Dorothy Eden (16 page)

But the thing remained: she was lying in the house of her future husband, and presently he would be tapping at the door and calling possessively, ‘Good morning, darling!’ And there would be discussions about the wedding. Dundas would want it to be soon because Margaretta would be going away. And she herself temporarily had no job and very little money, so a quick marriage was a solution to her future.

You little fool! Alice told herself silently. Here you are with the security and adoration you have been craving, and now you’re not happy about it. You’re caught in a web of fate. Those could be Camilla’s words. But Camilla would extricate herself from any kind of web, where you, you dope, will play honourably.

The roar of an engine and a sharp honking told her the bus was approaching. She leapt out of bed and stood with her face pressed against the window watching down the dahlia-bordered drive, the bus going past. It was too far to see Felix waving his farewell. The honks sounded derisive, as if they were saying, ‘You’ve asked for it, so now we leave you to your fate.’ She didn’t even know if he were coming back on another trip, or if he left tonight or tomorrow for Australia. He had asked her to go with him, not because he still loved her, but because he had a conscience about her.

That was what Alice told herself fiercely as, in company with the trickling rain down the window-pane, the tears slid down her cheeks. Felix was gone, leaving her to the gentle suffocation of Dundas’s love.

Someone was singing. She had not realized what a silent house this was until there was this unaccustomed sound. It was Margaretta singing loudly and curiously defiantly as she went with a mop down the passages.

She paused at Alice’s door and said, ‘I wouldn’t bother much with the rooms next to mine. They’re only storerooms. Daddy keeps his old photographic plates and things in them, and there’s a lot of junk. I could never make him throw anything away, and I don’t expect you will be able to either. So it just gets dumped and gathers dust up there.’

It was as if she were the successful applicant for a job; she was Margaretta’s successor, nothing more. And Margaretta was singing because she was escaping. In fact Margaretta was being extraordinarily vociferous, almost as if something were driving her to talk. Once, when she had been a child staying in her aunt’s house, Alice had accidentally broken a Ming bowl that her aunt had valued very much. She had been afraid of her aunt and afraid to confess. She had talked tirelessly about everything in her childish world before at last she was worn out and the confession came tumbling out of her. Margaretta, she realized, was behaving in the same way. Margaretta had to talk rather than think. Was there something on her mind other than the excitement of at last realizing her ambition to become a doctor?

‘I’ll go back to the schoolhouse today,’ Alice heard herself saying a little breathlessly.

Margaretta lifted her heavy eyebrows.

‘Is there something wrong?’

‘No. I’m well enough to go back, that’s all.’

‘You shouldn’t really be up,’ Margaretta said judicially. ‘After concussion you’re supposed to rest. You’ve been up too soon.’

Perhaps it was the concussion that made her so jumpy and nervous. Alice found herself snapping at Margaretta, ‘Yesterday nothing would have pleased you better than if I’d got up and gone. What has made you change your mind so completely?’

Margaretta’s slow painful blush spread over her broad face. She gripped the mop tightly and began vigorously mopping down the passage.

‘The damage is done now,’ she said. Suddenly she flung round. ‘And don’t ask me why. I did what I thought I should.’ Her forehead was creased as if she were going to cry. She moved on rapidly, and at that moment Dundas came up the stairs. His grey hair was ruffled boyishly; his eyes, colourless and placid, had the slumberous look of a lazy tiger. (Now she was always going to think of his eyes being like a tiger’s.)

‘Good morning, girls. What is Margaretta being heroic about? Do you know, all her life she has had this romantic notion of saving lives. I think it must be the drama of the operating table that appeals to her. Well, chicken’—he gave Margaretta a light pat on the head—‘Alice and I wish you well on your odyssey. But you haven’t started on it yet, and I think at this moment breakfast is indicated.’

As Margaretta, without a word, turned to go downstairs, Dundas took Alice in his arms. Through the thin material of her housecoat she could feel his hands, strong and square, pressing into her flesh, holding her prisoner. Loud in her ears she could hear the derisive honks of Felix’s horn and, after that first instinctive stiffening, she forced herself to relax, and to return Dundas’s embrace. Dear Dundas, who was kind and who was going to treasure her…

All through breakfast it wasn’t herself nibbling pieces of toast and making polite answers to Dundas’s conversation. It was a girl in a dream. She said yes and no automatically, and smiled serenely, and all the time behind her dreamy façade her mind was working furiously. She had to eliminate one thing at a time. The most important thing was to get to Hokitika to see that parson whom Felix had talked about. Then she had to go back to the Thorpes to find out what went on there. Tottie was the person to see. Tottie must tell her why she had given that whispered warning to lock her door. She would go in the daytime. There was nothing of which to be afraid while the sun shone.

