Topaz Island

by Patricia Robins

Genres: Romance

Synopsis

When Phillida Bethel takes her first holiday job as her mother's help to beautiful Suzanne Kingley, she never guesses what lies in store for her on the exotic Topaz Island. Danger, romance, adventure and excitement are to come her way in full measure. Inexperienced as she is, she has no yardstick by which to assess the fascinating American boy, Jeff Aymon. But it is the English student, Greg Somerville, who seems the only safe haven when this world of beauty suddenly becomes sinister... A compelling classic romance from the inimitable Patricia Robins, first published in 1965 and now available for the first time in eBook.

Release date: April 9, 2015

Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton

Print pages: 400

Sample

It was only now, when all the exams and interviews were over and she finally knew for certain that she had a place at Bristol University in the autumn, that Phillida thought about the holiday job she must get if she were to make ends meet.

‘Surely this dress will do!’ Granny Bethel said, holding up the hideous item of school uniform which Phillida hoped never to have to wear again.

‘Oh, Granny, no. I can’t wear that!’ Phil tried to curb her impatience. Perhaps a mother might have understood about fashion but Granny, bless her heart, simply hadn’t a clue.

‘I can’t see why not, dear. It looks perfectly good to me.’ Granny looked at her seventeen-year-old grand-daughter with her customary twin feelings of anxiety and bewilderment.

Phillida was two whole generations away—and long generations, for her father had been born when Granny Bethel was thirty, and he had been thirty when Phillida was born.

Sixty years was too big a gap to be breached for full understanding but nevertheless, each was deeply devoted to the other.

Both Phillida’s parents had died in an aeroplane accident in America. She had been only two years old at the time and Granny Bethel had never suspected that when she offered to look after the little girl for two weeks that it was to mean for the rest of her life-time. Fortunately for them both, Phillida was endowed not only with good looks but with an exceptionally high I.Q. Neither of her parents had carried life insurance and there was so little saved at the time of their death that Phillida’s only hope of a good education was to earn it through the state schooling system. She passed both her O levels and A levels a year younger than the average. Now, after years of intensely hard work, she had gained her university entrance and was to realise her ambition to study languages in which she hoped to obtain a degree.

It had not been easy for the old woman to bring up this brilliant child. Her own education had been very brief and she had long since forgotten what she had learned at school. She was powerless to help the little girl with difficult algebra problems or Latin homework and could only stand aside, bewildered and anxious, as the child was forced to rely on her own ability.

There had been little or no time for any kind of social life. Phil’s studies had occupied most of her evenings and weekends. In the holidays, she would go out with her girl-friends and very occasionally to a party, but there had been no steady boy-friend. For this Granny Bethel was thankful, for she was not at all sure she would have known how to guide Phil. As far as she knew, Phil, at seventeen, was completely innocent and, moreover, disinterested in most of the modern teenage activities.

In fact, this was not entirely true. Phil had longed for a stereo system, a tape deck, the latest records and friends in to dance to them, but she knew only too well the enormous financial sacrifices Granny Bethel was continually making, in order to keep her in school uniform and books and pocket money. She simply could not and would not ask for luxuries.

But now she knew that at least a few fashionable clothes and accessories were essential—no longer to be thought of as a luxury, and that since she couldn’t ask Granny Bethel for money, she must get a job for the next six months to enable her to buy what she needed.

Gently she tried to make Granny Bethel understand that work was no hardship for her; that she was quite old enough now to look after herself away from home; that she must earn some money to buy what she needed for the more sophisticated surroundings of university life.

‘That dress is, and only could be, school uniform!’ she explained. ‘Anyway, Granny, it’s far too tight for me now.’

Her grandmother sighed.

‘I do wish I could help somehow, Phillida!’ (She never shortened Phil’s name.) ‘Somehow I don’t like the idea of you working. You need a rest, dear. You’ve been working so hard for so long—and you look tired.’

Phil gave her reflection in the mirror a swift glance and hurriedly looked away again. Her hair was badly in need of a good cut. Her face did look drawn—some make-up would help. She would have liked to have bought some new cosmetics as well as a new wardrobe of clothes and shoes. She knew she had long, pretty legs, but couldn’t do them justice in last year’s school skirts.

