by Edna Dawes
She smiled. ‘And all because of a bicycle and glass of tomato juice! Would it astonish you to know I have an electric blanket to warm my bed in winter?’
‘I can think of more exciting alternatives,’ he said dryly. ‘Does it really get that cold?’
‘Where I come from it does.’ She didn’t elaborate because at that moment the car turned on to a road skirting a bay and the full beauty of the starlit night drove all conversation from her.
Far out to sea, a liner edged its way into the harbour, the lighted portholes giving the impression of a giant, floating honeycomb, and in the foreground breakers crashed on to the beach in oblique lines, filling the night with the exciting sound of water assaulting land. There were still people on the beach. Margaret could see groups of young people in brief swimsuits, their brown bodies gilded by lights from the road, some lying around idly chatting and some using a ball-game as an excuse to indulge in a battle of the sexes with the girls as delighted losers. Jan swung round a wide curve and brought Margaret back to an awareness of unfamiliar surroundings.
‘Where are we?’ she asked.
‘Our plans were somewhat interrupted by the party, so I thought we’d go back to my flat for a quiet drink,’ Jan told her.
And that’s all, she added silently, used to the capers she was expected to take part in in these situations. On the other hand, she was glad the evening had not fizzled out as she had thought. The flat was expensive, as Helen had indicated, but not as flamboyant as it could have been. He had used good sense and some small flair for colour to produce a surprising blend of comfort and decor in the main room. He took Margaret’s coat and she made a bee-line for a chair which was designed for only one reasonably-sized person. A ghost of a grin touched his lips when he saw how firmly ensconced she was.
‘In the light of your disillusionment tonight, may I pour you something other than tomato juice?’
‘Yes, I’d love some coffee,’ she replied. ‘Is that asking too much?’
‘Heaven preserve me from a teetotal woman,’ he groaned. ‘You’ll have to make it yourself, Maggie. Come on, I’ll show you where everything is.’
It may have been his way of getting her out of that chair but, as the kitchen was not very orderly, she was glad of his company to ease the job of searching for things. While the coffee was being prepared she asked him about the Game Reserve where she was to work for the next six months – maybe more. Schroeder Freight Limited had been flying supplies up to Myala and transporting live animals from there to zoos, or to the international airports and docks for shipment overseas, and both brothers knew Russell Martin well. Since Margaret was to be under his direction, she was curious about what type of man he was.
‘I can only tell you my impression of him as a person. The research he does, or how far he is prepared to help you with your work, you’ll have to find out for yourself. Chris used to fly animals for him before I ever joined the company, and he remained faithful to Schroeder Freight even when Chris went bust nine years ago. I think that fact is an excellent pointer to his character – loyal, sincere, stands by his beliefs. The Reserve has been under his direction for fifteen years or more, which means he is more at home with animals than he is with humans. He says he feels a special affinity with them. I must say he handles them expertly.’
‘There is no Mrs Russell, then?’
Jan shook his head. ‘If there had been, she would have left him years ago. I never knew a man more cut off from the rest of the world by his work.’ He held the door open for her to pass through with the tray. ‘You have nothing to fear from him, but watch your step with his assistant, Craig Barker. He is a real lusty fellow. It’s beyond me why a girl like you should want to bury herself up there amongst a lot of animals.’ He followed her as she carried the tray in and set it on a low table.
When she turned round to answer him and found herself in his arms, she could only marvel that she had fallen for such an old trick. The kiss was as she knew it would be: expert, very insistent and designed to arouse any woman between sixteen and sixty. On guard since she crossed the threshold, her immediate reaction was to let herself go completely limp and lifeless. He lifted his head abruptly and stepped back with an intuitive smile.
‘I was expecting a struggle, or a slapped face.’
She shook her head. ‘Experience has taught me that both those reactions only urge a man on – especially if he has been drinking. There is nothing more fatal to the natural urges of the male of the species than complete indifference – or a bucket of cold water.’
