by Jane Arbor
Hope drew a long breath. Then, resolved to daring, she said, ‘In other words, he read me rightly for what I am? A—how did it go?—a “plain jane with her head screwed on”?’
He laughed with a harsh sound. ‘And how did you hear about that?’
‘From Barbara.’
‘I might have known. But be fair—didn’t she report too that I liked your voice?’
‘Yes.’
‘And was that such a bad evaluation, merely by telephone?’
‘I suppose not. But you don’t deny that I do give people the impression that I’m the no-nonsense, school-marm type?’
He appeared to consider that. Then he said, ‘I think I prefer my estimate of this morning—that if you insist you’re not wearing your one-point for Perse, you’re probably the sublime Ice Maiden—hidden fires notional, but not guaranteed. How about that?’
‘As a flight of fancy, fine,’ she agreed. ‘But as a description of me—well, who would care for being thought—frigid?’
‘Not even with hints of possible arousal? I’d have thought that, compared with two-a-penny schoolmarms and plain janes, Ice Maidenhood might have an appeal as rarity value. But it hasn’t?’
‘No.’
‘Sorry. My mistake.’
But as that was no apology, but the kind of thing people said while remaining convinced they were right, Hope thought it time to change the subject, if he would let her. But when, after a small silence, she said on impulse, ‘I’m worried about Barbara; she’s not at all the sunny person she was when I first came here,’ as soon as the words were out, she realised she had probably invited a snub.
As she had. She watched his lips compress to a hard line. ‘And do you think I don’t know it?’ he said.
She hesitated. ‘I thought you must, but that you might know the cause and be able to help her. I—I’m sorry.’
‘And supposing that, as things are, I can’t help her?’
‘Then I shouldn’t have brought it up, and there’s nothing more to be said, is there?’ she retorted. And when he agreed, ‘Nothing, I’m afraid,’ she felt he had confirmed that he had thrown Barbara over.
That close embrace between them on the last of his almost daily visits to the bungalow must have been wrung from him by Barbara, and even on leaving her he hadn’t been able to refuse it. That night, Hope felt sure, she had been the unwilling witness of a parting which had been one of Barbara’s willing, and the thought was almost a physical pain.
For like Barbara, she had allowed herself to love the man at her side, and though he wouldn’t ever know it, she felt ashamed that she had let it happen. ‘Feet of clay’. The phrase sprang to her mind and wouldn’t be quieted in relation to Craig. For respect and admiration mattered in love. It was abject to love blindly without them, and Craig’s callous admission that he could do nothing for Barbara had destroyed them for her. At that moment Hope almost wished she could hate him. But she could not—quite.
The party proved to be the usual rout of noise and drinking and chat of people who knew each other very well, yet who were eager to entertain the leaven of strangers for whom the party had been given, by spreading a veritable red carpet of invitations and hospitality before them. Hope felt that Victoire must be gratified by Madenina’s anxiety to bask at secondhand in the glory of the television coup which Craig had brought off for Belle Rose.
Watching Victoire with Craig, Hope tried to guess at the true relationship between them. But they gave away nothing. Victoire was herself, imperious and elegant as always; Craig was the urbane host to the party, never far from her, but slightly aloof, according her the attention she seemed to expect, but nothing discernibly warmer than that. Two people who, for their own reasons, wanted to keep their closeness secret might enjoy behaving just so in public, Hope thought jealously—wearing masks for masks’ sake. Though why?
Her own vested interest was to find little comfort in Ian’s curiosity and speculations on their way home. For Ian’s view, based on no facts at all, he allowed, was that sooner or later Victoire and Craig would see the advantage of making a joint thing of Belle Rose’s ownership and management. Victoire was widowed, Craig was unmarried—what was to stop them? he enquired rhetorically. To which Hope could only reply that there was some gossip to that effect on the island, but that nobody knew.
