Jungle Lover

by Sally Heywood

  She got up. It was a waste of time. And she mustn't linger or she would only add fuel to his suspicion that she was intent on notching him up, in that distasteful phrase he had used the second time they'd met.

  'Where are you going?'

  She was already halfway to the door.

  'Plainly you didn't invite me in so we could have a serious discussion about my request.' Her hand was already resting on the door knob.

  'Come back.' It was an order.

  She hesitated.

  'I'm not used to having to say everything twice,' he snarled with a sudden loss of his earlier politeness. 'What's this obsession with speed? I haven't said all I want to say yet.'

  The first time they'd met he'd complained they weren't being speedy enough! Controlling her urge to point this out to him, she said, 'I really don't think --'

  'Sit down and listen.'

  'I --'

  'Damn well do it!' He moved towards her.

  When she automatically flinched he growled on a different note, 'Why the hell do you bring out the worst in me? Please—' he put out a hand and made a small bow '—please sit down.'

  When she was in the chair again, he told her, 'You have much to learn about our ways here. We take time to arrive at decisions. There is no need for mad haste, rushing hither and thither, you know. There is time enough. Time to enjoy...'

  She stiffened, almost lulled until the final word into thinking he was about to take her request seriously. She tensed, waiting for what would come next. Men were the same the world over, she was thinking. This one just happened to look like a blue-eyed conquistador.

  'Now, tell me,' he leaned back elegantly in the rattan chair. 'Why can you not let someone go up and collect your specimens for you? Tell me.'

  Chrissy did a double-take. 'I hadn't thought of that. I mean, who could do it? I can hardly ask any of the others. It wouldn't be professional. They have their own research, and—and I'd quite like to do it myself actually.'

  'We can't always do what we would like to do in this world, Miss Baker.'

  Wondering by what small thing he had recently found himself thwarted, she frowned.

  'And any more reasons?' he persisted.

  She bit her lip. 'I—can't think of anything just now,' she admitted.

  'Then leave it with me. Now, please, you may leave.' He got up and went over to a desk pushed into a corner. Taking it as a rather curt and unexpected dismissal, she made her way towards the door. As she reached it she felt him suddenly close behind her.

  'I'm so sorry, allow me,' he murmured. Obviously pulling out all the stops to restore his image as one of society's knights in shining armour, he opened the door for her and offered a token inclination of his head as she went out. Only when she heard the door close behind her did she release some of the tension he had aroused. Running down the steps, she lifted her face to the sun for a long moment and let all the tightness drain from her body. She hadn't understood him at all this time. Instead of getting to know him better she now felt she knew him less than ever.

  The feeling of knowing every single thing about him she had experienced on that first meeting in the clearing on the way here had been a complete illusion. She knew nothing. He was, as Eloise had jokingly said, a man of mystery. Why the continual about-faces, the efforts to be seen as a benign dictator rather than the tyrant he undoubtedly was? He wasn't the type to care a damn what anybody thought of him. Of that at least she was sure!

  But did it matter if she couldn't find answers to the enigma? He had seemed to be amicably disposed towards her request—but how, she angrily registered, had she, a free agent, been persuaded to think of her intention to work in the canopy as a request? However, he had at least come part of the way to meet her. It must be a victory of sorts.

  Returning to the lab, she wasn't surprised to find Hans already gone. Worried about job security, she thought bitterly. It made cowards of people if they weren't careful. Wondering how far she would go in ever risking her own job, she picked up the ropes that had been left out and toyed with them for a moment or two. She knew in theory what to do with them. Whether she would be a good enough shot to be able to get them over the right branch for an ascent was another matter. If necessary she would definitely have to have a try.

  After lunch she was just settling back in the lab, having lost too much time that morning and intending to make it up despite the afternoon steam bath, when there was a loud rat-tat on the door. Puzzled, she went to open it.

