In flat little syllables she said, “So they’re going to be married.”
Strangely, Natalie’s part in her life had ceased to matter. The woman had grown over-confident in her powers and taken out her furious disappointment in exaggeration to Venetia. She had also made subtle attempts to prove to Blake the senselessness of his marriage.
She lay back, completely exhausted. Blake gave her a swift, sideways glance, and closed his eyes. Insects chirred and leaves whispered, and the breeze stirred over their two bodies like a breath of cautious relief.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
IT was not till next day that Blake told Venetia about the other important item mentioned in his sister’s letter: his own attendance at the wedding of Paul and Thea. Venetia had taken it rather hazily for granted that their holiday would end a few days before the event, but Blake apparently had other intentions. Venetia was to stay on at Port Atholl while he went home to perform his duty. To do his best by Thea he would have to be away two nights, but now that Venetia was acquainted with several people, she was not likely to be lonely.
“Don’t you think Thea will be disappointed if you go without me?” she asked. Not that she wished to leave the haven of Port Atholl; nor could she contemplate witnessing a marriage, without dread. It was a conventional enquiry.
“She won’t mind when I tell her how much the coastal air has improved your health.”
“But ... won’t people talk?”
“They may,” he answered briefly.
“Wouldn’t you prefer to avoid that?”
“Gossip doesn’t worry me. Everyone up there knows you were very ill. Do you want to go back to Bondolo?”
She replied at once, with honesty. “No, but I’ll go if it’s your wish.”
“It isn’t. I don’t want us to return there together till ... well, till we both feel there’s no other place we’d rather be.”
It was left like that. For a further week they bathed and went for drives, and then the morning arrived when Blake was to leave for Bondolo. By eight o’clock he had breakfasted and was ready to set off. Venetia came down to the hotel steps with him.
“You promise to be very careful?” he said.
“Of course I do.”
“I want to come back to find you just like this.” He smiled. “Before you do anything at all, stop and ask yourself if Blake would approve.”
“I will.”
“Good-bye, then, my sweet.”
He kissed her, and was gone. Hours afterwards, Venetia recalled that she had sent no message of any kind for Thea. She could depend on Blake putting it right, but she was aware of the heat of shame in her face at catching herself out in such selfishness.
She had never before been selfish, never wallowed so consistently within herself as she had during the past weeks. Self-centred women had always roused her to contempt. Why had Blake condoned her poor behaviour? The bout of pneumonia was no excuse. She was young and strong, but she had welcomed the mental weakness after the days in bed, and was still reluctant to relinquish what remained of it. Why was she so full of fear?
On Saturday, Thea’s wedding day, Venetia addressed a telegram to “Mr. and Mrs. Paul Rivers” at the Ellisburg Hotel and resisted an impulse to send a separate one to Blake.
By lunch-time she was beginning to wonder how soon she could expect Blake. The reception would take up most of the afternoon, and after it he would have expenses to settle and perhaps need to take a last run out to Bondolo. Four hours for the journey. She set the deadline at ten o’clock.
Mercifully a middle-aged couple asked her to drive out with them to a famous picnic spot for tea. They were the type who abhor the thermos flask, so when they stopped a fire had to be lit and a kettle set to boil. After tasting the smoky brew, Venetia decided that plain water would have been preferable, but the operations and a walk to view a waterfall passed a couple of hours.
Back at the hotel she turned on the bath taps and undressed. The water was cool and foamy, the pine perfume refreshing. She lazed through the motions of soaping herself, then slid as far as she could under the water.
In sudden alarm she heard the main door of the suite open and close. She’d forgotten to slip up the catch—hadn’t bothered to bolt the bathroom door, either. Not that the service boy was likely to enter any of the rooms without permission.
In a nervous rush she stepped from the bath, perfunctorily used a towel and pulled on her dressing-gown. There came the click of fingernails on the door panel. “Are you in the tub, Venetia?”
It was Blake. She opened the door and stood before him, bright hair tousled and curling, blue eyes shining. “Blake, I’m so glad you’re back!”
He smiled. “That’s nice. I’m glad I’m back, too, if only to ensure that you take your bath behind locked doors, or with me on guard.”
An arm negligently about her, he went with her to her bedroom, touched his lips to her hair and sat down on the nearest bed.
“What have you been doing these two days?”
“Just being good. I want to hear all about the wedding. What did Thea wear?”
“A white silk suit with charming pale blue embroidery on the top half.”
“And her flowers?”
“Camellias, I think.”
“Oh no! Not camellias.”
“Perhaps not. They were pale pink and white. Paul wore lavender chiffon and carried roses.”
“Blake!”
“Well, don’t expect those sort of details from me. I did make a note of Thea’s dress because she looked quite beautiful and I knew you’d ask, but all I can say about the rest of them is that they were entirely correct and formal.” Without a pause, he added, “Have you been feeling good?”
“Splendid. Was the reception exciting?”
“I didn’t find it so. It went on too long. I began to think I’d never get here in time for dinner, but fortunately Paul was determined to get away by three, and I left soon after.”
Venetia picked up a nail-file from the bedside table and made use of it.
