African Assignment

by Carol Gregor

  'You've really got the bug, haven't you?'

  'I don't know. I think so. It depends if they're any good.'

  'I'll be surprised if they're not,' he said, and he shot her a quick glance. 'You've got a good eye. And passion and dedication. All the makings of a good photographer.'

  Passion, she thought, remembering the embrace of his aroused body in the night, and looking at him, and the way his smile warmed his whole handsome face, her heart grew huge and sore.

  'It all depends what you want,' he said.

  I want you, she answered silently to herself. That's all I want. I want you, and I want you to love me! The word startled her. Love. Love and Cal didn't seem at all compatible. She still stared at him with wide eyes. He might make love to women, he might love and leave, but real love—why, he had always made plain that such commitment and permanence had no place in his life.

  She swallowed down a painful lump. Cal glanced from the road, back to her.

  'What is it?'

  'Nothing.'

  She stared miserably ahead. Falling in love with Cal Fenton was probably the most stupid thing any woman could do. It certainly hadn't been part of her plan. But it had happened, she suddenly realised, and there wasn't a single, solitary thing she could do to change the situation.

  Silent, each locked in his own thoughts, they drove until the sun came up, warming the landscape with a golden glow. Herds of gazelles grazed peacefully, and the birds chirruped their morning chorus.

  'I think we're OK now. Let's stop and have a beer. It's not much of a breakfast, but I think that's all there is.'

  Cal slowed to a halt. They got out into the fresh morning air. The sun was warm on Frankie's arms, driving away the chill of exhaustion and hunger. She looked around, and to her horror she felt tears springing to her eyes. Everything around them was so beautiful and at peace, yet inside she was a raging mass of unfulfilled dreams and hopeless longings. Even worse, the tears, once started, would not stop. They spilled down her cheeks and splashed on to her dusty T-shirt until she was gulping and sobbing without restraint.

  'Hey!' Cal, rooting for the beers, looked up at the sound. Then he was by her side, catching her close, holding her hard to him. 'Easy, Frankie, easy.' His hands roamed her back and hair, soothing her as he might a frightened child. 'It's over now. Everything's OK. It's all finished.'

  'I don't know what's the matter,' she gasped out, shaking in his arms. Her tears seemed to come from some bottomless pit, as if she was crying not just for the moment, but for all the losses and failures she had ever known.

  Cal pushed the hair from her wet face, stroking it behind her ears. 'It's delayed shock, and exhaustion. It's a perfectly normal reaction.'

  She shook her head, her eyes meeting his. 'I'm not frightened. I'm—I don't know what I am --'

  He looked deep into her gaze.

  'Well, I do. You're beautiful, and brave, and honest --' He stopped, and swallowed.

  For a long moment their looks snagged so nakedly that she was sure he must bend his head and take her lips with his. The current flowing between their bodies was electric, a pulse of awareness that drove the blood faster through her veins and made her half dizzy with desire. Then, just as she thought something must happen or she would die from the tension, his voice toughened purposefully. 'And I certainly know one thing: your father would have been very proud of you,' and he set her deliberately away from him.

  She turned her back on him, desolated by his restraint and rigid self-control.

  'Nothing seems to affect you!' she cried bitterly.

  'Oh, you'd be surprised.' There was an edge of iron in his voice.

  'You don't get frightened! You don't lie awake at night! You don't let anyone get close to you!'

  'What if I'm just a damn good actor?' She turned back and saw a blaze of anger in his eyes.

  'Then why bother to act?' she blazed. 'Why waste all that effort? What's the point? Unless it's to fool yourself.'

  'The point is, it wouldn't help to have two of us scared out of our wits, or sobbing our hearts out, or --'

  'Or what?' Frankie scorned, blind with anger.

  'Or you know what!' He dashed his hand through his hair. 'You know damned well what! My God, Frankie, you try my patience! For two pins I'd up-end you and give you a good hiding!'

  'So that's how you get your kicks!'

  'Why, you little madam!'

