Brittle Bondage (23 page)

“You’re sure of everything but what’s right! Probably you’re equally certain that I enjoyed seeing you wretched and strung up. And you were going to round off things by running away!” He stopped abruptly, and said more quietly: “I’d probably have offered you marriage even if your father hadn’t written—even though I knew it was impossible for a child of eighteen to love a man of thirty
-
four. Propinquity and companionableness are common substitutes for love in marriage.”

He turned aside and bent to unbutton the clean shirt.

In stark tones she said, “What are we going to do?”

He straightened and bent upon her a sardonic smile. “We’re going to stay right here in Port Atholl and finish your education.” With a suggestion of the sarcasm which had been absent from his manner for so long, he went on: “You’re doing well, little one. We’ve talked Natalie Benham out of your system, and after tonight’s disposal of your father’s letter you’ll begin to comprehend the value of outspokenness in other directions, too. The day may come when you’ll look me in the eyes and agree that it might not be so bad to start together again at Bondolo.”

She twisted half towards the door. “And what if I refuse to go on like this?”

“You won’t, Venetia. You’ve already learned that you can’t run away from troubles—and a husband’s a pretty tenacious problem, I can tell you. You’d better go and
p
ain
t
up a little, in case Sylvia knocks here on her way down.”

Venetia returned to her room. Mechanically she brushed her hair and fastened the pearl-and-diamond earrings which Blake had given her—his wedding present ten days after their marriage. When she was quite ready, she remained in front of the mirror, trying with heartsick patience to fathom what it was that made Blake cool and mocking when she was well. That must be how he really felt towards her; the tenderness wore off as soon as she showed normal health.

She heard a movement in the tiny hall, switched off the light and went out to him. For the present she could only impose a ste
rn
control upon herself and go down with him to the lounge where Sylvia waited, walk between the two of them into the dazzling brightness of the dining
-
room, wade through a couple of the courses, drink coffee, and stroll in the still, cool air of the hotel grounds. The scent from a late-flowering bush came softly, mingling with the sharp fragrance of Blake’s Egyptian cigarette. The monotonous music of the hidden sea lulled the senses.

Sylvia said: “Bill comes tomorrow, you know. I feel happy as a bird. I didn’t like the idea of coming away without him, but he insisted that I must have a full month, and he couldn’t manage it just now. When we’re parted it’s like being half alive.” She turned to Venetia. “Will you go shopping with me in the morning? I promised him I’d buy two new frocks. I was against a long holiday and buying new clothes—what with getting out of the flat and into a house of our own, and so on, money’s a bit tight— but Bill’s a pigheaded old darling. Perhaps Blake will be glad of a morning without women.”

“I’ll stand it,” he said.

It was pleasant, Venetia found the following morning, to set out with another woman on an ordinary shopping venture. They walked down to the promenade and up a steep street to the main thoroughfare, which was flanked by large, modern stores. Sylvia bought the dresses and a flamboyant shirt, which she said that Bill would wear to please her. She was gay; her brown eyes shone and the red hair stood out around her little white straw hat.

They had long drinks in a store tearoom, wandered through a bazaar and gradually made their way back to the Regency.

Sylvia had decided to rest in her room during the afternoon. Bill was due around four. As she had the car he had arranged to be given a lift in someone else’s. Would Blake and Venetia be in the lounge for cocktails before dinner?

Blake, who had met the two women on the terrace, agreed that they would.

Venetia also spent the hours after lunch in her room. She wrote a long letter to Thea, but after going over it, considered it too cold and, therefore, too revealing, and tore it up. The service boy brought a tea-tray which Blake must have ordered before starting his game of tennis. Venetia had her tea in the small lounge, reading a novel while she sipped.

Shadows lengthened and she cast the book aside. She changed and came back into the lounge. It was quite dark now, the early-winter darkness, though the Natal night air was balmy, the sky a rich purple. Blake was probably lingering over a drink with his tennis opponent.

The surmise had scarcely passed through her mind when he arrived and came straight into the lounge.

“I’m glad you’ve already changed,” he said. “I think you’d better go along to Sylvia’s room and try to keep her quiet. Her husband’s about two hours late, and she
’
s nearly haywire. I’ve been battling to get through on the telephone to the house of the man Bill’s travelling with—but it was no good. She’s given me a couple of other Durban numbers which might yield some information. Stay with her and I’ll let you know the results.”

“Couldn’t you come too, and ’phone from her room?”