‘I shall get the kind of job where I don’t have to use my brains, Granny!’ she said, her slanting green eyes sparkling with sudden amusement. The corners of her rather too-big mouth also turned upwards, giving her an impish look. ‘I’ll be a mother’s help—you know I’m domestically qualified. And minding children will be a piece of cake for me after being a prefect for a year.’

It took Granny a week or two to get used to the idea and by that time Phil had lined up a job. She came back from the interview with her future employer, filled with excitement and enthusiasm.

‘Oh, Granny, I do wish you could have come with me. Mrs Kingley is perfectly sweet—and miles younger than I’d expected. I don’t think she can be more than about thirty-five at the most. And her clothes—Granny, they were absolutely gorgeous. She was wearing a lovely leather suit and she had beautiful blonde hair. I think she must have been a model or something. You can tell from the way she walks.’

Granny Bethel broke in:

‘But what will you have to do, Phillida?’

‘Practically nothing!’ Phil said, her green eyes shining. ‘And I’m being paid fifty pounds a week for the privilege!’ She caught the old woman round the waist and hugged her. ‘I’ve really been lucky, Gran. She nearly engaged a foreign girl yesterday and then decided to hold back the letter of acceptance until she’d seen me.’

Phil dropped exhausted into the shabby old sofa. She could not fully believe in her good luck. Mrs Kingley had been so sweet.

‘It’ll be such fun for us both!’ she had said—not like an employer at all. ‘May I call you Phil? And you must call me Suzanne. I do wish the children were here for you to meet but they are both at a birthday party. Jenny is eight and Rupert is one. I think you’ll find them easy to manage. I had a Scots nanny since Jenny was born but she left to get married. I don’t want to get another nanny yet because I’m not certain where my husband is going to be sent. He’s in the Foreign Office and he’s due for a term abroad but we just don’t know where. At the moment he’s in America. So you see, you coming for six months fits in perfectly with our plans and I do hope you will decide to. take the job.’

Phil had not hesitated. The London house where Mrs Kingley lived was beautiful. The room Phil was to have had seemed, by comparison with her own shabby room in Granny’s council flat in Camden, fit for a princess. The children’s nursery quarters consisted of day and night rooms and their own bathroom, all decorated in yellow and white.

Mrs Kingley had smiled at her gasps of admiration.

‘You want to see our home on Topaz Island—it’s far more attractive than this!’ she said.

‘Topaz Island?’

‘Yes! It’s just off the coast of the South of France. We go there in March and stay till it gets too hot in July or August. You won’t mind going abroad?’

‘Granny, I’ll be going abroad—to France!’ Phil cried. ‘I shall be able to improve my accent and learn a whole lot. It’s just all too good to be true!’

Granny smiled, pleased that Phillida was so happy and excited and relieved to know that she would be going to live with such nice people.

‘I told Mrs Kingley you couldn’t get about much because of your rheumatism and she said she’d come and pay you a visit, Granny, just so that you’ll know who I shall be going to live with. Isn’t that nice of her? And, Granny, look!’

In her excitement, Phil had forgotten one of the most important happenings of the day. She reached into her handbag and pulled out a slip of paper.

‘It’s a cheque—for a hundred pounds. One hundred pounds, Gran. Two weeks’ salary in advance, Mrs Kingley said, in case I needed to buy clothes. Wasn’t that thoughtful of her? Oh, I’m so happy I could burst!’

‘She does know you are inexperienced?’ Granny Bethel asked anxiously. ‘You seem very young to be getting so much money.’

‘Yes, I know, but she does know!’ Phil said confusedly. ‘And she doesn’t want references; she says my school reports are quite enough. And Granny, she’s glad I’m not a trained nanny—she said her previous one had been fearfully bossy and had often kept her away from the children and she’d hated it, so it’s all all right. As for the money—I think they must have so much, fifty pounds a week is nothing to them. You should see the house, Granny—it’s amazing. It looks as if it’s all been furnished and decorated regardless of cost. And they must be rich, anyway, to have their own villa in France. Doesn’t it sound perfect, Gran? Topaz Island?’

What Phil did not yet know was that the Kingleys owned not just the villa but the whole five square miles of Topaz Island. But this was only one thing among many she did not know… for instance, that Mr Kingley was twenty years older than his wife; he had been married before to a wealthy American woman who had died leaving him a fortune and the guardianship of a stepson by her own previous marriage; that Jeff Aymon was at this very moment packing his belongings at his American college from which he had finally been sent down in disgrace.

