The House at Sandalwood (14 page)

I wanted to smile at “the girls” but didn’t. Deirdre pleaded, “I’ve just got to get some new bikini sets. And this awful coral in the cove wears out a pair of my sandals every week.”

Stephen straddled the arm of the couch beside his wife. He looked down at her fondly, took a strand of her long hair and wound it around one linger.

“But don’t I try to bring you all the sandals and bikinis you ask for, sweetheart?”

Her gaze fixed upon his face. There was a beautiful, almost terrible love in that gaze.

“You bring me everything I ever wanted.”

“But you’d rather do it yourself.” He pretended to pull her hair and she squeaked.

“Well, maybe now and then. It would be marvelous, darling. Judy and Michiko would go shopping with me and then afterward we’d meet you and Ito at that apartment where you have the meetings. And then the late flight back to Kaiana. We could spend the night at the new Kaiana Hilton. That would keep us from crossing the channel so late in the night.”

I felt like a fifth wheel in this little party of two married couples, and I suggested, “I think it would be a wonderful idea for the four of you. But if you wouldn’t mind, I have a dozen things to do, and really would prefer to stay here and—I have some dresses to shorten. Things like that. Styles change so quickly, especially hemlines.”

“No!” Stephen stopped me sharply.

I wanted to laugh hysterically at this sharp outburst when I was babbling away about hemlines, but instead, like everyone else, I stared at Stephen. He finished his drink, behaving as if he hadn’t contradicted me. Did he mistrust his young wife so much that he wanted her well-guarded, like a prisoner on parole?

As usual, Ito Nagata smoothed over the awkwardness.

“I agree, Steve. You heard Michiko complaining the other day when she couldn’t be at the airport to meet Judith.” He gestured to me. “You are quite essential to the party.”

So it was arranged, and we all made plans for the next day. Ito Nagata stayed the night in a guest room next to Stephen’s with Deirdre comfortably settled in the bedroom she preferred, across the hall from Stephen’s room. No one who is an outsider can or should interfere with another’s marriage, but it worried me that this condition prevailed. Small wonder Stephen was so concerned about Deirdre in this marriage that was less than a year old.

Deirdre waved a nonchalant good night to me and went into her room. Ito and Stephen talked for a minute or two about the arrangements for the visit to Honolulu. I started to close my door but Stephen signaled to me. Ito was still there in the hall when Stephen passed him and took a few steps toward me. He said briefly, “We do want you, Judith, very much. You know that.”

“Thank you. I’ll do whatever I can.”

He seemed about to say something, but changed his mind. The silence between us lasted perhaps ten seconds, but during that time I was intensely aware of him, of his physical presence, the overwhelming attraction I felt toward him. Recognizing this, I stepped back into my room, with my hand on the door. I tried to smile but I was too nervous.

“You’ve made Deirdre very happy with this trip.”

He watched my hand upon the door. He wasn’t fooled by my inane smile, and he certainly wasn’t feeling amused. He said abruptly, “Deirdre is the most enchanting child I have ever known. She deserves all the happiness we can give her.” Then he added, in a voice stripped of almost all emotion, “But she
is
a child.”

He turned and left me. He did not speak to Ito, who had been an uneasy witness to our brief conversation. Ito and I avoided each other’s eyes and closed our doors.

When I was ready for bed I went to open the blinds for a look in the morning at the tree tops and the first daylight appearing in the western sky. I stood there a few minutes enjoying the midnight scents of tropic foliage which were delicious to me. I was surprised to hear Deirdre’s voice in the hall. She moved beyond my door, toward the upper
lanai.
Or was it the staircase? I didn’t want to spy on her, but her conduct seemed odd and I distinctly heard her say, “Thank you again. I’m ever so grateful. You’re not afraid to go home alone? Good night.”

I hesitated at the window, and while I postponed the decision to cross the room, I lost my chance to identify the person to whom Deirdre was grateful. Could it be one of the people who worked at Sandalwood? That seemed most likely. I took one more long whiff of the night air and was turning from the window when I heard a door close downstairs. Deirdre’s visitor leaving.