  His eyes narrowed dangerously and he stepped forward, gripping her shoulders with fingers that bit so hard into her flesh that she cried out.

  'Ow! You're hurting!'

  'People who provoke must live with the consequences,' he gritted, and his eyes were a battleground of dark emotions, and his expression was ruthless.

  Frankie's heart stopped, but her spirit rose up to lock with his. 'Have you ever seen me running away?' she challenged him.

  His look glittered, then, with a rough growl of impatience, his mouth came down on hers with a harsh, hurting urgency that bruised her lips and forced her head back hard against the side of the Land Rover. His body pressed against hers, and she felt his desire flame instantly.

  It was what she had longed for, had ached for, yet now it was all wrong—far too much, far too soon— and in her fragile state his brutal need frightened her and made her quail.

  Almost immediately he pulled away from her, his breath rasping harshly, but his hand still clasped her hair at the base of her neck.

  'How much do you even know about men, Frankie? Oh, riot teenage boyfriends or elderly bosses who try to paw your knee, but real men? What they feel? What they need?'

  She looked at him with wide, shocked eyes.

  'Nothing, I'll bet?'

  She shook her head dumbly.

  'Then don't play around with what you don't know and don't understand!'

  'I wasn't --'

  'Oh, yes, you were! We've been together too long! Well, I'll tell you now, this is your final warning. It wouldn't take much to push me over the edge! So don't try it, unless you're sure you know what you're getting into!'

  'I didn't know --' She stopped. She didn't know what? That his desire would be so raw and unforgiving, that his need would be so naked? But what had she expected? A man as masculine as Cal Fenton would hardly be otherwise.

  His eyes stripped across her. 'Well, now you do! I can't think what I can do to spell it out plainer. I only hope you're a quick learner!' Abruptly he turned and vaulted up into the Land Rover, starting the engine before she had even collected her wits.

  She got in leadenly and he let in the clutch. After a time he spoke, and his voice was cool and measured.

  'If we keep heading west,' he said, 'we should eventually hit the main loop-road through the park, then we can make our way back to the lodge.'

  She looked at him closely with her green eyes. How could his mood change so fast?

  When she did not reply Cal scowled across at her.

  'If there's one thing I can't stand, it's people who sulk.'

  'I'm not sulking, I'm thinking.'

  'What about?'

  'What do you think?'

  He drove on for a few more minutes. Then he rapped out, 'OK. I apologise. I'd rather that hadn't happened—but in my book you asked for it.'

  She turned his words over. ?It wasn't much of an apology, but she was surprised to get any at all.

  'I'm sorry, too. I guess I was acting like a schoolgirl.'

  His eyes went to hers, lingering across her face. His look was still hard. 'No,' he said roughly, 'not a schoolgirl. Unfortunately for me, definitely not a schoolgirl.' His eyes went back to the road, and his mouth crooked into a slight, self-deprecating grin. 'I somehow think we've lost that convent schoolgirl for good, somewhere along the way.'

  Later, many weary hours later, they found the lodge, and Frankie lay in a deep bath, soaking away her tiredness and reviewing the headlong events of the past two days.

  At least, she tried to, but her thoughts were like a rat on a wheel, a
nd they turned endlessly and unerringly back to Cal.

  She soaped a thigh. Cal's thighs were brown and muscled, she thought, and then swallowed at the memory of the way his hard body had assaulted hers, pushing her back against the Land Rover until she had longed to cry out in protest. Because that's what it had been, she knew—a deliberate, unrestrained assault, designed to frighten her off him.

  She frowned. He wanted her, she knew that for certain. And over the past two days something else seemed to have grown up between them, a whole new web of respect and awareness.

  Yet he seemed determined to keep her at arm's length, and she did not know why. He said it was her youth, her inexperience, but she sensed it was something else as well, something deeper, more primitive, that she could not begin to guess at. Or maybe it was something so simple that she could not bear to face it. Maybe there was a girlfriend waiting for him at home. After all, a man like Cal Fenton would hardly stay woman-less for long, and, although she had assumed his affairs were all fleeting, she actually knew nothing whatsoever about his private life.

