Winds of Enchantment Read online

  “Kneel, you little fool! You’ll be in the water.”

  His feet dug well among the weeds, he reached farther down, locked an arm about her waist and lifted. For a panting moment she hung in that flailing wind and then she was crouched beside him among great soggy leaves, gulping and feeling her head to make sure that some hair was left on it.

  The boys tried to manoeuvre the canoe farther down the bank, but it capsized and they, too, were forced to take shelter in the undergrowth.

  Nick’s face was grim, his teeth tight. The sky darkened, and then the lightning began, an eternal fire through the treetops. The noise was tremendous, ceaseless.

  “We can’t stay here,” he yelled. “There’s a path that runs parallel with the river. I’m going to find it. Keep close behind me.”

  He took off his jacket and buttoned it round her shoulders, opened his knife and began slashing the great sappy stems of the weeds. His violence rose to meet that of the wind; his arm swung with the same fury. He dragged her on, fighting the jungle and the elements. His face, in the ruddy glare of lightning, had a fierce, almost exultant look.

  When at last they reached the path his shirt was ripped to ribbons. Sheltering her with his body, he pushed her on among the trees, lifting his arms to take the blows from the threshing branches.

  Now the sky was viridian and flame. The trees cracked and roared in a fury and an ever fiercer rush of wind. It choked her breath, whipped words from her mouth before they could be uttered.

  To the right a tree shot up in a pillar of fire. A branch snapped off overhead with a dry rattle and was blown into the bush. The jacket was suddenly wrenched from her back and carried up into the trees. She struggled on, uncannily fearless, the rags of her frock clinging to her, her lungs bursting.

  How it rained—great flickering drops that made him urge her to go faster, and faster. The heavens seemed to be emptying, turning the track into a boiling stream that surged round their ankles with the sound of the sea.

  “A couple of miles,” he cried. “Can you make it?”

  She tried to nod, and saw him glint down at her with a clamped, devilish smile. He hauled her closer, half lifting her along with him, pulling her aside from the path of gale-driven saplings. In swirling, roaring blackness they reached the sea road, no longer the familiar sunbaked track but a red torrent. Here, he swung her up into his arms and battled the last few hundred yards to the house.

  Inside the living-room he set her down. She heard the scrape of a match; the lamp flowered. She stood quite still, eyes huge in her streaming face, the tatters of her dress plastered flat against her body, her hair like tow.

  “You’d better get changed,” he spoke without emotion. “Give me some shorts and a singlet of Bill’s.”

  Twenty minutes later she came back in linen slacks and a shirt. He was dry and brushed. Bill’s shorts showed a ring of white above the brown knee and the jacket pinched, but he said they felt good.

  “I expect the car’s flooded,” he jerked. “I’ll have to borrow some oilskins and walk it. What have you got to eat?” He seemed quite unperturbed, but his eyes did not meet hers.

  “It’s very late—the boys have gone.” She, too, tried to sound casual. “I’ll get you something from tins.”

  They sat down to a cold meal of chicken and vegetables, fresh pineapple, hard biscuit and coffee.

  There was a queer look about him, and something that she thought was controlled violence smouldered in the depths of his eyes. She had never seen him like this before, and the curious sadness that she had felt since early afternoon deepened into a positive ache.

  She cleared the table and gave him a pile of magazines that Steve had sent. While he read she moved uneasily about the room.

  “Give your legs a rest,” he grunted suddenly, without looking up. “They’ve earned it.”

  She was standing behind him in the alcove made by the bookshelves and the gramophone. He had taken off the tight jacket and she could see the powerful moulding of bone and muscle across his neck. “Nick, if—if you stay at Makai six months, I may not see you again,” she got out.

  Fully a minute passed. He thumbed a few pages.

  “Planning to go home?” he asked of a sheet of print.

  “I may be.”

  “I thought you were staying unless the climate got you down. That’s what Bill said.”

  “One doesn’t tell one’s father everything.”

  Another long pause. Then: “Why tell me?”

  “We’re friends, aren’t we?”

