Summer Lightning (19 page)

When she reached the airport there was a plane on the runway and a lot of noisy people either waiting to depart or seeing off those who were.

Inquiry revealed that Dominic’s plane would be an hour late. Fog in southern England and London. Poor London!

Here the sun was shining gloriously, as usual, but there was the sort of strong blustery wind airports specialize in. She walked around in it for a while, but when a young man in uniform, with wavy lines of braid on his sleeves, said, “You’ll find it more comfortable inside, madam,” she took his advice.

She bought a magazine to read and sat down at a table where she would watch the runways.

An attendant came over to ask if she wanted anything and she ordered a lime squash, for her throat was full of airport dust.

Her magazine didn’t hold her interest after the first few pages—perhaps she was too keyed up to read intelligently. She put it away and watched the activity going on in and around the plane that was due to depart.

The ground staff was fueling it, loading in luggage and food containers. A pair of legs hung out of an opening in a wing and occasionally kicked the air as if in exasperation. An officer in blue gray with gold stripes on his arms descended the gangway and strolled over with a handful of documents. A crisp air hostess took them from him reproachfully and sped away on her impractical high heels. Her figure was delicious in its trim tailored suit. Red hair gleamed under her saucy cap. Chloe wouldn’t have been surprised if she had gone into a song and dance routine.

Now the ground staff was dispersing, all work done. Air personnel took over. The redheaded hostess tripped across to the plane and up the gangway and was seen no more.

A loudspeaker made an announcement and the airport went into its departure routine. Propellers spun, then became blurry discs as engines roared. Passengers peered through windows as if looking their last on the earth.

The clumsy-looking plane blundered downwind, turned, gunned up its engines to a frightening roar, set off along the runway into the wind with increasing noise and speed, rose and at once was a graceful silver bird winging its way into the blue and out of sight.

A sort of communal sigh went up from the seers off. So
that
one got away all right, they seemed to say. Chloe had sighed, too. As she had told Dominic the first day, she always dreaded the moment when the thing became airborne. Would it soar happily heavenward? Or would it flop back to earth, disintegrate, become a mass of tangled wreckage? She wished she hadn’t got this absurd complex about flying.

Looking at her watch, she saw that there were only ten minutes to go before Dominic’s plane was due. There would still be the agony of watching it land. Landing was as bad as taking off...

Presently she heard it from far off. The loudspeaker announced it. It came in sight, circled, slid down an invisible slope and touched delicately, bounced gently and came to rest. Thank heaven for that!

The door opened, the gangway slid into place, passengers began to stream across the apron. At last came Dominic, in a dark suit and a hat, carrying a briefcase and talking hard to a man in a brown coat, with a beard, who really did look like a professor.

Chloe stood up and went into the reception hall. Her heart had already missed several beats; she felt rather lightheaded, as if she might faint—though she wasn’t the fainting type.

Evidently Dominic had shed the professor person during the customs formalities, for he came out alone. Tall, dark and handsome like the hero of a romance, Chloe thought.
I’m afraid I love you still, Professor Vining.
Pulling herself together, she walked forward.

“Hello, Dominic. Welcome back.”

He stared at her in surprise.

“Chloe! All alone?”

“Yes, Dominic. I drove your car—it was lovely. I wanted to talk to you.”

The gleam of humor was in his eyes. “Anything wrong?”

“N-no.”

“You haven’t spoiled a lot of film or dispatched the wrong set of bones to the wrong anthropologist?”

“No.”

“Is my mother all right?”

“She’s fine, Dominic, absolutely fine. She gets up each day. She’s so excited about the party. She’s begun to talk of coming downstairs for a little while on the night.”

Dominic’s warm smile flashed. “Isn’t it wonderful, Chloe? I believe old Galea was wrong, she’s going to get over this and be all right again—as right as she can hope to be.”

“Dr. Galea admits he was wrong. He gloats about it.”

“He was always very fond of her. Chloe, I have to thank you for this. I can’t thank you. There’s no way.”

The middle of the reception hall was hardly the place for this sort of conversation, Chloe thought wryly.

