Authors: Kathryn Blair
Lindsey pushed up from the chair and went to the window. The sun had come right out, big and smoky. Not far away the clouds paled and melted into the tops of the trees. The lawn, strewn with a wreckage of snapped twigs, peeped in green islands from a shallow lake, but the paths had already dried, and a sand-piper, driven in from the storm-rent beach, poised for flight on the gatepost, and took off. The air was tropically hot and moist.
Quickly she turned back into the room. “The green linen got wet. Shall we go and have a look at it?”
Mr. MacLellan came home to lunch. Blandly oblivious of the prickle in the atmosphere, he ate heartily and put on a pipe.
“Pity the rain was so heavy,” he said, tenderly gathering the broken heads of his orange-and-yellow Barberton daisies. “Did the dahlias a world of good, though, and filled the tank. Several hundred miles of coast had storms last night, I hear. At Kragga the bridge is under water, and the dam burst at Swartfontein. Some of the airfields are out of
co
mmis
sion.”
He wandered through the small orchard and back again, pulled up a mound of fierce-hued portulaca which threatened to overflow the neat cement wall at the end of the back lawn, and absentmindedly cleaned his hands on his handkerchief. His coffee was cold when he came back to the side stoep, but he drank it, sprawling his legs in front of him in utter content.
“Matthews was in Muizenberg yesterday. Funny we didn’t see him. I’ve asked him to bring his wife over to dinner tonight. Is it convenient?”
“Late to think of that if you’ve already invited them,” his wife returned tartly.
Mildly astonished, he raised shaggy brows at her. “I can put them off, if you say so.”
“Don’t be silly. I didn’t mean anything. We owe them dinner, anyway. Isn’t it time you went back?”
“No hurry for ten minutes,” he answered comfortably.
He was sitting farthest away from Lindsey, his bulk hiding the front gate. She heard it give a discreet creak, and goose feathers ran along her skin. Mr. MacLellan shifted and waved his pipe.
“Bless me, there’s Conlowe. Come on in, old fellow. Have you had lunch?”
The MacLellans stood up. Lindsey contrived to do the same, with the backs of her knees pressed hard
against
the ratten seat
of
the lounger.
Stuart said, “Yes; I’ve eaten, thanks.” Sarcastically, he added: “You returned early from your lunch appointment, Lindsey.”
“Oh, but Lindsey lunched here with us,” said Mr. MacLellan ingenuously. Either he had forgotten the woes poured into his ears each night during the past week, or he had slept through them. “What will you drink?”
“Nothing, thank you.”
“Have a cigarette, then. Sit down, man.
’F
raid I’ll have to go soon.”
They were seated in a line looking out on to the side garden. Lindsey and Mrs. MacLellan on the lounger, Stuart and Mr. MacLellan in chairs.
Rigidly, Lindsey’s head was turned away towards the back lawn. His face was set and cool; that much he had noticed. He wore the pearl grey lounge suit with a darker grey shirt and a burgundy tie; he looked unbearably familiar and handsome. She heard Mr. MacLellan saying, “Storms have been causing the deuce of a lot of damage. Had them your way, Conlowe?”
Stuart’s reply came crisp and loud, meant, she knew, more for her ears than theirs: “The sun was setting when I left Port Acland last evening in a chartered plane. We’d been going about three quarters of an hour when a wind hit us head on and we had to land. The pilot and I spent the night in the veld. About dawn we had a storm like the one you had here this morning; then it cleared, so we went up again. It was a bumpy ride.”
“A chartered plane!” Mr. MacLellan shivered. “One of those things with a cabin the size of a midget car? I wouldn’t travel in one for a million pounds. Why didn’t
you wait for the service plane this morning?”
“Too anxious to see my wife," maybe,” with veiled irony.
Lindsey’s blood cooled.
Mr. MacLellan stammered a bit, as though flooded with sudden memory. Of course, Conlowe was Lindsey’s husband, and wasn’t there some trouble or other? Yes, he could see there was by the silent anguish in Jean’s face and her positively beseeching eyes as they sought his own.
Hurriedly he tapped out his pipe. “I must be leaving,” he mumbled. “I have a class at three. Goodbye, old chap. Nice of you to call.”
