“I haven’t decided. Kelseys and Herons have always lived here, and I don’t fancy any other family in possession. I shall have to leave that decision for a few weeks.” He paused, his glance flickering over her excessive slimness, the sun-flecked hair and pale gold skin. “What about lunch?”
She drew slightly away from him. “May we have it on the veranda?”
He nodded without comment and went out to tell the boy. She drifted across to the french door and, standing there and gazing over the pomegranate trees, she remembered when they were in flower and the old man had grown testy because the garden boy had neglected to spray them; Charles had just gone back to Mohpeng and Mr. Kelsey had felt the parting more than ever before. He had never seen his nephew again.
Charles came back and gave her a drink. “Lunch will be ready in ten minutes,” he said.
With just a suggestion of her old spirit she answered, “You had no intention of taking me to the hotel, had you?”
His smile was tight. “Let’s say I hoped to persuade you that home is best.”
“Then why did you make me change my frock?”
“Why shouldn’t you change it, for me? I’ll never accept anything but the best from you, Laurette.” Before she could analyze this, he added, very coolly and firmly, “Will you give an eye to the place while I’m away? I’m keeping on the houseboy for a while because in this climate the house must be frequently aired, but I want you to take charge of the keys. He must come to you for them, and bring them back. Will you do it?”
After a moment’s struggle, she said, “Yes, Charles.”
“Good. As to the garden, I understand the boys have gone back to the reserve, but the houseboy knows another who will start here tomorrow.”
“I’ll come along to see that he does.”
“I wish you would. There’s one thing more. Come into the library, will you?”
She put down her glass and preceded him through the familiar corridor and into the light, book-lined room. Beside the window hung a tapestry, and this Charles drew aside as if it were a curtain, revealing a safe set in the wall.
“There are two keys to it,” he said, producing them. “This opens the first door,” it swung wide, showing a smaller door within, “and this the second.”
She saw two orderly heaps of papers and a heavy cash box. “Are you going to leave these here?” she asked.
“I must, in case they’re needed. I’ve had to write several letters and the replies will be coming in during the next week or so. I’d like you to collect them at the post office and open them. If they request documents of any kind, come here and get them. The contents of every envelope are marked on the outside. Then you can send the whole lot up to me by registered post and I’ll deal with them.”
“Shouldn’t you get a man to do all this?”
“I could, but I’d sooner trust the keys with you.” He snapped shut the safe and pulled the tapestry back into place. “Don’t you care for this kind of responsibility?”
“I don’t mind.”
She had turned slightly, and seen the imbuia card table at which her father and Mr. Kelsey had so often played. They must have sat at the table on the eve of their departure in the Barracuda, for the chessboard lay there with the pieces distributed over it and a pawn or two lying beside it.
Her throat began to hurt as if small needles were embedded there, and the appalling ache of pent-up tears weighted the backs of her eyes. She felt Charles’ arm across her shoulders and heard him say quietly,
“They had some good times together, didn’t they? I’ll bet they had a marvellous fortnight on the yacht.”
Had it been Ben with her she would have wept then, As it was, she stood there stiffly, feeling ill with the control she had to impose upon herself. One couldn’t fold up in front of Charles.
He took her back to the lounge and she finished her drink, and in a little while they went out to eat at the table which was set in the shade of the climbers which covered the colonial pillars. It was queer, sitting there with Charles and trying to eat chicken and squash and fresh fruit salad. His tones were so level, his demeanour vaguely reminiscent of the urbane host he had been in Mohpeng. Except that in Mohpeng, after the first evening, he had seemed positively to dislike her, whereas she now felt that he regarded her as merely a problem child.
Only once did she lose that impression. Instead of insisting that she rest in the lounge after lunch he drove her to the summit of one of the, “Gates” and switched off the engine. For some minutes Laurette gazed through the windscreen at the tangle of ferns and wild banana, cycad and cotton bush, but presently her eyes closed and she dozed a little. Without volition, she slid round into the corner, so that when she woke some time later she was looking straight at Charles’ profile.
He was leaning on the wheel, staring ahead and drawing on a cigarette as though it tasted bitter. His whole bearing had changed. The gentleness was gone and in its place she saw a blend of anger and tiredness overlaid by that strange and alien bitterness. His thoughts, she was sure, were a world away, and in that instant’s stillness of realization she heard the frightened beating of her own heart.
For a long moment she had the choking conviction that someone had hurt Charles; found his elusive heart and stabbed it. Then she must have shivered, for his head turned and his smile was there, without the harshness.
“Feel rested?” he asked.
“Yes, thank you. What’s the time?”
“Just on four. Would you like to go back to the bungalow now?”
“I think so. You’ve a long journey before you. Oughtn’t you to leave soon?”
He nodded. “I’ll get away almost at once. Laurette”—he paused for long enough to lend emphasis to what he was about to say—“I want your promise that you’ll make no changes till I come back in three or four weeks’ time. Be as happy as you can. I’ll write to you.”
“There’s no need for that,” she said, too quickly. Perceiving a slight harshness in his eyes, she added, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be ungracious. It just seemed...”
