Dorothy Eden (30 page)

“Are you going to town?” called old Mrs. Moffatt as Abby went up the path round the big house to the street.

The wrinkled brown face with the curiously sad eyes leaned out of the downstairs window. Abby could see the old lady’s smile. She was so eager to be friendly. Strings of gaily-colored beads hung round her neck. She decorated herself like a Christmas tree. She was both eager and forlorn, and one had the feeling that either she was acting, or else she really was, like Deirdre, lonely and shut out.

“I’ve got some shopping to do,” Abby called up to her. “Isn’t it a lovely day?”

“Are you going by ferry, dear?”

“Yes.”

“Then don’t be late home. The ferries get so crowded later. Don’t they, Milton?”

Abby had not imagined the movement at Mrs. Moffatt’s side. But she couldn’t see Milton clearly because he would be in his wheel chair.

“The traffic’s terrible,” the anxious delaying voice followed Abby. “We can’t even let Deirdre come home from school alone. Yes, Milton. I’m sorry, Abby. Milton says I’m keeping you. Have a nice time.”

Abby hurried on, relieved to escape. The old lady was lonely. She was bullied by Milton and her daughters. She was garrulous and had no one to listen to her. But Abby was glad only to get away, to escape the watching eyes and the constant inquisitiveness. What had they all done before Luke had come here to build his house in their garden? Stared at the lizards?

My name is Abigail Fearon. I’m twenty-four and just married. My husband is a surveyor just beginning on his own, and working very hard. Naturally he has to be away a lot, and I get a lot of spare time. It would help me to settle down much more quickly if I had a job and met more people. I’ve only been in Australia eight weeks, but I think it’s wonderful…

All the way to town on the ferry Abby rehearsed what she would say to the editor or editors whom she hoped would agree to see her. She had drafted out a list of ideas and projects. She was so optimistic about her scheme that she didn’t even notice as they slid beneath the great chilly arch of steel suspended miraculously above the little ferry boat. Her eyes were on the opposite shore where Sydney’s skyscrapers gleamed pale in the brilliant sunlight. As the water grew blue and sunlit again she even thought the bridge had a strange beauty, and it didn’t give her that oppressive feeling any more.

On shore she caught a bus up to Kings Cross which was her first destination. She wore a red suit and a small black velvet hat, and looked, had she known it, very pretty indeed. She thought that when her own private business was over she might call at Luke’s office and surprise him. Perhaps they could eat out that evening, and be gay. It was time they behaved like newly-married people.

The Cross was full of bustling people, and the rich heavy scent of flowers from the flower shops, carnations, stocks and great orange poppies hung in the air. Rows of old houses with lacy iron balconies and paint-flaked walls, reminiscent of another era, faced tall blocks of luxury flats. Bird cages and twining plants hung from blackened ceilings. Abby paused, fascinated by the juxtaposition of wealth and poverty. It was then that the name caught her eye and made her look again.

The Rose Bay Cosmetic Company. Now why did that seem significant?

It was a very modest notice over a door that opened from the street between a dress shop and a jeweller’s and led up a narrow stairway.

Abby paused again. Cosmetics were on her mind. That was why she had noticed the name.

No, it wasn’t. In a flash the answer came to her. That had been the name on the paper round the lipstick Deirdre had given her yesterday. She had forgotten it because it hadn’t been one of the giant companies. But now, like fate, she had stumbled on it. It was like fate indeed, for here was her opportunity to pursue the intriguing question of the lipstick flavor. She would go upstairs and present her credentials and ask precisely how the faint subtle flavor which her husband had unfortunately recognized had been put in the lipstick. It would make an excellent gimmick on which to base her first article.

Does your husband prefer to remember or forget that kiss?

Abby went briskly up the narrow stairs. They were uncarpeted and rather unswept, which suggested the Rose Bay Company was either very small and struggling, or very new. They were also dark and steep. This was an old building, probably built in the early days of Kings Cross, and its modernized façade didn’t correspond with its interior.

At the top of the stairway there were only two doorways. One led into a washroom, as indicated by the faded white printing, and the other, a shabbily painted green door, told nothing at all.

