Bewildered Heart

BEWILDERED HEART BY

KATHRYN BLAIR

MILLS & BOON LIMITED 17-19 FOLEY STREET LONDON WiA iDR

CHAPTER I one who, embarking on a ski-ride, is carried faster and faster, helpless to cry off once the venture is begun, Vernie Craig was being swung along in the express from Lagos in the direction of Murabai, a small station in a northern province of Nigeria. Large-eyed and perpetually breathless, she made no attempt to absorb more than a fraction of all that was alien and exotic outside the mosquito net which covered the window-space. It was enough to be here in the train, where life was luxurious and civilised, and to be nearing the junction where she would be met by Stephen. Staring, unseeing, at the blanketed outline of her companion, who had slept comfortably all through the dark hours, Vernie admitted to herself that she felt happier than at any time during the three months which had passed since her father died. Heat and a vague apprehension could not dull the excitement of travelling towards an African dawn and several months of primitive existence. Stephen hadn't wanted her to come. "I know it must be horribly lonely for you now that Father's gone," he had written, "but my contract will be up in six months and I shan't renew. In no time at all I shall be home, with you and Aunt Jo. The tropics are hard enough on a man women are apt to disintegrate. I've only had a year of it, but my digestion is already haywire. .. Oddly, it was this plaintive sentence which decided Vernie to give up her office job, book a passage, and bare her LIKE

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left arm to a doctor for the necessary inoculations. Stephen was her only kin; he deserved better than to be subjected to palm-oil cooking and tinned foods. In any case, she had promised her father's lawyer to take a long holiday, though he had demurred more than somewhat at her decision to join her brother. She needed to be invigorated, he had protested, not to live at oven-heat among men who resented women for their very scarcity. She had laughed at him as twenty-two does laugh at cautious fifty. She knew that Stephen, once she was installed in his house, would be overjoyed to have her. The railroad curved between bush-smothered hills and slowed. The other occupant of the sleeping-car raised her head from her pillow and rested it on her hand. "Good morning. Is this your halt?" "Nearly. It looks very wild." "Murabai is wilder. Not that I've ever been there, but you can judge by the size of the map." Her tropic-weary eyes moved over the fresh young face and the small hands which were tightly clasped round the band of the sunhelmet that reposed on Vernie's lap. "As far as I know, there are only four or five men there; the medical officer, a couple of traders, and other officials. You may not even find another woman. There are dozens of stations like Murabai, all of them the last word in boredom." "I'm going to keep house for my brother who's an agricultural scientist. I shan't be bored." The woman sighed. "I spend three months of every year with my husband, and each time I finish up thoroughly run down and screaming with nerves. Yet there are six women and eighteen men at Gamo." Vernie remained unimpressed. Africa does things to some people; the very air and strangeness possess a lure 6

which no amount of vicarious experience can shatter. Since the pleasant warmth on board near the coast of North Africa, she had lived through Accra, Freetown, and Lagos, and acquired the usual healthy respect for the cruel sun which rose unerringly and set swiftly in a wondrous copper vapour. "Take my advice," went on the listless tones, "and don't be persuaded to marry out here. There are numbers of men just aching to meet a girl with sufficient courage to stick the monotony and the climate, and you're bound to get proposals, even at Murabai. But don't be misled. That sort of marriage cracks up - if not here, then later in England." Vernie was tempted to put pertinent questions, but at that moment an attendant passed along the corridor calling, "Keleba Junction!" and two minutes later the train ran between low platforms which appeared to swarm with Africans in cotton blankets who jostled each other against the slowing carriages and yelled unintelligible demands. Vernie whispered a hurried good-bye to the yawning figure in the bunk, slung her helmet basket-fashion on her arm, and grabbed up her soft-topped suitcase. She stepped from the train and was instantly besieged. How cold it was, and how noisy! "Miss Craig! Has anyone seen Miss Veronica Craig? A little bit of a thing with yellow hair and blue eyes and .. ." - she was twirled into two tweed arms - "yes, the dimple is still at the corner of your mouth. Vernie, you look like heaven to me." "Stephen. Oh, Stephen!" She had to hang on to him for a minute because they were both remembering the day he left Southampton, when she stood beside the tall, beloved figure of their 7

father, waving to a receding ship. Then Stephen said, "They've heaved out your cabin trunk - I saw it. We'll have it shoved on the wagon and get going." It was not till he had distributed tips and exchanged the customary backchat with other local officials that Stephen was able to slip into the driving-seat beside Vernie and manoeuvre the box-car through mounds of dust to the laterite trail which ribboned for miles between parched grasslands. A merciless expanse of country that must become furnace-hot as the sun climbed higher in the steely sky. Now, the air had a curious nip which Stephen said was seasonal. "In a couple of hours it will be stifling, but by then we should be among the trees. Murabai is bush-country - not so healthy as this because of the fever-carrying insects - but more tolerable because in the humidity you sweat easily." "How long will it take to get there?" "Till nightfall - barring evils. I suppose it's no use telling you you shouldn't have come?" "Too late," she told him. "It's worth the journey just to see your funny crooked smile." "I hope you're not going to regret it." She detected suppressed anxiety before he added, "Tell me about England - the London shows and new books. You brought some novels and records? Bless you." They talked, and, because her attention was free, she watched him and noticed differences. Nothing superficial, for he was no less fair and good-looking, and his manner had all its erstwhile charm and affection. But once, when he looked her way, she saw a cloud behind his eyes and unfamiliar lines below them. A queasy digestion and the 8

climate might account for his slimness, but shadowed eyes were a sign of mental conflict. They made him appear older than his twenty-eight years. Vernie wondered. Bush stole upon them, knee-high scrub at first, followed by thin palms and stunted trees covered with little red nuts or sticky flowers. Among these they stopped for a picnic lunch, and soon after starting off again they came to the crenellated walls of a native town, where the language, tendered in ponderous greeting as the car slowly wound through a main street cluttered with oxen and pedlars in flowing rags, was an impure Arabic. "This is one of the last stops south for the cameltrains," Stephen explained. "You can buy almost anything except European clothes, but it's too far for us, and, anyway, the population is entirely African. I'll bring you here some time and we can camp at a rest-house. The Emir's palace is worth a visit, and with luck we'll coincide with the Hausa traders. They buy wonderful stuff up north and split up here to cover the district." The Mohammedan town was left behind and now they were in a young forest. At intervals of thirty miles or so rest-houses were posted, square mud dwellings with pointed thatched roofs, like native huts. By a modern stone bridge they crossed the river - dark, mysterious waters walled in by dense black vegetation - and shortly afterwards left the main track, which Stephen asserted was a first-class road, and right-angled into a wide path hacked, not long ago, from raw jungle. The hot day was dying. Stephen got back into his jacket and insisted that Vernie slip on her coat. "Can't afford chills," he said. "One of our chaps was invalided to Lagos only last month after pneumonia." "Haven't you a doctor at Murabai?" 9

"Yes, but only one. He's too busy with his Nigerian patients to spend too much time on us - it's easier to send us away for hospitalisation. I don't call him at all if I can help it." His tone, a trifle hostile, implied that Stephen and the doctor had little in common. "I'm longing to meet Bill Dyson," she said. He grinned. "You'll like Bill, but he's away just now, surveying. He's the perfect type for these parts - works fairly hard when he has to, gambles a bit, and always manages to wangle a tour when he's bored. Bill's almost unique. He never rows with anyone." Smilingly, she asked, "Do you?" His shoulders lifted and his fingers tightened over the wheel. "Not deliberately. When I feel poisonous I work. But with half a dozen men of varying temperaments thrown continually together there's bound to be occasional friction." "Aren't there any women?" she queried in dismay. She hadn't quite believed her companion of the train. "One - Mrs. Cricklade, wife of the forestry man. You'll make the acquaintance of the whole station this evening, except Bill. I've asked them in for after-dinner drinks, to give you a welcome." "How nice." Vernie quelled a tremor of stage-fright. "Will everyone be there ? " "Everyone except Peterson, the medical officer, who's away on his rounds. This territory is large for one man, but Clin Peterson makes the rounds of the villages without assistance. He would." "Don't you like him?" "Some time ago," Stephen answered, his gaze steadily on the road ahead, "he and I had .. . words. Since then 10

it's as though a stick of dynamite lay between us, waiting for a spark. He doesn't approve of your coming to Murabai." "Maybe I can win him over." Stephen's laugh was brief and unmirthful, but he made no further comment. Daylight ended suddenly. A wash of purple and gold in the strip between the tree-tops and then darkness and the first glittering stars. It was night and barely six-thirty. Moths frenzied in the car-beams and fireflies appeared in the branches on either side. The path widened, crossed a log bridge over a stream, and ended. To Vernie's unaccustomed eyes Murabai appeared a collection of large huts and smaller ones scattered over a circular clearing of about half a mile diameter. Lamplight filtered through the mana mats at windows and doors, and fires glowed in the open, silhouetting the negroid faces of the cook-boys. The cookhouse, Vernie learned, had burned down, and the new one was awaiting a wood stove. Stiffly, she mounted the creaking steps, crossed the narrow space which served as a veranda, and entered Stephen's living-room. The sun-dried mud walls were whitewashed inside, and so was the wooden ceiling. The furniture, sketchy pieces in rattan and local green wood, had a starved appearance, doubtless due to a lack of curtains, cushions, rugs, and homely ornaments. At each side of this central room was a bedroom. Stephen opened a door. "This one's yours, Vernie. Mrs. Cricklade lent the bed and helped me fix the chest and wardrobe. Think you'll be comfy?" "Of course." Her photographs and books would take the edge from the grimness. "When do we eat, Stephen? I'm famished." 1!

"As soon as you've changed. I told the boy to prepare a cold meal and serve it quick. Mind waiting till tomorrow for a bath? We use a tin tub on the veranda, and the boy draws the water from the river." "On the veranda!" He laughed. "At the side of the house, not the front. There's a grass matting cubicle with wire-netting over the top. Clin Peterson's house is the only one with a real bathroom - in fact, it's the only house that isn't a mud hut. Don't be long." But Vernie, hungry as she was, found it impossible to hurry. There was so much to examine and marvel at. The iron pedestal cradling a large enamel wash-bowl, and the pitcher full of murky water and covered by a square of muslin. The carbide lamps; the narrow steel bed roofed with close-mesh mosquito wire from which drapes of netting reached almost to the floor. A fearsome-looking haven. And in the wardrobe white termites scuttled into crevices, entrenched ready for the onslaught on her clothes. When she entered the living-room the boy who was setting the table paused, plates in hand, and surveyed her. Wordlessly, he conveyed his opinion that this was no place for a white girl and that as far as he was concerned there was still but one master in the house. The meal, consisting of tomato soup, cold sheep's tongues and vegetable salad, and fruit cocktail with cream, represented half a dozen precious tins from Stephen's store. The jaw-breaking bread rolls had been saved in a not-quite-airtight tin from the last baking; they tasted of mildew. Plainly, thought Vernie, here was work to do. They had coffee, and the boy cleared and brought a 12

trayload of bottles, sparklet, and glasses. Stephen got out boxes of cigarettes and produced his portable gramophone. He was not so nonchalant as he wished to appear, and Vernie would have liked to plead for his confidence. But this was, after all, her first evening at Murabai; she must not expect too much. The Cricklades were the first-comers. The man of average height and thickset, and his wife a faded, fretful woman of thirty. After eight years in Africa, Muriel Cricklade was afraid to face England without her husband. "I wouldn't mind looking more than my age," she complained to Vernie five minutes after squeezing her hands in greeting, "if I had something to show for the eight years abroad. Teaching in a country like Nigeria is great work for men, but we women have the thin end. We're useless." Vernie didn't quite agree, but could not summon the temerity to contradict one who had so much more knowledge of life and the tropics. Two other men arrived, a rather earnest young engineer named Wrightson, and the trader, Ramsey, who, bluff and red-faced, straightway confided to Vernie that if she needed any materials he was her supplier. Ramsey was one of those likeable men whenever "dress up" but are not without breezy good breeding. In all her time at Murabai, Vernie never saw him in anything but shirt and shorts, supplemented when need be by a very long machintosh. Wrightson, on the other hand, was as nervous as Stephen of offending "good taste". Both were in tropical lounge suits and looked unhappy about wearing a collar and tie. The room oozed with stored sultriness, but the veranda was too crude and confined for a party. 13

Stephen had poured drinks and the lively gossip was centred round Vernie, who stood in the middle of the room, a little flushed, her lips parted, her pale hair curling about slender, green-clad shoulders. "You're reminding us all of home," groaned Ramsey. "Daffodils and green grass and scudding cotton-wool in a pale blue sky. If Bill Dyson were here he'd peel off a scintillating verse to describe it." "We'll have a real binge when Bill comes back," promised Stephen. He looked beyond Vernie and acquired a small fixed smile as he took her by the elbow and turned her. "So you got back after all. Our doctor, Vernie. Clin, this is my sister." Clin Peterson advanced from the doorway and bowed slightly. His height and width of shoulders were startling, or perhaps the immaculate white jacket made them seem so. Vernie raised her eyes to encounter a shrewd grey stare. Immediately and without reason, a nerve stabbed in her throat. He was the antithesis of what she had imagined. Somewhere between thirty and thirty-five, his face lean and interesting rather than handsome, his mouth sardonic. His hair might have been a rich brown had he spared the brush and brilliantine; as it was, the crisp wave in front appeared dark and coerced into sleekness. "I'm happy to know you," he said. "We must do our best to make your stay pleasant and memorable." Memorable. Vernie had an idiotic desire to take a deep breath and repeat the word. It had a smoothness, like sunshine on still pastures. "Thank you," she answered demurely. "Do I curtsy?" 14

The hard features relaxed. "Not just now. Once a week - on Mondays, after breakfast." "What will you drink?" inserted Stephen. "Whisky and water, please." Clin nodded to the other men and solicitously inquired about Mrs. Cricklade's ailments. His glance moved over the walls and paused at the pink alabaster figurine which Vernie had placed on top of the bookshelves an hour ago. He hitched his trousers and sat down at her side in the rattan lounger. "I gather that Stephen has been painting a picture of me. The pompous doctor, conscious of his position and intolerably officious. He's prejudiced. It's only half true." "Why is he prejudiced?" she queried. "You're not a man who'd quarrel with subordinates. I've a nasty feeling-" "Have you?" he softly interrupted. "Nasty feelings are prevalent in the tropics. That's why it's the rule to swallow five grains of quinine every day, to drink water which has been filtered and boiled, and to rest regularly after lunch. It's a good plan, too, never to probe beneath your neighbour's surface, and to forget the sentimental side of life. That way, you get the minimum of nasty feelings and a modicum of comfort." "So you'd advise me to turn wooden for half a year?" "Not wooden - unemotional. If you really consider it necessary to share your brother's last few months here, do it sensibly. Men who choose to work near the Equator may be less susceptible than the average male when they're in England, but here, where an unmarried girl is a phenomenon, they're inclined to revere her as a deity . . . till a stronger urge takes hold." In Vernie's opinion he was being unnecessarily dicta15

tonal. "Is that why you're against my coming to Murabai?" "Partly; but there's also the question of fevers and the primitive conditions. I hoped you'd be the boyish, self-reliant kind; they're less complicated to deal with. You're hopelessly feminine.'' She got the impression that she had let him down and forced a revision of his original estimate. "I can whistle," she murmured in expiation, "and ride a bicycle." He smiled briefly. "Keep that high-school sense of humour. You'll need it - if only to combat the pests." He stretched a long arm to a table for his glass, and drained it. "I start out on my rounds tomorrow, but I'll arrange a dinner for you when I get back." "For me? How kind." "Not at all. It's my duty as an official from W.H.O." Chilling, but then he meant to repel: it wasn't his fault that he failed so utterly. Her laughter was warm and quiet. He got out his cigarette case, lifted a brow at her refusal, and slipped a white cylinder between his own lips. He was superbly at ease in the thick heat of the room, and she was certain his touch would be as cool as his appraisal of herself and the guests. An exasperating, calculated coolness, the result of years of self-discipline. Not the sort of man to whom it would be politic to lose one's heart; he'd have no use for anything so tender and demanding, nor would he be willing to yield a fraction of his individuality. Vernie pulled up. What crazy notions! Was the climate already exacting its toll of her sanity? Just when she supposed him a world away with his pa16

tients, he said, "What will you do when Stephen has to travel... stay with the Cricklades ?" "Why shouldn't I go with him?" "Because," he answered decisively, leaning back and inspecting the tip of his cigarette, "Stephen's work is trying enough for a man who's disillusioned and fed up. It wouldn't be fair to add the responsibility for your safety to his worries. I've been uneasy about him since soon after he came." Her eyes, wide and disturbed, sought and found Stephen. He was listening to Ramsey, but looking her way. "Why?" "You're his sister," Clin said brusquely. "I can't explain." "Perhaps I can help." " I f he wants you to know, he'll tell you. What I said about allowing your neighbour his privacy applies also to Stephen. For a man who loathes the tropics he's doing an excellent job, and you can help him best by being normal and companionable." His voice changed, lost the barbed emphasis. "I apologise for having talked like this on your first day. You're so much more intelligent than I anticipated that I've rather let myself go. If I hadn't been on the point of a tour, it could have waited a day or two." Foolish, but she had to make the inquiry. "How long will you be gone?" "Ten or twelve days - depends on the number of patients." He smiled with a faint, irritating twist of the lip that augured mockery, but a blare from the gramophone broke in, and Ramsey, who owned a deafening bass, began to sing. Stephen came over and perched at the head of the 17

lounger, and presently Wrightson joined them. Vernie could say no more to Clin till he rose to bid them all goodnight. And when he had gone and the others were disappearing through the compound, their voices blurring into the calm, scented night, she remained on the veranda, soaking in the magic of equatorial Africa, and conscious of a new, delicious riot in her veins. Not far above her head something rustled in the sloping thatch, and along the veranda rail darted a lizard, cross at being awakened from his slumbers. All around her breathed the warm, savage things of the earth. Her brother was at her back. "Tired, Vernie?" "I ought to be, but I'm not. Everything's so new and exciting. What is that heavy perfume?" "Frangipani. How did you like them?" "Your friends? They're grand." "You won't think so in six months' time." The moodiness in his voice struck her with instant contrition. How could she forget Stephen and his troubles so soon! She shifted and linked an arm in his. "The weeks will go quicker now that I'm with you. I'll watch over your food like a mother, and we'll brighten the house. It won't be a waste of money and effort because we'll get joy from it, and so will your successor. This place must have looked dreadful when you first moved in." "It did, but I could be blithe about it until . . . for a while." A silence grew between them. Then he said abruptly, "You had a long session with Clin." "He's not so formidable as I anticipated." "He has personality. When I came to Murabai he put me wise to a lot of things, and I was grateful. We were 18

friendly - went canoeing and shooting together . . . at least, he did the shooting and I went along." He hesitated, and in a swift glance she saw that he had paled and was biting at his lower lip. He drew away. "You might as well have it now as later," he said "Ten months ago I made a fool of myself, and Clin, in his cold, crisp fashion, told me what he thought of me." "But he likes you - I'm sure of it! Can't you bury whatever it was?" "Some things cut too deep." He was speaking rapidly, out into the night. "It happened in Keleba. The town is two miles from the junction where I met you this morning. Every year the Mayor there gives a ball, and all the foreign residents in the province are invited for a long week-end. It's due again in a couple of months - you'll be included this time." "And last year?" she prompted. "Clin had a room at the Residency, but I, being a newcomer, was housed with the Keleba education officer. The morning of the ball I went alone to the market . . . and met a girl." Venue's heart plunged. "Someone you'd seen before?" "No. She and I were the only white people in the market, so I naturally escorted her till she had made her purchases, and left her at the villa where she was staying. She was dark and lovely and beautifully dressed. Her name was Celia Carteret." "Stephen, you. .. fell in love with her?" "The whole way," he admitted bitterly. "She came to the ball and we danced together almost continuously. I was too desperate about having to return here the next day to question her about her background - that could 19

wait. About two in the morning I borrowed Clings car and took her home. I went into the house and had a last drink. Very indiscreet, but I was already determined to marry her. I made her promise to say good-bye to me next morning, and left her. When I came out to the car, Clin was in it, sitting at the wheel." Vernie's hand came up to her throat. "He'd followed you?" "On foot - it wasn't far. I got in with him and he drove out of town, and stopped. Then he let me have it." Stephen dropped the cigarette which had been smouldering between his fingers and ground his heel upon it. "Celia was the wife of a diplomat, Alan Carteret, who'd just been moved to Lagos. I was so stunned that I simply sat back and took it, but I did manage to grasp that I was contemptible, that only cads chase other men's wives, and that everyone was highly entertained by my lapse, including Celia. I raved a bit, told him that she would get a divorce and marry me, and h e . . . sneered." "Stephen, don't tell me any more... please!" "That's about all. I didn't see her again, and next day I came back with Wrightson. Luckily, Bill Dyson was sent here soon after, which eased the social position." "She . . . Celia . . . didn't deserve to have you love her. She should have told you from the beginning that she was married." "You can't blame her for my stupidity. She wore a circlet of diamonds on her finger, but I guessed it to be merely ornament. I knew that her father owned a sisal factory somewhere in West Africa, and that she was visiting friends; what more need I learn about her? I was too earnest... too devilishly sunk! " 20

Rage burned in Vernie, a womanly wrath against the creature who had had fun at Stephen's cost. No sisterly love could assuage his pain. She stood silent and suffered for him, the scene in the car between Clin and her brother vivid in her mind. At last she said, "Why should Clin Peterson rate you like that? Your mistake was pardonable." "He pretended to be concerned because of my newness to the country and the danger of my being dismissed, but I discovered afterwards that the business affected him more closely." She turned slowly. "How?" He shrugged. "Bill Dyson's been in West Africa for years and has learned a few things. Clin Peterson first became acquainted with Colin Carteret some years ago when they both happened to be in Lagos, where Celia was living with her father. Clin was attracted to her, but he'd just been given an important district and wouldn't take a wife into the bush. He chose his career in preference to marriage, so Celia married Carteret out of pique." Vernie did not know that her breathing had lost rhythm. "I can't believe any woman would do that. Clin was at the ball, too. Didn't he dance with her . .. show any signs?" "Clin's too cold-blooded to fall headlong for anyone. If he has any emotions they're well battened down. He no longer wishes to be in love with Celia, so he isn't. Simple, isn't it?" His wry resignation revealed much; Stephen had never succeeded in banishing Celia Carteret. His happiness had been wrecked by a single day's affair with an unscrupulous woman. The wife of Clin's colleague was the "stick of dynamite" which lay between the two men, and as far 21

as Vernie could judge, there was no means of removing it. "It's rotten for you," said Stephen, "having to imbibe all this tonight, but we won't dig it up again. You see now why I can't contemplate the humiliation of friendship with Clin. I hate him." Restlessly, he went down into the garden, and lifted to her a face that was haggard in the pale radiance of the stars. "With you here it will be easier to ignore him. I haven't entered his house for ten months. I'm not forbidding you to go there, but I'd rather you didn't. You do understand?" "Of course," she replied quietly. "I'm so terribly sorry about all this, Stephen." "You're a pet," he said, equally low. "Don't brood about it. Go to bed now. Good night, Vernie." She answered him and walked into the disordered living-room. Mechanically, she collected glasses and ashtrays and pushed back the chairs. For a second she peered into the tumbler from which Clin had drunk, as if hoping for some clue to a problem that bristled with enigmas. A hundred years had passed since this morning. Her loyalty to Stephen was stronger than ever, but she felt as if the whole focus of her existence had received a severe jar. Undressing, she tried to fill in the blanks in Stephen's confession, but always she came up against the impregnable wall of Clin Peterson. She saw the grey eyes, aloof and cynical, the high-boned nose with well-cut nostrils which once during their conversation had twitched with amusement; the arrogant mouth and the narrow cleft chin. A man so accustomed to command that doubtless he knew no other approach. Somehow, she could not reconcile Stephen's explana22

tion of Clin's relationship to Celia Carteret with what she knew of the man. True, one meeting was small basis for building a man's character, but she was sure that jealousy had no part in his make-up, for the plain reason that he had never been in love. Drawn to a woman, maybe, but no more. Astonishingly, this conclusion gave a lift to Vernie's step as she hung away her dress. She would be gay with Stephen, drag him back to the days in which they had argued together about music and books and a thousand trifles. The time would slide by, and all too soon they would be packing the cabin trunks and tin boxes for home. All too soon! An unaccountable twinge of dread brought Vernie to a standstill in front of the oldfashioned swing mirror on the chest. The damp-streaks were a warning, but her own young face shone through them, pink and sparkling with health. Had the invulnerable doctor allowed himself to compare her complexion with the tropic-sallow skin of other women? She drifted to the window and sniffed at the cooler air which percolated through the grass screen. Again the mocking-sweet exhalations of frangipani, but now they mingled with the cold bitter tang of some other plant which thrived close beside it, in Clin's garden.

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CHAPTER II BY daylight, Murabai lay breathless within an arm of jungle. The village covered much more space than Vernie had imagined in the darkness, for along its centre ran a wide, beaten earth track, and each of the dozen mud houses, six on either side of the road, was a hundred yards from the next. The dwellings followed a pattern which, though crude, nevertheless dealt as effectively as possible with midday heat and storms. All were raised on corpulent mahogany piles and had corrugated iron roofs covered with a foot-thick grass thatch which came right out to shelter the narrow little verandas. The doctor's house, smooth and white, the thatch alone the work of a master-craftsman, appeared, by contrast, palatial. All round its half-acre garden stretched a low white wall enclosing lawns and flowering shrubs and trees. One gained the impression that the road had been formed to lead to it, and that the other houses had been dropped on the wayside as an afterthought. The Cricklades lived across the road, and so did Wrightson, and the other houses were empty and some of them crumbling. For the first day or two after Vernie's arrival Stephen stayed at home with her, but the third morning he had to set out by motor-bike for a farm twenty miles away. With misgiving she watched Mahdu pack tins of beans and Irish stew into the "chop" box. "Next time," she said, "I'll prepare your day's food 24

myself, and if I can help it you won't have any tins to open." "I shall probably bring these back intact. The farmers are always anxious for me to taste their produce." "What sort of produce?" "Iburu or sorghum, with some sort of meat and peppers." "They sound outlandish. Who cooks it?" He laughed. "The wives, I suppose. A boy brings mine to the hut and afterwards I'm expected to make a speech, praising the meal." "I wish I could go with you." "Not this time. A lot of the way is merely a footpath and I have the deuce of a job to keep going. Think you'll be happy with Mrs. Cricklade?" "Of course. The bath will be ready for you at six." He bumped away in an upheaval of dust, and Vernie went indoors to find that it was only seven o'clock. The breakfast table had been cleared and Mahdu was cleaning the living-room, the expression on his bronze features so pained that she knew he was again disapproving her additions to the room. As on the two previous mornings, he grouped her ornaments and photographs together on the centre of the table and left them there. Smiling to herself, Vernie rearranged them. The newness of her surroundings was already fading. She had investigated every corner of the three-roomed abode and shuddered with silent horror at the pantry. Hard to believe that Stephen, who had grown up as she had in a quiet Sussex town under the immaculate eye of Aunt Josephine, could tolerate the dismal, shabby place. The fact was, the poor darling just didn't care enough to notice that ants were destroying the shelves which held 25

his food store; that the unused china and glassware were glued together with horrible-smelling green mould; that the grass blinds shed the dust of rot with every zephyr; that the clothes in his wardrobes were perpetually damp; and dozens of other appalling signs of neglect. And the bathroom! It was no joke to step from the gritty tin tub on to a lizard and to feel oneself the cynosure of a million eye-slits in the laced grass walls. Yesterday, she had said as much to Muriel Cricklade. "Terrifying, isn't it?" the woman had agreed. "Why don't you do what I do - have the bath dragged into your bedroom?" "But surely that makes the bedroom even damper - the steam, I mean?" "My dear child, you'll never get a bath hot enough for that - nor want it." Vernie, as yet unaccustomed to ordering a boy to do her bidding, had decided instead to humanise the bath cubicle. To start with, she would have it roofed with wood, and perhaps Mr. Ramsey could suggest a cheap material for draw curtains along the walls. A grass bath mat would be better than none at all. With the idea of commencing operations on this most necessary of all rooms in the tropics, Vernie changed from her house overall into a pink-flowered print, left the pale hair loose about her shoulders, and regretfully crowned it with a sun-helmet. Outside the house she paused in the tiny span of shade afforded by the extended thatch to pat the white dog which had curled for sleep close to the step. He was obviously a dog with personality and a craving for companionship, for her touch brought an innocent-seeming smile to his square jaw, and he followed her to the trader's house, and 26

sat guard till she came out again. Refreshed by a cool drink and Mr. Ramsey's promise to obtain everything she wanted, Vernie had no taste, at the moment, for the company of the teacher's wife. Muriel was too slack, too jaded, and Vernie liked to sip each experience with an unseasoned palate, and to know all the little shocks of delight and terror for herself. The white Arab dog, as though protesting that this was no time to take a walk - he preferred his exercise at sunset, after a dish of bones - pelted round her ankles in mad circles. "You're anybody's dog," she told him scathingly. "Go back to your master, whoever he is." He barked, pretended to nip her shoe, and bounded on. "All right," she said resignedly. 'This is more your country than mine. Lead on." He took her between hairy oil palms, digressed into a bamboo thicket, came out again and loped on, ready to hasten back if she halted. Enveloped in a blanket of steam, Vernie began to remember Stephen's warnings. "Never do anything you don't have to. Don't wait till you're wringing wet and the blood starts pounding in your temples before concluding that you've had enough." But she'd only been walking ten minutes! "And don't let your Sussex upbringing mislead you into lying on the grass," Stephen had added, "or in a second you'll be swarming with a hundred varieties of insect, not to mention the risk of scorpion and snake bites." These shoulder-high strands of elephant grass hardly invited the weary or the day-dreamer. Looking back over her shoulder, it was difficult to trace how she had entered the forest of palms and mahogany and kapok. It towered behind and about her, threaded with the ineradicable liana, 27

whose roots rippled in and out of the undergrowth like puff adders, and sent out long pale green tendrils as thick as a man's finger. She had to follow the pest of a dog or get lost. Then, quite suddenly, she was at the river's edge, clinging to a tree whose roots clawed out into mid-stream. Twenty yards to her right was the log bridge over which she had travelled with Stephen. Vernie took off her hat and used the back of her hand to dislodge some of the moisture from her forehead. She drew a hanky from her pocket, and crouched to dip it. "Now, now!" Startled, her arm tightening round the tree, she twisted towards the reproving sound. For a minute her gaze encountered only dazzling, sun-dappled greenness with a khaki blur in the centre. The blur acquired an outline, the well-proportioned figure of a man with rough black curls and a brilliant smile. He had found a tree-stump to perch upon and was inclined forward, elbow on his knee, and chin in hand. " 'And she shall lean her ear'," he quoted, " 'In many a secret place where rivulets dance their wayward round.' That was written about England. Never be tempted, sweet Veronica, to bathe your brow in the germ-breeding waters of the Kali." "It says much for my presence of mind that I didn't fall in head first when you exclaimed. Are you Bill Dyson?" "The same," he said blithely. "A great help, isn't it, that we're so well acquainted already?" He took it for granted that her brother had eulogised him. Well, it was true enough, except that Stephen had understated the good looks and altogether ignored the con28