If those sources yielded nothing then she could make enquiries at the hotel as to whether any guests had left to fly to Australia in the last week or so.

(If Felix suspected that that letter were faked, how could he walk out and leave the mystery unsolved? If the letter were a hoax, then the first one which she had found on Camilla’s mantelpiece would be a hoax also, and something serious must have happened to Camilla. And she alone, with her small amount of courage, was left to find it out!)

‘I think it’s going to clear,’ Dundas was saying. ‘I might get some shots after all. When are you coming on the glacier with me, Alice?’

The clouds had parted and a thin ray of sunshine lay across the tablecloth. The birds were starting to sing. Simultaneously Alice felt her spirits rising. She would be able to get out and accomplish something today after all.

‘Oh, one day soon,’ she answered Dundas. ‘Is it very difficult?’

‘Not at all. We’ll go up to Defiance Hut, stay there the night and take some shots at sunrise the next morning. I’ve been intending to do that for a long time.’

‘What a man says is easy is often astonishingly difficult,’ Alice observed to Margaretta. ‘Do you find the glacier easy?’

Margaretta’s eyes were on her plate. Her bent face had its closed brooding look.

‘I’ve never been on it,’ she said.

‘Not really?’ Alice was amazed. ‘But haven’t you wanted to?’

‘Actually that’s my fault,’ Dundas said. ‘When she was small I was nervous about her and wouldn’t allow her on the ice. It’s made her develop a phobia. She imagines the crevasses and can’t face them now.’

‘Are the crevasses bad?’ Alice asked.

‘Not until you get higher up. Of course, they can give one a nasty fall.’

‘You haven’t told Alice everything, Daddy,’ Margaretta said.

‘No.’ Dundas was silent for quite a long time. His eyes had their clear colourless look as if his mind were not behind them. But that was a fallacy, for when he spoke his voice was harsh, as if he were reliving an old tragedy. ‘The reason I wouldn’t allow Margaretta on the glacier when she was a child was because her mother died on it.’

‘Oh, how dreadful!’ Alice murmured, shocked.

‘She slipped down a crevasse. It shouldn’t have been fatal, but by the time one gets equipment to lift a person out—it was shock, mostly. We were with a party, but she had been nervous and got a bit behind. The guide had cut steps, but they’re inclined to get rubbed out after several people have gone over them. She slipped. I blame myself entirely. It wasn’t her first time on the glacier. But she had always been nervous and was trying to get over it.’

Dundas’s eyes came back to meet Alice’s. They gave an illusion of tenderness, because his mouth was tender. But really they were empty windows, waiting for that dark person to look out.

‘I had meant to tell you this, darling. You would be sure to hear it from another source if I didn’t.’

The words in Camilla’s diary were standing in front of Alice’s eyes.
I wonder if it’s true what they say about Dundas…
What did they say about him? That his wife’s death wasn’t an accident? Why did she imagine another person dwelt behind Dundas’s kind serene eyes?

‘How—how very sad for Margaretta,’ she murmured. ‘For you both.’

‘It’s all very long ago now,’ said Dundas in his gentle voice. ‘You’re not to think of it any more. Do you think, darling, that we might get married in that delightful little church that overlooks the glacier? It has a clear window over the altar giving a magnificent view of the mountains. With that purity outside, and you beside me…’

And all the time she would see that poor woman sliding, sliding down the ice-blue depths.

‘I have to shop before I can get married,’ Alice said hastily. ‘Lots of things—’

‘Of course, darling. I’m not hurrying you. I don’t mean tomorrow or next week.’

‘Margaretta has to have things, too.’ She was chattering now. ‘We must have a couple of days in town. I thought we might go tomorrow. Would tomorrow be all right?’

‘If you feel well enough, my dear.’

‘Of course I’m well enough. I’m completely recovered. I’ve never felt better.’ Of course she was well. If she were not, that treacherous other self who longed for love and comfort was likely to say things she didn’t mean, was likely to say meekly, ‘Yes, Dundas, I will marry you in the church at the glacier as soon as you wish’, when all the time what she meant was that she could never never never marry him.

