Winds of Enchantment (19 page)

“Whatever you decide,” he said.

So she began to plan. A firm in Torquay would supply new carpets and curtains. Pale grey and deep rose for the living-room, she decided. More extensive renovations could be ordered when she was more sure of her needs.

Pat was
torn
between the desire to keep the cottage as she had known it, and the fear that if she did, Christine and Bill would haunt the place...

Having acquiesced to her decision to reopen the place, Steve suggested they go over at the weekend and start things moving. “I’ll get Mrs. Jarvis to clean up, and we’ll splash on the paint ourselves. Make a beano of it.”

Tim was in the room when he said this, and he shot one of his keen, cynical looks at Pat. “Is the passionate nymph deserting us?” he drawled. “How soon?”

“As soon as possible,” she replied.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

PAT was giving the final coating of glossy cream to the skirting board in Christine’s bedroom. Every movement vibrated through the empty house, and even her breathing sounded almost as loud as the sea. This room would be hers now. She would waken to the thunder of the waves against the red cliffs, and lie still imagining the veined waters boiling round the rocks and sweeping into the bay.

She could hear Mr. Jarvis hacking at the growth in the garden. The copper beech, to whom she had told secrets as a child, still leaned at the back, and the lilacs and laburnums, the flowering currant and wistaria, had only to be pruned to give once more of their profusion. The tennis court was knee high with rank grass; it would have to be levelled and returfed.

Pat reached the last corner, brushed off, and wiped her hands. At the window she stretched and breathed in. In the autumn light the bungalows set in the green slope behind the beach were drawn into their bushes and shrubs as though for warmth. The nearest one, which had been Celia’s, was less immaculate than when she had lived there. It needed paint, and none of the curtains matched. On the front lawn a boy of about ten tinkered with a bicycle.

Mrs. Jarvis had left a salad and rolls and butter, and a fire burned bright in the fireplace. Pat set a kettle to boil and pushed the little brown teapot near the warmth. She curled down on to the carpet to eat, surprised that it was so pleasant to be alone.

Steve helped her to move in on the following Saturday,
a
nd later he told her that an art dealer had seen the portrait he had painted of her. “I—altered one or two details,” Steve admitted. “This chap liked it, said it showed promise, and I’m going to do a few more paintings and maybe exhibit. It was Tim who suggested I alter the painting and show it to this dealer chap.”

“Tim certainly has your interests at heart,” she smiled. “I’m so pleased for you, Steve.”

“Haven’t you my interests at heart?” He was looking at her, oddly. “If I make it as an artist-—well, you know what I hope will follow, don’t you, Pat?”

Yes, she knew that he hoped they had a future together, but right now she wasn’t ready to commit herself. She uncurled out of her chair and said she’d make coffee and sandwiches before he drove back to Balcombe.

“Are you sure you, won’t be lonely here on your own?” he asked, looking troubled.

“I’ve been here on my own many times before,” she reminded him. “After Christine died—and before Bill came home.”

“Poor old Bill,” he murmured. ‘You must have missed him a terrible lot. He had that kind of personality, didn’t he?”

She nodded. She could feel Steve looking at her over the rim of his coffee cup—and palpable in the atmosphere hung another name. Nick’s name. Steve had not mentioned him in all the time she had been home, but she knew that he connected her abrupt homecoming with Nick.

They made a date to meet in Balcombe the following Saturday, and the day broke cold and leaden. Pat would rather have stayed by her own cottage fire with a book, but was cheered by the sight of Steve, clad in a brown suit and smiling with his familiar charm, resting on the wheel of his car as she stepped from the bus.

He parked the car and after lunch they strolled about the little town. Pat bought several more books to add to her growing stock, and Steve some tubes of oil paint. A drizzling rain varnished the pavements, the sky darkened, the wind challenged and brought heavier, soaking rain. “There’s a cinema,” he pointed. “Come on.”

She raced across the road with him, laughing as they gained the wide steps. “Poor Steve,” she said. “Your day out, and you do detest flicks.”

They went in halfway through the main picture. The air was thick and drowsy and only the soundtrack kept Pat awake, but she grew interested when the next film was announced. Travel was more in her line than costume drama.

She wriggled more cosily into her seat, curling her fingers round the hand Steve offered. With a stream of sonorous phrases the film opened. A mahogany tree came into view, a monkey grinned through the branches, and birds chattered. A native village appeared, and there were piccans playing under the palms
...

Palms, the most graceful tree ever created, Bill had said.

