Welcome to Paradise (14 page)

It would have been easier to bear if she had been seated next to Richard. But she had been allotted to a single seat; while Richard sat next to a man who, it turned out, had once met him on the Rugby field years ago, and on the strength of that was prepared to talk rugby to him for the duration of the flight.

Listening to his
“Man, remember this?” and “Man, remember that?” Alix thought Richard
must go mad. But no—aren’t men
odd
?—he seemed to be enjoying
it.

She yawned, saw that it was no use trying to see anything below because her view was blocked by a wing, read for a time, did a spell of thinking, and finally composed herself to sleep.

It wasn’t easy to drop off because of the liveliness of the aircraft; but in time she managed it, and actually slept till the order came to fasten safety belts, which meant they were nearly there.

Richard came over to her then.

“All right, Alix? Been asleep, I’m glad to see. Don’t worry about the landing—this chap knows his stuff, I can see that.”

“I’m not worrying,” Alix assured him mendaciously.

“Good girl.”

He returned to his own seat, and Alix tried worrying about other things to take her mind off the horrors of the descent to earth. Would the Murrays be able to put her up again? Would there be a bus leaving for Edward tomorrow, or if not, how long would she have to wait? And so on and so on.

By the time she had thought of all the difficulties she might be going to meet—simply because she
would not
once again appear at Aunt Drusilla’s front door in Richard Herrold’s car—the aircraft was losing height and very soon, indeed, had touched down and was travelling along the runway, pulling up turning, taxiing to its stand.

Alix could see the people—not many of them
—
gathered outside the terminus as they drew near. One of them was waving a coloured scarf. When she stepped out of the plane, a few minutes later, she saw, with surprise and delight, that the owner of the scarf was none other than Aunt Drusilla, in her tweed suit, and the familiar toque, and with Nelson on a lead at her side.

“Oh, isn’t that marvellous?” she exclaimed. “Look, Richard, there’s my aunt, come to meet me.”

“Quick work,” Richard commented. “She must have set off the minute she got your wire, I should
think
. Good lord!” He finished in a tone of complete disgust: “Look who’s with her.”

Alix looked. Her face fell. Standing behind her aunt, bare-headed, blond, debonair, was Eric Gore.

“Oh,” she said in a small voice. Richard, she saw, was looking grim.

“So I shall be leaving you in good hands,” he said, not at all pleasantly.

“Richard, please,” Alix begged in sudden agitation. “Don’t let my aunt see us together. You go on ahead. Try not to let her see you. Please. You do understand, don’t you?”

He gave her a hard look.

“Perfectly,” he said.

“Oh—” she began. But he was striding on ahead. By the time she had cleared her luggage and joined Lady Merrick in the reception hall, he had vanished.

She felt both relieved and worried. She hated to think they had parted so abruptly and unfriendly. She knew she had been foolish—but the fact was that the mere sight of Eric Gore had caused her to lose her head for a moment.

Richard had been so sweet to her. He had done everything he could, yesterday, to make her forget she had been jilted. He had made her feel precious, desirable—and all without saying a single intimate word. She felt she had treated him very shabbily. She hoped he would forgive her
...

Well, no use dwelling on the matter now. She ran to her aunt and hugged her warmly.

“How sweet of you to come all this way to meet me, Aunt Drusilla,” she cried. “How are you?”

“Very well, my dear. It’s splendid to see you again so soon—splendid for
me,
I mean. Did you have a terrible flight in that nasty little machine? You look quite pale.”

“It wasn’t too bad. A bit bumpy.”

“Eric has gone to order some coffee and sandwiches for us. He’s been such an angel. He happened to be at ‘Laguna’—on business connected with Herrold, needless to say. I’ll tell you all about it later, you won’t believe the man’s outrageous effrontery!—when they telephoned your cable. And my dear, nothing would do but we must jump into his car and drive off there and then to meet you. We drove like the
wind.
Quite petrifying—though of course Eric drives superbly.”

“I’d been wondering about the bus. Oh, Nelson,
darling
.”

As Lady Merrick talked Nelson had been trying to get in a word with Alix. Now, desperate, he stood up on his hind legs, put his front paws on her shoulders, and gave her chin a loving lick.

“Down, Nelson,” ordered Lady Merrick sternly. “Sorry, dear. It’s just his way of making you welcom
e. He never forgets a friend.”

Alix pushed him away from her and rubbed his head behind the ears.

“Beautiful boy,” she said. He smirked and licked his lips. He knew quite well how beautiful he was!

