Full Tide (5 page)

“Unfortunately,” he said seren
e
ly, “I have no jurisdiction over the men’s private lives. Most of them, you will be pleased to know, are married.”

“And are the married ones inefficient?” she countered.

“Not noticeably. They know I wouldn’t tolerate inefficiency.”

She looked at him quickly, searchingly, and put a question she wouldn’t have dreamed she could ever voice to the master of the ship. “Have you always been like this?”

“Like what?”

“So unshakable and calculating. I can’t imagine that
you were ever a grubby little boy who climbed trees and smudged his exercise books.” Hastily, she tacked on, “Don’t answer that.”

He laughed briefly. “It’s rather longer since I was a grubby little boy than it is since you were a child with whitish pigtails and a bulge of toffee in your cheek. But I believe I was very normal—all those years ago.”

“Were you happy when you were young?”

His smile now was ironical. “I’m not senile, you know. I still have it in me to be happy, even if my ideas of enjoyment don’t entirely line up with yours. It’s not every man who needs a little woman and the regulation family of three to be happy.”

She had an urge to ask about his childhood, where he had lived and what his parents were like, whether he had had brothers and sisters and what it was that had made him take to the sea. She wanted a background for him, a setting which was less impersonal than the steel bridge where he worked and slept.

But he was looking up professionally at the black heavens, and after a moment or two he said, “The clouds are loosening up. Watch closely to the right there and you’ll see a star.”

“ ‘To see a star with my love,’ ” she quoted, and stopped suddenly.

“ ‘A star to dream on, with hands entwined and blended hearts; a pool of light
...”
he broke off with a short, taunting laugh. “So you read French poetry. I might have guessed it.”

"I wouldn’t have guessed it of
you
,”
she returned quickly.

“I first met that sonnet years ago, when Astra Carmichael was studying at the Academy. She used to assume various character parts and declaim it. She could make it
s
ound either sucrose or evil.”

Nettled, she said, “That may have been clever, but I
still think it’s a good poem and worth remembering.” She saw the star, a diamond o
n
a dark bed with a mist of cloud passing over it. “A star to dream on, with hands entwined and blended hearts.” A single, lovely star shining steadfastly over the heaving sea and the forging vessel.

Lisa’s face, as she stared, was small and palely lit, her eyes large and her hair white and satiny. Her mouth, as she turned to him, was parted and sweetly curved.
“It’s beautiful,” she said softly. “Beautiful as a promise after such a wild day.
”

“Yes, isn’t it.” His voice had gone as cool and stinging as the sea spray. “It’s nippy and your shoulders are bare.
I’m sure the doc. wouldn’t care to have a pneumonia case on his hands. Run along inside. Goodnight.”
He went at once. She saw him swing round the foot of a companion-way and mount towards the bridge, and she quivered with the chill he had left behind. Slowly,
she
made her way into the tempered warmth of the cabin deck, and along to her cabin, where a tiny electric night-light glowed on the dressing chest near the lower bunk.
Undressing, she recalled word
for word the Captain’s comments. Though, factually, he had told her nothing about himself, what he had said had been slightly revealing.

His devotion to his job was unremarkable, for a man doesn’t become the master of a luxury liner until he has proved himself. But his convictions about women showed him maddeningly casual on the subject of marriage. It was, one gathered, a condition to which he would not take easily, and if he ever did consider tethering himself he would choose a woman of intellect who had much to occupy her besides his well-being. A woman whose preoccupation with herself would keep her from interfering with his way of life.

She recollected his face in the dimness of the deck; the strong, high cheekbones and his eyes which had lost some of the ice and become
ki
nder, even if the kindness had to be tinctured with mockery. It would be dreadful, she thought soberly, to fall in love with such
a man. Dreadful, but dangerously exciting, so long as one roused some sort of response in him. Altogether too devastating; though, for one so innocent about men as Lisa Maxwell.

Thank goodness
she was level-headed, Lisa reflected drowsily. Another girl might lose her head at being singled out for a few minutes’ talk
by the Captain, but not she. She did not intend to lose any sleep over Mark Kennard.

Nevertheless, all had been quiet for a long, long time before Lisa at last slipped from the state of drowsiness into her first slumber.