‘My God!’ he exploded, the smile vanishing. ‘You make me sound part of a biology lesson. Shouldn’t you do a few diagrams on the blackboard, now?’
‘See what I mean,’ she said calmly. ‘All desire to be amorous has gone. Shall we have our coffee?’ As she sat in the chair designed for one he crossed to the bar and poured himself a drink.
‘I have to hand it to you English girls,’ he said with his back to her. ‘You are the supremos when it comes to cool, dispassionate forbearance. Helen displays it, at times.’
‘It must be our cold climate,’ she said, suddenly less sure of herself.
‘And the fact that you only have electric blankets to warm you in bed.’ He tossed back the drink and was refilling the glass when the telephone rang.
Margaret drank her coffee at the risk of scalding herself. She would leave after the phone call. Maybe she had gone too far, and it was now impossible to remain in each other’s company. It was almost midnight and tiredness was creeping upon her, bringing with it a faint backache; a reminder that she had had a heavy fall earlier that day.
Jan’s voice rose above her thoughts setting her curiosity alight. ‘What a bloody nerve! He had no right to do that. . . . No, of course I’m not withdrawing from the deal. He didn’t agree – I told you he wouldn’t – but we thrashed it out this afternoon and it was agreed that I would pay for it myself. . . . Let me worry about where the money is coming from, will you? The time to start jumping on me is when I don’t produce the next payment. . . . Yes, yes, I’m flying it to Myala on Wednesday, as arranged, and Chris can go to hell. He may be my older brother, but we have equal shares in this company – oh, and in future, don’t check on me, Van Heerdon. We have done enough business together for you to know I keep my word, and if Chris tries anything like that again, hang up on him!’
Margaret had seen his anger that afternoon, but now he was livid with it. Hastily she collected her handbag and coat.
‘I think I should go.’
‘Yes, I think you should,’ he agreed harshly. ‘I have had more than my daily quota of people telling me what I should, or should not do.’ He picked up the car keys from the sideboard.
‘I’ll take a taxi. There is no need for you to drive me home.’
‘I know, but I am taking you just the same. I can see through you, Miss Biology Teacher. Your intelligent scientific mind is telling you that this particular male of the species is possibly slightly tight and definitely raging mad – a state incompatible with driving a fast car. I shall now prove to you that the theory is wrong and give teacher a rap over the knuckles.’ He grabbed her arm and marched her down the corridor, into the lift and out to the car without another word.
If his intention had been to frighten Margaret, it failed. Certainly, he had been drinking, but to someone used to consuming alcohol the amount had been no more than he could handle, and his anger was controlled to do more damage to his nervous system than his car. The journey was swift and silent, but Margaret sat there, feeling immensely sorry for him.
From the telephone conversation, it seemed Chris had gone behind Jan’s back to tell Van Heerdon the Dakota deal was off; a move sure to inflame the younger Schroeder. The motives for Chris’s action might have been of the purest, but the method had resulted in Jan being forced to defend his business integrity to a man he didn’t like. She could sympathize with how he felt and regretted her own rather juvenile behaviour. Here, may
be, was one wild creature who refused to be anæsthetized; who needed special handling by someone who completely understood his complex nature!
*
Wednesday morning dawned magnificently. Table Mountain stood great and grey behind the city which Margaret already felt loath to leave. As a rule, she much preferred rural areas, but Cape Town had captivated her as soon as she arrived ten days ago. The final look from her bedroom window made her almost regret the necessity of flying up to the Game Reserve. The sun-washed, tree-lined streets had a foreign flavour which pleased her each time she strolled through them, and whichever way she turned there was either a view of the marine blue ocean or the silver grey rock-faces of the mountains which cupped the city as a child’s hand protects his answers on an examination paper.
