No Other Haven

CHAPTER ONE

IT was
almost as if she could hear Lionel’s voice now, quick and eager, speaking over her shoulder as she stared through the porthole at the speeding, white
-
veined Atlantic.

“You’d love Stuart, Lindy. He’s everything a man should be. Marvellous physique, generous, courageous. I know this sounds like boyish hero-worship of the man who saved my life, but it isn’t. I do wish you could have met him before they sent
him
back to the Far East.” Lionel, the young and ardent, her darling twin who had sailed away into the blue one summer’s morning, and never returned.

Well, Lindsey had met Stuart for the first time five days ago, and, true to Lionel’s prophecy, had loved him at sight. Today, at noon, the incredible would come to pass. The Captain, with the assistance of a bishop on his way to Cape Town, was going to marry them.

Five days, but she had known
him
for nearly as many years, ever since Lionel’s return from the memorable voyage during which Lieutenant Stuart Conlowe had kept her unconscious brother afloat in the South China Sea for several hours. After that, Lionel, just nineteen, had spent six months ashore, living with her in the cottage at Pendlesea. She had given up her job in Bournemouth to be with him and nurse him back to health.

From the table beside her brother’s bed, and later from the mantelpiece in the lounge, Stuart had quizzed at them. The tall figure in navy blue and gold braid had shared their jokes and affections. His sympathy flowed out from the enlarged snapshot in an oak frame
,
his humor and tolerance tempered their arguments. No day passed but Lionel spoke of him. Stuart Conlowe was a definite, beloved third personality in the house.

Even after her brother had reported back for duty and she was once again assisting at the art shop and doing relief nursing at the hospital, Lindsey kept the photograph in the lounge, while Lionel had a copy in his wallet. Often, she had paused before the man, her heart brimming with gratitude, and offered silent thanks for the bravery which had restored Lionel to her. Through Stuart she had enjoyed fourteen months more of her brother.

Then Lionel had died in an accident at sea, and readjustment entailed giving
up the tiny cottage and taking a room in Bournemouth, and trying rather desperately to fit into a social circle that seemed to have little time for impecunious young women.

The bright spots consisted of rare visits to the theatre and occasional letters from Aunt Kitty, who was a masseuse in Cape Town. Poor Aunt Kitty was getting on now. She had written that massage in the summer months was a nightmare, and she would like to use her small capita
l
to open an art and gift shop. Couldn’t Lindy come out and lend her youth and energy and her knowledge of the business? Lindsey was alone and depressed, and the idea of a new start in a young country had its appeal.

She made enquiries and acquired sheaves of literature about South Africa. She had chosen the popular season, but the shipping clerk was certain he could fix her up within the three months she stipulated. A month passed, six weeks, and then came a telegraphed enquiry from the shipping company. Would she take a single first class cabin which was available in the
Perthshire Abbey,
sailing in three days’ time?

Seized with excitement not
unmix
ed with trepidation, she packed, paid for her ticket and received a precious letter of credit from the bank for £130, which represented her total means.

So very much had happened since the morning she had followed the steward to her cabin, smelled the peculiar conditioned air as she unpacked, and lurched with the first rakish roll of the ship. It was not till dinner that evening that the chief steward seated everyone at the tables they were to occupy during the voyage. Lindsey’s was a table for three, her companions a middle-aged couple with a rare quality in
co
mm
on
—
a complete and absorbing interest in the same things. They were the MacLellans, returning, after six months’ leave in England, to the college where the husband taught physics.

A dozen feet away, at the large round table presided over by the Captain, sat Stuart Conlowe.

Lindsey was certain the minute she saw him, though he wore a dinner jacket in place of the uniform, and the charming smile was absent. Her heart performed a totally unfamiliar feat, something between a plunge and a revolution.

At last she was going to meet the other person in her life. Would he be as she had always imagined him? Would she be able to tell him who she was, and thank him—just a little?

As other diners began to straggle from the saloon, Lindsey joined them and went to her cabin. Fantastic that, of the two portraits on the dressing chest, one should be of a man whose acquaintance she was about to make for the first time. Hurriedly, breathlessly, she slipped the photograph into a drawer and slammed it. As though he would ever know!

The meeting, after all, was not premeditated. She had left her cabin and gone forward to the main staircase, where she hesitated. Was the large lounge up or down? Up, of course, for its doors opened to the sports deck. How confusing were all these corridors and layers of decks.

