Welcome to Paradise (18 page)

But now the outboard, with the fiendish perversity that can manifest itself in such contraptions at the least convenient moments, refused to start. In vain Richard wound the cord, took hold of the toggle, and pulled. There wasn’t a flicker of life. Muttering at it, he set about the thing with spanner and screwdriver, and cleaned this and blew through that. He tried all the tricks he knew. Finally he looked at Alix and shrugged.

“No good?” she asked.

“No good.”

“We could try to sail.”

“We’d never get out of this reach now.” She knew he was right. The favouring eddy, the last of the southwest breeze, had died away. Without a tow they wouldn’t get out.

“So what do we do?”

Richard studied their surroundings. Northolme, Eric Gore’s house, and its lands, were in sight. The house was in fact directly above them, but some distance back on the hill-slope. The banks were thickly fringed with reeds.

“There are landing places further up,” Richard said. “I know. We’ll make everything shipshape on your boat and leave it on the anchor. Then I’ll row us in mine to some place where we can land. There’s sure to be a path of sorts, and any path is likely to strike the road leading from Gore’s house, at some point. We can walk from there to the main road. Are you a good walker, Alix? It isn’t likely to be more than a couple of miles before we can hitch a lift.”

“Yes, I’m a good walker. I suppose it’s all right to leave the boats?”

“It’ll have to be. There’s nobody much likely to come up here during the week anyway. I’ll borrow a tow and collect tomorrow or the next day.”

“All right, then.”

When they were ready they transferred into Richard’s boat and he took the oars and pulled a lit
tl
e way upriver. Soon, on the right bank, they found a landing place. Richard grinned when he saw Eric Gore’s “No Landing” board.

“Sorry,” he said. “Necessity knows no law, as they say.”

They scrambled ashore on to the short turf, and Richard made his boat fast to the branch of a tree.

There was a little narrow path running into the bush and across a bit of open grass. But it petered out at a spot where somebody had once built a fire among some stones.

Alix looked round. She said, “Wait a minute, Richard.” She had seen something she thought she recognised. A thick thorn hedge, running roughly parallel on this side with the river, with three other sides enclosing a large paddock. The largest of a series of paddocks. The one furthest away from the house, at the very outskirts of the farm lands. The one in which Eric Gore kept his fierce Jersey bull. She said, “I remember the layout here. I looked at it through Mr. Gore’s telescope—did you know he has a telescope for keeping an eye on things? For all we know he may be keeping an eye on us now,” she added with a laugh—not really meaning it. “We can’t cross over to meet the road here
—
there are paddocks all the way. There’s a bull in this one—a bull that’s a divil to handle.”

“The road comes round the far side of the paddocks, you mean?”

“Yes. I think we must go round the outside of this top one, behind the thorn hedge, and we ought to strike it.”

“Let’s go, then.”

They turned left-handed and made their way over rough grass and through thin bush, parallel with the upper end of the thorn hedge. When they reached the point where the hedge turned a comer, they turned too, right-handed this time.

There was no bush here. Instead, a big space in the bush seemed to have been cleared and planted. The crop was three feet or so high, and might have been tomato plants or something of the sort. They began to walk through it. Whatever it was must have been planted broadcast—there were no regular rows between which to walk.

Richard was ahead. They had gone some fifty yards when he stopped dead. He pulled a plant and looked at the leaves. He said in a voice of utter astonishment, “Good lord!”

“What’s the matter?”

“Any idea what this is, Alix?”

“No. What?”

“It’s dagga.”

Alix stared at the harmless-looking crop.

“You mean
...
”

“It must be worth a fortune. Hidden away here
—
behind all that paraphernalia of paddocks, and a fierce bull, so that nobody’ll come here unless they have to. My hat, is
that
one of the sources of our Midas’s money?”

“You mean to say you think Eric Gore is growing and
...
selling dagga, making money out of a drug
...
?”

“Well, perhaps it’s somebody else. Perhaps he doesn’t know anything about it, somebody’s pulling a fast one on him, using his land and the shelter of his bull-paddock. We don’t know, of course. What do
you
think, Alix?”

Alix didn’t know what to think. But she believed Eric Gore to be capable of pretty well anything. Still, no man should be found guilty without proof, she reminded herself.

The proof, had she known it, was on its way even now. As she and Richard stood together, heads bent over the incriminating bit of greenstuff that Richard had plucked, something whined in the air like an angry bee. Something knocked the soft fishing hat off Richard’s head
...

Richard made a grab at Alix and flung her without ceremony down on to the ground, crushing a whole lot of dagga plants as she fell, with him beside her. He said, “My God, someone’s shooting at us. Gore, I don’t mind betting. He must have been watching us—through his telescope as you said. He shot because he
knows we know.”

