Brittle Bondage

by Rosalind Brett

  Venetia dressed with care, and wore the pearl and diamond earrings. Perhaps because something more momentous was imminent, her shrinking from Natalie had lessened from the urgent thing it had been a few days ago.

  The Benham homestead had an atmosphere of ageing respectability. The faded chintzs retained their glaze, the blackwood gleamed, and the rocking-chairs flanking the klompie brick fireplace creaked with mellow years. By contrast, Natalie, in a rose brocade cocktail suit with a necklace of amethysts set in gold peeping between stiff revers, scintillated like a new planet against an age-old languorous night sky. Her figure and face were taut and beautiful, her composure aroused in Venetia the old feeling of inadequacy and the usual longing to be somewhere else.

  It was not till they were about to leave that Blake mentioned tomorrow’s journey to the wattle estate, and explained the circumstances governing it.

  “With Mervyn?” Natalie’s surprise had a thread of contemptuous amusement. “Is he really shedding his shell? He’s a strange man.”

  “He’s got to the top by being a painstaking engineer,” Blake said.

  “But he’s a complete social duck,” she finished lightly. “A man is only half a man who shuts himself away in a fastness of wild buck and parakeets.”

  Blake smiled. “It’s been rumoured that you had something to do with that.”

  She laughed. “Rumours are like molasses; they seep all over till the source is lost. They’re just as unappetizing, too. I hardly know Mervyn.”

  Yet Neil had had it that his cousin, a man whose emotions ground slowly but inexorably, had come very near to asking Natalie to marry him. And vividly Venetia recalled the woman’s brief exchange with Neil that day of the tennis tournament, her unmistakable condemnation of his facetious attitude towards Mervyn’s idiosyncrasies. What could be her object in deceiving Blake?

  “A decent evening, wasn’t it?” said Blake, as they drove home. “One can’t help admiring Natalie. Both house and farm are a credit to her.”

  “And with it all,” Venetia agreed, a chill hand closing over her heart, “she manages always to look lovely. Why hasn’t she married?”

  “Natalie’s proud. She couldn’t marry anyone less competent than herself and she won’t contemplate giving up the farm except for a larger, more prosperous one. The ideal would be for her to marry a neighbouring farmer and join her land to his, but all the local men have wives—though I daresay,” he added musingly, “she could have had any one of them if she’d wished.”

  Venetia thought so too. Also, sharp as a sword, came the realization that but for Richard Lindley’s death Natalie might now be installed as an expert wife to Blake.

  He garaged the car, came indoors and pushed home the bolts. Venetia was standing near the reading-lamp in the lounge, drinking a cup of coffee from the flask which Mosi had filled and left for them. She had used a handkerchief to freshen her face and unwittingly erased the thin film of powder. The light showed her pale, with faint blue hollows under her eyes and shadows within them.

  “You shouldn’t be drinking black coffee before bed,” he said. “You look terribly tired.”

  “Tired, but not terribly. I shall sleep.”

  He took her cup, edged it on to the table and turned back to her. He put his arms round her and laid his cheek against her temple.

  “Venetia, you mustn’t keep worrying. We ourselves created the position we’re in, and only we can alter it. I can’t pretend to be any happier than you are, but I’m a man, and older—I see the pattern of this infernal situation more clearly. You’ve got to have trust.”

  As she didn’t answer, he held her away from him; he misread the heavy eyes and the clenched fists which lowered to her sides. A hardness overlaid his lean features, and he sank his hands into his pockets.

  With a brief good night he passed through to the dining-room.

  Thea showed up at about three the following afternoon. Blake had been ready for an hour, and she apologized for causing him a late start.

  She pecked his cheek. “Good-bye, old thing. Don’t be later than five on Tuesday. I’m due back on the job at six.”

  He looked down at Venetia. “Take care of yourself.” For an agonized second she was motionless. Then she clutched his sleeve and raised her lips. He bent and kissed them. For Thea’s benefit, she told herself, as the car moved forward and down the drive, shimmering in the blur of her tears.

