Welcome to Paradise

by Jill Tahourdin

  “Oh, Mr. Gurney! How wonderful of you to think of it,” cried Alix, her face lighting up. She had been thinking, only this morning, how perfect the water was, how just right the wind, for a sail up-lagoon. “If Aunt Drusilla says I may, I’d just love it.”

  “Of course, my dear child. The lagoon’s safe enough, so long as you keep away from the seaward end on a falling tide, and watch out for westerly busters. You know how to handle a boat—and you’re a strong swimmer. Very kind of you, James, to think of it.”

  A few days later a small motor launch towed the boat into position and dropped its anchor off the point. It was a flat-bottomed centre-board boat and would take the ground, at low tide, quite comfortably. Red sails were neatly rolled and stowed in the little cubbyhole up forward. James Gurney came round himself, later in the day, to show her how it was rigged.

  Alix was delighted. She took it out for a little spin that evening and found it easy to handle. She ran it aground once or twice, but jumped overboard and pushed it off; she soon learnt to locate the shoals by the colour of the water. So long as she only went out in light winds, she thought, she would have no trouble at all. And it was glorious fun.

  She sailed up-lagoon and past a number of dinghies whose occupants were fishing. One of these waved to her and called, “Hi, Alix. Nice your red sails look.”

  It was Valerie Herrold.

  “Come out one day,” Alix called back, but whether her voice was blown away on the breeze or not she didn’t know. Valerie merely waved again, and then they were out of earshot.

  By the end of a week she was handling it with confidence and planning more extensive trips up-lagoon.

  By the end of a week, too, Andrew Herrold’s activities had begun to take recognisable shape.

  Exactly opposite the outer corner-stone of Lady Merrick’s land, a huge arch of concrete blocks had been erected, with the words “Paradise Caravan Park”, wired for neon lighting, inscribed round its upper curve.

  “That knocks about a thousand off the value of ‘Laguna’ right away,” Lady Merrick said disgustedly, stopping her car on the way back from Edward to take in the full horror of this monstrosity. Actually, Alix thought fairly, when it’s plastered and whitened, as I suppose it will be, it’ll look quite handsome. Her aunt had spotted the master builder giving orders to some workmen fifty yards away.

  “There’s Baldwin,” she said. “Known him for years. He built our house, you know.”

  She got out of her car and waved.

  “Baldwin, come and tell me what all this is about,” she called peremptorily, Baldwin, a big red-faced man with a paunch, came at once, smiling ingratiatingly.

  “Big changes going on in Paradise, m’lady,” he observed, stating the obvious.

  “Indeed yes. What do all those mean?”—pointing to a series of rectangular foundations which had been laid all the way along the side of the road, right along to the gates of ‘Laguna.’

  “Usual offices, m’lady,” Baldwin said. “Garage and petrol station; estate office, shop; then the ablutionary blocks and the ... er...”

  “Didn’t I tell you?” Lady Merrick demanded tragically of Alix as she returned to the car. “Buildings the whole way to my very gates. The ablutionary block actually facing my entrance. Oh! And the brute is within his rights. There’s absolutely nothing I can do. I suppose this is his revenge after my closing the road. The man’s ... a monster. I must see my lawyer at once. There must be some way to stop this outrage.”

  But of course there wasn’t, as Mr. Forsyth, the lawyer, later confirmed. Herrold had bought the property. He had the backing of the local Council and the support of a majority of the residents in carrying out his new scheme. Lady Merrick would have, he feared, either to accept Mr. Herrold’s very generous offer to take over ‘Laguna’—or grin and bear it.

  “I won't give in. I won't be driven out,” asserted her ladyship stoutly. “I’ll see Herrold myself. I’ll appeal to his better nature. I suppose I can’t object to the arch—but to have my entrance devastated in this horrible fashion...”

