Dorothy Eden (52 page)

“Now, don’t be so formal, Simon. As if we don’t know each other.” Iris leaned from the bottom step of the stairs to kiss Antonia. Only that way was she on a level with Antonia. “Simon, isn’t she pretty?”

“I might repeat that about you,” said Antonia, speaking for the first time. The clear pallor of Iris’s cheeks, her green eyes and pale hair fitted almost uncomfortably into this cool white house, like an underwater nymph, or a ghost. Almost shivery. And there was old Simon nodding slowly, as pleased and proud as a king with a new fabulous empire.

Iris had begun to move quickly up the stairs. She gave the impression of never being still.

“Come on, Antonia. Come and see your room. We’ve put some pains into it because if you stay it must be nice. And if you don’t it will be our private guest room. This place wants an awful lot doing to it, but of course we’re concentrating on our own living quarters first. We’re keeping the upstairs part of this wing entirely for ourselves.”

“We don’t plan to open until the spring,” Simon said behind Antonia.

“No,” said Iris. “No one would want to come up here in the winter. It’s entirely a summer place. Simon and I thought it would be wonderful to have three months to ourselves and just get the renovations done at our convenience. We’ve all sorts of plans. I want to make this place like one of those delightful little places on the Riviera. Bright blue shutters, flower baskets, things like that. We got it dirt cheap, of course.”

“With Aunt Laura’s money,” Simon put in.

“Only part of it, darling,” Iris said a little sharply. “Look, Antonia, this is your room.”

She led the way into a large room charmingly furnished in deep yellow and apple green. The windows faced down the hillside over the rooftops of Sumner and the gentle curving bay.

“Simon told me you had red hair,” Iris said. “That’s why I chose these colours. But I love yellow, anyway.”

Antonia was moved by the thoughtfulness Iris had shown.

“The room’s lovely,” she said warmly. “How very kind you are.”

“Not a bit. We’re so glad to have you. Me especially. It’s been lonely here at nights when Simon goes down to his hotel. Just Bella and Gussie and me, and Bella and Gussie are downstairs. Now we’ll leave you to change. Dinner’s at seven. There’ll only be the three of us, and Bella isn’t an awfully good cook yet, but she’s learning. Come along, Simon. Let Antonia change.”

“But I’m only going down to that hotel for two more nights,” Simon said in a loud triumphant voice. “Aren’t I, love?”

He bent and kissed Iris on the back of her neck. Antonia thought of how his lips would be moist against her skin. Iris’s little white face remained quite calm.

“Yes, darling. So you are.”

It seemed to Antonia that she might have been speaking to a child.

Dinner was in the big dining-room that was as yet so sparsely furnished that sounds echoed. The long windows looked towards the sea that in the growing darkness seemed an immense distance down, as if they were perched on top of the world. There was always the sound of its slow drag and crash on the rocks. The wind, sighing over the tussocky hillside and rattling the windows, never ceased.

The room was draughty and chilly with a feel of early frost. Iris, who had changed into a lownecked dinner dress that showed her white shoulders and outlined her small breasts, looked as if she would never be still long enough to feel cold. She was talking incessantly about her plans for the hotel.

“Don’t you see the possibilities these big rooms have? All that old plaster moulding will be pulled down, we’ll have the walls painted, a new fireplace put in, window seats round these lovely windows. And I’m really going to let myself go on the furnishings. I’ve a colour scheme planned. The bedrooms won’t be numbered, they’ll go by colours, the blue, the gold, the green and so on. And of course there’s oceans of plumbing to do, hot and cold water to be put in all the bedrooms and a couple more bathrooms. And then there’s the bar. I’ve offered to let Simon design that, but he hasn’t had any brilliant ideas yet. Have you, darling?”

Simon, his mouth full, waved his fork in a large gesture.

“The place is yours, love, bar and all. I’ll just mix the drinks.”

He gave his loud delighted childish laugh. Antonia glanced at Iris. She was frowning slightly.

“I doubt if I could even trust you to do that.” The next moment the sharpness (had it been sharpness?) was out of her voice and she was saying with amused tolerance, “Simon’s so helpless! Has he always been like that, Antonia?”

Antonia looked at Simon’s amiable face.

