Winds of Enchantment Page 8

  “Nick, doesn’t it occur to you that I’m grown up now?” she asked helplessly. “I was a child when I last came to Makai—if I’m different now, it’s because I’m a woman.”

  His eyes raked her face, as if searching for the truth in her statement. Then he slowly shook his black head and raked back the hair from his forehead. “Your eyes are those of a lost child, Pat.”

  “And you’re no good at mopping up the tears of little girls lost, are you, Nick?”

  “I said that—believing it. I’d give anything to see you cry right now.” He leaned towards her, a large hand clenching brown over his white-clad knee. “There used to be such a look of eager expectancy about you, now you’re switched off and it exasperates me and hurts me to see you this way. Honey Brading, to feel too much is almost as bad as feeling too little. I know that Bill was mother and father to you for a couple of wonderful years, but nothing, not all the grieving in the world, is going to bring any of it back. He’s a grand memory which you are turning into a martyrdom!”

  She flinched—his words struck like a whiplash, then she jumped to her feet, white-faced, filled with resentment as she took in Nick’s look of abundant strength and power. “I never liked you,” she choked. “I tolerated you because of Bill, but I don’t have to tolerate you any more—beyond the bounds of business. Do you hear?”

  “Sure.” He too had got to his feet, and the green lights were flickering in his eyes. “I hear you, and if hating me will help bring you back to life, then go ahead and hate away. Hate the look of me, detest my arrogance and the fact that I’m alive and Bill dead. Hate the things I say, and the things I shall force you to do—hate me, honey, as much as you loved Bill.”

  “I’ll do all that, and more,” she swore. “And I won’t find any of it hard going—a thing is never so hard when the groundwork is already laid.”

  “Meaning?” he taunted.

  “Meaning that I hated you from the moment we met. You say that it’s bad to feel too much. Well,” she flung up her head, “I’d sooner have too much heart than that cold adding machine you carry about inside you. Whatever you do for anyone is calculated; mere nourishment for that inflated ego of yours. You took me on, little orphan Annie, just as you’d take on a sickly rubber tree, forcing it to yield. If I yield, it will most certainly be out of hatred.”

  “That suits me fine.” He smiled arrogantly, showing his white teeth. “That’s the way I want it, Honey Brading.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  TWO days later they returned to Kanos.

  The round began again. Forcing her into the saddle each morning, lunching alone at his own house or with men at the club, tea with her and staying on to dinner, or carrying her off to dine at Winterton Terrace. Avoiding certain subjects and wearing others to shreds.

  There were times, she knew, when he could have shaken her furiously, hurt her into feeling. She knew from the way he clenched his hands in his pockets, and studying the restraint of the man, she wondered what he would resort to if he ever truly let loose ... with her.

  She knew that when he was away from her he rode hard, gambled a lot, and was often down on the beach doing the job that once had been Bill’s. He called Cliff a neurotic soak and himself arranged for the seasonal repainting of the sheds and caulking of the boats.

  Word came through from Madden that the new road was fit for transport and the first six trucks would leave at once. They came, large vehicles bearing the company’s name. Nick made Pat go with him to meet them at the bend where the sea road joined the highway. For newly trained drivers, he said, the boys had done well; Makai to Kanos in ten hours.

  Barker had been off collecting orders and he came back with quite a bunch. He had even found a firm who would take the waste, and Nick enthusiastically told Pat that prices were better than ever. “We seem to be in rubber at the right time. A few years ago prices were so poor that you could only make it pay by cheapness of production. Pat, d’you fancy a swish evening out?”

  “Not much.” They were in the office, where she was entering up the private ledger.

  “I’ve just left Reynolds,” Nick’s voice had hardened. “He particularly wants us to go to his house to dinner tonight.”

  “There’s nothing to stop you from going,” she said, uninterested. “They won’t mind if you go alone.”

  “Pat, this has to do with rubber. I shouldn’t be surprised if the invitation was inspired from higher up. You and I employ the largest personnel in Kanos; we also contribute considerably to the prosperity of the province. In fact, we’re a power in local politics.”

