“So-so.” Knowing that he was purposely ignoring Deline’s existence, she did the same. “Were you with the Manleys this evening?”
He nodded. “All day. There were several of us and we ate mostly out of tins.”
“Did Wyn call in there?”
“Wyn Knight? Why should she?”
“I thought she might. She came here on a round of goodbye visits. She’s leaving tomorrow morning for a few weeks in the mountains.”
A brief silence, then Paul lifted his shoulders. “She has a wonderful life, the independent brat, and I suppose she’ll go on having it till she grows up—if she ever does. I’ll admit she makes me a bit tired these days, but the Manleys’ farm is on her way home from here. She might have dropped in.”
“I suppose she thought you wouldn’t care one way or the other.”
“She never bothers to think,” he said, “not even when she’s spending that eight hundred a year.”
“You do harp on it. Wyn doesn’t care much about money.”
“She doesn’t have to.” He yawned. “I’d better go to bed. It’ll be a long day tomorrow.”
It was an unsatisfactory talk, but Susan was a little relieved to find Paul fairly normal. She remembered last night, his white face in the darkness, his look of groping misery. She felt a twinge in her shoulder and thought, ruefully, that she had no doubt suffered more for Paul than he had suffered himself.
“I don’t suppose Wyn will leave till after breakfast,” she said. “You might find time to slip over to the Knights’ after your boys are set to work.”
“Not a hope. While I’m at Willowfield I’ll give the fullest value I can.”
“That sounds as if you might have plans,” she said.
“Nothing as yet.” His mouth was a little tight. “Would you like a nightcap?”
She recognized dismissal and shook her head. “I’ll leave you to it. Goodnight, Paul.”
Next morning Susan had breakfast on the veranda with Clive. The air was gloriously fresh and sparkling, raindrops scintillated in the flower-beds and hung from branches. A lemon tree had shed a few yellow fruits, and a kaffir puppy, fugitive from the native quarters, was tumbling one of them with its nose and bouncing after it when it rolled.
For several mornings now Deline’s breakfast had been taken to her by Amos, a fact she had queried only once with Susan. Generally, Susan had her own breakfast from a tray, but this morning she had found Clive outdoors and they had returned from a walk round the garden to find the veranda table set for two. So they sat down together to chilled fruit juice, scrambled eggs, toast and coffee, and talked, not of the tender lilac of the distant mountains and the lush new grass already springing in the garden, but of his London sale-room, where the famous and the wealthy gathered to outbid each other for treasures.
Clive’s complexion was healthier than when he had arrived in Rhodesia, and therefore he appeared younger. He had never yet worn shorts, was so town-bred that he could not even bring himself to wear a sports shirt without a dark silk scarf at the neck, but he contrived to look relaxed, if rather too tailored for the bush.
“You know what’s going to happen if you stay on here in Rhodesia, don’t you?” he said after companionable silence. “The sun will dry up your skin and those pale gold locks of yours will become bleached.”
“The skin needs care in England,” she answered. “Here, it needs a different sort of care, that’s all. Mrs. Wardon came here as a bride, ages ago, and her skin is like rose petals with a natural wrinkle in them. And the only care she ever gave it was a milk mask once a week!”
His look at her was tinged with affection. “You’re determined to see only the best of this country, aren’t you? What has it done for you, Susan?”
“It’s exhilarating and strange and lovely. It needs young people—thousands of them. There’s so much land here—enough to feed Rhodesia and England, too—and so much wealth underground that needs engineers to bring it to the surface. And as the country develops, so will the Africans—and that’s the greatest thrill of all.”
“Laudable sentiments,” he said, leaning back lazily in his chair, “but you still haven’t said what the country’s done for you. You seem always to be hanging fire, casting round for jobs to keep yourself busy. I can’t help noticing that all the exhilaration and strangeness and loveliness don’t appear to have made you particularly happy.”
“I’m happy enough,” she said quickly.
And she did look fresh and cheerful this morning. She was wearing a new pale blue linen frock and a necklace of blue and white wooden beads, and because she had been able to eat only a little dinner last night she had made the most of her breakfast.
“But it’s silly, at your age, not to be ecstatically happy,” he said. “In a year or two you’ll start falling in love, and you can take my word for it that young love is anything but a happy condition.”
She smiled. “You speak as if you were about a hundred.”
“I’m going thin on top,” he announced gravely.
“Well, that’s what money-grubbing in London has done for you,” she told him mischievously.
There was a movement near the french door of the living-room. “So that rather confounds you, doesn’t it, darling?” drawled Deline as she came out. “Don’t worry. I didn’t listen to the whole of your conversation. It’s such a marvellous morning that I thought I’d join you out here.” Her accents were pleasant, her smile unsullied. She took the chair Clive pulled up for her with the same friendliness that she leaned her cigarette to his lighter. She looked well, and very graceful in the scarlet sharkskin house-gown.
She blew a small cloud of smoke. “Age comes to us all,” she said, “and men haven’t many means of stalling off the ravages. But you don’t look ancient, Clive.”
“Thanks,” he said dryly. “I won’t insult you by returning the compliment.”
