Merger By Matrimony

by Cathy Williams

  And the weather wasn’t helping matters. The rains this time round were considerable, and she felt as though she was literally and figuratively drowning.

  ‘You’d better go home for the day,’ she said at a little after twelve, when the rain was threatening to turn into a storm. She could barely make herself heard above the crashing of the rain against the window panes. ‘And, Paolo, make sure that your brothers do some reading.’ She managed a weak smile, ushering her little troop to the door and making them don plastic hoods which were fairly useless in a downpour of this nature and anyway would probably be merrily discarded the minute the compound was out of sight.

  It was surreal to think that less than three months ago she had been in England, wearing clothes that looked like clothes and shoes that were ornamental rather than useful. She glanced across the open courtyard and through the driving rain saw her father beckoning to her.

  ‘An emergency!’ he was yelling, although the noise swept away a good part of what he was saying, and Destiny sighed and nodded, hurrying along the corridors of the wooden building and emerging a few minutes later through the door to her father’s office.

  ‘Apologise for disrupting your class, darling.’ He ran his fingers through his sparse, greying hair and gave her a worried look. ‘I’ve been radioed from El Real that there’s an emergency.’

  ‘What kind of emergency?’

  ‘Lone tourist has bumped into some of our mosquitoes and contracted some kind of parasitic infection. Or, at least, that’s what Enrique seems to think, but he’s no doctor.’

  ‘What about the medical services there?’ Though ‘medical services’ was something of an overstatement to describe the sole hard-working doctor with whom they had fairly regular communication.

  ‘Pablo’s been called away for another emergency a few kilometres away and seems to have become stranded out there by the rains. Dessie, I know you probably don’t want to do this, but there’s no one else. If Henri had been here I would have asked him, but, really, with me gone I’d need our own qualified doctor here just in case. We’ve had to deal with two snake bites already in the past couple of days, and Lord knows what’s happening towards Cana. I’ve had reports of fevers.’ He looked as weary as she had ever seen him.

  ‘Right. I’ll get something packed.’ She carried on discussing their method of transport, none too reliable in the current deluge, but she could feel her heart sinking fast. Her father was right. She didn’t want to go. There was enough to do here and the trip, which would probably take hours and be a nightmare journey, filled her with sudden dismay.

  All she wanted to do was huddle away in her room and let her mind travel back through time.

  Within the hour they had told the various other members of the compound what was happening, and were climbing into their four-wheel drive.

  The journey would be a combination of road and river and promised to be hellish. Despite the onslaught of rain the atmosphere was stifling and humid, and she knew that, given the muddy nature of the pathways linking all these small towns, they would spend at least a proportion of their time clearing morass from the roads in an attempt to get through. It was always the same during the rainy seasons, and this time it would be a thousand times worse because of the quantity of rainfall.

  ‘It’s ridiculous,’ Destiny told her father, as they progressed at a snail’s pace, with the wipers going at a rate. ‘Why do tourists feel that they can travel unaided into this part of the world? What gives them the right to expect help when they get themselves into a muddle?’

  ‘This sounds a little worse than a lost tourist who’s got into a muddle,’ her father said, craning forward to make sure that he kept to the barely visible marked path.

  ‘We’ll get there and he’ll have nothing more than a few mosquito bites and a bad cold from getting soaked.’

  ‘Not from what Enrique says.’

  ‘Enrique runs the grocery store and a rooming house!’ Destiny grumbled on insistently. ‘He’s not likely to be much of a gem when it comes to diagnosing illnesses! Did he say what the symptoms were?’

  ‘Raging fever, apparently. The man’s hallucinating.’

  ‘I feel like I’m about to hallucinate,’ she said, wiping her face with the rag she had brought with her. ‘This car is going to self-combust in a minute.’ The windows were rolled down, but only very slightly to allow for the rain and the heat inside the car was fierce. Even with the miniature fan affixed to the dashboard she could still feel beads of sweat rolling down her face and making her body feel like oil. She rolled her glass down a few more centimetres and was rewarded with a wash of water across her face. It was better, at any rate, than the humidity.

