The House at Sandalwood (5 page)

Little streams had been cut away from the river to run between each cabin, their banks lined with flowers, often blooms I had never seen before. It was all picturesque, but sad and deserted. The scene made me think of so much of the art practiced and exhibited by the inmates of the minimum security sector of the women’s prison. Their work was so often cheerful and bright and happy. But unfortunately, when I was an inmate there, the twittering buyers had always wanted gloomy, downbeat art, “the way it really is,” as more than one of the ladies remarked, her diamond-studded hands momentarily blinding me. The deserted cabins before me spoke all too clearly of “the way it was.”

It was darker further inside the grove and after glancing in at two more cabins, I looked back through the trees. Seeing that Moku must have given me up, I decided to take a shortcut back toward Sandalwood, across the next little footbridge. Surely, Deirdre would have returned to her home by now.

The cabin across the bridge was one of those Stephen Giles must have worked on recently. It looked quite charming surrounded by hibiscus, tiny pastel-colored orchids growing wild and a lovely golden-blossoming tree. The scent of the plumeria was almost overpowering. I made my way under the window, through underbrush that, however exotic, could have used some pruning, and noticed that recent work had been done on this and the next cabin. The windows were in and the rooftops with their simulated grass-hut look were very realistic without being impractical. I turned, went back a little way up the steps to see if I could discern any of Stephen Giles’s touches in the interior. The moon was out by this time, but it was not high enough to be of much help. I stepped inside, but realized I would be unable to see anything except especially dark bundles of rags and canvas left by workmen in the far corners of the living room. I was just turning back to the steps when one of those shadowy bundles moved. The floor creaked.

I must have cried out. I remember I had visions of ancient
kahunas
cursing this ground and of ghastly dead warriors rising up, angered at my intrusion. In my panic I backed against the door frame, staring. The bundle in the far corner unfolded, was thrown off. I heard Deirdre’s voice, still so oddly young and innocent, before I could make out her face. She rushed toward me, one sandaled foot still caught in the canvas that dragged behind her.

“Judy! I can’t believe it ... I was never so glad to see anybody! It
is
you, Aunt Judith?”

I had been so dumbfounded by her resurrection from what looked like an old gunny sack that she threw herself into my arms and I found myself hugging her before I could see her. She was crying. I felt my cheeks wet with her tears, and my own.

“Of course, it is! I came as soon as I could, dear. You knew I would, didn’t you?”

“It was awful. I was so scared!”

She came out of the cabin with me, holding tight to my hand as she had done when I found her in her childhood, after she had run off. The repetition of this action of many years ago was disturbing to me. She shouldn’t be doing this sort of thing any more.

“Deirdre! For heaven’s sake! You didn’t have to see those Berringers. You are a grown-up, a married woman. You needn’t see anyone you don’t want to see. Your husband will handle it if you can’t. Although, it’s better now to begin to handle problems yourself, rather than leave them for others. You really should have begun long ago. Dear, do you want people to think you are a coward?”

Deirdre looked around anxiously as we hurried through the Hawaiians’ sacred grove toward the welcome open space in front of Sandalwood, where the rising moon cast the
emu,
the gently bending stalks of orchids, and even the unkempt grass in long shadow.

“It was awful in that cabin. I kept very still so nothing would find me. I don’t care what people think. I
am
a coward!”

I laughed and after a momentary hesitation, Deirdre giggled.

“Yes. Stephen wouldn’t let them hurt me. He’s so wonderful. Have you met him?”

“He was very kind.”

“But he has to be away all the time. Whenever I need him, he’s always got some stupid meeting or other.”

I had no way of knowing how true her complaints might be and felt that I wouldn’t help anyone if I took sides in a matter between husband and wife. The best tactic, I thought, would be to play down complaints of both Deirdre and her husband unless I felt Deirdre was being seriously harmed by Stephen Giles’s deep devotion to his business. We saw Moku coming back from beyond the unfinished cabins in the little grove. He must have circled the
heiau
while I wandered among the cabins. I was looking in that direction and Deirdre startled me by clutching my arm tightly.

“She’s going to be angry.”

