Dorothy Eden (6 page)

‘I know. It’s all in the diary.’ Again Alice was exaggerating the contents of that diary. Some instinct was making her do so to see what reaction she got.

‘The diary?’

‘A funny sort of diary. Rather indiscreet. Camilla liked men, you know.’

‘Men? Other ones than Dalton?’

Really, the girl’s innocence was only equalled by her extraordinary looks. That brother of hers must have kept her in a convent. Couldn’t she have seen Camilla’s honeybee tendencies?

‘Well—there must have been, mustn’t there, since she has married one of them.’

‘I truly can’t believe that,’ said Katherine, almost pathetically. ‘She would have told me. She was my friend, the only friend I have.’

Her blue eyes misted and threatened to swim in enormous tears.

‘I’ll show you her letter,’ Alice said hurriedly.

She went to the kitchen to get it. (Was it really Camilla’s letter? It was printed. Anyone could print rather than imitate handwriting.)

When Katherine had perused it with close attention, she abruptly crumpled the sheet of paper up and the threatened tears came.

‘Then it is true! Oh, how unkind! Poor Dalton! He loved her, you know. I think he was going to marry her. Oh, how can I tell him this? How could she
be
so unkind?’

Running away, Alice thought cynically, seemed to be the first prudent thing Camilla had done. She could scarcely have untangled her complicated affairs had she remained here.

Then suddenly Katherine said, ‘I don’t believe she has gone away, because why would she leave all her things? Look! Here’s the nightdress she wore the last time she stayed at our place. She was very pleased with it. She had made it herself.’ She held up the filmy blue garment she had been clutching. ‘That’s too good to leave behind. And all her other things here. It wouldn’t be sensible to leave them.’

‘It looks as if she went in rather a hurry,’ Alice said uneasily. ‘We expect her to send for her things in a day or so. Then we’ll know where she is.’

‘Of course, one can’t take much on a plane,’ Katherine said. ‘I expect it is true then. She must have gone.’

Her lovely sensitive mouth began to droop again. She sniffed like a child. Miserably she looked at Alice.

‘You must think I’m a baby. But it’s so lonely here. Camilla was bright. She cheered me up. I’ll miss her frightfully. As for poor Dalton—’ She shook her head. ‘Well, I must go. Dalton will be annoyed with me for taking the car out alone. I’m just learning to drive and he never lets me go out alone. You’re not angry with me for coming snooping like this, are you?’

‘Of course I’m not angry.’ Was this incredibly lovely person just a little neurotic? She had long, narrow, very thin hands, with knuckle-bones that protruded sharply. Now she had dropped the nightgown she kept her hands clutched together. She was either very nervous or very distressed. When she suddenly said, ‘You have pretty hair. It’s prettier than Camilla’s really. Camilla’s was a little coarse. Would you come over and visit us one day?’ Alice had a feeling that Katherine was going to lay her thin sharply boned fingers on her hair and smooth it. She was a beautiful-looking girl, but there was something about her hands or the brilliance of her great eyes that was oddly disturbing. Yet she had been Camilla’s friend, and if one was to find out what had led Camilla to her surprising actions one had to get to know all her friends, to do what Camilla had done, to wear her mantle—of trouble, or danger, or whatever other complicated atmosphere it carried.

She moved a little away from her visitor and said politely, ‘Why, of course. I’d be glad to come.’

Katherine smiled.

‘How nice. Not tomorrow. Everyone here dines at the hotel on Saturday night. It’s just a custom. Rather a boring one, but it’s the only time Dalton ever takes me out. What about Sunday for tea?’

After she had gone Alice began to tidy up the odd clothes of Camilla’s that she had strewn about the room in her bewilderment. It was then that she discovered, at the back of a drawer filled with old letters, exercise books, magazines and sundry jars of face cream, unmended stockings and handkerchiefs, the other loose-leaf calendar, last year’s, with its inevitable Camilla comments.

Sitting on the floor in the small dark room that always, because of the encroaching bush, swam in a green gloom, Alice turned page after page of the block, and read the various inane and unimportant comments that dated from Camilla’s arrival six months ago. Only the more significant ones registered in her mind.

July 4th. Go to Thorpe farm. Wonder what the brother is like.

