Colin did not come to the plantation that weekend. Probably got someone to give him a game of golf, surmised Henry. After dinner on Sunday evening Melanie showed them the last pages of the chronicles.
“My contract has about three days to run,” she said with a pale smile. “Tomorrow I shall arrange my passage home.”
“Oh, but no!” cried Lucille. “You must stay to see the copy bound and handed over. There’ll be some pomp and ceremony, and you should have your part in it. We want you to remain with us as a guest for a while.”
“I can’t. There’s no place for me on Mindoa, and even if there were, I’d rather go. You and Henry have been kind—the best friends I’ve ever had—but I have to leave.”
“Are you quite certain you couldn’t settle here?” Lucille demanded earnestly.
“Quite certain,” she echoed evenly.
“You can’t slide completely out of our sight,” said Henry firmly. “Sometime you’ll come back.”
“I hope so.” But the possibility was too nebulous for serious contemplation.
Nothing was said about Stephen. They chatted rather sadly of the past months, about her cousin, John, and whatever else occurred to them, and eventually went quickly to bed. Because it might be dangerous and agonizing to Melanie if they probed below the surface, they were sorrowfully calm and acquiescent.
The shipping agent, when she consulted him on Monday, could offer her a berth on a boat sailing from Bombay in fifteen days. She would have to leave the island as others did, in one of the cargo vessels. The freighters were all fitted with a few cabins and she would find the trip agreeable if the seas were not too heavy. It was usual to pay the whole cost of the journey to Bombay and a proportion of the passage to England. Melanie paid and thrust into her bag the papers and labels he had given her.
She got the servant, Hussim, to clean her cases, and Henry made her a strong wooden box to take the overflow of oddments that she had acquired on the island.
Lucille wept over the completed pile of manuscript, and the next day she handed Melanie a check for two hundred pounds.
“Don’t thank me! The money was never mine. If you don’t believe me I’ll take you to a lawyer and he’ll produce a copy of my father’s will. That’s the correct payment for a handwritten copy of the papers, and not a penny too much, in my opinion. It will be easier for you if you cash the check at once, and change it into English money. Please, Melanie, no protests!”
A few months ago Melanie would have been afraid to carry so much cash on her person, but it is an irrefutable fact that when the feelings are numbed one’s financial state loses all importance. The notes were sealed in an envelope and carelessly placed with her passport and other documents in her bag.
Her last week on Mindoa was the longest Melanie had ever battled through. Her departure hung over the house like a vast shadow, yet Mindoa chose to display her fairest moods. The wind had softened into a cool breeze, flowers and trees were exotically perfect, and in spite of past storms and rending winds, the crops were more abundant than in any previous year. Harvesters worked among the cane and the coffee trees, the leaf pickers were busy among the tobacco and in the curing hut, and there were so many thousands of surplus blossoms on Lucille’s essence-bearing plants that the distillery could not cope with them.
The sea glittered and seductively curled over the beach. The reef, clean pink and white islands where slim brown fishermen mended and made use of their nets, was painfully familiar and beautiful.
Melanie had a last look at the reef from a long promontory near the village of Pirree, the morning before she sailed. Colin had taken her there, a morose, resigned Colin who now sat with her on the grass under a tree, and moodily stripped a blade of coarse grass.
He sighed, flicked impatiently at his sandy hair. “Lucille always says that people come into one’s life for a purpose, and that often when the purpose is accomplished they go their way. I wish I could fathom why you came into my life, Melanie.”
“I did help to plaster your wall,” she said, with an attempt at flippancy.
“Were you meant to shake me out of my complacency?” he queried, as if continuing to muse. “Or to ennoble my character? I don’t feel a bit noble.”
“Perhaps of the two of us I was the only one destined to reap benefits. We’ve had fun together and you’ve been wonderfully good for me.”
“What will you do in England?”
“Consult the want ads and land a job.”
“What sort of job?”
“I don’t know. It doesn’t matter.”
