The House on Flamingo Cay (10 page)

“Marvellous, thanks—but this is the part I’ve been really looking forward to. I hope you aren’t too busy to show me around a bit.” Her red lips parted in a provocative smile that showed off her beautiful teeth.

“I shouldn’t think so.” Stephen turned back to the others. “Let me introduce you to some of your fellow guests. This is Miss Valerie Langdon-Owen, Mrs. Stuyvesant.”

The Stuyvesants gave her the usual cordial American welcome, but although the girl acknowledged them all quite pleasantly, she at once turned back to Stephen and said, “Do come up and say hello to Mother and Daddy.”

He glanced at his watch. “All right.” Then, to the others, “Excuse me, will you?”

It was then that Sara happened to glance at her sister, and what she saw both startled and bewildered her. For Angela was unnaturally pale, and she was staring after Valerie Langdon-Owen with naked hatred in her eyes.

CHAPTER FOUR

“I THINK I’ll go up and take a shower, honey,” Mrs. Stuyvesant said to her son. “I feel kind of sandy.”

“Yes, I could do with one, too,” Angela agreed quickly. “We’ll see you later. Coming, Sara?”

As soon as they reached their room and Sara had locked the door, Angela hurled her beach-bag on to the bed and flung herself into a chair.

“If this isn’t my luck!” she exclaimed violently. “Everything was going beautifully, but now that that snooty little cat has turned up we might as well go straight home.”

“You know her? She didn’t seem to know you,” Sara said, mystified.

“I’ll say I know her,” Angela answered tersely. “And as soon as she takes her eyes off Stephen Rand for half a second, she’s sure to recognize me. If she didn’t just now, it was only because she’d never expect to find a salesgirl in these surroundings.”

“Who is she?”

Angela lit a cigarette. At one time she had smoked only after meals or during the evening, but ever since the drastic change in their lives her consumption had grown heavier. In the past two days she had been almost chain-smoking, and this sudden nervous addiction to the habit made Sara suspect that, for all her outward confidence, her sister was secretly edgy.

“She and her ghastly mother were two of our worst customers at the store,” she explained. “They ran quite a good account, but they were always such a damned nuisance that it was hardly worth the commission to get through a session with them. Even the buyer groaned when she saw them coming. Of all the people I’d least want to meet here, they top the poll!”

“Well, we needn’t have much to do with them just because they’re staying here,” Sara suggested encouragingly. “Apart from the Stuyvesants, we’ve hardly spoken to anyone.”

“You don’t know Mrs. Langdon-Owen,” Angela said bitterly. “Once they realize who I am, they’ll take a malicious pleasure in spreading it round the hotel.”

“What is there to spread? The fact that you worked in a shop? That’s nothing to be ashamed about. Why, lots of girls like Miss Langdon-Owen work in shops nowadays. I thought you had a deb in your department some time ago.”

“Yes, but she wasn’t there from necessity and she packed up as soon as the novelty wore off. Besides, the Stuyvesants don’t know that I worked—they think we’re a couple of debs.”

“You didn’t actually say so, did you?” Sara asked anxiously.

“Of course not, you idiot. But that’s what they think, and that’s what they would have gone on thinking if that awful Valerie creature hadn’t turned up.” She got up and began to pace restlessly about the room. “What you don’t seem to realize is that Connie may not be exactly a dreamboat, but he’s still a very good catch. Back in Minneapolis, he’s probably top target for every match-making mother within a hundred miles. So you can be quite sure he’s not short of girl friends. If he falls for me, it won’t be solely on the strength of my looks, but because I’ve a rarity value. You know how Americans like to buy up old English silver and porcelain and Jacobean staircases. Well, at the moment, the Stuyvesants see me in the same sort of light.”

“Oh, Angela, I wish you wouldn’t talk like that. You make yourself sound so cold-blooded and mercenary—and you know you aren’t really,” Sara protested distastefully.

Angela didn’t seem to hear her. She was staring at her reflection in the looking-glass, an expression of deep calculation making a faint line between her delicate fly-away eyebrows.

