The Whispering Grove Read online

  ‘There it is! There’s Salamander!’

  She tugged at Toni’s arm, pointing to the curling, lizard-like shape rushing up towards them. ‘Look, there’s the Eye. It’s the highest mountain on the island and it’s a volcano. They call it the Eye of the Salamander.’

  As she spoke the rapidly enlarging shape was lost and there was only a rushing blur of land. The plane was losing height and Toni gripped her belt with fingers that were nerveless. Salamander Isle; her new home at last. But there was little time for reflection or the sudden panic-stricken urge to turn, to return — where?

  The plane got down with a bump that sent her heart into her throat but had no effect on Juliet, who snapped out of her belt before the vibration ceased and shot out of her seat to be first along the aisle and off the plane. Tugged by that small hot grasp, Toni emerged into brilliant sun and a wave of heat that temporarily dazed her, almost like a wave of anaesthetic. There didn’t seem to be any air.

  Automatically she gazed round, seeking the passport, Customs and health formalities which had become an expected ritual. Everyone seemed to be making for a small, shanty-like building across at the far side of the airfield. It looked miles away, shimmering in the heat haze. Trying to shake off the curious lightheaded sensation, she kept a firm grip on Juliet’s hand and followed the irregular drift of the other passengers.

  Marise, her stepmother, and Norene had promised to meet her, and she searched the small clusters of people converging from the edge of the airfield. Was that...?

  A magazine slid out of the over-full bag carried by a woman plodding in front of Toni. She stopped automatically to rescue it and at the same moment the woman turned back. During the small exchange of murmurs and thanks Juliet gave a shrill squeal and darted forward. Her small figure was lost to sight, then reappeared beyond a trolley on which was being piled the baggage from the plane.

  A tall man in tropic white was striding to meet her, and her ecstatic greeting came clearly on the still air as she took a flying leap into his arms, to be swung shoulder-high and hugged tightly before he set her down.

  There was no doubt of Juliet’s welcome, or her safe arrival. Toni moved on slowly, aware of a sudden sense of loss, and for the first time she reflected on what the long journey would have been like without Juliet’s engaging company. If she had...

  ‘Toni! It is you ...? Here we are! Darling, we hardly recognized you.’

  Her arm was caught and she felt surrounded. Her stepmother was kissing her cheek and chattering excitedly, taking her cabin bag and passing it on to the tall, golden-skinned blonde who, Toni realized with a start of surprise, must be the stepsister she had last seen five years before as a podgy thirteen-year-old with a penchant for forbidden black eye make-up and petunia-shaded lipstick. There was little left of that adolescent now in the lovely, selfassured girl who glanced down at the bag, raised rather petulant brows and then thrust it impatiently at the thin sallow man who was standing a little apart from them looking as though he wished he were elsewhere.

  ‘—thought we were going to miss you,’ Marise was saying. ‘This is Kit Manton, darling. Kit - my famous stepdaughter. Did you have a good trip?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Toni, ‘except that I thought I was never going to get here.’ She smiled at Marise and Norene, suddenly feeling weak with relief to be here at last, and murmured a polite greeting to the sallow-faced man who so far had contented himself with the merest nod of acknowledgement.

  ‘We thought you might need help, so we dragged Kit along in case.’ Marise’s glance enveloped Toni. ‘But you seem to be walking all right, so it can’t be as bad after all.’

  Norene interposed impatiently: ‘Oh, Mother, for pity’s sake ... Because she’s had to give up her career doesn’t mean she’s a stretcher case. Although,’ her glance surveyed Toni’s slim legs, ‘you look perfectly okay to me.’

  The man called Kit broke in abruptly: ‘Look, do we have to stand around here and fry? Let’s get the nonsense over and yap later.’ He moved away, and Norene fell into step with him, leaving her

  mother and Toni to follow.

  ‘Yes, I forgot.’ Marise smiled brightly. ‘You won’t find it so hot on the coast. This was the only spot suitable for the airfield and it’s about the hottest.’

  Looking about her Toni now took in that the airfield lay in a huge flat oval sunk within higher ground, with the result that the heat lay trapped within and every whisper of breeze seemed to be filtered out by some quirk of the terrain.

