"Yes, and he's a pet. He used to have tea with us every week."
"What else does Anna say?"
She handed him the letter. He scanned it with brows joined, and looked up.
"So she's giving up the cottage and going to live at Gilson's villa; I suppose that's the most sensible thing to do. And they would like you to live with them." He sighed. "It's wrong of me to want to keep you here, but I don't see why Gilson should have my daughter."
She averted herself from him and spoke without expression. "Miss Brean has a flat in London, and I may try to get a job somewhere near."
"You like Miss Brean, don't you?"
She nodded. "She has no illusions, and she keeps one's feet on the ground."
"Why do you always call her Miss Brean? Hasn't she a first name?"
Fenella smiled. "A very suitable one. Margaret." She took the letter back from him and folded it. "I must answer this soon, giving my sailing date. Miss Brean and I are going to England together."
"You don't have to decide so fast," he said, "and I definitely wish to be consulted before you do anything final. Anna's waited long enough to get married; a few more days shouldn't tax her patience."
Miss Brean could not be drawn into a conference about it yet because she was out to lunch in the old part of the town. Fenella read the letter for the fourth time before placing it in her own drawer of the desk.
Aunt Anna and Mr. Gilson. Fenella could see them in the small chintzy lounge with leaded windows, her aunt absent-minded over some new design and the schoolmaster quiet and restful as he sipped his tea and ate a cake and enjoyed the peacefulness. Then one afternoon Mr. Gilson's courage had been equal to his needs. Probably to his own
everlasting astonishment he had proposed, and been accepted. It might never have come about if Fenella had not left her aunt companionless.
Her trip to Mozambique had accomplished that much, she thought, a trifle bitterly. And, without bitterness, she reflected that she and her father had arrived at an understanding of each other which drew them very close. It would wrench them both to be parted again.
After lunch, Miss Brean still being absent, Fenella accompanied her father to the native quarter which lay about five miles outside the town. On previous excursions into the reserve she had stayed in the car and alternately read a book and watched the natives, but today she got out and went with him to the but in which he examined those who were too old and feeble or too sick to make the trek to the clinic.
The medical but was in a valley whose sides were covered with native dwellings in brick-red adobe and brown thatch. In the spaces between the huts an early crop of maize was being cultivated, and down here near the roadside roamed the cattle tended by piccanins in roomy shorts and nothing else. They loved to shout and brandish a thorn stick.
The doctor and Carlos were the only white people who made regular visits to the reserve. Tourists were kept out more or less by order, and even the residents of the town were discouraged. The whole wide valley had been given over to the Tonga by the last Marquez, and Carlos saw to it that their rights were respected.
Patients sat around on the grass, most of them clad only in a thin cotton blanket. Their chatter was cheerful, even when they displayed neglected sores to one another. The African in charge of the but had the doctor's folding table set up near the doorless opening, and neat rows of the commoner medicaments lined up on a canvas stool. No one minded being examined in front of everyone else. If anything, they were proud when their condition called for disrobing and prodding.
Fenella wandered down to a giant euphorbia which reminded her of the grotesque growths one might expect to encounter in a nightmare. It pointed dozens of thick, uneven, sage-green fingers towards the hot, metallic sky.
She saw a brown snake with fine black marking glide away towards a castor bush thicket, and rescinded her decision to sit down. She felt too restless to be idle, anyway.
Fenella told herself that she was becoming tired of Machada, that the incessant sunshine sapped one's energy and caused this sensation of depression and mental weariness, which was out of place in a girl of her age. She was surrounded by hundreds of brown people who would have died away from the sun; this was their country, not hers. Let them have it!
"Meesis Harcourt!"
She turned and saw the African medical assistant running her way, his white overall flapping, his arms waving. Her senses awoke with a jolt and straightway she moved towards him with a long, swift tread.
"What is it?"
He came up, panting. "The doctor tell me to call you. It is a girl, a little one, who has broken her leg and must have attention this minute."
In spite of the heat, Fenella ran up the gradual slope to the hut, automatically leaping bushes and outcrops. The patients had forgotten their own ills; they were excitedly gossiping about the sudden and inexplicable anger of the doctor.
On the floor of the hut, wrapped in a blanket, lay the moaning, quaking child, and on her knees beside her the mother was wailing and swaying, with a painted bone juju between her hands. Dr. Harcourt was hastily tumbling stethoscope and instruments back into his bag.
"Oh, Fenella," he said with relief. "We'll have to take this little one to the clinic. She broke her leg three days ago and they've been trying the usual devil's brew to cure her. Sorry, my dear, but her most comfortable position will be across your lap, with the leg up and firmly supported. They've kept her fairly clean and the blanket is one of ours. Get into the car and I'll carry her out."
The transfer was effected with speed and precison. After his initial outburst of fury and disgust at the criminal neglect of a suffering child, the doctor ignored the screeching mother completely.
As they followed the rocky road he glanced sideways at the small brown face and large terrified eyes, and spoke a few words softly, in pidgin.
To Fenella he said, "I discovered this by accident, through one of the other patients. I sent a stretcher for the child and, of course, the mother came, too, and set up the loudest caterwauling she could manage."
