The Bonds of Matrimony

by Elizabeth Hunter

  Hero swung round on her heel, her skirts swishing against her legs. ‘It’s Hero Carmichael now,’ she reminded him. ‘I’m practically as British as you are!’

  The next day began badly. The clouds that had covered Mount Kenya the day before had evaporated, leaving the twin peaks revealed in majesty, and destroying Hero’s hopes that they presaged the coming rains. If they didn’t come soon, they would know that they were not coming again that year, and then the prospect for the northerly regions would be bleak indeed.

  Betsy came to breakfast in the negligee she had been wearing the evening before, her hair hanging down her back. Hero looked at her in surprise.

  ‘I thought you were coming round the farm?’ she reminded her.

  ‘Oh, so I was! Sorry, pet, I forgot all about it. Never mind, I expect it can get along without me.’ ‘I’ll wait for you,’ Hero offered.

  ‘No, don’t do that!’ Betsy said sharply. ‘It will take me ages to get dressed and I hate having to hurry. You go without me. You can easily show me round this afternoon - or some time, can’t you?’

  ‘Benedict will be back soon,’ Hero argued with a stubborn look. ‘He won’t think you very interested if you haven’t looked at the new fields by then, and I thought that was the idea!’

  ‘Your idea, sweetie, not mine!’

  Hero sighed. ‘Oh, very well,’ she gave in. ‘If you won’t come, you won’t!’

  Betsy gave her a dazzling smile. ‘Don’t let me stop you from doing whatever you have to do, though. It’s dreary enough here without having your disapproving face looking at me all day!’

  Hero was only too glad to go. She swallowed down her coffee as quickly as she could and went to inquire from Bob if he was feeling better. At least he seemed cheerful enough for once.

  ‘I think I’ll take up your suggestion and run myself into Isiolo, young Hero. Coming?’

  She shook her head. ‘Not this morning. This morning I want to finish sowing the far field. If you’re going to take the Land-Rover, could you give me a lift out there first? The men are there already, but they’ll need some more seed.’

  ‘Anything to oblige,’ Bob agreed grandly. ‘If you’re still at it when I come back, I might give you a hand.’

  ‘Thanks very much!’ Hero laughed back at him.

  She went out to the nearby boma where the seed was stored and checked out the seed against the plan Benedict had drawn up, labelling each type with care. Some of the sacks were old and leaking a little and she spent the time she was waiting for Bob to have his breakfast, sewing up the larger holes with string. But when she had finished and Bob had still not appeared, she went back up to the house to find him. There was no sign of him anywhere.

  Koinange came out of the kitchen, his white apron looking rather the worse for wear. If the rains would only come, Hero thought, they could all get clean, instead of making do for a few more days, and then a few more, as they had been recently.

  ‘Tell Bwana Andrews that I’ve taken the Land-Rover over to the boma to load up the seed, will you, Koinange?’

  The African assented, glaring down the hall at Bob’s closed door. ‘When do they go home?’ he asked hen ‘They make much work for all of us!’

  Hero smiled at him. ‘Yes, don’t they?’ she said. She felt very much more cheerful as she went back to the boma. The Land-Rover was going well, helped on no doubt by Benedict’s adjustment of the driving seat to fit her leg measurement rather than his. It meant that she could sit back and drive and she wondered why she had never thought of adjusting it for herself. It was funny how men thought of these things at once, whereas she would have gone on happily enough, suffering the minor inconvenience of years before she would have thought of seeing if the seat moved back and forth.

  The sacks of seed were heavy and she was hard put to it to lift them high enough to get them on to the back of the Land-Rover. When she had managed it, she was hot and sticky and the dust from the grass-seed stuck to her, irritating her skin. There was still no sign of Bob and she decided to go back to the house once again to hurry him up.

  A sweet, damp smell of pine greeted her nostrils as she stepped into the hall, and it was a minute or two before she could think what it was. Then it came to her, slowly, almost against her will, so reluctant was she to believe it. Someone was having a bath!

  ‘Bob!’ she roared at the top of her lungs. ‘Bob, where are you?’

  He emerged from her old bedroom, a sheepish smile on his face. ‘Sorry, old thing, I didn’t realize you were in a hurry!’