“That might prove even more of a strain for her. If there’s any news I’ll ring through.”

By now they were outside the suite, in the corridor. Blake gave her arm an encouraging pat. “Don’t start weeping with Sylvia. The car has probably had a puncture, and that’s no joke in the dark in any country, let alone Africa.”

“But wasn’t he supposed to get here at four?”

“They might have started late and hoped to make up time. Be a good girl and look on the bright side.”

Venetia nodded and turned left, while Blake made towards the lift. Sylvia’s room, a large double one, was on the same floor but at the other side of the hotel. Venetia hurried down the long, wide corridor and right-angled into a shorter one. She knocked at the end door, and entered the room.

Sylvia was standing in the doorway to her small balcony. She turned to Venetia a face haggard with worry and tears. Her voice creake
d
.

“Blake told me to come here, but I can’t stay up in this room, Venetia. I feel stifled. I’ve got to know where Bill is and go to him. Surely you understand? You’re married.”

“Of course I understand. But you can’t do anything till Blake has finished telephoning. You know how long it takes to get connected.”

The other woman twisted and walked jerkily across the room and back again. “Something’s happened to him. He wouldn’t let me worry myself silly. They were leaving
Durban straight after lunch, and it’s only a two-hour run.
”

“They might have been hung up.”

“Bill would have telephoned. He’s not the casual sort.”

“But something might have gone wrong with the car
w
hen they were miles from anywhere.”

“On the road there’s plenty of traffic. He’d have got a lift to the nearest ’phone. He’d die rather than put me into
a
state like this.”

At the mention of death, fresh tears gushed down Sylvia’s cheeks. She dragged a clean handkerchief from a drawer and pressed it to her swollen eyelids. She was in no condition to accept consolation even if Venetia could have voiced an expression of sympathy which did not sound trite. All that Venetia could think of was that most likely a catastrophe had happened to B
ill.
She wished Blake would hurry up and ring through to the room.

Venetia was praying with all she had, when a sharp rap came at the door. Sylvia snatched at the handle, and fell back with a disheartened sigh as Blake came in.

“
What have you heard?”

“Fairly good news,” he said, in those calming, level tones of his. “There’s been an accident, but Bill isn’t badly hurt.”

“Oh!” Her tongue moistened colourless lips. “Where is he?”

“At the district hospital. It’s about four miles from here. I’ll take you.”

“Hospital! Then he
must
be hurt.”

“A fractured arm, that’s all. Put your coat on. You come, too, Venetia—you can wrap in the car rug.”

Sylvia whipped up a jacket from a chair and went from the room. Venetia followed and Blake snapped off the light.

As he drove along the dark road he explained. After drawing blank from the two numbers Sylvia had given him, he had decided to contact the couple of hospitals between here and Durban, and if the results were negative to get in touch with the police. Naturally he had tried the nearest hospital first, and after a while had talked to someone at the casualty station. He had learned that Bill
Douglas and another man who had severe concussion had been picked up eighteen miles back at the side of a hill on the Durban road. Their car had overturned.

“If only Bill had been driving!” Sylvia exclaimed fiercely. “Can’t you go faster, Blake?”

“Seventy’s not bad on a moonless night,” he answered mildly. “We’re early there.”

Venetia wondered what Sylvia would have done without Blake to take care of things. After he had pulled up outside the brilliantly lit hospital he took an arm of each of the women and led
them round to the sign-posted casualty department. In no time at all their business was stated and they were conducted into a small private waiting-room. A houseman told them that Mr. Douglas was resting after the setting of the fracture, but he would soon be ready to leave.

Blake smiled at Sylvia. “So you’ll have your husband back tonight, after all. He’s probably had a rotten experience, so greet him with a smile, won’t you?”

“I’ll try. You’ve been so good, Blake.”

“You’d rather meet him alone, wouldn’t you? Venetia and I will wait in the car. You’ll be all right?”

“Yes.” Sylvia looked at both of them and managed a pale smile. “I’m very grateful for what you’ve done, and Bill will be, too. Heaven only knows when they’d have let me know at the hotel. I’m sorry I got rather out of hand, but
...
well, you see, in about six months we’ll be parents, so you can guess that I had the most frightening thoughts in the world.”

Blake’s pause was scarcely perceptible. “You can forget them now,” he said. “Get that smile ready.”

He escorted Venetia back to the car, saw her seated and covered with the rug before slipping in behind the wheel.

The silence was almost tangible. Beneath the rug Venetia was quivering, her chest felt hollow and her throat
had filled sickeningly.

