And No Regrets (11 page)

She rose and went over to stand beside him. Feeling the brush of his arm as he raised his cigarette to his lips caused her the most exquisite rush of awareness.

His warmth of body was communicated, his indifference something she must turn to need
... a need that would keep her here even against his will.

The moonlight cut a path through the wetness of the compound; and the rain-washed, primitive beauty of the jungle was all around them. Suddenly they heard the low thudding of drums from the village. “For you, Clare,” Ross spoke deeply beside her. “To celebrate your birthday I gave our people three fat pigs and they’re having a roast-up.”

“That was good of you, Ross.” Her fingers curled like pale orchid tendrils about his arm, pressing into the starched material. “
Th
ey would miss such concessions if you sent me aw
ay
...”

She glanced up at him, knowing that the moonlight touched her throat and revealed its curves and its shadows. His cigarette winged out into the night, then his hands were pressing warm against her sides and she was letting herself go close and fragile against his chest. His breath fanned warm across her face. For a taut moment they stared into each other’s eyes, then: “You sweet fool,” he growled. Then his lips were on hers, hard and warm, and forcing a gasp from her as her own lips opened under his. The thud of heartbeats and jungle drums mingled for interminable seconds, then his lips were parting from hers and she was gazing up at the queer, flickering smile in his eyes.

“That was unexpected,” he drawled.

“Yes,” she whispered, and wondered how he
would feel if she told him what had happened to her during the course of that kiss, that her heart had been drawn up into her throat, and the strength drained from her knees.

“We’ll have to blame it on the romantic surroundings,” he added.

She held on tight to her smile and nodded. She never knew what might have followed the turbulent promise of that kiss, for in that moment, loud and menacing, there rang through the jungle the cry of a large, night-stalking cat
.
Ross stiffened. His arms dropped away from Clare and he went out on to the veranda steps and listened tensely. “God, he’s close—I’m going out after him with a gun
!”

“Ross, no
!”
Clare caught sharply at a post of the veranda. “You can’t go out there—it’s dangerous—”

“Now don’t get panicky, honey.” His face in the moonlight had a determined look, his eyes were flashing silver. “We can’t have a leo prowling close to the house, or the village. With the moon
u
p, I should be able to track him down.”

“Alone?” Her heart was hammering. She wanted to clutch him by the arms, beg him
n
ot to go. She was scared, not of the big cat, but of Ross being alone out there with the beast.

“Of course I shan’t go alone.” He laughed at her as he pushed past her into the bungalow and made for the locked cabinet in which he kept his guns. He seemed to be shimmering with electricity. The hunting instinct was aroused in him, and Clare knew there was nothing she could say or do that would stop him from going after the leopard.

“I’ll take some boys’ from the village,” he said, taking out a box of cartridges and loading a rifle. “Not to worry, Clare. The cat’s a big one from the sound of him, but I’ve been after the brutes quite a few times before. They’re dangerous, on the prowl near women and kids. The last time I was here a piccan from the village got snatched by a cat
... we don’t want that to happen again.”

“No,” she whispered. He strode into his room, and she was still standing where he had left her when he came out wearing khaki drill and heavy laced boots. “There’ll be plenty of mud to plough through, but the moon has cleared the clouds from the sky and we shouldn’t have too much' trouble picking up the cat’s tracks. Clare, stop looking so worried and female.” He gave a heartless laugh. “I’ll probably be back by sun-up.”

He strode from the bungalow as though they didn’t matter a fig to each other, gripping his gun with one hand and thrusting cartridges into his pocket with the other one.

Clare heard again the cry
of
the big cat after
Ross
had splashed his way across the compound and taken the muddy track to the village, where he would round up boys for a hunting party.
Ice
seemed to trickle down her spine. For the first time
she was
really alone
i
n the jungle, for when Ross had gone off to take a look at the rubber plantation, he had left orders for Johnny and Mark to sleep out on the veranda. But tonight Clare would be all alone. Her only company would be her fears for Ross.

She went to her room and changed out of her party
dress into a housecoat. She had no intention of going to bed. It would be impossible to lie under her netting listening to every little sound in the jungle all around. She returned to the living-room, lit two of the lamps and doused the candles that still flickered in their holders on the table. She brought a tray from the kitchen and cleared the table in a dull, automatic way. Her birthday party was over, and whatever hopes she had entertained had been swept to nothing when that big cat had cried through the night and called to something in Ross which she had been powerless to combat.

The night passed slowly.

About midnight Clare heard a sound on the veranda that brought her heart into her throat. She could
now
handle a gun and, uncurling out of a chair, she snatched up the pearl-handled revolver which Ross had given her and went over
to
the veranda door. She listened,
tense
with nerves, visualising a sleek, gliding body out there.

“Missus, that you?” came a voice.

She snatched open the door and there was Johnny the houseboy, curled up near the steps on a grass mat. She saw the flash of his teeth in the darkness. “Boss man say come,” he said Cheerfully. “I come—others go after cat.”

When the pink feathers of dawn began to appear in the sky, Clare unwound achingly out of the chair in which she had spent the night, and went to the kitchen and made a pot of strong coffee. She drank two cups black, then made her way to her room and after a wash in water sickeningly redolent of disinfectant she changed into a shirt and slacks. Anything could have happened in the night, she thought painfully. The sun was getting up and still there was no sign of Ross.

She went and questioned Johnny. Did he think the men had
killed the big cat? Was there any chance that Mr. Brennan had been hurt in the hunt?

The boy shook his head fiercely. The big boss-man too good a shot to get hurt. Little missus not to worry about her husband, him plenty fine, happy to go hunting. Have skin of big leo for carpet in a week or so.

