An Unsuitable Wife

by Lindsay Armstrong

  And in an almost reflexive gesture she put her hands around the back of his head and cradled it to her breasts. Then she released him just as suddenly and said with a wry little smile, ‘Am I getting a cooking lesson tonight?’

  ‘If you want—Sid…’ he hesitated briefly then put his hands on her waist and swung her down into the cabin ‘…what was that about?’

  ‘Nothing, Mike.’ She took his hand and threaded her fingers through his at the same time as she said gaily, ‘Lead on, Mr Master Chef. In point of fact I’m starving. Is that what swimming does to you?’

  But things changed after that day.

  Not dramatically and not when they were making love but at other times they were both quieter, Sidonie thought, and said to herself, Well, it has to end, doesn’t it? And swallowed with sudden fright.

  They also had a blazing row.

  It all began quite innocently…

  ‘So this is Rosslyn Bay!’ she said as Morning Mist slid into a man-made harbour beneath a towering inverted pear-shaped rock.

  ‘Uh-huh.’ Mike was at the wheel. ‘Gateway to the Capricorn Coast, you might say. Great Keppel is not far away seaward, Rockhampton not far away inland, and that’s the township of Yeppoon you can see. But the only reason most people come into Rosslyn Bay is to refuel and take on water. And use the laundromat.’

  Sidonie wrinkled her nose. ‘You don’t like it.’

  ‘I guess it’s a reminder that the trip—that we’re getting closer to civilisation now,’ he amended. ‘Plus it’s not the most aesthetically appealing place I’ve been to-—hell,’ he added.

  She raised an eyebrow at him.

  ‘There are at least five boats lined up waiting to refuel; this will take hours. We’ll have to spend the night here.’

  ‘Is that a problem?’

  ‘No, you can anchor over there.’

  ‘Well, I’ll tell you what,’ she said brightly, ‘while you’re waiting to refuel, why don’t I try out this famous laundromat? Our towels and sheets need a good wash.’

  He glanced at her a shade wickedly, she thought but she tried to remain nonchalant. You could be right,’ he said gravely.

  ‘Is there anywhere you could drop me off?’

  ‘Certainly, that jetty there. But the laundromat is a bit of a walk.’

  Sidonie jumped up. ‘I don’t mind. Just show me the general direction.’

  ‘Have you ever used a laundromat before?’

  ‘Hundreds of times,’ she assured him, adding indignantly, ‘I’m not really some babe in the woods, Mike.’

  ‘Not quite,’ he agreed. ‘Do you know that little blue jar in the galley cupboard where the cups and saucers are?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You’ll find it chock-a-block with coins of the designation so beloved by laundromats.’

  ‘What a good idea!’

  ‘I’m full of ’em,’ he agreed.

  ‘And sometimes you’re so modest——’ she patted him on the head ‘—it’s incredible.’

  He took one hand off the wheel and pulled her into his lap. ‘Don’t do anything I wouldn’t while you’re ashore, Miss Hill.’

  She looked up into his eyes, saw how they teased and went limp with love. ‘I won’t,’ she promised because for once she couldn’t think of anything else to say.

  But she did, quite unwittingly, and she had no presentiment as she strode out jauntily from the jetty with her beloved hat upon her head to protect her from the sun and a bag of laundry swinging in her hand.

  There were only two other people in the laundromat—a pretty dark girl of about nineteen and her baby in a pram. But although she was pretty the girl’s eyes were swollen and red-rimmed as she sorted through a mountain of nappies and baby clothes, and she responded to Sidonie’s cheerful greeting with only a watery smile. Moreover, it wasn’t long before she sat down on the bench, dropped her head into her hands and began to sob pitifully. The baby immediately started to wail in sympathy.

  ‘Oh, dear,’ Sidonie said worriedly and she picked the baby up, sat down beside the girl and tried to comfort them both.

  It finally came out, a long, sad story about the trials of being an unmarried mother, how it was so hard to cope, how lonely she was even though she was living with her parents, how their unspoken disapproval came through, how she sometimes, although they had a perfectly good washing machine at home, came down here just to get away … How she still loved the father of her baby despite his defection.