The elevator clanged and half a dozen men and women streamed from it.

“I beg your par
d
on,” someone said, adroitly avoiding a collision.

“My own fault,” she smiled, reaching for a rail to cling to. “I haven’t yet got my sea legs.”

Lindsey looked up into a tanned face with features more aquiline than those in the snapshot and eyes that glittered blue-green, like the sea. His hair, thick and very dark, came to a point in the centre of his forehead, and his mouth
...

“Lost yourself?” he enquired pleasantly. “Women always lose their bearings the first day aboard.”

“I’d just recovered mine when we rocked.”

“Going up for coffee? May I join you?”

They sat in the lounge, rather too near the orchestra, so that conversation was more a competition than a pastime. How do I tell him? wondered Lindsey. He’s less approachable than I hoped, and older than in the picture, but he’s Stuart, all right, the man to whom Lionel was devoted and whom I’ve always wanted to know.

“Let’s go outside,” he said suddenly. “Will you be warm enough?”

For quite three minutes they stood at the rail in silence, watching the heaving black waters a long way below. When he turned his back upon the sea, she noticed a keenness in his expression.

“This will sound like the opening to a cruise flirtation,” he remarked, “but it isn’t intended that way. Have we ever met before?”

Yes, every day for nearly five years, she wanted to say.

“What makes you think we mi
ght
have?” she asked.

“
Your face, and the way your hair grows back in crisp little waves. Its color, too. Rather unusual, that particular shade of red.”

“It isn’t red by daylight. Lionel’s wasn’t, either.”

“Lionel?” A pause. “You mean Lionel Gresham? I get it now. You’re the twin sister he was always so anxious about
.
You’re very like him.” His tone
deepened with guarded interest
.
“How did you know I’m Stuart Conlowe?”

“We had your picture at the cottage. He
...
worshipped you—talked about you such a lot that I came to know you very well, from his angle.” A few more seconds ticked by. “Mr. Conlowe, I don’t quite know how to say it...”

“Then don’t,” he broke in abruptly. “Some
things
are better left unspoken. Tell me about yourself. Where are you going?”

For the next hour they talked. Aunt Kitty disposed of, Lindsey told him how she and Lionel had grown up even closer than most twins, for both parents had perished in a car smash when they were only four, and they had lived with Grandmother Gresham till Lionel was old enough to enter the Navy. She learned that Stuart was visiting South Africa, chiefly on a business trip, but also to see his mother, whose uncertain health necessitated her living in her native climate.

“In South Africa she keeps amazingly well, but she’s lonely.” He gave a short sigh. “I’m afraid the poor dear expects a lot from me
this
time and she’s in for a disappointment when I get to Port Acland—a rather shattering bump. She’s lived so much out of the world down there in the sunshine with an unlimited number of servants and few shortages that it’s hard for her to realize the difficulties of present-day civilization. She’s the sweetest soul in the world, but it’s not all honey and hayseed being an only son, especially if one has a well-developed sense of responsibility.”

From which Lindsey gathered that while Mrs. Conlowe’s adoration of her son was disproportionate, Stuart, too, was tied by bonds almost as strong. He was past thirty, so his mother might have reached sixty, which was not old, though perpetual fretting about her health and her son might have aged her.

Stuart dismissed the subject with a reference to the journey ahead and, when they parted after a nightcap in the smoking lounge, it was with the promise to meet on deck for a pre-breakfast route march.

Practically every waking minute they were together. The passage through the Bay was miraculously calm, and the usual organized sports came into full operation on the very first day out. Stuart entered himself for the men’s events and Lindsey for the women’s, and they partnered each other for mixed doubles. They strolled and chatted, shared his binoculars and compass, exchanged winks over the usual shipboard “affairs,” sat through a picture show, danced and watched the stars come out. Only occasionally, when he had been quiet a while, did a faint bitterness twist his lips. When his mouth was like that, Lindsey always looked quickly away. It was the only alien note to the otherwise perfect picture she had cherished for so long.

The fourth day—yesterday—they had gone ashore at Madeira.

To Lindsey, watching the spray through the porthole of her cabin, those hours from six till midnight held a dreamlike yet dramatic quality. The ship had anchored off Funchal in the warm glow of early evening, and was immediately encircled by ramshackle craft loaded with basketwork, fruit and linens, the boatmen lustily yelling their wares.

