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“You have fine hands, Charles . . . sensitive, tender. If I did not know that you also have passion, I would say that you are wholly the good physician. It is a pity that you English are so reserved. There is no getting into your mind. I wonder how you satisfy your women?”

He was saved from uttering some inanity by the roar of a Port Andrew taxi on the drive below. He stood up and moved to the top of the wide steps.

At his side, Sonya murmured: “A girl needing a job. You will turn her down, Charles.”

But he was hurrying down the steps, extending his hands. “Phil! I never anticipated for a moment that "you’d ever bother to find us. I’ll dismiss the taxi. You run up there, out of the sun.”

The girl did not run, Sonya noticed. She was thin, composed and tired—very tired. English, or at the most Colonial. Her green linen dress was neat, but travel-weary, and hair with reddish tints escaped from under the doublefelt hat. Sonya did not like red or blonde hair.

Charles reached the terrace again almost on Phil’s heels, and made the introduction.

Sonya nodded regally. “You have come to live in Port Andrew, Miss . .. er . .. Crane?”

“No,” Phil said quietly. “This is a visit on my way to Lagos.”

Charles indicated a chair. “I’ll send for more coffee. Will you join us, Sonya?”

“Thank you, no. I have business to do in town.” She had nothing to fear from this child; she was almost plain,
“Au revoir
, Charles.”

He went with her to the car because he knew there would be hell to pay if he omitted the courtesy, and came back to find Phil sitting as he had left her. She was white, her knees were drawn up and her hands clasped upon them. The change in her was incredible. Her voice retained the husky sweetness, but it was dead.

“I’ve come to beg a favour,” she said.

“Have some coffee first. Black?”

“Do I look so jaded? I spent the night on a mail boat— in a hammock above a cage of monkeys. We were stuck outside Port Andrew.”

“What a pity. We’d have found a bed for you somewhere.”

“Would you? That’s why I am here.” She stirred the coffee and drank a little. “From the boat this morning I went to the shipping office and bought a ticket for Lagos, but the coaster doesn’t sail till tomorrow. There’s no hotel, of course, and the club takes men only. The shipping clerk was a little upstage, gave me to understand that women don’t travel alone in West Africa, and I’d better think up the name of a friend pretty quick.”

“So you did. We’ll fix you up. I’m only sorry it’s not for more than one night.” He sat back in the same position from which he had viewed Sonya. “Meeting someone in Lagos?”

“Only a third boat. I’m going to England.”

“But you’ve no people there?”

“I’ve no people anywhere. When one decides to cut away from the tropics one has to pick on a place to go.” Charles said: “If you’re in need of an anchor for a time why not use us? Nothing’s so bad when you’ve work to do and a friend to call on.”

“If I accepted your kindness it could only be for a period, which would hardly be fair to you.”

“Why shouldn’t we both give it a month’s trial? Don’t answer yet. As soon as you feel rested, I’ll take you round and you shall say whether you’d rather sleep here tonight in what used to be a nurse’s room, or in the spare room of a nice woman I know in town.”

He digressed about the garden and the coastline and the sociable crowd at the club. When a faint colour had crept up under her skin he led the way to the laboratory where four young men were working, and into his office, and on to the records office, where Phil met two wives of laboratory assistants, Mrs. Kevin and Mrs. Coombs.

“Kevin and his wife are due for a long vacation,” Charles said when they had emerged once more into the corridor. “If you could slip into her place we’d all be grateful. The records aren’t complicated, but they’re terribly important; as soon as they lag we’re in the cart.”

They mounted wide stone stairs to the upper floor. The two dormitories occupied the whole of one side of the main corridor. On the other were bedrooms and bathrooms.

“We call this side the boarding-house,” said Charles. “The Coombs and the Kevins have the two largest rooms, the next is officially mine, though I seldom sleep here, and those at the end were originally reserved for nurses. They’re empty now, so you can select which you like.”

But he opened first the door of the room which he was sure would attract her most. It had a huge, semi-circular window that opened to a roofed balcony which commanded a magnificent vista of white-capped sea, remote white houses with red roofs, and a dark green sweep of forest. From a seat near the ornamental iron staircase one looked twenty feet down at the garden and close enough to touch grew a flower-laden frangipani.