Sciential ease which mantled the Honourable Bill Dyson. For Vernie swiftly recalled that this man who needed a hair-trim and a shave was the younger son of an earl. She got up, and Bill did the same. "Stephen thought you'd stay away till the weekend," she said. "So did I, but the bus gave trouble every day. I left it three miles back and walked. How do you like the hamlet?" "Murabai? Very much, so far." "That wasn't a fair question." He gave her an insouciant grin and held up an overhanging branch so that she could pass through to the road. "Stephen didn't prepare me for the accent on prettiness." Vernie had it in mind to remind him that such a compliment in the bush had less than the value of a bubble. But he inquired, "How long have you been here ?" "Three days." "Had a party yet?" "Everyone came in on my first night. Stephen was waiting for your return." "Of course he was. I suppose he's out today or I wouldn't have surprised you looking like a very English nymph peering into fathomless waters," She smiled, enjoying his facility of speech. "Do you often quote Wordsworth?" "Only when deeply moved," he confided. "I should have finished it: 'And beauty born of murmuring sound shall pass into her face.' Immortal Veronica!" His jesting tone and crumpled khaki drill robbed his manner of extravagance. He sauntered at her side as if this were a country road in England, edged with oaks and hawthorns, rather than a red rut in the jungle. 29

"I'm glad you came," he said, "if only for six short months. We'll have fun, and between times we'll be serious. In both moods I shall make love to you." "Why?" "Because I shan't be able to help it . . . and because I'm quite sure" - with a disarming wrinkle of amusement - "that you'll require relaxation and respite from palm oil and coconuts. Hullo, there's Bates." Vernie couldn't see anyone. "The dog," he explained. "His pedigree is tarnished, or he'd have been named Montmorency." She laughed. "It was he who led me to the river. Is he yours?" "He was." He pulled the white dog's ears and thumped his ribs. "I'm afraid that Bates is partial to the ladies. Except pie dogs, he's the only hound in these parts. Others can't survive the climate, but Bates goes on for ever. He hasn't any time for me now. You seem to have floored him... and small wonder." Vernie went on smiling. Bill put the heat and the pests in their places. One sweated and doctored one's bites and headaches, but every situation had its point of humour. To that extent his philosophy matched Vernie's. "Is Clin at home ?" he asked. "No, he left on his rounds two days ago." "So everything's quiet." "That sounds sarcastic. Don't you like him?" Bill shrugged. "I don't dislike him. In fact, when we're both here I visit him fairly regularly. Attraction of opposites, you see. He considers me a bit of a rake." Murabai opened before them. Bates was already stretched out at the foot of the steps belonging to the second house on the left. 30

"When he sidles into your place - as he surely will if he has dog-sense - kick him out," said Bill. "Otherwise he'll tag on to you for good. If he were a more presentable member of the species I'd give him to you." "He's rather a darling," she conceded, "and very knowledgeable." He flashed at her the engaging smile. "He's grown that way through contact with me. We'll share him, shall we?" With a foot on the bottom step, he added, "It's me for a bath and a few hours' sleep. I'll come up for a drink when Stephen gets back this evening. All right?" "Make it dinner?" "Thanks. So long." Vernie answered him as gaily and went on. Bates, a parched and weary Bates, straggled at her side. She heard Bill's laughing, "I told you so!" before he disappeared into his house. The dog was given a pan of water, and he collapsed under Venue's chair, unable to rouse himself even to snap at the flies that worried his nose. The hours slipped pleasantly by. Muriel Cricklade came over for tea, bringing with her some sewing which she left untouched in her lap, and a spate of plaintive advice which Vernie imbibed, but not very gravely, though she did wonder, rather pityingly, why a woman like Muriel should have married a schoolteacher who worked in Africa. She was so obviously provincial England, and unadventurous besides. Come to that, Vernie was provincial herself, but her candid young heart responded to alien excitement and, in any case, her stay was confined to a bare half-year. Furthermore, she was free of emotional ties; at least, she hoped so. But she did gain some culinary ideas from the other 31

woman, and when Muriel had folded her sewing and trailed away, Vernie called Mahdu and told him there would be three for dinner this evening. "And no tinned food, Mahdu, not one single tin! " The boy looked mystified and slightly huffed, but when she sent him to the river to gather bamboo shoots, he willingly left her in charge of the tiny kitchen. She turned into the screened-off portion that was the pantry, and once again surveyed the shelves. A small and priceless sack of white flour, a larger one of corn meal, canisters of dried fruits, rice, cocoa, brown and white sugar. Yesterday she had made a homely rice pudding. In her zeal to eliminate tinned milk she had used a pint of native goats' milk - and decided never to repeat the experiment. Stephen had choked and laughed at her chagrin, and Mahdu had considered her quite mad to tip the whole of the aromatic mess into his gourd; it tasted good with dried fish. Vernie was determined to risk no such fiasco this evening. Bill, she was sure, would be immoderately amused if half the meal were uneatable and she was forced to open cans in his presence. The piece of venison bought this morning from a Nigerian had been slowly braising out in the brick oven for nearly three hours, but Muriel said venison was tasteless unless one added a strip of pork and some onions. Vernie possessed neither, but she did find a carton of dried herbs and some curry powder. Quickly, she went to work. She drained most of the stock from the venison for a soup basis, and cut the meat from the bones and diced it. The soup was completed by the addition of herbs and seasoning, and to the remainder of the stock she added a teaspoonful of curry powder 32

mixed with the same quantity of corn meal, a couple of peppers and a few sultanas. Tonight the rice was boiled in water with a pinch of salt. Soup, curried venison with rice, fresh fruit of the squashy variety grown hereabouts, bread rusks, and soft cheese. Muriel had said, "Some people eat bamboo tips, but I never risk anything that grows near the river unless it's cooked." When Mahdu brought the armful of short green spears, Vernie examined them eagerly. She trimmed one, snapped it between her fingers, and took a small bite. Deliriously young and tender, an ideal substitute for celery with cheese. But perhaps it would be as well to add a dash of antiseptic to the water in which they were washed. Surprising how accustomed one grew to that faint flavour of antiseptic with raw foods. Presently, Vernie bathed off her perspiration and changed her dress in a haze of private satisfaction. Stephen had asserted that it was impossible to produce a square meal without recourse to tins. This evening, and often thereafter, she would prove him wrong. He came in tired but pleased to be welcomed. When Vernie told him that Bill was home, he brightened still more. "What do you think of him?" "He's nice. I've invited him to dinner." "Good. I was certain you two would get on together. Bill's not the traditional bad hat - he simply disagreed with his father over the choice of a profession. He would only have taken to the Navy if they'd let him have a ship of his own to sail where he pleased! Lady Maunham writes to him every mail. She adores him." Vernie could believe it. The scamp of a family is often 33

the most lovable. Bill was demonstrably popular with both sexes, and perhaps just a scrap callous of his effect on them. Yet she had a feeling that he replied regularly and affectionately to his mother. "Perhaps he'll go back some day," she said. "Bound to," Stephen answered with conviction, and heaved up out of his chair to take the cool dip his prickly skin craved. There was no handshake or slapping of shoulders when the two men met. Bill said, "Hi, Stephen, you work fiend." And Stephen replied, "Balked your tour, you lazy dog." After which exchange the atmosphere became magically exhilarating, as if a benevolent wind had carried away the heat of the day. And the meal, if the men were to be believed, was the most appetising either had eaten in years! A couple of evenings later Vernie and Stephen gave their party. With much care and apprehension she prepared dinner for seven from three wild fowl, white beans, dehydrated potatoes and butter, a basket of tiny tomatoes, mangoes and home-made bread. She worked hard on the table decorations and opened a precious box of candies purchased in Lagos. The small living-room, now that some of Mr. Ramsey's flowered cotton hung at the windows, was as homely as she could make it. But it was Bill Dyson, in white shirt and trousers with a bizarre cummerbund at the waist, who transformed an ordinary meal in the wilderness into a man-sized binge. Without much clowning or ostentation, he gave rein to his genius for liking people and making them like him and one another. A little more sincerity, a little more drive, and he would have made a grand leader of men. So 34

thought Vernie, in her dispassionate innocence. Stephen, aware of Bill's interest in his sister, was proud and glad. Deeply ingrained in him by Aunt Josephine's kindly autocracy lay a black-and-white sense of the fitness of things. Bill's place was at Maunham. He was second in line to the earldom, and even if he never succeeded, his name was old and honoured, and mere possession of it entailed inescapable duties. Bill ought to marry, and marry for love. A pure, self-effacing love was the astringent his debonair nature needed, and who more likely to inspire it than Vernie? It would be good to see her married and safe from such embittering experiences as his own with Celia Carteret. When Vernie had been eight days at Murabai she wrote her first long letter to her aunt in England. There was so much to say yet her pen remained poised and the notepaper blank. How could one ever translate into prose the gargantuan trees, the metallic sky and theatrical moon; the house, insects and snakes; the steamy morning mists and the strange hush and perfume of evening; above all, the perpetual bone-melting heat? Vernie shook her head and at last began to write. The letter took two hours and all her energy. Once a week the mail went by box-car to Keleba Junction. Wrightson made the trip one day and returned the next, bringing back with him anything which might be awaiting collection at the junction. Mrs. Cricklade occasionally grumbled about the long intervals between mails from England, but no one else seemed to care. The remoteness of Murabai, the strange calm that gradually drugged the senses to the outer world, descended upon almost everyone in time. There were still no signs of a stove for the communal 35

cookhouse, but since the crevices in the makeshift brick oven behind Stephen's house had been filled in with red mud, it cooked excellently. Vernie even produced a delicious chocolate layer cake. The element of uncertainty added a minor thrill to the art of cooking. There came a morning when the village presented a subtle change in aspect. Boys were sweeping the doctor's house while others scoured the judicial tables and chairs. A motley queue began to form, and Wrightson, harassed and important, broke it up and told the waiting villagers that their complaints must keep till tomorrow. The Fulani women, those proud creatures of beautiful carriage and pale skin, did not appear today with their bead and basket work, their fresh corn cobs gathered from the field at the riverside. Vernie saw it all from her modest veranda and concluded, with an odd acceleration of her heartbeats, that the doctor was once more in residence. She was flooded with recollection, chiefly of baffling grey eyes and a firm, slightly contemptuous mouth. When Stephen came home from an inspection of local experimental crops, she noticed that the wryness had slipped back into his expression, and guessed Clin's arrival to be the cause. Straightway he said, "It's usual on the day Clin comes home to go over to his house at six for cocktails. All the others do it, but I don't. Go if you'd like to, Vernie." Her blood coursed warmly, and then cooled. "Not without you," she said quietly. He looked grateful, but made no answer. After all, thought Vernie, she had come to Africa to make things easier for Stephen, not to hurt him by forming dangerous friendships; his peace of mind must have precedence over 36

her own inclinations. Nevertheless, she did envy Bill and Mr. Ramsey, the Cricklades and Wrightson, as they drifted up to Clin's house. She didn't want to declare Clin an enemy if she could help it. But the very next morning she was called upon to make the decision. Mr. Ramsey had provided local women with raw sisal which they had undertaken to dye green and red and convert into mats and blinds for Vernie. A Hausa woman brought news that the sisal was ready for weaving. Would the missus please come and choose her patterns ? So Vernie put on her helmet and followed the woman along one of the footpaths through the forest to the next village. The lengths of dyed sisal were spread beneath the wide branches of a baobab tree: the peculiar red from which the African never seems to exclude a hint of magenta, and two shades of green; a rather tender, willowy tint, and the same somewhat intensified. The patterns, on cartridge paper presumably provided by the resourceful Mr. Ramsey, were surprisingly tasteful and suited to the colouring. Vernie made her choice, and wished she knew the native tongue, so that she could put discreet questions. That hut over there, for instance, with the skin karosses hung over the doorway and walls, might belong to the headman of the village. Did the three huts near by denote three wives, and was the fat piccanin licking cassava pap from a gourd one of his offspring ? As she watched, the skins were drawn and held aside, and a Nigerian came out, a stalwart in white shorts and a blue shirt. Even as her pulses quickened to the familiar khaki jacket, Clin himself appeared, talking easily in Hau37

sa to the middle-aged headman. No pidgin for Clin. He saw her, ended the interview with unceremonial haste, and came over to where she stood beneath the baobab. Unconsciously, her hands had clenched at her sides and the smile she lifted to his abrupt greeting strove to be offhand and conventional. "I hardly expected to meet you in the village," he said. "It was unwise of you to come alone." "At ten in the morning?" "At any time." His eyes looked darker than she remembered, or they had changed with his thoughts. She indicated the drying sisal. "They're making some mats and window-screens for me. I came to approve the colours and select patterns." Quite pleasantly she added, "No one told me it was necessary to get permission before entering the village." She couldn't be sure whether he suppressed the faintest of smiles or a quirk of impatience. "It isn't, but if you need to come here again call one of my boys to accompany you. Are you ready to leave now?" Without waiting for her acquiescence, he sent the boy on ahead and walked at her pace across the clearing, to a footpath that was wider and more trodden than the one by which Vernie had come, but narrow enough to cause an occasional brushing of his sleeve against her bare arm. For two or three minutes they progressed in silence. Then he remarked, "I hoped you'd call in with the others yesterday. In a tiny community such as ours it's more or less essential that we should all gather under one roof as often as possible. It ventilates the social atmosphere." "I'm sorry," she said, annoyed to sound lame. "Ste38

phen had had a long day. He was tired." "You could have come with the Cricklades." "I didn't think of it." "Would you have come if you had thought of it?" " I . . .don'tknow." A pause, during which he disposed, with the heel of his shoe, of a scorpion. Vernie caught his quick glance of exasperation at her unstockinged ankles and prepared herself for a rebuke. But apparently the incident had been too small to sever his train of thought. "Supposing you atone for it and have a cooler with me now?" Dare she? Need Stephen know? Did he really intend her to hate Clin as he himself professed to? The string of queries chased in gleams and shadows across her face, and indecision clouded her eyes. The trees ended, and only a few yards ahead swung the back gate to Clin's garden. "Well?" he said, a hard note in his voice. "Thank you, b u t . . . no. I . . you see . . . " She was becoming too angry with herself to think clearly. Angry with herself, yet unconsciously she blamed him for his stiffness and formality. He must be aware of her reason for hesitating, her concern to please Stephen, yet he chose to ignore it, as if her brother were nursing a grouch too childish for discussion. Vernie was loath to admit it, but his insensitiveness pained. "Yes ?" he prompted unhelpfully. "I'm sure you have no time for visitors in the morning," she managed. "Normally, no. But I've just promised to open the surgery at noon, which gives me a free hour or so." He left it there, as if expecting a further reply. 39

Vernie gazed at the frail sprays of smilax that drooped over the cement wall. It was much too hot for the poor things, though the palms did their best to lean over and lend their green umbrellas. She went on walking with Clin on one side and the wall on the other, wishing he would indicate his understanding of her problem. Instead he looked grimmer, and very cool. "Very well," he said curtly, "drinks are off. Which evening would be most convenient for the dinner-party?" "Oh." Was his persistence deliberate, or was he unaware that she knew the nature of Stephen's malaise and his own part in it? "You mean a party for me? But we had one while you were away. I've been here nearly a fortnight now, you know. Quite an old hand." "So I believe," with some dryness and a flickering glance over the fading rash on her unprotected forearms. "I mentioned before I went on my rounds that I'd give a dinner for you." "Please don't think me ungrateful. . ." "When I want gratitude," he cut in, halting and facing her, "I'll go down on my knees and beg for it. It's my duty to offer the courtesy, but you have every right to decline. I take it you wish to be excluded from any social affairs at my house?" This was incredible. If only he'd soften just enough to encourage her to talk about Stephen. But he stood in front of her, inflexible as steel, his bearing demanding an unequivocal response. "Perhaps that would be best," she ventured unhappily. Why didn't he go, disappear into the lovely, frangipanismelling garden and leave her alone with the nasty little wound of his making ? 40

"I agree," he said. "It would be best. But if you're in need of anything, or confronted with any kind of trouble - apart from the emotions - please let me help." His demeanour businesslike, he went with her to Stephen's house, bade her good-bye, and strode back up the road. Vernie slipped into the living-room. She was strangely tired. Apart from the emotions. Clearly he had intimated that he had no intention of discussing Stephen, and in the same four words he had made it painfully obvious that what feelings remained to him after several womanless years in the tropics were determinedly under control. She got out a glass and filled it from the Berkefeld. It was not till the water splashed right over her wrist that she knew she was trembling.

41

CHAPTER III fronds outlined against a moon-dazzled sky, express an exotic wonder. When the air also vibrates with muted drum-beats and chanting and carries with it a blend of heady perfumes, you have the familiar tropical night which makes tolerable the heat and natural nuisances of the day. Bill Dyson, sprawled on Stephen's veranda and thus cramming its narrow width, gave a sigh of resignation and contentment. "Bates snores beautifully, doesn't he? It's one habit he learned himself, without help from me. Are you fond of Bates, Veronica ? " "A little, but I prefer dogs to be more doggy. Except when he's sleepy he considers himself nearly human." "An extraordinary hound," he agreed, "with large perceptions. You notice how he divides his time between us ?" "Thereby gaining two dinners instead of one," inserted Stephen, from Bill's other side. "Each being a reward for devotion," came the tranquil conclusion. "Bates is not base, Stephen; he's a dog with a fixed and very sound object. I would I were as tenacious of the worthwhile things in life." "Such as good food and the best cushion?" inquired Vernie lazily. "Such as security, and a pretty girl to share it," he corrected her, with severity. "And much more besides." "Underneath the poppycock," stated Stephen, "you're a conventionalist." PALM

42

"Don't we all, at times, envy the man who has stayed at home and grown roots? He has a sight more to show than we have." "Bill's feeling his age tonight," laughed Stephen, agreeably impressed by the other's dissatisfaction with himself and his conditions. He pushed up out of the canvas chair. "Cheer him up, Vernie, while I finish my report." For a few minutes the subdued notes of his whistling came through the door-screen; then it dimmed right out. "Submerged," commented Bill. "Millet, sorghum, yams, maize, cotton, palm oil, copra, and what have you. Your brother's conscientiousness appals me, Veronica. What difference whether he shows an increase on the yams and fewer bales of cotton?" Her eyes rather remotely trained upon the slivers of lamplight which penetrated the coral vines in the doctor's garden, she smiled. "Why do you pretend to despise sincerity, Bill?" "Possibly because it's a quality I covet," he answered lightly. "Sour grapes is the usual reason for belittling anything, so they say." He twisted more her way, his tone teasing. "You're very young and tender in the moonlight, Veronica - enough to make even a hardened wastrel like me regret the locust years." "You're not a wastrel." "No, nor yet hardened. That was a bid for sympathy. Just to look at you gives me the hollow conviction that one fine day I shall have to up and go - back to England, my father, and duty." He paused, grinning. "One fine day in about five months or so. What luck if we should travel together!" "Stephen would love that," she said mischievously. 43

"He has strait-laced ideas about you, Bill." "Perhaps I'm better acquainted with his ideas than you are." His warm glance of admiration was not wholly wasted on darkness, for the moon illumined him as attractively as it did Vernie. At about this time of night his belligerent curls always escaped from the fixative he used and gave him the rakish swashbuckling appearance which he preferred. "Is Stephen happier since I came?" she asked. "Decidedly." "I'm so glad. It's worth the heat and being unsettled." "Unsettled? Poor darling.. . already?" "About Stephen," she said hastily. "Only about Stephen?" Both laughter and earnestness were in his voice. "You've such a lot to learn, sweet Veronica, that I'm aching to begin lessons. But Murabai is so stultifying, especially with your brother never more than a wall away. Go fishing with me on Saturday ? " "I might. Stephen says the rains are overdue." "So they are. The river will be low and the fish drugged with heat. Beastly-tasting fish, by the way, unless it's pounded up with eggs and seasoning, and fried." Her allusion to the rains had pulled another string in his mind. He stood up and leaned over the rail to examine the sky. "Clear enough at the moment. Too clear. We get this cool clarity just before the sultry heat that breaks in storms and short-circuits one's nerves. You've an ordeal coming to you, my child, but I don't doubt that you'll keep your upper Hp taut and smile it if kills you." "I'll do my best." They went on chatting till Stephen, myopic from concentration, came out for a nightcap. Soon afterwards Bill offered an apology for departing before midnight; he had 44

just recalled that Wrightson would be off with the mail tomorrow, and he had a letter to write. Morning carried more signs of changes in the elements. A negligible mist and stupefying, gasping heat without a vestige of a breeze. Ants were abnormally industrious, and during the day clouds of scissor-winged tsetse-flies swarmed through the clearing, leaving behind trails of broken gossamer wings. Bird noises were silenced, and even the lizards clung static to the outer walls, with no appetite for the armies of insects that hummed around them. Vernie had never imagined such enervating, willdestroying heat. When dawn at last ousted the dreadful hours inside a mosquito net, her heart ached for Stephen, who today must travel in the lorry to collect small samples of the valuable cinchona from outlying native farms. Fortunately, Bill tendered his services, and she felt easier when they set out side by side in the cabin of the lorry. Mr. Ramsey had sent over a roll of pale blue plastic material and a can of white paint, so Vernie roused herself to snip off lengths to cover the bathroom wall, and to sew wide hems to take the reed sticks which Mahdu had cut and oiled for her. In sudden defiance of the elements, she painted the new wooden ceiling of the bath cubicle, and would have given a first coat to the zinc bath itself, had not an immense furry spider chosen the moment of her decision to scuttle up the side, pause on the rim and grin at her wickedly, and then fall with a crack inside the tub, where it lay curled up like a tiny kitten. It was no use reassuring herself that once in the thing would never get out. Vernie cast a briefly appreciative glance over the delicate blue walls and white ceiling, swung open the woven grass door, and went back to the comparative coolness of 45

her living-room. In the early afternoon Wrightson got in with the mail and supplies. Among Stephen's packet of letters was one addressed to them both from Aunt Josephine. Vernie sank into a chair and read it, but was too entirely encompassed by steaming Murabai to conjure more than a faint nostalgic tang of the Sussex cottage and her aunt in the Morris chair at the scarred old writingtable in the window. She would try again later, with Stephen. A distant mutter of thunder reminded her that the room was darkening. Without being told, Mahdu carried in the bamboo table and veranda chairs, and walked round fastening the screens at the windows. Then he was gone, and Vernie was alone with the dry stabs of lightning and fastapproaching grumbles of thunder. "Keep your head," she adjured herself sternly. "This house has withstood years of storms. Remember what Stephen said: get used to the noise and the rest is nothing." The noise! The menacing reverberations among the huge, encircling trees, and the warning wind. To Vernie, standing in the living-room and fighting with an instinct to shut tight her eyes and clap hands over her ears, it was still another of nature's grim tricks that the door should fly open and a man step inside the room, admitting a sudden gust that scattered mail and magazines. The door was flung to, and latched. Clin raked back his wind-risen hair and stared into her white, startled face. "Did I frighten you?" Her breathing seemed to have halted way down in her lungs. She could only nod. 46

"Of course," he said. "You wouldn't have heard me, though I did knock." He scooped up the fallen envelopes and periodicals. "A big mail this time. Mine is, too. I had no less than ten letters from friends in England, besides the usual business correspondence." Vernie's pallor had given way to a sweet flush. His manner dispelled her shyness and imparted confidence. She was amazed and absurdly happy, her fear of the coming storm marvellously abated. "All the letters are for Stephen, except one from my aunt, to us both," she said breathlessly. "The aunt who cared for you after your mother died? Stephen once described her to me - an admirable woman." "A dear," she confirmed, her smile less a tribute to Aunt Josephine than a symptom of tremulous delight in the moment. "Please sit down and have a drink. Or will you wait while tea is made ?" "I'll wait." He saved her the trouble of ringing the beaten metal bell, and sat down in a chair on the other side of the teak table, appraisal and speculation in the glance he turned her way. But explanation of his presence had to wait till tea was ordered and Mahdu gone. There was an instant's quietude, followed by a shattering explosion immediately overhead and sudden, deafening torrents. Vernie had started violently, and incautiously gripped the edge of the table. "Disconcerting at first, isn't it?" he said pleasantly. "So much more savage in every way than the English kind - like everything else out here. You won't find the next storm so terrifying." "I'm not scared." Which was true .. . now. She just hadn't guessed that thunder could crack with such force 47

and sound. There it went again, but this time she hardly quivered. He drew a flat packet from an inner pocket of his coat and took from the open end a plain white card printed in royal blue old English characters. "This is an invitation for you and Stephen to the Consul's Ball at the end of the month. He sent it through with mine, so that I could insert your full name." "It's kind of you to bring it over yourself - and so quickly." "It struck me that you might be alone, and perhaps somewhat disturbed," he casually replied. "You did look a trifle keyed up when I came in. About the b a l l . . . " he paused, and thoughtfully regarded the card which he had propped against a painted bowl. "Stephen may say that he'd rather not go, but you must persuade him otherwise. Diversions of this kind are all too few." "I don't know." She hesitated, recollecting many things. "Stephen isn't as fit as I'd like him to be. Nothing serious, but he may consider the journey to Kelaba an unnecessary exertion. If he doesn't go, I won't." "You must," he said firmly. "Relief during the rains is even more of a necessity for you than for him. Accommodation will be arranged, and you and Stephen can travel by car instead of the jeep - either with me or with Dyson." Tea was brought, and she poured as steadily as his direct yet impersonal gaze would permit. "Sugar?" "Please, but no milk. Hardened as I am to canned foods and substitutes, my palate refuses the taste of preserved milk, so if you should run short, I've a surplus that's yours for the asking." 48

Hammering rain, even continuous decrescendoes of thunder and blinding, violet-hued lightning, can form a comfortable wall to shut out a puzzling world. Resolutely, Vernie put Stephen from her thoughts, and took an inordinate interest in her teacup. For, to accentuate his unwonted expansiveness, Clin had rested both arms on the table and was leaning forward, a rare and charming smile on his lips. "I've been meaning to come down and apologise for my abruptness last time we met. I expect you thought me an intolerant and inconsiderate brute." "It did hurt a bit," she confessed, and smilingly tacked on, "but I made allowances for the lack of civilising influences." "Generous of you," with dry mockery. As on her first evening, his glance roamed the room, resting on a photograph and passing on to the row of oddments along the top of the bookshelves. "Where did you get the carved ivory?" "In Freetown. There were other lovely things which I couldn't afford. Some really exquisite embroidery done by the convent Africans, and beautiful sculptures by completely untutored tribes inland." She thought she detected cynicism at the corners of his mouth and her eagerness dimmed. "You've travelled and seen so much that native arts and crafts are commonplace." "But even I," he said, echoing the unconscious tinge of antagonism in her voice, "had to experience such .things a first time! Perhaps I've grown beyond the initial thrill, but I still collect pieces. I have a lot of Arabic ornaments and Egyptian pottery, and my own memento of Freetown is a crude diamond, washed down from the alluvial deposits on that coast. Some time, when you've for49

given me for wounding Stephen, I'd like to show them to you." Vernie wished she could meet his eyes and read what lay behind the careless challenge. When you've forgiven me for wounding Stephen. She might have guessed he would be impossible to deceive. He knew that Stephen had confided in her about his brief, calamitous love affair, had divined it from her rejection of the dinner-party and her general coolness. He would have realised that once launched on a confession, her brother had inevitably aired bitter views upon Clin's contempt for young men who chased married women. Yet he made no attempt to justify his stern censure, no propitiatory advances so that Vernie might "forgive him for wounding Stephen". Now, with rain and thunder battering about them, she, who had wanted so badly to hear some sort of refutation from Clin and had an unmistakable opening for discussion, was curiously dumb. Almost she saw his mental shrug, and the opportunity was lost. "Maybe Stephen has omitted to tell you that I invariably entertain on Saturdays ?" he queried. "No, but I rather gathered it." "Naturally. For that one night a week Dyson deserts you." With the usual arrogance in his tone mingled satire. "Bill pleases himself," she said distantly. " I f he comes here often it's because he and Stephen have a good deal in common." "I doubt it. Till you came they merely co-operated in passing the time. Bill has a penchant for nice-looking women. A penchant, not a weakness. He's not the type to lose control, and for that reason is the more dangerous. 50

