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Matt said, “What d’you want money for ... a new dress for the Astartes’ party? It’s a month away. I’ll get you some silk.”

“Damn the party,” she answered. “I just want to be independent—not tied to that log cabin and Julian’s bounty. You’ll let me pay a little of what I owe, but he never will. I hate him.”

“Your perspective’s all wrong. He’s the big boss and you happen to be one of his minor responsibilities,” Matt told her, brutally casual. “Count yourself lucky that he’s treated you so well. Here, take this bundle of magazines and let me have them back when you’ve finished with them. And stop wanting to alter Julian. He’s set too hard.”

Phil climbed the steep rut from the waterfront. Reaching the shade of the trees, she dragged the wrapper from the roll of papers and opened one. Dawdling, she arrived at the clearing as the post official in his bush car was leaving. His head bobbed through the window-space.

“Pardon, senhora. There is one letter for you, but one —a small envelope among Senhor Caswell’s mail. He will give it to you. Many apologies!”

Phil nodded to him and ran across the grass and up the steps to Julian’s veranda. He was perusing a note in the living-room when she burst in, and he looked up to indicate her letter, which lay apart from his own.

“There’s your cheque,” he remarked with a half-smile.

“If you like I’ll change it for you. I’ve plenty of currency in the safe.”

She used his paper-knife. “I hope the old boy has been generous. I framed my request in a way to wring his heart.”

But no pink slip was attached to the letter, nor did her panicky tearing of the envelope dislodge a cheque. So she flattened the paper and read most of the closely typed wording before raising her head to encounter Julian’s questioning gaze.

“What’s wrong?” he demanded.

Bewildered and fearful, she said: “Maybe I’m dense. Read it, and tell me what he’s getting at.”

He came and looked over her shoulder, and in a minute he took the letter from her and went through it again.

“God, what a let-down!” he said. “Your mother must be a bitch.”

“Looks like it, doesn’t it?” she managed thinly. “He says she was never divorced from my father and has only recently married again. The money is legally hers, not mine. It’s . . . horrible, Julian.”

“You can’t get away from the law.”

“Apart from that . . . how could she, after breaking his heart! She was the reason he stayed in the tropics. He worshipped her—Nigel told me so.”

“Any man who idolises a woman is begging for trouble,” he commented tersely. “I suppose she and her new husband are hard up, so she tried this—and succeeded. You notice she wishes you to write to her at the lawyer’s office?”

“Convention,” she said bitterly. “She never cared for anyone but herself. I’d rather die than take anything from her.”

“Melodramatic, but doubtless true,” he allowed. “Well, it could be worse. For three years you’ll be broke, but at twenty-one you’ll get three hundred a year. . .

“I didn’t see that.”

“Here it is in the last paragraph. ‘In case this information has come as a shock to you, may I remind you of the clause in your late father’s will which provides for a sum of three hundred pounds to be paid to you on your twenty-first birthday, or on the date of your marriage, whichever comes first, and annually thereafter.’ ”

She scarcely heard. Her eyes, large and dark, mirrored a sick despair. “I’m untrained. I shall have to go to Cape Town and find some piffling job.”

“What would you
like
to do?”

“I don’t know, except that I’m . . . scared of loneliness. Julian,” she came closer and touched the shirt-cuff rolled above his elbow, “think of something for me—some way I can remain on Valeira and earn my keep.”

“If you weren’t a girl,” he said with unwonted softness, “I could put you to work—make a planter of you. But you’re as well aware as I am that there’s nothing here for a woman.”

“Except marriage,” she said.

“Not that, either, unless you decide on Crawford, whose time is up in a little over a year.”

“Perhaps Matt will have some ideas. I’ll go down and see him.”

“No, don’t!” He grasped her wrist and she twisted back, surprised at his force and peremptoriness. “Keep it between the two of us for the present. Give me time to think it over.”

Breathlessly, as though she had been hurrying, she murmured: “All right. I’m in your hands, Julian.”

His short laugh was unmirthful. “The mission people implied as much eight months ago. I’m making no claims. Let’s shelve this business till the week-end. Come to dinner on Saturday.”

“Don’t you mean lunch?”

“I mean dinner. Discussions are best conducted after sundown.”

