Plantation Doctor (3 page)

Adrian once more thumbed the starter. They jolted along the by-path and out to another road which was not unlike the one which led up to the mission. But this ran between the native huts, and Lyn saw children playing in the dust and women in long cotton mission frocks pounding co in great stone bowls and gossiping in groups. They paused to watch the passage of the car. A man with a new white bandage about his woolly head tapped it and shouted cheerily as the car reached him.

The huts petered out and the road was wider and smoother, with tall coconut palms on either side and a shadowy tunnel ahead.

“Dr. Si
n
clair, I’m a little uncertain about the native boys who are to act as bearers,” said Lyn with some diffidence. “What do I do about them?”

“You don’t do anything,” he replied, and trod with a fraction more force on the accelerator.

‘That’s odd advice to a tenderfoot,” she said. “Do they realize what’s expected of them?”

“Absolutely.”

His brevity made her prickly with annoyance. “I do think you might try to be more helpful. I haven’t the least notion how to treat the boys.”

“Where you’re going,” he said, “you won’t need to know.”

Lyn felt herself go cold and clammy. Rather wildly,
s
he glanced from right to left at the speeding walls o
f
trees and back at the dark laterite road. Night was closing in, blackening the branches.

Then all at once she knew, and was furious. The road which she had taken for an alte
r
native path to the mission was really a route out of Cape Bandu. The “good-sized packet of food” which he had ordered, his request that she bring her hat, the collecting of her bags and Melia at the last moment
—
all added up to a simple ruse to prevent the trek to Akasi. She’d been completely fooled!

In a controlled voice which she scarcely recognized as her own, Lyn said, “Where are you taking us?”

“To the Denton estate—where else?” he queried, calm and uncaring. “My assistant is on leave, so you and Melia can have his house for two or three weeks
—
till Mrs. Latimer comes for you.”

A few seconds passed before she was able to say, “And how will you get Mrs. Latimer to Denton?”

“I’m afraid my life is too busy to make any special effort about that. One of those letters I wrote this afternoon will be posted to her from Freetown. The rest is up to her.” He paused, and tacked on whimsically, “I wouldn’t get too hot about it if I were you. Temperatures are apt to run high in the tropics without letting emotions get the better of you. I’m a doc
t
or; my duty is to save lives.”

“You had no right to interfere,” she said in low, angry tones. “Your beastly officiousness has probably cost me my job.”

His sideways smile at her was ironical and indolent. “You can get married. I’ll atone by introducing you to half a dozen eligible young men. You'll go down we
ll
at the plantation.”

Lyn could have wept. But instead, she stared in front of her, hating the unmoved man at her side with a totally unfamiliar intensity.

CHAPTER THREE

Lyn
woke up on her first morning at Denton to a world drenched in lovely, opalescent light. She twitched back the mosquito-net and sat up to gaze through the window at the wide sweep of grass between this house and the next

Last night she had seen only the lights of the other dwellings scattered down the clearing. Adrian Sinclair had brought her here, instructed a boy to make up the bed with aired linen and prepare a meal for the two women, and gone off to his own house. Tired and bitterly disappointed, Lyn had scarcely tasted the food; she had slipped between the sheets and willed herself to sleep.

This morning her anger was dormant. The sky reminded her of a sapphire bathed in milk, and the distant trees, which apparently surrounded the settlement, were thinly veiled by a mist which softened their strident green into a hue which vaguely reminded her of leafy roads in England. The houses were white and square and neatly thatched with banana leaves; each had its small veranda overlooking a flower-bed, but there were no fences, no gardens. Lyn supposed that most of them were built to the pattern of this house, though there was nothing regimental about the settlement.

Her bedroom was large and furnished in the local limba
—
a wood which grew too fast to have much character though it took well to wax polish. The bedcover and curtains were of a brown-and-gold cottage weave, and the one large rug was cream. Lyn remembered that besides this room there were only a living-room, a bathroom and the kitchen. Adrian had informed her that this was a regulation bachelor dwelling on the Denton estate. Every employee had his private habitation because the tropical climate had its own peculiar effect on the nerves, and men’s characters differed so widely. So long as they were not forced into intimate companionship the members of the staff remained good friends. There were regular dinner-parties and card-playing, covered courts and a swimming pool, and the several cars were available every evening for those who wished to seek diversion in the coastal town of Palmas.

