by M. M. Kaye
Julia had not liked India. Alastair, a junior officer in an Indian Cavalry Regiment, knew too many people and had too many friends there, and Julia was jealous of anyone and anything that distracted his attention from her. It was there that she first tried out a gambit that was in time to wreck her peace of mind and all prospects of a happily married life. At any party, picnic, ball or social gathering where Alastair appeared to be enjoying himself, she would develop a headache or feel suddenly unwell, and ask to be taken home.
It became her way of demanding his attention and demonstrating her possession of him, and satisfied some hungry, jealous, grasping instinct in her that could not bear to see him entertained or interested by anything or anyone but herself. She loved him with a bitter, jealous love that drove her to almost pathological extremes of behaviour in order to prove to herself that she had at least the power to wound him, and which only served to drive him further from her. The nerves and ill-health that had at first been imaginary, she pandered to and coaxed into reality. And there had been no children to direct her energies and emotions into more normal channels. The plumpness which had been pleasing in youth had turned in her thirties to fat, and the uncharitable were quick to decide that it was only his wife’s money that kept Alastair Blaine from running off with some younger and more glamorous charmer. Not that gossip had ever been able to name one. Everyone liked Alastair, but despite his wife’s unreasonable jealousy no one could accuse him of taking any particular interest in any other woman, and he had perhaps paid as much attention to Amanda Derington as he had ever been known to pay to anyone.
At the moment he was dancing with Persis Halliday, and Persis, slim and spectacular in flame-coloured chiffon, was flirting with him with a deliberate and malicious ostentation that was undoubtedly aimed at annoying his wife.
‘I can only hope that Persis changes her mind about going to Cyprus,’ murmured Amanda’s aunt, watching Mrs Halliday with a troubled frown. ‘Julia isn’t going to like it a bit, and she really does need a holiday. The heat has been very trying and she is not at all fit.’
‘You mean she’s too fat,’ said Amanda with the callousness of youth and a twenty-two-inch waist. ‘If she took a bit more exercise, instead of sipping all that diluted lemon juice, she’d feel far better. Who are these people she and Alastair are staying with in Cyprus?’
‘The Normans. He’s Alastair’s first cousin, and next in line to inherit Tetworth if Alastair doesn’t come up with any children—which seems highly likely at this late date. I met them when I was over there last year. They have a fascinating house in Kyrenia. I rather think that Claire Norman is delicate—lungs probably—and that is why they have to live in a warm climate. They must have plenty of money, as George Norman does nothing. Julia tells me that they’ll be crossing on the same boat as you are, as they’ve been staying with friends in Alex. You’ll probably be seeing quite a lot of them.’
‘I do hope not,’ said Amanda feelingly. ‘Not if it means seeing much more of Mrs Blaine. The proper place for her is flat on her back on some psychiatrist’s couch being de-complexed. You can’t blame Mrs Halliday for trying to take a rise out of her—she’s been consistently rude all evening. That’s no way to keep a husband!’
‘When you have acquired one of your own, Mandy, you will be able to show us how it should be done,’ said the Brigadier dryly.
Amanda laughed and made a face at him. ‘If you really want to know, darling, I’ve decided to be a spinster.’
‘What? Do you mean to say that in all this seething mob of males you see nothing that attracts your eye?’
‘Only one,’ said Amanda reflectively. ‘Present company excepted, of course.’
‘Ah!’ said the Brigadier. ‘That champagne you were referring to a moment or two ago. Don’t tell me that young Toby has at last succeeded in making a dent in your affections?—where is he by the way?’
‘He had to rush off and turn out a guard, or something equally martial,’ said Amanda. ‘He’ll be back. No, Toby isn’t my idea of champagne, poor lamb.’
‘Not Andrew Carron I hope?—or is it young Haigh? or the Plumbly boy or—no it can’t be Major Cotter! I won’t believe it of you.’
‘It isn’t anyone you know,’ said Amanda regretfully. ‘In fact it isn’t anyone I know either.’
She indicated by a brief gesture of the hand a lone gentleman who was lounging in a chair on the terrace just beyond the nearest door that led out of the ballroom, his long legs stretched out before him and his hands deep in the pockets of a pair of burnt-orange slacks of the type worn by Breton fishermen.
