Winds of Enchantment

by Rosalind Brett

  Nick’s tone hardened. “We talked this over a year ago. You promised to carry on.”

  Cole threw out a hand. “The fact that Helen has consented to come out and marry me alters everything. She’s relying on my finishing when my contract expires. You see that, don’t you, Mrs. Farland?”

  “Yes, I think I do,” Pat replied quietly. “But I hope your fiancée will like Africa well enough to stay a long time.”

  “She writes of seeing out my time with me, but I won’t have that. I’m afraid I’m one of those fools you sometimes read about—Helen comes first.”

  Nick shifted. “It’s disappointing,” he said. “I had you lined up for a good job. Still, a man straining after England is no good to me. I’ll have to fix up someone else.” He took a pull at his cigarette. “If that’s your decision, we’ll make the best of it. I’ll give you the finest wedding that’s ever been seen in Kanos, and be your best man, too.”

  “Will you, Nick?” Cole was beaming. “I hardly dared ask that.”

  Nick poured drinks and they toasted Cole and his future wife. It was nearly midnight when the young man went off to spend the night at Madden’s bungalow.

  Pat glanced at Nick now they were alone and saw a rather grim set to his mouth. Nick didn’t like other people spoiling his plans, and she wished she dared ask him to hand over this place, lock, stock and barrel to the rubber pool.

  “You look ready to strangle someone,” she said lightly.

  His jaw snapped audibly. “People are unpredictable, that’s the trouble,” he said. “You think you know them—then you’re face to face with the fact that you don’t.”

  “May your child-bride say something?”

  His grin flickered. “Go ahead.”

  “People never really come to terms with each other, Nick, until they’ve hurt each other and scratched below the surface. It has to hurt, the learning of another person.”

  Nick shot a look at her, a keen, penetrating one. The fact of Cole had receded; they both knew that they were talking personally.

  “Has knowing me hurt you very much, Pat?” he asked.

  “I know only a part of you, Nick.”

  “The part you’ve wanted to know.” His tone had grown harsh. “Well, I don’t think I’ve managed my responsibilities too badly, for a man who never saw himself as a father.”

  She caught her breath, sharply, as pain squeezed her heart. “I’ve always been aware that you classed me as a responsibility, Nick. I’m sorry the situation grew so out of hand that—that gossip started and you felt you had to take the drastic step of marrying me.”

  “Pat—” he took a step towards her and in the gleam of the lamp she saw the shine of perspiration on his upper lip. His eyes were entirely green, leaping and lambent as they always were when anger or any other emotion was gripping him. She stood there, slim and tensed, ready to do battle with the emotions that were urging her to him—to Nick who had married her out of a sense of responsibility, and because Bill had been his closest friend, and she, Bill’s daughter, so alone in Kanos three months ago.

  She turned away from him, and swallowed the bubble of emotion in her throat. “I’m glad these three months are almost up,” she said. “I shall be glad to get back to Kanos.”

  Next morning Cole returned to his plantation, and Nick stayed away from the house all day. In the evening he was his mocking, saturnine self again, and he mercilessly beat her at cards, and had saffron whisky decorated with lemon at his elbow more than once.

  Pat motored to Kanos two days before Madden was due. Once more he came to dinner at the villa, a fitter, happier-looking man, carrying hosts of snaps and many gifts, including a chewed mouth-organ donated by his small nephew. He said he felt good for a spell at Makai.

  Then Nick returned to Kanos, staying not at the villa but at Winterton Terrace. There was comment, but Pat chose not to care—or rather she told herself that she didn’t care. He came to dinner now and again, and they danced together at the club. Let people assume that they were drifting apart in a civilized manner, he said lazily. The final break would surprise no one.

  Cole came down to meet his Helen, a girl with a perfect complexion and sleek black hair parted in the centre and drawn back in a chignon that suited her pale, oval face and rare smile. Nick called her Mona Lisa, and told her charmingly that he was glad he hadn’t been picked on to give the bride away.

