Authors: Kathryn Blair
“Mrs. Conlowe has had a tray taken to her room,” Adrienne informed her. “How was the play last night?”
“Very well done.”
They sat on each side of the table, both facing the sea. Adrienne, remote and cool in white linen, raised a taper-heeled sandal to the terrace wall and examined it abstractedly.
“Plays send me to sleep, especially those which provide no spectacle. The theatre isn’t strong in South Africa. We’re an outdoor people.”
Desperately, Lindsey said, “Did Stuart telephone last night?”
“Yes. Oh, yes. I told him you were out, as we arranged.”
“Was he
...
disappointed?” She was laying herself wide open but she couldn’t help it.
“No,” with deliberation. “We had a long talk—precisely twelve minutes—before we were cut off.” With studied languor, her head turned towards Lindsey: “You’re fighting a losing bat
tl
e, my child. Is it worth it?”
Watching Lindsey’s face with the cold avidity of a cobra over its victim, she came to the conclusion that her stroke was well timed. Lindsey obviously adored Stuart with a headlong fervor that must be very wearing, judging by her sudden sick pallor and
startling
tide of color. How far he responded was difficult to assess, but Adrienne wouldn’t mind betting that a
light
fondness was the extent of it.
Detachedly, she saw the convulsive clench of Lindsey’s hands, the working of her throat. It must be grim to love someone that much, but she would get over it
.
You couldn’t knit together broken glass, but in life the bits picked themselves up and coalesced. She was really being kind to the girl, and Stuart would make her a handsome set
tl
ement
.
As Lindsey jumped up and ran down the steps, the dark, ironical glance followed her. How fortunate that she should be so transparent and easily wounded. Lucky, too, that there was still more than a week to go to Stuart’s return.
Now that Lindsey was out of sight, she could settle back and look into her own future. Granting that her immediate hopes were fulfilled, she would go on living here with Mrs. Conlowe, her position strengthened and cemented by disillusionment in the daughter-in-law. Whether Stuart would rebound in the way she desired would depend largely on her own cleverness. Even if he didn’t, there would be other ways of using her close connection with the Conlowe family. She hadn’t dared use the name as a backing for credit
...
yet.
The boy cleared the table, but Adrienne remained immersed in her rosy hued study. It dissolved at once when Mrs. Conlowe came out and sat in the chair which Lindsey had left.
“Well, Adrienne, another perfect morning. Have you seen the paper?”
“Only the headlines—nothing outstanding. Shall I get it and read it to you?”
“Not just yet. Where’s Lindsey?”
“Gone for a walk, I t
hink
.”
“Really? She didn’t come in to say good morning.”
“She looked seedy,” said Adrienne diffidently. “Either that or unhappy—perhaps both.”
Mrs. Conlowe’s forehead pleated with concern. “Not unhappy, surely? Perhaps she’s tired. We w
e
re late last night.”
Adrienne smiled and laid a hand for a moment on Mrs. Conlowe’s as it rested on the arm of her chair.
“You’re fresh and fit this morning. At Lindsey’s age, she should take a night out in her stride.” The hand returned to her own lap and she gazed over the garden. Hesitantly she amended: “It was wrong of me to use the word ‘unhappy.’ One can’t be sure. If I
hadn’t spoken to Stuart last night it wouldn’t have occurred to me.”
“What did he say?” came the instant demand.
“Not much.” Adrienne gave an embarrassed laugh. “It was what he didn’t say that fretted me a little. I expected lots of questions about Lindsey, but once I’d reassured him he didn’t mention her at all. I began to think how dreadful it would be if he and Lindsey weren’t happy together.”
Consternation and anxiety mingled in Mrs. Conlowe’s exclamation. “Adrienne! I can’t contemplate it. How could such a calamity come so soon after their marriage? It isn’t feasible.”
“Don’t worry,” Adrienne soothed her. “Stuart is eminently capable of handling his own affairs. He can manage Lindsey.”
Manage her? I don’t understand. Lindsey’s a dear girl.”
A relieved sigh. “Then you’re quite satisfied with what you’ve seen of them together? Thank goodness. My imagination must have been playing tricks.”
But Mrs. Conlowe, though unready to hear anything against Lindsey, had absorbed a diluted dose of the poison, and it was stimulating her memory to disturbing trifles. Since Stuart had
c
ome back to Port Acland there was a part of him, accessible before, that she could not reach. She had not tried very hard, deeming him too occupied in other directions to bother with her maternal needs, but it was often in her mind. A couple of weeks ago she had upbraided him with his cynical treatment of Lindsey’s feelings, and since then she had noticed other indications of an i
n
explicable distance between her son and his wife. And how oddly he had behaved over the property transfer — that horrid divorce clause and his mockery when she had insisted on its deletion.
Her heart contracted. Supposing Adrienne were right about Lindsey being unhappy. She might be homesick or fatigued by the daily increasing heat. How would Stuart react to homesickness? Would she lose him
a
gain
just when everything looked most promising? So very much depended on Lindsey settling contentedly in Port Acland.
