Unknown (3 page)

‘That’s all right, D.H. I ate alone and then I went out.’

Slowly, to give herself the time she needed, Tirza replaced the receiver and went back to the drawing-room.

‘That was my father,’ she said, ‘in case you wondered.’

Turning, he said, ‘What I can’t understand is why you have to model? It’s obvious that you live in a world of money and security and, no doubt, with no thought of tomorrow.’

‘I don’t have to model. I model because I want to.’ Her tone was brusque.

‘I’ll take your word for it.’ His eyes were on her face. ‘And to think I was going to offer you a job!’

‘What kind of job?’

‘I have this weaving industry in Swaziland ... it’s called the Swazi Signature Weaving Industry. There’s a boutique in Cape Town and another in Swaziland. I have a partner, by the way. He sees to the Swaziland side of things—mostly, anyway. I often have to go there. We often employ girls to model our fashion lines.’

‘Are you still going to offer me this job?’ she asked.

‘I think it’s a logical conclusion that I’m not.’ He glanced around. ‘You have here a very swish address.’

‘I don’t see that makes any difference.’

‘Then you’re interested?’

After a moment she said, ‘It isn’t an easy decision to make at a moment’s notice, is it? I’d have to think about it.’

‘I’ll ring you,’ he said. ‘Where do I find you in the directory?’

‘I’ll write it down,’ she told him. She got tired of people exclaiming ‘Are you Douglas Harper’s daughter, then?’

Next to the telephone number she wrote, Tirza. When she handed him the small white card he glanced up at her, ‘Tirza?’

‘Mrs Meeker will probably answer,’ she told him, and sounded suddenly tired and impatient. ‘Now, if you don’t mind ... I’m terribly tired.’

‘All right,’ he said, ‘let’s not argue about it.’

Her eyes followed him moodily as he went outside to where his Alfa-Romeo was parked beneath the white pillars with the twining pink and yellow roses. She heard the engine start, and then the lights came on. As he drove past the wide steps he tooted twice.

In her room, with the white fireplace and blue-and-white Delft tiles, she cried a little, feeling bruised and bewildered—but not much, for she had made the discovery, a long time ago, that tears did not help. Instead, she put her head back on her pillows and her lashes went down and she allowed herself to sink into a kind of comatose state of sheer misery.

The
following day was blustery, but, with its thick cream rug and the dark-green ornamental tree which grew in a container placed in a huge basket to one side of the tremendous small-paned windows, Tirza’s room was cool and calm.

Mrs Meeker sent coffee to her room and the maid placed it on the table, beside the bed.

‘Thank you.’ Tirza sat up. She was wearing a striped cotton man’s shirt—one of several she liked to wear. She had gone shopping with Nigel one day, and had bought several shirts because the colours were so striking. The shop was called Do Your Own Thing.

‘Sadie, please tell Mrs Meeker not to cook breakfast for me. I’m not hungry.’

She felt disinclined to face the day and sank back on her pillows thinking about Nigel Wright who had gone out of his way, with measured skill, to woo her. It all fell into pattern now, she thought bitterly ... his dislike of crowds, always choosing those discreet little restaurants, drives which led to quiet fishing villages. A wildness came over her that a man should do this to her. What was it Hugo Harrington had said last night? You have a lot to learn about men.

Suddenly, everything about the steely, sophisticated Hugo Harrington was exaggerated in her mind, and a rage built up against him too ... the way he had caught her looking at him and held her eyes for a long disturbing moment, before going over her briefly. The manner in which he had said, ‘Do I know you?’ She would, she could see, have to arm herself against this elusive quality in a galaxy of men who realised the power they had to cause women to make fools of themselves.

Restlessly, she threw back the bedclothes and stood up. She spent a long time in the bath, brooding on the past month, and was thankful that she had at least found out that Nigel was married after only one month. Things could have been worse for her. It was her friend Sandra Ballington who had said, ‘I suppose you know what you’re doing?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Well, I’ve seen you about with Nigel Wright. Don’t tell me you didn’t
know?
He’s married, Tirza.’

Men like Nigel Wright, she found herself thinking now, shouldn’t marry. Men with a combination of charm and looks which could hardly fail to turn heads, including their own.