  They were married in the white church on the Boulevard in the presence of about a hundred people who were there because Nick had invited them. Helen was lovely in bridal dress, Cole the correct nervous bridegroom. Nick stood tall and lazily smiling, his hard frame shown up to advantage by the muted beams through the high windows of the church.

  Pat watched the ceremony from the first row, and as Nick produced the ring her eyes smarted with quick tears. Through the blur his smile was tinged with cynicism, and she knew he was thinking of their marriage, that quiet, unceremonious tying of a knot that he had never meant to be a lasting one. Already it was slipping undone and, knowing he didn’t love her, there was nothing she could do to stop those tenuous bonds from slipping out of her grasp.

  She smiled all through Helen’s reception, drank champagne and looked outwardly composed in her blue suit, Nick’s silver bracelet shining on her wrist, and his gold ring still looking so very new on the third finger of her left hand, accompanied by the square-cut topaz he had insisted upon giving her. “To match your eyes,” he had said. “They have a topaz glitter at times.”

  He rented a room at the club for a fortnight and lent Cole the house at Winterton Terrace. Pat went there for dinner, and Helen’s serene happiness in those familiar surroundings was a fresh twist to the knife.

  It was absurd to compare herself with Cole’s wife. That young woman could be happy and confident in the future. Even if the climate forced her to leave her husband she would be certain that within a year they would come permanently together in England.

  Nick drove the young couple up to the plantation. He came back to the villa to describe the settling in. “Helen’s not like you, Patricia,” he said mockingly. “She showed a genuine and respectful awe of our trees.”

  “She hasn’t had to eat and drink them for a couple of years,” Pat retorted, stung. “Besides, a woman’s outlook is tempered by her private content.”

  “What am I to infer from that?” His tone was peremptory. “Pat, don’t shut me out. What is it?”

  “I’ve felt low a few times since the fever,” she replied evasively. “It will pass, I expect.”

  It was usual, during the dry season, for a charity bazaar to be held in the club grounds. The wealthy not only financed the stalls, but were expected to turn up in droves to buy. The funds, which finally amounted to a considerable sum, were handed over to the Kanos Research Institution for Tropical Diseases.

  Previously, Pat had given a cheque and bought several oddments, but this time she furnished a whole stall with goods brought in one of the Farland-Brading vessels from Liverpool. Lengths of fine cloth, necklets of cool jade and amber, embroidered blouses, hair ornaments, and a range of pretty, ridiculous parasols. The most colourful array on the vast, sun-baked lawn. For two hours Pat and the doctor’s wife traded briskly. Then came the teatime lull. Pat persuaded her companion to go off for refreshment and herself retired to a seat in a dark corner of the tent-like structure at the back of the stall, from which a stray purchaser would be visible.

  Music drifted from the pavilion, mingling with the distant clatter of teacups and talk. Through the canvas Pat could hear the two women at the next stall counting their takings.

  “Twenty-five pounds, fifteen shillings. Not bad, for small goods,” one of them said.

  “If someone doesn’t buy that little clock, then I might have it,” came the second voice. “It’s quite a nice-looking thing, isn’t it? Ah me, I’m so thirsty. I hope we sell out soon.”

  A boy brought Pat a tea-tray. She poured and took her cup back with her to the seat in
the corner. It was restful here. The two at the next stall were still talking, but in more subdued tones.

  “I wish I could afford boys dancing round me with tea-trays—what say you, Ida?”

  “I expect Nick Farland sent it over. Funny marriage, that.”

  Pat sat motionless, her teacup suspended halfway to her lips—lips that had gone suddenly dry.

  “They’re more partners than anything else,” came the reply. “I believe she has quite a lot of money in the company.”

  “You think that’s how she got him?”

  Pat was trembling, her whole body tense, awaiting the reply.

  “It’s probable. She’s not bad-looking, but a man like Nick Farland can take his pick, and I’ve always heard that he’s not the marrying sort. Money might sway him. After all, he’s only human.”

