She saw him glance over at Richard, sitting there in the dinghy, not looking their way. A look of—surely it couldn’t be menace, though that was what it looked like—appeared for an instant in the ice-blue eyes. Then he was pulling himself lithely aboard his boat. Smoothly, and loud enough for Richard to hear, he said, “I’ll take you outside with me, one morning this week, for some real fishing. I guarantee you’ll find it exciting. We’ll fix a date on Tuesday, when you come to Northolme, shall we?”
“Oh, I’m afraid I shan’t be able to come,” Alix told him, treading water. “I’m flying to Salisbury on Wednesday. I shall be on the bus on Tuesday, going to Port Elizabeth.”
She saw a look of extreme chagrin cross his face.
“You’re going away? Why?”
“A change of plans.” What business was it of his?
“But I thought ... Look here, you can’t possibly travel by the bus. If it weren’t for this meeting, I’d drive you over myself. You must let me send you in my car. My driver will take you. I must insist..
“You’re very kind, Mr. Gore,” Alix said coolly. “But I’ve booked my seat on the bus. It’s the ‘Luxury’ bus—my aunt says it’s most comfortable. Look, I must go now. Thank you. Goodbye.”
Without waiting to hear his reply—or to see the look of furious annoyance he directed at Richard’s back—she swam hard towards the dinghy. She said breathlessly, “I’ve come for my lesson, Richard, after all.”
“Good,” he answered pleasantly, turning round and giving her a pull over the stem.
“Thanks,” she said, and sat down in the stem sheets, laughing up at him suddenly happy and at ease.
Richard had suffered a sharp shock at finding Alix with Eric Gore. But he had no intention of spoiling what slender chance he might have with her by a display of jealousy or petulance. As the launch raced off up-lagoon—
“Nice-looking craft that, isn’t it?” he observed equably. “Powerful too. But don’t you be persuaded to go outside unless it’s a dead calm day. The swell out there can be devastating.”
“And I’m not a foolproof sailor, by any means.”
“Aren’t you?” He was foolproof himself, but didn’t choose to diminish her by saying so.
Nelson, who had unaccountably vanished while she was with Eric Gore, now reappeared and exhibited every intention of coming aboard.
“Go home, Nelson. Home,” Alix told him in a firm voice.
But Nelson had other ideas. Lifting his lip in a canine grin that said “Nothing doing,” he swerved and set off for the other side of the lagoon. “Back when I’m ready,” said the flick of his ears, so plainly that they both laughed. The laughter seemed to bring them closer. Richard said, “That’s a real dog. Got character. Knows his own mind.”
“He’s usually much more obedient than that.”
“Obedient—but not servile. He rightly sees no reason for going home now. Can’t stand a servile dog. You must meet mine. A Labrador. Finest dogs there are, I think.”
“Oh, yes. We have one at home. He’s old now, and a bit lazy. But he’s—well, one of the family.”
They talked dogs for a moment longer. Richard was busy with the rods. He looked up to say, “So you’re going, Alix?”
“Yes. How did you know?”
“Val told me.”
“Oh. Yes, of course.”
“Why, Alix?”
Funny, when Eric Gore had asked “Why?” she had resented the question as an impertinence. But when Richard asked, she couldn’t prevent the colour from flooding her cheeks.
“We thought—my aunt and I—” she began, stammering a little, “I should get on with things. Not—not hang around...”
No, it was too thin. She could see from the way his eyebrow had gone up in that ironic question mark, that he didn’t believe her.
He said gently, looking at her with love, “Alix, something has happened, hasn’t it? You’re not ... sure any more, are you?”
Now how in the world does he guess that? she wondered, disturbed. Her colour paled again. She returned his searching look with all the serenity at her command.
“Nothing has happened,” she told him steadily. “And I’m quite sure. Look, Richard, I don’t think I feel much like fishing this morning. I’m rather cold—perhaps I’ve been in the water too long. D’you mind?”
“No, I don’t mind. Come on. We’ll go ashore.”
He helped her over the side, swam beside her, waded with her through the shallows and walked to the grassy point.
“I shall be leaving on Tuesday,” she said, and held out her hand. “I don’t suppose I’ll see you again, so I’d better say goodbye now.”
“Au ’voir, Alix,” Richard said, taking the hand in his. She pulled it away with a little laugh, not at all mirthful, called to Nelson who was sitting on his haunches, virtuously awaiting her pleasure, and hurried away towards the house.
Her heart was beating a tattoo. Had she really heard Richard say, almost inaudibly, as she turned away from him, “I love you so much.” ?
Actually Richard had muttered the words, though not for her ears. He knew he was probably being a fool, letting himself fall deeper and deeper into love with another man’s girl. But he was unable to help himself. He had found in her face everything that he asked for in a woman—vivacity, intelligence, sweetness and zest. No use telling himself she was just another pretty but unremarkable girl. He loved her. He was afraid he would always love her.
With the penetrating intuition of love, he hadn’t been convinced when she said that nothing had happened to make her change her plans. He sensed an uncertainty in her that hadn’t been there that first day. It strengthened his ·determination not to give up—yet.