“Where will you live?”
“I’ll try a hostel first.”
“You’d prefer that to—” He concluded the sentence with a resentful wave of his hand at the wanton loveliness that surrounded them.
“It isn’t a case of preferences, Colin. For me, there’s nothing else. I’ve loved my time on Mindoa, but I could never belong on the island.”
“Not even,” he asked almost inaudibly, “if you had a husband and home here?”
There was no need to reply to that. With the right husband one could exist anywhere. She smiled at him gently. Since those early days with Ramon her knowledge of men had advanced considerably, and Colin presented no difficulties. When she had gone he would feel dull for a spell, and maybe a little cheated. But his plans for his own house and plantation would go ahead as inexorably as the seasons came and passed. And one day he would marry and have children to monopolize him as Denise did. Thinking about it, Melanie experienced a detached kind of envy.
“Will you write to us?” he said.
“Of course, regularly.”
After a silence he shifted and leaned back with his weight on his arms. “Does your boat for England touch at Alexandria?”
“I shouldn’t think so. Port Said, then Malta, the agent told me. It’s an English liner, not one of the Tjisande class.”
“Would it worry you to see Stephen again?”
“Probably. I’m not a good hater.”
“I haven’t answered his letter.”
“There was nothing to say, was there? You’d like to hurt him, but Stephen’s impenetrable.”
He turned to stare at her. “Wouldn’t you like to hurt him?”
“One feels that way, and I’m not subhuman. But you can’t injure a person because his desires don’t line up with yours. In real love, one’s first concern isn’t selfish; it’s for the other’s happiness. I wish I could believe that sometime Stephen will find true happiness, but I should say it’s harder for the cynic to achieve it than for any other type in the world.”
“You mean he can’t submerge himself for long enough to look for it!”
“It isn’t that. Stephen has no trust in the emotions and even less in those who rouse them. He lives with his brain and so precludes the likelihood of emotional suffering.”
“I’ll bet he suffered over the knock he had to give you. Otherwise he’d have put an end to the engagement sooner.” Melanie did not explain that the engagement had been a myth. She was incapable of facing more complications. She seemed to be shatteringly tired most of the time, and debating Stephen’s complex personality was anything but restful. So she looked up into the leaves and thought, this time tomorrow I shall be at sea. I’m glad.. .glad!
The rest of the day they spent with Lucille and Henry in an atmosphere of manufactured cheerfulness, and that night Melanie said goodbye to Colin.
“Sure you wouldn’t like me to be at the boat in the morning?” he said miserably. “I’ll stand it, if it will do any good.”
“It won’t, Colin. I loathe farewells.”
“So do I. Well ... goodbye, Melanie.”
Inevitably there was a kiss before the car pushed off into the darkness.
Melanie undressed in John’s room, turned off the lamp and got into bed. She let her memory drift back to the day of her arrival at the island; Ramon’s smooth, vital good looks, his overwhelming admiration as they sped in the
launch to the shore. She recalled the de Vaux chateau, an unpolished semiprecious stone in a viridian setting, and Ramon dappled with gold as he murmured, “Till tomorrow, senorita. I can hardly wait.”
Eight months ago! That was all, yet Melanie was years older and wiser than the girl who had been excited and flattered by Ramon, jockeyed by Elfrida and alternately despised and teased by Stephen.
And what of the future? Well, she was better equipped to deal with it now than she had been eight months ago. Past that her thoughts refused to travel, except to assure her that she need never be entirely alone again. In the very last resort there would always be Mindoa.
The house stirred at its usual early hour next morning. The Indian nurse took charge of Denise during breakfast while the cases were being packed into the trunk of the two-seater. The box had to go inside, between Henry and Melanie.
Lucille did not go to the boat. Melanie had begged her not to; it would be less grueling to part on the house steps.
Denise, her wheaten hair shining in the sun, was entirely unruffled. “Bay-bay,” she said graciously. “Bay-bay, Mel’nie.”