  By now Pat was trembling so violently that the tea rocked over into the saucer and ran over her hand. She put down the cup and wiped the damp, cold palms of her hands. She was sickened by what she had just heard, though for weeks, ever since the return from Makai, she had been aware, from knowing glances and sudden silences, that the gossips were busy—busy calculating just how long her sudden marriage to Nick would last. But she hadn’t thought them so envious of her money that they would think Nick had married her for it.

  Knowing that it was untrue did not help. Nick had money of his own, he had no need of hers. Except—except for the expansion he was so keen on, the new forests of those blasted trees and more and more plant to process the rubber, with an ever-increasing fleet to handle it.

  She gave a little shudder. The heat and torment between them had brought on a headache. She wanted to sit in a chair and weep—do nothing but weep, but another hour had to pass before she could leave, and by that time she was sufficiently recovered to smile as she passed a record sum to the bazaar treasurer and received his thanks.

  It was not till she reached the solitude of the villa that the torture began again. She bathed and changed into a fresh white dress ... then found herself gazing dispassionately at her face and figure in the mirror. Pat had never deluded herself that she was more than a clear-skinned, fairly attractive woman with rather unusual eyes, but as she bent a little nearer to the mirror and ruthlessly examined each detail of her face, she saw that the fever up at Makai had driven the sparkle from her eyes, reduced the lustre of her hair. Fever did that—particularly to women.

  But the trace of bitterness at her mouth was new, and when she suddenly glanced down at her hands, feeling pain, she saw white half-moons where her fingernails had bitten into her palms.

  It was madness to let the empty gossip of a couple of women torment her like this. Hadn’t she always known that Nick had taken her on because—because—

  She backed away from the mirror and what she saw reflected in her own eyes. Supposing it were true, what they had insinuated about the money? For had she ever really known Nick and what motivated him? Hadn’t he always been an enigma; lazy-eyed, giving nothing of his inner self away to anyone—anyone?

  There was a tap on her door and the houseboy announced that the car was ready.

  She was dining with Nick at Winterton Terrace, and she was filled with reluctance to see him, frightened lest her manner would betray her to him. She knew, now, what had hit her like a blow under the ribs. She realized fully why she felt so miserable—she loved Nick! And her heart was beating suffocatingly as she entered his house, and she clothed panic in cool words that immediately set them at a distance with each other. In his instant withdrawal she read all her fears and agonies of the afternoon!

  After dinner he drove her out along the jungle highway, but the tall trees, solidly shutting out the stars, were oppressive, burdening her mood.

  “Was that charity thing very tiring?” he asked.

  “No.” She felt her fingers clenching hard on her beaded purse as he rested an arm on the wheel and faced her in the glow of the dashboard. “Why—do you ask?”

  “You look a bit whacked.”

  “That’s typical of a man.” She heard the sharp note in her voice, hated it and couldn’t suppress it. “If I don’t set out to amuse you, I must be tired.”

  “No tantrums, child,” he adjured her lazily.

  Child! She wanted to flare out that she was no such a thing—she was a woman. A woman, moreover, who had discovered that evening that she was crazily in love with him. She locked her teeth against the clamouring, unwise words and asked him back to the villa for a drink.

  He followed her into the lounge and filled huge glasses with single fingers of tawny brandy. She drank slowly, letting him talk on his favourite subjects— rubber, horses, the new commission to investigate native lore.

  She accepted the cigarette he lit for her and her senses were conscious of him beside her on the divan.

  A stillness began, and spread over several minutes. The cigarettes were smoked through and disposed of.

  She tensed as his fingers touched the ends of her hair, then closed over the back of her head, forcing her, gently enough, to face him. The fine upper lip and the lower one, of which she had never been quite sure, were parted to show the closed edges of his teeth. The clean cool scent of him was strong in her nostrils, and her heart bounded, liquid and hot, into her throat. His hand upon her waist was hard and compelling—he was taking in each detail of her face, his own face hacked out of brown stone, lines biting the skin beside his mouth.

  Her sensitive mind swung back to that overheard conversation of the afternoon—yes, he had a ruthless face; it challenged, and it denied what she longed to see there.

