Dearest enemy

by Kathryn Blair

  He conversed charmingly, according more attention to the older woman than to Fenella. Tia Supervia beamed ecstatically and for a while submerged her repressions, till the limelight shifted to Antonie.

  The Portuguese girl had changed into a heavy white silk dress profusely patterned around the neckline with ruched scarlet braid, and she wore her hair loose about

  her shoulders. Her only jewellery was a beaten gold wristlet. She came to Carlos and slipped an arm in his.

  "How good to see you so soon, Carlos. I hope you are always home as early as this."

  He smiled down at her. "You have not been lonely, in this short time? You and Fenella are near in age. You should have much in common."

  "Fenella is kind." The reply was too automatic to have much sincerity, but a second later Antonie brightened and lifted her face to him. "Carlos, can you get us a box of colours . . . paints? Fenella will show me how to decorate some material with flower motifs—she has promised. When I am proficient I will design for you a silk scarf—but not with flowers! One does not wear a scarf in Mozambique, I know, but you will keep it because Antonie made it for, you."

  "That is quite certain," he said. "You shall have your box of colours and whatever you need in the way of materials. And now we will drink and eat small buns. To your chair, Antonie. Tia Supervia will pour for us."

  The man-servant who had wheeled in the tea-trolley grinned happily and withdrew. The whole staff were merry at having a young woman in the Quinta. They were agog with hope; even the natives and coloureds in the kitchens were aware of a new spirit in the air.

  It was while Fenella was plopping sugar into her second cup of tea that the gossip turned naturally to the coming weekend.

  "Tomorrow," Carlos said, "I shall again be busy, but on Thursday afternoon I will show you the town, Antonie, and you will buy gifts for your parents. Perhaps on Friday we shall visit the ebony forest; Fenella has not yet seen it, either. For the weekend . . ." he paused teasingly.

  "Yes, Carlos?"

  "You enjoyed the yacht, you and Tia?"

  "It is a splendid yacht."

  "She sails well since she has been overhauled. The weekend, then, we will spend on the yacht, from noon on Saturday till Sunday night. We will go to Porto Alva and have some of my friends there aboard for picnics and deck games, and possibly we shall have some dancing.

  In the four cabins we can sleep eight people. We are four,

  and there will be the doctor and some young men whom

  I will choose with great discretion. That will suit you?"

  Fenella had sipped her tea but her mouth was dry. She also had a sinking sensation in the region of her lowest rib. Carefully she reached to set down her cup upon the kidney-shaped trolley.

  "I'm afraid you must exclude me, Carlos. I have a guest to lunch next Sunday."

  He, too, disposed of his cup, and leaned back in his chair, the more squarely to regard her with those penetrating eyes. So far, his demeanour was wholly amicable.

  "So?" Then we will postpone the yachting till the following weekend."

  "I'm sorry," said Fenella, almost inaudibly. "I'm engaged for lunch every Sunday."

  His mouth compressed, but only slightly. "Surely that is impossible--unless it is always the same guest?"

  She made no reply beyond a movement of her head which might have meant anything.

  "You are too searching, Carlos," said Antonie. "Fenella is entitled to her secrets."

  Still looking at Fenella, Carlos said very coolly, "You will put off your guest next Sunday."

  "I can't," she said abruptly. "Please arrange the trip without me."

  His voice was tempered steel. "I will tell Frankland for you."

  Colour swept up from her neck, an angry pink. "You will not, senhor !"

  "Who is Frankland?" asked Antonie patiently. "He sounds like an Englishman."

  "He is," said Fenella, before Carlos could make some frozen rejoinder. "He's superintendent of a section of the plantations."

  "Are you fond of him?" Without waiting to find out, Antonie turned her large dark eyes thoughtfully to Carlos. "Could not this senhor . . . Mr. Frankland, be one of the party on the yacht? That would solve everything."

  Again Fenella hastened to forestall Carlos. "Please do not concern yourself, Antonie. It would be best to leave me out of your arrangements."

