Island of Flowers

by Denise Robins

Genres: Romance

Synopsis

Lovely Judy Railton had gambled her future on a newspaper ad, and was blissfully intoxicated with the result. She had sailed to Hawaii to marry a man she'd never seen, British ex-patriate Peter Delmer.

Release date: September 11, 2014

Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton

Print pages: 400

Sample

Peter Delmer sat on the steps of his verandah smoking a last pipe before turning in to bed, and looking before him at the starlit splendour of the Hawaiian night.

A brilliant moon threw fantastic shadows across the fruit trees and orchard of white rapaias, their flowers a delicate white with collars of green gourds. Beyond the garden lay the golden gloom of the beach, rimmed with the glittering silver of the sea.

A slim native boy wearing a white coat and lava-lava, and carrying a wreath of crimson flowers, passed and saluted.

‘Where are you off to, Tuna?’ Delmer called.

The boy bowed and grinned towards the tall Englishman.

‘I go to the wooing of Poma, Master.’

Delmer nodded. He had seen Poma. A typical goldenskinned, brown-eyed young native girl. He liked the child. She should make an ideal wife for his servant.

‘You have my good wishes, Turia,’ he said. ‘You are lucky!’

The boy looked at Delmer with his dark liquid eyes.

‘Tomorrow the mail-steamer calls at the island, O Master. It may bring news of a maiden for you; a woman more beautiful than my Poma.’

‘You never know, Turia,’ Delmer smiled. ‘Now you’d better run along or you’ll be keeping Poma waiting. Give her my regards.’

Putting his pipe in his pocket, Delmer watched the boy hurry towards the woods. Turia’s words had made his pulses suddenly thrill. ‘A woman more beautiful than Poma!’ Well, perhaps he was right. Perhaps there would be news tomorrow. It remained to be seen.

It was not only for a woman’s love that Delmer craved. He wanted companionship, someone to whom he could talk. He knew himself. Knew that he was, by nature, a sociable, affectionate person. The last man who should have been forced to live the life of a hermit.

The injustice of his exile swept across him in a sudden wave of anger. He was the victim of another man’s treachery. It was that other man who had forced him to endure this life of seclusion, of solitude. That other man who had forced him to put those fantastic advertisements in the papers. ‘Wanted—a wife!’ A woman to share his lonely existence on this island, to run his bungalow, to talk to him, to drive away the ghosts of the past which still haunted him. A woman to love. Yes, even that, he hoped, might come in time.

He had tried to make it clear in the advertisements, to any woman who applied, that her life must be spent here, and that she would never leave the island. But probably it was too much to ask of any ordinary girl. It was quite likely that there would be no answer to that almost agonised message of appeal which he had sent into the world beyond Hawaii.

Most of that night, Delmer lay awake listening to the throbbing of countless ukuleles. He imagined Turia crowning his velvet-eyed Poma with hibiscus blossoms, and taking her in his arms. This island seemed made for love. The very beauty of the place called for romance. It flamed every desire and passion.

He was relieved when morning came, and he looked out to the ultramarine Pacific glittering in the sunshine. A small crowd of boys was gathered round the quay, shouting to each other and waving their arms. Delmer felt his heart miss a beat. That meant that the boat had already arrived.

A moment later there was the sound of bare feet in the hall and a knock on the door of the bedroom. Turia came in smiling broadly, a bundle of mail in his hands.

‘For you, Master,’ he said, putting the letters on a table.

Delmer stared in amazement at the pile of envelopes. His advertisements had certainly borne fruit! There were at least fifty or sixty letters. Envelopes of every kind and shape, addressed in every type of handwriting. It would take him the best part of the morning to get through such a pile of correspondence.

Sitting down at his desk, he lit his pipe and began to tear open the letters. They were, he soon discovered, an astounding collection. Replies had come from all parts of England and America. Photographs and snapshots spilled from the envelopes and mingled with detailed descriptions, some of which caused him to laugh out loud. There were brazen demands, shy offers, passionate love-letters, and staid, tentative replies. Delmer felt amazed and bewildered. It seemed incredible that there should be so many women in the world willing to run the risk of crossing several thousand miles of ocean to share life with an unknown man.

