His mouth thinned. “If you’re trying to annoy me again you won’t succeed...”
He had been going to say more. But her mouth quivered and her fingers came up to her face in a curious, childlike gesture, as if to hide the quivering. His hand slipped inside her elbow, compelled her to the french door.
“Go to bed,” he said. “Let yourself relax, and sleep. Tomorrow morning even I won’t look so black as your thoughts have painted me. Good night.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
THE Delaneys were back in Port Quentin. Nothing momentous had happened during their two weeks’ absence, yet for Laurette the whole town and their own few acres in particular had a sharper meaning.
The last few days at Mohpeng had passed without incident. Charles had been carefully suave and charming, and thoughtful for the continued comfort of his guests. The trout breakfast-party at the edge of a mountain stream had passed off to the participants’ satisfaction, and Maris Seymour had been especially joyous both with the half-dozen fish she had caught and with Charles’ flattering banter.
Kevin had whispered to Laurette, “You were right, by Jove. They draw together like steel and a magnet. What price the District Commissioner as a brother-in-law!”
Singularly unmoved, Laurette had made an appropriate rejoinder. In the same spirit she had joined with her father, at dawn on Sunday, in thanking Charles for his hospitality. There had been no mention of a future visit, nor had Charles any notion when he would next see Port Quentin. He had sent his regards to his uncle, hoped they would have a pleasant, rainless trip, and waved them off.
Mohpeng was behind them. Laurette walked through the little Delaney plantation and made plans of a type which would have scared her a few weeks ago. But heartache had somehow immunized her against the more everyday dangers, and she had to have money. In Port Quentin there was no hope of earning any in an orthodox job, and she could not face leaving her father before his leg became quite normal; In any case, to acquire an adequate salary she would be compelled to live in Durban or some other large town distant from the home she loved and the friends she had made. And it wasn’t really necessary; the more she thought about it the more she was sure of that.
The third evening after their return she tackled her father. The evening meal was over and Bwazi gone to his quarters. Having spent the day weeding in the garden Laurette and the Captain had decided to have an early night, but she knew that hers would be a wakeful one unless they came to a decision.
She put on a cigarette and blew out the match, crossed the room to get an ashtray and spoke while her back was still turned to her father.
“Remember the idea you had about taking on one of the twenty-acre plots outside the town boundary? Have you given it much thought since?”
“No, though I’d still say it was worth trying—when I can get around without any sort of support.”
“That may take another couple of months.” A pause, during which she emitted enough smoke to create a thin veil. “I want us to get started on it at once. You can be the overseer and I’ll do the foreman’s duties. Bwazi knows a boy who will come three days a week for the heavy work, and we have our experience on the small plantation as a guide. The sooner we get going the quicker the results.”
The Captain let his head rest against the back of his chair, and regarded her thoughtfully. “Why the hurry? In two months the hottest part of the summer will be over and the whole proposition will sound much more comfortable.”
“I don’t mind the heat.” She paced restlessly to the window, lifted the chintz curtain and dropped it into position again. She came back to face him. “I can’t go on for ever without a job, and this is one I’m convinced I can handle. You yourself were keen about it a little while ago.”
“I’m still keen. As soon as I can take an active part we’ll go into it.”
“But why should we waste time? Once our plot is decided upon I can go ahead with the clearing. Two-thirds of it can eventually be planted with bananas and pineapples and the rest we’ll put down at once to catch crops—quick-growing vegetables and salads that we can sell locally in Umtopo.”
“The Indians have the local vegetable market.”
“For a year or two—until the bananas and pines begin to yield—we’ll compete with them. Maybe our experiment will push up the quality of their produce; it needs it.”
“Quite fierce about this, aren’t you? I’m beginning to believe you could do it.”
Almost with impatience she pressed out the half-smoked cigarette. “I’m determined to do it,” she said. “The land is cheap and will pay for itself in less than four years. Growth and fruiting here are pretty well continuous, so you can’t lose.”
“What about the marketing?”
“When we’re ready to sell our staff I’ll have a talk with the skipper of the freighter. Maybe he’ll ship it along to Durban for us.”
There was an answer to that: the freighter had given up as uneconomical the plying half-empty backwards and forwards along the coast. But John Delaney forbode to remind his daughter of the fact. Her anxiety puzzled him, but he saw in it a need to get busy on her own behalf, to earn her living in the only way presented itself now that she could no longer help Ben Vaughan. Small-scale planting might entail a tremendous amount of work for modest results, but the Delaneys were anything but avaricious, and he did want Laurette to be happier than she appeared at the moment.
The brittleness of her smile had not escaped him, but he was still too hazy about her inner personality to dare a comment or an enquiry. He blamed himself for their loving each other blindly, without either really knowing the other. His years in the Army had got him out of the way of personal relationships, and actually bereft him of the power to form anything closer than ordinary friendship. There was a gap between the comradeship he, shared with Laurette and their love for each other. It could have been filled by a sympathetic intimacy, but it wasn’t; it remained void because Laurette had grown up virtually without a father and contrived to do without parental guidance and understanding. He intended to make a better thing of being a grandfather!