As she sat squashed beside Stuart in the launch which was to take them ashore, a hawker in an adjacent boat thrust his goods over her shoulder.

“Buy a ’at, ladee? T’i
r
ty escudos. Verree cheap.”

Laughingly, Stuart jammed the brigh
tl
y-embroidered straw cartwheel over her curls and drew back his head to admire it. “Very effective. You look like a Technicolor lovely,” he said, and tossed the man his money.

The quay was lined with small, dark Portuguese people, some of them offering postcard views of the island and exquisitely worked handkerchiefs, while others simply stood and stared—as they did every week or so—at the gaily-dressed white folk come to spend money on silks and embroideries and mementoes of the visit.

Stuart had been here before. He shunned the advertised ox-cart trip up the mountainside.

“It’s a waste of time when you get such a good view of the island from the sea. Would you like to do some shopping, Lindsey? Lots of cheap and lovely things such as you won’t see anywhere else.”

“Will they take English money?”

“Only too gladly—the rate of exchange favors them. But we’ll have to use up the few pounds worth of escudos I brought from England first
.
”

She chose two chiffon blouses and a bright wool-worked bag, a carved amber bracelet and a minute set of wicker furniture in a small cellophane case. Laughter was in their eyes and in their voices as they threaded the cobbled streets, arms linked, Stuart swinging the parcels in an
a
bsurd string bag. He purchased flowers from one of the colorful peasant women who bore a tubful of exotic blooms upon her head; and baskets of loquats and strawberries and small bananas from the barefoot boys who ran beside them chanting, “Fife escudos, pliz. Fife escudos!”

They dined on mystery and spices among
the
palms at an hotel in one of the
avenidas
and in the star-sown, scented darkness strolled back to the waterfront.

“The
Perthshire
looks good lit up, doesn’t she?” he commented. “Makes you proud of the country she comes from.”

There was nothing to answer, so she gave him a warm, understanding smile, and nodded.

“Tired?” he queried.

“A little, but it’s a heavenly tiredness.
”

“Let’s have a last spot of Madeira.”

So they sat beneath a gay umbrella amid the fairy lights on the waterfront, sipped a heady wine and looked out over the short, stony beach lapped by creamy wavelets, and beyond to the spangled ship. This will never happen to me again, thought Lindsey. It just couldn’t. This sort of magic was momentary, irretrievable, a brit
tl
e loveliness to be handled reverently while it lasted and to be tucked away among one’s treasures when it ended.

Neither of them talked on the way back in the launch. For a while from the lower deck they watched the lithe brown youths diving for sixpences in the
light
of a naphtha flare, till a loudspeaker warned all hawkers to leave the ship.

“It’s nearly eleven,” said Stuart. “We’d better take this stuff to your cabin.”

“Not all that fruit,” she protested. “I shouldn’t know what to do with it.”

“I won’t have it in mine,” he asserted. “I’ve a reputation to keep up. I’m an industrialist on a business trip.”

“But that isn’t fair,” she retorted. “You bought it, and you ought to help me dispose of at least half of it.”

“Maybe I will,” he grinned. “Stow it in the bottom of your wardrobe cupboard and smuggle some of it up on deck between meals.”

Near the bureau on “C” Deck, Lindsey’s steward met them.

“
Excuse me, Miss Gresham. There’s a cable for you from Cape Town. I couldn’t find you, so I put it in your cabin.”

“Thanks,” said Lindsey. “I’ll get it now.”

Stuart dumped fruit, flowers and packages on the gold damask cover of her bed and hooked the door wide open before he turned to go.

“
I expect you’re as much in need of a wash as I am. Come aft as soon as you’re ready and we’ll see the last of Madeira.’ He was outside in the corridor awaiting her reply. He saw her fingers curl over the edge of the cablegram, and her other hand go up to her brow
and push back the straw hat. She had paled considerably.

“Bad news?” he asked quickly.

“Rather a blow,” she managed. “Aunt Kitty, the person I was going to, has died of a heart attack. This is from a friend of hers.”

“That’s upsetting.” He stood undecidedly in the doorway. “How does it affect you?”

“Not very closely, really. Aunt Kitty was a half
sister of my father’s. She went out to South Africa years ago to get married, but never did. I don’t remember what she looked like; in fact, I only knew her from her letters. Her death makes this journey pointless.”