A white beach shone, and a gleaming city was shown enclosed within the dark rim of the jungle. A city that might have been—that
was
—Kanos!

Unaware Pat was digging her fingernails into Steve’s hand. Then in a tortured whisper, she said: “I—I can’t stand this—I must get out, Steve!”

He got up quickly and, retaining her hand, led her along the aisle and out into the rain. She was white and trembling. “I want to go home,” she added.

“
I’
ll take you—”

“No, only to the bus. Forgive me, Steve,” she choked. “I can’t explain just now.”

Ten minutes later her bus was rolling out of Balcombe, with Pat, white-faced, staring unseeingly out of a rain-misted window.

It was still raining when Pat reached the cottage, pouring ceaselessly from an opaque sky. She took off her outdoor things and changed her shoes, and then went up to her bedroom to lean near the window and watch the rain—not the grey English rain, but the tumultuous, thrashing torrents that whipped the palms to frenzy and beat down into the casuarinas like molten glass.

She was swamped by a tide of chaotic memories. The listless rhythm of paddles through the hushed tunnel of the river; drums and smoke above the villages; flowers luxuriant and scentless, except when darkness fell and the subtle night air renewed the living, urgent things of the earth. The moon, so impossibly big and yellow that anything could happen. Dawn like a revelation; rich colour that danced and glittered on the sea, misting the islands, flooding the city with ineffable loveliness.

Kanos, as it was the morning of her departure, receding, like a light going out. The bewildering, pain-drenched loss.

She turned from the window and slipped into a huddle on the foot of her bed. There were things that didn’t bear remembering. A dark point of hair above green-flecked eyes; a voice, strong and dominant—gone hard, almost savage at the moment of farewell.

Her hands clenched on the bedcovers. Her heart thudded with hunger for Nick.

Next day dawned quite bright after the downpour. The boy next door came over to break kindling and sweep the paths free of the mud washed down by yesterday’s rain. He stayed to eat lunch with her, after which he ran off to attend Sunday School service at the church.

Pat moved restlessly about the cottage, but when
Steve came she was sitting in the lounge, silken legs extended to the log blaze, fair hair brushed back in soft waves from her forehead. She wore a soft chiffon blouse with a pussy-cat bow, and she felt the appreciation in Steve’s glance as he took the chair on the opposite side of the fireplace.

“Did you get very wet walking from the bus yesterday?” He sat making a business of lighting a cigarette.

“Not too drenchingly. I hurried.”

“Good.” He waited a few seconds, and then, as if relieved at her silence, he added
:
“Sorry I didn’t get over to lunch. I woke with a headache and it didn’t clear till an hour ago.”

“Poor Steve. My young man next door ate your pork chop.”

He did not seem to hear. There was an ashtray at his elbow, but he got up to look for another.

The silence was beginning to become oppressive.

He stayed on his feet in the centre of the room until, with unusual clumsiness, he got rid of the cigarette. Pat knew she had to put an end to this intolerable quietness between them.

“Steve, about yesterday...”

“I know,” he said quickly, as though at all costs to prevent further words on the subject. “It unnerved you, the unexpectedness of seeing—Kanos. You’ll soon forget.”

“I’ll never forget.” The words were out before she could stop them. Then as he swivelled sharply to look at her: “I know that now, and I’m not even going to try any more to blanket my mind to the past.”

He stood still, the colour risen in his cheeks. “I’ve been praying you would forget, Pat,” he said heavily.

She regarded him with a queer, distant look in her eyes. “I prayed for that myself, Steve. I really did.”

He gave a short painful sigh. “Is it Farland?”

A pang of love contracted in her throat, her head bent. “Yes.”

He paced to the window and back. “I guessed some weeks ago that there had been a man, and he was the only one I could think of. Nick Farland, the tough rubber planter, without a touch of sentiment in him—you’d think! But he sent for me to join you, Pat. He must have cared for you, to do that.”

“He cared as a parent would,” she said. “He often denied it, but I knew. He felt responsible for me after Bill was drowned. It was a big disappointment to him that you and I failed to make a match of it.” Her soft mouth twisted. “That was how much he wanted me off his hands.”

Steve faced her, and his voice went rough. “It sounds as though he put you through hell, yet you’re aching for more of the same.”

"No, it wasn’t quite as bad as that,” she argued. “The hell was of my own making. I—I couldn’t accept him for what he was prepared to be, so I ran out on our bargain.”

