The House at Sandalwood Page 2

  I loved each of them, but I agreed that I loved the “cheap ones” of pink plumeria best. The scents rose around me, delightfully romantic, and somehow softening my fears as well. I had felt cold for so long, my emotions frozen within me, that these flowers seemed to offer the first key to the freeing of those emotions.

  I was still thanking Ito Nagata when he went over to the bamboo bar again and waved away my thanks. “You deserve it. Besides, Michiko knows about it. No hanky-panky.” I laughed. I felt genuinely happy for a few minutes.

  “But no more drinks, Ito. I have to get used to it gradually.”

  “How about coffee?”

  “Fine. I’d like that.”

  “Kona coffee. Nothing like it in the world.”

  I smiled. Ito Nagata had certainly become a loyal booster of Michiko’s native state. Nor could I blame him. From my brief observation it was not for nothing that these islands were called the Paradise of the Pacific.

  There seemed to be coffee brewing constantly in a glass Silex. At any rate, he had a cup of steaming coffee ready for me within a minute or two. I accepted it with gratitude. I had raised the cup to my lips when I heard the hall door open. I was glad I could continue drinking the coffee without revealing my sudden new inner disquiet. I was certain that the stride and the slammed door and the human cyclone entering the room all represented my niece’s husband and my prospective employer, Stephen Giles.

  A little overwhelming at first glance, he was a trim man with a bronze look about him—his complexion, his hair, his throat, even his shirt and bare arms. At least he wasn’t wearing one of the loud aloha shirts sported by everyone who returned from the islands. But he was even more informal that I had been led to believe. His attraction for Deirdre and her friend Ingrid was obvious. He looked vividly alive. He had deep-set hazel eyes, a splendid high-bridged nose that dominated his face, and a mouth that I suspected might be both sensuous and tender. He came directly across the room and stood over me, studying everything about me. Now that I saw him close up, I wondered if he didn’t also look stubborn, but perhaps I was simply perceiving a man who was used to getting his own way.

  Ito and I sat nervously, and Giles began the conversation.

  “So this is Deirdre’s aunt!” He added with a smile, “Her young aunt.”

  Before Dr. Nagata could say anything, I told Mr. Giles coolly, “I am Judith Cameron,” and put my hand in his when he offered it. He had a strong grip.

  He said with unexpected frankness, “The newspaper pictures didn’t do you justice. And red hair. Have you a temper?”

  “Auburn. I have learned to control my temper, I hope.”

  “I’m always trying to control mine, although I sometimes wonder if I will ever conquer it.”

  Then he went over to the bar and made himself a drink. It appeared to be Scotch on the rocks. Immediately, Ito Nagata took his own glass and wandered away toward the dining room. I wondered if his departure had been prearranged. Mr. Giles brought his drink to the couch and sat down beside me, stretching his long legs out before him. The late-afternoon light cut across the room, highlighting all his features and giving them a harsh look I hadn’t noticed at first. “Miss Cameron—Judith, that is—I don’t know where I could have turned if you had failed me. I am in your debt. You came over here to help me...”

  “To help your wife, as I am sure you understand, Mr. Giles.”

  “Stephen. Yes, and I thank you for it. Deirdre will be immensely better with you to guide her.”

  A little thread of a frown told me he was hesitating about something he wanted to say. But I think he felt that he didn’t know me well enough to venture into those dark problems—Deirdre’s real difficulties that had brought me here. Were there dark problems?

  “Well,” he said after a silence between us, “I’m afraid I can’t take you to Ili-Ahi as I hoped to. I am in the middle of negotiations on the threat of a dock strike. I needn’t tell you what dock strikes do to our economy. Dr. Nagata has been good enough to say he will take you to my home immediately, where Deirdre is expecting you. The property in your charge will be on Ili-Ahi, as the island is called. To avoid confusion, our house is referred to as Sandalwood. Same thing, actually. But I hope you will occasionally help me to entertain at business receptions here in Honolulu.” As I looked at him, he put up one hand as though to ward off my objections. “All perfectly respectable, Judith. What I need is a woman to manage these things at home and here on Oahu. That’s it.”

