Authors: Kathryn Blair
The thi
r
d night, after the door had been bolted and Mr. MacLellan had retired to his den to do some hasty markings of test papers, Mrs. MacLellan tapped Lindsey’s shoulder.
“It’s time you had more color and the sparkle, came back into your eyes. Henry is free from 10:30 onwards tomorrow, and will take us out for the day. We’ll go to Muizenberg. It isn’t far, but the beach is lovely and doesn’t get too crowded on week-days. Would you like that, Lindsey?”
“I’d love it You’re much sweeter to me than I deserve.”
“
You exaggerate ... both our kindness and your own shortcomings.”
“But I have been rather like a damp hen.”
“What of it? You’ve made a tremendous effort, and we both admire you for it. You’ve got pluck, Lindsey, more than your share of it, and I can’t see it breaking down at this stage.”
“What exactly, do you mean by that?”
A humorous shrug. “I enjoy being cryptic. It’s settled about tomorrow, then? It will mean getting up early, because I must go into town with Henry, first thing. The packing of the picnic basket will be in your hands—a pleasant change for me.”
They said good night. Lindsey closed her door tight and leaned against it. In a minute or two she moved to draw off her dress and hang it up, and crossed to the window. The velvet night shimmered with stars and she fumbled with the catch and threw the window wide to the soft breeze from the slopes of the Kirstenbosch. It sighed in and swathed her bare shoulders with its cool somnolence. She leant out and listened to the unending pattern of little noises that came up from the garden and in from the oaks and blue gums. The African night a
i
r was un
bearably melodious and fragrant. Lindsey straightened abru
ptl
y and dropped the Venetian blind.
At a quarter past eight next morning Mr. and Mrs.
, MacLellan drove off. Lindsey thought up sandwich fillings, hastily beat up some doughnut mixture, cut it into rings and dropped them into a pan of hot fat. Chrissie
drained and sugared them, and set them out to cool. She also produced a golden pumpkin pie and quantities of raw fruit, and Lindsey filled the two flasks, one with coffee, the other with tea.
She had just washed her hands and made up a little when the car returned. As the three set out, the two women in the back and the Professor happily spread over the wheel, Mrs. MacLellan was unusually silent. Her air was preoccupied and a frown creased her forehead. Upon Lindsey’s profile, lifted towards the noble beauty of Kenilworth, she rested a reflective glance. Then her shoulders lifted, as though discarding a burden, and she began to point out avenues in which her friends lived, and views of more general interest.
Muizenberg, set in the lovely sweep of False Bay, has
a beauty all its own. Resting against an emerald hill, the houses gleamed white among their trees. To the left, the Hottentot’s Holland Mountains were receding into a midday haze of deep lilac. Lindsey had once believed that she would never get used to the vivid coloring of the Cape. Now she viewed it dispassionately, contrasting the warm blue sea with its white frill, the long stretch of pale sand with the living green beyond it, and the arch of metallic sky with the pewter line of the horizon. A vast cylinder of brilliance.
They lunched on the beach, took a walk to the cottage where Rhodes died, and came back again to bathe. Later, Mr. MacLellan went off to visit a colleague who had retired to a house overlooking the sea, and the women moved to the shade of a tree and dozed.
Presently, Mrs. MacLellan dragged some white knitting from her bag.
“Lindsey,” she said tentatively, “do you remember the last day on the boat, when I guessed your marriage was not all it should be? You said you’d tell me about it some time.”
Lindsey rolled on to her back and looked up into the thic
kl
y-clustered leaves which shut out the sun.
“The beginning?” she said thinly. “That part of it has become distant and a little unreal, though I suppose in the future I shall treasure it most. Meeting Stuart on the boat was the second miracle that ever happened to me. He ... he performed the first one as well, when he saved my brother.”
She told a few details—up to her arrival in Port Acland and her mother-in-law’s welcome. Then she went silent, and Mrs. MacLellan continued to knit, speculatively.
“The preliminaries were promising enough,” she commented at last, “but for a girl of twenty-three your ignorance of men was abysmal.”
“I know it,” Lindsey soberly agreed, casting back to her inability to shake off the agreeable Tony.
