The House at Sandalwood

by Virginia Coffman

  His uneasiness over my presence, as a woman and a comparative stranger, kept me from being of much help, but as I could see, Stephen managed very well alone. In spite of Bill’s hot, feverish forehead, it was clear almost at once that the towels with their heated stones were exactly what he needed. He calmed down, stopped shivering and in no time went to sleep.

  Satisfied that he would be all right for a few minutes, Stephen and I went back to the kitchen to find something that would seal up the broken living-room window until morning. All his exertions with blankets and hot stones and hibachis had dried out Stephen himself.

  He remarked wryly, “I thought when I reached the landing tonight that the amount of Pacific water I carried ashore would sink the island.” He looked at me. We smiled, although there was nothing very funny about his remark or our situation. We reached for the remaining candle at the same time. His fingers, firm and warm, closed over mine. It took an enormous effort of will for me to remove my hand. Long minutes after I caught myself staring at my hand and wishing—like a child with a first crush—that I could preserve that sensuous feeling between us.

  But instead, I said quickly, “I wish I could perk some coffee. We could use it.”

  “I don’t suppose you’d take a chance on a very small jigger of my father’s Oke.”

  “His what?” At least, the moment between us had passed. We were now comrades, not potential lovers.

  “Okolehau. It used to be popular—and legal—before the second World War. Something to do with taro. Everything has, in the Islands.”

  Somewhere I had heard of it before. I remembered that I had wanted to ask about Deirdre, to be certain there had been no relapse, but the house was damp, the jungle around us closing in from all sides, and a little warmth, I felt, would do us good. I said gaily, “Fine. Then we’ll try and cover that window in the living room. Have you eaten?”

  “Come to think of it, I haven’t.”

  “A little food, or at any rate, something healthy to drink, would do Mr. Pelhitt good, too,” I suggested.

  “You are a true pioneer’s woman, Judith.” He touched my chin jokingly, but I think the fact that I avoided his warm gaze might have brought the situation more firmly into focus. He stepped back, returned to the easy relationship he might have shown in Deirdre’s presence.

  “Great idea about dinner. I’m afraid we’ll have to cook on our guest’s hibachi.”

  “I wonder if there are any steaks in Mr. Yee’s precious refrigerator. Never mind. We’ll find something.”

  We attended to the living-room problem first. By the light of a third candle we got the window fairly well covered by a huge piece of plasterboard that had been under his desk in the study to protect the heirloom carpet. Stephen’s guest was not disturbed. Stephen had put a big Band-Aid patch on his temple. Apparently, the injury, though painful, was not serious. Bill slept heavily but as his body had warmed and dried, his temperature seemed to go down. I left the glass of water near him. He would have a monumental thirst when he began to recover. Some orange or tomato juice wouldn’t hurt either. How unhappy he seemed to be, caught in a vise between Victor Berringer and his highly unstable daughter!

  While I rummaged through Mr. Yee’s carefully arranged foods in the freezer, Stephen went upstairs and changed. He came back through the dark halls only minutes later looking especially handsome in a white turtleneck pullover and rust-colored slacks. He had combed his hair but it was still tousled. I was glad that such a mundane problem as food could keep my mind occupied.

  “There isn’t any tomato juice,” I told him. “I think Bill could do with quarts of orange juice. But all we’ve got is pineapple.”

  “One of the first dates Deirdre went on with me was to the big pineapple factory here,” Stephen reminisced. “It didn’t matter that we could have bought a glass of pineapple juice anywhere. Her thrill was to take a paper cup to the faucet and watch the juice pour out in front of her eyes. She likes things like that. Fairy-tale things. A not-quite-real world.”

  “How about some papaya?”

  “For me or our patient?”

  “For you. The patient gets the pineapple. There aren’t any steaks, by the way. Doesn’t Mr. Yee believe in beef?”

  He reached over my head into the highest shelf in the freezer, felt around and agreed that Mr. Yee had finally showed his Achilles’ heel.