  “I will be glad to help in any way.”

  He smiled and I understood quite well why Deirdre and her friend had pursued him, as Ito Nagata suggested. Giles said, “You are rather too attractive to be called Deirdre’s aunt. There will probably be gossip. Especially as my wife is too ... too young to manage her household.”

  “I couldn’t bear any gossip that would hurt Deirdre. But as for myself, I am not afraid of gossip.”

  “No. I don’t believe you are. And Deirdre will depend on you a great deal.”

  “All the better. Deirdre will bear up—I know she will,” I assured him and added with a flicker of amusement, “I promise to do my best and not to give anyone grounds for gossip.”

  He laughed at that. “You sound Victorian.” As I opened my mouth to deny this, he asked the curious question: “You aren’t superstitious, I hope?”

  What a very odd question to put to a housekeeper! I assumed it had something to do with Deirdre’s problems. But I couldn’t recall that my niece had ever been afraid of black cats and stepping on cracks in the sidewalk. “I’m not superstitious,” I said, “though I think you should know that I won’t walk under ladders.”

  He found this also amusing. “Very wise. Now, if you will excuse me, Judith, my charming young ‘aunt,’ I’ll leave you in Dr. Nagata’s capable hands and get back to those damned negotiations. I hope I can get home to Ili-Ahi tonight. But if not ...” He shrugged.

  He got up quickly, downed his drink and called to Ito. A minute later he was gone.

  I stared after him. “Is that all, Ito? Just like that?”

  Ito Nagata said with a sudden, unexpected reserve, “He’s accepted you; you’re in. But be careful. Don’t go rushing around making an enemy of him just to protect Deirdre. I like Stephen Giles, but he is a stubborn man. I wouldn’t want him to turn against me. Or you, for that matter.”

  “But why would he? I hope whatever I do will be for Deirdre’s sake.”

  “Deirdre may not be perfect either, you know. Try and weigh things. Don’t go out on a limb in supporting her against Steve. As I say, he’s a fair man, but he might be very difficult if he thought he was being crossed.”

  I understood, and I agreed with him. But at the moment I saw no reason why we should be enemies, Stephen and I, so long as he remained a good husband to my niece. And I must remember also, when Ito Nagata was giving me his undoubtedly excellent advice, that Ito had always felt I sheltered Deirdre too much. It was the only subject the Nagatas and I disagreed on.

  Two

  I had some vague notion that we would cross Oahu, Honolulu’s home island, and perhaps take a motorboat across the bay that Deirdre had mentioned in some of her letters, in order to reach Stephen Giles’s island of Ili-Ahi and his home, the fabled Sandalwood. I was surprised, though not yet uneasy over the complications and the length of time it took to reach Deirdre’s new home. We took an interisland plane northwest from Oahu, half an hour later touching down at the airfield on what Dr. Nagata called Ili-Ahi’s “parent island” of Kaiana, one of the major Hawaiian group, since Ili-Ahi did not have a landing field of its own. A young man from the little airport office came out and informed Dr. Nagata, “Your jeep is under the willows over there, this side of the Keawe thicket. Leave it in the breezeway near the beach and Sam and I will overhaul it soon as we get a break.”

  “Thanks, Tiji. See you at the luau Sunday.”

  I looked around this part of the island of Kaiana as Ito Nagata dropped my suitcase and make-u
p box into the jeep. Even at this hour, with sunset gaudily reflected on the tangled woods at the far end of the airfield and on the patch of what appeared to be giant ferns nearby, the island presented a hundred sources of mystery, of concealment to a stranger like me. How lost Deirdre must have felt! The difficulties of reaching Ili-Ahi were like a Chinese puzzle box containing endless smaller boxes within. Deirdre was virtually a prisoner at Sandalwood House once she had reached there.

  Ito offered his hand to help me up into the jeep, and then we bounced and rattled over a small, unpaved road while the other three plane passengers, intending to remain on Kaiana, took a hotel limousine along the paved highway in the opposite direction.

  Ito glanced at me several times while I studied the rapidly darkening foliage that overhung our little road.

  “Troubles?”