Another hour dragged by. The other two boys had gone with Ross, and Clare determinedly kneaded dough in the kitchen and made a batch of rolls and a couple of loaves
... she was taking the trays from the oven, the smell of cooked bread pervading the kitchen, when she heard a sudden commotion in the compound. She slammed a hot tray recklessly on the wooden table and went running along the passage to the living-room. There was a cluster of people out in the compound, with Ross’s tall figure towering in the centre of them. Through the windows Clare saw the smile slashing lines down his tanned cheeks. He was splashed with mud, his bush hat pushed to the back of his dark head. The coloured boys were clacking away nineteen to the dozen, and women and children had followed the hunting party to the bungalow ... relief at seeing Ross safe and sound was a choking lump in Clare’s throat. She wanted to run outside to him, and had to dig sharp spurs into the impulse. As he took the steps in a couple of strides and entered the room, she said in a calm voice that sounded horribly cold: “Well, did you get your cat?”

“I’ll say!” He ran a hand that rasped over his unshaven chin and jaws. “A brute, tall as me stretched out dead.”

The words hit her over the heart. She turned in the direction of the kitchen. “I’ll make you some coffee and get you something to eat,” she threw back over her shoulder.

“Bring it to my room, Clare,” he spoke through a hearty yawn. “I’m whacked to the wide—say, did Johnny come up to keep you company.”

“Yes—thanks,” she said shortly, and left him.

In the kitchen she made a big omelette, sliced cold chicken, and buttered several hot rolls. She placed the coffee pot on the bamboo tray, added a bowl of sugar and a large cup, then she carried the tray to his room and set it down on the table beside his bed. He was sprawled out on the clean linen in his muddy clothes, inhaling luxuriously the smoke of a cigarette.

“I’ll run you a bath.” Clare turned to go.

“What’s up?” he demanded. “You look squeezed
out —been worrying yourself all night long?”

“I’m only a woman,” she said sharply. She wouldn’t look round at him. There were sudden tears in her eyes that would tell him how much misery she had gone through.

“Clare.”

“Yes?” She stood stiffly, a hand on the doorknob.

“You didn’t have to worry about this tough nut, sweetie.” He spoke half-jeeringly behind her. “Were
you scared I’d get gobbled up and you’d have to make that trek back to Ridgley?”

“Credit me with a bit more unselfishness than that!’’ She was suffering the aftermath of anxiety, and his casualness was almost unendurable. “The leopard had to be shot, I know that, but you went after the beast as though you were going to a ball.”

“I’m only a man,” he said lazily. “I warned you long ago that the finer feelings are missing from my make-up, and I might add that to take everything too seriously is the way to get hurt.”

Having said this, he gave a careless laugh that whipped her heart. Her tears dried to flashes of fury as she whirled to face him. “Go on, laugh!” she flared. “It’s a great big joke that I was fool enough to feel anxious about you!”

“I’m not laughing at your anxiety,” he denied, bending sideways to pour coffee. “It’s just that to get into a stew in this climate is bad for the system. Simmer down, honey. All I did was go out and bag us a new carpet for the living-room. Think how pretty it will look.”

She banged his door behind her, cutting off the sound of his lazy laughter. Those moments in his arms last night seemed a dream from which she had awoken too sharply to reality. Moved by the moonlight and the wine, he had kissed her. This morning, the excitement of that cat chase was all that was on his mind, and Clare realised more forcibly than ever that she had to accept Ross on his terms. He just wasn’t prepared to accept a situation in which feeling would dominate over reason.

It’s a pity we’re not brother and sister, Clare thought acidly. To be his little sister was plainly all he wanted of her. A companionship pleasant and undemanding. All righ
t, she would see that he got it!

CHAPTER SEVEN

THE ra
in
s got into their stride again, bringing with them a
pervasive smell of mud and water, and that damp, enervating atmosphere which sapped energy and set tempers on edge. Clare would wade out in oilskins on visits to the cow pasture and chicken field, or to watch the swelling cocoyams and pods, and return to the house drenched.

The piano lost tune and many notes blanked out completely. Her clothes began to rot, and at times her bones felt they were melting in the damp heat.

Ross had a bad dose of fever. He took to his bed, and though he ordered her to stay away from him in case he had something infectious, Clare heard him moaning on the second night and
sh
e went in, finding him drenched in sweat and delirious. She spent the night sponging him down and wetting his parched lips with water; towards dawn he grew easier, less restless, and she left him. He didn’t seem to remember, when the bout was over, that she had cared for him at its height, and she never mentioned the fact. And though she tried, she couldn’t stop remembering that in his delirium he had mentioned a name
... Pat.

He had also mumbled several times something about being tough enough to come through ‘all this business,
’
whereas Pat would go and do something hysterical that
w
ould mess up things completely....

Clare did not dare to search for a meaning in those feverish words, and tried to feel only relief that Ross picked up so quickly. She wondered if his powers of physical endurance were bound up in his reserves of control, and from him she seemed to gather a soft of
nervous vitality, hardly aware that it was half spurious and that she lived balanced on the ridge of submerged emotions.

In September the rains came to an early conclusion. The mists parted to reveal a torrid sun in a sky of bronze. Crops were high in the fields; a new gaiety added itself to the tuneless song of the workers. To them the ‘little heat’ was the best time of the year; the rains over, the sun not yet at its zenith
... they were happy, so they sang and laughed and good-humouredly argued together.

One evening Ross sat in his chair, staring morosely in front of him. Clare glanced across at him from the shirt on which she was sewing buttons; these days when Ross looked moody her thoughts flew to the name he had mentioned in his fever
... Pat, which was short for Patsy.

“What are you thinking, Ross?” The words were out of Clare’s mouth before she could stop them; she winced as the needle jabbed into her finger, and she quickly sucked off the ruby spot of blood.