood it and neither could they. I haven’t told them about the job in Durban. That will tickle them pink, though it still sounds like hell to me.”
“You’ll settle into it,” she told him. “You must have an engineer’s mind or you couldn’t have got your degree.”
“You’re as comforting as a woolly scarf on a raw day,” he said. “I can’t imagine why some man hasn’t hooked you into a little cottage to warm his slippers and delight his heart. You’d be adorable to come home to, Lee.”
She did not take much notice of Jeremy. The wind and rain were so exhilarating, and the sky had those huge clouds which come up from the south-west in England. Her lips tasted salt and her nose and cheeks were faintly pink, but she was not cold. A glorious warmth had a core in the centre of her being.
“Jeremy, have you ever seen Astra Carmichael on the stage?” she asked.
He was not astonished at this turn of the conversation. “Yes, twice, in the same play. She was at the Captain’s table last night.”
Her smile at him was tinged with curiosity. “You didn’t say.”
He shrugged. “One always regards actresses as glamorous and unreal. I admired her tremendously in the play, and she’s an unerring producer—but in person such celebrities are disillusioning. She’s not likely to bother with small potatoes like you and me.”
Lisa laughed and described the episode of the yellow tablets. Jeremy was amused.
“Let’s hope like blazes that the thing worked, or she’ll have the merchant navy clamp you in irons. I’d hate to have to spend the rest of the voyage with bars between us.”
Presently she suggested that they go up to see Snippy and Tubs, the bull mastiffs whose acquaintance she had made this morning, but they found the companion roped off and affixed to the rail was a sign which forbade passengers to go farther. Philosophically, they turned back to the lounge, to be button-holed there by an earnest young man who begged them to attend a meeting for the election of a sports captain and committee at six o’clock. When they had agreed to be present, Lisa disengaged herself from Jerem
y’s firm grasp.
“I mustn’t neglect Nancy. She’s the reason I happen to be on the. Wentworth.”
“She’s a nuisance,” he groused amiably. “You’re too conscientious. It beats me how you’ve endured that little sphinz for three years.”
“You say that because Nancy’s feminine yet unmoved by your charm,” she chided him.
“Never mind, so long as you’re a little affected by it,” he said comfortably. “We’re dancing tonight, Lee!”
“In this weather?”
“The bumps will have evened out by then,” he stated confidently. “We may even have a clear sky and an Italian moon; you know the sort—large and; silver-gilt. It’s not so heady as an African one, but I always think it’s safer for you English to come to Africa by degrees—particularly when it’s the first time, as with you. I wonder if the band has a crooner?”
“Is that a relevant question?”
“Of course. An Italian moon isn’t half so potent without someone singing Santa Lucia in the background. Lisa, my sweet, we are adrift on the everlasting sea.”
That evening she wore the blue frock. It had a shaped bodice and almost invisible straps over the shoulders, and her only ornament was a tiny aquamarine butterfly in her hair. Jeremy groaned and said he didn’t stand a chance with all these naval uniforms about, not to mention a few monied young men among the passengers. She was too sweet by far! Lisa imbibed a grain of salt with his admiration, yet knew she was blossoming. Any girl would expand in such an atmosphere.
Jeremy’s hope for moonlight was not fulfilled, though the seas had abated somewhat and the rain had been left behind. However, too many women still kept to their cabins to make dancing worth while. The quintet played popular classics in the lounge, and people sat around in groups, listening and talking. Old Lord Picton was beetling his brows over a chess board while his opponent, a placid-faced missionary, strove to keep boredom from his expression.
Lisa and Jeremy joined two others for a card game, and she became so interested that when the chief deck steward stood beside her, she threw him an absorbed, “Nothing to drink, thanks.”
He bent lower, however. “Pardon me, madam, Miss Carmichael would like you and Mr. Carne to come to her table.”
“Oh!” Lisa cast a swift look towards the end of the lounge, saw Astra sunk within a tall-backed armchair near a low wine-table, and experienced a queer stab of misgiving; for Astra’s companion was Captain Kennard.
Speaking rather fast, she transmitted Astra’s message to the card table. Jeremy and Lisa were excused, and without any of the haste that quickened her pulses she preceded him, to wreathe among the tables and groups of chairs and finally reach Astra’s secluded corner.
Mark Kennard was standing. After her escort had been introduced Mark indicated a chair first for Lisa and then for Jeremy, after which he seated himself and offered cigarettes.
Unmoving, Astra showed her small even teeth in a smile. “I owe you a spot of gratitude, Miss Maxwell. Your medicine did the trick.”
“You were probably on the way to recovery, anyway. Those bouts don’t last for ever,” said the Captain, inhaling lazily.
Lisa darted him a vexed glance. How like him to belittle her effort. It wasn’t that she wanted praise or thanks, but he might allow the tablets the credit which was their due; he had probably decided that nothing she did could be really efficient.
The next moment those deep-set, ice-blue eyes rested upon her, a sardonic query in their depths, and she quickly looked away.
“I’m glad you’re better, Miss Carmichael,” she said conventionally.
Certainly Astra in black and silver with the warm brown hair set in burnished waves presented a different picture from the one Lisa had seen earlier in the stateroom. To her mind came a paragraph from a review she had read, in which Astra Carmichael had been described as a sultry beauty, smouldering her way into men’s hearts— when she was not a winsome girl looking mortally hurt. “Only a dynamic actress,” the critic had finished, “could encompass such a part.”