I've nothing against Bill, but I'd hate to see you captivated by his good looks and facility." "I'm not," she returned warmly. "I happen to enjoy him because he's different from everyone else at Murabai. There's no tenseness in him, no . . . consciousness of position, or even of the climate. He's easy to get on with, and the others aren't, particularly." "Come now!" The sarcasm was more pointed. "What about Ramsey, and our teacher and his excellent wife? The place isn't entirely peopled with overbearing medicos." She had to smile and suppress the retort that one of his kind was sufficient to make it seem so. "To revert to my Saturday 'At Homes'," he said. "We have bridge and occasionally do a play-reading in the cause of culture - Mrs. Cricklade's idea, by the way, and quite often diverting. If you ever feel starved for drama you might be willing to overcome your aversion and look in." "Thank you." He slipped back the cuff from his watch. "I'm expecting the headman at five. He's always punctual, whatever the weather. Sure you won't be nervous alone ?" "Quite." Getting up and going with him to the door was like rousing from an acid-sweet dream. "Please borrow a waterproof." "If you insist." She ran through to get Stephen's spare, and held it high for him to slip in his arms. The line of his mouth sardonic, he shouldered into it, finding the fit just a little restricting, though the length was not too bad. "What about your head?" she asked anxiously. "A soaking won't hurt it. Managing little woman, 51

aren't you ? Thanks for the tea. So long." The door whipped open and shut, and he was gone, head bent into the appalling downpour, which washed up around his ankles in thick red swirls. Minutes later, Vernie returned to her seat at the table. She grasped the Consul's invitation between finger and thumb, and read it. The names had been written in a neat, secretarial hand - all except her own Christian name. "Veronica" stood out bold and haughty, just as Clin stood out among other men. Her heart deliciously wrenched, she went back over the conversation. Not much in it to which one could cling or imbue with more than a surface meaning, but he had come of his own volition in case she was afraid of the storm. Thunder still cracked, but less precipitously, and the lightning no longer terrified, for hadn't Clin sat there opposite, with the spears playing round him, momentarily flaming across the crisp brown hair? Stephen must go to the Consul's Ball. Clin would be there, calm, poised, and charming. She would be near him in a way that was impossible at Murabai, where a handful of people - including Stephen - watched one's every lift of the eyebrow. An hour later the storm had grumbled its way over the jungle leaving, for a brief space, a sulphurous sky over which the purple veil of evening gradually drooped. Then it was night - an early, perilous, tropical night; fantastic and lovely with new scents that sprang from the earth and fought hopelessly to overawe the blatant frangipani in Clin's garden. Vernie was on the point of worrying when the lorry careered up the track, and Stephen came in. After a bath 52

and a meal she read out Aunt Josephine's letter and they had a few laughs and arguments. Stephen had actually forgotten the disposition of some of the furniture in the Sussex cottage! Vernie chided him, but not too gravely, for was she not herself in danger of brimming her whole mind with the bewildering present? Soon she produced the invitation card and slid it towards him. Stephen scanned it and looked up, his gaze unsteady. "So it's come . . . and you got it via Clin." He had recognised the forceful formation of her name. "He brought it this afternoon as the storm broke," she answered, her voice as devoid of expression as she could make it. "You will go, won't you ?" "What's the good? A visit to Keleba will only make us both dissatisfied. If you're billeted in the wilds it's safest to stay there till your time is up. For people like us, anyway." "People like us?" she echoed. Stephen was no longer looking at her. The card twisted in his hand. "You and I happen to be more sensitive than the usual crowd out here." "Clin was decisive about our going." Speaking his name aloud gave her a few seconds of guilty elation. "Mental health, and all that," he said with a grimace. "Don't think I'm afraid to go because of . . . last year. To get the best from a riotous week-end among men who are as greedy for human contacts as we are, you need to acquire a certain facetious mood. I can't do it, Vernie." She was unguarded, pleading. "Once there, you'd fall into it naturally. Bill would see to that. He'd be with you this time." 53

"Yes, he would." His glance was curious. "It's rather a surprise that you should wish to go. You've fitted in so contentedly here that I thought you'd choose to stay it out, without high spots. I'm being selfish. Why shouldn't you have a good time with Bill ? " Half-heartedly, he had capitulated. Vernie, a little alarmed at his unsmiling allusion to Bill - he had often coupled them in jest - nevertheless knew an inward flash of gratitude, followed by an uprush of pure happiness. "A bumper supply of magazines came," she exclaimed gaily. "A week's reading, at least! " The next day there was another storm at the same time. Clin did not come down, but Vernie had hardly supposed he would. Hopes, even as strong as hers, were unlikely to effect such a result. She was examining her clothes in readiness for the week-end in Keleba, trying on the white and gentian-blue evening dresses, which had been dry-cleaned at sea just before docking at Lagos. Two or three day-dresses would also be necessary, in addition to her travelling clothes. Apart from the journey they would be away only two nights and one complete day, but frequent changes were indispensable in such a climate. Having doubtfully struggled into a tan linen dress which fitted almost too well to be comfortable in sticky heat, Vernie paused to wonder how so enchanting a madness could have penetrated and taken possession of her modest and unassuming personality. Several evenings later Clin dropped in at Bill's house after dinner. His greeting included Vernie and Stephen, who were reclining one each end of the rattan divan with Bates between them. The dog, whose head and fore paws rested in Vernie's lap, cocked one ear and one eye. When Clin snapped his fingers, he shot to the floor and rubbed 54

against the trousered leg. Clin bent to tickle the white head and for a moment met Vernie's eyes. His own were enigmatic, yet she got the impression that he intended her to glean something from them: perhaps that the affections of a dog so easily won over were hardly worth having. Bill's dog, with Bill's aptitude for friendliness. He had a drink and mentioned that he would be travelling alone to the Consul's Ball. "Unless you three would care to make up the carload," he added. "It would save using two." "Suits me," said Bill airily. "I've overhauled my wagon, but she's reached the eccentric age." Stephen was silent, and Clin said good-night and strolled out, whistling under his breath a little tune which Vernie's ears strained to follow. Needless to emphasise that they did not travel to Keleba with Clin. Early on Friday morning, when mist drifted like finespun rain through the clearing, Clin's tourer swept down the road on its way to Keleba. Shortly afterwards Bill's car followed at a speed which Vernie considered excessive, though the two men assured her that it was mainly illusory, the bus being of pre-war vintage and Bill not the best of mechanics. The dusty, exhausting journey took twelve hours, and when they reached Keleba a grateful night breeze swayed the orderly rows of palms in the avenue of plain white houses with red roofs, where Bill slowed. In one of the houses lived Mr. Laidlaw, the senior agriculturist, to whom Stephen sent his monthly report. Mr. Laidlaw was a grizzled Scotsman in his early forties. A bluff manner disguised a certain embarrassment, 55

for he was a bachelor and apprehensive about the spare room which had been furbished as best he knew how for Vernie. She assured him at once that it reeked with luxury compared with her bedroom at Murabai, and exclaimed with joy at a glimpse through a door of a white bathroom. Bill swallowed his drink. "I'll push on up the road, where I'm expected. See you later, sweet Veronica, at the Club." Dazedly, she assented. All she wanted was a cool bath and cooler sheets. The thought of passing the evening dancing and drinking in an overheated, choking atmosphere gave her soberly to pause. Of course, she did feel invigorated after the bath, and she had to put on the gentian-blue dress because their host had been wearing a tropical evening suit when he met them on his veranda. And later, when dinner was over and Mr. Laidlaw suggested the Club, it would have been boorish and decidedly against her inclination to plead tiredness. Besides, Stephen stated that it was customary for all those who had arrived in town the night before the ball to meet and exchange gossip. Night air at Keleba had a more elusive aroma than that of Murabai. Pinning down the difference, Vernie concluded that humidity and the proximity of the jungle river to Murabai provided an all-pervading background odour of decayed logs and mud. There, one grew oblivious to it, but in Keleba its conspicuous absence lent clarity to a scent- and spice-burdened air. An Arab palace etched its vaguely Oriental contour against a sky radiant with stars and a sickle moon. Mystery lurked in the short shadows. Robed and blanketed figures stalked or sidled close to the buildings, their movements so noiseless that Vernie instinctively slid her hand 56

within Stephen's crooked elbow. But the short walk from the avenue to the Club bestowed magic. The stars were still reflected in the wide blue eyes when she entered the congested lounge. Bill detached himself from a group and came over. Her sparkle drew a quiet laugh from him. "Darling," he almost groaned, "it must be wonderful to be so young and untried. How I'd adore to devote the rest of my life to showing you the pristine soul of nature in all her moods!" He murmured much more of the same kind of nonsense while leading her, with Stephen in tow, to a long wall seat where she could sit and feel part of the highpitched excitement which mantled the men and women about her. Vernie sipped her lime with a dash of gin and rebuked herself for allowing a surge of delicious anticipation to race through her veins; a dangerously delicious anticipation. When Bill, unusually close to her ear, made a small "Uh-uh!" of warning, she smilingly looked where he had been staring a moment ago, towards the archway which opened to the ballroom. Her heart gave a sweet lurch. Clin, towering and distinguished, was making straight through the throng in the way he had - not hastily, but with deliberation. As he neared, a faint chill feathered along Vernie's spine, for it became apparent that he was guiding a woman at his side, steering her unerringly towards them. Automatically, Vernie's attention switched to this woman. She wore silver, which hugged her like an extra skin and enhanced her dark, vivid complexion. Black hair, piled effectively above her forehead, prepared one for the sloe-dark eyes, thickly fringed and cleverly made up. She 57

walked with conscious grace, her creamy, exposed shoulders swaying as if the ballroom music had stirred them to natural rhythm. Her colouring and obvious disregard of the heat were Latin, but she was tall and long-limbed, and not, to outward appearances, volcanic. Vernie found herself standing up between Bill, and Stephen, and curving her lips in a stiff smile. Clin bowed. "So your contraption made it." In the most casual way he inclined his head towards his companion. "Celia, you know Stephen Craig and Bill Dyson, but you haven't met Stephen's sister. Miss Craig - Mrs. Carteret." Vernie went clammily cold. After contriving a polite response she shot a desperate glance at Stephen and instantly wished Bill's car had jibbed back in the jungle. Her brother was so white that she thought he would collapse. But he said, "Hallo, Celia. Nice to see you." "Well, well," contributed Bill; "so you're still in Nigeria, tantalising the menfolk and aggravating the women. I'll bet a fiver you're here without your husband." Celia's face went grave and her preposterous lashes lowered as she replied, "He's . . . dead, Bill - six months ago of a fever." A pause, and then she raised a brave and gentle smile. "I'm so glad to meet you again - and you, Stephen. It gives life meaning to know one still has friends." At last Vernie looked at Clin. She saw that beneath his indifference watched a calculating satirist. What was he thinking? Vernie swallowed on the pebble of pain in her throat and accepted Bill's invitation to dance. 58

CHAPTER IV THE native market occupied a large expanse of beaten earth at the back of the town. The one and only stall was spread with a piece of green canvas upon which were sprinkled carved and smoothed stones and some suspect modern trinkets. All the other traders squatted in the dust beside little heaps or groups of their wares. They offered dried fish and manioc meal, baskets of minute tomatoes, spices, broken bits of ivory, baboon skulls, ancient crocodiles' teeth, and karosses. Well-dressed Hausas strolled about, riga trailing and crisp white turban adjusted so that the ends drooped gracefully over one shoulder, ready to be pulled against the mouth as a shield against harmattan dust. Some had their women pacing behind them; wives in rust or indigo cotton lavishly embroidered with gaudy yarns, which was their party dress, put on this morning in anticipation of rich trading. The Mohammedan Hausa woman wears much jewellery. Silver and copper nose-studs, necklaces, anklets, and bracelets, all appropriate and attractive against her smooth dark skin. Her hair is a miracle of tiny plaits woven high and threaded with beads and shells. To Vernie, the market was a glorious and intriguing experience. Stephen had remained behind for a shop talk with Mr. Laidlaw, and she had ventured out, wearing white linen and a sun-helmet and armed with plenty of change, in search of the market which a woman at the Club last night had insisted must not be missed. Recalling, too vividly, Stephen's meeting with Celia 59

Carteret in this same market a year ago, she supposed it must have occurred later, nearer to lunch-time, when the heat had driven most white people indoors. The sun was already fierce, though Vernie was pleased to find that she could bear the cruel glare for a fair period without sunglasses. A pity to blur these ravishing colours and outlines with smoked plastic. She bought a braided grass work-basket, some hammered leather masks, a small stone bust of an African girl wearing the traditional bead love-letter round her neck, and a couple of flat metal bowls which might be useful as ashtrays. "Missus please to buy jigida?" Vernie turned to encounter the velvet gaze of a young Hausa woman. Draped between strong wrists she held a length of leather thonging, dyed green, and threaded with oil-palm nuts, opulent in size and highly polished. Vernie smiled. "What is it ?" "Women wear it - so." Deftly, the ornament encircled her waist and was fastened. "My mother is rich. She has many jigida." Rather at a loss, for she had spent her quota of cash, Vernie retained the smile but shook her head. Unwilling to end the scene too abruptly, she touched the huge seeds admiringly. The woman's teeth flashed at someone behind Vernie. "The master has wife? He will buy jigida?" Vernie's overworked sixth sense got caught up in the aura of Clin. "Good morning," he said pleasantly. "I shouldn't stay out in the sun too long, if I were you." "I'd just completed my buying." With the sudden perception which occasionally out60

paces thought, she knew that he was remembering and swiftly dismissing the unhappy acquaintanceship which had begun here twelve months ago and ended ignominiously for Stephen a few hours later. His smile ironic, he tipped her shopping into the workbasket, pressed on the lid, and held it dangerously by one handle. The patient African woman, misinterpreting the small act of courtesy, came a step nearer, her beam including them both. "Missus would like jigida to keep for always? Have good luck." "D'you care for bought luck, Veronica?" queried Clin mockingly. Pressing home the wedge, the woman murmured, "Contented wife - happy husband. Jigida make." Clin laughed. Colour flared into Vernie's cheeks; for a second she hated the woman for the brutal error. Then she heard Clin, suave and fluent, as icily polite as he invariably was to natives, trading for the belt in Hausa. Some pieces of silver changed hands and Vernie felt the sun-warmed string of oil-palm nuts drop carelessly about her neck. She dragged it down and twisted it through her fingers. As they walked on she thanked him. To expunge the moment of horrid self-consciousness, she asked, "Is this thing really supposed to bring luck, or did she say that to sell it?" "Trading tactics, I'm afraid. The jigida is the Hausa woman's yardstick for wealth. Usually it is they who buy and wear them, but I expect that woman has quarrelled with her husband and he refuses to give her money to pay the hairdresser or the herbal doctor, so she has to sell 61

one, for a change. I believe a superstition has grown among white people - who should know better - that if a husband buys a jigida for his wife they are heading for a lifetime of happiness." Avoiding a bristling subject - she had never exercised so much ingenuity in so short a time! - Vernie offered an opinion. "The young women are good-looking, even by European standards." "The Hausas have an ideal of beauty, just as we have. A man likes his woman to be soft-voiced, to have a long neck and slim ankles for displaying trinkets, to walk with grace, and to talk little. Too many words, he says, may cost him fines for mischief-making. Sensible, don't you think?" The gentle raillery in his voice piqued her and started a small ache of despair. How could she ever hope to penetrate his armour of unemotionalism? He was saying, "A Hausa doesn't fall in love; when he can afford it he takes a wife, first balancing her virtues and drawbacks. He is by no means a fool." "Civilisation demands more from a woman than that she should be a show-piece and docile." She had spoken swiftly, as women do, sometimes, to escape a thrust of pain. His glance at her was keen and amused. "So it does. We must have a talk about it some time. Did you walk here?" They had emerged into a street of blank-looking walls pitted with a door about every forty yards. It was narrow and suffocatingly hot among the flowing robes and smells of the Africans. "Yes," she said, "but not this way." 62

"Are you tired?" Electric needles of heat plunged all over her body, and her feet, in closed white shoes, cried out for respite. But she said, "In the middle of the morning? Not a bit. Where are we going ? " "To the end and round the corner. Keleba isn't all parties and race meetings, you know." He grasped her elbow, at times changing the hand that cupped it, so that he could fall behind and protect her from the increasing crowds. They came into a wide paved square with palms in the middle and enclosed on two sides by a white crenellated wall. In front of this wall, their mobile jaws and lidded eyes comically stupid, lounged a number of shaggy camels. Boys in peg-topped white trousers and coloured shirts strutted among them, eager for their importance as "keepers" - as if camels ever had a mind to move when they needn't! - to be recognised. The last of the packs were being unloaded on to the heads of other boys, who clamoured for the privilege and "dash" money. "A camel train," explained Clin. "I saw it meandering into town at dawn this morning." "Where did it come from?" "The north. Parts of it may have journeyed as far as the Egyptian coast to buy silks and jewellery. The Nigerian emirs are wealthy and fond of display. Look over there. Fulani." All were men, pale-skinned, almond-eyed, with sleek black hair. They were more simply clothed than the Hausa, and the huge, humped cattle they drove proclaimed their nomadic inclinations. "They're not Mohammedan," said Clin. "Their way of living is simple and law-abiding, yet they are cleverer 63

and much purer in breed than the Hausa. The Emir I visit in Murabai province is very proud of his Fulani mother, and his chief wife is a Fula woman." He had drawn Vernie into the shade of the datepalms, and was watching her reactions to the kaleidoscopic throng of natives and cattle. A yellow tendril had drifted from beneath the sun-helmet and curled defiantly over the brim, and a flush, half of heat and half of delicious pleasure seemed permanently installed under the soft skin of her cheeks, endowing her with an appealing air of youth. "You're too young," he said abruptly, and Vernie dared not ask for what. "If you lived here a year the bloom would get rubbed off - and not only from your skin. How long have you to go - four months ?" "I sometimes wish it were longer." "Don't be an idiot." His smile was narrow-eyed. "Go home and marry some nice young man with a future." With scarcely a pause, he added, "Shall we make for coffee at the Club?" He took her to a table on the Club terrace and ordered coffee, but before it arrived others joined them. There was much talk of resting the whole afternoon to prepare for this evening's ball, and presently Vernie mentioned that Stephen would be wondering if she'd been kidnapped in the market. "That's virtually what happened," remarked Clin. "I'll take you down to Laidlaw's. I'd invite you to lunch with me, but that healthy colour you had a while ago seems to have receded, and I think it would do you more good to take the next few hours quietly." They had left the terrace without fuss, Clin swinging the work-basket and Vernie the jigida. On the drive they 64

met Bill, theatrically mopping his brow and feigning exhaustion. "Fair Veronica! I've searched for you from marketplace to minaret," he exclaimed, "to find you hobnobbing in broad daylight with the misogynist of Murabai. You didn't have to come all the way to Keleba for that." "Why have you been looking for me, Bill?" "For a number of reasons, but chiefly because of your blue eyes, angel. Shall we have a drink?" "I was just leaving." "And I have to get back to the Residency," said Clin, with curtness. Undismayed, Bill grinned. "All right. I'll walk the lady home and squeeze a drink out of Laidlaw." "No need to walk. I'll drive you both." In the car Bill's cheerfulness rasped. Clin drove without speaking, and within a few minutes was helping her out on to the clipped grass sidewalk. "Don't forget your goods." He handed them to her with an impersonal smile. "Thanks for an enjoyable morning. Good-bye." No mention of their seeing each other again this evening, unavoidable though it was bound to be. Her mind tried to blame Bill for Clin's coolness, but her heart believed otherwise. After the delightful half-hour in the market and the square he had withdrawn to an immeasurable distance, yet she could not recollect a single incident or phrase to cause it. Bill had irritated him, but only superficially during the last ten minutes or so. She placed her things on the hall table. "The house is very quiet." Bill sounded less merry. "Laidlaw's out. I came to find 65

you because Stephen's not too well. Digestive trouble again, I think." Instantly concerned, she asked, "Is he in bed?" "Yes. Fortunately, Laidlaw's lunching with friends, so Stephen can stay there till it's time to dress. Go to him, if you like. I'll rummage for my own drink." "Thanks for chasing after me. You're rather a dear, Bill." He twinkled. "I'm more than rather where you're concerned." She smiled briefly and went through to knock softly at Stephen's door. Upon his invitation she entered the room, to find him lying, still in shirt and trousers, on the bed. The mosquito net was pulled right back for air. His hair had darkened with sweat, and his thin young face had drawn in to pale lips. "Bill told me," she whispered. "Is it very bad?" "You're not to worry, Vernie. I've had it before. I didn't want anyone to know, but Bill burst in just as I felt groggiest. It's passing off now." "Darling, please let me call Clin." "No. Laidlaw would hear of it." "Does it matter? He's human." "I'd hate him to think I'd sprung this straight after our talk this morning. He said he had confidence in me. Himself, he has the digestion of a horse." "Bother him," she said indignantly. "He gets more fresh food here than you do at Murabai. Stephen, what can have made you so ill.. . the journey yesterday?" "Possibly." His head turned away. "A psychologist might call it three parts funk of the Ball." "But, darling . . . " "He'd be right. I was awake all last night trying to 66

fabricate some means of avoiding it." "Celia?" she said gently, lowering herself to rest on the edge of the bedside table. He didn't answer, and she sat staring across the room, realising only too poignantly the agony of his reopened scars. Celia of a year ago, gay, heartless and married, had changed and subtly sweetened. Vernie was sure of it. And Celia was now a widow. All the morning, with Clin, Vernie had forced the other woman from her thoughts. After all, they would be leaving at dawn tomorrow, and so long as Stephen was not left to cope with her alone, no further complications need arise. Was he still in love with her, or merely reliving the sharp anguish of last year? He was too sensitive for the sudden, barbaric passions of the tropics. As a boy he had suffered as much as she had for the bird with a damaged claw and the shivering puppy. He had preferred reading to playing football; and idling on the downs beneath a summer sky to rollicking to the sea for a swim. Vernie had comprehended the fine-drawn side of him because it coincided with a similar softness in herself. He needed a woman with tenderness and an understanding heart. Celia had neither. "Did you take some of the white stuff ?" she asked. "Yes. It appears to have worked., I'm going sleepy." "Good. Is the room dark enough?" "Plenty." His head was raised as if he had more to say, and she paused. "Vernie, you like Bill a lot, don't you?" "Of course. So does everyone." "I mean, something special - in the way he likes you?" "Bill's nice," she evaded. "If he asked you to marry him, would you ?" 67

" I ' d . . . think it over. But he isn't likely to." "He might, and it would be a tonic for you both, though it's in you I'm most interested. I'm certain you'd be safe with Bill, and his family would welcome you; they're anxious for him to marry." "At the moment I should say that marriage is an unknown country which the Honourable Bill has no desire to explore. We'll wait and see, shall we?" Briskly, she adjusted the blind and moved the carafe nearer to his reach. "If you want anything, give a tap on the wall; I shall hear it. I hope you'll sleep." When she came into the lounge it was a relief to find that Bill had had his drink and gone. At last she could slip off her shoes and relax. Stephen awoke about four, had tea and a bath, and took a turn in the garden before the sun set and it was time to dress. He was still pale, but his mouth had the compression of resolve. All Vernie's excited anticipation of the Ball had dissolved. She put on a white dress and responded to Mr. Laidlaw's awkward gallantries, but Stephen had all her attention and respect. Dinner was off. At seven they had cold snacks and drinks, and at eight-fifteen were driven by a uniformed boy to the Consulate, a huge white building in palmfringed grounds, which blazed with a tremendous concentration of indoor and outdoor illumination. They were announced, introduced, and let loose among a galaxy of colourfully dressed women and three times their number of white-clad men. Vernie viewed the whole expensive function - the compliments, the inquisitive but friendly women, the easily kindled men - with little feel68

ing. She danced with Stephen and encouraged him to dance with others. When she first caught a glimpse of Celia, the dark woman was dancing with Bill and apparently not disliking it. Generous Bill, who was capable of more discretion than one was apt to credit him with. Clin had not yet danced. He was sitting with the Consul and other local celebrities at the far end of the receptionroom, smoking and talking, his eyes at intervals searching over the guests. Vernie, gliding round in the arms of one of his colleagues, had met the grey gaze. His smile glinted like cold steel, and she shivered. It was later, at the buffet, that the Murabai contingent met together. Bill was sad. "I've had tragic news. My chief has got wind of my inaction this last month or so. He threatens to send me on a surveying tour in about a fortnight." "The horror," said Vernie. "What does he think he pays you for?" "He doesn't. My salary's been pledged for credit ever since the beginning of the year. If I hadn't a forgiving mother I'd be threadbare." "You'd get by," said Clin succinctly. He pushed forward a gilt chair for Vernie. "Sit down for a bit. You, too, Stephen." Quickly, she looked up at him. How had he guessed at Stephen's indisposition? Apart from his quietness, her brother was normal enough to deceive anyone. Clin's uncanny perceptiveness made her uneasy; but however offhand his manner, it was inexpressibly good to have him seated near, his long legs stretched before him and his drink an inch from her own on the small table. A crumb of comfort, too, that he had not preferred to fill the space 69

between the other two men. How utterly foolish are the ways of love! Spearingly, it flashed upon Vernie that her final line of defence had collapsed. Self-delusion can be a bulwark to pride. To admit, as she had a moment ago, to loving a man who had so little use for women that he couldn't bother to be consistently cruel or kind to them, was to plunge into a welter of fatal emotions. The laughter and music were instantly intolerable, the savoury she was eating a revolting mess. Into the circle at this juncture sailed Celia Carteret. "Hallo, everyone. May I eat with you ?" Bill seated her between himself and Clin, and supplied her with food and drink. Celia's emerald skirt fanned amply over her toes, the sparely cut bodice scintillating with green and gold starshaped sequins. From her new confusion, Vernie was aware of dark eyes viewing her with faint, patronising amusement. She must take a grip on herself. Tonight her job was Stephen, not her own wild feelings. "How does it feel to be attending your last West African ball ? " inquired Clin. "Lovely, and mournful. In spite of the heat and slack conventions, the magic grows into one. For a while, back in England, life is going to be very, very flat." "Not for you, sweetie-pie," said Bill. 'You'd send a ripple over any surface. Try one of those brown things coated with sauce." She did, and begged him to hide the remains quick Then she settled back with her glass, an unreadable expression behind her smile. "Am I silly to envy you all the return journey to Murabai tomorrow?" 70

"Exceedingly," said Clin. If you'd ever lived in the bush you'd know how silly." "Do you agree with that, Miss Craig?" Somehow, a tension had descended upon the convivial circle, and Vernie could think of nothing to ease it. "Keleba is an unforgettable experience," she answered slowly and with painful truth, "but I shan't be sorry to get back to Murabai." Thoughtfully, Celia pressed a red-tipped forefinger to her chin. "Is it the place or the people that fascinate you? Isn't it thrilling to be the only woman to leaven the male predominance?" "There's another woman," Vernie submitted, uncomfortably nettled. "In any case, the men are busy." "Oh, come now, Veronica," injuredly protested Bill. "That's unfair. I haven't done a stroke of work for five weeks - all on account of you." "A damaging confession," remarked Clin crisply, "however you look at it." "I don't know," mused Celia, but she pursued the subject no further. Instead, she gave Clin news of mutual acquaintances in Lagos. Vernie gathered that Celia had not lived in Nigeria during the whole of the past year. The Continent had claimed her till Alan Carteret's death, and after that she had returned to help her father settle his affairs. The sisal factory had been sold, and her father was already on his way back to England, but Celia had been unable to resist a visit to Keleba. How fortunate that it was the month of the Ball, and she would have a chance of wishing goodbye to all her friends. Her tone, modulated and nostalgic, lingered after she had finished speaking. She regarded Stephen with an af71

fection that seemed not entirely bogus, turned upon Bill a bland and provocative smile, but glanced longest at Clin. "So you're checking out on the luxury express," commented Bill. "How soon?" "When I'm bored with Keleba." "You're a free agent. Why envy us the doubtful delights of Murabai when you can try them out for yourself?" She gave a low peal of laughter. "Do you mean it? Would Clin let me go with you?" Vernie clung rigidly to her chair, dreading the reply. "At your own risk," said Clin. "You wouldn't stick it a week," Bill wagered. Celia sparkled. "Wouldn't I? Don't disapprove, Clin, there's a dear. I won't be a nuisance, I promise, and it might be just a scrap exciting to have an extra woman about the place!" Her heart burdened, Vernie turned to her brother. "I'm horribly hot, Stephen. Will you go outside with me for a breath of air ? " Dreadfully transparent, particularly to the percipient Celia, but Vernie was past caring. Bill said, "Don't forget you're dancing with me again, Veronica." She took Stephen's arm and was thankful to find it hard and comforting against her side. On the lighted terrace his iron composure slackened, yet she had the conviction that he was tensed to some degree of exaltation. Was he - frightful thought - buoyed with daring hope ? "It was thick in there. Come on to the grass and breathe deeply," he suggested with kindness, for all the world as if he were handling a wilting dancing partner instead of the sister he loved. His whole demeanour shut her out. 72

