The House on Flamingo Cay (13 page)

CHAPTER FIVE

“WHAT’S the matter? Are you ill?” he asked sharply, hearing her indrawn breath and feeling her sway slightly

“I—I’m fine. You startled me, that’s all,” she said huskily.

“It would have been more of a shock to find yourself pitching head first into the water. Are you alone?”

“Yes—the others have gone to the races,” she explained.

He indicated her beach-bag.

“Is that your swimming-gear? The ferry’s just left. I’ll take you over with me.”

“No!” The sharpness of her refusal was quite involuntary. Stephen’s eyebrows went up, but he didn’t say anything.
“I’m not going to the beach. That is, I started out to swim and then changed my mind and went shopping,” she explained hurriedly, feeling her cheeks growing hot.

“All right. We’ll go for a spin instead,” he said easily. Before she could decide whether she wanted to refuse this too, he had propelled her along the quay and was helping her into a small launch.

“How many boats have you got?” Sara asked, when they were in clear water and Stephen could relax his attention. It was the first remark that came into her head. She felt oddly breathless, as if someone had pushed her off a high diving board and she was still winded and floundering.

“This one belongs to the hotel. The other launch is mine, and I have a small yacht at Flamingo.”

“It must be fun—sailing,” she said absently.

“It is. One of the best events of the year is the Out Islands regatta in March. All the boats go south to Great Exuma to start the race, and Georgetown harbor gets so jammed with craft it’s like a floating village.”

March, thought Sara. Where shall we be in March? Back in London, probably, and a hundred times worse off than we were before. Stephen won’t even remember me.

“How are you getting on with the water-skiing?” he asked.

“Oh, I haven’t done any more. I haven’t had much free time.”

“Isn’t all time free on a holiday?”

“Well, you know what I mean.”

“You mean you’re tied up with the Stuyvesants,” he said, without expression.

“They generally have some plans for the day,” she agreed. “It would be ungracious to go off alone when they’ve been so kind to us.”

“Hotels are like ships, I’m afraid,” he said drily. “The first person to make a set at you is usually the reigning bore. Not that I imagine the Stuyvesants are necessarily bores. But I daresay you would have filled your time rather differently if you hadn’t got so tied up with them.”

“Oh, I don’t know. We might have had less fun. I don’t suppose we would have gone out so much at night.”

He grinned at that. “You wouldn’t have lacked escorts—not in Nassau.”

He switched off the motor and let the launch skim towards the beach where a narrow landing stage ran out into the sea.

“I’ve been asked to tea in that cottage with the green roof,” he said over his shoulder, as he made fast. “I think you’ll like Laura Lindsay.”

“But I can’t come with you without an invitation,” Sara demurred. She had no idea that their trip had any destination.

“Oh, rubbish. Laura doesn’t stand on ceremony, and she likes unexpected visitors,” he said briskly. “Come on, up with you.”

Swung on to the jetty beside him before she could utter any further protest, Sara followed him up the beach and did what she could to smooth her windblown hair without the aid of a comb.

The cottage was secluded from its neighbors by a high white wall topped with masses of deep pink bougainvillea growing up from within. A wrought-iron gate gave access to the beach and, when Stephen had pushed this open and stood aside for her to precede him, Sara found herself in the most enchanting little garden. Every kind of vivid sub-tropical flower seemed to be blooming there and, across the small velvet lawn, a miniature Japanese pagoda was reflected in an ornamental lily pond.

“Oh ... but how pretty!” Sara exclaimed delightedly.

Stephen nodded. “It is pleasant, isn’t it? Gardening is Laura’s hobby. She’s a widow, by the way. They came out here for the sake of her husband’s health about five years ago. He died last summer.”

The south side of the cottage was shaded by a wide verandah where a lace-clothed table was flanked by two cushioned cane armchairs. Two rose-sprigged china
cups had been set on the silver tea-tray. There was something so intimate about those two chairs and cups that Sara wished Stephen had not made her come.

“Laura! Where are you?” he called.