No one else moved, but Mrs. MacLellan waved feebly. They watched him plump into his chair and slip away.
With cynical courtesy, Stuart said, “Your turn, Mrs. MacLellan.”
“Do you wish me to go, Lindsey?” the older woman queried with a birdlike flutter.
“Lindsey doesn’t know what she wants,” Stuart cut in curtly. “I’m asking you to leave us alone for a while, Mrs. MacLellan.
”
“If you ... don’t mind,” Lindsey added.
“Very well. I shall be a few doors away with a friend. Send Chrissie for me if you ... want anything.”
The faint smile remained on Stuart’s lips for several minutes after Mrs. MacLellan had gone, though his eyes were sapphire-hard. He leaned back in his chair, contemplating the branches of a pine tree above the next garden.
“Nine days is a long time, Lindsey,” he stated with taut mockery. “You might have
telephoned me
each
evening as I did you from Jo’burg.”
“The way I felt when I left Port Acland, I never wanted to hear your voice a
g
ain
.
”
“The way you felt!” The smile was gone. “You were too steeped in your own emotions to give a hang about what mine would be when I came across the couple of lines of scribble in my bedroom. How could you do that to me, Lindsey—leave me in the hellish position of knowing that you were wandering alone in a strange country and no way of finding you!”
“I did what was best for both of us.”
“Have I heard that before—or did I say it myself before I went north?” He half turned, inclined towards her over the head of the lounger. “Do you realize that for eight days
—
eight days
—
I was entirely ignorant of what might be happening to you?”
“Why not?” she demanded with a return of spirit. “Surely you don’t consider yourself entitled to a detailed report of my movements—after the horrible accusations you hurled at me that night?”
“I was angry,” he bit out; “too angry to care what I said. You should have made allowances for that. As for the accusations, I apologize. I discovered the very night of the day you left that there was no basis for them.” For the first time Lindsey looked full at
him.
“How?”
His whole face sharpened. “I got hold of Loraine and shook the truth out of him.”
She stared. “What made you go to Tony?”
“Can’t you guess?” shortly.
“You wouldn’t have been surprised to ... find me with him?”
“It was just one of the bolt holes I had to explore.” He jerked up and paced in front of her. “You’ll admit the situation appeared doubtful, and you made no real attempt at denial. I blame you for that, Lindsey.”
“Perhaps I was a little crazy, but that aspect of it held no importance for me. If you believed the other version
...”
She gave a sorry little shrug. “After all, Tony did come to ‘Elliotdale’ twice, and I did go to the Baumanns’. It was easy to concoct an
affair
of it
..
.”
“Too easy. After I’d thought it over sanely in daylight I was sure you’d be caught up by circumstances, but that afternoon, coming home to an empty house, I assured myself that only the guilty run away. That was why, having tried the airport and the railway station. I went to see Tony Loraine.”
Lindsey’s head was bent. To still the plucking of her fingers, she dovetailed them. In gentler mood he was bard to withstand.
“And Tony,” she said. “I expect he was too decent to incriminate Adrienne?”
“To be just, he was. But he let slip that Adrienne knew he was taking you to the Baumanns’, though you didn’t. So I chased back to ‘Komana’ for an interview with Adrienne.”
“Was your mother aware that I’d gone from Port Acland?”
“I hadn’t seen her since lunch. But I told her then ... at midnight.”
“Oh, poor darling!”
He stopped and looked down at the top of her head. “You care for my mother, don’t you?” he said quietly. “I wish you could have seen her that night, all fury on your behalf. She was magnificent. There were moments when I pitied Adrienne, though she stood up to it well and left us jauntily. My mother gave her a cheque and more or less kicked her out.”
“
So Adrienne lost,” said Lindsey in a small, flat voice. “I saw her here in Cape Town a few days ago. She didn’t see me.”
“She talked of going to the South of France to live with her father and his new wife. Lindsey,” he had softened intolerably, “Adrienne confessed to treating you abominably. Had she been a man, I’d have choked her. Heaven knows what horrible scheme was at the back of it—but if you’d only come to me, trusted
me...”