Charles was saying: “The male nurses—we have only three—sleep in a separate building. We all eat in the dining-room or on the terrace, and there’s a jeep belonging to the Institute which will run you into town. If you feel you can stay, and I hope you will, I’d like to assure you that you’ll have no contact with sickness. Nearly all our patients are seen by appointment, and few remain overnight; and anyway, you’d see nothing of them. I’m offering you a clerical post among a bunch of grand people.”

“You’re extraordinarily kind, Charles.”

He crossed to the door. “Lie down for an hour. I’ll have some food brought up to you. We can send for your things later if you make up your mind to throw in with us.”

He snicked the door behind him and went down to his office. Abstractedly he thumbed through a report, and then he gave it up and dropped his jaws into his hands, his eyes following the slack movements of a garden boy outside.

No doubt about it, the girl must be persuaded to live at the Institute and put in a regular six hours a day. She must be made to throw off the numbness and laugh herself back to prettiness and vitality. He wondered what could possibly have happened to her in such a spot as Goanda. A man, of course, a trader or a district official. Why was it that the nicest girls inevitably fell for swine? He recollected her wide eyes and laughing mouth, her eagerness and high spirits. The man had done that to her, as well.

At two o’clock Phil knocked at his door.

“I’d like to do that job,” she said hesitantly. “But no salary—no strings.”

“Good. Go along and get matey in the records department, You’re one of us.”

Not quite, though. Sonya was still to be won over. Charles sighed to himself. When Phil’s footsteps had receded he lifted the telephone and dialled, hoping that this was one of the days when the apparatus jibbed. But no. The unmistakable grunt of a houseboy.

“Is Madame there?” he enquired.

She was. “This is unusual, Charles. I was about to take my
siesta
.”

“Forgive me. Would you prefer me to ring later?”

“Certainly not. What is it,
cheri?"

“Our talk this morning was interrupted. How soon can we continue it?” Damned hypocrite, he named himself.

“This evening,
mon cher.
I go to dinner with the General, but he is very respectable. He brings me home at ten. You will come for a nightcap?”

“If I may. I won’t keep you longer now, Sonya. Goodbye.”

As he replaced the telephone, Charles shrugged with distaste. It was all very sordid, but he did get a sort of wry kick from it, and kisses with Sonya were not an extortionate price for Phil’s presence and the chance of making her whole again. Somehow, he didn’t think Sonya would mind if he went no further than kissing; she’d regard it as flattering evidence of worthier desires. Sonya was after marriage . . . with an Englishman; preferably Charles, who was good-looking and received by the upper hundred in Port Andrew. Her ambitions were so obvious that he made the mistake of believing them fairly harmless.

PHIL’S duties were easy and pleasant. Within a few days Mrs. Kevin departed with her husband for North Africa, and Phil found herself partnering Mrs. Coombs in the records office, and dealing alone with the library.

The books, three parts technical and medical and the rest an assortment of fiction and biography, lined a square room on the ground floor. Charles had passed over to Phil the care of the library because there is nothing so effective as a roomful of reading-matter to transport a person into a different world.

He would have liked to hear her step lighten and the smile come back into her voice. Occasionally he took her for a drive through the coast road away from the town, and stopped to smell and watch the sea. She was quiet and uncommunicative, and Charles congratulated himself. This was the first stage of recovery.

A week of rain set in; sudden clashing storms petering down to several hours of torrent, then sulphurous sunshine followed by hot mists. Sometimes Phil was overcome by loneliness and terror. This African world was so dense, so violent, the jungle so hostile and suffocating. She could not stand it another day, another hour. One of her worst moments came on a Saturday morning, when most of the others had driven hopefully into town to the polo.

She was on the beach fighting for courage when a storm broke. In seconds, as she moved without haste through the trees, her shirt and shorts were soaked and, by the time she reached the Institute, her hair dripped like strings of seaweed and the rest of her shed a pool into the hall. Upstairs, she met Charles coming from one of the dormitories.