Vernie could have wept. First Bill betraying them both by challenging Celia to invade Murabai, then Stephen confounding and disregarding her pain for him. And Clin, who could, had he desired, have vetoed the suggestion, had amicably acquiesced. Nothing made sense, except that Celia, by sheer personality, had got her own way with three widely different men. Obediently, Vernie inhaled the cool, spicy air. A clock chimed eleven clear strokes, and on the tail of the last a bugle rang out, reminding the town that the military were still on guard. "That's long enough, Vernie," said Stephen. "You'll catch cold." So they went back and Bill claimed his dance. Blithe as ever, he whispered nonsense into her ear, and before the music ended she learned that Clin would pick Celia up in the morning and take her with him to Murabai. Twelve hours alone together on deserted roads. As they made their way towards a wall seat Vernie accumulated the courage to demand, "Why did you dare her to come to Murabai, Bill? Stephen's borne a great deal." "He has, my sweet, but I've observed something that you haven't. Stephen had a repression over Celia, and meeting her again magnified it. You dispel a bogey by facing it. See?" "He'd have got over i t . . "But not sensibly, so that he could contemplate marriage with someone else." She had to leave it there. Bill was a man and thus better placed to understand Stephen. Perhaps the same idea accounted for Clin's strange acceptance of still another woman in his stronghold. She hoped fervently it might be so. 73

CHAPTER V MOST of the empty houses at Murabai were falling apart with rot and the depredations of the white ant. In fact, but for the support of strong growths of vine-weed interlaced with elephant grass, wild banana, tree ferns, and various species of wild corn, the structures would long ago have subsided into green-smothered hillocks. For her first night Celia used Wrightson's house and the young assistant slept in Clin's spare room. After that she had a house of her own, with one of the blue-andwhite uniformed boys at her command, and because she was a guest in Murabai, what more natural than that she should take her meals with the medical officer? So there were insupportable moments each day for Vernie. Even if Clin were miles away for lunch, he was bound to breakfast and dine at home. The evenings were maddening and endless. If she and Stephen sat in their veranda, music and laughter floated down to them and made them both restless. Closed within their living-room they stifled, and imagined what they could not see and hear. And for the first time they had nothing to talk about. Bill still came, of course, but chiefly during the day. Twice he had brought Celia for sundowners. She spoke to Stephen with calculated charm and simplicity, showing what seemed a genuine interest in his work and collection of books. Bill sat back, winking conspiratorially at Vernie. Had he, or had he not, been right ? Driven by an inner urge, Vernie spent part of a morning at the Clinic, watching Clin and his small band of Nigerian nurses. Halfway through the morning, Celia 74

strolled in. After a while, she leaned forward and tapped him. "Clin, may I have a sip of your water?" He twisted. "Good heavens, what are you doing here?" His keen regard slipped over Vernie. "Go into the house and have something really cold and refreshing. The remaining cases are only a repetition of the first." Vernie stood up. Celia said, "Why didn't I think of that?" and lazily waved him farewell. Tingling a little, Vernie passed through the gates to the doctor's house for the first time. On each side of the path stretched lawns of cropped Kikuyu grass with hibiscus and coral vine, datura and plumbago growing from small circles of red soil. Near the struggling smilax which clung to the meagre shade of the garden wall, palms flourished, the dome variety which have a graceful branch formation peculiarly their own. "Going into this house always reminds me of what it must be like to step into a fridge," remarked Celia. "The outer walls are at least three feet thick." Vernie had paused in the spacious, rattan-furnished veranda. "I'll have my drink here, if I may," she answered quickly. Impossible to explain that entering Clin's house called for different company and decidedly other emotions. Celia shrugged. "Very well. What will you have ?" "Just lime and soda, please." Celia went inside and Vernie sat down and waited. Perfumes were muted out of existence by the sun. She wondered which of the shrubs exuded the bitterish night scent that mingled like a taunt with the seductive exhalations of frangipani. 75

Celia and the boy with the tray came together. The other woman had used compact and lipstick. In case Clin comes, thought Vernie, miserably conscious of her own stickiness. She had got out of the way of carrying cosmetics everywhere she went. The dark head rested against the back of a chair. Sideways, Vernie examined the elegant lines of Celia's profile and the deep ivory tones of her skin. The startling eyelashes were half-lowered, revealing cleverly darkened lids. Only her mouth jarred; at least, it jarred Vernie, for even in repose it had hardness and self-assurance. One would not attempt to compete with Mrs. Carteret. "You're rather like Stephen," Celia offered conversationally. "Not only in appearance, but in the ways you both have of revealing yourselves. It's frightfully unfledged to curl up your hands or bite on your lip when you're rattled." "I wasn't aware that I'd done either." Vernie strove to speak evenly. Ignoring the reference to Stephen, she added, "I'm twenty-two. Sophistication takes time." "I wouldn't know. I grew up on the Continent." Celia crossed her ankles and swung one toe backwards and forwards, tapping at a spray of bougainvillea that had pushed across the stone floor. "I've wanted to ask you - does Stephen resent me?" " I . ..don't think so." "It seemed incredible that he should. Last year, when we first met, we were attracted in the nicest way imaginable, and I hoped we'd always be friends." "Yes," said Vernie stiffly. "Why not?" Celia smiled. "Are you hedging or being naive? Stephen's my own age - twenty-eight. He'd hardly have confided in a young sister unless -" she let it tail off, and 76

started again. "Has your brother quarrelled with Clin?" "No." "Then why don't you and he come up here in the evenings?" Pointedly, she tacked on, "You'd come, wouldn't you?" Now that the attack was launched, Venue's nerves tightened for combat. But she was still cautious. "Stephen has been unwell. He has to take things quietly for a while." "I'm sorry." The sympathy was perfunctory. "I'm fond of Stephen. It would be horrid to discover that I'd caused a rift between him and Clin." She knew her power, this woman. With a kind of horror, Vernie saw the dainty red sandal which had been aimlessly swinging swoop and crush a head of full-blown flowers, spreading a purple stain over the floor. The action, soulless and destructive, disposed of the last of Vernie's self-consciousness. "No man enjoys being made to look a fool," she said. "If you'd told Stephen you were married when you met him a year ago, he'd have been saved a world of anguish." "My dear child" - with uplifted brows - "our acquaintance lasted a few hours - no longer. Don't ask me to believe that a man of Stephen's intelligence would allow a flirtation to assume such colossal importance." "His sense of decency would never have let him make love to a married woman!" "Exaggeration is the prerogative of the young: to have fun and games together is to make love! You've learned singularly little about the tropics, Miss Craig." "So had Stephen, twelve months ago." An impulse had drawn Vernie to her feet and controlled anger interfered with her breathing. 77

Indolently, Celia pressed further back in her chair. "What would you rather have, Miss Craig - a man's reverence or his kisses? Don't answer .. . it's too obvious. You're the first sort of woman, and if men occasionally lean towards the second, it is to protect your kind. Personally, I'd be bored melancholy if a man considered me too good for his kisses. By the way" - the sarcasm deepened - "I hope you're not falling too hard for Bill Dyson. He's a doubtful bet." The next moment found Vernie incapable of constructive thought. But she managed to move, to nod frigid thanks for the drink, and march down the path. Strictly averting herself from the clinic, she smiled woodenly at Mr. Ramsey, and stood by the table in her own livingroom without realising how she had got there. It was quite five minutes before she saw the idiocy of walking out on Celia, and even then the import of her action was swallowed by a renewed concern for Stephen. It would not help him if she made an enemy of the woman. Vernie was frightened, and what was worse, she felt alone. Bill, on whom she might have counted for sane advice, not only approved this situation - he had contrived it. Against his nonchalance, Stephen's withdrawal and Celia's scheming, what chance had Vernie ? Was it putting it too strongly to dub Celia a schemer? She reeked of subtlety blended, in the masculine presence, with a nice proportion of helplessness. Only Bill was not deceived; at all times he debunked her artifice and showed her as a woman who had been spoiled by a wealthy parent and a surfeit of admiration. Celia dealt with him wisely. A bewildered frown, a pleading smile, and Bill was made to appear blase and insensi78

tive. Stephen was hoodwinked, and so, Vernie suspected, was Clin. Mahdu brought the cold lunch she had ordered, and it was cleared and she was drinking coffee close to the open door when Wrightson hurried down for his own lunch and the Africans who had besieged the Clinic vanished their ways through the trees. Clin would now have gone in to wash and share a meal with Celia. Vernie was beginning to wilt beneath the strain of unlimited leisure. She had had all the walls distempered, but their surfaces were too uneven to display the couple of water-colours she had toted from England. A corner bracket shaped by a village craftsman and wax-polished a rich red by Mahdu had made a splendid setting for a vase of leaves and flowers, but Stephen had leaned on it one day and brought the lot to the ground, so the holes in the plaster had been filled with mud, smoothed off, and disguised with whitewash, and the bracket cast out to rot. In spite of such setbacks, the living-room presented a vastly different appearance from the musty apartment Vernie had entered on her first evening. One by one the disintegrating pieces of furniture had been replaced by solid teak. The plain vellum lampshade had been fortified against the flame's heat by thick coats of clear cellulose, and Vernie had fixed round each rim a ruche of beige velvet ribbon. The cushions had had to be filled with raw cotton, but their burgundy plumpness converted the old rattan lounger into a thing that caught the eye and invited, and Stephen's sagging armchair had a new cover of the same burgundy cotton piped with beige. From the beige linen she had made a fringed tablecloth with napkins to match, and the left-overs she had embroidered into oval mats for Stephen's dressing-chest. 79

Apart from curtains, which matched those in the livingroom, and new window-screens, Vernie's bedroom remained rather grim. Further expenditure did seem an unnecessary waste when everything went to pot the minute you left it. The station went siesta-quiet. Vernie took her helmet and walked down towards the track which led over the river. Bates, snoozing on the bottom step of Bill's house, shook himself and trotted, sluggish and disapproving, in her wake. She crossed the log bridge, and found a lightningsmitten tree to rest upon. Twigs drifted slowly downstream, and now came a canoe, a mahogany log smoothly hollowed to carry eight men. Only two Africans paddled it now, one at each end, and the centre was heaped with mangoes and yams and spotty fig bananas over which hovered clouds of tiny flies. At the bridge the boys automatically ducked and ceased chanting, to spring upright on the other side and resume their song simultaneously and on an identical note. The canoe rounded a bend and the forest-enclosed river became peaceful again. Vernie heard the car before it appeared. Oddly, above the quickening of her heart, she found herself regretting that Clin had not rested after the gruelling session of this morning. She called Bates and slipped a thumb under his collar, and by that time the car was at her side of the bridge, and slowing. Clin got out and came over. He sniffed. "Has there been a canoe along ? " "How did you know?" "Stirred mud. Oughtn't you to be lying down?" Firmly, he gripped Bates by the scruff and gave him a push, then extended a hand to help her to her feet. "Rivers 80

breed mosquitoes and dead trees are alive with termites, not to mention sleeping snakes. Why are you here?" "One must do something." "Are you lonely?" he asked quietly. "A bit - while Stephen's out." "No Bill?" "He's gone with my brother today." "Hard luck," he said laconically, and smiled. "You did two things that pleased me this morning." "The visit to the Clinic ? And what else ? " "The drink on my veranda. It was surrender, of a sort, if you did stay only fifteen minutes." Off her guard, Vernie began, "I don't stay away because I want t o . . . " "I know," he said quickly. "But don't you think it's time you showed Stephen that you and he are separate individuals ? I've never regarded him as other than a friend, but I'm not going to apologise for something that I'd do again, if I had to." She looked down at the gilt coins of sunshine on the shadowed track, and her voice lowered. "You didn't believe then - so you won't now - that Stephen really fell in love with Mrs. Carteret." "How could he, in a few hours!" "To you that sounds incredible, because you'd never allow emotions to have that much domination over you. Stephen's of softer metal. Love at first sight does happen with people like him." "Does it?" His gaze was curious and penetrating. "I've always regarded sudden love as infatuation, something quite different from the mutual attraction which occasionally develops into a happy marriage. Perhaps that has a prosaic ring to one of your romantic years ?" 81

"No. It would comfort me to be assured that Stephen had only been infatuated with Mrs. Carteret. I loathe talking about him like this, b u t . . . " "Of course you do, and it isn't really necessary. If, instead of condoning his dislike of me, you persuaded him to put up a semblance of friendship, it might in time become real. As a first step, will you both come to the dinner-party I'm giving tomorrow for Celia ?" Vernie was silent. Clin's tone held a gentle jibe. "I'd have done the same for you, remember." Had she mirrored the sharp thrust of jealousy? She gave him a bright smile. "I'll come if Stephen will." "Then you'll come," he said with finality. "I'll ask him myself." A bird dipped across their heads on its way over the river. Momentarily, the yellow and green plumage gleamed in a shaft of liquid sunshine before it plunged among leaves. Instinctively, both had turned to watch the flight. "Lovely," she murmured. "But fleeting," he concurred abruptly; "like all youth and beauty in these places." Her glance veered to his. "Quite a theme song with you, isn't it? Is that why you've never brought a . . . wife here?" He had drawn away a pace, his hand on the car door, his bearing entirely cool and mocking. "It's as good a reason as any for keeping oneself under control. Now run along and rest, and try to lose that dog as you pass Bill Dyson's. He cloys." Poor Bates, reflected Vernie, as she watched the receding car. Clin never missed a chance of comparing fickle dog with fickle master. Though Vernie never thought of 82

Bill as a philanderer, except perhaps in contrast to Clin. It was depressing how contacts with Clin always left her bruised and deflated. Invariably his pleasantness had a sharp edge, and his restraint was of the merciless brand associated with law courts. Recalling his consideration for Muriel Cricklade - his regular inquiries regarding her health, the medicines he mixed and sent over, and the genuine sympathetic advice which Muriel vowed had kept her going during the past two years - Vernie was afraid that her own stock must be low indeed with Clin Peterson. If she were less young and healthy . . . The foolishness of it! Why couldn't she accept the chasm between Vernie Craig and the hard-bitten doctor and write off the pangs as daydreams? Does the heart never countenance defeat? Stephen got in just before four. After his bath he told Vernie bluntly that Clin had made a detour expressly to meet the lorry, and had invited them to dinner tomorrow. Intent upon fastening his shirt-cuff, he said, "I didn't refuse because it would have looked churlish. He's never taken so much trouble before." "He told you the dinner is for Celia Carteret ?" Stephen nodded. "The usual routine affair. I'd ask her here to a meal if it weren't such a mud hut." "Bill comes and enjoys it," she said defensively. "You've made the place a thousand times more cosy than it was," he assured her, "but Celia's accustomed to the best houses in the Northern Provinces, and some of them are palatial." He bent over the other shirt-cuff. "Clin's made this gesture. I think we ought to go, Vernie." She knew what the decision had cost him, the struggle he had endured between a desire for a whole evening of 83

Celia and his aversion from submitting to Clin. The fact that Celia had won held menace and certainty. Stephen was still in love with the woman. So when, next evening, Vernie put on her white dress and brushed her hair, she was overcome by the similarity of her feelings to those she had had on the night of the Consul's Ball. Except that tonight the danger to Stephen was unavoidable. She would have liked to enter Clin's house on tiptoes of excitement, but fears kept her soles firmly on the mosaic floor of the hall. The lounge was huge and impressive, and somehow it seemed moulded round Clin. Vernie had desolately to concede that for Celia in scarlet and silver it provided an excellent backcloth. Clin welcomed them conventionally, as if this visit had no special significance, and soon Vernie was sipping a cocktail with Muriel Cricklade, and watching, with fatalistic calm, Celia's appropriation of Stephen. At dinner, placed between the genial Mr. Ramsey and Wrightson, Vernie ate with dwindling appetite, and, in spite of the jollity around her, was most unhappy. At the head of the table Clin had Celia on his left and Mr. Cricklade on his right. Bill was on the other side of Celia, then came Stephen and Muriel. Clin had spaced the three women to the best advantage, yet taken care to keep Vernie apart from both Stephen and Bill. She had no doubt that the arrangement had been deliberate, yet his purpose was obscure. He chatted with Celia, and once, when he had turned to answer a remark of Cricklade's, the varnished fingernails pressed his white sleeve calling him back, and Vernie heard the soft laugh at whatever he said. She winced, as if a nerve in her had been stabbed with something red hot. 84

Later, in the lounge with the veranda doors wide, Celia starred brilliantly in the reading of a one-act play. Bill and Mrs. Ramsey, at their own request, took the other two characters and performed like troupers, but Celia, in the part of a misunderstood but resourceful wife, used her husky voice like a thoroughbred actress, and earned prolonged applause and compliments. She shone with adulation and triumph. Stephen could not drag his eyes from her dark and sparkling beauty. "You've buried a thoroughly good talent," said Clin. "I wouldn't say buried," demurred Bill, jeering. "It's constant use that's made it so good. Eh, Celia?" "Need you be cantankerous, Bill dear?" she inquired without rancour. "You're not a bad actor yourself." "No, but I lack your experience and range, my pet." Talk flowed in with gramophone music, and desultory dancing followed. Suddenly Bill said, "Tomorrow's Saturday. Why shouldn't we all go up-river for a picnic ?" The suggestion caught on. Clin was holding a surgery next morning, so he couldn't go, but the rest were enthusiastic. All but Vernie. Presently she was able to slip through the door into the garden. She looked up for signs of the rain which, this year, was so reluctant to get into stride, but the portents for tomorrow's picnic were flawless. She was like one of those twigs drifting on the river yesterday, caught fast in a forked root till a bigger twig should push her free and into the current. A waxen blossom brushed her cheek and she held it there, grateful for its coolness and balm. When Celia was gone from Murabai she would come here again, but not before. 85

Voices sent her into the shadows, but no one came down to the lawn. Between a palm-trunk and a square-cut hibiscus she could see Clin and Celia smoking on the veranda. Celia's hand played lovingly over the bougainvillea, and Clin, half facing her, watched the delicate movements as if they ciphered a message. He tipped his cigarette into the garden, hitched a trousers leg, and raised the foot to a bare edge of the wall. His posture matched Celia's in perfect poise and content. Vernie turned and slid through the side-gate which led to the village. Earlier, she had compared his solicitude for Muriel Cricklade with his casual treatment of Vernie Craig; continuing the comparison, how did Celia come out? During the past week self-torture seemed to have developed into Vernie's favourite pastime. Now she reminded herself that Celia's week was up on Sunday; Clin was amusing himself with a clever woman, but he would forget her as he had before, once her disturbing presence was removed. Wasn't it natural that he should find relaxation in Celia, who dressed superbly, exuded expensive perfume, and knew all the tricks of voice and gesture? Innocent youth must seem tiresome to Clin. Cold solace for poor Vernie. Shunning the jungle blackness, she had taken a path to the left, intending to circle the houses. She must not be absent too long or they would search for her, and at the moment she could imagine nothing more distasteful than limelight. So she lengthened her pace, her skirt gathered up from the grass as she walked. A small camp-fire, between the back of Bill's house and the bush, made her pause. Beside it squatted six Africans, throwing primitive dice carved from ivory, and 86

drinking herb beer. The scene had drama and mystery. Prognathous jaws, flat woolly heads, and sinewy shoulders silhouetted by the fire-glow. Mahdu was recognisable as the only one wearing a shirt. The rest had shed all of civilisation except shorts. The game ended and they emptied the gourds of drink. Then an argument started, good-humouredly, with much clacking and heaving laughter. But, swift as a tropical night obliterates day, the merriment changed to snarls, and the boys were on their feet, grotesque now in a Dervish dance of fury. Vernie backed, afraid that precipitate flight would divert their attentions from one another. How utterly mad she had been to come trailing round the village at something to midnight. For a second she contemplated commanding Mahdu to escort her up the road, but for all his disdain of the locals, he appeared now to have sloughed his superiority and to be competing with the others in violence. In fact, it was Mahdu who first brandished a knife. Vernie had just decided to speed her exit when it happened. A flame in her right shoulder and sudden red stains on her dress. Her scream shocked the boys into effigies; then they scattered. Blindly, clasping her hand over the wound, she began to run. It was not till she was almost enveloped in vines that she stopped, gripped by frantic bewilderment. Had she been crazy enough to dive straight into the forest? Panting from exertion and the dreadful sensation which was ousting the numbness in her shoulder, she reached her sound arm to a tree-trunk and let it take her weight. For minutes she was too sick and faint to change position. 87

"Vernie! Vernie, where are you?" That was Stephen's cry, but she hadn't the strength to answer it. "Ver-on-ica! " A stentorian effort from Bill. She closed her eyes and tried to shout, but it was odd how the tensing of her throat muscles sent sparks to her ripped arm. Stephen called again, but from a greater distance, and Bill seemed to be moving away too. Vernie tried to placate her panic with reason. She couldn't have penetrated far into the trees; it was simply a matter of turning back a short way. The camp-fire would still be burning and other lights visible. But thick-leaved branches closed about her, dripping with those terrifying vines. She was imprisoned in an evil, brooding fastness. A beam of light fell across her closed lids. "What in heaven!" The exclamation was Clin's. At the first touch of his hand something snapped in Vernie. She sagged forward into his arms. "Don't tremble so," he said, strangely harsh. "Veronica, was that blood on your dress? We heard your scream. Are you hurt?" "Some Africans were fighting. A knife caught my shoulder." "A knife!" He said no more, but pocketed the torch and lifted her. She felt his chin hard against her cheek as he strode, head ducked to protect her face from thorny growths. Desperately, she clung to the beloved reality of being carried in his strong arms, till exhaustion and pain shrouded her consciousness. 88

CHAPTER VI DAWN filtered through the mana screen at the window, casting a patterned rectangle on the white wall opposite. It was six o'clock, and the usual morning noises seeped in. Bates, airing his lungs as he never did at any other time of the day; boys chopping kindling; Mahdu raking out the brick stove at the back; and the small boy just outside, sweeping ants and lizards from the veranda. Vernie twitched aside the mosquito net and lay back again, surprised that the pain at the top of her arm had diminished. The whole shoulder felt large and one vast ache, but the bandaging, light and expert, showed that the swelling was more sensation than fact. Nothing odd about waking in one's own bed, but it was usual to be able to recollect how one had arrived there. What had happened after Clin had found her, and where, oh, where was her treasured white dress ? A knock on the door and Stephen came in. He stood by the bed and smiled down at her a little wearily. "Better for the sleep? You certainly look it." "Heaps. I'm sorry to have been such an ass, Stephen." "Never mind. It was a horrible gash. Thank heaven Clin was there." "What. . .did he do?" "He cleaned the wound, filled it with sulfonamide, and put in four stitches." Looking away, he added, "He made a neat job of it. I don't think you'll have a scar." "Where was I all the time ?" "In his lounge - he doped you. He brought you over 89

here and Mrs. Cricklade helped you undress. Don't you remember that?" "Hazily." Stephen was hating his own incompetence, and she wished there were some way of reassuring him that comparatively few men were moulded in Clin's cold and detached form. But certain sentiments are taboo between brother and sister. Ruefully she asked, "Is my dress ruined?" "I'm afraid so. Clin hacked it straight across the shoulder. Mrs. Cricklade took your clothes away to soak out the stains." "I hope my lunacy isn't going to spoil the picnic." "The others are going, but I'll stay with you." Vernie couldn't have managed it better had the incident of the knife been planned, except that it might have been less painful to feign a ricked ankle or a raging head. But in Stephen's resignation lurked a shadow. This was Celia's last day. Supposing this were Vernie's last day with Clin and she had to choose between duty and spending it with him ? A goose walked over her grave. "I won't let you," she said impulsively. "I shall be as happy here alone as if it were a working day. Hurry and get shaved, darling. They're sure to start early." He protested, but her persistence won, and he went off to the bath cubicle. After she had drunk some of Mahdu's smoky tea, Vernie gingerly got out of bed and began to dress. She washed as best she could, put on a tennis frock which buttoned on the shoulders like a school tunic, and brushed back her hair to fall in a deep wave round the nape of her neck. Anxious, and still wrenched two ways, Stephen kissed her temple. 90

"Sure you don't mind?" "Of course. I'll go to the step with you." Bill loped up and squeezed her fingers. "You look enchanting, my lovely. Come with us, and I'll guard you with my life." "No," said Stephen firmly. "Vernie must rest." "Certainly she must," agreed Mr. Ramsey, with a friendly grin at her. "We were just getting nicely tight last night when you knocked us cold sober. Don't ever do it again." Then Wrightson appeared with the Cricklades. "My dear, I'm so glad to see you looking bright this morning," said Muriel, "So am I," shyly from Wrightson. And Mr. Cricklade expressed a similar satisfaction with a beam and a grunt. A lump came into Vernie's throat and a brightness into her eyes. They were sweet, and so sympathetic and helpful. "I hope you'll have a wonderful time," was all she could answer. Then she noticed that Celia had joined the group. Celia, slim and immaculate in riding breeches and a white silk shirt, the dark hair groomed back into a shining knot below her topi. The others, except Stephen and Bill, said good-bye and moved off towards the river. Celia came between the two men and slipped a hand into an arm of each. Her mouth was confident and possessive, but her eyes, as they rested on Vernie, were hard as jet. "You stole the party last night. The picnic, it seems, is to be all mine. Clin asked me to tell you that he has some unusually busy hours before him, and he wishes you to spend the whole day indoors. On no account are 91

you to walk in the sun." "It would be wise, Vernie," said Stephen, almost apologetically. When they had gone, she sat on in the veranda. The need for dissimulation over, she sank into a deep lethargy, the result of loss of blood and shock. Her woolly brain registered that numbers of sick Africans lined the benches outside the Clinic; she could see them through the bamboo fence. The thought of them trudging through the jungle from their distant villages, maimed, often in frightful pain, was pitiful. A boy from Clin's house came up the steps and handed her a hastily written note. "Go back to bed at once," she read, "and stay there till lunch-time. I will come down later." She smiled faintly and nodded to the boy to go. Clin must have seen her from his own veranda and scribbled his disapproval before opening the surgery. She went inside and lay among the new cushions on the lounger, and presently, with astonishing ease, she fell asleep. The morning passed. A few times Mahdu came and looked at her, rasping his chin in perplexity. True, he preferred to be bossed by the doctor, but this little missus, for all her unnecessary bowls and vases, her wax polish and queer notions about cooking, her ridiculous love of soap and water and fly sprays, had much tolerance and kindness. If her recovery meant that he would have to take punishment for that miserable business of last night, he still did not want to die. Which was generous and brave of Mahdu, though he said it himself. At one o'clock he stoically ate his mess of manioc meal and dried fish, and afterwards assumed his most grave demeanour and walked up to the doctor's house. 92

Vernie's sleep had been deep and dreamless. She awoke warm and rested, unaware that a drowsy flush and pale hair spread over the burgundy cushion made her appear extremely young and defenceless. At the first incautious stretching of limbs she winced and sat up straight. She blinked, and hurriedly pushed back the tumbled hair. From a chair only a couple of feet away Clin was studying her. "Take your time," he advised. "We've the remainder of the day before us." "But you ought to be in the surgery!" "Hardly. It's a quarter to three." "No! What on earth have I done?" He sounded amused. "Slept off the drug. I gave you luminal last night, but you, being the contrary sort, roused at your usual time, determined to be normal. When you lay down again the drug caught up with you. It does that if you're not accustomed to it. How does the shoulder feel?" Memory flooded back - Clin's arms about her and his warm breath on her cheek - but she hadn't had time to be embarrassed, and now it was too late. "Stiff, but no agony." Unobtrusively, she slid her feet to the ground. "Have you been here long ? " "About an hour. You were so still that your boy got wind-up and came to see me. I suspected the drug would act as it did. In fact, that was why I ordered you back to bed." "You know everything." "Not quite," he replied, a trifle mockingly. "Don't keep stabbing at your hair. Tousled, you look about fifteen and easy to handle. You won't feel very hungry, but would you like some tea?" 93

"I might, after I've tidied." "If I let you go you'll come back a soignee twentytwo." "I shall still be wearing this crumpled frock." "All right. I'll order the tea." She returned to find the chairs moved nearer the door, one either side of the table, upon which had appeared a dish of sandwiches garnished with mock-parsley, the contents of a freshly opened tin of shortbreads, and a pyramid of coconut fingers - all from Clin's kitchen. As he seated her one of his boys brought a pot of tea and teacups. "Where's Mahdu?" she asked. "Mahdu," he told her, setting each cup into its saucer with precision, "is repenting his sins. He confessed to being concerned in last night's fracas, though he swears his was not the knife which injured you." He dropped one domino from the covered sugar-bowl into her cup, and placed it left of her plate for all the world as if she were a left-handed friend he had often entertained to tea. "Eat up," he bade her. "I had a good lunch." While she nibbled he talked; of other provinces in which he had worked; of meetings with famous travellers and the inevitable outcasts of society; of comical incidents at surgeries. "We seldom stay at one place more than eighteen months," he said. "I've been here just on two years. Soon after you leave for England, I shall be leaving Murabai." With exceptional composure, she answered, "For a different area?" "Possibly. Last week in Keleba Head Office mentioned 94

what he termed 'a post of the utmost importance' in Lagos. No travelling, plenty of companionship, and more leisure. I'd take it if I weren't so heartily tired of doctoring people." "Are you? I can't imagine you doing anything else." He smiled. "Have you really tried? Haven't you been doing a little judging yourself, through Stephen's eyes?" "No," she said flatly. "Stephen doesn't come in to what I think about you." "What a revelation! Tell me more." "What can I tell you about yourself that you're not aware of already? That you can be charming .. . and insufferable; kind . . . and devastatingly cruel...." "Blame your youth, Veronica!" "You even speak my name with a sneer." The swift exchange ended abruptly. "Except," she added unevenly, "when you rescued me last night." The pause was scarcely perceptible. "Some time," he said, "you're going to explain what prompted you to saunter round the station at midnight in the middle of a perfectly good party." But not now, stated his manner; definitely not now. He got up and signalled the boy who had apparently been waiting in front of the house, and while the tray was being filled, took a turn along the restricting veranda. When they were alone again he beckoned her out. Professionally, he felt her shoulder. "If there's no discomfort we won't look at it till tomorrow. Cover your head and we'll take a walk." "But this morning . . ." She stopped and he quizzed at her. "Well?" "I'll get my hat," she returned hastily. 95

