And No Regrets (22 page)

After supper, Clare showed him to Bill’s quarters and ensured that he had clean linen on the bed, and a carafe of water.

“Thank heaven for England and water without disinfectant in it.” He smiled and closed his hands over Clare’s shoulders and gave them a squeeze. “You love that guy a devil of a lot, don’t you?” he murmured.

She nodded. “Well, have you everything you want, Don?”

“Not quite,” he grinned, “but I’m hopeful.”

“You’re incorrigible!” She slipped out of his grasp and moved to tire door. “Breakfast is at eight, Don. Goodnight
.
”

“Goodnight, Clare the shining one. Thanks for
putting me up.”

The next-few days passed pleasantly. Don no longer probed, or flirted; he behaved like the friend she had real need of at this time; the unquestioning chum who
played card games and draughts with her while the rain tumbled down outside. He talked a lot about himself, his college days, and people he knew in London. His parents had died some years ago, and he was without a brother or sister. Maybe it was lack of family that had drawn him to plantation life in Africa. The majority of men who took on the life out here were rootless, searching for something to take the place of being lonely in England, where most people had someone.

“The tropics have not been my El Dorado,” he said, looking wry. “But I’m determined to find a niche for myself once I get back home. I’m not going to drift from job to job, like a lot of chaps do when they leave the tropics.”

“I wish you every success, Don.” She gave him a warm smile. “You’ve a streak of obstinacy which should get you what you want.”

On Friday she went with him to the landing-stage to await the arrival of the steamer that would take him on to Lagos. “Let’s go home together, Clare,” he urged. “I’ve a feeling you’ll be needing a friend on that voyage.”

She would make no promises, but he said he would
s
tay on in Lagos until the end of March and would be on hand if she changed her mind.

The skipper of the steamer left some mail and took what she had brought, then Don was aboard, the whis
tl
e was piping, and all too soon Clare was all alone again at Bula.

Accompanied by Johnny she made for home along the muddy track, coming abreast of the lorry which Ross had parked beneath the trees before setting
o
ut for the rubber plantation. For some absurd reason, Clare had a sudden longing to sit inside the lorry for a while, and she climbed into the driving seat and there opened the oilskin package of letters.

The
one she dreaded to see was there. Pink-enve
loped, perfumed, the writing an undisciplined scrawl, with a smear of lipstick on it as though Patsy had touched the envelope to her mouth. Clare wanted to rip the letter to bits, and to toss them into the mud. She also craved to see what Patsy had written.

Instead, because Clare was honourable and she would keep her bargain with Ross to the last moment of their eighteen months, she slipped the letter in among his others, untampered with. She sat a moment staring through the window above the driving wheel, then she read her own letters from home. Aunt Letty couldn’t wait to see her, she and Uncle Fred would come to Southampton to meet her boat, and then they would take her straight home to Ridgley. Clare smiled a little to herself. Bang went her jaunt round the cinemas and the shops, for she wouldn’t have the heart to refuse her aunt after all this time.

There was also a warm invitation from her father to stay at his Hampstead home with him and his wife. Elizabeth, he wrote, was longing to meet her stepdaughter.

The family tentacles were closing on her already, and Clare ripped open sharply the envelope with Simon's handwriting on it. His letter held an ironical surprise for Clare. His devotion to her had gone aground in Norway, where he had met a girl called
Il
se whom he planned to marry
... at the end of March.

‘She’s rather like you to look at, Clare,’ he had written. ‘Clear-skinned, and darkish, with small golden freckles across the bridge of her nose. I shall be bringing her to England, and maybe we can meet to talk about the old days. How long ago and far away they seem! Once it seemed inevitable that we would marry, but life had other things in store for both of us
...
other loves, which perhaps neither of us regret.’

Clare shivered at that word regret She would regret
nothing, and everything, when she said goodbye
to
Ross.

The men came home three days later than they had planned, wet, weary, and badly in need of hot food and a good night’s sleep.

“What a benighted place
it
is!” Bill, unshaven, looked like Bill Sikes.

“It’s a poor show up there right enough,” Ross agreed, expelling cigarette smoke and tiredly rubbing the nape of his neck. “I’m going to let the company know that the place is a flop.”

“If Ross can’t make a go of those trees, then I certainly shan’t.” Bill stretched mightily and yawned.

“Baths for you two,” Clare said firmly, “then hot food, and sleep.”

“Sweet talk.” Ross smiled lazily into her eyes. “I’ve missed you a little, Mrs. Brennan.”

“I’ve missed
... both of you.” She spoke briskly, to hide the leap of her heart. “Now out to the bathhouse, you pair of tramps, while I get busy in the kitchen.”

“How’s your foot been?” Ross wanted to know.

“It’s quite better now. You should join Bill and take up surgery.”

“You can’t teach an old dog new tricks,” he grinned, rasping a hand over his beard. “Do I look as awful as Bill?”

“You certainly do,” she laughed. Her heart yearned over him, and yet felt bruised that he could say
he had missed her when he planned to put her out of his life for the sake of someone else. Patsy, to say the least of it, hardly seemed the domesticated sort, and Ross liked well-cooked food and a clean, efficiently run home. But maybe he planned to hire a housekeeper and to keep Patsy just looking decorative, Clare thought
tartly, marching out to the kitchen to prepare a substantial meal for the men.

The table was laid, and Clare was standing by the window, absently watching the rain, when Ross strolled into the room. He was fresh and groomed in a white shirt and brown slacks, his dark hair still seal-sleek from his bath. Clare gave him a smile over her shoulder, and didn't move as he came across to stand behind her
... his presence just behind her shoulders was like a touch, and her nostrils tensed to the smell of pine soap and shaving cream.

