So he doesn’t like Eric Gore either, she thought. What’s more, he doesn’t even like my knowing him. She said lightly, “I took him for a foreigner, a German, perhaps. But my aunt said that was nonsense. She seemed to think he was pretty special.”
“H’m.”
She waited for Richard to comment further; but all he said, with rather cool abruptness, was, “Well, better run in and dry off, Alix. Mustn’t get chilled. I’ll be seeing you.”
Without waiting for her to reply he had left her, and was splashing through the shallows in the direction of his boat. He didn’t look back.
Alix called Nelson and ran with him back to the house.
Her cheeks were warm and she was aware of a curious elation, both pleasurable and vaguely alarming—as if at some challenge whose significance she didn’t quite grasp.
Quickly she slipped into her room. There she stripped off her wet swim-suit, towelled herself, and rinsed the salt from her hair.
At eight-thirty, composed and dressed in a bright shirt and linen slacks, she joined her aunt for breakfast.
Lady Merrick eyed her with frank pleasure.
“So nice to have you here, dear. Slept well?”
“Not very, Aunt Drusilla.”
“Oh? Why not? Bed not comfortable?”
“It was lovely. And so is my room. And Nelson and I had a heavenly swim this morning, early.”
“Then what...?”
Alix came straight to the point.
“I’m afraid I was worrying. One of Bernard’s letters, the latest of the three, rather upset me. I’d like you to read it, if you will, and tell me what you think of it.” She took the air-letter from her bag and handed it over. Her aunt poured herself a second cup of coffee, donned formidable horarims, and read it through twice, slowly.
“H’m,” she remarked at length. “This Barrett—who is he, exactly?”
Alix explained.
“Any family?”
“His wife. His mother too, I fancy. And a daughter.”
“Age?”
“Twenty-one or two.”
“Pretty?”
“Very, if the snapshot Bernard sent me is a good likeness. Do you think...?”
Lady Merrick removed her spectacles and shook her handsome grey head.
“You’re not going to like this,” she said kindly. “But for what my opinion is worth, I think something—perhaps this Sandra, perhaps not—has made Bernard feel he’s not quite so ... so sure...”
“Yes,” Alix agreed in a small voice. “Yes. That’s rather what I thought too. I just wanted to know if it struck you the same way. Do you think he’d like to—to jilt me, Aunt Drusilla?”
“If he would, he hasn’t quite got the guts to say so,” was the dry response.
Alix was silent, thinking. She buttered a piece of toast, and absently spread it with marmalade, which she had always disliked.
“So what do I do now?” she asked at length.
Her aunt lit a cigarette and blew out a mouthful of smoke before replying. Then—
“You could let him go,” she suggested.
“But...”
“Or you could put up a fight to keep him, couldn’t you?”
“Y—yes...”
“It all depends,” Lady Merrick expounded briskly, “on how much he means to you, my dear. Tell me—how much does he mean?”
Alix hesitated.
“I’m not quite sure,” she said slowly. “I’ve been asking myself that question during the night, and honestly I don’t know the answer. You see, I haven’t seen him for two years.”
“Two years too long.”
“Perhaps. But you see, Aunt Drusilla—during those two years, everything I’ve thought done and—and felt has been based on the certainty that I was in love with Bernard, and he with me; and that I was going to marry him. If I’m not, I’ll feel that in a sense I’ve thrown away those two years—lost them out of my life.”
Her aunt blew a smoke ring. She said cheerfully, with a fond look at her niece’s downcast face, “They’re not lost, my dear, whatever comes of them. No experience of that kind—loving, feeling deeply, hoping—is a loss. But you’re both young. And you’ve got to face the fact that young people’s ideas—and tastes—can change a lot in two years.”
“Mine haven’t changed,” Alix protested. “I’ve never even thought of changing.”
“No. But you’re the steadfast type my dear.” Seeing the real trouble and perplexity in her niece’s big brown eyes she added: “You know, don’t you, dear, that you are more than welcome to live with me here for just as long as you like?”