I saw Ilima’s imposing figure on the veranda. She seemed absolutely without expression, but her presence itself was forbidding, even to me.

“You must remember that is your house, Deirdre,” I told the girl. “Yours and, of course, Mr. Giles’s. It isn’t necessary to be rude for you to stand straight, like Ilima. Just hold your head up, smile, be polite, and give your orders to your servants.”

“But she isn’t a servant.”

“Then,” I reminded her, “she shouldn’t frighten you, because she’s just a person standing on your veranda, after all.”

This seemed to be an entirely new notion to her. I took advantage of her temporary confidence to ask her, “Why did you hide in the
heiau
if it frightened you so? Wouldn’t it have been better to stay in your room until Mr. Berringer left? Not,” I added, “that I approve of your running away like a child.”

She sighed. “It was nice when I was a child, except for mother being the way she was, of course. But I hid in the cabin because I knew Ilima and Moku wouldn’t go in after me. They see ghosts and ancient gods there. They’re more afraid than I am.”

Her persistence in pretending to be that child I had loved and cared for during the periods when we couldn’t locate her mother puzzled me more than anything else that had happened since my arrival in Honolulu.

Because Deirdre was so obviously afraid of the massive and queenly Ilima, it pleased me that she went up to the veranda and stood her ground, saying to the older woman, “I’m awfully sorry I kept you here so long, only I was looking over my husband’s work in the
heiau
. My aunt will be my housekeeper now.”

I whispered, “Thank her.”

But it was too late. Ilima stepped down to the grass, nodded slightly to both of us and strode off along the path across the island to her village on the far shore. The queen had retired with all of her honor and dignity.

Almost at once Deirdre seemed to forget the hours she had spent like a cowering animal in the unfinished cabin. She rushed into the house complaining that she was starved.

“Michiko Nagata’s Korean Uncle Yee is the cook, you know,” she said. “And a wonder. He terrifies us all, even my husband. Yee! Where are you?” she yelled and then tried to duck behind me.

The serious, severe face of Mr. Yee appeared in the dining room doorway as I was trying, unobtrusively, to get Deirdre on her way upstairs to bathe and change before dinner. We were both covered with dust, leaves, dirt, and possibly insects as well.

Yee asked, “Mrs. Stephen will take a tray in her room?” He was speaking to me as if Deirdre had mysteriously vanished. He added, “It is usual, on nights after there is this long delay.”

I agreed and we went on. Nelia Perez, a pretty Filipino college girl, met us on the upper floor.

“Good evening, Mrs. Steve. Your bath water is ready. Nice and hot. You want to jump in?” She glanced at Deirdre’s long, disheveled chestnut hair, and nodded to me. I released my arm as gently as possible from Deirdre’s tight grasp, and said cheerfully, “I’ll see you later, dear,” and went into my room.

I felt mentally exhausted as well as physically tired. Every bone and muscle was weak as water. I fell into the big, comfortable chair by the little round rosewood table, and closed my eyes momentarily. I still didn’t know, or wouldn’t admit to myself that my body was actually less tired than my spirit. I had known something was very wrong here, but I had thought and still told myself it was a physical problem of some kind that could be rectified by a little common sense.

Deirdre was simply new to her position as the wife of an important landowner. She was young. She would grow into her position—I thought it would only take patience. I decided I must explain that to her husband. Fortunately, he was a man one could talk to, directly and to the point. He didn’t seem unreasonable.

Sitting here taking it easy wasn’t going to help matters. I took the clothes out of my suitcase and hung them in the small but adequate closet, reflecting that there wasn’t much I owned that would be useful in the humid sultry weather of the Islands. At least I wasn’t penniless. I had a small income that would take care of most of my wants, and then too, Stephen Giles had insisted that I must have a reasonable salary, as he called it.

I ran warm water and bathed in the huge bathroom, loving the old and wonderfully big tub. Then I slipped on a violet chiffon caftan of several layers that I had bought in Los Angeles before my flight. This restored to me something of the femininity that I felt I had lost during the long years past, and when my dinner tray was brought to me by the small Japanese house woman, I felt luxurious and contented, assuring myself that everything would be straightened out in no time. I would soon be able to think about the rest of my life, where I would go, what I would do...