“Could we go and have lunch in the restaurant here?” she suggested. “Then I could talk to you properly. You’re so tall. It gives me a stiff neck, looking up.”

He laughed, looking down at her.

“Of course. Charming idea. You looked worried, Chloe. Didn’t I tell you to leave worrying to me?”

“I know, but...”

“Let’s find a table, then you shall tell me all!”

When they were seated and he had given the order, he said, quirking an eyebrow at her, “Well, Chloe?”

“I—Dominic, what are we going to
do
?”

“Do?”

“Yes. We’ve got to face up to it. Your mother isn’t going to die—and nobody, let this be clearly understood, could be happier about that than I am. I—I’ve grown to love your mother. But we got engaged because—you know why, and now the contessa is demanding that we fix the wedding date so that she can announce it at the party. I believe she wants to come downstairs to do just that. So you tell me. What are we going to do?”

When he didn’t answer at once, being occupied, maddeningly, in studying the wine list a waiter had brought to him, she gritted her teeth.

As soon as the waiter had left them she said desperately, “Do you realize I’m due to leave Malta nineteen days from now?”

He pretended to look concerned.

“So soon? Oh, no, we can’t let you run away so quickly. We’ll extend the terms of the contract.”

“But I’ve got
other
contracts. At home. And I told my godmother I’d be home then and she’ll be expecting me. Anyway, extending the contract wouldn’t solve our problem.”

“Which is?”

“Oh, Dominic, must you be so—so...”

“So...?”

“So maddening. You know as well as I do. How are we to tell your mother the engagement is—”

“Off?”

“Yes. How?”

“Must it be off?”

“You said I was to be perfectly free ... afterward...”

“But this isn’t afterward.”

“But I’ve got to go
away
. I can’t go back to England tied to you by this—this phony engagement. How can I?”

“You mean because of this other fellow? The live-and-die man?”

“No—” crossly “—I don’t.”

“Then...?”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake, Dominic, say something constructive. This is your problem as well as mine.”

This was becoming a scene—the thing she hated. She felt her cheeks growing hot. She resisted an impulse to run her hands through her hair—she was wearing a hat, anyway.

The wine waiter was showing Dominic a bottle. Receiving approval, he opened it and deftly poured a little into Dominic’s glass. Dominic tasted it, appeared to savor it, nodded again. The waiter beamed, filled their glasses and ambled off.

“Something constructive, you want? Well, the best thing I can think of is that you marry me.”

“Oh!” It was a gasp more than a word. How agonizing to be offered her heart’s desire—and with just about as much feeling behind the offer as if she were being handed a cigarette.

“Thank you. But I hardly think that would work out.”

“Why not? We like being with each other—I said so, you said so. You can be extremely useful to me in my work. And as far as my mother is concerned, the earlier the date, the more overjoyed she’ll be.”

“Your mother, yes, perhaps. But what about me?”

“Still thinking about the live-and-die fellow? Has he come into the picture again?”

“Yes.”

“Still in love with him?”

“More than ever.”

“And he?”

She lost her head completely then.

“He doesn’t care a hoot for me. But till he does, no weddings for me, thank you.”

Unconsciously she had pulled off her hat and was running her fingers through the crisp chestnut hair. Dominic flicked one brief glance at it, as he had before, and as before, her hands came down into her lap. She seized her glass with one of them and emptied it at a gulp.

“Careful,” he said. “Give you hiccups.”

“I don’t
care
!”

“Now calm down, Chloe. You won’t marry me. Very well, that’s agreed. Now we’ve got nineteen days—it was nineteen you said, wasn’t it—to think of something else. Have some of this food, it’s excellent.”

To avoid argument she took a small helping. She had a suspicion that he was laughing at her, though his face remained serious. His eyes were on his plate—she couldn’t see them. She began to plod through her meal, which tasted to her like damp sawdust.

“Tell me about how the plans for the reception are going,” he asked, smiling engagingly.

“Louise has those in hand. She’s arranging everything.”

“So? Chloe, I’ve got news for Louise.”

Her eyes widened. “About her husband?”

“Yes, Poor old Dick. His party got a message through at last. Been trekking for months. Got to a trading post with a radio, and now planes are going out for them. It’s quite an epic.”

