She made a harsh, breaking sound of laughter. “Frighten me? You? That’s nearly funny. You couldn’t frighten anyone, Martin. Why have you come here?”
“I couldn’t bear not to,” he said simply. “You look so ... ravaged. Tell ... tell me what’s happened.”
Her teeth snapped hard. “Yes, I’ll tell you. Dave Paterson and I were in love ... he wanted to marry me. I tried to postpone marriage, for your sake ... because I hadn’t the courage to hurt you.” Heedless of his white, stricken face, she went on rapidly: “Dave demanded that I never see you again ... but I wouldn’t promise. So he’s gone away, and when he returns there’ll be someone new at the store, and I shall be safely out of his way for ever. That’s what happened, Martin! You’ve merely crippled my life, destroyed the loveliest thing that ever came into it. Now do you understand why I can’t look at you without loathing?”
He had fallen back against the veranda post. His throat worked but he made no sound. Her fury had abated, leaving her pale and spent.
“You’d better get out, Martin, and stay out. You and I have no use for each other any more.”
“You love Paterson,” he whispered. “I thought you might. But if he can leave you on my account he doesn’t love you. I know you’re stronger than I am, more balanced and sensible. In time you’ll get over wanting Dave, but I shall go on wanting you for the rest of my life. Tess—”
“Please go, Martin.”
“But when can I see you again?”
“I’ve told you,” she said with icy viciousness. “I’m finished with you. I don’t care what you do or where you go, so long as we never meet again.”
She turned indoors and left him there, slumped against the rusting iron post. She lay on her bed in a dreadful apathy of weakness and misery, and after a while she slipped into an exhausted doze.
A few days later the buyer of the store came over to make arrangements about moving in. He turned out to be the man who had begged for an option and been refused. When the attorney informed him that an offer had been received, the man had decided to cable his prospective bride, and as a consequence he had raised the figure by two hundred and fifty, and made up his mind to have the place ready for when she arrived. Money, he explained, would be a little tight at first. Was Miss Bentley willing to quote him an all-in price for the furnishings as the house stood? He and his wife could replace them gradually.
Tess shrugged. She didn’t care what he did. Slackly, she agreed to allow a painter from Parsburg access to the house; she accepted a cheque to cover both furniture and jeep, and promised to get the boys working on the garden.
The day before Tess was due to depart, Cath Arnold came over, alone. She rested on the gate, her glance admiringly sweeping the renovated bungalow.
“My word, I never thought it could ever gleam like that. And the flat lawns! I bet it twists your heart a bit to think of someone else living here.”
“Not much, to be candid,” Tess told her. “I’ve no people — nothing to keep me at Zinto.”
“In any case, you’ve come out well financially, haven’t you? They tell me the store sold for over five thousand. What are you planning for the future?”
“Nothing, yet. Tomorrow I go to the coast for a holiday. After that I may join my brothers in England.”
“Shan’t we be seeing you up here any more?
“I’m not sure. Coming in for a drink?”
“Sorry, but I mustn’t stay that long. I came to invite you to use our spare bedroom for a week or two, but if you’ve already booked at the coast...” Tess hadn’t, but neither had she any desire to live with neighbours. There was only one thing she needed to learn from Cath.
Offhandedly she said: “Everard is managing Zinto at the moment, isn’t he? Have you heard from Dave?”
“We had an airmail from him yesterday, merely half a dozen lines to say that he’d arrived in Lokola and found the place unchanged. Everard will be sending him a report at the end of the month.” Cath paused. “I believe it was all for the best that Dave didn’t care enough for Mariella. He’s not an ordinary type of man. She’d have developed into a drag on him and made them both unhappy.”
“Probably.”
The silence which followed had a vague unrest. Conventionally, Cath ended it.
“Look here, Tess, you’ll keep in touch with us, won’t you? Even if we haven’t been close friends, we’ve been neighbours for a long time. We’ll be interested to hear all about you, and I’ll send you the local news. Hazel will be keen to hear from you, so do send her a postcard now and then.”