CHAPTER
THREE

Jeremy was first at the breakfast table, but contrary
to his
custom he ordered only coffee and rolls. He was unsettled; a condition to which his ego did not take kindly. He tried very hard, though, to forget Astra’s allure and remember only the facts of their long
tete-a-tete
last night. After all
,
she had merely suggested a private test in her
cabin. He might turn out to be a complete dud, and if that were the case Astra had promised that no one need be any the wiser. Sporting of her, really, to take so much trouble
.

During a somewhat unquiet night he had regretfully decided not to take Lisa into his confidence till after the session with Astra; she could be disconcertingly candid, and she might easily come out with some good-humored remark which would completely put him off. Perhaps later
they would be able to laugh together at his foolishness. He almost hoped so, though failure to please Astra would be a spear to his pride. It was the deuce to want two opposing things so badly.

Despondently, he ate a small piece of roll with a large wad of butter. The butter reminded him of home, where all good things were plentiful, but one must needs have a vast supply of cash to procure them.

On their few, farmed acres outside Durban his mother had kept fowls and a couple of cows so that the three boys should be well-nourished. They had always come first with her, and when his brothers had perished all her love had become concentrated on Jeremy. He couldn’t tell the old lady that he didn’t want it. Had it been a selfish love
he c
ould have shrugged her out of his thoughts, but it was a gentle, sacrificing love which asked nothing in return but his satisfaction and happiness. In her simplicity she did not know what a whale of a job it was to achieve happiness.

Jeremy was well aware that he would never be the
model son his ageing parents deserved but he also knew that they would feel pleased and fulfilled if he took up the technical post in Durban. What a break it would be if he
could wake up one morning secure in the knowledge that there was nothing else he’d rather do. But what a hope!

Fortunately, Lisa showed up just then, smiling in the way she always did as she came to the table, and exuding the clean, ordinary scent of lavender bath cubes.

Jeremy seated her. “You’re always behind time. I began to think you weren’t coming.”

“
Nancy grazed her wrist and she does love
bandages—big professional ones.” She cast a swift glance at the round table before starting on the grapefruit which the waiter
had
put before her. “I hear they’re filling the swimming pool today. Can’t you feel a new softness in
the air, Jeremy? It’s Sunday, too. Had you forgotten?”

“It won’t make much difference at sea. I used to loathe the English Sunday, particularly in the winter. I mostly spent them in a boarding house parlor among damp green plush and a bevy of china dogs. The landlady’s daughter used to eat peppermint creams with her young man.”

She laughed. “Poor Jeremy. It must feel really grand to be going home.”

“Home is a long way off yet. I’d rather be making a lasting impression on you.”

“It’s far too early in the day for compliments,” she protested.

“It’s never too early for facts,” he stated moodily.

“You
are
down.” She tasted the coffee he had poured. “I haven’t seen you like this before.”

“I haven’t been like it for a long time—not since I flopped in my first exam. Lisa, I’m a heel.”

For a second she stared at him, startled. Then the smile came back. “You mean what Nancy calls a cad. I haven’t noticed it but have it your own way. I always think it’s best when you’re low to admit the worst. Then what comes after is a gradual rebuilding of one’s natural pride. You’ll improve presently. I’m taking you to church.”

“Good Lord!” he exclaimed in some alarm. Then: “Well, I believe I might even go with you ill hadn’t made a promise which will keep me occupied elsewhere most of the morning.” Hastily he tacked on, “That sports committee chap, you know.”

Lisa hadn’t much appetite, either, but she wasn’t unhappy. Nor was she deeply concerned about Jeremy.
He mostly seemed able to get the best from life, and a little dejection, whatever the cause, could do
him
no harm. She finished her coffee.

“I’m going to the library for a book. See you at lunch, Jeremy.”

And she was gone, leaving him uncertain and quite a bit angry. He had waited for her knowing she had the
power
to say the words which would put him right with his
conscience, and within the space of a few minutes she had breezed in and out uncaring that he had a problem.
“
Hell!” he said aloud, to the waiter’s astonishment.

Lisa, of course, was totally unaware that Jeremy was sunk in a man-size dilemma. She had seen merely a little grumpiness allied with an incongruous hang-dog look. Even had she known that his trouble was indecision as to how far along the gilded path he should go with Astra, Lisa would have forborne to offer advice. Jeremy was twenty-
f
ive and far more experienced in the ways of the world than she. Besides, it was a matter she could not take very seriously. Jeremy was an engineer, not a young man of the chorus.