  “You are.” She fitted the cap of her pen and screwed it tight. “You do the bulk of the work—I’m just someone who happens to be mixed up in all this because Bill brought me here.”

  She could feel his hard, reined-in anger as she locked away the ledger. She walked out of the office and past the sheds and made her way up to the villa—it shone white in the sun—the proud African house that Bill had built. She hardly knew whether she hated the place, or loved it. It was haunted, she was sure of that. Bill’s jovial voice was everywhere, singing a ditty, bawling out one of the boys, calling her kitten...

  Hard footfalls crunched the path behind her. “Thunderation, Pat!” His hands seized her slim shoulders and he pulled her roughly round to face him. The western sky, as they faced each other there in the front garden, was soaked in fire. It seemed to be in his eyes as well, and it bronzed his face and made of his anger something she might have feared—had she had feelings to feel and fear with.

  “I don’t care to be dragged to parties out of pity,” she flared. “Do you think people don’t know that you’re my self-imposed keeper? Let me off the hook for once, Nick—give me a breather from your well-intentioned but unwanted company.”

  “And what will you do all the evening?” he demanded, and she saw a nerve pulsing hard beside his mouth. “Mope as usual?”

  “You call it moping,” she retorted. “I just happen to prefer my own company to yours.”

  “All right.” He let her go, and her shoulders hurt where his fingers had gripped her. “I don’t know why I bother with you. You’re about as much fun as a wet week.”

  “I told you that at Makai,” she threw back at him as she continued on her way to the house. “Enjoy the party, Nick. I’m sure you’ll be a big success with Mrs. Reynolds.”

  She went up the steps of the veranda and into the lounge, but she felt no sense of triumph at that last crack; she knew that Nick had a brand of integrity rare in West Africa. He did not flirt with the wives of other men, or take his pleasures lightly. Hadn’t Bill said that the jungle was his mistress—his love?

  A storm came and opened up the soil of the Brading garden; already new grass speared the burnt stubble and native weed spread succulent roots and sought the sun. Honeysuckle and bougainvillaea were bedded near the house, and along the low white boundary walls cape jasmine was set, and moonflowers, cannas and night-blooming lilies. From circular plots in the lawn sprang palm saplings and jacarandas, lantana, hibiscus and coral vine.

  Pat and a couple of the boys were weeding. She wore a coral cotton dress with a boat neckline, and she worked, wearing a raffia hat, until the dress was clinging to her moist back. She straightened at last and told the boys to get themselves something to eat, then she tiredly made her way indoors. Hard work dulled the edge of her thoughts as nothing else seemed to, and she welcomed the blossoming garden—for Nick was often down at the sheds and she avoided him as much as he would let her.

  She sat down to a solitary lunch, then took a couple of hours’ siesta under the netting of her bed. When she awoke a curtain of darkness swathed the window, and a boy stole in. “You sleep, missy?” he enquired.

  ‘Yes, John. Light the lamp.”

  “Have chop?” he asked, when the duty had been performed.

  “Soon. Is bath ready?”

  ‘Yes, missy.”

  She bathed and put on a white frock. But she should
have worn something brighter, that was obvious the moment she caught sight of herself in the mirror. A dash of lipstick helped a bit, but it seemed from her pallor that she had worked too long in the garden that day and exhausted herself rather than made herself healthily tired. The light, shoulder-length hair added to her general appearance of defenceless youth.

  Nick was prowling the lounge when she walked in. “Oh, I didn’t know you were here,” she said. “You mostly put on some music.”

  His eyes flicked her pale face, but he made no comment. After dinner they smoked on the veranda. The night was cool and heady, typical of the rare intervals in the season that was just beginning. Fireflies drifted among the bare branches of the newly planted shrubs, the palm-tufts rattled, night moths winged in an aimless maze.

  “In a few weeks this will be the most charming villa in the bay,” said Nick. “You should entertain.”