He looked at some of the photographs and smiled. They were a motley crew. There were middle-aged spinsters with spectacles and a background of aspidistras and antimacassars; a couple of ex—very ex—glamour-girls. Numerous typists, governesses, waitresses, shop-girls.

The last letter seemed to be the most promising. It was written in a firm, educated hand on heavy cream notepaper engraved with a London address. The writer was brief and to the point. She was, she said, twenty-three, fair-haired, and blue-eyed. She was tired of her life in London. Her parents were difficult and exacting. She wanted freedom. She was a lover of adventure, and would be willing to go to Hawaii if Mr. Delmer liked the look of her photograph, and was willing to take a chance of their finding happiness together.

Delmer picked up the photograph, and walking to the window, examined it in the strong morning light. The girl was certainly good to look at. The face which he studied was a delicate oval, the features perfectly defined, the eyes wide and long-lashed, the mouth a charming bow. The photograph, he noticed, had been taken in Bond Street. It was signed ‘Carol’.

Standing up, Delmer knocked out his pipe. He felt strangely excited and elated, no longer lonely. It was as though ‘Carol’s’ precise little letter had already brought companionship, laughter and love into the monastic austerity of his bungalow. Once again he looked at the photograph. Was it possible that this was the woman whom fate meant him to possess? Was this ‘Carol’ destined to come here and make life a song—a love song—for him? He could know nothing of what lay behind those beautiful eyes, nor what character was masked by that delicate beauty. He only knew that she was willing to come, that she was willing to gamble with the future. Well, that was good enough! The sooner she arrived, the better pleased he would be. Shouting for Turia, Delmer sat down at his desk and hurriedly wrote out a cable.

‘Take this and have it sent off at once,’ he almost shouted at the boy. ‘Run, I tell you! Move as though you were going to the wooing of your Poma!’

Turia took the cable-form and ran from the house, an expression of astonishment on his dark face. Never before had he known his master to be so excitable. What had happened? Was it possible that he had had news of a maiden who would come to him? Had one of those letters contained a delicious promise for this strange, lonely Englishman? Turia prayed that it was so.

A blonde, blue-eyed girl wearing a camel’s-hair sports coat, and with a black beret perched on the back of her head, came out of the post-office round the corner from Brenton Gardens, Hampstead. There was an expression of calculation and some amusement on her face.

She was well aware that she had just made the most important move of her life. Her cable which would already be on its way across the ocean to Peter Delmer had sealed her fate. Accept offer, she had written. Sailing Saturday. Stop. Carol Marston.

Walking home through the grey November dusk, Carol once again went over in her mind all the details of the letter which she had received from Peter Delmer this afternoon. It had been an exciting and illuminating letter, following upon the cable which had arrived some weeks before. It told her about the island, about the life which she would live. It gave her explicit directions as to ships and travel arrangements. And it concluded by asking her to come as quickly as possible.

Carol pulled up the collar of her coat to protect herself against the bitter wind which blew from Hampstead Heath. She would be glad to get out of England. She hated the place and the narrow suburban life which she was forced to live. It seemed to hem her in and sap her personality. She had always managed to get a certain amount of fun out of life amongst the set in which she spent most of her time. She was admired. One or two men had been madly in love with her. But they were quite unable to offer more than a comfortable home on a meagre, if secure, income. Carol had turned them down without hesitation. She demanded more than love in a cottage or suburban villa. Love without money did not appeal to her.

That was why she had answered Peter Delmer’s advertisement carefully, and without committing herself. She had been struck, in the first place, by its possibilities. To travel, to go to the Pacific Islands, to see life from a new, glamorous angle would be a fresh thrill for her. But she did not intend to bind herself down until she had learned fuller details about the man and what he had to offer.

Today’s letter had told her what she wanted to know. Delmer appeared to have money. He said that his fruit farm was paying well, that he could give her every luxury which she might need on his island home. But the fact that he expected her to live permanently on the island, that they would never leave it, did not appeal to her.