Mrs. Conlowe straightened. A garden boy had turned on the fountain in the centre of the lawn, and Lindsey was there, talking to him. Ordinarily, she didn’t care for outside boys to be accorded such privileges, but
this
morning
she
was wa
rm
ed by the sight. It was like Lindsey to seek knowledge of the garden, and the sun couldn’t trouble her unduly, or she wouldn’t stand there without a hat. Sea bathing had becomingly browned her, and if she did seem somewhat distrait occasionally, wasn’t that to be expected? Marriage and a new country almost in one breath!
Lindsey had left “Komana” impelled by an urge to walk and walk, to sit on a headland at Paynters Ridge and bathe mind and body in the cleansing salt spray. But halfway along the Esplanade she remembered an omission: Mrs. Conlowe would be hurt that she hadn’t slipped into her bedroom for a few minutes. So, dutifully, she turned back, and the change
o
f direction reversed the current of her thoughts. Why not go straight to her mother-in-law and say, “Adrienne hates me. She has a perfect right to, but I can’t live in the same house with her. Would you mind if I went home?” Mrs. Conlowe would fuss. “Preposterous, my dear. Adrienne couldn’t hate anybody. What put such a notion into your head?” If she answered truthfully and Adrienne were taxed with it, the other woman would use her genius for twisting a situation to her own advantage. But Lindsey felt that something much more frightful would happen if she had to live through many more encounters with Adrienne Cadell.
With apparent resolve, Lindsey pushed open the gate, but on the drive her footsteps faltered. She saw the two
women
on
the terrace and swerved to cross the lawn. A boy was adjusting the nozzle of the fountain and turning the tap. Then he grasped the garden shears and knelt to
trim
the edge of a bed of orange cannas. She asked him if they had tortoises down here near the sea, and if there
was anything that made plants distasteful without harming the little pests. The boy looked mystified. Why preserve the tortoise, his big eyes queried. White ladies were most peculiar.
As Mrs. Conlowe came down into the garden, Lindsey went to meet her. Smiling, the older woman tapped the young cheek.
“Good morning, my dear. I do like having you here with me. At times I sit and marvel at my good fortune in possessing both a son and daughter so much better than anyone else’s!”
No; Lindsey wouldn’t wilfully destroy such happiness.
Nothing was so horrible that it could not be worse. She might have had a month more of Adrienne instead of only a week, and if she avoided being alone with the woman further unpleasantness should be staved off.
Quite by chance, during the next three days “Komana” was seldom free from visitors. A family with whom Mrs. Conlowe had been connected from her youth came down from Kimberley and stayed at an hotel only a few hundred yards from the house. Adrienne knew them, too, and was invited to their picnics and to dinner at the Club and elsewhere. It was not difficult for Lindsey to wriggle away to the cinema or an expedition to the shops. But when the visitors had motored on to Cape Town, Adrienne resumed her barbed interest in her house companion. Lindsey, on the plea of much to do at “Elliotdale” before Stuart’s return on Thursday, boarded a Beechwood bus and walked the final half
mile
to the house.
She could not go back to “Komana," she reflected. Later, Daniel must cycle d
o
wn to a public telephone and make her excuses: the unexpected arrival of a friend—anything so long as she were released from spending another night under the same roof with Adrienne. She stopped on the green verge outside her own house and pressed a hand upon the stab of physical agony in her heart. What of the telephone call from Stuart! True, the three minutes were unbearably cold and brief, but he was there, at the other end of the wire, and if his voice had the impersonality of tempered steel it was Stuart’s, and for that reason alone it was precious.
Slowly, she went up the path and indoors. In the kitchen Daniel was polishing the brasses, just as he did every Monday morning, but he left his work to make her some tea. With Meta away at the location, the house was hushed and peaceful, but Lindsey could not rest.
What was Stuart doing now? Did he think of her as often as she thought of
him
? No; that was impossible. He was a man with work to do, he could put aside his private life for a few hours every day and ponder it with sane objectivity when evening came. The worst of being a woman was that when love got hold of you, you were entirely in its power every waking minute and, often as not, throughout your dreams as well. With lo
ng
ing and with fear
she
looked forward to his return.
Lindsey did not instruct Daniel to put linen
on
her bed, but she arranged with
him
to have Meta back on Wednesday, and told him that she herself would come up and prepare the grocery list and do some baking.
Towards six o’clock she was ready to leave. She had actually reached the front stoep on her way out when Tony Loraine’s car pulled up and he slid out and came through the gate.
“Were you just going?” he cried. “What luck for me that I wasn’t five minutes later.”
Habit and hospitality brought a smile to her lips. “A sundowner, Tony?”
“Please, if I’m not in the way. I’ve come to beg a boon.”
She opened the cabinet in the lounge and waved at the glasses. “Help yourself, will you? Nothing for me,
than
k
s
.
Shall I get you some ice?”
“Sherry will do nicely. Sure you won’t join me?”
“Quite.” She waited till he was seated before
a
sking,
“What’s the favor Tony?”
He held his glass between the fingers of both hands and rocked it gently. “Are you doing anything tonight, Lin?”
“Perhaps you’d better explain what you want of me before I answer.”