  “You’re tired,” he set aside his magazine. “I ought to be going.”

  As he said this Pat was highly conscious of tension between them. She took a step closer to his back, looked down and saw the livid depression that began on the point of his shoulder, slipped under the strap of the singlet and ran several inches diagonally down his chest. She touched the scar, unthinkingly, and at once she felt him stiffen. “Does it hurt?” she asked huskily.

  “No,” in a sharp undertone.

  She drew her fingers away, and stood taut against the bookshelves as he got quickly to his feet. He turned, stared coldly into her eyes for a long moment, then he crossed towards the kitchen and when he came back into the room he was wearing Bill’s oilskins. “Goodnight, Pat.” His glance swung round the room, as though his mind was fixing details. “Don’t dream about the storm, and that muddy trek of ours.”

  “I shan’t” She watched him go to the veranda door. “Goodbye, Nick.”

  There was a rustle of oilskins, then the decisive slam of the door.

  Bill returned jubilant and full of plans. He had bought the two freighters and as soon as the Farland-Brading sheds were up on the new concession along the shore, the vessels would be towed in and slicked up. He was full of ambitious ideas.

  He grinned affectionately at Pat. “We’ll build our own house farther up, nearer the nobs. A storied affair with a double veranda—as good as the best you’ll see in the port. We’ll even fit out a bathroom or two. We’re going up, kitten. Your father’s a company director now.” He gave a gusty laugh. “Bill Brading, gone all brandy and cigars. I shall have to look out my white ducks.”

  His enthusiasm was infectious. Pat went with him to choose a site for the house, an eminence above the belt of casuarinas that cut off the beach. A squad of natives cleared the trees, drove in the mighty piles, prepared the vast quantities of cement and mud to build the two-foot-thick walls. Apart from an occasional squall—the rains were nearly at an end—nothing but the natural indolence of the labourers stood in the way of the rapid completion of the house.

  The other traders were sceptical and envious. Whoever heard of a man of fifty starting a new sort of life in the tropics?

  Pat discussed the house with Cliff Grey, who smiled cynically and said he was all for people believing they could find happiness, anywhere. The trouble was, realism had a way of overcoming idealism; out here, perhaps, more than anywhere else.

  Cliff, talking in this vein, made Pat feel impatient. She couldn’t help contrasting him with Nick Farland—Nick the fighter and pioneer. She thought of the storm, and the steely strength of his hand as he gripped the jack-knife and hacked at the primeval growth of the jungle, his satanic exultation when at last he dragged her through the path, his body shielding her from the worst blows of the wind.

  Bill wrote to him about the two freighters, describing the new wharves with the company’s name printed across them facing the sea, and boasted of the new white villa. Nick replied that all of it was good work; he had severed his connections with his former shippers and Bill could expect the first boatloads down the river within the next fortnight.

  Bryant, the young agent whom Bill had relieved, came back and took over. Till their own house was ready, the Bradings moved into the one that was vacated when the Melvilles packed up and went home to England. Bill bought up the old shooting car that Melville had left for his successor.

  Soon the villa above the ca
suarinas emerged white and striking, with pillared screened verandas and a high green roof. Later the garden would be planted with palms and hibiscus, jacaranda and bougainvillaea. Furniture was being made in the town, fabrics had been ordered, and baths were on their way from Marseilles.

  Bill fretted in enforced idleness, waiting for the promised loads of crepe rubber. He wrote again to Makai: “Devil take it, Nick, your plantation had better yield quicker than this or we’ll all go hungry.”

  To which came the reply: “Keep your shirt on, Bill, you’ll soon be wondering where to store it all. By the way, how’s finance? I’m thinking of cutting a section of road to meet the jungle highway so that we can use trucks.”

  Although at least several months must pass before a new road could be completed, Bill ordered lorries in readiness.

  Then came the great morning when the first laden boats tied up in the small harbour at the river mouth. Thousands of thin, milky sheets of rubber were transferred straight into surf-boats which zigzagged through the flats to the steamers. In spite of all the business with customs officials, one of the freighters left at midnight and the other in the misty dawn.