  She gave him a thunderous look and stalked down the hall, flinging open the bathroom door. A cloud of hot steam came gushing out to meet her, fragrant and enticing.

  ‘Hero, really!’ Betsy’s light voice broke the silence as Hero stood in the doorway, unable to believe her eyes. ‘Either come in, or go out!’

  ‘Betsy, how could you?’ Hero gasped.

  ‘How could I what?’

  ‘You know how short of water we are! If you were going to have a bath, you could have told us, and we could have all used the same water —’

  ‘Not very hygienic, darling!’

  ‘Well, we could have had a couple of inches between us. And the water could have been used afterwards on the vegetable garden.’

  ‘Heaven forbid!’ said Betsy, making a face. ‘How

  was I to know that I couldn’t even have a bath without

  incurring your displeasure? You haven’t said anything before.’

  ‘Before?’ Hero almost shouted. ‘You mean you’ve had a bath before?’

  ‘Every day. Why not?’

  Hero finally lost her temper.

  ‘You are the most selfish person I’ve ever come across!’ she trounced Betsy. ‘But that’s it! I’ve stood as much as I’m going to from you - and from Bob too! You can both go back to Nairobi today—’

  ‘And what will Benedict say about that?’ Betsy drawled, unmoved.

  ‘I don’t care what he says! I’ll drive you to Nanyuki as soon as you’ve packed your things, and that’s all. You know how short of water we are! That people are dying of thirst already in the Northern Frontier District, and yet you can’t even do without a bath! Ruining the water for anything else by putting in handfuls of bath-salts! And putting in as much water as the bath

  will hold.’

  ‘You’re only jealous,’ Betsy smiled at her, busily soaping her neck. ‘You look as though you could do with a bath yourself!’

  Hero glared at her, speechless with rage. ‘I’ll go and pack for you,’ she said, when she could trust herself to say anything.

  ‘Do, darling!’ Betsy cooed. ‘But don’t think that I won’t have a great deal to say to Benedict about this!’

  ‘So will I!’ Hero retorted.

  She turned on her heel and slammed the door behind her, coming face to face with Bob who was staring at her, overcome with a surprised admiration that did much to restore her good temper and make

  her want to laugh.

  ‘You don’t mean it, do you?’ he asked her.

  ‘Every word!’

  He laughed out loud. ‘I didn’t think you had it in you! Are you turning me out too?’

  With her temper dying away, Hero was already beginning to have cold feet that she might have overreached herself. ‘Bob, you’ll have to go with her. She won’t go alone and I can’t - I won’t have her here any longer!’

  ‘You don’t have to apologise to me.’ he assured her. ‘I’m only too eager to get Betsy away from that husband of yours and back into my sphere of influence. I never would have come in the first place, if she hadn’t begged me to. Said I’d be company for her, that I could get to know her better. Fat chance I’ve had of that!’

  Hero attempted a brief smile. ‘It wasn’t a very good idea, asking you here, was it?’

  ‘I can’t think why you did!’ Bob said with brotherly

  frankness.

  Hero threaded her fingers together. ‘It was all so difficult. I tho
ught it would be easier with other people about, and Benedict seemed to want me to ask Betsy. And now I’m going to start Betsy’s packing!’

  ‘Okay. It won’t take me a few minutes to get my gear together.’ He looked at her curiously. ‘Are you really figuring on driving us to Nanyuki?’

  ‘Yes! Please God, Benedict doesn’t get home before I do. He said it was too far for me to go on my own — ‘

  ‘So it is!’ Bob said sagely.

  ‘Well, it can’t be helped. We’re going, and that’s that.’

  Packing Betsy’s clothes took longer than she had expected. Nothing was where she expected it to be, and everything looked as though it could do with a good iron and mostly a good wash as well. Hero bundled them all together into the suitcase and was in the process of collecting up the various jars and tubes of makeup on the dressing-table, when Betsy came wafting in from the bathroom on a cloud of pine bath-salts and scented soap.

  ‘What a pain in the neck you are!’ she complained. ‘I don’t feel like driving all the way to Nanyuki.’

