Dorothy Eden (26 page)

“I could feel it in the letter,” Julia whispered. “It made me come out here.” Then she said flatly, “I thought it was Paul’s letter.”

“Harry was immensely impressed by it,” Davey went on. “But when it came to writing it he said he’d hurt his wrist. Could I imitate his hand-writing? So I, gullible still, practised his handwriting (it was Paul’s, of course) and finally the letter was sent to you. Then I found myself waiting as impatiently as he for the answer. When it came I told myself the sensible thing for me to do was to get out before you arrived. But things began to puzzle me. My instinct for a plot was uppermost again. Why wasn’t Harry making some effort to make the house habitable for his bride, why wasn’t he re-stocking the place and showing some interest in it? Why did he and his mother behave as if Heriot Hills were merely a hide-out? Why did he want to marry you in Wellington as if he never intended to bring you here at all? Why was he angry when you insisted on coming here, as if the whole thing, were becoming too complicated? He didn’t act like a man in love. For one thing, he was too interested in other women, and for another, apart from this urgency about marrying you, he seemed indifferent to you personally.”

“He had never seen me,” Julia said. “I might have been awfully ill-favoured. He wouldn’t have liked that.” Suddenly she was remembering that voice that had come into her sleep last night. “It was only because she was such a pretty thing.” It was resentful and defeated, but it still held its firm admiration for and susceptibility to beauty in women.

“He was nice—a little,” she murmured.

“He was weak and greedy and spoiled and occasionally vicious. But I grant you he had a great deal of charm.”

“He nearly killed Nita,” said Julia, realising now who the prowler in the house had been, that night in the kitchen when he had thrust her out, the night in the library when Nita had screamed.

“Yes, in a moment of anger because she became difficult. Then he had her shut up in a private home that took mental cases. Did you know that? She was locked in her room. He hoped she would never recover her memory, but if she did he took the precaution of paying the matron of the home handsomely to keep her out of the way indefinitely.”

“Oh, Davey, how dreadful!”

“It was dreadful. But Nita was more ingenious than he. Her memory came back and she remembered Timmy. A woman shut away from her baby will become very clever in her attempts to get back to it.”

“It was Nita who used the telephone!”

“She tried to. She was always stopped, of course. But finally she escaped. She collected that nice new car Harry had bought her as a bribe and came out here.”

The whole thing was becoming clear now, Kate’s fear, Paul’s uneasiness about the telephone calls.

“It was Nita’s hands I saw in the night. They were still bandaged. She had come in to look at Timmy, I expect. But why was she in your cottage?”

“She had hidden there when she knew I was away. Lily helped her. Lily was pretty angry with Harry, too.”

“It’s all so simple now,” Julia said. “I shouldn’t have been frightened. But the anonymous letters—had Nita written all of them? What about the one I got while she was shut up in that nursing home?”

“She had become friendly with Lily and had given her things, underclothing or something, and got her to slip the letters under your door. That one had been written before Nita’s accident, so Lily put it under your door for good measure.”

The final significant fact was coming to Julia.

“Davey, if I had married Paul—Harry—it would have been bigamous.”

“It would, indeed.”

“Then why was Nita allowing it to happen?”

“That’s the essence of the plot. And I’m afraid it’s all the fault of your Uncle Jonathan, who meant well, but who obviously is an impractical dreamer and trusts human nature far too much.”

“He thought marriages of convenience were neat and practical and satisfactory,” Julia said. “He admires the way the French still arrange them. And of course ever since Paul visited us he had set his heart on us marrying, because Paul was Georgina’s grandson.”

“Exactly. Didn’t it occur to you that he might have used a little pressure on Paul, as he thought?”

Julia was startled. “You mean money?”

“In other words, a marriage settlement of which you were to be kept in ignorance in case you felt Paul had been unduly influenced and was not marrying you for yourself alone.”

Julia felt curiously humiliated.

“Was it a large amount?”

“Some fifty thousand pounds. It was to be paid into Paul’s bank account on the day your uncle received evidence of your marriage.”

“But Paul was dead, and Harry got the letter,” Julia surmised.