  She didn’t reply, for tonight she didn’t want an argument. In a while she heard him shift in his cane chair and felt him looking sideways at her. “Pat,” he said suddenly, “while I was waiting for you in the lounge I glanced through some old magazines. Among them was a sketch of you in a deck chair in someone’s garden. Who did it?”

  “Steve—a long time ago,” she replied.

  “Steve who? Do I know him?”

  “He’s in England.”

  “Gone back, do you mean? Someone you knew while I was at Makai?”

  “He’s never been to Africa.”

  “The garden in that sketch was tropical.”

  “Steve has plenty of imagination,” she said.

  “Tell me about him.” There was a suppressed impatience in Nick’s voice. “That sketch was you as I have never seen you, Pat, so this chap is someone close to you.”

  Her head dropped against the back of her chair. “I’ve known Steve all my life.”

  “You grew up together?”

  “Hardly. He was nearly grown up when I was at nursery school. I’ll soon be twenty-one. Steve must be thirty-six.”

  “Is he unmarried?”

  “He was to have married last year—he changed his mind.” It seemed so fantastically remote, now, hearing that Steve was not marrying Celia after all. She gave a little troubled sigh.

  “Was this Steve—in love with you?” Nick asked.

  “Yes, I think he was, Nick.”

  “And you with him?”

  “I’ve always been—very fond of him.” A moth brushed her cheek like a ghostly finger. “He taught me all the things big brothers do teach, ragged me a bit and took a lot of care of me, I could say anything to Steve and know he’d understand.” Pat stopped, and then went on a little huskily: “I never cared much for Celia—but the fact of her didn’t hurt till I was seventeen and my mother died. Steve was all I had—till Bill came home.”

  “Did Bill like him?” Nick sounded quite impersonal, like a lawyer putting questions to her. Because of that tone of his she could answer them quite calmly.

  “They got on well,” she said. “Bill didn’t care for Celia—he thought her cold. Beautiful but cold.”

  Nick turned his head and looked at her closely; he raised his cigarette and drew hard on it. “That fellow shouldn’t have let you come to Africa,” he said forcibly.

  “He hadn’t much choice—and it wasn’t till the last minute that he admitted he cared for me.” She passed a hand over her forehead. “It must have happened, all that with Steve. But it seems like a dream.”

  “He still writes to you?” Nick demanded.

  “Every mail. I wrote, too, till Bill ... Why are you stirring this up?”

  “Is it painful?”

  “No! Nothing is that now, not any more.”

  “But you did think a great deal of this chap?” he persisted. “You’d have married him, had he not been engaged to this other girl?”

  “I—might have,” she admitted.

  A noisy, crowded car sped along the road beyond the villa. For a breathless moment a slice of moon tore a rent in the clouds. “Where does he live?” Nick spoke quietly.

  Pat told him, apathetically, thinking him curious and no more. When he had gone, she opened the magazine in which he had discovered the sketch and stood a moment studying her own face, smiling against a background of palmettoes and jasmine. Beneath the sketch, in architect’s script, Steve had written, “You, darling.”

  Pat heard a few days later that Nick had bought some new horses from a man who was returning to England, a black stallion, and a grey filly with dainty legs. “I’m going slack in the city,” Nick laughed when he told her. “The black is a devil, but he’ll harden me up. Come on down to the polo field—I’m going to try him out this morning.”

  She liked horses, always had, and after changing into breeches and a shirt, she drove with Nick to the field. Several men were there looking over the other horses that were being sold. Black Adam’s stall was away from the rest and Pat saw the glitter of Nick’s eyes as they both noticed that the stall had recently been fitted with a new door.

  Vernon, who had sold Nick the horse, came up with a couple of men. “Going to ride him, Nick?” he asked.

  “Sure, if you’ll lend me a saddle.”

  Someone cried, “God, he’s going to ride that devil! What’s the betting Farland’s thrown in twice round the field?”

  “Don’t take it, Nick,” advised Vernon. “That devil sees red instead of white at the goal posts. Keep him for hard riding.”