Upon the advice of the chief deck steward, she ch
ose a
new historical novel for herself and a tale about ponies for. Nancy, who had been hanging around the locked book-
c
ases till Lisa should come and work the adult magic which opened all doors
.

Nancy liked to select her own read
ing
matter, and was rebellious at Lisa’s choice. “I hate stories about horses. I
don’t mind dogs and cats, or even jungle animals, but horses are too smug and understanding in books. I won’t read that one, Lee!”

Lisa shepherded her out of the reading room.
It’s
a famous book, so it must
b
e true to life. he ponies in it are real—it says so on the dust cover.”

“I don’t care. I won’t read about horses.
”

By now they were on deck where chairs were lined up facing the sea, and passengers were readjusting the notches to their individual requirements. Regardless of
onlookers, Nancy took a determined stance in the middle of the deck.

“When did
you last read one?” asked Lisa patiently.

“Oh, a year or so ago. It was sludgy.”

“You must have been unlucky, and anyway, your taste in literature will have developed since then.”

“Will it?” This was a novel item to learn about oneself. “If that’s true I expect I shall like them even less now.”

“Not necessarily. One sometimes acquires tolerance and the critical faculty at the same time.” Lisa warmed slightly to the topic, though she knew better than to sound in the least dogmatic. “I read somewhere that children always like books about ponies, and it reminded me that I was never keen on them when I was young. I wondered if I’d missed something worthwhile. I tell you what, Nancy. Read this book and see if you can genuinely pick it to pieces.”

“It’s a waste of time when there are so many nicer books.” But the opposition was weakening. “I dislike children who talk to horses as if they were human.”

“So do I,” agreed Lisa, with more diplomacy than truth. “But let’s be absolutely fair. You prefer dogs and cats, and maybe in Africa they make pets of monkeys. There happen also to be children who love horses. You believe in pleasing yourself about such things, don’t you?”

Nancy sighed. “There you go again, appealing to my sense of justice. You’re
...
you’re insidious, Lee!”

A chuckle came from a chair nearby and Lisa traced it to a thin woman of about forty, whose greying dark curls had been blown into a tangle by the breeze. She wore rather too much jewellery, but her eyes were bright and brown and her mouth humorous. Nancy gave one of the stiff little smiles she reserved for importunate adults and, with sudden dignity, walked
u
p the deck.

“Don’t sit in the sun, Nancy,” Lisa called after her.

“An intelligent child,” commented the woman, “and you
handle her deftly, if I may say so. It always gives me immense pleasure to hear children reasoned with, because they invariably respond to it.”

“She can be rigid,” laughed Lisa, “but the steward was so eager in his praise of the book that I had to take it.
Next time I’ll send Nancy to deal with him herself.”

“And I guarantee she’ll do the choosing! How old is
she?”

“Nearly eleven, but she thinks almost like a grown-up.”
Lisa leaned back upon the rail, fading the other woman. “I shall miss her frightfully.”

The two chatted for a while
.
Her companion, Lisa learned, was Laura Basson, the English widow of a South African business man. She had a son and a daughter at school in Cape Town and was now on her way to bring them home.

“They’re fourteen and sixteen—a nasty age to change school—but I want them near me, add I’ve no alternative to living in England. I never stayed long enough in
one place to have friends in South Africa, but I have a relative or two at home. I’m not the solitary sort. I ca
n’
t get along without friends. It’s different when one has a husband.”

She was wealthy. Her several rings were encrusted with diamonds and sapphires, and the necklace she wore
carelessly with a linen suit had the depth and purity of pearls straight from the ocean bed. But gems are no substitute for human relationships, and Laura Basson admitted that her days were long and her nights often sleepless. Luckily
she had retained her sense of humor, but at times it had been severely strained.

Lisa found herself wondering about other passengers.
There was a story behind each one of them. Queer to think
that all over the world people were working out their fate
,
and for each its course was different. Intuitively, she knew that this woman would never regain true
happiness unless she married again.

“Don’t look so grave, my dear,” said Mrs. Basson. “You’ll have troubles—we all do—but it’s unwise to allow them much importance. You have to grab at happiness wherever you come across it—particularly when you fall in love. I suppose you haven’t been in love yet?
”

Lisa shook her head. “I’m not sure that I want to be.”