“And Harry was quite unscrupulous. His wife was not quite so much so, but she too was greedy. She agreed for him to go through this form of marriage—providing he could convince you he really was Paul, whom he resembled greatly, the facial surgery which was the result of a motor accident, allowing him a little strangeness—and then they were to skip out of the country deserting you. But with the cash, of course.”

Julia felt a ghost of her old perpetual coldness.

“Kate knew?”

“She had to. When you refused to marry Harry in Wellington, neatly and swiftly, so that he could discard you at once, she had to be brought here as a chaperon. She was ambitious for her son, but Kate has only a small, frightened soul. She wanted to call the thing off long ago, especially after Nita’s arrival.”

“Nita had shadowed me?”

“Nita knew her husband’s weakness for pretty girls. If you were pretty she couldn’t trust him. And you were. So she tried to scare you off with the letters, and the occasional accident; like the moths, which she must have had a hell of a time collecting.”

“But something else happened,” Julia said, puzzled. “Paul—I mean Harry—got another letter from Uncle Jonathan that upset him a great deal. He was different after that.”

“Ah, yes, he had reason to be. Your uncle suddenly became cautious. Perhaps he feared Paul would be a fortune hunter after all. So he decided the fifty thousand pounds was to go not to Paul, but to your first child. This meant that Paul really had to live with you. By this time he was not going to find it difficult because he wanted you very much. It meant that Nita had to be kept permanently out of the way. You understand?”

Julia shivered.

“Then he really meant to kill her that night?”

“It looks very much like it. He came secretly back from Timaru. He asked Nita to wait for him in the library. Either he meant to kill her or persuade her to go away indefinitely. It looks as if she refused to go away and he lost his temper and made that clumsy attempt to kill her.”

“And she,” Julia murmured, thinking of Nita’s state of undress, “thought he had come to make love to her. What has happened now?”

“Well, that’s the inexplicable quality of human nature. Nita loves Harry. For good or bad—and I’m afraid with Harry it will always be bad—she loves him. She is making no charges against him. She’s just taken him away.”

“They’ll never be happy that way.”

“I should imagine it will be a pretty little hell. But do they deserve better?” Suddenly Davey put out his arms to her and said, “They’re finished. They’re done with. They’re out of our lives for ever. Let’s forget them.”

But Julia could not relax yet.

“How do you know all this?”

“Kate left a letter. She had become very fond of you, and thought it only fair that you should know the truth, or as much of it as I thought fit to tell you. She didn’t want to hurt you too much. Poor Kate. She had decided long ago that the game wasn’t worth the cost.”

“And my missing pearls,” Julia reflected. “Harry must have taken them back when he realised he wasn’t getting Uncle Jonathan’s money quite so soon. Nita’s car he can still return. I’m afraid the new sheep will never come.”

“Does that matter?” Davey looked round the old-fashioned kitchen with its peeling walls and smoke-blackened ceiling. His gaze seemed to take in the rooms beyond, full of dusty furniture, windows rattling, draughts whistling down the stairs. Consciousness of all the dishevelled, dilapidated past grandeur of the place was in his face. “Leave the old place to its memories,” he said.

“But Georgina?”

“Dove will look after her until Mrs. Bates comes back. This is her kingdom. I should think she wasn’t half so crazy before Kate and Harry bewildered her by moving in. You realise she was too shrewd to be fooled by Harry? That must have been a hurdle for them.”

Even as Davey stopped speaking there was a scuttering overhead like mice, or the inquisitive feet of a rabbit. Presently there was a high, plaintive voice from the top of the stairs.

“Julia! Julia dear! Something very terrible has happened.”

Julia flew down the passage to the foot of the stairs.

“What is it, Granny?”

“The moths have been at my wedding dress. And after all the care I have given it. Oh dear, it isn’t even respectable now!”

“Wait a minute,” said Julia eagerly. She ran up the stairs. “I have your dress in my room, Granny. I should have given it to you when I arrived. It was never mine. Look, come and see.”

The old lady shuffled on her tiny unsteady feet to the door of Julia’s bedroom. Then her dim eyes rested on, the dress blooming like a cherry tree, like a nymph, in the curtained room. Her delicate nostrils began to quiver, the pink crept into her cheeks.

