Winds of Enchantment Page 4

  He grinned at her tone. “Bill’s not a ruffian. He isn’t anything—just Bill.”

  She looked up defiantly. “I’ve driven through Kanos a few times at night—I’ve seen what some of the women are like. I don’t wish to join them.”

  “They aren’t to be judged, after several years out here.” He snapped his fingers sharply. “If you came up one evening you wouldn’t meet any trouble—I’d see to that.”

  “I’d rather not, thanks all the same, Mr. Farland.”

  “Determined little cuss, aren’t you?” he observed agreeably. “Do you ride?”

  “I used to hack a bit in Devonshire.”

  “Then ride with me tomorrow morning. I’ll mount you.”

  Her brows went together, her lips opened defensively, but his laugh broke in, hard and provoking. She smiled and blew a delicate grey stream of smoke into his face. Then her breath caught, somewhere deep down in her throat, as those flecks in his eyes seemed to sharpen into points of green fire. Ah, he had a temper under the ice! She wasn’t a bit surprised, and suddenly it struck her as rather childish to throw away the chance of a gallop on a good horse because she didn’t much like the man.

  She did ride with him next morning, and a week later she wore green chiffon to a dinner at the club. She was new out here, fresh and with something touch-me-not about her. Several of her dance partners wanted to make a beeline for the palms and camphors of the club gardens, but Nick, as though sensing her reluctance, was there each time to whisk her smoothly out of danger.

  She told Bill about the dance at breakfast next morning, adding with a laugh that Nick made a good bodyguard.

  “Nick’s like I was at his age,” her father grunted. “Trading was my mistress—the jungle’s his.”

  “You mean—he doesn’t care for women?”

  “He can do without them—for months at a time, anyway.” He was quiet for a moment, then: “Tell me when it gets you down, kitten. I was always a blind fool where women are concerned. I know you like Kanos and while you keep fit you can stay. But I won’t have you marry out here. Whatever happens, you mustn’t go the way of your mother.” He paused again, and added with apparent irrelevance, “The mail’s about due. You’ll be hearing from Steve again.”

  The letter came, and she read it in her small bedroom—he and Celia had split up! They were not marrying after all! It would never work, he realized that more strongly than ever since Pat’s departure for Africa...

  Pat’s hands clenched on the sheets of paper, she stared unseeingly across her room at the gently moving blinds, hearing the night sounds of Africa beyond the slats. Steve was free! And it was plain from his letter that it was because of her that he had broken his engagement. Her thoughts were in a whirl, and she couldn’t have said what the emotion was that took her to the table, and why it was that she wrote him a letter so charged with tenderness. Was it the sudden realization that often a week went by out here without Steve entering her thoughts at all?

  After folding the letter and sealing the envelope, she wandered down to the edge of the sea and dipped her toes in the calm black water. She looked along the beach, beyond the square shapes of the wharves to the lights of Kanos, set like so many jewels in the jet of the bay. A lovely sight.

  From the nearby native village stole the thud of drums—she knew a wedding feast to be in progress. The girl would sit facing the boy she was to marry, there would be dancing and chanting for a couple of hours, then the girl would be taken back to her family for a few weeks, till the cows and goats and tobacco of her purchase price were paid up to her father. So simple and primitive.

  Pat drew a sigh. Her body felt curiously weighted, as though she had taken on a burden.

  The rains had set in with a vengeance. Each day opened with an inevitable downpour, which developed after lunch into an avalanche that hammered on the roof as though it would beat it open. It was hot, damp, and Pat’s thirst was unquenchable. The filtering apparatus was slow and consequently she absorbed quantities of flat, brackish boiled water edged with lime. Eating became a tremendous effort; even Bill’s appetite was affected.

  On the surface his mood remained unaffected. He could still smile and chaff, and during this period the sweetest intervals were those rainless nights when a yellow moon thrust above the trees and a million stars studded the sky. Then the atmosphere tingled with a subtle magic.

