Her nostrils thinned. “Because you’re jealous!”
“No, I got over that long ago.”
“Did you know,” she asked distinctly, “that David has told Susan he wants to marry me?”
For nearly a minute Clive was still. Then he said softly, “It’s getting plainer every second, and the more I see of it the less I like it. You need a firm hand, Deline, but not David’s. You’ve got him believing in you, but you haven’t another single soul on your side. Remember that! I’ll make you no promise, because as things are I don’t intend to leave. But you’ll keep away from Paul Darcey all the same, because if you don’t, I’ll let you down so hard with David that he’ll throw you out. You believe I’m serious, don’t you?”
“You’ve been serious before. As if I care!”
Clive’s attitude was anything but threatening, but his voice was firm and cold. “I’m warning you, Deline. If you make one move in Paul’s direction when we get back I’ll spill the whole works to David. So far you’ve been able to rely on some shred of foolish chivalry in me that you hadn’t managed to kill, but where you’re concerned it’s dead now. I’ll tell David everything—how you forgot to break off our engagement before you married someone else, how you telephoned me less than a year after your marriage and begged to keep my friendship, how we went to theatres and the races without your husband’s knowledge, and best of all”—he paused and gave her a narrow smile—“how you asked me to return your engagement ring while you were in the nursing home and forgot all about it when a rich Rhodesian began to take interest. I won’t have to mention what you’ve done to Paul and Susan. The other will be more than enough.”
She was sitting up straight now, the edges of her teeth visible between those reddened lips. “You’re overstepped it, Clive. If there’s one thing I’ve learned very thoroughly, it’s how to handle David. I only have to call you a liar and collapse, and your whole story falls to bits.”
“I’m willing to risk that.”
Her mouth curled contemptuously. “For David’s sake? When did you ever risk anything for another man?”
“No, not for David’s sake; no one knows better how to take care of himself than David Forrest. I’d do it for Susan.”
She gave a brief, high-pitched laugh. “Bless you! But the knight’s armor doesn’t become you, Clive. It merely makes you idiotic. And if you have any sly intentions towards Susan, they’re doomed. The poor thing is more than half in love with David herself!”
Clive didn’t answer at once. He sat on for a moment, and then got rather abruptly to his feet. “Here they come,” he said, “but there’s just time to repeat what I’ve already made very clear. Lay off Susan and Paul! And be very careful what you say to David, or I’ll turn a few facts loose. I was never more serious in my life!”
By the time Susan and David had reached them both were standing, and all four moved off naturally together. Deline’s hands were drawn tight on the clasp of the cream suede handbag, but there was no other sign that she was in any way disturbed. And Clive’s behavior was remarkably carefree, as though he had loosened a weight from his mind.
“No news from the brother?” he asked Susan.
“None. I don’t know if that’s good or bad.”
“It’s good,” said David. “It means your mother doesn’t need your urgently, and in any case we shall be back at Willowfield in three days.”
“It’s sad to break up, isn’t it?” said Susan. “I feel I could go on for as long as the weather holds.”
“That’s because you’re young, Sweet Sue,” remarked Clive paternally. “The young show up well in almost any surroundings.”
“Less well in those situations that matter,” she replied. “Inexperience is sometimes an awful handicap.”
“You’ll grow out of it,” David comforted her.
“Of course you will,” put in Deline smoothly. “It only takes a love affair, and no one need even know about it. In fact, the average woman learns most from love that isn’t returned, so long as her instinct for reprisals is not too strong.”
“You can hardly know much about that,” commented Clive casually. “It’s always been the other way about with you, hasn’t it?”
Susan gave him a startled glance. Then she looked at Deline and took in the contemptuous smile, and all at once she knew that the peaceful interlude was over.
They camped that night about five miles beyond Vila Volteiro. After sharing a pie and salads bought earlier in the town, and drinking the usual couple of cups of coffee each, they relaxed about the small camp-fire till it was time for bed. No one had much to say. Perhaps, thought Susan, a little appalled, they had already exhausted the topics of mutual interest. After all, they were a very mixed foursome.
Yes she was sure that had she been alone with David there were endless themes on which she could have led him to dilate. And he might even have been happy to satisfy her curiosity, because during the past few days he had become more of a friend, even if true intimacy were as far away as ever. But she was growing into the habit of expecting nothing at all from David, so that his companionableness became delicious, his teasing an almost unbearable sweetness.
Every night she sat like this, looking across a low fire at the coppery hues of his face in the light of the flickering flames. Every night she wondered what he was thinking, and every night she knew a small pang of grief because another day with him was ended.
Tonight, as on other nights, it was he who decided when it was time to go to bed. And when eventually he said goodnight he used the same words as last night and the night before. “Goodnight, girls”—with a rap at the side of the trailer—“sweet dreams!”
Susan lay awake a long time that night, and when eventually she slept it was uneasily and only till the first crack of dawn. Through the ventilator in the roof she watched the sky go pale and become streaked with magenta. She heard the men making the fire, smelled their first cigarette of the day, and at last looked across at Deline. Had Deline’s eyes been wide, and flickered shut? Susan couldn’t be sure, but the suspicion deepened her sense of something wrong. She sat up, swung down her legs and reached over to draw a beaker of cold water. In spite of herself she was watching Deline.
