Home is Goodbye (6 page)

Sara hurried down the corridor to the theatre and relayed the consent to Dr. Cengupta.

‘
Would you
l
ike me to try and contact Mr. Halifax, sir?’ she asked.

He nodded briefly. ‘I want something in writing if it’s possible. If not, we’ll have to carry on without. I hate operating on anyone, though, without the proper formalities!’ He sounded quite irritable, which was unlike him, and Sara scurried back up the corridor in response to the tone. But when she got through to the airstrip Matt had already left.

‘He’s gone in the car,’ the African mechanic told her. ‘I am getting out the Auster while he’s away. One passenger went with him.’

It was plain that he didn’t know anything more about Matt’s movements, and, with a sigh, Sara put the telephone receiver down and went back to the theatre.

Dr. Cengupta had finished scrubbing up and was waiting for someone to help him into his operating clothing. Sara hastily pulled out a sterilized apron and helped him into it, tying the strings behind for him.

‘He isn’t at the airstrip,’ she said. ‘He’s gone to get a passenger in his car.’

The doctor looked at her over his mask.

‘He may be coming here. Perhaps someone is hurt?’

‘I don’t know. Mrs. Halifax just said they’d had bad news from Arusha.’

But Dr. Cengupta proved to be quite correct, for hardly had she finished speaking than there was the screeching sound of brakes being applied in a hurry outside and a second later they could hear Matt’s firm footsteps coming towards them.

‘What’s up, Matt?’ the Indian called out, his voice oddly muffled by his mask.

‘I want Nurse Wayne!’
Matt rapped out. ‘Hurry! What’s going on here?’ he added as he walked into the theatre.

‘Emergency appendectomy,’ Dr. Cengupta said wearily ‘You can sign the form of consent while you’re here. Fetch it, nurse.’

Nurse Lucy sped off to get the form, while Sara paused uncertainly on the edge of the conversation.

‘I need Nurse Wayne here,’ the doctor said. ‘She has more experience of theatre work.’

‘I’m sorry, Karim, but you’ll have to make do with Lucy Mgweri tonight. My patient is fretting and I’ll have to take Nurse Wayne with me.’

The doctor sighed.

‘I suppose you are right,’ he agreed. ‘Nurse Wayne has specialized in that field.’

‘Quite!’ snapped Matt. ‘I wanted to take you personally, but the boy will need you, so I’m afraid you will have to let Nurse Wayne go!’ He grinned and slowly the doctor smiled reluctantly back.

Sara felt a fleeting thrill fountain up inside her as she realized that she was going to fly with Matt to Arusha. It would be tremendously interesting to see the other estate and find out more about the complicated working of this family business.

At a sign from the doctor she tore off her green overall and hurried down the corridor to her office to get her emergency bag, blessing the impulse earlier in the day when she had fully checked its contents thus saving her from having to do it now. She grabbed her cloak and veil and hurried back.

‘I’m ready, sir,’
she panted.

Dr. Cengupta gave her a look of approval noting that somehow she had managed to put her veil on straight and looked once more a demure nursing sister.

‘Then you’d better go and leave me to my operation,’ he smiled. ‘Are you ready, nurse?’

Nurse Lucy nodded her head. Sara was amused to notice that her eyes did indeed pop out, but otherwise she looked calm and competent and she had no worries about leaving her to assist Dr. Cengupta. She had done it all many times before when Sara had not been there to call on.

‘Have you everything you need?’ Matt asked her.

‘Yes, Mr. Halifax,’ she replied, feeling a little as though she had been asked whether she had a clean handkerchief.

‘Matt,’ he said briefly. ‘No one will know who you mean if you go round calling me that!’

Matt! She savoured it on her tongue, wondering if it was short for Matthew, or for something else that he preferred to keep dark. Something like Matthias or Hermatus!

‘Come on!’ he called to her. ‘Hop in!’

She hurried down the hospital steps and jumped into the passenger seat of his car, clutching her bag on her knee.

‘How long will it take us to get there?’ she asked breathlessly.

‘A few hours. Three, usually. The Auster’s pretty small, but it makes a terrific difference to us. Nearly all the big estates have some sort of aeroplane at their disposal now. Flip down to Dar-es-Salaam, or across to Zanzibar! Wonderful!’