“What bargain?” Steve spoke sharply. “Were you—engaged to him? I knew you had been wearing a ring—I saw the mark where it had been.”

“He—married me,” she replied.

“Oh, no!” His eyes shone with swift anger. “Was that all he wanted of you—another Christine? Pat darling, I can’t let you throw your life away as your mother did.”

“When Christine died and I blamed Bill, you defended him.” Her eyes dwelt, large and misty, on Steve’s face. “You forced me to realize that she had never been an unhappy woman.”

“She wasn’t a Brading. You are—all through. Bradings live, they don’t sit at home and wait—wait hopelessly. Pat, my dear, don’t look like that. It had to be said. And we should have talked about Farland long ago. Keeping it locked up inside you only swelled its importance out of all proportion.” He came and slipped down on to the arm of her chair and held her shoulders. “I’m not pleading entirely for myself. Your happiness comes first, it always has.”

“Thank you for being so understanding, Steve.” She squeezed his hand. “You’ve always been the best of friends.”

During the next few weeks Steve was as charming and attentive as ever, devoting to her practically the whole of his leisure.

Winter was kind this year, and with flyaway hair, and a stormcheater over narrow pants, Pat tramped the shore and the cliffs, and sometimes took out the boy next door in the small boat she had bought. They made driftwood fires and smoked sausages over them, and she told him tales about Africa in much the same way as Bill had yarned in the old days.

The tides sprang high and noisy, and February came in cool and gusty. Clouds chased in from the sea and broke over the hills, filling the streams with rushing waters.

It was on a windy, rain-smelling morning that Steve drove up to the cottage, looking rough about the hair, his expression a blend of pleasure and anxiety. Pat was washing up the breakfast things in the kitchen and she looked round as the back door opened. A memory tugged, and they smiled at each other.

“Hullo. You’re early.” She dried her hands. “You look a bit like the cat who got the kipper—what’s up
?
”

“Some news from that art chap in London.” He took down her wind-cheater from the hook on the kitchen door and handed it to her. “Come out for a walk and a talk.”

With a preoccupied air, he belted the coat round her and flipped up the collar. “You’d better cover your hair. There’s a shrewd wind.”

As they followed the sea road their arms automatically linked. “Come on,” she shot him a smile, “you’re obviously busting with a bit of news.”

“Well, to cut a long story short, this chap is asking me to go up to London. He’s even taken an option on a flat with a fine studio attached. I—wish to heaven I knew what to do.”

“What
is
there to do but go?” she said at once. “It’s just what you’ve been longing for. What’s to stop you?”

“You’re well aware of what stops me,” he said roughly. “I wouldn’t hesitate a moment if you’d consent to go with me. But how can I leave you here, knowing you’re lonely, and not too happy? It’s true, Pat,” as he felt her slight withdrawal. “If you could only leave the past where it belongs, cut adrift from it. What has it brought you?—only pain and loneliness. We could start afresh in London—it’s up to you.”

They continued walking, past bungalows and cowed grass slopes, towards the tawny cliffs which jutted into a cloudy sky.

“Steve,” she said at last, “it will hurt me considerably if you stay in Devon and miss this wonderful chance on my account. It’s almost spring, and if I should need you badly I could come up to London for a visit. In fact,” her face lifted to him and her smile was affectionate, “I’ll come and see you very soon. How’s that?”

“It’s just what I expected,” he answered wryly. “Then you’ll go?”

He made no immediate reply, and Pat suddenly said
:
“What happened to my portrait?”

“I’ve still got it. I shall never sell it.”

“Not even to me, Steve?”

“Not even to you. When you’re down here, and I’m in London, it’s all I shall have of you.”

A week later Steve packed up and left for London. In spite of her assertions to the contrary, Pat keenly felt his absence, but she was glad that at last Steve was gathering some sort of harvest from his earlier endeavours.

Spring came in with a spatter of white in the hedgerows and bursts of pink from the sea flowers that clung to the cliffs. Shrubs greened and fattened, the copper beech misted with pearly flakes, and in the nook just round the headland the gulls nested. Pretty, mewing things which she often stood and watched.

She and her young boy friend rowed out to the Rock and rested, c
hin
s on knees, to soak in the sweet scene. The cliffs, sage and brick in the afternoon light; dun-coloured rocks streaked black with seaweed; enchanting caves and a series of tiny, deserted beaches.

Pat was not lonely as she had been upon her arrival in England. The cottage itself was a companion of the dearest, most positive kind, soaked with the spirit of her parents’ strong, perhaps strange love for each other.