Brittle Bondage (2 page)

CHAPTER
TWO

THERE is no lovelier province in the whole world than Natal. The sea is warm, turbulent and shark-ridden, the coastal vistas stupendous.
T
he sub-tropical night sky is darkly hyacinthine, the air wine-warm and languorous, but the mid-day sun pours out its molten heat upon a rich and brilliant land.

Bondolo lay about a hundred and seventy miles up
-
country from Umsanga. For most of the way the road was good, stretching between plantations of pineapples and bananas, wattle and papaws, with an occasional Zulu kraal in between, where piccanins ran out and offered painted gourds and beadwork at the roadside while their elders sat around chewing sugar-cane. The women were buxom and skirted in gay cloth.

Blake pointed out the famous sugar mill to which his own cane was sent, and laughed with a note of pride when they passed an oncoming loaded lorry bearing the words “Garrard, Bondolo.”

The car right-angled into a private road. Trees were left behind and the cane rose high on each side, green and succulent, and leaning gently on the breeze. It halted while they traversed a wide, tree-walled river, and began again. When the next belt of trees arrived they were tall and cleared of vine, and among them flowered flamboyants and jacarandas, which had been set there by man.

Presently Blake turned into a gateless drive and slowed down.

“Here we are, Venetia,” he said. “The Garrard homestead.”

Just then Venetia was too hot to notice more than that the house was large and thatched and smothered in flowers. A number of dogs barked and bounded about them, among them a Great Dane which sidled against Blake and nosed affectionately into his sleeve.

The frenzy of the dogs brought a big, plain-faced house-boy in white bush shirt and shorts to the veranda. He clacked something into the hall and a smaller boy appeared and ran down the steps to the car.

Blake introduced them; the large one as Mosi and the other as Fumana. They grinned and stared at her. This was indeed a very little white missus for the big master. The wives of both were amply curved.

Venetia moved from the white hall, with its hide chairs and yellowwood table burdened with a rubber plant, into a huge lounge made dim by slated sunblinds. Chairs and chesterfield were of heavily-patterned rose-hued damask, and the curtains were plain grey; the carpet combined both colours. Something about the room depressed her.

Blake must have sensed her reaction, for he said, good-humouredly: “The place isn’t very lived in, is it? Needs a few novels and a bit of sewing lying about. If there’s anything you take a dislike to, say so, and we’ll sling it out. Twist the stuff about how you like.”

In the dining-room Mosi was preparing the blackwood table for lunch, and Blake suggested that they should wash and eat before inspecting the rest of the house. He showed her the green-tiled bathroom, and she stayed there for some time, washing her hands much more carefully than was necessary, and fighting with a foolish surge of tears.

If Blake suspected them when she came into the dining
-
room he made no signs. Nor did he insist that she eat a good lunch, though he did pour a splash of gin into her soda-and-lime.

Perhaps he was aware of her relief when he observed; “I shall have to go out and check up on one or two things with the foreman. You might like to stroll through the other rooms by yourself, and do some unpacking. I told Fumana to take your trunk into the end room. It gets the morning sun and is cool for the rest of the day.”

When her dresses were hung away and her father’s photograph stood on the kidney-shaped dressing-table, Venetia felt more normal. It really was a splendid bedroom, with a bay window one side and a glass door on another, opening to the veranda.

She drank her tea which Mosi brought her at four o’clock, then stepped out into the corridor and stood listening. The house was steeped in a tranquil hush. When Blake asked, as he was bound to, whether she had learned the lay-out of the house, she wanted to be able to answer yes. For his sake she must not risk trifling complications. There were still four doors she had not opened.

She started with the opposite side of the corridor. The first room was not unlike her own, except that it lay on the other side of the house, and in spite of drawn curtains was unbearably hot and airless. The next was Blake’s; she glimpsed a colour scheme of navy blue and gold, riding kit flung over a chair and a pipe lying on the window-sill, and quickly withdrew. Then came a small room with loaded bookshelves down one wall and a desk near the window with a chair pushed under it; a somewhat shabby little study, but a glance at the names on the spines of the books heartened her. She hoped Blake wouldn’t mind her coming in here sometimes.

