The House on Flamingo Cay (18 page)

CHAPTER SEVEN

“WHAT about this letter Angela left? How are you going to get it if you won’t tell Rand where you are?” Peter said quietly.

It was late evening, and they were sitting on the beach below the bungalow. He had been waiting for Sara at closing time, and one glance at her agonized face had told him she was close to breaking point. There had been no tremor in her voice when she told him what had happened, and she had needed no persuasion to eat her supper or come down to the beach with him. If anything, she was more than ordinarily composed. Now, passing them on the beach, a stranger might have mistaken her absent expression for that of a placid daydreamer.

But to Peter, whose past life had acquainted him with many of the less obvious manifestations of grief and stress, her quietness was more disquieting than tears. He recognized frozen calm, the childlike amenability as the outward symptoms of a profound emotional shock.

For some moments it seemed as if Sara had not heard the question. Then she turned her head and gave him the curiously remote look of someone for whom everything has lost its reality.

“The letter?” she said vaguely. “Oh, I don’t suppose it’s anything important.”

Peter lit a cigarette and tried another tack. “I wonder what she told Rand about your leaving so abruptly.”

“I can’t imagine—but anyway it’s none of his business,” Sara said flatly. She pushed up from the sand. “I think I’d better go back now, Peter. I could do with an early night.”

But, slight as it had been, her change of tone had not escaped him. “You seem half afraid of the fellow,” he said casually. “Is that why you won’t collect the letter—because of meeting him?”

Sara bent to pick up her towel, then dusted her legs of sand. Her sheath dress being unsuitable for the beach, Peter had lent her a shirt and a pair of shorts. They were sizes too large and she had had to fit the shorts to her waist with a cummerbund from one of his foulard scarves.

“Of course it isn’t. What an absurd idea,” she said stiffly.

Back at the bungalow, Peter said, “You’ve time for a cup of coffee, haven’t you? It’s not nine yet.”

“All right, but I mustn’t stay too long. I—I don’t think Madame Elsa was impressed with my services today, and I can’t afford to lose the job.”

Peter left her on the patio and went into the kitchen. Sitting listlessly in one of the loungers, Sara could hear him pouring beans into the electric grinder and then the clink of cups.

She had closed her eyes and was yielding to the strange lassitude that seemed to be seeping through her. Suddenly, out of the peaceful quietude of the evening, a car door slammed in the roadway beyond the bungalow. At first she scarcely registered the sound, and then, with a kind of electric premonition, she started up and dashed indoors to the kitchen.

“What’s the matter?” Peter asked, puzzled. There were footsteps on the gravelled drive, then the sharp ping of the door-bell. He replaced the milk bottle in the ice-box. “Oh, that must be Fred Saunders. He’s been making me some new types of tow-grip.”

Sara was standing in the doorway, looking along the passage. The front door was panelled with ribbed shadow-glass and, through it, she could see the outline of a tall male figure.

“It’s Stephen,” she said, in a whisper.

“So? No doubt he has come to ask if I know where you are.”

“You mustn’t tell him! I don’t want to see him.”

The bell rang again and Peter moved past her to answer it. But Sara held him back with both hands on his forearm. “You promise you won’t let him in?” she insisted anxiously.

“Not if you don’t wish it,” he agreed equably, keeping his voice low. “But don’t you think—”

Whatever he had been about to suggest was cut short by the door being opened. And before Sara had the presence of mind to duck swiftly into the kitchen, Stephen had walked into the hall and caught her.

“Good evening,” he said coolly. “I thought I might find you here, Sara.”

In spite of his casual tone, there was something in his face that made Sara edge closer to Peter. “What do you want?” she asked frigidly.

“I think I would prefer to speak to you in private, if Laszlo has no objections.”

“I haven’t any secrets from Peter,” she said brusquely. But his keen grey eyes had a glint of steel in them, and she could not meet that coldly challenging stare.

He shrugged. “Very well.”

“Perhaps we had better go into the living-room,” Peter said quietly. Taking Sara’s hand in his, he gave it a reassuring squeeze, and led her across the hall.

“Will you have a drink, Rand?” he asked courteously, when they were all in the inner room.

