Love This Stranger

by Rosalind Brett

  He knocked. “Ready?”

  She opened the door and he held out a burgundy silk dressing-gown.

  “You’d better have this — it’s shorter than the bathrobe. There’s nothing to blush about, Teresa. You once lay in my bed like that.”

  “I hope you had nightmares afterwards.”

  “I did,” he admitted succinctly, tightening the girdle of the bath-robe round his middle. “Hold up your skirt or you’ll trip on your nose.”

  An extraordinary sensation seized her. She raced out of the house before him, tearing like a mad thing down the garden path. He loped behind, not attempting to catch her up till laughter floated over her shoulder. Sweet, elusive laughter. He spurted and grabbed the flying dressing-gown, but she was out of it, fleeing ahead like a wind-borne goddess. As he shook off his robe she cleaved the water, and he waited till the pale head came up ten feet away before flinging himself upon her.

  That struggle with Dave in the moon-shot pool had a savage, pagan quality. At times Tess could see his teeth, set in a devilish grin. However she kicked she could not evade the crushing strength of his arms, and when at last she was spent except for the leaping, molten thing that was her heart, he had her helpless and kissed her mouth.

  “I’ll teach you to dare me,” he grunted, and kissed her again, so thoroughly that his legs ceased to move and they both sank under.

  Tess surfaced free of him. She tossed back her hair and made for the stone steps, grasped one of them and paused to regain her balance. Suddenly, the ominous silence of the pool smote her. She peered over the water and saw it black, with dancing silver hills.

  “Dave!” she cried sharply. The sound echoed in her ears, but she shouted again, more peremptorily.

  Stop shaking, she sternly bade herself. Men like Dave didn’t drown in a dozen feet of water. He must be lurking at the far end, laughing at her. No one could stay submerged for so long.

  She strove to keep her tone level. “Dave, I’ve had enough. I’m getting out.”

  Still that oppressive noiselessness. Fighting down the panic that rasped in her throat, she pushed back into the water and struck out for the opposite end; she wen swam under water for a while, but at length had to gasp her way to the side and pull herself clear. She slumped on the grass, her head down upon her knees, her whole body vibrating with the effort to breathe.

  Hard, dry hands grasped her upper arms. She stiffened, and raised her head to look into a face gone angular with some sort of emotion. His shoulders gleamed like polished stone but the one that slipped behind her was warm and vital.

  “Tess, I’m terribly sorry. I didn’t think for a second you’d take it seriously. I ducked behind the rubber plants.”

  “Swine,” she choked, and cracked a bony little fist at his chin.

  And then the fight went out of her. She lay in his arms, wanting she knew not what, till his mouth descended fiercely upon hers, and found the hollow in her throat, and moved down to burn into softer flesh. Then her doubts resolved into an undeniable, flaring need.

  Dave said it, a trifle thickly, for both of them: “Tess ... Let’s go indoors.”

  CHAPTER F IVE

  DURING the following week Tess had three visits from potential buyers. Two of them were appalled by the store’s isolation and the fact that the population of Parsburg was no, more than three hundred whites; they were sure their wives would never settle in such a spot. The third was a bachelor of forty, engaged to a widow who would arrive in the Union about three months from now. Could he take an option on the property?

  When Tess repeated this up at the farmhouse, Dave said: “Tell him an option is impossible, but we’ll communicate with him before accepting another offer.”

  They were in the garden beneath a mango tree. It was nearly one o’clock, and Martin would be lunching with Tess today.

  She reached overhead and tugged off a thick dark leaf.

  “Dave, I know you’re against this, but ... couldn’t you please be generous to Martin? He’s not having an easy time of it just now, and it worries him that he may soon have to leave Zinto.”

  His smile held exasperation. “What would you have me do — present him with a partnership in the farm? Why not treat him as a man and let him arrange his own life? At twenty-seven I was running a mining camp with one white assistant and a thousand Africans.”

  “You don’t understand him a bit,” she sighed. Useless to angle for Dave’s sympathy when he had no intention of giving it.

