Full Tide (22 page)

M
rs. Basson, who had earlier suggested that she and Lisa could travel to England together, now thought that at the end of the school term her daughter might come to Durban for a holiday. The fourteen-year old Julie would help Nancy over the difficult week or two after Lisa’s d
e
parture. Laura Basson had also promised to have Nancy at the hotel for the coming weekend, while Lisa went with Jeremy to Johannesburg.

Lisa had tried to cancel the jaunt. She had no wish to see Astra Carmichael on the stage, nor had she the spirit which is necessary for such an outing. Jeremy refuted this last.

“You’re miserable because you’ve booked your ticket home,” he stated, aggrieved. “It’s mean of you, Lee, when everyone wants you to stay. If you must work there are plenty of jobs here —good ones, too.”

“Where would I live? I can’t stay on for ever with Dr. Veness.”

“
We’ve a spare r
o
om at the farm,” he said firmly, “and you could ride in to town with me every morning.”

“You’re a dear, Jeremy, but I couldn’t do it.”

“If you were in love with me, we could get married.”

“If you were in love with me, too,” she said.

He thrust out a rueful lip. “I don’t suppose it would do for us to get married. I’d depend on you too much and you’d come to despise me. You’ve certainly taught me my own limitations, Lee.” He lifted his shoulders philosophically. “Anyway, you’re not doing me out of the weekend binge. I’ve got theatre tickets through an agent and have booked rooms at an hotel. We’re practically there!”

When they did set off in the opalescent dawn, Lisa was more inclined to view the long car ride as educational.
It would be silly, after all, to return to England with only a superficial knowledge of the Durban district to show for twelve thousand miles of sea voyaging.

Detachedly, she made a mental note of the pineapple and banana farms which were coming alive in the morning sun. She saw Indian women walking at the roadside and their husbands holding children. She had often noticed how fond were Indian men of their numerous offspring; they carried them much more often than Englishmen carry their children, and listened to their soft prattle with eager, indulgent smiles.

It was so hot in Pietermaritzburg that Jeremy would not stop. A sultry sun-trap full of color and white buildings. Lisa could hardly believe that university students managed to concentrate in such heat, but Jeremy assured her that they did.

Then came the endless climb from Natal, with the peaks of the Drakensberg hidden in a lilac mist to the left, into the rarefied atmosphere of the Transvaal, where the air had a decided nip and the grass was dried white; the only greenness was in the distant patches of gum trees and in the kopjes
.

“This isn’t a bit as one imagines the hinterland of Africa,” observed Lisa.

“It’s the altitude. It does all sorts of things to the country-side, and to the people, too. You’d think it would slow you down, but in Johannesburg life is ten times faster than in any other town in the Union. It’s known as ‘little New York’.”

A description which Lisa decided, when they entered the city, could not have been improved upon. Skyscrapers, closely-packed vehicles of all kinds and milling crowds of black and white people, even though this was Saturday afternoon. To Lisa the maze of streets with their abundance of motorists’ signs and traffic police, the street vendors and shouting, woolly-headed newsboys were slightly unreal in Africa. Compared with Johannesburg, the City of London was unhurried and peaceful.

Their hotel was slightly north of the city. From her room Lisa could look out upon a main artery leading to the suburbs and watch big American cars flash north and south at high speed. A donkey cart loaded with sacks and neatly-cut twigs battled along at the extreme edge of the road, the African driver nonchalantly blowing at a mouth organ.

Hotel, service i
n
South Africa is invariably good, and in this hotel it had reached the peak of taste and efficiency.

Part of Lisa revelled in the big, soft towels, the generous supply of good soap, the string of modern bathrooms and the roomy, noiseless lifts. The rest of her was still numb and bewildered.

At dinner Jeremy was happy. “After the theatre we’ll go to a night club and dance. No—we’ll make it a
roadhouse where dress isn’t essential. They mostly remain open longer, too.”

