Stephanie

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• Winston Graham
  
• Dedication
  
• BOOK ONE
  
• Chapter One
  
• Chapter Two
  
• Chapter Three
  
• Chapter Four
  
• Chapter Five
  
• Chapter Six
  
• Chapter Seven
  
• BOOK TWO
  
• Chapter One
  
• Chapter Two
  
• Chapter Three
  
• Chapter Four
  
• Chapter Five
  
• Chapter Six
  
• Chapter Seven
  
• Chapter Eight
  
• Chapter Nine
  
• Chapter Ten
  
• Chapter Eleven
  
• Chapter Twelve
  
• BOOK THREE
  
• Chapter One
  
• Chapter Two
  
• Chapter Three
  
• Chapter Four
  
• Chapter Five
  
• Epilogue
  

Winston Mawdsley Graham OBE was an English novelist, best known for the series of historical novels about the Poldarks. Graham was born in Manchester in 1908, but moved to Perranporth, Cornwall when he was seventeen. His first novel,
The House with the Stained Glass Windows
was published in 1933. His first ‘Poldark' novel,
Ross Poldark
, was published in 1945, and was followed by eleven further titles, the last of which,
Bella Poldark
, came out in 2002. The novels were set in Cornwall, especially in and around Perranporth, where Graham spent much of his life, and were made into a BBC television series in the 1970s. It was so successful that vicars moved or cancelled church services rather than try to hold them when Poldark was showing.

Aside from the Poldark series, Graham's most successful work was
Marnie
, a thriller which was filmed by Alfred Hitchcock in 1964. Hitchcock had originally hoped that Grace Kelly would return to films to play the lead and she had agreed in principle, but the plan failed when the principality of Monaco realised that the heroine was a thief and sexually repressed. The leads were eventually taken by Tippi Hedren and Sean Connery. Five of Graham's other books were filmed, including
The Walking Stick
,
Night Without Stars
and
Take My Life
. Graham wrote a history of the Spanish Armadas and an historical novel,
The Grove of Eagles
, based in that period. He was also an accomplished writer of suspense novels. His autobiography,
Memoirs of a Private Man
, was published by Macmillan in 2003. He had completed work on it just weeks before he died. Graham was a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and in 1983 was honoured with the OBE.

To George Astley

My most grateful thanks to Dr David Jackson,
whose help and advice have been quite invaluable.

Also, at an earlier stage, to Dr Denis Hocking,
my friend for so many years.

The Portuguese colony of Goa was taken over by India in the spring of 1961. In 1974 the leading hotel group in India, observing the long stretches of unspoiled beach, the rich vegetation and the good climate of the recent possession, decided to put up a luxury hotel there. It was built on the site of one of the old Portuguese forts erected to protect the colony from Turks, Frenchmen, Englishmen, pirates and other undesirable visitors. There were also wells there, and it had been used as a watering post for sailing vessels calling in on the long voyage back to Portugal.

The hotel, built with elegance and good taste in such a way as to merge into the countryside, was a great success, and nine years later a number of spacious, self-contained luxury bungalows, each in an acre of garden, were added on the slopes above the hotel. On 13 April 1984, which was a Friday, in one of these superior bungalows, a man and a woman were making love.

It was four o'clock in the afternoon, the sun beat down out of a sky from which all the colour had been sapped, a fresh breeze was drawn in off the yellow Arabian Sea. The hotel flag fluttered tautly. A surf had grown up along the great flat arc of the beach, creating a fine mist so that one could only see about the first two miles of the lightly bronzed sand.

Presently the girl moved out of the air-conditioned bedroom, parting the lace curtains as she went to sit on the verandah. The man joined her and rang for tea. Out here the heat met them, but it was not overpowering; the breeze filtered through the eucalyptus trees and the palms, keeping the air warmly light.

They were silent for a while, content with savouring their mutual pleasure, having nothing more to say to each other than what in the passion of the moment had already been said.

A tall rather bony man with dark wiry hair receding at the temples, Errol Colton looked to be in his early forties but was in fact thirty-eight. He had a mobile, humorous, sophisticated face with an expression that suggested he had seen a lot of life and found most of it wryly amusing.

Stephanie Locke, who was twenty-one, also looked older, in spite of her slender, loose-jointed build. She was tall and pretty with a narrowly oval face, bright eyes and a quick and easy smile. When she ran, but only then, her knees seemed too close together. There was a vitality and a volatility about her which was not without a sense of strain, of nerves near the surface. Her fair hair, loose now, was normally done in a ponytail.

