She would be safe playing bridge. "All right, if you'll partner me." As she stood, her dress puffed out from the waist and caught a thorn. "I'm hooked up, Roy. Can you help? Careful! Don't tear it for heaven's sake."
He bent close, working gingerly with his fingers. "I can't see," he mumbled. "Do you think you could stay just like this till I fetch a torch?" The next second he gave a grunt of triumph. "Done it—though I'm afraid there's a nick in the stuff."
"So!" came Inga's thick, husky voice. "This is an hour rather soon for the tete-a-tete."
"I wouldn't say that." Lightheartedly, Roy took his cue. "Night comes early in these parts."
Mark was with Inga, standing nonchalantly behind her shoulder, his face, as far as Karen could see, an impersonal mask.
"My skirt caught on this bush," she said hurriedly. "Roy released it for me."
"No excuses," laughed Inga. "We saw. Did we not see, Mark? The school-teacher very, very close to the education officer! It is perfect, that."
"Hardly our concern," Mark said carelessly. "African nights are reputed to encourage that sort of thing. Would you ladies care for a drink out here?"
His manner and tone were a blade in the heart. Karen moved a step or two along the path. "Thank you, no. We were just going in to play bridge."
"Stay with us." Inga sat down and spread her dress over the bench. She glanced up at Mark, her head posed to display the white curve of her throat against the dark background. A superb show -woman in every sense, she used her coquetry with an air of irresistible candour which combined with her fair, alien features to magnetise men much less vital than Mark. "Let us talk of groundnut farms and the schools and the new club we soon are promised in Guaba."
"Is that a fact?" asked Roy. "A club in Guaba?"
"We were discussing it this evening before you came," Mark answered. "Apparently," he looked at Karen, "someone made the suggestion to Charles Williamson the other day and he has persuaded one of his friends to rent a large house there and try it out as a communal centre. It's going to be nice for you," laconically, "not to have to traipse into Nairobi if you fancy a night out, especially when the road is widened and surfaced."
"Almost civilisation," agreed Roy. "I wouldn't mind settling in this district for good."
"Nor I," said Inga, "though I prefer to live in a city, and Kenya is much too hot. South Africa is a fine country and the towns are modern. I have many friends at the Cape."
KAREN recalled the single occasion when Mark had confided about the directorship he had been offered in Johannesburg. With a sudden
inward flash she knew that Inga, too, was aware of his indecision, but, whereas she, Karen, had felt incompetent to venture an opinion, the Swedish woman was waging a definite campaign.
Defensively, she was about to take Roy's arm when Charles appeared. "So here you are, Roy. I thought you were fetching Karen for bridge." "We're just coming."
"And you, Inga—and Mark?"
"Mark and I have farm business," Inga told him with a throaty laugh. "Later, we will come in and dance."
Charles smiled at Karen and offered his arm. "I haven't yet told you how lovely you look tonight. I almost wish I weren't host, so that we could find another bench and talk—but not of groundnuts!"
"She is a little young for your experiments, Charles," said Inga sharply. "But eminently capable," said Mark, "of holding her own."
Not in the least disconcerted, Charles patted the hand on his arm, then turned to Roy. "Are you coming with us, Roy?"
A minute or so later they reached the short lawn in front of the house. "Inga Sanderfield's rather stunning," Roy remarked ingenuously. "Is she going to marry Mark Howard?"
"I don't know," replied Charles brusquely, "but Mark seems a willing victim. Possibly he was the reason that Inga came back to Kenya. She doesn't belong here—never will. If you'd seen her in Sweden, as I have, you'd know her for an entirely different woman."
Karen made a bid for a change of subject. "You've been to Sweden?" "I spent three months there last year."
Now they were on the veranda and Charles stood aside for Karen to enter the house. She glimpsed his face, set in a polite smile which did not completely hide the twist of bitterness at the corners of his mouth. She did not know that her own lips were taut in a similar smile, for she had just realised the significance of what Charles had said. If he had guessed, as his tone implied, that a serious affair would develop between Mark and Inga when she came back to Nairobi, he probably had good grounds for it, for he had known them both for a number of years. Mark must have been in love with Inga while she was still another man's wife.