  They reached the shanty and joined the now diminished queue. ‘Such a mania for stamping these days,’ Marise grumbled when at last Toni’s papers were completed and duly returned to her. ‘Kit will take your luggage, darling.’ She led the way outside to a bright red open tourer, girded with heat-radiating chrome, that was parked at the approach to a long avenue of tall feathery casuarinas.

  ‘This is Kit’s car. Lucky he was free this afternoon because ours is in dock with—’

  Toni did not hear the rest of her stepmother’s remark. Her attention was drawn to the sleek white Mercedes outside the airport gate. The tall man was hoisting a case into the back seat and urging in a small girl whose protest carried clearly to Toni’s ears. ‘But, Daddy ... She’s there. I just want to—’

  ‘No, Juliet, not now.’

  ‘Yes, but...’

  Kit’s slamming of the boot lid drowned the child’s voice, and Toni touched her stepmother’s arm. ‘That little girl ... The man with her is Mr. Valmont, her father?’

  Norene, preparing to ensconce herself in the front passenger seat, looked back. ‘Yes, that’s Justin Valmont.’ Her brows rose slightly. ‘Do you know him?’

  ‘No.’ Toni still hesitated by the side of the car. ‘But I travelled from England with the little girl. It seemed such a long journey for a child to make alone and I just wondered .’ Aware of three pairs of somewhat surprised eyes staring at her, she stopped and smiled uncertainly.

  Kit Manton laughed loudly. ‘You wondered if the kid had got into the right hands?’ He laughed again. ‘Set your mind at rest. That’s Valmont all right, though I can’t speak for the kid. This is the first time I’ve set eyes on her.’

  The slightly coarse note in Manton’s voice carried, and the tall man in the immaculate suit turned his head. His glance ranged coolly over the little group by the scarlet car and rather deliberately he closed the door on Juliet, who immediately popped her head through the window and waved vigorously to Toni.

  A little uncertainly Toni raised her hand in response, then let it waver to her side as she felt the full impact of a searching regard which made her feel oddly discomfited.

  For the first time she was seeing clearly the face of Justin Valmont, lean, tanned, under thick dark hair with a touch of grey at the temples, and even-featured to the point of handsomeness.

  In those cool grey eyes she could read neither curiosity nor interest, merely something that looked remarkably like disapproval.

  Abruptly he bent and said something to Juliet, then walked round and slid behind the wheel of the Mercedes. It shot away smoothly down the avenue of casuarinas and an impatient blast on the horn from Kit Manton jerked Toni into action. Slowly she got in beside her stepmother and sank back on to the uncomfortably hot red leather.

  Marise began to chatter, but Toni was not listening. She could not help thinking of the autocratic survey to which she had been subjected, and the small sweet Juliet who in an incredibly short space of time seemed already to have become part of her life.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Villa Aurelia was a leisurely half-hour’s drive from the airport; Kit Manton accomplished it in seventeen minutes flat. The second part of the route, along a winding red road that bridged a deep, heavily wooded ravine, dropped steeply down a rugged hillside into cool, glossy-leaved lemon groves and finally emerged to overlook a series of small, white-sanded coves and the wide deep blue of the ocean, held a loveliness Toni had scant time to savour between blurred glimpses
and responses to Marise’s questions.

  She gave it up and devoted her attention to her stepmother; there would be plenty of time for exploring this inviting island at her leisure.

  Presently they came to the first of several villas edging the road. They were spaced widely apart and all individual: blue shutters, red-tiled cupolas, white Moorish arches, black lacy-grilled wrought iron, lemon verbena in tubs, beautifully tended gardens and terraces with bamboo hedges, roses, morning glory, scarlet and pink bougainvillea ... Toni’s heart began to lift at the vivid colourful freshness of the scene; surely here she could forget.

  The car slowed, swung into an open driveway and slid to a halt outside a long low sprawling villa.

  Marise said brightly: ‘We’re home, darling.’

