Dorothy Eden (14 page)

He was so near to her. She cared nothing for him any longer. But she hated to see the way his eyes had grown hard and contemptuous.

‘Felix, I couldn’t travel while I was ill.’

‘Granted you couldn’t, but what about now? Are you going to let me book a seat for you on the bus tomorrow?’

Alice thought of Camilla’s little cottage with its air of mystery, of beautiful unhappy Katherine Thorpe and her queer threatening brother, of surly Margaretta, of Dundas with his gentle passion for small women, and like a fantastic backdrop on a stage the mountains, the lowering clouds, the white frozen stream of the glacier.

‘No,’ she said definitely. ‘It’s much too interesting here. Anyway, I refuse to be ordered about like this. I’m getting much too tired of people telling me to go away. I’m not spilling their little schemes—whatever they are.’

Felix regarded her in his assessing way.

‘Is it only a passion for drama that keeps you here, such as long midnight walks and trees hurled at you in storms?’

‘You mean, don’t you, is it Dundas Hill who keeps me here? You’ve told me repeatedly that we’re through. I don’t ask you questions about what you’re doing, so I’m sorry, but it’s entirely none of your business whether I’m interested in another man or not.’

‘Those words have a familiar sound,’ said Felix thoughtfully.

‘Familiar?’

‘Yes, Camilla used them to me not ten days ago. I was poking my nose in, as usual.’

That sense of disquiet, never far away, was back with Alice again.

‘What were you poking your nose into?’

‘One of her mysterious intrigues. By the way, it might interest you to know that Camilla was not married in Hokitika.’

‘Not?’

‘According to the marriage register, no. But there are a great many other places where she could have been married. Nevertheless, I may be on to something. A parson in Rutland Street—’

‘Well, Alice! Felix!’ That was Dundas’s hearty voice suddenly breaking upon them. He came striding into the room still in his climbing clothes, his boots muddy now, his skin bright with windburn. ‘Alice, my dear, it’s grand to see you up. Felix, has Margaretta given you a drink? Ah, she’s naughty. I’ll get you one. But first, news of Camilla. In the mailbag you brought down. A letter for you, Alice, and one for me.’

‘Where is she?’ Alice demanded, springing up and taking the letter. ‘What does she say?’

‘Read your letter, child. Read your letter.’

Alice could scarcely believe that the answer to the mystery lay in that slim envelope with its neatly printed address and Australian postmark. She tore it open and took out the printed sheet inside. (Why had Camilla this craze for printing? It must come from teaching it in school.)

DEAR ALICE,

YOU MUST BE WONDERING WHERE ON EARTH I HAVE GOT TO AND WHY I HAVE BEHAVED SO PECULIARLY. IT’S ALL DUE TO REX WHO WAS CATCHING A PLANE TO MELBOURNE AND JUST DIDN’T GIVE ME A MINUTE. I WAS LITERALLY FLOWN TO THE ALTAR ! I AM WRITING THIS TO YOU AT THE COTTAGE BECAUSE I HAVE A HUNCH YOU WILL STILL BE THERE. I HOPE ONE OR TWO OF MY IMPORTUNATE FRIENDS HAVE NOT BEEN WORRYING YOU! I HAVE WRITTEN TO DUNDAS TELLING HIM WHERE TO HAVE MY THINGS SENT, PARTICULARLY A FUR COAT WHICH YOU MUST HAVE WONDERED WHY I LEFT. REX JUST WOULDN’T LET ME PACK A THING. I AM TRULY SORRY TO HAVE BEEN SUCH A BAD HOSTESS, BUT YOU KNOW ME. I GET CARRIED AWAY, REALLY CARRIED AWAY, HA, HA! WE ARE LEAVING FOR SAN FRANCISCO TOMORROW, AND THEN SOME PLACE IN THE MIDDLE WEST. ISN’T IT EXCITING! REX IS TERRIBLY SWEET. YOU MIGHT FLING A FEW APOLOGIES FOR MY BEHAVIOUR ROUND THE VALLEY, TO THE THORPES, FELIX, ETC. AREN’T I BAD! I HOPE YOU HAVE LOOKED AFTER MY ANIMALS.

LOTS OF LOVE FROM YOUR ALWAYS UNRELIABLE

CAMILLA.

Alice read the letter aloud, slowly. When she had finished she felt curiously flat. After what had happened, both in her imagination and in fact, this explanation seemed a tepid anti-climax.

‘I can’t think why Camilla has taken to this habit of printing. She never used to,’ she said.