  Sidonie shook her head and marvelled inwardly. But apparently just being able to unburden herself to a sympathetic stranger helped because finally the girl dried her tears, and together they transferred loads of washing to the driers and sorted it and folded it as it came out, in quite a spirit of companionship.

  Because there were only three, slow driers, though, Sidonie’s washing was last to go in and still drying when Pauline—they’d exchanged names—was ready to go with several large bags balanced precariously on the top of the pram hood.

  ‘Have you got far to go?’ Sidonie asked.

  ‘About a mile up the road.’

  Sidonie glanced at the drier and made a decision. ‘I’ll walk up with you, then; mine is still going to take ages, I think. Here, let me carry a bag.’

  But it was at least a mile up the main Yeppoon road then half a mile down a side one- and she’d left her hat in the laundromat, Sidonie realised. Not that she minded; the sun was sinking and was losing its strength and Pauline pressed her to come in and have a cup of tea. But belatedly Sidonie thought of Mike, who might be wondering what had happened to her, so she declined but she took note of the address and suggested they might become pen-pals. The other girl was so grateful, Sidonie wished she could do more, and had this on her mind as she walked back the way they’d come. She was also thinking that Rosslyn Bay was a lonely sort of place to be stranded with a baby-—it was really nothing more than a fishing village—and got the fright of her life when a police car skidded to a halt beside her and a burly constable enquired whether she might be Sidonie Hill.

  ‘Yes, yes,’ she breathed, immediately imagining that some terrible accident had befallen Mike. ‘What’s happened?’

  The constable reached resignedly for his radio. ‘Nothing, love. Your boyfriend’s just doing his nut. Convinced you got kidnapped ’cause he reckons you wouldn’t have gone anywhere willingly without your hat.’ And he cast Sidonie a speaking look.

  ‘How d-dare you?’ Sidonie’s voice quivered with anger. ‘How dare you say things like that to me in front of a whole lot of people?’

  They were back on Morning Mist; she’d just scrambled off the dinghy and stood on the back deck with her hands on her hips, her hat on her head. ‘Of all the——’

  ‘They were all too true,’ he replied cuttingly as he came up the ladder himself and threw the bag of laundry on the deck. ‘You were gone for bloody hours. What do you think I should have done? I checked the shops, I checked anywhere you might legitimately be expected to go—there are not a lot of places one can go in Rosslyn Bay—and to all intents and purposes you had vanished into thin air.’

  ‘But I hadn’t——-’

  ‘And we can continue this discussion down below,’ he said curtly and simply picked her up and carried her there.

  Sidonie kicked and fought on the way down, as angry as she could ever recall being, but to no avail. She also said when he finally set her on her feet, ‘I hate you, Mike Brennan! All I was doing was a good turn, and it was so little, for some poor girl——’

  ‘Well, the next time you get carried away doing good deeds, just let me know in advance.’ He stared at her, his eyes still smouldering, his mouth set in a hard line, then he turned away abruptly and reached for a bottle of Scotch.

  Sidonie watched him in silence as he poured a drink. Then she said tautly, ‘I never thought you would be the kind of person to make so much out of a simple misunderstanding, Mike. I’m…I have to confess I’m disappointed in you.’

>   ‘Disappointed,’ he ground out and banged a second glass on to the counter. ‘What you don’t understand is that girls do get picked up and whisked away and God knows what else. So to blithely walk miles away and leave your belongings, your precious damned hat behind,’ he said witheringly, ‘would look suspicious to anyone! To me,’ he stressed the word, ‘who knows only too well how much trouble you can get yourself into without even trying—it certainly looked that way,’ he finished furiously.

  Sidonie pursed her lips and decided to ignore that taunt. ‘Are you not just a little embarrassed about over-reacting, Mike? Although the police were pretty understanding, I thought. Especially when you started to abuse me.’

  ‘Embarrassed!’ he marvelled. ‘You’re damn right.’ He took a sip of straight Scotch and breathed exasperatedly. ‘You’d try the patience of a saint, Sidonie.’

  ‘If that’s the case, you don’t have to put up with me, Mike. I can go any time, you know,’ she said proudly.