  'Ah, so here you are, Miss Baker. Profound apologies for the interruption.' It was Garcia Montada at his most suave—but was there a gleam of amusement in the sky-blue depths? Before she could decide, he turned to the teenage boy lurking behind him. 'Here is Tomas. He has kindly offered to assist you.' With a sardonic smile Garcia Montada inclined his head and swivelled to leave.

  The boy looked at Chrissy and Chrissy looked at the boy. She wondered how much his "offer" had come down to a simple question of obeying orders. She gave him a smile, as if to dissociate herself from anything Garcia Montada might have said, and held out a hand. 'Hi, I'm Chrissy,' she announced. 'Did "El Senhor" --' her lip curled, '—tell you what I want?'

  The boy nodded. He didn't look like a boy ordered to climb to the top of a sixty metre tree against his wishes. In fact he looked positively eager to get going.

  Chrissy fetched the ropes and the rest of the gear. It was quite a turn-up for the books—not only had 'El Senhor' kept his word, he had done it in double-quick time as well! Even so, after one or two ascents Tomas might feel like a rest while she went up to have a look round for herself!

  That evening Eloise and Pierre were absent because they were down-river with Pedro, Lars was feeling the heat and was lying down, and Hans, after half an hour, went off to his room to make a few observations on the latest addition to his beetle collection. That left Chrissy and Rodrigo Garcia Montada alone on the veranda, with the cries of the night creatures filling the velvety darkness beyond the perimeter of the amber glow shed by the oil lamp above their heads.

  Chrissy racked her brain for some excuse to leave too but could think of nothing, having announced at dinner that she was finished for the day and well on schedule.

  She had avoided addressing Garcia Montada just as he had seemed to avoid addressing her. Now there was silence between them, though by no means an empty one.

  Eventually she felt compelled to say something to bring some normality to her jumping nerves. She searched in vain for a remark that lacked innuendo, or any suggestion of an invitation, and said at last, 'I'm surprised you're still here. I understood you visited the house only rarely.'

  'You mean you feel I've outstayed my welcome?' His face was in shadow but there was no mistaking the ironic tone.

  'No, of course not --' she began but he interrupted.

  'Your interest in the reasons for my being here is most flattering, Miss Baker.'

  'It wasn't meant to be,' she couldn't help pointing out. 'It was simply a. casual observation.' Let's get that straight at least! she thought.

  'A concern at any rate that seems to form the basis for most of our conversations—if such they can be called.'

  His voice was level with only a hint of an inflexion that could spell danger. Chrissy ignored it. 'No doubt you have far more fascinating conversations with the sort of decorative type of woman you say you prefer.'

  'Did I say that...? Anyway, I think you're quite decorative enough,' he rejoined. 'Quite the little blonde angel of most men's more primitive fantasies.'

  Floored by her inability to sort the insults from the compliments, Chrissy was silent.

  'I feel I've offended you now. Is it insulting to draw attention to your --' he paused as if sifting through his vocabulary for a suitable word '—to your beauty?'

  'I find it offensive when men dwell on my appearance,' she said tightly. 'There's more to me than that!' Memories of what it had been like to be the accidental winner of a beauty contest came back to tau
nt her. 'Sometimes I feel I should try to make myself look as ugly as possible in order to be taken seriously as a human being,' she said.

  'Could you?'

  'What?' She lifted her head. His face was still in shadow but she could see the silver-blue of his eyes gleaming ferally in the darkness.

  'Make yourself look ugly?' He laughed and answered his own question. 'No, I doubt it. Even first thing in the morning when most of us are at our worst you will be quite ravishing, I'm sure.'

  She wondered what he would look like at his 'worst'— quite ravishing too, she thought, or the masculine, very masculine, equivalent. She turned away and wished he would leave. But he went on sitting there, jangling her nerves and making her wonder why it was impossible to get up and simply walk away.

  'Miss Baker...' He said her name as if experimenting with it, tasting it on his lips. 'Do you prefer to be addressed thus?'

  She pursed her lips. 'It's really up to you. You're the— what do they call you—the Senhor?'