Alix smiled her gratitude.
“I know, darling,” she said in her warm voice. “And I will stay with you—I suppose I can find a job—?—If ... if things go wrong. But...”
Lady Merrick, stubbing out her cigarette, waited with unaccustomed patience while her niece sought for words.
“But I can’t just take all this for granted. I can’t just leave things in the air. Either I’m engaged to Bernard and going to be married soon, or I’m not. The thing is, don’t you see?—I must know”
“Of course.” Lady Merrick fitted another cigarette into her long amber holder and waited again. When at length Alix spoke, there was a flush of embarrassment on her face.
“I’m afraid you’re going to think me terribly ungrateful, after inviting me here and paying my fare and everything—but Aunt Drusilla, I think I must fly up to Salisbury right away, as soon as I can get a seat on a plane. I simply can’t stay on here, trying to enjoy this heavenly place, when all the time my future may be in ruins.”
Meeting her aunt’s eye at that point, she gave a shaky laugh.
“It sounds like something in a melodrama, put that way, doesn’t it? But—you do see, don’t you?”
“Of course I see,” Lady Merrick agreed warmly, hiding her own disappointment. “I have to go in to Edward this morning. We could go in to the travel bureau and see about your passage right away, if that’s what you’d like.”
Alix jumped up and kissed her aunt’s rather leathery cheek. Next to Bernard and Mummy and Daphne, she thought, she really is the nicest person in the world. “And you don’t think me a snake?”
“No, I don’t think you a snake. I think, if you want to know, that you’re being rather sensible and practical about the whole thing. You’re going to see Bernard, I take it, and give him a chance to...”
“I shan’t say a thing,” Alix broke in. “I shan’t refer to the letter except to say how sorry I am about the farm. I shall just give him a chance to—to come clean, if he wants to. And then I shall fade away.”
“If he seems to want you to.”
“Yes, of course.”
“Did you answer the letter?”
“Not yet.”
“Then don’t,” Lady Merrick advised. “Send a cable, ARRIVING SUCH AND SUCH A DATE, PLEASE MEET. You can do it when you’ve booked your seat. Much the best way.”
Alix agreed. She had been thinking what a difficult letter it was going to be to write. A cable would be so much simpler; besides, it would leave Bernard with no alternative but to meet her plane.
“I’ll go and feed Nelson now. Then, when you’re ready, we can go to Edward.”
As her aunt was about to leave the room Alix had a guilty thought.
“Oh, that reminds me. I’m afraid I saw Richard Herrold this morning.”
Lady Merrick bristled.
“Indeed? Where, may I ask?”
“On the lagoon. Nelson and I swam out—and there he was, in a boat, fishing. I’m afraid he means to fish there—just off your point—whenever the tide is right.”
“He sounds uncommonly like that father of his,” Lady Merrick commented with strong disapproval. “I hope you snubbed him as he deserved?”
“I did ask him if he couldn’t fish somewhere else. But he said this was his favourite place. So what could I do?”
“H’m. Nothing, I suppose. Can’t s
top him. You’re rather taken with him, aren’t you?”
“Well, yes, I do like him. He was awfully nice to me on the way here. Though I’m afraid he’s completely on his father’s side about this Paradise scheme.”
“And there’s the rub. I do admit he appeared to have the same sort of superficial charm as his dreadful father. But I wouldn’t trust it a yard. Opportunists, I don’t doubt—both of ’em.”
Alix was silent. She couldn’t agree with her aunt’s strictures on Richard, but didn’t want to make an issue of it.
“He wants to date you, I suppose?”
“Well—he wants me to go fishing again tomorrow. He—I helped him land a big fish this morning—” Better say nothing about the invitation to dine. Write it off. Forget it.
