Winds of Enchantment Page 12

  He was still for a long moment, then he cupped her chin in his large hand and gazed down at the pale blur of her face. “You’ve voiced something that I’ve been chewing over in my own mind,” he said at last. “People might gossip, Pat.”

  “There would be the captain and crew.” She smiled up at him. “Do let’s, Nick.”

  “A cargo boat isn’t exactly a rose bower,” he said quizzically.

  “I’m used to the smell of rubber,” she wrinkled her nose. “When you come from Makai you carry it with you on your clothes.”

  He gave a laugh. “Okay, child, the cruise is on, but I warn you it won’t be exactly luxurious.”

  “I’m tired of luxury, of the villa, of garden parties and flirtatious young officers.” She threw back her head and breathed deeply. “I need to be on the sea, Nick.”

  He nodded thoughtfully. “Perhaps you do, Pat,” he said.

  It took a week to scour and disinfect the Bullbat and a further three days to install new mattresses and bed linen, a bath and tinned food.

  On a cool white morning they steamed out of Kanos Bay. Pat, in blue slacks and an ivory silk shirt, hugged the rail with folded arms and felt Nick beside her.

  That first day was marvellous. Not a cloud anywhere and a sweet spicy breeze that went cold and heady with darkness. The stars came low enough to be plucked, scintillating on the curly black crests of the Atlantic like diamonds on ruffled satin.

  The next few days were breathless and cloudy. They bathed in the deeps, and Pat stretched her limbs healthily in the salt water, smiling to herself as she recalled the icy grip of the English Channel and compared it with this rocking languorous bath.

  Mostly, she and Nick took their meals on deck. There were four cabins and the spare one had been converted into a dining-room, but it smelled stale and at dusk hordes of cockroaches made it unbearable.

  On the fifth day out the wind stiffened and Nick at once ordered that the boat put in at the nearest harbour. This happened to be a curve of white beach with a drunken little landing stage at one end and no other visible sign of life. A storm came up, the trees quarrelled, the sea lashed at their roots, and the pewter sky contracted and emptied itself, later spreading a boundless cloth of gold that tarnished suddenly with darkness. The night was soft and cool and the moon carved a brilliant pathway through the sea to the edge of the world.

  Pat was suspended on the rim of happiness. She felt freed and young, delighting in everything they saw. She could go into the sea, and watch it from the rails of the boat. Watch it in calm and in storm. Once she said dreamily: “If only we could stay like this for ever.”

  “We’re already running short of toothpaste and soap,” he said drily.

  “You beast, Nick.”

  He grinned. “Civilization has its uses. I prefer my house to be free of vermin, and I do rather like a crease in my trousers and a hair trim every third Wednesday.” The days were not idle. Nick, accustomed to feeding and doctoring his labourers, naturally noticed cases of infection and malnutrition among the people of the villages they visited. He used upon them the bulk of the ship’s medical supplies, and impressed upon men and women alike that they would be happier and healthier and lose fewer piccans if their diet was more wholesome and varied. They must clear a large section of bush and plant the seed he would send them. They must not eat the dead fish cast up out of the sea, nor brew strong medicines from bush plants, and if a baby’s eyes showed sign of infection he should be at once taken to the nearest village that owned a doctor.

  He took Pat on short expeditions into the bush, following the age-old paths worn by countless native feet between giant trees and weed growth. They ate red bananas and drank coconut milk, and at an inland village were presented with some fine pineapples from a tree in the chiefs compound.

  One night the mate and cook-steward of the Bullbat fought with knives. “They’re bored and restless,” observed Nick, when the dispute had been settled. “Soon we shall have to pack up and go.”

  “Offer them more money,” Pat suggested.

  “If I did, they’d soon want somewhere to spend it.” But he, too, seemed loath to end this cruising interlude. Rations were diminishing fast, yet he made no definite move till one of the crew grazed a rib in an accident. He had the man patched up, and Pat heard him instruct the skipper to be ready at dawn.

