Plantation Doctor (12 page)

Some items which to Lyn had seemed part of the establishment had been sold: the set of Bohemian goblets and the Staffordshire loving-cup, the petit-point folding screen which she had rather coveted herself and the two ancient firescreens which he had several times been on the verge of casting out for junk. An American had bought the latter, rejoiced Mr. Latimer, and actually stated his own price!

Towards the end of the letter he said that although the girl from the secretarial bureau was pleasant, he and his wife missed Lyn’s careful listing and invoicing, her presence at their luncheon table, and cheerful “Good night!” as she ran past their flat on her way up to bed. They hoped she was enjoying Africa and would be glad to have details of some of her experiences.

Lyn sadly folded away the letter. By now, Mr. Latimer had received her own epistle and quite soon the parcel of manuscript from the old mission doctor of the Akasi district would be in his hands. The poor darling was bound to be upset.

Somehow, it was difficult to believe in the existence of the small, old-fashioned shop off the Chr
i
stchurch Road, with its rows of silver and glassware, its Chippendale chairs and Persian prayer-rugs; its oddments of Chinese antiquity. Fantastic that only three months had passed since she had left the place, and even more incredible that she could ever return to the narrow crowded walls, the smell of age which had once been the breath of romance.

Africa was so vast and enveloping, a land of mystery of untamed forests, of illimitable heat and smouldering passions. Occasionally Lyn felt that the country made impossible demands.

“The whole thing depends on your type of mentality,” Claud told her. “Most of us develop the fatalistic attitude
—
we who can’t get away. I can never make out why women don’t do the same.”

“We’re too conscious of what we’re missing, and besides, there’s so little a woman can do.”

He grinned. “Just by existing you do plenty. Nowhere in the world is a woman more protected and respected. Away from the feminine influence it’s only too easy for
a
man to degenerate. It begins in small ways; you’re always tired, so why bother to shave every day, and who’s to care if you get tight now and then? You feel great when you’re tight which is more than you ever do sober. In time you don’t notice that the boy is serving the chop straight from tins and not troubling to clean the hut. While there’s a woman around, any woman—even the tough-skinned, middle-aged wife of a missionary—you don’t slip far. Strange but true, my child.”

Lyn believed, but went on chafing. Hazel possessed some of her brother’s laziness and little inclination towards the domestic life. In her position,
Lyn
would have had to to renew the breakfast cloths and table mats, to trim the moth-chewed edges from the rugs and re-bind them, to fill up the cracks in the walls and hide their damp streaks with a coat of distemper. Being a guest in the house, albeit a paying one, she could only offer to da
rn
the linens as if to relieve Hazel of the task—though Hazel would never have tackled it.

And the garden! When she heard rustlings in the still of the night Lyn wondered about the small beasts which undoubtedly nested in the depths of the matted growth not far beyond the window.

Melia was disgusted with the garden, too, but her flaming dialect was powerless to set the boy working out there. He was a houseboy; if the boss wanted the garden cleared he must engage a garden boy. But the boss had his hands full to overflowing with the urgent requirements of the plantation.

CHAPTER
TWELVE

On
a hot
steamy morning Hazel and Lyn sat together in the lounge of the bungalow. Lyn was sewing, and Hazel, with her feet raised to another chair and a volume open on her trousered knees, lay back contemplating the ceiling, a pastime to which she had recently become addicted. Both heard someone on the path and a rap at the door, but it was Lyn who got up and went into the hall.

Rollins stood in the open doorway. He wore his best light suit with a gay tie and carried a speckless topi. His plump face was pinker than usual and shining across the forehead where he had mopped away the perspiration and his sandy, greying hair had been neatly brushed. He was so unlike the usual Rollins in overalls that for a moment Lyn did not recognize him, but as soon as she did she welcomed him.

“Good morning, Mr. Rollins. Will you come in?”

The helmet spun round in thick, nervous fingers. “Can I speak to you alone, miss?”

“Of course.” Lyn came out to the veranda and pulled the door shut. “We won’t be interrupted here. Can I help you in some way?”