Felix took the letter from her. He perused it slowly, in silence. Dundas said, ‘Mine was much to the same effect. I must say it takes a burden off my mind knowing where to send her things. I have a new teacher arriving tomorrow, and she will probably like to stay in the cottage until we decide whether to renovate it or pull it down. Well, one likes a neat end to things.’

Felix handed the letter back to Alice. He still made no comment. He looked as if he were suffering from a feeling of anti-climax, too. Alice realized that he never had believed in Camilla’s elopement, and was finding it difficult to adjust his theories.

She realized that she hadn’t believed in it either. There had been so many puzzling things. (How to explain what had happened to her in the Thorpe house, and that voice whispering, ‘Camilla’s here’?) But here was the evidence in her hands, and she could not but be glad for the happy ending. Camilla’s luck had held at last.

When Dundas brought drinks and said in his deep pleasant voice, ‘Now we can drink to Camilla’s happiness in all sincerity, and I hope my next teacher is just a little more stable,’ she laughed and raised her glass contentedly.

Felix, after a moment, did so, too. But he murmured:

‘
’Tis ten to one this play can never please

All that are here…’

Dundas nodded understanding.

‘Ah, my dear fellow. But may I suggest that with your talents you need never be at a loss?’

It occurred to Alice afterwards that Dundas might have been wrong in supposing that Felix was suffering from jealousy. His careless quotation could have meant that just as he had not believed in Camilla’s elopement, now he did not believe in the explanation contained in her letter.

But the letter had a Sydney postmark. It was completely genuine. Alice had studied it a dozen times. It was Camilla talking in her old gay haphazard way. It explained everything, except perhaps the origin of the fur coat. But one would not expect Camilla to give away indiscreet secrets. No, there was nothing more to worry about. Camilla was safe and was going to lose herself in the anonymity of the Middle West. Good luck to her.

Alice was light-hearted as she went upstairs to the bedroom with the candy-striped wallpaper. Dundas had insisted on her having her dinner in bed, and this she was glad to agree to, for the day had been exhausting. But apart from her tiredness she felt better now. The solution to Camilla’s disappearance had lifted a great weight from her. Tomorrow she would go back to the schoolhouse and prepare to enjoy her holiday.

As she was undressing, Margaretta came into the room.

‘Hullo,’ said Alice. ‘Isn’t it good news about Camilla?’

Margaretta said guardedly, ‘I suppose it is.’

‘You don’t sound very sure,’ Alice said in surprise.

Margaretta didn’t answer. She had her hands behind her back. Her expression was unreadable.

‘Do you?’ Alice insisted.

‘With Camilla you can’t be sure,’ Margaretta mumbled at last.

Suddenly she brought her right hand out. In it she held a white tissue-paper package.

‘Daddy says he’s going to have his dinner up here with you,’ she said in a rush. ‘You’d better put this on.’

She had flushed scarlet with embarrassment, Alice thought, at her first kind action. Alice took the package and opened it. It contained a flame-coloured nylon nightdress.

‘But, Margaretta!’ Alice shook out the delicate flamboyant thing, full of bewilderment. She looked at Margaretta’s drab brown dress gaping at its fastenings, and then at this very feminine fastidious garment in her hand. How would Margaretta, who was shamefully shabby and careless about her clothes, come to own a nylon nightdress of this quality?

‘It was given to me,’ Margaretta said, without meeting Alice’s eyes. ‘I’ve never worn it.’

‘But you mustn’t lend me a pretty thing like this that’s never been worn,’ Alice protested. ‘You keep it for—’

‘For what?’ Margaretta asked roughly. ‘You can imagine me in nylon.’

‘Yes, but—’

‘Wear it!’ Margaretta ordered. ‘It’s better than those old cotton things of mine you’ve had on. It’ll suit you,’ she added in her blunt ungracious way, and abruptly, so that there could be no more argument, she left the room.

Alice put the nightdress on. That little core of uneasiness was stirring in her again as she did so. But it was a lovely thing. Its glowing colour made her whole body a flame. She thought of Dundas coming in presently, and suddenly her uneasiness gave way to excitement and the old feminine desire to light admiration in a man’s eyes.

When Dundas came in he was carrying a card-table. He carefully erected it by the bed, saying in a gay boyish voice, ‘I’m going to have my dinner in here with you if you’ll allow me.’

Then he looked up and saw her.

It was curious how the pupils of his eyes expanded as she watched. Like a startled cat s, like a tiger’s. Why should Katherine think his eyes were like a tiger’s when the rest of his face was so bland and genial?

‘Why—you’re all dressed up.’

Had he never seen an attractive woman in bed before? Alice knew that she looked extremely attractive. She had the ribbon coquettishly in her curls and weakness had made a brilliant spot of colour in either cheek. Her breasts were delicately round beneath the soft smooth texture of the nightdress. It had been fun prettying herself up like this, with Margaretta’s unexpected encouragement and the knowledge that Dundas would be coming up to say good night.

