by Isobel Chace
Wonderful indeed! Sara had a vision of a beautiful little aeroplane, compact but very strong, bearing herself to all the magical places she had always wanted to visit. The Mountains of the Moon, for instance; Mount Kilimanjaro and Mount Kenya; the flamingo lakes of the north, with their population of magnificent pink birds, sometimes standing on both long legs, sometimes sleeping on one. There were so many places to visit!
Their arrival at the airstrip brought an abrupt end to her dreaming. At one end there was a hanger that housed the Auster and another larger aeroplane used for ferrying the whole family from one place to another. The ground was flat and fairly even, and someone had lit two parallel rows of flares along the take-off so that Matt could see where he was going. The flares were primitive wood torches, but effective, and very beautiful in the black night.
The African mechanic was still working on the Auster, checking the petrol level with a dip-stick.
‘Is it ready?’ Matt asked in Swahili.
‘Ndiyo, bwana,’ the mechanic replied.
He grinned curiously at Sara, his white teeth flashing in the darkness, and made some remark to Matt, who smiled too.
Sara looked up at him inquiringly.
‘He says you look as though you’d never flown before,’ he explained. ‘Excited, but a little cautious.’
Sara smiled too, and she hoped confidently. She never had been in an aeroplane before, but it seemed ridiculous to say so in this land where everyone flies from the moment they are born.
She looked curiously at the little Auster. It was as compact as she had imagined, but hardly as strong! The paint was peeling off in patches and it looked desperately insecure to her untutored eyes. Small, too! Two little seats in the front, bucket seats, she noticed, like those of a sports car, and a smaller one behind that would hold little more than a child.
She took a deep breath and sat in the seat allotted to her. Matt went round to the other side and climbed in beside her.
‘Okay?’ he asked.
She nodded. She was beyond speech. Urgently she tried to remember all that she had ever read or seen about travelling in an aeroplane. ‘Fasten your safety-belts!’ The phrase came to her mind and she searched for something that would answer that description. Her hands came up with two pieces of webbing with a complicated catch attached to the two ends. With trembling fingers she managed to do it up, but it was still far too slack. Whoever had last sat in the seat had been a much bigger person than she was ever likely to be.
To her relief Matt saw her difficulty and leant over to adjust it for her.
‘I hadn’t realized you were such a little thing!’ he teased, and to her dismay she could feel herself blushing and was glad that the lights from the instruments were not sufficient for him to be able to notice.
He started the engine and she could feel the vibration passing right through her. The whole aeroplane seemed as though it would be shaken to pieces. It would be more likely to crash if it was rigid, she told herself, and said it again to comfort her nervous body.
‘Frightened?’ Matt asked.
She managed a smile.
‘Of course not!’ she disclaimed, but she was. A tingling, exhilarating fear ran like electricity through her bloodstream. Beneath her she could feel the wheel jolting over the rough grass, and then they jumped, touched again, and back into the air. Her first flight had started.
She could see Matt’s strong hand on the controls and relaxed a little. He spoke into a microphone attached to his head gear, but she couldn’t hear what it was that he said. She no longer wanted to know. This minute little machine dancing through the clear night sky was the most wonderful experience of her whole life.
CHAPTER FOUR
Slowly they climbed higher into the black sky. Beneath her stretched the continent of Africa. If anything had been needed to convince Sara of the vastness of that great land mass it was this flight through the night. Occasionally she could see a fire lit by some travelling nomads, Masai perhaps, or the electric lights of some more civilized dwelling. But mostly there was just black nothingness.
As her eyes became more accustomed to the darkness she could make out odd shapes beneath her — the occasional hillock, a small group of trees, and once a number of animals grazing. Zebra, perhaps? Anything that her imagination cared to make them.
Matt took the aeroplane down a little when they passed over a native village where they were celebrating something with a dance. She could see the long lines of twirling figures in the firelight and wondered at their stamina when Matt told her that it would go on for hour after hour. For a moment she thought she caught the sound of their drums, but then they had moved on and the dancers became nothing more than a blur behind them.