  One such night, Pat drove out at Nick’s side along the sea road. The palms stood black against the silver-gilt of the sea and sky, waving gently in a warm breeze. The tufted islands in the bay were like ghostly mirages, and Pat’s heart turned with the mystery of it all.

  The sea road ended at a wide sweep of marsh which eddied and sucked round the car as it curved to meet the jungle road. Trees advanced. Mahogany and cottonwood, tall enough to shut out the moon; closely spaced and clogged so thickly with liana bine and giant weeds that they formed an impenetrable wall on either side. The headlights raked the forest, picked out the green orbs of startled beasts and the red eyes of bull-bats. The windscreen was black with insects.

  Presently Nick stopped the car, switched off the engine, so that all was quiet but for the surrounding, primitive music of the jungle. Pat felt curiously keyed-up. This green place stirred in her a queer excitement that was akin to fear.

  “Talk,” she said urgently. “Please talk.”

  So he told her, something of amusement in his voice, about the surveyor’s trek in the Northern Province which had led to him working out here. She questioned him and he went back to the various jobs he had tried in England and elsewhere. His parents having died while he was young, he had been brought up by a bachelor uncle, who had died four years ago, leaving him enough money, with what he already had, to start the plantation.

  From the blunt arrogance of his phrases, the cool assurance with which he described difficulties met and conquered, she knew him to be a man used to command. Oddly, she resented his mastery of himself.

  “Don’t you ever long to go back to England, even for a visit?” she probed.

  “I did go back for three months when I’d finished surveying,” he told her. “But I’d lost touch with civilization—the jungle had got me.”

  “But you can’t stay in Africa for ever,” she argued.

  “Why not?” he asked lazily.

  “No one does. It—it’s inhuman.”

  He gave a little jeering laugh and looked at her sideways. “You couldn’t be expected to understand, Pat. The way I see it there are three things to contend with here: heat, fever, and loneliness. The heat troubles me less than most, precautions largely deal with disease. I may strike an occasional patch of boredom, but I’m never lonely.”

  “Never?”

  “Never!”

  “Then why do you come to Kanos?”

  The broad shoulders moved slightly away from her. He let the seconds tick by before he answered. His tone was light. “At Makai, I can go months without thinking of women, but when I eventually get around to it, they’re always fair-skinned, dainty and cool. I come to Kanos to disillusion myself.”

  Pat looked away from him. Inexplicably it hurt that he should dislike women so much.

  “Has Bill told you that he’s going up to the coast for a few days?” Nick asked, after a couple of minutes. “He’s going to look at a couple of freighters that he’s heard are for sale.”

  “He mentioned it,” she replied tonelessly. “Are the boats for you?”

  “For the Farland-Brading Rubber Company,” he said. “I’ve already taken steps to register the name.”

  “Then it wasn’t a joke?”

  “Why should it be?”

  “I can’t see you with a partner. You’re too—independent.”

  “This will be different. Bill won’t have any say in production, and unless we’re unnecessarily held up for transport, I shan’t butt in on Bill’s end.”

  “You won’t get the better of Bill,” she said with confidence.

  “This
is a partnership, Patricia,” making her name a long-drawn taunt, “not a ten-round contest.”

  Even as he spoke, the night had gone very black. “The lights are out!” she exclaimed.

  “Moths, darn them.” He started the engine, but it had no effect, and he had to get out and swipe the thick clusters of huge-winged moths from the beams. They were settling back even before he reversed, but the rush of air cleared them and the car swept back down the road as a clashing of branches heralded still more rain. Soon the car windows were running with water, and Pat watched the frantic agitation of the windshield wiper and the bob of the car lights through the thick curtain of rain. “How long does this go on?” she asked.

  “Days,” he said cheerfully. “Then it’ll fade away and we’ll have heat. Quite a country, isn’t it? How long d’you reckon you’ll be able to stand it?”

  “As long as Bill needs me,” she replied.

  “Do you think Bill needs you?” His tone was quizzical. “He strikes me as pretty self-sufficient.”

  “We all need someone,” she asserted, “even those who put up a front that looks as though it could never be dented.”