I had no idea what I would do. Lately, I had not thought beyond my release and the settlement of my niece’s problems.

“
Mahimahi
. You will like, please,” the Japanese house woman explained. “Very good fish. And Island spinach. A little
poi.
So health. Very good health. Coconut pudding. Tea.”

I thanked her and she shuffled away. She wore a
haole
dress but her small feet were cushioned in Japanese
get as.
She was right about the dinner. It was delicious and the
mahimahi
, as prepared by Mrs. Nagata’s uncle, was superb. When someone knocked an hour later, I assumed it was the Japanese woman, come to take my tray. I called out casually.

“Come in,” I said and then scrambled up in disarray when Stephen Giles walked in, impetuous and positive, apparently never having asked himself if my equally spontaneous “come in” would be for him. In spite of my annoyance I was also amused. He and Deirdre were a great pair—there was at this moment something of the confident boy about this very masculine male.

He saw me reach out toward the open closet for a robe that would look a little less obvious than this sexy business I was wearing. But as he watched me, I gave up the attempt. He was smiling a mischievous, warm smile. It was not difficult to see why Deirdre adored him.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m afraid I have the bad habit of walking in anywhere and at any time. They tell me my manners are no better when I’m working out labor problems. Do you suppose that’s why I have so much trouble persuading the ILU to see things my way?”

He seemed remarkably persuasive to me, but then, this persuasive power probably would be more effective on females.

Watch it, I thought ... and watch yourself, Judith Cameron. You aren’t going to help Deirdre by falling in love with her husband...

Four

I regained my calm and launched into the most important problem we had in common.

“Deirdre went for a long walk this afternoon and I decided to join her. I’m afraid it made us late for dinner. That was why she ate in her room. She must have been terribly disappointed to miss having dinner with you, but I am sure she didn’t know you would be home.”

“It was a last-minute thing. We had a breakthrough on a couple of points and about that time I received a call from here ... I thought Deirdre might be in trouble.”

“No. She’s fine. Or was an hour ago.” I wondered who had called him. Probably Ilima Moku. I was sorry about it—I had hoped he wouldn’t find out.

He stood there a minute looking at me with his arms crossed in a formidable way, and I couldn’t imagine what on earth he was thinking, or if he really saw me. I didn’t move a muscle. He said finally, “Have you gotten settled yet?”

I said I had. “And I really should be downstairs getting acquainted with the staff. I’m afraid I was so comfortable here, I ...”

“Don’t be so damned humble!” He ordered me so sharply and so unexpectedly, I was roused to a fury that surprised even me.

“I didn’t know it was in my contract that I should not be
humble! What else is there in my unwritten contract that I am forbidden to do? Like losing my temper?”

He crossed his arms, looked far less formidable and then laughed. “A red-headed Scot! I know them well. May I sit down?”

“I beg your pardon. Did you want to speak with me about the work here?”

He pulled up the small chair from the French dresser and straddled the delicate back of the chair, facing me as I returned to my own comfortable armchair.

“Miss Cameron ... that is to say—Judith.”

“Yes?”

“You knew my wife quite well as a child. Probably much better than her parents knew her.”

“Her father, my older brother, died in a prison camp outside Pyongyang in North Korea.”

He nodded. “You must have been very young then.”

Twenty-one years ago. And yet, as a twelve-year-old bobby-soxer then, I took my promise to my brother very seriously. My father had died on Guadalcanal when I was three, and after my brother died almost ten years later, mother seemed to lose her frail grasp on life. She couldn’t believe that life could ever be good again, and when I was eighteen, she was gone, dead in less than ten days after a simple cold turned into pneumonia. But I had learned to manage the house, the cleaning, the cooking, even the hiring of mother’s nurses and the occasional cooks who came and went when we could afford them. Nearly half the time during those years, Wayne’s widow, a stunning blonde, had left Deirdre with mother and me. This was especially true after Deirdre’s bad attack of rheumatic fever when she was five, which left her with a damaged heart that had never quite grown strong again. After mother’s death came the terrible times when Deirdre’s own mother, now an alcoholic with little control over her actions, made life miserable and terrifying for Deirdre and, eventually, for me.