There was an answering voice from somewhere inside the house, then swift light footsteps crossing a parquet floor.

“Stephen, dear. I’m so glad you could come. I thought you might be too busy this week. Oh, you’ve brought a friend.”

“This is Sara Gordon, Laura. She’s staying at the hotel,” Stephen explained.

“How do you do, Miss Gordon. How nice of Stephen to bring you.” A slim brown hand pressed warmly over Sara’s and two vivid blue eyes smiled into her startled ones.

She had expected Mrs. Lindsay to be in the late thirties, elegantly dressed and none too welcoming. In fact, she was white-haired, wrinkled and probably near seventy.

“Stephen, bring out another chair, will you? The trolley is in the kitchen. Perhaps you’d wheel it through for me,” their hostess said, smiling at him. “Now come and sit down, Miss Gordon, and tell me what you think of the West Indies. Is this your first visit to Nassau?”

“Yes, it is, and I think the islands are heavenly,” Sara said dryly. “I hope you don’t mind my coming here, Mrs. Lindsay, but Stephen gave me no choice. I’m afraid I’m not very suitably dressed in these beach pants.”

“Of course I don’t mind. I’m delighted—and I think you look absolutely charming. If I were twenty years younger I’d wear trousers myself. They’re such sensible garments for the seaside.”

“But not always notably becoming to the female figure,” Stephen said drily, bringing out a third chair.

“No, I’m afraid not,” Mrs. Lindsay agreed with a chuckle. “Some of these stout middle-aged women look quite grotesque in them. But, on anyone young and slim, they’re most attractive.”

“You’ll make her blush, Laura. She blushes very easily.” With a teasing grin that did make Sara color slightly, he went off to fetch the trolley.

“What a beautiful garden you’ve made here, Mrs. Lindsay,” she said hastily.

“I must admit I’m rather proud of it myself,” her hostess said happily.

“I love that little temple behind the pool.”

“Ah, there’s a story attached to that,” said Mrs. Lindsay. “It was originally in our garden in England. We had to leave it behind when we came out here, and I often used to say that it would have been the perfect finishing touch to that corner. I’m telling Miss Gordon about the pagoda, Stephen,” she explained, as he pushed the trolley out.

“Well, one morning about two years ago, I looked out of my window—and there it was? I thought I must be seeing things, and so did my husband. He was bedridden then, you see, and his room was on the other side of the house. He obviously thought I was having hallucinations, poor dear. Anyway, I ran out into the garden and found that it was not my imagination, but our original pagoda. And the solution to the puzzle was that Stephen had just come back from a trip to England and brought it with him. He’d been all the way to Rutland to find our old home and persuade the new owners to sell it to him.” She turned and smiled at Stephen with deep affection. “I think that’s one of the kindest things he’s ever done.”

“How you love to dramatize everything, Laura,” Stephen said negligently. “You would have made an excellent press agent. Your geese are always swans and you find lofty motives behind the most commonplace actions.”

“While you, my dear boy, pretend a cynical detachment which is entirely false and not at all convincing—at least not to me,” she retorted.

He laughed. “I doubt if you’ll convince Sara of my fine qualities. She has already formed her opinion,” he said, with a derisive glance across the tea-table.

“I expect you’ve been bullying her,” said Mrs. Lindsay. “Modern young women aren’t accustomed to such arbitrary manners.” She twinkled at Sara. “They may secretly enjoy it, but they feel they must justify their emancipation by asserting their independence. Isn’t that so, Miss Gordon?”

Sara smiled. “Please, won’t you call me Sara?” she asked.

“Thank you, my dear. I was just thinking what a charming name it is.”

After tea, Stephen went off to attend to a faulty plug which Mrs. Lindsay had asked if he could repair.

