And No Regrets (7 page)

S
he went inside and sat down at the keyboard, and her mood was expressed by the Moonlight Sonata, so suggestive of a love that would never shift out of the shadows to blaze freely in the sunshine.

Next morning, after Ross had bidden their guests goodbye,
C
lare escorted the Pryces down to the river, where their dilapidated canoe was tied up. They had a picnic lunch, and Clare sat talking with Mrs. Pryce while her husband supervised the loading of their kit.

“Your village is growing,” said Mrs. Pryce. “There are twenty-eight piccans now. There were nineteen last time we came. About a dozen are already four years old, ripe for teaching. My husband is going to write to Lagos for a teacher, but can we rely upon Mr. Brennan to build us a schoolhouse? Do you think he
w
ould do that, or shall I ask for funds?”

Her eyes twinkling, Clare replied: “I’ll drop one or two sly hints, and in a day or two he’ll begin to think it his own idea to erect a school.”

“Aren’t men children!” Mrs. Pryce allowed herself a rare smile. “Pleased with themselves so long as they’re on top—my dear, are you completely happy with that young man? He’s very cynical—I do declare that he comes out with the oddest remarks.”

“He just thinks he’s
cl
ever, like all men,” Clare
s
miled, a fist clenching over her heart where hope of happiness with him seemed to be dying. “Let me know if there is anything at all I can do to help you with Bula.”

“I will, with pleasure. It may be a year or two before we can get started with a school. Things move slowly out here, owing to the long delay between letters. But everything comes
—
in time. We’ll make Bula village one you can be proud of.”

“I wish I might be here to see it.” Clare spoke wistfully. “I go home in a year.”

“We shall be along to see you again before then.
”

T
heir goods had been evenly distributed along the canoe, and a native with paddles sat at each end. Mr. Pryce shook Clare’s hand with bone-cracking friendliness and thanked her warmly for her hospitality. Mrs. Pryce printed an embarrassed
little
kiss on her cheek and was warmly embraced in return, and the two lowered themselves carefully in the boat
.

T
he canoe arrowed slowly away from the landing stage into midstream. They exchanged shouted goodbyes and handwaves, and Clare stood watching until the small craft vanished into a tunnel between the mangroves. She became
aware that th
e sun was at its peak, and that perspiration was coursing down her spine.

I
t had been pleasant having visitors, and she felt slack now that they were gone. Once more she would have time on her hands, time to wonder about the future, about her father and Aunt Letty and why they didn’t write, leaving her abandoned here—though it had been of her own choosing—with a man who plainly didn’t love her. Yet, strangely, she didn’t regret the plunge she had taken.

E
ighteen months and no regrets, she reflected. She knew a part of her would die when Ross went off to Cape Town alone, yet still she would not have given up any of this. She had been only half alive in Ridgley, now she sucked a bitter-sweet honey in a wild garden of Eden. She looked about her, and her smile was gallant
.

T
urning back to the track, she found Johnny awaiting her. Faithful Johnny, clasping firmly the thick stick with which he would dispose of any snake which lay in her path.

“Home, Johnny,” she smiled, brandishing a sere blade of elephant grass. “Straight home
!
”

Clare awoke a few mornings later with a thick tongue and a headache. It was not yet dawn, but there were noises in the living-room of heavy baggage being lugged across the floor and out through the door to the veranda. Ross’s voice could be
h
eard giving orders.

S
he sat up, uneasily conscious of a raw, dry throat and a consuming heat in her body. She pushed aside the mosquito net and swayed to her feet, and scarcely aware of the mechanical movements of her
limbs
she bathed her face and arms in the pinkish water on the washstand and put on a frock. She then secured her hair with a ribbon.

I
n the living-room Ross stood in the lamplight, tossing down a last cup of coffee.

“
I was just going to give you a shout,” he said. “Have some coffee, and then I shall have to be off—it’s gettin
g
late.”

“
You’re sure you have everything you need?” she asked.

“
I
think
so.
You’re not properly awake yet.
Y
ou’ll
freshen up outside, it’s quite cool.”

