Star Creek

by Pamela Kent

  As they crossed the hall Mrs. Pearce came hurrying, but Helen waved her back.

  “I’ll go with her!” her lips said voicelessly.

  It was the first time she had climbed the short flight of stairs to the wing she had never yet entered, and she was surprised when she found herself in the corridor to discover that it was well carpeted and lighted, and there was nothing in the slightest degree barren about it.

  Valerie’s rooms, when they reached them, were large and almost splendid, and in the daytime the wide windows would afford a wonderful view of the grounds. In Mrs. Trelawnce’s bedroom the lights were already glowing softly, and the silk sheets on her bed were turned down and waiting for her. She had an enormous dressing-table that appeared to be covered with gold-topped jars and bottles, and her wide triple mirrors must provide her with excellent reflections of herself and her own charms whenever she wished to study them.

  As for the rest of the comforts provided, they were on at truly lavish scale. Her own ivory framed television set, which she could watch while she was lying in bed, a deep chaise-longue with adjustable foot-rest that she could recline on when the day was fine and she wished to look out of the window, a pale primrose carpet and primrose satin bedspread and bedhead. And it was obvious that the wing had been more or less converted for her use, for in addition to a charmingly furnished sitting-room she had a small dressing-room, and a truly luxurious bathroom. The only thing she lacked, apparently, was companionship. And she must be very lonely sometimes, Helen thought.

  Anyone living her sort of a life would be lonely.

  Helen wondered whether she occasionally felt resentful because she was shut away; but when she turned to look at her, with commiseration and pity in her eyes, she found that Valerie Trelawnce was smiling in a relaxed and contented manner, and as if she was glad to be back in her own rooms she went to the window and threw it wide, despite the fact that it was already dark, and leaned out to inhale the saltiness of the clean wind from the sea.

  “I love it up here,” she declared. She stretched wide her arms to the night, as if she loved that, too. “Downstairs nothing is quite the same, but up here I can do as I like.”

  She turned and looked at Helen, peeping at her between her silken fringe of eyelashes.

  “Nobody bothers about me up here. I can scream my head off if I wanted to, and even Pearcy will just shrug her shoulders. But downstairs I have to be on my best behaviour, and if I make a scene I’m bustled up here at once. That’s why I’m never very keen when they suggest I should go downstairs.”

  “But now that I’m here, you will come down ... often, won’t you?” Helen said, watching her closely in order not to miss any of her reactions.

  Valerie shrugged.

  “If you think it’s a good idea. I’m just as happy up here.”

  “But Mr. Trelawnce... ” Helen said. “You have to think of him, you know. I’m sure he wants you downstairs.”

  She was not prepared for the immediate response to this ... the wide-eyed, almost disbelieving stare, and then the throwing back of a shapely gold head and the filling of the room with laughter. The window was still wide open, the curtains stirring in the breeze, and the laughter must have penetrated to the shadowy woods that bordered the creek, echoing and re-echoing amongst the trees.

  “That’s wonderful!” she exclaimed, at last, when the laughter died in her throat. “Roger want me downstairs? The day Roger wants me downstairs, and says so, I’ll suspect that he’s as unpredictable as I am! My dear Helen,” advancing towards her and shaking her head, “the truth is that Roger would like to have me tied up in a sack and thrown in the sea! In that way he’d get rid of me!”

  Helen was badly shocked.

  “I’m sure you must be wrong,” she said, as if it was her duty to convince the other girl. “Why, your very relationship to one another would make it impossible for him to feel like that!”

  Valerie’s blue eyes danced with amusement. She laid a delicate fingertip against Helen’s cheek—it was rather like a butterfly caress—and then drew it downwards very gently as if she was taking a sensuous pleasure in the feel of the other girl’s skin.

  “You’re nice,” she remarked, making use of her favourite expression, “and you’re also a bit dim. Or perhaps you deliberately deceive yourself? You must know that Roger’s thrilled because you’ve come to live here. You’re probably the nicest thing that’s happened to him for years! Since he lost his arm, in fact!”