They talked about Crispin and Tina and the party, and when he left her at the bungalow Ian’s kiss was warm with a feeling she could not share. She liked him. He was companionable. But nothing within her stirred at his touch. Her only response was a sense of gratitude for his friendly homage, and if he thought himself in love with her, he would not find that enough.
The next morning the television crew arrived in the muster at the plantation. As a preliminary to their survey of the estate Craig gathered them in the office for a briefing on the life cycle of sugar cane, its long history of use by man and its importance in the markets of the world.
He told them he couldn’t dictate their treatment of the subject, but that he hoped they wouldn’t neglect the human approach—meaning the men and women and children who had served and been served by cane over the centuries; the families who lived by and for it now, and the unborn thousands who would profit from it in the future.
Listening, Hope experienced a recoil from her bitter feelings of overnight. He wasn’t all callous; he could care, he did care for some things, for some people—for those wives who had stormed the boucan, for old Eli Caracas whom he had defended from Victoire, for all his workers who answered his loyalty to them with their own for him.
With all her heart now, Hope wanted not to think ill of him, not to despise him for his treatment of Barbara. If only, if only she knew the hows and the whys of it all! But who was to tell her, while Barbara kept her own counsel and he kept his? She had to suppose that only events—such as, perhaps, the announcement of his engagement to Victoire—would do so. And that was something she prayed she would not be long enough on Madenina to see.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Again Tina had to await Victoire’s pleasure before learning what her sentence was to be. Crispin had been sent home, fully recovered after three days in hospital, but now Victoire did not allow Tina to take him out alone. She was always policed by Doria, Victoire’s house-woman, of whom Tina complained to Hope, ‘I’m nothing but a chauffeur to her and Crispin. She sits in the car like a prison warder, and when we get out she walks a pace or two behind. She hardly ever speaks; I might as well try to communicate with a deaf-mute, and Madame never trusts me now with any errands she wants done—she always gives them to Doria or Crispin.’
Hope said, none too sympathetically, ‘Well, you can hardly wonder that she’s afraid you might desert Crispin again, can you?’
‘As if I would!’ Tina scorned.
‘As if you’d dare, don’t you mean? But that last time Luke Donat was as much to blame as you. Have you seen him since to tell him so?’ Hope asked.
‘Once.’
‘And—?’
‘It was only in the town, and we couldn’t talk there. He’d heard about Crispin, of course, but he didn’t make another date, and he hasn’t since.’
‘Do you want him to?’
‘What do you think? I’m in love with him!’ Tina declared.
‘Even though it sounds as if he feels he’s well out of it, and means to keep out?’ As she saw Tina’s face crumple to misery Hope softened. ‘Look,’ she began, ‘I know what it feels like—’
‘You don’t You can’t! You’ve never been in love,’ Tina accused.
(The Ice Maiden syndrome?) Hope said quietly, “Maybe not, though I think I’d be cured of any man who played me along while it suited him, and then, when he had made trouble for me, didn’t want to know.’
‘He didn’t make the trouble. It was just too bad that it happened,’ Tina defended him.
‘He knew you shouldn’t leave Crispin alone, and he knew there was a manchineel on Cloud’s Nest beach,’ Hope maintained, a
nd then pleaded, ‘Tina love, it just isn’t on. He isn’t serious about you; he can’t be. So if he does want to make another date with you, don’t see him, will you? Nor try to make one with him?’
But Tina wasn’t promising, and remained unconvinced. ‘He can’t mean to finish with me—just like that We were both on our way somewhere and we only had a minute or two together. He’ll ring me or write—or something,’ she declared doggedly, and it was on that note of blind trust that Hope had to part from her.
Now spring was really on the march. Marked in the tropics by no lengthening of the daylight hours, nor by the new pale greenery of the English countryside, on lush Madenina, rainbow-coloured all the year round, it was signalled by the increasing strength of the sun, by the locals’ quickened urge to celebrate every weekend with ‘jump-ups’ to the insistent clamour of steel bands, and the final readying of the canes for the first cut of the year.