What Julian intended for her future she could only conjecture, but desperately, with every nerve and fibre of her being, she relied on his calm, merciless brain to conceive a miracle.

By Saturday, encouraged by his agreeable nod whenever they happened to meet, she was happy and excited with anticipation. She put on the tan linen dress which heightened the flames in her hair, and used a touch of the make-up left behind by Daphne Foster, after which she stood back to approve her reflection.

Julian paid her the compliment of wearing a white lounge suit and offering a cocktail without mocking her lack of years. For dinner they had roast pigeons, potatoes, tinned beans and asparagus, and a steamed fruit pudding which so delighted Phil that she ate a second helping. Sam brought coffee and cognac to the veranda.

Presently Julian lit a second cigarette from his first and leaned back, regarding her keenly.

“A while ago, you said you’d leave the island when your money turned up. Supposing you had three hundred a year from now on—would you go?”

“I’m . . . not sure.” He was eyeing her with a ruthless intensity which froze her heart. Her head bent. “Yes, if you wanted it so badly.”

“Good. Now we’re getting somewhere.” He stubbed the half-cigarette, slung one knee over the other and rested his arm on it. “This lawyer will be satisfied with a marriage certificate, but he’s bound to verify the details. It’ll have to be watertight. Someone must go through the ceremony with you.”

“No!” she cried. “That would be vile. I couldn’t do it.”

“Listen to me,” he said grimly. “We’re going to settle this once and for all. Any preference as to the partner?”

She sprang up, trembling. “I won’t hear any more. It’s ghastly, discussing marriage as you would a tennis match. I’ll stay on the island for the next three years. I’ll work for the shippers and pay you back—”

“You won’t.” He was head and shoulders above her, clipped violence in his voice. “If there were any way of forcing you to accept money from me I’d take it. There isn’t, so I’ll marry you in Lagos, and make you legally entitled to your own."

For a frightened, frantic moment she was unable to drag her gaze from the taut brown throat. Then she put her hands to her face, pressing them to her forehead as if in pain.

His savage tones continued: “We’ll send the lawyer the certificate and you can return here till the first cheque arrives. After that you go to the mainland and start annulment proceedings. Nothing complicated about it.”

Her hands dropped. Pale and strained, she asked, “Why should you do this?”

“Why not? The name is mine to bestow as I please. It’s one you needn’t be ashamed of, and later you could revert to your own.”

“What would the other men think?”

“They wouldn’t know. We’d travel separately both ways and carry on as we are now till the lawyer parts up. The whole arrangement would be between you and me.”

She paused. Then, “If I agreed you’d demand a promise from me?”

“Naturally. Valeira’s no good for you, and never will be. Besides missing a lot of fun you’re playing hell with your health. In addition, you’re upsetting the men—”

“You’d get rid of me for Roger’s sake?”

“For all our sakes,” he corrected irritably. “In time there’ll come a successor to Roger.”

“And the promise?”

“That once your cheque is here you’ll sail on the first boat for Cape Town or England. To cover eventualities, I want your word that, whatever happens, you’ll leave within three months and accept financial help from me till you’re straightened out.”

Her knuckles gleamed pale on the veranda rail. “I see. You seem to have thought of everything. But as a plan it’s not quite up to your standard, Julian.”

“Of course it isn’t. Your blasted independence is in the way.”

“Eight months ago you’d have shipped me to England without compunction.”

“Not penniless. Anyway, time has made changes. You can do things with a precocious kid that are out of the question with a woman.”

“You’re sure we’d have grounds for an annulment?” she enquired in a low voice.

“The best in the world.”

‘Wouldn’t you hate to be connected with a case of that sort?”

“I might, if I intended ever returning to England. Out here one can commit murder and remain a good fellow. The climate is a wonderful get-out,”

He moved and called for drinks. No more was said till they came, and he was pouring lime juice and topping it with gin.

“Forget the fantastic angle. You need the cash, and a few words before a registrar will procure it for you. Simple, isn’t it?”

So simple as to be almost funny, if she could have gone into it with a wink and a cocked thumb. She took the glass and sipped at it, looked up into sardonic blue eyes and contrived a faint smile.

“I’ll sleep on it,” she said. “You’re in no haste to take on a wife?”