“H’m,” said her aunt again. She stood with her hand on the knob of the door, appearing to cogitate. “As you’re going off so soon, it can’t do much harm,” she said finally. “Of course I don’t want you to miss your morning swim. So nice for Nelson too. And I suppose it’s just possible you might learn something useful—about Herrold Senior’s further intentions, I mean.”
“I should think I easily might.”
Lady Merrick gave a resigned shrug.
“All right. But no dates on shore, please. Can’t have Herrold Senior think I’m weakening.”
“We’ll see how good a sleuth I am,” Alix said with her infectious laugh. And laughing, wondered at herself.
Though the shadow of Bernard’s letter, and this journey to find out the truth of it, hung over her, the odd sense of elation persisted. She felt at a loss to understand herself.
She wished Bernard were with her now. She was sure that if he were, and could take her in his arms and hug her in his affectionately bear-like way, and they could talk, everything would be as it always had between them. She wanted so much to keep things that way.
CHAPTER FOUR
THE little town of Edward, where the residents of Paradise did their shopping, changed their library books, and fuelled their motor-cars, was sited well inland from the lagoon, which it viewed from a height, and off the national road, which by-passed it. It was backed by wooded foot-hills and the towering slopes of the Berg.
A gravel side-road lined with oaks, flowering gums, jacarandas and occasional small dwellings and shops, climbed gradually into its main street.
Along this side-road, this morning, wound donkey-carts carrying coloured families, a span of oxen in charge of a Khosa boy armed with a long whip, a horseman in khaki drill and a Boer War helmet, a large number of cyclists and pedestrians, and several lorries and motor-cars.
Among these Lady Merrick threaded her way in her ancient but stately Dodge with a nonchalance born of familiarity, tooting her horn briskly and now and then uttering a mildly unladylike expletive.
“Always a bit congested on this stretch on Saturdays”, she remarked tolerantly. “Day off for the natives and coloureds.”
The main street was busy too, though with no more than a cosy small-town bustle of pedestrians strolling, stopping to chat, popping in and out of shops; and of traffic moving sedately or neatly parking itself.
Alix gazed about her with lively interest, liking it all. She was pleased by the brown faces she saw everywhere—ruddy-brown healthy tan of the “whites,” coffee-brown of the coloured, chocolate-brown of the purebred Africans. She liked the sparkling sunshine, the clean spring tang in the air, the white and pastel houses on the terraced slopes, the flowering trees, the distant glimmer of the lagoon.
Big old oaks diversified the street and a few early jacarandas dropped their first azure blooms. A little old stone church stood back in a grassy tree-shaded churchyard, fitting in comfortably with old Dutch-gabled dwellings and more modem garages, offices and banks.
“The church was built by English settlers who came to this part of the Cape in 1820,” Lady Merrick explained as she manoeuvred to park the Dodge.
“I was just thinking how English the whole place looks,” Alix exclaimed. “In spite of the dark faces and exotic trees. It’s a dear little town, Aunt Drusilla.”
“They call places of this size dorps, here. Such an unattractive word, I always think. It’s very quiet usually, you know. It’s beginning to wake up now for the September holiday invasion. Tiresome—queues in the shops and at the Post Office, nowhere to park, and the odder-looking creatures, raw with sunburn and dressed in those queer American beach clothes, walking around. Bad enough now—but think what it’ll be like if Herrold gets his way. Turmoil, my dear. Turmoil.”
Alix looked curiously at her aunt. She could remember the days when she would have enjoyed the rip-roaring noise and confusion of holiday crowds. Had Uncle Edgar—whom Alix had never met—changed her outlook so completely?
Lady Merrick gave her sudden jolly neigh of a laugh.
“Think I’ve grown into an old fuddy-duddy, don’t you?” she demanded. “Well, if I have, blame it on Herrold, who wants to divert the main holiday stream into Uncle Edgar’s beloved Paradise. Drat him,” she finished explosively as she stepped on to the pavement next to which she had at last succeeded in edging the Dodge. “Why, hullo, James. Nearly knocked you down. Didn’t see you,” she exclaimed a second later, smiling at a tall, lean-bodied man with thick white hair, a pleasant leather-face and what used to be called a “gallant” manner.