  “Can’t we send them for the rations and wait here?” They had returned again to the white curve of beach they had found in that first storm.

  “It would take eight or ten days, and we’re out of medical supplies. Supposing you got hurt or took a fever, and I had nothing here to treat you with?”

  “What can happen to me in that time?”

  “Plenty.” He spoke in his old curt voice. “I’m not risking it.”

  “We’ve been so—happy,” she pleaded.

  “It’s no good,” he said resolutely. “I’d shoot myself if you were ill through my negligence.”

  She glanced round at the shimmering beach, the sea beyond, and the palms haloed by the sun. A small island of peace—it filled her with a strange panic, the thought of leaving it. In a stride Nick was close to her, holding her gently.

  “I know,” he spoke into her hair. “I know how you feel.”

  Then she felt his arms go tense, and a warm breath across her temple as though he opened his mouth to say something more. Several seconds passed, then he said: “We’ll do this again—some time. But I’m a little superstitious, Pat, and I can’t help wondering if fate, having given us the happiness of this holiday, is now packing a punch for us. This is one time when I’m not sticking out my chin.”

  “I swear I won’t get ill or do anything to worry you,” she entreated.

  “Don’t make it harder for me.” He put her away from him. “We’ve had an idyllic trip and we can repeat it—some time.”

  “But for the present,” she flicked the long fair hair back from her cheeks, “you’ve had enough, is that it?”

  He gave a shrug and a laugh, his teeth snapping. “Yes, Pat—I’ve had enough. We’re heading for Kanos in the morning.”

  The Bullbat steamed back into the bay just six weeks after her departure. It rained heavily as they went ashore, and the rain continued almost without easing for three days. After a brief lazy spell, which was more a reaction from an excess of delight than real depression, Pat picked up the threads of life here in the city. Some people seemed curious as to the purpose of the cruise she had taken with Nick, but he had stated that it was business and Pat guessed that few cared to express any doubt in his presence.

  Now they were home again, she recalled that he had said people would probably gossip. Mrs. Reynolds had stopped calling and inviting, and Pat grew increasingly aware of a curious, bated atmosphere when she appeared at a card party or a tea dance. There was speculation in the glances thrown at her; and some of the men grew bolder in their approaches. Pat was disturbed. It hadn’t occurred to her all that much that people would think what they were obviously thinking—and it was something she just couldn’t discuss with Nick.

  Then one morning Nick came early to the villa, while she was dressing after a canter on the grey filly he had given her. She whisked her fair hair back from her face and made a pony-tail—it was too hot on her neck and she wished Nick would consent to her having it cut. Then she stiffened as knuckles rapped her bedroom door; it seemed that Nick had grown impatient of waiting downstairs for her.

  “May I come in, Pat?” he called out.

  “Of course. I’m all dressed.”

  He swung open the door, came in and clicked it shut behind him. He crossed and stood near the window, and he was smoking a cigarette in a quick, impatient way. When Pat turned to whisk a filmy nightdress into hiding, she could see his reflection in a large wall mirror. He looked stern, abstracted.

  “What’s on your mind, Nick?” she asked. "It appears to be a very weighty problem from the way you’re frowning.”

  Under his dark brows
his eyes held hers steadily. “I have to go back to Makai,” he said.

  “Oh, Nick,” she gave a little laugh, “you’ve had to go back before—and you’ve never looked this grim.”

  "I have to go back for three months,” he added.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  “THREE months?” she echoed.

  “I’m afraid so.” He stood regarding her with his hazel eyes still brow-shadowed. “I’ve put off telling you —you see, Madden was due for leave several weeks ago. I persuaded him to hang on till the rains were over, but I can’t keep him there any longer. He hasn’t been all that fit this past year, and any man works better for a holiday. Besides, his contract says three months’ leave every eighteen months.”

  “And you have to go back and take over,” Pat said.