“Well, if they try to put a spoke in my wheel, they may find I’m more than a match for them,” she said, I half to herself. Then, turning to look at Sara, “I shouldn’t have thought you’d have been exactly delighted to meet that South Kensington siren. It’s very obvious why
she
wanted to come to Nassau.”

“What do you mean?”

“Oh, for Pete’s sake, Sara—are you blind? She’s crazy about Stephen.”

“I don’t see why that should worry me,” Sara said frigidly.

“So you’re really not interested in him? Oh, well”—Angela shrugged her shoulders—“it’s probably just as well. I think he was mildly intrigued by you, but you’d never be able to match friend Valerie’s technique.”

* * *

Neither Stephen nor the Langdon-Owen family appeared in the cocktail bar or on the dining terrace that evening. After dinner, the Stuyvesants and the Gordon girls were having coffee in the palm lounge when a waiter told Sara she was wanted on the telephone. She got up, preparing to follow him back to the booths in the entrance lounge, but the man said she could take the call in her chair and produced a telephone which he set on the arm of her chair. A moment later, the switchboard connected the lines.

Not surprisingly—since she knew no one else outside the hotel—the caller was Peter Laszlo. He wanted to know if she would care to come out for a drink.

Conscious that the others had stopped talking and were watching her, Sara had a short mental debate with herself, then made up her mind.

“I’m going out with Peter for a while,” she said to Angela, when she had replaced the receiver. “He’s picking me up in about twenty minutes.”

Actually it was less than ten minutes before a page came to tell her that Peter had arrived. Sara said goodnight to the Stuyvesants, wondered if her sister’s smile masked a helpless annoyance, and went to meet him in the foyer. Standing by the reception desk was Stephen Rand.

“Oh, hello, Stephen. We did enjoy the trip today,” she said sweetly. And then, quite deliberately, she moved past him to give Peter a glowing smile and take his arm.

“You look very vivacious tonight,” Peter said, as he tucked her into his car.

“Do I?”

As he walked round the bonnet and slid behind the wheel, Sara looked back through the hotel entrance. But Stephen had moved out of sight and she had no means of knowing whether her little piece of bravado had succeeded in nettling him. Probably not, she decided wryly. Now that Valerie Langdon-Owen had come on the scene, he would no longer be even casually interested in anyone like herself.

“What is your sister doing tonight?” Peter asked, as they emerged into Bay Street.

“Oh, I believe Conrad is taking her dancing,” Sara said absently.

“She is attracted by this American?”

It was a difficult question to answer—and rather an odd one to ask, Sara thought later—and she avoided a direct reply by saying vaguely, “He isn’t exactly an Adonis, but he’s very likeable.” Then, to change the subject: “Where are we going, Peter?”

“I thought you might like to drive out to Blackbeard’s Tower. It is almost in ruins now, but it is one of the things to see here,” he explained. Then, taking his eyes off the road for just long enough to smile at her, “The tower is a little solitary, but I have no ulterior motive in taking you there.”

“I—I didn’t suppose you had,” Sara said, blushing slightly.

He laughed at that. “Perhaps you do not, Sara, but I think your sister does.”

“Oh, that’s just a habit with her. Being three years older, she still feels she ought to keep an eye on me.”

“She could be right. You are very trusting—perhaps too much so in a city like Nassau.”

“I’m sure Nassau isn’t any more dangerous than London,” Sara said lightly. “And surely one must take some things on trust or life would be a misery.”

Blackbeard’s Tower stood on a hill at the eastern end of the island, a weathered and crumbling relic of the violent past. Peter told her that Blackbeard’s real name had been Edward Teach and that the tower had been his private stronghold.

“I wonder what sort of men the pirates really were—the leaders, I mean,” Sara said thoughtfully, as they strolled back to the car. “They can’t have all been ruffians. Henry Morgan became Governor of Jamaica.”

“I doubt if they were the dashing characters we see at the cinema,” Peter said drily.

“I suppose not.”

He took her hand and swung it gently between them. “You know, I think you are secretly very romantic,” he said, gently teasing. “You are the type who longs for someone to sweep you off your feet in the grand manner.”