Every estate took on casual labour for each ratoon, the arduous, dirty work of cutting being for the most part beneath the dignity of the permanent workers engaged on the regular husbandry and management of the crops. A few of these, attracted by the higher rates and bonuses for cane-cutting, would change to it for the season. But the daily queues at the Belle Rose office for vetting and despatch to the boucan for the issue of ‘cards’ were made up of men and a few brawny women who homed-in for the weeks of the ratoon and reckoned to live on their takings for as many weeks after it.
On Belle Rose this year matters were complicated by the television team’s omnipresent cameras and trailing cables, and their insatiable quest for information on every aspect of the sugar industry and of island life which might promise ‘good camera’.
It was on one such morning of hectic activity that Victoire’s car drew up outside the office and Victoire arrived to demand that it be cleared of all the people milling in and about it, as she wished to speak to Craig in private. ‘To you too,’ she added imperiously to Hope. ‘Please stay.’
‘Mr. Napier is down at the boucan,’ Hope told her.
‘Then have him fetched, please. I have a later appointment in the town and I can’t wait.’ With which Victoire turned to study the view from the window, registering an air of no-interest until Craig appeared in answer to Hope’s message to him.
Then she told him, ‘I phoned you, but you had already left. And as I needed to see Miss Redmond too, I came down.’ She turned to include Hope in what she said next, which was, ‘Tina is missing. She hasn’t been back all night, and if for any silly reason she has taken refuge with you or your landlady again, I think I could at least expect you to have let me know.’
For Hope, the effect was electric. An icy chill ran the length of her spine, and it was Craig who barked at Victoire, ‘Missing? Since last night? And you’ve done nothing about it until now? Or have you? Rung the police or the hospital—no?’
‘And advertised to the whole island that she has gone? You know the rate at which gossip runs here. Besides, I only learned she hadn’t been home an hour ago when I got up, and Doria told me. And then naturally I concluded she was where she had run skulking before now—with your friend Mrs. Paul and with her cousin here—’
‘Which she isn’t, of course?’ Craig broke in to demand of Hope.
Hope said, ‘Of course not. If she had come to us we’d have telephoned Madame de Faye and sent her back, as, I’d remind you, Madame, we have always done before. I haven’t seen her for several days, and do I take it that last night you didn’t know she was out?’
‘Last night I knew,’ Victoire corrected. ‘I had given her the evening off after she had seen Crispin to bed. She wasn’t entitled to it, but she had asked it as a special favour, though of course I no longer allow her to take the small car unless Doria is with her. So if she went out, she must have taken a taxi.’
‘You know that she called one?’ pressed Craig.
Victoire shrugged. ‘I wasn’t interested. As she obviously wanted to go out, she must have taken one.’ With a glance at her watch, ‘Well, now you know all I know, I must go. I have an appointment to keep.’
With his hand on the telephone Craig said, ‘You’ll wait, please, while I ring the police and the hospital. When will you be at home again in case Tina turns up?’
Another shrug. ‘After lunch some time. I can’t say precisely.’ But Victoire waited while he made the two calls, both without result—there had been no accident reported, no emergency admission. Whereupon she said, ‘So now the police know, I’ve done all I can,’ and was about to leave when Craig stopped her.
‘Has Tina been seeing anything of young Donat since the Crispin affair?’ he asked.
‘How should I know? Barbara Paul had done nothing to find her an escort, so I introduced them. But knowing how I should react if she had seen him again while she still had charge of Crispin, she would be a little idiot if she had tried.’
‘Girls who imagine themselves in love are apt to be idiotic by the standards of the rest of us,’ Craig said grimly, and then, ‘All right, I’ll handle it. But try to be there, please, when Tina does go back.’
During their exchange they had both ignored Hope, listening, numbed with fear, but grateful to Craig for asking all that had to be asked and wringing answers from Victoire, however reluctantly she gave them. When she had gone he looked across at Hope, standing emptily, her lip caught between her teeth to still its quivering. He said, ‘You’re afraid, aren’t you, that I could well have put it, “If Tina goes back”?’