“
Cool? Her face and head were burning, and her hand trembled with the weight of the coffee cup. She set it down with a bang.

“
Are you annoyed with me for not taking you along?
”
he asked. “It’s a filthy trip, and God knows what condition the rest house is in. It was only a temporary structure—a wooden shed. Probably the rains swept it away. It’s a lousy bit of country, not really fit for rubber trees, but I bought and planted it with the company’s money, and it’s my duty to make it yield.”

“I know
all that,” she assured him, trying to suppress irritation with her
s
elf for feeling so odd this morning. “I don’t want to go, Ross.”

“
Then why are you suddenly so—oh, I don’t know.” He shrugged his khaki-clad shoulders. ‘You said you weren’t afraid of being left alone for ten days, and you’ll be safer with coloured servants than you’d be with white ones. Then you have the dogs for company—a pity we had to destroy all the puppies but one, but they wouldn’t have survived.”

“
I’ll be fine,” she said shakily.

H
e came a step closer and cupped her chin in his large hand, tilting her face to him. “Are you a
little
down at seeing me go?” he queried. “Don’t you hate me quite as much as you said?”

S
he pulled free of him, querulously.

“
I don’t like leaving you,” his eyes hardened as they dwelt on her face, “but this is my job and the rains will soon be upon us again. I just can’t put it off any longer.”

S
he pressed a weary hand against her head. “I’m sorry, Ross. It’s hard to be merry and bright at this time in the morning.”

“
Have another cup of coffee and eat a biscuit.” He took up his gun and a box of cartridges. “I’ll take these, out and see if the boys have loaded the lorry properly.” She heard him take the steps in one leap, a minute later the lorry began to chug, then he came striding in again
... looking so lean and darkly fit that he made Clare feel positively fragile. She hated the feeling, hoped desperately that she wasn’t starting, a fever. Would he stay, if she mentioned her fears? Her eyes scanned his face, her lips moved, but women only begged of those who loved them. They held on to their pride with those who felt indifferent to them.

“
Ready, honey?” He tossed a cube of sugar into his mouth and crunched it
... he had a sweet tooth, this tough-fibred husband of hers.

S
he nodded and followed him outside, hesitating at the top step. From the lowest he glanced back.

“
Where’s your hat?” he demanded.

S
he fought down panic. “Ross, I’ll say goodbye to you here
... not go with you as far as the river. Do you mind?”

“
Scared of the dark?” The remark would have sounded teasing, if there had not been a razor-keen edge to his voice. “It will be light before we get there and still cool for the walk back.”

“
I—I’d rather not go.” Her moist hand was gripping the veranda rail, and again there arose in her the desire to tell him that she thought she had picked up an infection. But, if she kept him from his work, he wouldn’t be pleased
... he might even send her home to England if he thought she was becoming enervated by the climate out here.

F
rowning, he mounted the steps until their eyes were level. “We’ve stopped being pals, Clare,” he said quietly. “I don’t like that.”

S
he leaned against the veranda post to still the trembling of her knees. “Don’t be silly,” she tried to speak lightly. “It’s just that I’m tired and want to go back to bed.”

“
You can sleep day and night for the next ten days. There is something, isn’t there?” He drew a deep, exasperated breath. “How typical of a woman to choose a moment like this for a display of temperament
.
”

“Please stop accusing me of temperament,” she pleaded, feeling a disturbing throbbing in her head, wishing desperately that he would go. “Hop off to your rubber plantation and forget me for a while.”

“
Don’t talk like that,” he said, with a hint of pleading. “It’s bad enough leaving you here alone, without parting as if we didn’t care a damn.” He took a cigarette from his case and slipped it between his lips. “Why don’t you say if you’re frightened?”

“
You don’t like me to be frightened of things,” she managed, quite brightly. “And as it happens I’m not, this time.”

H
e flicked his lighter, then blew a firm jet of smoke.

“
You’re dying to see the back of me, aren’t you?” he said.