  “Cheer up,” said Thea quietly. “He hasn’t gone to the North Pole, you know.” She pushed back her shoulders and lifted her head. “I’m going to have a whale of a time, and so are you. Thanks for suggesting that I invite the girls along, by the way. About ten of them are coming tomorrow—not all together, of course, or the hospital would have to close down—but we shan’t have a lonely moment. You’ll enjoy the girls. And I hope it’s all right for Paul to come to lunch on Sunday? He seems to cling to the idea of showing you his garden, so he may carry us back there. Why should he be so certain that you’re more of a gardener than I?”

  Venetia contrived a smile. “Maybe he talks gardens with me, and other things with you.”

  They walked up to the veranda. Thea called Mosi and bade him fetch her bag from the two-seater. She paused in the porch.

  To Venetia she said gently, “Aren’t you on good terms with Blake?”

  The response came swiftly: “What made you ask that?”

  “Nothing very definite. You’re miserable, and he kissed you as if he were merely off to the sheds for five minutes.”

  Venetia’s voice was pitched a shade high. “You don’t need me to tell you that Blake isn’t demonstrative.”

  Thea knew better. He was too possessive, too vital, not to demand the utmost from a wife. She gave Venetia’s arm a little shake.

  “I’m your sister, the only one you have, and I like you more than somewhat. Any girl placed as you are would ache for another woman to talk to.”

  “I do, but I don’t propose to bore you the moment you get here. We’ve the whole week-end. Shall I come in and help you hang out your clothes?”

  With her sister-in-law in the house, Venetia’s bearing eased. From Thea, calm, thoughtful and slightly humorous in outlook, emanated an aura of bedrock sanity. She did everything thoroughly, even her lazing. Her point of view on any matter had a basis of logic, and a silence shared with her had the tranquillity of dreamless sleep.

  Venetia detected in her a subtle change, not the least symptom being the alacrity with which she had invited the party of nurses to Bondolo. Thea had never before admitted to having one friend among her associates, let alone ten.

  The “girls” began to arrive, the first four in a rickety car driven by a grey-haired woman who sported slacks and a continental blouse. They all wore bizarre clothes and big cheap straw hats, in revulsion, probably, from blue cotton and stiff, white cuffs. They sat anywhere on the steps, cross-legged on the lawn or propped on the soil against a palm trunk, and their collective appetite was prodigious. On the whole they were a strapping bunch. They bathed, argued music and poetry, and amid much laughter hacked the male nurses and housemen to pieces.

  Noise waxed and waned, worked up again as newcomers appeared. Thea’s colleagues had taken her open invitation literally; they had brought relatives and friends from town, and those who were not free till the evening came escorted by the male nurses and housemen who had been the subject of comment in the afternoon. They were agreeable young men, asking no more than to dance for a while, to drink moderately, and to sing a great number of popular songs.

  By ten o’clock the last of their visitors had departed. Thea lit a cigarette and said: “Well, that’s that. Comic crowd, aren’t they?”

  “They’re grand,” was Venetia’s verdict. “I wish I’d been trained as a nurse.”

  “At your age you’d still be a pro, and hating it. You’re not the type, my dear. You’ve got to be cut out for it.” She inhaled contentedly. “It’s a great job, once you get used to it—about the best substit
ute there is for marriage because you never have an opportunity to feel unwanted.”

  “Surely you don’t regard it that way, Thea!”

  She shrugged. “Why not? Psychologists say there is no pure happiness without service. In marrying you serve only a husband and children. The nurse serves the whole of humanity.”

  “That isn’t the least bit reasonable, and you know it,” exclaimed Venetia. “Once a nurse, always a nurse, whether you’re married or not. A doctor ought to have a wife familiar with nursing. Apart from doing her bit in his practice, they’d understand each other.”

  “Too bad if the man happened to fall for a schoolmistress.”

  “The odds are against it; doctors meet too many good-looking women in caps and aprons.” Venetia paused. “One of those nurses was whispering about a Dr. Dennis. Who is he?”

