by Wynne May
Before going back to the hotel they visited one of the trading stores in the area. On the veranda there was an assortment of ploughs, sacks of flour and cooking pots while inside the shelves were piled high with vividly coloured blankets, rolls of cloth, boots, tobacco, combs, and vaseline.
Michelle’s troubled eyes searched for one item - fruit salts - then she went to the man behind the counter. ‘Excuse me,’ she said, ‘have you any fruit salts?’
He did not seem to understand, and then, from behind, Lyle made the request in the man’s own language while to Michelle he said, ‘What’s the problem? Why are you asking for fruit salts?’
‘I can’t define my problem, but I think I have acute indigestion.’ She knew that she sounded as she felt - vaguely distracted.
Giving her an amused glance, he said, ‘A young girl like you?’
‘Yes. I don’t think it’s uncommon.’ Moodily, she watched the man as he went in the direction of a small cardboard box which stood on one of the shelves. No wonder she had not been able to find the stuff, she thought.
Marie and Heidi were busy choosing dark blue and white printed cotton while Carl and Pieter stood beside them, looking amused.
Lyle said, ‘He says he has only two packets left.’
‘No bottles?’ she asked.
‘No bottles.’ His eyes searched her face. ‘Why don’t you wait until you get back to the hotel, Michelle? You’ll get what you want there.
These packets looked rather ancient.’
‘I’ll take these,’ she said, preparing to pay for them. The moment Lyle left her she intended asking the owner for a glass, cup, enamel mug -
anything - of water.
‘I’d think twice before taking that,’ Lyle’s eyes went to the packets.
‘The packets are yellow with age, Michelle. He probably doesn’t have much demand for stuff like this.’
Feeling impatient with herself - and him, now - she turned away, dropping the packets into her bag as she did so. She would have to wait, she thought. It wouldn’t be long now. ‘I’ll decide presently,’ she said.
‘You’re entitled to do that, I guess.’ Behind her, she knew Lyle had shrugged impatiently. ‘But my advice is - lay off, until you get back and are able to get something else.’
The others were leaving the store and there was nothing for it but to follow them out to the Land-Rover which was cooling down in the dust-laden air.
Lyle dropped them all off outside the hotel and waited until the food hampers were off-loaded. After he had parked the Land-Rover he joined then in the foyer. ‘We’re back in time for tea,’ he said.
Brushing dust from her slacks, Marie said, ‘That will be followed by a nice hot bath.’
‘Followed by a nice cold beer,’ grinned Carl.
‘Followed by a nice tasty dinner,’ Heidi giggled. ‘Thank you for a super day. It’s been fantastic.’
‘That goes for everybody,’ Carl and Pieter were saying together, while Michelle kept on smiling, nursing her discomfort and longing to go to her room.
‘It’s been a pleasure,’ Lyle replied. ‘I’ve enjoyed it. Thank you.’ His eyes flickered to Michelle. ‘Take it easy,’ he said. ‘Relax. You’ll find what you want at the shop. Take my advice and toss what you have in the waste-paper basket. I think it’s been standing on that shelf back there since the beginning of time. In fact, the salts appeared lumpy to me.’
‘I’ll be all right,’ she answered. She felt a huge sense of let-down. ‘It’s not really important.’
The others were going towards the staircase, laughing and joking and filling the foyer with their noise. Michelle turned to leave, then stopped as Lyle said, ‘I think, Michelle, we should have a talk, in the very near future.’
‘I don’t see what about,’ she said, her voice cool, ‘unless it happens to be about my work?’
‘This cat and mouse game is beginning to wear me down. Your work has nothing to do with it.’ His voice was quiet.
‘No?’
‘No.’
‘Well, in that case, I don’t think we need to have a talk. Thank you for the trip.’
His eyes held hers for a moment before he said, ‘Don’t thank me. It’s all part of the service.’ She watched him turn and make his way outside to the dust-covered Land-Rover.