  Dropping Alix at the house, she turned the car round and sped back to Herrold’s office there. She returned an hour later, flushed, excited—but obliged to admit that Mr. Herrold, though polite and even charming, had been quite adamant. That was where his architect—that son of his, Lady Merrick snorted—had decided the buildings should go. That was where they would go. The other block would go along the other boundary of ‘Laguna,’ on the Braines’ land. Oh, yes, he had already purchased the stand of gums. Clearing would start tomorrow.

  “He’s—he’s uncrushable,” Lady Merrick mourned. Alix saw that she was inconsolable.

  To take her mind off Herrold and his doings she told her that she was having some trouble herself, in the garden.

  “With Francis?”

  “Yes. He really scared me this morning, Aunt Brasilia. I feel pretty certain he’d been smoking dagga. His eyes—they were horrible, dull-looking, dilated—you know, I expect.”

  “But what did he do, darling?”

  “First of all he did everything wrong. Planted things in the wrong places, dithered about generally. Usually I can give him his orders and leave him to it. But this morning he was so stupid I had to stand over him. And then suddenly—he had one of those big knives they use for slashing undergrowth in his hand at the time—he threw up both arms and shouted, “I can’t work with Miss Ellix all the time watching me. I good gardener. I know my work.’ He was waving his knife about. And then he started to move towards me. I thought he was going to attack me, Aunt Drusilla.”

  Lady Merrick cried, startled and shocked, “Did he touch you?”

  “No. I turned and walked away, as slowly as I dared. A bit later on I went back and he was going on with his work. I didn’t speak to him.”

  “I must sack him at once,” Lady Merrick said with decision. “He did this once before, and I forgave him. It’s the way dagga takes him—makes him pugnacious. But people have been known to kill under its influence. We can’t take that risk. He’d better go.”

  “It’s a pity,” Alix said. “He’s a good gardener.”

  “Yes. And Christina’s a good cook. I suppose she may go too. We’ll just have to take a chance on that.” So Francis was paid off that evening. Asked where he had got the dagga, he grinned vacuously and didn’t reply. Lady Merrick shrugged. That, really, wasn’t her affair. It was for the police to discover. She rang up the station and told the sergeant in charge that she had dismissed Francis, and why. He promised to make some enquiries.

  “And that’s all we shall ever hear of it, I suppose,” said Lady Merrick, with no idea how wrong she was to be proved. “And now to find a new garden boy.”

  Eric Gore solved that problem for them. He loaned them a boy of his own, a real expert who made light work of everything Alix gave him to do. The rockery, pathway and steps began to take shape, plants and dwarf conifers and shrubs were tucked into place, you could begin to see what a delightful garden feature it was going to be.

  Alix began to look around for a couple of acres to rent for her plant nurseries. She put an advertisement in the Edward Star announcing that she was available as consultant. Having found land, she went into the cost of a simple irrigation system from a nearby mountain stream.

  In all this, unavoidably it seemed, Eric Gore took an active part. Lady Merrick had got into the habit of appealing to him in any difficulty or uncertainty; and one had to allow that he always seemed to know the answers.

  Alix began to feel rather as she imagined a fly must feel, caught in a spider’s web. There was no getting away from him.

  A week after their expedition up the river, for instance, he had telephoned Lady Merrick with an invitation. This was for them to join a party he was arranging for the annual Ball in aid of the local hospital. There would be cocktails and a dinner party at Northolme first.

  Lady Merrick was enchanted.

  “It’s the social event of the year,” she sa
id. “It’s held in the Town Hall at Edward and everybody in the whole district will be there. You must have a new evening dress, dearest. I’ll stand you one. And a hair-do at ‘Loraine.’ ”

  “I usually do my own, Aunt Drusilla.”

  “I know. And very nice it always looks, so lucky having that natural wave. But this is an occasion. Eric usually invites some very smart people down from Cape Town. We’re honoured, my dear.”

  Alix made a face. Her aunt said rather anxiously, “You do like Eric, don’t you, dear?”

  Alix decided to be honest.

