The House on Flamingo Cay (6 page)

“Perhaps I’d better present myself to her,” he said, smiling. “Whereabouts is your party?”

“They were over there before the cabaret. Stephen ... you aren’t a water-skiing instructor or anything like that, are you?” she asked, on impulse.

His mouth curved with amusement, but it seemed to Sara that his eyes narrowed slightly.

“I’ve taught people to ski—but not professionally,” he said casually. “Why do you ask?”

“I ... I just wondered.”

She waited, expecting him to tell her what he did for a living. But whether he knew that she was curious and chose to ignore it, or whether he merely missed her unspoken question, there was no means of telling.

As Sara had expected, the Stuyvesants received him with their usual cordiality and Angela was coolly polite. But at least she did not seem to feel the instinctive antagonism that she had evinced towards Peter Laszlo.

“Are you here on business or a vacation, Mr. Rand?” Mrs. Stuyvesant enquired, with American directness.

“I live here,” Stephen explained.

“You do? Well, now isn’t that interesting. Then you’ve had experience of these terrible wind storms that someone was telling me about today.”

“The autumn hurricanes? Yes, they can be a bit uncomfortable.”

Mrs. Stuyvesant laughed. “Now if that isn’t just the most typical example of your British way of understating everything! Why, I was told that the wind sometimes gets up to more than seventy miles an hour. I certainly hope we don’t run into one in the next two weeks.”

“It isn’t likely,” he assured her. “The hurricane period is usually from August to October. They very rarely occur during the tourist season. We do have storms occasionally, but they’re nothing like a full-scale cyclone.”

“What happens when there is a bad hurricane?” Angela enquired.

“One gets under cover and waits until it’s blown itself out,” Stephen said casually. “We usually get a reasonable warning.” He turned back to Mrs. Stuyvesant. “As a matter of fact your New England seaboard seems to get the brunt of them nowadays. Up to the war, they generally blew out over the Atlantic, but now that the polar air-stream has changed direction, the States often take a worse battering than we do.”

“Why, yes, guess that’s so—but living way over in Minneapolis, we don’t seem to appreciate it somehow. I’m certainly glad we don’t have such frights in Minnesota,” she said feelingly. “I know it’s silly of me, but even an ordinary thunderstorm just scares me right out of my wits. I guess I’d die of fright if I got caught up in a hurricane.”

There was a pause in conversation while the waiter brought fresh glasses of bitter-sweet rum punch and removed the empty ones.

Then Stephen looked at Angela again and said:

“I’m driving Sara up to the pine barren tomorrow afternoon, Miss Gordon. Perhaps you’d like to join us if you haven’t any other plans.”

Angela flickered a glance at Sara, but before she could reply, Conrad said, “Miss Angela and I are going to try our luck at this deep-sea fishing tomorrow. Maybe you’d care to join us, Mr. Rand. We’d be very glad to have you with us. You’re probably something of an expert if you live here. We’ll be starting out around ten and making a long day of it.”

Stephen turned to Sara. “Would you prefer that?” There was the suspicion of twinkle in his eyes, as if he knew very well that she would not prefer it, but that she might hesitate to say so.

Fortunately Mrs. Stuyvesant decided the issue for her. “I think maybe Sara might find a whole day on the water a shade too strenuous just yet,” she suggested. “A drive up to the forest would certainly be more relaxing. Why don’t we all meet for late dinner tomorrow night and then maybe go on to a club?” Nobody offered any objection to this, so Stephen said, “Then I’ll meet you in the foyer about noon, Sara.”

Presently, he persuaded Mrs. Stuyvesant to dance with him and Conrad and Angela followed them, leaving Sara and Peter again.

He had been staring into his glass for several minutes, and although he asked her to dance Sara had a feeling that he was no longer in a convivial mood.

“I think I’d rather sit out this time. I’m not tired, but I feel rather lazy now,” she said with a smile.

“You are too warm perhaps. Shall we take a stroll on the terrace for a few moments?”

