Blue Fire

by Phyllis A. Whitney

  “You should have seen what just happened—” she began, but Mara stopped her at once.

  “Give him the film or I won’t answer for the consequences. These are not ordinary times in South Africa.”

  They were both against her and there was nothing else to do. She opened the camera and took the film out without rolling it up, making sure that light reached her last few shots. At least there would be no evidence against her.

  The policeman took the film and Mara thanked him graciously, giving Susan a little push toward Niklaas’s car. She clearly meant to stand on no ceremony, and indignant though she was, Susan went. Mara started the Mercedes and drove down the street. She said nothing until they were out of District Six, and Susan sat beside her equally silent. She was furious at the policeman, furious over the loss of her pictures and with Mara for her highhanded rescue.

  “It’s fortunate that Willi phoned me after you set out this morning,” Mara said when they had driven a few blocks. “I had some trouble finding you, or I might have stopped you more quickly.”

  “I didn’t want to be stopped,” Susan said. “If you hadn’t rushed in, I might have been able to deal with the officer myself and saved my pictures in the bargain.”

  “You don’t know our police,” Mara told her dryly. “If it hadn’t been for me, you might be in real trouble by now. They aren’t fooling, you know, and they don’t like such pictures being sent outside. I suppose that’s what you intended?”

  Susan had no wish to tell Mara what she intended. All her first instinctive distrust of the blond girl had swept to the fore.

  “I’m a news photographer,” she said a bit curtly. “I’ve been in difficult spots before and I’ve managed to get out of them. It was kind of you to interest yourself, but I’m quite capable of—”

  “I didn’t do it for you!” Mara broke in. “I did it for Dirk. I couldn’t stand by and see you involve him in unpleasant publicity.”

  It was perfectly true that Dirk would not like what she had done, but Mara had no business assuming that publicity would necessarily have resulted if she had been allowed to handle the matter in her own way.

  The car had been headed toward the Aerie, but suddenly Mara turned into a quiet side street of small white houses, drew the car to the curb, and switched off the engine.

  “We might as well have this out,” she said.

  Susan, still lost in her own indignant thoughts, could only stare at her blankly. The other girl’s cool poise had deserted her and she was breathing quickly, as if some long-simmering rage had suddenly boiled up in her and was out of restraint.

  “You can’t go on being fooled forever!” she said in a low, tense voice. “If it hadn’t been for you, Dirk and I would be married by now.”

  Susan was as much appalled by the look in Mara’s eyes as by her words. She said nothing at all.

  Mara pushed back her heavy mass of blond hair as if the movement rid her of pent-up energy.

  “I’m neither mad nor a fool,” she went on. “I’m in love with Dirk and in the end I mean to have him back. So you might as well be warned.”

  Susan’s amazement was growing. Somehow she could not take this outburst seriously. Mara was suffering from some dreadful delusion.

  The blond girl had quieted a little, as if her first wild expending of emotion was over and she was groping her way back to her normal, guarded poise. Her tone was calmer when she spoke again, but there was still venom in the words.

  “Don’t you know why he married you?”

  “Of course I do,” Susan said promptly.

  Mara went on as if she had not spoken. “It was because of the diamond. Because he wanted that fortune in his hands and if you could lead him to it, then you were worth whatever temporary sacrifices he might have to make.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” Susan said. “I suppose you’re referring to the letter my mother wrote before she died. In the first place, that letter was a trick to gain me consideration from my father. Nothing else. In the second place, you surely can’t believe that a man like Dirk would go so far as to marry simply because there might be a remote chance that his wife knew something about a diamond that disappeared years ago. The whole idea is silly.”

  Mara did not answer. She started the car and put it in gear.

  “What do you think Dirk is going to say when I tell him about this?” Susan asked curiously. “Won’t he be angry with you then?”

  “You won’t tell him,” Mara said, and turned the car from the curb. “You won’t take that risk. Because then everything would be out in the open and you wouldn’t be able to pretend any more. Though if you do tell him it won’t matter to me.”

  She sounded so angrily confident that Susan felt shaken for the first time in her own strong conviction. The evil of doubt had crept subtly into her mind and now questions were there that had not existed before. She thought about them in silence as Mara drove her home. She remembered again Dirk’s strangeness before their plane had landed in Cape Town, his stiffness at the airport, and the way she could not get through his guard that first day in the Aerie. That day when he had again been in touch with Mara Bellman. Yet later he had enveloped his wife with a love that she could not doubt and the uncertainties of their arrival had faded.

  When the car drew up before the front gate, Susan quickly opened the door. She did not want to speak to Mara again, but the other woman reached across and caught her by the arm just as she would have stepped out.

  “I pulled you out of trouble this time,” she said. “And if you like we’ll say nothing to Dirk about what you were up to. I jolly well don’t want to talk to him about it. But next time I hope your troubles are a lot more serious. And if they are, I won’t rescue you.” Her eyes had narrowed and all the beauty was gone from her face. “In fact, I’d take great pleasure in helping them along.”

  Susan went into the house feeling a little sick. It was rather dreadful to see another woman rip away the guise of civilization and reveal what lay beneath. Could she be like that too? she wondered—and did not know the answer.