His weary brows lifted comically. “You suspect me, don’t you? You always have, even though I’ve tried to show you that I’m not a complete cad. It chafes a bit, to know you dislike me.”
“But I don’t dislike you—nor suspect you
...
much.”
At her slight emphasis on the last two words he grimaced ruefully, and sipped his sherry, before observing, “I deserve that—but not from you.”
“I’m sorry,” she said impulsively. “It isn’t fair to judge you by your clients.”
“I should say not! You’ll have to atone for that by lending me your feminine eye this evening. I have to report a party for the
Courier,
and the woman who usually gives me the lowdown on what’s what in female attire is tied up. I’m hopeless when it comes to describing taffeta and lace and heart shaped necklines. Will you pull me out of a hole, Lin?”
“You must know heaps of girls. Why pick on me?”
“I thought you’d be at a loose end; also that your viewpoint would be English and fresh and perhaps give my column a new slant. Heaven knows it needs it! I’m stale as last week’s bread.”
“Can’t you find someone else?”
“Don’t turn me down after I’ve chased all the way out here to get you. I went to ‘Komana’ first. Adrienne rather thought you’d agree to a party on businesslike terms,
especially as she and Mrs. Conlowe have some fogies to bridge this evening, and you don’t play.” He did not add that Adrienne was his usual assistant at functions.
Lindsey’s reluctance to return to “Komana” was so strong that she hesitated.
Tony slipped in: “I shall be sunk if you don’t come.
It’s too late now to find a substitute.”
Contritely, she said, “You know that Stuart rings ‘Komana’ every night...”
“You needn’t miss it. The call can be transferred. Have pity on me, Lindsey.”
Still she looked doubtful.
“Do you ever consider anyone but that husband of yours?” he queried, exasperated. “He’s meeting people and having fun in Johannesburg and, believe me, up there you can certainly go places! Surely he doesn’t expect you to sit pining for him every second he’s away while he does as he pleases?”
She couldn’t tell him that, however unreasonably, Stuart despised him.
“Where is the party?”
He grinned with new confidence. “At a house on the Esplanade. You will come, Lin? I’ll look after you like a big brother ... if that’s how you want it.”
Tony waited twenty minutes while she changed into evening dress. He did not know it, but his allusions to gay Johannesburg had split the straw in his favor. Strangely, all the time Stuart had been away she had imagined him as
torn
with anxieties as she was during his leisure hours. Now, she recalled background sounds when he telephoned, and guarded tones, as though others were present. Once he had broken off to laugh an apology to someone, but when he resumed talking to her his voice had returned to its erstwhile expressionlessness. It struck her like a blow between the eyes that he was enjoying himself while she yearned, despaired, and struggled through searing contacts with Adrienne, and generally headed towards nervous collapse.
All the same, uneasiness seeped into her as she left “Elliotdale” with Tony. If it were not for Adrienne’s presence in her mother-in-law’s house, she would have made him leave her there and go on to his party without her. But even as they passed along the Esplanade in the early darkness, Mrs. Conlowe’s dinner guests were arriving. The wrought iron gates stood open, and through the gap between the pillars Lindsey saw Adrienne welcoming an elderly Colonel and his lady as they got out of their car.
“I ought to run in and let Mrs. Conlowe know where we’re going,”
she
said.
“It isn’t necessary,” he replied swiftly. “I suggested to Adrienne that if you did not turn up for
dinne
r
it would mean that you were with me. She agreed to tell Mrs. Conlowe that you’d been invited to a party.”
The phrasing of the last sentence momentarily arrested Lindsey’s thoughts, but then Tony said something else and she forgot it. A few minutes later they turned into a drive festooned with fairy lights, and were diverted by a colored boy in a bright red
safari
suit to a second path, which led to a back lawn where other cars were parked, jammed together like dominoes in a box.
The house itself huge, futuristic, was outlined in red lamps, and brilliant light streamed from every window on to the verandas, where groups chattered, drank cocktails and played pitchball with the chipolatas. The noise, as Lindsey and Tony came round to the front entrance, was incredible. No one received them, but one of the red suited boys stepped forward with aperitifs.
After
the
decorum of “Komana” this place was a vulgar
Bedlam.
“You didn’t tell me whose party this is,” said Lindsey in an unnecessary whisper. “Who lives here?”
Tony hedged “The house used to belong to some people named Hetherington, great friends of the Conlowes. They left and a Mr. Baumann bought it. He’s not quite top drawer, but very popular.”
Vaguely, Lindsey remembered hearing Mr. Baumann’s name, but nothing more. When she had recovered from the, deafening carillon that announced dinner, she felt herself being firmly pushed by hordes of well-dressed people into a
dining
room so ostentatiously magnificent that she shuddered.
Obscurely, she was reminded of the night when Stuart had taken her to the Club, and they had walked along the coast road and heard singing and the drum beat of Africa. Unbelievable that native kraals could exist almost side by side with this!
Tony was saying close to her ear, “Don’t be too disgusted; regard it as part of your education. We can go soon after dinner, if you like.” Apologetically, he spoke more softly: “You don’t fit in here. I brought you against my inclination. You must believe that.”
Before she could voice her bewilderment, someone had seated her, and iced jellied soup was being served.