‘Good God!’ said the Brigadier, revolted. ‘The Artist?’
‘That’s right,’ agreed Amanda. ‘Don’t you think he looks rather intriguing?’
‘No I do not. Needs a hair-cut! Where did you meet the feller?’
‘I didn’t. I mean I haven’t. I’ve only seen him here and there. And as I’m off to Cyprus on Monday, I don’t suppose I shall ever meet him now. A pity. He looks precisely my cup of tea.’
‘You are mixing your drinks,’ observed the Brigadier, hitching his chair round so as to obtain a better view. ‘He probably wears sandals and manicures his toenails and thinks Picasso is terrific.’
‘Well so do I, if it comes to that.’
‘Tacha!’ said the Brigadier. ‘All you women are alike. Hand you a lot of nice clean-living normal chaps on a platter, and you won’t look at ’em! But you fall over your feet at the sight of the first long-haired blighter who dabbles in art. What’s he doing here anyway?’
‘Painting the pyramids,’ sighed Amanda’s aunt. ‘They will do it!’ She turned an affectionate smile upon her niece: ‘You are quite right, Mandy. Such a change from chlorinated drinking water or gin and lime. I must get to know him at once.’
‘What on earth are you talking about?’ demanded the Brigadier, bewildered.
‘Champagne, of course,’ said Amanda’s aunt. ‘So much more exciting and stimulating than—well, beer.’ She rose to her feet in a swirl of grey draperies and turned towards the door.
‘Muriel!’ said the Brigadier, scandalized, ‘even at your age you cannot go accosting strange men!’
‘Watch me,’ said Amanda’s aunt, and left them.
It was perhaps half an hour later that her niece, leaving the ballroom for the cooler air of the terrace, was hailed by her aunt.
‘Amanda dear, come over here. I want to introduce you to Steven Howard. Mr Howard—my niece, Amanda Derington.’
Mr Howard rose and Amanda held out her hand and found herself looking up into a pair of coolly observant hazel eyes that held a curious glint of speculative interest. There was no trace of admiration in that level gaze, or any recognition of the fact that Miss Derington was an exceptionally pretty girl. Only that oddly speculative interest.
Brown hair … light brown eyes … sun-browned face … thirtyish; he isn’t really good-looking, thought Amanda confusedly: his face is out of drawing. But that’s what makes it so intriguing …
A muscle twitched at the corner of Mr Howard’s mouth and Amanda suddenly awoke to the fact that her hand was still in his and that she had been studying his face for a full minute. She snatched her hand away, blushed vividly, and was instantly furious with herself and—illogically—with Steven Howard.
‘Mr Howard is an artist. He paints,’ said Amanda’s aunt helpfully. ‘He is collecting material for an Exhibition in the autumn.’
‘Oh,’ said Amanda briefly.
Mr Howard said: ‘I am afraid that your aunt gives me credit for more zeal than I possess. To tell the truth, I find art an admirable excuse for avoiding work and loafing around in the sun.’ His voice was slow and pleasant and contained the hint of a laugh.
Amanda said: ‘Really?’ in the tone of one who is not amused, and the band launched into ‘La Vie en Rose’.
‘I’m sorry I can’t ask you to dance,’ said Mr Howard, ‘but as you see, I am improperly dressed. Perhaps some other tim
e____?’
‘I shan’t be here,’ said Amanda flatly. ‘I’m leaving on Monday. Toby, isn’t this our dance?’
She turned abruptly away and left him, and when the dance was over and she and Toby returned to the terrace, he was gone.
‘But I thought you wanted to meet him, Mandy!’ said Amanda’s aunt plaintively. ‘Why did you snub the poor man after I’d gone to all that trouble?’
‘I don’t know,’ admitted Amanda ruefully. ‘Because I felt I’d make an exhibition of myself, I suppose. Or else because I don’t like being laughed at. And he wasn’t in the least snubbed. He was amused—and I don’t think I like him at all.’
‘Oh well,’ said Amanda’s aunt, ‘I don’t suppose you’re ever likely to see him again.’
But in this she was entirely wrong. Amanda was to see him again not five minutes after Julia died.