Presently Blake said, “Sylvia and Bill Douglas are a
fortunate couple.”

“Yes, they are,” she said, low-toned. Very lucky.
”

He glanced at her keenly, and turned back sharply to contemplation of the great lighted courtyard.

“If you don’t fancy it,” he said abruptly, “you needn’t see so much of Sylvia from now on.”

“Perhaps that would be wise,” she whispered. Nothing more on the subject was said between them. Venetia sat drawn into herself with pain and a queer kind of humiliation.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

THAT night seemed to Venetia to be one of impossible heat. She could not sleep, could not even force herself to lie still. She felt sure that a storm was gathering outside, a storm of terrible intensity.

She was lonely and frightened; her heart was on fire with a dreadful yearning. This was worse than anything she had ever before experienced. She wanted Blake many times, his arms, his lips, but she had never known this blind desire, this necessity to belong to him in body and spirit. She could not bear it.

She got out of bed, pushed back the damp hair from her brow and drank a glass of water. The bed, tumbled and creased, repelled her, and she stood at its foot wondering how she would ever get through this endless night. It couldn’t be much after twelve.

Futilely she wished that Sylvia had chosen any other holiday resort than Port Atholl. Her happiness with Bill was a goad and a taunt, the joy they were to share early next year twisted sharp knives in Venetia’s heart. It had done something to Blake, too; shown
him
that marriage without love is likely to demand immeasurable sacrifice. His self-assurance had at last been jogged.

Sylvia and Bill, two years married and ecstatically devoted to each other, had brought home to Blake—as Thea’s romance had not—the utter pointlessness of his own marriage. Venetia, finally keyed up to his slightest reaction, had seen the tiredness under his smile, the effort behind his light goodnight kiss. Yes, the perfunctory kiss had cost him an effort of will. No woman could continue to live close to a man in such conditions. Blake might consider his courage equal to it, but Venetia had no such illusions about her own.

She slipped her arms into a thin silk wrap and knotted the belt, opened the french door and stepped on to the balcony. The air was warm and embracing, but she hated it. The musky scent from the garden brought again that nauseating fullness to her throat. She would try to calm her pulses with a cigarette.

Before she could move back into the room a bar of light fell across the other side of the balcony and Blake’s door opened. He was still in shirt and trousers; he must have been sitting or lounging like that in the dark.

“What are you doing, Venetia?”

He had approached in a bound and grabbed her wrist. She laughed suddenly, hysterically. “Did it look as if I was going to throw myself over? I haven’t got that sort of pluck. It would simplify everything if I had, wouldn’t it?”

He kept hold of her wrist. “Why are you out here? Couldn’t you sleep?”

“I’m certainly not sleepwalking,” she said, in curious, breaking tones.

“Your feet are bare. Come inside.”

With extraordinary strength she wrenched away from him. “I won’t go back in there! I detest that room.”

“Come into my room, then.”

This time his grip was like a band of iron upon her upper arm. He took her into the other bedroom, pulled shut the door, and put her into the one wing-chair. He looked down at her stiff little figure with anxiety.

“If you start acting crazily you’ll be ill again,” he said. “You look like death now. What is it?”

Her hands clenched over the arms of the chair, she stared up at him wildly.

“
You
ask what it is! You were at the hospital tonight— you heard as much as I did. You saw Sylvia and her husband in the back of the car, and were as sick with envy as I was. I can’t endure any more—”

“Let’s be reasonable, Venetia. We’ll admit that this evening we both received a nasty jolt, but maybe it was all to the good. It would be saner to discuss this in daylight when you’re not so tired.”

“I don’t need to put it off till daylight. I’m through, Blake. Finished!”

“And what,” he enquired heavily, “are you finished with?”

“This stupid marriage.”

“I’ve waited a long time to hear you say that.” In the merciless light from the main pendant he appeared sallow and strangely lined. “What do you propose we should do about it?”

“You’ll go to Bondolo,” she said desperately, “and I’ll return to England.”

“Supposing I disagree?”

“But you can’t!” She choked on an anguished sob. “I won’t live with you again. It isn’t fair that one should pay for a mistake for the rest of one’s life. I must have my freedom.”

He put the inevitable question. “Freedom to marry another man? Is that what you’re after?”

“For heaven’s sake!” She sprang up, trembling. “Must it always be another man?”

“It’s the only human reason,” he said harshly.

“It isn’t mine.”