“I will.”
Cath had got back into the old car. Her head poked out. “You did hear about Martin Cramer, I suppose?”
“Nothing recent. Is he still at the hotel?”
“No, my dear. He’s vanished, but left his bags and things in his room. Caused quite an upheaval for a couple of days. The police were working on it but had to give up for lack of evidence. I always said there was something uncanny about that young man.”
Walking up towards the house after Cath had driven away, Tess pondered, without feeling, upon Martin’s disappearance. Instinctively, she was sure that he had not entered the hotel since she had sent him away from Zinto. It would be in character for him to have taken his car as far as he could in the direction opposite from Parsburg. He was simply trying, as she intended to try tomorrow, to run away from pain.
CHAPTER SEVEN
DAVE had been right about Lourenco Marques. Portuguese East Africa was an experience in which, had her mood been gay and unfettered, she would have delighted for a while and ultimately have tired of. As she had expected, it was almost like living in a separate and vastly more colourful continent. The mosaic pavements, the Praga Sete de Margo and its bandstand surrounded by little wine tables, the casinos, the lovely Polana Beach and all the rest of the expensive sophistication of the place were excitingly different from anything she had known or heard about.
With a Johannesburg family who happened to be holiday-making at the same hotel, Tess did the usual rounds of the city and surrounding districts. She went up the river at Marracuene and saw the hippo skirmishing, walked in the Vasco da Gama gardens and admired the Portuguese-style gateway which guards the entrance to the museum. At night she danced a little, witnessed the floor shows and lost a large number of escudos in the casinos.
When her friends returned to Johannesburg, Tess decided to move on to Durban, where the language was mainly English and she could read the familiar newspapers. But Durban had even less to offer her bruised spirit than had Lourenco Marques.
She spent a few days at East London, and passed on to Port Cranston, where, as was becoming her habit, she took up residence at one of the best hotels overlooking the sea.
Dave had been gone six weeks. Three weeks from now she would take the train to Parsburg, and meanwhile she would play desperately to shorten the days.
It was hunger for companionship which made her accept lifts from the other residents along the Esplanade into town. Invariably they invited her to do a cinema with them, or to bathe, or to drive out to one of the guest farms for tea. And it was the same feeling which impelled her to notice the couple who sat at the next table in the long dining-room, though she rather had the impression that they had smiled at her a few times before she was entirely conscious of their proximity. Because they were of opposite sexes and near ages, she presumed they were husband and wife.
He was good-looking in an ascetic fashion, darkish and long-featured with a gently smiling mouth and hazel eyes. Tess put his age at about thirty, and the woman’s at twenty-eight. Obviously, this brown-haired, brown-eyed goddess was a career-woman and exceptionally strong-willed. The wonder was that the man hadn’t succumbed to her domination.
One evening, just after dinner, Tess learned why. The native boy who usually pulled wide the heavy swing door for her was missing. Someone said quickly, “Allow me,” and there was the darkish man, inclining his head at her with a charmi
ng smile as he held back the door, to permit Tess and his table companion to pass through.
In the wide corridor from the dining-room to the main lounge, Tess found herself between the couple.
“Have coffee with us, won’t you?” the woman suggested.
“You take so much for granted, Julie,” he said. “Miss Bentley hasn’t the least notion who we are. She’s new to the town.”
“Are you famous?” asked Tess.
“Merely well known in Port Cranston. My sister is a doctor, and I’m Richard Barnwell, best known as my father’s son.”
“Barnwells, the antique dealers in Main Street?”
“Exactly. My father started the business and when he died it became mine.” His expression had a touch of self-mockery. “Barnwells began as an exchange mart in a wooden shack on the water-front, fifty years ago. Today we’re known as the only dealers in genuine antiques in this part of the country. Where will you sit?”