  “How about scrambling some eggs and having these sausages? I think they are chorizo. Damn! I wish we could heat some coffee. Well, no matter. What do you think of the Okolehau?” He watched as I tasted the stuff which seemed potent enough to cook food without a hibachi. I held onto the top of my head and he laughed.

  “There’s not much left in the world, and from the look on your face, it’s just as well. You know, that casserole looks interesting.”

  “Chicken a la king?”

  “Not from Mr. Yee. I’ll bet it’s tomorrow’s dinner. Chicken in milk—coconut milk. Those greens are the tops of taro. It’s one of his specialties. What would happen if we heated it tonight?”

  I was horrified. “Not me! You forget, I know Mr. Yee’s demanding nature.”

  “Coward!” he teased as he finished his drink and fed briquets into the hibachi until it was ready for my frying pan. Then he straddled a chair beside the table and propped his arms on the chairback. He then proceeded to make me nervous by watching me work.

  “Do the doctors say when Deirdre will be able to get up?” I asked while I beat the eggs.

  “She was up for a few minutes this afternoon. She’s such an adorable—” He hesitated just a shade before adding, “child.” There was a little silence. He went on finally, “Judith?”

  “Yes?”

  “Do you believe, from your knowledge of her, that my wife will ever grow up?”

  I didn’t look around. “Do you really think you would love her as much if she were completely grown-up and different?”

  He laughed and I heard him drumming the fingers of one hand on the table. “Probably not.” He started to say something, then broke off in an odd way. I looked back at him. His fingers curled around a bit of leather and he was staring at it. I recognized it as the gilt sandal strap I had found in the sacred grove.

  “Oh, that!” I started to explain but he was asking of no one in particular, “Isn’t this from one of Kekua Moku’s sandals?”

  “But it can’t be. I found it in that grove beyond the luau setup. The one that’s accursed or whatever.”

  He turned the lace over. “But I remember when she and Deirdre bought sandals, quite different, but I remember the discussions they had. Kekua in the grove. Well, it’s not impossible. She has—” He caught himself. “Had—poor little Kekua!—had a mind of her own. I wonder what she was doing there. Or was her sandal found by someone? All this means very little, of course, since she slipped and fell.” He looked up at me. I was staring at him, puzzled as he was by the girl’s unnatural death.

  “Could there be something about her death that is—well—sinister?”

  “Probably not. She may even have lost her footing because of the loose sandal. But there had to be a reason. From the minute I heard about the rotten business I haven’t been satisfied that Kekua could have simply gotten too close to the edge. She knew where the gulch was. She has played around here since she was two or three years old.” He took a deep breath. “Ilima will never forgive me. Moku might understand that it was an accident. A horrible accident, which, frankly, I still can’t figure out. But Ilima—she will hate us. I can’t say I blame her.”

  After heating the sausage slices, I tried to concentrate on the scrambled eggs, which were finished very quickly. I set this improvised dinner before him on one of the plates from the kitchen set, blue and white but unadorned, with none of the eggshell delicacy of the china used for the family meals. After thanking me for this snack, he ate in what appeared to be enjoyment. I decided to heat up a can of soup for Bill Pelhitt and went in to see if he could drink the pineapple jui
ce.

  I found him awake and in spite of a splitting headache he was insisting that he had to have his clothes. He must get home.

  “Where is home?”

  He started to give me the obvious reply, that he had to return to the village. But he debated this, even while he assured me he had to leave. “I don’t suppose any place is home now. Maybe when we all get over this, maybe then I will know.”

  Offering him the juice, which he drank obediently, I said briskly, “What you need to do is get out of Berringer’s hands, out from under his influence. Go somewhere you’ve never been to before and find a nice girl and marry her.”

  He looked startled at the idea. “But—Ingrid...”

  He really needed a good shaking up. “Frankly, she doesn’t seem to have returned all this devotion you’ve lavished on her. She must have had you spellbound or something.”