The reversal of his decision that she should remain indoors all day did not displease her. The heat was going, the daytime pests becoming somnolent, and the moths and mosquitoes were only just beginning to flex their wings. Five o'clock was one of the pleasantest of the daylight hours. But Vernie did wonder about Celia's injunction before going off to the picnic. It had been delivered with such icy dislike. Casually she asked, "Did you give Mrs. Carteret a message for me this morning?" "I meant to, but I breakfasted at an unearthly hour and didn't see her. Why?" "Nothing. An idea I had." He let it pass without further query, and for a minute Vernie indulged in speculation. But when he insisted that she might soon become dizzy if she did not hold his arm, this hot, murmurous world had room for no one beside herself and Clin. He took her back to his own house, and they stood for a short while staring out at the darkening trees and the concentration of dying gold in the rich evening sky. "I wonder if anyone has ever written a poem about palms against a sapphire sky?" she said. 'Green and gold and aquamarine above the pallid strand'," he quoted. "That was written about Lagos. The commercial paint-brush can do more with the tropics than the poet's pencil. Heat breeds violence in all its forms, and poets are torn to pieces by violence." "When my friends in England knew I was corning to Nigeria, they bombarded me with warnings. Men in the tropics, they said, were heat-crazy enough to fight each other over a woman whom they wouldn't spare a second glance back home. At the time I half believed it, but it's 96

good to know from experience that it's untrue." "Not entirely." "Distorted, then." "Partly distorted, shall we say? You've been here a brief two months," he reminded her dryly. "I might add that you're pretty enough to merit a second glance from many a man back home. It isn't safe to draw conclusions till you're on the boat to England." "Anyway, it's fortunate that Stephen should be stationed at Murabai. It might easily have been somewhere else." "And some other medical officer." His tone teased. "Unthinkable that you might have come to West Africa and missed meeting the Honourable Bill Dyson. There's one of his type in most places, but Bill has the advantage of a high-sounding handle." "He never struts." "Therein lies his main attraction . . . for men. Women are electrified by the title and his prowess at making love." His voice lowered. "Does he do it well?" "Do what well?" "The sweet contacts and whispers. He's had plenty of practice." Then bluntly, "Has he ever kissed you?" "Of course not! At least..." His laugh was short and sardonic. "At least?" Annoyed that colour should sweep into her face, she retorted, "Bill behaves spontaneously. You can't call a meaningless brush of the forehead a kiss." "It would be a caress from anyone else but Dyson," he said crisply. "Others before you have aspired to marrying into the peerage, but Bill wasn't ready. If my reading of the signs is correct, he's now feeling the pull towards home, so your chances are excellent." 97

His grin baffled her. She would not be childish enough to take him seriously; far wiser to play up to his banter. "Is that your considered opinion? How gratifying." In the next breath she detested her own banality. Gin's mouth was cynical as he led her into his lounge and set a flame to each of the lamps. "If you'll pardon me for five minutes, I'll go and order dinner. Any suggestions?" "Not one. I'm still not hungry." "The others may not show up before nine. It had better be cold chicken and salad." He went off and Vernie stood for a long time in front of one of the cabinets, regarding each item as if in part it had helped to forge the key to Clin Peterson. Carved jade, crude lapis lazuli, moonstones, agate, a cat's-eye, peridot, and coral; a dagger in a garnet-crusted sheath; a heavy silver ring mounting a single rare blue topaz; a bracelet of beaten silver and opals. Beautiful, this last, in its bed of velvet; lovely as raindrops on a wine-dark rose. Clin came behind her. "I thought you preferred the African specimens. These were my earliest efforts at collecting. Occasionally, I decide to get rid of the lot." "I do hope you won't! " Her vehemence brought a faint smile to his lips. "They're a nuisance when one hasn't a fixed home. My predecessor here had a wife who displayed her china and glass in these cabinets, but I'm hardly likely to have the same luck with my next house. The stuff will go back into boxes and grow fungi." "You won't always live in Africa." "I shall," he said, with such finality and coldness that 98

her heart contracted and she remained staring at the splashes of warm colour behind the glass. Without much change in his expression, he pointed to the bracelet. "What do you think of it?" "It's exquisite." He brought a bunch of keys from his pocket and opened the door. In his palm the bracelet gleamed iridescently. "Try it on," he said. Quickly, her hands went behind her back. "I'd rather not. Opals are supposed to be unlucky if you wear them." "Maiden's tears." The jeer had an edge. "Legend has it that you weep for the giver. You'll scarcely be called upon to weep for me, Veronica." He tossed the bracelet where it belonged, and snapped shut the door. "How solemn we've become over a few semi-precious stones. Find yourself a book, will you, while I enter some notes about this morning's surgery." As Vernie dropped into the low chair beside the bookcase, she was surprised to find herself trembling. At random she chose a book and opened it, totally unaware that it was the heavy verbiage of Carlyle which blurred before her vision. She tried to swallow on the huge clot in her throat, but the very action of suppressing tears started a fresh stinging in her eyelids. Her teeth clamped. To cry here, now, would be the end. By a superhuman effort which left her weak, she gained control. The dregs of her emotion, two tears, slid down her cheeks, and dried. Presently, Clin closed his notebook and put it away in a drawer of the desk. He got up and bent over her. His laugh moved the hair at her forehead. "Poor child! Carlyle is meant to be taken in small doses at long intervals. I doubt if he's a woman's writer 99

at all. Didn't you see the new novels on the middle shelf?" "There wasn't time to start a novel." She let him take the book and replace it between Donne and Hazlitt. He sat on the wide arm of her chair and again she felt the light, exploring touch on her injured shoulder. "I've been a brute to you this evening, haven't I ?" Thankful that he could see only the top of her head, she answered, "You've been. .. you." "You'll have to forgive me. That wound of yours shook me up last night. You know the parental impulse to spank a child that makes a successful dash across the road in the teeth of a bus ?" "Yes." "I was six when I first took a horse over a fence. My nurse, a large Scotswoman with a sense of responsibility, told me darkly that if I did it again and broke my neck she'd give me a thrashing. Today, I have sympathy with poor old Jeannie." "But you're neither parent nor nurse." "Nor even big brother," he agreed. "Mysterious, isn't it?" To avoid a pause which would have been the more unbearable for his nearness, she said, "I haven't thanked you for the medical attention. Stephen told me all about it, and I'm very grateful." "Thank heaven for modern drugs. You must take it easy for the next week." He straightened. "Let's have a drink... a real one, not lime and soda." He prepared them, tall glasses, three parts full of amber liquid, and presented hers with a bow. Over the top of his glass he smiled down at her. Perhaps he was noticing 100

her pallor for the first time; his smile faded, and the grey eyes lost their glint. "You should have let go just now and cried," he said quietly. "Nice women have to cry sometimes." "Carlyle's fault," she replied unsteadily, and was rewarded with an unbelieving grin. Vernie was tired, and when their drinks were finished, Clin did what she hoped he would: he played some gramophone music. Brahms and Debussy and Lehar. She stayed in her low chair, and he sat at one end of the massive chesterfield, the gramophone on a coffee table between them. She did not bother to think; it was sufficient to be part of this tenuous harmony and peace, to watch Clin, and share with him the lilt and verve of the music. "Giselle" was half-way through when Celia came in. She paused in the doorway, slim and vivid in yellow linen, her frown disintegrating as Clin rose and spoke to her. Before the music ended both Bill and Stephen had added themselves to the company. Bill stopped the whirring record. "How's my little pigeon with the broken wing?" he asked. "Nearly whole again. Did you have a good day?" "So-so, but picnicking isn't all it's cracked up to be, and we missed your saving presence, sweet Veronica." "Did you get any shooting?" inquired Clin. "Not with guns," came the cryptic reply. "Mind if I pour a drink?" "Go ahead. Give us all one." Celia had established herself next to Clin on the chesterfield. Stephen, a line etched at the corner of each eye either by sun or by strain, came dutifully to sit near Ver101

nie, but his attention had fixed on the dark head which lay negligently close to Clin's shoulder. In spite of Bill's badinage and Clin's normal aloofness, Vernie sensed conflict and drama in the atmosphere. Heaven knew what had happened out there on the river today. Stephen's unhappiness reached out to her, almost tangible, and Celia's posture of healthy weariness masked an unnerving watchfulness, in which Vernie knew she was included. She felt sure those sloe-dark eyes could read inside her head and her heart. "As soon as the others are here we'll have dinner," said Clin. "You'll want to get to bed early tonight, Celia." "I think not, Clin," she drawled. "You did say how inconvenient it would be to spare Wrightson to drive me to Keleba tomorrow, so I've made up my mind to stay on. I like it here." Her face turned to him. "Have I been in the way?" "On the contrary. You've stood up to bush living much better than I expected. Stay as long as you can." "You're a darling," was her response, and both her arms went round one of his and hugged it. It seemed to Vernie that without appearing boorish, Clin could have disengaged himself and left her in possession of the chesterfield. Tormentingly, she concluded that he was not averse from Celia's proximity; he might even have permitted the small display in order to show her his pleasure in her decision to remain at Murabai. When he did draw his arm from Celia's loose clasp to get up and go into the hall to look for the Cricklades, Stephen unhesitatingly went over and took his place. His eager but guarded tones came clearly to Vernie. "You're really staying, Celia? Was that what you meant this afternoon when..." 102

"Yes, my dear. Are you pleased?" "It just doesn't seem possible!" "Hush, Stephen." Bill, emptying his second drink, winked at Vernie, and she gave him a pleasing smile. The whole world was rocking again and she too exhausted to cope. Bill wasn't the help he ought to be; maybe he was getting too much private fun out of the situation. When Clin returned he stared straight across at Vernie. "Your sister needs her bed, Stephen," he said curtly. "I'd arranged for us all to dine together, but it's getting late. As Celia isn't leaving, there'll be other evenings. I'll have a tray sent to your house at once." Stephen sprang up, hot colour darkening his cheekbones, and Vernie, too, was standing, her eyes large with apprehension and fatigue. "I'm so sorry," she said jerkily; "I don't want to wreck another dinner-party for you," and walked to the door. "Good night, everyone." In the hall Clin caught her elbow. "You know I didn't mean that," he exclaimed in a furious undertone. "You do need rest, badly, and Stephen is the only one who has the right to help you." "I'm beginning to understand," she said dully. "Stephen and I won't trouble you much. We both have . . . pride." There was no time for more before Stephen came. He managed a tight smile, and slipped an arm across her back. "Ready, Vernie?" She nodded. Celia had drifted to Clin's side. Politely, Vernie 103

wished them both good night, and dispassionately, as she and her brother made their way home, she hoped that Stephen had correctly construed Celia's final, narrowed smile of triumph.

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CHAPTER VII an affectionate brother and sister who have never seriously quarrelled, tension cannot last for long. On Sunday morning Vernie suggested that the dressing on her shoulder be renewed, so when Clin came down an hour later for that purpose, his services were politely declined. He glanced coolly from Vernie to Stephen and went away again. Perhaps it was fortunate that a storm broke in the afternoon and raged all through the evening and half the night. Isolated with Stephen in a red swirling lake, Vernie experienced a period of safety from shattering incidents. Naturally, her thoughts went back many times over yesterday, but Clin's gentleness when they were alone had lost reality. Only his ruthlessness had substance. Did he really count Stephen as a rival? Wasn't it patent to him that Celia was merely using her brother as a willing foil, because, even in the jungle she had to be admired and made love to and, if possible, fought over? Was he falling in love with the woman ? As the days passed Vernie became certain of one thing: Celia's sole object in staying on at the hot, pest-ridden station was the conquest of Clin. Bill, when he dropped in for morning coffee, was frank about it. "Celia was already married when I first met her, but she was intriguing enough to merit a few inquiries. I heard that it was an unforgivable blow when Clin chose the bush in preference to her charms. And why shouldn't it be? Her charms are considerable. Clin happens to be a man of iron." 105 BETWEEN

"Can it be true that she married Alan Carteret out of pique?" "Too true, my sweet. She lived with him only a few weeks." "Is she in love with Clin?" Bill laughed. "She was, but I rather think he now constitutes a challenge. He's the only thing Celia ever wanted without getting." "And Clin?" Vernie had to ask. "Do you think he's still... adamant?" He shrugged. "Who can tell? He's more easily roused to anger these days, even with me, which could mean that those feelings he's so far neglected are giving trouble." Moodily for him, he added, "These small villages are the deuce; like living on the rim of a homemade volcano." "You said you were going on tour again." "I'm awaiting instructions. The trouble is, Head Office has the conviction that I'm a playboy and not much good on the job. They're always amazed when I turn in my report, but straightway forget me and leave me to stew." "Why don't you spend the intervals in Keleba?" He teased. "Because you're not there, Veronica. Can you spare a spot of brandy to pep up this coffee ? " Perhaps the frequent storms and enervating wet heat accounted for the days slipping by with nightmarish sameness. Another week-end passed. Vernie's wound, now nearly recovered, showed a curved blue indentation with dark points each side where the stitches had been. Except when Bill took her for short rides to continue the driving lessons begun weeks ago, she kept to the house, and the evenings were so black, the night air so oppressive with heat and moisture, that it was a relief to 106

shut doors and windows and write letters or re-read one of the books. About noon one day, Muriel Cricklade brought over a tart made with dried apple rings and cinnamon. "We had one yesterday," she said, "and enjoyed it. My husband adores them." Muriel's innate kindness had needed the stimulus of Vernie's accident. Now, she often waded over with a dress pattern or some cookies, and sometimes she worked hard on her piece of embroidery, sitting on the veranda and talking in her lack-lustre manner about the culture they were missing. Today, though, Muriel's eyes were bright and she spoke with energy. When the tart was covered and put away she moved around touching Vernie's ornaments and humming to herself. "Happy?" asked Vernie, thinking how pleasant it was to have her there. "Very. In our mail yesterday we had just the letter I've been longing for and yet dreading. My husband has been offered a post by an afforestation board in England. We're sailing in a month." "Muriel, how splendid!" "That's how I feel this morning." Years had fled from the tropic-tired face, leaving it sunny and thirty again. "It's rather a wrench for Richard because he's specialised in tropical forestry, but . . . well, we bad a very long talk last night, and I've made him as eager to go as I am. You see, we've been married eight years, and spent practically the whole time in the tropics. You won't realise all the implications of that - the heightened tempo, the lack of refinements, and a lot more. Men get along all right, but if you're a woman and nervy, the heat and un107

natural mode of living get you down." "It will be lovely to start a new home in England." Muriel sighed contentedly. "And a baby. I've wanted one for a long time, but I wouldn't go without Richard. It's funny, but I never dared mention the subject to him till last night. One doesn't have children in these places, so what was the use? But when I did out with it, I discovered that we were both anxious for the same thing. Can you wonder that I raise my tuneless voice in song ? " Presently, still wrapped in her rosy world, Muriel went to get her husband's lunch, and Vernie sat down to a steamed corn cob, one of the half-dozen brought from the field near the river this morning. Seasoned and coated with tinned butter it was tender and delicious, but Vernie ate it without tasting, for Muriel, transfigured by the prospect of ordinary domestic joy, was a person to dwell upon and envy. Vernie had always regarded the Cricklades as unmatched, but they had proved, after eight testing years, to be of one mind. Love smote the unlikeliest people, and quite often made an excellent job of it. So much devolved upon the woman. When she told Stephen about the Cricklades that evening he made the remark she expected. "In a few months all this crowd except Ramsey will have gone from Murabai. There'll be a new set of men posing new problems. Makes one seem superfluous, doesn't it?" "From the social aspect, perhaps. But there's a lot to be said for a continual change of personnel. It keeps the improvements fluid and prevents complete melancholy." "You feeling it too, Vernie?" he asked shrewdly. "This last week or so I've been trying to view things with 108

cold objectivity. It isn't simple, but it helps." He paused. "The rains were deadly enough last year, but this season the damp rots one's brain." "Do you still have the pain, Stephen?" "Now and then." He smiled offhandedly. "Bill knew a chap who had the same trouble and it cleared up like magic when he went home. Mainly mental, the doctor told him. Nervous indigestion or something." The solution was comforting, but she did wish he would sink his pride for long enough to consult Clin about it. If it weren't for the ever-present Celia, Vernie would have gone to him for advice herself. Stephen's health came before personal shrinking. But in spite of more healthy feeding, Stephen remained thin and mostly without appetite. Worse, his colour was deteriorating from pale tan to dyspeptic grey, and the fine features were marred by a constantly drawn expression. That week-end, Mr. Cricklade's successor came to Murabai. He was a middle-aged bachelor named Gerrard, who filled his leisure with hunting and fishing. So on Sunday, all except Vernie, Stephen, and Wrightson went off in the box-car to a plateau many miles away, where the river widened and wild duck were known to be plentiful. Vernie wrote a long letter to Aunt Josephine, and shorter ones to friends in Sussex. She looked up from the writing-pad to find Stephen, his book neglected, slumped in an inertia of utter weariness and despair. As soon as he was conscious of her attention his shoulders squared and he turned a page, and instinctively she knew that he had been away down the river, with Celia. The whole atmosphere of the house was becoming in109

tolerably charged. She would go to Clin in all humility and beg his assistance. Stephen's heart must mend as it would, but there were material remedies for physical troubles. Her resolve was eased by the early return of the party, and the pair of quail which Clin at once sent down. Vernie watched Celia enter her own house, and then walked out into the dusk. Clin, still in riding kit, was standing smoking in his garden. Immediately he saw her he opened the gate to let her through, but the stiffness with which he towered at her side stayed the impetus which had brought her so far. "I came to thank you for the quail," she began. "It isn't necessary. I sent them quickly so that you could cook them this evening." "I thought so." An agony of embarrassment kept her silent for a minute. This was going to be horribly difficult. "A note was good enough to thank me for the buck meat last week," he reminded her. "It would have served again." "You'd rather I . . . hadn't come?" "Yes, if that was your only intention in coming." Need he be so dreadfully hard? After all, she hadn't hurt him as he had hurt her. He wasn't that vulnerable. "I'm sorry to have been so stupid and feminine," she said. "Your slight to Stephen that evening pricked us both." "It's a pity neither of you has yet learned the difference between a slight and concern for your welfare. You seem to have convinced yourself that it pleases me to dictate on every possible occasion." 110

"I don't mind your dictating to me," she returned with spirit, "but Stephen's a man . . ." "Stephen's a fool," he clipped out, "to exhaust his emotions over a woman who has never been remotely fond of him. When I saw you looking like death, and Stephen ignoring you, and hot-headed with the news that Celia would not be leaving, I acted as any man with authority and a heart would have done." "A heart!" It was his contempt for her brother that angered Vernie. " I f you ever possessed a heart it atrophied years ago. You don't care for anything but your position and the power it gives you. . . . " "Steady. Let's take the rest of that as said." His voice had gone dangerously soft. "Since you came you've regarded me as an enemy, because of Stephen. From the beginning you identified yourself with him, and encouraged his animosity towards me. Oh, yes, you did -" as she made to deny it. "Not wittingly, of course - you couldn't be truculent if you tried - but you kept before you the idea of a man without a single human quality, and first impressions die hard. I hoped you'd more sense, more insight." "I've tried to understand you," she returned, "but no one can see through a steel wall. Loyalty to Stephen was important. You must appreciate that." "Loyalty to oneself also has a high value. As you say, Stephen's a man. Why not treat him as one, and stop managing an affair that you can know nothing about?" His coolness revived her anger. "I'm not a Nigerian to be intimidated by your manner. Neither are you my brother's superior." As swift as it had surged the fury died. She drew away. "I came 111

this evening in apologetic mood. I wish I'd thought twice." His bearing changed. In a stride he put himself between Vernie and the gate. "Come into the house. I've been wanting to talk to you." "Wanting it so badly that you've forgotten my existence. It doesn't matter. We could never b e . . . friends." "You're right," he said roughly, "we couldn't. But we might investigate the reason why." "It isn't obscure," she said with bitterness. "What can a cynical egotist have in common with Stephen's sister?" Darkness had crept up, and sounds were approaching up the track. Peremptorily, Clin said, "You'll come in to dinner and I'll send for Stephen." "I won't," she answered, desperately firm. From the other side of the hedge Celia sweetly inquired, "May I come in?" and Clin swung back the gate. "Oh, Miss Craig," in simulated surprise, "you and your brother might exist on another planet for all we see of you. How is Stephen?" "Well enough, thanks." Vernie, burdened with the futility of her errand, wished it were true. "You two must be bored silly," Celia went on. "I can't visualise anything more devitalising than to be cooped up in the wilds with one's own kin. Hallo, Bill dear." She contrived the ostentatiously artificial air she always assumed when greeting him. Bill nodded and leaned familiarly on the top bar of the gate. "I've come to fetch you, sweet Veronica. I'm participating in your roast game tonight." "Are you? I'm glad." She got past Clin. " I f you'd let me know I'd have made a cream trifle." 112

"Bless you," Bill said indulgently. "Your consideration for the inner man should earn you the best husband in the world." "How sad that you don't qualify, Bill," Celia said acidly. "I don't know." He spoke lazily. "It's wonderful what marriage with the right girl will accomplish. When I get into my tweeds and shoulder a gun I'm quite a home-bird, believe it or not. Veronica believes it, don't you, pet ? " For a second it looked as if Clin would say something icy and austere. With a nervous smile, Vernie took the hand Bill offered, and turned to the others. "I won't keep you any longer. Good night, Mrs. Carteret. Good night.. . Clin." For three days there was no rain, and Vernie got the notion that Stephen's step had lightened and his skin taken on a faint glow. Was she fretting unnecessarily about his health? Bill declared that no one ever felt really well in the rains, and that Stephen didn't look any seedier than at this time last year. Relinquishing the worry over Stephen opened the way for deeper, more rending anguish, and there were times when the station, in the sultry grip of the jungle, oppressed with its weight of hidden passion and intrigue. Vernie was spending several hours each day with Muriel and becoming increasingly astonished at the accumulation of junk she had stowed away in the tiny house. They filled tea chests with cedarwood boxes, grass stools and Benares brass: cheap objects from Indian bazaars. Silks and linens crumbled at a touch and had to be thrown away, but little dismayed Muriel in her newly acquired 113

happiness. The chests were sealed, bound, and dispatched to Keleba Junction, there to await the Cricklades and their trunks. Belatedly, Muriel embarked on a brief spate of entertaining, but the house was too small to invite more than two or three at a time, and Gerrard, bluff and homely, was mostly there. He would transfer from his dilapidated shack when the Cricklades were gone. Muriel had heard that Celia Carteret would be leaving at the same time as she and her husband, in a fortnight. "So you'll be the only woman here, poor dear," she told Vernie, "and it will be lonelier than usual, because Bill's bound to be off on tour soon, and the doctor likewise. I expect you're simply yearning for the next two months to fly." Yearning was not quite the word; Vernie hadn't Muriel's incentive for returning to England. Stephen had to make his periodic visit to outlying farms, and was away three days. Perhaps it was unreasonable to feel that Bill should have accompanied him, for tropical land culture was not to Bill's taste, and he had put in several odd days on the work. The time palled. Every subject Vernie and Muriel could converse upon had been spent, and Bill's mixture of facetiousness and perspicacity rasped as it never had before. To intensify her anxiety more rain set in, and she had nightmarish visions of Stephen sleeping between wet blankets in a leaking hut. Stephen came back needing a bath, but otherwise normal and pleased with the results of last year's spade work on the farms. "The trouble with Africans is that they seldom see beyond today. Each time I go I lecture them on the necessity 114

for good rich farming, and the essential planting of trees for timber and soil fertility in the future. This time I laid it on thick about soil erosion." "How do you put it over?" "In pidgin, with the key words in well-conned Hausa. I'm not too good, but by repetition I knock it into them. I told one old boy that I'm finishing in a couple of months, and he made me take a belt of cowrie shells as a parting gift." As he hung it on a hook beside the one which held the jigida given her by Clin, Vernie's throat contracted. She, like Muriel, would have things to destroy when the time came for packing. The following Sunday she and Stephen canoed down the river and spent the day idling and fishing in the shallows. The wide waters, boulder-strewn in the centre and silted high at the sides, rushed and eddied towards the channel farther on, falling into purling dents where stream beds lay and bubbling around tree roots with abandon. "There's a village about a mile on," said Stephen, "one that I call at about once a month. If the river weren't so high, I'd take you there. The rains have certainly been fierce." "I wish you would let me go with you some days." "Where's the sense in two of us getting worn out?" "I might as well see a little of the district before we leave it." She had set out the lunch on a folding table beneath a mango tree. The two canoe boys could be seen as small black figures fishing some way along on the other side of the water. Their methods were crude but effective. They waded, scooping with shallow baskets, and tipped the catch 115

into a grass-net bag slung on a pole between them and ingeniously manoeuvred when they stooped. Vernie and Stephen had eaten and were smoking a tranquil cigarette when she said, "Wouldn't it be lovely if you could buy some land near Aunt Jo? Then you could live with her and put off the expense of building a house for a while." "I shouldn't care for that." He was pensive. "I wouldn't mind living near her, but not with her. I intend to have a place of my own. It would be your home, too, till you marry." "Will you be able to settle in Sussex, after this?" she waved her hand. "Why not?" He stared across at her. " I f Bill can't get away when my time is up, would you like to wait on for him?" "Bill? No." To smooth the terseness of her answer, she added, "I'm not leaving you till you're in more capable hands than mine." They dozed, and awoke to a brew of thick, sweet tea, coloured with tinned milk. Now that it was cooler they cast a line, and the boys, satisfied with the heaving pink and silver mass that hung in a basket over the side of the canoe, watched their efforts with interest. They paddled home in a black hush. On either hand loomed dense forest, which met overhead, obliterating the oddly clear sky which presaged still more rain. As, tired but not too unhappy, they walked the track home, Bill hailed them from his door. "Come on in. Wrightson turned up with the mail just as we were having sundowners. It's all here." Bill's lounge was crowded. His boy poured drinks, and Ramsey was unleashing his rolling voice in song. Muriel 116

was reading a letter while her husband peered in the end of a bundle of magazines. Celia slipped a flat packet of private envelopes into her corn-coloured linen bag, and Clin, leaning negligently against the wall, held his neatly stringed package of mail under his arm. Aware of her untidy hair and mud-streaked dress, Vernie went to the table where the remaining letters were scattered. She and Stephen sorted theirs and slipped them into pockets. "Thanks very much," she said. "The rest are yours. Bill." He barred the doorway. "You're not going without a drink." "We're horribly grubby." "You couldn't be horribly anything. Have some whisky and tell us a good fishing story." The only empty chair was next to Clin. He bent over. "Had a restful day?" "Yes, very." "Your hair looks damp. I hope you didn't bathe." "Stephen wouldn't let me. It must be moisture from the trees." There was a pause, filled with Ramsey's clamouring bass. Vernie could feel against her spine the thumb of Clin's hand which rested on the back of her chair. Quietly, he jibed: "You don't strike me as a woman happily in love, Veronica. Is it uncertainty that makes you quiver at the least touch?" "Perhaps it's your nearness," she replied evenly. "I do shiver with the cold." "Which cleverly begs the question. May I offer some advice?" She glanced down into the glass she was holding. "Ad117

vice... or sarcasm ? I'd rather not hear it." He leaned closer. "Afraid?" "I suppose so." In a sharp undertone he said, "I'll tell you why you're afraid..." "There's no need," she retorted swiftly. "It's natural to fear a man who applies cold justice in his private dealings with friends . . . with some friends, anyway. What have I done recently to deserve this inquisition?" "You deserve more than an inquisition, my child," he said, falling carelessly back into his former position near the wall, "but this is neither the time nor the place to begin your education." Thereafter he was silent, but Vernie could feel his presence behind her, remote yet acutely magnetic. Stephen had finished his drink. With immense self-control he had smiled at Celia but stayed at the table with Bill. Vernie hoped that Clin had noticed, and revised some of his hurtful opinions. Bill had opened a foolscap envelope and read a closetyped sheet. With a flourish he twisted to face his companions. "Doom, my friends," he exclaimed. "Wednesday at dawn is zero hour." "The sack, Bill?" asked Ramsey interestedly. "Would that it were! But, no. A tour in swamp country in sticky weather. I have to join a party of architects and steel experts to survey bridge sites." "Admirably managed," said Celia enigmatically. He grimaced at her and turned to Vernie. "Isn't that the filthiest luck, my sweet ? I may have to be away a whole month. How are we going to bear it?" Vernie experienced a curious sensation. They were all 118

looking at her, most of them benevolently. She was certain that Clin knew her cheeks were burning and her pulses humming. Suddenly, recklessly, she had a desire to defy him, to stand up on her own two feet, tilt her head, and hurl his arrogance back at him. But natural modesty is not so simply discarded. She did the next best thing. "Stephen and I will give a farewell party for you on Tuesday, Bill - unless you rather the doctor did it?" "I should say not! " Bill tossed letter and envelope into the air, dragged Vernie to her feet and whirled her giddy. She landed at the open doorway, breathless and little sick with the flat taste of her victory. For, as the room righted itself, Clin was lighting another cigarette, his manner as detached and unmoved as if nothing in the least unexpected had occurred.

