opinion.
‘One of us, are you, dear?’ she inquired, indicating the bag. ‘You must be a newcomer, so I thought I ought to make certain you know where the bus is and that it will be leaving shortly; you’d best come along with me, you don’t want to miss it, you shouldn’t be alone in a place like this, these natives will take advantage of an attractive young woman, my name is Tregarth, call me Jen. How’d ja do?’
I said brilliantly, ‘Hi.’
‘And where is your hat?’ Jen looked at me severely. ‘Most unwise of you to come out without one. You have a nice colour, but the sun is deadly here, you risk heat prostration or sunstroke.’
‘I forgot,’ I said meekly. ‘I do have one. A hat. I forgot it.’
‘Well, don’t do it again. What did you say your name was?’
‘Vicky. Vicky Bliss.’ There was no reason for me to be coy about it. She’d find out in a few hours.
‘You are not on the passenger list.’ Her tone made it sound like an accusation.
‘No. I joined the cruise at the last minute. A friend of mine had to cancel, owing to illness, and – ’
‘I see.’ Her face relaxed. The expression wasn’t anything like a smile, but it was probably as close as she could come. ‘Glad to see another young person on board. Most of the passengers are practically senile. My son and his wife will be pleased to have someone their own age to talk to. Not that they . . .’ She looked up, over my shoulder, and the change in her face made me stare. So she could smile. ‘Ah, but here they are. Looking for me, I expect. My dears, allow me to introduce . . .’
I didn’t hear the rest of it. When I turned, my ears went dead, the way they do after a sudden change in altitude.
She couldn’t have been more than eighteen – twenty, at the outside. Her skin had that exquisite English fairness and her hair was a mass of cloudy brown curls framing her heart-shaped face. I saw that much, and the fact that the top of her head barely reached his chin, and that he had gone dead-white under his tan and that his eyes were as flat and opaque as blue circles painted on paper.
The girl smiled and spoke. My ears popped midway through the speech, and I caught the last woods, ‘. . . call me Mary. This . . .’ She tilted her head and looked up at him, her eyes shining. ‘This is John.’
He had himself under control, except for his colour; he always had trouble with that. His voice was cool and steady. ‘How do you do. We’d better hurry; the others have gone on. Mother – ’
She waved away the arm he offered. ‘No, darling. I’m perfectly capable of walking a few more yards unassisted. You look a little . . . Are you feeling well?’ His brows drew together, and she said hurriedly, ‘Oh, dear, I’m fussing, aren’t I? I promise I won’t do it again. Come along, Vicky, you and I will lean on one another.’
She didn’t need assistance; she was a lot steadier on her feet than I was. I stumbled along beside her, grateful for the uneven terrain and the heat and the need for haste, since they offered an excuse for the fact that I couldn’t seem to take a deep breath. From behind me I heard a murmur of voices and a soft, silvery laugh.
The bus was one of those modern monsters, air-conditioned and enormous. As soon as we had settled ourselves an attendant came round with a tray. ‘Mineral water?’ he inquired softly. ‘Orange juice? Mimosa?’
It occurred to my numbed brain that mimosas had alcohol of some kind in them. Champagne? Who cared? I grabbed one and tossed it down.
Jen had taken the seat next to mine. Several rows ahead I saw the familiar outlines of a neatly shaped skull covered with fair hair. Mary’s head wasn’t visible over the back of the seat. She was so tiny.
Have I mentioned I am almost six feet tall?
Maybe it was the alcohol that cleared my head, but I doubt it; the damned thing was mostly orange juice. I turned to Jen – Guinevere? He had told me that was his mother’s name. I had assumed it was a joke.
‘Guinevere,’ I said experimentally. My voice seemed to be working.
She didn’t question my knowledge. I suppose she thought she’d told me. She couldn’t possibly remember everything she said, she had been talking non-stop. Her chin lifted proudly. ‘We are an old Cornish family. Tre, Pol, and Pen – you know the rhyme? Names beginning with those syllables distinguish the Cornishmen. There is a tradition that Arthur himself was our remote ancestor. My father’s name was Gawain, his father’s name was Arthur. On my mother’s side . . .’
‘Mother’s side,’ I repeated, to show I was paying attention. I waved at the steward. Guzzling my second mimosa, I lost the next few sentences.
‘. . . only a distant connection with Egypt, really. So, when I decided to marry, I chose a cousin in order to carry on the family name. Poor Agrivaine. I didn’t see a great deal of him; he was always running off to some war or other.’
‘Agrivaine?’
‘That was what I called him. He had been christened Albert, and I believed his friends referred to him as – as Al. So common! It was he who insisted on calling our son John. I wanted to name him Percival or Galahad.’
I choked on my drink. Jen gave me a hearty slap on the back. Her brow clouded. ‘Oh, dear, I hope I didn’t offend the dear boy. Men are so sensitive about weakness, you know, and I promised myself I would stop fussing over him, especially now that he has a wife to look after him, but he was so ill last winter . . . A skiing accident, and then pneumonia. He seems quite fit now, but I worry.’
‘Skiing accident,’ I repeated, like a parrot. I guess it could have been described that way. John wasn’t the world’s greatest skier, and he had fallen flat on his already damaged face while he was trying to reach the spot where a very unpleasant individual was about to do unpleasant things to me before finishing me off permanently. However, the worst of his injuries had resulted from the hand-to-hand fight that followed his arrival and from the avalanche that had followed the fight. I had not known about his subsequent illness, but I wasn’t surprised to hear of it. If he had stayed in bed for a few days instead of sneaking off the first time I left him alone . . .
Fortunately Jen didn’t notice my abstraction; she was perfectly happy to carry the conversation. I sat slugging down champagne and orange juice while Jen went merrily on, telling me how she had feared her dear boy would never settle down – ‘he is so attractive to women’ – about the whirlwind courtship – ‘he didn’t bring her to meet me until a few weeks ago’ – and about their insistence that she join them on their honeymoon.
‘Honeymoon,’ said the parrot.
‘Yes, they were married last week. Such a lovely ceremony, in the family home, with only their close friends present . . . of course I refused when they first suggested I come along, but Mary was so insistent, and John assured me she would be deeply wounded if I did not agree. Naturally I mean to stay out of their way as much as possible.’
I don’t remember what else she said.
The others had checked in the day before, so I didn’t have to wait unmercifully long before a steward was assigned to show me to my room. I was vaguely conscious of its elegance – a long curved window, with a small railed balcony beyond, a private bath. My suitcases had been arranged at the foot of the bed. I got rid of the steward and collapsed into the nearest chair.
Sometimes, especially in the middle of the night when you wake up and stumble sleepily through a darkened room, and stub your toe or bang your elbow, it takes several seconds for the pain to reach your sluggish brain. I had managed to keep it at bay for much longer than that.
I
A BADLY BRUISED ego can hurt just as much as a broken heart. When one is young and stupid and romantic and vulnerable, one is inclined to confuse the two. I was none of the above, except possibly stupid, but God knows I had made that mistake on a number of occasions.
Not this time, though. Shock, anger, humiliation, shame – to mention only a few of the emotions that boiled inside me – had been responsible for my reaction. I must have managed to conceal it from Jen; she hadn’t seemed to see anything unusual. I only hoped I hadn’t betrayed myself to John.
I pulled myself to my feet. The cocktail hour would begin shortly and I was supposed to attend. It would be my first public appearance, my first chance to connect faces and forms with the names on the passenger list. A