July 18th
.
Don’t forget eleven o’clock for glacier. Dundas always wanting to photograph me, such a bore.
And the later comment in brackets
(Was terrified, even with Dundas looking after me. Wonder if it’s true what they say. Poor darling, he’s so sweet.)

July 20th. Dalton Thorpe absolutely thrilling—he makes me think of Rudolph Valentino.

August 8th. Margaretta such a dull child. They say she adores her father.

A month later she was writing,
Hokitika (hair net, nylons, face powder, new history books).
Then the added comment obviously made on her return,
New bus-driver, Felix Dodsworth. He doesn’t look a bit like a bus-driver. I shall call him Dod. Nice having a new man about.

On the fourteenth of November there was a cryptic entry,
Gosh, what a present!

Then a mysterious one,
Answer solicitor’s letter.

Then, at the beginning of December,
Can’t get away for holidays. Things here becoming too interesting.

And three weeks later,
Good news, Alice is going to come. Can ask her advice.

But a day later she was writing, in agitation, if the wavering scrawl was any indication of her state of mind,
D won’t wait.

Then, on the last day of the year, with great firmness, she had made the comment,
Tomorrow New Year—will have to straighten things out. It might be fun, but it’s getting a bit dangerous. Perhaps I had better listen to D.

The calendar clasped in her hands, Alice sat back on her heels. The little room with its odour of carnation seemed uncannily still. One might be a goldfish in a green bowl swimming round and round, never arriving anywhere. Which was a good thing, because one didn’t quite care to arrive at any place or any conclusion to one’s startled thoughts.

To reassure herself, Alice got out writing materials and began a letter to Camilla:

‘You untidy little wretch, why do you always leave so many loose ends in your life? Here I am with them flapping all round me. You might think it amusing to go off and leave three men pining for you—I suppose now you have got the fourth (who is he, darling?) you don’t give a snap of your fingers for the three D’s. But I assure you it isn’t all fun for me.

‘Why did you have that irritating habit of referring to them all by their initial in your diary? Now I don’t know where I am because I never know whom you mean. Who is the impetuous one? Who is the impatient one? Why were things getting dangerous? Seriously, you must tell me, because it looks as if your mantle (and a troubled one) has fallen on me, and I shall have to cope with these three indignant swains.

‘Honestly, darling, what made you go off in such a mad rush and leave everything? I am packing your clothes and will send them on to you when you let me know where you are. I have gone through your drawers—just as if you were dead, it’s really a bit grim—but there’s a tin trunk I can’t find the key to. I expect I’ll find it in one of your funny unlikely places.

‘I have adopted your orphan family. The cat is beautiful, but Webster makes me intensely uncomfortable. I keep thinking he is my conscience—or yours! Only you haven’t got one, have you, darling?

‘Much against Dundas’s wish (he seems desperately anxious to burn down the house, and I admit it is a disgrace to a self-respecting school committee), I am staying here until I have been on the glacier and done all the tourist things. I can’t afford to stay at the hotel, anyway. This is my holiday, and I intend to make the most of it in spite of your defection.

‘Where the devil
are
you? The bathroom stinks of that awful carnation soap you use, and I expect you to walk in any minute. I can’t get over the feeling that you are much closer than we think…’

Now she was just writing her thoughts, overcome by the deep disturbing conviction that this letter would never be posted.

What was in that locked trunk? Suddenly she felt it absolutely imperative to know. The lock was old and rusty. She could probably break it with a poker.

After ten minutes of strenuous effort the lock fell to pieces. As Alice’s hands were on the lid of the trunk she was aware that it had begun to rain again. The mantle of clouds had settled down over the house like Camilla’s mantle of trouble on her own shoulders. The room was almost dark. The rain on the roof brought back her feeling of floating breathlessly under water, cool, dark, green water that had no surface. All the intensity of her apprehension was back. She could scarcely bring herself to raise the lid of the trunk.

That was silly, silly! It would just be full of more of Camilla’s hoarded rubbish. She and Dundas were a good pair. An odour of mothballs came out as Alice’s determined hands raised the lid. There were layers of tissue paper. (It wasn’t a body, anyway. No one ever wrapped a body in tissue paper and mothballs.) Probably it was a treasured evening gown.

But no. As Alice ripped away the last layer of tissue paper she saw the beautiful grey squirrel coat lying there.

Get mothballs in town today.
The words were so insistent that they might have been spoken.

Camilla had wanted the mothballs to pack with the coat. She had intended bringing them back.

