And No Regrets (5 page)

A
gain he lifted her, carried her
to
the cane lounger
and
set her down among the cushions. “You’ve seen the lightning do its worst, honey,” he murmured just
above
her head. “When
we’ve
seen the worst of anything,
or
anyone,
we
have from then
on
the courage
to
face them with confidence.”

“
Th—thank you for the lesson, boss-man,” she murmured, deep in the cushions like
a
kitten.
“
I’ll really be fit to face anything after
a
year and three more months with you.”

“
You’ll have graduated
to the big league,” he
agreed, ruffling her hair. “But
there was colour
out there, didn’t you see it? Tropical lightning
like
an
endless shower of
raw
gold. Celestial fireworks
—
could
be the
title of
a
Gershwin piece, eh?”

“
You always liked me
to
play Gershwin,” she murmured, her thoughts winging back
to
Ridgley, to the piano in her aunt’s lounge and Ross lounging beside it in a smart, civilised suit of grey, listening while she played.

A
smile ran teasingly about his lips as he regarded her, then he tilted her chin. “You’ve gone through a baptism of fire and water,” he said. “You’ve witnessed God’s hand over the land.”

“
You love all this wildness, don’t you, Ross?” she said.

“
It’s got into my blood,” he admitted. “It’s made me what I am—a primitive.”

S
he laughed breathlessly. “You can be kind when you like,” she said, touching his arm with the tips of her fingers. “I thought for a small terrible time that you were hard all through.”

“
Three-parts of the way through, honey.” He rose lazily to his feet, and she saw him run the backs of his fingernails down the jaw she had slapped. “You yourself can be a vixen in pink ribbons,” he drawled.

“
Are you expecting an apology?” She spoke flippantly. “I couldn’t hurt you. Hitting you bruised my fingers.”

“
That’ll teach you not to be so free with them,” he rejoined. “I don’t happen to like kittens who claw.”

“
Don’t you ever think of me as a woman?” she found herself asking, curiously.

“
If you could see yourself with my eyes.” He put back his head and laughed at her, and indeed she could well see how she must look at the moment, with tear streaks down her cheeks, her hair all mussed, and her lipstick smeared sideways where she had buried her head in the cushions of the lounger. Oh, let him laugh! Better laughing than biting out sarcasms and taunting her for being vulnerable enough to shrink from tropical lightning that could shear a tree to its heart.

He liked violence. It was in the arrogance of his features, and in the hardness of his mouth. When he had plucked her off this lounger half an hour ago and made her go to the shutters, his fingers had gripped her so hard that her bones had felt as though they must snap within his grasp. She would have bruises tomorrow, if she didn’t have them already. Suddenly she felt washed out and rather sad. What had happened to the glib resolutions arrived at in England? Where now those hopeful resolutions of an unfledged imagination? Her brain was too weary to work it out
.
She let her head fall backward to rest on the cane back of the seat.

He was pouring a drink with something less than his usual steadiness, swallowing it with unusual haste. The thunder was limping away into the distance.

The remaining cases of household gear arrived
a
little later than expected owing to the heavy rains
..
.
and with them came a piano. Clare was dazzled by the sight of it when the boys and Ross had finally got it in and set it down, a bungalow model, an octave missing at each end. “Oh, Ross,” she had to blink to stop the foolish, pleased tears. “What a lovely surprise.”

“I’m glad you’re pleased—thought you might be.” He ran his own clumsy fingers along the keyboard. “Maybe not quite so tuneful, as auntie’s grand.”

“
It’s a
little
beauty!” She sat down on the matching bench and caressed the keys. “The nicest Christmas present I ever had.”

“
Strange to think it’s the season of goodwill and holly, eh, out here where we’ve got a tropical sun blazing?” His hand squeezed her lightly clad shoulder. “You’ll be able to play carols, and I’ll polish up my voice and sing them.”

A
nd so it was. They had roast fowl and mock plum pudding for dinner, and brought in some greenery to give the living-room an air of festivity. Clare felt suspended on a wave of happiness. There was her baby piano, the gramophone, chintzes and silks, golf clubs and tennis rackets, books and seven-pound tins of sweet biscuits.

T
here was also the present she had bought him in London, before they had sailed, and which she had been saving him for Christmas—a silver lighter, bought out of the cheque her father had given her. An attractive, glinting thing shaped like an eagle. When Ross thanked her there was a twinkle in his eye.

“
Do I put you in mind of an eagle?” he queried. She nodded. He always had, from the very beginning, and she thought of that old adage about eagles always flying alone. She hoped to the soul of her that he wasn’t
,
in the end, going to prove the adage a true one.

N
ow the mists cleared by breakfast time and a savage sun shone from a white-hot sky. Clare arranged and
rearranged the newly arrived furniture till the
b
oys were on the point of striking. Her fingers raced madly over the keys of the piano and she sang the dizziest of
modern
songs. When she grew tired of singing and playing, out would come the gramophone records, and she would dream blissfully through Delibes, Debussy and Lehar, a long citrus drink nearby and sometimes a cigarette between her lips. Ross said it was like living in a one-man night club.

I
n time her excitement grew less girlish, and she was content to sit in the comparative cool of late evening and stitch at curtains and cushions and new clothes for herself. Chintzes at the windows and bright mounds upon the loungers and chairs, embroidered linen mats beneath bowls of breathtaking flowers, and a bookcase filled with bright new novels drew from Ross the remark that he had never had it so good out here in the bush.