“I think most girls do—although they know it isn’t likely.”

“Not every girl. For instance, I doubt if your sister has such dreams.”

“You hardly know her. How can you guess what she dreams about?” Sara said lightly.

“Oh, it is just that she strikes me as having a great deal of ... sense,” he replied.

“Which I haven’t.” She laughed. “Thanks very much. You’re most flattering.”

Peter also laughed. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to sound impolite. You have sense too, of course, but I think what your heart feels will always be of most importance to you.”

“Which is a polite way of saying that my head isn’t screwed on as tightly as it should be,” she countered good-humouredly. Then, glancing up at him with a
slightly mischievous expression, “Tell me, Peter, if you have no ulterior motive in asking me out tonight, why did you?”

He was silent for some moments and, because a small cloud was drifting across the moon, the light was too dim for her to see his face.

“It is a long time since I was with a girl like you, Sara,” he said quietly. “You remind me of the days when I too had these youthful dreams and illusions.”

“Peter, were you ever in love with anyone?” she asked diffidently, not sure what prompted the question and half afraid that he would laugh at her for it.

“Oh, yes,” he said seriously. “One is not born a cynic, you know. There was a time when I was most passionately in love.”

“You mean there was someone in Hungary?”

This time he did laugh at her, but it was a friendly chuckle and she did not feel gauche and inept as she had done yesterday with Stephen Rand.

“Oh, yes, you are a true romantic, my dear,” Peter said amusedly. “You think to yourself ‘Poor fellow—to be so very disillusioned he must have been badly let down by some heartless girl to whom he was madly devoted.’ “I am right—yes?”

It was, in fact, roughly what Sara had conjectured. “But I am afraid that the facts of the case are much more prosaic,” he continued. “There was never only one girl for me, and my heart was never broken. It was I who was the inconstant lover, and if I am disillusioned, it is as much with myself as with your sex. It is easy enough to fall in love, but more difficult to stay so. I have never yet met anyone with whom I wished to spend the rest of my life.”

They had reached the car again, and he suggested that they should drive back to the city and go ‘over the hill’.

“Well, I mustn’t be too late back,” Sara said doubtfully.

He switched on the engine.

“It is still early. We have plenty of time.”

He took her to a club where the dance floor was open to the stars and the tables under the verandah were screened from each other by leafy trellises. The music was slow and sweet, and when they danced, Peter held her very close to him. Between dances, they drank iced pineapple cocktails and he was amusing and gallant.

Once, when they returned to their little arbour, he continued to hold her hand, and Sara realized suddenly how easy it would be to fall in love with him. Yet, in some strange way, she knew that this would never happen to her. Although he was so charming and attractive, there was something missing between them: some small but vital element that made all the difference between liking and loving.

They danced and talked and danced again until, happening to catch sight of his watch, Sara saw that it was nearly one o’clock.

“Oh, Peter, look at the time! I’d no idea it was so late,” she exclaimed anxiously.

“Does it matter?” he asked, smiling. “You are not like Cinderella. You do not have to return to your kitchen at the stroke of midnight.”

“I said I wouldn’t be late. They may be worried about me. Oh, please—we must leave now.”

He saw that she was genuinely alarmed, and within a few minutes they had left the club and were back in his car.

“Why should anyone worry about you? They know you are with me, don’t they?” he asked, as the car moved forward. “Or doesn’t your sister trust me to take care of you?”

“It isn’t that,” Sara said awkwardly. “I said I’d be back early. She may think we’ve had an accident.” Peter made no comment, and she knew that he guessed the truth. It was stupid of her not to have realized how swiftly the time was passing. Now, all she could hope was that Angela would still be out with the Stuyvesants when they reached the hotel.

Since, by Nassau standards, one o’clock in the morning was still comparatively early, the public
rooms were still alight when they drew up outside the hotel entrance.

“No, please don’t bother to get out,” Sara said hurriedly, as he reached to open his door. “I have enjoyed myself, Peter,” she added warmly.

“When can we meet again? Can you come skiing tomorrow?” he asked.