“You can have your piece of land,” he said now. “If you like, you may drive me down to the council office tomorrow morning.”
A small tension snapped within Laurette. “Thanks,” she said. “You won’t regret it, darling.”
They chose their plot the following afternoon, a strip which had about five hundred yards’ frontage on an overgrown wagon track. They picked on that particular plot because it had few trees except along the edge, and would be comparatively easy to clear. The group of ancient cycads, that queer palm which bore the breadfruit of pioneering days, would be left standing, for no one willingly destroyed a cycad, These, her father guessed, were many hundreds of years old, and Laurette recalled being told by a ninety-year-old inhabitant of Port Quentin that the cycad at the bottom of his garden had gained neither height nor girth since his childhood; the house had disintegrated and been rebuilt, but the breadfruit tree had changed hardly a fraction.
A deposit was paid to the council and arrangements made for the rest of the purchase money to be remitted by half-yearly instalments. The Delaneys were landowners.
“We’ll splash a bit extra and hire the tractor from the garage for the clearing,” said John Delaney. “Meanwhile you can order your seed and implements. Take your time—we don’t suffer from soil erosion in this corner of Africa.”
From then on the tempo of Laurette’s existence accelerated considerably. Every day she dressed in slacks and a shirt and drove out to the plot. Hampered by the lack of laborers, she had to put in some manual work herself, but she turned to it gladly and with zest. All she had was given to this new project, for there must be no doubt about its success. It wasn’t only those all-important one hundred and forty pounds which forced her on. Equally compelling was the knowledge that planting, for a woman, was an exacting career; to make good at it one needed to be strong, both mentally and physically, and La
urette had resolved to prove she possessed that strength.
She would never marry; Charles had spoiled her for other men. But she would always have a home, and a job which was full of interest and out of the rut. She had no intention of subsiding with despair.
At the end of a fortnight part of the rich brown soil was clean enough to be set with South African salads and varieties of vegetables, and the first day’s planting was blessed with a beneficient rain.
It was on that day, too, that both John Delaney and Laurette received a letter from Peter. To his father, of course, Peter had written in his usual airy style, but the Captain was nevertheless perturbed to read that the post of welfare officer had turned out a flop, while, fortunately, a really good opening with a London firm of stockbrokers coincided with Peter’s release from the tropics.
“A pity the boy can’t stick it out,” was the Captain’s observation. “Still, he must have saved a fair portion of his salary and that will help him to get established in London. I’m afraid we can’t do much more for him.” He slid the letter back into its envelope. “What has he to say to you?”
“It’s on the same lines as yours.” Slowly, as if what Peter had penned were negligible, she tore the letter across, twice, and crumpled it into her palm. “I expect he’s exuberant at leaving the tropics.”
John Delaney went quiet and pensive. His son’s blithe thoughtfulness always made him uneasy and a trifle sad; yet there was little one could do now that Peter had reached manhood. He must shape his own life.
Laurette had so often talked with her father about Peter that she could not help but guess what was in his mind at this moment. She hated to see him so disturbed but was thankful he had learned nothing of the truth about the matter. He was distressed by Peter’s instability, but how much more deeply he would have been wounded to hear about the gambling and debts.
She had read her own brief letter only once, but its contents were imprinted in her memory. Peter had received the money (“for which many, many thanks, my sweet Laurette”), but who the dickens had she borrowed it from? Who was this chap in Basutoland who had the nerve to follow up the loan with a simply scorching letter? Did Laurette know the man had actually stated that Peter Delaney was a blight on the face of the earth, that in future he had better leave his sister alone and wriggle out if his morasses without aid, like the insect he was?
“Honestly, Laurette,” he finished, “this Charles Heron doesn’t deserve a penny of the money back. How you ever got him to pay out I can’t imagine!”
The information that Charles had slated Peter by post further hardened Laurette’s decision that the whole of the loan should be repaid. That evening she replied to Peter telling him that as soon as he began his duties in England he must send her whatever he could afford; once her own letter was posted she put the subject from her for a while. The new plantation kept her completely occupied.
About once a week Ben came to see John Delaney. Laurette heard about his calls from her father, but her three acres of market garden were covered with the pale green of new growth before she herself saw Ben.
He came down to the plot in his car, bumped along the track and pulled up close to where she was forking in a powdered pest-killer. He got out on to the soil, raked his hair back in the familiar, harassed manner, and gave her a restrained smile.
“Hello,” she said with deserved cheerfulness. “Have you come to see if it’s true?”
“No, I knew It was. I believe you could do anything you really set your mind to.” He looked down at the golden-brown face under the old straw hat. “How does a thing of your age and size manage to own such a strong will?”
“Most of us can manage to be strong-willed in one direction,” she said. “It’s what drives you that counts.”
“You must have an extraordinarily powerful stimulus.”
He turned to survey the expanse of freshly-ploughed earth and added musingly, “Growing things is clean, vital work, isn’t it? You can’t imagine it getting mixed up with intrigue and hatred.”
