They Met in Zanzibar (12 page)

We-ell! So that was the way they meant to play it, because of Michael; nice, innocent Michael. Peg might have found it interesting if she hadn’t felt a little sick. She was conscious of Lynette’s appraisal of her slacks and print Mouse and her pale wind-blown hair.

Steve was saying, “I left a note in your living-room, Michael, saying that I’d meet Lynette. Have you been here long?”

“No, but I went out early to pick up Peg. I thought Lynette might like to be met by someone more exciting than her brother.”

Lynette smiled gently, and opened large dark eyes at Steve. It was all very expressive, Those eyes said, “What comical things brothers are.” And implied a great deal more, though Michael, blithely unaware of undercurrents, babbled on for a bit, and ended.

“Seeing that Steve’s here, we may as well go home two by two. Take your choice, Lyn.”

But Steve made the choice. “Peg will go with you, Michael. I’ve more room for your sister’s luggage - we’ll have to wait a few minutes till it’s unloaded. You two go ahead.”

Peg and Steve did not exchange a single word. He saw her into Michael’s car, smiled at her as if she were someone he met casually every day and waved them off.

“I shan’t have to worry so much about providing entertainment for Lynette as I thought I would,” said Michael presently, in relieved tones. “I suppose Steve took her about in Singapore, and now they’ll naturally partner each other. Gosh, am I glad!” He flung her a smile. “Shall we speed and get there before them?”

“I’d better go straight home,” she said. “I’m not
dressed for a welcoming tea-party and I came without telling anyone. I’
ll
call at your place some other time.”

“A dinner at the Government Club has already been arranged for Saturday. Will you go with me?”

“I’ll let you know, Michael.”

Steve’s car didn’t pass them, as she had thought it might. No doubt he was driving slowly; you can’t speed and pick up the threads of an affair at the same time. Peg wondered, a little bitterly, whether Steve and that girl were having a quiet chuckle between kisses; they certainly had cause for it.

CHAPTER FIVE

As h
e had promised, exactly a week from the day he had spoken to Peg in town, Steve came to the Maldon bungalow. Jim was lounging in the living room with a drink before lunch, and Peg, changing a shirt that was damp with sweat for a dry one, heard the men greet each other from her bedroom

“Hallo, Jim,” Steve said, in a voice which sounded careless but non-committal. “I’ve brought you some reading matter I’ve finished with. You haven’t had it lately and there’s quite a pile.”

“Thanks,” came her father’s reply, equally unrevealing. “Help yourself to a drink.”

An interval, while Peg hastily buttoned her plain white shirt and pressed a tissue to the patch of perspiration each side of her nose. She’d had a rushed morning and in spite of a quick shower still felt sticky. She stood back and looked at her blue linen shorts. A skirt over them? Oh, to blazes with Steve.

But at the door she paused, as he began to speak again. “Been missing you at the card parties, Jim. The men think you’ve a grudge against the whole lot of them, instead of only me.”

“I guess I’d feel out of it these days,” Jim paused. “I’ve done more
t
hinking t
han you’d give me credit for, and I’m beginning to realise how we all stand, You, too,
Steve. I had no right to get nasty with you.”

“Forget that. It’s the future that matters.”

“Not to me. I haven’t got so much of it to bother about as you have. That’s what I mean about realising how we stand. When I was in my thirties I didn’t let anyone or anything get in the way of what I wanted, and I had dependents who were entitled to believe I’d put them first. I don’t know why I should have expected you to throw in your lot with mine; in your place, I’d have acted as you did, but I’m darned certain that if you’d been placed as I was, fifteen years ago, you wouldn’t have chosen a plantation in preference to your family.”

“It’s all water under the bridge, but I’m glad you’ve been thinking, Jim. Everyone understands and respects your feelings about your place, and you can be sure
...
”

“You’re going too quickly. I haven’t given in, Steve.” Peg went into the corridor. Her heart was beating fast as she approached the living-room door, but once again she was halted by Steve’s voice.

