Dorothy Eden (48 page)

It was Luke who made the tea, and together, in their pleasant sitting-room, he and Abby persuaded Mrs. Moffatt to drink some. Luke had assured her that she would neither be arrested nor cut off at once from the drug she craved. She sat winding her thin, brows hands together and looking into space. Once she said, “Whatever they say, I do love Deirdre.”

“Of course you do, Mrs. Moffatt. We’ll soon have Deirdre back. The police are on to that.”

“What I don’t understand,” said Abby, “is why they went to such elaborate care to get me out of the house the day they wanted to burgle us. I was out all morning, as they knew. Why wasn’t it done then?”

“Jock was watching,” said Luke simply. “He didn’t go to work until the afternoon. By that time you were back. So Mary had to ring you up. Anyway, she probably enjoyed that little bit of stageplay of letting you think she was wheeling Milton home in his chair. It was a good alibi for them all. Did you know Milton wasn’t a cripple, Mrs. Moffatt?”

The frizzled gray head shook energetically.

“No! They fooled me about that. I didn’t believe Deirdre when she said someone walked in the night. I never heard anything.”

When the telephone rang she sat stiffly upright, waiting to see who it was. So did Abby, until Luke came back to say that Lola had been picked up at her beauty salon.

“It created a furor among the clients, I believe,” he said tiredly, and Abby knew that, little as he cared for Lola with her brazen gaiety and her slim body, and the greediness for money that she shared with her sister, he hated this happening to a woman. He hated the whole thing with a weary despair.

“Both of them. Both of my girls,” said Mrs. Moffatt quietly. Presently she added, “Mary always wanted to go on the stage. She was very good at acting. But there wasn’t an opportunity and I suppose she was bitter and frustrated. She was very strong-willed beneath that quietness, you know. Very strong-willed. She must have pretended all that nervousness of Milton. It was part of her act, I suppose.” The old lady looked bewildered. “Milton wasn’t a cripple when he married her. They lived in Darwin, and she said that was where he had the car accident. He had been an importer and he had to give up his business. Mary asked if they could come here since he needed hospital treatment every now and then. She said money would be no trouble, and it wasn’t. I thought Milton must have private means, but of course now I know better.”

She sighed deeply, looking guilty and ashamed again.

“Mary started me on the stuff about a year ago. She said it was good for depressions and headaches, it would make me feel young and gay. I loved being a young girl, you know, and I’d never had much of that either, with my husband dying so soon, leaving me with two babies. I’m only fifty-six now, although I know I look nearly eighty. It’s this horrible stuff that now I can’t do without.”

“And what about Lola?” Luke asked quietly.

“Poor Lola. She always wanted to get rich quick, and her marriage had been a failure. Not that Reg isn’t still around, but he won’t live here, and he’s not one for responsibility or children. He’s a chemist, you know. He’s been very useful, Mary tells me. Making our fortunes, she says! Reg! I always thought he was such a weak creature. But it’s so easy to be corrupted. So easy.”

The telephone rang again. When Luke came back Abby looked up eagerly. It must be about Deirdre this time.

But Luke shook his head. Abby saw the tautness of his face.

“What, Luke?”

“Milton. When they stopped to pay the toll on the bridge he made a break for it.”

Abby waited, remembering those great girders, the ominous shadow over the water, the inescapable feeling of doom the bridge had given her. She had had some strange kind of precognition, she realized. Now she knew what Luke was going to say.

“He succeeded in getting out of the car, but was knocked down by one coming the other way.” Presently he went on, “Perhaps being a cripple in a wheel-chair was safer, after all. By the way, they’ve picked up Lola’s husband, your fish-faced friend. But Deirdre wasn’t in his rooms.”

“Then where is she? Didn’t Lola say?”

Two of the kookaburras had come to perch in the jacaranda tree. The third was tapping at the window. But surely it hadn’t become that confident and clever!

Abby turned sharply.

“Deirdre!” she cried.

Deirdre’s face, thin and foxy, was pressed against the pane. When Abby opened the window she said in her blasé way,

“You took long enough to hear me. What are you all talking about so hard?”

Her face was grubby and faintly tear-stained, her hair hanging in strings. But she said perkily,

“I told him I’d escape and I did. The old bastard!”