“Remember you have to drive back tomorrow. You won’t want to do it with a hangover.”

“Driving is easy here. The roads don’t twist every few yards as they do in England.” He looked round for the wine waiter. “Champagne, Lee
!
Astra and champagne go together like lovers and the moon.”

He still admired the woman. Because it was outside
h
is
normal world he would always treasure the period he had worked with her as the biggest thing in his life. Lisa could see Jeremy in a few years’ time: a fairly high position with the same motor company, a large car, a pretty wife,
a bungalow above the sea, and a round of golf on Sundays.

And the story to tell of how he had once turned down an offer to be leading man to Astra Carmichael. He was constructed neither for the heights nor the depths; how lucky he was in that
!

The play, viewed from a comfortable seat in the stalls, showed Astra at her most arresting. Reduced to its framework, the story was trivial, but she made of it something memorable and stirring. Watching the economy of her
movements and listening to the clever shading of expression in her tones, one suffered and rejoiced with her. She was, as Jeremy whispered, superb.

When she had taken her last call Jeremy held Lisa’s arm tightly. “Will you go back-stage with me, Lee!
”

“Again the lure of the footlights?”

“No. I may not have a chance to come up again before Astra’s season ends. It seems a pity not to try and have a word with her for the last time. Besides, she’ll be awfully
glad to see you.”

“I doubt it.
”

“She doesn’t bear malice, Lee. She hated failing with both of us, but it has lost all importance now her plays are well under way. With her, the stage always comes first—you know that. Please come with me.”

Because she also, for some indefinable reason, felt a sudden urge to see the actress, Lisa allowed him to lead her through a side exit, down a narrow lane and through the stage doorway. A native messenger took the not
e
which Jeremy scribbled on the door-keeper’s pad, and came back to escort them to Astra’s dressing room, a wide, cool and untidy apartment on the left of a stone corridor.

Astra, in a silk wrap with a towel about the shoulders, was creaming her face, so that all expression was obliterated. Only the green jewels of her eyes showed recognition and a faint curiosity.

“
Hallo, Jeremy
...
Lisa. What are you two doing in the big town?”

“We came
to see you,” answered Jeremy at once. Doubtless others had travelled from afar to witness her performance, for Astra showed not a scrap of surprise.

“How sweet,” she said evenly, and turned back to her mirror to peel off the stage eyelashes. “What did you think of my hero, Jeremy?”

“He was grand. I took to him when you first chose him.”

“
Aren’t you jealous?
”
She smiled at him in the mirror—teeth whiter than the cream mask on her face. “No, I don’t think you are. You are quite unspoiled, darling, for which I daresay you have to thank our little girl here. By the way,” the eyes in the mirror sought and looked over Lisa, “I gathered the impression that
you
were yearning for England and a deadly serious profession. This country is insidious, isn’t it? It’s even got me wanting to stay.”

Jeremy seized upon this. “Why don’t you? They’d eat you alive in Durban and Cape Town. You said you hadn’t fixed up anything definite for when this contract is finished.”

“I haven’t, but they keep badgering me. I fancy a break, though, a real one. The only mode of living I haven’t sampled is the domestic one. Friends here tell me the housewife's lot in Africa is perfectly wonderful.”

Jeremy laughed, but Lisa’s senses sharpened. This was
a
new facet of Astra.

“Would you remain on the stage if you married?” queried Jeremy, looking about, him familiarly at the screened-off wardrobe, the blonde wig on its stand, the chair full of shoes.

“I’d give it up for a while.” Fastidiously, Astra dabbed at her cheeks with a square of white silk, and swung about to face them, still expertly gathering up the surface of cream. “I’d have to pretend to give it up,” she said with a smile, “because men in the flush of devotion have a peculiar antipathy for the working wife. When the flush fades they’re less adamant, particularly if the wife is, capable of lining the joint coffer.”