  She yawned, despite her churning thoughts, and soaped her other leg. Maybe tonight, over dinner, she could unravel the mystery. She would pin her hair up, wear the dress that had hitherto lain forgotten at the bottom of her basket, get him in the mood to talk. . . She blinked as her vision began to blur and, realising she was so weary that she was almost fainting, she got out of the water and stumbled towards the bed.

  There she slept for hours, not waking until nine o'clock. Fumbling her way awake, she wondered why Cal had not called her for dinner. Then she saw the note pushed under the door. It was in the impatient black hand she was getting to know so well.

  Frankie, I'm not going to let them get away with it. I'm still going to get those pictures. I've had to take the Land Rover, but I should be back in a couple of days. Charge everything to my account. Cal.

  She read it twice, then sat slowly down on the bed. She felt bleak with disappointment, then a different feeling crept in. It was fear, deep fear for him and his safety. She remembered the shouting men with their menacing guns. If they caught Cal taking pictures of their activities they would hardly stop to think twice before they pulled their triggers. She shut her eyes, sick with dread, and the feeling closed like a blackness over her head.

  This morning she had known she had fallen in love with Cal; now she knew it was something much worse. She wasn't just in love with him. Being in love was a passion that could blossom and fade—a mere question of flaring desire and short-term obsession. Just the sort of thing, in fact, that any observant outsider could have predicted for her, had he seen the two of them rattling off into the wilderness together. She grimaced at the thought, and at the innocent, unthinking girl she must have seemed then.

  But what she felt for Cal was something altogether different. In him she had met her match, had found the one person who could make her whole; she did not know how she knew it, but she did, primitively and instinctively. And what she felt for him was love, real love, the kind that endured against all odds, and lasted for always. And the knowledge was like a huge, aching soreness in her heart.

  Because Cal had no use for love, he had made that perfectly plain, and, even if it were otherwise, what could he possibly see in her? The answer was crystal clear, in his countless gibes about her youth and inexperience. 'Oh!' She groaned bitterly at the memory. Cal, she knew, felt a fleeting desire for her, but what was that compared to the burden of her love for him? He was her man, he would be for always, he held her in thrall. And the worst thing of all was that there was nothing she could do to change that fact— no matter how furiously he rejected her, it would stay that way forever.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Two days dragged past. Frankie's thoughts were always on Cal. After the peace and silence of the bush, the game lodge, with its milling crowds and souvenir kiosks, seemed like Piccadilly Circus, but she had to do something to pass the time so she joined the game-viewing buses that left the hotel every morning and evening.

  Not that they ever saw much game, and any poor animal they came across was assailed by a battery of whirring video cameras. Animals watching animals, she thought, as people climbed and jostled across each other for the best view, and she turned her camera on her human companions rather than on the giraffes and gazelles that grazed near by.

  It was hard to sleep. The nights were hot and her dreams were troubled. On the third night she tossed and turned for hours until she slipped into a restless doze in which she dreamt that Cal was in trouble, crying out, but when she fought to get to him, she could not get near.

  'Oh!' She surfaced, crying and sweating, then sank back again, only to hear once more Cal's terrible cries.

  She opened her eyes, registering her room, but the cries were still there, real shouts of pain and terror. She shot up, wide awake now, every nerve quivering like a cat sensing danger.

  There was silence. Then it came again. Cal's voice, indistinct but terrible, coming from the next room.

  Without thought, she shot out of bed and into his room. It was dark, and thick with sweat and fear. She stumbled over bags and clothes that had been discarded hastily. Some time in the night Cal must have returned and flung himself carelessly into bed.

  Then the cry came again, its words urgent and indistinct. She heard muffled curses, then some clearer words. 'Leave me! I'm all right. Get to him --!' The tone of it made her blood run cold. She switched on the lamp. Cal lay naked in the bed, tangled in the sheet, his skin slicked with sweat. He was clearly ill. His face had a dreadful pallor, and his hand, extended, clutched convulsively.

