And No Regrets (13 page)

“Are you getting really worried about your looks?”
h
e murmured
.

“Well, I don’t much like the idea of having to plaster the ravages with cosmetics,” she admitted.

“My dear girl, that’s a long way off,” he gave a hoot of laughter. “English air and good food will work wonders, and incidentally put some meat on your bones. You’re much too thin.”

“Don’t you like thin girls?” His reminder that England loomed closer had put a cloud over the sun.

“I like you,” he tipped her hat over her eyes, teasingly.

She smiled, scooped up a handful of sand and let
i
t trickle through her fingers and over his bare brown knees. “In shorts you look like a Scoutmaster,” she said lightly.

“Thanks for nothing, Girl Guide. Now I don’t like you.”

Her shoulders trembled with nervous laughter. Trickling more sand, she said: “Ask me how it feels liking you.”

“I don’t want to know,” he said airily.

‘‘Coward,” she scoffed. “You’ll lose all your badges.”

“You exercise that brain of yours too much,” he said. Then after a few moments: “It’ll be nice to be back in England for a while.”

“England—cool, green, a draught of icy water down a tropic-fevered throat.” She encircled her knees with her arms, while Ross produced a handful of raisins from his pocket and nibbled them.

“No sooner back than I’m wanting to get away.” His face grew moody. “I have a subconscious striving for two worlds, that’s the only answer. Here we have Africa and England. There we have only England.” He shot the last of the raisins into his mouth. “How come you like me when I’m such a mixed-up guy?”

“It’s the maternal in me,” she quipped, longing to smooth those cynical creases from his face. “I recognise that you need the understanding of a mother.”

“That’ll be enough!” He spoke sharply, got to his feet and pulled her up. “Now it’s time for us to negotiate a sticky bit of river in not-quite-darkest Africa.
”

For some distance, because of the mud banks and dangerous stream beds, the boys had to wade through the quickened waters, guiding the laden canoe while Ross paddled. When the foam reached little Johnny
’
s chest, Ross told them to jump into the boat. The river smoothed out again and narrowed, but the trees were more sparse, and soon they passed a grass-roofed hamlet surrounded by fields of maize and yams.

In the late afternoon they reached Kalai station, to be met by all four of the men resident there. Not one had a wife living here with him, though Clare learned that Mrs. Earle, wife of the district officer, had been out for the past year but had had to return to England after a bad bout of malaria.

Clare smiled at each of the men in turn as she was introduced, and walking in front with Ross and Don Carter, thought: “I’m about as sick for a glimpse of a white woman as they are.”

“It’s good seeing you again, Mrs. Brennan,” Don said, smiling down at her. “Bucked us all up no end when you sent word that you would come for Christmas.”

“It will make a break for us as well, having company,” she assured him. “I’m sure Ross gets tired of having no one but a woman to talk to.”

“That’s the kind of boredom I’d like,” Don chuckled. “And I can’t quite believe it. Anything in it, Ross?”

“You know what women are,” Ross rejoined lazily. “Their minds are filled with more fantasy than fact.”

“Well, thanks for bringing your wife to liven up Kalai for us,” Don said to him. “Feminine fantasy with our Christmas fare will go down beautifully.”

He was looking down sideways at
C
lare as he spoke, and she knew from the smile in his blue eyes that he was remembering the evening they had danced together, and he had flirted lightly with her. Ross gazed in front of him as they walked to Don’s bungalow. His thoughts seemed miles away.

The bungalow was a plain, quite airy place, with three rooms and a kitchen. Don said he was spending the week at Earle’s place so they could be alone, and his face had a rather tense expression when he said that. Ross thanked him crisply, adding that there had been no need for him to turn out.

“I’d rather.” He kept his eyes fixed on Ross while Clare drew off her topi and shook out her hair. “You’ll find the place fairly comfortable, though not up to Bula standards since your wife has worked her miracles there.”

Clare glanced round her. Plenty of books, a strong tang of cigarette smoke, woven carpets of grass, and worn chairs. Brass ornaments added a bit of colour, but they needed polishing. Whisky and soda, gin and lime, stood with glasses on a bamboo table.

“I’m sure we’ll be more than comfortable,” she smiled at Don. “Thank you
for letting us stay here.”

The week that followed turned out to be a fairly enjoyable one. Don had hoarded a box of crackers for the festivities, and after they had pulled them they sat about in fancy paper hats, drinking and yarning, mostly about England. Don had a gramophone and a batch of fairly new records, and Clare danced one by one with the men of Kalai station while Ross looked on lazily. If he remembered the last time she had danced with Don, and his crackling anger, it wasn’t showing in his grey eyes. They dwelt on her in Don’s arms quite imperturbably. “Yes,” she heard him say to Earle, “Clare has kept remarkably fit out here. A combination of luck, will-power, and my insistence that she never neglect her health.”

As though he spoke about a filly, she thought tartly, and let Don hold her a little closer to his white jacket.

“I’ve thought about you a lot since we met, Clare,” he murmured near her ear. “Have you thought about me?”

“In what way?” she asked coolly. “I’m a married woman, Don.”

“So you are,” he sighed. “Why is it that all the nice girls get snatched from under my nose?”

“How often has that happened?” she laughed. “I bet you’ve had your share of conquests.”

“None of them count, Clare. You out-dazzle them all.”

“What nonsense,” she scoffed. “When men are stuck away for months on end in the bush, anything in a skirt looks good to them.”

“So sweet-looking, so tough-talking.” Don held her a little away from him so he could look into her eyes. “Picking up Brennan’s approach to life, Clare?”