  Willi met her in the hall, her manner one of quiet dignity, and Susan offered no reproach. Willi had acted upon the prompting of her own conscience and was not to be blamed for feeling that she must telephone Mara. Susan went upstairs and tried a little desperately to regain her composure before she had to face Dirk again. The cold look of the police officer’s eyes, the limp jacket hanging on its hook, the helpless plight of the man arrested, mingled in her mind with the things Mara had said. The painful doubts she had planted began to take root.

  Yet when Dirk came home that evening his mood was cheerful and her concealment successful. All went smoothly between them and a little of her fear subsided. No matter what had happened in the past, she told herself firmly, Dirk loved her now. Mara was simply a jealous woman who wanted to strike out and hurt the person who had hurt her. Seen in that light, she was more to be pitied than feared.

  Yet it was necessary, Susan found, to tell herself this over and over.

  10

  The experience in District Six stopped Susan’s picture taking for a time. If she could not catch the ugly side of Cape Town life as well as the pleasant, then there was no point in her trying the story she had in mind.

  Her first sickness and shock over Mara’s words faded and she made an effort to bolster her own confidence. She could not bring herself to broach the matter with Dirk, however, and evidently Mara had kept her word and said nothing herself.

  As the days passed, she thought increasingly of the obligation John Cornish had placed upon her. More than ever she wanted to answer him, and to reassure Dirk. Once full remembrance had returned, there would be no more nonsense about a lost diamond. No more suspicions of Claire, and no more possibility that Mara’s attack might have any truth in it. John Cornish would be stopped in his purpose and her marriage with Dirk would continue serenely with no threat of quicksand to betray her. It was a happy prospect and she decided to furt
her it without more delay.

  She had not seen her father since her first visit to his house. No further summons had come from him. Nor had Dirk asked her to see him. But the conviction began to grow in her that the only way into the past was to seek him out again. Seek him out and ask that she be allowed to see the house she’d lived in as a child.

  The morning she returned to Protea Hill was also the morning when she decided to explore the path that led downhill into the ravine. She told Willi she would be out for a while. Then she put on walking shoes and a sweater and went into the garden. The drop from wall to path was not great and she swung herself over the stone parapet and down into the grass on the far side. In bright sunlight the scent of pines was warm and spicy, and she took deep drafts of Cape Town’s sparkling spring air.

  The path dipped sharply beneath her feet as she followed it, and she saw that the upright objects she had glimpsed by moonlight the other night were indeed several rocks that stood upright like great monolithic shafts. They formed an irregular half circle away from the path and she looked behind them cautiously, a little fearful of snakes. There was something almost awesome about these rocks. Had some primeval force toppled them end over end to stand them at last in this position through all the ages since? The mountain above would remember that upheaval, she thought, gazing up at it. What she saw at the mountaintop brought her to a halt, watching in wonder as the phenomenon peculiar to Table Mountain happened before her eyes.

  In an otherwise clear sky a fluffy cloud floated high above the mountain. Even as she looked, the Mountain exerted its attraction and the cloud dropped swiftly to its top. There it spread out in a layer of white over the entire table, drifting a little way down the sides so that it looked as if a tablecloth had been spread evenly over the flat top of the mountain. Above, the sky was still brightly blue.

  Susan had seen this happen as a child, but she had forgotten until now what an astonishing sight it could be. Up there on the mountain, where all had been clear a moment before, the rocky top was now hidden by thick cloud.

  Happy to have seen the mountain’s performance, she followed the path down into the shadowy coolness of the grove where flat-topped pines clustered and then out into the open beyond. Here an amazing variety of tiny wildflowers spread over the fields. She stooped to pick a small flower with six widespread white petals, edged with black, its navy-blue heart touched with black and yellow stamens.

  The path continued its downhill plunge to a place where a side path branched upward toward the houses on this opposite side of the ravine. Susan looked up to see her father’s house a stone’s throw away. The side path seemed to wind its way between houses to the street, with no wall to climb at this point. She followed it quickly and found herself outside the stone and iron fence of Protea Hill.

  The yard boy saw her and came to open the gate. She went purposefully up the steps and stood before the familiar door with its long glass panels on either side. A maid answered her ring and invited her in just as Mara Bellman came down the stairs. Though she had prepared herself for this inevitable meeting, Susan winced inwardly at the sight of the other girl.

  Today Mara wore a green suit that set off her fair skin and pale-blond hair and there was an aura of sophisticated perfume about her. Her eyes rested coolly upon Susan and she greeted her politely enough, without any of the letting down of her guard that she had displayed at their last meeting.

  “If you’re looking for Dirk,” she said casually, “he’s not here this morning.”

  “I’d like to see my father, if it’s possible,” Susan said.

  “He has gone out in the car with Thomas,” Mara told her. “I don’t know when he’ll be back.”

  She made no attempt to invite her in, and Susan knew that she would have to take matters into her own hands.

  “I believe I’ll wait for a little while in case Father should come home soon.”

  Mara hesitated, but Susan was Niklaas’s daughter and she could hardly turn her away.