  “The Don Juan of the medical fraternity in Ellisburg,” said Thea flippantly.

  “He likes you a lot?”

  “They’re crazy. Dennis happens to be attending several cases in Ward Three, that’s all. He’s a friend of Paul. They have a working arrangement that one shall be on call when the other isn’t.”

  “Oh. I’m glad Paul knows him.”

  Thea’s mouth curved, but she said nothing. She lit another cigarette and this time Venetia had one as well. They sauntered outside, laughed a bit at the disarray of the veranda and the oddments left about on the grass, yawned deeply and parted for bed.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Paul, when he came for lunch the following day, seemed to Venetia to have lost a fraction of his solid good-humour. There was no pinning down the difference, for his courtesy and kindness were unchanged, his interest in everything just as keen. But the tiny lines at the corners of his eyes were more noticeable, and his smile had constraint. He had probably been up all night, poor man.

  As Thea had predicted, he proposed that this afternoon was as convenient a time as any for Venetia to pronounce an opinion on his garden, and mid-afternoon he drove them to his house on the outskirts of the town.

  It was an old, tastefully furnished bungalow set in an acre of keejat and mvule trees with which Paul was loath to part. He mentioned the fact today.

  “You’ll never have a tidy garden while you keep them,” said Thea flatly, “and you’ve really very little colour, Paul.”

  “It’s hopeless to compare this place with Bondolo, ’ he answered. “There isn’t a palm or a mountain in sight. And I can’t say that I hanker for a tidy garden. I prefer my home to be an antidote to the surgery.”

  “If it were mine,” offered Thea, with nonchalance, “I’d uproot all the trees except the borderline, set a few peaches and oranges at the back and flowering shrubs at the front, put the rest down to grass, and consider the task admirably accomplished.”

  “Seeing that it’s mine,” Paul concluded dispassionately, “and that Venetia lives too far away to superintend operations, I shall doubtless leave it as it is. Come in out of the sun, you two. The heat is torrid.”

  Today, apparently, his garden held no magnetism. They chatted for an hour, and had tea; then Venetia made a stroll right through the grounds an excuse for leaving them together. But when she rounded the house again, Thea and Paul were already on the path, waiting for her. They seemed to have little to say to each other. He returned them to Bondolo, thanked them both and slid away.

  “Paul was tired,” said Venetia, when the sound of the car had receded.

  “A doctor’s is an exacting life,” Thea remarked, and she drifted off to take a shower.

  Monday began with a storm, a cataclysmic torrent of outsize hailstones succeeded by a couple of hours’ tropical rain.

  Venetia slept badly that night, dozing and waking in a succession of nightmares. At something after two she got up and opened the french window. Tomorrow—no, today—was Tuesday. Her respite was nearly over, and the flimsy gaiety which had clothed her mind was dispersing like the mist, being blown away by the searching wind of reality. The longing to see Blake again was more terrible than any yearning she had ever known, yet it had an element of bitter reluctance.

  At length came the flame-tipped dawn. The bull terriers began their scampering, windows in other parts of the house creaked wide, and the boys blended quiet tenor with rumbling bass in their early-morning chant. Mosi brought coffee, and Thea came in to share it.

  The storm had left driftweed over, paths and grass, but in the blackened and shredded plants new green hearts were already forming. After breakfast Venetia set the garden boys working on the clearing up, and with Thea she collected the snapped flowers and dropped fruit.

  The plantation foreman and the messenger from the hospital arrived simultaneously, but the Zulu boy on a bicycle gloriously reinforced with copper tubing and flying coloured streamers, stepped back and held his peaked cap in his hand, while the ginger-bearded “baas” had his say.

  The foreman addressed both women, or rather, he spoke to the air midway between them.

  “I’ve come to report that an ox-team was struck by lightning yesterday. We lost twenty oxen.”

  “Good heavens!” said Thea. “Twenty in one go! That’s a bit of a blow.”

  “No people hurt?” Venetia asked anxiously.