Having come straight from Norfolk in December, Margaret was specially conscious of the sun-browned, healthy inhabitants and couldn’t help comparing them with the careworn, head-scarved women who were shrammed with cold as they finished their Christmas shopping at home. She had probably looked the same way herself a mere fortnight ago. No wonder Helen had thought the world well lost to settle in this spot with a man like Chris Schroeder! That brought her thoughts back to his brother and she turned away with a sigh to go down to the lobby.
Jan looked very businesslike when she met him at the airport; the flashy silk shirt had been replaced by a khaki bush-jacket and his trousers, though just as tight-fitting, were also in serviceable khaki.
‘Is this all you’ve got?’ He indicated her luggage with a nod of his head.
‘Yes. Although they delivered the bicycle fully repaired, I decided against taking it. I can always do exercises to keep fit.’
They entered the Dakota through a door near the tail, and Jan had to put his hands on her waist to push her up to the lowest step of the metal ladder he had hooked into the opening. After the jetliner in which she had travelled to South Africa, Margaret had to admit this aircraft was a Cinderella, and wondered if Chris could have been right when he called it a heap of scrap-iron. As she walked up the steep slope of the stark shell forming the freight hold she remembered Jan’s warning that she would have no first-class comfort on this flight.
The cockpit was reached through a thick door and Margaret felt as if she had walked on to the set of a wartime film. The mass of controls, dials and levers looked quite familiar and only needed four dashing young men in leather flying helmets, giving the thumbs-up signal, to complete the illusion.
‘You’d better sit there. I can’t have you in the co-pilot’s seat. You might touch the controls.’ Jan’s voice broke across her visions of Kenneth More and Richard Attenborough, but she was quick enough to retort, ‘I am quite able to resist the urge to push knobs and turn handles!’
‘Look,’ he said, ‘you have your rules when it comes to experiments with the human male; I have mine when I am flying. All the time we are in this machine, you do whatever you are told. Is that clear?’
‘Yes, quite!’
‘Sit down and fasten that belt around you, then keep quiet until we are off the ground.’
‘Roger, skipper,’ she found herself saying, but Jan didn’t think it funny and the need to hold back a smile soon vanished.
Her padded seat was tucked into a little cubby-hole with a table-top before it and a narrow window giving her a view of the port-side wing and propeller. She sat down and fastened the belt with some misgivings. From this position, the pilot was hidden, making her feel uncomfortably cut-off. Also, the Dakota was bigger than she had imagined and faint anxiety about Jan’s ability to fly such an aircraft on his own made her wish she could watch what he was doing in order to take her mind off things.
The engines made a deafening roar! It was all right for Jan, he had earphones on and was exchanging take-off instructions with the control tower so, presumably, it was slightly reduced, but Margaret wondered how she would ever stand the din for five hours. They taxied forward to reach the runway and were just slewing round to face the long, straight stretch when she noticed a car racing towards them from the hangar marked Schroeder Freight Ltd. She undid her seat-belt and walked up behind the pilot.
‘There is someone driving after us. Hadn’t you better stop?’ she shouted at him.
‘Can’t,’ he told her over his shoulder. ‘I’ll lose my place in the queue. Now, for God’s sake sit down as I ordered you ten minutes ago!’
‘I can’t see anything when I’m sitting down,’ she complained, but did as he asked. Immediately, the engine noise increased, there was a forward jerk which sent her pressing back into her seat, and the Dakota rumbled into a remarkably short take-off which might not have been the smoothest Jan had ever made, but was certainly the hastiest. The comparatively unfamiliar controls didn’t hold his attention exclusively, so he found time to laugh softly to himself.
Margaret sat worrying over what she had seen, but had more sense than to bother Jan now. Her limited knowledge of flying was sufficient to tell her that it was impossible to stop in the middle of a take-off. He would have to circle the airfield then put down again once he realized the situation. The awful sensation of the roof pressing on her head lessened the higher they climbed, but the beauty of Cape Town below went unnoticed.