“You’ve gone pale,” he said.
She knew it and braced herself. “The flush from the bath has worn off. Where are Paul and Thea spending their honeymoon?”
“Touring, as far as Cape Town and back. They send you a message full of love and goodwill, and some wedding cake.” He reached for her hand. “What’s on your mind?”
She shook her head but kept it lowered.
“There’s something,” he persisted. “Let’s have the truth.”
“It just occurred to me how much luckier Paul is than you are. Thea will make him wonderfully happy from the start, but I’m only a liability to you. Sometimes I wonder why I was put into the world.”
Blake said quietly: “I’m a difficult sort of swine, but Paul isn’t. Thea’s a woman of thirty, and you aren’t. They haven’t any adjustments to make.” Venetia let him draw her down beside him on the bed. “I’ll try very hard not to hurt you any more.”
This she interpreted to mean that he would continue to pamper her and neglect the estate. Which was a wrong she knew not how to put right.
“You’re all I have,” she said, a little forlornly, “and I do want to make you happy.”
The sun had gone down and the room was nearly dark. Venetia sat at Blake’s side, frightened at the inexplicable flood of beating warmth in her body. She was excited to the point of tears. She wanted to lie close to him in his arms, his fingers soothing her till she slept. She wanted to awaken with her cheek upon his shoulder, his lips upon her brow.
She felt him move, felt the tensile strength of his arm about her, the vibrant heat of his hand over her heart. An agony rose in her throat and choked her. Expectancy drove the blood from her face, made her eyes wide and strained.
She jumped up and switched on the bedside lamp.
“My dear child,” he said, “you’re white and trembling. I oughtn’t to have left you here all by yourself.”
“No ... it isn’t t
hat.” Impossible to explain what it was. She wasn’t sure herself, but her heart still thudded up near her throat.
“You’ve certainly done too much. We’ll have dinner up here tonight.”
“No. I’d rather go down,” she said, feverishly dragging open the wardrobe. “Please go, while I dress.”
He came behind her, took her shoulders and turned her. Shrewdly he examined her features; his mind sprang to a conclusion, the grey eyes went dark as jet and his hands fell.
“Don’t look at me like that,” he said sharply. “You haven’t the least cause for it. God in heaven, you ought to know that by now!”
He twisted and went to his own room, leaving her rigid by the wide-swung door of the wardrobe. For a long while she remained there, staring across at the dark rectangle of the window. She had misread the contraction of his arm, the pressure of his hand. She had nothing to fear. He needed nothing from her.
As for the terrified pulsing in her own veins, that must have been prompted by a desire—that recurring fatal desire—to please him. But subtly it was borne in on her that Thea’s wedding, the fulfilment she would share with Paul, constituted a further stiffener to the barrier between Venetia and Blake.
She sighed shakily, and began to dress.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
FOR the first time since they had come to Port Atholl Venetia had a bad night. Tossing on her pillow, she was conscious all through the dark hours of a sense of foreboding. At last she was being honest with herself, seeing herself as a useless young wife who had been cradled too long by the kindness of an indifferent husband.
Since the abrupt ending to those months of eroding compromise at Bondolo she had not once admitted, even in private, to being in love with Blake. But it smote her now like a deadly blow. She loved Blake, but he was still as far as ever from loving her. She was not ignorant. She knew that he was a man of vital passions, that were she to set out to rouse them he and she would meet on another plane. But where did passion lead, without love?
Somewhere there was a woman who could adequately fill his life and satisfy him emotionally, someone with Natalie’s strength but without Natalie’s hardness—and when she came into the picture, what then?
The following day Venetia fleetingly recalled her imaginings of the night. They were having coffee after lunch in the sun lounge overlooking the drive. A car swerved round to a halt and a woman got out. Blake leaned forward.
“Good lord, that’s Sylvia Douglas! She seems to be minus a husband. I’ll go out and see if I can help.”
Venetia watched their meeting out there in the sunshine, the long handclasp, the woman’s fingers as she doffed her little grey cap and the shake of the titian red hair as she smiled and talked. Blake took her car keys and opened the luggage carrier, instructed the boys to carry the suitcases inside. The two came up the steps, still chatting, and disappeared from Venetia’s view.
Ten minutes later Blake returned to his chair in the sun lounge.
“Sylvia’s here for a month,” he said, “ten days alone and the rest of the time with her husband. She’s Mrs. Alliston’s younger sister—married to a public works official in Durban. I told her we’d all meet here for tea.”
“She looks sweet,” said Venetia.
“She is sweet,” he stated.
It is a strange and unchallenged fact that chance-made acquaintances occasionally take an entirely unwitting but vitally important hand in the shaping of one’s destiny.
Sylvia Douglas accepted Blake’s wife as she accepted Blake himself. They were friends from her home town, and she didn’t mind them knowing how homesick she had been till the last couple of months, and how desperately she needed this holiday. She was twenty-six, less vivacious than her sister, and two years married. Her manner was unaffected, and she entered pleasantly into their conversation.