“Peg told you that you have a month to decide? There’s still three weeks left, so let’s leave it for the present. It’s more important that we all get back to normal. How about coming over for some poker tonight?”

“Not tonight. Maybe at the weekend.”

“Okay. There are two or three big parties at the Government Club. You and Peg are invited to all of them.”

“I’m no socialite, but Peg could do with a spot of life.”

“I’ll get her to persuade you to come to at least one of them. You’re feeling fit?”

“Sure I am,” with some belligerence. “Never felt better, in fact. I’ve taken up water-skiing again.”

Peg entered the room then, a slim youthful figure with corn-silk hair, and long brown legs. She smiled mechanically. “Hi. May I have a drink?”

Steve surveyed her mockingly. “You don’t grow up much, young Peg. What’ll it be - a Coke?”

“We don’t keep them. I’ll have my usual lime and soda, and if you like you can show it the gin bottle.”

“Well, well - maybe you
are
growing up.” He mixed the drink for her and placed it in her hand. “Passfield told me you made an excellent job of that incubator baby.”

“
It had been bo
rn
over an hour when I first saw it. I only oiled the poor thing and took it out to the doctor’s house in a carton.”

“It would have died if you hadn’t done that. How did you know what to do?”

“I’ve read it up.” Gratefully, she drank some of the stingingly cold liquid in her glass. “It’s just on lunchtime. Like to eat with us?”

“You
could
sound a
little
more inviting.”

“That’s true,” said her father, looking across at her curiously.
“
In the old days Steve often had lunch with me.”

“That’s all right,” Steve said. “I shouldn’t have commented. I’m expected back, anyway. Since Foster’s sister has been here we three have eaten together at my place most days. Thanks for the drink. We’ll expect you for cards on Friday evening, Jim. Peg can come along and make friends with Lynette Foster. So long, both of you.” They answered him and he went out to his car. Peg began to set the table, and her father topped up his glass and sat back again, regarding her with just a shade of anxiety.

“Has my attitude towards Steve made you take a dislike to him?”

She was casual. “No, but I didn’t want him to stay for lunch - did you? After all, he’s still on the other side of the fence from us.”

Jim nodded. “But I don’t want you to suffer for that. Steve knows the right people here and they’ll give you a good time. When I dropped out of things I was being selfish. I want you to promise me you’ll go wherever you’re invited.”

“I promise - except the card evenings. I’m quite sure Lynette Foster and I wouldn’t have a single thing in common.”

“How can you know that? You like her brother.”

“She’s not his kind, and I’d rather not know her.”

In fact, Peg was determined to stay as far away from Lynette Foster as one could possibly get on an island like Motu. Had her father had nothing else on his mind she might have told him what she knew about Steve and Lynette. But perhaps not. Men condoned one another’s affairs, and her father would probably have expressed his vexation at her knowing so much about Steve’s private life, which was surely his own business.

Peg didn’t think about Steve any more than was necessary. Intuitively, she knew that he and her father would never quite get back on to the old footing. Even if Jim Maldon eventually capitulated and sold his plantation, he would feel the other men had forced him to it, and that Steve, though within his rights, had been their leader. For that, Peg found, she did not blame Steve. But for the affair he was intermittently carrying on with Lynette Foster quite unbeknown to the girl’s parents and Michael, Peg hated him. And it wasn’t simply an abhorrence of intrigue and deception; it was a complex hatred that hurt her physically, like a knife-wo
und
that wouldn’t heal.

When Jim went to Steve’s for cards that Friday, Peg asked to be dropped off at the McTeales’, where she too played cards, but not poker and not for money. As Peg might have guessed, Lynette Foster was proving a new item of interest, and Mrs. McTeale thought she might give a picnic for her. There was a good deal of conjecture among the three or four women.

“ ’Tisn’t often a girl reaches the age of twenty-four out here without marrying,” said one. “She looks as if she
might be self-willed and choosy.”

“Or keen on a man who’ll take some catching,” came a sly comment in reply. “Michael’s been here about two years. I wonder why she hasn’t visited him before?”