“Good God!” he exclaimed, and swung wide a bathroom door, pushing her inside in front of him.

“Get out of your clothes and wrap in a towel,” he said professionally. “Have the bath as hot as you can bear it and dry thoroughly. Be quick.”

Ten minutes later, wearing a second large towel, she went to her bedroom and found there a glass of hot milk and a couple of tablets. She had swallowed both and was dressed when Charles knocked.

He looked her over critically, the drying curling hair about the small face, her pale lips. She was trembling.

“You took those tablets?” he asked quickly.

“Yes. I haven’t a fever.”

“What is it, then?”

“Hurrying, and the milk. I feel rather dizzy.”

Charles stared, and a sense of shock spread through his system. Her head bent and she nodded like a sad, defeated child.

“Yes,” she said. “I’m going to have a baby.”

“Oh, my dear,” he murmured, as though her hurt were his.

Gently he pressed her down into a chair, and sat near by on the arm of another. “Can you speak about it?”

She took a long, shivering breath. “I suspected it before I left Goanda. I’m sure now. I’m getting used to the idea.”

“But, Phil, what about the man?”

“He ... we were married, but had agreed to a divorce. I shall be all right. I have an allowance.”

Charles put aside the personal blow. She was heartbreakingly young. “He has a right to know about this.”

“No. He’d hate it. He didn’t want a wife—he’d loathe to be burdened with a family.”

“That’s hardly the point. Let me get in touch with him for you, Phil. It’s fair to give him his chance.”

“You don’t know him. Besides, I don’t want him that way.”

He stood up.

“Well, thanks for telling me, Phil. It won’t harm you to go on as you are for the present, so long as you keep healthy.”

For the first time since he had come in she met his eyes. “It’s between you and me, Charles?”

He smiled. “Absolutely, and for the next month or two I’m your doctor. My first prescription is dinner with me tonight at the club.”

“My wardrobe wouldn’t run to it.”

“Very well. Tea, and perhaps some dancing till sundowner time. You can wear anything for that. Game?”

She smiled slightly and inclined her head.

The rain finished at about noon, so Charles drove her into town early enough for a tour of the shops.

Port Andrew was a white and green town with avenues leading down to the wide Marine Drive where the blocks of offices were situated. Charles lived at the other end of one of these avenues, but he did not take Phil to the bungalow he shared with an education officer. After buying a few things they went straight to the club and had tea, after which they joined the dancers on the terrace.

Phil had last danced to a band in Cape Town when she was sixteen. Not that the three young men who now provided rhythm could be termed a band; a gramophone record would have yielded more harmony. But their presence in an alcove shut off by palmettoes gave an illusion of sophistication.

Men and women included Phil in their glances. They raised enquiring brows, and the men winked. In a port of this size everyone knew everyone else. Phil thought, if it weren’t so hot I’d settle here; they wouldn’t snub me with Charles as my ally.

And Charles thought what a damned nuisance it would be if Sonya heard rumours. It had been simple until this morning, but now he had a whale-size problem on his hands. Phil mustn’t be hurt any more. Perhaps he’d better see Sonya this evening; introduce an offhand reference to this little jaunt. How he detested the subterfuge and lying. If only Levalle had left the trusteeship in the sole hands of the lawyer instead of besottedly including his wife.

As the feeling of resigned bitterness wore off, Phil experienced odd moments of fearful anticipation. She would stand still in the middle of her room and contemplate the miracle which was in creation inside her body. The knowledge that she possessed something of Julian that he could never take away helped to assuage the dreadful ache of loss. The loneliness was temporary. This time next year she would be whole and free, guardian of small dependent flesh and blood. She would never be lonely or aimless again.

There were other moments, of course, which lengthened unendurably into the dark hours, when the grief which was never absent rose to a sweating, wrenching agony.

The week-ends, once the offices had been locked at noon on Saturday, stretched long and somnolent. The two bachelor assistants invariably spent the whole time with friends in town, and the Coombs were either out, too, or in their room. Phil always felt as if she had the vast building and grounds to herself.