As for the other man—Bernard—Richard thought he deserved to have to fight for Alix. He had gone away and left her, instead of taking her with him, refusing to let her out of his sight. It’s Bernard who’s the fool, thought Richard, laying plans as he made his way back to his boat.
It was a point of view, right or wrong. It was certainly Richard’s.
Only when Alix had showered, and was towelling her wet hair, did she remember her promise to sleuth on her aunt’s behalf—about which she had done nothing whatever. The fact was, she had never once thought of it. She hoped her aunt wouldn’t be disappointed.
But Lady Merrick, at breakfast, was complacency itself. It seemed that she had seen through her binoculars the meeting between her niece and Eric Gore. And then Eric, the moment he had reached home—only a few minutes ago, just before they sat down to breakfast—had telephoned.
“But why, Aunt Drusilla?”
“He’s so upset that you’re going, dear. As you won’t be able to go to Northolme on Tuesday, he wants us to go there this evening. Early, to look over the farm. Then stay on for dinner.”
“You didn’t accept?”
“Of course I did, my dear. I wouldn’t miss one of his superb dinners for anything. He told me he’d tried to persuade you to let him send you to P.E. in his car, but you’d refused. Silly child—so much more comfortable.”
“I didn’t want to be under an obligation to him,” Alix said, her voice trembling with vexation.
Lady Merrick stared.
“Why ever not?” she asked. “I told you he was taken with you. He doesn’t usually put himself out like this—when the Braines’ daughter was here he could hardly be induced to invite her for a game of tennis. You should be flattered,” she finished with her cheerful neigh.
Alix gave up and tried to smile. She couldn’t bring herself to spoil her aunt’s obvious pride and pleasure by being obdurate.
“I’d better go up and look out something to wear, then,” she said. “Cocktail dress, I suppose?”
“Yes. Your prettiest, please, dearest.”
Alix said, “All right, Aunt Drusilla,” docilely, and left the room.
But actually she felt far from docile.
She could see, only too plainly, the way her aunt’s mi
nd was working, and everything in her that was loyal to Bernard and the future they had planned together rebelled against it.
Obstinately she told herself that she was not, repeat not, going to get involved with Eric Gore. Or with anyone else in Paradise.
She was going to marry Bernard. They were going to start a farm, build a house, work up a plant nursery. Later on they would start a family.
They would live happily ever after.
Please God...
When she had chosen her dress—a green silk which would need pressing after having been packed so long in her air-case—Alix took it downstairs and gave it to Effelina, who was an expert laundress.
“It pretty,” Effelina said admiringly. “Miss Ellix goin’ to look like doll.”
Alix laughed and went off to do the flowers she and her aunt had cut last evening, and left soaking in a bath of deep water. She was good with flowers and loved doing mem. She could always make them stand up and face the right way instead of flopping together in a huddle. Her aunt, after watching her arrange one bowl, had handed over to her. She was no good at all with flowers herself.
Alix had already begun to feel she could settle down easily enough into the Paradise routine. Lunches, little dinners, tea and cocktail and Bridge parties—diversified, for the men, by nine-hole golf, croquet, bowls, carpentry and eternal messing about with fishing rods and boats; and for the women by housekeeping, light gardening, and meeting in each others’ drawing rooms to gossip while working devotedly for the many charities of the district, nearly all directed at the sadly indigent coloured population.
Simple, agreeable, peaceful activities; the normal relaxations and preoccupations of elderly people with no serious worries about money, and time on their hands.
But already Alix was beginning to feel a tiny stirring of sympathy for Andrew Herrold’s point of view—though not for the world would she have said so to her aunt.
Later on in the morning, when the tide was turning, a wind came whistling across the lagoon from the west. It came in a wild tearing gust, as if the earlier light breeze had suddenly grown up. The gust died away quickly; but soon it was blowing really hard.
Alix stared in wonder to see the blue lagoon turn indigo-dark, angry. A multitude of white crests rode it as the squall raced across from beneath the low green hills towards their beach.
The seagulls, confused by the noise and fury, flopped screeching on to the little islands of sea-grass and cowered there, unable to take off again. A heron and some egrets huddled miserably beside them. Spume flew off the tom crests and drifted like rain down-lagoon. Dinghies that had been left at anchor rocked and spun wildly.
“Good heavens, does it often do this? Alix asked from the window.
“Not often, thank goodness. Mostly during the cool weather. It’s what’s known locally as a westerly buster. Our summer wind is the south-easter, you know. These westerlies are a bore—they flatten the garden in no time.”
“There goes a branch off the flowering gum now,” Alix said.
“Bother. I hope it won’t last—it won’t be pleasant driving to Northolme in this.”
“No, I suppose not,” Alix said, hoping it would blow a gale so that they would have to cancel their date. “I say, one of those boats has broken loose. It’s being driven ashore. Hadn’t I better go and pull it up before it damages itself?”
“Do if you like. But take care, dear.”
