“Insignia, of sorts. They spend as little as possible on food in order to have more and better clothes. It keeps them proud and happy, so why worry?” Which was Theo’s philosophy about most things.
He parked outside the hotel, took Ann into the tidy little cane and velvet lounge and ordered martinis. He knew most of the people idling there, but took care to do no more than nod to them. As soon as the drinks were finished they went into the dining room and were served with dinner. An adequate meal, but not spectacular. But Ann wasn’t hungry; she was glad when they were given coffee and could light cigarettes.
Now, Theo seemed unwilling to broach anything controversial. He smoked, and mentioned various farms in the district, asked about Mr. and Mrs. Calvert’s cruise and about the Riding School. Ann answered automatically; the distance which had widened between herself and Theo in three or four weeks was incredible. He looked thinner, and there was nervousness in the way in which he drew on the cigarette and eventually pressed it out.
He said suddenly, “I think we’d better drive a little way.”
She leaned forward. “I’m not so difficult to talk to, am I?”
“I wouldn’t have thought so, but you do seem to have changed a bit. I don’t blame you. The marvel is that you stayed on, after discovering what sort of people we are.” He stood up, and after a moment in which she smiled at him, Ann got up too, and went with him to the car. They drove away from town, climbed a low mountain and dipped towards a narrow river that gleamed dully. Beside the bridge he pulled in and switched off the engine. In the sudden silence Ann heard the gurgling of water against the bridge piles, and then a rustling through the low bush that edged the river. She sat still, and waited.
At last Theo said, “It’s not easy to know where to begin.”
“It isn’t necessary to talk it out,” Ann said gently. “You pretended a little in Cape Town and I enjoyed your pretence. We didn’t take each other so very seriously, did we?”
“No, I don’t think we did. I wished I was the sort of person you thought me, but there was no chance of my becoming that person, so I was rational about it. I came home, wrote you a letter, and thought that must be the end of it. My one mistake was in talking about you to Elva.”
“You had to give her some reason for staying on in Cape Town.”
“I needn’t have gone into such detail, but you see, I was well on the way to being in love with you.”
Ann hesitated, and said softly, “I’m not really your sort, am I?”
“No, that was the devil of it.” He was losing the note of strain, becoming rueful. “You’re cool and sweet ... and unblemished. I’ve known a few women, but none like you. Even our meeting was the sort of thing that never happens to me.”
Ann recalled it, vividly. A small rider from the school had been in tears because she had collected no points at all. Ann had lifted the child from the mount and knelt beside her ... and found Theo kneeling on the little girl’s other side and offering a handkerchief. She had met his glance, light blue and amused, had noticed the shaft of sunlight striking across the impossibly fair hair. In looks, that afternoon, he had been breathtaking; no wonder she had felt herself reeling slightly as he told her, with engaging frankness, that he had been angling for an introduction and hoped their meeting over the woes of the child would be sufficient. She had smiled at him and taken the little girl away, but that evening, at the Show Ball, they had been formally presented to each other; he had bowed gravely and given her a half wink.
Ann leaned back in her corner. “You’re not nearly so happy as you were then, and I’m not wholly to blame, am I?”
“You’re not to blame at all.” He paused. “Sometimes I’m damned sure that the craziest thing I ever did was to let Elva live with me at Groenkop. She and I have never been good for each other, yet somehow we’ve stuck together and spoiled each other’s lives.”
“But you’re grown people!”
“That’s right,” he said laconically, “but we’re grown people with a family chip on the shoulder. Care to hear about it?”
“If it’ll help, yes.”
He pressed the palm of his hand round the wheel of the car, said with a sigh, “Our parents were English and badly matched. My mother was a farmer’s daughter, my father the son of a firmly-established business man. I’m a bit like my old man—weak, passably pleasant and seldom able to rub two pound notes together. He was always doing things that tarnished the fair name of Borland, so eventually, soon after Elva was born, he was given tickets to South Africa for all of us. My grandfather took the precaution of buying a piece of land for him to farm—not that my father was keen on farming, but my mother had it in her and she was strong—and it was the thing one did in those days. The trouble was, my mother had married for one purpose—to get away from farm life. So you see how things were.”