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CHAPTER VIII To feed and entertain ten people in a room barely twelve feet square was a problem to tax the ingenuity of a more knowledgeable housewife than Vernie. Not till she stood in her own living-room next morning and viewed the small dining table surrounded by an eighteen inch circle of polished floor did she realise the fool hardiness of her gesture. Still, her pride had let her in for it, and it was her duty to live up to the highest expectation of the guests, and trust to Bill's clowning to span uncomfortable moments. She examined her stores, and turned to Mahdu in perplexity. "These tins of chicken and milk and dehydrated vegetables . . . where did they come from?" "Big white doctor send them early - boy say him plenty too much those things." Typical of Clin, both the gift and the method of giving. He would have sent them at dawn, before others were astir. How exasperating. . . and how endearing! Was it possible that he had divined the motive which had prompted her stupid suggestion to arrange a party for Bill? Had he understood, and forgiven? Perhaps she was reading far too much into a friendly offering of surplus foods. He might be using this means of demonstrating his complete indifference to her action. Either way was humiliating. Next morning Muriel helped with the cooking. To keep the morning's bake fresh for the evening, the tray-loads 120

of crisp savouries were placed upon a pantry shelf, and covered by a tent made from a damped tablecloth. Mahdu was told to watch for ants, and when Vernie had wrapped the long loaves of baking powder bread and eaten a few biscuits and cheese for her lunch, she lay down with a book for a while. Stephen came home early, so they were able to laze over tea and dress at leisure. Evening wear was optional. Ramsey never troubled with it, but the other men generally compromised with a freshly pressed tropical lounge suit. Tonight, Vernie thought it expedient to wear a simple calf-length dress in blue silk with a soft white ruffle at the throat. The yellow hair, which in the damp heat had lost much of its curl, fell into a soft roll about her shoulders. The blue eyes were grave as they surveyed her finished reflection, but in a stretched, expectant way she was happy as she made a final inspection of the living-room. The table and cabinet were laden and protected by lengths of mosquito muslin. Only a faint pungency remained from the copious spraying of the room, and Mahdu had obediently swept up the corpses and kept the screens closed against a further invasion. Cigarettes, matches, ashtrays; everything was ready. Stephen glanced round appreciatively. "We haven't much, but you've certainly made the place shine, Vernie. I wish we'd asked them all before." She surmised that "all" meant Celia. Tentatively, she asked, "Have you heard that Mrs. Carteret is leaving with the Cricklades next week?" He nodded. "I exist only in the present these days. One could go crazy looking into the bleak future." "Not too bleak, darling, with the farm to look forward to. Time, they say, heals everything." 121

"I suppose that what I feel for Celia is in the nature of an illness," he admitted wryly. "A tropical fever which has to run its course. It's devilish painful." Which was the most he had recently allowed himself to say about it. Wisely, Vernie gave him an affectionate smile, unnecessarily patted a cushion, and went out to breathe in the warm, starry evening. Down the road, in the light from Bill's door, she could see Bates sitting, ears perked, apparently intent upon the movements of his master within the house. She could imagine Bill conversing with his dog in his usual vein, while he knotted his tie and slipped in cuff-links. From the rakish shack opposite Bill's, which was temporarily occupied by Gerrard, issued monotonous whistling. The new forestry man was one of those individuals who leave no imprint anywhere. When, in a few years, his time in the tropics was ended, he would retire to a club in Bath and spend the rest of his life swopping tales with similar rootless men. "Good evening, Veronica." Swiftly, she turned, a ridiculous shyness bringing soft pink to her cheeks. Unthinkingly, she descended the three steps to Clin's side. "You're the first, and I told myself you'd come last." "Never be too sure of your own judgment," he said. "You look like a delphinium. Why were you staring so hard down the road. . . willing Bill to get a move on ?" "No. I was musing about Mr. Gerrard. He's like an independent oak tree with no background. He gives you the feeling he was never anywhere else and has never wanted to be." "The best foresters are men like him." "And like you," she added. 122

He smiled down at her. "Do I remind you of an independent oak tree?" "You're not solid enough." "Then what, in your colourful imagination, do I represent?" Cold-tempered steel which momentarily sends back fire; ice, with fast-running water below the surface and dangerous currents. "Different things at different times," she evaded. As on one or two previous occasions, he permitted the subterfuge to pass unchallenged. In the half-glow his cheekbones shone darkly and his nose and chin jutted with hauteur. But his mouth, that baffling feature, had softened into teasing lines. "Clin" - her voice quavered on the low note - "I'm sorry I was so horrid the other evening." "You were a bit nasty, weren't you?" he said quietly. "I had no intention of stealing your last evening with Bill." "Please! You must know that had nothing to do with it." "No? Don't you think you rather overdo the accent on the medical officer? Maybe it's never entered your head that I, too, have private problems which loom as large to me as yours to you ?" "I don't believe it seriously." She wished it were possible to read his eyes. "You're so self-contained, so impatient of weakness in others. I've always regarded yours as a perfectly ordered life running between parallels of your own choosing. I don't suppose you could make the mistake of . . . loving the wrong person. You see everything several moves ahead, so you can avoid most of the pits that others tumble into." 123

"Theoretically sound, Veronica," he replied noncommittally. "Unfortunately, in this matter of loving the wrong person it's far easier to deal cold-bloodedly with other people's miscalculations than with one's own." Before her brain could dissect this, he ended, "So if, at any time, you feel my ego needs deflating, don't work the superman gambit in front of the bunch, but come up to the house and have it out with me." "I've said I'm sorry," she whispered. "I really am." His teeth flashed in a sudden smile. Thoughtlessly, his hand descended on her shoulder and squeezed. She winced, and emitted an "Ouch! " of pain. His arm slid round her. "Your shoulder! I ought to be shot for forgetting." "It doesn't hurt normally," she gasped, "but I haven't tried bunching it yet." His laugh was gentle, and the glance she raised could he have seen it, mirrored her heart. For a long moment she rested in the half-circle of his arm, and then he withdrew it. "Tropical nights are demoralising," he commented with acerbity. "Lead me to a strong drink, Veronica." A few minutes later the others began arriving. Celia, in one of her sequined gowns, was drawn to Clin like a needle to a magnet, and Vernie watched with envy the sophisticated friendliness with which they greeted each other and shared a divan. Bill had gone gay. At the waist of his white trousers he wore a cerise cummerbund; his tie was emerald, and from the lapel of his jacket swung a small native juju. The odd sparkle in his eyes and the careful drawl suggested that he had already drunk freely, but nobody minded. Poor old Bill was off on a long tour, and if he wasn't entitled to get a 124

little tight, who was ? Heat and smoke rendered the atmosphere airless, and Celia, in a clear, bored voice, demanded the opening of the screens. "Do you mind, Stephen? I don't object to pests, but I've a horror of suffocation." "We only meant to keep them closed while the food is about," he returned a trifle shortly. "Is everyone finished?" The party was not an undiluted success. The Cricklades, Wrightson, Ramsey, and Gerrard were happy enough, but for them existence was uncomplicated by tensions and innuendoes; led by Ramsey they sang to the gramophone music. It was Celia who created the unpleasant impression that everyone was heartily tired of everyone else, and that bedtime could not come too soon. Even Bill's jocularity had worn thin. Only Clin's resourceful twisting of barbed remarks saved the earlier hours from catastrophe. Towards midnight the Cricklades got up to go. Muriel offered a hand to Bill. "You'll be off before we're up tomorrow. We have to say goodbye to you, Bill. We shan't be here when you get back." "Awful," said Bill soberly. "We must meet in England." "It's hardly likely. We shall live in Hampshire, and you'll be your father's son again. We're sure to talk-about you often, Bill." "You'd come up for a weekend if I invited you, wouldn't you?" Muriel's brows went together in good-natured puzzlement. "We might, but don't feel that you have to keep up 125

the acquaintance with us. England isn't Nigeria. In Kenya we were the best of friends with a baronet, but when we ran into him in London we could tell he wished we hadn't." She shrugged. "It didn't matter." "He was a snob of the worst kind," declared Bill. "In your shoes I'd have punched his nose." His hesitation appeared natural. He bent to stub out his cigarette, and added, "Vernie will certainly want you to visit us. Won't you, my sweet?" She paled, and stared at him. An electric silence was terminated laughingly by Stephen. "I hope you haven't cabled an announcement to the London press without my permission." Bill inserted another cigarette between his lips and left it unlighted. His smile at Vernie was not particularly mirthful, and it seemed to plead. But she could not let him get away with this mad joke. "You're not responsible, Bill," she told him. "Too much whisky." "Quite the reverse," he said. "I'd rather have waited till I had a ring to give you, but I wanted everyone to know before I go." In a flash he was transformed by the familiar brilliant smile. He reached over and yanked the jigida from the wall. "We'll go native, Veronica! Lifelong felicity from polished oil-palm nuts." Impeded by Stephen, who apparently considered the idea good fun, Vernie could not escape. Deftly, the belt was fastened, a clumsy circlet about her slim waist. Muriel clapped. "Wonderful! Now you're engaged, Vernie. I shall always remember this." 126

So would Vernie. How could she ever forget her own infuriating helplessness to prevent Bill's antics; Stephen's gladness; Celia, eyelids narrowed and nostrils flaring, still on the divan beside Clin, whose expression could only be described as one of extreme distaste. And Clin's jigida appropriated as a theatrical prop by Bill. Then Clin stood up, holding his drink. "Surely this calls for a toast?" he inquired, with a faint undertone of satire. He waited till the other glasses were raised. "To the Honourable Bill and his future wife. Persistence has won its reward." No one else noticed the slight emphasis on Bill's title, nor attributed more than its lightest meaning to the final sentence. They drank and laughed and thumped Bill's back, while Vernie was given over to a deep and vibrant hate... for Clin. In the noise which followed the jigida found its way back to its place on the wall. The Cricklades departed with Gerrard and Wrightson. Ramsey sang his way home, and Stephen escorted Celia to her house. Bill hung about on the veranda till Stephen could be seen returning, when he touched Vernie's cheek with his finger-tips, said good night and went. Clin dropped down the three steps in one pace. As he turned his head, Vernie shrank from the cold contempt in his eyes and the thinned mouth. "You've pulled it off," he said. "Congratulations." Before she could answer he was striding away. Back in the living-room, Vernie sat on the arm of a chair and gazed unseeing at the wall, till Stephen came in. He stood above her contemplatively, with his hands in his pockets. 127

"Well, Bill certainly saved the party from disaster," he said. "If that was his object he needn't have bothered. Bill's overreached himself this time." "What do you mean ?" "How dare he do a thing like that in front of the whole crowd! Most of them took it seriously." "So did I. He intended it seriously. Bill's in love with you." "He's not, but if he were it wouldn't alter the fact that this evening's exhibition was in bad taste, and hurtful." Stephen came to sit opposite her, and leaned forward. "Bill's like that. He's lived for so long on the rim of things that the depths scare him. He just hadn't the courage to propose to you in the normal way. He masks his emotions with persiflage and trusts you to realise they're there." "But I don't love him, Stephen, and he knows it." He sat back, a little stunned. "Oh, my dear. I thought you did. I'm a poor sort of brother, aren't I ?" "Bill's blarneyed so much," she said bitterly, "but he'd have behaved the same with any woman who might have come here." "That's not entirely true. He's never asked a girl to marry him before." "He'd drunk a great deal. It was a tipsy jest, and he'll have to apologise for it." Stephen spoke quietly, persuasively. "Bill knew what he was about and he's genuinely attracted by you. Give it a trial, Vernie." She jumped up. "I can't. The others believe I'm bemused by his title. If I loved him, they could put whatever construction they pleased, but as it is, I won't have it rumoured that I've chased and caught him." 128

"They know better than that." "You're wrong. I've already been accused of it this evening." Stephen was angry. "Who had the nerve?" "Clin," she said. He paused, a muscle jerging in his jaw. "He would. Clin's opinion has ceased to be important to you and me." But, aware of her pallor and quivering lips, and his own smouldering resentment, he knew that it hadn't. "What would you like me to do, Vernie ? " "You're not terribly disappointed?" "Not terribly, but quite a bit. I haven't handled my own affairs too well, and it has been a comfort to visualise you installed as one of the Maunham family. But if you can't care enough for Bill to marry him" - he gestured "we must tell him so." "Yes, and at once, please, Stephen, so that everything will be straight before he leaves." Reluctantly she tacked on, "Shall I go with you?" "Better not. By now he may be really tight." Not that Stephen anticipated trouble with Bill. He lingered outside on the veranda, wondering if anything would ever come right for the Craigs. Fantastic if Vernie had fallen in love with Clin. Yet was it? Casting his mind back with difficulty to those very early months at Murabai, before Celia, Stephen's recollection supplied the pleasant spectacle of himself and Clin becoming close friends in an undemanding, masculine fashion. No question then of the big white chief condescending to a young cadet. Weren't the strained relations of Stephen's making? Clin had gone on being Clin, but Stephen had read personal hostility into the natural aloofness and cynicism; his lacerations had shrunk from 129

the healing salt of Clin's tongue. Perhaps in those days he had cared a little too much for Clin's approval. Often, during the past year, he would have liked to know what Clin thought of this project and that. In roundabout ways, through African headmen and farmers, he had learned that whenever the medical officer visited the villages in Stephen's section he rode round the vast tracts of cultivated land and expressed pleasure at what he saw. Stephen had tried to be annoyed at Clin's presumption. Who the dickens did he think he was! But at the same time he stored the praise as worth far more than compliments from his senior, Mr. Laidlaw. Yes, there was much in Clin that a girl of Vernie's upbringing might find attractive, apart from his looks. His air of mastery, his elusive charm, his sense of justice, and his impeccability. And to a woman with Celia's experience, his worldliness and tantalising habit of sitting back and watching the sentimental contortions of his fellowcreatures might prove an irresistible challenge. Regarding, with the dispassionate calmness of an oldstager, the emergence from the jungle of a moon so yellow and large as to appear man-made, Stephen recaptured the few minutes he had shared with Celia less than an hour ago. They had walked in silence to her house and he had gone in first to light the lamp. In the minute before he turned he had noticed evidences of feminine occupation which Vernie avoided in their house: a dress slung over a chair, a work-basket bursting with ribbons and cottons, a filmy garment in a heap on the table. He had picked up from the mat an expensive hair ornament. "I might have trodden on this and ruined it." "It wouldn't have broken my heart," she'd answered, 130

dropping her wrap so that he had to retrieve that, too, from the floor. "Plenty more where that came from." "You've never had to worry about money, have you, Celia?" "No, darling. Lack of cash must be soul-destroying. Will you have a nightcap ?" He'd declined and gone to the door, and she had moved with him and placed a hand on his sleeve. "You do see how it is, Stephen? I could love you if I let myself, but it would be hopeless for us to marry. I couldn't settle on a two-by-four farm, and you'd be wretched trailing round the capitals of the world at my expense." "But you do intend t o . . . marry again?" "Maybe." The outlandish eyelashes had lowered seductively, so that he knew the old urge to lay his lips to them. "You're such a boy about love, Stephen." She meant that he had no technique, no assurance; he cherished the old-fashioned notion that to be lovers a couple had also to be friends. He supposed that besides being hyper-sensitive he was out of date and thoroughly unpractised as well. "I haven't experimented," he'd said. She had shaken his arm. "Darling, you sound quite harsh." He'd felt harsh. He could have kissed her then, placed his mouth shyly on hers as he had before, and roused an expert response. But why should he give her such satisfaction when she had not the least compunction in spearing him? Strange, that he should have been alone with Celia, all set for an embrace, and yet turned his back on the chance. For that, literally, was what he had done: murmured good 131

night and come back here to Vernie. On a sudden decision, Stephen went out to the track and turned right. Lights still gleamed in Bill's house, drawing myriads of moths and hard-backs. How should he put it ? "Look here, Bill; Vernie's upset about this evening's fooling. No girl likes to be ragged into an engagement, and she's more easily hurt than most. In any case, she's not yet ready to consider marriage. So will you retract the whole thing, and let the three of us be as we were before ? " It sounded weak, but the mild approach was best with Bill. He'd probably catch on quickly and offer sincere regrets. Bates flopped down the steps and rubbed Stephen's legs. Abstractedly, he scratched the dog's head, and mounted to the veranda, a replica of his own. The outer wire-screen was closed, but the door, opening into a living-room, stood wide a foot, allowing a panel view of the interior. His fingers on the latch of the screen, Stephen halted. A chill coursed down his spine, and a deadly steadiness gripped his heart. Celia was in that room. He could see her hand plucking at Bill's sleeve as, earlier, it had plucked at his own. Bill was nearly facing the door, though he looked sideways at Celia. His lips moved inaudibly, and his smile was hazy. His arms went out and pulled her to him. Stephen heard her exultant, high-pitched laugh and witnessed the kiss. A minute later he had quietly returned to the track and was slowly pacing back the way he had come. The moon dusted trees and roofs with silver and blackened the shadows. Some beast howled away in the bush, and, as an immediate result, the village camp-fires sent up plumes of 132

smoke, which Stephen saw above the trees. All the grim loathing he felt for this place seemed concentrated in that acrid cloud of woodsmoke. In a few minutes he was able to analyse the scene he had stumbled upon. Bill, of course, was intoxicated. Celia had come to him and he, in the reckless state wrought by drink and an imminent departure, had seized a moment's oblivion. Why Celia had risked going to Bill's house at this hour was less obvious, but it was like her to wring the last drop of emotion from a friendship. Possibly, Stephen's cool departure from her house had irritated her into a distorted kind of retaliation. Bill was going away and they would not meet again, unless in England. And wasn't it possible that Celia got a thrill from the act of being kissed by another woman's fiance? For that must be how she regarded Bill. And what of Clin? In this showdown with his illusions Stephen did not spare himself. If Celia's shallow nature had any capacity for feeling, it was upon Clin she expended it. She had wanted him first, and when her husband had died it was towards Clin she had gravitated. She detested the bush, yet had settled in a mud house in a tiny community - in order to be near Clin. This kissing of other men was mere sensation-seeking to appease a bruised vanity; perhaps Clin was too sparing with his caresses. Well, if he couldn't manage her, no one could. Stephen stopped outside his house, overcome with the bitterness and futility of living on one's passions. Since Celia had come a second time into his life he had continually had to struggle against her. Her sweetness had been unbearably lovely, till he recognised it for a subtle method 133

of keeping him obediently in love with her. It took infinitely more time and effort to fall out of love than into it; in fact, Stephen had come to accept that half-alive feeling as permanent. Celia in Bill's arms had shaken him alert again, but the pain was dulled by knowledge. She was greedy and selfish, a beautiful body without true substance. He ached with the jolt, but was chastened of infatuation. For a little longer he remained leaning against the veranda rail. Brilliance over the clearing accentuated the brooding hush of the jungle. The drums were quiet, the singing ended, and the Africans, no doubt, except for the couple who tended the fires, were wrapped in their blankets and packed tight in airless huts. Oddly, he remembered a dictum of Clin's: "Africans recover from their own illnesses, but they succumb to ours. Force on them brick houses with windows and half of them would die off from lung trouble. Don't meddle with their style of architecture but encourage them to improve it." Heavens, why think of such things now! Was it a sign that he was cured of Celia? He hoped so. It was not entirely without a qualm, though, that he saw her flit along the rear of the houses opposite, to her own abode, but the sight of her no longer affected his reason. He was only depressed, as if in the aftermath of a fever. Wearily, he went into the house. The living-room had been straightened and shorn of all signs of festivity. On a tiny tray stood the usual tumblerful of diluted goats' milk laced with brandy for him to sip while undressing. He noted that the jigida was missing from the wall, and it came to him with a small shock of pity that Clin had given it to Vernie, and now all her joy in it was gone. 134

As she brought in the emptied ashtrays, he felt an uprush of brotherly pride in her dignity and composure. She was still pale and her smile hurt him. "You saw Bill?" she asked. "Yes. You won't have any more trouble from that silly business. I thought you wouldn't want him to come tonight to apologise. That can wait, can't it?" "Thanks for going. It's awfully late, and you have to work tomorrow." "I'll make it. Good night, my dear." He bolted the door and carried the nightcap into his bedroom. He would write a note and instruct Mahdu to deliver it just as Bill was ready to set off in the morning. How glad he would be when he and Vernie could drive away from Murabai for good.

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CHAPTER X T H E word "party" had become synonymous for Vernie with heartbreaking unpleasantness. There was a lot to be said for Ramsey's viewpoint on the subject; parties in party dress were not only a bore, but likely to bring bad blood to the surface, particularly in a small station. He liked to dine out, to play cards and to sing, but in his attire and manner he deliberately avoided the formal and festive. In his way he was by far the happiest man at Murabai. Vernie felt that she never wanted to give or to attend another party as long as she lived. For the first day or two after Bill's departure, she definitely contemplated asking Stephen whether he would mind very much if she went to Lagos and spent the last couple of months there. Then the desolating thought of being hundreds of unnecessary miles from Clin took hold, and she turned away from flight, defeated. Soon, with the elasticity of youth, her spirit resumed a more even keel, and she faced the unpalatable truth. She had come here for Stephen's sake and for Stephen's sake she must remain. If she could keep that fact dominant it would help immeasurably. What matter that her nights were broken with dreams and morning found her untested? Stephen, at any rate, looked fresher, which, considering how Celia's days at Murabai were narrowing, augured well. That Saturday Stephen had to work, and Vernie persuaded him to let her go with him. It was a long, tiring 136

morning in the hot and smelly cabin of the lorry, but lunch in a rest-house and a snooze after it restored them both. Vernie stayed in the thatched hut while Stephen drove on about his business. Presently she became aware of rushing, singing waters some distance away. The sound must have been there all the time, but only now, as she wearied of the printed page, did it penetrate her hearing. A waterfall, perhaps; in any case, worthy of investigation. She put on her sun-helmet and took the trail through the trees at the back of the hut. Peculiar, how one grew as accustomed to the jungle as to an English wood; even the strangling vines were green lace curtains by day, remiriiscent of cascading silver birch, but the cycads, tall and ancient as baobab trees, were wholly tropical. Vernie was particularly attracted to palms. The path was clear of growth and well-trodden, and soon Vernie saw why. Tree-felling had been in operation. Giant mahoganies, their boles newly sawn, lay flat in the bush awaiting their turn to be rolled to the river. Work had ceased for today. The rumble of water was so close that she stopped apprehensively. Then she saw the molten silver through the lower branches, a Victoria Falls in miniature, where the river dashed over a ledge of rocks, foamed and widened into a fast-running lake. A little way along was a timber station; a collection of wooden buildings, a sawmill and logging apparatus, and beyond them a settlement of native huts. Vernie remembered Stephen saying that an Anglo-Indian had charge of the place and was doing a grand job. His hobby was furniture-making. If her brother were here they could have gone over and made themselves known. The manager 137

might have been coaxed to show them some of his work. Vernie was on the point of regretfully retracing the path when a crackle in the undergrowth made her swing round. She stared at Celia Carteret as if at a forest satyr. "Oh! I thought I was alone." "I saw you through the trees, from the car - Clin's car." Celia stepped fastidiously on to the flat top of an old tree-root. "How I detest these filthy paths. Is your lorry parked back there ?" "No, my brother is using it. He's coming to pick me up." Questions burned the tip of Vernie's tongue. Clin's car; then where was Clin? Had they come here for a picnic tea? A patronising smile curved Celia's lips. "You are still very obvious, Miss Craig. Why should it trouble you that I've come here alone with Clin? Isn't it natural that when he chooses pieces for his home I should be with him ?" "Is h e . . . ordering new furniture?" "Only cabinets to hold his collections. One would hardly buy house furniture from a backwoods carpenter." New cabinets for his opals and ivory. Did that mean he had decided to accept the post in Lagos? He had stated that he would not leave Africa, but at Lagos were shipping and an airport, and with more leisure he would be able to make use of both. As his wife, Celia would not be allowed to go off alone to Europe, but what was to prevent Clin from accompanying her ? She must veil the agony in her eyes. "Where is he now?" Celia's dark head inclined carelessly towards the sawmill. "In there, talking logs and prices with the manager. We 138

chose some good seasoned mahogany for the cabinets. Clin wants carved and polished doors, not glass. He says glass cabinets have the museum atmosphere, and he'd rather unlock the collection for the interested few than display them blatantly." She laughed, as though indulging the whim of a loved one. "I really don't know why he keeps the odds and ends. I'd sooner have one large diamond than all those mementoes from the ends of the earth." Vernie comprehended Clin's attachment to his collections; it was one of the things she loved him for - a possessive softness in his otherwise granite exterior. Celia was saying, "Men are strange - transparent in some things and completely incomprehensible in others. Bill, for instance. You and he are utterly unsuited, you know." "Yes, I do know," replied Vernie. "Well," came the long-drawn, sarcastic comment, "there's nothing like acknowledging an urge to connect up with the peerage." "You needn't say any more," Vernie said sharply. "I've no intention of marrying Bill." Celia's surprise, though swiftly suppressed, was genuine. "Then what was the object of the play-acting the other evening?" "I told everyone at the time that it was Bill's idea of a joke." The dark glance glinted shrewdly. "I don't quite get it -" Though it was patent that she did and only sought reassurance. "Bill's the son of an earl. When he returns to the fold he'll have money and a chance of inheriting the tide - his elder brother isn't married. And you're turning 139

him down! You must be crazy." "As you just remarked, we're totally unsuited." A shrug. "I should have thought a girl in your position would have done her darnedest to see that she did suit him." Celia paused. "You and Stephen delight in hurling yourselves against brick walls. The tropics are no good to your sort of people. If Stephen tries, he can get remission of the last two months on health grounds." What was the woman angling for now? What possible difference could the presence or absence of the Craigs make to her plans? "I think we'll stay it out," Vernie said stubbornly. Monotony and heat were the least of her difficulties. "Climate never affects me." Celia smiled again with a touch of maddening superciliousness which Vernie was hard put to it to ignore. "I'm as happy in England as in Nigeria, or anywhere else. I'm hoping Clin will agree to live in Lagos for about three years and decide to settle in England afterwards." Vernie, incapable of convention at the moment, squared her shoulders and looked towards the timber station. She saw Clin talking to the manager, and her heart seemed to lift right into her throat. "I must go. Mrs. Carteret, will you please tell Clin that Bill and I aren't engaged - that the announcement was Bill's notion of a party diversion? I'd like everyone to understand." "Why, of course," she answered charmingly. "See you later, Miss Craig." Vernie hastened back to the hut as if fiends were at her heels. Arrived there, she sank to a camp stool with sudden paralysis. Supposing Celia gave her message to Clin at once! He would come stalking through the trees demand140

ing why Stephen had left her alone, and probably insist that she write her brother a note and go home with Celia and himself. At the moment she could envisage nothing more calamitous. Minutes dragged by; at length her pulses slowed and terror gave way to an absurd disappointment. Clin in any mood was preferable to no Clin at all. But Celia was unlikely to rouse his chivalry on Vernie's behalf. They would be well on the way home before Celia mentioned the meeting; she might even wait till this evening. Vernie leaned against the mud wall, hands clenched in her lap. Had she known him long enough to love him selflessly? The friendship between them, evidenced by his frequent generosity, and forgiveness when she had behaved with youthful impulsiveness over Bill's party, had grown in spite of Stephen and other setbacks. Given a smooth passage it might have expanded into something rare and lovely, in which his happiness held first place. Could she have borne it with more fortitude had the woman not been Celia? Wasn't Clin entitled to better than a once-married siren? But if he wanted her, if his love triumphed over the spiteful marriage with Captain Carteret, shouldn't one be glad for him? Whatever happened, one could be sure that he knew what he was doing. With thankfulness she heard the return of the lorry, and began folding the stools and packing the magazines into the picnic-case. "Sorry I was so long," Stephen hailed her. "Did you get frightened?" "No. I took a walk." "You shouldn't have. I meant to warn you. Which way did you go?" "To the river. I saw the timber station." 141

"Meet anyone?" "The manager was outside the sawmill, but I didn't let him see me." He helped her into the seat beside the driver's and got in himself. He waited till the lorry was moving before darting her an affectionate smile. "Decent of you not to slate me for abandoning you for two solid hours. It was such a relief to chat with a man out from England only a couple of months ago that I forgot the time." "Did you give him our books ?" He nodded. "And the records. He almost went to his knees in gratitude. The silly ass has already used up everything he brought with him, so he gave me about twenty books that we haven't read." "Cheers," she said. "At two a week they'll nearly last us out." "He said he wished I'd brought you along, but it was best that you didn't go. He's not digging in too well and brief contact with a woman would have unsettled him more. It doesn't take much to tip one's equilibrium in the early months." Vernie pondered. These were early months for her, too. Were England and a quiet life with Aunt Josephine the answer to the problem? Fatalistically, she knew the contrary to be true. Stephen was right when he described his infatuation for Celia as a fever. Young men in lonely places, fighting physical ills, debilitating heat and the depredations of pests and damp, fell only too readily under the spell of a sympathetic woman. It was later, often much later, that they realised the fallibility of love at first sight. Yet it seemed to Vernie that she had loved Clin from the beginning. Loved and disliked him, fought and been 142

engulfed in his magnetism. It distressed her to realise that if Celia did leave with the Cricklades next Thursday Clin would go off on a long round of local clinics soon after, and her own last days at Murabai would be sorrowful and drab. With all her being she hoped that Clin's marriage would not be announced till she had sailed away from Africa. On Tuesday morning, as Stephen was preparing to roar away on the motor bike, Vernie came out with his "chop" box. The thing was strapped on to the carrier and she stepped back. "Activity up the road," he remarked. She nodded. "More than the usual sweep-out of the doctor's house - they're laying rugs. What does it mean?" "An important conference of local chiefs. Clin always lets them use his grounds. You'll see a gorgeous procession of chiefs and elders, an abundance of salaaming and ceremonial present-giving. If they bring wives, go up and listen-in, but if there are no women you'd better stay out of sight. Cheerio." She waved, and sat down in the veranda with an embroidered tablecloth she was finishing for Muriel spread across her knees. She had promised to have it ready for the trunk this evening. At nine o'clock the band of delegates arrived. How they had travelled from the Hausa town many miles away on the road to Keleba was a mystery. They entered Murabai on foot, a brown-skinned group of eleven men in billowing robes, followed by lesser personages bearing the indispensable livestock and native wood and metal work which were intended as gifts. They brought no women. The preliminaries were gone through with ponderous courtesy. Clin met them under the awning which had been 143

erected in his garden, greeted each separately by name and the Hausa gesture, accepted unwanted cages of chickens and carved boxes, and, according to custom, tendered money gifts in return. Presently, the turbaned chief and elders took their seats, and the rest squatted about near enough to hear all the evidence regarding tax evasions and plans for a new hospital in the province, which it was proposed to staff with Lagos-trained Nigerian doctors. The conference went on and on, maddeningly circuitous. Imperturbable and polite, Clin talked and listened. The tireless elders, by repetition and impracticable suggestion, prolonged the palaver till nearly two, and when it broke up Clin accompanied them into the house to feed and rest. During the afternoon it was pleasant and ludicrous to see donkeys browsing up the track. They must have been left the other side of the log bridge and wearied of indigestible elephant grass. They had no sooner been rounded up than Muriel came over for her tablecloth. "You've completed it? How lovely, but we're not packing tonight after all. There's still tomorrow, and it looks as though we're in for high jinks this evening. You saw the ' B e g g a r s 'O p e r a ' ? " Vernie smiled. "The delegation? They were colourful, weren't they?" "Yes. Our villagers are tickled pink. They've invited the whole crowd to stay overnight and are putting on a dance for them this evening. You simply must come and seek." "Do they invite white people?" "They love it. You mustn't go home without seeing a native dance." 144