The train journey to New York might have been a lot more tedious for Jeff if he had not met up with a very pretty actress who had been delighted to permit the attractive young college boy to entertain her. And Jeff Aymon could be very entertaining when he chose.

He was what an Englishman would call typically American to look at. He was tall and beautifully built with square shoulders and narrow hips. Even the close crew-cut could not diminish entirely the blue-black shine of his dark hair. Beneath a broad wide forehead his eyes shone surprisingly blue. It was an open honest attractive face; a face one instinctively trusted and liked. It was Jeff’s biggest asset.

In his pocket was a letter for his stepfather from the principal of his college. He knew very well what was in it; knew too, that on no account could he permit his stepfather to read it. Deliberately, he tore it into tiny squares and let them fall out of the window.

‘Say, honey, what’s that you’re doing?’

Jeff grinned at his travelling companion.

‘Getting rid of my past!’ he said.

‘Oh, a love-letter. What happened, honey? Did she let you down?’

‘Not quite. She found me out! Now, how about another drink to celebrate?’

Two hours later Jeff was drinking yet another Scotch—this time in the company of his stepfather. So far, Charles Kingley had not been very friendly. In fact, he’d been definitely distant, Jeff thought. It was time he altered that. He said:

‘I know this must be a pretty nasty shock for you, but frankly, when you hear what really happened, I don’t think you’ll blame me!’

Charles Kingley looked at his stepson with misgivings. The boy had been six when his mother had died and, like a lot of American children, hopelessly spoilt by English standards. Charles had never actually liked the boy—never managed to get close to him but he’d put this down to the fact that he himself was rather shy, introverted and typically English, and that he had little in common with this stepson who, he supposed, took after his French father rather than his American mother. Already in his late forties when Jeff was born, the Frenchman had died a year after his son’s birth, leaving his far younger widow the opportunity to marry again. Charles had taken on the responsibility for the boy when he married his mother.

Because Jeff had wanted it so passionately, Charles had arranged for him to stay at school in America when his own spell of duty in Washington was up and he had to return to England. There had been Aunt Georgie on his mother’s side who was prepared to act as his guardian and Jeff would be sent to England for the longest vacation. When the time came, however, Jeff had not wanted to leave. Aunt Georgie had written a long rambling letter about summer camp and Jeff’s friends and because he, Charles, was already in love with Suzanne by then and wishing to spend as much of his spare time as possible with her, he allowed the boy to stay in the States.

The cable from the aunt asking him to come to America as soon as he could had been a nasty shock. He had been in regular correspondence with her and as far as he knew, Jeff had been in no trouble over the years since he had last seen him. Now, like a bombshell, he learned that the boy was being expelled from his college.

He got leave from the office and flew to America. From New York he telephoned Aunt Georgie. She refused to give details on the telephone and told him Jeff would be arriving next day and would come to his hotel and explain everything.

And here the boy was—no, not a boy any longer, a young man, self-assured, even a little tough at first summing up—and apparently not one whit ashamed of himself for being chucked out of college.

‘It was like this, sir!’

Charles listened to the American accent, trying to accustom his ears to the sudden change from home. ‘This buddy of mine and I were taking two girls for a spin. We’d had a few drinks and I suppose Hank must have had more than I thought. Anyway, he was jumping mad to drive my car when it came time to go home. First off, I refused, then I said okay because this kid has come through school the hard way—no dough, you understand? Works his way. Well, next thing we hit a tree and there’s this girl, my date as a matter of fact, pretty badly hurt. Hank is frantic. “If they find out it’s me who was driving, there’ll be all hell let loose,” he said. “I haven’t a licence and I’ve no insurance.”’

Jeff leaned back in his chair, regarding his stepfather closely.

‘Well, what would you have done, sir? He was my buddy and it was partly my fault for letting him drive. So we swapped seats and sat there till the first car passed by.’

‘And the girl?’

‘Well, that’s the awful part, sir. She wasn’t killed but she was quite badly injured. There was a court case and I took the blame and my aunt thought it best to notify you.’

Charles let out his breath. Unknown to himself, he had been sitting tensely, holding himself taut until he realised that far from being in disgrace, Jeff had done rather a fine thing. Of course, it was crazy for the boy to take the blame for anything so serious. If this girl had died, there could have been an action for manslaughter. Still, mercifully it hadn’t come to that.

‘Frankly, sir,’ Jeff said, ‘I’m not too s. . .