“As far as I can get from tin miners and alluvial deposits.”
“And citrus farms?”
He stood up and dug his hands into his pockets. “Last time I left Lokola my ideas were beautifully definite — to kick around the world for a year and settle on a farm in a good climate for the rest of my life. They fell in like a rotten roof. This time I’m making no plans, but I shan’t come back.”
“Why did you ask me to hang on till you leave — for the look of the thing?”
“No, Teresa,” he said mockingly. “Seeing that we’re considered to be related, it would cause no comment if you decided to come along with us.”
Tess had to take her time about answering that. But finally she said, “You forgot to give me a jade and diamond ring first, Dave,” and walked out to join Luke.
To please him she swallowed some of the tepid liquid he offered her. She was recalling the first talk she had had with Luke, his offhand statement that Dave would never forgive her for letting him go. At the time she had believed she understood what he had in mind, but now she was less sure.
She would get nowhere by fighting with Dave; he had her beaten every time. Even when she ran away he had been forced to come after her and drag her out of a mess. The rare tenderness which had surprised her at Zinto and drawn out all her own yielding sweetness might never have existed. He could still be gentle, but only from pity. Viciousness cloaked in mockery composed his general mood. For Tess it did have the pride-saving effect of keeping emotionalism at bay. There would be no more lapses.
Upon his suggestion of five minutes ago she dared not ponder just yet. She did not doubt that beneath the sarcasm lay a serious invitation, but a stuffy, glaring village with a background of native chatter and chanting was scarcely the best place in which to debate it.
On the return journey Tess sat in the back of the car; it happened as naturally as if it had been agreed to.
The car dipped alongside a wide rift, product of soil erosion yet prodigally green; wound up a hill, and from its summit, they saw Fort Leppa, arching spears of palms above walls and cupolas—a picture postcard painting in the smouldering glow of sunset.
Dave drove round to the back of the club. “Coming in, Tess?” Luke asked.
“It’ll be noisy at the bar,” Dave said. “I’ll bring a drink out here.”
Luke smiled at her from the footpath. “So long. I shan’t be down next week-end, but perhaps Dave will bring you back with him.”
She returned some banality, and her eyes followed the two figures till they disappeared; or rather they followed the tall, broad-shouldered figure while her lips smiled wryly, without humour.
Dave brought her a long drink which sparkled amber. It prickled in her nostrils and created a warmth in her chest. He had edged into the driver’s seat but was half-facing her, as though interestedly awaiting developments.
“Is it good?”
“Mmm. What is it?”
“A panacea for misery, but unfortunately not a cure. Don’t take to drinking that while you’re alone at the club. And one other thing.” He smiled slightly but spoke with a deliberation which was intended to impress. “There are very few women here—not more than fifteen in the whole town, and most of them live in the residential quarter. Your bedroom is on a private corridor, and I’ve made sure that the bells are in order, but you must take the precaution of locking your door every night.”
“Spoken like an affectionate husband,” she said flippantly. “Don’t worry. No one will ever seduce me against my will.”
“Don’t be so clever. You pleaded to be allowed to leave the doctor’s house for something more lively, and I agreed on condition that you’re careful.” He took her glass and placed it on the floor of the car. “How are you off for ready cash?”
“I’ll manage.”
“You can buy, anything you like at the store and charge it to my account.”
“I suspect your generosity, Dave.”
“You would,” he said, in cold clipped accents, “but your suspicions have even less basis than they had before.”
He twisted back and started the car. It swerved out and climbed one of the steep avenues. At the Greaves’ house he got out to give her a hand.
“I won’t come in,” he said. “Sure you’ve got all you need?”
“Quite. Thanks for the afternoon out. You certainly provided a couple of highlights.”
The warning sparks were visible in his grey eyes, but he spoke without heat. “Think it over, Teresa. I can put you on a plane to the Cape, where you’ll be lonely and more restless than ever, or we needn’t part yet. If you decide to throw in with Walt and me, there’ll be no strings, except of your own making. Have your answer ready by next Saturday. I’ll say goodbye now.”
