Authors: Kathryn Blair
If this is a veranda lunch, thought Lindsey after half an hour of noise and sundried tidbits, give me bread and cheese in the shade of a date palm. She hadn’t met one person she’d like to see again, except perhaps Tony. Although he fooled and flattered the women, there were moments when he looked weary of them. Adrienne was utterly at ease and never alone. The background of smoke and strong drink became her. “Adrienne, I’m going now,” said Lindsey.
“Going? The party’s just beginning. Tony, you can’t allow a prospective customer to give you the slip like this.”
He came over, bending an agreeable smile on Lindsey. “I
would
like to take a portrait of you—just for the pleasure of it. But I’d rather be friends. You’re such a refreshing change from what I’m used to.”
“Did I fluff the introduction?” murmured Adrienne. “She wears a wedding ring, Tony.”
“All the nice ones do,” he complained; “except you, my pet, and you’re only a cousin. If you must go, Lindsey, promise to come out to the Country Club one evening when your husband leaves you at a loose end.”
She nodded, edging away. “You needn’t come, Adrienne. I’ll walk into town and get the bus back.”
“You can’t do that!” The other woman rose, a guarded hostility in her expression
.
“What will Mrs.
Conlowe think if I keep the car and let you use a bus?”
“I
’ll
do the explaining. Please! I’d rather go alone.” From that instant, when she demonstrated to Adrienne Cadell that she, too, had a will of her own, Lindsey knew they were enemies. She fled through a gallery of photographs and down those red steps. Purposefully, lest she was being watched from that teeming veranda, she walked to the
Esplanade and turned left, towards the town. The road curled away from the sea, the elegant houses and hotels gave way to small shops, and then came an odd-shaped Market Square, with a central lily pond surrounded by young palms, before the
main
shopping district began.
For nearly two hours she window gazed, and then, to lend an authentic air to the escape from Adrienne, she paid her subscription at the library and chose two books.
It was a quarter to four. She must return to “Komana.” Discovering where the Esplanade buses started from and
queuing
for one ate up a further twenty-five minutes. When she arrived at the house Stuart was pacing the drive. He faced her, unsmiling.
“Thank heaven you’re back. Where’s the sense in my leaving you here for company if you chase off alone as soon as I’m gone? My mother and Adrienne have been very perturbed.”
Before he had finished speaking she was conscious of being overlooked from the sun lounge. Her eyelids down, she twisted to walk beside
him.
“I thought Adrienne would have told you. Apparently, my coming here today was a little inconvenient. Your mother didn’t say, but
...
”
Oh, what was the use! She felt herself trembling, and wanting with all her being to turn her face into his jacket and know that his strength was the shield between herself and the intangible dangers that awaited her up there over the tea table.
“Steady,” he said, low toned. “It doesn’t matter, now you’re back. You had us worried—going off for so long in a strange town. Sure you’re all right?”
Mrs. Conlowe leaned over the veranda rail. “Did you lose yourself, Lindsey?”
Stuart laughed, drew the two books from under Lindsey’s arm and held them up.
“She did—in a book, the brat. Started reading and forgot the time. Pour the tea, darling. I’m as dry as the Karroo.”
Stuart got her through. His lunch companions had been amusing, or he made them seem so, and he had arranged to inspect a couple of sites down at the industrial end tomorrow. He’d take an option on the most suitable and go into design and building costs.
“You’re serious about this?” Mrs. Conlowe begged. “Stuart, I do hope you are.”
“I’ve been here just four days. All this is preliminary work. We can’t invest thousands on plant and buildings until we’re sure of a steady supply of raw materials. I’m putting out feelers, but everything takes time, especially in this country.”
“I shan’t feel safe till the South African branch is registered and you and Lindsey are furnishing a house of your own ..
.
not so far out as ‘Elliotdale,’ either.” Adrienne, who had sat silent and absorbed while Stuart talked, now asked to be excused. She had to telephone some invitations for Saturday’s sherry party.
Lindsey relaxed. She caught Stuart’s glance, keen and enquiring, and faintly nodded. Within ten minutes they had left for home.
After dinner, when Stuart was intent upon a large-scale local map in the lounge at “Elliotdale,” Lindsey opened a book and tried to read. In a little while he raised his head.
“What went wrong this afternoon?”
“Nothing calamitous. It all came about because I can’t drive.”
“How was
t
hat?”
“The veranda lunch at Tony Loraine’s was deadly, so I decided to leave. If I could have taken the car and arranged that Adrienne wander back in her own good time, there would have been no fuss.”
“Adrienne said that the party was very entertaining. She was hurt that you should have walked out on her friends like that.”
“There was nothing public about my going. No one took the slightest interest except Tony, and he understood perfectly. It was the car business that annoyed Adrienne.”
“She wasn’t annoyed—only hurt.”
Lindsey’s handkerchief was a tight ball in her palm. “If you’d let me learn to drive,” she said, “such situations wouldn’t arise.”
He grinned suddenly. “I believe you’re trying to pin it on me. Never mind, I can take it. But Adrienne’s a proud girl, and sensitive about her position as dependant at ‘Komana.’ ”
“Is she a dependant?”
“It costs her nothing to live there.”
In Lindsey’s opinion, Adrienne was on a good thing, virtually daughter of the affluent house of Conlowe. One couldn’t voice such thoughts to Stuart, but surely he could see for himself that Adrienne was coveting and usurping the position at “Komana” which was by right his wife’s? He would have seen it soon enough had he loved her.
“By the way,” he added, concentrating once more on his map, “we can’t ignore Adrienne. We might ask her out to dinner at the week end.”