A hug from Lucille, a choked, “Au revoir, Melanie.”
Then the house was left behind, and Henry was gruffly asking if Melanie was sure she had everything—as if he hadn’t asked it several times already.
The best of boarding a cargo vessel is the lack of formality and the speed of departure. The skipper doesn’t care to have his passengers aboard till the holds are loaded and battened, so the delay between embarking and sailing is negligible.
Henry dealt with the customs officer and went with Melanie to her cabin. He ascertained that she would have three companions, one bound for China and the others for France, and gave her some totally unnecessary instructions about how to proceed at Bombay. He hadn’t finished when the ship’s siren sounded.
“That’s my cue for exit,” he said tritely. “Be sure to drop us a line at each port of call.”
His big arm went around her, he kissed her cheek. She watched him stride down the gangplank, saw it hauled on deck. Ropes were flung out, guttural orders were given and the small dark seamen sprinted on bare feet to obey. The vessel was moving.
Henry was still there on the jetty with the sun-drenched island behind him. He stood beside the car, his hand raised. Melanie waved once. Her throat burned, her eyes ached and her body was a drained shell.
Goodbye, Henry ... Lucille. Goodbye, Mindoa.
CHAPTER TWENTY
The Meridian steamed out of Bombay on an afternoon that was pearly with heat. She was large and stately and unmistakably British. The captain was impeccably attired and in tropic whites the officers looked dashing and romantic. But their conversation revealed a “little woman” at home, or cherished parents. They harked nostalgically back to Sheffield or Birmingham or Maida Vale, but freely admitted there was no career to equal their own.
The Meridian steamed out of Bombay on an afternoon that was pearly with heat. She was large and stately and unmistakably British. The captain was impeccably attired and in tropic whites the officers looked dashing and romantic. But their conversation revealed a “little woman” at home, or cherished parents. They harked nostalgically back to Sheffield or Birmingham or Maida Vale, but freely admitted there was no career to equal their own.
Melanie shared a cabin with a retired civil servant, a large woman who for many months had enthusiastically circled the world but could pick on no finer place to settle than Eastbourne.
“So bracing, you know,” she said, “and I’ve always had an affection for Sussex. Hampshire is too far from London for one who is putting on the years, and I do so enjoy a concert. Do you find pleasure in good music?”
This was asked in a tone of slight reprimand, as if Miss Hogg had small respect for the tastes of the younger generation. Melanie answered warily, but the older woman’s breezy tactics soon uncovered her English past.
“A music teacher, eh? That’s capital. Can you play the Moonlight Sonata?” Giving Melanie barely a second in which to nod and no time at all for the qualification that it was eighteen months since she had last touched piano keys, Miss Hogg beamed. “We’ll insist on a real ship’s concert, not one of those dreary things that wind up with jigging to this soporific sucrose rubbish they call dance music.”
“I don’t carry scores around with me,” Melanie protested weakly.
“They’ll have plenty on board,” stated the woman decisively. “Leave it to me.”
Miss Hogg was undoubtedly a woman of character. Before the ship docked at Aden the notice board bore the announcement of a “social evening,” which passengers were invited not only to attend, but also to ensure its success by their own musical and histrionic efforts; intending performers were requested to write their names on the list and to give some indication of how they proposed to entertain. With a sinking sensation Melanie saw her own name at the top of the list in a firm, feminine hand, and beside it, “Pianist. Beethoven, Chopin, etc.”
The grand piano in the lounge attracted Melanie as light draws at the buried seed, yet the crowd that gossiped there repelled her. But one morning, very early, she found the lounge empty and sat gingerly and unbelievingly with her fingers wandering in an ecstasy of freedom over the keyboard. It was like coming home ... if one had a home. The half dozen people who came in remained, quietly, to listen, and Melanie blissfully played on, unaware of her exclusive and appreciative audience.