“Come over to the buffet, dearest,” said Lady Merrick. “Ah, here we are, Eric. Here is Alix.”

Eric Gore stepped forward. If he didn’t actually click his heels and make her a bow, he gave the impression of doing so. Alix wouldn’t have been at all surprised if he had taken her hand and kissed it, so Teutonic did his blond head, light eyes, and something almost military in his carriage and bearing seem to her.

He said smilingly, “Welcome back to Paradise, Miss Rayne. It was more than we had hoped for, to see you again so soon.”

“It was very kind of you to drive my aunt over to meet me, Mr. Gore,” Alix said formally.

There was something almost wolfish in the smile which accompanied his bland reply. “It was my pleasure.”

He’s a phoney, I’m certain he is, Alix thought.
It
was
my pleasure.
People—men, ordinary
En
glishm
en
—
don’t talk that way. His presence caused her a suffocating feeling of discomfort.

He led them to a table, and a steward brought hot, fragrant coffee and a plate of tongue sandwiches.

Though she had felt very hungry when they touched down, Alix found that her appetite had fled. She was upset over her treatment of Richard, worried over Gore’s unexpected appearance—as if he had the
right
to come and meet her—and felt tired and out of humour. Gone was the gay confidence she had felt on starting back to Paradise.

Eric Gore, however, seemed not to notice her mood. He plied them both assiduously with coffee and sandwiches. He kept up a suave, easy flow of small talk, questions, little jokes. He offered a sandwich to Nelson too, but Nelson fastidiously turned away his head.

“He’s been trained not to take food from anyone but myself,” Lady Merrick hastened to explain.

‘Ah, a very obedient dog,” Eric Gore said; but Alix could see he was offended.

She saw he had noticed she was no longer wearing her ring, but he didn’t, thank goodness, mention it. Her
aunt had noticed too. She kept eyeing her niece with smiling approval.

Despite her setback at the hands of Mr. Herrold, she seemed in excellent spirits. She laughed a lot. Perhaps, like Mr. Herrold himself, she was exhilarated by drama, opposition, a good fight.

She looked, now, at her watch.

“I suppose you’d like to be on the way, Eric?”

“Whenever you’re ready, Lady M.”

The big American car was waiting outside. Eric Gore settled Lady Merrick with Nelson in the back seat, which she insisted she preferred, put Alix in front, stowed her aircases in the boot, and took the wheel. He had pulled on a pair of pigskin gloves. He drove with a kind of elegant nonchalance, as if controlling a powerful car at high speed was as easy as falling off a log. The soft hat he had pulled down on his head gave him a rakish, swashbuckling air. He’s, doing everything for effect, Alix thought distastefully. Far from being grateful to him, she found herself positively resenting him, his car, his sophisticated talk, everything about him, in fact.

He drove, as Lady Merrick had said, like the wind. Forests and mountains and glimpses of blue sea flashed by. Vague blurs of bright colour told Alix that the verges were in full spring panoply. As the sun sank lower, and dusk began to fall, these colours took on an added brilliance. The air was sweet, the landscape seemed to be bathed in honey-gold light. How lovely this country was—how ugly, compared with it, the one she had left behind!

In no time, it seemed, they came to the turning with the signpost, “Welcome to Paradise.” A wave of uncertainty swept over Alix as Gore swung the car on to the causeway. What was she going to do here? How find the means to keep herself? She couldn’t stay for ever as Aunt Drusilla’s guest. She had her living to earn. Would there be any scope for her here? The one job that would have suited her perfectly—the one Herrold Senior had
offered her—she couldn’t, obviously, take. Would anything else offer? If not, where should she turn next?

They were climbing, now, up the little rise that would bring them in sight of the lagoon. Alix took a pull on herself. No good letting herself get panicky. Something would happen. She would
make
something happen. She turned to her aunt and said, “How lovely the lagoon looks.”

“But for how long now?” her aunt replied sepulchrally. But Alix saw she wasn’t really cast down. She was like, rather, an old war horse scenting the battle
...

Th
ey were pulling up in front of the house. Eric Gore switched off and sprang out, in his lithe way, to help them out.

“You’ll stay and have dinner with us, won’t you, Eric?” Lady Merrick asked.

To Alix’s annoyance he accepted with alacrity. She could only hope he would go, quickly, when dinner was over.

He busied himself mixing, while they changed, the very dry Martinis for which, he assured them, he was famous. When they came down, he offered the ice-cold drinks, each with a little curl of lemon peel clinging to the rim of the glass, with a flourish.