Laurette shifted her small sack of powder and pushed her hat to the back of her head, revealing damp, clinging curls. “Doctoring shouldn’t, either,” she said. And then, tentatively, “Is there anything in the rumor that you’re selling up?”
“I haven’t done anything positive about it. Alix wants me to go north and specialize, but I can’t make up my mind.”
“That’s the answer, surely?”
He gave her an odd, swift glance. “You mean that I should be driven in the way you’re driven to create a plantation. If I’m not, then I ought to stay. My case is less simple than yours. I have reason to be grateful to Alix, and to her father. I’m not even certain that I’d do more good by remaining here than by going.”
Frankly she enquired, “Aren’t you in love with her?”
He replied at once, offhandedly, “No. You shouldn’t need to ask that. But she’s done so much for me that occasionally I feel almost bound to marry her.”
She twisted the handle of the fork she had been using, and watched the soil churning about the tines. “It would be a bitter sort of marriage, because she’s probably not in love with you, either.”
There followed a very long silence. Ben leant back upon the bonnet of his car and stared into the blue and green distance. Laurette noticed that the fawn hair was losing color at the temples and the lines were etched even deeper at the corners of his eyes. She also noticed a yellow bird on a branch behind him and envied its freedom.
She was freer than Ben, though; he was hemmed in by the indomitable Alix.
He spoke suddenly. “Laurette, if I told Alix to go, would you work with me again?”
“I couldn’t.” Her hand went out in an embracing gesture. “I’m committed to this, now.” She hesitated, and her newly-found courage prompted her next statement. “I used to be furious and hurt about the way you let me go without a word. I longed for a showdown, so that I could tell you what I thought of a man who allowed his cousin to sack his assistant. Well, I’ve become less belligerent about it...”
“But, Laurette!” He was electrified, and gazing at her in perplexity. “It was you who told Alix—that was why I never mentioned it to you.”
“Then you didn’t ever say you couldn’t afford a nurse?”
“I may have said I couldn’t afford a trained one. Neither can I. But you...”
“What else did your cousin tell you?”
He met her eyes and his were alight with anger. “That you were not only tired of the practice and the mission, but were in love with someone who refused to let you continue helping me.”
“In love?” she echoed, her head slightly averted. “You knew that wasn’t so.”
“How could I be sure? There was Charles.”
Half-prepared for this, she said, “Even if I’d been in love with Charles, it would have been most unlikely that I’d stir his emotions. Alix Brooke was clearing the way for her own ends.”
“I wish I’d guessed,” he said with vehemence. “Instead, I’ve slipped deeper and deeper into her debt.” He straightened, and a small wry smile moved his lips. “It’s a relief to hear that Charles isn’t the man in your life. Your happiness is important to me, and I can’t see you finding it with the cool, soulless type.”
Unexpectedly, she said, “I can’t either. I rather think that the years will turn me into a breezy, hardworking bachelor woman.”
At this, Ben, who seldom smiled with real enjoyment, laughed outright. “When that happens I’ll believe in miracles.”
Both of them were still smiling when at last he got back into the car and started the engine. He reversed and poked out his head.
“Mind if I drop in at the bungalow for tea on Sunday?”
“We’ll be glad to have you.”
“Good. Don’t dig about too long in the sun. You may be tough, but you’re still only a girl.”
Laurette watched the car disappear and then continued with her task. The short chat
with Ben had given her a feeling of elation. Without much effort on the part of either, the wall had collapsed and the way was open for a renewal of friendship between them.
It was strange, she thought as she dexterously twisted the fork to bury the grey powder, how events of varying magnitude confused the conduct of one’s existence. Emotionally, Alix Brooke meant nothing at all either to Ben or to herself, but the incidence of her arrival in Port Quentin at a particular time had affected both their lives—her own perhaps even more than Ben’s.
But for Alix she would still be “the nurse” at the doctor’s house. The letter from Peter announcing his dilemma would have been discussed with Ben; he would have advanced the money and a satisfactory arrangement whereby the amount could be repaid would have been concluded. All fair and square and friendly.
Instead, she had been forced to confide in Charles, and he, of course, had arrogantly relieved her of all responsibility—except that she now had to work like a fiend till the obligation was fulfilled.
She tipped the old hat still farther back and leaned, as all good growers do, upon the handle of her fork, to survey the Delaney acres. Across at the other side of the plot Bwazi’s boy friend, Josiah, was digging up thorn-bush roots while his recumbent wife encouraged him from the shade of a sea-willow and his one naked offspring tumbled among the furrows. Josiah’s small Fingo figure was hardy, and so long as he was left to tackle the job in his own way he didn’t slack.
When the ground was quite fit for large-scale planting Bwazi would forsake the house and pair up with Josiah. The plants were already ordered, thousands of small grey-green pineapples and pale emerald bananas to beautify the land and eventually to provide an income to supplement the Captain’s pension.
Being honest with herself, Laurette admitted that she preferred working the plantation to working with Ben; taking the long view, she was helping to provide for her father’s retirement as well as her own future. That much good, at least, had emerged from the past weeks of agony.
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