“You’re too sweet-looking to escape it. I hope you’ll find someone protective and ardent. It’s so easy to get hurt, and that kind of injury is difficult to live down.” At this juncture they were joined by a thickset little Dutch woman who proceeded with the aid of a steward to set up a hand loom upon which a roll of gaily-striped weave was growing.

It was really odd and marvellous, thought Lisa as she watched the blunt, fast-moving fingers, how folk of different nations and creeds become close and friendly when confined to a ship. They unfolded their life stories and helped each other, well knowing that at the end of the trip they would all go their separate ways.

Having done more than enough moralizing for one morning, Lisa went off to wash her hands and find a hat. Nancy had left a note in the cabin which read, “I’m not going to church, I’m going to Sunday School in the nursery.” Lisa worried for a minute; she herself was responsible for Nancy’s quiet self-possession, but it still gave her qualms.

She approached the lounge alone, her knees surprisingly wobbly and a queer warmth in her veins. The place had been transformed. The chairs, most of them easies, stood in row
’
s down the centre, and the majority of them were occupied. On one side of the lounge were the
stewards and stewardesses, lined up as if for inspection, and on the other the officers and crew made a neat array. The pianist, also in uniform, sat at the grand piano, and as Lisa slipped into her seat, which was somewhere near the middle of the congregation, he began to play a hymn.

The atmosphere calmed Lisa, so that when Captain Kennard took his place behind the table draped with the Union Jack and the flag of South Africa, she knew a deep content and a sort of pride. The service he conducted
was brief and simple.

There came the final, familiar hymn and soon they were dispersing. Lisa reached one of the wide exits at the same time as Mark. She took off her hat and looked up at, him. “It was a lovely service,” she said.

“Thanks. Perhaps you were in the mood, for it. Did you come alone?”

“Nancy, for some reason, decided on Sunday School.”

“I was the reason,” he said, the ghost of a smile playing about his chiselled mouth. “I came upon her reading, and we had a brief chat. I noticed she had had to be bandaged again.”

Crimson petals flowered in her cheeks. She was vexed with herself, not knowing that there is nothing more attractive than a flush upon clear pale skin.

“It was a large dressing hiding a very small graze. Most of the children have had tumbles.”

“Some of the adults, too,” he, said enigmatically. He bowed. “I have work to do, so perhaps you’ll pardon me,
Miss Maxwell.”

Lisa
found Nancy making guarded conversation with a girl a year or two older than herself, and deemed it wise to leave her there. She wandered on to where two seamen were inspecting the faucets which filled the swimming pool. The sun on her back as she leant on the safety rail and watched the first trickles of water over the white tiling was warm and teasing. She had examined the marked map on the wall near the purser’s office and discovered that t
he
ship was heading for the channel between Madeira and the Canaries. Early tomorrow, someone had said, they would pass Madeira. Lisa wished they were stopping there
.
She wanted to prolong the voyage into eternity, because she had a groundless yet inescapable feeling that it was the biggest thing which would ever happen to her in the whole of her life.

Jeremy did not appear for lunch. Nor did Astra.
Puzzled, but not put out, Lisa ate alone, and afterwards she went to the cabin for a quiet read. The sunshine slanted through the port-hole, the curtain lifted and bellied,
the faint creaking of the bulkheads and the muffled, distant throbbing of the ship’s heart were a b
e
nign a
c
companiment to the Sabbath quietude.

It lasted till four-thirty, when Jeremy, quite pale for
h
im, his wheat-colored hair untidy, knocked and walked
in.
“Oh,” he said, momentarily stunned, as though Nancy’s presence were totally unexpected. With a visible lift of his shoulders, as if he were performing the bewildering task known as pulling oneself together, he added, “I
must talk to you, Lee. We’ll have to go to the lounge, unless
...”

Nancy, recumbent on the rug with a book—not the one about ponies—yielded nothing. To use her own expression, Jeremy could go fishing. She didn’t like him, and she didn’t want to like him.

Lisa said, “We might as well have tea up there. I’ve had a
gloriously lazy afternoon.” She turned to Nancy. “Are you staying in here, darling?”

“Yes, please.”

“All right. I’ll send you orange squash and biscuits. I’ll be back as soon as I’ve had tea.”

Jeremy, it seemed, was worn and almost distraught. As they walked the corridor and mounted the wide, flower-decked staircase, he held on to her arm like a
man
clinging to a spar in erratic seas. He chose a corner of the lounge which was screened from the few other tea drinkers, saw Lisa seated and then sank down into his own chair, facing her across the table and letting out a sigh of both excitement and disaster.