  'The lord?'

  'If you say so.'

  'Or do you prefer Seigneur?' he chuckled wickedly. 'Unafraid I shall claim my "droit"—?'

  'I'm sure you're too much of a gentleman even to contemplate such a thing,' she riposted.

  He chuckled again. It was a sound like that made by a contented predator when the prey was firmly within its grasp. But he took her by surprise. 'You may have got the wrong impression the other day. Do you remember our brief encounter in the kitchen?' He waited until she gave a faint assent. How could she not remember? Brief encounter, he called it. Why not cataclysm? Apocalypse? 'I can assure you it was unprecedented,' he went on. 'You made a gift of yourself. No man could have resisted.'

  'So that's all right, then,' she said, not bothering to hide her sarcasm.

  'Your meaning?'

  'No blame attaches to you even though you—even though you took advantage of me --'

  'I took advantage of you?' He seemed genuinely scandalised. 'Hardly a reasonable interpretation of events. You were almost naked.'

  'I had no idea anyone else was around and in that heat I couldn't bear to wear anything heavier.'

  'Even so --'

  'Even so I was asking for it? Is that what you mean?'

  He smiled faintly, teeth a slash of white in the shadows. 'Were you not? Have you not as you say been "asking for it" ever since we met?'

  'Certainly not!'

  'Do you always look at men with blind lust in your eyes as if asking to be taken --?'

  'How dare you?' She gripped the sides of her chair.

  'Don't slap my face again. The second time I will not be so well-behaved.'

  'You mean you'd strike back?'

  'Something would be done. That's for sure.'

  'Like what? Send me back home like a naughty girl?'

  'I wasn't thinking along those lines --'

  'Don't threaten me, Senhor Montada, this sort of thing is not part of my contract.'

  She saw him lean back in the chair beside her own. With his head resting on the cushion his face looked like a painting, all hollows and jagged cheekbones, the straight nose and full lips asking to be admired. His eyes were closed. This way he looked provokingly handsome—and he was accusing her of provoking him!'

  She leaned forward, wanting only to get away.

  'Don't go!' He tilted his head towards her and opened his eyes a slit.

  'There's no point in continuing this.' But she hesitated.

  'There is every point. We are testing each other. Learning each other.'

  'I think I know you as well as I wish to,' she told him, not caring what happened if only she could escape in safety. There was such threat in everything he said, but the real threat was in the way he managed to turn the threat into seduction.

  Like a fly in a spider's web her mind twisted and turned for a way out. She could find it only in attack. 'I know you're arrogant and full of prejudice. Your ideas of women are feudal.'

  'You know nothing of me or my ideas, Miss Baker, and I know only a little of you and yours. Whether you wish to know more has nothing to do with it. You are here on my territory for some weeks to come. It is inescapable that our paths cross.'

  'Do you take so much trouble to get to know everyone who works here?'

  'I can assure you this is no trouble.'

  Everything she said seemed to change when he threw it back to her. She rocked more rapidly back and forth, making the fan attached to the rocker waft her hair until it lifted.

  He put out a hand. 'Slow down. You make me nervous.'

  'Very likely, I must say...' She turned her head. 'Do you shoot dumb, defenceless animals with that gun of yours?'

  'Sometimes.'

  'I don't know how you can.'

  'Are you vegetarian?'

  She reluctantly shook her head. 'I don't believe in killing animals for the fun of it though.'

  'And you assume I do?' He turned his hunter's eyes on her.

  'No doubt,' she replied quickly. 'You own everything here. Why not do what you like, play God if it amuses you?'

  'You see me as a megalomaniac?'

  'Oh, I understand how easy it must be—to be like that, living here so far from civilisation,' she said, not concealing her contempt. 'You are obviously lord of all you survey.'

  'Not quite all.' He looked full in her face and gave her a smile of deliberate and meaningful charm.

  Her. lips tightened.