  ‘I never really asked you this, Destiny, but what exactly happened out there in England?’ Her father wasn’t looking at her, and she felt a little jolt of shock at his question. He was a reticent man when it came to conversations about feelings and emotions, and for him to encourage one right now showed how much the question had been nagging away at the back of his mind.

  ‘Nothing happened out there.’

  ‘The last time we spoke when you were there, you seemed to have settled in and you were enjoying yourself.’

  ‘I never said that I was enjoying myself,’ she persisted stubbornly, staring out of the window as the rain lashed the rainforest around them, making every bending tree and swirling leaf look dangerous. Men thought that they were so big and strong. Well, it only took one show of nature like this to silence them.

  ‘Darling, you don’t actually need to spell everything out for me. I know I’m an old duffer—’

  ‘Dad! Don’t!’

  ‘—but I can occasionally read between the lines, and you were enjoying yourself. Nothing like that time when you were in Mexico and you were so desperate to come back home.’

  They both paused as the car was manoeuvred very slowly through a minor flood, densely brown and littered with fallen leaves.

  ‘So why did you suddenly decide to leave?’

  ‘I didn’t suddenly decide,’ Destiny said awkwardly. ‘I just realised that I couldn’t accomplish any more over there, so I came back.’

  ‘Henri said something about a man.’

  ‘Henri? What did he say? It’s not true!’

  ‘He said something about this Callum character…’

  ‘Henri doesn’t know Callum from Adam!’ she burst out, cursing her friend for having dumped her in the mire. She hadn’t mentioned Callum Ross to her father because there had been no point. It would only have hurt and disappointed him to think that she’d got caught up in a temporary and seedy affair with someone so alien to the sort of man he would have expected for her. Not a doctor, not someone whose life-blood was rooted in environmental issues and helping other people. But a businessman. Someone whose interests were all wrapped up in making money, even when it involved marrying a woman to further his ends.

  ‘What was he like, then?’

  ‘What was who like?’

  ‘You’re dodging the question. And you’re going into a sulk.’

  ‘Dad, I’m a grown woman. Grown women don’t go into sulks. Have you ever known me to go into a sulk?’

  ‘No,’ he admitted, but before she could give a triumphant smile, he carried on remorselessly, ‘which is why your behaviour has been so odd ever since you returned. You say the right things, and never hesitate to pull your weight, but you’ve been wrapped up in yourself and I can’t help but wonder whether something happened to you over there that you’re not telling me about. If I didn’t know better, I’d say that you’re suffering all the symptoms of love sickness.’

  ‘Oh, Dad, please.’ Amazing how parents had a knack of making you feel like a child.

  ‘And the only name that’s been mentioned in connection with your stay in England, aside from the Wilson man, is this Callum character.’

  ‘Who is just the sort of man I would never fall in love with!’ She thought back to that hard, intelligent face,
those skilful hands that had explored every inch of her body until she’d thought she would suffocate from desire—and then she thought of his proposal, which had been like a punch in her gut. Cold, logical, without feeling or emotion. Theoretically, the sort of man she really would never fall in love with, which just went to show how huge the gap was between theory and practice.

  ‘Why?’ her father was asking in a mildly curious voice. ‘Is he cruel? A bore? Stupid?’

  ‘No, none of those things.’

  ‘Ah. I see,’ her father murmured.

  ‘He just expects everything to go his way, even when his plans are…are…’ Her cheeks were bright red, and not from the sweltering heat in the car. She stopped abruptly, caught off guard in the middle of her sentence. ‘He thinks that because things make some kind of peculiar sense to him everyone will just fall into line and go along with what he has to offer.’