He lifted his own and looked at Alix.

“Welcome back,” he said again.

“Thank you,” she said, looking into her glass, not meeting his eyes.

During dinner he and her aunt, between them, regaled her with a vivacious account of the meeting at Northolme. She didn’t tell them she already knew about it. She would tell Aunt Drusilla about Richard having travelled up to Rhodesia with her later on, when they were alone. Her aunt would be displeased, she knew, but she was a
fair-minded
woman. She would realise that Alix had not been to blame.

It was with a sense of shock, then, that she heard Eric Gore say smoothly—her aunt having gone out of the room for a moment to attend to some detail of the dinner—

“I assume you don’t want Lady Merrick to know, do you, that Herrold travelled down with you in the plane?”

Affronted, Alix stared at him. This really is going just a little too far, she thought angrily. With an effort she steadied her voice.

“I hope you’re not suggesting that I’m going to deceive my aunt, Mr. Gore,” she parried.

He smiled. There was an unpleasant gleam in the ice
-
blue eyes as he retorted, “Of course not. I merely happened to notice that you—shall we say—got rid of Herrold rather neatly when you saw Lady Merrick and myself waiting to meet you.”

Alix was so angry she could hardly speak.

“What right have you
...
?” she began.

“No right, of course,” he broke in. In the same smooth stilted way he went on, “But I hope very much that one day soon, you will give me the right.”

Alix was silent. Fortunately Lady Merrick now joined them, and they moved on to the veranda for coffee. In a little while Eric Gore rose to leave.

“Such a dear, isn’t he?” Lady Merrick said as the lights of his car vanished into the night. She gave her niece a kindly, rather complacent look. She was very pleased with her.

“Now, dear, I want to know
all
about it. You’re broken off your engagement, of course. Tell me what happened.”

Briefly, Alix told her.

“I’m sorry, dear,” her aunt said at the end. “But I do feel it’s all for the best. And I’m so glad to have you back. Now you must hear all that’s been happening while you’ve been away. The battle with Herrold is on, my dear. Now you shall listen to what
I’m
pl
annin
g
to do
—
”

CHAPTER TWELVE

It was one of those perfect spring nights. The air was warm and soft. The lagoon lay dark and quiet, breathing gently, under the stars. There was a soft glimmer from the beach, but the hills were ebony dark against the spangled sky.

After Eric Gore had left them Alix and Lady Merrick sat out on the veranda till nearly midnight. There was so much to talk about.

“My dear child, you couldn’t have come back at a more convenient time as it happens,” Lady Merrick had exclaimed when she was quite satisfied that her niece, though jilted, was neither angry nor sad.

“I’m glad about that,” Alix said. “But why?”

“You’ll see. I’ve got a job for you—but more of that later. The point is, next week Herrold starts on the construction of his caravan park. It’ll be turmoil, of course. Lorries to-and-fro-ing all day; a cement mixer; a bulldozer—a real one, I don’t mean the man himself,” chuckled Lady Merrick. “And of course
hundreds
of Africans making their usual infernal din. And if it rains heaven help us, because think of the
mud
...
”

She had to pause for breath there. Did she know what exactly Herrold was going to build? Alix put in.

“That’s what we must wait to see. Bathrooms and latrines just opposite my front gate, I wouldn’t wonder! Whatever it is, it’ll be designed to produce the maximum of annoyance for me and reduce the value of ‘Laguna’ at the same time, you can be sure. The creature has sworn to get me out, you know. So nobody can blame me, can they, if
I
go into action too?”

“I suppose they can’t,” Alix agreed soothingly, though she didn’t see that anything her aunt could do was going to stop Herrold. He seemed to hold too many of the cards.

“We’re going to twist his tail—Eric and I,” pursued Lady Merrick with unholy glee. “Eric has had a splendid idea.
He
will put up ‘No landing’ notices along both river banks—all the good picnic spots are on his property, you see—and
I
shall close the road.”

“You mean—the coast road?”

Her aunt nodded. She was busy lighting another cigarette.

“But can you?”

“Certainly I can. My boundary, you see, goes to the end of the point.”

“So part of the road crosses your land?”

“Exactly. Nowadays, the road from the causeway to the gates of ‘Laguna’—and to the Chambers’ gate on the other verge—is kept up by the local council and is public property. But beyond there, when it forks to right and left and runs along the edge of the beach, it’s kept up by the residents. Each of us looks after the stretch that passes our own property. Now here’s the point. All the houses beyond the Braines’ have roads leading from their rear to join the main track. But at the back of ‘Laguna’ and the Braines’ there’s a big old gum stand.”