Wonderful indeed! Sara had a vision of a beautiful little aeroplane, compact but very strong, bearing herself to all the magical places she had always wanted to visit. The Mountains of the Moon, for instance; Mount Kilimanjaro and Mount Kenya; the flamingo lakes of the north, with their population of magnificent pink birds, sometimes standing on both long legs, sometimes sleeping on one. There were so many places to visit!

Their arrival at the airstrip brought an abrupt end to
her dreaming. At one end there was a hanger that housed the Auster and another larger aeroplane used for ferrying the whole family from one place to another. The ground was flat and fairly even, and someone had lit two parallel rows of flares along the take-off so that Matt could see where he was going. The flares were primitive wood torches, but effective, and very beautiful in the black night.

The African mechanic was still working on the Auster, checking the petrol level with a dip-stick.

‘Is it ready?’ Matt asked in Swahili.

‘
Ndiyo, bwana
,’
the mechanic replied.

He grinned curiously at Sara, his white teeth flashing in the darkness, and made some remark to Matt, who smiled too.

Sara looked up at him inquiringly.

‘He says you look as though you’d never flown before,’ he explained. ‘Excited, but a little cautious.’

Sara smiled too, and she hoped confidently. She never had been in an aeroplane before, but it seemed ridiculous to say so in this land where everyone flies from the moment they are bo
rn
.

She looked curiously at the little Auster. It was as compact as she had imagined, but hardly as strong! The paint was peeling off in patches and it looked desperately insecure to her untutored eyes. Small, too! Two little seats in the front, bucket seats, she noticed, like those of a sports car, and a smaller one behind that would hold little more than a child.

She took a deep breath and sat in the seat allotted to her. Matt went round to the other side and climbed in beside her.

‘Okay?’ he asked.

She nodded. She was beyond speech. Urgently she tried to remember all that she had ever read or seen about travelling in an aeroplane. ‘Fasten your safety-belts!’ The phrase came to her mind and she searched for something that would answer that description. Her hands came up with two pieces of webbing with a complicated catch attached to the two ends. With trembling fingers she managed to do it up, but it was still far too slack. Whoever had last sat in the seat had been a much bigger person than she was ever likely to be.

To her relief Matt saw her difficulty and leant over to adjust it for her.

‘I hadn’t realized you were such a little thing!’ he teased, and to her dismay she could feel herself blushing and was glad that the lights from the instruments were not sufficient for him to be able to notice.

He started the engine and she
co
uld feel the vibration passing right through her. The whole aeroplane seemed as though it would be shaken to pieces. It would be more likely to crash if it was rigid, she told herself, and said it again to comfort her nervous body.

‘Frightened?’ Matt asked.

She managed a smile.

‘Of course not!’ she disclaimed, but she was. A tingling, exhilarating fear ran like electricity through her bloodstream. Beneath her she could feel the wheel jolting over the rough grass, and then they jumped, touched again, and back into the air. Her first flight had started.

She could see Matt’s strong hand on the controls and relaxed a little. He spoke into a microphone attached to his head gear, but she couldn’t hear what it was that he said. She no longer wanted to know. This minute little machine dancing through the clear night sky was the most wonderful experience of her whole life.

CHAPTER FOUR

Slowly
they climbed higher into the black sky. Beneath her stretched the continent of Africa. If anything had been needed to convince Sara of the vastness of that great land mass it was this flight through the night. Occasionally she could see a fire lit by some travelling nomads, Masai perhaps, or the electric lights of some more civilized dwelling. But mostly there was just black nothingness.

As her eyes became more accustomed to the darkness she could make out odd shapes beneath her — the occasional hillock, a small group of trees, and once a number of animals grazing. Zebra, perhaps? Anything that her imagination cared to make them.

Matt took the aeroplane down a little when they passed over a native village where they were celebrating something with a dance. She could see the long lines of twirling figures in the firelight and wondered at their stamina when Matt told her that it would go on for hour after hour. For a moment she thought she caught the sound of their drums, but then they had moved on and the dancers became nothing more than a blur behind them.

For the most part Sara sat in silence, not liking to disturb the fierce concentration of the man beside her. She was only too conscious that her life was literally in his hands, and although she knew that he must have clocked in hundreds of accident-free flying hours, she had no intention of taking his mind off what he was doing.