"Poor mite," she murmured, surprised that four-year-old should feel so light. "It's almost incredible that so many of them do survive. The lectures of Mrs. Westwood and Senhora Seixas seem to do no good at all."
"I hate to say it, but the women are worse than the men—a lot worse. In a matter of months you can drill a boy into believing that white man's medicine is powerful stuff; when he's ill he'll come to the clinic and he'll faithfully do as he's told, even though he may also be attending a witch-doctor. I'm afraid the witch-doctor gets the credit for his cure, but that's inevitable till the natives grow away from superstition, and heaven knows when that will be. The men are very much under the influence of the women, and it isn't a particularly good influence from the medical point of view. The women are tough and not nearly so eager for education as the boys."
The child lay still, her head resting upon Fenella's arm. Her eyes remained wide and staring, and Fenella wondered what was going on behind that smooth dark forehead. What a pity that she had no words with which to try and dispel the little girl's fears. Her father's pidgin was effective and might easily be learned.
Regarding the child with a smile as reassuring as she could make it, Fenella let her mind dwell upon an impossibility: her father in a different mission and herself as his assistant. The two of them always together, battling against disase. It would be rewarding work, of a type which would leave small room for regrets and longings.
The thought had to be suppressed. She knew that she could never exist on the same continent with Carlos. Perhaps it was weak to acknowledge it, but she had always faced her own drawbacks, and this shattering love for Carlos must be classed as chief among them.
The mission, when they arrived, was caught up in a minor turmoil. In tampering with the electric-lighting plant, one of the servants had badly burned his hands, and Nurse Silva was busy cleansing and dressing his extensive wounds. The only other nurse on duty was forbidden
to leave the vicinity of the ward.
"Looks as if you'll have to help, Fenella," Dr. Harcourt said. "Slip along and ask Mrs. Westwood to come to the clinic. Then relieve Nurse Silva, if you can, and send her to me. Not frightened, are you?"
"Of course not."
"Good girl. Don't forget to use antiseptic when you wash, and it's just as well to wear a mask. Nurse Silva will fit you up."
Fenella sped along the mission veranda, and almost collided with Miss Brean.
"I've been scouting for you, my dear," she said. "Why so precipitate?"
Fenella gave a few details and Miss Brean kept a detaining hand on her arm.
"Don't bother Mrs. Westwood," she said. "I'll go to your father. My nerves are perfectly steady and I won't distract him by talk, as she might."
"All right. Thanks a lot. Tell him Nurse Silva will be along soon."
Fenella found the nurse in a room adjoining the ward. Again she gave the brief explanation and, as soon as she had washed, took over bandaging the native's burned hands and arms, while Nurse Silva hurried off to give her expert assistance to the doctor.
Fenella completed the dressing and cleared up. She went into the ward, where a younger nurse was frantically coping with a piccanin who had a sudden urge to tear the plaster from his cracked shoulder and run home. Intermittently, this sort of thing did happen. On her own account Fenella sent to the dispenser for a sedative, and at length the boy was quietened, and the rest of the patients were able to relax.
It was nearly dark before the little girl was wheeled into the ward and gently lifted to her bed to sleep off the anaesthetic. Fenella carried a tea-tray along to her father's
consulting room, and Miss Brean opened the door to her; Miss Brean in a white overall with sleeves rolled up and a turban composed of a white hand-towel obscuring her pretty dark-brown hair. Clothed thus she looked plain, but enviably serene.
Quite naturally, the older woman took charge of the teapot. She half-filled a teacup, poured in about a tablespoonful
of whisky and presented the result to the doctor.
"You drink that," he instructed. "I'll have the new "No, please."
"I insist," he said, in those quiet, forcible tones which no one disobeyed. "This afternoon's little spot of bother has been your initiation to nursing. Drink it."
So she drank half of it and left the remainder till he was served, too. They sat back in the hard leather chairs like a couple of old campaigners, and Fenella perched on the desk between them, sipping a cup of milkly but otherwise unadulterated tea. The atmosphere, after the hectic interlude, was pleasantly untroubled.
"You did remarkably well, Miss Brean," the doctor commented. "I'll admit that my heart dropped when you appeared in plate of Mrs. Westwood. She has helped before in an emergency, and knows where things are kept and what to do. When I saw you I wondered what I was in for."
"You thought I was going to be a liability," Miss Brean returned tranquilly. "If I do travel for three parts of the year, I also try to be a useful citizen wherever I happen to settle for a while; otherwise a traveller's existence is a pretty useless one. Which reminds me"—she placed her empty cup on the desk—"that I came back to the mission this afternoon fired with enthusiasm. Those people I lunched with had also hooked in the city fathers. They want to start an arts centre—something which will become so big that people will be attracted from Alimane and other towns. You know the sort of thing: music, drama, arts and crafts. Doesn't it strike you as marvellous?"
"It's ambitious," said the doctor cautiously. "For a place the size of Machada."
"Perhaps, but it would start small and grow gradually. From being a town of planters, merchants and the idle
wealthy, Machada would grow into a city with a reputation for culture in the sub-tropics. Who knows, a university might be built from such beginnings."