She paused, gazing at her niece triumphantly. Alix didn’t see. She shook her head.

“My dear, the Braines’ only entrance is
through my land.
I bet Herrold didn’t
think
of that when he snapped up the property. Your uncle gave them a courtesy right of way
—not
a legal one—as they were friends of ours. But legally I can close the road at any time. And as it’s now going to be a question of giving passage to Herrold and his caravanners, I jolly well will!”

She sounded so much like the Roedean schoolgirl she had once been that Alix burst out lau
ghin
g.

“Think I’m batty, don’t you?” her aunt demanded good-humouredly. “But don’t you see? If Herrold is to carry out his threat to build his caravan park all round me—which is what he told the meeting he would do
—
he’s got to get through to the Braines’ property.”

Alix said, “So he’ll have to build another road, round the back of ‘Laguna?’ ”

“Yes. And to do that he’ll first have to buy the stand of gums, then clear them. And old gum stumps, my dear, are the very dickens to get out. I foresee a lot of fun over that.”

Lady Merrick
’
s eyes, as she spoke, fairly snapped with enjoyment. She looked lively, mischievous, full of zest. She also looked years younger. She seemed full of the joy of battle, rather than its bitterness.

“Of course I know it’s only a pinprick,” she admitted cheerfully. “But it’ll smart.”

Alix laughed.

“And where do I come in?” she wanted to know. “I’m proposing to employ
you,
my dear—at your usual professional rates, of course—to enclose the point, and the stretch of road in question, and turn it into garden.”

“It’ll mean moving your lovely hibiscus hedge.” Lady Merrick pooh-poohed that.

“Child’s play to you, my dear, to transplant it. And then you can have a free hand. Make a real feature of it, so that I can talk of my new rockery, or shrubbery or whatever. I’ve a perfect right to put all my land under cultivation, after all.”

Alix laughed again. It was a good scheme and she couldn’t blame her aunt. Herrold’s methods certainly invited retaliation.

“All right, Aunt Drusilla. I’ll think out a scheme,” she agreed.

“You can have Francis to do all the pully-hauly.”

“Francis? The dagga-smoker?”

“Yes. But he only smokes on Friday night and over the weekend, after he’s been paid,” Lady Merrick said reassuringly. “They all do—or get drunk. It’s their emotional outlet, you know. He’s quite all right
during the week, you’ll find.”

“Is he?” Alix sounded doubtful. She had found something particularly repellent about Francis. However, Aunt Drusilla said he had green fingers. So long as he worked well, his personal habits oughtn’t to matter to her.

“I’ll turn him over to you tomorrow morning. You can start him off moving the hedge. And we’l
l get Lem
pere, the carrier, to bring black soil or rock or whatever you need.”

“
All right. I still don’t understand about closing the river banks.”

Lady Merrick waved a hand, scattering ash lavishly.

“My dear, all the visitors will want to do river picnics. Well, they can’t. Eric won’t let ’em, ha ha.”

Privately Alix thought that wasn’t such a good idea. It was rather too vindictive. It meant the visitors would suffer—not Herrold. But she didn’t voice her thoughts. She yawned and asked what about bed. It had been a very long day. Her aunt, all compunction, rose at once.

“You must be half dead, dearest. Go along now, and sleep well.”

“Goodnight, Aunt Drusilla. It’s lovely to be back,” said Alix’s warm voice.

“It’s lovely that you’ve come. Goodnight.”

Alix was thinking about the new piece of garden as she and Nelson crossed the coast road on their way to the beach next morning.

The shape of the land to be enclosed was a blunt
-
pointed triangle and the transposed hedge would cross the road in two places, and run along two sides of this triangle to the point.

It looked as if a rock garden, with a path winding out to the point and connecting by way of shallow steps to the beach, would be the answer. As she studied the lie of the land Alix grew interested—then enthusiastic.

She decided to make a really good job of this. Then, if her aunt thought there was any future in starting up a garden consultant business in the area, perhaps she would allow her to use it as her show piece.

The question of earning her living was very much on her mind now. Lady Merrick wanted her to stay on at ‘Laguna’ indefinitely. And she felt already such a strong affection for Paradise and the lagoon that she wanted to do so, if it proved feasible. But feasible it must be;

she had no intention of living on her aunt’s charity. The five hundred pounds which her mother had made over to her as a wedding present when she left England wouldn’t last for ever.