For the most part Sara sat in silence, not liking to disturb the fierce concentration of the man beside her. She was only too conscious that her life was literally in his hands, and although she knew that he must have clocked in hundreds of accident-free flying hours, she had no intention of taking his mind off what he was doing.
It was he, therefore, who broke the silence. He was sitting back in his seat, his whole body relaxed, but his sensitive fingers always attuned to the slightest pull on the joystick.
‘A bit different from the VC10s and Boeings, isn’t it?’ he said.
‘Very,’ she agreed. ‘But better. More personal.’
His eyes met hers in the dim light and she knew that she hadn’t bluffed him at all, he was well aware that she had never flown before. A little chagrined, she wondered how she had given herself away. And then, as though he read her thoughts, he told her.
‘You can’t hope to pull the wool over my eyes with such a guilty look on your face!’ he said laughingly. ‘I shan’t hold it against you!’
She laughed too, a little uncertainly.
‘It wasn’t that I wanted you to think me more experienced than I am,’ she said anxiously. ‘I didn’t want you to be worrying about me, or — or to feel that you had to make it any easier for me than for — for anyone else.’
‘Message understood!’ he reassured her. ‘You don’t want any favouritism because of your uncle. But that doesn’t mean that you have to be any more spartan than any other girl would be.’
He smiled at her, a warm, gentle smile that softened his rather harsh features for a moment. Sara hastily changed the conversation.
‘Why are we going to Arusha?’ she asked. ‘Has someone had an accident there?’
He shook his head.
‘My cousin’s wife is expecting a baby and she should have gone down to Tanga or Dar-es-Salaam, but they were having labour problems on the estate and she put it off. It’s not due yet, but she’s having pains and Joe rang through to ask me to bring Cengupta over just in case.’
Sara’s professional side rebelled against these haphazard methods.
‘Isn’t there a doctor any nearer?’ she asked indignantly. ‘She should have had regular check-ups to make sure that everything is going to be all right—’
‘It’s just as quick for me to fly from here as for the doctor to get out to her from Arusha. And Cengupta has been over once or twice. That’s why I wanted him now,’ he added thoughtfully. ‘He thinks she’s in for a bad time.’
Sara could not help remembering that he had come into the hospital calling out her name, and she gave a little half-smile and he laughed.
‘I wanted you too!’ he exclaimed. ‘But Mrs. Wayne said you were at the hospital coping with an emergency, so I guessed that I couldn’t have you both! Karim says this sort of thing is in your line?’
‘Yes, it is,’ Sara agreed simply. She had no need to elaborate, for at that moment there was a complete understanding between them, and she knew that he would accept her word. It was pleasant to feel that for a few moments she was being accepted as herself and not as her aunt’s niece. She took a deep breath and said the first thing that came into her head.
‘Julia will be annoyed at your leaving her alone on her first evening
.’
It was casually said, but she knew from the sudden tightening of his mouth and neck that she had destroyed the moment.
‘I don’t suppose so,’ he said quietly. ‘She comes more to see Mother than anyone else. Her mother is mine’s first cousin and she has a share in the estate. Naturally she comes every so often to see what’s doing.’
He sounded reasonable and very much himself, but Sara bitterly regretted bringing the other girl into the conversation. She had the feeling that Matt thought she was prying into his private affairs, and she had had no intention of ever doing such a thing.
‘James brought her to the hospital,’ she heard herself saying. ‘He said she was your girl! She’s very pretty!’ she added, aghast at where her tongue was leading her.
Matt said nothing. Sara waited for the silence to become more comfortable, but it did nothing of the sort. Instead she grew steadily more and more agitated. At last Matt began to speak, quite quietly, but so that she could not help but listen to what he had to say.