“Am I in a position to judge, Simon? We haven’t seen a lot of each other. I used to think he was a horrid small boy.”

“I’m quite sure he was,” said Iris.

Simon gave his wide smile and turned his attention with renewed interest to his plate.

The meal was served by a thin-faced woman with a stooped back and an air of overwhelming tiredness. Iris explained that that was Bella Smale whose husband was in hospital dying of tuberculosis. Her son Gussie, a sharp little scamp, untruthful and untrustworthy, lived with her. He pretended to be dumb when he got into any trouble, but he was as intelligent as the next one. He would be useful about the place if he could be trained, which sometimes seemed doubtful. Of course later there would be a complete staff.

“Well, let’s show Antonia over,” Simon said.

But Antonia felt enough had been said in the meantime about the hotel. She wanted to talk about the wedding, about Aunt Laura’s death, and particularly about those disturbing events that had happened in Auckland.

However, neither Iris nor Simon was going to be talkative about Aunt Laura. Iris, who had been her companion for six months before she died, seemed genuinely upset, and Simon also was subdued. He had come out from England a few weeks before Aunt Laura’s death because she was worried about her affairs, and as her executor and a relative she wanted him with her. Iris had met her on a passenger ship coming out to New Zealand from England, and, at the old lady’s request, had become her companion.

“She was so sweet to me,” she said. “The poor darling was ill then, but I didn’t know that. I’m only glad I was able to help her for that short time.”

“Iris saw to everything,” said Simon. “She was wonderful.”

“No, I wasn’t. After all I owed Miss Mildmay something. I needed a job and she gave me a home as well. And then”—her voice was suddenly almost flippant—“she provided for Simon, too.”

“Did she know you were going to be married?” Antonia asked.

“We don’t quite know. We told her, but she was only semi-conscious for some time before she died. Now and again she’d brighten. It was a stroke, you know. She had two slight ones, and then this last one.”

“Poor old Aunt Laura,” said Simon. “I always remember once when I was a kid my dog got run over and killed. It broke my heart, especially when they said I couldn’t have another. But one arrived a week later, a puppy in a basket with a blue ribbon round his neck. A golden cocker. He was from Aunt Laura. She knew my mother would never turn away such a cute little beggar, blue ribbon and all. She was right. I was allowed to keep him. I never forgot that.”

“Simon’s
enormously
sentimental,” Iris sighed. “It’s not always practical in this hard old life.”

Antonia was pursuing her own thoughts. “What could that man have wanted to tell me about Aunt Laura’s death? It must have been a hoax.”

“What man?”

When Iris’s attention was aroused her eyes glittered, Antonia noticed.

“Oh, I had a peculiar phone call.” Antonia began to relate the incident again, but now without a great deal of conviction. Everyone had cried her down so much that she was almost beginning to wonder herself if the thing had really happened.

“I might have had a blank about the unpacking,” she finished, “but there was still the phone call. No one’s been able to explain that away.”

Simon’s mouth hung open a little. His eyes were fixed on Antonia, then as she looked at him they slid away in their customary evasive manner. Iris was saying a little breathlessly.

“How very odd! How disturbing for you! But surely it can’t have meant anything.” Her face seemed very thin and sharp. It almost seemed as if she were reassuring herself. Then she said slowly, “Are you quite sure—”

“That it really happened,” Antonia finished. “Now please don’t you start on that angle. I may be a little absent-minded, but surely not that much.”

“Absent-minded,” Iris repeated reflectively. “I wonder—But, you poor darling, it was upsetting for you. Nothing like that will happen to you here, I can assure you.”

So she, too, was subscribing to the theory of hallucinations, Antonia thought wearily. Well, maybe everybody was right. Even Simon, with his indirect eyes. But he, suddenly, was looking a little frightened of her.

As soon as dinner was over they showed her all the rooms in the right wing of the house. The left wing, Iris said, was shut up until the workmen arrived. It wasn’t fit for inspection. She began to talk happily of her plans again, and the thought came into Antonia’s mind that she was marrying, not Simon, but her pet dream, a small exclusive hotel on Continental lines. It was the logical explanation. In a way it was Aunt Laura’s legacy to her, and doubtless she deserved it.