As soon as Jan stopped speaking into the mouthpiece attached to the earphones, Margaret leant out and caught his attention.
‘Your brother Chris was in that car.’
‘So I saw!’
‘Well . . . it must be important. Shouldn’t you go back?’
‘I know what he wanted.’
‘You know?’
He grinned broadly. ‘I can make a pretty good guess. To break my neck, I shouldn’t wonder.’
‘You are not making sense.’
He pushed back the headphones and laughed gaily. ‘I have just pulled a fast one on dear brother, and he won’t like it a bit. He flatly refused to let me take you to Myala in this and was all set to make a diversion on his way to Kimberley in the Trilander. It seemed complete nonsense for both of us to go to Myala, but the situation was so tense, it seemed the only way to calm him down last Monday. I was all set to tell you the altered arrangements when Van Heerdon telephoned with the information that Chris tried to cancel the purchase of the Dakota without telling me. Because of that, I decided to let things stand and whisk you away from under his nose. I deliberately left the timing a little tight, but it couldn’t have been better.’
Margaret felt all churned up. Jan was treating her as a pawn in a game of one-upmanship. There was no question of flying a paying passenger to a required destination; she had been used merely as a means of getting at Chris. She now remembered Chris calling from the stoep, ‘See you at the airfield.’ He might think she had been a willing participant in this outrageous trip. Really, this red-haired man was impossible, as Helen had said!
‘For a man of twenty-eight, you behave in a remarkably juvenile manner,’ she flung at him.
‘So I am constantly being told – but since they are all older than I, it’s hardly surprising they look at it that way.’
‘I assume you are referring to your brothers. Isn’t it time you stopped playing adolescent pranks on them?’
‘For a foreigner, you have a hell of a nerve when it comes to interfering in my affairs,’ he blazed. ‘This is no adolescent prank. It was damned ridiculous for two of us to fly to the same place just because Chris thought this aircraft too unsafe to risk your lovely skin. Do you think I’d fly it if it was? And when it comes to juvenile behaviour, brother Chris runs a close second by trying to ruin a good business deal by going behind my back – and he is thirty-seven.’
Continued conversation was impossible. They both retired into an aggrieved silence which went on so long there seemed no way of breaking it. It was hot inside the cockpit. Margaret took a cologne flagon from her handbag and rubbed some over her forehead, behind her ears and on her wrists. Her feet in their sandals were swollen, and the broad straps clung to her damp skin un
comfortably. The dress which had seemed pleasantly cool earlier this morning had grown warmer, and her hair which hung to her shoulders before turning under clung to her neck like a fur scarf. She pushed it up with her hands and leant her head back trying to get comfortable. The lack of contact with the only other person present left her with time hanging heavily. She read the various notices twenty-five times, decided it was impossible to see anything from the window, and searched through her handbag on four different occasions, then found the noisy drone of the engines was beginning to give her a headache. She looked at her watch. Only an hour had passed. It seemed like four!
She tried to concentrate on what she would be doing at Myala, but enthusiasm refused to be aroused. It was surprising. For months, every time she had thought about being in Africa observing the wildlife in its natural environment, a small flutter of excitement had moved inside her. It had been a great stroke of luck that she had attended a party and met a man who had a friend in Africa working on a Game Reserve. Life had been like that for her. Things had come easily. She had been blessed with brains and intelligence enough to enable her to follow the career she most wanted, and she had passed her examinations with distinction.
When she had first qualified she was offered a coveted post at the Institute of Animal Sciences so that she could concentrate on a study of ecology – the branch which fascinated her most – but her dominant interest in African animals had to be confined to studying data from zoos and safari parks in England until her chance meeting with the man who had started her off on this trip. Where some people waited years for an opportunity of this kind, it had dropped into her lap like a sun-ripened orange. There would be six months – maybe more, if she could get round Dr Martin – in which to saturate her brain with a fascinating study before returning to England.