  "The senhorita is right," said Carlos coldly, as he got up. "In future we will remember she is not free on Sundays. Shall we go out to the terrace?"

  Carlos, of course, was still of the opinion that she was making an idiot of herself over Austin. Fenella longed to be alone with him and tell him the truth, to beg his sympathy and counsel in the matter of Maria. He would know how to deal with it and minimise the hurt for the lovers and Maria's parents; he might even persuade Maria's father to condone the marriage, and help the young couple to settle in Machada.

  But no. Even if Carlos were approachable, his own honourable mode of living would preclude leniency towards others less upright. His profound cynicism in the matter of herself and Austin and his merciless attitude towards the people of the town who did not conform to the proprieties were barriers which Fenella could not surmount.

  His strict code was one of the things she loved him for —yes, loved, she repeated bitterly; she might as well admit it here at the Quinta while all his tenderness was for the cousin who sat beside him—but her own principles were flexible enough to recognise and forgive the weaknesses in other human beings.

  There was nothing for it but to continue as she had begun. She would come to the Quinta whenever she was wanted, not so much to keep her promise to Carlos as for the exquisite pain of seeing him often. And she must go on helping Austin and Maria in the small way which lay within her power. They had so little compared with Carlos.. . and Antonie.

  Fenella did not stay for dinner that evening. Carlos asked her to, but something contemptuous in his expression prevented her from accepting. She made her frock the excuse; she had worn it for many hours and needed a change. The day with Antonie had exacted its toll of her nervous energy, and Carlos, ironical and remote, was suddenly insupportable.

  So she went home as she had come, in a Pereira car with a chauffeur driving. She lay back in it and thought of the three at the Quinta who, from now on, would spend all their evenings together. Probably the time would

  come when Tia Supervia would go to bed first in order that the other two might exchange good nights without an audience. What agony there was in such imagining!

  * * *

  * * *

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  DURING the next two or three weeks Fenella was fully occupied. Nearly every weekday morning the car came to carry her off to the Quinta, and there she swam and lazed and gossiped. Carlos took the three women for drives into the plantations and through the native villages. He would stop and explain cultivation and cropping methods, or call an old native from his but and question him in Tonga, afterwards translating for the benefit of his passengers.

  Fenella saw the ebonies growing, and the workshops where ornaments were made from seasoned wood for the export market. She strolled round the oil-extraction plant and the sisal factory, penetrated the thick belts of timber and marvelled at the gargantuan trees. Antonie was impressed. She knew little about anything that grew except grapes for the wine market, and garden flowers and shrubs.

  Every other morning at eight-thirty, Fenella had a long session in Portuguese. The patience of Senhora Seixas was never taxed, for her pupil was uncommonly quick to grasp the rules and pronunciation; even the difficult nasal sounds came easily, because so many Portuguese used them when speaking English. Fenella, whose school French had risen only slightly above average, found that she possessed a sort of affinity with Portuguese—unless her swift progress could be prosaically attributed to the fact that she heard the language spoken so often.

  Antonie could never be persuaded to test Fenella's grasp of idiom or the irregular verbs. She frankly d
eclared that the early stages of learning a language were boring both to the pupil and everyone else; after which Fenella kept her prowess to herself.

  She still wrote up her father's charts and the card index, and fitted in an hour or two now and then assisting the dispenser. Her invitations to cocktail parties were fewer. In a town the size of Machada it could not help but be known that she had been chosen to companion Antonie de Bordone. Some envied her, and the mere fact that she was often at the Quinta sent up her stock with the

  shopkeepers of the town. Everyone waited for the day when Carlos would launch his cousin with a ball.

  Fenella was not happy, but she had no time to be really wretched; she was balanced precariously on a rim between the extremes. If she happened to be at home when Dr. Harcourt came in for lunch, he would raise his brows.

  "Are you condescending to stay at the mission today?" he said once.