  Helen was more than shocked this time. She was concerned.

  “I know you’re talking nonsense,” she exclaimed hurriedly, “but if you’d like me to go away—”

  But Valerie’s fingers fastened on her wrist, and her delicately varnished nails dug into it.

  “I want you to stay here!” she declared, in a sharp and urgent tone; “I don’t want you to go away! You mustn’t even think of going away! Promise me that you’ll stay!”

  Helen tried to remove her wrist, but the other refused to let her go.

  “Promise,” she insisted.

  Helen decided that if that was what she wanted she would have to promise ... and it occurred to her that part of Valerie’s nervous trouble was due to a persecution complex. Perhaps she was secretly fiercely jealous, and any attractive young woman who came near her husband aroused her suspicions.

  In which case Helen ought really to go away, before her fixation became worse.

  “If I stay, will you let me see you every day?” Helen suggested at last, adopting a soothing tone. “Will you let me come up here and talk to you if you don’t feel like coming downstairs?”

  Valerie dropped her wrist.

  “If you like.”

  But it was almost as if a fire that had threatened to get out of hand had died away altogether, and there was a deathly kind of boredom and lack of interest in her voice. She even turned her back on Helen and walked towards her bedroom door.

  “I’m tired,” she said. “Tell Pearcy to come and undress me, will you?” And she closed the bedroom door in Helen’s face.

  After she had passed on the message to Mrs. Pearce, Helen returned to the drawing-room, but although the lights were all glowing softly there was no one in the room. She returned to the hall and stared at the door of the library.

  Someone was pacing up and down on the other side of it, and she realised that that someone was Roger Trelawnce, owner of Trelawnce Manor and husband of Valerie Trelawnce.

  CHAPTER TEN

  SHE did not see Valerie at all the next day. When she asked Mrs. Pearce about her the housekeeper looked unusually evasive and explained that Mrs. Trelawnce was having one of her bad headaches, and was remaining in a darkened room. She did not think she would be in a condition to have dinner downstairs that night, and she did not think it would be at all advisable for Helen to go upstairs and have a word with her.

  In short, she made it quite clear to Helen that the wing , she had first thought of as unused was still out of bounds to her, and either Valerie did not wish to see her, or someone had decided it was unwise for her to see Valerie.

  She spent the morning in the garden, taking advantage of the brilliant June sunshine and helping along the pale golden tan she was acquiring; but at lunch—and somehow she was surprised that Roger joined her for lunch—her guardian suggested that she might like to try out the new motor-cruiser with him.

  “Oh, have you bought it?” she said, her interest quickening at once.

  He smiled.

  “Yes, I’ve bought it. Not that there was ever much doubt that I would.”

  “Mr. Broad is very persuasive when he wants to sell something?”

  “Very persuasive.”

  His eyes were on her. She was wearing a cream silk dress with a low sun-top, and the little bolero jacket that went with it was draped over the back of her chair. Her hair had warm golden lights in the strong beams of sunshine that filled the panelled dining-room and that delicate bronze that had overspread her dear skin was m
ost attractive. And as usual her eyes, although so serenely grey, had a warm look in the ... Roger Trelawnce averted his own eyes somewhat hurriedly, and helped himself to a bunch of grapes from the bowl of fruit on the table.

  “You’ll come, then?” he said.

  “If you’d like me to.”

  “I wouldn’t ask you if I didn't want you to.”'

  He abandoned the pretence of eating grapes, and lighted himself a cigarette in his somewhat clumsy fashion.

  “I’m sorry about last night,” he said, very quietly. “Valerie got a little over-excited. That’s the trouble when we bring her downstairs. She behaves like a child who’s been given a treat, and doesn’t quite know how to comport herself.”

  “I thought she enjoyed the early part of the evening,” Helen remarked, peering into her coffee-cup— at lunch coffee was always served in the dining-room—in order to avoid his eyes. “It was only later on that I realised she wasn’t really enjoying herself at all.”

