Authors: Rosalind Brett
She was suddenly aware of him at her side. She caught a whiff of his tobacco, felt the brush of his sleeve, and knew that if she turned to meet his eyes she would feel that queer shock somewhere in the region of her lower ribs. No one else had eyes that could smile so lazily, or turn so hard above an arrogant jut of a nose. Ross Brennan
... a lean hard Roman with throwback tendencies!
“Tell me once more what I can expect of the tropics?” she invited, like someone needing bitter medicine in order to cure a fever.
“Ferocious heat, jigger-bugs, the chance of fever, and hours of monotony,” he listed.
“I’d be crazy to take on all that—and you,” she murmured.
Their eyes locked for a long moment, then he turned away from her and jerked the curtain aside. “Maybe it was a crazy, impossible idea,” he said crisply, staring out of the window. “Forget I ever mentioned it.”
And when he said that, Clare knew for certain that she would never forgive herself for letting him go away without her. She couldn’t do it
...
she loved him too much.
C
lare was only half prepared for Aunt Letty’s aversion to the marriage. Her aunt agreed that Ross could be charming when he liked, but charm, particularly the sophisticated kind, was a doubtful asset in a husband. Clare would bitterly regret what she was set on doing—besides, a young couple in love didn’t try to be clever with each other all the time!
H
er niece could not explain that the bright chatter she reserved for Ross was an indispensable disguise to her true feelings. And had her father known that she was entering into a marriage which would be built on a one-sided love, he would not, she knew, have given his consent to it. As it was, he declared, she was inviting trouble by tying herself to a calculating egoist like Brennan. He didn’t mince his words and Clare had to swallow them, knowing them to be true.
W
ithin the month Clare stood with Ross before a registrar and
c
hanged her name from Clare Meriden to Clare Brennan. Ross slipped on to her finger a smooth oval of jade set in a thin band of gold; she loved the ring and said so. “Good,” he murmured, and kissed the finger that wore it
.
She met his eyes—most certainly there was some heartache ahead for her, but surely there would be sweet intervals as well? If she could believe so, life would be more than tolerable.
C
lare left England for Lagos somewhat estranged from her two closest relatives. Aunt Letty preserved an offended silence right until the boat had sailed. Her father, contemplating a second marriage, had given her a perfunctory send-off and cast a hard look at Ross. S
h
e had written to both of them during the voyage out, but no replies had yet come to her letters.
S
he had hoped for a cable in Lagos, and for that reason had willingly agreed to Ross’s suggestion that they have some fun for a week or two. The parties had been marvellous; interesting, too, in a way. The men on leave with their wives seemed to envy Ross her youth and freshness; the bush, they loudly asserted, was no place for a white woman. The womenfolk showed plainly that they pitied her ignorance, and hinted openly that Ross had married her for convenience. No man who really cared for a woman would take her out to that monotonous hell. She would lose those pretty looks and that light step, and (casting envious glances at her smiling mouth) she would soon beg
i
n to give in to moods of irritation like the rest of them.
Clare stirred where she stood on the Macleans’ veranda, for here at Onitslo she had received similar warnings, and tomorrow she and Ross set off on the last stages of their journey. She turned and walked back into the bungalow, blinking at the bright lights and noticing almost at once that Ross and Patsy Harri
m
an were missing from the room.
“Ross has been kind enough to give Patsy a lift home.” Mrs. Maclean approached Clare with her rather jaded smile. Years in the tropics had taken their toll of her, sallowed her face and robbed her hair of its gloss. She eyed Clare with a concerned friendliness. “How young you are,” she said. “Mike Harriman should never have brought Patsy out to this climate, then left her so much to her own resources.”
Clare, trying to look composed, perched on the arm of a chair to await her husband’s return. Patsy was attractive in a dark-haired, poppy-mouthed way, and Clare tried not to
feel hurt that Ross had not sought her out before going off with the girl.