  ‘Too bad!’ said Hero.

  Betsy sat on the end of the bed and leaned back on her hands, looking down lovingly at her own body. ‘Don’t you think you’re bucking for a set-down?’ she

  asked, pleasantly enough. ‘And Benedict is the right person to give it to you too. How are you going to explain your actions to him?’

  Hero forbore to answer. She pulled open all the drawers to make sure they were empty, and shut them again, making a great deal of noise to discourage Betsy from saying anything further. When she had made sure that nothing had been left behind, she stood up straight and said, ‘I’m going to take the seed out to the men. I’ll be back in half an hour.’

  ‘And what if I’m not ready?’ Betsy asked. She lay back in an insolent attitude and smiled up at Hero. ‘What then?’

  ‘I’ll have your luggage taken out,’ Hero said flatly. She went out of the room, taking a deep breath to calm her anger. It was lucky, she thought, that she had something to do. If she had had to wait round the house, waiting for Betsy to get herself together, she would have gone out of her mind in five minutes, let alone half an hour!

  She sprang into the driving-seat of the Land-Rover and drove like a lunatic out to the far field. The men came to the edge of the field to talk to her, helping her unload most of the seed and stacking it neatly by the side of the murram track that went between the new fields.

  ‘We’ll have it seeded today,’ they promised her.

  ‘Good,’ she responded. ‘The Bwana Mkubwa will be pleased.’

  The Africans grinned. ‘He’ll be home soon!’ they teased her, exchanging amused smiles at her obvious embarrassment. ‘You won’t work so hard when he is

  home again!’

  She smiled back at them. ‘I shan’t be working today either,’ she told them. ‘Will you be able to manage without me?’

  They assured her that they could. They replaced some of the samples of seed in the back of the Land-Rover and stood and watched her as she turned the vehicle in the narrow track and drove off back to the house.

  Much to her surprise both Bob and Betsy were waiting for her on the verandah; Bob looking bluff and cheerful, Betsy in a cold rage that Hero recognized from their schooldays.

  ‘Are you ready?’ she asked them.

  ‘I’ll put the luggage in,’ Bob offered.

  Hero climbed into the back of the Land-Rover and received the suitcases as he handed them up to her. Crouched between the seats at the back, she thought she heard the sound of an aeroplane’s engines, but when she looked up there was nothing to be seen.

  ‘Did you hear a plane?’ she asked Bob.

  ‘You’ve got that husband of yours on your brain!’ he laughed at her.

  ‘I thought it might be he,’ she admitted. ‘I wish he’d come!’

  Bob patted her kindly on the shoulder. ‘Shows what a lame-brain you are, my dear! Betsy will tell him a fine tale as soon as she sees him, and then where will you be?’

  Hero preferred not to think about it. She finished stowing away the luggage and took her seat behind the steering-wheel. Bob got into the centre seat, allowing

  Betsy to sit on his other side by the window. Hero let in the clutch, sniffing madly to hold back the tears that threatened to blind her completely. And then she saw him, walking up the track towards them, and she was frozen in her seat, unable to move hand or foot.

  ‘Look out!’ Bob exclaimed. He pulled on the steering-wheel so that they narrowly missed the approaching Benedict, and yelled at Hero to put on the break. Belatedly, she did so, and Betsy hit her head on the windscreen, letting forth a stream of abuse.

  Hero jumped out on to the road and then, a sudden feeling of awkwardness taking over, she backed away from him until her back came up against the hot metal of the Land-Rover.

  ‘Where are you going?’ he asked pleasantly enough.

  Bob climbed down beside her and put a protective arm round her shoulders. ‘We thought we’d go back to Nairobi,’ he explained. ‘We’re just setting off for Nanyuki.’

  Benedict looked at Hero. ‘You too?’ he asked her.

  Bob’s arm tightened around her. He turned his head

  and deliberately kissed Hero on the cheek. ‘Why

  shouldn’t she prefer a spell of my society? There’s

  nothing much for her here!’ he declared.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Hero had never yet seen Benedict lose his self-control. She did not do so now. But there was a steely glint in his eyes as they met her own. ‘There’s something all three of you would do well to understand,’ he said. ‘My wife’s kisses belong to me - all of them - and I don’t care for any of them getting mislaid along the way. Bob, you can pack your bags.’ He turned again to Hero. ‘What’s all this about going to Nanyuki?’