“Alix, come and meet my old friend James Gurney. My niece Alix Rayne, James, here on a flying visit.”
“Welcome to Paradise, Miss Alix,” Gurney said with old-fashioned courtesy. “How d’you like it?”
“I love it, Mr. Gurney.”
“Good. Bring her to see my garden, Drusilla. And meantime, how about coffee at the Espresso in an hour or so?”
“Thank you, James. Love to.”
Mr. Gurney lifted his ancient panama hat and left them, very upright and only leaning slightly on his stick.
“He’s nearly eighty and still plays golf and bowls and walks miles. He’s been widowed twice—and now he plans to take a third wife. Me,” whispered Lady Merrick with what, in anyone less deeply contralto, would have been a giggle. “He had a very bad war, prisoner of the Japs in Shanghai for four years, lost nearly everything, just has enough to live quietly in Paradise. A dear old boy.”
Again Alix gave her aunt a curious look. She hadn’t somehow thought of her as still marriageable. Yet she was still a handsome woman—of fifty-odd?—sixty-odd?—Alix had never given the matter a thought before. Mummy was forty-seven and Aunt Drusilla was her eldest sister. She looked no older now than she had four years ago, when she had flown over to visit the family after Uncle Edgar’s death.
With a little gurgle of laughter Alix said, “He’s nice, but too old for you, darling. You must find yourself a younger beau.”
“Perhaps I will,” Lady Merrick surprisingly agreed. “It’s no fife for a woman, living alone without a man about the place.”
They had reached the travel bureau now, and the conversation died a natural death.
Lady Merrick said, “I’ll go and change the books while you fix up about your air passage. You’ve got all your documents, of course? Very well, dear, I’ll come back for you.”
Alix went inside the travel bureau and was received by a slim, smiling girl, grey-eyed and dark-haired, about whom there was something strangely familiar.
Of course. Richard had a sister. This girl was strikingly like him in looks and manner. Alix would have liked to ask her name, but the girl was already busy taking down her particulars. When she had finished, however, she looked up with a twinkle in her eyes.
“I think I’ve heard about you,” she said friendlily. “Didn’t my brother Richard drive you over from P.E.?”
“Yes, he did. I was just thinking how like him you are.”
The two girls smiled at each other, and at once there was a warmth between them. Alix thought regretfully that if she hadn’t been going away, and if there hadn’t been this business about Paradise between them, they might
easily have become friends. And Valerie thought she could understand her brother’s enthusiasm about this new girl, and that she herself would have loved to know her better.
“I thought you were meaning to stay here for a while,” she said aloud, and then wished she had kept quiet, seeing the shade of embarrassment on Alix’s candid face.
“Yes, I was. I’ve—had to change my plans.” Tactfully Valerie went on with the business in hand, and asked no more personal questions.
But when, later in the morning, Richard called in with a message from their father, she told him that his friend Alix Rayne had been in, and had booked to fly from Port Elizabeth to Salisbury on next Wednesday afternoon’s plane. She saw that the news had come as a shock to him. Since she had always been his confidante she didn’t hesitate to ask.
“You’ve fallen for her, haven’t you, Dick?”
“Hook, line and sinker, Val.”
Valerie’s eyes widened.
“As bad as that?”
“As bad as that.”
“Poor Dicky. But didn’t I see a ring on her engagement finger?”
Richard said wryly, “You did. She’s come out to marry a would-be tobacco farmer fellow somewhere near Salisbury.”
“Would-be?”
“Still learning his job. And looking for a farm.”
“Oh. So it’s not imminent?”
“It wasn’t. But it looks as if something’s moved faster than expected. Or else...”
“Or else what?”
Richard’s jaw suddenly looked very resolute as he replied, “I don’t know. But I’ve got a hunch about this engagement of hers. And I’m going to play it for all it’s worth.”
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