It was he, therefore, who broke the silence. He was
sitting back in his seat, his whole body relaxed
,
but his sensitive fingers always attuned to the slightest pull on the
joystick.

‘A bit different from the VC
10
s and Boeings, isn’t it?’ he said.

‘Very,’ she agreed. ‘But better. More personal.’

His eyes met hers in the dim light and she knew that she hadn’t bluffed him at all, he was well aware that she had never flown before. A little chagrined, she wondered how she had given herself away. And then, as though he read her thoughts, he told her.

‘You can’t hope to pull the wool over my eyes with such a guilty look on your face!’ he said laughingly. ‘I shan’t hold it against you!’

She laughed too, a little uncertainly.

‘It wasn’t that I wanted you to think me more experienced than I am,’ she said anxiously. ‘I didn’t want you to be worrying about me, or
—
or to feel that you had to make it any easier for me than for
—
for anyone else.’

‘Message understood!’ he reassured her. ‘You don’t want any favouritism because of your uncle. But that doesn’t mean that you have to be any more spartan than any other girl would be.’

He smiled at her, a warm, gentle smile that softened his rather harsh features for a moment. Sara hastily changed the conversation.

‘Why are we going to Arusha?’ she asked. ‘Has someone had an accident there?’

He shook his head.

‘My cousin’s wife is expecting a baby and she should have gone down to Tanga or Dar-es-Salaam, but they were having labour problems on the estate and she put it off. It’s not due yet, but she’s having pains and Joe rang through to ask me to bring Cengupta over just in case.’

S
ara’s professional side rebelled against these haphazard methods.

‘Isn’t there a doctor any nearer?’ she asked indignantly. ‘She should have had regular check-ups to make sure that everything is going to be all right—’

‘It’s just as quick for me to fly from here as for the doctor to get out to her from Arusha. And Cengupta has been over once or twice. That’s why I wanted him now,’ he added thoughtfully. ‘He thinks she’s in for a bad time.’

Sara could not help remembering that he had come into the hospital calling out her name, and she gave a little half-smile and he laughed.

‘I wanted you too!’ he exclaimed. ‘But Mrs. Wayne said you were at the hospital coping with an emergency, so I guessed that I couldn’t have you both! Karim says this sort of thing is in your line?’

‘Yes, it is,’ Sara agreed simply. She had no need to elaborate, for at that moment there was a complete understanding between them, and she knew that he would accept her word. It was pleasant to feel that for a few moments she was being accepted as herself and not as her aunt’s niece. She took a deep breath and said the first thing that came into her head.

‘Julia will be annoyed at your leaving her alone on her first evening.’

It was casually said, but she knew from the sudden tightening of his mouth and neck that she had destroyed the moment.

‘I
don’t suppose so,’ he said quietly. ‘She comes more to see Mother than anyone else. Her mother is mine’s first cousin and she has a share in the estate. Naturally she comes every so often to see what’s doing.’

He sounded reasonable and very much himself, but
Sara bitterly regretted bringing the other girl into the conversation. She had the feeling that Matt thought she was prying into his private affairs, and she had had no intention of ever doing such a thing.

‘James brought her to the hospital,’ she heard herself saying. ‘He said she was your girl! She’s very pretty!’ she added, aghast at where her tongue was leading her.

Matt said nothing. Sara waited for the silence to become more comfortable, but it did nothing of the sort. Instead she grew steadily more and more agitated. At last Matt began to speak, quite quietly, but so that she could not help but listen to what he had to say.

‘I’ve known Julia all my life. We were practically brought up together, and we both play golf. Golf is probably the most important thing in Julia’s life. She travels from one club to another, picking up whatever games she can and usually collecting most of the cups. Then, when she’s hard up, she comes home to recuperate. That’s what she’s doing at the moment. It’s a question too of finance. It’s an expensive business belonging to every golf club in East Africa, so she has to have a fairly large income to do it. Every now and again she makes sure she’s getting every penny she’s due.’ He paused thoughtfully. ‘That’s the curse of these big family affairs,’ he went on. ‘Everyone always thinks that he could manage better than the chap who’s actually doing the job! Every improvement has to be fought in case one’s income is down a bit that year. If I didn’t cook the books a little, they’d slowly strangle the whole goose!’

‘I didn’t know you were related,’ Sara said in a small voice.