“Deirdre!” exclaimed her grandmother, shocked.

“So he is. If that’s my father, I’m sorry I met him.”

Luke lifted her up and set her in an easy chair.

“A cold drink, do you think, Abby. Lemonade?”

“Lime,” said Deirdre dispassionately. She waited for the drink and swallowed it thirstily. Mrs. Moffatt mopped at her tears.

“It’s just us left, Deirdre. Did you know?”

Deirdre looked astonished.

“What’s happened to old Milton? Did he tell you I saw him walking last night? Fancy sitting in that old chair when he could walk! He was wild with me for seeing him. That’s why Mummy took me to my Father today. But it wasn’t much good. We didn’t like each other. He kept telling me to shut up. So when he went out to get cigarettes I ran away.”

“But how did you find your way home?” Abby asked.

“I thumbed a lift. It’s easy. Lots of kids do it.”

Abby began to laugh unsteadily.

“Luke, we don’t have to worry about Deirdre. In fact, I think boarding-school is the answer.”

Deirdre looked from one to the other.

“What about Gran?”

“Gran will be going away for a while,” Luke said. “She isn’t well and needs treatment.”

“What about—Mummy?”

“She’ll be away for a while, too.”

“Everybody! Good heavens!” Deirdre shrugged fatalistically. She swallowed the last drops of her drink. “Actually, I’ve always wanted to go to boarding-school. I just hope—” She stopped and her eyes slid away.

“Hope what?” Luke insisted.

“That Abby might come and see me sometimes,” Deirdre mumbled self-consciously.

“Of course I will!” said Abby warmly.

Luke rubbed his hand in Deirdre’s hair.

“Perceptive little brat, aren’t you? You know who the nicest people are.”

Deirdre looked up, grinning with all her old bounce. In the brief silence a thread of music drifted up from the river.

But I love only you-oo, I love only you…

“Jock’s home!” Abby exclaimed, and hurried out on to the patio to wave to the scrawny, half-naked figure in his shabby boat.

A lizard flashed in a long, gray streak across the sun-warm stones. The river was green and sluggish, the scent of the gums fragrant, like lavender.

A bird flew across Abby’s vision, one of the kookaburras inviting her notice. When she ignored it, it settled in the jacaranda with its two companions and they all lifted their creamy throats and began to laugh.

The familiar sound was no longer shocking. It had become part of her life here, and consequently was quaintly original and amusing and completely acceptable…

A
NTONIA KNEW THE TWO
letters, Iris’s and Simon’s, by heart. She had re-read them a dozen times before leaving London, and now the rhythm of the plane’s engines and the curious unreality of fatigue was making her repeat them senselessly in her head. Over and over her mind kept saying:

I particularly want you, dear, and so does Simon.

Simon was her cousin. She hadn’t seen him for several years. She remembered him as a fat boy with puffy eyelids, a flat shapeless nose and a good-natured grin. He used to have a passionate enthusiasm for frogs and guineapigs. She was surprised that he should even remember her, quite apart from wanting her to come to his wedding. But of course there was that business about Aunt Laura’s death too. Globe-trotting Laura, the family had always called her. Antonia couldn’t remember her at all. She was her mother’s eldest sister and had spent her life in unlikely places like Mexico or Peru or Persia or the South Sea Islands. To Antonia she was a letter bearing interesting foreign stamps every Christmas. She had brought one of her letters with her, as a means of establishing her identity. Because Simon had said that he and she were Aunt Laura’s sole beneficiaries. The poor old dear couldn’t have had much money left after her globe-trotting, but there was enough, apparently, for Simon to buy an hotel and to pay her passage by air from England.

“I’ve bought an hotel and I’m being married,” his letter had said. “I came to New Zealand a few months ago when old Aunt Laura (do you remember her?) sent for me because she was dying. She’s made me her trustee and she’s left you and me her bit—you because she said your mother was her favourite sister, and me because I’m the only male in the family.

“I came out because I wasn’t doing anything much else at the time, and now Iris wants this hotel (it’s only a small holiday place), and we thought you might like to be in on it. Anyway, Iris wants to meet some of my family.

