Winds of Enchantment Page 7

  Ignoring the lack of interest in her voice, he went on: “It’s cleared but not surfaced. Even so, the journey took three hours less than by river. Eventually we’ll be able to do it in six hours. Not bad, eh?”

  He talked, more urgently than the subject warranted, of the day, not far distant, when lorries would supplant the native canoe. There was already a sign up at the junction with the jungle highway, a proud metal thing bearing the words, ‘Farland-Brading Rubber Plantations’.

  The cool, clipped phrases barely touched her consciousness. She was steeped in an inertia. It was no good Nick trying to infuse her with his own will and enthusiasm; the most important part of her was dead—with Bill.

  Next day Doctor Piers suggested a little exercise. This was such a reversal of his previous advice that anyone else might have wondered. Nor did Pat suspect a hidden hand when, at the close of his visit, the doctor informed her that he would not call again unless requested by herself to do so.

  She walked through the rooms, ate nothing, but smoked quite a few cigarettes and drank quantities of black coffee.

  It was Nick who made her go out with one of his friends while Bill’s bedroom was dismantled, his clothes packed and sent away. It was Nick who made her ride each morning, and dress of an evening for the club or dinner at Winterton Terrace.

  One morning he took her to the solicitor’s office. She signed without reading the parchments. Then Nick signed, and the witnesses.

  They drove down the sunbaked street to the bank. Here some more signatures were required of her. The manager called for drinks and cigarettes. “You’ve surprised us all, Miss Brading,” he said. “We thought you’d be going back to England.”

  She smiled distortedly. England ... Africa ... it didn’t matter where.

  Nick came back to the villa for lunch. “We’re partners now,” he said. “You can bawl me out for a slow dog with the rubber, and I can chivvy you over the transport. We’ll take Barker on permanently to sell the stuff. Grey can supervise the shipping and you can poke in your nose whenever you wish. Agreed?”

  She shrugged acquiescence.

  The boy announced lunch and Nick took her elbow and led her into the dining-room. “You’re missing something good,” he said when she refused the savoury.

  She thought he pitied her, but was too dumb to resent it. She knew he watched her keenly and didn’t care; she would never feel anything again, for anyone.

  A month dragged by and the shadows began to lift. The pain was easing and the mental exhaustion dispersing. Gradually, she picked up the threads of the business, looked over the store sheds and the books, accepted formal visits from the skippers of the Farland-Brading fleet. She signed wages cheques and ordered up the rice rations for the labourers. When they worked extra hard she gave ‘dash money’ as Bill used to do.

  But her spirit was quenched. She seldom smiled, never bantered. She was grateful for Nick, but would have been just as grateful had he left her alone. She was too mentally fagged for the effort he demanded.

  “You’re looking better,” he remarked one evening. “I came from Makai in a hurry and I ought to go back for a week or two. Can you manage without me?”

  “Of course.” She meant it.

  He smiled a little. “I didn’t expect you to flatter me into staying, but you needn’t be so independent.”

  “I’m not. You’ve been kind,” she managed a smile, “but I’ve no right to keep you from your work.”

  “If I put more men on to the new road it will soon be finished. I could travel up much more frequently then.”

  “You needn’t—for me.”

  He was silent for a moment. “I will though—for both of us. I shan’t feel right till you’re ticking me off again. Will you promise me something?”

  “Within reason.”

  “That you’ll ride each morning and work up an appetite, that you’ll go to the club and dance a bit, and watch the polo on Saturdays. That you’ll let me know at once if you’re in any sort of trouble.”

  She sighed, and shrugged. “Why should you go to this bother for me?”

  He prolonged the pause in order to force her to look up at him. But when she raised her eyes they were a dull amber, and her mouth, though still coral and warm-looking, was straight and unresponsive.

  “I like a fight,” he replied briefly.

  So Nick returned to Makai.