“Even so, you’d have got through with Stuart’s help.” She dropped her knitting into the grass and concentrated on the pale face beside her as she enquired point blank, “Why did Stuart remain so aloof, Lindsey?”
“It’s quite simple,” was the slow, distinct answer. “He was in love with a woman in London before he sailed. Stuart’s not the sort who can love twice. I
...
I’m afraid I’m not, either.”
Mrs. MacLellan was stunned. Nothing so catastrophic had entered her calculations. Misunderstanding, even a bitter quarrel, she could have construed and coped with. But another love eating into a man’s consciousness! No wonder poor Lindsey had run away. The cruel hopelessness of it
.
Mentally, Mrs. MacLellan was wringing her hands. Although her own marriage was ideal, she had not reached middle age without learning much about men and their reactions. And knowledge made her angry. How dare Stuart Conlowe marry Lindsey knowing he could only offer her the dregs left undrained by someone else! That he liked her and pitied her in her distress was no excuse. He was a man and by far the stronger. If he had really wanted to help Lindsey, he could
h
ave done so without binding her in so desolate a union. He could have forced her to accept his protection and enough money to get her home again or settled in a post in Cape Town. If he had wanted simply to
help.
He had seen in her a solace, a means of forgetting. It surprised Mrs. MacLellan to discover that it hurt to have her faith in Stuart dislodged. She did not know
him
well, but her interest in Lindsey had naturally included
him,
both on the boat and on the single occasion when he had brought her to dinner at Newlands. She, a Scotswoman who eschewed gambling, would nevertheless have staked quite an amount on his eventually returning Lindsey’s love. But he was to blame for this devastating outcome of their marriage. If only she had known last week when he called ... or even yesterday! Mrs. MacLellan felt as though she were caught in a cage of her own making.
She peeped at her watch. “I expect Henry’s having tea with old Munro. Shall we go and find some?”
Towards 7:30, as they drove back to Newlands, the treetops were tinged with the flames of sunset. Chrissie had dinner ready, and after an hour or two of the radio they went to bed.
Mrs. MacLellan awoke next morning with a bad head.
“It’s most unusual,” she complained to Lindsey, and headaches have a habit of descending upon one at just the wrong time. I ought to go into town
this
morning
.
”
“Can’t I go for you?”
“Let me see.” She laid a thoughtful finger along her cheek. “Do you know Miss Greave’s
shop on Plein Street?
...
She sells embroideries and wools. She had a shipment of Irish linen
coming in this week and promised to keep six yards of it for me—apple green. The poor
old dear doesn’t own a delivery car, and I try to save her the expense of using the express
parcels service.”
“Apple green linen from Miss Greaves,” Lindsey repeated. “I’ll manage that. What else?”
Mrs. MacLellan had to cogitate. “My perennial heat rash seems to be starting and I’ve run out of boracic powder, so will you get me some? And half a dozen air letters at the post office. Don’t rush back. Have elevenses in Carnegie’s, and hear some good music; they have an excellent quartette.”
Lindsey took the bus. It was the average fine morning, full of filmy sunshine and deceptively cool. Inland clouds piled in a way she had never noticed before, mounting and spreading towards the town like liquid gunmetal. She eyed the other passengers, most of them women bent on shopping, and saw that, like herself, they wore light dresses and no hats. She forgot that plastic waterproofs fold into the handbag.
Miss Greaves displayed the linen and packed it. Lindsey came out and visited a chemist for boracic powder. Then the Post Office. The streets glared, dusty-gold, beneath an oppressive, brassy sky. Above the buildings the first thunderheads approached, moving imperceptibly within a silver aura. Lindsey decided against Carnegie’s, and not much later she wished she hadn’t.
For as she perspired in the bus queue, thunder growled massively over the city. The noise reverberated and continued, a lengthening, grumbling threat. It grew louder as she sat in the bus, and the black sky split with li
ghtning
. But as yet no rain fell. It waited till she had left the bus.
A sudden great wind tore through the roads, lightning flashed and the thunder took a mighty, imperious note. Lindsey ran, with the first huge drops smacking at her face and arms. It deluged. In a streaming panic—for this was her first South African storm—Lindsey sloshed through coursing rivers, wincing from the flames
in the sky and deafening noises. It did not occur to her to dash into one of the houses for shelter.