  “Do I detect a dig at my front?” he said drily. “I assure you, young Pat, that it’s test-proofed steel. There’s no way through it, for I don’t intend to have any of my plans spoilt by rents in the old armour.”

  “I believe you mean that, Mr. Farland.” She shot a side glance at his assertive profile, and her eyes dwelt on that bold underlip of his. “Do you intend to follow in your uncle’s bachelor footsteps?”

  “I may do,” he drawled. “Women are dispensable if you fill your life with other things.”

  “And that’s what you’ve done, Mr. Farland?”

  “That’s what I’ve done, Miss Brading.” The car swooshed to a halt outside the house, and he flung open the door beside him and took a look at the path. Then he reached over to the back seat for his stormproof and caped it around her. “Move over into my seat as I get out,” he ordered. “I’ll carry you to your door.”

  She did as he ordered and felt his arms close round her as he lifted her out of the car and over a kerb that was swirling like a stream in spate. “You’ll get soaked,” she gasped.

  “I’m used to it,” he grunted, and sloshed at a run up the path to the front steps of the veranda. Under its cover he set her down on her feet and wiped the water from his face with his jacket sleeve. “Thanks. Here’s your coat.” She handed it to him, and when he started to put it on, she added: “Come in for a drink and a dry-out.”

  “I’ll take a rain-check on that.” She saw the white flash of his teeth in the semi-darkness. Then he held out a hand and she put hers into it. “Goodnight, Patricia. I’m the perfect gentleman, you see.”

  “Goodnight, Mr. Farland. Thanks for the drive.” “Thank you.” He dived back into the rain and as she watched him race up the muddy path to his car, she still felt the tingling warmth of his handclasp. A man’s hands were always much warmer than a woman’s, she found herself reflecting. She watched the car buck away into the tumbling rain, and pondered the complexity that was Nick Farland as she made her way indoors.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  BILL had arranged that while he was away Pat should sleep in the Barkers’ spare bedroom. She would have preferred staying on in the house alone; there was the dog, and the boys were trustworthy. But Bill was adamant and the Barkers keen, so she used their room at night, returning to her own house for breakfast Nick came for news of her father, and invited her to picnic with him up the river next day.

  The rain had kept off for nearly a week, but it was windless and the mist wreathed the shore till swallowed by the sun. Pat dressed in a flowered print to await Nick’s arrival. The morning passed, and with lunchtime approaching a growing anger surged against him for not sending word that he was held up. But when at about two the car pulled into the kerb at the bottom of the shorn grass, relief quietened her rage and she smiled a quick welcome.

  “Had a message from Makai,” he explained. “My assistant is down with malaria. He gets it badly, so I shall have to go back.”

  “At once?”

  “Tomorrow. I’m sorry about letting you down this morning.”

  She shrugged. “It doesn’t matter.”

  “Don’t be stiff, Pat. I promised, and you said you’d like to go up the river. Why not go now?”

  “It’s too hot—”

  “It’s cool on the river. Go on, get your helmet. I expect the boys are still waiting with the canoe at the stage. Boy!” he strode to the kitchen door. “Hand me out some bottles of lime.”

  The river twisted between high jungle walls that met ahead and behind, while directly above arched a strip of steel blue sky. Pat drowsed in the canoe beneath an awning of palm-thatch. The boys paddled without much energy, and they also had to resort to frequent thirst-quenching.

  Nick sat at the other end of the boat, contentedly viewing the scene. He tossed her a packet of shelled nuts and chewed a few himself, moving his strong white teeth with mechanical precision as though mentally far away. He had discarded his jacket and his throat showed brown and hard at the open neck of his white silk shirt.

  Through lowered lashes she watched him. The dark point of hair at the top of the square tanned face seemed exactly related to the cleft in his chin. By a trick of light the hazel was washed right out of his eyes, leaving them green and watchful, like a leopard’s.

  Then he looked at her, pinned her glance. “Still glad you came to Africa?” he asked.

  She nodded. “I wish I were a man, though.”

  “You wouldn’t be nearly so popular. How many men have asked you to marry them?”

