‘Would you mind very much if I did flirt with you?’ she couldn’t resist asking him.
‘I think I could come to terms with the situation,’ he drawled.
The moment he drew up outside the house, she was out of the Land-Rover and running into the house.
‘I want to go and see how the banks are holding! And how the donkey is getting on, FulanV.’ she told him, rather breathlessly, over her shoulder. ‘I’m going to change and go down to the river.’
She didn’t dare meet the look in his eyes. She made a dash into her room, tearing off her pink dress and her high-heeled shoes as fast as she could go. She felt more normal altogether in her usual cotton trousers and a checked shirt; more normal and a great deal safer too.
It took her some time to find her mackintosh and the Wellington boots she had last worn about two years before. She banged the boots on the floor to make sure that no insect had made its home in the toes and then stuffed her feet into them, and threw the mackintosh around her shoulders.
Benedict was still waiting where she had left him in the Land-Rover. ‘Hop in!’ he commanded, but Hero felt she had to argue.
‘Aren’t you hungry?’ she asked him. ‘Koinange will make you a sandwich —’
‘No, he won’t.’
‘But Koinange —’
‘I’ve given him the day off. If we eat at all, I’m afraid you’ll have to get the meal. Now, do you want to go down and look at the river or not?’
She got cautiously in beside him. They would never make it, she thought. The murram was already wet through and as slippery as a skating rink. She wondered if she should tell him to go round the long way, but the expression on his face kept her silent. Besides, if anyone could drive them there and back, it would be Benedict, she reasoned. He drove as well as he did everything else, with flair and good-tempered ease.
The river had only just begun to fill up. The water, thick with red mud, moved slowly past them, gathering momentum even as they watched.
‘You see that mud?’ Benedict broke the silence. ‘That’s someone else’s topsoil!’
‘The elephants like it,’ Hero said. ‘They blow water, the muddier the better, all over their backs to keep away the flies and other insects. They come up out of their baths as pink as you could wish for.’ ‘Do they come here?’ he asked.
She nodded. ‘They used to. My father encouraged them to keep to an old walk they had going down to the river. He always said they did more good than harm. When the figures came out that they were being poached at the rate of twelve hundred a month, he nearly went mad. And that’s not counting the ones who stray out of the game reserves and are killed legally by the small farmers round about. One can understand it, they do trample down the crops, and sometimes whole villages as well, but it used to break his heart. He didn’t believe that people always have to come first. But they’re elephants! He would say. There aren’t any at all in West Africa now. Soon there may not be any here either. They’re eating themselves out of house and home.’
‘That I can believe,’ Benedict said. ‘I saw a good deal of vegetation bashing by elephants in Tsavo National Park last year.’
Hero stiffened at the mention of the year before. She got out of the Land-Rover and lifted her face to the sky, letting the rain run through her hair and over her skin, washing away the last remnants of her make-up. She hardly noticed when Benedict came round the bonnet and stood beside her, staring thoughtfully into the depths of the water, as it roared past them.
In his usual quick way he had read her thoughts at once. ‘Even now, are you still wanting to make Betsy’s pretty ears go red?’ he asked. ‘In that case, I’m afraid there’s only one thing for me to do. I’m going to exorcise Betsy from your system.’
Quite slowly and deliberately he reached out for her and drew her into his arms. His lips took possession of her own, forcing them apart. She felt his body hard against her own and his arms gripping her tightly to him. Her whole being became fused with an ecstasy she had never known before. She was trembling. Then gradually he relaxed his grip, but still held her close, one hand on the nape of her neck and stroking her back gently with the other.
‘Is Betsy now exorcised?’ he asked.
Hero could not trust herself to speak, but he could see the answer in her eyes. He said, ‘Sweetheart, we’ve looked at the river, we’ve seen that the new banks are holding, and we can be reasonably sure that the new grasses will germinate beautifully in this rain, so may we now go home?’
This time it was she who laughed. ‘I haven’t looked in on the donkey yet. We’ll probably have to walk! You’ll never turn the Land-Rover in this!’
But he did manage it. ‘I thought we’d be pulling it out of the river tomorrow,’ she confessed, ‘It wouldn’t have been for the first time!’
The donkey heard them coming and came running to the stable door, bleating a welcome.
‘He’s grown,’ Benedict commented.
‘You ought to look in on him more often.’ Hero gave the donkey a warm hug. ‘He belongs to both of us,’ she reminded him.
‘I’ll give you my share,’ he offered.