  “Oh, no. I was only thinking. I hadn’t quite realized before how much jungle there is in Hawaii.”

  He smiled but I suspected he was still worried about something, either Deirdre’s problems or my ability to cope. “You aren’t against greenery and vegetation, I hope. You’ll find a good deal of it here, and more so on Ili-Ahi.”

  “But I like greenery and flowers. And believe me, I can get along without so much of the pushing and shoving and intimacy with strangers that I knew too well for eight years.” I raised the divinely scented leis from around my neck and sniffed at them. “It’s only that I had a slightly closed-in feeling there for a few minutes. It’s no place for anyone with claustrophobia.” I was afraid he might think I had changed my mind about what I had come to do, and I added with what sounded to my own ears like an overdone enthusiasm, “But I adore my flowers—the lovely flowers you gave me. They are perfect.”

  “Not quite, I’m afraid.” Ito was looking at me, or rather, at my neck which, as a matter of fact, had begun to burn a little. I put my hand to my throat under the cool, moist leis, laughing uneasily.

  “Sunset and the Dracula hour. Why are you looking at me like that?”

  He smiled. “I am afraid one of those leis was strung with wire. Not a very common trick these days. Anyway, it has scratched you.” He took out a linen handkerchief, and I put it to my neck. When I glanced at the much creased linen there was a thread of a bloodstain. A little troubled, I laughed again and lied.

  “Don’t look so serious, Ito. It’s not some bad omen. I don’t believe in omens. I wouldn’t dare. My new employer was very explicit about that. He even asked if I were superstitious. I suppose if I’d said I told fortunes with tarot cards I’d have been thrown out on my ear.”

  Dr. Nagata slowed to let a group of giggling brown young children of all races cross the road and plunge into what I could only think of as a sinister-looking jungle of monstrous, twisted growths, half of which appeared to be uprooted. They looked as if they had gigantic spiders on their backs, with their roots growing in all directions. Dr. Nagata asked me in a puzzled way, “Stephen talked to you about superstitions? Good Lord! I wonder if he takes them seriously now.”

  “Takes what seriously?”

  “Old wives’ tales,” he said in a sharp, annoyed voice. “Some time ago there was trouble at the site of the Sandalwood Heiau, that series of cottages for tourists with a layout for parties or luaus—that type of thing. Matter of fact, I invested in the heiau myself. Anyway, it had all gone to seed, you might say, until recently. They couldn’t make a go of it. Stephen’s father lost his shirt and killed himself, so Stephen had to start again from scratch. And all, they say, because the cottages were built on the site of an ancient heiau. A sacred place in the islands.”

  Slightly apprehensive after looking around this desolate spot, I asked, “Is Ili-Ahi anything like this island?”

  “Not nearly as big, and not as civilized.” That shook me. Could anything be even less civilized than this place? “No towns on Ili-Ahi. Sandalwood is the plantation house. Not much by Big Island standards. Then there are cottages in the Hawaiian sector. They grow taro and some experimental crops. The object is to bring back something of the old pre-haole life. No, I don’t just mean Caucasians.” He corrected himself. “Haoles are foreigners. These Hawaiians aren’t happy with the civilization brought by the Asians, either. Anyway, what isn’t under cultivation of sorts is jungle. And an area of fields on the west, where some cattle are run.”

  It didn’t sound promising. I thought this island was remote enough. I wouldn’t mind it so much for myself. I would almost prefer my own company after the crowded conditions I had known for the past eight years. But I wondered how a young girl like Deirdre had reacted.

  The jeep bounced along and quite suddenly jostled us out over the sand on a series of planks that ran into a shed at one end of a long, narrow strand of beach. The breezeway Dr. Nagata’s friend, Tiji, had mentioned.

  Now what would we do?