“Oh, how wonderful! We must go back to Santa Clara quickly to tell her.”

Dominic said quietly, “You’re such a nice child, Chloe.”

Chloe was telling herself,
Surely Louise will be pleased. She’ll go home, to wait for him. Things may work out, if she goes.

Dominic said gently, “Finish your lunch. A few minutes isn’t going to make all that much difference to Louise.” When they had eaten he made her have a cup of coffee and a cigarette. Then he drove her back to Santa Clara. The landscape that had lain so flat and featureless under the stars that first night was pleasantly green and flowery now. Corn and fodder and sprung up, asphodel lilies waved their pink heads. What a pity she would be leaving it so soon. What a pity she felt so very strongly about not marrying Dominic, her only love, because he so plainly didn’t return her sentiments.
The best thing
I
can think of is that you marry me.
No, thank you, Professor Vining. Not Chloe Linden. She still holds out for love, love, love.

Louise was with Mrs. Vining when they got back home. Dominic, holding Chloe’s hand as they went in to see his mother, told her the good news right away.

Chloe, watching her face, saw it freeze over, as if an icy wind from Antarctica, where Dick was, had blown over it. But in a second she had recovered herself. The contessa said, “Louise dear! It only needed this to make my happiness complete.”

“Isn’t it wonderful, a miracle, Aunt Olivia?”

“We’ll telephone and see about a reservation for you right away, Louise,” Dominic said. “You’ll want to be in London when they arrive.”

The look of fury rippled for a second over the heart shaped face again—again, like a squall over water, darkening it. Nobody saw but Chloe.

“Make it the day after the reception, Dominic dear,” Louise begged sweetly. “Dick wouldn’t want me to desert Aunt Olivia without seeing that through.”

“Perhaps there will be time for Dick to fly out here,” the contessa said, patting Louise’s hand. “Wouldn’t that be delightful, Louise, dear?”

“Bliss, Aunt Olivia.”

Dominic’s face was quite expressionless. He said, “Well, think it over and let me know what you want done, Louise. You look wonderful, mother.”

“So much better, dearest. I’m beginning to want to go out, I’ve been in this prison so long.”

“You will, but don’t be in a hurry.”

“I mustn’t miss the spring flowers.”

“You won’t, I promise.”

She began to talk, eagerly, about the reception. Dominic humored her, and then up came the question Chloe dreaded. “We’ve left it to you to decide a date for the wedding—will you, dear? So that we can announce it then.”

He laughed and said soothingly, “Mother, dear, you go a little too fast. We must give Chloe time to go home and consult her own family, mustn’t we?”

Somehow he managed to cajole her.
But that doesn’t solve the problem,
Chloe thought despairingly.
There is no solution
—
except, as he says, to marry him. But I won‘t do
it. I won’t
—
Or only when I’m sure he loves me. He
loves me—he loves me not.
He loves me not.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Finding Louise in that living that evening before dinner, alone and waiting for the appearance of Mark and his jug of Martini, Chloe said, “I’m glad, Louise, about your good news.”

“Thanks, sweetie. So am I—I suppose. At least we can settle something. But you didn’t expect me to go into transports and rush off home to wait for him? Not on your life. Let him come here for me. Not that I’m in the least sure how I’ll receive him.”

“But he must have had a terrible time.”

“So what? He likes that sort of thing, apparently. He could have been a first secretary in some decent diplomatic post by now—but no, he must go on this ridiculous expedition. I sometimes think he must be mental.”

She blew out a cloud of Turkish tobacco smoke and added with a grin, “Of course, they may give him a knighthood, like Hillary and Fuchs. That might gave me something to think about. Rather nice—Lady Carlyon—don’t you think?”

“Very.”

“I’ll have to give the matter my consideration. Ah, here comes Mark, thank God. Darling, I hope they are very cold.”

“Cold as the nether pit, wherever that is,” Mark assured her.

“Precious! What should we do without our Mark?” Mark, standing with his back to Louise as he poured out the large drink she demanded, caught Chloe’s eye. His left eyelid dropped toward her in a wink. She knew he was thinking,
Good as a play, Louise