  ‘I was coming straight back!’ she blurted out, remembering that he had told her not to drive so far on her own and that he would undoubtedly remember that he had too. ‘There was no other way. They’re catching the night train to Nairobi.’

  Betsy unrolled herself languidly from her seat. ‘Hero has ordered us both off your land. It’s too ridiculous really, but now that you’re here, perhaps you can wring an apology out of her and then we can all go back to the house!’

  Hero bit her lip. ‘Please, Benedict!’ she whispered.

  ‘That isn’t what I’m angry with you about.’

  ‘Isn’t it?’

  ‘Why didn’t you let them take the Land-Rover and leave it at Nanyuki? I don’t like to think of your driving miles by yourself, no matter how well you know the road.’

  ‘But we need the Land-Rover!’ she said.

  ‘Suppose I said I need you more?’ he said.

  Hero shook her head, her mouth dry. ‘I’m sorry,’ she murmured.

  ‘Just as well! But don’t think you’ll always get off so lightly. I won’t have you putting yourself into unnecessary danger, no matter what good reasons you think you have for doing so!’

  She went red and then very white. ‘Benedict, are you

  - telling me something?’ she asked him.

  ‘I haven’t started yet!’ he said.

  ‘Excuse me for breathing!’ Betsy interjected. ‘They’re nice people, so they probably will,’ Bob told her. ‘It’s a pity you called the bet off, Hero, or you’d be ten bob the richer! It looks as though we all underrated you!’ He saw the keen look Benedict was giving him and brushed his hands together. ‘There was no harm in it,’ he said. ‘It’s not my fault, if Hero thought you had other plans which didn’t include her. Why, she’s spent the whole time you were away trying to make Betsy take an interest in the farm, and a more pointless waste of time than that is hard to find!’

  Betsy’s laugh rang out. ‘The truth is that Hero couldn’t contain her jealousy of me a moment longer. Rather sweet, don’t you think? But to make such a fuss about my natural desire to keep clean in this barbaric place was taking things a bit far!
Nobody was stopping her from having a bath - if she had wanted one. I really can’t stand people who martyr themselves for some ridiculous cause and then get cross when everyone else doesn’t do the same! When I think of all I’ve done for you, Hero Kaufman—’

  ‘Hero Carmichael!’ said Benedict.

  ‘Oh, for heaven’s sake!’ Betsy turned on them. ‘You’re just as bad as each other. Let’s go to Nanyuki, if we’re going!’

  Hero got into the back of the Land-Rover, allowing the others to sit in the front together. Benedict didn’t even look at her as he took his place behind the steering-wheel, but he saw her all right when she made to get out at the other end. He held out his hand to her and helped her down.

  ‘I’m sorry if you think I was making a fuss about nothing,’ she said.

  ‘I didn’t say that.’

  ‘No, but I’m sorry all the same. The thing was, I thought I’d be back before you came home — ‘

  ‘I see,’ he said. ‘It’s all right if you drive to Nanyuki

  behind my back and I don’t know about it, is that it.’

  ‘No, I didn’t mean that! Only I didn’t think you’d be pleased to find Betsy gone.’

  ‘I gathered that!’ he agreed, doing nothing to help her out.

  ‘Don’t you mind after all?’ she asked.

  But Benedict was no longer looking at her. He was brisk and businesslike and she was afraid to question him further.

  ‘Those trousers won’t do!’ he surprised her by saying. ‘Change into a dress, Hero. Something soft and pretty. And wear a hat, will you? If you must, you can even have a bath yourself! I flew through a great bank of rain-clouds on the way here. They can’t all be so unkind as to go somewhere else! Have your bath, and leave me to worry about the consequences!’

  ‘But where are we going?’ she cried out.

  ‘Does it matter? I thought we’d drive with the others as far as Isiolo. I have some business to do there and I thought you might like to come with me.’

  ‘Oh yes! Yes, I would. But I don’t have to change for that.’