“That’s all right,” he said abruptly. “I do have your promise that you won’t make any changes?”
“I won’t do anything drastic. I shall try to sell the house, but it isn’t likely I shall get a bite that soon.”
He drove her home almost in silence, and when she invited him in he shook his head. He opened the gate for her and stood back, as if avoiding contact as she passed. “So long,” he said. “Keep your chin up.”
And before she was half-way along the short path he had sped away.
CHAPTER TWENTY
LIFE was slightly easier to bear after Charles had gone. For one thing, there was so much to do. The Kelsey garden had to be pulled into shape again, and the house to be opened up every day for airing. Letters for Charles arrived from banks and trust companies, and she had to go to the safe and select the relevant documents for posting on to Mohpeng.
The first time she went into the library alone an odd thing happened. Involuntarily, she looked for the chessboard and found it missing. The card table had been polished and on its centre stood something she had never seen before, a silver model of a polo player on horseback. She had not touched the model but hastily, foolishly, her mind had seized on a connection between the chessboard, which had so often been shared by her father and his uncle, and the lithe, solid figure which had taken its place. And such is the construction of the feminine emotions that Laurette, who had not been able to shed tears for the loss of her father, now dropped into a chair and abandoned herself to a grief which had more to do with the living than the dead. Afterwards, she was certain Charles had placed the silver model there himself. Perhaps his intention had been light and satirical, calculated to brace her into a faint grin of amusement; probably he would have jeered had he seen her tears.
Still, she felt stronger for having wept away some of her sorrow, and she began to think more constructively about her future. Some time
soon she would have to decide whether to stay in Africa or go home to England. Irene said there were many jobs open to girls all over the Union and in Rhodesia, and somehow Laurette felt drawn to try her luck elsewhere on the sub-continent before travelling back to London.
At the moment she did not feel a particular need of friends, though she did concede that had Peter still been living in West Africa she would have gone to him. Peter in London was a different proposition, though.
Just a fortnight after she had cabled him she received from him an air letter. There was no doubt at all that her news had shaken him profoundly, and his final paragraph Laurette found touching.
He meant much more to me than you’ll ever know (he wrote). All through school I was terribly proud to have a soldier for a father, and believe it or not I couldn’t have borne to tell my closest friend that he was not my real father. I wish I could have been the sort of son he wanted...
She skimmed over his regrets. He seemed to be getting on better in London, and stated that he would soon be able to repay part of the loan she had had from that fellow in Basutoland. Perhaps Peter was at last finding his own feet.
The weather at this time was unsettled. A day of steamy heat would be followed by a tremendous storm which washed over Port Quentin with the force of an avalanche. Sometimes the rain was accompanied by fierce lightning and deafening crescendoes of thunder, and in the mornings they would awaken to thick hot mist which cleared to a sulphurous haze that later gave way to burning sunshine which revealed stricken trees and turbulent gulleys between the rocks.
The seas would be calm at one hour and gigantic the next. Vessels stayed anchored in the small harbour, the river covered its banks and rose up into the steep riverside gardens of the houses. And during daylight hours everything went on steaming.
The walls of the bungalow, both inside and outside, were continually drenched. At night the bedding felt damp, and Laurette grew fearful lest Irene catch cold. But the other woman seemed to stand up to it very well. Since living with Laurette she looked much healthier and her appetite was good. Laurette had noticed, too, that Irene’s nerves appeared to be at their worst just before Ben might be expected to call, though his presence invariably soothed them. A pity, thought Laurette, that Irene had only about two months to go. In some respects Ben was a painfully slow worker.
Airing the Kelsey house during the hot wet spell was something of a problem. She consulted Irene.
“You see, if we open doors and windows more damp enters,” she said. “The fireplaces there are very beautiful but I don’t believe they’ve ever had fires in them. It’s possible the chimneys are blocked, and even if they aren’t I don’t like to take the responsibility for blackening those firebricks.”
“In any case, the house would go damp again as soon as the fires died. I don’t suppose you can get coal here, and burning wood doesn’t last long, even if you could get it dry enough to kindle.” Irene pondered. “Can’t you get hold of some paraffin heaters?”
“You mean those tall round stoves? I think they sell them at the store. Would they give out enough warmth?”
“Well, you could have them on most of the time, couldn’t you? Which rooms do Mr. Heron use most?”
“The lounge and his own room, I suppose. By the time he comes the weather may have changed, but this dampness could get well into cushions and mattresses—and it might spoil his books, too. I noticed mildew on some of ours, this morning.”
“Then let’s go down and see about some heaters right away.”
They did, and bought three large ones. Laurette herself filled them with paraffin and showed the boy how to keep them going; one in the lounge, another in the library and the third in Charles’ airy, impersonal bedroom.
Laurette did not consciously think much about what she was doing for Charles. He was trusting her to take care of the house during his months’ absence and he had done so much for her at various times that she told herself she was glad to have an opportunity of repaying his generosity.
Daring the day she shunned all intimate thought of him. But at night, when rain kept up a continuous low roar and a wind blew off the sea into her bedroom she knew long, heart wrenching hours.