Hero presented him with an outraged face. ‘But you can’t! He has to belong to both of us!’ She scratched the top of the donkey’s head. ‘You do love him a little bit, don’t you?’
He put his hands over hers. ‘I prefer his mistress,’ he said. ‘Come on, Hero, it’s time we dried you out!’
But back at the house, he seemed a stranger again and the uncertainty that had dogged Hero all day robbed her of her appetite.
‘I think I’ll get us something to eat,’ she volunteered.
‘Oh yes?’ he said. He held out his hands to her, looking right into her eyes. ‘Yes, you do that, and then with any luck you won’t be able to think of anything else to put between us for the rest of the day.’ He touched her hair with gentle fingers and shook his
head at her. ‘My drowned darling! You’d better fetch a towel too and I’ll dry your hair for you. I like to see it all fluffed up and pretty!’
She couldn’t find a single word to say. Even with him standing so close to her that she could feel him breathing, she couldn’t quite manage to get him in focus.
‘But you can’t want to waste your time drying my hair!’ she said. She made a last effort to pull herself together. ‘If I make a moussaka, will that do for you? I
— I’m not very hungry somehow.’
‘Of course I want to dry your hair for you,’ he murmured. ‘It’s all part of my plan to spoil you for anyone else who may set eyes on you and want you as much as I do!’
‘But I’m married to you!’
‘Although not very sure of yourself at the moment,’ he said, ‘but you will be when I’ve finished with you!’
‘I’ll go and cook, if you’ll excuse me.’
He let her go at once and that wasn’t what she wanted either. He went over to the record-player and chose a disc at random, putting it on the turntable. As the first rich notes of Birgit Nilsson’s voice spread
through the house, he followed Hero into the kitchen.
‘Wagner?’ he asked. ‘Your choice?’
‘My father’s.’
He listened in silence for a moment. ‘I don’t recognize it. Is it one of the operas?’
‘No. They’re five poems by Mathilde Wesendonck, who was a friend of his. He set them to music for her. They sound better when it’s raining,’ she added. ‘There’s always something of the excitement of a storm in his music.’ She added, ‘I like storms!’
He gave her a quick look. ‘Love of storms seems a mutual feeling. Did I tell you I brought you a present from the Sudan?’
‘I shouldn’t have thought you’d have had time to go shopping,’ she said.
‘I didn’t. I persuaded a friend of mine to fly it out with him. His wife bought it in Vienna, following my detailed instructions as to what I wanted. Want to see?’
She nodded. Did he have friends
all over the world, waiting to do his bidding? She put the dish in the oven to finish cooking and then stood in the middle of the kitchen, not knowing whether to go or stay.
‘Shut your eyes,’ he commanded, ‘and hold out your hands.’
She did as she had been asked and felt his lips against hers. Her eyes flew open and he dropped the most seductively beautiful nightdress into her hands at the same moment.
‘Benedict!’ she exclaimed. ‘But I’ve never worn anything— Is this - for me?’
‘It’s not as young and sweet as the one you made yourself,’ he said. ‘I like that one too, but this one is to match the Greek fire in your heart. This one is for tonight!’
‘But Greek fire was a terrible weapon!’
‘Oh, terrible!’ he mocked her. ‘Believe me, I know! I’ve been on the receiving end —’
‘You mean, that’s how you think of me?’
His arms came round her, holding her so tightly that she couldn’t move if she wanted to.
‘I like spoiling you,’ he said in her ear. ‘I love you very much, Liebling, more than you’ll ever know.’ ‘I love you too!’
He wouldn’t allow her to say anything else, but kissed her lips, her eyes, her brow, and then her lips again, stirring her to a passion that leapt up within her to meet and complement his own for her. Then with an effort that she felt like an electric shock down her body, he put her away from him and sat her down on one of the wooden kitchen chairs, starting to rub her hair dry on the nearest towel that came to hand.
‘We have time, sweetheart. We have all the time in the world! And I don’t think I’m a stranger to you any longer, am I? We’ll eat your meal, and drink wine - not retsina! - and you can flirt with me all you want to. Because afterwards, my lovely wife, my time is coming!’
And the rain thundered down on the roof, mixed with the final chords of the last of the Wagnerian songs, bringing life to the countryside for another year.
Table of Contents
She poured Benedict out another cup of tea when he
‘Those trousers won’t do!’ he surprised her by say
Table of Contents
She poured Benedict out another cup of tea when he
'Those trousers won't do!' he surprised her by say
The Bonds of Matrimony Page 15