If only there were someone to whom she could talk about all this. Suddenly she remembered that Dundas had said the new teacher was arriving at the schoolhouse yesterday. She would go over and make her acquaintance.

It was strange coming back to the little house set damply among the spreading ferns and crackling raupo bushes. She felt as though it were years ago that she had sat in the gloom among Camilla’s forgotten clothes and smelled the faint perfume that made her seem so mysteriously near.

There was the gash in the ngaio tree where the branch had come down in the storm. It was reassuring to know that the explanation for the blow on her head at least was true and had nothing to do with the door opening in the darkness behind her.

Her knock at the door was answered by a small erect woman who, with her rimless glasses, small sharp eyes and busy manner, was so typical of her profession that it was laughable. This middle-aged plain-faced woman whose pointed nose quivered at the tip was no Camilla, and for that reason she had an air of security about her that was reassuring.

Here, Alice knew instinctively, was an ally.

When the woman spoke her voice was doubly reassuring.

‘Why, what a pretty thing you are ! I do hope you’re the young lady Mr. Hill told me about.’

‘I expect I am,’ said Alice. ‘But why do you hope that?’

‘He’s going to marry you, isn’t he? He’s such a nice gentleman and so excited. So romantic, the pet. I hardly know whether I’ve come to teach school or to supervise a wedding. I’m Letty Wicks, as you will have guessed. But do come in. All your things are here. Are you going to stay with me till the wedding? Mr. Hill says your home is in England. He hopes you’ll remain with him and his daughter. He didn’t want me to stay in this house either. Really, it is a disgrace, too! But a schoolteacher’s salary doesn’t run to hotels, and I understand the last teacher made this place quite habitable. What a romance that was! The kettle’s boiling. You’ll have a cup of tea, won’t you? I always have a kettle on the boil. It’s so friendly, isn’t it? And the cat here, poor thing. Tell me, would any woman in her senses go away and leave her cat uncared for?’

Miss Wicks was like a kettle on the boil herself. But her spate of words ceased at last, and Alice, following her brisk figure into the kitchen, was able to say mildly, ‘There was a magpie, too. It talked, so it got killed.’

Miss Wicks swung round. The tip of her nose quivered madly.

‘My
dear
! What
are
you saying?’

‘I found it dead the other night. Dundas said it would have been killed in a fight, but I don’t agree. There have been too many other odd things.’

‘Goodness gracious!’ breathed Miss Wicks. She flung tea-leaves indiscriminately into the teapot and slopped boiling water over them. Her hand quivered almost as much as her thin tender nose-tip.

‘As a matter of fact, I knew there was something queer about that woman the way she’s left things in school. Her mind just wasn’t on her job. I suppose it was on this man she eloped with. Tell me, was his name Dalton?’

‘Dalton! Why do you ask that?’

‘There was a half-finished letter under her blotter. You know, those desk-blotter things. I was starting the new term with a clean piece of blotting-paper, and under the old piece there was this letter. I remember the words exactly:

Dear Dalton,

‘It’s just too generous of you about the fur coat. I don’t really think I should take it. After all, I gave you my word—’

‘Yes,’ said Alice eagerly. ‘Go on.’

‘That’s all there was. She never finished the letter, or else she wrote another and meant to tear this one up. But I hope she married this Dalton if he gave her a valuable present like that. It’s hardly playing the game if she didn’t.’

‘It was grey squirrel,’ said Alice slowly. ‘I always thought it was Dalton Thorpe who gave it to her. No, she didn’t marry him. And she went away without the coat. That’s another thing I couldn’t understand. Camilla was usually so mercenary.’

‘Goodness !’ exclaimed Miss Wicks. ‘Sit down and tell me all about it. Please! I adore a mystery.’

The telling of it brought it all back: the carnation-scented cottage in the rainy gloom; the yellow cat crying and Webster cocking his impudent head; the discovery of the fur coat; Katherine Thorpe’s visit; the Thorpes’ house, oddly luxurious for such an isolated spot; the punctured tyres; the whispered voice in the night; her crazy flight in the storm. She remembered the haven Dundas’s house had seemed when she had come back to consciousness, and suddenly her gratitude to Dundas came back, and she was happier, both in her feelings about him and for telling the whole story to a sympathetic listener.