  She sat forward abruptly, drawing herself away from him. He made a little scoffing noise and kept hold of her hair, so that it hurt.

  “Don’t!” she cried sharply.

  He brought his hand down to her arm. The faint alarm and enquiry in his eyes steadied her. “I’m sorry, child. What is the matter?”

  “I-I’m hot,” she faltered.

  “You don’t feel hot to me.”

  “Well, I am.”

  “All right, child! You’re hot, and disliking me again.” He stood up, hands in his pockets, shoulders well back. “Do you want me to go?”

  “Now you’re the injured male.” She fought to sound flippant.

  “Not a bit.” But his tone was crisp and his mouth hardly moved. “You’ve been odd all the evening. Is there a reason?”

  “Need there be—apart from the climate?”

  “The climate?” He looked down at her, frowning. “I’ve never heard you have a go at the climate before.”

  “Perhaps it unnerves me—now I’ve had fever,” she evaded his eyes, her gaze fixed on the statuette of the Bantu woman on the coffee table.

  “Look at me, Pat,” he commanded, and when he used that tone she always obeyed him—like a child. Her gaze lifted, amber and misty. Something groped for her heart—love!

  She watched his face, the thick brows contracted, the cleft very apparent in his chin. “You’ve been edgy ever since that bout, haven’t you, Pat?” His eyes had softened into hazel. “Believe me, you may never have it that bad ever again.”

  “Did I—talk during my delirium?” she asked.

  “Oh, you said one or two irrational things, mainly connected with your childhood.”

  “That means I mentioned Steve?”

  “Yes, you mentioned him. He taught you to swim, eh? And to handle a boat?”

  She nodded. Steve had taught her a lot, but it had been Nick who had taught her how to love—and suffer for it. The suffering was inevitable from now on; he didn’t love her, and a barrier was building between them.

  “Pat,” he sat down again beside her and took hold of her hands, “regretting how I whisked you to the altar?”

  “We were married in front of a desk in a book-lined office,” she reminded him. She gave a cool little laugh. “Being whisked to the altar makes me think of a gooey egg going round and round in a plastic bowl.”

  At once his hands
clenched hard on hers. “Did Cole’s big white wedding hurt you, Patricia?” he demanded.

  “Not really, Nick.” She shook her head. “Helen and Cole were marrying for—love. Our kind of marriage had the correct setting.”

  “Quite so.” His tone was harsh. “We were not marrying for love, were we? Organ peals and bells and a choir, and you in white lace would have been a bit much in our case.”

  “A farce,” she agreed laughingly. “We might have felt that we owed it to each to—to stay married. As things are—”

  “Yes, as things are, Patricia, we are not bound by church vows, or any other kind.”

  When he had gone, back to Winterton Terrace, Pat sat on slackly in a chair, aware that her head was throbbing tiredly. She closed her eyes and saw Nick’s hard, sun-bitten face. How would that face look if love ever softened it to tenderness? Her breath caught in her throat. Soon she would have to come to grips with their eventual parting, but tonight it hurt too much to even think about it.

  In panic, in relief, she let her thoughts run to England.

  England, where flowers did not drape white walls like gay scarves, huge, sun-fed. There you had the stinging confetti of snow, the bridal blossom of the orchards, and silver fingers of moonlight thrusting down between beech boughs. There were shady nooks and lovely cool gardens. Buttered muffins, flame-lit logs, and softly falling rain for walking in...

  Pat put her hands over her eyes and suddenly she was weeping; weeping at last for Bill, and for the love she had discovered today in pain.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  KANOS was held in the breathless thrall of the most terrific heatwave the residents could remember. The sun had reached a violent zenith from which, it seemed, it would never budge, and everyone sighed for the rain that was not yet due. The occasional breeze that came off the shimmering sea was hot, sticky, hardly a relief for stifling lungs. Brows contracted into permanent creases against the impossible glitter of the sun on white buildings and the beach. Tempers grew raw, and nerves were tensed and on edge.