As soon as she reached her room she opened her bag and removed the two little packets containing the fruit salts. Indeed, they did look yellow with age, she thought, unless they had been in a part of the shop where the rain leaked through a hole in the roof and the water had dripped on to the cardboard box, moistening the contents of the packets and yellowing as they dried again. She pressed one packet in an endeavour to break down the salts which had become lumpy, then, going through to her bathroom, she filled a tumbler with water, added the salts and gulped the fizzing liquid down.
After a hot bath she felt much better and the indigestion had left her, but she experienced a bloated sensation in the region of her stomach.
Although she was not hungry she went down to dinner, but found that she could not eat much. It was during the late hours of the night that she woke up, violently ill, and was left feeling spent and wretched. There were severe pains in her stomach. By two o’clock in the morning she was desperate, and when at last the sky suddenly became tinged with the colours of dawn, she was utterly thankful.
Directly she was able to use the phone she rang Laney.
‘Laney,’ she said, ‘I’m terribly ill. Please get Pete to come and get me.’
Laney did not waste time asking questions and within a short time Pete knocked at her door and she let him in. ‘What’s happened?’ he asked, his eyes going quickly over Michelle.
‘Oh,’ she moaned, ‘you tell me!’
‘Laney’s preparing your bed,’ he told her. ‘She’ll look after you. We’ll get the doctor.’
‘Oh, gosh!’ Michelle sat on the side of her bed. ‘I’m so ill, Pete. I’ve been through a hideous night. I’ll have to notify them downstairs, of course. I can’t just go off without putting them wise.’
‘I’ve already done that.’ Peter sounded worried. ‘What can I do for you?’
‘Just sling these in that case for me.’ Michelle doubled over and groaned.
At the farm, Laney helped her into bed in the small guest room with its thick white walls and grass watusi bedroom suite. At the far end of the room there was a white cot, waiting. This was to be the nursery. Already Laney had been to work here and, ill as she was feeling, Michelle knew rage and despair to think that Lyle Cunningham was trying to buy the farm which had become home to Pete and Laney. Gradually they were putting all they had into it. Was it all going to be for nothing?
‘Pete is phoning our doctor,’ Laney was saying comfortingly. ‘You must be suffering from food poisoning, Michelle. Do you realize that? And yet Pete phoned the hotel to find out whether the others were affected by the food sent up in the Land-Rover and was told that not only are the four people who did the trip up the Pass okay, but the entire hotel. So we just can’t understand what it’s all about.
Anyway, we’ll see what doctor says.’
The doctor, when informed about the fruit salts, wanted to see the remaining packet which, fortunately, was still in Michelle’s handbag.
‘I’ll look into this,’ he said, pocketing it. ‘It could have been standing next to something on the shelf - or it could be that it had been inadvertently sprayed with insecticide.’
‘Oh, no!’ Laney exclaimed, shocked. ‘Don’t say that!’
‘At any rate, it should be investigated by the health people,’ he replied. ‘The packet is certainly discoloured and it’s been moist.’ He took it from his pocket and examined it again. ‘Anyway, she’s over the worst now, and that,’ he glanced in the direction of the prescription which he had placed on one of the grass watusi bedside tables, ‘should fix her up in no time.’
‘Let us know about the fruit salts, will you, Doctor?’ Laney asked.
/> ‘I’ll do that. It should be looked into.’
Michelle was dozing after such a hideous night when Lyle Cunningham arrived and Laney was shaking her shoulder lightly.
‘Wakey-wakey,’ she said, ‘somebody to see you.’
‘Don’t wake her,’ Lyle was saying as she opened her eyes. ‘Perhaps she should sleep.’
‘No. She’ll be thrilled to see you, Lyle. She’d be terribly disappointed if I told her you’d been and I hadn’t called her.’
Michelle looked up. ‘Hello.’ Lyle’s voice was soft.
‘I’ll go and put the kettle on,’ said Laney, leaving them alone, and a huge silence settled on the room.
Eventually Lyle said, ‘How do you feel now? I understand you had a very rough night, Michelle?’
She followed him with her eyes, her lashes heavy, as he sat down on the side of the bed, although there happened to be a very comfortable chair nearby.
‘Have you lost your tongue, Michelle?’ His blue-green eyes went over her face.