  Alone, and discouraging the advances of well-intentioned friends, Pat tried desperately to understand the lassitude that washed over her like a tide. She thought back to the days at the cottage at Caystor. There was no pain, no joy in recollection, only an ache of indifference. She had cried for Christine, a passion of weeping against Steve’s shoulder. For Bill she had shed no tear. She would never weep or laugh again. She would never again know an excess of joy, or pain.

  For a few days she kept up the morning ride, but it seemed pointless, and tiring. She stopped going to the club, working hard all day and reading long into the small hours each night. Sometimes she stood long at the window in the lounge, gazing over the tops of the casuarinas to the ceaseless sea. Above the wharves often protruded the smoke-blackened funnels of a steamer, and out at the bar freighters nested in the steel-hot bosom of the waters.

  Then Cliff came to her to say there was trouble among the boatboys. “They want more money,” he said.

  “Are all the Kanos boatmen in this, or just our boys?” she asked.

  “Only ours, Pat.”

  She paused reflectively. “Our lot do better than most—good tips and rations. What’s behind it?”

  He shook his head, and looked uncomfortable.

  “Have you been drinking again, Cliff?” She spoke sharply.

  “A bit—the trouble is, Pat, I’m not Bill. The boys are used to being slanged by him in their own lingo.”

  “You mean they’re taking advantage of us, because Bill’s gone, and I’m a woman.” Her breath caught on a sigh. “Look, explain to Sam the foreman how we stand about rates, that it’s a union thing, but say we’ll increase the rations.”

  She watched Cliff shamble away. The job was too big for him, but she had hoped that added responsibility would pull him together. It wouldn’t do for Nick to find out that the shipping was in the hands of a degenerate.

  Nick wrote that the surfacing of the road was nearly complete. He had acquired the lease on a further tract of land beyond Makai, and had fixed on a first-class man to clear and plant it. The fellow was coming next week ... “I shall stay on a few days to get him run in and then leave him and Madden in charge here. You and I are due for a spot of gaiety.”

  The note drifted to the table and then to the carpet. She sank down on the divan and stared hopelessly at the floor.

  It was in a similar position, a fortnight later, that Nick came upon her. He stood above her, considering her attitude, and the smile left his lips and the green stood out hard in his eyes. She was thin and very pale. She bore no relation to the spirited girl who had argued with him up at Makai—humour seemed killed in her. “Hullo, Patricia,” he spoke quietly. “Feeling low?”

  She sat up and raked back her hair. “I—try not to be like this, Nick,” she spoke defensibly.

  “I’ll see you try a little harder. You’re going to the polo match with me at four-forty. I’m riding in the first match. We’re taking tea in the pavilion with the Reynolds.”

  She sighed. “That means dressing up.”

  “Why not? No one can look prettier than you when you try.”

  “You go alone and come back here to dinner,” she suggested.

  “We’re dining at the club,” he said forcibly. He reached down, took her by the shoulders and lifted her to her feet. “Pat, look at me! You can’t go on grieving like this. Flesh and blood won’t stand it ... you’ll kill yourself.” He spoke angrily, close to her face. “Can you imagine how Bill would feel if he saw you now? For heaven’s sake take hold of yourself ... hold on to me, if it will help. We’ve got to get you bac
k where you were.”

  “It isn’t grief,” she said wearily. “I died, too, that day.”

  His tone roughened. “Don’t be a little fool. You’re warm and living and there’s a heart beating just here,” he pressed her side, “wanting to leap and plunge with excitement and all the other emotions. Give it a chance, Pat.”

  Her expression did not change. She took his hand from her shoulder and the other dropped into his pocket as he turned away.

  “Help yourself to a drink while I change,” she said.

  That night, after dining at the club, he drove along the sea road, his jaw taut and grim and determined, as though he’d shake her out of her apathy by cruelly showing her the sea. She sat beside him, very still, gazing out, far out. “Let the tears come,” he roughly ordered. “Once you called me inhuman, now who’s being that way?”

  “There are my tears,” she pointed to the sea. “An ocean of them.”