At Aden she went ashore with Miss Hogg. They visited the street of tourist shops, and Melanie recognized the one in which she had bought the mementos for Elfrida. Lower down, threading the crowd, was the very Arab who had demanded two pounds ten for the block of carved amber; he still wore a dirty burnoose and an ingratiating smile.
Melanie was not the kind to wallow in a spate of sentiment. She recollected the details dispassionately, knowing that you don’t cure an ill by turning a blind eye to it.
The voyage through the Gulf of Aden and the Red Sea was made vaguely pleasant by the untiring Miss Hogg. She was full of odd and interesting snippets of information, and a determined deck-walker at all hours of the day. The tropics, she considered, weren’t nearly as fearsome as the travel books made out; like others, she had discovered that though her body craved inaction, her brain was clearer and more inventive in the heat.
“Besides, in the tropics you meet peculiar people. There’s a leavening of dull ones, I grant you, but in any crowd you’ll come across someone who’s had impossible experiences. The tropics breed rare types of everything. Look at the trees and flowers! Poinsettias growing like weeds among elephant grass—lobelias tall as trees. And the animals! I believe that everyone should travel—get out and see things. It’s the best kind of education in the world!” She talked incessantly and with gusto, and never repeated herself. When the concert she had fostered took place she acted the role of commere with zest and intelligence. Even in introducing Melanie she made allusion to the “divine brow” of Beethoven, and went off into a merry description of an incident in the private life of Scarlatti, culled from heaven knew where. This plain, stoutish person had become the most popular member on board.
Despite the warnings of other passengers, Miss Hogg—and therefore Melanie—made a tour of Port Said. Miss Hogg was disappointed. The place looked pleasant enough in the sun, with its palm trees, blue-domed mosque and clean avenues running up from the quay to the main part of the town. There were beggars and touts, of course, and shops piled high with gaudy trinkets, nylons, perfumes and leather-work decorated with Egyptian symbols, but nothing, as Miss Hogg regretfully remarked, to point it out as more of a “cesspool” than any other port. No doubt men saw more than women.
The Meridian, when they got back to it, was surrounded by boats overloaded with junk. Each of the small crafts was placarded with an unlikely name, such as Smith, Macintosh or Churchill, and the clamor was tremendous.
That evening, as the ship plowed on its way under an indigo sky mazed with star
s, Miss Hogg drew Melanie to the rail to watch the receding lights of Port Said.
“The East is behind us now,” said Melanie. “We’re in the Mediterranean.”
“This isn’t what we know as the Mediterranean. Over there are the mouths of the Nile and tomorrow we’ll be in Alexandria.”
Melanie’s folded arms rested heavily on the rail, supporting her suddenly limp shoulders. The diminishing lights swung into a single, blinding globe and splintered.
“We ... don’t touch Alexandria,” she said.
“We do. It’s marked on the map outside the lounge with one of those little red pins as our next stop. I saw it as we came up from dinner. To me, Alexandria will be more interesting than Port Said. The city is more cosmopolitan than Egyptian, you know, and exceptionally prosperous, with the Nile delta on its back doorstep. Nearly all the cotton and rice produced in Egypt is handled there. The guidebook doesn’t mention many sights, but we’ll take a look at the pharos and Pompey’s pillar. There’s a Muslim cemetery near the pillar, but I don’t know if one’s allowed to view the tombs.”
Melanie looked down into the dark, speeding waters and said through cold lips, “I won’t go ashore with you this time. Aden and Port Said were enough.”
“But Alexandria is better than either. You’ll see Jews and Berbers, Greeks, Levantines and quite a number of English. In summer the Egyptian government moves from Cairo to Alexandria because the climate is pleasanter.”
“I’m getting tired of these places.”
“And you only nineteen!” exclaimed Miss Hogg sternly. “Young people are so lazy these days. I had to retire before I could get around. At your age I’d have given my ears for a quarter of your good luck. Will you be coming this way again?”
“I don’t suppose so—ever.”
Stormy Haven Page 17