Sobbing and gasping, she reached the MacLellans’ stoep. It had been emptied of furniture, the rain washed in over the granolithic floor and runnelled out through the square openings at the base of the stoep wall. Lindsey opened the door, kicked off her shoes and sped inside.
Chrissie said,
“
Aiee,
Mis’ Lindsey! Ain’t no bath hot this minute. Must I fetch a big towel?”
“Yes, please, Chrissie. Where’s Mrs. MacLellan?”
“She got a visitor, ma’am. She don’t hear you come in ’cos that big thunder. I take them shoes to the kitchen.”
In her bedroom Lindsey pulled off her sodden clothes and vigorously used the towel
.
She drew on fresh undies and dress, trod into mules, and set about drying her hair. When it was brushed and secured with a ribbon, she scooped up the bundle of wet clothes and Mrs. MacLellan’s dejected parcel, and carried them to the kitchen.
“This rain soon stop,” Chrissie cheerfully assured her. “I wash them things right now and they be dry in five minutes’ sun.”
Lindsey stayed in the kitchen to drink a cup of tea. Lightning licked at the house and water thudded in tons on the roof and flooded down the windows. The walls shuddered with the impact of thunder. But, true to the colored girl’s word, quite soon the thunder and li
ghtning
ceased, though torrential rain persisted for a while.
Lindsey returned to her bedroom for her bag. She opened the squelchy white leather sacque and took out the air letters and the packet of boracic powder, mercifully only faintly damp on the wrapper.
Outside her door she hesitated. She heard voices from the hall. Mrs. MacLellan’s visitor must be leaving.
A voice spoke with cold distinctness. “I’m sorry you feel that way, Mrs. MacLellan, but there’s a great deal you can’t understand. Thanks for your help.”
The main door closed. Footsteps clattered swif
tl
y down to the path. Lindsey’s throat had shut tight. Her hand had gone to the wall for support.
“Stuart,” she choked. “Stuart!”
She flew through the hall to the door and wrenched it open. A taxi, which had apparently been sheltering in the garage, was swerving out of the gate and disappearing behind the thick grey curtain of rain.
Crazily, Lindsey made as though to follow it, but Mrs. MacLellan caught her arm.
“Lindsey, you can’t. Come back inside. Come back.”
The cab was gone. There was only the rain spattering into the two baby palms and swirling down the paths into the road.
Lindsey twisted back into the house, her face white and stricken, fingers curled tensely at her sides. She let Mrs. MacLellan lead her into the lounge, and slipped down into a chair—his chair. The smell of his smoke was about her head; a glass—the one he had used—rested on
a table
beside her.
Carefully, as if it held his heart, she cupped it in both hands.
“Tell me everything he said,” she implored. “Everything.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
MRS. MACLELLAN’S mythical headache of this morning was fast developing into a reality. Looking at Lindsey and thinking of the man who had just left, she felt like weeping. What a bungling, tattered result she had achieved from the most splendid of intentions.
“I didn’t know you’d got back, Lindsey,” she said weakly. “Stuart came about half an hour ago, just as the storm was breaking. He flew down early this morning.”
“What made him come here ... again?”
“I did. My dear, I don’t know how to tell you. When you arrived four days ago, I was sure in my own mind that you and Stuart could be brought together
again,
Stupidly—for
I was aware of only a fraction of the facts—
I
decided that worrying over you might show
him
that he was unable to live without you. I gave you both three more days. Yesterday morning, whe
n
I drove into town with Henry, I sent Stuart a telegram, advising him that I’d keep you here till he came.”
“
Just that?” Lindsey whispered.
Mrs. MacLellan nodded. “Perhaps you can imagine my fright when you told me at Muizenberg about that
...
other woman? I hardly closed my eyes all night.”
“You sent me out this morning to get me out of the way?”
Miserably, she admitted it. “The telegram would have got there too late for him to catch yesterday’s plane, but I had a shrewd idea that he’d be on today’s. The Port Acland plane gets in to Cape Town at about ten-thirty. I had to see him alone. Lindsey, you’ll loathe me for this, but I was concerned only for you, both in wiring
him
and in ... lying to him this morning.”
