Mayenga Farm (25 page)

"What are you afraid of?" he asked quickly.

"Don't hold me, Kent. Please."

The words were so low and pained that he let her go. They seemed to gain their feet simultaneously, but as Rennie twisted towards Paddy, he caught hard at her elbow, and held her there, unable to move. His voice was harsh with strain.

"I've just asked you to marry me—or didn’t you notice?"

"I didn’t intend to behave badly," she said, white-faced. "I can't marry you, Kent."

"You’re not in love with me?"

"It isn't that____"

"Well, that’s enlightening. We seem to be getting somewhere at last. If it isn’t that, what is it? "

Rennie swallowed. "The way you feel now, any woman would suit your purpose. You’ve chosen me because I’m accessible and tractable."

"Tractable! I’d hardly call you that. This sounds like a section from Michael’s novel. Go on, my sweet."

His mockery gave Rennie courage.

"You’re hurt and angry. You want to prove to yourself and to anyone else who’s curious that Jackie was just another woman who enlivened your leisure for a while. You're trying to convince yourself that you never loved her. I can’t imagine anything more heart-breaking than to marry a man who is embittered over a disastrous love affair."

"Jackie?" he echoed blankly. "What the devil are you talking about?" Then he gave a brief gust of laughter. "You lovely lunatic. Kiss me,

before I beat you."

He pulled her into his arms and found her mouth, kissed her till she panted and clung.

When she could speak again she whispered, "Not . . . Jackie?"

"Not . . . Jackie," he breathed back, borrowing her stammer. "I wish Michael joy of her."

"But you did like her, Kent"

"A little. Her technique was a change from your persistent refusal to be friendly. When she first came I hoped she'd bring you out a bit— persuade you into the social round. That was before I understood just how low your father’s funds were. Afterwards, I used to rage inside myself. At times, it did occur to me that I might make you jealous of Jackie—I deliberately invited her and Mrs. Caton every time I entertained—but after the fire all that was finished." He paused, and his tone dropped. "You’re so sweet when you're helpless, Rennie. I must have loved you from the start, when you got angry with me for minding your business, but I was never really sure till the day you came to Elands Ridge all torn about and smoke-stained. You wrenched the heart right out of me."

"If you’d only said-"

"It looks like that now, but no man cares to lay himself bare too soon. Besides, exhausted as you were, you’d brought your pride along, and I still resented it. But in the following week or two, when you gave me a free hand at Mayenga, it seemed as if the hatchet had had a decent and final interment. You can’t imagine how I felt when you returned the picture. It was like a blow between the eyes. Since then you’ve either been chilly as winter or avoided me as if I were ant-poison."

His skin was copper in the dying sunlight. Behind him, in relief against the darkling sky, the trees billowed their quivering gilt coins. A wild duck rose from the reeds, its neck grotesquely stretched as it took wing and sailed upriver. Paddy pawed the turf and shuddered his coat.

"Why did you send back the picture?" Kent wanted to know.

"The picture?" Rennie stirred against him. She was recalling Jackie's extravagant statement: "We’re crazy about each other." No need to repeat it to Kent. He’d be furious. "I’m afraid it was jealousy again," she said with an apologetic smile. "You hadn't been over that day. You wrote that you had friends up from the coast. That evening you gave a large-scale dinner party."

"Quite right. So I did."

"Michael found out that you’d invited Jackie, After he told me I couldn’t bear to possess the picture."

"But, darling, you’d have loathed that crowd. I'd invited them at short notice because my two guests were the hard-drinking, gambling type. Jackie could take it—in fact, I seem to remember that she voted it my best party to date— but I wouldn't have had you among that mob for anything."

"Then ... may I have the picture, Kent?"

"You may not," he said firmly, "It stays at Elands Ridge."

"Oh."

He bent and gave her a hard kiss." And that's where you're going now—to Elands Ridge, via Mayenga. I want you to myself, in my own house."

Dusk swept in like a dark tide. The horses jogged side by side, wholly content, but neither Kent nor Rennie spoke much, though they exchanged frequent glances, and once Kent winked at her and reached out to squeeze her arm. There was still so much to be explained, yet for the moment Rennie was happy, ecstatically happy, in the knowledge that Kent loved her. Nothing else had importance beside that.

It was dark when they came to the farmhouse gate, but Adrian was in the lighted stoep, his pipe smoking fiercely as he gazed over the humming garden. Rennie could see the grey cloud shrouding the glow of the lamp. Swiftly, Kent unsaddled the horses and sent them off to me pasture.

"Wait in the car," he said. "I'll just slip up for a word with your father."

"I'll go with you."

"You'd take too long. Do as you're told, there's a pet."

He was gone only three minutes, and came back, grinning, to slide into his seat and press the starter.

"What did he say?" she queried.

"Nothing. I did all the talking." He trod gently and the car moved off.

"We can't walk out on him like this. There's no one to get his dinner!"

"In that case he'll have to raid the cooler himself. He won't mind. Are you warm enough?"

"Plenty, but I'm grubby to go visiting."

"You're not going visiting," he said. "You're going home."

Shyness gathered like a dot in her throat. Unseeing, she watched the speeding trees, first the cedars, and then Kent's forest, bounded by the giant eucalyptus.

Elands Ridge loomed white and imperious, but completely unlighted. Kent helped her from the car and jingled his keys. "I gave Tanu permission to stay in the Reserve with his parents while I was away, and the other servants will have gone to the kraal for the night. So we shall be in the same boat as Adrian."

He unlocked the door and flooded the hall with light, tucked her hand into his arm and led her down the corridor to the wide, white

kitchen.

"Hungry?"

"I could eat something. May I open the frig?"