I moved closer to the window. A minute later I saw Ilima Moku’s huge, regal figure striding up toward the clearing and the path to her village.

So the Queen of Ili-Ahi had been visiting Deirdre! It was too much to hope that she hadn’t told Deirdre about my meeting with Stephen and Ito Nagata at the landing that afternoon.

Ten

I slept badly that night. I couldn’t see how I might have disobeyed Stephen’s request to meet him at the landing, but all the same, my conscience nagged at me. I think, if I had been the mere protective “aunt,” the housekeeper and companion I intended to be, I would have found it easier to accept Deirdre’s resentment and jealousy now. During that minute or two with Stephen tonight, I had been attracted to the man and sensed that he felt something for me.

But in his case there were excuses. He had married a stunning and endearing young beauty only to find she was a child. A man of great sexual appeal, and probably normal sexual appetites, he found himself bound to a girl who, I suspected, was emotionally too immature for his needs. I did not dare to dwell on Stephen’s problems. My concern must be with Deirdre herself, a child cut off from all understanding and love. With her mother’s death she lost even me, the surrogate parent.

Sometimes during that night, as during the previous nine years, I resented this chain that seemed to keep me forever hobbled to another human being. Had Deirdre been anyone but the bubbling, loving girl she was, I might have broken those links in spite of all my promises to her father. But I couldn’t abandon Deirdre. I could only try to see that she made Stephen a good wife. From the little Ito Nagata and Michiko had told me when Deirdre married Stephen, I understood he was not a man who played around much. His drive was quite different. I suspected his mastery of business, and his stubborn determination to finish what his weak father had begun, were more urgent drives to him than casual affairs would be. That was Deirdre’s greatest protection.

On the other hand, there were those minutes when we were together ... I knew we shared a physical desire. And it would be disastrous to give in to that under the circumstances.

By the time I got to sleep I felt that I knew what I must do: banish entirely this ridiculous crush I had on Deirdre’s husband and rigorously concentrate on helping Deirdre’s growth. That would be painful for both of us, but it seemed obvious now that the most serious aspect of her problem had begun with her mother’s death. Having faced that, I thought I might know where to start in helping her. If, of course, a layman could help.

With all these good resolutions I finally slept, and dreamed. Although my days and often the nights before I managed to sleep were haunted by bits and pieces of memories, it was strange that I so seldom relived the nightmare of Claire Cameron’s death. But sometimes during those predawn hours of troubled sleep I found myself once more returning to that horrible day, trying to keep out of the way of Deirdre’s friends at her thirteenth birthday party, while still making myself available in case of emergency.

I awoke with a start in that humid Hawaiian darkness, but with my mind full of those memories. With one arm behind my head, I went over in my thoughts every detail I could recall—trying for the hundredth, or thousandth time, to fix the pattern, find out what really happened:

It was a very warm, dry day. Unexpectedly warm even for southern California at that time of year. I could see the smog settling in flat layers over the sprawling city that was spread out below my home in the Hollywood Hills. I stood on the terrace at the rear of the house, trying not to listen to the silly, lovable chatter going on around the pool, which was on the next level below the terrace. I was wondering if I shouldn’t change from my green linen sheath to a two-piece white silk because John, my fiancé, was coming, and John Eastman had a thing for white. And purity in every sense except, of course, when applied to himself.

I remember that John felt Deirdre was a serious obstacle to our marriage. He used to ask me, “How can you try to mother a teen-age girl with a heart murmur, palpitations, and a dozen other ailments? She should be in a decent girls’ school where she could be treated whenever she had a flare-up. You can’t be responsible for her. You were a teen-ager yourself not so long ago. Judith, can’t you see your way clear to sending her back to her real mother? Let her worry about the girl’s birthday parties and her schooling and all the rest.”

To this I could only remind him, “Don’t you think I want Deirdre to be raised in her own home, with her own mother? If we could just sober up Claire for a little while, she might ... But there I had to leave it, the obvious answer unspoken. I was still romantic enough in those days to believe that all Claire needed was a genuine love in order to sober up and become a family woman.