  "I told Carlos last night that I needed a day at home. Besides, I like being here when it's the boy's afternoon off."

  "You like being monopolised, too," he commented shrewdly. "Do you have any other guests at the Quinta?"

  "A man or two, sometimes, to balance a luncheon party."

  "Is Carlos at home much?"

  His tone made Fenella wary. Considering his preoccupation with his work, he could, at times, show amazing perspicacity about things less mundane.

  "Not in the mornings," she answered non-committally, "and some afternoons he goes off with the bailiff. I don't have much to do with him."

  When Carlos was there she had as much to do with him as any guest has with a host. But some kinds of torture are best borne alone. It would be too shattering if her father were to guess at the bruised state of her emotions.

  Since an incident in Alimane, Fenella's heart had become additionally heavy. That day he had come home for a quick lunch before making a business trip to the port.

  "You two girls may go with me and employ yourselves at the shops until I am free," he said. "Tia, too, unless she would prefer to rest."

  Tia did prefer to rest, so Antonie and Fenella went down to the car, and from that moment the afternoon developed a sinuous thread of poison. For Antonie slid into the front seat which was usually her aunt's, and Fenella had, perforce, to sit in the back. Carlos, arriving a few moments later, said:

  "You have arranged between you this new seating? Very well, if you are both satisfied."

  Less than half an hour later he had parked the car in the centre of Alimane.

  "We will meet here again at exactly four," he said, "and then we will call in on some English friends for tea. Do not exhaust yourselves."

  He disappeared into a building and the two girls strolled under the wide portico which shaded the shop fronts. Presently, Antonie was drawn to a hairdresser's window.

  "We have an hour," she observed. "I will ask if they can shampoo my hair at once. This shop is bigger than the one in Machada."

  To wait in the shop while Antonie had her hair washed and set was hardly Fenella's idea of an afternoon's pleasure. They agreed to meet at the car, and she made her way to the sea front.

  It was really too hot to walk on the shadeless beach but the blue sea beckoned, so irrestibly cool and calm, that Fenella took off her shoes and plodded down to where the waves lapped white round an exposed reef of rocks. It was sheer bad luck that she should have remained too long staring out at the red-sailed fishing-boats in the bay. When her watch said five to four and she about-faced to retrace her steps, the ocean was well up the sides of her rock and there was no other foothold within five feet.

  She was in no immediate danger; in fact, it would have been no trouble to wade between the rocks to safety. But she was wearing white linen, and only too clearly she recalled Carlos' mention of having tea with friends.

  She considered taking the leap which would land her on the nearest foothold; from there up to the beach the stones were smaller and more closely packed. But a wave washed along the reef and she could see herself sliding neatly over the surface of the rock into four feet of water.

  Her figure had been spotted by a couple of schoolboys in shorts and sun-helmets. From the sea's edge they called to her in Portuguese, and then both raced away and disappeared among the dunes and palms. Despairingly, Fenella discovered that it was nearly a quarter past four.

  The boys returned with two men. Then suddenly, behind them, appeared the tall, loping form of Carlos. Fenella's heart plunged into the depths. She would have given any-

  thing, in that instant, to sink gracefully and for ever into the Indian Ocean.

  The rescue went forward with humiliating deliberation, in the presence of four excited spectators. Carlos jumped easily from rock to rock till he was facing her, unsmilingly, across the five feet of bubbling water. He leaned over and stretched out his hand.

  "Give me first your shoes. Now take my hand and leap when I tell you. This rock is big and there is no hurry."

  But Fenella's balance must have been sadly disturbed. She leapt, and jarred Carlos so violently that he went down on one hand to save them both.

  "I'm just . . . hopeless," she panted. "I'm so sorry, Carlos."

  "There is no harm done," he said shortly. "Let us go."

  When, in a moment, they trod upon sand, he waited while she put on her shoes. Very politely, he thanked the schoolboys for their efforts, and when one of them begged to be allowed aboard his yacht, he invited both to a picnic on deck the following Sunday.