  “It isn’t me they want—any woman would do!”

  “That’s true. You’re the first unattached woman I’ve seen in Kanos. An unmarried girl is enough of a magnet. When she’s pretty, too...” He let it trail off at that.

  It was an unexpected compliment and she coloured, and covered it by slapping flies from her face.

  “Don’t get caught by any of them,” he went on, still smiling. “The sort of feeling you might have for a man out here would bear no relation to that enduring stuff you women read about in books.”

  Her glance carefully on the awning, she asked: “You’ve no belief in the endurance of—love, then?”

  “Not out here,” he answered laconically.

  “What about elsewhere?”

  “Still a debatable point. Life is life, and books are for reading and for being set on one side when you’ve done with ’em.”

  “And even you, Mr. Farland, could not set a—woman on one side?”

  “I haven’t been put to the test,” he tossed a nut into his mouth and crunched it. “It wouldn’t be something I’d enjoy.”

  “But I believe you’d do it.” She idly threw a nut into the water. “You’re a ruthless person, aren’t you?”

  “You don’t have to let it worry you.” He grinned wickedly. “I shan’t put you out of the boat and leave you to get eaten by jungle leopards.”

  “Thanks for the reassurance.” She smiled, and yet at the same time felt a cold little shiver run over her. Then she added lightly: “A girl isn’t very safe in Africa, is she, with wife-hungry men roaming the city, and leopards stalking about in the wilds?”

  “She’s okay while she has a keeper standing by,” he drawled. “Do you miss Bill?”

  “He’s one of those people you do miss.” She shrugged. “I love him a bit too much, perhaps.”

  Nick didn’t return a comment and when she looked at him, his eyes were fixed broodingly on her face. “You’re nothing like him on the outside,” he said. “Even to the hair. What colour do you call yours—to me it looks like honey with the sun striking through it.”

  “What a pretty speech for a rubber planter.” She smiled gaily. “I look like my mother, but inside I’m a Brading. I can understand exactly how Bill feels about Africa.”

  “I doubt it,” Nick dr
awled. “The place is his mistress.”

  “He said that about you.” She stared at Nick. “You and Bill are akin, aren’t you? You think and feel alike. It’s—uncanny.”

  “Not really, if you stop to think about it.” He gave a stretch and turned his gaze skywards, lithe and lazy as a sun-indolent leopard. “Africa’s a man’s country,” he murmured.

  “Not a woman’s?”

  “Not a woman’s!”

  She was growing used to his manner of repeating her last words in a tone calculated to clinch argument. After a while she enquired: “How far is Makai?”

  “A day and a half up the river.”

  “This river?”

  “This, and a branch of it.”

  “Will it be long—before you come to Kanos again?”

  “Depends on whether Bill can put things through without me. I may be back in a couple of months; maybe six. Look, there’s a small clearing. Like a rest?” They lazed for a while on ground-sheets, quenching thirst with the remainder of the lime juice and not talking much. Then all at once Nick sat up. “There’s something wrong!” His eyes had narrowed. “I don’t like it.”

  The atmosphere seemed burdened, noticeably; the drone of insects and the jungle chatter had lessened. “Rain?” Pat asked.

  “More like a squall.” He leapt to his feet and pulled her up, then grabbed the ground-sheets. “Come on, child, we’ll get back!”

  The sky had changed from steel to brass. It was curiously silent, but before they had been going half an hour the squall leapt upon them with a mighty stirring and blustering among the trees. Boat and water were swept against the mangroves. Nick clung to the roots, spitting oaths that would have done credit to Bill.

  “Keep flat!” he shouted to her.

  Cursing the hell-bent wind, he pulled himself in among the roots and weeds, then he turned, and while the boys balanced one at each end of the canoe and steadied it by grasping branches, he leant over to Pat. “Get up a little, on to your knees, and leave the rest to me!”

  She moved, bracing herself against a force altogether supernatural. Thinking to help him, she tried to stand. In a second her helmet was ripped off and a branch had slashed her sleeve to the shoulder, leaving a thin, bleeding trail.