A frown came to the smooth pale brow, a trembling hand rose to the white temples, and the china blue eyes half-opened.
“Susan,” came the whisper. “I feel like death. Call David.”
Susan hastily replaced the beaker and bent over the other bunk. “Is it your head, Deline? Would you like a sip of water?”
“I said call David. And take your hands off me!”
Susan withdrew her hand from other’s brow as if she were stung. She turned at once to unlock the back door of the trailer, and careless of her crumpled pyjamas and bare feet, she jumped on to the grass. Clive was stooping to extract cups and saucers from the tin cupboard which was always placed under the caravan, and David was crisping some rye biscuits over the fire.
He glanced up at her, looked as though he were about to offer a facetious comment upon her appearance, and then, aware of her anxiety, he straightened quickly. “What’s wrong, Susan? Did a snake get in?”
“No, it’s Deline. She seems awfully unwell.”
“Oh, help,” he said under his breath, but Susan heard it. He added, “I was sure the couple of tablets we swallow every morning would take care of everything. I must go in and see her.”
Susan didn’t follow him into the cabin. She stood leaning against it, pushing back her untidy hair. Clive was beside her.
“What are Deline’s symptoms?” he asked.
“A bad head, I think, and she may have a temperature.” Susan was pale and quivering herself, and she had a sickening sensation in her throat which had no physical origin. “What do you think it can be, Clive?”
“I’ve no idea. In a country like this there must be dozens of harmless fevers that one never hears about.” He took off his jacket and slung it about her shoulders. “It’s still
misty and cool. Come and have some tea.”
Susan sat on an upturned box and covered her face with her hand. She was feeling again the sudden tenseness in David, the hint of harshness in him. He was shaken and terribly concerned. He was in there now with Deline, questioning her gently, testing her pulse and the clamminess of her skin.
Clive was kneeling, holding a cup of tea. “Come on,” he coaxed. “Deline was well enough yesterday. It can’t possibly be serious.”
He put his free arm round her and drew down her hand. David came out of the trailer, looked them over coolly and went to the back seat of the car for the medicine box.
Determinedly, Clive kept his arm about Susan. “What do you think it is, David?” he asked. “Some sort of fever?”
“I don’t think so.” He sounded offhand, “She feels dizzy and has a migraine. She seems very weak.”
“Anything I can do?”
Coolly David said, “You appear to be sufficiently occupied.” And he went up again into the cabin.
“He’s softer than you’d imagine,” murmured Clive. “Stop shaking, Susan. Deline’s met far tougher crises than this.”
The morning air was reviving Susan, but she still felt shorn and stricken. She drank some of the tea, kept Clive’s jacket about her shoulders and went to the door of the caravan. Before she could speak she heard Deline’s voice, quavering and pathetic.
“But a foreign doctor might not understand English, David, or he might misconstrue whatever we told him. He’d probably send us straight back to Willowfield, anyway. I’m so dreadfully sorry, darling.”
“You don’t have to be,” David answered soothingly. “You can’t realize how I feel about this, Deline. After taking so much trouble to get you really well, I had to land you with this! It isn’t a thing I could have foreseen, but I’d a thousand times rather not have come, than to have had it happen.”
“But it isn’t your fault, my dear,” was the sweet, earnest reply, “and it’s been so lovely that I can’t bear you to reproach yourself. I’m sure the tablets you’ve just given me will do the trick.”
“I hope so!”
Susan moistened her lips and made a sound, so that David came to the opening. “May I have my dress?” she asked.
From her bunk Deline said thinly, “Please. I shan’t be able to stand a lot of movement about me.”
“I’ll give Susan her clothes,” said David.
With a return of spirit, Susan said, “I’ll get them myself!”
“I’m afraid you won’t.” He spoke quietly, firmly. “Modesty hardly comes into this. Which clothes do you want?”
Green eyes met grey and both were cool. “Bring whatever you like,” she said abruptly, and walked a few yards away.
Clive gave her a half-wink but said nothing. David came out bearing slacks, a shirt and some sort of undergarment, and Susan took them from him.
“Whatever else you may need from the trailer you must ask me for,” he said. “I don’t believe for a second that Deline has anything infectious, but we’ll take normal precautions. It could be something that women pick up easier than men—it could be anything.”
“I’ve been in there all night. If it’s coming my way I’ve already got it.”
“You’re wrong. Illnesses are at their most infectious a day or so after the onset. You’ll do as you’re told, Susan. I can’t trust you to take the care I’d take myself.”
Recklessly, she said, “I don’t suppose you could trust anyone else to nurse Deline, either. Have it your own way!”
“Do we have any breakfast this morning” Clive queried diplomatically. “I suppose it’s unholy in me, but Deline’s headache hasn’t robbed me of my appetite.”
“I’m going to use some of your water and dress in the car,” said Susan. “After that I’ll find you some sausages and bacon.”
