Full Tide

by Celine Conway

  “Well, he should care,” declared Mrs. Basson warmly. “When Nancy goes to school she’ll be invited out and want to bring friends home. She’ll compare this museum with the houses her friends live in, and she’ll loathe the Victorian atmosphere. Children—girls, particularly—are sensitive about...” She had stopped precipitately because Lisa was making small but frantic signs that they were not alone.

  Dr. Veness hesitated, and then came right into the room. “It must be around tea time,” he said, quite pleasantly but with a sideways, glance at Mrs. Basson. “Will you ring for it, Lisa? Tea for three.”

  Lisa hurriedly made an introduction. Not a whit discomfited, Laura Basson accepted a cigarette and a light and lay back in her chair.

  “This house is built on a slope, isn’t it?” she remarked conversationally to Dr. Veness. She waved smilingly at the side window. “If you kept those trees pruned you’d have a glorious view of the bay. The room would be lighter, too.”

  “I daresay. We don’t use this lounge much—at least, we didn’t till Lisa and Nancy came. I haven’t bothered with views myself for years.”

  Nor with much else besides his work, thought Mrs. Basson, watching him. She remembered Nancy’s merry outburst, “He’s nearly fifty!” and reflected that the man certainly looked it. A withdrawn type who had given all he had to one woman and found himself drained dry when she was gone. He had come to South Africa to forget, but doubtless discovered that bereavement makes one place singularly like all others. She knew the pain of that discovery from experience.

  As Mrs. Basson pressed out her cigarette and said thank you for the tea, Nancy came into the house. She had been in the garden shelter, and she stood at the lounge door blinking and staring. Then, apparently, she believed her eyesight, for she hopped across the room and hugged Laura’s arm.

  “Hallo, Mrs. Basson! Are you living in Durban? Where are all your lovely rings?”

  The answer to the second question came equably. “They were stolen from my hotel room in Cape Town.”

  “Good heavens,” said Lisa. “What a blow.”

  “They weren’t worth much and they’ve always been insured.”

  Not worth much! Those huge diamonds and sapphires, the milky pearls. And what of their priceless value as gifts from her husband? Something funny here, mused Lisa.

  Dr. Veness was regarding his daughter with some curiosity, watching the two small hands clasping the larger one, her elfin face upturned to smile into another. Why wouldn’t the little monkey do that to Mrs. Hatherly, he wondered vexedly.

  Because of Nancy; he said stiltedly, “Please come whenever you wish, Mrs. Basson. Perhaps you’ll stay to dinner?”

  “I’d like to. Will you let Lisa and Nancy spend tomorrow with me in town? I’m at the Avalon.”

  It was arranged, after which the doctor had to hurry away and Lisa and Nancy showed Mrs. Basson the rest of the house and presented her to a dourly amiable Mrs. Hatherly.

  When Nancy had tired of grown-ups and gone off to inspect a find in the garden, Mrs. Basson shook a sympathetic head. “That poor doctor! What a household he's going to have when the Hatherly and Nancy have to get along without you as a buffer. I suppose he’s been glad to have such a genteel, highly respectable creature as housekeeper; she seems to go with the place as it stands.”

  “I think he must have engaged her because he couldn’t get along with only houseboys and she stirred no feelings of any kind. He’s an undemonstrative man, even with Nancy.”

  “He’s probably too far gone to be roused by another woman,” reflected Mrs. Basson abstractedly. “We’ll liven him up while we’re here, Lisa!”

  They did get the doctor out for a picnic the following Sunday. He looked slightly younger in whites with the shirt collar open, and Lisa noticed that Mrs. Basson also seemed to have shed a few years. In a turquoise silk suit with the short grizzled curls blowing about her bright face she had the appearance of a woman of thirty-five who was prematurely going grey. She was attractive, more so than if her fingers had still been loaded with rings. Jewellery occasionally lends dignity but too much of it infallibly adds years.

  That day, spent in one of the more remote coastal resorts between beach and lushly overgrown country-side, had a homely tranquillity. There were games on the sand and an excellent lunch (provided, by the way; by the temporarily forgotten Mrs. Hatherly), in a rocky cove which they had to themselves. They climbed, stole a stick of sugar cane and cut it into convenient lengths for chewing; not the doctor, of course, but, he looked on tolerantly and lent Nancy his handkerchief to wipe her fingers.