I
n the slightly cooler weather between the ‘little heat’ and the ‘great heat,’ Ross was away all day in the farther reaches of the plantation. It was then that Clare experienced the first drag of monotony. Left to her own resources for all the daylight hours, she would try to plan the time carefully. So many hours exercise, so long at the piano, so many chapters to be read—rationing this delight for fear the books would give out—a quiet rest in the midday heat. But the lack of companionship was a severe test.

O
ne day she tackled Ross. “Would I be horribly in the way if I came out with you for a few hours each day?” she asked.

“
Not horribly,” he answered. “If it would give you a change, be ready at sunrise tomorrow in your riding kit. You can go with me in the lorry.”

I
t was grand to get away from the house for a while and to jolt with him along the baked red rut to the river. Clare was surprised at the shortness of the track that had taken so long to traverse on the journey out.

I
t took two hours by lorry, and then they were at the river, a mere runnel compared with the Niger. It was dark and murky, and mangroves grew thickly on each bank, meeting over the water in places to form sinister black tunnels.

T
hey left the lorry and found the clearing where the natives were temporarily camped. The men were already at work among the timber, felling, lopping, heaving the logs on to the timber rollers and dragging them by chains down to the dump near the landing stage. Ross left her with instructions not to stray, and to fire the rifle he had thrust into her hands if she was scared.

T
he sun got up, and she sat on a tree stump, eyes alert, watching the dart of gay-plumaged birds and the myriad movements of grass life, almost unconscious of the eternal hum of the jungle. The massive trees shut out the sun, but as the heat of the day increased the atmosphere became moist and steamy.

A
t the hottest part of the day they broke for food. The men gathered round their cooking pots and ate a mess of plantains and herbs. They squabbled among themselves with lazy goodwill.

B
ack in the lorry Clare and Ross ate their own lunch, and washed it down with tinned orange juice. Then Ross said: “You’d better go back to the house now, honey. Can you walk it?”

“
Yes,
I’ll
be glad to.”

“
A couple of boys can go with you. Send them back when you reach the compound.”

“
Can you spare the men from work? I can go alone.”

“
You’d get a shock if I took you at your word,” he laughed.

“
I’d make it, though.” She tilted her chin.

“
Sure you would, Girl Guide.” He gave her pointed chin a mocking brush with his fist. “Enjoyed seeing your spouse at work?”

“I feel for you, having to work so hard in this heat.” Her face still seemed to feel his touch, and the bones of her shoulders ached for his hands upon them in loving discovery. She replaced her topi, pushed her linen blouse into the waistband of her riding trousers, and gave a little shudder of secret pleasure as he brushed a fly from her arm. He climbed out of the lorry and went over to his men to select a couple of boys to accompany her on the walk back to the house.

I
n the compound a few weeks later, Clare was brooding like any English housewife over the growth of her garden, when Ross came striding down the path towards her. It was barely two hours since he had left. Suppressing fears of snake-bite or some other evil—he jeered if she jittered—she waited till he reached her. “Hello,” she said. “What are you doing here?”

H
e ran a couple of fingers down the collar of her dress. “I couldn’t stay away from you,” he grinned.

S
he wished it were true! She pointed to a tall plant with wide, bushy leaves stuck, yucca-wise, on the end of a thick stump. “You wouldn’t think it possible an honest English cabbage seed could produce a monstrosity like that, would you?”

“
You must have mixed the seeds,” he drawled.

“
I’m certain I didn’t,” she retorted indignan
tl
y.

“Then his roots have got mixed up with someone else
’
s
—
funny how that can happen.” For a few minutes he seemed inclined to linger. It was pleasant here now that the mist was gone and the sun not yet malicious. Clare insisted on his admiring her flowers and reaching down some sprays of jacaranda.

“B
elieve it or not, there was a reason for my returning this morning,” he said. “The Pryces are coming.”

“
Oh? Who are the Pryces, and how do you know?” She gazed up at him under the wide brim of her grass hat.

“
My foreman heard they were on the way and told me. Mr. and Mrs. Pryce are missionaries.”

“
Are they nice?” She was naturally interested because i
t
was such ages since either of them had seen another white woman.

H
e shrugged. “I guess you’ll like them
... though I’d rather they’d stayed away.”

“
Why, do they make trouble in the village?” she asked.

“
No, it isn’t that. The inhabitants forget them as soon as they’re gone.” He turned to walk down the track at her side. “We’re getting along on our own. We don’t want others butting in.”

A
t the house steps, he said: “They’ll be here before dark, so it will be dinner for four. And I’m rather afraid they’ll expect to stay in the house this time, with you here.”

“
That should work out
...
all right,” she was too preoccupied with thoughts of food and entertainment to really take in what was at the back of his reluctance to have these people stay overnight.

“
They pitched camp at the edge of the village before,” he grunted. “I only saw them in the evenings. Clare, this means you’ll have to turn out of your bedroom as it’s the only one with two beds. We’ll—have to put a camp bed in mine.”

W
ords that scattered her housewifely thoughts at once. She gazed up at him, speechlessly. He nodded. “The world outside is moving in on us, Clare. Mrs. Pryce likes to gossip—”