  He softened. “You’re a fool, Tess, but a lovely one. You know that men take advantage of your compassion, yet you go on giving it, with both hands. Some day you’ll learn that it doesn’t pay.” He cupped the back of her head in the way he had, and kissed her. “Come indoors and let me kiss you properly.”

  “No,” she answered, not very firmly. “Love-making puts me off my food, and Katie has prepared my favourite lunch. I’m going now.”

  He laughed. “All right, I’ll come down later.”

  For a week they had met every day. Dave had at last walked through the Bentley house and shaken his head with distaste. She couldn’t leave the decrepit furniture and moth-bitten karosses soon enough for him. Where she would thereafter take up her abode remained in the air ... or in his mind.

  It was all too new for much conjecture. She only knew that because of Dave her blood sang and her nerves leapt; that together they were one intense, concentrated life which nothing had the power to bruise. She desired no future beyond the eternal present, even though Martin had to dwell on the rim. Dave didn’t realize how little was necessary to make Martin happy.

  Just lunching here, across the table from Tess, brought a muted joy to his bearing. The thin cheeks, so lightly tanned, were made attractive by the faint red which had come into them; a, tinge of lively green ousted the shadows from the hazel eyes and his mouth forgot the habit of compression. He ate well, and drank two cups of coffee.

  It was too hot to sit on the veranda, so they subsided one each, end of the rusty chesterfield to smoke a cigarette. Quite how they got on to the subject of his visit to Johannesburg neither could have traced, but Martin found himself describing the specialist’s opaque, sandy eyes and shining, freckled face.

  “There’s something gnomish about elderly people with freckles,” he mused. “I got the feeling that he would deny anybody anything in his power.”

  “Didn’t you believe in him?”

  “Up to a point, but he’s a medical man, not a psychologist.”

  “You don’t need a psychologist.”

  His voice changed a little. “Anyone who’s been in a doctor’s hands for a couple of years needs mental stimulus. All this fellow could suggest was ... having a woman when I feel low.”

  Tess pressed out her cigarette in the ash-tray between them. “Maybe it’s not such stupid advice. You never have ... have you, Martin?”

  “I’d hate it — with someone I didn’t care for. In any case, my being in love with you makes it impossible.” Martin made a complication of lighting a second cigarette, and inhaled, before mentioning, “I told him about you.”

  Slowly she answered, “That wasn’t very wise of you,” and at once wished she had kept quiet.

  “It was in the cards that I’d love unwisely and behave unwisely about it, too,” he said with bitterness. “I keep telling myself that I can stand it so long as you don’t fall for someone else. That would be the end.”

  An icy hand closed round her heart. She saw Martin in the throes of a nerve-storm because he had learned of her love for Dave. Absurd. He’d merely used a common expression for emphasis. But she was afraid for his vulnerability, his seemingly fatal trend towards suffering.

  The problem, his love for her and its possible effect on his work, renewed her longing to do something for him. If only Dave were not so pigheadedly opposed to Martin’s control of the store they could all go on like this for many months. It was wrong to wreck Martin’s peace, to turn him out of the only haven he had
ever known.

  Martin had stood up. “It was a grand lunch, Tess. And thanks for listening to me.”

  “Such a good lunch,” she agreed, “that I’m sleepy. I’m going lazy for an hour. So long.”

  She lay on her back regarding the mottled ceiling through a haze of delicious intimate thoughts. Darkness crept in, stabbed by lightning. Another storm gathering. The spring rains were starting early, matching their violence with her own wild feelings. Life was exciting and lovely, because there was nothing she would not give Dave, no physical pain, had it been required of her, that she would not have borne for him.

  They dismounted at a thicket of aloes and bottlebrush, and turned loose the horses.

  Tess dug her hands into the pockets of her slacks and toned her contented gaze upon the modest Witberg heights.

  “I haven’t been here since before I went to college. My brothers and I came once on donkeys. The beastly things wandered and we had to walk home in the dark. It was frightful.”

  Dave smiled. “How old were you then?”