Impossible to forget the look of him when he had not known himself watched; the bitter pull of the muscle in his cheek, the silent stare through the windscreen at something which filled him with either anger or frustration or disillusionment; perhaps a mixture of all three. What could a man like Charles have been thinking of just then? Being a woman, Laurette’s answer to that question was ... a woman. And the only one she could connect with Charles was Maris Seymour.
She remembered an extraordinary number of details about Maris, who was sporty and vivacious and pretty, and who perhaps for a man had deeps. Against her will she recalled a full lower lip which might denote passion as well as self-will. She lay in bed trembling at the thought that Charles might have kissed those lips, or wanted to so badly that he knew he would have to kiss them one day.
Mohpeng was the sort of place to drive a man to that way of thinking, and Maris had had the unique experience of being the only unmarried woman among many bachelors. Not that she had taken much advantage of the fact; her interest had centred in only one bachelor—Charles.
One night when she lay sweating in her bed, Laurette remembered a remark of Kevin’s, which she had not bothered to analyse at the time it was uttered. “If Charles fell in love with Maris it would be against his good judgment.” She supposed he meant that Charles was as capable as anyone else of seeing that Maris was shallow and merely a little infatuated with him.
Against his good judgment! Was that the explanation of the bitter mouth? Had he reached a point where he must make a decision? He would know, none better, how suitable a wife Maris would make, and it was now up to him to decide whether such a love would be good enough for Charles Heron.
That must be it! If Kevin was going on leave for six months his sister could hardly stay on in Mohpeng. Charles was faced with an ultimatum; he had to let her go, or marry her.
In the blackness of a stormy night Laurette’s breath caught hard in her throat, and it came to her, blindingly, that she would not be able to go on living in Africa if Charles declared an intention of marrying Maris. One could only stand so much.
From the beginning of Charles’ absence a month had appeared a long time, but with two weeks of the month gone, and a third on its way, it seemed that the time narrowed alarmingly towards his return. He had said he would remain in Port Quentin at least a week this time, and Laurette experienced a queer blend of eagerness and shrinking. Now that she was living down the grief she wanted desperately to see Charles again, but she was steeling herself against the worst. A month from now she might, probably would, have parted from him for ever.
She grew nervy. So much so that she did not care to visit the Kelsey house alone any longer. Irene, gentle and half-understanding, walked over there with her most afternoons to see that the garden boy had been on the job and the heaters were working.
Late one afternoon—it was Friday and the boys were trooping in from the reserve and the smallholdings for their weekly supplies of meal and tobacco—they were halfway back to the bungalow when the houseboy from the big house came pounding after them.
“The keys, missus,” he gasped. “There is a fire in one room!”
“Fire!” Laurette had already turned to run back with him. “Which room?”
“Where master keeps the books. I will go first, missus.”
Dangling the keys he went loping ahead at a terrific speed. Laurette followed him like a young deer and Irene was running as well, but more sedately.
“Why the dickens,” Laurette panted, “didn’t he smash the window and put it out!”
Irene either did not hear this or she had no explanation to offer. She had had to slow down. The house, when she saw it, looked so normal that she thankfully lessened her pace still more.
Laurette, however, sped into th
e hall after the boy and made for the corridor. Smoke issued through the half-open door of the library, billows of it, low down. She went through, saw the boy stamping on the flaming carpet with bare feet, swirls of smoke about his body.
“Take out the stove,” she ordered. “We must roll the carpet and get that out, too.”
After that she couldn’t speak for some while. Gasping and choking, using an almost superhuman strength, she thrust at tables and chairs and at the desk, freeing the carpet. The boy gaped from the doorway while the two women threw the corners of the carpet over its centre, stifling the flames.
“Get water!” Laurette shouted at him. And, “Go out into the air, Irene. You’ll be ill again.”
But Irene said faintly, “Come on, we’ll pull the carpet outside ourselves. I’m afraid the floor is smouldering.”
A few minutes later, however, they discovered it was only badly scorched. The carpet, though, when they opened it on the grass, was a ruin, and Laurette sank down beside it, her face in her hands.
Nursing a burn on her arm, Irene sat down beside her. “You’re blaming yourself, aren’t you?” she said softly. “You couldn’t help it. It must have been the boy’s fault. I suppose he upset paraffin and dropped a lighted match somewhere near. It would have gone out if the paraffin hadn’t been there. Everything looked all right when we left it. It was just bad luck.”
“The Mirzapur carpet,” came Laurette’s muffled tones, “and a patch on the floor that will never come out.”
“What a good thing the fire was discovered before it got serious, though. There’s nothing to fight a fire with in Port Quentin.”
Laurette raised a white face. “Charles will be disgusted—he has every right to be. If I hadn’t promised him I’d stay, I’d clear out tomorrow.”
“You’re taking this much too seriously. The Africans are notoriously careless, and Mr. Herron will understand.”
“He won’t.” She shook back her singed hair. ‘Tomorrow I’ll have the books shifted into another room and I’ll clean up the library. I’m going to pack my things, too, Irene. “I want to be ready to leave as soon as I’ve seen Charles.”
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