  “I’m afraid—not terribly,” she said.

  “My dear child, you’re surely not still pining for that Bernard of yours, I do hope?”

  “Of course not. That’s completely over. I’m not pining for anyone. I’m just—not interested at present. That’s all.”

  “Oh well, if that’s really all,” said her aunt, looking relieved. “I suppose it’s natural under the circumstances. But I should snap out of it as soon as possible if I were you, dear.”

  “I’ll try to, Aunt Drusilla.”

  Though if snapping out of it meant being more amenable about Eric Gore, Lady Merrick was going to be disappointed, she thought

  She knew the gossips were busy about her.

  She really couldn’t blame Richard if he thought she was encouraging Eric Gore. He didn’t know—how could he?—how strong was the pressure Gore and her aunt between them were exerting. Nor, perhaps, how often, to avoid a scene, she had let herself be involved in arrangements she would much rather have avoided.

  It was all becoming very difficult.

  It seemed ironical to her that she, who had so recently been jilted, should now have two eligible males at her feet.

  But no—Richard wasn’t at her feet. He had taken a very firm stand—at a distance. He had offered his heart—but he wasn’t trailing it.

  But even if I found I was in love with him, should I ever bring myself to tell him so? she wondered. Yet that was the condition he had laid down.

  Why should I? she thought indignantly. But she knew the answer. She would—if she loved him enough.

  Fortunately, there wasn’t much likelihood of that.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  NOW it was October and the weather was warming up for the summer season which would be at its height all over the Cape in December and January.

  The countryside had burst into bloom. There were drifts of mauve cineraria and fire lilies on the veldt and hill slopes. Yellow daisies, purple ground geranium and golden ursinia carpeted the verges. The proteas and pincushion bushes displayed their gay, fantastic flowers. Wattle trees dripped gold and jacarandas shed azure petals to carpet the ground. It was a lovely time of the year.

  At Paradise building was going on apace. Andrew Herrold meant to have his caravan park ready in time for the season this year. By next year he planned to have built his country club. He had doubled the number of workmen and machines on the job. The noise and dust never ceased from sunrise to sunset. Every time she left ‘Laguna’ in her car Lady Merrick was held up by one or other of the fleet of lorries Mr. Herrold employed. Though the buildings he was putting up, designed by Richard, were in fact charming and appropriate, Lady Merrick saw them only as blots on a fair countryside.

  Her closing of the road, moreover, hadn’t deterred Herrold for longer than it took him to clear the spinney of gums. Now he was building another line of offices, shops, etc., on the other side of ‘Laguna.’ Lady Merrick was indeed hemmed in.

  Once Alix did suggest, tentatively, that the site Herrold had offered would have all the peace and quiet that ‘Laguna’ now lacked. It was the only time she had ever seen her aunt really cross with her....

  Meantime she was going quietly about her own business. Her advertisement, plus a lucky break, had brought her her first commission.

  A Mr. and Mrs. Pascall, whom Aunt Drusilla had known in India when Mr. Pascall was manager of a very important bank, had come to the district recently, and had called. It seemed they had bought a largish old house on the hill-slopes above Edward, with about five acres of land. This, they said, had gone to wilderness. When they later saw Alix’s notice in the Star, Mrs. Pascall rang up at once to engage her to plan a new garden.

  Alix was delighted. She decided to purchase a Corgi motor-cycle so that she wouldn’t be dependent on her aunt’s car for transport. Soon she and it were a familiar sight in the little town of Edward.

  Eric Gore didn’t approve. He didn’t think it fitting in his future wife. But Lady Merrick had warned him on no account to try to rush Alix. So he was biding his time. But he was not a patient man. He had to have what he wanted, when he wanted it. And at present—though he had known many girls more beautiful, better dressed, more amusing and more sophisticated than Alix Rayne—Alix Rayne was the girl he wanted, and meant to have. It was, he told himself, just one of those things. His ardour grew with waiting. He didn’t intend to wait much longer...