  'But I am offending you again and without even trying. Let's agree, shall we, Miss Baker? We are two separate people with practically nothing in common. We don't even like each other very much, it seems. But, as luck will have it, here we are, stuck in the middle of the jungle without any prospect of running away to the city and city folk and what you call civilisation for some weeks to come. Don't you think we should make the best of things?'

  'We don't need to make the best of things. We don't even need to meet. You don't have to be around here, do you?'

  'You are concerned again with the matter of my whereabouts. How interesting.'

  'Only concerned in so far as I would prefer it if you were elsewhere,' she retorted, not caring how she sounded.

  He gave a grunt. 'So I gather.' He got up so suddenly she started with surprise. 'I may as well wish you goodnight. We are, as you might say, flogging a dead horse?' With a jerk of his head he turned and walked rapidly along the veranda and eventually she saw him disappear round the corner to the front where, she thought with a sudden shoot of misery, he'll no doubt find the solitude he prefers.

  She had almost engineered his departure. Now he had gone. She had never spoken to anyone like that before. It was unstoppable, the feeling that came over her whenever he was around. But she was glad he had gone.

  She rocked back and forth. There was nothing so lonely as the empty chair beside her. But she was glad it was empty. She rocked back and forth for a few minutes more. Why was it they were unable to talk to each other like two reasonable human beings? What was the point of all this sparring? Who won by it? He had kissed her by mistake the other day. She had responded with an eagerness that was out of character. They both accepted that it was best forgotten.

  Still rocking quickly back and forth, she thought, What if he had intended to wipe the slate clean this evening? He had made some effort to put things on a different footing by offering the services of Tomas. So why had she made matters worse from the moment she had opened her mouth?

  Another wave of misery overcame her. The night seemed full of loneliness despite the multitude of fellow creatures in the forest.

  After a while she got up, letting the chair rock wildly as she moved away. No point in sitting, out here alone. She would go back to her room and find a book. Glancing at the clock as she went inside, she saw it was nearly midnight. Maybe it was time to turn in. The house was as silent as a morgue. For the first time she wondered if she had been right to take this assignment. The work was fine. But she hadn't expected to encounter difficulties
beyond that.

  She reached her room. Unhappiness made her slow, and before going in she couldn't hold back a tear or two as she rested her forehead against the door. Remembering some of the things she had said to him, she was really appalled. He seemed to have forced them out of her against her will. Despairingly she glanced along the corridor. At the furthest end, on the opposite side of the house, she could see the door to his room.

  Just as she turned away she glimpsed his athletic shape emerging from the kitchen. Casting a glance down the corridor, she knew he had seen her, but he turned towards his own room and she slipped out of sight before he reached the end.

  With a leaden feeling she switched on the lamp and began to undress.

  Once in bed, she pulled the mosquito netting around her and, with just the light from the lamp at the head of the bed, began to flick unseeingly through a paperback. It was useless trying to sleep feeling like this. Even with her eyes open she could see his face dancing before her. Now she really thought about it he had looked almost vulnerable with his head tilted back on the cushion, rocking gently, almost imperceptibly, to and fro. How did she know he hadn't been wounded by her remarks? But then, he had given as good as he got.

  She put the book to one side. He had commented on the fact that they didn't even like each other much. Doubtless he felt that. She had hardly put herself out to be liked! But he provoked her so with his assumption—not an assumption—with his justifiable air of authority. How could she expect him to behave any differently when he was such a commanding figure?

  In her heart of hearts she knew that liking was an irrelevance. He wasn't the sort of man to arouse lukewarm feelings. It would have to be either love or hate. Perhaps it wasn't dislike they felt then, but hate? The truth was she didn't know what she felt... except confusion. But she dared not put any other name to this hell of emotion. Now, in the silence of the night, it felt like tenderness, like longing... It felt like love. The sort that went painfully unrequited.

  There was a knock on her door. Thinking it must be Eloise, back later than expected, .she didn't move but called out, 'Come in.'