The final room was Thea’s. Venetia
hesitated
just inside, recalling all that Blake had told her about his sister during the drive from Bondolo this morning
.
His tone had been non-committal.

“
At one time Thea and I understood one another very well,’ he’d said. “Some years ago she left home and took up nursing, but after our parents died I practically refurnished the house, persuaded her to give up nursing and settle at home, and for a long while it seemed to work. Then things happened.”

It hadn’t occurred to Venetia that his pause might have been more than merely reflective.

He had continued: “There was a love-affair—one of those abortive things that a woman of her age and type should have taken in her stride and forgotten. Normally she had plenty of sense, but after that she cleared off to Durban, and for the last eighteen months she’s been a sister in one of the hospitals there. She’s only thirty, but I’ve a nasty feeling that she’s cut the word ‘marriage’ out of her dictionary. She’s just giving everything to her work.”

Later he had added: “You’ll get on well with Thea. She’s sophisticated, but it’s a comfortable kind of sophistication—a repudiation of sentimentality.”

Venetia was young enough to have preferred a gentle, homely sister-in-law who might teach her all the things of which she was beginning to realize herself so starkly ignorant.

Firm footsteps and the thud of a door brought her into the corridor.

“Sorry to have been so long” said Blake from the hall. “Devil of a lot of work seems to have piled up. Familiarizing yourself?”

“Yes. It’s a lovely home, Blake. I like the idea of living
in a house with no stairs.”

“Had tea?”

“I ought to have asked you that,” she reproached herself. “When I’ve got over the strangeness I will try to be a good housewife. Let me make you some tea now.”

“It’s not one of my vices.” He smiled down at her. The air is cooling off outside. How about a knock-up on the court?”

“I’d love that.”

“Nip along for your racquet and shoes.”

When she rejoined him, he clipped
her racquet with his own against his side, linked a careless arm in hers and drew her down the garden path to the gate in the tall hedge of luxuriant golden bignonia. They emerged into a hard court enclosed by wire-netting and partly shaded by old mango trees in which canaries chittered and the ever
present weaver-birds constructed their ingenious nests. Blake spun his racquet, won, but chose the sunny end.

Today he set the pace, a leisurely one which, nevertheless, brought sweat to her temples and made her pant. She did well, but was no match for a hard-thewed man and soon he collected the balls and vaulted the net to her side.

Critically he looked her over, and quietly he said: “You’re not quite fit enough for tennis—I can see that now. You aren’t going to be silly, are you, Venetia? If you agree with everything I propose out of some stupid sense of gratitude I shall get blazingly angry. I won’t have
gratitude.”

Her lids lowered. “I did want to play.
”

“No—you wanted to please me, and that
’
s something I refuse to tolerate. In your way you’re putting as much into this partnership as I am and eventually a great deal is going to depend on you. You’ve got to realize that from the start.” His voice deepened, and slightly hardened. You must alter your earlier conception of me. I can’t go on till the end of time being your big brother or an agreeable cousin.”

“I didn’t intend to disappoint you
...”

“You haven’t.” He dabbed her brow dry with his handkerchief and kept his head averted above hers. “Your grief for your father is still too new to allow much room for other things, but they’re there, Venetia—very much so. Our marriage has to be a success. I’m sure you appreciate the importance of absolute truth between us?”

“Of course. I won’t fail you, Blake.”

The hint of tenseness in the atmosphere eased. He gave a light tug at the back of her hair.

“Fail me! What’s on your mind now?”

“Nothing, only
...”

“Only what?”

“Well,” hesitantly, “if I gave up my previous conception of you all at once, you’d become a stranger, and there’d be no place for me at Bondolo.”