So I waited out the birthday party, hoping there would be no quarrels among the groups around the pool, no hard feelings between two pretty blonde girls over an equally pretty boy who wore his hair surprisingly long for the style nine years ago. I looked over the group, wondering where Deirdre was, saw her with a boy and a girl, all three stretched out in the sun beyond the far end of the pool. Deirdre wore what she called her first “grown-up” bikini set, in black with a white deer strategically placed over the right hipbone.

Deirdre would have preferred to do some strenuous swimming, or the very least, to join the group tossing the big beach ball in the pool, but she had never quite gotten her childhood strength back after her attack of rheumatic fever long ago.

She saw me glance that way and waved to me. I waved back. Then she sat up, looking puzzled about something behind me, and pointed. I looked over my shoulder, then up at the windows of my bedroom on the second floor of the rambling stucco house. Someone was up there, wandering around—probably one of Deirdre’s young guests curious to see the family rooms. But it had been my experience that such curiosity often meant pilfering as well, so I left the terrace and went in through the breakfast room door and up the stairs. I made enough noise to warn whoever was up there. I didn’t want to “catch” someone if I could help it. Better just to warn off the interloper by my presence and a friendly greeting. Have it all look accidental.

There was a group downstairs at the buffet finishing up the luncheon—the foot-long sandwiches and the sundaes they had made themselves. It wasn’t so long since I had participated in just such parties myself. As I went up the stairs I heard buzzing and whispers and guessed that those at the buffet were watching me. They must have known which of their friends I was about to encounter.

I crossed the upper hall and went into my bedroom. The room was empty but the lively green spread on my four-poster bed showed signs of having been disturbed. Obviously, someone had been sitting on the bed. The door to the small dressing room between my bedroom and bathroom was almost closed. I had left it wide open. I supposed whoever was snooping around had ducked into the bathroom. Amused at the natural curiosity of my unseen visitor, I followed.

Nearly everything on my dressing table had been overturned. Powder was spilled over the little mirrored tray in which I set my lipsticks. The lipsticks themselves rolled on the floor. One had come open and its coral contents were ground into the gray carpeting. I wasn’t in too friendly a mood when I saw that. I picked up the lipstick case and, weighing it in my palm, I pushed open the bathroom door which was ajar.

Claire Cameron stood there interestedly reading labels on the various medicines in the glass cabinet. She did not turn around as I came in behind her. In her gloved left hand was one of my initialed lo-ball glasses in which one ice cube wandered alone in what appeared to be a full glass of Scotch, if I knew Claire. She waved the glass toward the medicine cabinet, took a long swallow and remarked thickly, “Not a decent stock at all, at all. But you always were Little Miss N-Namby-Pamby. Don’t you ever get headaches?”

Except for the dainty, though now soiled, white lace gloves, there was little left of the girl I had first seen when she was engaged to Wayne. Her soft, pretty face had swollen alarmingly in the years since. When I remembered the beautiful, petulant young bride with topaz-colored hair and the fantastically tiny waistline in her New Look wedding gown, I was sickened with pity. She had become a thirty-year-old woman with flabby features and badly bleached thinning hair. She looked ten years older than her true age. And yet, pity wasn’t what she needed. She had been unfaithful to Wayne even before he left for Korea. She had never been disciplined in her free, wealthy childhood, and found marriage an impossible constriction. Still, remembering that young bride of long ago, who had impressed me, a gawky teen-ager, I felt sick now at what remained.

I said, “There is aspirin right under your hand. Claire ... how about going out to see Deirdre before you finish that drink?”

“Later. Ac-Actually why I came.”

I began to brighten. Maybe I’d gotten cynical about her. Maybe she did care about her daughter after all.

“She will be so excited! You haven’t seen her yet? Come along and we’ll—”

“Hold it! H-hold it! Now, look, Goody-Two-Shoes,” she waved the drink. The sticky contents splashed over my head and I stepped back, trying not to let her annoy me.