“I can’t start to tell you what Iris is like. I’m no good at that sort of thing. But I’m plain crazy about her. I feel like that old joker in the Bible, you know, the one who says ‘Sweet is thy voice and fair is thy face.’

“I do hope you’ll come, Tonia, because I want to show Iris off to someone.”

That was Simon exactly as she remembered him, naîve, slow, self-effacing, absorbed in his hobbies, unable to believe anyone would ever see anything in him. One would have known that when he fell in love it would be in the worshipping way, which was dangerous as well as uncomfortable. For what woman could stay permanently on a pedestal? Iris, of course, might have that gift, for she didn’t sound simple. Antonia didn’t know why she had that instinct about her after just reading her letter which was very sweet, friendly and sincere.

“Simon says you’re his favourite cousin and I would so much like to have you at our wedding. I know it’s an awfully long way to come and we don’t know what your personal circumstances are. But I am sure you would find it worth while if you could. You would like New Zealand and besides there’s this business about your aunt’s estate. I believe your being here would facilitate matters although Dougal Conroy, our solicitor (he’s a dear, but
so
cautious), says it isn’t necessary. But quite apart from business we want you at our wedding. You don’t need to worry about money because Simon and I have bought an hotel—it’s just a small guesthouse, really—on a hilltop overlooking the most glorious sea, and there would be a home there for you. The place is badly in need of renovation, but we plan to spend the winter repairing it and doing up the garden, and in the summer, in its miniature way, it will be wonderful.

“Simon is sweet! I’m so madly happy I must have someone to share it with. Please do come.”

Antonia had the instinctive feeling, on first reading that letter, that Iris had had very little in her life, otherwise how could she be so excited about what sounded like nothing but a glorified boarding house (and tumble-down at that), and phlegmatic old Simon. But perhaps Simon had improved a lot in the last five years, especially since he was moved to quote the Song of Solomon. Perhaps Iris really did love him. Perhaps her letter was completely sincere.

“Tea, Miss Webb?” said the stewardess, breaking into Antonia’s thoughts.

“Yes, please. How long before we land?”

“About an hour. You’ll be glad to get there.”

Antonia stretched her weary limbs.

“I certainly will.”

“It’s a long trip from England the first time.” The stewardess was friendly, pretty, smart in her uniform. “It makes London seem a long way away.”

“London on a wet February day,” said Antonia dreamily. “That was how I left it. I was glad it was raining. It didn’t make me feel so homesick.”

She had been homesick, of course—for her tiny flat in South Kensington, her kindly garrulous landlady, her cat curled up indifferently in his favourite spot on the window ledge (the next tenant was taking him over), the people at the office, even the rain pouring on the gulls’-wing grey London roof-tops. But there was something of the globe-trotting Aunt Laura in her. She reached out for new experiences. She couldn’t resist this challenge, for she felt that that was the unwritten part of Aunt Laura’s will. When, almost at the last minute, she had had a bad attack of flu and had had to postpone her reservations for a fortnight she had been consumed with impatience, and only sheer weakness had prevented her from catching the plane.

“You’ll enjoy the New Zealand sunshine,” said the stewardess. “What are you going to do there?”

“I don’t quite know. I worked on a little weekly in London. They want me to do articles for that. But I’m going chiefly because of an inheritance.”

“My goodness! You might be an heiress!”

Antonia laughed. A new land was approaching, excitement was stirring in her. Good old Aunt Laura with her legacy of travel, if nothing else. She answered the pretty stewardess.

“In the language of my Cockney friends, not bloomin’ likely!”

Simon had cabled that he had reserved her a room at the Grand Hotel in Auckland. He and Iris lived at a beach suburb of Christchurch in the South Island. Antonia was to fly down in the morning. Between now and then she had sixteen hours in which to sleep. She needed them all. After the five days in a plane with the brief hours of rest at airports she was in a queer unreal dream. The clear brilliant New Zealand sky, the houses slanting up the hillsides, the little white-sailed yachts sprinkled over the shining harbour seemed nothing more than an illustration out of a travel magazine. Tomorrow she would appreciate it. Today she must sleep.

As soon as she arrived she took a hot bath and tumbled into bed. But before sleep had finally claimed her the telephone at her bedside rang. Antonia wearily roused herself. Who would this be? Simon ringing from the South Island?