  The air was wine-warm and softly humid, typical of Natal in the less torrid season, and when at last they wound in the car along a river bank towards home, the sky was acquiring the violet hue of dusk. A flight of birds winged low over the river, splashes of white beauty against the darkling water and thick green growth.

  “I’ve never done this before,” the doctor admitted, “which was very foolish of me, because after eleven in the mornings my Sundays are mostly free. We must try it again.”

  Nothing effusive about his appreciation, but the day out had evidently been a move in the right direction.

  With the advent of Mrs. Basson more cheer came into Lisa’s life, and when Jeremy turned up and reported that he had started to earn his living in Durban and mostly had his father’s two-seater at his disposal, she knew a strong disinclination to leave it all and return to England.

  The days were a succession of small agreeable surprises. With Nancy on holiday till after the long vacation and Mrs. Basson either visiting the doctor’s house or arranging a treat in town, interspersed for Lisa by one or two evenings out each week with Jeremy, the next month got into its stride and neared its end.

  There came a morning when the newspaper, in its shipping column, reported the Wentworth’s arrival in Cape Town, and Lisa realized that she had been a guest of Dr. Veness for more than five weeks. She thought, “In a week the ship will dock at Durban. I shall see Mark and ... and then I’ll go home.” For several hours she played with the notion of booking her passage in the ship, but finally common sense told her that even if a berth were available, by taking it she would only be begging for more knocks. She was not sure that her fortitude was equal even to a mere glimpse of the dark angular face.

  By a coincidence, in the same newspaper Astra’s outstanding success in her second Johannesburg production was publicized. A large picture showed the familiar face, thin, expressive of some deep and shattering emotion. Small wonder that the actress was impersonal in her own life. No woman could give so much to her art and still have reserves for private use.

  Jeremy that evening was enthusiastic about the portrait. “I’ve watched her play that scene; it does something to your nerves. I wish I could see it in the theatre.”

  In a blaze of excitement he tacked on: “That play will run for three weeks. Lee, will you go up with me next Saturday to see it?”

  “But it’s over four hundred miles!”

  “My dear angel, distances in this country are there to be covered. It’s a good road all the way and there’s only one town of any size. You just rip along. If we started at six on Saturday morning we’d be there at least by midafternoon, and we could travel back on Sunday. I’ll wire ahead to an hotel.”

  “Not this Saturday,” she said swiftly. The Wentworth was scheduled to put in on Saturday morning.

  “The one after, then. It’s a date!”

  With the knowledge that Mark was on his way, the tempo of Lisa’s existence slowed right down. She saw the ship posted at Port Elizabeth, then at East London. Two days to go, only one; but what an infinity of longing one day could hold.

  She hardly slept that night. She lay imagining the ploughing vessel on the star-shot ocean, coining nearer with every second. She smelled the ship’s smells, heard the midnight creaking, the one bell of the middle watch, and felt Nancy’s bunk pressing in above her. And she wondered if Mark had spared her a thou
ght since the letter he had written to Dr. Veness from Cape Town last trip. Sickeningly, she recalled his statement that a month after they had parted neither would remember what the other looked like. He, of course, was stamped upon her heart and mind for ever, and perhaps ... perhaps she had not been so easy to forget as he had thought.

  At breakfast next morning she found it hard to swallow a mouthful. When Mrs. Basson chugged up in her hired coupe Lisa met her with a brittle smile. Carelessly she said, “The Wentworth gets in this morning. Shall we go down and watch?”

  “Why not?” The other woman was only half deceived. Since she had realized that Jeremy Carne could never seriously affect Lisa, she had tirelessly explored other paths and done some conjecturing. “Let’s go right away. She may already be visible on the horizon.”

  Nancy went, too. She drew immense but silent pleasure from sitting in what she termed Mrs. Basson’s “buzz-bomb” and popping out of it to do occasional errands. One of the things she liked best about Laura was her way of pulling beside a store and saying unconcernedly, “Nip along to the wool counter, Nancy, and ask if the ‘Pinetree’ 3-ply has come in yet.” Or, “Run this book into the library, will you? I’ll choose another tomorrow.” For all the world, thought Nancy expansively, as if she were her daughter. She was very keen to make an excellent job of each little task entrusted to her, and did hope she was going to be good on a horse: yes, she had decided to ask her father for one, after all.