  “About eleven. It was just before the boys sailed for England.”

  “When you were eleven,” he said, “I’d left Cambridge and had over a year in the tropics. Does that make you think?”

  Comfortably, she leaned against him. “About what — your past affairs? I’ve never deceived myself. Anyone can see you’ve been a bad lad, David, my love. It’s etched all over you.”

  “Thanks.”

  Uncertain of his tone, she looked up at him, and swiftly added: “That was my rotten idea of a joke. You don’t seriously want me to think up differences between us, do you? The way we are, there just aren’t any.”

  “Sweetly put, Teresa. All the same, if I thought there weren’t, I’d go round breaking a few necks.” He nipped her ear. “Come and sit in the shade.” From the spot he chose they could see gentle green slopes and a brown rocky face supporting the lopsided pinnacle of the highest peak in the Witbergs.

  Against the hot blue sky the scene had grandeur and an atmosphere wholly African. Far away, beyond the foothills they had penetrated, lay miles of open veld splodged with cattle which were scarcely visible at this distance. A soft wind rustled the low trees.

  'Dave leaned back on his elbow, his grey glance upon that craggy summit. “Ever had the urge to travel, Tess?”

  She drew up her knees and hugged them. “Of course, off and on.”

  “To anywhere in particular?”

  “Well, first it was Portuguese East Africa. Lourenco Marques isn’t so very far, and it’s exciting and continental.”

  “And expensive and sophisticated,” he completed dryly. “I don’t see you in Lourenco Marques — or not for long.”

  She wrinkled her nose at him. “You’ve been everywhere. Tell me about Lokola.”

  He paused, a faint surprise in his expression. “How did you know what was in my mind?”

  “I didn’t. It just came into mine. What’s so fascinating about Lokola?”

  “It’s wet and hot and filthy. The whites drink too much and talk mud, and the Africans are the laziest I’ve ever come up against.”

  “Any women?”

  “Two or three, wives of government officials, but there were none among my bunch except that Brigham, my partner, lived with a Malay girl.”

  “A Malay? How in the world did she get there?”

  He made a small sound of amusement. “Teresa, you continually amaze me. You ought to be shocked, not caught up in the geography of the thing. Brig’s a rake. His parents kicked him out of England twenty years ago arid he’s lived in all the slimy dumps between the Gold Coast and Singapore. He drinks, gambles, lusts, and between times he superintends the mine. While I was there I had charge of a government mine fifty miles away; the partnership with Brigham was merely a hobby that might pay dividends some time.”

  “You trust him?”

  “Brig’s all right. You won’t dislike him.”

  She cast him a hurried, sideways glance. “Is he coming here?”

  He threw back his head and laughed with pure enjoyment. “If you’d met Brig you’d appreciate how funny that is. Remind me to show you one of his letters.”

  Her smile palely reflected his humor. “Then ... what did you mean?”

  “That we’re going to Lokola for a couple of months, you and I.”

  “Are we? When?”

  “In about ten days.” His voice sharpened. “What’s the matter? “Don’t you fancy it?”

  “Yes, but not so soon.”

  “This is the best time to go — while the citrus is growing. I went over to Inchfaun this morning and sounded Arnold. I think he’d be willing to keep an eye on the farm while I’m away, and Marais is well run in to my methods. The estate agent can deal with the sale of the store.”

  Tess picked at a snapped thread near the hem of her trouser-leg. “So that was the plan you’ve been hinting at?”

  “I imagined it would appeal to you. It isn’t every woman’s idea of a honeymoon, but you’re above the average.”

  Her colour drained and her clasp tightened round her ankles. “Honeymoon?”

  There was a moment’s silence while he adjusted his thoughts to hers.

  “For the love of heaven!” he said harshly. “Had you decided I wasn’t going to marry you? I’m not quite such a rat.”

  Her head was turned towards the mountain “I wasn’t sure that you’d want marriage.”