  Carlos did not speak until they had left the beach and were crossing the esplanade. Then he said, "We will tell Antonie that you had forgotten the time. No one else need hear about this childish escapade."

  Which reduced still further Fenella's stature in her own eyes.

  Antonie was in the car, reading a periodical. She accepted her cousin's brief explanation and shook her freshly perfumed curls at Fenella.

  "That was naughty. Now we shall be late at the house of the English people."

  "We are not going there." Carlos inserted the ignition key and turned it. "There was no appointment, so it does not matter."

  Antonie shrugged. "I do not, in any case, much care for tea. We will wait and have some refreshment at the Quinta." She made a sharp sound of concern. "Carlos! What have you done to your hand?"

  "It is nothing." He flipped a folded handkerchief from his pocket and placed it in his palm. "I caught it on the rough trunk of a tree."

  "But it is deep—a horrid gash." She had taken his hand between her own and was gently stanching the wound. "Let us find a chemist and have it dressed. Please, Carlos."

  "It will do till we get home. Now leave it, or you will spoil your dress with blood."

  Sitting in the back of the car, Fenella guessed that Carlos had injured his hand when she had flung herself upon him from the rock. If only she could have unleashed the tension from her system by voicing tenderness and contrition.

  The car pulled out. Fenella remained silent till they were nearing Machada, when she begged to de dropped at the mission. To watch Antonie cleaning and dressing the torn hand was more than she would be able to bear.

  On Sundays Fenella tried firmly to forget everything but the mission, Maria and Austin. She drifted into the habit of leaving the two alone for half an hour after lunch, and this earned the gratitude of Maria, at least. Austin was less expansive, and Fenella thought she knew why. It was natural in a man to loathe such a situation. The whole business tilted at his manhood, and he probably squirmed inwardly at his own helplessness.

  There was one afternoon when the car did not come for Maria till later than usual. In the hammock on the side veranda Fenella looked at her watch and wondered whether to propose an early cup of tea. Her father had gone into Alimane for a day's golf, and the mission was steeped in Sabbath tranquillity. Cicadas sang and the redwings fluttered between the bushes, but they were no more disturbing than the whisper of the breeze over the thatched roof.

  Reluctantly, Fenella reached her feet to the flo
or and stretched her limbs She would switch on the kettle and get out cups and some cakes; Maria was always pleased to be included in English customs.

  Fenella made her way to the back door, and found it locked. That meant she would have to make apologies to Austin and Maria and slip through the lounge. Oh, well, it couldn't be helped. She sauntered round past the hammock to the front of the house and reached for the knob of the french window. The next instant she had stepped

  back and flattened herself against the white distempered wall.

  When her heart had steadied she grew angry at her own girlish reaction to the scene she had witnessed. Of course they kissed, she told herself fiercely. They were in love and this was all they had; a fleeting half-hour in which to unburden the accumulated despondency of a week and reassure one another for the week to come. Stupid to be distressed for Maria and annoyed with Austin. They had clung together and kissed in mutual need.

  She moved a few paces to the corner of the house and stood in the angle of the veranda wall. Her knees were weak, and her hands quivering till she tightened them at her sides. One felt compassion for people like Maria and Austin—one didn't envy them. Yet an anguish had risen in her breast and her eyelids stung with tears. She did envy them what they possessed of each other; sweet words and joined lips.

  The chauffeur-driven car had halted in front of the house before Fenella saw it. She had no time to stir before Maria came swiftly from the lounge, cheeks flushed, eyes alight and red mouth parted. As had become his practice, Austin remained indoors—because chauffeurs are as capable as anyone else of adding two and two.

  "Good-bye, Fenella!" Maria exclaimed. "Till next Sunday, unless we have the good fortune to meet before then. You are generous to me, cara, and I will always be thankful that we are good friends."

  The girl was gone, and in a minute or so Austin appeared ,at Fenella's side.