“Wouldn’t it be natural?” she asked. “Many women don the moods and attitudes that suit best the temperaments of their men. I’m no exception.”

“You’re Clare the shining one,” Don said firmly. “You’re too good for the guy.”

“He’s tough, I know that, but I’ve seen sides to him that few other people have seen,” she quickly defended Ross. “The iron doesn’t go all the way through.”

Noel Brady tapped Don on the shoulder. “You’ve had your share of Mrs. Brennan,” he said. “My ration now.”

Clare wasn’t sorry when the evening was over. An unlimited supply of male admiration had grown cloying in the end, and Ross had not claimed her for a single dance. She undressed tiredly, and lay sleepless a long time under her netting. The next morning she rode with Ross as far as Kalai lake, wide and bluer than the sky and steeply edged with mangrove trees and grass-covered precipices from which one could gaze down into indigo depths as bottomless as eternity. A couple of small brown fishing boats sat squarely upon the barely moving water, the figures in them still as stone. The sun pressed down like a fiery lid, branding the blue waters with circles of molten gold.

Clare lay curled in the shade of a tree, watching the sinuous writhings of a snake at the edge of the lake twenty feet below. The snake’s skin was a translucent blue-green, its belly a streak of silver. It slid along a smooth rock, coiled and went to sleep.

A parrot screeched in the branches above and was answered by another some yards away. A monkey chattered close to her ear, and she rolled over quickly to find Ross’s mocking face near her own.

She lay quite still and silent, her cheek against her arm. He pulled a handful of short grass and showered it over her head. Without smiling, she shook it off.

“I’m glad we’re going home tomorrow,” she said.

“Had enough of the womanless males of Kalai?” he asked. “Has it been trying?”

“They
... do rather cluster like moths round a candle,” she muttered.

“Proves you haven’t lost your looks,” he mocked.

“Any woman would have the same effect,” she rejoined.

“Probably true,” he agreed carelessly.

She turned her head away from him and pressed her eyes against her arm, shutting out his sardonic, uncaring face. A pin-point of pain burst and flooded her body, causing her heart to thud against the earth. Her throat was drawn too tight for speech, then she heard him strike a match and caught the odour of his cigarette. Parrots squawked again and whirred in the branches above.

The pain dimmed. Shaping her lips into a smile, she twisted on to her back and asked for a cigarette. He lit one and put it between her lips from his. Their smoke intermingled as it drifted upwards in the still air.

Presently she asked: “Are you going down to look at the rubber before we go back to England?”

“Why do you ask?”

“I thought you might have decided to go while the Pryces are with us. They’ll stay several weeks this time.”

“You want me out of the way, eh?” His cigarette jerked in his mouth as he spoke. He tapped his breast pocket , and felt inside, then drew out a folded sheet of notepaper. “This is one of the letters that came from head office with the last mail. I was going to wait till we were back at Bula before telling you about it. The fact is, Clare, they’re not sending out my successor until March, and they want me to stay on until the end of June. It’s all here in the letter, if you’d care to read it.”

She shook her head. “This means we’ve got to stay a further three months, and then travel in the rains,” she said.

He nodded. “How do you feel about it?”

“My brain has become so muddled,” she shrugged, hardly knowing in this moment what she did feel. She only knew that she sensed something in his manner that caused her apprehension.

He slipped the letter back into his pocket. “There are several things we have to weigh up,” he said. “Your health, for instance. You know as well as I do that you’re living on your final reserves. You could have lasted till the end of March because your mind was built up for it, but I don’t know that I’m willing to let you stay a further three months.”

“There’s not much wrong with me
... physically.
”

“Perhaps I’m afraid of mental strain.”

“But, Ross—”

“The life out here has been a strain Clare.” As he spoke he leaned down and looked directly into her eyes. “Can you deny it? Can you say that now you can’t bear the deeper sort of books, and that anything but the lightest music tears you to pieces? You’re cussed obstinate, Clare, like me, but admit that living together at Bula has become close to unbearable.”

“Is that why you brought me to Kalai?” she breathed. “You needed a break from being with me exclusively?”

“We both needed a break, honey.” He sat back and his face had that hard, set look.

Her breath came unevenly. “You really want me to go
... this time, don’t you, Ross?”

He inclined his head and stared down into the hot blue waters of the lake.

CHAPTER EIGHT

“ALL right, Ross, I’ll go home in March.” Clare heard her own voice like an echo in a shell. “I don’t want to overstay my welcome at Bula.”

She was watching him through her lashes and caught the sharp glance he shot at her. For a wild moment she toyed with the idea of complete frankness, then knew he would receive it with a laugh, make her look an emotional fool. “I don’t think anything ever tore you to pieces,” she said, and took a deep pull at her cigarette.

“How d’you suppose I’d do my work if I allowed mere emotionalism to use up my nervous energy?” he asked, and there was no vestige of expression in his face. “I will admit, however, that before the piano crocked up my taste for music was coming near to matching yours. I can understand you weeping a little over that record of the Hassan serenade.”

Her breath came unevenly. “Then
... you do know a little how I feel?”

“Yes, but I don’t approve.” He sent a stream of cigarette smoke into the air. “Try to take yourself less seriously, Clare. You’ve been such a game kid. Pity to spoil it.”

Her throat quivered. She even managed to return his smile. A wave of soft air rippled her dress and fanned across her cheek.

“You stay till June, then?” she said brightly.

“Of course. There’s the question of the rubber trees—this new man will have to be taken down there. For me to make two journeys would be pointless. The Pryces will be gone by the time he and I get round to
the rubber trees, which means that you will have to go with us—”

“I?” she exclaimed, her heart jolting. “Then you’ll be going before the end of March?”