2
The decks of the S.S. Orantares, which was due to leave Port Said for Limassol, were hot and crowded, and the party from Fayid had taken refuge in the lounge where they had turned on all the fans and ordered iced drinks.
They had been joined there by Mr and Mrs Norman, who had arrived from Alexandria earlier in the day.
Claire Norman was a petite, small-boned and magnolia-skinned woman who possessed a pair of wide grey eyes fringed with silky black lashes, and a cloud of short dark curls cut like a child’s. She was not particularly pretty, but her lack of inches and look of slender delicacy somehow suggested the drooping fragility of a snowdrop bending before a harsh wind, and managed to make every other woman appear, by comparison, buxom and oversized. She owned in addition a sweet, soft little voice, and her beautifully cut dress of pale green linen, small white hat and the faint scent of lily-of-the-valley that clung about her, strongly emphasized the First-Flower-of-Spring motif.
Her husband, George Norman, appeared by contrast almost aggressively solid and beefy as he fussed about his tiny wife like some large and over-anxious St Bernard dog. His square, homely face was burnt brick-red by the sun and his thick brown hair was streaked with grey, and he looked completely out of place in the hot, garish and cosmopolitan setting of the crowded lounge. One felt instinctively that he would have been more at home wearing old tweeds and a hat with salmon flies stuck into the band, drinking draught beer at some English country pub, rather than wearing thin tropical duck and accepting an iced gin sling from a coffee-coloured gentleman in a red tarboosh.
‘Oh, this heat!’ sighed Claire Norman, ‘I’m exhausted!’
‘Claire tires so easily,’ explained George Norman to the assembled company. ‘Darling, don’t you think you should go and lie down? It’s probably a lot cooler in the cabin.’
‘And leave dear Julia?—and Alastair—just when we’ve met? Of course not! Why I’ve been longing to see them again. It’s been such years!’
‘January,’ said Julia blightingly. ‘Six months.’
‘So it is. But it seems like years. It’s dreadful the way one misses one’s real friends…’
‘____and before that, September,’ continued Julia as though Mrs Norman had not spoken.
‘And now again. It’s so wonderful to see you Julia—and you too Alastair…’ Claire Norman laid a small white hand caressingly on Alastair Blaine’s lean brown one and Amanda saw him flush, and saw too that for a brief moment there was a queer, unreadable look on his face.
Julia put down her glass with a grimace of disgust and said: ‘They’ve put sugar in it! Alastair, make that man get me another. I particularly said only lemon and water, not lemon squash. They don’t listen!’
Major Blaine dutifully hailed a passing steward and Claire said: ‘It’s so good of you both to come and stay with us, Julia. I get so lonely in Cyprus—so far from home and friends.’
‘Then why stay there?’ demanded Julia.
Claire Norman drew a soft, quivering breath and smiled wistfully. ‘The doctors,’ she said gently. ‘They tell me that I could never … But don’t let’s talk about me. Let’s talk about something more interesting. You! You’re looking so well Julia darling. I only wish I could put on a little weight too. George makes me drink pints of cream and eat pounds of butter, but it’s no good. I cannot seem to gain an ounce. Daddy always said I was a changeling—too small for a mortal.’
Persis choked into her gin and lime, dabbed her mouth with a vast chiffon handkerchief and muttered something into its folds that sounded suspiciously like ‘Teeny weeny me!’ and Amanda’s dimples were suddenly visible. She turned hurriedly away, and looking out of the window said: ‘We must be going to sail. They seem to be getting the gangway in.’
There was a burst of shouting and invective from over the side as two more passengers, late arrivals who had almost succeeded in missing the boat, scrambled up the gangway and stood panting and breathless on the deck.
They were an ill-matched couple. The attractive, dark-haired woman in the pink linen suit was as smartly and expensively dressed as Persis, and her white shoes and gloves, despite the heat and the coal dust, were fresh and spotless. She carried a small white leather dressing case in one hand, and what appeared to be an easel in the other. Her companion, by contrast, appeared hot, grubby and dressed with deliberate carelessness. He wore a pair of exceedingly dirty blue linen slacks topped by an orange sports shirt that could also have done with a wash, and sported a scanty ginger beard and a black beret.