“Lord, yes,” said Ann soberly. “You had nothing but the land and the only farmer among you didn’t want to farm—she probably felt entirely sold. What happened?”
He shrugged. “For about a year my mother tried hard and my father evaded his responsibilities. Then he died, and there were just the three of us—I was eleven and Elva seven at the time. We had no money, lived in an isolated spot in the Orange Free State, and yet somehow we two children had been born with expensive tastes and a dislike of manual work. If we hadn’t been very young it would have been hell. As it was, my mother gave in to circumstances. She married a man we hated, and when I was seventeen she cleared out altogether.”
“Elva must have been thirteen then! What did you do?”
“I sold up and sent her to a grandmother in England. Myself, I got into the Air Force over here, and for a few years everything was fairly smooth. I’d get an occasional dark and brooding letter from Elva and once or twice my grandmother wrote that she couldn’t handle her and I must make some other arrangement. Then for about a year I heard nothing, and because I couldn’t get together enough money for the air fare, I left the Air Force and joined a new airways company—Peterson’s. It was a splendid move, and almost at once I was backwards and forwards between Rome and Johannesburg. Then I had to go to Paris; it was the nearest I had been to England and I took a chance and hopped a B.E.A. to London.” A change came into his voice. “I found Elva that same evening. She was in hospital with a broken thigh—had fallen from her bedroom window, so they said.”
Ann’s eyes went wide and appalled in the darkness. “You mean...”
He nodded. “I think so, though she never confessed. All I learned was that she’d been taken in by someone who’d promised immense rewards, had gone fanatically into a venture that was going to put her high among the monied women of the world; it failed, of course. She was your age, cocksure and with a mind like ... like distorted whipcord. I daren’t leave her there any longer, so I arranged that as soon as she could be moved she must be shipped to South Africa.”
“She does seem slightly fanatical,” Ann said slowly. “I thought it only this evening.”'
“So you’ve noticed it, too.” He left it there for a minute or two, then said, with a humourless, deprecating laugh, “I’m not built to stand it. If she does something foolish again...”
“She’s a very sane person, really.”
“She’s sane enough until she gets an idea and goes after something. When I got her here she ran a flat for me and we had some good times. Then she got hold of some money and went feverish on the Stock Exchange—lost the lot. So far,” he ended heavily, “she has only chased money—but now she’s after a man as well. There’s that hard, go-getter look in her eyes, and she won’t listen to reason.”
His hand rested on the seat between them and Ann slipped hers over it. “Poor Theo. No wonder you tried to be someone else in Cape Town.”
He smiled, and lifted his shoulders. “It’s not only Elva. I haven’t been too stable myself. Storr warned me twice before I was finally grounded. I can hold drink all right, but it was against regulations to smell of it b
efore you were handed the tot as you were ready to leave. He grounded me for the passengers’ sake—some time I might have whacked a whole bottle before a trip.”
“Why did you do it—to drown your troubles?”
“Partly—and partly because I’m my father’s son. Aren’t you sick of this sob-stuff?”
“No, I’m glad you’ve told me. I’ve lived such a happy, hemmed-in sort of life myself that I hardly knew such families as yours existed. It’s good for me to learn about you.”
“You’re not disgusted?”
“Of course not. There’s just one thing I don’t understand. Why, if neither you nor Elva is keen on farming, did you come to Groenkop?”
He grinned wearily. “It was one of those hit-or-miss things. Storr knew we’d grown up on a farm and offered the house and fifty acres. Elva knew Piet Mulder in Johannesburg and discovered that he’d bought land in the Belati district and was going to test for minerals before he farmed. In her headlong way she was sure Piet’s land was rich, and so she urged me to accept Storr’s offer, so that she could be in on the ground floor. We’d been here more than a year before we were quite certain Piet’s land was ordinary farming stuff, and somehow we’ve just gone on, without counting the time.”