Since there was no other door this was the one at which Abby knocked. She waited a few moments, listening for footsteps. It was dark and cool up here, after the heat of the sun in the street. The roar of the traffic seemed a long way off. The building was so silent, it might have been empty.

Nobody came to answer her knock. She knocked again, more loudly, and waited. Still no one came. Tentatively she tried the handle of the door, and found it locked.

Suddenly she felt as if she were trespassing on somebody’s private premises. This was obviously not the business entrance to the Rose Bay Cosmetic Company at all. In any case, if it were called the Rose Bay Company, surely its premises would be at Rose Bay, that very attractive suburb of Sydney on the water front.

Disappointedly Abby turned away, and began to go down the stairs, her high heels tapping on the wooden treads. Then she found that she had dropped a glove outside the door, and had to go back to retrieve it.

It was as she stooped to pick it up that she heard the faint noise within the room, a curious furtive dragging sound.

It was at that moment too, that the overwhelming feeling of being watched came over her again. There was an eye at the keyhole, she thought wildly. Or whether there was or not, there was certainly someone in the room.

Anger at this familiar suspicious pattern of sly watching took her boldly up to the door. She banged on it unceremoniously.

“I know there’s someone in there. Open the door!” Utter silence. The place was deserted, dead. Had she heard a sound? Or had it been noises from the street? She looked down the steep flight of stairs to the square of sunlight at the bottom. It looked so normal that her fancies seemed ridiculous.

She turned, meaning to give one last tentative knock, but instead gasped in shock.

The door had opened silently, no more than a few inches.

She found herself looking into a pair of pale, red-rimmed eyes.

“You knocked. You want something?”

The voice was a flat monotone. Abby couldn’t have said why she felt that first tremor of fear.

“I didn’t know there was anybody there. I thought the place was empty.”

The man was showing a little more of himself now. He was meagrely built, and had a face curiously fishlike. A faintly gasping mouth, pale eyes, and hair so sparse over his skull that it seemed flesh-colored.

Not a pleasant individual, but simply a man, not a hobgoblin or a ghost. Abby pulled herself together, and asked more composedly,

“Is this the Rose Bay Cosmetic Company?”

“I don’t know anything about that, lady.”

“But you must. The sign says so downstairs. What are you doing here if you don’t know what place it is?” Determined not to be chilled by his flat stare, Abby worked herself into a state of indignation. Why was the door opened only that meagre six inches? What was in there, anyway?

A mad impulse made her give the door a sharp push.

“What are you hiding in there? Let me look. Either this is the Rose Bay Cosmetic Company or it isn’t.”

Taken unawares the man had lost his grip of the door and it sprang open, to show a completely empty room except for some old packing-cases in a corner that looked as if they had stood there for years.

There was another door at the side. It was opened the merest chink.

Again Abby had that chilling certainty that she was being watched.

A narrow, dirty window looked down into what must be a well, judging by the dimness of the light it gave. The sounds from the street were scarcely audible from here. The sunlight and the bustling normality might have been a thousand miles away.

The pale eyes of the man looked at her unblinkingly.

“I think you’re in the wrong place, lady.”

“Then why is that notice up in the street?”

“Can’t say. I’m only a workman.”

“Doing what?” Abby asked crisply.

“That wouldn’t be your business, would it?” the man said, with deliberate insolence. “If you want this Rose Bay Company, I can’t help you. Sounds more like they’d be in Rose Bay. What did you want, anyway?”

“It was just to find out about a lipstick they make—”

That side door did move. She could have sworn it. What was she doing here, anyway, standing in an empty room asking a workman foolish questions about a lipstick? Something he couldn’t have known about even had he been an employee of the mysterious Rose Bay Cosmetic Company. She was beginning to babble. Because if she didn’t that acute feeling of danger would take possession of her, and she wouldn’t have known how to get herself out of this horrible room.

“It isn’t really important. I’m sorry I disturbed you.”

“You’ve come to the wrong place,” said the man in his flat voice. “I’d go—if I was you. For your own good.”