"It’s yours, with all that therein is. What shall we have . . . sweet corn, cheese, crispbread, tomatoes, pressed tongue? The cucumber looks weary, but maybe we can do without it. The butter’s like iron."

He loaded the table while she washed her hands, and twenty minutes later they were eating corn, highly seasoned and yellow with butter, and rye biscuits spread with soft cheese and sprinkled with herbs, and the whole kitchen was impregnated with the delicious aroma of coffee.

Rennie looked at him and loved him; loved the way he lodged back on two legs of the white enamelled chair, the quizzical dents at the corners of his mouth; his black hair and the straight dark brows. This was their first intimate meal together, predecessor of many, many more. They would share dawns and sunsets, troubles and untold happiness. Almost, she wished he were poor and aspiring, so that she might prove what a good wife she could be. She forgot how Kent had writhed over her struggles at Mayenga.

"Why so tense?" he enquired.

She smiled. "The suddenness, I suppose. Less than two hours ago I was built up to leave Mayenga—and you—for good. Now, I’m wondering how I can possibly leave you at all, even for the three months."

He reverted to the four legs of the chair with a crash.

"My poor, foolish child! You have the queerest notions. Do you really think I’d let you go?"

"But my father’s tour starts soon..."

"So it does, and I'd be the last to deter him from it, but by then, my heart's darling, you and I will be married, and I shall have first claim on you." He laughed. "Don’t look so terrified. I bet this next fortnight will be the longest we’ll ever live through. If the law would allow it, I’d marry you tomorrow."

Her head bent to hide a flood of pink.

With teasing tenderness he went on, "I know just the place for a honeymoon; a house that belongs to an aunt of mine who’s at present in England. It has white gables and a tangled garden, and is perched above a lagoon on the Natal coast, where we can bathe and picnic. An old Afrikaans couple take care of the place, and will keep house for us.

How long is it till you’re twenty-one?"

"Five weeks."

"Where will your father be then?"

"Probably at Port Elizabeth."

"Adrian’s sentimental; he'd like to be on hand when you come of age. We’ll break the honeymoon—go to Port Elizabeth for a celebration, and back to Natal. Would you like that?"

She was speechless, of course, and he had to kiss away the ache from her eyelids and the tremulousness from her smile.

And after that he insisted on their inspecting every room in the house and planning alterations. He knew there was too much blue about the place, but when he’d furnished, uniform curtains and covers had seemed to him the safest, and it wasn’t a bad blue, was it?

"The color of your eyes," she said. "We’ll keep it in some of the rooms."

He showed her the cupboards and the balconies, and a small, tucked-away room where he kept his polo sticks and tennis racquets and a hoard of old sports gear. On the wall hung the original of the photograph of him which she had seen in the polo news in the Gravenburg newspaper. She fingered the frame.

"I’ve never seen you play, Kent."

"No, you haven’t. When I invited you to a match last Christmas you didn’t turn up, and it wasn’t long after when I began to get sensitive about you. Women set such store by clothes and presenting themselves each Saturday in a different get-up. The other players’ wives are like that, and though I knew that in youth and good looks you’d knock them cold, I also knew you couldn’t afford to compete with them in the way of dress, and might be unhappy about it."

"So you asked Jackie instead."

"She didn’t need asking. Jackie was friendly with the other players and their relatives, and the polo was a standing engagement. From now on, it's a regular date for you, too. I hope you're not going to be the sort of wife to get nerves every time I play."

Rennie was beginning to realize that there could be no escaping the anxieties of being Kent's wife. She was fond of horses and rode passably well herself; she was aware that he handled them as if he’d been born in the saddle, and that his superb horsemanship had averted frightful spills on the field. But she would worry just the same; visualize a smashed collar-bone or a fractured limb every time his mount reared. All women in love are that way.

She avoided a direct reply by asking, "You'll let me keep Paddy,

won’t you? He’s a bit of a mongrel compared with your Arab ponies, but he won’t care a scrap if they’re snooty with him. Paddy’s not in the least self-conscious. He’s a dear."

"He’s like your father’s chestnut—has the gait of a hack but a stout capacity for endurance. We’ll keep them both. Adrian might like to ride when he comes this way."

She faced him, smiling a little ruefully. "By that time Mayenga will have a new owner. We’ll all three ride along your river bank and pull his farming methods to pieces."

"You hadn’t better." He tugged her hair. "Mayenga will be ours."

"Kent!" She shone up at him. "You can’t mean that you’re taking over?"

"I'm certainly not allowing a stranger on your land. It’s a compact farm, and citrus-growing will provide a change from forestry. I know a fellow who will manage it and eventually show a profit. I'll get him here for an interview in a day or two, and you can judge whether he's worthy to live in your house. There's always the chance that he’ll have it torn down because it fronts south."

"Brute! Our view is as good as yours."

"Agreed, but your mosquitoes are better nourished. Come out of this cubby-hole, darling. I have to breathe on one cylinder."

At the end of the corridor a tall window admitted sounds and perfumes from the garden and the forest beyond. A wedge of moon peeped between branches, a moon that was young and full of promise. Kent snapped off the light, and they stood with the breeze playing about them, his arm across her shoulders, his heart thudding heavily into her side.

In a little while she was conscious of the distant drumbeat which she had heard so often at Mayenga. Tonight the rhythm was strange and exciting; insistent and primitive; and Rennie thought she could see the glare of a far-away fire.

Kent said, "A native betrothal or wedding feast." And was silent, listening again.

Half-turning, she looked up at his lean face, heard his quick-drawn breath as he turned, too. The long thin line below his jaw was livid.

She felt the contraction of his arms, and raised her lips to press small kisses along the scar.

"I’ve longed to do that," she said, softly.

For once it was Kent who had no answer — no verbal answer. He could only sweep her close and kiss her with a passion as savage as it

was tender.