As they travelled, Lyn had listened to his cool, unhurried voice, because she could not get away from it. She had listened and seethed. She didn’t care that Denton Rubber Estates Ltd. were proud of the comforts and civilization they had established for their men in the jungle. All she could think of was that because of Adrian Sinclair the miles were lengthening between herself and Akasi.

With a night’s sleep behind her she felt differently. Not towards the cynically good-looking doctor; the natural sweetness in her character seemed turned to fire when she thought of his treachery. But if circumstances forced her to wait while the Sierra Leone postal authorities dealt with his letter to Mrs. Latimer and the good lady’s reply, this place appeared to have much more to offer than Cape Bandu, or even Freetown.

Lyn got out of bed and stretched luxuriously. She had no time to do more before a timid tap sounded at the door and Melia came in. Lyn had forgotten Melia. She looked now at the thin face gone tight with shyness, at the neat, faded dress covered by a white apron, the smooth black hair wrenched back and pinned into a knot, and knew a rush of pleasure and thankfulness.

“Good morning,” she said. “You’re up early. Where did you sleep, Melia?”

“I had a good night. The doctor sent a camp-bed and I put it in the kitchen.”

“You can’t go on sleeping there. We’ll transfer it to the living-room.”

“No, ma’am,” She spoke hastily, her sallow face flushed. “We keep the camp-bed in the kitchen. Isn’t nice that I have my bed where you must eat.”

“But it’s only for a couple of weeks, and the kitchen will be stuffy.”

“I am used to the heat. I will sleep there quite well,” said Melia, and she instantly added, “You like tea or
c
offee? And what, please, do you eat for breakfast?
T
he boy bring from the doctor’s house a basket with eggs and tins of butter and meat and bacon. Also there is another basket with fruit.”

Lyn made her choice. She was hungry and eager to make a closer inspection of her surroundings. By the time she had dressed, the small house smelled appetizingly of frying bacon, and the living-room presented an inviting picture, with its wicker chairs and chintz cushions, its table covered by a plain white cloth and set with an excellent imitation of Spode china and a centre-piece piled high with bananas and mangoes. Lyn had to admit that the rubber company possessed a soul of sorts.

While she ate she could look through the open doorway and across the narrow veranda at the emerald grass that sloped down to a large, rambling villa which was almost completely hidden by palms. That, she supposed, was where the manager lived with his wife. Lyn wondered about the wife, how she tolerated being the only woman among a dozen or fifteen men
—
though to be sure there were other women in Palmas, which was not so far away. Still, it must be a lonely kind of life, and the everlasting heat and myriads of pests must make it well
-
nigh i
n
supportable at times.

Lyn finished her coffee and went out to the veranda. Now, she had a good view of the whole settlement. The twenty houses were spread over many acres; six of them were larger than the rest and were occupied, Lyn presumed, by those officers of the company who had wives out for occasional visits. The men were apparently leaving for their work in the farther reaches of the plantations, for now and then a motor-bike or small car roared away down the wide red track which seemed to thrust straight into the crepuscular gloom of the jungle. Otherwise there was little activity.

Lyn had just decided to go indoors for a hat when she was hailed from the path at the side of the house.

“Miss Russell! Just a moment.”

Though she had heard them for the first time only yesterday, Lyn had come to know those tones very well. Stiffly, her forces gathered, she turned to confront the owner of them.

C
ool and nonchalant, he came to the foot of the st
o
ne steps, his dark hair crisp in the early sun, his eyes like cornelians under those straight dark brows. He was not alone. His companion was a thinnish man with red hair and a broad nose.

“Miss Russell, I’d like to introduce our manager John Baird,” said Adrian. “He will take you over to meet Mrs.
Baird, and she, in turn, will make you acquainted with some of the supervisors.” To the manager he added with a trace of amusement. “Well, here’s our invader, John. What’s your verdict? Would you have done as I did?”

The smile of the other man made pleasant his rather ugly face. “I would, Doctor, but I might have bungled it. I’m not so bright at handling the ladies, you know. Welcome to Denton, Miss Russell. We’ll do our best to make your stay an agreeable one.”

