Island of escape

ISLAND OF ESCAPE by Dorothy Cork

It was because she felt sorry for Steve Gascoyne that Ellis had written to him. Her flighty cousin Jan had heartlessly thrown him over—to steal Ellis's boy-friend Paul !—and while Ellis was heartbroken over the loss of Paul she realised that Steve, a hardworking sheep farmer, who had been expecting to acquire a wife and helpmeet, had practical problems too. So she had written to suggest that the two of them might come to some arrangement. What she had had in mind was helping him on the sheep station or something useful like that, but it seemed Steve had completely misunderstood her...

ELLIS scarcely recognised herself in the girl who looked back at her from the mirror in the hotel bedroom, high above Sandy Bay. She couldn't help thinking that if she had looked like this just two weeks ago, then Paul might not have ditched her and been so easily diverted by Jan's charms. She had grown used to that sort of thing happening, of course. Men rarely looked again at Ellis Lincoln once they had met her volatile and beautiful cousin Jan.

But this time was different. Paul was the first man she had really felt seriously about, and Jan had broken up the affair so easily.

Ellis leaned closer to her reflection to smooth colour over her lips, and had to blink away tears from her eyes even as she took in, with a new shock of surprise, her changed appearance. The light golden-brown hair, which she always used to wear long and neatly drawn back from her face, had been cut short and completely restyled, and she had been shown by an expert how to use, to full effect, the expensive make-up that Jake had insisted she should buy. Tonight, her darkly lashed blue eyes looked like jewels in their setting of subtly applied eye-shadow, and as if all this were not enough, she wore the most sophisticated and beautiful dress she had ever owned in all her twenty years. It was a blue and green affair of finest voile, the halter-neck, that showed off her smooth young shoulders, looped through with a wide band of fine gold mesh, fastened at one side by a sparkling clasp. She had, in fact, become such

a stranger to herself that she found it hard to reconcile what she saw with what she knew herself to be—a quiet, almost plain girl, very unsophisticated, and completely lacking in charisma, as Jan had remarked once. A girl who kept house for her uncle in a Melbourne suburb.

Well, all that had come to an end since Jan had come home from Fli
nders Island and annexed Paul Ho
ward. Ellis simply couldn't stay there any longer, and though she did it reluctantly, she left her uncle in Jan's decidedly unwilling hands and flew across Bass Strait to spend a week in Hobart with Jake Armour.

`The best way to mend a broken heart,' Jake claimed, `is to go somewhere different—meet new people—enjoy yourself,' and he had written Ellis a bracing letter. `'Come to Hobart and join me at the Casino Hotel. You'll have the whale of a time—you'll soon forget that fellow. He can't be worth breaking your heart over anyhow, if he prefers that minx Jan to you. I never did like that girl. I remember saying to Siddie when we left you with the Websters, That young miss will eat little Ellis alive—'

Jake had been Ellis's father's closest friend, and when Ellis was orphaned at eleven, she had spent three years—three happy years—with him and his wife, Sidd
ie.
Then he had gone broke, completely broke, and reluctantly passed her over to her aunt and uncle, who had looked after her and educated her. Ellis had barely left school and started work in a bank when her

aunt died, and since Jan, despite being tw
o
y
ears older than Ellis, was too giddy and irresponsi
b
le to be trusted, it was Ellis who took over the housekeeping for her uncle and for Jan and Martin. It was not long . after that that Siddie and Jake came into a small fortune and wanted her to come back to them, but out of

loyalty and gratitude she stayed with her uncle.

And now she would never go back. She had made up her mind

Ellis glanced at the little jewelled-watch on her wrist. It was time to go downstairs. If Jake had had enough of the gaming tables in the main casino, he would be waiting for her. They were going to dine in the Cabaret Room and then watch the show, and Ellis had a slight feeling of trepidation, because Jake was pressing her to go back to Adelaide with him and be the daughter he had never had. Siddie had died over two years ago, and now he was going to marry again and Ellis knew, though it didn't seem to have occurred to Jake, that it would be a great mistake for him to present his new wife with an unknown, twenty-year-old 'daughter'. She could only hope and pray that she would hear soon about the position she had applied for on Flinders Island.

Taking up her evening purse, she made her way to the elevator. She was sure she would be happy working on a sheep farm—or a sheep station, as Jan called it. She would feel herself useful, she would be busy, and in time, she supposed, she would get over Paul. Time, people said, was a great healer when it came to all sorts -of ills, including broken hearts.

Travelling down in the lift among a crowd of well-dressed chattering people, Ellis wondered just why she hadn't heard from Steve Gascoyne in answer to her letter. Perhaps he didn't want to have any dealings with a cousin of Jan's. The very thought of how Jan had treated him troubled Ellis's conscience, as so many of the things Jan did troubled her conscience. Like not staying in to answer the phone when she had promised her father she would, or going out for the day with her latest boy-friend instead of typing out the letters her

father paid her to deal with Ellis didn't know how many times she herself had stayed up till all hours of the night doing Jan's typing for her—and getting no thanks for it. She didn't know, either, how many lies she had told on her cousin's behalf when Jan had capriciously decided to 'forget' a date.

And now there was Steve Gascoyne, this poor sheep farmer whom Jan had actually promised to marry. Ellis felt so sorry for him She pictured him as a nice unsophisticated countryman who probably could hardly believe that anyone like Jan could have fallen in love with him. And then Jan, no more than three days after she came home to Melbourne, rather obviously decided that Paul Howard, a young and successful real estate developer, was more to her taste. To give her her due, Ellis thought she was genuinely unaware that Paul had been her property till then, because a man as eligible as Paul was very hard to associate with a girl like Ellis

Ellis stepped out of the elevator and crossed the foyer towards the main casino, her eyes suddenly filling with the tears that would come when she thought of Paul. He had been so nice to her—he had taken her to a show, come to dinner, talked to her about all sorts of fascinating things.

And he had kissed her.

Oh, how she had fantasised about him—when she lay in bed at night, and at all hours of the day. It had been an effort to keep him out of her mind as she did her uncle's typing for him. She had taken that on so Jan could have a holiday with her brother Martin, a naturalist, who was doing research on various birds on Flinders Island Ellis had thought it odd that Jan should be interested in going to such a small out-of-the-way place, but in no time she had plunged into a love affair

with Steve Gascoyne. 'A torrid love affair,' she had written, and her letters had been full of satisfaction.

Now the engagement was off. The ring, a very beautiful one, had been returned by registered post. Exactly why was a mystery to Ellis. She was inclined to suspect that Jan had been rather cruelly amusing herself by having a 'torrid' love affair with a simple farmer. One thing that was plain was that she had left the island when she did because she didn't want to let herself in for any household chores.-

`Steve's aunt was taken off to hospital in Hobart by the Flying Doctor Service,' she had told Ellis. 'And I have a very nasty feeling she won't be coming back. Which does rather make one think, seeing that she did all the housekeeping. I really couldn't see myself taking that on—and certainly not cooking for the shearers when that comes around.'

But was that a good enough reason for breaking an engagement if you really loved a man? Ellis wouldn't have thought so. Still, Jan had always been fickle—and she was so attractive to the opposite sex she could pick and choose all she liked.

And now she had chosen Paul.

Ellis swallowed back her tears as she moved towards the Cabaret Room, and stood still for a moment glancing around her. The golden cages at the mini dice spun, the big dice tumbled. The croupier at one of the roulette tables raked in the chips, and from another came the call, Faites vos jeux!' Dealers at the blackjack tables, vivid in their vermilion dresses, flipped cards from the 'shoe', and from their high chairs the inspectors, formal in black suits and white shirts, presided over each game.