Some time later Mrs Meeker came into her room to find out whether she was feeling ill.

‘I’m okay now, thanks. I—I had an upset, but I’m getting over it now,’ said Tirza, moving a bowl of roses out of the sun which was streaming into the lovely room, so that Mrs Meeker would not see her face.

‘What kind of upset, dear?’ Mrs Meeker showed concern.

A fragile breeze in the room was laden with the scent of roses which caused Tirza’s throat to tighten.

‘I just felt sick. It will pass, don’t worry.’ Turning, she tried to smile casually.

She was having coffee with her father the following evening when Hugo Harrington phoned.

‘What do you
see
in him?’ His voice was mocking. ‘Don’t tell me you’re still moping over that character?’ She could imagine him, suave and handsome, wearing well-cut trousers and a silk shirt, maybe—open at the chest.

She touched the nape of her neck. From where she was standing she could see her father in the drawing-room, with its sofas and chairs of imposing dimensions and upholstered in rich cream Portuguese carpeting.

It was difficult to believe that Hugo Harrington had been in this room. So far as she had been concerned he had been a ship that passed in the night.

‘I’m surprised you remembered,’ she replied stiffly. ‘It’s in the past now, so far as I’m concerned. You see, in a space of a short time I’ve reached the very comfortable stage where I don’t take the opposite sex all that seriously.’

‘Outwardly calm, but inwardly very tense, in other words.’ He laughed softly.

‘Not at all. What can I do for you? You didn’t ring just to talk about this little episode in my life, surely?’ Her voice was frigid.

‘I said I’d ring,’ he told her. ‘In two days’ time I’ll be going off to Swaziland. We’re putting on a fashion show there, at the Royal Swazi Hotel.’

‘I’m not really a model,’ she cut in, ‘if this is what you have in mind.’

‘Think,’ he went on, ‘you’ll be getting away from it all—to the endless grasslands, those rocky hills rising towards the mountains. Lunch with me tomorrow and we’ll talk about it.’

‘I’ll think about it,’ her voice was stilted. ‘Right now, I’m with someone.’

‘So am I with someone, right now.’ She was quick to notice the impatience in his voice. ‘I’m as anxious to get back as you are. I’ll pick you up tomorrow, say at...’

‘If I come,’ she told him, ‘it will be on my own steam.
I
can drive.’

‘Right. Say one-fifteen at the Bistro Baobab.’

She wanted to go, that was the shattering part of it. She wanted to be back in the swing of things to make her forget what a fool she had been. ‘All right, but I really have to go now. I’m—er—busy.’

‘Watch it,’ he said, and she knew he was smiling. ‘What are you trying to do to yourself—commit suicide?’ He rang off.

So sure of her, she thought bitterly. Hugo Harrington was the type who would never think of losing.

When she rejoined her father she said, ‘D.H., I want to work for you.’

Douglas Harper looked up from the booklet on gold shares.

‘You want to work for
me?'
He sounded frankly surprised. ‘What about this boutique—this ...’ he hunted around in his mind for the name—‘this Lotus Flower, is it?’

‘I only help out there, really. I’ve invested a little money in it and I model for them sometimes, but it’s not what I consider to be a full-time position. Sometimes I feel so useless. D. H., I want you to take me into the business.’

‘What is it you want to do?’ he asked.

‘I want to be one of your buyers. I want to start off by going to Swaziland on a buying spree for Harper’s.’

He infuriated her by laughing outright. ‘You want to be a buyer? But, my dear girl, I already have buyers, more than I damn well know what to do with, if it comes to that.’

‘Look,’ she said, ‘it’s terribly important to me. I’m twenty-three, right? I’m getting exactly nowhere, right? I’ll tell you what I want to do. There’s this weaving industry in Swaziland and, because I want to get away for a while, I want to go there first. While I’m there, I want to see for myself what goes on. I’m more than just a little interested, as it so happens.’

‘What do you intend buying from these people?’ he asked, but she could see that he was beginning to fidget, as his mind strayed to the booklet which he was still holding.

‘Mohair fabrics, to be made up into curtaining, wall-hangings and couture garments for Harper’s.’

‘There’s nothing new there,’ he said.