  ‘Are we talking about his purchase of the company? Because, from the sounds of it, it seemed very generous, and it’s a great relief to me that you now have more than sufficient funds to retire to England whenever you choose…’

  Destiny looked at her father as though he had suddenly taken leave of his senses. What was he talking about? Ever since she had returned to Panama she’d felt as though, subtly but undeniably, things were changing around her. No comfortable Henri, no comfortable routines that she never questioned, and now her father was hinting that she might want to go back to England. Why?

  ‘I don’t intend to go back there,’ Destiny said quickly. ‘Why should I?’

  ‘Why indeed?’ her father said, which wasn’t much of an answer. ‘We should be hitting the station in the next hour or so, if the weather conditions don’t get any worse; then we can get a boat to Real. With any luck, the river’s going to be all right.’

  ‘If the boatmen haven’t all holed up for the rains,’ Destiny said gloomily.

  By the time they finally made it to the station, the dubious quality of the light was beginning to fade and, as she had feared, they were compelled to spend the night at the ranger station. There was no electricity, and bathing in the creek was out of the question because of the weather, so, after a basic meal, which was brought by them but cooked in good humour by Juan, who refused to see the massive rains as anything other than a minor nuisance, Destiny retired to her cot, sticky, muddy and dishevelled. Her feet felt stiff from the hiking boots she had worn. All around here was fer de lance territory and the thought of a snake bite further complicating things was not even to be contemplated. No one ventured out without the protection of boots. Useful, necessary, but unfortunately very conducive to sweaty feet.

  Juan, because he knew them and liked them, had managed to provide two pails of creek water, so at least she found she could go to sleep with clean feet, if very little else.

  And the rains, overnight, appeared to have let up a bit. She awakened to more of a persistent drizzle than the torrential, never-ending downpour that had been in evidence over the past few weeks.

  ‘I hope your cousin’s going to do the boat trip for us,’ Destiny said to Juan once they were outside, ‘and he hasn’t got himself into one of his alcoholic jags.’

  ‘José’s given up the evil drink.’ Juan grinned, while Destiny shot him a long, sceptical look. ‘No, really!’ he said, holding his hands up. ‘I think it was after that lecture you gave him.’

  ‘Well, your mother will be pleased.’

  ‘Now all he has to do is find a wife and give her some grandchildren.’

  ‘At seventeen?’

  ‘Never too young to start.’ He eyed her cheekily. ‘I’d advise you not to leave it too long, old lady.’ To which she told him to shut up, but she was in a less oppressed frame of mind by the time they began the second leg of their journey, boxes of provisions and clothes in hand, as well as invaluable medical supplies which were contained in a watertight box and wrapped in several layers of waterproof plastic for good measure.

  As soon as they arrived at Enrique’s house, her father turned to her and told her to stay put.

  ‘I’ll make a diagnosis and then we can discuss what we need to do.’

  He vanished inside the room while Destiny remained outside, staring at the fine grey drizzle and trying to come to terms with a life that had been stood on its head and even now was moving at newer and crazier angles with each passing moment. She jumped when her father finally reappeared.

  ‘It’s serious, Dessie. Dengue fever. His fever’s through the roof and apparently he’s been slipping in and out of consciousness. I’ve washed him a bit, and changed him, but we need to start administering antibiotics in case secondary infections have set in. So…’

  She nodded. She knew the routine. She also knew that round-the-clock antibiotics would require them both to take turns at getting up in the early hours of the morning to inject him. Under normal circumstances, and if they’d been in the makeshift hospital area in the compound, they would have had the facilities to give the antibiotics via a drip, but it would be more rudimentary here.

  ‘Will he pull through?’ she asked, following her father to the room, and he shrugged and gave a fifty-fifty gesture with his hand.

  ‘Take a look for yourself and then tell me what you think. I haven’t seen a case of Dengue this bad for a while…’

  Destiny approached the bed, sympathetic to the tourist’s plight but exasperated by his foolishness in thinking he could undertake a trek of mammoth proportions in damaging weather.