“Thank you,” she said.

Adrian nodded towards the door of the house. “Are you comfortable in there?”

“Perfectly. It’s a charming little home.”

“But you’d still prefer to be fighting your way through to Akasi?”

“Naturally.”

He grinned faintly. “You underrate the privileges of living at the Denton settlement. It’s the best equipped on the Coast. When eventually you get through to Akasi you’ll look back nostalgically on your period here.” He inclined his head at them both. “I have patients waiting.
See you later, John.”

It took Lyn a moment to recover from the choked feeling which Adrian’s unrepentant mockery had engendered. But the habit of politeness was strong and she contrived a smile without much difficulty.

“If you’ll excuse me, I’ll get my hat, Mr. Baird. I’m looking forward to meeting your wife.”

John Baird was an unconservative Scotsman. He knew everything about rubber and a great deal about the men who superintended the production, coagulation and baling of it; he handled Africans with that degree of sternness tempered with generosity which yields the best results, was seldom upset by the climate and never by the
m
o
notony. But, considering that he had been married for five years, he knew very little about his wife.

Rosita Baird was about thirty-eight, a year or two older than her husband. She had a close-fitting cap of black hair and smallish black eyes with feverish lights in them. Her complexion was dead white, her mouth a thin scarlet line which occasionally jerked at the
corner
s with “tropic nerves.”

Later, Lyn learned that she had first met John while he was on leave in London, that he, modest man, had hardly dared to believe that the woman existed who would share his home in the wilderness. It had not occurred to him that his ugliness was attractive, particularly when allied to an excellent salary. Nor had he realized that Rosita, a woman past thirty and without a profession, was a failure among her own set and longing for just such a position as he could offer her. He had always been grateful to her for marrying him, and there was an element of gratitude also in Rosita’s regard for her husband; she had never forgotten the ecstatic first moment of knowing herself a married woman. On the surface, at least, gratitude seemed to be an adequate substitute for love.

Lyn had been rather surprised when the manager had indicated one of the several larger houses as being his own. She had looked back toward the long, shapely roof of the villa among the palms.

“I thought that would be yours.”

“Oh no, Dr. Sinclair has that,” he had answered, as if it were a fact she should have guessed.

“Does he live there alone?”

“Of course.”

Then Lyn met Mrs. Baird, and she forgot the annoying doctor. For Rosita in a tan-colored housecoat and gilt filigree buttons and a tall qui
l
ted collar was an arresting sight. She stood on the veranda, extending tapering white fingers.

“Good morning,” she said. “You’re Miss Russell. Dr. Sinclair came over and told us about you last night, after he’d settled you at the home. It was fortunate, was it not, that his assistant happened to be on long leave, so that you could use his place?”

This, thought Lyn, was not a particularly auspicious beginning to their acquaintanceship. The manager’s dwelling had at least two bedrooms, but Mrs. Baird seemed to be intimating that a young woman would not be a welcome addition to her household.

John Baird said, “Now that you’ve met each other, I’ll be off. I’ll be back at eleven.”

“Good-bye, dear,” said Rosita absently.

But there was nothing abstracted about her as she led the way into a large lounge and turned to survey Lyn’s small, vital face and girlish figure in striped linen. Her eyes had taken on an almost feline glint.

“You were very foolish to come alone to the tropics,” she remarked.

Lyn smiled. “I shall soon begin to believe that. But I’m bound to go on to Akasi. I’ve no alternative.”

“In these places there is always an alternative. I’ve known women come out to settle for three years with their husbands, and return to England within days. It’s a matter of stamina, both mental and physical. Unfortunately one can’t know whether one is conditioned for the tropics till one has experienced them.” Rosita waved Lyn to a chair and herself drifted to the corner of a divan. “How well do you know Dr. Sinclair?”

Lyn could have answered expressively, but she remained on the conventional plane and explained briefly. The other woman nodded, and the black eyes gleamed a little with satisfaction. For a woman of her age Rosita was oddly transparent.

“You don’t care for our doctor? Women never do. He’s too careless of their emotions, too much the immovable bachelor. There are other young men here, however, who are more impressionable; even the married ones have an eye for a woman. It’s no joke, I can tell you, being the only one among so many of them. If it were not for the fact that they like and respect my husband my life would be unbearable.”