‘Perhaps not, but there might be something different. In any case, apart from buying I want to start my own weaving industry at the farm in the Karroo.’

‘Well,’ her father sounded surprised, ‘this is a new one on me, Tirza. What do you think you know about weaving?’

‘Only a little. But I want to have a look and work out whether I have it in me to start a small industry—without any help from you.’

‘I see.’ He fingered his chin.

‘You’re always moaning about Howard,’ Tirza went on, trying to keep her mind from the music coming from the expensive stereo. The words hammered at her brain ... Honey, I’m lost without you. I’m really going to have to do something, without
you
in my life ...

Sadie, the maid with the coppery skin, came in for the white-and-ginger Beit-Hayotser coffee cups. The soft hair framing Sadie’s face looked like soft teased-out mohair, Tirza found herself thinking.

Douglas Harper took this moment to get back to his facts and figures on gold shares, and Tirza stared resentfully at him. ‘Well?’ she said, finally.

‘I’ll have to think about it,’ he answered.

In the struggle to hold on to her temper Tirza gazed about the beautiful room which, because of the architectural style of the house, should have been furnished in the traditional Cape-style manner, but wasn’t. At the time of decorating, after the house had been completed, her father had called in an interior decorator. Even then, she seethed, she had been given no role to play. Douglas Harper had told the decorator to ‘come up with something unique—give the house freedom’. What was it he had said, ‘I have no traditional heirlooms I want to display.’ Nothing, except his daughter!

‘D.H.,’ her voice sounded loud, even to her own ears, ‘I’m trying to discuss something with you. Will you please
listen
? I want to be a buyer and I want to leave for Swaziland almost immediately. I want to get away.’

‘Is this your only reason for wanting to be a buyer?’ He sounded impatient now.

‘I want to strike while the iron is hot,’ she said, after a moment. ‘Before I change my mind. I don’t want to go on in this useless fashion. If I don’t go to Swaziland now I might never go and, in turn, I might never start that weaving industry.’

‘Where will you stay?’ he surprised her by asking.

‘What difference does it make?’ She shrugged her shoulders.

‘You’ve never been to Swaziland,’ he pointed out.

‘No, but I know enough. There’s the Ezulwini Holiday Inn. There’s the Royal Swazi Spa—any one of those...’

‘I don’t like that.’ He threw the blue and gold booklet on the bush-hammered travertine top of the low coffee table. His black eyebrows were beginning to bush. ‘If I agree to this scheme of yours,’ he said, after a moment, ‘it will be on the understanding that you’ll stay with Cathy Mobray, if she’ll have you.’

''If
you agree!’ She was angry now. ‘D.H., isn’t it just about time you began to realise that I’m over twenty-one? And, by the way, who is Cathy Mobray?’ When he made no reply she found herself saying, ‘Perhaps it was a love affair?’

‘I wouldn’t say that,’ he took a breath. ‘The only woman I ever really loved was your
mother. But
Cathy is a woman I very nearly married
—some
time ago.’

‘How long ago?’

‘When I was busy with the farm,’
he said
quietly.

That was when he had bought the farm,
with
the house on it, Tirza thought, and the adjoining land with the country hotel on it, which had been converted into the most magnificent homestead. ‘You didn’t tell me.’ Her voice was abrupt. ‘Well, I’m telling you now. What difference does it make?’ He reacted impatiently.

‘Better late than never,’ she said, still in that same abrupt voice. ‘At least, so they say.’

‘Actually, I bought the Karroo farm, and the adjoining hotel, because of Cathy,’ he went on. ‘That’s why I had the hotel converted. I thought we could all stay there, you know ... that I’d make it my headquarters, as it were, operate my affairs from there, apart from those times when I have to travel, of course.’

‘Who is
all?'
she asked, her eyes on his face.

‘Cathy has a daughter. Her name is Paige.’

Tirza felt resentment building up. ‘There was Cathy and Cathy has a daughter. I wondered at the time just why you bought that farm, and you never did get around to telling me. What happened? Between you, I mean?’

‘Oh,’ he shrugged, ‘she changed her mind. More or less at the last moment.’

‘After you’d had the hotel converted and the interior decorator had finished she just changed her mind? And you want me to stay with a woman like that?’ Her voice was heated.