“But you can’t just shoot people,” Alix gasped. “You can’t get away with—murder,” she protested, trembling all over.

“Can’t you?” Richard said grimly. “He’s well known as a buck-hunter. He could say he thought he saw buck among his crops—if ever there was an inquiry. If he’d succeeded, I mean. He could arrange to move—whatever he had shot—into his com or his alfalfa or what
-
have-you. Or there’s the river—so why should anyone need to know?”

Alix nodded. It was true. This was Sunday, and there were no workmen about the place. There would just, perhaps, be the cowmen who looked after the milking of the Jerseys in the automatic milking shed.

Richard said, “Let’s try something.”

He crawled to where his hat was, pulled another plant, and set the hat on top of the stems. He raised it at the stretch of his arm above the plants. At once the angry bee whined again. The hat fell to the ground.

“He must be crazy,” Alix said. “Do you think
—
does
he
use dagga too? You said he looked peculiar last night—sort of all lit up, you said, but not drunk.”

“It could be. And he’d said he would kill me—remember?”

Oh, but it was all too melodramatic and impossible to be true. But it
was
true. Or something was. Here were two sane people, Richard and herself, lying flat on the ground on a patch of illegal dagga, not daring to move or get up and walk away for fear of being potted at like bolting rabbits by a madman with a rifle. It didn’t make sense.

And yet, if you accepted Richard’s theory—and her own—perhaps it did. Perhaps Eric Gore not only grew and sold dagga, but was an addict himself. In secret, of course. Perhaps that explained the way she had felt about him from the very first—that there was something
wrong,
frightening
...

“So what do we do now, Richard?”

“I think we make our way back to the river. Like this—crawling. Do you notice the wind has dropped a bit? It often does as the tide goes down. We’ll row downstream, see if we can make headway against the wind on the lagoon. We’ll have to hug this bank till we’re out of sight of Northolme. If we can’t make much headway, we’ll try to find a place to land, and walk along the shore road till we meet the main road and can get a lift. All right?”

“All right.”

“Who was it said fact was stranger than fiction?”

“I don’t know, Richard.”

“But he’d got something there—hadn’t he?”

Alix laughed, though she couldn’t have been enduring greater discomfort. Richard loved her for laughing. He loved her for taking this fantastic adventure the way she had. He loved her utterly, the adorable, obstinate, maddening little thing
...

They crawled on diligently, avoiding showing themselves. There were no more shots. They found Richard’s boat. Richard tried the outboard engine once more, just for luck. The perverse thing fired, died away. He rewound the chord, pulled the toggle; it fired again, and settled to a steady put-put.

“Well,
would you
believe
it?” Alix cried happily “What wonderful luck!”

They had a very wet trip down-lagoon, though the wind was dying away to a moderate breeze now. Wet
—
but strangely exhilarating, Alix found. She even enjoyed herself. She said once, after a period of thought, “Are you going to
—do
anything about Eric Gore, Richard?”

Richard said, not smiling, looking sterner than she had ever seen him, “You bet I am, my sweet.”

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

“IT’S like a tidal wave, isn’t it?” Lady Merrick said.

She meant the scandal about Eric Gore, which had broken over Paradise a fortnight after the discovery of the dagga field by Alix and Richard, and left it gasping.

Gore had been arrested for illicit trade in dagga, grown on his own estate.

A word from Richard to an ambitious young police officer of his acquaintance had set going an investigation tha.t had quickly uncovered the whole organisation of which Gore and his manager O’Rourke were the heads.

Of course, by the time the police arrived to investigate the field of dagga it had been reaped and reploughed. But Gore’s lorries, stopped on their way to Cape Town, were found to be carrying thousands of pounds worth of the stuff, hidden in the false bottoms of trays of his out-of-season fruits and vegetables.

His contacts in Cape Town and elsewhere had been located and arrested too. There would be a big national clean-up of the evil trade in dagga as a result. The ambitious young police officer said he couldn’t thank Richard enough.

Paradise, stunned at first, was soon simmering and boiling with excitement.

Never had there been so much to speculate over and talk about. Never had there been so much social activity, so many morning coffee parties, lunch, tea, cocktail, sundowner and dinner parties as now.

When it was revealed that Eric Gore was really Erich Goering, one of a family of notorious illicit diamond buyers in the old German South-West, all the armchair detectives in the place sagely nodded their heads.

They had always sensed something Teutonic about him. Those blond Aryan looks. That immaculate, rather military bearing. That love of ostentatious display
...

Lady Merrick and Alix found themselves in great demand. Everyone wanted to see how they were taking it—poor dear Drusilla must have been sadly disappointed!—condole with them, above all, pump them about Eric Gore. Their telephone rang and rang till they could have cried with vexation.