She found her voice. ‘Yes. That is—even if—if she’s able to, she won’t go back. She’ll be too frightened, as she has always been before.’
‘Yes, well—now we’ve got to trace her.’ His hand went again to the receiver without lifting it. ‘What do you know as to whether she has seen Donat again?’
Hope thought back. ‘Just that they met once by chance, and that she was counting on his making another date, but without, I think, really expecting him to.’
‘Though by her asking for the evening off, it looks as if he may have done, doesn’t it?’
Hope caught her breath, hating the implication of that. ‘You’re suggesting he did, and that she—? That he persuaded her—?’
‘To spend the night with him? It’s possible, yes.’
‘But it’s not! Tina isn’t like that, however—besotted. She wouldn’t, she wouldn’t!’
‘All right, though she spent the night somewhere, didn’t she?’ As Hope watched, he lifted the receiver. ‘I’m ringing Planchet,’ he explained, and waited.
When he spoke again it was evidently to a servant. ‘Ah—busy, hm? Packing? Going to Europe at the weekend? Well, I still want to speak to him. So fetch him, please.’
A few minutes of silence. Then he was snapping questions one after another, and possibly for Hope’s benefit, echoing the answers he got.
‘So? You haven’t seen her? You didn’t make a date with her for last evening? So if she hasn’t been back to our Great House all night, you don’t know where she could be? But where used you to meet when you were seeing a lot of her?’ A pause. Then—‘No. “Around” and “At one of the beaches for a swim” won’t do. Where?’
Again a pause before Craig’s final threat of ‘You’d better—’ as he replaced the receiver and said to Hope, stating a fact, ‘He’s lying, of course.’
‘That he hasn’t dated Tina? How do you know?’
‘He’s frightened to his boot-heels—it comes through. But at least we have somewhere to begin looking.’ He stood and crooked a beckoning finger. ‘Come along. We’re going there now.’
Hope didn’t move. ‘ “We”? No, tell me, and I’ll go. You can’t leave. That queue, and there’ll be more by now! And Ian Perse is coming to see you—’
‘Would you allow me to judge first priorities for myself?’ he returned sharply. ‘If Donat is responsible for anything having happened to your silly cousin, I’m going to nail him for it, trip to Europe or no. Meanwhile Perse’s business
with me can wait.’
Gratefully Hope went with him after he had telephoned the boucan and rapped out some instructions to Winston Fortune. It wasn’t until she was beside him in his car that she asked where he was taking her.
‘To Witch Creek. It’s where Donat admits they’ve been in the habit of meeting and going swimming.’
‘But even if he’s lying, and he did see her yesterday, they couldn’t have spent the night there—on the beach!’ Hope protested.
‘There’s a disused fisherman’s hut on Witch Creek,’ Craig reminded her. ‘If Donat made a date with her for last evening and then didn’t keep it, she may have waited indefinitely for him, and then couldn’t get back.’
‘Wherever she went, she took a taxi,’ Hope pointed out. ‘However long she waited, she could have come back in that—’
‘We’ve only Victoire’s assumption that she took one.’
Hope shook her head despairingly. ‘She couldn’t have walked out to Witch’s Creek—it’s much too far. She must have given up hope of Luke Donat’s turning up after an hour or two at most, so she couldn’t possibly still be there.’
Craig lifted a shoulder in half-agreement ‘Probably not,’ he said. ‘But Witch Creek happens to be the only clue we have.’
Like Cloud’s Nest, Witch Creek was a crescent of white sand, lapped by a lazy surf-line and sheltered from the rough coast road by windblown tamarisks and palms. Craig drew off the road in the shade of these, cut the engine and sat in silence for a moment or two.
Then, ‘Coming with me, or would you prefer to stay here?’ he asked.
Hope swallowed on the fear-induced lump in her throat. ‘I’ll come,’ she said, and looking up, surprised an unexpected compassion in his eyes before he alighted and opened the car door on her side.