And No Regrets (9 page)

“You men love the jungle, don’t you?” Clare murmured.

“She’s like a woman, full of mixed moods that drive a man to quick hating, then fierce loving. Elemental, Clare. Warm, rich with life, mazed with paths leading to danger and pleasure. Yes,” he took a deep breath of the night air, “the jungle gets into a man’s blood.”

Dinner was a complete success, and afterwards, at Don’s coaxing, they put on gramophone records and danced to them. With the chairs and loungers pushed
back against the walls, the living-room .was quite large, and Clare laughed gaily as Don swung her around to the music
... laughter that died abruptly as booted feet sounded on the steps of the veranda and a tall figure loomed in the doorway.

Clare had not been expecting Ross’s return, and the shock was showing on her face as she pulled out of Don Carter’s arms. Nor had Ross been expecting to see her laughing and dancing with another man, that was only too plain from the frosty, chiselled look of his face.

He entered the' room with his wolfish stride, and tossed a rucksack to a chair. It whacked against the cane, and Clare winced. “You—are back early,” she managed to say. “How did you find the situation at the rubber plantation?”

“Not exactly to my liking,” he crisped, and the look he raked over Clare seemed to suggest that he had come back to a similar situation. “What are you doing here, Carter—apart from giving my wife a whirl?”

Don, looking a trifle less perturbed than Clare, explained that he was making his way up river from a spot of leave, and that he had called here to deliver some mail and some fruit. “Mrs. Brennan was kind enough to invite me for dinner,” he added, his fingers at his bow tie, as though he were feeling suddenly hot and wished to unloosen it. “My boys have pitched me a tent in your compound—I hope that’s okay?”

“Sure,” Ross drawled, and it was Don’s turn to receive
the
rake of
those
silver-grey eyes. “You’re
w
elcome
to a meal here, and to bed down in the compound.”

Clare flushed at Ross’s tone of voice, and she didn’t like the way he pressed down on that word ‘bed.’ Surely he didn’t imagine—

“Any of that dinner left for the master of the house?” he demanded.

Luke had gone home to the village by now, so Clare
w
ent to fix him a tray
h
erself. From the kitchen she could hear the two men talking, and her earlobes tingled at the way he had spoken upon finding her cutting a rug with Don. He had said he would be away about ten days, now he appeared on the seventh and she didn’t dare hope that he had been worried about her, or missing her. Either emotion, if one or the other had brought him back, had been killed stone dead when he had walked in and seen her all dressed up and laughing like a kid on her first date.

Clare carried his tray into the living-room, where he was now sprawled out in a cane armchair, a whisky and soda in hand. Don was hovering, suitcase in hand, some of his gaiety quenched. “I’ll be off to camp now, Cl—Mrs. Brennan,” he said. “Dinner with you ma
de a nice break.”

“Come up for breakfast in the morning, Mr. Carter,” she smiled. “You don’t want to commence your journey on beans and biscuits.”

“That’s kind of you. Thanks a lot.” He bade Ross goodnight, then herself, and made his way out of the bungalow and across the compound to where his tent was pitched.

“I seem to have quenched the festivities,” Ross said, picking up a drumstick and taking a hungry bite out of it. “You were really letting yourself go, weren’t you, sweetheart?”

“I was just being hospitable, is there anything wrong with that?” she asked. “Don brought us some letters, and a box of rum truffles from your friend Patsy Harriman.”

“My friend?” His glance flicked like steel. “You employ a funny tone, sweetheart. I might even say a suggestive one.”

“Well, you’ve always been pretty friendly with her, haven’t you
?
I could see that for myself when we were at Onitslo.” Clare perched on the arm of a chair and
hoped she looked nonchalant. Da
rn
him for coming back unexpectedly, maybe in a softened mood which she, unintentionally, had hardened again into a steely one.

“I have got myself a clever little woman, haven’t I?” he gibed. “No wonder I’m the envy of all the planters along this part of the coast. That lucky Ross Brennan, they’re all saying. His missus is a real little angel
... only angels don’t accuse their husbands of having affairs with the wives of other men!”