The holiday atmosphere was gone. Susan spread the check cloth on the folding table, heated the tinned sausages and fried plenty of bacon. She served three portions, a very small one for herself, and ate resolutely because she would not have the men think her affected by the decided chill that Deline’s sudden indisposition had forced upon the party. She washed the dishes, accepted a cigarette and took a walk down the road as far as a cyclone fence, beyond which natives were working among ground nuts.
She tried to think dispassionately about Deline, tried to rid herself of the unworthy conclusion that the other woman was not quite so ill as she made out. Was it possible that Clive was more upset than he appeared? He had certainly gone off into a thoughtful mood after breakfast, and seemed as unwilling to converse as David.
As for David ... Susan held tightly on to the top of the fence. She closed her eyes and heard him speaking gently to Deline, coaxing her to drink diluted fruit juice; saw him slipping an arm beneath those slim, silk-clad shoulders and raising her, so that she could take the juice more easily. There was no one in the world for him now but Deline.
She thought of yesterday and the day before, and the day before that; remembered nights of music under the stars, a lizard, four feet long, upon which she had almost trodden because of its excellent camouflage, and David’s arm drawing her to safety. She thought of the pink, crystal perfection of the mornings, of David’s strong hands wielding an axe, of spicy-smelling woods vaunting glorious blossoms, and of chewing coffee beans. And as if it were in another life she recollected watching, with him, the rosy light of the setting sun over the treetops, the inexpressible beauty of a crescent moon sailing among the stars.
She turned her back on the memories, and half-way along the road she met him. He turned and fell into step beside her, his hands plunged into his pockets, his demeanor preoccupied.
“When Deline’s headache has eased,” he said, “we’ll have to start moving towards home. Quite apart from the fact that I’m responsible, I’m sorry things have happened this way. You won’t get much pleasure out of looking back upon this break, I’m afraid.”
She shrugged. “I may, once I’m away from Africa.”
“We’ve had some good times, these last four days. When you’re most fed up with me you might think them over.” This was so exactly what she had been doing that Susan was silent for a minute. She looked away from him, at a waist-high ant hill. “Why should I be fed up with you? This illness of Deline’s isn’t your fault, and your reaction to it is wholly in character. I wish you wouldn’t treat me like a child to be isolated from measles, but the fact that you do is in character, too. It’s not very pleasant, though, to be the only other woman around yet debarred from doing a little nursing.”
“It’s just a safety measure. But to be honest, I think Deline will feel calmer if I look after her. She’s never found it easy to trust people, but she does trust me.” He added, enigmatically, “And you’ll have to trust me, too.”
“I trust you,” she said a little wearily. Then found herself remarking, “You said once that this trip into Mozambique might settle a few things. It has, hasn’t it?”
He glanced at her briefly. “No, they were settled before we started. They’ve fallen into a clear pattern, that’s all.” His voice took a faint edge. “Clive is going to hang on at Willowfield—I can read it in his attitude. He’s going to wait till that letter comes from your mother, when he hopes to escort you to the south of France.”
Susan’s heart became even more constricted. She knew what he meant when he said their circumstances had fallen into a clear pattern. Before leaving Willowfield he had known his own and Deline’s feelings; now, her sudden illness threw into relief all they meant to each other. And he dared to sneer about Clive’s intentions—as if he could possibly know them! She felt a need to hurt him, had no weapon but defiance.
“That’s between Clive and me, surely!”
“Do you think I’d stand by and let him do as he liked with you?”
She laughed angrily. “I can take care of myself. As a matter of fact, I can imagine nothing more enjoyable than a journey with Clive, and I feel
sure he’d deliver me unharmed. When will you realize that I’m not your responsibility?”
“It was through me you came to Africa and through me you met Carlsten,” he said. “Clive may be good company, he may also have a fairly sure income and fancy himself a little in love with you, but that’s where the points in his favor come to an end. He’s lazy and weak. He makes his living from the difference between buying cheap and selling dear. In his own line he’s no better than an elegant shark!”
“How ridiculous,” she flashed at him. “He must know a tremendous amount about antiques or he couldn’t run his business.”
“He knows only what he’s picked up from an excellent manager—the man, by the way, who is finding it so easy to get along without him just now.” He was casting the words at her as if they were sharp stones intended for a specific target. “But leaving aside his method of making a living, he still isn’t an attractive character. He’s made love to a dozen women, and let a few down. When he’s tired of London he plays around on the Continent, and to keep his sale-room in the public eye he writes articles pieced together from his library on antiques and gets his manager to vet them.” He paused, staring at her. “I’ve been hospitable to Clive because I was his guest in London, and there were other reasons as well. In any case, when he first came to Willowfield I only suspected he was a parasite. I’m sure now!”
But Susan was roused, too. She stopped and faced him, her head tilted. “And why are you sure?” she demanded. “You’ve only the word of one person against another, and personally I don’t think it’s enough! I could tell you...”
“I’m not arguing, Susan,” he said, his mouth tight. “You can make up your mind to one fact: you’re not leaving Africa with Clive Carlsten!”
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