“I really believe I’ve hurt you. I didn’t mean to, Clive.”
“I don’t hurt, these days,” he said equably. “That’s one advantage of climbing high into the thirties. Do you remember that play we saw in London about an elderly man who accepted his years and an equally elderly woman who wouldn’t?”
“Yes, I remember.” She spoke softly, reminiscently. “That must have been nearly a year ago.”
A year ago, thought Susan suddenly, Deline had had a husband. She looked quickly from one to the other but gathered nothing from their expressions. Clive had the faint smile that could mean anything, and Deline had merely permitted her mouth to curve. Yet the feeling persisted within Susan that they had come closer in that moment than at any time since Clive had come to Africa.
Then she saw Deline’s fingers and thumb deliberately break the long cigarette before she thrust it into the ash-bowl, and her mind jerked back to the night of the storm, in her bedroom.
“I almost wish,” said Deline, “that I were going with you today—except that I have no feeling at all for ruins, old or new.”
Susan felt her body cling more tightly to her chair. “I don’t think Clive intended going out today,” she said clearly.
“No?” The elegant head turned towards him. “It’s still early, and not likely to be hot after the rain. I quite thought you were sticking to the plan.”
“Tomorrow will do as well,” he said easily.
“But I believe David has guests coming tomorrow evening, and after a day in the sun you’ll be tired out.” Deline shrugged. “Please yourself, of course. It was such a lazy day yesterday that I thought you’d be aching to get busy today.” She smiled. “You’re not the true dilettante, Clive; you’re too fond of movement for that.”
“I’m not all that keen on exertion,” he said, “but there are a good many places I want to see before I go back. The trouble will be fitting them in.”
“All the more reason,” she said lightly, “for immediate action.” Then, reasonably, “I’m sure David wouldn’t mind your going off without telling him first. I’ll
explain to him.
Clive squashed out his cigarette and nodded. “I do seem to have exhausted the local stuff. What about it, Susan?”
Deline’s lashes came down to hide bright eyes. “Susan’s been bored for days,” she said. “If she’d had the courage she’d have suggested going today herself.”
“Good.” Clive stood up. “I’ll go and get my road maps and look at the bus. Will you collect the food, Susan?”
For a minute or two after he had gone Susan did not move. Deline looked down at her crossed ankles and absently swung a black silk mule, but presently this palled, and she reached for the day before yesterday’s newspaper which lay on a chair. Susan nerved herself, and stood.
Deline looked up. “I shan’t need to know any of the details,” she said with a cool smile. “It’s the results that will matter. If Clive doesn’t announce his departure within the next couple of days, both you and your brother will wish you had never been born.” And she returned deeply into the newspaper.
The touch of unreality in the situation kept Susan quite calm. With Amos she prepared a picnic basket, and by the time it was ready Clive had his hired car out front and was waiting for her. She gathered up a bag and cardigan, noticing that the veranda was empty as she went out. Deline had done the task she had set herself and probably, in high satisfaction, gone back to her bed.
It didn’t seem possible, as they drove down through Kumati and out on to the west road, a little later, that anything bad could come of such a morning. The true mountains were left behind, but here and there, in the vivid green countryside, small jagged peaks rose up, brown against the intensely blue sky.
The road was in better condition than Clive had expected. “Though it wouldn’t do to have it crack up after the first rain,” he commented. “It must be pretty terrible at the end of the season.”
“They use mechanical graders,” she told him. “If they were tarred, the roads would be used too much and all the animals would be frightened away. The big game is gradually disappearing.”
“An advantage, to my mind!”
She smiled. “The odd thing is that you never know where you’ll meet animals. During the day they just don’t seem to exist, but if you’re travelling even on a tarred road during the hour after dawn, you’ll see all kinds of wild things. Paul and I saw a family of lions sitting among the trees, and a friend of ours nearly ran down a giraffe. Have you ever seen a giraffe eating?”
“I’ve seen people looking that way, in a restaurant.”
“Yes, but they weren’t funny, and giraffes are. They feed on acacia trees, nibbling all the shoots across the top. In the distance they look like animated wooden toys.” After Kumati there was little sign of civilization till they reached the pleasant, sleepy town of Fort Victoria, and not much later they ran along the empty road which led past the hotel and straight down into the queer ruined city of Zimbabwe.
As David had forecast, the whole vast area was deserted. A guide lived in a cottage on the hill, but otherwise not even an African stirred in the great hot valley of secrets. They parked the car on the grass and stood staring at the immense granite citadel with its brick lace work around the top, at the walls which had once housed a temple, at the bush which grew so riotously about them.
“Let’s have some lunch before we penetrate,” said Clive. “This place gives one the shivers, and you have to get into the mood for it.”
“Some experts say Zimbabwe is of Indian origin,” she said dreamily. “They found lovely vases and gold beads, and inside the citadel there are towers that archeologists connect with nature worship.”
“You definitely need your lunch,” said Clive firmly. We’ll spread ourselves just here.” A brilliant green lizard darted over the rock he indicated, and he grimaced. “I’m certainly not cut out for this country. Everything’s much too big and bright—even the bugs!”