“You mentioned the word affair,” Clare flamed, jumping to her feet. “I was ready to believe it hadn’t gone beyond a few kisses in your car.”

And with those words hanging between them, he gazed at her in that uncannily still way he had, as though she were something under a microscope. Then: “Go to bed,” he said. “The excitement of dining and dancing with Don Carter has gone to your head.”

“I do hate you!
” she flared. “You’re arrogant beyond words
!”

“You told me that once before,” he quizzed her over the rim of his whisky glass. “I’m beginning to wonder if you really believe it—emphasis is usually a sign of woolly reasoning.”

“Does it disturb you, Ross, that I might hate you? Is that why you’re arguing against it?” she asked. “Well, it’s a hopeful sign. It even suggests that you might be human. I thought you kept your human emotions under lock and key.”

“
Clever, my dear.” He executed a gnat with his fist in a rather meaning way. “Watch out that you don’t get too clever. I might have a remedy for it which you wouldn’t like at all.”

“You mean you’ll send me home to England?” she said coldly.

One of his dark brows quirked into a peak, then after
a
moment he said: “You regard that as the worst
punishment I could hand out? To send you home to
England—and Simon?”

“Let’s leave Simon out of it,” she said, spirit sapping away, tipping her out of sparkling temper into dull apathy. Why must it always be the hurting kind of fireworks between her and Ross, never the kind that preceded a blaze of love? She turned towards her bedroom door. She would go in and read Simon’s letter
... to the devil with Ross and whether or not there was a key to the locked-up heart of him.

“Goodnight,” she said. “I hope the rubber trees are not beyond saving.”

“Few things are beyond saving, if you’ve got the will to do so,” he rejoined. “Goodnight, Clare. Perhaps we’ll both be feeling a little more civilised in the morning.”

“Perhaps,” she said, and went from the room feeling as though she left her heart behind. A tear dropped to her cheek and slanted to her lips, for another bright flame of hope had been doused by the ice of his uncaring. His annoyance at finding her with Don stemmed from the arrogance of being her owner, not her lover ... did he love her, then it would be an agony and a heaven to see jealousy fla
r
e in his eyes.

She sagged into a chair and closed her eyes, suddenly overwhelmed by fatigue. After a while she prepared for bed, then sitting under the netting with the lamp glowing beside her, she opened her father’s letter, slitting the top of the thick envelope with the nail of her forefinger.

The first part of the letter was concerned with his own marriage, and he seemed quite happy, then he went on ...

‘How does it feel to have got what you wanted? It was honest-to-God living with Nature in the raw that you were after, wasn’t it? I hope, my dear, you are taking every care of your health, and that Brennan is being as kind to you as it is in his nature to be. I will not repeat the doubts which I expressed before you sailed to Africa with him, but there is always a home for you with Elizabeth and myself should your precipitate marriage not work out....’

He wound up with his love, and Clare gave a painful little sigh as she returned the letter to its envelope. The letter had depressed her. It underscored too darkly her own fears regarding her future with Ross ... Ross, who tried now and again to be kind, but who didn’t love her.

Her aunt’s letter was a document of grievances, and she turned to Simon’s with the frowning hope that he hadn’t written to near enough say, ‘Come home, leave your folly behind you.’

But no! Simon’s letter wasn’t in the least solemn. He had had his first book published, and it had created quite a stir among the literati. He was now in Norway gathering material for a second. He was quite happy and hoped most sincerely that Clar
e
was. He finished with the hope that she would write to him, and he was sending along to her a signed copy of his novel. He rather thought she would like it. It wasn’t exactly romantic, but then he had never been that way inclined.

He could say that again, Clare thought, refolding the letter and putting it away.

The next evening, as Clare and Ross sat on the veranda watching the moon spread its milky glamour over the jungle, he said; “I had a letter from my father.”

This gave her a jolt of surprise, for he talked so rarely about his vicarage home in England and his widowed father. “What did he have to say?” she asked.

“That he hopes when I return to England that I shall take you to see him.”

And will you? she wanted to ask. Will you take me as your wife to see your father, or will our marriage
be
wound up with no regrets?