  He gave a disgusted grunt, caught at the wheel and spun the car in a reckless U-turn. They drove back to the villa, unspeaking.

  Pat was not ungrateful for Nick’s concern—after all, he had been Bill’s close friend. For his sake she would have liked to throw off the dreadful inertia that had her in its grip.

  Trouble flared again among the boatmen, and this time Nick settled it. “Grey’s no good,” he said when he came back. “The boys have no respect for him—and he drinks heavily. We’ll advertise for someone else.”

  “You can’t sack Cliff,” she demurred. “He’d go under straight away without a job.”

  “A man like that is more nuisance than he’s worth,” Nick spoke decisively. “We’ll give him a bonus and pay his passage home.”

  “He won’t go home. Nick, I gave him a hand while you were at Makai. We could provide him with an assistant.”

  “Okay, I’ll do that rather than see you go down to the beach in all this heat. And for the time being I’ll keep watch myself.”

  It was not long after this that Madden wrote from Makai that he needed Nick’s decision on a few matters. Cole, the new man, was camping on the plantation and Madden was alone. Should he come up to Kanos or would Nick be returning soon?

  “You’ll go, of course,” said Pat, when he showed her the letter.

  “No. Madden can come here.”

  “It isn’t like you to neglect the rubber for so long. Are you growing tired of it?”

  “I’m not leaving you again,” was his brief reply. He leaned across the dinner table—they were at Winterton Terrace—and gave her the taut smile which had replaced his former mocking grin. “I’ll go to Makai if you’ll go with me.”

  She sat hesitating, aware of his green-flecked eyes upon her, hard and glinting. “All right, Nick,” with a faint shrug, “I’ll go with you. Makai is as good a place as any to be bored in.”

  He pulled in his lip, the debatable lower one which she never glanced at now.

  They left for Makai by road in the misty dawn. The highway was cool between the tall trees. As the sun came up the parrots flocked raucously from their homes near the river, and monkeys swung out in long chattering lines among the treetops. They passed a village, a huddle of mud huts and a cluster of staring women and children. Nick said their men worked on the plantation.

  “They go home for a couple of days once a fortnight,” he added.

  When the sun was hottest, they stopped to eat and rest. Nick talked about the native schools and missions where the untiring medics worked. Africa’s hidden wealth, he said, should be made to yield for the benefit of its people. She watched him as he talked, and realized how strongly he felt about the people of Africa; she also realized that he was doing more than his bit to help them get educated, and decently fed and housed.

  Pat dozed off in a while, and when she awoke the last glow of evening was softening the geometrical lines of the rubber trees. They had left the highway and were racketing over the hardcore foundation of the new road.

  “About another hour and we’ll be at Makai,” he shot her a smile. “Had a good sleep?”

  She nodded and gave a stretch; her hair was ruffled and she looked like a child.

  “Do you dream?” he asked.

  “Why, have I been talking in my sleep?” She looked disturbed.

  “You murmured a name or two.” He looked quizzical. “You’ll sleep better at Makai. It’s cooler among the trees.”

  Madden had food and baths waiting when they arrived. This time Pat was to use Nick’s bungalow and he was to sleep at the superintendent’s place. He said he’d take his meals with her, and as they crossed the compound she noticed that additional softer trees and shrubs had been planted since her last visit. Some bushes of flame flowers, and several velvet tamarinds.

  “Is it more like home?” He quizzed her face as they reached the veranda of his bungalow.

  “Well, the outside certainly is,” she agreed. A brooding quiet lay over the forest all about them. There was no moon, but the cool air had released a scent, sweet and pungent, that rose in waves with the breeze.

  “Mmm, much nicer than all that rubber,” she murmured.

  Pat and the two men sat on the veranda till very late that night. Then she admitted to being sleepy and the men said goodnight and moved off.

  As she lay between fresh white sheets, she listened to the night sounds of Makai, and caught the distant thud of a drum. The heartbeat of Africa.