The knowledge set the seal of finality upon Karen's painfully stretched emotions. She refused to remember Mark's teasing friendliness and the good humour with which he bore with her ignorance of his country, and taught her the things a good settler should know. His interest in the school, she assured herself, was the professional engineer's, his generosity the outcome of being wealthy and a bachelor. Now that he had shown so clearly that he had little further use for her companionship, she saw him as ruthless, cruel, without a spark of tenderness. But her heart wouldn't believe it .. .
OUTWARDLY, events were moving smoothly. School started with a flourish at eight-thirty each morning, and Karen's little ones finished
at twelve, while the over-sevens broke for half an hour and then went on with lessons till two o'clock. At first, Karen waited to ride home with Keith, but as soon as he grew accustomed to the journey up from the crossroads she left him to manage alone. His expert handling of the pony Mark had given him, made her own occasional nervousness on Bambu look like, unnecessary dithering, which came of not having learned to ride in childhood. Kenya was a great country for the fearless, she thought.
Following Elizabeth's example, other farmers in the district began to entertain more freely. Besides the usual dinners and dance parties, there were picnics along the river and impromptu tennis and golf tournaments, followed by a cold supper. Once three car-loads travelled west to view the blue and white beauty of the Falls, still another aspect of the multiple personality of Kenya.
Very gradually the hard lines about Nova's mouth were giving way, but, though she allowed Karen to draw her into the social life of the neighbourhood, her enjoyment of it was constrained and reluctant. She much preferred being alone with Karen, or, at most, making up a foursome with Roy and one of his friends.
The spate of entertaining had set Elizabeth yearning for new clothes. "Previously, I've held out till our annual couple of weeks in Nairobi, but this time I really can't go on till after coffee-picking."
Justin felt around in his pockets for hit pipe. "Of course you must have new clothes," he agreed. "Spend a week in Nairobi with Karen. I'll look after the dairy."
"I've a much better suggestion," offered Karen from her seat at his desk, where she was filing letters, invoices and receipts. "The coffee trees won't vanish if Justin leaves them for a little while, and I know far more about the dairy than he does. It's time you two had a second honeymoon."
Elizabeth stopped dead m the centre of the room. "What a lovely idea," she said quietly.
Justin made a complication of filling his pipe and said nothing. But presently both of them went out to the veranda and Karen stayed at the desk, knowing what they were discussing and glad from the bottom of her heart that she had thought of it. She didn't look up when Elizabeth re-entered, and the quick, warm kiss on her cheek came as a surprise. "You pet," her cousin murmured. "We're going to take you at your word."
When Nova was asked she said Yes, she could manage without help at the school for a week or so, and would be only too pleased to sleep at the farm with Karen. John Winchester agreed to come up and confer with the farm foreman every couple of days, and Keith promised to be a good boy so long as they promised in return to bring him back a set of carpentry tools—his very own, and not baby-size, either.
ON a Saturday morning, with the trees dark against a flawle
ss blue sky and the road ribboning away all pink and dusty before them, Elizabeth and Justin set off in the bush car for a ten days' spree.
"See that she buys an evening frock, Justin," was Karen's final injunction. "White for preference. Brunettes with tanned skins do full justice to white. Goodbye, both of you. Happy days."
"That's that," said Keith matter-of-factly as the car disappeared. "Mums looked pretty, didn't she? I suppose she's excited." He kicked his way up the garden beneath a riotous harmony of passion-flower and solanum which arched the path, and skipped up on to the rockery. "Shall we do some gardening?"
"Come and help me in the dairy first. I'm afraid it'll take me twice as long as it takes your mummy."
"It's just routine," he remarked airily.
Watching him clamber from ledge to ledge amid tawny and carmine pools of flowers, Karen envied his upbringing. Karen's stories of England, while avidly absorbed and questioned, inspired Keith with only a mild longing. It must be boring to have to play indoors half the year, and what sort of country was it to have no snakes, no buck or zebra, no bright-feathered parrots or stately ostriches, and where trees and flowers died
right off for months together, and it rained all the year round, and snowed!