“Come to Paradise for peace and quiet,” Lady Merrick said with sardonic humour one morning at breakfast, coming back to the table after taking a call. With a sigh she added, “It’s strange how everything seems to have gone wrong with this place since Andrew Herrold arrived on the scene.”

Alix gave her a rather shocked look.

“But Aunt Drusilla, you surely aren’t blaming Mr. Herrold for Eric Gore?” she exclaimed.

“No, of course not. I merely said everything seemed to have gone haywire
since he came.”

“But surely unmasking a drug-smuggling ring is all to the good, isn’t it?” Alix insisted.

Her aunt said crossly, “Oh, I suppose so. Yes, of course. But look at all the scandal-mongering and sensationalism it’s caused. Paradise is ruined. I’m glad your Uncle Edgar isn’t here to see it. It’ll never be the same place any more.”

Alix agreed, placatingly, that it wouldn’t be the same.

But
ruined!
That depended, didn’t it, on the point of view? There were plenty of people who thought it was going to be better, now, than ever.

Lady Merrick retorted that she knew what her own point of view was and didn’t intend to change it. There was an obstinate look in her eyes still, but the zest had gone out of her. She was sadly out of humour these days.

Apart from her chagrin over Eric Gore, it maddened her that every time she walked or drove out of the gates of ‘Laguna’ she was confronted with Andrew Herrold’s project, now nearing completion.

That the buildings were, in point of fact, very pleasant to look at was an added annoyance. They were in the cool attractive Spanish style—cream-white walls and terracotta tiles, terracotta curlicues over windows and doors, ornamental wrought-iron grilles, tiled patios with orange and lemon trees in tubs, tall slim cypresses, stone pots of gay bright flowers.

Even the entrance arch was pleasing, now it was finished. And the caravans would be in bays among the big trees, on well shaven grass; the utility features tactfully concealed behind pleasant white-washed walls.

The fact was that Mr. Herrold had done a very good job. Everybody except Lady Merrick, who found herself hemmed in, just as she had feared, by camp activities on either side of her, was enthusiastic. Paradise was not only unblemished, but when Mr. Herrold had finished with it, it was going to be a great deal more fun to live in, it was generally ag
reed

All this, though she put a brave front on it, Lady Merrick was finding singularly hard to bear.

Alix was having a difficult time too.

She had been surprised to find her professional services in sudden urgent demand.

“But it isn’t their gardens they want to discuss with me, it’s Eric Gore,” she told her aunt despairingly after fulfilling three or four engagements.

“Better refuse to take any more jobs till this has blown over,” her aunt advised brusquely. “They’ll tire of the subject in time. No scandal lasts for ever.”

Alix said doubtfully, “I suppose that’s what I’d better do.”

But she knew it meant the end of her hopes of building up a business in the district. People would be offended. They wouldn’t offer her work again. She might just as well pack up and go.

But where?

She needed knowledgeable advice about that. And her aunt, even if she could have given it, was in no mood just now to be worried. She had worries enough of her own.

Alix began to long for sight of Richard.

She hadn’t seen him at all since their adventure on the river, though he had telephoned the next day to make sure she was none the worse for it. She herself had been leaving early each morning on her Corgi for the Pascalls’, and had had no time for her morning swim. Perhaps Richard hadn’t been fishing anyway—he had mentioned that he too was going to have a very busy time.

She began to feel, now, that she would give
any
thing
to see that eyebrow of his cocked at her, that twinkle in the grey eyes, those strong brown hands, the forceful nose and chin, that engaging grin. She wanted to hear his voice. She longed to hear his laugh—the laugh that always set her laughing too. She needed the reassurance of his presence, so easy, so comfortable, so
...
dear.

She wondered if she was falling in love with him.

She had thought, before, that love ought to be all rapture and thrill and excitement; a leaping of the heart, a rushing of the blood in the veins.

That wasn’t how she felt about Richard. He just made her feel safe, at ease,
happy.

Was that enough?

She woke one night after a frightening dream. In it she had relived those moments beside the river, when the shot had whined past them like an angry bee, and Richard had flung her to the ground and dropped down beside her.

She woke trembling and sweating, saying aloud, “Eric Gore is a crack shot, Richard. He might have
killed
you.”

In her half-waking state she lay shuddering and sobbing.

“I might have lost you,” she cried.

Suddenly, quite wide awake, she thought. If I had, I’d have wanted to die too.

That was when she knew, beyond any doubt. What she felt for Richard
was
love. Without knowing it, she had fallen in love with him.

Now that she knew, she felt airy, excited, almost lightheaded. She couldn’t wait to tell him. The most important thing in the world, now, was to see Richard and tell him, before he went away.