Naturally and simply Sylvia attached herself to the Garrards. The three bathed together, played tennis and drove out to the golf course. In the evenings they played cards, or the two women sat in the lounge while Blake went off for a game of poker in a private room.
One afternoon they went out in a hired launch. They got back to the Regency in time for sundowners, and parted, to change for dinner. Venetia had collected a few shells, but some were so delicate that when she extracted them from her dress pocket in her bedroom they cracked into fragments. A sharp edge nicked the pad of her thumb and started it bleeding.
She heard Blake go into the bathroom, and decided to make do with a wash at the hand-basin in the corner. The edge of the shell must have been very fine, for it had gashed quite deeply, though when she held the thumb under the tap, the mark which showed up was tiny. Blood spattered her green silk slip, and she had to wash a spot from the knee of her stocking. Dash the thing! She wrapped the thumb in a hanky, struggled into a green dress and went out to drum on the bathroom door. “Blake, have we any small adhesive plasters?”
“Yes,” he replied at once. “Have you hurt yourself?”
“It’s only a pinprick, but I’m afraid of getting blood on my dress when I do my hair. Where are the plasters?”
“In the pocket of one of my sports jackets; I’m not sure which. Be looking for them. I’ve just finished shaving. I’ll be out in a tick.”
Inside his room she hesitated. A clean shirt lay on the bed, but otherwise the room was scrupulously tidy and impersonal, like the one he occupied at Bondolo. This room had built-in wardrobes with sliding doors, one of which was conveniently pulled back. She picked on the linen jacket first, and found both pockets empty; the same with the blue sports coat. She dipped a hand into the pocket of the tweed one and closed it over a flat tin and what felt like a piece of glossy paper. She drew both out into the glare of the electric light.
The box slipped from her grasp, and she was left holding only a crumpled letter—the last one from her father to Blake.
Blake was in the room, looking at her dilated eyes and white, parted lips, at the fine nostrils arched with horror and pain.
Quite gently, he took the letter from her and tossed it on to the dressing-table, bent and picked up the box of dressings.
“Is it your thumb?” he said. “Let me see.”
While she stood there, frozen, he unwound the handkerchief, trimmed one of the plasters till it was no larger than a sixpence, and pressed it over the cut.
“I’m sorry about the letter,” he said. “I’d forgotten it was in that pocket. Some time we must talk about the night you spent in my study. Don’t worry now.”
“Did you say I ... spent a night in the study?”
“Don’t you remember?”
“No. I—I thought I must have collapsed in my bedroom.” Both hands came up to her face as she whispered, “So that was it.”
Blake did not touch her, but he came near, protectively. “Thea and I found you there next morning. You were unconscious. Do you remember going into the room?”
Her fingers lay along her cheeks, her elbows were held hard against her chest. “Yes. I was terribly unhappy ... and I seemed to be a bundle of twitching nerves. I wanted to cry ... but I couldn’t.”
Blake’s features had tightened up. “You were on the verge of pneumonia.”
She was steadier now. “I was going to run away. I hoped to catch the early-morning train to Durban, and a boat to England. It was childish. You don’t solve troubles by running away from them.”
“What made you go to the study?”
“The letter.” Her voice was strong again, and bitter besides. “I’d seen it before. I was going to write you a note and pin it to the letter, because I hadn’t the courage to confront you with it.” She gulped hard. “I sat down at the desk and read it again—those words my father had written when he was ill and frightened for me—”
“When did you first read it—how long ago?”
“The day after I came to Bondolo. It was in a book of verse on the chair. I found it still in the same book.”
“So!” He clipped out t
he exclamation and paused. “I don’t recall leaving it in a book, but if that’s where you found it, I must have. In any case, if you read it, it was your duty to tell me, not to make it the basis of a campaign of hate against me. I suppose you decided that I’d annexed you out of friendship and loyalty to your father. Didn’t it strike you at any time that I could have looked after you without marriage?”
“No.” Her head was averted. “No, it didn’t.”
“What was to prevent my placing you in Thea’s charge in Durban? I might have arranged for her to make a nurse out of you.”
Her mouth quivered. “I’m sure you’ve wished a good many times that you had.”
She was unready for his sudden flare of anger.
“You’re sure of everything but what’s right! Probably you’re equally certain that I enjoyed seeing you wretched and strung up. And you were going to round off things by running away!” He stopped abruptly, and said more quietly: “I’d probably have offered you marriage even if your father hadn’t written—even though I knew it was impossible for a child of eighteen to love a man of thirty-four. Propinquity and companionableness are common substitutes for love in marriage.”
He turned aside and bent to unbutton the clean shirt.
In stark tones she said, “What are we going to do?”
He straightened and bent upon her a sardonic smile. “We’re going to stay right here in Port Atholl and finish your education.” With a suggestion of the sarcasm which had been absent from his manner for so long, he went on: “You’re doing well, little one. We’ve talked Natalie Benham out of your system, and after tonight’s disposal of your father’s letter you’ll begin to comprehend the value of outspokenness in other directions, too. The day may come when you’ll look me in the eyes and agree that it might not be so bad to start together again at Bondolo.”
She twisted half towards the door. “And what if I refuse to go on like this?”
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