  Toni stayed still, staring from the car. All the hope and eagerness had faded from her eyes. This couldn’t be it! This wasn’t the villa of the snaps her father had sent over the years. It couldn’t be; there must be some mistake ... Dismay clouded her face as she took in the overgrown garden, the sagging gate propped back at the drive entrance, the peeling white-bleached-to-grey paint ...

  Fighting down her dismay, Toni followed her stepmother across the red-tiled patio. She must not criticize. She had to remember that it was almost eighteen months since her father’s sudden death. It must have been dreadful for Marise left to cope alone, with only

  Norene, who would then be barely seventeen. There would be a reason ...

  Determinedly she put away the disturbing thoughts and tried to see only the cheerful enough lounge into which she was being shown, ignoring the glimpsed untidiness of an unmade bed and scattered clothing visible through a half-open door across the hall.

  Everyone could not be a model of tidiness; her friend Lisa had been the world’s worst. Her tiny flat the heart of chaos and her place in the dressing-room at the theatre the despair of their dresser. Lisa was always the last coryphee frantically hunting for a bit of her costume when their call ‘on stage’ came over the tannoy

  ‘You look as though you need this.’ Kit Manton was holding a glass under her nose. ‘It’s okay,’ he smiled broadly, ‘it’s mostly bitter lemon - I never serve Mickey Finns to strange young ladies until I know them better.’

  A little reluctantly she accepted the drink, sensing that he was amused and wondering just where he fitted in. He moved round the villa as though perfectly at home, yet he did not look the kind of man with whom her father would have been friendly.

  She shook her head as though to clear her thoughts. He had come along to meet her, looked after her luggage and put his car at her disposal. She certainly did not know him well enough to dismiss him as the brash, rather insolent type she instinctively avoided. It was just that she was so desperately travel-tired everything seemed hopelessly distorted ... All the same, she wished he would go. It was difficult to establish a relationship with two women who were almost strangers, despite the fact they were her kin, when a third stranger was present.

  But he stayed on to join them for the evening meal and then to Toni’s dismay she found that an evening out was on the agenda.

  ‘To celebrate your arrival, darling,’ Marise said. ‘Kit manages the Saffron Orchid down in Port. It’s the only decent night spot,’ she explained.

  ‘But I haven’t even unpacked,’ Toni protested.

  ‘It won’t take you very long.’ Marise raised her brows. ‘We have to get changed. There’s no great rush.’

  Kit Manton lit a cheroot and drawled: ‘I think you should call it off, Marise. The kid looks dead on her feet. Let’s make it another night.’

  Toni flashed him a grateful glance, then bit her lip as she saw Marise’s disappointed expression. She said quickly: ‘It’s sweet of you, but it’s true — I am just about dead on my feet. But that’s no reason to spoil your evening.’ She hesitated. ‘Couldn’t you go without me? That is, if you don’t mind my suggesting it.’

  Norene leaned over the back of a chair, looking faintly bored, and Marise said doubtfully: ‘I forgot you’d be tired. It’s just that we thought ...’ she tailed off vaguely with a shrug.

  Kit Manton laughed. ‘It’s plain enough. Toni gets her beauty sleep and we go on the town and leave her in peace. Okay, girls?’

  At last it was settled. The trio departed into the indigo night and an air of peaceful desertion descended on the villa as the car revs faded into the distance. Toni switched out the lounge lights and went wearily into the bedroom she had been allotted. She surveyed the two cases and slowly opened one, lifting out the first folded garment. Then abruptly she slung it over the back of a chair and rummaged for her nightdress.

  A few minutes later she tumbled into bed and fell into a sleep of utter exhaustion.

  The little songbird was happy.

  Night’s veils had slipped away to reveal a sky warm as a sun-tinted apricot. Pale gold dapples flirted through the leaves, and the wide heavens beckoned to unfolding wings.

  The joyous trills filled the soft clear air and mingled with the music in Toni’s dream. She stirred and lay for a little while, eyes closed, adjusting to the first awakening in a strange room in a strange land.

  Presently she freed herself of the thin coverlet which had provided all the warmth she had needed and went to the window, her fingers unfamiliar with the cords securing the blinds.