In spite of the perpetual beauty around her, Karen herself was often victim of an overwhelming nostalgia for England. There were times, chiefly at night, when she would have given anything to be lying in her walnut bed in the flat at Maida Vale, knowing she would awaken to the twitter of sparrows in the old lime tree and the frequent clatter of buses along the main road. Yet she was aware there could be no going back. She was no longer the carefree girl who had left England eight months ago.
At this moment, though, Karen was very much the Kenya housewife. For a few minutes she lingered in the small orchard and tentatively handled the golden fruit of the orange and grapefruit trees. Apricot and peach spread weighted branches, and squat guavas and loquats lined the path, which ended at a tangle of green silk banana leaves.
The dairy was enclosed within a circle of pawpaws which, in the early days, Elizabeth had planted with care and regularly watered, not knowing they would thrive almost on warmth alone.
The cans of milk were lined up inside the dairy, ready for separating. The dairy-boy, in white shorts and singlet, lifted and poured the cream into the churn, then the skim milk into fresh buckets ready for cheese. Karen worked steadily. The boy churned, singing softly to himself. At eleven o'clock she left him to it while she went into the house for a cup of tea. Scarcely had the kettle boiled, than Keith burst in. "Karen, what d'you think—"
"I did think you were going to help in the dairy."
"Sorry, I forgot. I saddled Trix and rode down the road a little way," he said breathlessly. "They're widening and making the new surface. It's grand!"
"The road from Grassa to Guaba?"
"Of course. What other road is there? Mark says his boys will be knocking off work soon as it is Saturday, but they'll pass our house on Monday. I wish I needn't go to school."
"You're not missing school for that," she answered mechanically. "Was Mark breaking for tea?"
"No, he'd only just come."
"Would you like to take a flask to him?"
"Yes, and a couple of those honey scones you baked yesterday. Aren't you coming?"
"Not this time."
He followed her to the pantry and back again. "It's a beautiful road," he added persuasively.
"Not this time," she repeated, lowering the teapot. Carefully she wiped the flask with a napkin, popped in four lumps of sugar and a dash of milk, corked it and screwed on the cap. "Wait and bring back the flask, will you?"
She hadn't seen. Mark since the dinner at Charles Williamson's. Justin,
who had gone down to Grassa with Keith, had said the bridge looked nearly complete, though Mark had told him there was still a good deal to do after a slack period of measuring the strain and stretch. It seemed that, owing to an inconsistency in the subsoil on the farther bank of the river, he had been forced to make slight alterations to the design. Any time now a technical director of the construction company by whom he had been commissioned, was expected down for a final conference, and he was keen to get the roads in the immediate neighbourhood into first-class condition for testing the bridge.
Resolutely Karen walked back to the dairy. The first butter, a glistening mound set upon a muslin on the tiled shelf, was ready for weighing and wrapping. By lunch-time her arms and shoulders ached abominably, but the tidy stack ready for despatch to the co-operative depot was a pleasant panacea to physical discomfort.
When at last she sat down to lunch, Keith had finished eating and gone off again. Jimmy told her that the "bwana makubwa"—the big master—had come in but could not wait. She was to let him know at once if she needed assistance of any kind. Her heart warmed and her tiredness fell away. Only a conventional offer of help from Mark, yet for the time being it gave point to existence and spread a balm over the bruised places in her mind.
CHAPTER VI
THE days were long and exhausting. Nova brought her sewing and armfuls of exercise books to correct, but all Karen felt fit for in the evenings was a doze near the fire.
"You're doing too much," Nova said. "Justin didn't intend you to run his boys, too."
"The farm foreman and the herdsman came for instructions. I have to tell them something, and there are always small troubles. Either a cow goes off milk, or a leopard breaks into one of the bomas during the night. This morning I had to superintend the mixing of cattle-dip. Justin's very particular about warding off all chance of rinderpest and East Coast fever."
"John Winchester took on that responsibility."