"Where do you come in?" asked Fenella.
"Inviting me in on the conference was merely a courtesy gesture because I had been at the luncheon party and shown interest, but the idea appealed to me so much that I found myself taking the floor. When I said I might be here a further month or two, they collared me for the organising committee. I put forward your name, Fenella. After all, your Portuguese is improving all the time."
Fenella inspected the dregs at the bottom of her cup. In low, level tones she mentioned Aunt Anna's marriage and the necessity for an early departure from Machada.
"There's nothing to prevent you from staying as long as you like, though," she finished. "Mrs. Westwood would be very glad to put you up."
"Why not write to your aunt and suggest that she marries without delay and flies over for a honeymoon? That way, she would meet your father."
"Yes, why not?" put in Dr. Harcourt. "They could manage it during Gilson's long break."
Aunt Anna would come; Fenella was sure of that. She would undertake the trip with zest and learn much that would freshen her work. And Miss Brean's point that Dr. Harcourt could meet his sister after more than two years meant that he would also have a chance of intimate acquaintance with his new brother-in-law.
But Fenella knew that she was unequal to the strain of two or three additional months in Machada. She could not allow herself to care whether or not the town had an arts centre; in any case, the project was unlikely to lag simply because she had no part in it. Once these people made up their minds on a matter they invariably went ahead with it.
She said idly, "Where did the plan originate?"
Miss Brean smiled humorously. "Where does anything in this district originate? The brainwave was Senhor Pereira's, and the bulk of the money for the scheme will come from him He's very keen to get some English people on the committee. In fact, it was he who reminded me that
you'd trained as a textile designer and would be a valuable member."
"How like him!" The sharpness in her voice drew an enquiring gaze from her father, and she qualified the exclamation: "Carlos thinks we're all as enamoured of his town as he is."
"It didn't occur to me that you'd be against the idea," Miss Brean said, a little hesitantly. "I hope you won't be too hostile when the senhor comes tomorrow."
"You've invited him to come down to the mission?" asked the doctor.
"No, to the house, for dinner. I thought we could have a discussion afterwards. Do you mind?"
Slowly, Fenella slid from the desk and stood very straight. A fortunate dryness in her throat halted the utterance of the words which had sped to her tongue, so that it was the doctor who spoke next.
"Not in the least. Why shouldn't you have a guest? Fenella doesn't really mind, either. Sometimes his foreignness puts her back up, but she soon gets over it. There's not a woman anywhere who doesn't succumb to Carlos in the end." He smiled at his daughter. "You'll have to get together with the boy to create a meal worthy of the house of Harcourt!"
She contrived a good-natured retort, and, to still the trembling which had seized her limbs, collected the tea things and carried them to the mission kitchen. To stall off thought she emptied the teapot and put away the tray. Then she walked up to the house in the darkness. In the lounge she paused.
Carlos at their dining-table, polite, suave, exquisitely appreciative of whatever food was served and the manner in which it had been cooked. Carlos mocking at her across a table which was too small for his particular code of behaviour: the slanting glance above a bowl of pink magnolias, the cheek-bones made prominent by the faintly sarcastic indentations at the corners of his mouth, the thin nostrils widened a fraction by private amusement. In the small house every finest shade of his expression, the smoky fragrance, his . . . dearness, would be brought heartbreakingly close.
* * *
* * *
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
OF his own accord the houseboy enlisted the services of a stalwart native who put so much energy into polishing the floors that they reflected the furniture. The menu was decided upon and the boy went off for the necessary extra groceries. Fenella pick
ed pink and red buds which would open into gorgeous stiff silk cups by evening, and arranged them in vases against the white walls.
There was singularly little for her to do. Antonio was an excellent cook and, more to the point, he was at his best with Portuguese dishes. In addition, his reverence for Carlos was so profound that it was unnecessary to demand from him his utmost. Nothing less was fit for the senhor.
This morning Miss Brean wandered about the house somewhat erratically. As she had expected, the doctor declined to use her services in the clinic on the grounds that Carlos would object, as he had objected to Fenella's assisting the nurses. Yesterday's incident had been an isolated exception; emergencies call for drastic remedies, but he was half-inclined to agree with the dictum of Senhor Pereira. Untrained women were careless of their own health, contemptuous of precautions which came naturally to a skilled nurse . . . and so on. Miss Brean was far too sensible to take easily avoidable risks, but she had not revolted against his decision. As a matter of fact she would have been dismayed had he accepted her offer of assistance. She had other plans for filling the day, and over midmorning coffee she made them known to Fenella.
"While I'm here I'd like to explore up-country," she said. "My map shows a road which follows the coast and eventually links up with a main thoroughfare at Porto Alva. Have you ever been that way?"
"I've only been as far as Alimane and Ibana. The Porto Alva road from Alimane isn't much more than a track. All transport is done on the Ibana road."
"I enjoy those rough tracks — they give one plenty to think about. You meet monkeys and buck, and the natives aren't urbanised. I've worked out a two-hundred mile
tour which, allowing for road conditions and pauses, should take five or six hours. I'll prevail upon your houseboy to pack some rolls and cheese and a flask of tea."
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