  Two ships were not enough, Bill growled. There was a chap down the coast with a fleet of idle vessels and he meant to have some of them.

  It was astonishing, in this place where everything moved with painful slowness, how soon the sheds were bursting with rubber, and the boats plying at regular intervals. Bill, unable to resist a spot of trading, had hardware and salt and cheap clothes brought in the empty boats from England, which he sold at a profit to Cliff Grey, who in turn made his own percentage out of the natives.

  For Pat, despite the heat, life at this time was full of interest and excitement. After mail day, and a letter from Steve, she would feel faintly restless. But England was so distant, its cool shores so utterly remote from this tropic strand, that along with Steve it assumed in her mind the shape of some land she had visited in dreams; elusive and unreal.

  She had an office built on to the Farland-Brading sheds and ordered account books with the firm’s name indented on the covers. A desk was put in, and a typewriter, and the drawers were filled with printed stationery and office sundries. For a few weeks she had lessons from an accountant she had met at the club and gradually, with the aid of a native clerk, she took over the whole of Bill’s office work, which pleased him mightily.

  Bill was having a grand time. Between shipments he cruised up the coast and made contracts with export agents of foreign firms. “They’re fighting for our stuff,” he reported to Pat. “Nick’s rubber is the best quality down the coast and they know it. Look at these contracts, kitten!”

  Then one lunch time, Bill waved a letter of Nick’s under her nose. “Nick’s invited me to Makai for a few days, to see how the rubber’s made.”

  “How soon can we go?” Pat asked, smiling.

  “He doesn’t include you, kitten.”

  “He’s probably forgotten my existence.” She shrugged. “But I might as well see how they get that infernal rubber we have with every meal.”

  Bill wasn’t so sure. “I doubt if they can put you up.”

  “I’ll take a camp bed and sleep on the veranda. She was faintly surprised by her own eagerness. “Say I can come, Bill.”

  He looked thoughtful for once, but could not deny her anything so easy to give.

  “Okay, you coaxing female you.” Grinning, he reached across the table and patted her hand. But don’t blame me if Nick kicks up the dust. Makai, from all accounts, is no place for a woman.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  A WEEK later they set off up the river at dawn in a shivering mist. The boys sang and poled energetically till the sun came up, when the pace was more sluggish and except for the dip of the paddles the river was an endless channel of silence. Just before dusk they reached a village, where the local preacher put them up for the night.

  Again next morning they made an early start, and soon they came to the branch river that led to Makai. About mid-morning the scene to the left of the river changed. A clearing appeared, and a native village, followed by rubber trees, young ones not yet tapped. A few miles farther on began the fully grown trees with their little grey cups sheltered by peaks to keep out the rain. They were perfectly spaced, the earth flat and leafy between them.

  After a couple of hours of looking at these regimented ranks of trees, Pat closed her eyes and drifted off to sleep against her mound of cushions.

  They came to Makai soon after midday. On a modern-looking cement platform lolled a few boys, and nearby in khaki drill, his eyes shadowed by his helmet, stood Nick Farland. Bill sprang out and jabbed his partner’s ribs in greeting. Nick came down the steps, put a foot in the boat and gave Pat a hand. She jumped lightly up beside him, and met those green-flecked, ironical hazel eyes that were like no one else’s. “So you had to come as well,” he drawled.

  “My curiosity got the better of me,” she smiled. “Do you mind?”

  “Not much good minding, is it?” He turned to Bill.

  “This is what I call a plantation!” Bill exclaimed. “This is really something, my lad.” Smiling to himself, the older man strolled ahead through a path between cocoa trees.

  “Patricia,” Nick drawled softly, “did you come to see me or the rubber trees?”

  She smiled, borrowing his mockery. “I couldn’t bear to imagine your disappointment if Bill turned up alone.”

  “I’d have got through.”

  “No doubt,” she answered. “It would take more than a woman to supplant the rubber at Makai.”