  “Maybe I’m to blame for taking things too much for granted. Perhaps. I should have told you that as you’re under age, I had to get consent from the magistrate in Parsburg. I applied for the licence right away We can be married in a week.” His features hardened. “You don’t appear to be very enthusiastic. Can’t you bear to look at me?”

  She slid down beside him. “Kiss me, Dave.”

  He did. “Why are you trembling?”

  “Because I’m crazy.”

  “You’re not happy about marrying me, are you? You believe I love you now, but you can’t see it lasting. You certainly are crazy.”

  He kissed her with force, and she clung to him, giving back his kisses, but too choked with mixed emotions to speak.

  Presently he said: “You’ll need clothes — a lot of frocks and thin woollen vests. Dangerous to go about there without undies. You’re going to sweat like you’ve never sweated before. Your vaccination mark is fairly new, isn’t it?”

  “Yes. There was a scare about eighteen months ago.”

  “That leaves only the jab for yellow fever. For safety, we’ll both have it, though my last ought still to be active. Not apprehensive about fevers, are you?”

  Oh, God, if only he’d be quiet. “Not a scrap,” she told him, against his neck.

  “You’ll probably feel a bit whacked to begin with headache and lassitude — but it’ll pass, and you’ll take precautions automatically. In any case, I’ll be there to watch over you.” She felt a vibration in his diaphragm as he tacked on: “I’m looking forward to the men’s sick envy when I turn up with a wife. There never has been anything so sweet and fresh as you at Lokola. They’ll adore you, Tess.”

  Her chest tight, her throat heavy, she stopped his mouth with a kiss so shaky and pleading that it roused him to passion. For the first time bewildering pain overlaid her ecstasy.

  She was quiet as they rode back to Zinto through the gold-dusted hills, and for the rest of the evening Dave was gentle with her. He seemed to sense her shrinking from renewal of their earlier discussion and to place upon it his own satisfactory construction.

  It was not till she was alone that the real torment began, and it lasted well into the night. The bitter irony of being wanted by Dave as a wife while she was bound, as an indispensable support, to Martin.

  There must be a way out. Dave could be made to understand that the tug of loyalty towards Martin in no way detracted from her love for him. He was capable of pity and generosity.

  But was he, where his own desires were at stake? What of
Mariella? He would expect her to cast off Martin as he had shed the “Carr girl,” mercilessly and with finality; whereas she, from compassion and affection, shied away from inflicting upon Martin the slightest injury. Was she a coward, undeserving of Dave’s love? Tess did not think so. In Dave ran a vein of iron; if he were crossed even she would not be immune from his cruelty.

  Tess got up next morning unrefreshed and dark-eyed, and no nearer an elucidation of the problem. Over at the store she watched the baling and loading of goat-and sheep-skins; a small consignment this time, because the rains had drawn up new grass upon which to feed the stock, and. the natives were anxious to increase their herds.

  The store oppressed. The conglomeration of odours and noises, usually tolerable at the distance of the office, sent her out into the air, and an impulse, backed by the fear that Dave might come down early, led her to get out the jeep and head for Parsburg. The straight red rutted road sped under her. She crossed the river, passed the private road up to Inchfaun and the gates to smaller farms. Mimosa thorn had clothed its winter grey with new green leaves, and the wattles dripped with pungent golden blossom. Here and there a wild peach flowered, product, presumably, of a chance-flung peach stone.

  Tess drove unseeing. She entered the town and automatically pulled in at the post office. Not that she was expecting any mail, but what else could one do in town on a Monday morning. Half the shopkeepers had not yet bothered to open.

  There were three letters: two from wholesalers with new lines to offer, and the other for Martin. A thin airmailed envelope, this last, from his agent. The knowledge that it probably contained a cheque bore her back in a more hopeful state of mind to Zinto.

  She hurried into the store, calling his name. He appeared from the back and she stopped, made nerveless by his white, stricken face and staring eyes. “Martin,” she whispered, “what’s happened?”

  His hand groped towards her. “You ... didn’t know he was going to do it? Thank God.”

  “Who?” But already she was taut with the foreknowledge of disaster. She reached to touch him. “Dave? What has he done?”