  What she saw made the colour drain away from her face. She felt her breathing thicken. Her father was talking behind her, but his voice was background noise, insignificant next to the roaring in her head.

  Callum Ross, ashen and unshaven, lay on the bed. And he was dying. She could almost see the life ebbing away from him as she continued to stare, until the ground began to feel unsteady under her feet and she reached out to support herself on the side of the bed.

  ‘We’ll do our best,’ her father said quietly, approaching her, ‘but it’s a bad case.’

  ‘It’s Callum Ross,’ she whispered, turning stricken eyes to her father. ‘The man is Callum Ross.’

  ‘What the…?’

  ‘Please, Dad. Let me give him the antibiotics.’ But her hand was shaking so much that she couldn’t, and her father swiftly injected him.

  She remained with him for the rest of the day, watching the flicker of eyelids over closed eyes, checking him frequently to see whether the tell tale rash that marked the end of the fever was beginning to appear.

  ‘You fool,’ she whispered, reaching out to hold his hand. ‘What got into your head? Don’t die on me, Callum. I’ll never forgive you.’ One tear spilled down her face and was quickly joined by another. When, later, her father came in to administer the next lot of medicine, she was steady enough to do it herself, and she hustled him out of the door, nodding feverishly when he told her what needed doing.

  His body, which had filled every corner of her mind for the past couple of months, seemed vulnerable now that it was under attack. When she washed him, she could see the signs of wasting already beginning to set in. He wouldn’t have eaten for days, and the stubble on his face was beginning to resemble the start of a beard.

  ‘I could shave you,’ she said, speaking to herself, because thus far she had had no response from him. ‘Would you trust me to do that? Why couldn’t you have stayed put?’ she demanded, swerving away from the subject and glaring at him. ‘If you’ve put yourself in danger because of a couple of questions you wanted to ask about the business, then I’ll kill you, Callum Ross. Do you hear me?’ No, of course he didn’t, but she carried on talking anyway, all through the night, until sleep finally overcame her.

  She was awake at the crack of dawn, leaving him alone only long enough to freshen herself and grab something to eat. She was barely aware of her father’s battery of questions and offered no explanations.

  When she returned to the room, it was to find that Callum at least ha
d changed position on the bed. He was no longer on his back, with his grey face upturned, but on his side, even though his eyes were still closed.

  And his breathing seemed easier as well, although she was well aware that that was probably her imagination. It was easy to become accustomed to the varying patterns of an illness until you imagined that they were less severe than they had been at the outset.

  She propped him gently up and tried to spoon some liquid food down him.

  ‘Have I told you that you’re a fool, Callum Ross?’ she said, growing accustomed to the sensation of making conversation into silence to someone who couldn’t hear what she was saying. ‘Didn’t I tell you about the mishaps that happened to tourists who took risks?’

  She heard the tremor in her voice. ‘Dad’s asking a million questions about you and I don’t know what to tell him. He wants to know why I’m insisting on doing everything for you when I’ve explained to him what an arrogant, irritating thorn under the skin you are. He wants to know why I’m running around like a headless chicken and looking like a washed-out rag over someone I told him doesn’t matter. He can’t understand what you’re doing in this part of the world. As usual, I’m in a mess because of you.’

  She expertly took his temperature and logged it on the frightening chart that was now clipped to the top of the bed, then she sat back and looked at the man lying on the bed in front of her. ‘You risked your life…for what? Some papers I may have forgotten to sign? You stupid man.’ Her voice was beginning to sound unnatural again, and she breathed in deeply in an attempt to control it.

  She was slowly realising that, even though she’d come back to Panama, even though she’d told herself that Panama was her country and she would remain there for evermore, doing what she’d always done, even if she died a sad, old spinster, a part of her had still believed that one day she would see him again. Because miracles happened. If Callum died now, then there would be no miracles.