  He drank the juice in one nervous gulp. “No. But I thought I owed it to her to... It’s like paying one’s respects to the dead, you know—in my case, a dead romance. I just felt I owed it to her.”

  Stephen came in about this time. I hardly recognized his hard voice. “You think she is dead. Why? Have you some special reason for thinking so?”

  “No. I mean—I don’t have any special reason. But I’m sure.”

  “Why?” The word was snapped out. Stephen’s antagonism baffled me.

  “For heaven’s sake, leave the poor man alone,” I put in while Bill not very helpfully shrugged, started to drop his blanket and grabbed at it. “I’ll see about your clothes,” I said and went back to the kitchen, where everything was still damp, although the doorway into the pantry looked like a Neapolitan clothesline where Stephen had stretched the slacks, shirt, underpants and gray jacket on the backs of chairs. Stephen followed me.

  “Must you be so suspicious of him?” I asked, trying not to touch off his uncertain temper.

  I could see that he was already wishing he had behaved better. “Sorry. He just irritates me. So damned helpless, and you huddling over him like some Nightingale with the lamp!”

  “In my case, it’s a candle.” I tried to play down his silly accusation. “Anyway, he’ll be gone soon. You might lend him some of your things. He is not as tall, and he weighs more, but you must have something.”

  “Don’t worry. I’m way ahead of you. I’ve laid out things for him when he is able to get on his feet. But I would like to find out what he knows. Or suspects. I can’t see Berringer killing his own daughter—assuming she is dead—but what are they doing on the island?”

  I began to clear away his dish and silverware. “Stephen, if I ask you something, you will understand this is strictly between you and me?”

  “You know that.” He smiled suddenly. “Are you about to admit that fellow is in love with you?”

  “No. Don’t be ridiculous. To people like that, I am one of those efficient nurse types on whose shoulders he can weep so he can unstarch my uniform.”

  “Do people often unstarch you?”

  I was silent for a minute.

  “What were you going to tell me that was so secret, Judith?” His unexpected gentleness when he used my name was hard to disregard. I made a special effort to renew my impersonal manner.

  “I think you ought to know that Victor Berringer is asking questions about the man who threatened Mrs. Asami’s neighbor that day in Honolulu about the time you and Deirdre were married.”

  “Mrs. Asami’s neighbor. The Berringer girl.” He didn’t seem as worried or as angry as I expected, but he was thoughtful. “I wonder if you think I murdered the girl. And if so, why? Or was she a discarded mistress of mine? Or a blackmailer?” He laughed shortly, but there was no humor in the sound. “Not that she isn’t capable of it. She made life miserable for Deirdre.” I couldn’t avoid his gaze. He was willing me to look at him. “Is that what you have thought of me since you and Pelhitt visited Mrs. Asami? Judith, I swear to you—”

  I said violently, “I know you didn’t do it! Don’t be a fool! But Berringer would love to believe anything, and so would William Pelhitt. The poor man is jealous. After all, he loves this Ingrid character.”

  He stared at me, unable to say anything for a minute. Then he laughed, this time much more cheerfully.

  “Thank you for the vote of confidence. But please, promise me one thing. Never refer to me as a ‘poor man.’ ”

  “I’m not likely to. You are not the sort to inspire pity.”

  “Thank God for that, at any rate.”

  I had just stacked up the dishes when I heard Bill Pelhitt in the hall. “Where is everybody?”

  He was at the open doorway into the kitchen only a second later, and I very much hoped he hadn’t heard our last remarks. He had found the clothes left by Stephen and looked a trifle odd in Stephen’s sporty attire, but he was not unattractive.

  “I appreciate the hospitality, but I had better be getting back. They might think I’ve run away because of the trouble in the village. The young lady was always nice to me, and I feel I owe her my presence at the—ah—you might call it the wake.”