“Thanks, but this is not exactly a social call,” Stephen said crisply. A hard smile lifted the corner of his mouth. “I daresay Sara could do with one,” he said sardonically.

Peter’s face was expressionless, but there was a hint of severity in his reply.

“Miss Gordon is not very well and I was on the point of taking her home. If you could explain your business—”

Stephen cut him short. “In that case I’ll take her myself. We can talk on the way,” he said smoothly.

Without looking at him, Sara said: “I prefer to talk here.” Then, turning to Peter, “May I have a cigarette, please?”

His eyebrows lifted a fraction, but he took out his case and offered it. With fingers that were not quite steady, Sara took a cigarette and put it between her lips. But when Stephen flicked his lighter for her, she deliberately ignored him and waited for Peter to produce his.

There was a tense pause, and then Stephen took an envelope from the inside pocket of his jacket and held it out. “This is your sister’s letter. I presume you want to read it.”

“Thank you.” Barely glancing at it, Sara dropped the envelope on the coffee table. “You needn’t have bothered to deliver it. I could have picked it up at the reception desk.”

“No doubt—and thereby avoided any difficult explanations,” he answered drily.

“I’m afraid I don’t follow you. An explanation of what?”

“Of why you are here when your sister has left for the States.”

She turned aside to tip ash into the tray. “Isn’t that our business?”

“It would have been—if your sister hadn’t asked me to keep an eye on you,” he said negligently.

“I don’t believe it. Why on earth should she?” Sara exclaimed hotly.

“Presumably because she felt uneasy about you.”

Sara’s chin lifted and she was on the point of making an acid retort when there was a bubbling sound from the kitchen and Peter hurried to attend to the neglected percolator.

The moment he had left them, Stephen took a single pace forward and grasped her wrists. “Don’t spar with me, Sara. I want to know the truth. What happened between you and Angela? Was it something to do with her engagement?”

“Let me go! How dare you come barging in here and questioning me?” She tried to free her wrists, but he tightened his grip.

“Because I can’t stand by and watch you make a fool of yourself.” Releasing one arm, he took the cigarette and flipped it out of the window. “You don’t really want that, and it will make you cough,” he said firmly.

“Oh, this is the absolute end! You must be a megalomaniac. Just because someone stays at your beastly hotel, does it give you the right to hound them all over the island?” she demanded furiously.

He let her go then, although he didn’t move away and the low table prevented her from backing. They were very close, and even in anger and resentment, her sense responded to the nearness of his forceful masculinity. She could resist his magnetism, but she could never fail to be conscious of it.

“I had the impression, at one time, that you rather liked my hounding you,” he said quizzically.

At any other time, she would never have reacted so violently. But, at this particular moment, the gibe was too brutal to be borne. Her reflex was immediate and involuntary. Before she knew what she was doing her hand had come up and delivered a stinging slap.

Even before she saw the fierceness in his eyes and the clenching of his jaw, she was horrified.

Later, knowing what would have happened if Peter had not come back then, her throat would go dry, her heart lurch.

“I think you had better leave, Rand.” Peter’s mouth was grim, his accent very pronounced.

“Not without Sara.” There was still a glitter of vengeance in Stephen’s eyes, but his voice was low and controlled.

“Then I’m afraid you’ll have a long wait, Mr. Rand,” Sara said icily. “Perhaps I should explain that ... that Peter and I are engaged. If I need any help with my affairs, I shall naturally rely on my ... my fiancé.’ And, brushing past him, she moved to Peter’s side and slipped her hand into his.

Stephen stared at her, his eyes narrowing. For a moment, she was afraid he would not believe her. Then, without a word, the marks of her fingers still reddening his lean brown cheek, he straightened his tie and strode swiftly out of the house.

It was not until they heard the rev of his engine that Sara let out her breath.

“Oh, Peter, I’m so sorry,” she said huskily. “I didn’t mean to say that. The ... the words just seemed to blurt out. Are you very angry?”

He turned her into his arms and tipped up her chin. “No, I am not angry,” he said slowly. “But I think it was a foolish thing to tell him. You see I had not realized before that you are very much in love with the fellow.”