An enigmatic woman, too, thought Lisa. One wouldn’t care to have to compete with her on any plane, but in the field of love there would be no hope at all. One felt instinctively that she knew every answer, every telling trick. “It was Captain Kennard who suggested I might like to meet you, Mr. Carne,” Astra was drawling pleasantly, her glance at the young man full of smiling appraisal. “He was right about you. You’re very good-looking.”
Jeremy, himself master of the complimentary phrase, was sufficiently taken by surprise at this frontal attack to redden quite furiously. “Thanks a lot. Kind of you to say so. Decent of the Captain, too.”
“I wasn’t being decent,” said Mark, so coolly and cryptically that Lisa felt the little hairs rising on the back of her neck. In his utter lack of emotion this man could be an absolute beast.
However, as Mark had no doubt intended, the implications of the remark passed by the less sensitive Jeremy, who at this moment was gazing at Astra with the candid admiration of a man who is by no means ignorant about women. “I suppose everyone tells you how much they enjoyed your acting in Vale of Tears. I saw the play both at the beginning and at the end of the run and it made a terrific impression on me.”
“Really?” Astra had patently heard it all before. She readjusted her cigarette in its jade holder before adding, “I had an excellent foil in my leading man. You’d be astonished how difficult it is to respond to some actors, particularly the older, seasoned ones; they’re so keen on putting over their own personality. I prefer someone young, whom I can mould into the part myself. Have you done any acting, Mr. Carne?”
“I!” he exclaimed blankly. “Good heavens, no.”
Mark Kennard inserted a mild enquiry. “Not even at college? I would have said you were a natural for hero parts.”
Unaccountably Lisa felt bound to put in, “You’ve only just met Jeremy. How can you possibly know that?”
Mark turned to her with elaborate courtesy. “Most people are easy to assess at first meeting. I did the same with you ... remember?”
Astra’s bright green eyes were upon him. “You’re teasing, Mark, and it’s not seemly in a captain.” To Lisa she said calmly, “There was a time when he treated me that way, too, but over the years we’ve grown beyond it. You, unfortunately, won’t have time to know him at his best—as a human being, I mean, not a sea-captain. Mr. Carne,” a brilliant smile at the young man, “or may I call you Jeremy? Well, Jeremy, what about you and your Lisa helping me with my notes for the productions I have to put on in South Africa? I do need some assistance from young people with fresh ideas. I’m sure you’d find it interesting.”
“You’ll have to count me out,” said Lisa quickly. “I have a child to look after.”
“Is Nancy still living?” queried Mark with sarcasm. “That’s not bad going.”
It seemed to Lisa that there was a slice of atmosphere between herself and the Captain which crackled electrically. Why an antagonism should have sprung up between Lisa Maxwell and the master of the Wentworth was incomprehensible, but it was there, a recurring and unmistakable state of tension.
Mark had continued speaking, though he now addressed Jeremy. “You will put in a few hours with Miss Carmichael, won’t you? She has a trying time ahead of her because in a country like South Africa there will be few first-class actors to choose from. As a matter of fact,” he looked at Astra as if it had only at that moment occurred to him, “you may find Mr. Carne just the pupil you’re after. The fans fall hard for a fair, handsome hero.”
The assured blue gaze swerved and flickered over Lisa. He was lining her up with the “fans” and at the same time deriving inward amusement from the reflection that Jeremy could easily be wrested from her side. He wasn’t only aloof and arrogant; he was almost vindictive.
“What a wonderful idea,” said Astra. “I’ll have to think that over.”
Jeremy, apparently, was not to be consulted at this stage. Lisa lo
oked his way and saw that his color had not yet receded. He was practically taken in by all this talk; bemused, perhaps, by Astra’s fame, her expensive perfume and the tantalizing snugness of her frock; her mature curves were very beautiful. Vaguely miserable, Lisa leaned forward to stub out the cigarette she had scarcely smoked.
Mark stood up. “If you’ll excuse me,” he said, and moved with a long, careless stride towards the main entrance, and disappeared.
Lisa did not attend very assiduously to the conversation which ensued between Jeremy and Astra Carmichael. It was chiefly about the actress’s other successes in the theatre and the delights she achieved from producing. She was no more conceited than she had a right to be, and it was natural that Jeremy should be enthralled.
He tried to fire Lisa with his own enthusiasm for the sophisticated creature who still lay back in her chair with an indefinable air of helplessness; but it was no good. Lisa craved for the privacy of her bed.
She got to her feet. “You won’t mind if I leave you now?”
On the point of saying “I’ll go with you,” Jeremy paused. He couldn’t very well walk out on Miss Carmichael. “Won’t you wait a little longer, Lee?” he begged.
“I’m rather tired. See you at breakfast, Jeremy. Goodnight, Miss Carmichael.”
Astra murmured something, but it was not permission for Jeremy to accompany Lisa, so after a minute or so he sat down again.
Lisa did not go at once to the cabin. She stepped through one of the doorways on to the deck and crossed to the rail to peer down at the dark, subdued seas. There were no stars and a wind still scoured the bulwarks, but something in the air promised warmth. With every second they were sailing south into more benign waters.
Lisa looked round as the purser passed, and he touched his cap and hesitated. She said, “Goodnight,” and he passed on, leaving her with the deck to herself. The strains of an overworked Viennese waltz floated around her.
Full Tide Page 3