“Gosh,” he breathed, “What a day! They say
the
turning points in a man’s existence steal upon him unawares. This one has come to me with a blare of trumpets.”

“Have some tea,” Lisa advised him soothingly, pushing across the neat blue and white cup. “They’ve brought your favorite marble cake, too.”

But Jeremy’s digestion was temporarily paralyzed. He ignored the cake, dropped several lumps of sugar into the tea and stirred so abstractedly that the liquid poured over into the saucer.

But he managed a slightly winning smile. “First I must apologize for more or less lying to you this morning. I longed to tell you at breakfast that I’d promised Astra Carmichael to spend an hour or two on a test in her cabin, but ... we
ll
, I didn’t.”

“A test for what?”

A faint access of color made his sherry-brown eyes look like polished topaz. On a comic note of despair he said, “She thinks I have it in me to be an actor.”

L
isa absorbed this for a long moment. “Seriously?” she asked at last.

“She’s serious enough,” he returned almost grimly
. “
How that woman can work
!
”

“
So you had the test?
”

H
e nodded, and got out his handkerchief to wipe a brow still damp from exertion. “She gave me a part to read—explained it all first and
told me to forget my own identity and assume hi
s
. After a couple of false starts I got going, with her taking the other two parts
.
She’s magnificent, Lee. So beautiful and sensual, and yet acting the whole time
_r
. Try to imagine her lying there in a
chair...”

“It doesn’t need much imagination,” she interposed dryly.

“She didn’t bother to move even a hand;
i
t was all done by inflection. When it was over I voted we call it a day. But not she! We tried
another part, and then another.
For lunch we had Scotch and soda and dry biscuits, and it was then that she told me she could train me to work with her in Johannesburg. Fantastic, isn’t it?”

For a while Lisa had no comment to offer. Had Jeremy been less serious she would have laughed, sharing his joke. But he was so obviously in earnest that a jest
now might prove fatal. No, her attitude at the moment had to be as casual as she could make it. “Johannesburg is a big city, isn’t it? I suppose the prospect is rather glittering, but she may be wrong. It would be ghastly if you failed to go over with the audience.
”

“Astra says I won’t. The plays she’s chosen for the
season have the orthodox sort of hero. She herself is the star of them.
”

“Naturally.
”

He bent forward, determined to convince. “Don’t you see, it’s best for me that my first parts should be on one pattern. That way I shall have a chance to learn stagecraft and improve my technique before tackling anything really big.
”

Lisa hated hurting people, but she was anxious that Jeremy should avoid deeper wounds later. She drank some tea before making her next observation,
a
nd smiled to soften its impact.

“Do you honestly believe you’ll ever be good enough to tackle something really big?”

‘ His mouth compressed, and he did not hide the fact that he was stung. “You might encourage a chap! This opportunity has dropped straight out of the blue, and I refuse to pass it up. If Astra Carmichael considers I have the talent to make a living on the stage, I don’t see that you have any cause to question it.” He broke off, and tacked on quickly, lightly, “I’m sorry. If I hadn’t muddled the telling of it you’d have understood. I want to do this thing, Lee. It may sound crazy, but I think it’s my line.”

“But your mother is so proud of you now. She’d feel terribly let down if all the sacrifices she’s made turned out to be superfluous. Think about it awfully hard,”' she pleaded. “You actually have your technical degree, but you’d be starting at the bottom with Astra. I know she promises you fairly important parts, but only for six months. After that you’d probably have to go on alone, without her influence. And I can’t help thinking it’s all too sudde
n
and overwhelming.”

“My dear girl, that’s how the best things come about!”

“Some of them,” she said slowly, “but not those which map one’s whole career.” Her forehead puckered with an earnestness which matched his. “Before this, you’ve never had the smallest urge to act,
have you?”

“No,”
h
e
acknowledged flatly, “I haven’t. But I was raised in a country where few actors reach more than amateur status.”

“You’ve been in England since then.”

He breathed , a long sigh of exasperation and chagrin. “All right, I’m not a born actor. I know, it. But Astra Carmichael, who you’ll admit has some experience of the theatre, is certain I’d make a popular leading man in her plays. Leading man, mind you, not just an extra.”