But when Stephen came in and heard about it he shook his head. "Candidly, I don't fancy it. We had one of these dances some time ago and I had the deuce of a hangover next morning. I find the drums and the dust and woodsmoke throughly depressing." Stephen had never taken to the noise of the drums. Festive or warning, they worried him, filled him with a sense of impending doom. At first, Vernie had shared his objections to them, but within a month they had slipped, an accepted interpretation of the bush, into the background of her life at Murabai. "You needn't come," she said. "Wrightson doesn't care for the dances either, but the Cricklades are keen to take a last-minute view. I could go with them." "Sounds all right. But don't hang on there if you hate it." When dinner was over he made her put on a coat and button it to the throat, and himself delivered her into the hands of the Cricklades. Intending to make for the widest track through the belt of trees, Mr. Cricklade and the two women walked up as far as the doctor's garden wall. As they reached the side gate, Clin emerged, carrying a hurricane lamp. "Hallo there," he said. "Going to watch the barn dance? Your flashlight is feeble, Cricklade." "You haven't a spare battery, I suppose?" "Yes, but a lantern is better. Take this and I'll go in for another." "Sure you don't mind?" "Not a bit. You might leave Miss Craig with me to make it two to a light." Careful, Vernie told herself as Clin held her wrist in 145

the darkness; he's just managing again. He ducked beneath an arch of bignonia and drew her after him along the path to a small back veranda in which shone a single lamp. There were two doors - one to the kitchen and the other opening into a corridor which led past the bedroom to the front of the house. It was through this second door that Clin guided Vernie, and he did not release her till he had turned up the lamp in the hall. He faced her with a set, enigmatic smile. "Our meeting out there was not accidental. I've been watching for you." Again she had to steady herself. "Have you? How kind." "Save the thanks for a bit. You may not like what I have to say. Supposing I were to ask you not to go to the feast?" "I might give in, if there were a good reason." "Fair enough. Stephen has no taste for these things, so it was obvious that he'd stay away. Cricklade and I are the only white men attending, and I shall have to sit among the Hausa visitors." He paused. "I wonder if you have any conception of the violence of these tribal dances? They start off with official dancers - men stamping round a huge central fire. As the tempo increases the audience urges them on, and pretty soon they're all in it, hypnotised into a frenzy by native beer and the sight of warrior dancers prancing in fur and feathers. I'm not trying to scare you; the only danger would be accidental - like the knife which sliced your shoulder - and there'd be no risk at all if you had adequate protection." "Mrs. Cricklade is going." "For something to thrill listeners with when she gets 146

back to England." "She's attended one of these before. I haven't." He sighed. "I knew you'd be difficult. Can't you realise that one man isn't sufficient escort for two women? If there's trouble, Cricklade will instinctively look after his wife first - any man would - and I shall be too far away to be any good to you. Why can't you be submissive for once? Say, 'Yes, Clin,' nicely, and let me take you home to Stephen." "Couldn't I see the start of it?" "My dear Veronica, it began hours ago, when the whole village donned headdress and necklaces. The dance is the culmination. Don't you agree that I'm being extraordinarily patient with you ? " "I may never again have the opportunity of seeing a native dance." "Dare I say that you won't have missed much? Before you return to England get Bill to take you to one of the organised shows in Keleba. Be a good child and forget tonight's orgy." The reasonable tones had hardened, and he had a look she had never seen in him before; he appeared tired and more than his age. Swiftly she said, "I capitulate. Will you . . . will you tell me about it tomorrow ? " "Some time, perhaps, but not tomorrow. I shall have another full day. There's always a heap to do before I go away." "I didn't know your tour was so near." "Not a tour," he said. "I'm driving Celia to Keleba on Thursday and shall spend the weekend there." A moth had fallen into the flame of the lamp. It flared and sputtered and settled again into a comfortable glow. 147

The moth was extinguished, like Vernie's heart. She wanted to say, "I hope you'll be very happy, Clin," but even unspoken the words had an empty ring. How could he ever know deep happiness with a woman such as Celia, and with such love as she could yield him: a grasping desire that was likely to fade once she had attained the coveted marriage? Was his love strong enough to change her into a tender wife and mother, or had he turned for ever from normal domestic life? It hurt to foresee him living on in Africa, hard and cynical, with a selfish wife - and no children. She said, "Well, I won't keep you any longer." They went the front way and out of the main gates. A few yards down the road they met Celia and Wrightson. "I've spiked you, Clin," sparkled Celia, nestling into her collar as they passed. "I'm no longer an unprotected female. Mr. Wrightson has offered to sit beside me and to shoo me away at the least sign of unruliness." Over her shoulder she called, "Is Miss Craig also seeking a squire?" No answer was necessary. Vernie's mouth was stiff, her teeth tight, but at her own house she stopped and raised to him a brief smile. "They'll be waiting for you. If I don't see you again before you leave, good-bye and a pleasant journey." He murmured something which might have been, "You silly child!" added a cool, "Good night," and left her. Vernie entered the living-room and snapped shut the door behind her. If only it were as easy to close this bitter chapter in her life!

148

CHAPTER X T H E Cricklades had decided to travel to Keleba in their own modest car, hoping to sell it for a good figure when they got there. Clin had their trunks loaded into his tourer with Celia's luggage and his own grip, and he allowed the small car an hour's start. When she had said good-bye to Muriel and her husband, Vernie sat sadly sipping her breakfast coffee. Stephen had made his farewells the night before and left at daybreak on a round of local fields, expressly in order to be home at lunch-time for the rest of the day. That way she would more easily become inured to the loneliness. Soon, when Clin's car crunched away, Vernie would be the only woman at Murabai, and the prospect appalled. How would she bear it if he came back next week engaged to Celia? Had she the strength to endure several weeks of unvarnished torture? As Clin's tourer started up, both her hands closed round her cup. The door was open to the misty morning, but she could not move to look out. The noise toned to a purr without diminishing. The sudden crack of the car door brought dampness to her temples. She set down the cup as if it were priceless china, and stared at Clin, standing in the doorway. "Good morning," he said curtly. "I came along to see you last night, but you'd gone to bed." "Stephen told me." She got to her feet. "I was just coming out to wave you good-bye." "You needn't lie to me," he said. "Yesterday you heard 149

me arrange with Stephen that I'd call in for a nightcap, so you escaped to your bedroom. This morning you'd have stayed in the house till I was gone. We've had a few tussles together, but nothing bad enough to warrant that sort of thing. What's got into you?" "I don't know," she answered truthfully, adding with less veracity, "I suppose it's depression over Muriel's departure." "Why be disturbed about that?" - with an unpleasant smile. "I understood you and Bill were going to get together with the Cricklades later on. I should think your emotions would welcome a peaceful interlude." "I shall be glad to have done, for a while, with your taunts about Bill," she said bitterly. "For a man who has little use for his own emotions, you concern yourself a great deal with other people's. Ought you to keep Mrs. Carteret waiting ? " He came nearer, the smile turned cynical, his voice clipped and clear. "I refuse to quarrel with you, Veronica. Last night I felt like spanking you very hard, and this morning I could be even angrier. You're behaving as if I were a stranger." Her gaze up at him was much steadier than her heartbeats. "That's odd, because I believe I know you very well almost as well as you know me. Do you remember impressing upon me at our first contact that it was unwise to probe below one's neighbour's surface? Not going back on it, are you?" "No. I just don't happen to regard you as a neighbour," he said savagely. "That's another oddity that you can cogitate during my absence, you infuriating little mule. And for heaven's sake take care of yourself while I'm 150

away, and don't leave the village without Stephen. If you do" - his eyes were a metallic blaze - "I'll get you shifted right away to Keleba. I mean it!" She had no doubt of it. Clin in a rage was someone she hoped never to encounter; he could be deadly enough without it. With a stab of despair and relief, she heard Celia's thumb on the klaxon. "Good-bye," she managed. "So long," he said grimly. "See you next Tuesday." Well, that was the end of Clin for five or six days: a thud of the door, the loudest acceleration he could contrive, followed by a furious cloud of red dust. Vernie drank some more coffee, black and unsweetened, and crossed the road to make sure that Muriel's house was being adequately prepared to receive Mr. Gerrard. It helped to have Stephen at home that afternoon. He pulled aside the screen and looked through the window. "Quiet, isn't it? We used to have it like this sometimes before you came, and I rather enjoyed the atmosphere of haunted solitude. It was the only time I could ever settle to reading classics." "I can't become interested in anything deep," she said. "It puzzles me how anyone can, in this climate. But at times I'd give my all to tinkle on a piano." "Poor Vernie. It's going to be dim for you from now on. Murabai hasn't been a conspicuously joyful experience for you, I'm afraid." "I wouldn't have missed it, though." She plunged: "I loved being here . . . till Celia came. She changed everyone - everyone who matters to me, anyway." He didn't close up as she had thought he might, but remained visually absorbed in the compound as he answered, 151

"Up to a point Celia's potency is considerable. Beyond that point one realises that her attractions are almost wholly physical. I'm no longer in love with her." "So I've noticed," she said softly. "And how relieved I am!" He laughed a little self-consciously. "It happened gradually. When she came to Murabai I had wild dreams, but the previous year had taught me a certain amount of caution, if nothing else. Quite soon I suspected that I was merely a tool in her game with . . . with Clin, and the knowledge acted like a vile-tasting tonic. I took the final dose the night we gave the party for Bill." Vernie smiled faintly. This talk was doing Stephen good. "Yes ?" she encouraged. "It was when I walked down to see him about that bogus engagement. Celia was in the house with him - I saw them kiss." "Celia and Bill?" "Bill wasn't infatuated, as I was. He was just cockeyed on whisky. And Celia was merely testing her powers. She probably got heaps of fun from enticing a man whom she deemed at the time to be yours." Vernie shivered. This was the woman who intended to marry Clin. "You said you spoke to Bill that night." He turned. "It was too fresh to explain to you just then. I sent him a note instead, and he scribbled back that he understood." He dropped astride a chair and rested his arms on the rail. "You know, Vernie, it's possible that one benefits from an abortive love affair. Even at my headiest moments with Celia I knew that marriage with her would fail. Perhaps first love often occurs like that. If we could 152

stand away and watch ourselves - and the one we've fallen for - we'd see all the inconsistencies in the relationship, the unbridgeable differences of temperament and outlook." Had he, now that Celia no longer preoccupied him, guessed at her love for Clin? Was he pleading that she, too, might be the victim of a mental fever? "In any case," he went on, "a one-sided business can't be the real thing. Marriages are based on mutual attraction." As an afterthought he said, "That was what deceived me about you and Bill. I still think you could have made something fine of him." "Bill requires a more ruthless hand than mine," she said, and dismissed the subject with a smile. The barrier between them was down, or nearly. Stephen talked with candour and good humour. His smile had lost the restraint and gone crooked again, and his thinness and lack of colour were less evident. But for Vernie the pall of depression did not lift. In fact, during that weekend her capacity for suffering expanded; her heart was crushed with the weight of its own longing. She really must pull herself up. Perhaps providence, with an ironical sense of chivalry, decided to step in. It was barely dawn on Monday when Mahdu knocked upon Vernie's bedroom door and entered. In the dusky light the whites of his eyes were huge and terrified. "The master is sick! You come now, missus." And he rushed out. Vernie sprang from her bed, dragged on her dressinggown, and hurried into Stephen's room. The lamp was burning, casting a shadowy arc over the bed and the wall. 153

"Careful," Stephen gasped. "I knocked down the carafe." She flew to the other side of the bed and looped back the net. Her brother lay on his side, his face putty-coloured and running with perspiration, the lines of pain etched deep. "The same pain, darling?" she begged urgently. "A thousand times worse. Prepare me a dose of that white stuff. It's in the bedside table." She skirted Mahdu, who was gathering broken glass, tipped out the medicine into the measure kept there for the purpose, and held it to Stephen's hps. He was still panting when he lay back. "I'm sorry to worry you like this. I had it a bit when I came to bed, but managed to get off to sleep. Then it woke me up some while ago." Desperately she asked, "Haven't you any idea at all what it is, Stephen? We had a very plain dinner - one you've had lots of times without trouble." He shook his head and closed his eyes, exhausted. "It would happen... while Clin's away." Pointless to remind him that Clin might have been consulted months ago. "Stephen" - she strove to exclude anxiety from the query - "could it be appendicitis ?" "I wondered that. The worst of the pain is in that region." His tongue stole out to moisten his lips. "Ramsey's away, isn't he? Will you get dressed, Vernie, and ask Wrightson to come over?" She hated to leave him, but was thankful to be doing something. Swiftly, she dragged on a linen dress and brushed her hair. The village was enveloped in a thick cold mist which felt like rain upon her skin as she ran 154

across the track. Wrightson, conscious of his load of responsibility in the doctor's absence, was already up and shaved. As he listened to Vernie's description of symptoms and her consequent fears, his youthful jaw sagged. "We'll have to get him to a doctor at once. But how?" "Mr. Gerrard?" she supplied hopefully. "I heard him set out about twenty minutes ago, and heaven knows where he's gone. Isn't it the rottenest luck?" "Surely there's a doctor nearer than Keleba?" "Possibly, but I don't know of any. He'd be safest in the Keleba hospital." "Twelve hours away!" "It sounds frightful, but there's no alternative. We can fix up the box-car with a mattress and pillows..." "I'll drive it myself," she said. "I hardly dare let you do it - and I can't offer to come as I can't leave the site - we're blasting today. Clin will be mad when he hears about it." She sighed shakily. "How fortunate that Bill taught me to drive." "You'd better hold on till I've sent scouts out for Gerrard," said Wrightson unhappily. "And waste more time? I'll manage. Will you give instructions for the box-car to be got out and rigged up, and then go in and have a word with Stephen? I'll have to pack a few things." Stephen scarcely protested, but he did insist on wearing shirt and slacks, and staggering out to the box-car without aid. His pallor and weakness were frightening. Vernie would have liked to give him whisky and aspirin, but she knew that when appendicitis is suspected the patient should have nothing till he has seen a doctor. 155

Wrightson had thought of many things: a "chop" box and a portable medical kit, a flask of coffee, some brandy, even a slab of "tropical" chocolate. The last in case Vernie should be afraid to stop and eat. "When you reach Keleba it will be dark and round about dinner-time," he said. "Stop at the first house. Everyone out here is only too willing to help everyone else. They'll take over for you." "All right. Thanks so much for what you've done." "I wish I'd really done something," he said with chagrin. "Twelve hours' driving on these roads is no woman's job. If you're not too flat tonight I'd be awfully grateful if you'd get in touch with Clin at the Club and explain how we're placed this morning. Otherwise he'll roast me alive when he returns tomorrow." "I'll try." For the present she had to push Clin from her mind. "You couldn't have acted any other way." She took a last glimpse of Stephen, and got into the driver's seat, switched on the ignition, and moved off. With visibility at about a hundred and fifty yards and no danger of meeting other traffic, she could make a steady forty-five. But each jolt twanged her nerves, for Stephen lay flat in the body of the car, and his innerspring mattress would absorb only the lightest shocks. The pain must have been shattering for him to submit to being driven to Keleba by his sister. Her teeth were clamped so hard that her jaws ached, and her throat was parched with fear. She tried to recall all she had ever heard about appendicitis; that there was no imminent danger while the pain persisted, but cessation of pain might mean a ruptured appendix and peritonitis . .. and other things. Dreadful to have to pray that Stephen might go on enduring agony 156

for interminable hours. The mist was dispersing more rapidly now, and though the sun rose well to the left, she had to pull down the shield to lessen the glare. The red laterite road stretched ahead, an unending ribbon of flame, and already the trees had shortened and changed type. After a couple of hours she stopped, and gently slid into the box-car with Stephen. The grey mask he lifted turned her heart. "Am I rattling you terribly?" she whispered. "You're doing... wonderfully." "Would you like a sip of water?" "Not yet." There was nothing for it but to keep moving. Her head thudded with the engine. Anxiety gnawed at her, depleting still further her energies. And the sun reached its zenith, sending cruel hammer-strokes through the thin metal roof of the jeep, which reeked of hot oil and churned dust. The modern stone bridge was left behind, and Vernie began to look forward to the Mohammedan town with a sensation approaching excitement. The town held humanity, albeit dark-skinned; she would slow down when they arrived and have another word with Stephen. Small trees, and plains burnt brown by the sun; the searing hot road. The blessed sight of a couple of piccanins tending cattle. Then, strung out on the horizon, the picturesque wall of the town. Ten minutes later she stopped in the main street, the focus of innumerable dark eyes. Again she spoke to her brother. "We're in the town now. Are you sure there isn't a doctor here, Stephen?" "There'll be a n . . . African one . . . of course." 157

His speech jerked and he slid back. With the strange calm that seldom fails in an emergency, she bathed his forehead and chafed his hand, and as soon as he stirred she got out to make inquiries. Without surprise, she saw that the car was surrounded by inquisitive Hausas. A turbaned gentleman smiled and bowed, and Vernie addressed him. The master in the car was sick; was there a doctor in the town? But yes! The old man clasped his hands in delight. Two doctors, no less! Mr. Lee, the local physician, and the new Dr. West, a white man of much learning, and a large heart. He commanded a boy to guide the young white lady to the "Gidan West". Hastily, Vernie slipped into her seat and invited the boy to come alongside and indicate the way. Her pulses throbbed. A white doctor. She daren't tell Stephen lest it turn out to be a mistake or a hoax. Some of these people had a puckish sense of humour, to put it charitably. Subconsciously, she noted the time. Ten minutes to one. She swerved round corners, avoiding donkeys and refractory camels, passed, without seeing, an Edwardian gig drawn by an Arab horse, and eventually braked on a dirt road outside a shabby white house with rock-plants growing in the thatch. Vernie hesitated an instant in the porch. Both the main door and the wire-screen were closed and, as usual in these places, there was no bell or knocker. She had lifted her knuckles to rap, when both doors were opened by a girl a white girl not much older than herself. Vernie stared at the pale face with indeterminate features as if at a mirage. "Does Dr. West live here?" "Yes. Please come in. I'm his daughter... Janet." 158

"Oh, dear." Vernie caught at the door-frame and smiled feebly. "Don't look so concerned over me. It's not I who am ill, but my brother. He's in the c a r . . . " To her own overwhelming disgust her brain whirled and her knees gave way. When she came to her head was resting on the raised end of an old-fashioned wicker sofa, and her limbs knew the wondrous peace of relaxation. The pale girl, her hair a chestnut cloud, was bending over her and the coolest of fingers stroked her brow. "My brother," begged Vernie. "I'm horribly afraid it's appendicitis." "My father and the house boy have carried him into the surgery. He's conscious, so he'll be able to answer questions. Don't say any more till you feel better." Vernie was on the point of reiterating that it was Stephen who was ill, not she. But the tremendous relief of having delivered him into expert hands, coupled with fatigue, left her peculiarly inert. She could almost have slept. Janet West sank into a shabby old chair, her small, plain face tranquil in a dusty pencil of light from the darkened window. Her eyes were topaz and her lashes and brows the same soft brown as her hair. A touch of mascara and hpstick might have endowed her with certain good looks, but her nose flattened out at the tip into an unmistakable snub. Janet's real beauty was in her serenity. Lying on the sofa, Vernie recognised it, and warmed towards the older girl with an aching need. "It was a miracle - finding you and your father here," she said. "We hadn't heard about you in Murabai." "We've been here less than a month. My father isn't an official doctor - W.H.O. or anything. He used to do research work in tropical medicine at Lagos, but various 159

difficulties held it up and he decided he'd be more use and probably learn more if he worked as a general practitioner among the Africans. So he came here. The Emir gave us this house and made a grant of money for equipment. Father's very happy." "And you? Have you lived in the tropics for long?" "Less than a year. I'm not unhappy, but" - a pleasant little shrug - "this isn't real living for a woman. My father wants me to go home." Vernie's straining ear caught the click of a door. "That," said Janet, before she could speak, "was the male nurse. Father must have sent for him." "May I see the doctor?" "He'll want to see you as soon as the examination is over. Could you drink a glass of cold milk? We've only goats' milk, but it's good." Goats' milk! Vernie quelled a shudder. Fortunately, sounds approached, and Dr. West came into the room. He was short, thickset, and grizzled; his eyes were kind and very direct. "How is this young lady now? Over the giddiness? Good. No, stay where you are. Janet, run along and help Bandi prepare the patient." Vernie had sat up very straight. "Is Stephen..." "The appendix, as you surmised. Have I your permission to operate?" "Of course." He smiled. "I may say that I should have operated without it. You got him here just in time. Another couple of hours" - he gestured economically - "well, you made it, and I trust that you will be rewarded. My daughter is a semi-trained nurse, and I have a skilled African. Our theatre is merely a converted bedroom, but it is adequate. 160

I don't suppose you've eaten since last night, but we won't force food upon you till you have seen your brother, minus his appendix. Do you mind being alone for half an hour?" She shook her head. "If I can help. . . " "You can, by remaining completely composed and full of courage. As soon as you're ready to freshen up go to my daughter's bedroom - the second door on the left of the corridor." As briskly as he had entered, Dr. West went out. Alone, Vernie tried to struggle out of the morass of worry. "Completely composed and full of courage" was a wide demand, especially in her present depleted condition, but if she could keep before her the fact that she had reached a doctor in time, her nerves might tend to settle. Activity was the solution, but she had nothing to do except clean up a little. Determinedly, she went out to the jeep, but the valise was gone, and was presumably with Stephen. Back in the house she found her way to Janet's bedroom, a severe apartment which reminded Vernie of her own room at Murabai. Carefully, she washed at the china basin on a pedestal, and hung out the damp towel. She combed her hair and smoothed her dress. Only fifteen minutes had passed. What now? What indeed, except to return to that cool living-room and give herself up to a profound gratitude for the existence of Dr. West! It was nearly three o'clock before Janet came back. "Your brother is through the anaesthetic. My father and Bandi are putting him to bed." "It's all over?" 161

"All but the after-effects. He's sure to feel poorly for a day or two." Janet had subsided into a chair almost as suddenly as Vernie. She smiled apologetically. "I must be needing a cup of tea. The boy will bring some soon, and a light meal for you." For the first time since she had left the station, Vernie was near to tears, but it wouldn't do for Stephen to see traces. When Dr. West poked his head in the doorway she jumped up at once. "A couple of minutes," he conceded, "and no talking. The man must sleep." Vernie crept along the corridor and into a room to Stephen's bedside. He lay still and white, but his breath came regularly. She could have cried, after all, for while she stood above him he stayed quiet and somnolent. The black male nurse, in his white shirt and trousers, stood sentinel, and Vernie wanted to grasp his hand and thank him. That unreal day wore on. Stephen was spared none of the unpleasant consequences of anaesthesia, but by evening, when he had been given a sedative and tucked away in a mosquito net with the indefatigable Bandi still standing by, Dr. West assured Vernie that the worst was past. She sat with Janet in the now familiar living-room, and helped to roll the lengths of cotton bandage cut and washed earlier in the day by local women. Janet, who did not strike Vernie as a talkative type, nevertheless offered information about herself. "I started to train as a nurse in London. My father and mother were in Lagos, and I managed an occasional passage out here. When my mother died a year ago I decided to try and take her place, but I'm not made of tropical 162

pioneering stuff, as she was. I can't pretend to enjoy West Africa." "Stephen's the same," said Vernie. "But you're one of the few who can tolerate the climate with affection?" "Four months isn't time enough to judge." "How old are you? Over twenty?" "Twenty-two, and feeling more." Janet smiled. "You'll get over that. I shall be twentysix next month, two days before your brother is twentynine. I filled in his card from Father's notes," she added explanatorily. "His birthplace interested me. I used to spend summer holidays with a grandmother near Petworth." "Only ten miles from us! We probably saw each other in town. Extraordinary that we should meet for the first time so many years later in the wilderness." "Life is like that," said Janet softly. The old metal clock on the wall struck nine, and the boy brought in diluted lime-juice flavoured with whisky. Janet tipped the rolls of bandage into a large linen bag and drew up the string. "We rise about five and retire correspondingly early," she said. "By dawn we often have the porch full of ailing Africans, and tomorrow is teeth-pulling day, so we shall be busy. Your brother should be well enough for you to take a turn with the nursing." "I hope so. How am I ever going to thank you and Dr. West?" "Stephen's recovery will be thanks enough." Presently Vernie went to the bedroom on the other side of Stephen's which had been allotted to her. It had the austerity and antiseptic odour of a ward, which no doubt 163

it was, and the valise, Stephen's goods having been extracted, stood at the foot of the white iron bed. Stiffly, Vernie undressed. The day had stretched endlessly and been entirely strange. The nightmare drive of this morning might have happened to someone else, had not Stephen lain, bloodless and weak, in the adjoining room. Weariness and reaction swept over her in a wave. Halfheartedly she slapped a mosquito on her leg and cleaned off the stain. For a minute she could not summon the effort to get into bed. A draught descended in warm gusts from the squares of grass matting which were suspended along a rope below the ceiling. She had noticed a similar rig-up in Stephen's room and been glad for him. Apparently Dr. West kept a boy on night shift when there was illness in the house, working the crude fans. Vernie crawled between the sheets and put out the lamp. Smells and sounds were deadened by the thoughts which leapt out of the darkness. Tomorrow Clin would leave Keleba for Murabai. A few hours' motoring and he would travel through the main street of this purely native town, unaware that Vernie and her brother were housed in its outskirts. On the edge of sleep she arranged with herself to post a boy on the road with a note for the white doctor, but when she struggled awake once more the idea was impracticable and foolish. Tonight, she was too tired to plan, but still sufficiently alive to tremble with a terrible and hopeless longing to see Clin again.