  “Madden and I are the only ones familiar with that end of the plantation.”

  “And you intend going without me, Nick?”

  “You’ve never spent more than a couple of weeks at Makai, child. You don’t know the dragging monotony of the place for a woman. No other women to gossip with. No dancing, or shopping. We men have our work, but could you bear three months of those trees you dislike so much?”

  “Maybe I’ve grown up a bit since that time I was there—with Bill.” She fiddled with pots and brushes on the dressing-table. “I was just a kid, and the magic of Kanos had not yet tarnished for me.”

  She heard him catch his breath. “Has that happened, Pat?”

  “Nick,” she took a sudden step towards him, “there’s gossip about us, isn’t there? I—I caused it, asking you to take me on that cruise, and now you feel you must go alone to Makai.”

  “There’s an alternative—if you dislike the idea of staying alone here at Kanos, but—”

  “Hesitation doesn’t become you, Nick.” She felt she had gone suddenly pale. “You usually take hurdles no matter what the risk.”

  “When the risk involves only myself, then it doesn’t much matter,” he rejoined. “This one would involve you.”

  “In what way?” she asked.

  “You aren’t going to like this, Pat.”

  “Try me.” She faced him, slim and youthful with her hair in a pony-tail, and a yucca-patterned shirt outside narrow pants, her feet braced in loafers.

  “First let me ask you something,” he tossed his cigarette stub through the open window. “Have you heard at all from Steve Holman?”

  She shook her head.

  “Is everything quite dead between you and him, Pat?”

  “I—think so. It must be, for he hasn’t written, and I let him go away.”

  “Then, Pat,” Nick stood very straight, looking dark and sterner than she had ever seen him before, “if you come to Makai, you will have to come as my wife.”

  “Your—wife?” Her eyes had widened, her hands had clenched into fists at her sides. “Is—the gossip that bad?”

  “To the devil with gossip! If I leave you here in Kanos, alone, it will seem pretty poisonous, but to the devil with it as far as I’m concerned. But I must spend three months at Makai if the plantation is to be kept in a good, yielding condition, and if you come—well, it must be as my wife.”

  “You don’t—you’ve never wanted to marry,” she faltered. “It must be the gossip.”

  “From your angle I suppose it is.” His face had hardened. “Some of those darned women will tread all over that soft heart of yours if I leave you here alone. But I won’t subject you to more of the same by taking you to Makai as a single girl.”

  “It’s a big price for you to pay, Nick,” she said quietly. “Destruction lies in marrying out of pity.”

  “You’re forgetting that I’m a gambler by nature.” His teeth showed in a taut smile. “And you’re Bill Brading’s daughter.”

  “You mean we’d both be gambling?” She kicked at the carpet. “I—could go home to England. Had you thought of that?”

  “Yes ” he said bluntly. “Yes, I thought of it. It seemed the best solution, until it occurred to me that this is a damnably small world and that if you went back to Caystor, it could get around that you were the discarded girl friend of a rubber planter.”

  He smiled again, flickeringly. “We’ve been pretty close, you and I, Pat, in an odd sort of way. There was a bit of talk before we took that cruise along the coast—”

  “Oh, no!” she exclaimed.

  He inclined his black head. “You’re too attractive, my child, to be thought of in purely platonic terms with Nick Farland.”

  “They’d all be pretty surprised if they knew the truth, wouldn’t they?” She broke into a shaky laugh. “Would you really marry me, Nick?”

  “Against my better judgment, yes.”

  “Though love wouldn’t enter in?”

  “I’ve never given a hang for sentiment.” He shrugged and plunged his hands deep into his pockets. “A ring on your finger and a piece of parchment won’t alter things between us. And when you leave Africa it will be as you came. Satisfied, Pat?”

  She nodded, wondering at the strangeness of her association with Nick, and the way he talked in such cool, controlled terms of their marriage. It was to him no more than a business contract, to be terminated when it suited both of them. And because Kanos had become hateful just lately, and England too far away to beckon with any force, she knew she would enter into this contract-marriage with Nick.