“I can hardly wait.” He grinned and drained his tumbler. “It’s clear-cut enough. You may borrow without hope of repaying any part of the debt for three years, or seize the chance of immediate independence. Either way I’m with you.”

“I don’t understand why. You’ve always resented me.”

“One can resent and still have compassion.”

“Compassion? You?” She had an impulse to laugh out her pain into his ironical face. Where one craved love, pity seared the soul. Unsteadily, feeling raw and naked, she set down her drink and dabbed her lips. “You won’t mind if I go now? Thank you for the dinner. I ... I’d prefer to give you the answer tomorrow.”

His shoulders lifted. “I’ve disappointed you. You’d have liked me to be sentimental. Mind the step—it’s just behind you.”

He accompanied her to her door, held the flashlight till the lamp glowed and said a casual good night.

Phil lingered near the table, her fingers locked tight with uncertainty and dread. In the back of her consciousness lay a conviction that her future, as she had seen it this evening, was inescapable; a magnet compelled her on to fulfilment, perhaps destruction.

Strange and terrible to be in love with a man like Julian. If only she had the pluck to take a loan from Matt and clear out. But such sacrifice was beyond human courage. For some reason clear only to himself, Julian had proposed a sort of marriage; that he had also set its limit she must ignore. He cared enough to risk a scandal; was it outside the bounds of possibility that he could be persuaded to care more? Supposing she failed?

But when she walked over to Julian’s house next morning, wearing her usual shorts and shirt this time and bearing a freshly made vanilla cake, her chin was well up and her eyes smiling.

Instantly he caught her mood. Brows lifted, he bowed over the cake and flipped a thumbnail at her fingers.

“Here we go, little one,” he jibed gently. “Into marriage and out of it within six months. When it’s all over I’ll write a book about it.”

“I’ll help you,” she said, and joined in his grunt of laughter.

DELIBERATELY, Phil buttoned up her doubts and existed in the present, carefully observing all the precautions upon which Julian had insisted. When he went off to Lagos “to see a dentist and do some business,” she did not go down to the waterfront to speed him. A couple of days later Matt was surprised at her anxiety to board a boat bound for one of the ports at the mouth of the Niger.

“You can’t spend more than a couple of hours on land at a dump like that,” he protested. “Those ports are pestholes.”

“I shall stay aboard and go down to Libreville. I’ve heard you can buy French fashions there.”

“Make the round journey?”

“If it’s possible.”

“What will you use for money?”

“I have several pounds,” she said carefully. “Julian made me an advance till my allowance comes. He knew I was keen to take the trip.”

“If he agreed to it . . Matt shrugged. “Take care of yourself, lovey, and keep near the boat.”

Early next morning, followed by a husky Negro carrying her soft-topped hatbox from which a thorough scouring and polishing could not remove the traces of blue mould, Phil stepped on the deck of a clean little coaster.

Late in the afternoon the ship nosed between thickening mangroves whose roots clawed the silt bars in the delta. For a while they moved through calm waters between mangrove swamps and forested headlands, and by the time the white houses of the port were visible a blood-coloured sky was painting them red-gold, and dusk hazed the ramparts of trees on either side.

Phil opened her case for the inevitable customs man, and proceeded through the shed to where, in the darkness of a huge-girthed tree, Julian awaited her in a borrowed car to drive her on to Batu, a tiny trading station dependent on the precious and plentiful palm oil. The schooner they boarded reeked of the stuff; the decks were saffron and slippery with it, the holds chockful of drums.

That night they anchored off Lagos, and Phil slept in a hammock beneath the stars while Julian played cards in the cabin forward. She awoke in an enveloping wet fog with a crick in the spine and a headache. This morning her consuming desire was to be done with the beastly affair and return to the island.

Fortunately, everything moved smoothly. Mid-morning she and Julian were canoed ashore and he hired a taxi to convey them to one of the dazzling buildings. In a cool room he introduced the two English witnesses, and went through the ceremony and its aftermath of handshakes and good wishes as if marriage were a form of diversion in which he indulged every month or so. But for the thin gold circle on her finger Phil wouldn’t have believed that brief words and a few signatures had tied so solemn a knot.