In despair, she turned her head away from him. She was in love with him and he was the man who was doing his best to smash Pete and Laney, quite apart from the fact that he had done nothing but humiliate her ever since he had seen her posing in the snow bikini.
‘Something went wrong along the line somewhere,’ she murmured.
‘For some unknown reason that tinned curry didn’t agree with me and I got the most awful attack of indigestion, and then, as Laney has probably told you, the fruit salts could have been tainted. Anyway,’
she added in a voice that was not quite steady. ‘I don’t feel like talking about it. Everything seems so pointless.’
‘What seems so pointless?’ he asked.
After a while she said, ‘Everything.’
‘Well, I’m open to suggestions, Michelle.’ He took her hand in his own and she put her teeth down on her lips and held her breath.
‘I’d rather you didn’t touch me,’ she said, trying to free her hand.
‘I lost my head yesterday. I’m sorry, Michelle.’ His voice was gentle.
Looking at him through a sheen of tears, she said, ‘Is there a difference? You only lost your head because you happen to think I’m-I’m - to use an old corny word, even in these permissive times -cheap. Isn’t that so?’
‘No, that isn’t so.’ He sounded angry now.
However, she went on, ‘But even cheap girls like to choose the men they want to have an affair with.’
Where, she asked herself, was the girl who used to swing around London as though it belonged to her? Who, in her place, was this wretched girl with the stomach pains and the feelings of a moonsick schoolgirl?
At that moment Laney came in, carrying a tray. Michelle took her hand away from Lyle’s. ‘Laney,’ she said, ‘I hate to do this to you, but could you have it in the living-room? I’m not feeling all that much like company. I’m sorry.’
‘Fine, Michelle. Don’t worry about it.’
Lyle stood up. ‘Let me carry the tray for you, Laney.’
As he followed Laney from the room Michelle’s eyes filled with tears. ‘Traitor,’ she whispered. ‘Traitor! Why can’t Pete and Laney see through your little game?’
CHAPTER TEN
THE fruit salts had been contaminated by insecticide spray and the trading store owner duly advised of the outcome of tests and cautioned. ‘A lot of these sprays should be struck off the market,’ the doctor had said, ‘although I understand that a Jot already have been -
and with more to come, I hope.’
Laney drove Michelle back to the hotel after she had spent a day and a night at the farm. ‘Be careful, Michelle, where and what you buy in future.’ Laney’s smile was not without worry.
Michelle felt drained and calm. ‘I’ll be careful, Laney, don’t worry.
Honestly, while the attack lasted, I thought I was going to die. It was awful!’
Soon after she was back at the hotel she met Lyle Cunningham in the foyer. ‘So you’re back?’ He smiled briefly, but his face recovered its cold aloofness almost immediately. ‘Have you quite got over your ordeal?’
‘Yes, thank you,’ she answered, wondering at the sudden pleasure the sight of him gave her. She forced the feeling aside.
‘I had a feeling about those salts,’ he told her. ‘I wish I’d been firm about it. I didn’t want you to buy it.’
She made no reply at first and then, after a pause, she murmured,
‘Yes. I know, it was entirely my own fault. I should have taken your advice and gone along to the shop at the hotel and bought a bottle. I guess I was feeling desperate.’ She shrugged slightly and even managed a casual smile.
‘Anyway, you’ve recovered, that’s the main thing.’
Michelle sensed the tension in him. Their eyes held. Cunningham Senior was coming into the foyer and Lyle turned. ‘I have a customer under the drier,’ she said. ‘Please excuse me.’
As she passed the desk on her way to her small salon, Michelle was aware of Liza’s dark eyes following her. She stifled the temptation to ask Liza, with sarcasm in her voice, whether there was anything she wanted.
Long, sunny days slipped by and, although Glen Hayes had a talent for irritating her, Michelle had found herself accepting invitations to go out with him whenever she was free. It was about time, she thought, that she started finding interests outside the hotel - time she stopped brooding and thinking about Lyle Cunningham.