Here in Zimbabwe, Susan found it nearly impossible even to think about Deline and her threats, particularly as Clive seemed to have completely forgotten Willowfield. She wandered with him inside that great elliptical temple so beautifully constructed of chiselled granite blocks, posed for his camera near the acropolis, walked the torturous passages and made the usual remarks about the mysterious ancient city lying in the dark throbbing heart of Africa.
A while later, having driven for some miles, they hung close to the Chipoppo Falls, walked among the eucalyptus trees above the valley and had tea at the holiday hotel. At four-thirty, Clive had decided, they would set out on a fast journey home.
It was there, at the tea table in the hotel garden among the poinsettias and cannas and scarlet flamboyants, that Susan realized that he would have to be told now or not at all. To say aloud, “David told me the other day that he’s going to marry Deline Maynton,” would be to transform it into a shattering truth. She couldn’t do it. At most she could only hint.
“Try one of these tarts,” said Clive. “Pineapple may be good for heartbreak.”
“Heartbreak?” she echoed. “What made you say that?”
“You looked a bit grim. What’s the matter—doesn’t the tea taste as good as it looks?”
“It’s so lovely here,” she said. “Such a pity to talk of unhappy things. Clive, how much longer are you staying at Willowfield?”
“I don’t know.” He gave her his rather worn smile. “Events seldom measure up as you hope they will. One of the things I’d really like is to take you into Mozambique, but I suppose it wouldn’t do. Perhaps I shall have to give it a miss, after all.”
She looked down at her cup, asked quietly, “Did you expect something different from the set-up at Willowfield?” Were you disappointed?”
“I’m not sure disappointed is the right word. I do wonder whether the right things are happening, but there’s nothing I can do to change them. Susan”—his smile was affectionate—“you do understand what’s going on between Deline and David, don’t you? I only mention it because I’d hate it to come as a shock to you that one of these days those two are going to marry.”
The statement was made so smoothly, so entirely without rancor or emphasis, that for a moment Susan gazed at him blankly. The ground had been sliced from beneath her feet, and her thoughts were floating in reverse, unable to find anchorage.
In a different way he had told her what she had been struggling to tell him, and the effect was overwhelming. Whereas previously she had dully taken the worst for granted, now she became violently opposed to it, refused to admit it.
She gathered her wits, strove to speak normally. “Was it Deline who told you that?”
“Not only Deline. I’m afraid I’d be inclined to take a large grain of salt with anything she might say on the subject.”
Her heart was so cold that it trembled within her. “Then ... David himself?”
“There was a letter he intercepted, a letter from Deline. He never did open it, but he must have been fairly sure that it asked me to come out here.” His smile was self-deprecating. “You won’t understand this because you don’t go in for intrigue and high diplomacy, but Deline thrives in that atmosphere. Before she and David left England there was the usual polite talk about my visiting Rhodesia as his guest; Deline seemed fairly keen and David was non-committal. After they’d been gone a week or two I heard from David—a conventional intimation that they’d arrived and Deline was settling, but I learned shortly after my arrival here that Deline had written at the same time. David handed me the letter.”
“I remember it,” said Susan, bending forward over the table. “Deline wrote some letters on the veranda, and when I came to post them the one addressed to you was missing. David’s was there.”
“You didn’t follow it up?”
She shook her head. “I thought Deline must have kept it back. I posted David’s letters that day and saw the one to you amongst them.” She paused. “You think he kept the letter back because he didn’t want you to come here?”
“I’m sure of it. In his own note to me
he said Deline was so taken with Rhodesia that she thought she might like to stay here for good. Which was a pretty plain statement of the fact that it wouldn’t matter if she never saw me again. He didn’t read her letter, of course, but he must have formed some idea of what was in it.”
“But ... but didn’t he explain when he gave it to you?”
“He only said he’d had a reason for keeping it back which didn’t exist any longer. I didn’t argue about it because David’s code is normally so rigid that whatever reason he had must have been a sound one.”
Susan sat back in the painted metal chair and said huskily, “But how does this prove what we were talking about?”
He flicked a wisp of dried grass from his tea. “Alone, it only proves that he didn’t want me to have any further contact with Deline, but with a man like David even that is plenty. I don’t need to have it in black and white, though. It’s obvious that Deline can get her way with him.”
“That needn’t mean they’re going to marry.”
He shrugged. “One feels these things.”
A long moment elapsed before Susan said, “Would it surprise you to hear that David had told someone he intended to marry Deline?”
“I’d refuse to believe it. It just isn’t in his nature to make such an announcement until the engagement is official.”
“You don’t think he might ... tell me?”
Clive laughed. “I don’t know what you’re getting at, Sweet Sue—but, no, he wouldn’t tell you. He likes you very much, in spite of his brusqueness sometimes, but he couldn’t be boyish and confiding if he tried, particularly with a girl of your age. You’ll know when the rest of us do—not before.”
The tightness in Susan’s throat eased a little. Her task was set aside and she was powerless. She watched a spectacular blue bird swaying on the slender tip of a cypress branch.
Portrait of Susan Page 12