  'Oh!'

  Frankie didn't know what to do. She looked around for a phone, but as she did so his body writhed and thrashed on the bed and his voice cried out, rising to the same pitch of agony. 'Damn you, I said leave me! Get to him—across the street—can't you see him?'

  'It's all right!' She spoke instinctively, with no idea if he could hear her or not. 'They're seeing to him. Don't worry!'

  He flung himself back towards her, catching at her wrist. His grip was like a vice. His eyes opened, but she could see at once that he was not seeing her, but looking straight through her to some terrible vision from the past. 'It just went up in his face. He took the full brunt --'

  'Don't worry. Everything will be all right.'

  'It should have been me—he pushed me back. It should have been me!'

  She shushed him like a child, easing him back against the pillows, feeling terrified and alone. When his body untensed again, and he let her wrist go, she snatched up the phone. A sullen operator told her there was no chance of getting a doctor tonight. In the morning Cal could be evacuated by air ambulance if necessary, he said, but his tone made it clear he thought she was making an unnecessary fuss about a touch of flu.

  'That might be too late! I have to do something now,' she shouted. 'At least get me someone I can talk to on the phone!' She slammed the receiver back down. Cal had flung himself face down again and was breathing with rapid, shallow breaths. She felt so helpless. She ran to the bathroom and fetched a cold flannel to sponge his face, but he was immediately covered in sweat again. His sheets were soaking.

  He flung himself away from her, cursing furiously.

  It was a fever. He must have caught a fever during his days out hunting the poachers. It was some ghastly tropical fever, and he was probably going to die of it! Panic gripped her as she bent to scrabble through his bag. After all, people did die, she knew it all too well. Her mother had gone out in the car and never come back. And her father had taken just one step too many towards an innocent-looking car that had blown up in his face.

  Blown up in his face. She froze. What had Cal said? it went up in his face. He took the full brunt.' Her heart raced as his fevered words echoed through her head, 'It should have been me,' he'd said.

  She shot round to look at him, as if by seeing his prone body she could read his mind. But the sight of him drove all thought from h
er head. He looked, if anything, worse. She had to do something, and fast. But what? She bent down again to his bag.

  'Oh!' Tears were fogging her eyes, making her blind search useless. She dashed them away, her frightened moans joining Cal's fevered exclamations. What was the point of loving people when they just went and died on you? That must be how Cal felt—after all, he'd probably seen more people dead than alive.

  She took a deep breath and struggled to get a grip on herself as she pulled out a wash-bag and began to rummage desperately through it, although what she was looking for she could not have said.

  There were the usual sticking plasters and antiseptic creams and a few items she wished she hadn't seen, and then at the bottom a brown plastic pot of pills. She was just squinting at the label when the phone rang.

  'Mrs Fenton?'

  'Yes?' She answered without a moment's hesitation. The name was now as familiar as her own.

  'My name is Dr Morton. I'm talking to you from Nairobi. I gather Mr Fenton is in a fever. Describe his symptoms to me.'

  The calm, measured voice was immensely reassuring.

  'Does your husband suffer from malaria, Mrs Fenton?' he asked, when she had finished.

  'He's—er—he's never said. We haven't been married long,' she added lamely, 'but I found some pills in his bag.'

  'Read the label to me.'

  She read out the long, scientific words.

  'Hmm, well, it's hard to be sure without being there, but I'm prepared to take a risk and say it seems like a straightforward case of malaria. Get him to take these according to the instructions and I'm sure he'll be back to normal fairly soon.'

  'Oh, thank you!'

  'You should see a steady recovery once he takes this medication. If his temperature is still as high in the morning, then we will have to think again, but I somehow don't think it will be.'

  'Thank you. I'm sorry you had to be disturbed.'

  'All part of the job. Goodnight, Mrs Fenton, and good luck.'

  'Oh, Dr --'

  'Yes?'

  'Is there anything else I can do for him?'