“I’ve thought of you a devil of a lot, here all alone,” Ross said, arid one of those brushfire thrills ran thr
o
ugh her as she felt his fingers fondling the ends of her
h
air. “What have you found to do while I’ve been away?” he asked.

It is a fact that love can drive all thoughts from the mind but an awareness of the loved one,
and Clare did not consciously lie when she omitted to mention Don Carter’s unexpected arrival at the bungalow. “Oh, I’ve been generally lazy,” she said, “and done quite a bit of worrying about you and Bill. It must have been dreadful up there, what with the rain and the pair of you having to sleep in that dank
re
st
-
house. It’s a wonder you both haven’t gone down with a chill.”

“We’re both as tough as boot leather, honey.” His hand curved over her left shoulder, warm and roughskinned against the material of her dress. “Bill isn’t at all a bad sort, Clare. He’s willing to learn, and not over-imaginative. If a chap’s going to work out here for two or three years, then it doesn’t do for him to be on the thinking side. Bill knows, now, how tough the life can be, but I think he’ll settle down all right. His real test will come when we’ve both gone.”

Clare couldn’t suppress the shiver that ran through her at those words, and Ross turned her round to face
hi
m. “You’ve really grown to care for this place, haven’t you, Clare?” he said.

And taking in the tanned cragginess of his face, she wanted so much to say that anywhere with him would be heaven. A tormented heaven because he didn’t love her, but nicer, more exciting th
a
n anywhere else on earth.

Instead she had to give him the prosaic, expected answer. “If you live in a place long enough, you either grow to love it or hate it,” she said. “I’ve liked it here, I suppose, because for the first time I’ve been free of the gratitude that made me give in so much to Aunt Letty.”

“Has the life out here eliminated that weakness, Clare?” His brows met in a dark line as he gazed down at her. “Back in England will you live your own life and not follow a course marked out by someone else?”

“I shall try,” she smiled. “I can’t tell at this stage.”

“Clare,” he gave her a gentle shake, “your heart rules you, do you know that?”

“I suppose it does.” She put back her head and met his eyes. “One lesson you couldn’t drill into, me, boss
-
man.”

“Maybe if I had drilled it into you, I’d have spoilt you.” He grinned wryly. “I believe you came out here with me because I hard-pedalled the lonely angle. Did you?”

She nodded, for she couldn’t say that love for him had motivated her right from the start. He had never wanted complications, and Clare had sworn, since discovering the exchange of letters between him and Patsy, to see that they parted on his terms just as they had started on them.

“If it’s anything to you, Clare,” he said, “these eighteen months have been far less of a drag than they
w
ould have been had I come alone to Bula. But—”

“No regrets,” she said quickly. “No saying that you
shouldn't have exposed me to fever, and jiggers, and monotony. For such a soft bunny, I’ve come through it all quite well, haven’t I?”

He touched a finger to her thin young face, and felt the thrust of her cheekbone. His mouth was tautly drawn, lines etched at the
corner
s
... but those lines had been present when he had walked in out of the rain with Bill. He was just tired
...
she mustn’t go imagining a state of anxiety on
her
account.

“I would never have forgiven myself if anything bad had happened to you, Clare,” he said sincerely. “You’ve been a real brick—a gold brick.”

“
Thank you, boss-man. But why are we talking like this? I have one more week before you take me to Lagos.” Though she smiled jauntily, her throat felt as though it were tied in a knot and each word caused her pain. “I’m glad you got back so—so the three of us can have that last week together.”

“That last week would have been pretty grim if we had had to face it without Bill, eh?”

She nodded. In a way Bill’s presence was a blessing. Being entirely alone with Ross, knowing that each day brought departure from Bula a little closer, would have been unbearable.

Then, amazingly, Ross cupped her face in large hands and laid a light but warm kiss against her mouth. “Just to say thanks for everything,” he murmured. “For smiling when I snarled, for fighting out a fe
v
er all alone, for being so game all through. I’m not the easiest of men to get along with, and if things had been different—”

If, her heart cried out, he had not made promises to another woman!

She tilted her chin. “Eighteen months isn’t much to give to a lonely bush-man. You were very welcome, Mr. Brennan.”

And they were standing there, webbed in the most
poignant moment of their months together, when Bill strolled in upon them. “Who’s been sleeping in my bed, Goldilocks?” he enquired laughingly. And he held up a pair of bedroom slippers, leather and masculine. “These were under my bed. They’re too small for either Ross or myself.”

“They’re Don’s,” she said, before it occurred to her that she had not yet mentioned his visit. “He must have forgotten them.”

“Don Carter?” Ross said sharply. “Has he been here?”

“He stayed close on a week, and caught last Friday’s steamer for Lagos.” She met Ross’s eyes and saw that they had a peculiar glitter to them. Her heart jolted ... she realised that quite unknowingly she had led him to think that she had been here all alone while he and Bill had been away.

She caught at his wrist, and felt him jerk it free of her fingers. “Don quit his job at Kalai,” she said, a little wildly. “H—he slept here—I couldn’t expect him to camp out in the rain.”

“You weren’t going to mention that he’d been here,” Ross said, his eyes narrowed to glittering slits. “You were going to play the brave little angel and let me believe that you’d put up with ten days of monotony and storms all on your own. So he’s at Lagos? What, waiting for you to turn up so the pair of you can go home together?”

There comes a moment when one false word, one careless spark, can blow a couple apart for always. Torn by love and the pain of being unjustly accused, Clare spoke recklessly. “Yes,” she heard herself say, “Don’s waiting for me at Lagos. How clever of you to guess. He’s waiting for me just as Patsy is waiting for you!”