“Who were your letters from?” he wanted to know.

She told him, and saw him kick at the lower veranda rail as she mentioned Simon Longworth. “The guy who put you up on a pedestal, eh, Clare? Was it he who planted the travel bug in your young brain? Writers are notorious for spinning golden cobwebs over the realities and making them seem rosier than they are, or ever could be.”

“Don’t be cynical tonight, Ross,” Clare suddenly pleaded. “I didn’t come to Africa expecting Shangri-la. I just wanted—”

“Adventure?” he murmured.

No, love, she thought wistfully. Your love, Ross. Your arms, and tenderness in your grey eyes instead of indifference.

“You silly, sensitive little idiot,” he teased beside her. “I was thinking while I was up among all that rubber and chaos that it might be a good idea to send you to Onitslo for the rains. There’s more to do there
... after seeing you with Carter last night, I guessed that you were missing civilised people and the gaiety of a few parties. The Macs would be pleased to have you.”

She felt her hands clenching together in her lap.
“Do
you want me to go?”

“You haven’t smiled much lately, honey, and misery doesn’t become you.” He rose and crossed to the: veranda rail, where he turned and leaned there looking at her in the moonlight.

“Do you want me to go?” she repeated.

“I wouldn’t dance a jig of joy if you went,”
he
admitted.

She got up and slowly crossed to his side. A pulse beat suffocatingly in her throat. “I’m sorry about last night,” she said shyly. “I acted like a little pig, when you were feeling tired and dispirited. Then to come upon me dancing the light fantastic with Don Carter
.
.. I’m not bored here, Ross. Really.”

“I thought you might be.” He flicked a finger at her cheek. “Say now if you want t
o
go to Onitslo. I’ll take you tomorrow—”

“No,” she broke in, curling her fingers about his arm. “I’d be lost at Onitslo without you.”

“There’ll be more storms, honey,” he warned. “Bad rains, fierce lightning—”

“I can take it now,” she assured him. “You showed me that lightning can kill, but so, can lots of other things, and I’m growing up.”

“If you think so, my baby.” He bent over her, a rare boyish smile on his lips. She could see the white .edges of his teeth as he added: “Come in and play to me. Some Gershwin. I’m feeling nostalgic.”

A few days later a heavy storm broke in mid-afternoon. Ross came in from the sheds and peeled off his jacket. “As good a time as any for getting in a report on the rubber,” he said. “Do you want the shutters
cl
osed?”

“I
... don’t think so.”

“Make sure. I don’t m
in
d parboiling if you’re happier shut in.”

“No. I can sit with my back to it.”

He spread his sheets of figures on the table, drew foolscap paper in front of him and sat down. “What’s the date?” he asked.

‘The twenty-eighth of April,” she replied, and pressed out on her knee the small mat she was embroidering.

“Let’s see,” he shot her a thoughtful look, “haven’t we a coming-of-age within the next day or two?”

“I had my birthday while you were away,” she said quietly. She had been in bed, lightheaded with fever, and had felt a hundred instead of a mere twenty-one.

“Oh
!
” He carefully clea
ned the nib of his pen, dipped it i
nto the bottle of ink and worked the plunger. His expression was an odd blend of mockery and
regret. Her heart beat fast as she watched him, wondering which would win; would his heart speak before his head had a chance?

But he took his time before adding: “Well, even if the day has passed, we can still celebrate. There’s champagne buried somewhere, and I can present you with the key of the bungalow.” He laughed. “Let’s make it tonight, shall we?”

The house trembled from a particularly violent crack of thunder. The room was brilliantly illumined. She dug her nails into her palms as the thunder crashed again.

“After all
, a
girl
i
s only twenty-one but once in
a
lifetime,” he flashed a smile at her. “We might as well have the best of everything we’ve got”

“It will be fun to have a party,” she said, wincing from the lightning. “We’ll have fireworks to go with it, from the look of things.”

But not those from the night of his return, she prayed. Let everything be wonderful for her party. Let the bluebird
of
happiness
fly
in from the storm for
a
while.