Glen had phoned her one day, soon after she had been up the Sani Pass with Lyle Cunningham. ‘I haven’t seen you around,’ he said.
‘What have you been doing with yourself?’
‘I’ve been busy,’ she murmured.
‘How are you?’ he asked.
‘Oh …’ she tried to think of something flippant to say, ‘I - er-stagger along, I guess.’
‘Let’s not waste any more time,’ Glen had said. ‘What about having dinner with me tonight?’
Well, she had found herself thinking, why not? She was free to do as she wished when she was not working, and so for the past two months she had avoided Lyle Cunningham and gone out with Glen Hayes.
Glen was always up to form, making passes at her with a subtle sense of timing - passes which she always rejected. It was amazing how he kept on phoning her, she thought, and sometimes she felt mean as she went on seeing him when all the time there was this faint, involuntary contempt which she felt towards him.
One day Liza said, ‘Aren’t you seeing rather a lot of Glen Hayes these days?’
Keeping her anger under tight control, Michelle replied, ‘And aren’t you seeing rather a lot of Lyle Cunningham these days? It’s the same thing, really, isn’t it?’
The fact that Lyle often called for Liza and took her out in his car had not escaped Michelle’s notice, and she knew she was jealous.
‘I was going out with Lyle Cunningham long before you came on the scene, as a matter of fact,’ Liza replied hotly. ‘And by the way, that goes for Glen Hayes, as well.’
‘Oh?’ Liza’s constant sarcasm was beginning to get on Michelle’s nerves. ‘I hope I haven’t destroyed your peace of mind?’ she said.
‘Not at all.’ Liza’s voice was cutting. ‘I’d like you to feel absolutely reassured on that point.’
Glen Hayes had taken delivery of his Land-Rovers, although there had been no organized trips up the Pass. It was not like Glen Hayes to delay anything and Michelle found herself wondering why the vehicles were not in operation.
She was having dinner with him one evening at a farm on the outskirts of Thabana, when he said, ‘I intend to go one better than the Cunninghams. Our excursions up the Pass will be cheaper. In fact, whatever they do, I intend to go one better.’ He gave her a meaningful smile.
‘Is that what you have in mind?’ Her voice was sharp.
‘That’s what I have in mind.’ His eyes were lazy behind the horn-rimmed glasses, tawny and deceptively lazy.
‘What have you got against the Cu
nninghams?’ Michelle watched his eyes close - a habit when he was preparing to answer a question.
When he opened them he said, ‘I’ll tell you.’ He put one elbow on the table and rested his cheek on his hand. ‘When the hotel came on the market I was interested. I didn’t act quickly enough, though. I could kick myself now. I’ve had my eye on these parts for some time, now -
along with my partners, that is. So I - we - did the next best thing. We built the chalets. We intended including an a la carte restaurant, but we scrapped that. The chalets, as you know, are equipped with super little kitchens, pots and pans, electric stoves, refrigerators - in fact, the lot … There’s a small supermarket to cater for the average holidaymaker and - well, there you have it. Do you get me?’
‘I’m beginning to understand, I think.’ Michelle watched him roll his tongue around his teeth and take it away with a little smacking sound.
Glen always created the impression that he was just in the act of finishing off some tasty morsel. In any other person this could have been nothing short of a disgusting little habit, but there was something aggravatingly fascinating about the way in which he performed this small ritual, while in the midst of conversing.
‘But,’ he went on, ‘we had this idea about a farm.’ Michelle’s nerves tightened suddenly as she listened to him. ‘We’ve been keeping a close watch on the market. In other words, when your brother’s farm came up for sale, we were all there, believe me.’
‘I see,’ she said softly.
‘As you probably know, your brother and his wife found themselves in such a financial mess that they put the farm on the market. That was before you arrived here, of course. Then they withdrew it.
However, Lyle Cunningham is still doing his best to get them to sell.
In fact, he loaned them money, I understand, which he knew damned well they’d never in a hundred years be able to pay back. It could be that he’s using this as a lever to get his own way with them. I don’t say it is - but it could be.’
‘That’s generous of you.’ Michelle’s voice was bitter.