Then, at the compassion in his voice, Sara’s control gave way. Turning her face into his shoulder, she wept for the wreckage of her dreams.

* * *

Angela’s letter was incisive and unyielding.

Dear Sara (she had written),

Perhaps, now that we have left, you will realize that I mean to go through with this thing. I enclose the remainder of our money and have asked Stephen Rand to keep an eye on you. I told him the truth—that you were being difficult about my marriage. Emily believes that you’ve gone back to London to settle our affairs. Naturally, she thought it a little odd that you should go off so abruptly, but I think she has accepted it. As soon as you’re prepared to accept the inevitable, you’d better wire me at the address overleaf and I’ll fix a flight for you. You must see that you can’t run other people’s lives for them. Angela.

There was a brief postscript. “
I will write next week to Stephen.
”

In the week that followed Sara read the letter many times. It seemed to her that she must choose between two evils. At the cost of all her deepest moral convictions, she could accept the marriage and join her sister in the States. It was not as if she actively disliked the Stuyvesants. In a way, she had grown quite fond of them, and they would certainly provide her with every material advantage and do their best to make her happy.

Her only other choice, and it would undoubtedly be a difficult and lonely one, was to make a fresh start on her own.

After several days of agonized indecision, she showed the letter to Peter and appealed to his judgment.

“I think you are looking at it from the wrong point of view,” he said, after a contemplative silence. “It is true what Angela says here. There is seldom much to be gained from trying to direct people’s lives—even when they are set on a course that will clearly end in their unhappiness. In the final analysis, one can only choose one’s own road. Now, suppose you were still in England, and your sister had married someone for the more customary reason that she loved him? Presumably you would not have gone to live with her. What would you have done?”

“I’m not sure. I suppose I would have advertised for a flat-mate and gone on with my job,” Sara said slowly.

Following Stephen’s visit to the bungalow and her impetuous announcement that she and Peter were engaged, she had told the Hungarian everything about their past life.

“But you say it was not a job that you liked much?”

“It was never exactly a vocation,” she admitted wryly. “How many people do have a job that absorbs them? I was just one of a million white-collar girls who take up shorthand and typing because it provides a reasonable living between school and marriage. It may sound pretty uninspired, but without any special talents, what else can we do with ourselves?”

“But you do have some special talents,” he said smiling. “You can swim like a fish.”

“That wouldn’t earn me a living,” she said drily. “There’s only one Esther Williams.”

“But perhaps it could,” he said seriously. “You remember that day you came skiing with me?”

“Oh, you mean that joke we had about my going into partnership with you?”

“It was a joke at the time—but perhaps now we might take it more seriously. No, listen to me, Sara. I am quite in earnest. Only this morning I had to turn down several enquiries because my time is already over-booked. With a couple of weeks training you would be perfectly proficient to teach—especially the children. And there is another thing. That new hotel on the other side of the island has recently built a special pool. It is similar to the Marine Bar Pool at the Fort Montagu. The people sitting in the bar can watch the swimmers through a glass wall. The management is planning to stage a water-cabaret. They have engaged some aqua-girls from Florida, but they have not yet acquired the speciality. It is possible that you and I could provide it for them.”

“But they’d want an experienced act,” Sara objected.

“Not necessarily. What they want is something original—and that’s just what I have in mind,” he persisted.

But even when he had explained his idea—and it would certainly be a most spectacular performance—Sara found it difficult to take the idea seriously.

“You’d need a glamorous blonde to partner you, Peter. I’m not the siren type,” she said wryly. “And besides, if I don’t go to Minneapolis, I can’t stay here. I shall have to save my fare home, or try to get a working passage.”

“If you came in with me, you could save to go anywhere you pleased,” Peter pointed out.

“Perhaps. The trouble is that there’s nowhere I really want to go,” she said forlornly. “I’ve a few friends in London, but no one really close. I seem to be rather like you—a kind of displaced person.”

“You have me,” he said gently. “Or don’t I count?”

“You know you do, Peter. You’ve been wonderful to me and I’m more than grateful.”

“Then think my plan over,” he advised. “I am sure it would be more fun than sitting at a typewriter.”

So Sara promised to consider it, and he drove her back to her lodgings.