Carol had no intention of doing that, however attractive this unknown husband might be. Delmer had money and she intended to spend it. If he refused to take her to New York, she would go by herself. Delmer would not argue with her. There would be no obstacles put in her way—if only she were right about that photograph which he had sent her.

Carol felt that there was little doubt about the photograph. She had a remarkable memory for faces. Immediately she had seen his snapshot, she knew that she had seen that face before. Then it dawned on her. She had seen it in the newspapers. She was convinced that it was the face of a man who had been called ‘George Milton’—a man who had been mixed up in a murder case.

She could even remember details of the crime which had created considerable interest in the more sensational press. Milton, a famous cricketer and rowing blue, had been involved in a quarrel in the card-room of a Major Steel’s house in Half Moon Street. A shot had been fired, and the third man in the case, James Vale, had been killed.

When the police arrived, they found Steel alone with the dead man. The major, who had telephoned Scotland Yard, handed over a revolver which had belonged to Milton and denounced him as the murderer. But by the time the police car had got to Milton’s flat, he had gone. He had not been seen from that day to this.

Whether Milton was guilty or merely the victim of Major Steel’s treachery made little difference to Carol. She guessed that Milton, who now called himself Peter Delmer, was hiding on this Hawaiian island, that the loneliness of his outcast existence had driven him to risk putting the advertisement in the paper in order to have a woman by his side. All that really mattered to her was that he was rich, that today was Wednesday, and that on Saturday she would sail for America.

Arriving at her home in Brenton Gardens, Carol went straight upstairs to her bedroom. It was vital, she realised, to keep her plans from her parents. She must gather her clothes together and pack in secrecy. It would not be easy, but at all costs she must prevent arousing any suspicion.

In her room another girl was sitting, darning a pair of stockings. Carol glanced at her casually.

‘Run along to your own room, Judy,’ she said, taking a cigarette from her case. ‘I’ve got some things to do here.’

The girl rose to her feet and stretched out her arms.

‘All right. There are your stockings. I’ve finished them.’

‘Thanks,’ Carol said, taking off her coat and beret and throwing them on the bed. ‘And look here, you might take this bag and see if you can mend it. The lining’s torn.’

Picking up her cousin’s suede bag, Judy Railton went to her own room at the top of the house. She was not surprised at Carol’s curt, off-hand manner. Judy had grown accustomed to being treated like dirt by the elder girl. It was, she supposed, what one had to put up with when, one was the ‘poor relation’.

The death of her parents some twelve months ago had forced her to throw herself on the mercy and generosity of Carol’s parents. It had been a bitter, unhappy year for Judy. She felt that she was not really wanted in the house. But she tried to keep up her spirits and accept the position philosophically. She felt, at least, that she gave back more than she got. In return for her room and food, she was treated as little better than a cook-general in the household.

It had been a miserable existence. But now even that might be denied her. At his very moment, her uncle and aunt were discussing what attitude they should take up about the story which Judy had confessed to them that morning.

It was her misery in this house which had led Judy towards the first steps of the tragedy which her relations were now debating. The man who used to come to the house to give Carol singing lessons had seemed human and understanding. He sympathised with the lonely Judy, telling her that she was wasting her life. Then he had made love to her, playing on her imagination to such an extent that she believed she was in love with him. Less than two months after their first meeting, they were secretly married and went to Brighton for a week’s honeymoon.

Julian Panton told Judy that he was being given the post of director in one of the West End theatre orchestras. As soon as he signed the contract they would announce their marriage, and be able to buy a flat of their own in town.

His promises turned out to be as elusive as the man himself. Judy returned to the house in Hampstead and waited for word from him. Some weeks later she was to learn the truth. There was no letter from him. The address to which she wrote returned her letters, marked ‘not known’. Panton had vanished without trace.

Frantic with fright and misery, Judy realised that she was helpless. She could not hope to find him. For weeks she suffered, playing a part, pretending that nothing was the matter. Until this morning she had remained in complete ignorance of his fate or whereabouts.

The long legal envelop. . .