“Well, my dear, this is your last night in Onitslo,” said Mrs. Maclean. “After tomorrow it will be a long time before you see another white woman—or white man, except your husband. I must say I a
dmire
your courage in coming out here to tack
l
e bush life.”
With a man like Ross, Clare filled in. She smiled and pleated with her fingers a fold of her chiffon
skirt. “Ross said the loneliness would be too unbearable unless he brought along a wife,” she replied.
“
And the fascination of Africa has you in its grip, eh?” said the other woman, her smile a trifle wistful, as though she were remembering her own eagerness of long ago.
Clare nodded. With every fresh sight and experience her eagerness increased to get into the bush and to live alongside Ross in the real, teeming Africa. Their coming months together—even if the marriage would not be more than a companionship—would surely strip him of that defensive air of cynicism, so that when the time came for them to part, he would be unable to let her go. She clung to that hope and it buoyed her up, put a sparkle in her eye and a tilt to her chin when Ross finally sauntered into the room, looking very tanned in his white dinner-jacket.
“
We thought you’d hit a tree,” Mrs. Maclean was straightening cushions and gathering up glasses. Her husband had fallen off to sleep in a chair.
“Patsy had things to say about Mike and I lent
a
sympathetic ear.” Ross crossed the room with a lazy stride and stood looking down at his wife. “Enjoyed the party?” he asked. “Feel like
a
last run round? It’s dark, but very pleasant, and I shan’t have
a
private car in my hands for a while. How about it?”
“Of course,” Clare agreed.
“
Then tie something over your hair if you don’t want it full of aliens.”
It was a relief to be out in the air without a topi, the helmet every white person has to wear even on sunless days against the tropical heat. Clare lay back comfortably in her seat in the open tourer, watching as
much of the Old Town as was visible between the palms. It was sedately English in atmosphere, a quiet game of bridge seen through a bungalow window farther on a group of white-clad men smoking on
a
terrace.
S
oon they were down on the waterfront. It was quiet now, and in the clouded blackness a few lights on the boats starred the night like ghostly jewels. Glare soaked in the mystery and strangeness of it all, while Ross drew in beside the river and halted the car.
N
ow they could see upon the water the fan-shaped reflections of lanterns on the bigger boats. Smaller ones were black shapes without lights, drawn in close like shadows almost. “With luck we’ll be home in less than a fortnight,” Ross remarked.
F
or some reason she couldn’t suppress a little laugh. “Why the amusement, because I called it home?” he asked coolly. “You’ve never given your life’s blood to anything for three years. You don’t know how it feels to be going back to see what has developed from the sweat of spadework. I took a raw tract
of bush and slashed and cleared and planted civilised forests of timber. I started a native village of my own and taught them to sow and reap their own food and to talk pidgin English. I showed them how antiseptics kill germs—”
“You don’t have to go on, Ross.” She touched his sleeve, gave his arm a squeeze. “I do understand how you feel about all you’ve accomplished.”
“
Last time out I was paid a sum of money for research,” he growled, his jaw-bone arrogant in the starlight. “When my own land was planned and the work well ahead, I took an option on another piece some miles away. We cleared and planted rubber
... I wonder how it’s doing.”
S
he knew he needed no reply. His voice had taken on the nostalgic note she had heard once or twice before. She felt no kinship with him.
“
The house and sheds will need repair. I hope to God the roofs have stood the rain,” he finished.
C
lare sat beside him feeling quiet
. A
match flared, he lit a cigarette and puffed his usual stream of smoke. Then after a few minutes he said: “Not sulking because I ran Patsy home to her fool of a husband, are you?”
“
Is he a fool?” she asked, kicking at something winged that might have been a mosquito.
“
Any man’s a fool who lets his wife play at playing around with other men.” Ross spoke crisply.
“
Sounds as though I’ll have to watch my step,” she said flippantly.
“
There’s no competition where we’re going—I’m the only white man around within a radius of thirty miles.” His
teeth
were
just visible in a caustic smile.
“Does the idea of being completely alone with me begin to
w
orry you, Mrs. Brennan?”