The dining tables had been cleared away and groups of cane chairs and loungers set out, but there was no one else on the terrace when they reached it. After the scented and cigar-heavy atmosphere of the ballroom, the light breeze coming over the harbour was pleasantly fresh and revitalizing.

It was almost one o’clock now, but somewhere out on the wharves a negro was crooning a calypso, and the flickering glow of a brazier lit the deck of an anchored schooner. The water, silvered by moonlight, hushed gently against the hulls of the yachts and cruisers, and when Sara looked up, the sky was an infinity of stars.

“How beautiful it is,” she said softly. She looked across towards Hog Island and thought of the Paradise Beach where she had bathed with Stephen this morning—no, it was yesterday morning now!—and of how much she would like to be there again at this moment, swimming in the calm moonlit water and then building a driftwood fire and frying chipolatas for breakfast.

Almost as if he read her thought, Peter said: “Sometimes the hotels arrange barbecue parties to some of the smaller islands, you know. One must rest in the afternoon and then the launch leaves here about midnight and returns as the sun is coming up.”

“Oh, really? I must make enquiries. It sounds fun.”

He touched her smooth bare arm. “You are not too cool here after the heat in the ballroom?”

“I like the breeze,” she said smilingly.

“Yet I think we had better return now. Your sister may not approve that we are alone for too long,” he said gravely.

Sara gave him a wary glance. “What makes you think that?” she asked cautiously.

He shrugged. “It is merely an impression I have.”

Sara shifted uncomfortably. His tone was casual and unworried, but it was possible that her sister, not content with her marked coolness towards him, had used their dance together to make her attitude more explicit.

“Angela is always rather reserved with strangers. She doesn’t mean to appear unfriendly,” she said awkwardly.

Peter’s mouth quirked. “Perhaps she does not like it that I do not succumb to her beauty,” he said negligently. “She is used to much admiration, no doubt.”

“She may be used to it but she isn’t at all vain,” Sara said loyally.

His expression became cynical. “A lovely woman is always vain,” he said dryly. “If a man does not respond to her,, she becomes piqued and alarmed.”

“I don’t agree. That may be true of some girls, but it certainly isn’t of Angela. It isn’t because you don’t—” She stopped short abruptly.

“Yes?” he prompted.

“Perhaps we had better go back,” Sara said hastily. “If the Stuyvesants are going fishing tomorrow, they probably won’t stay up too late.”

Peter made no demur, but just before they reached the ballroom he said, “If you are alone tomorrow morning, perhaps you would like to come skiing? I have no lessons before lunch.” Then, as she hesitated, he added, “It would not be a professional instruction, you understand. I am asking you as a friend.”

The offer was too tempting to resist—whatever her sister might say. “Thank you very much. I’d like it,” Sara said warmly.

“Good. Then I will be waiting in my boat below the terrace at half-past ten. And now I will take you back to your party and say goodnight.”

Soon after Peter’s departure, Stephen also said goodnight.

“You know something?” said Mrs. Stuyvesant, when he had gone. “That young man is how I always imagine a typical Britisher. You know what I mean? He has that real English drawl and such a lovely manner.”

“Where did you meet him, Sara?” Angela asked.

“Oh, down on the wharf. He—he took me over to the beach for my swim yesterday.”

Angela’s eyebrows lifted a fraction, but she made no comment.

“I wonder who he is?” Mrs. Stuyvesant continued speculatively. “Something to do with the legislature, maybe.”

“Why don’t you ask him, Mother?” Conrad enquired, with twinkle.

“Well, I did—in a roundabout way,” his mother admitted blandly. “I guess he’s the type that doesn’t like talking about himself, he seemed just a little bit evasive.”

“I hope it’s all right for Sara to go out with him tomorrow,” Angela said, frowning.

“Oh, I’m sure he’s quite respectable, dear,” Mrs. Stuyvesant assured her confidently.

“If he lives around here, maybe we could check up on him,” Conrad suggested.

“Oh, no!” Sara exclaimed. They all looked at her, and she colored. “I think I’m old enough to choose my own friends without ... without having them screened,” she said defensively. And then, “I think I’ll go to bed now, if you don’t mind. I’m beginning to feel a bit droopy.”