Lady Merrick had been amused at her seriousness.

“My dear child, for heaven’s sake don’t turn into one of these grim career women,” she begged. “Of course you’ll marry. It’s what you are obviously cut out for.”

“I don’t mean to marry for years and years, Aunt Drusilla.”

“Nonsense, dear. You say that because of this business of Bernard. But you must forget about that. Though I do hope you’ll choose someone a little more mature, more established, next time. Someone of
position.”

I know. Eric Gore, thought Alix with a sardonic little grin.
No, thank you.
But all she said was, “They don’t grow on trees for the picking, do they?”

“Any girl as pretty and intelligent as you should have no difficulty at all, my dear.”

But I’m not even going to
think
about marriage for a long, long time, Alix asserted to herself now.

Nelson’s cold nose, pushed insistently into her hand, reminded her that he had not brought her out on this fine bright mornin
g
to have her stand still, lost in thought, on the point. She pulled his ear and laughed.

“All right. Come on, then,” she said, and followed his waving stem out to the deep water. There was no dinghy this morning. No Richard sat baiting his hooks, or watching his line. Alix looked across the water to the jetty where he kept his boat. No sign of movement there.

Perhaps he was too busy after his absence—she wasn’t the only one with work to do and a career to pursue.

Perhaps—she hoped not—she had offended him so much that he wouldn’t come any more.

That thought, oddly, seemed to take the sparkle out of the day. She was very thoughtful as she walked back, after a short swim, to the house
...

Richard wasn’t there next morning, either. Or the morning after. But Herrold Senior came. Not to fish, but to inspect his property, along with the master builder he was employing, for a last time before starting work on the Chambers’ side of the
road.

Alix had already put Francis to work. When Herrold’s car took the left-hand turn beyond the gates of
K
‘Laguna,’ he found the road blocked by a deep trench with a mound of earth beyond it.

With a grunt of annoyance he pulled up and got out.

“I’ll just see what all this is about,” he told the builder, and made for the house. He found Alix, gloved and busy with small saw and secateurs, trimming and
pr
unin
g
the hedge trees in readiness for moving them.

“H’m. So you’
r
e back, are you?” he
co
mm
ented.
“Didn’t stay long, did you? Wedding off—eh?”

“If it’s of any interest to you, Mr. Herrold, yes, it is,” Alix replied with some heat.

“No need to snap my head off. I told you things didn’t always work out the way people thought they would—didn’t I? Perhaps you’ll consider accepting that job I offered you now—heh?”

“Thank you, Mr. Herrold. For the present I have a job.”

He looked at the tools in her hands.

“H’m. Anything to do with this mess-up on the road?”

“Yes.”

“What’s it all about?”

“I’m constructing a new rock garden for my aunt.”

“But you’re blocking the road, my good girl.”

“I know. The road runs through my aunt’s land. She’s closed it,” Alix said gently.

Mr. Herrold opened his mouth to say something violent, thought better of it, muttered, “Hah, so that’s her game, is it? We’ll see about that,” turned on his heel, and strode back to his car.

Alix chuckled. That vexed him, she thought, and ran indoors to tell her aunt. She would have been surprised to know that as he walked away from her, Herrold
Senior’s shoulders were shaking. The laugh’s on me there all right, he was thinking appreciatively. He was a man who could always see a joke against
hims
elf.

A few days later, his bulldozer, his cement mixer, his labour gangs of tree-fellers and bricklayers and their mates started work on the Chambers’ side of the road. The noise they made penetrated into every comer of ‘Laguna.’ Clouds of dust drifted across it, carried on a wind that had perversely turned westerly. The earth road was scarred and corrugated by the heavily-laden vehicles that travelled back and forth all day long. Lady Merrick had predicted turmoil; and turmoil there was.

Meantime the rock garden took shape. The trenches across the road were filled in by Francis with compost and soil, the hibiscus hedge was watered into position.

Lempere the carrier delivered loads of black earth and the handsome local rock from a hillside quarry, further blocking the coast road.

Alix, wearing shirt and slacks, her gardening gloves and a big straw hat, was busy all day long. And after nearly ten days, when she was considering whether or not she should write him a little note of apology and contrition, Richard came out early one morning to fish. Catching sight of the quiet figure in the dinghy as she walked down to the water with Nelson, Alix felt a curious sensation—as if her heart had stopped for a moment, then hurried on to catch up with its own rhythm.

She didn’t hesitate about swimming out to him. She put up a hand and caught at the gunwale.