“I won’t flatter myself,” his sarcasm held bitterness, “that you’re concerned in any way about me. You’ve discovered in yourself a need to be wholly and passionately loved. Oh yes, I know all about it. I’ve noticed symptoms in you before, but tonight it stuck out a mile. When you sat next to me in the car you were shaking with it.” His teeth showed, white and vicious. “If, when you first felt that need you’d turned towards me instead of against me—” He interrupted himself to say: “I don’t suppose it occurs to you that I’ve stood quite a bit, too, particularly since we’ve been in Port Atholl. At Bondolo I could work till I was exhausted.” A pause. “I’m not letting you go, Venetia.”

She faced him, her cheeks ashen, her chin raised, the radiant hair falling back upon the collar of her wrap.

“If you stop me I shall do something really desperate—not just collapse with nerves.”

His face was dark now with anger, and fire blazed in
the grey eyes.

“You’ve never given our marriage a chance. You’ve admitted that from the beginning you pinned the whole structure on to the letter from your father. You allowed your mind to be poisoned by that, you became jealous of Natalie—God knows why. All this was happening, and I hadn’t an inkling of it.” He stopped to take a furious breath. “Remember how grateful you were in the beginning? Gratitude is a quality I haven’t much use for, but if it had made you honest with me I’d have tolerated it, even from you. Instead you’ve done nothing but deceive—”

“That’s a lie!” Her temper had flared to meet his. They confronted one another in a white heat of rage such as neither had ever before exhibited. “What you took for dishonesty wasn’t even subterfuge. A woman doesn’t hurl herself against a brick wall.” Her anger was already consuming itself. She drew a long, painful breath.
“
Here
’
s honesty, then. If I leave you I think I shall die, but it won’t be so agonising a death as if I were to go on living with you. I’m not constructed to bear the slow torture of loving without being loved in return. There was a time—”

“Venetia!” He held her face hard between his hands; like spear-points his eyes searched into it. “Oh, my God!” he muttered, and caught her up in his arms.

She felt his heart driving into her breast, the fierce hunger of his kisses. And at last he was just holding her, silen
tl
y, with his cheek against her hair. It was she who gently ended the embrace.

Not looking at him, she said: “I
...
asked for that: I’ve known all along that I could make you want me
...
that
way.”

“What sort of a husband would I be if I didn’t? Of course I want you that way, but I want you every other way, too. You’re not a child any longer—I’ve told you that before. You can’t feel quite as I do yet, but it’ll come much more quickly if we live normally.”

“You don’t have to be kind.”

“My dearest girl, I’ve told you I love you—”

“You haven’t!”

“I’ve just kissed you as no man has any right to kiss a woman unless he’s in love with her. I could have kissed you like that the day we were married.”

Her pallor increased, but she met his eyes. “I want so terribly to believe you.”

It seemed then as if he were seeing her for the first time as a woman capable of deep and vibrant emotions, or perhaps he was at last permitting himself to see her so.

“You must believe it,” he said. “I started loving you the day we met. If your father had lived I would have had you both as guests at Bondolo and set out to make you love me in the conventional way. I felt badly let down at having to marry you so soon—before you were ready for it, and on such conditions, but I braced myself to stick it for a month or two. We couldn’t have been close at the beginning.”

Venetia moved slightly and leant for support along the side of the chair. She was oddly weak and not particularly happy.

“Why couldn’t we have been close at the beginning, if we loved each other?”

“But did we?” He spoke drily yet tenderly. “Do you recall how you received my proposal? You said, ‘But
marriage,
Blake,” as if I were suggesting something entirely beyond your capacity. You weren’t in love with me, Venetia. You were anxious to be cherished, to have someone who would fill the void your father had left.”

“But I did wish you’d make love to me.”

“I was aware of that, too,” he said with irony “but I couldn’t have gone about it in the way you expected; that kind of thing is apt to get unmanageable and if I’d kissed you then as I kissed you a moment ago, you’d have fainted with terror. You’ve grown up since then, my darling.”

She couldn’t take it in. Blake standing there, his gaze shrewd and a softness about his mouth as he called her “my darling”: her own being a maze of bliss and fright
.

“It’s im
possible—that the wall is down a
nd the heartache over. Blake,” her voice shook, “how soon can we go back to Bondolo?”

Blake didn’t answer. He took her left hand and pressed his lips to the platinum band on the third finger. Then he kissed her mouth, with a purposeful violence
...
and soon, Venetia believed.