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CHAPTER XI FOR two days Stephen's vitality remained at an ebb. Janet, Vernie, and Bandi shared the nursing duties, but he would sooner have been left entirely alone with the peculiar day and night dreams which had no sequence or meaning. On Wednesday afternoon, during one or those rare intervals when no one else was in his room, he began to think. The responsibility had been heavy for Vernie. She felt things so keenly - he could plainly recollect her brave white smile in the box-car - and she was young to be compelled to make decisions for two. She had got through remarkably well, but it was time he roused himself to take over, though he couldn't hope to be out of bed under a fortnight. Thank heaven this doctor and his daughter seemed to be the right sort. He hadn't noticed the girl in the starchy white apron come through the open doorway. In fact, she was standing beside the bed, smiling down at him and reaching for his wrist, before he became fully aware of her. He felt her cool touch and watched her while she timed his pulse. "You're better," she said quietly. "Could you do with an extra pillow?" "May I ? " She was out of the room and back again within a minute. A capable arm slid under him and the second pillow was pushed into place. He said, "I've been a miserable patient, but I'll try to atone." "It's natural to feel low after an operation. By perking 165

up now you're following the normal course. Tomorrow you'll take an interest in books, and by the weekend you'll want the portable gramophone at your bedside, and perhaps a game of cards." She moved methodically, without noise, preparing the table to receive his tea-tray. Her hands were large, but he was impressed by their shape and whiteness; they would as deftly handle a butter churn or a sewing needle. "Miss W e s t . . . or is it permitted to call you Janet?" "Please do. The name is plain, but suitable." "It isn't plain at all. It's pretty and neat . . . and suitable." The palest pink shaded her cheeks. "You were going to ask me something." "Yes, about my sister. How is she?" Janet looked him over shrewdly, and he said, "You can be candid with me." She was. "Vernie is quite well, but she has no appetite and is restless. We had a chat after lunch and she seems to regard it as imperative to go to Keleba and see your medical officer." Stephen's smile died. "You mustn't let her. A message can be sent by a boy - anything rather than that." "She says that a letter wouldn't convey enough, and an interview is essential. I don't know why, but she's set on it." "I won't let her go!" His voice, sharp and strained, drew Janet to his side. "Please don't disturb yourself. I told you because I thought you understood her, but I ought to have realised that none of us knows the inmost heart of another. Keleba is only seven hours away, and a boy could go with her to change a tyre, in case of puncture." "Vernie's not used to driving." 166

"She brought you here." She paused, a tenderness in her for the man so unwillingly tied to his bed. "I wish she were my sister. I'd feel as reluctant as you do, but I'd let her go." "Would you?" He raised a troubled gaze. This was his first conversation and it was wearing him down. Vernie could look after herself. Hadn't she journeyed from England to Keleba Junction without a companion? Unnecessarily, Janet smoothed the bed cover. "You've talked enough. Leave the decision till tomorrow. Just lie quiet till your tea comes." She lingered a moment longer. "Janet." "Yes?" He gave her a small smile. "Nothing - except that I like the tilt of your nose." "I was born in Manchester," she answered with subdued humour. "My nose grew that way through pressing it on the window-pane to gaze wistfully at the rain." That night was intolerably long for Vernie. Now that Stephen was definitely on the mend she had to arrange about their future, particularly the passage home to England. For it was certain that someone else would have to carry on his work at Murabai. Time was too short for any other arrangement. It came to her, with bitterness and relief, that she need never go back to the station in the bush. Their belongings could be packed and taken to the junction by Wrightson, and when Stephen was fit to travel the Craigs could shake off the heat and heartaches of West Africa. It was still dark when she got up and dressed, but Janet was already drinking her first cup of coffee and preparing 167

the surgery for the morning's work. She looked up smilingly as Vernie hesitated on the threshold. "You should have stayed in bed. I always think the early hours are miserable if you haven't plenty to do." "I've decided to go to Keleba today, Janet - that is, if you don't mind my leaving Stephen on your hands ?" "He's no trouble." "But he might be, if he discovers where I've gone. Don't tell him till it's unavoidable. I'll take the boy you offered and send him back when I reach Mr. Laidlaw's." "You'll stay overnight?" "Perhaps two nights. There may be some business to do regarding the termination of Stephen's contract. And I have to book our tickets home." Janet, sterilised towels over one arm, paused at the door of a white cupboard. Her voice was studiously impersonal. "To be safe, he shouldn't leave here before a month is up. It takes longer to get on one's feet after an illness in the tropics." A month! A shadow in the other girl's face kept Vernie silent. She stood there while the towels were laid on their shelf and cleaned instruments locked away behind glass doors. At last she said, "I'll go before it's hot. If I give Stephen his breakfast he won't worry about my absence for a few hours. The boy should be back tonight." Vernie returned to her bedroom and dropped her pyjamas, a dress, and toilet articles into the leather bag. She ate some tinned grapefruit and bread and butter, and carried Stephen's tray to his room. In the morning light, spruced and propped up by the thoughtfully Bandi, he appeared very fair and ascetically handsome. Vernie helped him, and poured his coffee. 168

"Eat some of the coddled egg, darling. Janet cooked it herself." From blunt refusal to attack the morsel, he eyed it with a degree of interest. "Sound sort of person, isn't she? The kind of girl who ought to be married and managing a home. I wonder why she isn't?" "The usual reason, I suppose. She hasn't yet fallen in love. Her father is sending her back to England." "Is he?" An odd note of caution had lowered his voice. "What about her ? Does she want to go ? " "I believe so. She dislikes this climate as much as you do." Without further persuasion he finished the egg and ate two fingers of toast. As she collected the tray, Janet came into the room and, involuntarily, Vernie watched the swift meeting of their eyes and the wordless understanding with which they smiled at each other. Yet she would have wagered that nothing really personal had yet entered their relationship. How could it, with Stephen sick? She felt a swift thrust of . . . was it jealousy? Too soon to couple them in her mind, but she couldn't help acknowledging that Janet had all that Stephen needed in a woman: strength, tenderness, and a capacity for hard work. She could visualise them together in a farmhouse, stretching Stephen's modest capital and wresting bliss from the farm and each other. In that haven there would be no room for Vernie. Well, there were still Aunt Josephine and a career. She would never love another man as she had loved Clin, so marriage was out of the question. But a career was possible. Away from Africa the pain of loving would diminish and fade with the passing of time. But it is not given 169

to love twice so violently, with every sinew of one's being. As the box-car squeaked over the rutted streets and out of the town, Vernie allowed herself, after four days' strict adherence to the undeviating theme of Stephen, to hope that Clin had been a little disturbed by her precipitate departure from Murabai. He would be busy, of course, and unhappy over parting with Celia, but it would upset him to hear that she had set out on the long trip with a sick brother on her hands. Celia, presumably, had already reached Lagos, where she would have fun till Clin could join her. In about three months, when Clin was due to leave Murabai for good, they would be married. Vernie's fingers curled tight on the wheel, her palms perspired. In the mirror she could see the top of the faded pink turban of the Hausa boy who squatted on the floor of the car behind her. He could drive, and she would have invited him to take a turn but for the anguish which rose hot and urgent into her throat. Driving demanded a certain amount of concentration, which left that much less of her free to think of Clin. The road unwound, and the trees ended, except for isolated clusters which patched the sere grass with dusty green. Everything was drenched in a white-hot glare; Vernie's actions became mechanical, her brain drugged. She stopped only once, to drink some coffee and get the boy to tip petrol into the tank. After that, she drove on and on, sweltering in the suffocating heat of the car. Just after two she came to the white houses on the edge of Keleba. Only now did it occur to her that Mr. Laidlaw was a bachelor and unable to accommodate her for the night. She did not doubt that he would arrange with some married friend to put her up, but Vernie would prefer to 170

remain independent. Keleba had no hotel, but it was possible that the Club would secure some sort of accommodation for her. So, instead of driving straight to Mr. Laidlaw's, she went on up the main thoroughfare of the town to the Keleba Club. At this hour the place was empty of members, but a sleepy clerk promised to have a room prepared for her in the Club annexe. She washed, had some tea and biscuits, and set out on foot for the long residential avenue which she remembered so well. Traversing the town, she recalled the song about "Mad Dogs and Englishmen". The white roads were deserted, the houses shuttered against the sun. The wives would be resting though the men, she guessed, were back in their offices. Fortunately, Mr. Laidlaw conducted his official work in his home, and Vernie was shown into the lounge and asked to wait. By the time he came in she had cooled somewhat, and was able to answer his bluff greeting with a smile. Gravely, he listened while she told him about Stephen. "We've been frantic about you, Miss Craig," he said when she had ended. "In the last couple of days the Murabai-Keleba road has been scoured throughout." "You knew about Stephen?" "That he was ill and you had whisked him away in a jeep, but nothing more. Peterson had search-parties out." "I didn't intend to disappear. Stephen was so bad that I believe I'd have consulted a witch-doctor if Dr. West hadn't been there. Was Clin furious?" "I'm afraid so. He left here at daybreak on Tuesday and was back again within twenty hours, expecting to hear that Stephen was in hospital. The town was combed for information, but no one knew a thing about you. Clin had 171

made the journey twice since you left the station, but he called out half the Keleba cars to examine the road and the paths through the bush." "I didn't meet any this morning." "Most of them returned last night." "And Clin?" "I don't know where he is now, but I'll try to get word through to him. Don't disturb yourself any further. Stephen will be released from his contract and all his expenses paid. I have a man at Gamo who can be transferred to Murabai." "I sent back the jeep so that Stephen shouldn't worry about me." Mr. Laidlaw's expression was benign. "Government vehicles are a boon sometimes, aren't they?" He stood up. "I have to go out, but do stay here and rest, and order what you wish from the boy." For an hour she lounged in solitude. She had completed her task and was free. The coolness of the white house seeped into her, and soon she stirred to peer through a window. It was nearly five and the first gold of sunset tipped the curved spears of the palms. She would go to the Club and make herself familiar, while light lasted, with the way to her bedroom. The stored heat of the sidewalk burned the soles of her shoes, but a breeze moved the branches and refreshed her jaded nerves. She heard a playful tattoo on a klaxon, and turned to inspect the old car which had slowly drawn in almost at her side. The door shot open. "Why, Bill!" "Veronica, my sweet. I couldn't be more delighted to see anyone. Hop in." She did so, and stared at him. Memories swept in, but 172

so much had occurred since Bill's party that they seemed airy and unreal. "Did the surveying tour break down?" "It did. I decided to walk out, and had to resign. You looked tuckered up, my pet, and no wonder. What happened to you and Stephen?" She told him and he shook his head with some affection. "I'll never comprehend the mind of woman as long as I live. They shriek at a mouse and face the jungle and hordes of Africans with equanimity. I'll go out tomorrow and see poor old Stephen." "Could I travel with you, Bill ?" He was smiling, but his lip turned in between his teeth. "Do you trust me?" "You've always been nice to me. I don't judge you on a single lapse." He laughed. "You're about the sweetest girl I ever met. At first I was rather sick with myself over that jigida affair. I wasn't so drunk as you thought. Mind if I unload?" "Of course not, Bill." " W e l l . . . it was Celia. That surprises you, doesn't it?" He paused. "When we met her that weekend of the Consul's Ball, I was drawn to her as I've never been drawn to anyone else. It sounds like the old fatuous story of the flies and the honey-pot, but my reaction to her was different from any other man's. I saw right through her . . . and still loved her." "That was why you kissed her the night before you left?" "So Stephen saw it? I meant him to. I wish I could explain the extraordinary state of my emotions at that time. Celia must have guessed at them, but she wouldn't 173

give up the pursuit of Clin Peterson. Her first failure with him had bitten in too deeply. I taunted her with it, but whatever I said made no difference. When I was ordered to go on tour, it looked like the end of Celia for me. I put on the engagement act partly to see if it would hurt her, and partly because . . . well, you're the only other woman I've ever contemplated marrying. I'm terribly sorry if it distressed you, Veronica." "It doesn't matter now. Celia came to your house that night?" He nodded. "She was jealous of you, but still determined to marry Clin, so I asserted that I was just as bent on marrying you. We were exchanging some enlightening remarks when I suddenly saw Stephen outside the door." He grinned. "I couldn't have been so very tight, Veronica, because in that instant I worked out that if Stephen saw her kissing me it would mean the end of his own infatuation." "That was .. . decent of you, Bill." "Not so very, but it acted two ways. Last Sunday I found out that that kiss was Celia's undoing. It taught her that she and I are the same sort of people, that a revengeful marriage with a man like Clin might prove an insupportable burden. He'd be merciless once he realised she didn't love him. So get ready with the congratulations, Veronica." Blankly incredulous, she whispered, "Bill, you're not "I am, angel. Celia's in Lagos, and when I've worked my month's notice I shall join her. We'll be married in London." Quite two minutes passed before she could speak. Bill raked his black curls and leaned in his corner, the noncha174

lance a trifle less genuine than usual. "I can't take it in," she said thinly. " Y o u . . . and Celia." Slightly uncomfortable, Bill said, "I told you I met her soon after her marriage and was intrigued." "I'm not belittling your feeling for her. I believe you really are well matched," Vernie assured him. "You were lucky to be able to resign the moment it suited you." He shrugged. "I'm not too happy about that. You see, I started out on tour in a poisonous mood. The others of the party were seniors, and one of them in particular made it very clear that I was to be treated as a junior. For a few days it didn't bother me, but then I got to thinking that Celia would be in Keleba that Thursday - exactly a week ago today, though it seems years past - and somehow I had to see her. I asked for an extended weekend and was turned down. When I stated that I intended to take the extra day I was informed that if I did I could report to my chief in Keleba. The outcome was that he demanded my resignation." His mouth dented at the corners. "Grim way to end up, isn't it?" She smiled with offhand sympathy. "England is your life, Bill, not Nigeria. You'll forget all this." Bill would soon recover from the humiliation. Vernie was much more concerned with Clin, but she couldn't discuss him with Bill. Her imagination shrank from the picture of Clin finally embittered against marriage: wifeless, and chained to Africa by an absorption in his career. Her heart yearned to him, yet she would do anything rather than face him again. "What I hate most is having to break with you and Stephen," Bill was saying. "We shall invite you to Maunham regularly, so that some time you'll perhaps forgive us, and come. My mother would dote on you both." 175

Darkness was falling. Lights sprang on in the bungalows at each side of the road, and white-suited men and a few women filled the verandas, talking and smoking over a sundowner. A bleakness settled upon Vernie. Too much was happening all at once, and she hadn't eaten a square meal since yesterday. Like an unhappy child she craved her bed and oblivion. Tomorrow's dawn always brought new courage, and occasionally one was fortunate enough to awaken with a fresh slant on life. "Could you drop me at the Club, Bill?" He pressed the starter. "You're tired," he said, "and I'm a cackling hound, if there is such a thing. We'll leave about ten in the morning. Suit you?" "Yes." He stopped at the white cement portals and gave her wrist a pat. "Here we are, Veronica. Don't droop, my pigeon. Nothing is ever as murky as it looks." She smiled good night and left him. All very well for Bill to be gay from the stronghold of his security. As she made her way along the Club corridor which led to the small adjoining guest-house, Vernie felt sad and bitter and horribly lonely. At this hour Stephen would be eating his evening meal with Janet at his side; the two of them encompassed in the warm circle of a single lamp. Bill would already have forgotten her, his debonair head in the clouds with Celia. Yes, Bill might make an excellent thing of an alliance with Celia. He would prune her vanity and gain stiffening from her hardness. And how Celia would revere her titled relations! For the tropics, Vernie's room was luxurious. No 176

sooner had she collapsed into an upholstered chair than a boy came to announce that dinner was available in the main dining-room between the hours of seven and eightthirty. Vernie chose, however, to be served here, away from curious glances and evening-dress and the jarring atmosphere of gaiety. She ate some braised venison, and carried her cup of coffee on to the balcony. A dozen feet below rustled the dry branches of hibiscus and flamboyant, and away at the end of this tangled back garden the tattered banners of plantains waved against a clear, luminous sky. Somewhere among the trees a boy was drawing plaintive notes from a flute. She sat on the wall, breathing in all the living, savage scents of Africa, and thought back to her first night at Murabai, when the taunting sweet perfume of frangipani had mingled like a warning with the barbaric exhalations from some other plant. She had never found out what that other plant was - would never know now - but it remained symbolic of this hot, abundant land. The flute-notes drowned in a sudden blare of more sophisticated music; the indispensable gramophone record amplified for dancing. They had flung wide the ballroom doors, for she could see couples flitting into the garden from the side terrace of the main building. Impossible to sleep while so much convivial noise vibrated the air. A walk seemed to be indicated. She flung a coat about her shoulders and tiptoed to the head of a flight of stairs at the opposite end of the landing from those by which she had ascended. They led her to a door which opened to the garden she had seen from above. But the paths were almost obliterated by shrubs and overgrown plants, and she imagined them alive with 177

scorpions. Wiser to skirt the Club grounds and stroll a short way down the road. From the path she had chosen the ballroom was brilliant and inviting. Cars were still twisting into the drive, most of them crammed with high-spirited young men whose cigarettes sparked like fireflies in the darkness. Vernie had almost reached the cement pillars at the gates when another car right-angled between them and caught her full in its beams. A jamming on of brakes, and Clin confronted her. For a long nerveless moment Vernie's eyes were raised to his. All she could see was the strong outline of his face and dark caverns above his cheekbones. She ached, with painful intensity, to hear his voice, but when it came the words: were cold and quiet, chill fingers laid on her heart. "The end of the chase," he said. "You have about as much consideration for the feelings of others as a stone image." "But, Clin . . ." "You needn't go into details. I heard most of them from Stephen." "From.. .Stephen?" "I traced him - no thanks to you - at about two o'clock this afternoon." "Then he must have explained our predicament last Monday. He'll have made you understand." She was pleading, but he gave no indication of softening. "I called at Laidlaw's and he told me you'd taken a room at the Club. I'm staying here, too, tonight, so we may as well go in." He did not touch her or even turn his head her way as they threaded the crowded vestibule. In passing, he an178

swered greetings from other men, and it smote Vernie like a blow that, as is inevitable in such places, everyone knew who she was and was mistaking Clin's interest in her. Clin must be hating the publicity. Automatically, she went on walking at his side, through the lounge into the writing-room, where he opened another door into the small Club library. Electric light illumined leather chairs, a couple of low tables, and walls lined with laden bookshelves. He lifted the coat from her and hung it over the back of one of the chairs. The ever-watchful wine-boy had followed and was given an order. While they waited, Clin was silent, and when the boy had returned and been dismissed, he transferred her tall glass to the arm of her chair, and poured neat whisky for himself, which he drained in one go. Strung up and trembling, Vernie saw him prepare a second weaker drink, and set it down without tasting. He was changed; pale under his tan and dark round the eyes through loss of sleep. With fatal clairvoyance, she knew that emotionally he was roused and going through hell. Was he paying the price of loving and losing Celia?

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CHAPTER X I I THE room must have been in the centre of the building, for it was windowless and cool. Except for the roof ventilator, they might have been shut away in the sound-proof library of an English house. There was even a bowl of wilting orange poppies on one of the tables, and a briar pipe and pouch beside an ashtray. Clin was still standing and, from his attitude, was conning the titles of the books on his eye-level two yards away. Then he looked down at her and involuntarily she went rigid. For not a ghost of the old mockery shone from his glance. It glittered. "Why didn't you send a message to Murabai as soon as Stephen was through the operation?" "I thought you'd take it for granted he was in Keleba hospital, and leave it at that. How could I guess you'd turn round and come straight back when there was so much work to do at the station? It did occur to me that I might post a boy to intercept you on Tuesday, but I suppose I . . . shrank from it." "Why?" "By that time I knew Stephen and I would not return to Murabai." "So you hoped never to meet the insufferable medical officer again?" She shivered, helpless against his coldness. "I see now that I placed you in an unpleasant position, but I really do think that you allow your sense of duty to impose upon you. If your conscience demanded that the 180

road and jungle be scoured, surely it didn't insist that you neglect everything and join the search? I'm sorry to have caused an upheaval, but won't you realise the horror I went through? Stephen was in such desperate pain, and I..." The tremor and tailing off of the final sentence brought Clin nearer. He dropped to the seat of a chair and leaned towards her. "I felt it all - the fright and agony, and though most of it was over by the time Wrightson told me, I couldn't leave you to bear any more alone. That was my reason for motoring back to Keleba. I wish it were possible to convey the stark terror of discovering that you had never reached town - that you might be anywhere along those five hundred miles of road." She daren't dwell upon the rare unsteadiness in his voice. He was tired. It was imperative to keep this conversation as impersonal as the hour and their recent experiences would permit. "Weren't you aware that Dr. West lived at the Hausa town?" "No, and neither was anyone else. I saw the chief medical officer here, and he stated emphatically that only a half-trained African worked there. I questioned some of the townspeople yesterday about you and Stephen and drew blank. Today I called on the Emir and learned about Dr. West." Flatly, he added, "The doctor made a tidy job of Stephen and incidentally gave it as his private opinion that the trouble was long-standing." "I believe it began before I left England. He often had pain, and I rather think he suspected the cause, but kept it to himself." "To come to me was out of the question, of course," 181

said Clin curtly. "Much more important to cling to your pride, whatever the risk." "That's unjust," she said quickly. "There was a night when I did come up for advice about him, without his knowledge. The day you sent the quail. You said a note would have done and called Stephen a fool for wanting Celia." Clin did not reply for a long time. His bent head was uninformative and she wondered which had hurt him most - what she had conveyed or the reference to Celia. "So your resentment fed upon misunderstanding," he said, without emotion, "and from then on Clin could do no right." He got up for his glass and stayed the other side of the table. "Laidlaw is arranging your passage home. Did you ask him to do it?" "Yes." "West Africa has defeated you?" "I could go on living here, if I had to." Gladly, cried her heart. "Have you seen Bill?" he asked abruptly. She replied with a weary little nod, "He's taking me back to Stephen tomorrow." "Friends... in spite of everything?" "Don't," she said. "You're hateful when you sneer." "I'm not sneering. In fact, I felt sorry for you when Bill announced his engagement to Celia before a throng out there in the vestibule last Sunday evening. He might have terminated the first one before taking on a second." She grasped the chair arms to push up to her feet, and moved towards her coat. Resistance and courage came to her aid. "Is it any use repeating that Bill and I were never en182

gaged?" she said stonily. "I've told you before.. "You haven't," he said sharply. "I asked Celia to tell you." His warmth and male fragrance were intolerably near, and suddenly her control slipped, and her voice cracked. "We Craigs are imbeciles! Everyone saw it at once but we ourselves. Celia kept Stephen at heel to tantalise you, and Bill used me as an irritant to Celia. Stephen was easy prey, but as it happened I wasn't even mildly infatuated with Bill, or with his title." Colour flared in her cheeks and her eyes were bright with curbed tears. "Your sense of justice doesn't appear to extend to matters concerning yourself. I've put up with a good deal recently, and I won't have you vent your unhappiness on me. Please let me pass." "You're not going yet," said Clin roughly. "You think you've suffered, but you haven't any true conception of what suffering is. You ought to be in love with someone who doesn't care a hang about you. You ought to spend the dark hours pacing and wondering if a leopard has had her, or whether drink-mad Africans have torn her up as a tribal sacrifice." He turned from her, his lean jaw moving. "You'd better go, after all. Lack of sleep is apt to make one light-headed." What had he meant? Her eyes, wide with anguished hope, scanned his face and saw it dark and angular with a bitter passion. "Clin," she whispered huskily; and gently, shyly, laid the palm of her hand along his cheek. She felt it seized and pressed against his mouth, and closed her eyes so that the tears spilled over as he pulled her tight into his arms and kissed her. His chin dug exquisitely hard against her temple. "You do care a hang about me, Veronica," he said very 183

softly. "How could you - and plan to disappear from my life?" "I'm so tired and happy," she murmured. "Just hold me." Time passed. At last he drew back his head. "My poor darling, I'll take you to your room. Tomorrow we'll breakfast together and discuss all the things which we're too intoxicated and exhausted to debate tonight." He dropped her coat about her and guided her back through the world of dancing and laughter. Vernie slept late next morning; that is, late for the tropics, where bed becomes stickier the higher the sun rises. For hours before sleeping she had lain in her strange room, beset by hazy ecstasies interspersed with black interludes in which the period alone with Clin in the library had no substance. She awoke to long needles of sunshine through the blinds, and a breakfast tray lodged upon the two bronze hands of a white-clad waiter. With consternation she heard that it was eight o'clock. An unsigned note inserted between coffee pot and milk jug read: "You really must wake up now - we have much to do. I shall wait on the terrace." Elation tingled in her veins. She ran to the bathroom and took a dip, hastened back and into the tan linen frock. Happiness made her pause and examine her reflection, and staring into her own blue eyes brought doubts to her mind - the same doubts which had punctuated her joy in bed: Celia. Supposing Clin had to make the choice between Vernie and his career, which would win? Not that she'd put him to the test; she would follow him to the Antipodes or the 184

North Pole. But the uncertainty tormented her. There was still so much to be said to Clin. Last night he was fatigued and his coldness had given way to what, in him, amounted to a beloved recklessness. Difficult to realise that the aloof doctor had surrendered so utterly to his feelings. How much had rebound from Celia to do with his metamorphosis ? Insidious thoughts, twining into her consciousness like snakes. Vernie slid the strap of her sun-helmet over her arm and went down to the main entrance. Her fears left no space for embarrassment, so that when Clin extricated himself from a circle of men and strode along the terrace towards her, her pride in him, the man above all men, had a quality of detachment. This morning he was vital and gently mocking. "Our first breakfast date and you muffed it. We have an appointment at the Town Hall at nine-thirty." "Oh, dear. I didn't bring fancy clothes. What do we do there?" "Arrange a special licence. Don't frown like that or I'll give you a kiss right here on the terrace that you'll never live down. What's the matter?" "Only . .. well, I wanted to talk to you before we do anything final." His gaze was keen. "I told you to sleep last night and not to he worrying. Come down to the car and we'll drive out of town for half an hour." "What about Bill ? He's due here at ten." "I sent him a note, and enclosed a letter for Stephen, so it's all taken care of. Come along." Before he started the car he kissed her. "I know what's on your mind," he said, "and I'll tell 185

you now that you're an idiot. But here goes." The car glided away over the concrete road, but Keleba was small, and the satin surface petered out quite soon, the usual dusty trail opening before them like a continuous red scar in the scorched miles of plain. At the first offer of shade, a cluster of cycads and nut-trees, Clin braked. In silence they watched a string of Fulani and their cattle, the women in the rear, their naked shoulders gleaming above the coloured cloth which they wore bound tightly under the armpits. With infinite grace the procession passed, packs on erect heads and babies secured to their backs. "Changing camp," observed Clin. "Did you notice the cicatrice marks on the women's faces and arms? They're the Fulani identity cards, in case the women are stolen." A fact which would have galvanised her into curiosity at any other time. At the moment she was restless, yet vaguely reluctant to speak. He didn't press for her confidence. Indicating the trees, he said, "It was here that I brought Stephen the night I rowed with him for pursuing a married woman." His instinct was infallible. Ignoring the familiar nervestab in her throat, she clasped her hands before her and looked ahead. "Need you have been quite so cruel to him? He was caught up in something stronger than himself, but even so, he'd have stayed clear of Celia had he known she was married." "I wasn't sure of that. He'd been here such a short time, and I was very uneasy about the whole episode. I had no illusions about Celia's fascinations, and Stephen had let 186

himself go. Rather than have him tarnish his future, I lost his friendship." Here it was. Vernie quailed, but ventured: "Yet a year later you allowed Celia to come to Murabai," she said. "Clin, have you been in love with Celia?" Swiftly, his hand closed over hers. "Who's been gossiping about me?" "When Stephen explained the strained relations between you and him, he mentioned a rumour that Celia had married Alan Carteret to . .. spite you. And Bill had heard that you dropped the idea of marrying her because you'd been posted to the bush." He shifted behind the wheel and rested an arm upon it. The hand holding her fingers slackened, as if to withdraw. "I'm afraid I've left you in the dark about the earlier days of the man you're going to marry, Veronica. My background is less obvious to you than yours is to me. I started my career as W.H.O. medical officer in Lagos. There I met Celia's father, and consequently Celia. Carteret, whom I had known for several years, happened to be around at the time, and he and I were frequent visitors at Celia's house in Lagos. I won't pretend she didn't attract me. When a man has had no contact with women for six years . . . " His shoulders lifted. "Then I was posted to Murabai." "I gathered that you were practically engaged to Celia." "From whom . .. Bill?" He smiled. "A man is either engaged or he isn't. I wasn't. In my gladness to be back on the old job, I'd forgotten Celia, and she was stung. She married Carteret because he was crazy about her." Could he possibly be unaware that Celia, freed by her husband's death, had made a second bid to capture him? "You and she got on so well together at Murabai." 187

"We were playing a game in which you've no experience, Veronica," he said teasingly. "A worldly game which helps pass the time but gets one nowhere. She wanted me to propose to her so that she could turn me down flat and appease her ego." Vernie did not believe it, but she was satisfied on the main point. Celia's dark beauty had affected Clin two or three years ago, but he had never loved her. "You could have prevented her coming to Murabai," she accused him. He gave her a little shake. "You had a wonderful time last night fretting over this, didn't you, and I had the best night's sleep in months. Can't you simply be grateful right through to your bones that we love each other?" "I am!" she breathed. And then: "Can Celia really be in love with Bill?" His head went back in a brief gust of laughter. "Leave it alone! What do we care whether it's Bill and his title or just herself that Celia's in love with? Thank your stars that Stephen had only his own gallant person to offer her." Vernie could have echoed his laugh. Why hadn't she thought of it before! Bill had professed that he challenged Celia to visit Murabai in order that Stephen's "repression" might find outlet and be cured. Clin had professed nothing. He had merely allowed the ambitious Celia daily contact with the son of Lord Maunham and sat back to await the result: Stephen's disillusionment. Her brow puckered. "Then why did you persist in coupling me with Bill ?" Clin sobered completely. "The reason for that goes back to the first time I saw you and Bill together. There was no Celia then. You enjoyed his extravagance and uncaring ways. He was always in your house, or you in his, 188

and it was evident that Stephen encouraged it. I was falling in love with you and loathing the sensation." "Clin! If only you'd given me a hint." "I tried to deny it. Compared with my thirty-five years, you're so young. . ." "And youth and beauty are fleeting in the tropics - I've listened to all that before. But I don't care." She leaned over, her hands upon his sleeves, and pressed her lips to his brown throat. "Whatever your future I want to share it. Never send me away from you, Clin." His arrogance was gone. "It's strange," he said unevenly, stroking her hair, "but when you came out this morning and wouldn't meet my eyes I formed the impression that what you were so anxious to have cleared up was our future place of abode. That's why I called you an idiot. I wouldn't keep a wife in Nigeria." "I won't marry you on any other terms." He laughed tenderly. "You will, darling. When my time at Murabai is up we're leaving West Africa. D'you mind waiting three months for a honeymoon?" "You mean... go to England?" " I f you like, for a month or so." "But what will you do? You're such a perfect medical officer." He held her away and grinned at her. "We had a biggish meeting last weekend, and the authorities are going full steam ahead with the new hospital at Murabai, which of course will be staffed by Nigerians. My work there has been accomplished. Next time we'll land somewhere healthier, probably in Kenya. You shall have a garden full of flowers and ground-nuts, and prattle Swahili to the houseboy." 189

"Do you know Swahili ?" "Not yet, but that's a detail -I picked up Hausa in three weeks." He glanced at his watch. "Nine-twenty! I must step on it." He reversed the car, bent to plant a kiss on her ear, and accelerated. The wind zipped between the windows and whipped her hair into a halo; a hot, dusty wind caused by speed. "Did you say a special licence?" she asked. "That gives u s . . . only a few days." "Yes, darling," he said kindly. "There's no way of doing it sooner." "Afterwards, we drive to Murabai?" "That's the general idea. Well drop in for Stephen's blessing on the way." Already Keleba was appearing in the distance, materialising into the faintly Oriental architecture of this older side of the town. Soon he had to slow down and thread through the gesticulating groups which meandered haphazard from one side of the road to the other. A turn into a more spacious thoroughfare lined with palms, a swerve through wide, wrought-iron gates, brought them to the foot of the semicircular steps of the Town Hall. "We made it with a minute to spare," he said. Vernie lifted to him a tremulous smile, and his answering smile was passionate and tender, and unmistakably possessive.

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