But now she wasn’t quite so sure. She had an odd feeling that the darkness in his eyes wasn’t all admiration.

‘This is Margaretta’s,’ she said, indicating the nightdress. ‘She insisted on my wearing it. It was so kind of her. It’s really a little glamorous, isn’t it?’ She watched his face, and suddenly guessed the reason for his tension. Of course, he was wondering where his prim and quiet daughter had got a luxurious garment like this.

‘I don’t know where she got it,’ she went on, ‘but I’m sure it was in a perfectly legitimate way. You’re not worrying about it, are you?’

Suddenly she added, ‘It’s not Camilla’s like those shoes were, is it?’

He gave himself a small jerk.

‘If it were I wouldn’t know.’ Then, in apology for his abruptness, he said, ‘It’s just that you look so extremely beautiful. But I’d better have a word with Margaretta, all the same. She might be a dark horse, my daughter, eh?’

He was smiling and the tension was past. He went out of the room and Alice lay back thinking idly of the luxurious tastes of the women on the coast, Katherine Thorpe’s model evening gowns, Camilla’s squirrel coat, Margaretta’s nightdress. It was almost as if the thing were infectious, as if it might all stem from one source. She wondered why that thought came to her.

Dundas was gone a long time. Once Alice thought she heard voices raised to a high pitch. But she wasn’t sure. The wind was rising again, and a couple of keas were squabbling on the roof. She could hear their shrill profane voices and the scrabbling of their claws on the iron. And suddenly she was thinking of Webster lying in the rain with his poor twisted neck. Whatever Camilla’s letter explained, it did not explain why someone should want to kill Webster.

She was sure there was something about that letter of Camilla’s that should have been significant, but could not identify what it was. Was it that Camilla had taken to this extraordinary habit of printing? She had never used to do it in letters, but on the other hand Alice had so rarely exchanged letters with her that she could be no authority on her handwriting habits. Nevertheless there was something about that letter. Alice reached over to get it from the bedside table, and the thin substance of the nylon moved against her skin. It had the coolness of flower petals. Out of nowhere, as if the words were spoken aloud, she heard Margaretta saying,
Daddy likes women’s clothes.

The door opened and Alice shot round.

‘Did I startle you?’ came Dundas’s voice. ‘I should have knocked, but my hands are full, as you see.’

He was carrying a tray laden with china, cutlery, a sherry decanter and glasses, and a vase of yellow roses. He put the roses carefully in the middle of the table and turned with his pleasant beaming smile.

‘There. A little celebration, you see.’

‘What are we celebrating?’ Alice asked guardedly.

‘The good news of Camilla. And your recovery, of course.’ His eyes rested on her. His voice had its deep velvet quality. ‘Especially your recovery.’

He began setting out the dishes with a deliberation that was almost absent-minded. What was he thinking about? Alice wondered, uneasiness stirring in her again. His eyes still had that alert darkened look although he smiled so kindly.
Daddy likes women’s clothes,
she was thinking. He took the stopper out of the decanter and with precision filled each glass until the golden liquid reached the brim.

The reason for his deliberation, Alice suddenly noticed, was because his hands were shaking.

‘There you are, my dear,’ he said, handing a glass to Alice.

A drop of the sherry spilt on the bedclothes. He was exaggeratedly upset, getting a table napkin to wipe it up.

‘I’m a little nervous,’ he said. Then he added abruptly in his prim old-fashioned way, ‘Do you think when one is over forty one should no longer be romantic?’

‘Not in the least,’ Alice answered sincerely.

‘I’m forty-two.’

He looked so anxious and nervous and distressed that Alice had to help him.

‘And what are you romantic about, Dundas?’

‘About you, my dear.’ The words were out now. Dundas took a deep swallow of sherry and went on more boldly, ‘I’ve fallen in love with you. I never thought I would fall in love again. In fact, I never have in this way before. I’m hoping very much that I can persuade you to marry me.’

Why, Dundas!’ Alice murmured. She should not have been startled, because Dundas’s actions had obviously been leading up to this. But she found it curiously embarrassing to be proposed to as she lay in bed in a borrowed nightdress.

Yet why should she be? Dundas was so kind and gentle and thoughtful. She need never be embarrassed with him. She could just let herself be wrapped in his loving care. She could have what she had longed for all her life, someone to love her deeply and sincerely. There need be no more lonely struggling, no more hardening herself to rebuffs. In a house full of miniature ladies she could be the animate one, set on a pedestal and revered.