She chose a chair and waited till the Indian waiter had poured coffee and moved away to serve others, before saying, with a smile: “It doesn’t do to sneer at one’s beginnings or to throw them out as a challenge to other people. My father set up as a trader in a native reserve about thirteen years ago. The district expanded and more white people came in, so we did very well. My two brothers are at universities in England, and at the moment I’m a person of modest but adequate means. That kind of thing is common in a young country.”
“We wondered about you,” Julia Barnwell threw out bluntly. “Even took the trouble to ask who you were. A girl staying alone in an hotel is uncommon, and you, if I may say so, are very attractive. Did your mother have that silver-gilt hair?”
“No, hers was tawny, and my father’s darker.”
“I told you so, Richard! The true white-blonde is invariably a phenomenon.” She turned to the hovering waiter, lifted a written message from his tray, and read it. “Oh, damn. Another call. I’ll see you both later.”
She went off smartly, her tailored dress swinging. Richard got out his cigarette-case.
“Don’t let Julie’s outspokenness disturb you. She did her studying among men and developed that line as a sort of defence. No doubt it helps in her work, too.” He struck a match and held it to her cigarette. “You don’t mind our curiosity about you?”
“Not a bit. I’m curious about you, too. Why, if you’re Port Cranston people, are you living in an hotel?”
“We have a house at the back of the town. Julie is soon going to marry another doctor, but before they can practise there together extensive alterations to the rooms are necessary. She drives up daily to the surgery and to watch progress, but we both find it less wearing to sleep and eat here.” He inhaled and flicked out the match. Quietly he added, “Why are you alone?”
A slight premonitory chill crept up her spine. She looked down at the gay spotted hem of the cream linen dress swathing her calves. “My father died, the store was sold and I discovered myself possessed of over three thousand, so I decided to have my first real holiday.”
“How old are you?”
“Twenty.”
“Awfully young.” He said it as if in answer to a private doubt. “I’ve watched you, perhaps more than I should. You’re unhappy about something.”
“Aren’t we all?” she returned lightly. “You’re not particularly radiant yourself, but I don’t suppose you spill your troubles to everyone you meet.”
“I haven’t any — only a general dissatisfaction with things as they are.” He leaned back. “Sorry to have probed just now. How long are you staying?”
“About three weeks.”
“Fine. Will you go out with me one evening?”
“Thanks,” she said. “I’d like to.”
Tess thought that Richard Barnwell would leave her alone after that. Something in her appearance had caught his fancy but the follow-up had disappointed him, which couldn’t be helped. But next morning he half-rose from his breakfast-table to greet her, and when he came in at five-thirty he immediately sought her out and ordered sundowners. Later, he insisted that she dine at his table, and when Julie showed up, he told her point-blank that he was taking Miss Bentley to a show in the Town Hall.
Richard could not have been termed a commonplace man. He had travelled in search of education and objets d’art, had helped to launch a mission in Swaziland, and was a respected councilor of Port Cranston.
Yet with him Tess found little necessity to dissimulate. Probably the fact of hardly caring what he thought of her had much to do with her ease in his company. She was as readily quiet as talkative, and if she preferred an hour at her bedroom window watching the fresco of palms against the heaving Indian Ocean, she did not hesitate to tell him so.
Her complete indifference vexed and intrigued Richard, the more so as his sister had taken to referring to Tess as his “fair nymph.” The juggernaut quality in Julie had never rasped him so much as it did now, when she teased him heavily and mercilessly about Tess Bentley, and told him he had better work fast if the girl was here for so short a stay. After all, she reminded him, he had already had one wife...
It was many months since Richard had reflected upon the fiasco of his marriage; one doesn’t dwell too often upon the painful mistakes in life, particularly when the brief space of a year had encompassed their inception and sudden conclusion. In the two years since the divorce he had realized why he had married Robina, and the reasons for the collapse of the partnership. Robina’s surface had been insidiously feminine but at heart she had been too like Julie. She had scoffed at his chivalry and the positive need in him to protect his own woman, shrugged away his desire for children and taunted him with being too gentle a lover.