‘I’ve known Julia all my life. We were practically brought up together, and we both play golf. Golf is probably the most important thing in Julia’s life. She travels from one club to another, picking up whatever games she can and usually collecting most of the cups. Then, when she’s hard up, she comes home to recuperate. That’s what she’s doing at the moment. It’s a question too of finance. It’s an expensive business belonging to every golf club in East Africa, so she has to have a fairly large income to do it. Every now and again she makes sure she’s getting every penny she’s due.’ He paused thoughtfully. ‘That’s the curse of these big family affairs,’ he went on. ‘Everyone always thinks that he could manage better than the chap who’s actually doing the job! Every improvement has to be fought in case one’s income is down a bit that year. If I didn’t cook the books a little, they’d slowly strangle the whole goose!’
‘I didn’t know you were related,’ Sara said in a small voice.
‘Oh, good lord, I have dozens of second cousins! So you can see why you have to be worthy of your hire, Nurse Wayne,’ he said sternly. ‘Fifteen hundred a year takes a lot of explaining!’
‘Fifteen hundred pounds!’ Sara repeated. ‘But I’ve never been paid anything like that in my life!’
The size of the figure momentarily stunned her, for she knew that on top of that the entire Wayne family was receiving free board and lodging from the estate.
‘It’s the customary figure for an experienced, fully qualified sister around here,’ he said, in a voice that brooked no argument. ‘You can be worth every penny of that to us in preventive medicine too. Karim Cengupta has all sorts of schemes in that direction.’
‘I should think so!’ Sara agreed in shocked tones. ‘You would need to get something for all that money!’
He grinned at her, amused by her thrifty reaction.
‘It’s not so very much when you’re dealing in hundreds of thousands,’ he said dryly. But to Sara it was more money than she had ever dreamed of possessing and she sat in silence mentally deciding how she was going to spend such vast wealth.
She was still half dreaming, half sleeping, when the little aeroplane began to lose height and Matt prepared for the touch-down. She struggled up in her seat so that she could press her nose to the window, but there was nothing very much to see. Then suddenly, beneath her, she saw the two lines of flares that had been lit for their arrival.
Matt spoke quickly into his microphone and they went down a little more quickly, causing Sara to swallow hard to keep her stomach from rising. It was very like the sensation of going down in a fast lift and she clutched the edge of her seat and shut her eyes.
But then, before she was ready for it, she felt the wheels jolt against the ground beneath them, and she knew that they had safely landed. They taxied forward towards an African waving two torches and came to a stop just beside him. He hurried forward and opened the door on Matt’s side.
‘Jambo, bwana! Jambo, memsahib!’ he beamed, and went on in a stream of Swahili that Sara had no hope of understanding.
‘We must hurry!’ Matt told her. ‘The child’s coming! Damn and blast Joe! Why couldn’t he have sent her down to the coast as it was planned!’
Sara picked up her bag and straightened her shoulders, allowing her professional self to take control. Often, in London, she had done this very same thing when she had been afraid or doubtful of her own skill, and it had never failed her. She became a machine — a well-trained machine capable of human effort, but not subject to human emotions and such things as fatigue.
Then she was ready, and without another word, she followed Matt into the house.
Perhaps because of the much higher altitude there were still some embers burning of a wood fire in the grate and they both automatically gravitated towards it.
‘I wonder where Joe’s got to,’ Matt said, almost as though this was a normal social call. ‘He might at least be here to offer us a drink!’
Sara shivered. It was ridiculous, she thought, to feel cold when she had braved many, and far worse, temperatures at home, but the cold clung around her, cooling her flesh into goose-pimples.
‘I’ll get the boy to make up the fire anyway,’ Matt decided firmly, ‘and while he’s about it, I’ll find out where everyone is.’
He went out of the room and Sara was left alone. There was complete silence in the house and she was unexpectedly nervous, listening intently for the slightest sound.