“
Lying to him?”
Mrs. MacLellan stood up and walked about. “He came in expecting to meet you at once. I let him think
that you had gone out purposely, to avoid him, because you considered that you and he had nothing to say to each other. He said that now he’d found out where you were he was determined to see you. He meant it, all right. I was desperate, I can tell you, and willing to do anything to save you the pain of a scene with him.” She paused. “What a mer
c
iless sort of man he is, beneath the charm. And that queer, cold anger! He seemed like part of the storm.”
“You were desperate,” Lindsey impatien
tl
y reminded her.
“Never more so in my life. I told him that I had telegraphed him through a mistaken conviction that a wife’s place was with her husband, but I had since amended that conviction. No woman should have to live with a man who did not love her.”
“How did he take that?”
“Without the twitch of a muscle. No wonder he was a good officer. After a bit he politely commented that that side of it was none of my business; I had been good enough to let
him
know that you were living with me, and he was grateful, especially for my hospitality to you. The rest was now in his hands.”
“Oh.” Lindsey slumped back in her chair, trembling. “What do you suppose he’s going to do?”
“He’ll come back, but not yet. I told him you were out to lunch and might be away all day. Pull yourself together, Lindsey, This had to happen, but once it’s over you need never see him again.”
The tone of the rain had lifted to admit gurgling sounds as the water gushed away through various channels. A pale beam slanted across the room. Idiotically Lindsey thought, there’s a rainbow somewhere.
“Did he look well?” she was able to ask.
“Physically? More or less. But his eyes were tired.” Like that last evening. Tired and icy and full of dislike. As she crept back into her armor, Lindsey’s nerves relaxed. Her
mind
still shied from the things he had said and implied, and the way he had accused her of shattering what confidence and trust had grown between them.
“T
hank
heaven all this has happened now,” he’d brutally flung at her. “It would have been too bad if we’d committed ourselves in any way.” He could not have informed her much more clearly that the mockery was over and she was free to go. But he preferred
t
hat she should go as he chose and in his good time.
Her chin rose half an inch. He could keep his acid dreams of the woman he had lost in England, and eventually take Adrienne, or someone like her, as his wife. He had never needed Lindsey as she had needed him, long, long before they had met. What a senseless fool she had been to set
him
up as the sum of all that was desirable
in a man. Good looks, charm, courage; the three had captured her dreams, and her
imagina
tion
had clothed him with all the complementary virtues. Her obsession with the celluloid hero—for obsession was what it had amounted to—had obscured the fine qualities of other young men. They were ordinary and, with a little trouble, attainable. Stuart was neither.
Back on the boat, before the cable advising her of Aunt Kitty’s death, Lindsey had lived right inside a tremulous, radiant hope. Then Madeira. Intoxicated by the scintillating darkness, the warm, spicy air and his charming, protective nearness, to Lindsey Madeira had become synonymous with heaven.
How pitifully adolescent and blind she was then! He had never regarded her as a woman, but simply as young Lionel Gresham’s sister in a similar predicament to Lionel’s own a few years before; she was grappling with seas too strong for her and, in decency’s name, the least he could do was hook her out and set her on her feet. A man like Stuart would not from choice marry a girl ten years younger and absurdly inexperienced, however much he enjoyed the diversions of dancing with her and beating her at deck tennis.
The word “pity” pierced Lindsey like a sword. Let him find some other object for his pity; she could bear no more of it.
“I’ve been wondering,” Mrs. MacLellan said unhappily, “whether it would not be wiser for you to stay somewhere else till Stuart has gone back to Port Acland.”
“No.” Lindsey set the glass back on the small table. “I’ll see him—for the last time.”
Then cut away from it all—Stuart, South Africa,, and stupid hope that kept bounding up wi
t
h a false, dazzling smile. From Aunt Kitty’s money she would accept only enough to get her back to England; the rest could go to one of the hard-working native missions. In the interests of her own future, she must dispense with every reminder of this interlude. But oh, the grief and pain of loss.