The sound of a car in the drive told them their tea was being brought up in a taxi from the hotel.

‘I could have made it here,' Stephanie murmured as the little dark-skinned waiter appeared coming up the pathway balancing a laden tray.

‘It's my view', Errol said, yawning, ‘ that you should never do anything you can get someone else to do for you.'

‘Except in bed,' she suggested.

‘Well, wench, I don't yet include that under the heading of a chore …'

The smiling waiter brought in two thermoses and sliced lime and sugar (and hot milk just in case they had changed their minds), and some biscuits and slices of plum cake. Errol signed, and the waiter bowed and, still smiling, left. She poured the tea. It was a peaceful moment. After the taxi had driven away, the only sound was the faint rustling of the wind.

He yawned again.

‘Sleepy?'

‘Not more than is physiologically normal. But it's too early for a nap, and life's too short.'

‘Race you to the end of the beach,' she suggested.

‘Uh-huh.' The beach was six miles long. ‘I might potter out and take some more shots.' Errol was a keen and expert photographer and had brought three cameras with him.

‘If you do,' she said, ‘I may stay in and write to Daddy. I owe him something more than a postcard.'

Errol squeezed some lime into his tea. ‘Give him my love.'

‘You don't even know him.'

‘The man who produced you must be worthy of affection … He knows
about
me, I suppose?'

‘Of course.'

‘And approves?'

In spite of their intimacy they had talked very little about their personal lives.

‘You've asked me before. I honestly don't
know.
I don't see much of him and … It's a different ball game from when he was young. Would you want your little Polly to play fast and loose?'

‘Not at her present age. But yes, it'll come to that, I suppose – always assuming that coming away on a holiday with me can be called playing fast and loose.'

‘More or less, by Daddy's standards. After all, you're a married man, old enough to be my uncle, and you mean me no good.'

Errol rubbed his ear. ‘Who knows what may come of it yet? After all, I bought you a brooch in Bombay. There can be worse wages of sin than that.'

‘It's
lovely.
Did I remember to say thank you for it?'

‘You certainly did.'

‘One thing I knew I'd forgotten. I should have said: “You shouldn't've.”' She had risen to get a scarf, and she stooped and kissed him. He wrapped his arm around her bare legs.

‘You weren't exactly innocent when I met you.'

‘As I've told you often enough, there was nothing serious for me until I saw you blowing on the horizon like a …'

‘A sperm whale,' he suggested.

She giggled. ‘Yes.'

When tea was finished he took off his thin black Chinese silk robe and put on a shirt and a pair of shorts. She lit a cigarette and rested her bare feet on the verandah rail.

‘He's a cripple, you've told me.'

‘Who? Daddy? Yes.'

‘How does he manage to write those articles on gardening if he can't do any gardening himself?'

‘Oh, he can. He buzzes around in his electric chair. And he's always potting and repotting things on the bench – or superintending planting … But d'you mean you've actually
read
articles by him?'

‘I've seen 'em. And didn't he do a thing on television?'

‘Last year. A short series.'

‘I think I looked in once – before I ever met you. Suzanne was watching. She likes that sort of thing. Dark-haired, rather stout. You must take after your mother.'

‘He gets fat because he can't take exercise – it's simple enough. But yes, my mother was blonde.'

‘She left him, you said. I've often thought that must take a bit of doing – walking out on a cripple.'

‘I wish you wouldn't call him a cripple – he's just lame, has to use a chair, that's all.'

‘Well, call it what you will. She left a lame man with two young daughters.'

‘He was only slightly lame at the time – walked with a stick. But yes, she fell in love with this Brazilian. It was the big thing in her life, apparently. Daddy told her she was free to go.'

‘In spite of you and – what is it? – Teresa. In spite of you and Teresa? I call that a bit thick.'

‘Don't you think you should come off your morality plinth, Errol? After all, you're spending a lot of money bringing a dumb little undergraduate to India and lavishing presents on her while your underprivileged wife languishes at home. And you're taking risks –'

‘What risks?'

‘You said your board of directors didn't approve of your mixing business with pleasure.'

‘Did I? Oh, to hell with that. Incidentally, I don't see Suzanne as at all underprivileged. She lives extravagantly and well and I spend most of my spare time with her when I'm at home.'