At ten o’clock Simon left to go down the road to his hotel. Antonia was in her room, and through her open window the murmur of his and Iris’s voice came up from the front door. Antonia sat down before her dressing table with its pretty golden drapings. She yawned and picked up her hair-brush. She was very tired. The day was a confusion of half-formed impressions. She hoped Iris was bidding Simon a genuinely affectionate goodnight. Poor old Simon, he was so naîve, so proud of Iris. After all, often one partner to a marriage loved a little more than the other. That didn’t necessarily make the marriage a failure.

Antonia’s thought broke off as Simon’s voice, suddenly loud and a little bewildered, came up to her.

“But you’ll have to tell her now that they haven’t come.”

Iris’s reply was inaudible. Again came Simon’s voice, definite in spite of its bewilderment. “They may not even come tomorrow.”

“Of course they will. They’ve promised. Anyway, I’ll see to that. For goodness’ sake, don’t be a fool at this stage.” Iris’s voice, sharply raised, was clear this time. It was Simon’s that was lowered now. He said something anxiously and Iris answered, “I’ll make all possible enquiries. But it
can’t
be anything. It just isn’t possible.”

Simon made a muttered answer. Then he went tramping down the gravelled drive, and there was the sound of the front door shutting.

What was it that Simon thought she should be told? It could be nothing connected with her legacy because Dougal Conroy was looking after that. Antonia was sure that self-possessed young man would do nothing indiscreet. She had found his correctness and his discretion provocative as well as a little irritating as they had driven to the Hilltop that afternoon, but now, with the wind rising and that dreary flaxbush on the lawn giving its staccato crackles, it was comforting to think that the lights of the Conroy house were visible from here. Dougal had told her that merely as a passing remark, but now, remembering, she went to the window to lean out and stare down the darkening hillside.

“What are you doing?” came Iris’s voice sharply behind her.

Antonia started so that she almost lost her balance.

“Just looking at the lights,” she said. “Mr. Conroy said I’d be able to see their house from here.”

“Oh, Dougal!” It seemed that Iris relaxed. Could she have thought that Antonia was deliberately trying to eavesdrop? “Yes, that’s their house—the first at the turn of the road. Dougal has a terrible mother, poor boy.”

“Terrible? How?”

“Oh, she shouts the most appalling gossip at you. All exaggerated, of course. She’s always looking for sensations.” Iris was chatting in a friendly way now. “Can I come in and have a cigarette? It’s been so lonely up here when Simon’s gone at nights. But as he says it’s only for two more nights. Do you hear that whistling noise?”

Antonia had already noticed the thin eerie sound that came at intervals of ten seconds or so and that seemed to grow louder as the wind rose. She had thought at first that it was fancy, or an echo in her ears.

“It’s the whistling buoy,” Iris said. “There are bad rocks down there. You only hear it when the wind is from the east, thank goodness. It gives me the jitters.”

“Didn’t you hear it before you bought this place?”

“Oh, yes. But I wouldn’t let a little thing like that put me off. It’s only at night when I’m alone that I think of it.”

She sat down on the ottoman at the foot of the bed, and her eyes had a narrow sharp look. Suddenly there was no softness in her face. It was all introspection. She’s remembering something in her past, perhaps in her childhood, Antonia thought. Something hard and unhappy. She looks like a woman who has ghosts walking—at night, when she’s alone and there are lonely sounds. Poor Simon, she was going to be too complex for him.

“Tell me what you’re wearing for your wedding,” Antonia invited.

Iris looked up. The tension left her face. It became animated.

“A green faille suit. Simon likes me in green. We thought it was too soon after Miss Mildmay’s death for it to be anything but a quiet wedding. I haven’t a hat yet. Would you like to come shopping with me tomorrow?”

“Yes, very much.”

“That’s nice. By the way, that telephone conversation you say you had in Auckland. Can you think of anyone who would do that to you—play a joke, for instance?”

“It would be a poor sort of joke to play on anyone. How should I know who would do it? I don’t know a soul in Auckland.”

“Extraordinary!” Iris murmured. “Tell me how the voice sounded.”

As well as she could Antonia imitated the thick slow sound. In her own voice it sounded merely feeble and silly.

Iris laughed.

“That sounds like the villain out of the melodrama. Someone
is
having a joke on you, that is if you didn’t dream the whole thing.”