Out in the open, Alix was surprised at the weight in the wind. Seeing Francis having a surreptitious smoke under some bushes, she called to him to come and help her. She knew she wouldn’t be strong enough to battle with the boat alone.
“Miss Ellix going to get wet,” Francis observed with his amiable, vacuous grin.
“I know. But never mind. Come on.”
She was, in fact, drenched and quite exhausted by the time they had it safely pulled up out of harm’s way.
She said kindly, “Thank you, Francis, you were a great help.”
“Don’t mention, Miss Ellix,” he begged her, lifting the dreadful hat.
I wouldn’t care to be caught out in a small boat, in a blow like that, Alix thought as she hurried back into the house to change her sopping clothes.
The wind died away a little around noon, then blew again with increased fury. The odd thing, to Alix, was that though some flurries of rain fell, most of the time the sun shone brilliantly so that the wild water seemed to give off flashes of light.
The sea-birds, poor things, still cowered. Now and then they tried to rise into the air, only to flop back again, baffled.
CHAPTER SIX
ALIX put on a slim-skirted jersey suit of moss green, and pulled a matching soft angora cap over her hair. Her aunt had fixed a net over her iron-grey waves and skewered on a sort of toque, vaguely Queen-Maryish. She too wore a suit, an old but very good one of heather tweed. She looked very well in it.
“We’d be airborne in anything full-skirted today,” she observed deeply. “You look very nice, my dear. Quite charming. And so appropriate.”
“Thank you, Aunt Drusilla. May I drive?”
“How about a licence?”
“I brought my International.”
“Good. I’ll be navigator.”
Alix was delighted. She loved driving; had even enjoyed driving the tractors at the Priory. If she had been a man, she would have wanted to be an engineer of some sort.
“We turn off a good way before the Edward road,” her aunt told her. They took, in fact, a “dirt” road that circled part of the lagoon at sea-level. Along this bit the wind, still blowing furiously, seemed to rock the car.
It was better when they took a wide track going uphill through indigenous forest. This emerged at length on to a high plateau of rather open land, closely turfed as if sheep had grazed it.
“There you are. That’s Northolme,” announced Lady Merrick, in the gratified tones of one successfully producing a rabbit out of a hat.
Eric Gore’s house stood back from well-shaven lawns shaded by one or two magnificent trees. It was built of stone, with long balconied windows, a handsome pillared portico, and a lot of very decorative wrought-iron work and carving.
On three sides it looked directly on to the river valley and the lagoon. It was high enough to command a wide prospect of the Indian Ocean beyond the bar.
On the fourth side the forested mountains backed it. The road swept up to its portico round a big circular bed crammed with immense bushes of hydrangea.
“Charming, isn’t it?”
“Very,” Alix agreed politely. She was, in fact, much impressed with its handsomeness and size.
As she braked to a standstill Eric Gore came out to greet them.
“Welcome to Northolme,” he said in his light smooth voice, using what Alix had come to recognise as a current local greeting. “Do come indoors quickly. It’s hardly possible to stand in this blow. How are you, Lady D.? And you, Miss Rayne? I was afraid the weather might be too much for you. Awfully good of you to turn out on such a day.”
“Not at all, Eric. I wouldn’t miss it for worlds. May the boy bring that suitcase in? It’s got our dinner things in it—if we may have a room to change in later. Couldn’t turn out in pretties with a westerly blowing, m’m?”
“Of course not. Mrs. September”—he referred to his coloured housekeeper, Alix supposed—“will show you to a suite.”
“How grand that sounds, Eric.”
He gave them his complacent smile.
“I only hope the others won’t be put off.”
“The others?”
“I arranged a little party of ten—thought it would be more amusing for you than my undiluted company,” he told them, with a smug pseudo-modesty that made Alix dislike him more than ever.
This feeling of dislike was intensified when he put his hand under her elbow, as if to help her up the stone steps leading to the portico—and as if she were decrepit enough to need help!—and murmured, in a tone at once teasing and mal
icious, “I hope the second fishing lesson was as successful as the first.”
How does he know it was my second? she wondered. And why mention it, anyway?
She managed to answer light, hiding her annoyance—after all, she was his guest.
“Just the usual beginner’s luck,” she said, and added quickly, “What a splendid position your house has, Mr. Gore.”
That deflected his attention from herself. For the next half hour he showed them round, drawing their attention to the pictures—many of them the eccentric modern kind that looked as if they might have been painted with a trowel, and meant nothing at all to Alix, who preferred a picture to look recognisable, at least—the exquisite furniture, the china, the collection of ancient and modern weapons in what he called the armoury.
“My family brought a good deal of this stuff out here,” he told them; but he didn’t say from where. Ordinarily Lady Merrick wouldn’t have hesitated to ask him; but today she was too bemused, by the thought of how very agreeable it would be if Alix were to become mistress of all this, to be her brisk enquiring self.
“Such a pity we can’t go round the farm,” Eric Gore said regretfully when the tour of the house was over. “But luckily I can show it to you in another way.”
He showed them a brass telescope that stood on a swivel stand in a big bow window that seemed to have been specially built out to give an all-round view.
Welcome to Paradise Page 6