All the bright glory of the day had gone. She couldn’t feel very deeply the loss of a woman she had hardly known, so perhaps it was natural that she should be gnawed by a thousand personal worries. Her job thrown up, no commercial training, most of her money gone, and she was heading for a strange country where living was costly.

“No journey is pointless,” he said. “I’m selfish enough to be sorry that the cable wasn’t held up till tomorrow. It’s spoiled our day.”

She smiled faintly, as he had meant her to.

“Don’t take it too badly,” he added. “Powder your nose and meet me on deck in fifteen minutes. We’ll talk it over.”

Just as Lionel had trusted Stuart Conlowe, so did Lindsey.

As the lights of the island receded, she explained to him her situation.

“Perhaps it was crazy to bum my boats as I did, but life has been so dreary since ... Lionel, that I grabbed at this chance with Aunt Kitty.”

“Are you going as a visitor or an immigrant?”

“I’m not sure—everything was so hurried at the last moment, I filled in several forms. I was so glad to get
away from the past
.
Whichever way it is, I’m afraid I’m sunk. If the immigration authorities demand the usual hundred pounds deposit, I shall be left with almost nothing to live on. The alternative is to book my passage back home at once and live as cheaply as I can while waiting my turn. It’s terribly ... disheartening.”

“You’re not going to do either,” he said. “There’s another way out.” He paused for so long that she was drawn to glance sideways at the strong ou
tline
of his jaw in the darkness. Without turning his head, he went on, “You do like me, don’t you, Lindsey?”

Could one describe as “liking” this delicious melting of her very bones at the thought of him?

“Yes. Oh, yes,” she told him.

He straightened and looked down at her. “That makes us about even. We haven’t been acquainted long enough to be in love, but we like each other very much, which isn’t a bad basis for marriage. Will you marry me, Lindsey?”

She stared, stunned.

“I’m dead serious,” he said. “I can’t help you as I want to unless you’re my wife. I’ve been a bachelor too long. I need someone like you.”

Her voice came back. “Marriage shouldn’t be used that way ... as an expedient.”

“
Why regard it in that light? You’re very sweet and attractive.” Humor warmed his tones. “In fact, I
think
you’ll make a charming wife once you’ve learned that I prefer my bacon frizzled and detest milk puddings.”

“I ... I wish you’d waited till Cape Town,” she answered, low-voiced.

“
We can’t leave it so long. The marriage must take place aboard ship, right away. As it happens, I think it will be quite easy. I’ve known Captain Cartwright since my early naval days, and I dare say you’ve noticed the Bishop sitting at our table?”

“The tweedy man with twinkling eyes?”

“That’s it; he’s the sporting sort. With the Captain’s permission, he’ll tie the knot and you’ll enter the Union as Mrs. Conlowe and few questions asked. After that, I believe one has to register the marriage on land. We can do it in Cape Town.”

From his light manner she had a desperate dread that he was getting at her. “Isn’t this taking your altruism rather far?”

“Put altruism out of your mind,” he said, almost roughly. “I know what I’m doing. Before we met we’d heard a great deal about one another, and from the moment we collided we haven’t looked at anyone else. Ultimately, in normal circumstances, we might gradually have worked towards marriage. These aren’t normal circumstances. You need my name now.”

A paralysis gripped Lindsey, an extraordinary void in which she could neither think nor move. It was Stuart who widened the issue, in negative tones:

“If you’re afraid I might take it you’re marrying me for my worldly goods, you’re less of an individual than I thought. But if
I
insist that I want to marry you, the problem is simply this. The wedding ceremony is necessary so we can go through with it at once. For the rest”—a pause—“we’ve all the time in the universe.” Looking at him, Lindsey had the conviction that she was missing some vital point. Life—till death us do part—with Stuart! What more could she possibly envisage? Then why was she hesitating?

“You see what it means,” he said, smiling. “The good times we’ve had can go on after Cape Town. With continuous propinquity, our feelings will change—they can’t help it. We’ll either love or loathe, and there are remedies for both. I’m willing to take the chance if you are.”

Madeira was swallowed. A black night pressed in to the uncanny music of distant, churning waters.

“The risks are negligible,” he added. “You’ve had a few knocks and are alone and stranded. For my own
sake just as much as yours, I want to marry you. Let’s do it, shall we?”

“Yes,” below her breath. There was never a chance that she could have replied otherwise.