  He only smiled but it was a tigerish, cynical little smile and he glanced around expressively as if to say, Where exactly do you plan to go, friend Sid?

  Sidonie suddenly experienced the sensation of being dangerously overwrought, as if this couldn’t—or shouldn’t—be happening to her. And two tears sparkled on her lashes and brimmed over.

  Mike stared at her then said in a suddenly goaded sort of voice, ‘Come here, Sid.’

  ‘No, Mike.’ She sniffed and scrubbed her eyes with her wrists. ‘Not until you apologise——’

  ‘What the hell have I got to apologise for?’ he demanded.

  ‘For treating me the way you did. For making such a fool of me in front of…the whole town! I tried to apologise and explain what had happened. I tried to tell you why it had all happened but you wouldn’t listen—well, I’m not going to listen now.’ And she stood straight and stern in her yellow T-shirt and blue shorts, her hat still on her head, and didn’t bother to scrub the tears away any more. ‘I feel extremely misused, if you must know, and quite determined not to give in to your overbearing tactics, which are nothing short of bullying of the highest order to my mind.’

  For a moment his expression defied description then he deliberately relaxed. ‘All right,’ he drawled, ‘I apologise. Would you care to share a drink with me?’

  She stared at him. ‘I don’t think you really mean that, Mike——’

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake!’ He came round the counter and picked her up and sat her on it. He also removed her hat, murmuring that it had done enough damage for one day. Then he said gravely, ‘I’m sorry, Sid. I genuinely got a fright; I couldn’t for the life of me imagine where you might have gone and …well, the rest you know. But you have to admit it was pretty thoughtless to wander off like that, in a strange place.’

  ‘I suppose so,’ she conceded. ‘But she was just so miserable, you see. And she had this sweet baby—I’m going to write to her. Just pen-pal sort of thing; it can only help, don’t you think?’

  ‘Well, so long as she doesn’t turn up on your doorstep one day complete with sweet baby—uh—no, only teasing,’ he said ruefully. ‘Am I forgiven?’

  Sidonie considered then she said, ‘Yes. Provided, though——’

  ‘I might have known there would be a proviso,’ he said with an ironic little smile.

  ‘That you stop treating me as if I can’t take care of myself.’

  ‘Can you?’ He said it almost in a reflexive gesture, she thought, then smiled, but drily, as he added, ‘OK. Should we kiss and make up?’

  ‘If you want to—’

  ‘I do. Don’t you?’ He raised a quizzical eyebrow at her.

  ‘Why do I get the feeling I’m being patronised?’ she asked more of herself, as if speaking her thoughts aloud.

  ‘I wouldn’t dream of patronising you, Sid,’ he replied, however, and drew his hands lightly down her arms. ‘You’re quite—terrifying,’ he added innocently, ‘when you get all haughty and proud and climb on to your high horse. For basically a slip of a girl, you grow amazingly in stature.’

  ‘Well, now I know you are patronising me, Mike Brennan——’

  ‘And I can see there’s only one way around this one,’ he broke in wryly and, taking her in his arms, began to kiss her without further ado.

  Later, in the dark, as she lay beside him holding his hand, sated and drowsy and feeling worshipped from the tips of her toes to the crown of her curly head, he said very quietly, ‘Still feeling misused, Sid?’

  She sighed and turned into his arms. ‘No. It’s impossible. Although I suspect I should.’

  He laughed. ‘What say we leave Rosslyn Bay very early in the morning and try our luck at Pancake Creek‘? I can’t think of any disasters that might befall us there.’

  ‘All right.’ She snuggled closer to him and was not to know that Pancake Creek would provide the biggest disaster of all, from her point of view.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  DEAR diary, it was on the way to Pancake Creek that I got the feeling I was on a runaway train. I think what happened at Rosslyn Bay precipitated it and I knew we both had it on our minds as we sailed south; I could almost hear him saying to himself, What the hell am I going to do with you, Sid? No, not quite as he did say it to me once, not angrily but perhaps with a different and genuine concern, a sense of different responsibility, because, of course, I couldn’t hide how I felt…I couldn’t be half-hearted about loving him although I tried not to make it too obvious. So what were we going to do? That was on our minds and we couldn’t help it creeping into our conversation—-then two things came up …

  ‘Have you got a permanent berth at Tin Can Bay, Mike?’