“But you already feel there is a place for you” he stated unequivocally.

At the steps he halted. “I told Mosi to spread himself in preparing dinner. Wear your prettiest frock. After all,” with a teasing smile, “this is our wedding-day, and there’s no reason why it shouldn’t leave a sweet taste.”

“You’re so good to me, Blake.”

“Make the most of it, then—it can’t possibly last. I always end up by spanking my women.”

“For nothing at all?” she said, smiling. “That sounds brutal.”

“For backchat,” he told her, with an unwonted edge of cynicism. “Go in and have a rest. We dine at seven.” With a murmur of assent she took her racquet from him and went to her room. Blake at Bondolo was a much more complicated person than Blake at Umsanga. Perhaps happenings on the plantation during his absence had displeased him, or he might be wishing, as she was, that their first few days together were over, and a routine established between them.

She bathed and dressed in a crocus-blue dress bought a couple of days ago in Durban. Blake had seen it folded in its tissue-lined box and remarked that the colour was girlish and he hoped the style wasn’t.

At six-thirty she softly made her way to the lounge. It was empty, but a wrought-iron standard lamp cast a saffron circle which drew a coppery glint from the dusky damask. On a low table near the chesterfield a silver tray of drinks had been set. Venetia handled one of the winking crystal glasses, and had just leaned forward to relinquish it when Blake entered. He wore a light grey suit she hadn’t seen before, and his smile had charm. He touched her shoulder in passing.

“The blue suits you,” he said. “You knew that or you wouldn’t have chosen the shade. It makes your eyes look like mountain pools—I expect you know that too?”

“I’m willing to be convinced,” she said demurely, and drew a short laugh from him. To Venetia the lamp seemed to burn more brightly.

He poured cocktails, gave her one and raised his own. His eyes over the rim were unreadable, but his tones were even.

“To us,” he said, and, as if in afterthought tacked on “and our future.”

As soon as his glass was drained he sat down beside her and produced his cigarette-case.

She shook her head. “I still don’t smoke Blake.”

“Time you began,” he said briefly, and slipped a cigarette between her lips. “Soon I shall have to invite friends to meet you. We’ll have to give a dinner-party.”

“Will we? What sort of people are they?” she asked apprehensively.

“Residents from round about. Professional men and their wives from Ellisburg—we didn’t come through the town on the way here, but it’s actually our nearest patch of civilization. And there are a few planters in the district. No one in the least frightening. They’ll all befriend you and consider me an exceptionally lucky man.”

She lodged the cigarette upon the ashtray he had pushed near, and with her head bent, replied, “It’s what
you
think that matters, Blake.”

He turned it off with mockery. “You’re learning fast my child. With an obedient wife at my side I anticipate a life of extreme felicity.”

Dinner passed smoothly—Blake managed that. Afterwards they sauntered in the strongly-scented night, and he related incidents from his boyhood when he had lived on a wattle farm not far from here. He made her try another cigarette and this time she discarded only half of it. Soon after ten he said something about taking a last look round, and gave a slight pressure to her arm.

Her heart beating rather fast, she looked up at him. He would kiss her now; she wanted him to. A kiss would obliterate all the accumulated awkwardness of the day and give them the correct start for tomorrow. One kissed a brother good night, and Blake was closer than a brother ... at least, he would be one day. For a suffocating moment she thought, “Don’t let him kiss me as a lover
...
not yet.”

Then like a dull little blow it came to her that he had nodded, said good night, and moved away into the night. As she went to her room, her knees felt stiff and her chest was tight. She was tired, so tired that it was an effort to undress. For a time she sat in her wrap, remembering last night in her hotel bedroom and the extraordinary sensation of gladness which had kept her awake. Tonight she felt immature and confused, or it might have been exhaustion that made her doubt her ability to succeed as Blake’s wife. Of one thing, even in her weariness, she was certain. So long as he showed in small ways that he cared for her, very little could go wrong.