  Nick had had charge of her life too long, now, for her to argue against his proposal.

  He arranged the formalities quickly and quietly, and they were married by special licence that weekend. A few of his business friends and their wives were invited to a small reception, and then he left immediately for Makai. He would need a few days with Madden before the superintendent went on leave, and added that he would ask Madden to call upon her in Kanos. As soon as she was ready, John would drive her out to Makai.

  All very businesslike, all very impersonal, Pat thought without rancour. Nick did not love her. She had always known that.

  When he had gone, Pat began to think of Makai as Nick spoke of it. Cool and peaceful among the trees; not so far removed from the greenness of England as this white-stranded bay, which broiled under a fierce sun all the hours of daylight.

  On his one night in Kanos, Madden came to dine at the villa. He was to spend his leave with a married sister at Fez, in Morocco. He looked grey-faced and taut after his long vigil in the jungle, yet he insisted that the life suited him. Over a glass of wine and a cigar of Nick’s, he grew more relaxed. “Nick says you’re joining him at Makai,” he remarked.

  She nodded. “The plantation comes first with him, and he should give his time to it without having to worry about me. And with you away, Mr. Madden, he needs a bit of company.”

  “There’s Cole.” Then Madden broke into a smile.

  “But I do see that a wife is the better sort of company.”

  Pat smiled in return, and wondered what this man would say if she told him that Nick had married her—though he denied all possession of sentiment—to save her from being thought his mistress.

  Although Nick would have scoffed had she voiced it, temperamentally he was an idealist. One of his strongest desires was to remedy the evils of the jungle, not for the white man but for its rightful inhabitants.

  “How would you come out, Mr. Madden,” she asked, “if a rubber pool was formed?”

  “As Nick’s right-hand man I should probably be given a roving commission, reorganizing the smaller plantations,” he replied.

  “You’d prefer that?”

  “It can get terribly lonely at Makai. I must admit that I wouldn’t mind a change.”

  “Have you told Nick how you feel?”

  “We talked of it a day or two ago. I’d have thought the pool idea would appeal to him. As head of it he would be in a strong position with the government and he could get them working faster on improvements in native life.” Madden flicked cigar ash into a glass tray. “I can’t understand his attitude—knowing
his views.”

  Pat saw clearly that she was the obstacle to the formation of the pool—yet now there was no true Farland-Brading company. She would try and persuade him to see that.

  At daybreak she set out for Makai, reaching the plantation in time for a late lunch. As they stood, she and Nick, on the veranda that evening, the dying sun burned the tops of the trees and she was very conscious of the new gold ring on her finger, shining as her hand gripped the veranda rail.

  “Makai is now your home, Pat,” he said at last. “Does it feel like it?”

  “Not yet,” she said truthfully. “Nick, do you ever think of going back to England?”

  “Never,” he replied calmly.

  “You wouldn’t go—under any circumstances?”

  “There might be something that would make me, but at the moment I can’t think of it. I find England slow and stifling. Maybe I’ll see it differently when I’m twenty years older; just now I’m not content to rust.”

  “You never look very far ahead, do you?”

  “Life’s tricky,” he returned. “You’ve found that out already.”

  Pat stood still and wordless beside him, keenly aware of the approaching night, her thoughts roving back to the time when she had wondered what Nick would be like if he ever broke loose—with her. He was gazing towards the darkening jungle, and her gaze slowly slipped to that bold mouth of his. A steel thread of shock insinuated itself, leaving her shaken, a little shocked, as she realized the trend of her thoughts. She had, for a moment, wondered what it would be like to be really kissed by Nick. To feel that hard, ruthless-looking mouth on hers!

  Then a breeze rattled the trees in the compound. The distant whine of some jungle beast was answered by a restless chafing from the stables. The moths came out.