“
You set out the terms of our contract too firmly for me to be worried,” she rejoined.
S
he felt a quizzing side glance from him, and kept her gaze on the ghostly hulks of the waterfront boats. “Think we’ll settle down all right together, Clare?” he asked.
“
My nature’s an optimistic one,” she assured him.
H
e started up the car, and on their way back to the Macleans’ bungalow he remarked that in the morning he would get a dog. “No, two dogs,” he added, “then we shan’t mind shooting one if he takes an infection. You’ll have to learn how to handle a gun, too. You’ll be alone a lot and the best way to scare a beast back into the jungle is to fire a round. Are you frightened?”
“I
suppose I am a lit
tl
e,” she admitted, for her flesh had crept at his mention of guns and jungle beasts.
“W
ell, you may never see a leopard, but be warned that there’ll be plenty of ants and bugs and flies, so never go to sleep without drawing your mosquito net across your bed. In fact,” she felt him give her a wicked
grin,
“
I shall make a point of coming into your room to see you’ve drawn your net.”
“I can see you’re going to be quite masterful,” she quipped, feeling a sudden heat in her cheeks and glad of the darkness so he couldn’t see that she had blushed. Silly to blush, but she was so newly married, so fraught with the hope that he would become masterful to the point of wanting to
boss
her, and love her, for life.
“I’m longing to see a chain of monkeys,” she said gaily.
“So you shall, honey, if I have to shoot ’em and string them up myself.”
CHAPTER TWO
WHEN at last they came within sight of the house, Ross stopped dead. The natives carrying Clare’s ‘chair
’
—a raft on poles with a grass roof—stopped too, and lowered her to the ground. She walked forward to her husband’s side, ignoring the ache and heat of her body. He was frowning, for in the short space of his absence, eight months in all, the track had disappeared beneath elephant grass, and thick black weed, which rose shoulder-high, had had to be scythed flat before they could proceed this far.
The house was oblong, raised on stout mahogany piles, a wooden structure with a tin roof. The rapidity of its dilapidation would be unbelievable anywhere but in the tropics. A great slice of roof had slipped right off, leaving a gaping triangle, the door was askew on its hinges, veranda posts were gone, and the slatted windows wide to entrance of beetles and bats.
With the rains, the jungle had crept all over the compound even to the walls of the house, blanketing the coffee and cocoa and jacaranda trees
... everything looked unkempt and wild. And when they went inside they found the furniture thickly covered with a green mould. The table, wickerwork chairs and loungers, even the matting on the floor, was green-crusted. Ross stood looking about him with anger and frustration in his eyes, then he said something to the boys and they began to scrape the mould with pieces of sharpened wood.
C
lare wanted to weep, for herself and for Ross. Although he had not been bringing a dearly loved bride to his jungle home, she knew that he had not wanted to give her this kind of welcome.
The two bedrooms stood one each side of the central living-room. In these rooms moisture had wreaked the same havoc to the beds and the bedding. Drawers would not move. Their whole aspect
was a sorry one.
“I’m sorry about all this, Clare.” Ross ran a large hand through his hair and rumpled it. He groaned and threw out his arms. “This is Africa, honey
!
This is what it can do to all your hard work in a matter of months—God, I bet you could burst into tears!”
“I could drink a cup of tea,” she said brightly. “Come on, we’ll both feel better for some tea.”
Fires were lighted, and Clare brewed them a pot of cheer-up tea. They had biscuits with it, then he went outside to see their fresh mattresses unloaded and set to air. “Good job we brought them,” he called out to Clare. “See that the boy's scrub off all that mould, honey. It’ll start again if they leave any of it on the walls and the floor.”
A space was cleared in the compound, and there the wooden chests of provisions were opened, sorted, and carried into the house. Air-tight bins of flour, lard, butter, hundreds of tins of food. Tea, coffee, rice, and so on. Provisions for nearly a year, to be replenished gradually by the steamer that came up to the Bula landing stage every two months.