But where was he?

Before, he had seemed to be always turning up, wherever she happened to be. At Port Elizabeth, on the lagoon, in the airliner, at Punchestown, at the Ball, up the river
...

Always, when she needed him or when she didn’t he had been there. Now, ironically, she never seemed to see him at all. Was he busy?—out of town?—or deliberately keeping away, perhaps to give her time to recover from the shock of Eric Gore?

Whatever the answer, she could make no coherent plans about the future till she had seen him.

After that—if he still loved her—surely the future would look after itself?
...

Now Paradise, growing tired of Eric Gore, turned to another source of gossip and amusement
—the giant braaiv
leis Andrew Herrold was giving to mark the opening of his new caravan park.

Lady Merrick had received an invitation, on a handsome gilt-edged card, for herself and Alix. She snorted over it, tore it in two, replaced the pieces in the envelope; stuck it down with a dab of gum, re-addressed it in her enormous handwriting to Andrew Herrold, and dropped it in the post.

It was for the following Saturday night, starting at seven o’clock.

“We’ll arrange to be out that night,” she told Alix. “And we’d better get away early, before the rush of cars starts. I know. We’ll go out and have dinner at that nice roadhouse beyond Edward. And then we’ll see a film. I’ll get James Gurney to escort us. He loves to dine out. With any luck this tamasha of Herrold’s’ll be over by the time we get back.”

Alix agreed docilely. She couldn’t help wishing her aunt would give in, let ‘Laguna’ go, accept the new site and the new house and make the best of it. New lamps for old—and not a bad exchange. But her aunt, bless her, was proud as well as obstinate. Unless something happened to force her to go, she would never give in.

When the three of them drove out from ‘Laguna’ on the Saturday evening of the barbecue, they saw that Herrold had been at pains to clear away the horrid traces of his building activities, at least on the Chambers’ side. Building was still going on on the Braines’ acreage, the new road to which had now been made. But that was all hidden behind trees.

“Give the feller his due, he’s made a tidy job of it,” James Gurney remarked fairly.

Lady Merrick snorted. This was one devil to whom she was
not
prepared to give his due.

“I suppose everybody in the place—except our three selves—will be gorging themselves at his horrible party soon,” she snapped.

“I wouldn’t be surprised,” said James Gurney.

Along the road a figure came weaving towards them. On its head was a dreadful old hat; it wore a raggedy old shirt, raggedy pants. Alix, at the wheel, slowed up to avoid knockin
g
it down. She saw that it was Francis.

He lurched by, his legs unsteady, his eyes unco-ordinated. This time he didn’t take off the dreadful old hat. He gave her, instead, a very unpleasant scowl. He shouted, “I going to get Christina. Christina my wife.”

“Oh dear,” Lady Merrick said. “I’m afraid Francis is drunk. Or else it’s dagga. Or both. And Christina is alone in charge of the house. Except Nelson who’s shut up indoors. I do
hope
Francis won’t try to make trouble. He can be so
very
pugnacious when he’s been smoking dagga.”

“Don’t worry, Drusilla,” James Gurney said. “With all those folks around at Herrold’s braaivleis, if the fellow makes trouble for Christina, she can always run across and get some help.”

“Yes, that’s so. Of course she can,” Lady Merrick agreed.

They drove through the stands of wattle and gum, past the salt meadows from which the tide water was now receding, and on to the broad national road. They followed this till it by-passed Edward, continued for a few miles, and turned in under a pergola of gay bougainvillaea to a group of thatched buildings standing on a level stretch of grass.

This was the Wayside Inn, a roadhouse and motel with a well-earned reputation for excellent grills. This was where Lady Merrick had ordered, by telephone, mixed grills for three. She knew that this was her old friend’s favourite dish.

While they waited for the food, which they could see being cooked over charcoal through a big glass window between the kitchen and dining-room, James Gurney ordered cocktails and the management played soft music to them on the radiogram.

Ordinarily, on Saturday night, there would have been a dozen or more parties from Paradise and Edward, listening to the music, dancing a little on the minute dance floor, and enjoying watching their grills being cooked.

Tonight the three of them were the only guests. Andrew Herrold’s barbecue had swallowed up all the rest.

Though they did their best, it wasn’t a very merry evening for them. It is difficult for one small party of three people, two of them rather disturbed in mind, to feel merry in a large empty restaurant capable of holding three score.

The grill, when it came, was excellent. The bottle of Nederburg Reisling that James Gurney insisted on contributing to the feast was cold and delicious. The ices and coffee left nothing to be desired.

But Lady Merrick wasn’t herself.

“I’ve been made to look a fool by Herrold, James, let’s face it,” she said wryly as she sipped her liqueur.