  It was almost as though her movement was the cue for the unseen songbird to cease his melody. Then from somewhere farther distant came the responding song. She stood motionless, listening to the joyous duologue and staring beyond the unkempt garden to the vista of abundant tropical greens and the blue streak of sea far to her left.

  This was real; she hadn’t stepped out of a dream. This was what she would awaken to each new day. The old chapter had closed, irrevocably. And each new awakening would carry her farther away, blurring the memories. But would the longing ever dim? And the numb, unbelieving realization that it was over .

  At last she turned away and reached for her housecoat. She heard no sound of her stepmother or Norene stirring and she might have been alone in the somnolent villa as she bathed in unpleasantly tepid water, then dressed and let herself quietly out of the house.

  There was a small gate at the end of the garden behind the villa and the beginning of a narrow path which she felt instinctively must lead down to the beach. But it was farther to the beach than she had imagined. The path wound steeply down the hillside, among the light and dark of strange ferns and overhanging foliage, and finally through tangling creeper and a thicket of tall sad filaos before it opened to the vista of white beach, and the muted sound of the sea became a clear pattern of sound.

  The sand was crisp and sugary underfoot, and the outgoing tide had marked a wavering ripple of leaves and fronds and sea-stalks, and among the limp skeletal shapes of seaweed were strange exquisite shells which Toni had never seen on an English beach.

  She walked slowly, trying to see and think only of the lovely panorama formed by this wild tropic shore and the distant line of the mountains, hazy under their morning veil of soft pearly mist. But already the disturbing fears were crowding in upon her. What was she going to do with her future? How was she going to fill in the minutes, days, hours and years which lay ahead?

  In the past every minute had been mapped out; a dancer’s day never seemed long enough to cram into it everything she wanted to do. The classes, every morning, which the whole ballet company had to attend, from the newest, humblest member of the corps de ballet to the great Maria Prokhova herself; the afternoon rehearsals; and the performance at night. Always something new to master, always the dancer’s endless striving for perfection. What was to fill the void that was left?

  Unseeingly she wandered from the sea’s edge, vaguely conscious of the sun’s increasing power and seeking the tree-tangled shade inshore.

  Back in England everyone had been so certain that the excitement of going to live on a tropical island in the Indian Ocean would prove the best possible wa
y of helping her to adjust to the sudden tragic ending of a career which had been her vocation. ‘New faces, new places, sunshine - you lucky girl! Just think of us,’ Lisa had said, ‘when you’re lotus-eating and lazing on your glorious coral strand. Just remember us slogging away on the studio floor with old Markie rapping our shins with his cane and calling us a lot of flat-footed elephants ...’

  If only ... she cried silently. If only I were back. I’d give the world to be slogging alongside you at the bane. And old Markie didn’t mean to be cruel. He only wanted us to be perfect ...

  ‘Hallo! We have a trespasser.’

  The cool tones brought Toni whirling round, her eyes dilating with alarm. For the moment she saw only the silent, encircling trees and the twisting foliage of the grove into which she had strayed, then she saw the tall man in beige slacks and lime-green shirt regarding her from a track visible beyond the trees.

  She said defensively, ‘I’m just walking. I’m not trespassing.’

  ‘No?’ said Justin Valmont, coming towards her. ‘This is private land and the beach—’ He checked suddenly, and she saw her own recognition reflected in his grey eyes.

  ‘And the beach is private as well,’ she returned icily, the fleeting thought occurring that Juliet Valmont certainly hadn’t inherited her charm and appealing disposition from her father! Head high, she added, ‘I’ve neither wish nor intention to trespass. Please accept my apologies and assurance that it will not happen again.’

  She turned to retrace her steps.

  A flicker of surprise crossed his face. He said, ‘That isn’t necessary. How could you know, having only arrived yesterday afternoon?’

  Perforce, as he was now barring her path, she stayed there, unsmiling and giving the smallest of nods, making it quite clear that she waited for him to move.

  He said calmly, ‘May I introduce myself? I’m Justin Valmont. And I believe I owe you my thanks for your kindness to my daughter during her flight from England.’