When his memories had taken him that far, Richard jibbed. It didn’t do to dig up the grim bones of that year, the indignities which incompatibility heaps upon the sensitive.
From the moment when Tess’s whitish curls and smooth tan had drawn his gaze to her table, Richard had rigidly considered her as just another lovely; at this season of the year the resort was peppered with them, though they were invariably accompanied by parents or youthful husbands. The shadow in the very blue eyes rather tilted at his judgment, and her total unconcern with her effect upon others posed another question. Nor was she pretty in the currently accepted sense. Unusual, of course, and slightly boyish in manner, but with potential sweetness and humour in the wide, red mouth. Not a vestige of Robina's opulence, yet her figure was one to hold the eye.
On her last Saturday they did some surf-riding. For Tess it was an initiation into an exhilarating new sport, and after it she flopped down upon her bathrobe, panting explosively. Richard, on his elbow beside her, watched her breathing lose its depth and her thick lashes lying over the faint hollows below her eyes.
Presently he asked, “What will you do in Parsburg, Tess?”
Her eyelids flickered. “I have to settle final details with the lawyer and pick up my mail.”
“You’ve nothing to keep you there ... have you?”
“I don’t know.”
Richard slipped right back, with a hand under his head. “I’d hate to lose touch with you.”
“Been nice, hasn’t it?” she said remotely.
“Too nice,” he answered, his tone studiously ordinary. “You’ve made me wish I could undo the last three years of my life. Tess, does the fact that I’ve been divorced affect your conception of me?”
“I’ve never thought about it. A good many of us have something we’d rather hide, but divorce is so blatant that the wronged party can’t help but suffer publicly. I suppose an unhappy marriage, even a brief one, changes a man quite a lot ... but I didn’t know you before it.”
“If only you had,” he said.
She didn’t remind him that at seventeen she was still a student at Grahamstown; in fact she didn’t even think of it. The palms in the orderly lawns which backed the beach rustled with a sudden strong breeze which washed gratefully over her golden skin. She
had no desire to move, no wish for anything beyond her present mental and physical lassitude.
“I could take you to Parsburg,” he suggested, “and knock around there for a few days. I haven’t explored that district.”
“There’s nothing to explore. It’s just a fair sized dorp surrounded by farms. Flat country, except for the little Witbergs, and so dry that the grass is mostly white and the red-hot pokers grey. Apart from Zinto, I’ve no affection for the neighbourhood.”
“You said that Zinto is an orange farm. Where citrus grows you find moisture.”
“There’s the Zinto River bordering the property.”
“Then ... may I drive you up, Tess?”
“No,” she said, and to soften the sudden sharpness in her voice, added, “your setting is Port Cranston, Richard — your gardens and large house, the baroque furniture, Florentine lamps and fine pictures. You’d loathe the veld town atmosphere of Parsburg and couldn’t help but be contemptuous of the people there. Oh yes,” she went on as a sound from him warned her of an interjection, “you have the warmest admiration for the farmers — backbone of South Africa and all that — but you and they wouldn’t mix.”
“I mix with you!” She heard him move up again on to his elbow and knew that his gaze upon her face missed nothing. “You’re different from any woman I’ve ever known. At first I couldn’t believe you had grown up in the backveld; you were too intelligent, too knowledgeable, too utterly unselfconscious among townsfolk. Then it occurred to me that some kind of experience had made you impervious for the time being, and ... well, I suspected a disappointing love affair. Somehow, that ... and your somewhat alien background brought you close to me. I can’t let you take a train straight out of my life.”
“I may come back — some time.”
Richard was silent for so long that she drew the robe round her and sat. up. He still leaned on his side, and she saw that his cheek-bones had darkened with blood.
He said, “For the present I must be content with that, but I’m going to miss you, Tess.”
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