  He glanced at her swiftly, and then away.

  “It was good of you to take her upstairs,” he said. “Somehow I think she has really taken quite a fancy to you.”

  “Do you think so?” For a moment their eyes met, and there was a certain amount of badly veiled astonishment in hers. His were unreadable.

  He nodded, crushing out his only recently lighted cigarette.

  “I suppose it’s not very usual for two women of much the same age, and much the same type of looks—by that I mean that you’re both exceptionally attractive in your own distinctly differing fashions—to develop an attachment for one another. But somehow I think you’re really sorry for Valerie, and Valerie according to Mrs. Pearce has singled you out for special treatment. She wants to see a lot of you, and I’m afraid it might tax your patience before very long.”

  But Helen shook her head quite firmly.

  “Oh, no! Nothing of the kind! If she wants to see me I’m only too happy to go up and see her.”

  “Are you?” he said. And then, before she could even open her lips to reassure him afresh, he stood up and glanced out of the window at the sun-flooded lawns and declared: “We ought to be going if we’re to get the best of the day. The weather report isn’t too good, and a storm is predicted for later on. At the moment it’s almost too good to be true, so if you’re sure you’ve nothing better to do shall we make for the creek?”

  She answered at once, a trifle impulsively ... although later on she wondered if it wouldn’t have showed better feeling if she had demurred a little.

  “Oh, no, I’ve nothing better to do, and I’d love to come! Thank you for asking me.”

  “Thank you for being willing to try out a new boat!”

  “Is it likely to spring a leak like your last one, and sink us?” laughing up into his face as they walked along the terrace.

  “Not with Tom himself aboard. Without Tom ... Well, all that’s in the future!”

  His fingers closed round her bare arm as they descended the steps, and she felt as if a new lightness had entered her heart, a new buoyancy was affecting her step. A sweet wind was coming at them off the sea, and it blew the bright ends of her hair across her face, temporarily blinding her. She stumbled, and laughed, and his hand closed more firmly about her arm. He was hurting her a little, but it didn’t seem to matter.

  They went through the woods to the smooth waters of the creek, and there Tom Broad awaited them with the smartly painted new boat swinging softly at the end of her mooring-line. But before they answered the cheerful greeting of Tom, in his broad Cornish accents, Helen experienced the unfamiliar thrill of having a strong male arm slip round her to protect her from the overhanging boughs, while a low, warm, masculine voice breathed warningly close to her ear:

  “Take care of the tree roots! They can throw you if you’re not paying particular attention to where you’re going.”

  And for one wild moment she wondered where they were going, and why the whole afternoon’s excursion suddenly struck her as a breathtaking and exciting adventure that had as much appeal for her as a golden bauble held in front of the eyes of a collector of golden baubles would have for that collector, or a bright new toy dangling in front of the eyes of a child.

  “Afternoon, miss,” Tom said politely, when he caught sight of her. “Afternoon, sir!”

  And if he had noticed that protective arm encompassing the slim, bare shoulders of the clear-eyed girl his own normally twinkling sea-blue eyes did not betray the fact that he did.

  “ ’Tes a good day, sir,” he said, once more addressing the owner of the woods, the creek and the manor. “We’ll get a good blow out there, although ’tes hot on shore.”

  He helped Helen to enter the dinghy, and then Roger followed her into the stern. There was no need to start up the motor, because a few movements of the oars brought them alongside Trelawnce’s latest purchase. Helen was the first to arrive on deck, and she was delighted by the tiny cabin with its comfortable cushions and matching curtains. Apart from that there was not much furniture in the cabin, only a table and a small portable radio and a cupboard that contained drinks, glasses, and a few provisions.

  “If you’d like a cup of tea, miss,” Tom said to her, as he stood looking down at her with his twinkling eyes, “there’s a Primus, and we can soon make one. But I expect you’d like to get under weigh first.”