Ann said simply, “I’m sorry about everything, Theo. You make me want to help.”
“Don’t say that, or I shall feel more of a heel. I’ve kept the worst till last. I could have been here when you arrived the other day, but I got cold feet and cleared out before Storr knew you were coming.”
She smiled, mischievously. “Yes, I know. But it’s not so terrible.”
“This part is: I didn’t sprain my wrist and I didn’t go to a hospital for an X-ray.”
Ann gazed at him, laughed a little helplessly. “You idiot! You hoped I’d take the hint and hurry back home!”
“That’s what any normal girl would have done.”
“Then I can’t be quite normal. I’ll confess I thought of it, but not very seriously, because although I’d gathered Elva’s reason for inviting me was more than half selfish, I wanted to leave things tidy. Now that we understand each other, I’ll go whenever you like.”
“You make things awfully tough. Since I’ve seen you again I don’t want you to go.” His tones lowered and his head turned slightly away from her. “During the last few hours I’ve been wondering whether Storr would give me another chance with the Company.”
Ann withdrew slightly. “Why don’t you ask him?”
“I don’t think so—not till Elva’s got whatever’s riding her right out of her system. Storr won’t marry her, but she won’t believe it till he tells her himself in some way. God knows when that will be.”
Her mouth oddly parched, Ann asked, “How can you be sure Storr won’t marry Elva? She has most of the things he needs—beauty, an air of breeding, a sporty way with her.”
“She’s also transparent to a man who’s experienced. Her efforts in the home were a little too late. Besides, I believe there’s someone else Storr’s keen on—in Johannesburg.”
Well, there it was. Ann had probed for it, and reached it. Mrs. Newman had begged her not to mention the subject to Elva and Theo, but is seemed that Theo knew already, or that he guessed. It was possible he even knew the woman who stood between his sister and Storr Peterson.
Theo went on, consideringly, “Marriage is what Elva needs most. Piet Mulder would take her on tomorrow, if she’d have him, but Piet’s a simple soul and he’s never likely to be rolling in cash. Actually, I believe Storr is the only man who’s ever made Elva really look into herself; other men bore her—except Piet who irritates and pleases her in about equal proportions.” He gave a long, comical sigh. “Well, there you have it—the feckless Borlands, both products of instability in childhood and lack of ... love. The psychologist johnnies make fortunes out of people like us.”
“Elva, perhaps, but not you, Theo. You’ve just had rotten luck.”
“I could have handled it better.”
“With your character and background I don’t think you could. You were young when you started worrying about Elva, and I believe you still worry about her. If she’d never come back to South Africa you’d still be a pilot.”
“Could be. She’s twenty-five, and even more of a problem than when she was a girl.” He took his hand from under hers, gripped her fingers and let them go. With a smile that was too jaded for a man of twenty-nine, he said, “Well, I’ve explained why I fell for your clean and polished innocence and aired a few sins. Don’t hold them against me, will you?”
“I couldn’t.”
“You’ll stay the full month?”
She looked at him, saw lines beside his mouth that shouldn’t be there. “I’d like to, Theo,” she said softly.
“And you won’t tell my sister about our talk tonight? Let’s keep it between you and me.”
“It’s best that way. Elva’s not a fool; it’s more than likely that she’ll become aware that Storr is interested in someone else and let the whole thing peter out In any case, he won’t be here so very long.”
“Let’s hope not.” He let some time elapse before squaring his shoulders and saying quite cheerfully, “Shall we go back and grab a drink? There may even be some dancing in the hotel.”