Artist, thought Amanda; and was suddenly reminded of Steven Howard. No one meeting Mr Howard for the first time could have typed him, she thought. He had, it is true, worn brightly coloured slacks; but then a good many members of the Sailing Club affected them too, and there was nothing else about him to suggest his profession. He might have been anything: Tinker, tailor, soldier, sailor, mused Amanda; and wondered why it was that she should remember everything about him, and every line of his face, so clearly?
The blatantly artistic gentleman on the deck dropped two suitcases and an untidy paper parcel containing canvases, and said crossly and as though continuing a previous conversation:
‘Of course I declared them. What a country! Not a tube of usable paint in the place. Students’ Water Colours—Bah! Put that down, you frightful coolie! Put it down—it’s not dry yet! God in heaven____!’
George Norman, his attention attracted by the howl of fury from the deck, stood up and peered through the window over Amanda’s head.
‘I thought so,’ he said. ‘It’s that chap Potter.’
Claire turned quickly. ‘Lumley? Why, whatever can he have been doing over here?’
‘Painting the pyramids, I suppose,’ said her husband in an unconscious echo of Amanda’s aunt.
‘Tell him to come in and join us,’ said Claire. She turned to Major Blaine: ‘You remember Lumley Potter, don’t you Alastair? He has a studio-flat in Famagusta. You met him once or twice at our house when you and Julia were staying with us last year. I think I took you over to see his paintings.’
‘You did,’ said Julia. ‘Lumley! That wasn’t what his mother christened him. I met a Mrs Deadon in Cairo last winter who knew all about Mr Potter. I’m not surprised that he decided to settle in Cyprus. As for his paintings, I could do as well with my eyes shut—better! If that’s art____’
‘But Julia darling, it is Art’—Claire pronounced it as though it had a capital A. ‘You mustn’t be conventional, darling. Lumley doesn’t paint what ordinary, conventional people see. He paints the soul of a place—the spiritual aroma.’
‘Spiritual garlic you mean!’ snapped Julia. ‘Don’t be such a humbug, Claire! The man’s a flop, a failure and a fake, and you know it. He can’t paint well, so he dresses himself up in what is practically fancy dress, grows a beard, talks a lot of rubbish and paints as badly as he can in the hope of fooling a lot of credulous artistic snobs into thinking he’s a genius. And so I told him!’
‘Yes, I remember,’ said Claire dryly. ‘And lost him a great deal of money by doing so. That new-rich Australian couple had practically
bought eight of his canvases, but when they heard you they took fright and backed out. However Alastair at least did not agree with you. He bought one—“Sea Green Cypriots”—didn’t you Alastair?’
‘Only because he felt he had to, to make up for the Blaggs backing out of buying those dreadful daubs,’ said Julia unpleasantly.
‘Oh darling! You do misjudge Alastair so. He has a real, deep-down feeling for truth in Art.’
‘I understand Alastair perfectly, thank you Claire,’ said Julia acidly.
Alastair Blaine flushed uncomfortably and Persis rose with determination: ‘Well, I don’t know about you, but I guess I’ve had all that I can take of the ship’s gin,’ she remarked cheerfully. ‘Alastair honey, how about leaving the girls to sort out your artistic sensibilities while you escort me on deck? I’d like to take a slant at the waterfront before we pull out. Will you spare him, Julia?’
Major Blaine rose with alacrity and assisted Persis to collect her handbag and gloves, while Claire Norman watched them with a sudden frown on her white forehead. After a moment she turned abruptly to her husband and said: ‘George dear, I asked you to call Lumley.’
George Norman looked embarrassed and spoke with obvious hesitation: ‘Er–well–I thought perhaps I had better not. He had someone with him.’
‘Oh?’ Claire Norman’s soft voice sharpened a little. ‘Who was it? Anyone we know?’
‘Anita.’
‘Who?’ said Major Blaine, turning sharply. ‘But I thought____’ He glanced at Amanda, but did not finish the sentence, for Persis took his arm and said: ‘Let’s go,’ and they turned away together and disappeared through the doorway.
‘Anita!’ said Claire Norman. There were suddenly two bright patches of colour in her pale cheeks. Her small mouth tightened into a hard narrow line, and for a moment it was as if the frail, pliant snowdrop had been transformed into something made of steel.