  “The driver was knocked unconscious, but he came round. It was his own fault. The boys have all been told a hundred times to outspan and scatter the oxen when a big storm blows up. This poor fool tried to whip speed into them and get them home.”

  “Why didn’t you come to the house about this yesterday?” demanded Thea.

  “Mr. Garrard has often said that his wife was not to be bothered with the farm. I came this morning for permission to go to Miss Benham. She borrowed a team from us, and we can do with it back.”

  “You must leave it over for a day,” said Venetia.

  “No use harvesting if we can’t load. We wasted most of yesterday, and about seventy boys are involved. The boss wouldn’t have them idle.”

  Venetia hesitated, and Thea intervened.

  “It couldn’t do any harm to ask Miss Benham if she’s finished with the team.”

  So the foreman mounted and rode away, and Venetia felt, if possible, a little more sick at heart than she had felt ten minutes ago.

  Diffidently the native boy approached Thea and handed her a letter. “This very important. I take answer, missus.” By now Venetia was prepared for Thea’s rueful comment after she had read the letter.

  “This is it, Venetia. The staff nurse has dysentery. Ward Three, according to Matron, is in chaos; will I cut short my leave by a few hours. Sorry, my dear.”

  In a way Venetia was almost glad to see Thea go. She had hoped, in any case, to be alone to greet Blake, for there was no calculating what might be his mood. She helped Thea to pack, make her take a basket of fruit and a large cherry cake for “the girls,” and drove with her as far as the turn to the Ellisburg road.

  As she said good-bye, Thea’s glance was compassionate. “I’ve loved being with you, Venetia, and I believe it did you good to have me here. A sort of antidote, if you know what I mean. May I offer you some advice?”

  Her tone roused a certain caution in Venetia. “You may.”

  “Well ... try to avoid bruising yourself against Blake. That’s all, my dear.”

  Easy to dole out that sort of counsel, Venetia reflected, turning up the private track to Bondolo; one might as well try to avoid life itself.

  Her thoughts reverted to the foreman’s visit and the small slur in the statement, “Mr. Garrard has often said that his wife was not to be bothered with the farm.” The slur was the foreman’s, not Blake’s, but it carried a sting. A real “plantation missus” would have been told of the mishap yesterday; she would have suggested an immediate means of tackling the loss, and herself have driven over to make the friendly enquiry of Natalie. But Blake didn’t need a “plantation missus.”

  After a light lunch she straightway gave her orders for dinner. Beef rolls prepared from thin sli
ces of tender steak and forcemeat stuffing, baked in a bed of sliced and seasoned onions; crisped potatoes, pumpkin and buttered cabbage; a green salad and a fresh fruit salad, cream and cheese. One of Blake’s favourite meals.

  Walking from the kitchen into the dining-room, she suddenly came face to face with him. Unconsciously she stared and stiffened.

  “I belong here,” he said softly, with sarcasm, “Remember me?”

  A sharp breath forced from her throat “I was surprised. I didn’t hear the car.”

  “I shut off the engine in the lower drive, in case you were asleep.”

  “Have you had lunch?”

  “Yes, thanks. Where’s Thea?”

  “She left at about ten. She was called back by letter to the hospital.”

  “So we’re alone?”—still with a hint of satire. “How nice.”

  She fought down all personal feeling: her disappointment in his mood, the fresh and nearly overwhelming tide of despair.

  “Blake, we had a storm yesterday.”

  “So I believe,” he said. “Natalie described it as simply fiendish.”

  “Natalie?” A chill petered down her spine. “When did you see her?”

  “Today—not long ago,” he said carelessly. “I left the wattle estate soon after breakfast. The road passes Vrede Rust and she came down and signalled me to stop. I got out, and she gave me the news.”

  “About the ... oxen?”

  He nodded. “She was distressed because you sent my foreman to commandeer those I had lent her. Apparently the team was out working her land and she had to refuse him.”

  “We ... I merely gave the man permission to ask her if she could spare them.”

  “I told her that was probably it.”