  Now and again in the early morning, when she and Nelson went down to swim, Alix saw Richard. Sometimes she fished with him for a little while, sometimes not.

  One morning he said, conversationally, “Will you be going to the dance next Saturday, Alix?”

  “Yes.”

  “Will you dance with me?”

  “I’d love to—if I can. You see, we’re going in a party. My aunt has accepted...”

  “H’m. Gore’s party?”

  “Y—yes.”

  “I see. You’d really like to dance with me, Alix?”

  “Of course, Richard. But...”

  “Then just leave it to me.”

  She glanced up at him, took note of the forceful English nose and chin, and thought, Yes, I can leave it to you. Changing the subject in order to do a little of what she called her “sleuthing,” she learned that Herrold Senior was planning to give a big braaivleis party for the whole district to mark the opening of the caravan park. This would be in early November. It seemed incredible that it could be ready by then; but Mr. Herrold had decreed it, and so, she didn’t doubt, it would be.

  “I suppose it’s no use my inviting you to that?” Richard said with a rueful smile.

  “None at all.”

  “And after that, Alix, I’m off to Salisbury.”

  “For good?”

  “Oh, I shall come down now and then, I suppose, to visit the family. But yes, for good, you might say. I expect to be hectically busy for a time, anyway, till I get things organised. None of this lazy lagoon life. No home comforts either. Though I suppose I shall have to look round and find a flat, sooner or later. Can't stand hotels for long.”

  He cocked an eyebrow at her. His eyes had the familiar glint in them. She said coolly, “Too bad. I expect to be busy too.”

  “Business flourishing?”

  She told him about her first commission and he was gratifyingly impressed.

  “I still think, though, that Salisbury would have given you more scope.”

  “Of course it would. But I happen to be living in Paradise.”

  “True.”

  “I ... if you...”

  She fell silent, biting her lip.

  “You were going to say?”

  “No. Nothing, really.”

  “Look out, you’ve got a bite. Carefully, now...” She was becoming quite skilful, now, with the rod and line he kept in the boat specially for her. He was proud of his pupil. His manner to her, these mornings, was cheerful, easy, brotherly. Sometimes she wondered if she had dreamed that he had ever said to her, “I love you so much.”

  That was how she wanted it, wasn’t it?

  Of course it was. But perversely, it teased her. It irked her that she wasn’t sure, any more, how Richard felt.

  “Has Lady Merrick thought any more about the new site my father had offered?” he was asking now. Casually, as if it were a matter of little consequence.

  “No. She hasn’t.”

  “I think she’d be wise to consider it
. The offer might be withdrawn.”

  “Is that meant to be a threat, Richard?”

  He laughed, seeing her chin go up.

  “Good heavens, no. Just a little seasonable advice.”

  “For which my aunt won’t thank you.”

  “What do you think, Alix?”

  “I’m still on her side of the fence.”

  But apart from loyalty, and blood being thicker than water, am I really? she asked herself honestly. For it was plain that Herrold Senior wasn’t, in point of fact, going to deface the countryside at all. He was merely going to make it possible for more and more people to enjoy it.

  Still, he had ridden rough-shod over her aunt. So she was against him. She had to side with her own.

  Richard didn’t attempt to argue with her about it. He only hoped something might happen to cause her to change her mind.

  When she walked back to the house she found Francis hanging about by the shrubbery. She said sharply, “What are you doing here, Francis? What do you want?”

  “I come to fetch Christina,” he said sullenly. She saw that he had been drinking. Smoking dagga too, probably. His eyes had a glazed, unco-ordinated look. He added insolently, “Christina my wife.”

  Alix said, “You can’t see her now. You must go away.”

  He began to talk loudly, in a mixture of his bastard English and Afrikaans. At the note of abuse in his voice Nelson growled and bared his teeth. When Francis raised the stick he carried Nelson began to look really dangerous. Alix took hold of his collar and tried to calm him.”