  The answer was obvious, but not quite what I had pictured as the way visitors arrived at Ili-Ahi. A simple motorboat with a good working engine. It seemed very unpretentious and to me, at least, pleasant. But Deirdre must have been surprised. Surely, this wasn’t the way an impressionable young girl would expect to arrive at the home island of her fabulous husband. Or had she and her friend Ingrid visited the island before Deirdre married Stephen Giles? Although he was certainly attractive, I had not been in a position to admire the charm and masculinity of males for a long time. I told myself that in view of Deirdre’s apparent problems, her husband should have better defended her—against the elements as well as other people. But I knew I was assuming too much. Stephen Giles could hardly be aware of all the possible dangers concerning my poor niece. I had hoped my conviction in her mother’s death had closed the past for Deirdre. Stephen might not know all about that time of misery and suffering we had shared. Or did he?

  We stepped into this boat that looked like an overgrown dory, and Dr. Nagata started the motor after a couple of sputtering attempts. It was past sunset, but violent and startling rays on the western horizon still made the immediate world look as if it were on fire. I could see now that there really was a small land mass—an island?—northwest, beyond the wide entrance to Kaiana Bay, but in this little boat, and among these exceedingly choppy waters, I felt less than secure. I dropped one hand into the water, which was crimson in the light.

  Dr. Nagata called to me proudly, “Gorgeous sunset, isn’t it?”

  We were getting a terrific feedback from the foam and waves cutting all around us and I could only agree, “Gorgeous!” as I wiped my face. I put on my sunglasses again, trying to see where we were going to land along that dark, forbidding coast. There was Stephen Giles’s celebrated island of Ili-Ahi, with its more-romantic English translation of Sandalwood. But I need not have been concerned. Dr. Nagata knew perfectly well what he was doing. He headed in toward a tiny dot of light that proved to be a kind of stake coming out of the water about six feet high and topped by a flickering electric light that burned continually. (At least, they had electricity here.) It was covered by a bright copper hood. This hood, upon which the sunset rays gleamed, was the actual light I had seen at a distance. The electric light itself was far too dim.

  Ito Nagata explained. “This little channel is one exit point of a genuine river.”

  “I had no idea an island as small as this might have a river.”

  “Indeed, yes. Not anything to match Kauai’s river, but it’s bigger than a brook. It cuts across the island, more or less from the northwest peak, the highest on the island, down through swampy areas, between the Sandalwood Heiau’s abandoned cabins that Stephen has taken over, and onto this spot on the southeast of Ili-Ahi.”

  With stunning suddenness, the sun disappeared and we found ourselves landing at a small, rather unsteady plank dock, in the deep gray dusk. I put away my sunglasses. I had to blink several times to see anything behind and around that copper beacon light on the spit of land that reached out into the channel between Ili-Ahi and the Kaiana Bay. For a minute Dr. Nagata stopped moving. There were curio
us hushed little sounds around us, like sibilant whispers. Thickets very like those I had seen on Ili-Ahi’s parent island of Kaiana grew close along the shore. There was only this hundred yards or so of sand and coral outcroppings where the stream emptied into the sea. Not such a good swimming area here—the coral would cut up anyone’s feet.

  As Dr. Nagata joined me, I noticed that he now carried a big flashlight. I laughed, pretending to be more amused than uneasy. “This really is a primitive place. Are there no lights on the road?”

  “Yes and no. There are no roads as such on Ili-Ahi, though Stephen has a jeep and so do the Hawaiian villagers on the other side of the island. But there are lights on this path to the house. Just a little walk through those trees there. We’ll probably be met.” He reached for the copper cover of the lamp at the wharf and pressed a button inside the lamp stand. “Buzzer. It rings in the main house.”

  I took up my make-up case. He lifted the heavier suitcase out of the boat and we started along the dark path toward the big house, which was still unseen. There were more light standards lining the dark, twisting way at infrequent intervals, and I found myself hurrying from one pool of light to the next with Dr. Nagata almost striding to keep up with me. A pungent, not unattractive odor of moist earth and bitter roots pervaded the lush, green growth. Now and then there were softer, flowery scents. One could almost sort them out individually, haunting little reminders of the plant life all around.

  “Frightened?”

  “A little. It’s this jungle, or whatever it is. The trees are so tightly laced together. And beyond the path...” I pointed out with my make-up case, “... it’s soggy and wet. All that moss and decayed wood. And, I suppose, thousands of insects and snakes.”