Ann nodded, and he set the old estate car moving. She felt more acclimatized to the Belati atmosphere, and knew that she now understood Theo far better than she would ever have done if they had stayed on the Cape Town footing. There was only one thing he hadn’t covered, and it was something she didn’t care to ask him about. Elva had convinced herself that given the chance, Theo and Ann Calvert would marry. Presumably it would suit Elva to have her brother so conveniently taken care of, but wasn’t there perhaps another angle to it? Theo knew his sister through and through; he knew that she was two people—a raffish, horsey type who had contempt for her own sex, and a well-kept woman, who wanted travel and a husband and plenty of money—and he was also aware of the dark, violent streak in her nature. Wasn’t it possible that Elva, rosily seeing herself installed as mistress of Groenkop and of whatever establishment Storr might set up in Johannesburg, had decided it might be good policy to keep at least a few hundred miles between herself and her brother? No doubt she had already taken for granted his surrender of the house and fifty acres and removal to Cape Town; it was unlikely that she had troubled to think further ahead and wondered how a man who knew only planes and farming would make a living away from both. All she cared about at the moment was keeping Storr’s opinion of herself highly glazed and intact.
For a few minutes Ann wondered about Elva’s long stay in England and that suspect fall from a bedroom window. What a strange, reckless creature she must have been ... might still be. It didn’t bear thinking about.
They found the hotel bright with music from a gramophone, joined several dancing couples and recaptured some of the friendliness of their earlier acquaintanceship. The glamour was missing, though; in its place Ann was conscious of an understanding of Theo which bordered on compassion. For a lighthearted debonair and handsome young man he had really had a little too much to endure. While she was here she would help him all she could.
The following weekend there were two or three social events. On Friday evening one of Theo’s friends gave himself a birthday party at the hotel, and on Saturday there was a picnic near die river, arranged by Mrs. Newman. Ann had received a warm note of invitation to the picnic, and she accepted at once, only to discover later that neither Elva nor Theo had received a similar note. Apparently Sheila Newman’s courage had not quite risen to extending invitations to people who had previously refused them. However, Ann enjoyed the picnic, met several entertaining people and ended the day at the Newmans’ house. It did her good to be away from everyone at Groenkop for so long.
Elva had brought the chestnut gelding to the small pasture in which the grey and the roan spent their leisure, but it was not till Sunday morning that Ann tried it out. With the rein
tighter than usual, she rode slowly down to the little tin church where the Africans, decorous in best suits and clean frocks, sat in a circle on the glass and listened to a very black priest. When the service was over and she had the place to herself, Ann looked through a window into the church. The benches were plain but varnished, the altar narrow and covered with a crisp white cloth edged with lace. There were carved wooden candlesticks, a pot of crimson Barberton daisies, and below the altar a crude but magnificent mosaic depicting a huge gold cross being borne along by a number of dark-skinned saints. It was a primitive and peaceful building, too small to be used for normal services.
Ann got back into the saddle, felt insecure for a moment because the gelding was broader than the roan, and then pushed the horse to a canter. She sat easily, and thought about the letter she had received yesterday from her mother. They were at Durban for five days, while the ship reloaded, and they wished Ann were with them; they hoped to receive a letter from her at the next stop up the coast. It worried Ann that her mother had not mentioned her own health, and yet she was sure that if anything were even slightly wrong with it her father would write. Perhaps she was letting her general uneasiness become concentrated on the one point.
The gelding moved gracefully over the hillside, making for the road. A jeep rocked along down there, raising a lethargic cloud of dust, and half a dozen natives, carrying beribboned sticks and wearing brilliant cloths about their heads, danced to their own chanting and turned across the veld. The sun glared over a scene which was peculiarly African; low brown and green mountains, occasional umbrella trees, a huddle of thatched huts on a hillside, a piccaninny herding his father’s handful of assorted cattle. Then, as Ann reached level ground, a long and sumptuous estate car appeared on the road; it slowed and stopped, and Ann’s heart did just the opposite.
Storr swung out and came round the car, took a few paces across the grass to where she had reined in. He looked extraordinarily tall and broad-shouldered and tanned, and the smile he lifted gleamed whitely with mockery and a hint of malice.
The Reluctant Guest Page 8