She stood motionless, incapable of a spontaneous smile, as the car purred away. The house, when she entered, was quiet, except for the muted movements of the kitchen boy. She went into her bedroom, adjusted the mosquito screen over the window, drew the curtains against the fast-encroaching dusk, and snapped on a light. Her reflection stared from the mirror, thin and shadowed, her eyes uncommonly large and dark. Like a machine, her mind revolved its problem. Dave was leaving the tropics, and she believed him when he stated that this time there would be no turning back. Dare she hope that good would come of accepting his invitation? Didn’t the fact that he had asked her prove, in itself, that whatever power she had wielded over him had by now been thoroughly sapped? Otherwise he couldn’t have tolerated her proximity.
She experienced a sudden, horrified palpitation of the heart. Dave wasn’t acting. He really did feel that way — cold and embittered. No woman would ever rouse him again as she had at Zinto. That was why he could contemplate several weeks in her company with equanimity. It also explained his chilly reaction when, in fright and weakness, she had begged the solace of his arms. What had she done to him?
Tess was trembling with an agonizing sensation. She had been striving to reach something in him which she herself had destroyed. Surely there was some way of atoning.
At the moment, in her new awareness, Tess could not sort it out. She only knew she was bound to go wherever he went so long as he would suffer her nearness.
CHAPTER SEVEN
CAPE RICOS was a small, ramshackle port. The waterfront was a straggle of cement and wooden structures, all in need of repair, and except for a scraggy palm here and there the couple of streets of houses were hardly more prepossessing.
There were few boats at the quay just now. A couple of cargo boats, an oil carrier and a nicely rigged ketch which belonged to a rubber-estate owner from Loanda. From where Dave had camped they could look down over thorn and berry trees to the hot grey Atlantic. The tent had been erected in the shade of some tamarind trees which Dave said had originally been brought from India for their medicinal properties by Portuguese monks. From the sea came a ceaseless wind which lost its heat soon after sunset and made a blanket necessary overnight. Sleeping in the tent was the only part of this camping venture which Tess disliked. She would far rather have lain outdoors in a sleeping-bag near Dave and Luke, and watched the stars till she could stay awake no longer. But Dave wouldn’t hear of it.
“You’ll crawl under canvas each night at ten and stay there till dawn,” he’d stated flatly. “I don’t care if you do wear pants and short hair—you’re still a woman ... very much so.”
“I can’t sleep properly shut in like that,” she had protested.
To which he had replied: “Walt and I wouldn’t sleep properly outside if you were there, so it’s two against one. You must make up your mind to get used to it.”
She had given in. During the last six weeks, since Dave had put the proposition in the ant-infested rest-house, giving in had developed into a habit with Tess.
They had left Fort Leppa a week ago. Apart from the time it took to acquire the necessary equipment there had been the matter of Francis Redding’s death. Upon Dave’s advice, Avia had gone to
friends of hers somewhere along the coast, and he and Luke had cleared up Redding’s accounts.
On their arrival at Cape Ricos she had had some luck. Her trunk, which she had presumed lost in the coastal vessel that had brought her here, had been unloaded, and left in the customs shed. Damp had got into her clothes, and the odour of it seemed ineradicable, but there they were, the gay beach frocks and slacks from Lourenco Marques, the tailored linens from England and a cosmopolitan array of footwear.
Luke was less put out by the feminine clutter than he had anticipated. Indeed, he missed it when it was all packed away again and his own and Dave’s underclothes hung on the line each day. There were seldom any of Tess’s, so he took it that she hardly ever wore any.
Luke would have liked things to come right for Tess —she was so game, so completely unaffected—but he was glad she had the tent to herself; it would have unsettled him had Dave shared it with her. As it was, they managed admirably.