An African came in and bent over the fireplace. Sara was horrified to see that he had brought in a live coal in his bare hands and was busy blowing life into it, before he added other scraps of wood to make the fire blaze.
‘Your hands!’ she exclaimed, and seized them to make sure that he was unhurt.
The African laughed, a great belly laugh that released all the tension in the room. He picked up the coal and showed her that it was quite cool to the touch, not hotter than the soup plates her mother handled at home, even though she, with her more tender skin, usually found it wiser to use a cloth.
‘Hapana moto, memsahib,’ he grinned. ‘Not hot!’
Sara smiled back at him and he went back to his ministrations to the fire.
Upstairs she could hear Matt walking about and smiled to herself. This was a most unexpected family, she thought. Nothing was ever quite as she expected it to be. Certainly she had not expected to be flown hundreds of miles to find that her patient had disappeared and that there was nothing for her to do!
Matt came hurrying down the stairs again and she looked up expectantly as he came in.
‘Have you found them?’ she asked.
He nodded and reached out for her bag.
‘She’s in the guest-house outside. It seems she was in the garden when the pains began. Joe’s out there with her.’
He led the way out into the garden and down a long leafy path towards a mud and wattle building in the distance. There was a fragrant scent of flowers, mixed with moonlight and night air, and Sara wished that she could linger and enjoy this exotic peace. She had missed gardens more than she knew, in spite of the fact that her time in Tanzania could be measured in hours more easily than in days. It took a lot of effort to submerge that self beneath the mantle of her profession, but she managed it well and there was nothing to show how much she longed to be out in the night when they reached the guest house.
Matt rapped on the door and walked in without waiting for an answer.
‘Joe! It’s Matt! I’ve brought the nurse!’
A tough, ugly man came out of the inner room and grinned at the two of them.
‘I’d just about given you up,’ he said. ‘Marjorie’s in pretty bad shape. Could you come at once, nurse?’
Sara followed him quickly into the bedroom, taking off her cape as she did so. Matt followed with her bag, which he put down on a chair beside the bed. She made a signal for the two men to leave her, and leant over the bed.
‘Hullo, Mrs. Halifax,’ she said
gently. ‘My name’s Sara, I’m the nurse your husband sent for.’
Marjorie Halifax gave her a fleeting smile.
‘I should have gone down to the coast,’ she said. ‘If I’d known that it was going to be anything like this, nothing would have kept me here!’ She moaned and gripped Sara’s hand until it hurt.
‘You’ll be fine now!’ Sara said calmly. This was familiar ground to her. She could almost imagine herself back in the Maternity Ward in London, with the rain drizzling down outside, and the occasional screech of a London bus as it drew up at the stop just outside.
It was not an easy birth, but it was quite normal. In between the pains Marjorie told her about her life miles from anywhere, and Sara told her about her previous life in England.
‘You were a fool not to stay there!’ Marjorie told her. ‘If Joe wasn’t out here, I’d go back tomorrow!’ She muttered on about the labour problems and the difficulties of retaining her British way of life, tired out by the incessant demands she had made on herself to keep her dislike of the country from her husband.
Sara tried to comfort her, but at that moment nobody could. She wanted the rain and the green fields; the well-ploughed landscape of England and the centuries-old villages, buried deep in their traditions.
‘We’re due for leave,’ she confided. ‘Six months of heaven in England! Can you imagine it?’ And then with a touch of humour: ‘After four I shall be screaming to come back again, what with the people and the lack of servants! That’s the trouble with us settlers, we’re happy nowhere!’
But some people were. Some settlers loved the land they had torn out of the wilderness with a devotion that nothing could compete with. Loving each ugly, spiky plant because it grew on their land. Settlers like Matt for instance!
Sara brought her thoughts back to Marjorie and the coming child. Another Halifax, she thought. Would this one work for, or live off the estate? She hoped urgently that it would be the former. The new generation would be badly needed to carry on the tradition on the land.