This was said with a certain air of pride and an undertone of excitement. While Rosita went on talking, Lyn watched her and speculated. She was not a happy woman; too much in life had passed her by. But the present mode of her existence exhilarated and gratified her; it made her conscious of, and glad of,
her
womanhood. She spent three months of every year in England, but whereas there she vegetated in hotels among people who soon lost interest in her personality, here at Denton she really lived, as the pivot of the social life of the plantation. She loved to talk about herself and wanted no competition.

The lounge became hotter, the atmosphere laden with perfume and humidity, and at last Mrs. Baird stirred to switch on a fan and order some tea. By now Lyn was dazed with heat and the continuous sprightly tones of her hostess. With relief, she heard the returning footsteps of John Baird.

He had brought with him two of the supervisors, Roger Bailey and Peter Walsh. In their khaki shirts and shorts, their hair damp with sweat and flattened from wearing a topi, they looked ordinary and likeable, not unlike the young men with whom Lyn had played at the tennis club in Bournemouth. They greeted her and tried not to stare, drank tea flavored with whisky and told her, almost in unison, that the overland route to Akasi was impossible. In their eagerness to convince her of this, they both escorted her back to her temporary abode.

“Will you be at Mrs. Baird’s for sundowners tonight?” one of them
—
she couldn’t remember if it were Peter or Roger
—
asked her.

“I shall if I’m invited.”

“Will you go with us
—
the two of us
—
to the club at Palmas tomorrow?” the other wished to ascertain.

“You’re very kind. I’d like to.”

They sighed with youthful satisfaction, tipped their helmets and moved away.

Before the day was over Lyn had several such refreshing experiences. There were five of these young men living at the settlement, all between the ages of twenty
-
four and twenty-eight. The rest were older, some had wives in England and on the Continent, and a couple were studious and very quiet. Had she cared, she could have booked up her evenings a long time ahead, but at intervals while the cocktails were being absorbed Mrs. Baird took the trouble to remind the company that Miss Russell was in West Africa to work, and that her sojourn at Denton would be comparatively short.

Quite soon Lyn was aware of Rosita’s passion for twisting and exaggerating situations to emphasize her own role among them. In a way it was pitiful, for none of them appeared to wish to regard her
as other than the manager’s wife. Already Lyn had learned that a nice woman rarely comes to harm at the hands of a white man in West Africa; there are too many who are ready to guard her with their lives.

That evening she dined with the manager and his wife. From the veranda she later saw a night sky of sultry beauty and a heavy, molten moon sliding down behind the trees and splattering gold between the branches. Natives crossing the great compound looked eerie, their dark skin merged with the blackness and only their shirts visible.

Mr. Baird said comfortably, “The company have been examining the possibility of lighting up the whole settlement. It would be a complicated job
—
they’d have to put in another plant.”

“You mean outdoor lamp standards?” asked Lyn.

“Yes. It would be convenient.”

“But somehow wrong,” she said.

“Wrong! You’d think differently if you had to live here where it’s dark for twelve hours every night,” put in Rosita with tartness. “What’s wrong about it?”

“It’s just a foolish idea,” Lyn confessed. “Sierra Leone, Liberia and the Gold Coast
—
I like to think of them as the Darkest Africa of travel books.”

“So they are,” said an even voice from below the veranda, “but one doesn’t grow sentimental over them.” Adrian mounted the steps. “How’s everyone?”

Rosita fluttered. “Sit down, doctor. We hoped you’d come to dinner. I had a special dish prepared for you.”

He drew forward a chair to face them. Under the swinging lamp he looked brown and lean and self-assured.

“I’m so sorry. I was busy till late, making up for my absence yesterday.”

“How is Dick Wilton’s fever?” asked the manager.

“Settling, but I’ll keep him in the ward for a week, if it’s all right with you, John. It’s his first bout and a nasty one.”

“T
here’s always someone sick or on leave.
Yo
u get used to doing without one or two of them. Dick’s shaping nicely and he’s conscientious, so a rest won’t make him lazy. What will you have?”

“Nothing, thanks.” Adrian took a cigarette from the box on the veranda table and set a match to it. His smile across at Lyn was sardonic. “Pleasant bunch of men, aren’t they?”