His words didn’t necessarily hold a threat. The timbre of his voice hadn’t changed. But Abby looked into his cold eyes and was galvanized into action. Muttering an apology, she was out of the room and running down the stairs. Running for that heavenly sweet sunlight. Not knowing why the dusty old packing-cases and the dirty window and the derelict room had filled her with such fear.

In the street she found herself trembling. What was wrong with her? The man had done nothing. It was she who had behaved idiotically, forcing her way into private premises. But in her mind’s eye she saw the side door inching open, moving just that fraction. And contemplating who had been behind that frightened her even more than the strange, subtle antagonism of the fish-faced man.

Suddenly, in the bright noisy street, she felt terribly alone. It was not the first time she had felt very alone in this gigantic, alien country, but this time her solitude was something different—as if she were the one stranger among hostile people.

Of course she was imagining it. It all originated from Luke’s behavior. If he had let her come really close to him she would never have begun thinking that everyone was hostile. But he hadn’t, he was holding her away, so her feeling towards everybody was tinged with this hurt and suspicion.

Nevertheless, at this moment only Luke could comfort her, and with nothing but this thought in mind she made for the nearest telephone box.

Could she go up to his office and wait until he was ready to go home, she meant to ask. Because the thought of going home to the empty house with the kookaburras raucously screaming in the jacaranda tree, the thin strains of Jock’s gramophone from the river, and Mrs. Moffatt calling to ask what she had done in town, were too much to contemplate.

Miss Atkinson, Luke’s forty-year-old secretary, answered the telephone. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Fearon. Mr. Fearon isn’t in.”

“Oh!” Abby made a disappointed sound. She found that she kept glancing back down the street to see if the fish-faced man had emerged from the building. “Will he be in soon? Can I come and wait? I’m in town and thought we might go home together?”

She made her voice light. Miss Atkinson was a matter-of-fact unimaginative sort of person, loyal to Luke but inclined to be bossy and managing. She had kindly but firmly made it clear from the start that she considered a wife’s place was in the home, not hanging around her husband’s business premises. Abby could have the new house by the river, but Miss Atkinson had the Elizabeth Street offices.

“Well, I am sorry, Mrs. Fearon, but he’s gone out to Parramatta on a job. He said he’d be going home straight from there.”

“Oh!” Now the bottom had really fallen out of the day. “Did he say how late he was likely to be?”

“He didn’t say he’d be late at all.” Miss Atkinson’s voice was brisk and reassuring. It told Abby not to fuss. It suggested that over-possessiveness could suffocate a man.

“Then—I guess I’ll have to go home by ferry.”

“That’s right. It’s a nice day to be on the harbor. I wish I could be myself.”

All right, thought Abby crossly, don’t lecture me. Don’t think I’m a spoilt wife. Because you couldn’t be further from the truth.

“You’re all right, aren’t you, Mrs. Fearon?” came the brisk, no-nonsense voice.

“Yes, I’m all right.”

“I thought for a minute you sounded nervous.”

Abby managed a laugh. “What on earth about?”

“Yes, that’s what I thought. In Sydney. Where are you ringing from?”

“The Cross.”

“Oh, well, odd things can happen up there. But not by daylight, usually. So don’t be alarmed.”

Miss Atkinson was simply making conversation. She was relieved when Abby hung up, so that she could get back to her work. Real things, not the hypersensitive fancies of a spoilt bride.

But her attitude had done Abby good after all, for now she found herself quite calm enough to go into an espresso bar for coffee, and then to make the journey down to Circular Quay to catch the ferry.

There was a queue waiting for the ferry. She took her place and was jostled and hurried on board. Looking back as she found a seat she could not be sure, she could never be sure enough to tell it as a fact to Luke, but the figure sauntering behind the crowd which had just disembarked from another ferry looked remarkably like that of the fish-faced man. She could see his flesh-colored hair…

There were many middle-aged men with thinning hair which had gone that color. It would be so easy to make a mistake, and she had rather had him on her mind. But if it should have been him—and Abby’s eyes strained after the vanishing figure as the ferry headed out towards the towering shape of the bridge—there was only one conclusion she could draw. He had followed her to see where she went. Perhaps to satisfy himself as to who she was. Because he had more than half an idea already.