And No Regrets

by Rosalind Brett

  “Most women have a driving need to find security,” Clare rejoined, “and ecstasy, as I’m sure you will agree, is but a moment of time.”

  His grey eyes narrowed as she said that. “Was Simon less than solemn, after all?” he drawled.

  “Simon’s a writer and he used to talk to me about life.” She tilted her chin and hoped, for some absurd reason, that she looked sophisticated. “Each human being has his or her own complexities, and fundamental needs and drives. Aunt Letty confused hers with mine—if I had wanted safety, Ross, I should not have chosen to come to the wilds with a man without a heart.”

  “You’d have married Simon Longworth, eh?” He gave a chuckle. “Lovers are not friends, as someone once said.”

  “Are you relieved that I’ve never had a love affair?” she asked lightly.

  “To have brought here a woman with the needs of experience would have been impossible on our terms,” he pointed out.

  “Perhaps such a woman would have been better for you, in the long run.” Clare made herself meet his eyes, and the strangeness of this conversation, the elements of intimacy and danger in it, had quickened her pulse-rate. They had never talked like this before— but then they had never been so alone before.

  His glance flicked over her sun-honeyed skin. His masculinity reached out to touch her, though he didn’t move. Difficult, she sensed, for so emphatic a character to find happiness, and he was determined not to chance a lifetime of one woman by taking more than her company during their sojourn here.

  “So you’re aware that men can turn on the passion without it involving the heart,” he drawled. “Good, your knowledge should help you steer clear of causing anything like it between us.”

  “I cause it!” She gazed at him with indignant eyes.

  “Yes, you.” He swung to the table. “You’re the pretty one round here.”

  She watched in exasperation as he began to write a report, an elbow on the table, one hand supporting his chin, his pen moving lazily over the sheet of paper. That man had a gift for always putting himself in the right and other people in the wrong, she fumed inwardly. He could only be tempted if she set out to tempt ... of all the egotistical brutes!

  She began to gather up the coffee things, forgetting as usual that she now had a boy to perform such chores. By the time she left the room with the tray, her sense of humour was restored. Darn the man, but how he exhilarated even as he put an edge on her temper. Simon had never managed to do that ... but then she had not been helplessly in love with Simon.

  Pots of paint, laid on quite efficiently by the boys, had made a tremendous difference in the house. Cream walls and treated woodwork were a cheerful background for furniture that had begun to take on a faint gleam from the polish Mark rubbed into it almost every day. The windows, roof, and veranda were repaired and coated with gas tar. On still days the house still reeked with its pungent odour.

  Until the rest of the gear arrived they were without books, gramophone and records. There was no chessboard, not even a pack of cards, and Clare’s hands often ached for the touch of a piano keyboard.

  She was restlessly wandering about the living-room one evening, pausing at the door of the veranda, then coming back to take up some mending, when Ross said gently: “When the steamer arrives at the end of the week, you’ll have more to occupy yourself with. There’ll be a crate of books, and magazines, and doubtless letters for you to answer.”

  “I’m not really bored,” she assured him,

  “But music and books will help, eh?”

  She nodded and continued with her sewing, her dark head bent in the amber light of the lamp. They would help because her restlessness had its roots not in dissatisfaction with this place to which he had brought her, but in her longing for a return of the love she felt increasingly for him.

  He wasn’t always an easy man to live with, and once, when the relentless rains kept them shut in for hours together, the tension was a thin wire stretched close to snapping point She sat listening to the rain pounding on the tin roof of the house, listening until her nerves were jumping. He watched her, with a merciless interest, she thought, like a surgeon over a guinea-pig. She hated him for that. A man with any feelings would have come over and given her a spot of comfort, but not Ross. There he sat, long legs crossed, cigarette smoke wreathing about his dark face, crystalline eyes fixed upon her strained face.

  “Let me have a cigarette,” she said suddenly. He snapped open his case and extended it, left her to light it herself. She rarely smoked, and this time nearly choked on his, strong tobacco.

  “Don’t try so hard,” he grunted. “If the rains make you feel like screaming, then go ahead and scream.”

  “Doesn’t screaming come into your category of what is permissible and what is not in a woman?” she asked shakily, stubbing out the strong cigarette.