“I hope so.” The slight nervousness affected his smile, made it jerky and apologetic. “It’s about Melia—Miss Ducros. She
...
well, she’s a very nice woman, but she doe
s
n’t understand me yet. She thinks
I’m ...
you know
...
kind of fresh.”

“I’m sure you’re wrong. She hasn’t complained to me about it and I’m sure she would.”

“Not that fresh,” he said hastily. “In that funny lingo of hers she says I talk too much. I don’t, really—I just keep the ball rolling, so to speak, because she doesn’t talk enough. I guess she don’t know much about Cockneys.”

“She’s actually a white West African. You’re probably the only Cockney she’s ever met.”

He pondered this. “Funny, ain’t it? And nice, somehow. In some ways she’s like a child.”

Lynn
forbore
to mention that that coincided with Melia’s opinion of him. She liked Rollins, and he had roused her curiosity, but she determined to let him take his time. He did not keep her waiting long.

“To tell you the truth,” he said very red now, “I asked her to marry me and she thought I was joking. Couldn’t convince her otherwise. Yesterday, it was, after I’d finished work for the day. I slipped round to the kitchen and she was there. She gave me a newly baked bread roll with jam—that’s what did it.”

Lyn sternly quelled a smile. “It made you propose?” she asked.

“No.” He gave her an injured frown. “She got that idea as well. I mean that’s what made her laugh at me. I was all set to pop the question in style when the first thing she says is ‘Meester Rollins, you have smelled our bread baking. Shame on you.’ Just as if the smell had drawn me to the house! It was disheartening, properly put me off. I sat down to recuperate and then I made the mistake of eating the roll and telling her she was a fine cook before I got round to the main business. She hardly listened.”

“What a pity. Melia’s rather like that. You’ll have to try again.”

“That’s the snag. Once you’ve been ridiculed you haven’t the nerve. I was thinking, miss, that perhaps
...
” he hesitated and again circled the topi between two hands in his embarrassment. “Melia would listen to you. Will you make her understand for me?”

“Why, Rollins! I’ve never proposed to anyone in my life.”

“Now you’re get
t
ing at me. I know I’ve asked for it. I suppose to you I seem just an old fool looking for a housekeeper.”

“Not a bit,” she said at once sincerely. “I’m glad you do want to marry her. But Melia’s so modest that it will be difficult to persuade her that she’s wanted for herself. You see, no one has ever really needed her before.”

He nodded and lowered his glance. “I’ve gathered that. No one ever treated her as a friend ti
ll
you took her up—she’s as good as told me. That’s half the reason why she won’t take me seriously—because it would mean leaving you.”

Lyn paused, then said impulsively, “You’ll make her happy, won’t you? She’s pleased with so very little. Come
along to see her this evening and before then I’ll have a word w
i
th her.”

He expelled a protracted breath of relief. “Thanks, Miss Russell. Tell her
...
tell her she needn’t even cook unless she likes. And tell her that my old pal who lives with me has applied for his ticket home, so we shan’t have to share the house with anyone else.”

Lyn remembered something. “What about when you have to go back to England? Melia wouldn’t fit in there, or stand the English climate.”

Rollins shrugged somewhat sheepishly. “If she’ll marry me I’ll never go back. I’ll spend my life giving her the things she’s missed. I’ve saved some money. Maybe one day we’ll make for a better climate but it’ll be somewhere in Africa.”

“All right. I’ll do my best for you.”

He muttered his thanks and was about to turn away when his hand dived into his pocket. “I almost forgot. I was fitting new lights for Mrs. Baird early this morning and she asked me to give you this note.”

Lyn fingered it, her heart sinking. “Thanks. I’ll see you later.”

She entered the lounge, encountered Hazel’s vaguely inquisitive stare, and slit the envelope. Swiftly she read the few lines.

“Perfumed notepaper,” remarked Hazel. “It reaches all the way over here. Do you know anyone as girlish as that?”

“It’s from Mrs. Baird at the settlement. She’s invited me to a birthday picnic next Saturday.”

“Up the river?”

“I suppose so.”