  “Yes, it’s a bit sticky here,” Trelawnce complained, as they slid down the silent, dark ribbon of the creek, and midges hovering in the warm air tried to bite them. The trees bending to meet them were like a canopy between them and the hard, bright blue of the sky; and as she gazed upwards at the little bits of blue she could see between the lace-like pattern of leaves it was all so still and silent that Helen felt she was in an enchanted world.

  “It’s not surprising that they call this Star Creek,” she said. “At night, viewed from the dimness of these woods and this spot, the stars would seem very bright whenever one caught a glimpse of them.”

  Trelawnce’s eyes rested on her almost broodingly. A muscle at one corner of his mouth twitched.

  “And what about a really dark night?” he asked. “A night when there was neither moon nor stars? Would you be afraid to do this on a really dark night?”

  She felt as if her breath caught excitingly in her throat as she looked at him.

  “Would you?” she asked.

  “I’ve done it many times.”

  Something nagged at the back of her brain, something that caused her a momentary feeling of doubt and uneasiness, but it was too sensuously warm, and the movement was too enervating, for her to wish to prolong that moment. She picked up a book that was lying on the table and looked through it.”

  “What are you going to call the boat?”

  “At present it’s called Zephyr, but I’d like to think up something different,” he admitted. “Something rather more intimate and personal.”

  “What about—Valerie?” she suggested, and was surprised because his reaction was not at all what one might have expected. He frowned, and backed out of the cabin.

  “I’ll join you later,” he said. “I want to have a word with Tom.”

  Where the creek ended and they slipped out into the open sea the light seemed dazzling after the dimness of the tree-lined banks. Helen went forward with the others and watched as the shore line receded gradually into the distance. The Zephyr was cutting through the water like a knife slicing through butter, and the steady rhythm of the engine had a soothing, soporific effect that was counterbalanced by the freshness of the breeze that met them once they were away from the shelter of the land. Helen leaned over the side and watched the foam that was racing in their wake, and what with the brightness of the sea and warmth of the sun and that exciting vibration that was going on all around her she began to feel she was being hypnotised into a state of ecstatic exhilaration that was unlike anything she had ever felt before.

  The short, bright ends of her hair streamed out behind her, her grey ey
es grew bright and dreamy at the same time. Trelawnce once more came and sat beside her and pointed out various landmarks.

  “That’s the church at St. Garth. Its Norman tower is far older than the main part of the church. And over there you can see the bridge over the river at the foot of the hill leading down from Trelawnce. I don’t think you can make out the village street, because it curves round behind the church, but you can see Colonel Wince’s house, Roselawn, up there near the edge of the cliff. One of these days he’s going to have a bad cliff fall that will lose him part of his garden.”

  “Where does your cousin Perry Trelawnce live?” she asked, because she had never yet succeeded in establishing exactly where Perry Trelawnce lived.

  “Oh, he has a cottage, but it’s inland,” the man beside her answered.

  “Does it belong to you?”

  “It is my property, yes.”

  But his voice was short, as if he did not wish to discuss his cousin.

  She pointed out a beach that she thought she recognised.

  “Is that the cove where I bathe sometimes? The one where the opening to the large cave is?”

  He glanced sideways at her, and his attractive mouth curved slightly as he smiled with avouch of whimsicalness.

  “You seem to be very much attracted by caves,” he remarked. “One day we’ll explore that one together. I’m not terribly fascinated by caves myself.”

  “But that one, you said yourself, leads into a passage that is connected with Trelawnce,” she reminded him “Wouldn’t you like to find out whether it really does lead to Trelawnce?”

  He shrugged.

  “It’s bound to be blocked somewhere between the opening and the place where it enters the grounds of the manor.”

  “Then you think it comes out in the manor grounds?”

  Another shrug. “It might. I have no idea.”

  “And why should it be blocked?”

  “Why not?” The whimsical smile still clung about his mouth. “After centuries of disuse.”