“Mine?” she whispered in her light little voice.

“Of course. Jonathan sent it for you.”

“Ah! The naughty man! The
dear,
naughty man!” The eternal coquetry was back in her eyes. She edged forward to reach out her dead-leaf hand to touch the dress. Julia took Davey’s arm and led him away.

“That’s the right ending,” she said with satisfaction. “We nearly muddled it up, but at last it’s right. Darling, now I have only a cotton nightdress.”

“Even that,” he said briefly, “is more than enough.”

For

Win and Bernie

Whose garden and kookaburras

I borrowed

A
GAIN IT WAS THE
harsh devilish laughter that woke Abby. She started up, shocked and tense. Then, opening her eyes fully, she slumped back dejectedly on the pillows.

It was the kookaburras in the jacaranda tree outside her window who were making the noise. There were three of them and they came every day to be fed. At first she had thought they were cute, with their plump bodies, beige and blue feathers, and black unwinking eyes fixed on the windows, waiting for a movement inside. It had amused her to lure them closer and closer with scraps of raw meat, taming their fierce shyness and wondering whether one day she would succeed in persuading them to eat out of her hand.

Luke said it couldn’t be done, and that had made her more determined. It was as if, by taming the kookaburras, she would simultaneously overcome her own prejudice and hostility towards this new country.

But now she had had to admit her mistake. For the odd little trio, far from giving her any affection, took all they could get and when she was not there to feed them raised their hideous cacophony of sound, shattering her sleep morning after morning. It was strange that such cosy-looking birds were given that strident laughter that seemed to deliberately mock everything soft and tender and decent, even love, perhaps particularly love. It was the voice of disillusion coming out of this primeval land.

Fully awake, Abby realized that Luke had gone. There was a faint depression in the pillow where his head had been, that was all. She leaned over, pressing her cheek against it. In the very first days of their marriage, when Luke had had to make an early start, she had insisted on getting up and getting his breakfast. But when he had gone she had had a never-ending day to face. His suggestion that he could make his own coffee and toast on these days, without disturbing her, had seemed practical after all. It wasn’t as if he longed to have her waiting on him. Or as if he longed to have her at all…

That niggling doubt Abby pushed firmly away. But she had agreed that there was little point in her getting up early on these occasions. She could sleep until the kookaburras or some other strident noise woke her, and then at least a little more of the day would be gone.

For it seemed as if the hot bright days were simply an interval to be passed somehow until Luke’s return at night. She tried not to let him see this, and indeed not to see it herself. She had a new attractive home, situated picturesquely on the banks of a tidal river. One had to be near the water in Sydney, people told her, otherwise the summer heat was too oppressive. There was a natural swimming pool fenced off from any shark that might slide inconspicuously in from the wide blue waters of the harbor, and the garden, only half-developed, was there waiting for her to plan if she wished.

With housework, shopping, gardening, and idling in the hot sun she could very pleasantly fill in the days. Soon she would make friends. There were, after all, other people in Sydney besides the Moffatts who lived in the big stone house which stood up the hillside, towering over this modest new one like a mother over a child.

That was it, a watchful mother who wasn’t sure what her new very modern and not particularly welcome child would get up to.

Old Mrs. Moffatt hadn’t much wanted to sell this piece of land, Luke had told Abby. But circumstances had forced her to, so they must understand and try to be pleasant neighbors. It wasn’t much fun having strangers come to live in your front garden.

But Lola, her daughter, didn’t mind the strangers, Abby had noticed. Mary was more withdrawn and anyway had an invalid husband. But Lola…

Abby got out of bed abruptly, determined not to lie thinking. It was only nine o’clock. At the earliest, Luke would be home at seven that evening.

She would have a leisurely bath, then sit a long time over her coffee. After that she would tidy the house and go out shopping. Lunch was too easy, a salad and a fresh roll. She could plan a dinner that took a lot of preparation, so that a good part of the afternoon would be taken care of. Or she could swim, or go to the library, or take a ferry across the harbor into the city, sliding beneath the gigantic shadow of the bridge. Perhaps call at Luke’s office and come home with him.