  “I’ll double the bet,” was Nick’s answer. “Four times round the field for a tenner.”

  Half a dozen voices took him up, then Pat watched as Nick grasped the saddle and entered the stall. Ten minutes later he rode out, mouth compressed, knees firm, his shoulders free, hands steady. Black Adam snorted, threw up his glossy head and, obeying a tug on the reins, swerved right, past the stalls and across the pasture to the polo field.

  With few comments the men beside Pat watched the struggle between man and beast, the matching of sinew with sinew, will against will. The horse streaked the length of the field, reared and turned in one movement. Three times Nick put him at it before he would take the lap at the back of the posts. A mad gallop to the opposite end of the field and once again the forcing hands and heels. Backwards and forwards swung the battle till the bet was won.

  “Holy smoke! What’s he doing now?” muttered Vernon.

  “Trying to force him through the goal,” said one of the other men. “He’ll collect a smashed collarbone.”

  Pat stood taut, and she saw that the black gelding wouldn’t give way. With all his magnificent strength he fought away from the posts, twisting and turning with such ferocity that there were moments when the rider could only dig in his knees, crouch forward and cling. At last Nick gave up and cantered back to the stables.

  “A beauty,” he stated, eyes entirely green in his perspiring face. He dismounted and ran his hands over the quivering flanks.

  “You’ll never train him for polo,” said Vernon.

  “He’d have gone through the goal today with blinkers and a whip,” Nick was smiling, his eyes narrowed. “Like to bet I’ll never ride him in a match?”

  ‘You’re an obstinate cuss, Nick,” someone laughed.

  Nick cast a glance at Pat. “Like the horse?” he asked.

  She came over, dug sugar out of her breeches pocket and fearlessly fed the black horse. “Don’t break his spirit, Nick,” she said. Their eyes met, his teeth showed, a white line against his deep brown tan.

  It was raining when the mail came; cascading down with the wind, thrashing at the sea side of the villa with the noise of a million whips. Pat’s solitary letter rested against the Bantu statuette till she came from her afternoon rest.

  The airmail stamp made her pick it up, but there was nothing else unusual about it. Steve’s writing on an azure envelope; apart from the stamp it was no different from the wad of letters that lay in her writing case.

  The boy brought in the tea, and she seated herself
and poured before giving further attention to the letter. Then, since it had to be read some time, she slit the envelope. Her pulses did not quicken as her eyes moved down the sheet, but she was filled with a queer reluctance, an unexplicable uneasiness.

  Steve was coming to Kanos!

  She left the letter open upon the table and sipped her tea.

  Steve here, among the palms and white buildings. Steve of the nut-brown eyes and wavy hair, wearing white drill and a sun-helmet. She tried to force her brain to take it in. Steve in this room, smiling at her from the depths of one of those chairs. Laying an arm about her shoulders in the old familiar way, fastening her sandal, flicking a tendril of hair out of her eyes. What would he think of the rum kid now?

  Nick came in swearing about the rain. He stopped, glanced sharply at the letter and then at Pat.

  “Had some mail?” he asked.

  “Read it.” Her eyes were expressionless.

  “Who’s it from?”

  “Steve Holman. Go on, read it.”

  “I’d sooner you told me what he says.”

  “He’s coming to Kanos.”

  “How soon?”

  “Within a few days. The usual mail from England is due on Friday, isn’t it? He’ll be on that boat.”

  Nick lowered himself into a chair, took a biscuit from the tea-tray and pecked a piece out of it. “I shall be glad to meet the man who knocked you cold,” he drawled.

  “I’ve changed a great deal. When I left Steve I was so sure of my world, and now everything’s crumbled under my feet—nothing can ever be as it was,” she ended on a sigh.

  “It can come pretty near, if you try. I’ll take a cup of tea, honey.”

  He leaned back and crossed his legs. She felt him watching her below half-closed lids and was vaguely irritated. She set his cup on the corner of the table nearest him, and pushed across the box of cigarettes.