  It was certainly cooler at Makai, where she wandered among the trees set round a lake on the farther rim of the new plantation. There was no path to the dark water, but it was not unpleasant to sit in the shade of the cabin on the sere hillside and gaze down at it. It imbued her with a sort of transient peace.

  Nick and the men talked shop a lot, and she listened lazily. “We’ll have to lay off planting till the rains,” Nick said to Cole. “Mark off the clearing where the tanks and smoking sheds will eventually be erected and have the boys sow it with yams and millet, and see they keep down the weeds. It’ll help you with supplies, too. In fact, it’s wise to get a crop or two off the cleared land before you plant rubber; sweetens the soil and fills the native, and once it rains the stuff will grow so fast it won’t hold you back.”

  “I need more men,” put in Cole.

  “You’ll have them. By the way, you must do something with the track up at Makai. It’s all right now, but you’ll never make it in the rains. Bed in some of the felled timber, mahogany for preference. Don’t bother too much just yet about making the land pay for itself.”

  “Will it be long before you return to Makai?” Madden asked Nick.

  “I don’t know.” Nick glanced at Pat, consideringly. “Anyway, I’m relying on you, Cole, to make a good job of the new plantation. It’s great work, wresting wealth and order from miles of crude jungle.”

  The conversation went on for some while, and then Nick turned to Pat and suggested a ride. The boy brought their horses, and he helped her into the saddle. She shot in lightly, and Nick gazed up at her with a frown. “You weigh next to nothing,” he grunted.

  “It’s fashionable,” she pulled a face at him. “Fat girls don’t look good in riding breeches.”

  “Well, I must admit you look good in yours.” He grinned and swung into his own saddle, and they set off along a burnt brick track. Dust rose round them in red clouds. The waning sun burnished the wide reaches of cleared land.

  They had dinner alone at the bungalow that evening, and afterwards he put records on the gramophone. Pat curled up at one end of a wicker settee, and looked a little better than of late.

  “You’re pleased with Cole, aren’t you?” she said after a moment.

  “He seems to me the right type to train as manager of the whole plantation,” Nick agreed, sitting down with a cigarette.

  “But that’s your job.” Her eyes widened. “You won’t give that up easily.”

  “He’d only be in full charge during my absence.” She nodded, as if fully expecting that answer. She breathed his cigarett
e smoke, then held out a hand for one. He came lazily across to her and looked down at her, watching as her fair head tilted back and the first puff wreathed her face. The flame of the match reached his, fingers and he flicked it off.

  “You’d sooner stay at Makai than return to Kanos,” she stated, knowing him and his devotion to this jungle kingdom he had built.

  He hitched his white trousers and sat down beside her. “Maybe I want more fun out of life than Makai can offer,” he drawled.

  They smoked in silence.

  “Nick,” she spoke in a cool, distant voice, “you’ve wasted enough time on me. When we go back to Kanos, I want you to go your way, and I shall go mine. You—ought to find yourself a girl.”

  He twisted his head towards her and paused long enough to make Pat turn her head to meet his gaze. “Haven’t I got a girl?” he asked quietly.

  “You want fun—you’ve just said so. And you’ll never have fun with me. I’m a burden that you took on because of your partnership with Bill—”

  “That isn’t quite true, Patricia.”

  “I believe it is—and I’d rather you left me alone.”

  He leaned to the table for the ashtray. “I took you on, child, and I’m sticking to you till you’re ready to stand alone again.”

  He held the ashtray while she stubbed out her cigarette, then he added his own. Her head was bent, she wouldn’t meet his eyes.

  “I mean what I say, Pat.” His tone stayed soft, but there was force in it. “You see, for the present you’re my job, not the rubber. We’re making money, and soon it will come in even faster, but I’d give every cent I own and start the sweating uphill fight all over again if it would make you come alive as you once were.” She frowned, and felt he was heaping responsibility upon her that she did not want to bear. There must be something she could do, some way she could repay his concern and tolerance.