S
he swayed at the words. Oh, God, she had never felt like this in her life
!
“
Please go, Ross.” Sharpness threaded her voice.

H
e turned, went down the steps, leaving his cigarette smoke to smart her heavy eyes. “Well, if you’re determined not to go a little way with me, then I’ll be off.” He swung himself into the lorry. “You’ll take every care?”

S
he nodded.

“
So long, then.” She saw the flash of his eyes,
their queer mixture of anger and perplexity.

“
Goodbye,” she called out, and watched the lorry lurch out on to the track and rock along the first precipitous half-mile. Soon it was out of sight and sound, and now that her anxiety lest he should touch even her hand and guess her temperature was gone, she felt unreasonably chagrined that he should have accepted her distant farewell.

S
he walked slowly back to the living-room, turned out the lamp and groped her way into her bedroom. Her head was reeling.

F
or three days she sweated and dozed in a faint delirium from which she emerged at intervals to absorb far too much quinine in an effort to throw off all traces of the bout before Ross’s return. On the fourth day her temperature went down, but she was too weak to move. On the fifth day she got up for a few hours in the evening, and on the sixth resumed her normal rising hour, feeling shaky and suffering the unpleasant after-effects of too much quinine.

N
ow her brain felt light and clear. The fever had been frightening because she had had to suffer it alone, but now she could think clearly again, she was dismayed at the way she and Ross had parted for these ten days. He had been angry
... coldly, aloofly angry, the worst sort with him.

S
he sighed and curled down among the cushions of the lounger with the only puppy left out of Edwina s litter. Ross had had to destroy the others the day before his departure; he had no doubt gone off thinking she was sulking with him over the puppies. She had been distressed at the time, but she had known that it had been necessary to put the weak little things out of their misery.

S
he caressed the soft coat of the puppy who had proved the hardiest, and as he made contented little noises, she smiled to herself. “We’ll have to call this little guy Lucky,” Ross had said with that mock-tender grin of his. In a gay mood, she occasionally glimpsed gentleness in him; felt that nuggets of tenderness might be buried in that aggressive heart of his, but if she so much as lifted a tentative probing finger, he would say things most calculated to make her bristle. Though there were times when she was almost madly happy—as on walks in the bush by night when he held her close beside him in comradeship without passion, or when their eyes met over some shared joke—she despaired of ever reaching his innermost corners. That could only happen in the improbable event of his feelings towards her becoming those of love...

T
he following day, feeling much more energetic, she decided to have a look at Ross’s clothes to make sure there were no moths or other pests worming their way into the material.

S
he went into his bedroom, her nostrils tensing at his lingering cigarette smoke, and opened the closet in which he kept his suits and jackets, etc. One by one she gave them a thorough shaking
... and it was out of a pocket of his white dinner-jacket that the small square of chiffon drifted like a cloud. Clare bent to pick it up, recalling that Ross had last worn this jacket the
evening they had quarrelled here in his room. The other times he had worn it had been at Onitslo ... and her fingers tensed on the chiffon handkerchief as she noticed across the material a smear of poppy-red lipstick, and in one
corner
the silver-thread initials P.H.

P
atsy Harriman! Ross had run the girl home after that final party at the Macleans, and it looked as though the girl’s poppy-red mouth had left their traces on his face, or his mouth, which he had wiped away with her handkerchief. Then, in the emotion of the moment, he had pushed the chiffon square into his pocket and forgotten all about it
.

C
lare shouldn’t have felt such a sharp thrust of resentment, hadn’t she seen for herself back in England that Ross drew the eyes and the attention of women like a magnet? And she knew from Mrs. Maclean that Ross had known Patsy before going on leave to England.

S
he replaced the chiffon handkerchief in his pocket, and hung up the jacket. She slammed the closet door on its starched whiteness, then turned and marched out of his room.

M
ark, the houseboy, was awaiting her. A boat had just pulled in at the river, he told her. It was the boat of a Mr. Carter, who was now on his way to the house ... Clare tensed sharply at the news. The first casual visitor in the six months they had been here, and he had to make his appearance while Ross was away from home
!