But she hadn’t come back.

Now Alice, like Felix, no longer believed the story of Camilla’s marriage. It was no longer possible to believe it.

Because she knew Camilla too well. She knew that never in her life could she bring herself to leave behind her so lovely and valuable a coat as this.

F
OR THE SECOND TIME
since her arrival Alice noticed the keas. Three of them had been perched on the roof of the bus which had just arrived and stood outside the hotel and had been picking with their sharp inquisitive beaks at the luggage and packages. When the swinging doors of the hotel opened and some people came out talking loudly they swept into the air, screeching their anger. The underside of their wings was a rich phantasy of colour, emerald green, blue, blood red, a brilliant nightmare it must seem to the stricken eyes of the lambs on which they preyed. One perched on a windowsill, folding its wings drably, and regarding Alice with its inquisitive, baleful and treacherous eye. The peculiar foreboding she had felt on her arrival swept over her again. For no reason she had developed an anathema to those squat, noisy mountain birds.

She hesitated on the doorstep of the hotel, all the lively courage she had felt while dressing in the little schoolhouse leaving her.

There, she had stood in front of the mirror saying, ‘Sorry, Camilla. Sorry, darling. I know how jealous you are of your clothes. But I have to do this. It’s for your sake.’

Webster had hopped on to the end of the bed and stood looking at her with his head on one side.

‘Well, encyclopaedia, what do you think?’ Alice had asked.

‘Nevermore,’ said Webster in his small harsh croak.

‘I should think not,’ said Alice severely. ‘I almost have an idea Camilla echoes you. Nevermore, indeed!’

She tucked the lapels of the coat under her chin. It was a little too big for her. She felt wrapped in a soft grey cocoon. But Camilla was taller. The well-cut swinging back and the rolled collar must have looked wonderful on her. Camilla must have revelled in it. It wasn’t, as fur coats went, a highly expensive kind. For instance, it was but a poor relation of her mother’s mink and chinchilla. But to Camilla, who had had to count every penny and who had always made all her own clothes, the three hundred pounds or so that this would have cost must have seemed fabulous for one garment. So that it was all the more perplexing that she should have left it behind.

Would the experiment tonight solve anything? Alice held her little head high and longed for more inches. If she could look at the mysterious Dalton Thorpe, at kind Dundas and at laughing secretive Felix from their own level she would not have been afraid at all. Of course, she was not afraid of Dundas, who was shy, nor of Felix, whom she thought she knew so well, nor of any man. It was only this intangible something, this apprehension that crept up on one out of the rain and the wet green bush and the low mist. And the sweet carnation odour that reminded one incessantly of Camilla’s absence.

Would tonight prove anything? Alice struck a pose and declaimed
Look like the innocent flower, but be the serpent under’t
to her fur-clad image in the mirror.

‘Nevermore,’ muttered Webster.

Alice giggled at the absurdity of the uncanny creature’s comments and her apprehension left her.

But now it was back again as she forced herself to push open the swinging doors of the hotel and walk through the brightly lit lobby into the lounge.

Nothing happened at all. She sat down and beckoned to a waiter and primly ordered a sherry. Then she eased the coat off her shoulders and looked about her. The guests were the conventional tourist type. Most of them were sunburnt and peeling. There was some loud chatter about strained muscles and ice crevasses and scree slopes. One or two of the younger men glanced towards her curiously, thinking her a new arrival. The lounge was large and raftered, with a huge fireplace, and decorated with pictures of mountain peaks and bowls of immense raupo heads and toi-toi plumes. Alice could hear the harsh impatient screech of the keas outside. It was beginning to rain again, too, the thin mist of it webbing against the wall of bush. But in here all was warmth and cheer and light-heartedness.

Then Dundas and Margaretta came in. Margaretta came through the door first, but immediately she slipped behind her father as if trying to efface herself as she crossed the room. She was a tall girl, with strong well-formed limbs. When she learned to walk with grace and confidence she might almost, in spite of her heavy brows and sullen jaw, be handsome. Alice wondered if it was from a desire to look smaller and slimmer that Margaretta wore clothes too small for her. Tonight she had on a brown velvet that might have been her party dress two years ago. Her hair was done in two thick plaits and pinned round her head. She was a curious mixture of child and grown-up. She looked intensely unhappy, so unhappy that something must have happened very recently to cause it.