“You don’t sound very uplifted.”

“I’d prefer not to go. She and I didn’t have much in common.”

Hazel yawned, her smile was jaded. “Think of all those starved bachelors with only Rosita to enliven their days. Be charitable, and go dressed in your nattiest
.
Who brought the note?”

“Rollins, the maintenance man.”

To avoid further questions, Lyn crumpled the invitation, pushed it into her pocket and moved towards the kitchen. Rosita’s few gushing words had jarred her memory, stirred up the scene with Adrian which she had striven for days to bury. She would not reply to the woman in haste.

Melia was in the kitchen preparing a salad from odd
-
looking dehydrated cabbage, tomatoes not much larger than peas, pineapple, gherkins, chopped peppers and a flaked tinned cheese of pallid hue. The boy was using his grass broom on the back veranda; his sleepy singing punctuated the sweeping.

“Isn’t nothing for you to do, Miss Lyn,” said Melia. “This is a social call. I’ve just had the good Rollins to see me.”

Melia lifted her wide bony shoulders. “He is like molasses, that man.”

“Yes, he is rather sweet.” Lyn laughed a little at Melia’s sudden mystified stare. “He confessed to having proposed to you last night.”

“Propose? What is that?”

“In all seriousness he asked you to marry him, and according to him you didn’t even say no. You just laughed at him.”

“Of course I laughed. Always he makes jokes.”

“Not that time. You hurt his feelings.”

“How does one talk to such a man?” Melia asked, chopping harder at the pineapple in her exasperation. “He has seen that already I work for you.”

“But, Melia,” Lyn was earnest, impressive, “wouldn’t you like to have a man to care for you, a husband who would be yours, and no one else’s? Think how marvellous it would be to have someone belonging to you.”

“A husband?” Melia’s right hand ceased its operations and the stiff left arm rested in the comfortable groove above her hipbone; her dark eyes were unblinkingly upon Lyn. “A husband, did you say?”

Lyn pressed on, extolling Rollins and the marital state. Melia heard her out, without commenting. One could see that she was slowly revolving all the implications, that some time she would come to a decision from which she would not budge.

“Imagine the wonder of having a home and husband of your own,” Lyn concluded. “Rollins is very anxious to marry you, Melia.”

A silence followed. Then Melia drew a sigh of mental exhaustion.

“Rollins is a good man and I would trust him to do his best for a woman, but I will not marry him to be his servant.”

“You won’t be his servant—of course you won’t. He’ll look after you, give you the things you’ve never had. He loves you.”

Melia did not blush, as Lyn had expected. Without a tremor she enquired softly, “You believe that is true, Miss Lyn? It is because he likes me so much that he wishes to make me his wife? I am not good-looking, I have no country. I have not even a birth certificate.”

“Those details don’t matter. I’m sure he’ll do everything possible to make you happy.”

The second silence was longer than the first. Lyn looked at the drab hues of the salad—even the tomatoes were a dull gold
—
and thought of bright green lettuce and the darker length of a crisp cucumber, the moist exuberance of beetroot, slices of scarlet tomatoes and radishes trimmed into flower shapes, the rich yellow and blue-white of hard
-
boiled eggs. For a few seconds she yearned for the temperate shores of England.

Then Melia spoke, without emphasis but with finality. “I would like to marry Mr. Rollins, but not while you are here. If he will wait till you sail back to your country, then I will marry him.”

Lyn was too weary to attempt to change a mind so patently made up. She had done her duty by Rollins, forced Melia to give consideration to his proposal and used blandishments to make her accept it. It was up to him to coax her into fixing a date.

Claud came into the house with a clatter which galvanized Melia and brought the boy back into the kitchen.

“I’ll set the table,” Lyn said, and she collected the water jug and glasses.

It was not till she went to bed that night, earlier than the other two; that Lyn could give her entire attention to Rosita’s letter. She smoothed out the sheet of paper and again read its stiltedly phrased contents.