It was half an hour before Angela came up and, in no mood for any further discussion, Sara pretended to be asleep.

It was as well that she and Stephen had cancelled their early swim as, when the maid brought their early tea, both girls were still asleep. Conrad had already begun his breakfast when they went down to the terrace, but it was several minutes before his mother arrived. And when she did appear, Mrs. Stuyvesant was obviously brimming with some news.

“Now I don’t want you to think me dreadfully interfering, Sara dear,” she said, as she sat down. “But I could tell that Angela was concerned about your date for the afternoon, so I thought I’d have a tactful word with that nice little receptionist who’s always so very helpful.”

Sara said nothing, but inwardly she was furious.

“I was very discreet,” Mrs. Stuyvesant went on blithely. “I explained that I’d met Mr. Rand at the dance last night and that I wanted to get his address to ask him to a party up in our suite. I guess it was just as well I did check, or we could have all looked pretty silly. You should have seen the girl’s face when I asked her if she knew him? It was the most comical thing imaginable.” She clicked her tongue and gave a reminiscent chuckle.

“What did she say about him?” Angela asked quickly.

“Well, he certainly is a most eligible escort for any girl,” Mrs. Stuyvesant said beamingly. She paused to enjoy their curiosity. “You see, it turns out that he’s the owner of this very hotel.”

There was a short pause until Sara said blankly, “The owner? But he can’t be.”

Mrs. Stuyvesant looked surprised. “But of course he is, honey. Why should that nice girl fib about it? Don’t you see? That’s why she looked so startled when I asked her about him.” Then, in a tone of concern, “Why, Sara, you’ve gone quite pale. Are you sick, dear? Maybe you stayed up too late last night.”

Sara pushed back her chair. “I’m fine. I—I’ve just got a headache,” she said flatly. “Excuse me, I’ll go and take some aspirin.”

Back in the bedroom, she closed the door behind her and leaned dazedly against it. Presently, an ironic smile that was more like a grimace twisted her sensitive mouth. So, far from being an impecunious Out Islander of whom Angela might not approve, Stephen was really one of the most prosperous of Nassau’s affluent hoteliers. Why, he was probably almost as wealthy as Conrad Stuyvesant. The salt-stained levis and washed-out shirts he had worn were just an eccentricity which she had been foolish enough to take at their face value. He wasn’t really her sort of person at all. He was one of the Others—monied, assured, sophisticated.

She had moved away from the door and was staring unhappily out of the window, when Angela came in.

“What was all that about?” she demanded, but not unkindly. “You haven’t really got a headache, have you?”

Sara shook her head. “I—I just wanted to get away from the Stuyvesants,” she said lamely.

“They are a bit wearing at times,” Angela conceded. She dropped into a chair and lit a cigarette. “The good news about your boy friend seems to have shaken you.”

“He’s not my boy friend,” Sara said sharply.

Angela examined her nails. “He could be. He seems quite interested,” she said mildly. “Maybe you’d better spend the morning in the beauty parlor. Your hair could do with a set again.” She gave her sister a long measuring look. “To be frank, sweetie, I wouldn’t have thought you were the type to appeal to him, and it could be that he’s just amusing himself. But if he’s genuinely attracted—and it’s always a possibility—you might solve all our little problems. Anyway, it’s worth an effort.”

Sara felt curiously sick. “I thought it was Conrad who was going to do that?” she said bitterly. “Or isn’t he showing enough enthusiasm?”

“Conrad’s my providence,” Angela said shortly. “Now don’t start being difficult, Sara. We’ve had all
this out before. All I’m saying is that, if you like this Stephen Rand and he goes on being attentive, you’d be silly not to make the most of it. What’s wrong with that, may I ask?”

“Oh, nothing,” Sara said negligently. Then, her tone sharpening, “Except that I
don’t
like Stephen Rand.”

“You seemed to like him last night. You were positively glowing,” her sister said tartly.