"He hasn't been up and I don't care to remind him. You're not to, either, Nova. We shall get through. It isn't for long."
Early in the first week, Hanim brought a note from Mark.
"Today I heard from Keith that you and Miss Lawson are sleeping alone at the farm. I thought justin would have arranged something with the Winchesters. Hanim has instructions to spend each night on your veranda."
Hanim, quiet and dignified, nodded when he saw her refold the sheet of
paper. "Memsahib?" There was a world of understanding and knowledge in the polite inquiry.
"Thank you, Hanim. It will be a comfort to know that you're here."
The next Saturday, Roy drove up to the farm. After a few facetious comments about the splendid new concrete road, he came to the point. "I thought you girls might like to try out the club in Guaba," he said. "They have cards and billiards and dancing. Quite a jolly crowd collect there. Can Keith go down to the Winchesters for the night?"
"He's already in bed, and I'm too tired to dance, anyway." Observing Nova's faint disappointment, Karen went on impulsively, "You two go. I shall be quite happy here, with Hanim on guard."
With mock apprehension, Roy said, "D'you think I'll be safe with Nova? She's a bit of a man-eater, you know."
"Just the influence you need. In fact, it cuts both ways. We'll all go together next weekend."
Nova changed into a cyclamen-silk dress, and Karen joined her in the bedroom, her eyes glinting with a hint of mischief. "Let me do your hair for you, Nova?"
"Heavens, no! There's nothing to do."
"Your usual style doesn't suit this frock. Keep still a minute."
Deftly Karen combed and patted. "You see? Looser around your face is much more becoming."
"It feels strange." But a flush had crept into her sallow cheeks. "I used to do it something like this." Sharply she swerved from the mirror to hang up her skirt and tidy the room. Marvellous what a change of hairstyle did to a woman, thought Karen, especially in the way of lopping off the years. In her embarrassment, Nova looked almost elfin.
Roy blinked and, surprisingly, remained silent.
"You're quite sure you'll be all right, Karen?" Nova demanded urgently. "Absolutely. I shall go to bed early. Don't leave the club before the fun's over." .
BUT when they had gone, Karen felt restless and wide awake. She was stuck off the ninth of her luncheon-mats, and there was nothing on the
bookshelves she had not read except a treatise on coffee growing and a heap of pamphlets about groundnut cultivation. She lay back in her chair, and at once her eyes focussed on a large ginger spider scrambling through a conveniently sized hole in the canvas ceiling. Just lately the canvas had rotted in several places, and dark blobs showed where she and her cousin had patched it. Elizabeth said the stuff should have been thickly coated with paint or gum in the beginning; now it was too late, and sometime soon the canvas would have to be completely renewed in all the rooms.
With startling suddenness a cry from Keith broke the stillness. "Mummy —ooh, Mummy!"
Electrified, Karen grabbed up a torch and dashed into his bedroom. "What is it? Mummy's away. Have you forgotten?"
He was sitting up in bed, rocking, both hands clamped round his jaws, his eyes streaming. "My tooth a-aches!" he wept.
"Oh, goodness! I'll bring a lamp. Try not to make too much noise. We'll get it better." But she wasn't sure how.
"It hu-urts!" he bellowed after her.
"Poor old chap," she called from the bathroom trying to remember whether Elizabeth had ever mentioned a toothache remedy for Keith. Back in his bedroom she questioned him. "Bear up, darling. It's not so bad now the light's here, is it? What does Mummy use for toothache?"
"I never had it before. It's orful!"
"I know. Let's rub a little iodine on to your gum, shall we? Show me just where it is."
By the time he had been persuaded to open his mouth, both he and Karen were worn out. Like most small boys, Keith had never taken kindly to pain, and toothache is one of the least tolerable of the everyday agonies even to the more mature. Though she wished desperately that he would stop wailing for a minute and let her take a good look, Karen had every sympathy with him. It must have been a vicious pain to awaken him so suddenly from sleep. At last, more by luck than design, she caught a glimpse of the offender: the first small double tooth to the left had a round brown cavity in the centre.
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