  “You know me very well,” he agreed drily. The turn of a corner revealed a white, tin-roofed house. “You share this with Bill. The superintendent has transferred to my place for your stay. Run along in, child, and take a nice cool bath and a long cool drink. They’ll make you feel a new woman.”

  “Nick,” she confronted him, chin tilted, amber eyes shaded by the brim of her sun-helmet, “haven’t you yet made up your mind whether I’m a child or a woman?”

  He gazed down at her ironically. ‘You’re a mixture of the two, Patricia. A dappy kid who sees the world through dream-specs. I hope a hard taste of reality isn’t waiting round the corner to shake your dreamworld all out of perspective. I’m not good at mopping up the tears of little girls.”

  “You’re better at dragging them through the jungle in a storm, eh?” She gave a laugh. “I wonder if you are such a tough nut as you make out, Mr. Farland.”

  “There’s one thing for sure, young Pat,” he clicked his fingers under her tilt of a nose, “I’m the big-wheel around here, and don’t you forget any of my orders. No wandering off among the trees—the atmosphere isn’t exactly that of a Surrey pinewood.”

  “I wouldn’t dream of disobeying you,” she mocked. “You might decide that I’m a little girl, after all, and tip me over your big brown knee for a spanking.”

  “You could do with one of those, I reckon.” He quizzed her, none too kindly. “Getting spoiled out here, with all those men wanting to marry you, and Bill putting up a white villa where you can act the princess?”

  “You didn’t have to say that.” She felt stung, recalling all the hours she spent poring over the account books in the Farland-Brading office.

  “No, I didn’t have to say it.” His mouth softened a fraction. “You can be a heck of a good kid, Honey Brading—especially in the rain.”

  They grinned at each other, then he swung on his heel and walked across the compound with that long, easy stride of a body in perfect trim. A hard, tall enigmatical man. Pat nipped at her lip, still uncertain whether she liked him, or was fascinated by his achievements here at Makai. There was one thing for certain, in lots of ways he wasn’t quite so nice as Steve. He didn’t make her feel comfortable and at ease; their banter was edged, as though it could cut deep and make a wound.

  During the following days at Makai, Pat slept lightly, and the slightest sound in the compound stabbed her into instant
wakefulness.

  Madden, the superintendent, was a sociable sort, and one morning she went with him on his rounds. They met Jameson, the assistant manager, and stayed for lunch with him. Unused to feminine companionship and interest, the superintendent had taken longer over his day’s work than was customary, and the evening meal was waiting when he drove Pat back to Makai. She told them to start without her and ran in to wash and change, but when she returned they were still standing about in the living-room, and Nick gave her a hard, intent look which made a pulse jump in her throat. Over coffee he asked Madden: “You saw Jameson?” The superintendent nodded, then he gave an exclamation. “Gosh, I’m sorry! I clean forgot your message.”

  Nick’s fist thumped down on the table. “That’s a day wasted, Madden, d’you realize it?”

  Pat glanced from one man to the other. “I think I’m to blame,” she said. “We met Mr. Jameson at lunch time and I made rubber talk taboo.”

  Nick gave her a cool stare. “What did you talk about?” he enquired. “Rose trees and chintz covers?”

  “Yes,” she retorted, “and the cinema and Hyde Park, the Boat Race and the Cotswolds. Fresh milk and roast beef, and Christmas with holly and everything else that isn’t Africa. For an hour we decided to be human.” Bill laughed. Nick made no reply, and when the meal was cleared the men settled to play cards while Pat went out into the sultry moonlight and looked out over the stunted trees of the compound to the orderly walls of rubber. Each morning Nick would come out to the same scene: coffee trees and plantains amid elephant grass, and that maddening, symmetrical boundary of rubber.

  His house was well furnished, the houseboys good, but the cooking was unimaginative and too often from tins. He had some good horses here, but what was the good of riding if the only paths lay between those interminable trees? He was sacrificing a diagonal slice of the plantation to the new road, but only so that he could make the money quicker to plant still more acres.