Sara was already out of the car. “I’m not sure. I think you’d better ring me in the morning if you’re not busy. Goodnight—and thank you again for a lovely evening.” And, with a smile and a wave, she turned and hurried into the foyer. To her relief, the clerk at the reception desk said that, as far as he knew, the Stuyvesants had not yet returned. He checked the room keys to confirm this.

“Oh, good. Thank you very much. Goodnight.” Feeling rather like a truant schoolgirl who had managed to slip into class without detection, Sara turned to the lift.”

But the dial beside the press-button showed that it had just gone up, and she crossed to the staircase. Now that she was safely back, it seemed silly ever to have panicked, and she began to think back over the evening with retrospective enjoyment.

So she was humming a snatch of calypso and smiling to herself at one of Peter’s most absurd anecdotes as she reached the first landing and walked straight into Stephen.

“Hello, Sara. Did you have a good time?” His grey eyes took in her breeze-ruffled hair and softly flushed cheeks.

Sara drew in a breath and her smile faded. She had not been prepared for a second encounter with him.

“Yes, very nice, thank you,” she said shortly. And then, with a flash of her earlier recklessness, “We went to the Crescent Moon. Do you know it?”

“I’ve been there once or twice,” he said pleasantly. “I thought that was where you would go.”

His tone succeeded in ruffling her and she was not sufficiently experienced at the game of thrust and parry to check herself saying coldly, “What do you mean?”

Stephen shrugged. “Moonlight and slow waltzes are part of Laszlo’s technique.”

Sara’s chin came up, but she managed to choke back an angry repudiation.

“Are they?” she answered coolly. “Well, a smooth approach is generally more acceptable than rugged caveman tactics, don’t you think?”

She hadn’t really expected that the barb would pierce his arrogance, so it was satisfying to see that, although he laughed, there was a gleam of coldness in his eyes.

“Not being a girl, I wouldn’t know.” He moved aside so that she was free to pass him to the second flight of stairs. “I expect you’re tired. You’ve had a long day. Goodnight, Sara.” With the formal bow of a hotelier excusing himself to one of his guests, he went off along the corridor and disappeared into a doorway.

Sara stood looking after him for a moment. Then, with a faint sigh, she climbed the rest of the stairs. But it was not physical weariness that made her shoulders droop as she undressed and washed. It was a kind of mental emotional fatigue so that, suddenly and completely without reason, she wanted to lie on the bed and weep.

I must be sickening for something, she thought listlessly. That
will
infuriate Angela, if I wake up tomorrow with chickenpox.

Some time during the day the bed-linen had been changed, and when she had switched out the lamp and kicked off her blue velvet slippers, the sheets were cool and smooth. She had opened the balcony doors and a light wind stirred the pale voile curtains and brought the tang of the ocean into the room.

Why do I always have to spar with him? Sara wondered restlessly. I liked him so much that first day. And then, remembering what had happened on the cay and the humiliation she had felt when he had held her helpless in his arms and made such a fool of her, resentment welled up again and she forced herself not to think of him.

Sara had expected to have a call from Peter next morning, but when, by ten o’clock, he had not rung up, she supposed that he was heavily booked with ski lessons and agreed to accompany the others to Paradise Beach. Rather surprisingly, her sister had made no comment about the events of the previous evening. Perhaps she was too preoccupied with her own affairs to bother about Sara’s activities for the time being.

When they went up to their room to collect their bathing gear, Angela discovered that there was a crack in one lens of her sun-glasses. “I’ll have to. go out and buy another pair. You go ahead with the Stuyvesants and I’ll follow you over later,” she said.

“Can’t you buy a pair at the shop downstairs?” Sara suggested. There were two shops in the hotel. One had a heterogeneous stock of colored view cards, pharmaceutical goods, bathing caps and all the other odds and ends that visitors might require. The other was an elegant boutique where one could buy English cashmeres, Italian sandals and expensive French evening-bags.

“No, they only have fancy types which are on the way out now. I want a plain black pair with rather thick frames, and I’ve seen them some way along Bay Street. I’ll be with you in half an hour,” said Angela.