Lindsey was quiet, pretending to read. It seemed that he took Adrienne at her own valuation, which altered according to the person she aimed to impress. How would he react if she recounted the conversation in the car? Laugh, probably, and call Lindsey a goop for taking such an obvious joke without a grain of salt.
Perhaps she was a goose; she hoped so. Life was going to become a nightmare if she could not be friendly with Adrienne, who was ideally placed to instil poison into the Conlowe main stream.
Next day she prevailed upon Stuart to leave her at home.
“Daniel has the new bike,” she pointed out. “There’s that dreadful dog, and I’ve lots to do. After all, if you do open up in Port Acland I shall have to get used to being alone the whole day. A few hours now and then will break me in.”
Curious how her heart lifted when he had gone; sank at first, as the car receded, and then began gradually to ease from the oppression of uncertainty and dread. Today, she would be a housewife. She would bake gingerbread and inspect her new linen, have lunch in the garden and, after a delightful snooze, bathe and change into one of the new dresses, ready for tea, when Stuart returned, under the mulberry tree at the end of the lawn.
First, though, she must dawdle the whole length of the garden and marvel yet again at the tropical and sub-tropical trees and flowers. The oranges, dark-leaved and packed with waxen blossom whose scent was heavy and sweet and reminiscent of the fruit it augured. The smooth sturdy trunks of pawpaws with their shapely green heads, gangling guavas, commonplace apple, plum, peach and apricot, gnarled fig trees; all set about in glorious disregard for symmetry.
At the bananas she paused, fingering the split green silk and reaching to touch
the
colossal purple buds which—though at present she refused to believe it—in a few months would grow into a stem of fat yellow fingers. Nearby, feeding the huge plants, a pool edged with rocks grew tall, cultivated reeds, the brown spears so straight and splendid that they appeared unreal. Wild rock flowers grew about her feet; the trees closed her in with jungle height and intensity.
The garden boy was chanting rhythmically as he sharpened his scythe. The blade flashed in the sun, so did his copper earrings and the edges of his teeth. His cap most bush boys wear headgear—was of old goat-skin, and his shirt, once a triumphant affair in red and blue, hung together by neat strips of flannelette. On Sundays, Kiasa was a visual feast in his knee breeches, white shirt, red turban and two dozen bazaar bangles distributed over wrists and ankles.
Brutus, the Alsatian, was chained to the door of the servants’ quarters, which were two separate rooms built on to the back of the garage. At Lindsey’
s
approach he sat up, jaws wide, tongue lolling.
“Hello, old boy,” she said. “I wish you looked less as though you’d like a bite at my legs. We’d let you roam then.”
He suffered her near, but the second her hand touched his collar he snapped. Mrs. Conlowe, in her anxiety to be well protected, had allowed the three dogs to develop in their own wild fashion, and Brutus, at four, was too old for tamin
g
.
Lindsey did her faking and gave Meta a needlework lesson, punctuated with complaints from the girl that she’d rather knit. Then she sat down in the dining room to write to Mrs. MacLellan.
Was it possible that only a week had passed since she and Stuart had dined with the MacLellans in their home among the oaks? So very much had happened since then, but little of it could be included in a letter. Still, she had promised to send her address, and Mrs. MacLellan would be interested in details of the house and servants.
The day sauntered through its phases. Stuart did not return alone. He brought two business friends who monopolized him till seven, but could not stay to dinner because they had no way of letting their wives know. One of the boons of being telephone-less, privately rejoiced Lindsey.
When they had gone Stuart showed her a rough plan he and an architect had drawn up this afternoon.
“Each one of these bays is a factory specializing in an article.” He indicated them one by one. “Batteries, electric motors, lamps, and so on. Later, we may add a domestic appliances building. Each bay will take two months to complete. My idea is to start production in the first one as soon as it’s up, so that we shall be three parts
r
unnin
g
when the whole works are finished. You see it takes so much time to get machinery over from England or America
...
”
She listened, interpolating a comprehending remark now and then.
“If I can’t make the necessary contracts for raw materials down here, I shall have to visit Johannesburg for a few days. All the big people in England are represented there.” He rolled the plan and slipped it under the closed flap of his brief case. “And now, for attending like a good girl, you shall have a cigarette.”
H
e took one from each side of his case.
“Light it for me,” she said quickly.
It tasted sweet, straight from his lips.
“You know, Lindsey,” he said through a cloud of smoke, “I’m beginning to wonder if we’re going at it the right way.”
“Going
at ...
what?”
“Marriage.” He sat on the edge of the dining table, one foot raised to a chair, an elbow on his knee. His eyes were mocking, his mouth grave. “Do you feel we’re still progressing favorably?”
She had to feel it, else there was no sanity anywhere.
“Why shouldn’t I?”
“If you do, so much the better. It was the darnedest luck that we should have been rushed into it like that
...
particularly tough on you. If we’d known one another longer and been enough in love to
...
well, become engaged
...
marriage would have come more naturally. You can’t be in love with a woman and not make love to her.”
The cigarette crushed between Lindsey’s fingers. “Can’t you?”
His face hardened. “Not unless she’s cold as driven snow. Don’t think I’m disappointed in you or regretting anything. I’m not. If you’re satisfied, we’ll say no more.”
“How can I be satisfied, knowing you aren’t?”
“My concern is for you. I can’t help noticing when you look restless and insecure, and it infuriates me that I can do nothing about it. I’m able to take care of you and protect you but no one can force love till the germ exists.”
Lindsey sat very still. This was worse, much worse, than yesterday’s incident with Adrienne Cadell.
“So you think that
...
taking a house together was a
...
mistake,” she managed.