During the day the men fished and read. When the weather cooled they would all three go down by the footpath into the town and perhaps play tennis or squash. Invariably they were invited to one of the houses for a meal, and when they trudged back in the darkness, Tess would take an arm of each and breathe fast as she kept up with their long strides. They would sit up for an hour, watching the spitting fire and discussing the sort of subject that goes with darkness and comradeship.
About noon each day the men brought the fish to the camp and Tess, who spent the mornings lazily, would become energetic and housewifely.
One morning it rained; nothing violent, but it was depressing to have to sit in the tent or in a car while the men went fishing. The warm, slate-colored drizzle shrouded everything; from the car she could not see the tent, a dozen yards away. The fireplace was a sodden mass of grey ash. Egrets and gulls were grounded, and the usual roar of the waves had become reduced to a sibilant whisper.
Towards lunch-time it cleared and the world began to steam. Tess had got into a swim-suit and was pulling on sandals when the men arrived.
“Coming?” she asked, not very cordially. They never invited her to go fishing.
Luke said a brief, “No, thanks,” and lowered to his haunches to clear out the fireplace.
Dave said: “We’ve been in, but I’ll walk down with you. The mist is bad below, and the path is tricky.” She draped a bath towel across her shoulders and started off ahead of him. He caught her up and grasped her elbow, and they carried on together down the path. At the overhang the track narrowed, and his shoulder slid naturally behind hers while his hand moved to her waist.
Prompted by the firmness of his touch and his air of impregnability, she said with a slightly vicious emphasis, “Remember when we used to bathe in your pool at Zinto?”
“I do,” he admitted evenly. “You’re the only woman I’ve ever kissed under water.”
“I must enter that in my diary alongside the sock on the jaw.” She paused. “I still don’t see why you had to abandon the farm so abruptly. You didn’t intend to when you left. Your only aim was to drive me off the property, and that happened within a week or so of your departure.”
“Zinto was Paterson’s Folly.”
“Was it, though?” She slanted him a glance.
“Tess Bentley, too?”
“Yes—but I was coming back to you.”
She stopped dead, her face lifted and drained of blood. “You ... were?”
“Don’t get emotional. It’s over now.”
Her fingers curled tight over his sleeve. “But, Dave ... why didn’t you?”
“Arnold wrote that you’d left the district and were going to England. It seemed that you weren’t even going to hang on to see if I did turn up.” He shrugged. “We were finished, so I got dug back into Lokola.”
“Oh.” It was a sound of resignation and pain. She turned slowly and walked on. “As you say, it’s over now.”
“We’re two changed people,” he added.
Tess made no answer. Her nerves were suddenly raw and smarting, and all she desired was to be away from him for a while.
“I’ll go on alone, Dave. Don’t wait for me.”
She broke into a run, which finished at the low sand-dunes at the back of the beach, left towel and sandals in a heap and dived straight into a wave. The midday heat of the sun was increasing the mist. She surfaced in a white vapour and swam about, fiercely aware of the cool sting of the water and the sense of being withdrawn from the aches and stabs of life.
Yet it was not long before the bitterness and irony ran together in her veins like a toxin. Some things are impossible to bear. Had he spoken gently, or even less dispassionately, the shock of grief might have been somewhat tempered. He had actually intended coming back to her...
“Tess!”
He must have followed. Why shouldn’t he let her lose herself in the mist? No one would care. Lethargically, she swam in, stood up on the beach and pressed her hair away from her forehead. He materialized at her side.
“I was afraid you’d go the wrong way and get bogged in the silt.”
“I’d have stayed there till the sun came out,” she told him ungraciously. “It’s a hell of a job for a strong swimmer to drown.”
He flung the towel round her and bent to push on her sandals. “Let’s hope Walt’s got the fire going. This damp is no good to anyone. Another day like this and we’ll have to break camp and move on.”
Tess did not enquire where to. She stood on a rock, kicked her feet free of sand and began a quick return up the path. Her heart pounded and her mouth was stiff; she wasn’t sure what she would do if Dave touched her again.