  ‘Yes—what brought that to mind, Sid?’

  They were about an hour out of Pancake Creek and motoring because the sea was dead calm, its surface like a mirror for the blue sky above, and there was not a breath of breeze.

  Sidonie patted the wooden deck she was sitting on, patiently splicing a rope. ‘It’s just hard to think of Morning Mist——’ she squinted up at the bare mast and halyards ‘—being laid up for months and months.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘it’s not the best solution but about the only one. Still, I’ve had an extra month off this time so I can’t complain.’

  ‘When are you due back?’ she asked quite naturally.

  ‘In two weeks.’

  Two weeks—she repeated it in her mind and felt as if a hand was squeezing her heart suddenly, and all her naturalness deserted her. ‘So,’ she said with an effort, ‘do you think you’ll keep her? I mean, I gathered that you’d had a series of boats from what they told me in Airlie Beach.’

  He glanced at her briefly. ‘Mmm. I worked my way up to Morning Mist, you might say, by buying a couple of second-hand yachts and doing them up and selling them on.’

  ‘You wouldn’t …sell her on, though, would you?’ To her consternation she was unable to keep the anxiety out of her voice and eyes.

  ‘No. This is it.’

  She relaxed a little.

  ‘Why, Sid?’ he queried quietly.

  ‘I… just like to think of you two together, that’s all,’ she said awkwardly.

  ‘The perfect mistress,’ he said drily after a time. ‘I can pack her up and put her away any time I want.’

  Sidonie digested the tinge of self-directed cynicism behind his words and got up and showed him the rope. ‘There, perfectly spliced anyway. That’s one thing you didn’t have to teach me, Mike—’ She stopped abruptly.

  ‘Sid———’

  No, Mike, please don’t,’ she whispered. ‘Let’s talk about something else. Did you know, for example, that Captain Cook named Bustard Head behind which lies Pancake Creek in 1770? And he so named it because they shot a fowl there that was the best bird they’d eaten since leaving home.’

  He was silent for a moment, watching her carefully, then he said, ‘You’re a mine of information, Miss Hill.’

  ‘I’ve been reading his diary in your Cruis
ing the Curtis Coast book,’ she replied gaily. ‘I wondered if they had pancakes for breakfast one day round about that time but I can’t find any reference to it.’

  He smiled absently then his gaze narrowed on the southern horizon. ‘There’s that change they forecast. We might be stuck with pancakes for breakfast for a few days, Sid.’

  She scanned the horizon and saw the build-up of clouds. ‘Oh.’

  He took her hand and pulled her down beside him. All he wore was a pair of shorts and he was tanned nearly mahogany all over apart from where his shorts covered so that by contrast her own golden glow looked pale, and she felt small next to his smoothly muscled bulk and long, powerful legs. Not that she minded, normally. Somehow or other he contrived to make her slender body, her waist, which he could nearly span with his hands, her narrow hands and feet feel gloriously feminine, something she’d never really felt before. But today, at that moment, all she felt was small and worried.

  ‘Don’t look like that,’ he said, linking his arms loosely round her. ‘It won’t be like all the drama we had at Middle Percy or the storm we got into getting there. Pancake is as protected as Island Head. All you get is a slight roll in a northerly.’

  She leant her cheek on his shoulder and said softly, ‘Middle Percy was special, though.’ And immediately winced inwardly. Why do I keep saying these things?

  ‘Yes.’ He rested his chin on her head but said no more as the Gardiner beneath them maintained its even, steady beat and carried them on.

  But there was a surprise waiting for them at Pancake Creek—Moonshine, riding gently on her anchor in the broad placid reach of the creek.

  ‘Bloody hell!’ Mike swore. ‘I might have known.’

  ‘Oh, no,’ Sidonie said. ‘I wonder if Karen’s with him?’

  ‘Someone’s with him,’ Mike said coldly, and stopped.