  “Come in, if you like,” she said grudgingly. “Though I can’t promise that you won’t have a long wait.”

  All she wanted was to get into the house, Susan thought. To be left alone with it; It didn’t matter whether she saw her father or not. To reacquaint herself with one room would be a start. She could not very well ask Mara to show her through the entire house without her father’s permission.

  Mara led the way into a big, comfortable living room that had been changed considerably since Susan had last seen it. The furniture was set well back from the center of the room, arranged close to the walls. It was a room that had been made safe for a blind man, with no unexpected stumbling blocks.

  Apparently Niklaas van Pelt had brought furniture here from his house in Johannesburg, for Susan recognized some of the pieces. She remembered particularly a great cabinet of stinkwood—that beautiful, ill-named wood of South Africa, odorous only in its freshly cut state. The grain had dark-colored markings that made a handsome, wavelike pattern, and the drawers were set with Cape silver key plates and handles. Over the fireplace hung a long copper warming pan, clearly Dutch in character. These old things suited the room and somehow suited Niklaas van Pelt.

  “There are magazines on the table.” Mara was curt. “If you want anything, just ring the bell near the door.”

  “Thank you,” Susan said and sat down on a long couch, wanting only to be left here alone.

  But Mara stood in the doorway, reluctant to go. “Have you thought over what we talked about the other day?” she asked.

  Her audacity was surprising. Susan hesitated for a moment, once more taken aback. Then she spoke quietly:

  “What was there to think about? Whatever may have happened in the past has no bearing on the present. I haven’t been brooding about it.”

  Open dislike was alive in Mara’s eyes. “You’re wise not to put the matter to a test. As long as you don’t lead Dirk to the diamond, you’re safe enough. For a time at least.”

  Susan said nothing, refusing to be drawn into an open quarrel. Mara shrugged and went out of the room.

  Now all hope of regaining contact with the house was gone. The necessary mood had been destroyed and Susan knew it would not return. When the maid came in with the inevitable eleven o’clock morning tea, Susan drank a cupful, trying to still the quivering resentment that Mara had aroused in her. Did the woman mean to bait her every time they met? The prospect was unthinkable, but for the moment she knew of no way to stop her. She was not yet ready to turn to Dirk about the matter. Was it fear of the truth that held her back? she wondered. Surely what had happened before she married Dirk need not concern her now. If she told Dirk, he would reassure her, but he would also think her foolish. There was no need to speak.

  The sound of a car in the driveway indicated that her father had come home. Mara did not appear again, but the maid came to tell her that Mr. van Pelt awaited her in his study.

  Again her father sat behind the great desk upon which every object had been placed with meticulous care so that there might be a minimum of groping for what he wanted. The heavy, polished cane with the silver head leaned against his red-leather chair, ready when he wanted it. As he took Susan’s hand and drew her into the chair beside him, she felt again the cool, dry clasp of his fingers. She did not wait for him to ask the reason for her visit, but plunged at once into what she had to say. At her first mention of John Cornish’s name, she sensed a stiffening in him. But his dark glasses gave nothing away and his face was expressionless as he listened.

  She told him of her meeting with Cornish in the Public Gardens and of the story he had unwittingly told her, before he knew she was Claire van Pelt’s daughter. She went on to speak frankly of Cornish’s suspicions concerning Claire, and her father heard her through without interruption.

  “So you see,” she ended a little breathlessly, “I want to remember. I want to find my way back. Perhaps you can help me.”

  He was still for a long moment and ther
e was a tightness about his mouth. “I will not help you,” he said at length. “Remembering is pointless. I know all that happened, and the only thing that is important to me now is to forget. I am sorry, indeed, that John Cornish has returned to Cape Town.”

  “But what if there really is something to that letter from my mother?” she persisted. “What if it’s true that I may have known something as a child that I could bring back to mind if I really worked at it?”

  “You mean concerning the diamond?” he asked. “Forget about that. I don’t want to know what happened to it. The man who owned it is dead. And he was paid in full long before he died. The stone has caused nothing but misery in its history.”

  If he spoke the truth, then he had not been impressed by her mother’s ruse, after all. He had not sent for her because of the diamond. In this realization might lie an assuaging of pain, but something else was more important now. She had no time to think of her own hurt.

  “Do you think my mother took it?” she demanded. “Because that’s what John Cornish believes and it’s what he means to write about in his book.”

  “He will not do that,” Niklaas said. “I will not permit it.”

  Remorselessly Susan went on. “He thinks she took the small diamonds too. He thinks she stole them when she worked for De Beers. He means to bring all this into the open in his book whether he has a chance to talk to you or not.”

  “Then I shall talk to him first.” Her father’s blue-veined hand slapped the desk before him and for an instant she saw him as she remembered him from her childhood—a physically powerful, forceful man, of whom many were afraid. Including, sometimes, herself and her mother.

  Without intending to, she had favored Cornish’s cause. She had changed her father’s mind about seeing him. And perhaps this was for the best. There was no one in a better position than Niklaas van Pelt himself to stop Cornish and prevent these fabrications about her mother from being published.