“This is a sort of farewell before she goes to Europe. They say she’s not coming back East.”

“She has no intention of saying farewell - take my word for it. Still, good luck to her. Be rather exciting
to
have a general manager with a young wife.”

“Have you ever thought of Steve as the marrying kind? I can’t see it, somehow, unless he finds someone like himself. The Foster girl is attractive, of course, but he’s known her a good while without coming to the point.”

“My opinion,” said Mrs. McTeale judicially, “is that Lynette has come here to bring it to a head or finish it. She doesn’t want an affair - she wants marriage. Her trouble is that she’s seen so little of Steve. That’s why she’s decided to stay here for a few weeks. I think it’s all very romantic.”

Peg, feeling strange inside, remained silent. She was glad her father had left the wagon and gone on to Steve’s with Mr. McTeale; she could leave early. When, a little later, she had said goodnight to the women, Peg did not drive straight home. She made for the shore, and switched off the engine at the usual spot, on a patch of grass just above the palm-fringed beach. The sea was a rippling sheet of dark metal with the reef a curly line of white some way out. She could see an anchored canoe and the poles of a net in the lagoon. The palms were blackly outlined against the sea and star-sown sky.

As she grew more accustomed to the darkness she saw land crabs pushing down into the sandy soil and their seafaring kin scuttling about on the wet white sand. She could hear islanders chanting sleepily after an evening meal
of roast wild pig and rice and too much palm wine, and she could feel the soft insidious warmth of the South Sea air.

She sat very still, her unrest crystallised into something as inevitable as the sea itself. She was captured. Her heart was in this strange, half-tamed island, and wherever the future might land her, some part of her very core would always belong down here among the exotic islands of the South Seas. For her, night anywhere else would never hold the magic it held here, and surely nowhere else on earth could dawn paint such swift strokes of colour. Richly verdured Motu, in its sapphire setting, would never fade from her consciousness.

It was a long time before she could stir herself to drive home, and when she did it was to find her father on the veranda, pacing impatiently. She apologised quickly.

“I knew that someone would give you a lift home, but I did intend to be here before you came.”

“You shouldn’t go off on your own.”

“I felt I needed it, but I’m sorry. Did you have a good evening?”

“So-so. The Foster girl was the only woman there, and Steve was pretty hipped that you didn’t go with me.”

“I don’t care what Steve thinks,” she said, though she did, too much. “Like something before you go to bed?”

“No. Don’t forget to lock up. Goodnight, Peg.”

He seemed fed up and mentally out of sorts. He wouldn’t go to the party next evening, but Peg went, as Michael’s partner. It was an ordinary little social evening with some dancing as makeweight, but Peg had conjured a party mood, and she wore a pink chiffon dress to match it.

She had decided it was no use taking much notice of her feelings; they would let her down, but her head wouldn’t. So she made friends with one or two young government
officials whom she had so far known only by sight, and with a
little
self-persuasion she went gay in the way women do in the tropics, where a little licence is more often permissible than elsewhere. She flirted lightly, accepted an invitation to a tennis party and another to a modest birthday celebration, and had a different partner for every dance. Their way of accepting her, the glance or two of admiration that she couldn’t help meeting, the smiles of the married men and their wives, provided Peg with the kind of armour she needed. So much so that when she caught Steve’s glance she ignored his lifted, questioning brows. He could go climb a coconut palm.

Lynette Foster was there, of course, making quite a splash in her green silk upon the usually calm surface of the service life, but she and Peg hardly met in that large white room with its modest bouquet in each
corner
and the buffet and cocktail bar at one end.

The evening was practically worn out when Steve slipped an arm about Peg and danced her away from the group she had been with. They were near the centre of the floor before he said, “May I have the pleasure, Miss Maldon?”

“Bit late to refuse you, isn’t it? You’re so masterful, Mr. Cortland.”

His smile was tolerant. “What do you think of the Government Club - first time you’ve been here to a party, isn’t it?”