The husky tones softened the cynicism of this remark.
Her face emerged, clear and maturely beautiful, and when she fluffed the hair which had been strained behind her ears she had an unmistakable if somewhat remote charm.

She stood up and seemed about to voice a regretful dismissal. Then she rested her glance once more upon Lisa, and in the manner of one recollecting a slim bond between them, asked point-blank, “Have you heard from Mark?”

Unready for the question, Lisa took a moment before replying, “Of course not. Why should I hear from him?”

Astra lifted a hand in a gesture which could have meant anything. “I thought you might, that’s all. I had an airmail from him a couple of days ago. He asked me to get a solicitor to clinch the deal for the house i
n
Cape
Town.”

“The house in Cape Town?” Lisa echoed, above
a
quickening
heartbeat
. “Mark’s house?”

“Didn’t you know about it? He and I made a quick inspection of it when we docked there, and Mark
arranged an option. Now he’s apparently going to buy the place.”

“Is he
...
going to settle there?”

“I expect so. That’s the base he’ll work from in this new business venture. It’s all being organized in London so it will be some while before the thing gets going over here. I expect there’s a number of legal details to be attended to first.”

The rest of what Astra said did not register with Lisa
very clearly. There was a little more cool banter between Astra and Jeremy, an agreeable
au revoir,
and she was outside in the small car, and Jeremy was starting up the engine and already talking of a dancing club recommended by the receptionist at the hotel.

Much later, when she lay awake in the strange bedroom, Lisa knew that nothing worse than this could ever happen to her. Mark was buying a house in Cape Town, and Astra was preparing herself for a brief snatch of domestic bliss. Obviously, they had an understanding. The actress would finish her season and then go south. By that time the preliminaries of this business of Mark’s would be concluded, and both would be free to marry.

Astra’s viewpoint, that a man had to be humored till the gilt wore from his love, probably dovetailed with Mark’s. N
o
, that was not true. He had left the sea for Astra; he loved her enough for that, so it was unlikely that what he felt for her would ever diminish. It was too strong.

Once Astra had tasted the only way of living she had not yet experienced
...
what then? Would she go back to her “first and only love”? Would she embitter him, make him hate all women? He deserved better than that, yet somehow he seemed to be asking for it.

Why, Lisa wondered wildly, didn’t he use that cold reasoning of his, and take a look into the future? But perhaps he had, yet was driven to do all the things a man does when he’s in love with a woman.

Lisa’s last conscious thought, as dawn began to pale the sky, was one of heart-wrenching thankfulness that in less than a fortnight she would have sailed for home.

CHAPTER
TWELVE

After Lisa’s
return to Durban a spell of unpredictable weather set in. The mornings were clear and exhilarating, but early in the afternoon clouds would roll in from the north-east, the birds would cease their trilling and the trees acquire an expectant stillness. Then would come the storm, nothing which would make news by African standards but a long, tropical downpour nevertheless.

I
t was not safe to go picnicking. There were tales of wash-aways on the roads and cars overturned, of rising rivers which swept away native children sheltering under bushes on their banks.

At the first warning cloud Lisa and Nancy kept close to the house, and if Mrs. Basson happened to be with them she was invited for dinner. It mostly cleared before ten.

Because of her own melancholy it took Lisa several days to realize that Laura Basson was lo
o
king positively uplifted. On the surface no reason was
apparent
,
for nothing seemed otherwise to have changed. But there it was; youth in her step, a spontaneous smile which was compound of pure gladness and a sort of relief, and an altogether new note in her voice.

On the Thursday of that week Lisa learned what was at the root of her happiness. The two women were in the doctor’s lounge, while Nancy sat near the bookcase in her bedroom once more devouring the printed word having done particularly well at this morning’s arithmetic session, she was permitted to spend the rest of the day as she pleased.

It was dark outside with the gathering storm.
L
isa had switched on a reading lamp and snapped it off again, because electric light in daytime is anything but an antidote for despondency.