“Delightful.”

“After today you won’t have a dull moment and I anticipate increased demands, for sleeping pills. Such is the effect of woman on the cadets of the Coast. Amazing, isn’t it?” He flicked the match down into the grass. “Sticking the heat without trouble?”

“I think so.”

He looked at Rosita. “I doubt whether Miss Russell has staying-power to equal yours, Mrs. Baird; you’re phenomenal. John’s a lucky man.”

The other woman, who had shown signs of restlessness while the doctor addressed Lyn, relaxed into her chair on a drawn breath of self-esteem and turned the conversation into channels more to her taste.

Lyn was sleepy, but not too sleepy to reflect that Adrian Sinclair was astonishingly practised in the handling of women. A doctor in equatorial Africa had few white women as patients, and she surmised that Adrian’s discerning eye where the other sex was concerned sprang more from a natural instinct than from his medical conscience. Which made him a rather more complex individual than she had supposed
him
.
Cold-bloodedness in a doctor was to some extent comprehensible, but swift recognition of a woman’s moods and an immediate bid to placate them put him back into the category of the unknown. He was deep, this Dr. Sinclair. She doubted whether anyone really knew him.

She found herself concocting reasons why he had taken up tropical medicine. A disillusioning love affair, perhaps. But, no. You couldn’t imagine him bothering at all with women, let alone allowing one of them to shape his future. Lyn had never before encountered a man so entirely self-sufficient and coolly charming. His attitude set him above the other men; he was arrogant, yet without
con
ceit,
i
mperturbable to a tantalizing degree, yet capable of swift decisive action
—
as witness his abduction of her from Cape Bandu. And more aggravating than any of these qualities was the conviction that he would never permit himself to get angry. Disapproving maybe, or coldly aloof, but never fiery and furious as Lyn had been with him yesterday
—
as she would be still if she were not so sleepy.

It was nearly eleven when he stood up.

“I’ll
say good night, Mrs. Baird
...
and John
—
and accompany our guest to her house on my way. Are you ready, Miss Russell?”

Lyn said her good nights and followed him down to the worn path. He trod out his cigarette and took an impersonal grip of her elbow.

Over in the trees fireflies were flittering like wind-blown sparks, and above hung the stars. The moon had gone and drawn down with it the mellow golden glow. The atmosphere was benign and moist.

In a tone both mocking and genial he said, “I suppose you’re dated up for the next two weeks? You’ll be dancing in the club at Palmas, playing tennis, bathing amid an admiring audience, driving out to the coast road and generally enjoying a series of glorious binges for which you needn’t even pay an occasional kiss. In fact it would be best for the masculine equilibrium if you confined your thanks to pretty words.”

“Is that a prescription?”

“If you like. Kisses can be unsettling like beggars, and the men aren’t doing so badly without them.”

“I thought you had it in mind that I should marry one of the eligibles,” she reminded him. “Kisses come before a proposal, I believe.”

“You believe right. You could do worse, but hasty marriages sometimes turn into deplorable messes, particularly when contracted in abnormal circumstances.” With satire he added, “I still think that marriage is more in your line than buying and selling
objets d’art,
and infinitely preferable to sweating away your health at Akasi. How long has Mrs. Latimer been there?”

“About eight months.
”

“In that case, I wouldn’t mind betting that by new she’s on the way to becoming a sick woman. You can’t exist in swamp country without picking up some pestilential fever. When she does reach Denton we’ll do our best to dissuade her from going back.”

They had got to Lyn’s house. Adrian dropped his hand.

“Let me know if you want anything, won’t you?”

Night air had driven off the drowsiness, sharpened her exasperation. “You don’t mean that at all. You know exactly what I want!”

“So I do,” he said carelessly, “but I doubt very much if you do. Good night, Miss Russell. Sleep well.”

She answered him shortly and went up into the living
-
room. She switched on the light and at once tried unsuccessfully to stifle a scream. Adrian leapt the steps and thrust her aside.

“It’s only a rat,” he said with relief, “and a dead one at that. It must have got through from the roof, leapt on to the table and died there.” To Melia, who had appeared from the door to the kitchen, he added, “It’s poisoned. Get a boy to bury it in the morning.”