Luke had not only started a fire, but fillets of fish were cooking, in a pan of palm-oil, and he was setting the table for three. Up here the moisture had evaporated and a clean sun burned directly overhead. Through the tamarinds it shed a python-skin pattern of black and gold. By the time Tess had rubbed down and dressed, the fish and a pot of coffee were ready.
Mid-afternoon, the sea came right out of the mist, palm as polished pewter under the steel-blue sky. A cargo vessel went out under steam, leaving a dark, white-fringed wedge in its wake, and shortly afterwards a liner crossed the mouth of the bay.
“She’s not stopping,” Luke said, in the odd expressionless voice he had acquired since yesterday.
“Bound for Kanos,” Dave commented. “That’s what you can do with, Walt—a spell in Kanos.”
“Why don’t we buy a boat and go?”
Desultorily, the men discussed all the gear necessary for a cruise down the coast. They talked about the design of the ketch Bondoa, her masts and sails, the ballasting and food storage capacity. Tess listened, knowing that Dave was merely talking to pass the time. His manner was conversational and without purpose.
No rain came next day, but a film hung over the sea and the outriggers stayed close to the shore. The camp had too strong an atmosphere of hangover, so when Dave and Luke had set out with their tackle, Tess made her way down to the waterfront and spent a couple of hours in the shade of a tree, reading. She got back in time to mix a batter and open a tin of luncheon beef. When the men strolled up she was ready to serve the slices of meat fried in batter, and hot beans.
Luke, as he doused his face at the bucket, was actually smiling. He came to the table wiping his hands. “Hope you’re going to be a good sailor, Tess.”
She hesitated, dish in hand, became aware of Dave at her back, and went on loading the plates.
“Are you telling me that you’ve bought the Bondoa?”
“Dave has. We’re taking over at once and can sail as soon as the papers are in order.”
She ladled beans for Luke and placed the dish near Dave. “Have you ever sailed in a ketch, Luke?”
“I was a member of the yacht club at Massa, but there we floated round a lagoon. Dave did some cruising in a yawl when he went wandering a year or two back, and we’ve taken on the present crew of three Portuguese. One of them is a first-class navi
gator, and one can cook, so we’ll get through all right.”
Tess wasn’t so sure. Once on the high seas in the seventy foot Bondoa there would be no way of escape. And anyway, Dave might feel the same distaste for her as she felt for him. She ate a little, but remained outside the conversation about the purchase.
When lunch was cleared and Luke had disappeared to change his shirt, Dave looked up from a sheaf of forms he had spread over the table.
“You’d better come down this afternoon and choose your cabin. The small one is more private — the other one has to be used as lounge and dining-room too.”
“You’re sure you want me on the boat?”
“Of course we’re taking you with us.”
“Very well. My only stipulation,” she said, avoiding his eyes, “is a cabin with a door that locks.”
His mouth set. “You shall have it. And you’ll need some kind of wardrobe rigged up.”
“Don’t bother—yet. If I don’t take to sailing I’ll be leaving you at Kanos. How soon can we start sleeping on the boat?”
“We’ll break camp tomorrow. We’re selling both cars.”
Luke ranged over, his eyes crinkled with pleasure. “I’ll feel bad saying goodbye to my bus, but these fellows in Cape Ricos can’t get ’em. And it’ll be great to have a new one some time.”
Two or three days ago Tess would have become saddened at the drawing of tent-pegs, the stacking away of chairs and china and pots. But her only sensation the following afternoon was one of relief. She got into Dave’s car, and when they jolted up round the hill and down to the earth road on the other side she had no urge to look back.
For three days the Portuguese seamen worked on freshening the ship. They cleaned and varnished the booms and masts, gave the outside a coat of white paint down to the gunmetal grey waterline, repaired the sails and oiled the deck. The cabins were white-enamelled with a stained teak trim, and the engine-room and galley were finished in grey. The Bondoa was roomy and well-built; there was even deck space for cargo had they cared to turn traders.
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