  I didn’t know what to do myself about the grief of the villagers. I was a haole, a Caucasian, and I was a malahini, a newcomer. They were not likely to accept me, but Stephen was almost one of them, and yet, his family, his house, were hated and feared now. I could see that he was debating his conduct as I debated mine.

  Stephen said, “No need to leave until morning, Pelhitt. Maybe I had better go back when you do. I have to talk with Moku and Ilima. Make them understand how we feel over what has happened.”

  But Bill pleaded with obvious embarrassment, “It might be better if you didn’t see them just yet, sir. I’m sorry. It’s pretty rough having to say it after you’ve been so darned helpful, but I’m afraid from what Vic and I heard today, there might be trouble if anyone from Sandalwood showed up now. You do understand, don’t you?”

  Seeing that Bill, in his excessive politeness, was having his own rough time of an explanation, I added, “He’s right, Stephen. Really. There couldn’t be any mistake when Moku took his daughter away this afternoon. He was very bitter. I felt the bitterness almost as much as his grief.”

  “And he’s not as bad as his wife, the one they call Queen Ilima. I heard them, Giles. No mistake—it goes deep with them.”

  “But they accept you and Berringer.”

  Pelhitt had nothing to say to that. He looked drained and tired after the liquor and the effects of the storm. But the fever and chills seemed to be gone—that was one consolation. He asked if someone would be so good as to give him another glass of pineapple juice. I got him the drink and asked if he wouldn’t like something to eat. Then Stephen suddenly took the matter out of my hands.

  “You’ve been on your feet and fighting problems all day, Judith. Be a good child and go to bed.”

  Bill added his concern. “I’ve caused you a lot of trouble. Mr. Giles is right. You go on. As for me, I appreciate what you two have done for me, but honestly, I’d rather be on my way.”

  I was tired and worried. I wasn’t quite sure why, but so many odd things were happening at once, and besides, I felt I shouldn’t be around Stephen any more than necessary. I enjoyed his company too much. He took one of the candles from the kitchen and started up the stairs with me. On the landing he asked in a low voice, “What do you make of him? How did he get so wet? Was he standing in the downpour?”

  “No. Lying in it, I think. He had been drinking heavily and I saw him lying over in the grove. I didn’t know what it was, but as soon as I saw his gray slacks and jacket, I recognized him.”

  “Will you be all right?”

  “Of course, now that you have come.” I realized instantly that it was the wrong thing to say and I elaborated on the remark as casually as possible, “Now that someone else is in the house, I can feel safer.” I reached for the candle.

  “I’ll take you,” he said testily, but he was too late. I already had one hand on the saucer. He grabbed
at the candle which broke away from the saucer and rolled across the landing. We both knelt to rescue it before the house burned down. I found myself giggling—I really must have been tired!

  He rescued the candle and set it back in the saucer of melted wax as I was scrambling to get up. He put his hand under one of my elbows and got me to my feet.

  “I love your smile ... I love your mouth, Judith.”

  He kissed me. I struggled. I had always regarded a woman who struggled against a kiss from the man she loved as a ridiculous phony. A second later I would have surrendered to the exquisite pleasure of that kiss. But I recovered first. My conscience, the despicable thing I was doing to Deirdre, gave me the courage to break away.

  “I’m sorry. I never should have—” I couldn’t go on. I wanted him so much. I made my way up the stairs, through the dark toward my room. I heard his rapid footsteps immediately afterward and as I fumbled to open my door, he said quietly, “At least take the light. I won’t bother you. But don’t expect me to say I am sorry for what happened. That would be pretty hypocritical. Good night, Judith.”

  I glanced at him briefly as I took the candle. Whatever he said, or whatever his feelings, I knew he was deeply troubled too. The part of him that needed me was not the complete man. Any other reasonably normal woman would serve him as well. He loved Deirdre. And in his special way, he needed Deirdre’s dependence upon him. I was certain of it.

  I locked the door and found myself crying. It was the most incredible thing. There were years when I had never cried. Now I was all adolescent emotion.