“What was the good? You were as taken in as your mother was. Adrienne had known you both for years and I was a stranger. I had no foothold in your family. Events piled up. While you were away I could feel that your mother was beginning to regard me suspiciously, in Adrienne’s light, and I was fenced off from them, and unable to do a thing to put myself right.” Both hands came up over her eyes and forehead. “Adrienne guessed our marriage was a farce. What could I do against that?”
He dropped on his knees in front of her and took her wrists, but a spark of Lindsey’s resolve still glowed. She tugged away and went running down into the garden.
He was beside her, in front of her, forcing her to stand and face him.
“We’re going back to Port Acland,” he said, “to start again. This time there’ll be no cross currents and no hiding from each other. If you wish, we’ll change houses or live in an hotel. You shall choose.”
“I’ve chosen,” she answered, her face averted. “We married for the wrong reasons. You pitied me, and I
.
.
. well, I must have married you for your money.”
“Don’t talk rot!”
“It’s true enough. At the time you said that one doesn’t marry for love on a four days’ acquaintance. If I’d been well provided for you wouldn’t have offered to marry me, would you?”
“I suppose not.”
She swallowed on the hurt in her throat. “Of course not. And I’d have laughed at a shipboard proposal, secure in the knowledge that my life was my own, so long as I had a cosy bank balance. So you see, I did marry you for financial reasons.”
“We had this out at the time. In any case, it’s beside the point now.”
“On the contrary, Stuart, it has become the only point that matters. As it happens, I don’t need your money any longer—I have some of my own. Aunt Kitty left it to me.
It isn’t a fortune by Conlowe standards, but I’m not extravagant.” She paused, pale but more composed.
Stuart’s mouth had narrowed into a line, his jaw was hard.
“Go on,” he said.
“I don’t need your help any longer,” she repeated. “We can both have our ... freedom.”
For a long moment he searched over what he could see of her face. A pure contour but for the drawn in lip; dropped eyelashes and the faintest tremor at the
corner
of her mouth.
“How fort
u
nate,” he said harshly. “So we can.”
Lindsey didn’t know which way he went. But in a little while she became conscious of the sun’s heat striking down into her scalp, and a nauseating damp odor from a pool of pink flowers under the hedge. Clear, at last, of all emotion, she walked indoors.
The kitchen was clean and quiet. Upon the centre of the scrubbed table a cross-stitch cloth sat
corner
ways beneath a bowl of African marigolds. Chrissie’s heap of bright knitting occupied a white enamelled chair.
The dim, cool dining room smelled of the fruit piled on to a silver dish on the sideboard. White g
l
adioli spikes hid much of the window and the rest was screened by chintz curtains.
In the hall she teetered, irresolute, before slipping into her bedroom and turning the key. During the day her bed was a blue silk studio couch. Three bolster cushions cuddled into the chromium surround which formed the head of her bed at night. Lindsey sank upon this accommodating piece of furniture and dropped her shoulders into one of the cushions.
Of all the disheartening experiences encountered in her fifty years,
soliloquized
Mrs. MacLellan, this one with Lindsey annoyed and consumed her most. Henry would aver that it was her meddling which had plunged Lindsey into a wilderness of unnecessary suffering. Which was true, however excellent her aims. She could never view marital disasters with the casual eye of the onlooker, and Lindsey’s had a more personal significance, for she had known them both just so long as they had known each other.
For forty minutes, off and on, she had sat on Alicia Curzon’s veranda waiting for some sign from her own house, a few hundred yards down the road. As Mrs. MacLellan had surmised, Alicia was out, so she could stay on in peace for a couple of hours, though the prospect appalled. On the other hand, if the two who had possession of her own house forgot her existence it might be all to the good. If only she’d remembered to bring a book or some knitting. Alicia’s chairs, though the very latest in red canvas and steel tubing equipment for stoeps, were decidedly uncomfortable to one who had never outlived a Scots manse upbringing. The Curzon children would most emphatically grow up with curvature of the spine.
For the third time Mrs. MacLellan strolled to the gate and leaned upon it, surveying the broad avenue of oaks and somewhat impatient of the cathedral quiet. A servant in blue felt slippers padded by to the post box, and down the road another coquetted with a dusky swain over a gate. Somewhere, a garden boy was lazily pushing a lawn mower. How foolish, so soon after the storm.