  Now, as the car moved along the Berea, they saw the roofs and gardens of houses sloping down to the city, and beyond them the bottle-green bay. Lisa’s overworked heart contracted, for the Wentworth was there, in full view, steaming steadily towards the harbor. The ship was so big and splendid, her superstructure so white and majestic in the brazen sunshine.

  As they stared the ship slowly rounded the Bluff and came into the channel. Mrs. Basson shifted her glance to the sharp white line of Lisa’s jaw; with an inward sigh she turned the ignition key and pressed the starter. “We’ll have coffee somewhere and drive down to the dock later, when the passengers have cleared. Would you like one of those pink, foamy concoctions with nuts on, Nancy?”

  When, eventually, they did reach the side of the ship, the discharging of passengers’ luggage had ceased and the unloading of cargo not yet begun. Seamen idled by the rail and an officer strolled along the deck looking a trifle odd and very English in white tropical kit with an outsize briar pipe clamped between his teeth.

  “Why don’t we go aboard?” Nancy wanted to know.

  “I don’t think we should,” Mrs. Basson answered. “Having sailed in her once doesn’t entitle us to clamber over her every time she’s in port. It wouldn’t look so bad if one of us went. Lisa...”

  “No!” To smooth the edge of the curt negative, she added with a shaky smile, “It was sentimental—my wanting to see the ship again; she’s the only one I’ve ever sailed in, you see. We’d better go back to the house for lunch.”

  Mrs. Basson had no time to disagree before they were hailed in breezy tones.

  “Good morning! So you’re still in the land of sunshine.” The purser of the red hair and engaging smile came nearly down the gangway. “Are you sailing back with us?”

  Lisa shook her head, and Mrs. Basson replied, “No. Your arrival is just a diversion in our holiday. Had a good trip?”

  “Fine. Moderate seas, and no children wandering where they shouldn’t in the Canaries.” “He laughed down at Nancy, then looked at Lisa, “We hadn’t anyone like you aboard this time.”

  “Passengers are ever-changing,” put in the older woman, easily, “but I suppose the officers and staff are fairly permanent.” She paused, then enquired with apparent aimlessness: “How is your strong, silent captain?”

  The purser grinned. “You mean Captain Kennard? Still strong and silent, I expect. He’s not with us.”

  Standing there in the hot sunshine Lisa went cold and shivery. “Not ... with you? Do you mean he’s not your captain now?”

  “That’s right. This trip we have another.”

  “Is that usual—to change captains?”

  A shrug. “Captain Kennard has been on the Wentworth for two years, but I believe he’s due for leave. I didn’t know till I reported at Southampton that he wouldn’t be with us. We all moaned, because it was great having a youngish skipper.”

  “Will he have another ship?” she managed.

  “Bound to, but if he’s on long leave he may not be back in uniform till the autumn—the English autumn. By the way,” his voice had a note which Lisa might have recognized had her condition been normal, “how would you like to take pity tonight on a benighted sailor in a strange country? I hear there’s a good show on in town and we could have dinner first.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said mechanically, with the pale smile. “See you again some time. Goodbye.”

  The next few minutes had the clammy touch of death. Lisa walked with the other two back to the car and gazed through the window as they threaded the streets and ran out on the main road to the Berea.

  The shock had been too sudden and tremendous. At one moment she had known in every fibre of her being that Mark was there on the ship, and in the next her certainty was shattered and made ludicrous. He was not here at all. He was six thousand miles away enjoying the first bright burst of England’s summer. And he had probably taken good care to erase South Africa from his mind for a long time.

  Her mistake smote deep. It showed how grossly one might be misled by hopes and desires. All the week she had built herself up for a meeting with Mark, however brief and dispiriting. She had been with him in that wide, windowed cabin on the: bridge and looked in upon his relaxation with a book in the “den.” She had even experienced the agony of being ignored by those ice-blue eyes. But whatever the pain, whatever the price, Mark had been there.

  Now, it was all to do again: the growing of a sheath about her heart, the cooling of her emotions. This time there must be no error. Soon, she must be able to meet her own eyes in the mirror and declare that she was free of love and cold as a glacier.

  Outwardly, Lisa succeeded almost at once in her resolve. On Monday, after a consultation with Dr. Veness, she booked her passage home. The sailing date was nearly three weeks away, and in that time Nancy must be shown that it was her duty to be friendly with Mrs. Hatherly, though how to force the child into amicable relations with the woman was beyond Lisa’s power of reasoning.

  Mrs. 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 departure. 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 room 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!”
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  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.