“I have often wished to apologize to you for
m
y eccentric behavior when you left Denton to take up residence with the Merricks, but the longer one leaves it, the more difficult an apology becomes. Will you please take this letter as an indication of my sincere regret, and show your forgiveness by attending my birthday celebration next Saturday? We are setting out from here at twelve in two cars and will find a good spot for a picnic and bathing. If you can come, Roger Bailey will pick you up during the morning
...
”

Lyn began slowly to undress. Adrian would not be there. His name was posted on the club notice-board as one of those who would be playing off one of the early rounds in a golf tournament on Saturday. Had there been any risk of meeting him she would have had to decline the invitation; on the other hand, Denton without him held no allure. She seemed stranded between two arid wastes, without even a mirage to color with hope the horizon. She could see no alternative to wading through the picn
i
c as a guest of the coy and watchful Rosita.

Saturday came, with a wondrous blue sky and clear early, sunshine which lay in strips across the breakfast table on the veranda and shed a bloom over the delectable array of tropical fruits. Lyn drank fruit juice and ate a section of pawpa
w
, but could not face scrambled eggs. Her head ached and she had no energy. She would have liked to lie in a hammock on the coolest side of the house and slip back into the sleep from which she had roused so languidly this morning. It must be the psychological effect of cowardice which made her feel so slack. She shrank from visiting Denton, from hearing Adrian’s name on careless lips.

Claud had to go down to the tiny bank on the waterfront for a session with the manager on the simmering question of money, and Hazel went off in someone’s car to have morning tea at the club. She would probably be taken out to the golf course, had doubtless decided to give herself the bitter pleasure of watching Adrian’s unhurried and accurate strokes.

When Roger arrived Lyn made a tremendous effort to be normal. He was happy and eager and pleased to be back
on a friendly footing. He informed her that everything was ready; he had only to pick up two passengers for the back seat and they could start away to catch up the first car.

Afterwards, Lyn never remembered that day very distinctly. She did recall driving through the forest with three facetious young men and coming out on to a road which had battalions of Denton trees on one side and Claud Me
r
rick’s festooned acres on the other. And the stretch of river at which they eventually stopped remained pictured in her brain because she spent several hours there, trying to appear as if she were enjoying Rosita’s party.

The water was fast-flowing and therefore less pest-ridden than the usual treacly jungle river. Gargantuan trees arched over it and the great strong roots of mangroves raked into its depths. The men scythed flat the elephant grass and Rosita doled out a sickly smelling liquid which, if dabbed here and there on the body, was guaranteed to repel mosquitos.

Lyn had never felt so flattened by the heat, so uncaring whether she lived or died. The headache persisted, and other aches attacked her limbs. Her pores oozed and the hot breeze set her shivering. With the vague intention to kill or cure, she took a dip with the others and, after some minutes of vainly endeavoring to synchronize the movements of her arms and legs, she crawled into her clothes, aching and sweating again and not too sure that her legs would carry her. Yet the smile upon her lips remained so fixed that no one suspected her flush had not been acquired through unavoidable contact with sunshine while bathing.

They reached Denton at about five-thirty.

“Come in for sundowners,” exclaimed Rosita, still airy and birthday-minded.

Lyn didn’t know how she was going to drag her leaden body into the house. “Will you take me home?” she whispered to Roger.

“You can’t go yet. Mrs. Baird would be frightfully upset. I believe she’s produced something special in the way of savories. Are you tired?”

She nodded and her scalp was split by knives of pain,

“A drink will help you,” he said. “Have just one and then I’ll take you.”

Pure will-power got Lyn out of the car and up to a chair on the Bairds’ veranda. From there she saw Adrian approaching, heard him say,

“Did you people have a good time? Sorry I couldn’t make it, Mrs. Baird.”

“Well, you have promised to dine with us,” came Rosita’s sharply playful voice. “John is pouring some whisky for you. Try one of these from the dish.”

There was talk and laughter. Lyn slackened in her chair, concentrating on the drink she held, fighting back one of those waves of searing heat and its aftermath of ague-like shivering. The worst passed and she managed to place her glass on a table and stand up.

“I
...
I’ll have to go now, Mrs. Baird. Thanks so much
for...”