“You know, if it were not for Stephen’s generosity, I should be living in a home for old ladies in England, or at best in some cheerless bed-sitting room,” she said wryly, after he had left them. “You see, my husband’s long illness used up most of our small capital and, unfortunately for me, his pension died with him. Stephen knew that I hadn’t any close relatives in England and he insisted that I stay on here. Perhaps I should have refused—the rent I pay him for this cottage is farcically small when one considers what he would get from summer visitors—but I dreaded going back to those long cold winters after living in this lovely climate. And perhaps it’s foolish of me, but here in the cottage and the garden, I still feel Robert’s presence. It’s as if, although his body isn’t here, he is still quite close to me. Does that sound very foolish and sentimental?”

“No, of course not,” Sara said gently.

“Perhaps, in a very small way, Stephen does gain something from my staying,” Mrs. Lindsay said thoughtfully. “He often comes over in the evening. He says it’s a refuge from the rather artificial atmosphere of Nassau and all those rich and blasé tourists. Of course he’s only really happy on Flamingo Cay. Has he taken you there yet?”

Sara shook her head.

“Oh, it is a most idyllic island,” Mrs. Lindsay said with reminiscent pleasure. “I don’t wonder his heart is there, it’s an absolute paradise. All the Out Islands are lovely, but that little cay is the most perfect of them all.”

“Is that where his people live?” Sara asked.

“He hasn’t any family. His father was lost at sea during the last war, and his mother died soon afterwards. She was expecting a baby and the doctors warned her that she might have a difficult confinement, but she refused to leave the cay and come into hospital. The child—another son—was stillborn, and poor Helen never rallied. Fortunately the grandfather was living here—it was he who opened the hotel—so Stephen was able to stay on Flamingo in the care of the West Indian butler and his wife. But for the war, of course, he would have gone to boarding school in England. As things were, he had to have a tutor, and then, as soon as he was old enough, the old man took him into the hotel.”

“So he isn’t really descended from a notorious pirate?”

Mrs. Lindsay chuckled. ”Is that what he told you? No, his grandfather came out here for the same reason that we did. His wife was a semi-invalid and needed plenty of sun and air. In those days, of course, the islands were scarcely on the map. In fact it wasn’t until the Bahamas Development Board was started, and when air travel became so much cheaper, that this tremendous influx began. I don’t know the actual figures—Stephen would tell you—but I believe we have over two hundred thousand visitors in a year now.”

She paused to reach for a chintz work-bag and take out a piece of tapestry. “As a matter of fact I think Stephen would have made a very successful pirate,” she said reflectively. “He’s a born sailor and has plenty of authority about him. But, more than that, he has an adventurous spirit that seems to be lacking in so many young men nowadays. I suppose it’s the age we live in, but I’ve often thought that a lot of men look settled and middle-aged before they’re even thirty. I do like a man to have some dash about him, don’t you?” She put on her spectacles and threaded a needle with silk. “Yes, if he had been born two hundred years earlier and found himself on the wrong side of the law, I think Stephen would have roved the Spanish Main with great gusto.”

They would probably have spent the evening with her, but Mrs. Lindsay was going to a bridge party, so they left a little after six.

The sea was sapphire streaked with amethyst in the glow of the westering sun; the sky rose-tinted and clear above the stirring palmettoes. Sara sat in the stern of the launch and watched Stephen’s back—the thick dark hair close-cropped to the well-shaped head, the broad shoulders under the clean white shirt, the long lean legs that moved with such a graceful stride.

Already, and still unwillingly, she was at the stage when she wanted to take in every physical detail, to prolong every moment of his company. Love, she thought helplessly, was like a drug. One didn’t even realize one was an addict until, suddenly, the craving was stronger than one’s will: a terrible aching hunger for a word or a glance that might show some measure of response.

“Oh, by the way, we’re running a midnight barbecue on one of the beaches next week. It will be a fancy dress affair, so you’d better start thinking of a costume,” Stephen said turning to glance at her. “There’s a place in town where you can hire one, or you can rig up something from your own gear. Some of the women go to extraordinary lengths, but it’s generally best to pick a fairly simple get-up which can stand up to sand and spilled coffee.”

“How does everyone get there?” Sara asked.

“We hire some extra boats and run a whole fleet over. You’ll probably need to rest all the afternoon because the party doesn’t usually end till dawn.”