  “Come off it, Clare,” he crisped. “I don’t demand too much of you. You’re here and that’s good enough. I like to see your sewing about the place, and other feminine fripperies. I don’t ask for the stiff upper-lip of a Boy Scout on an endurance course.” He got to his feet abruptly and came over to the lounger where she sat, and sat down beside her.

  “You little fool,” he muttered. “You darned, soft little fool.” He pulled her head to his shoulder and laid his fingers across her pounding forehead. “You disinfect all your water before you drink it?” he added prosaically.

  A touch of hysteria, or disappointment, made her giggle. He glanced down at her, his eyes resting on the soft red of her lips. Her heart tilted at that look, and when his arm dropped away from her, she felt she died a little. She could still feel where his arm had rested under her shoulders, hard and thewed, and when he said that what she could do with was a drink, she nodded and watched him go to the sideboard.

  She was butting her heart against a sentiment-proof wall, she knew that, yet in his shadow-weave shirt, his long legs encased in narrow linen trousers, he excited her senses and her affections. Those ironical brows above the shrewd steely eyes, that in some lights held a strong hint of blue, made him look a devil ... a devil she both feared and loved. He brought her gin and tonic across to her, with ice out of that ingenious little thermos.

  “Bottoms up,” he grinned.

  She echoed his toast and drank gallantly to a future which might have no bottom in it. The rain had slackened, and as it subsided it left a curious stillness in the air.

  “Don’t change the way you are,” he said unexpectedly. “Be yourself through thick and thin—I might find it galling at times, but secretly I’m impressed.”

  “You mean I’m a soft little fool, but you like me that way?” she murmured.

  “Meaning you’re a floundering chick, and I like you that way. What a hush now the rain has lost its ferocity! Strange, isn’t it?” He tilted his dark head to listen to the queer silence that now held sway over the jungle all around them. “We’re like Noah and his missus in the ark.”

  “We’ve even a couple of dogs,” she said with a laugh. “Brutus is soon to become a father.”

  “I had noticed,” he said dryly.

  They laughed together, and the transient peace outside had entered the house and was touching them. Clare held her breath, for happiness is like the bluebird—now you see it, now you don’t!

  CHAPTER THREE

  THE rains were petering out. For days there would be no rainfall, only a thick, hot mist rolling in from the river, shrouding and entering the house, running in rivulets down the newly painted walls, and causing Clare to perspire at every movement.

  For an hour or two at midday a fierce sun appeared in a dazzling sky, and with the first appearance of the sun came troops of ants. The floors were alive with them, sorting and regimenting themselves for attack upon the food resources of the house. Clare and the boys set to work for a counter-attack, baiting corners of the rooms with pieces of dried fruit and cake, waiting until the bait was alive with ants and then dropping it into hot water to kill
them.

  There came, too, the scissor-winged tsetse fly, but both they and the ants disappeared at dusk, to be replaced by mosquitoes and moths, mango-flies, flying beetles, praying mantis, and huge, nerve-shaking spiders. Clare hated spiders and was ever on the watch for one of the evil-looking things—inevitably they invaded the places where she was most likely to be these hot, humid days—the tin bath, and her bedroom.

  She always seemed to be yelling for one of the boys to remove a long-legged invader from the bath. This they found highly amusing, and, giggling, would march off with the wriggling offender. No doubt, she told herself, they put it all round the village that the little white missus was much too chicken-hearted for the big boss-man. And she really couldn’t blame them! She was an idiot, blanching to see a spider crawling towards her—what would she be like if a leopard should ever come out of the bush to menace her?

  Ross seemed to be living precariously balanced on the rim of mixed moods. Almost anything she said called forth a cynicism, but she knew that his work, especially in the present enervating atmosphere, was attacking his reserves of energy. An appalling number of jobs had still to be completed before he could start earnestly upon the plantation itself. Only with a great deal of patience and try-outs had the lorry and sawmill been got into working condition. On the mechanical work he had himself to spend hours, fuming silently, with uncannily controlled irritation. It would have been healthier, Clare felt, to hear him rave and yell. An odd muttered curse hugely understated the task he was tackling.

  Then one morning when she was quite certain that the rains had ended, she awoke with a sense of foreboding to a sultry heat that made breathing difficult, and movement a torture. One of the dogs, Edwina, lay on the floor of the living-room just outside her bedroom door. The dog was shivering and lolling her tongue. Clare knelt beside the dog and stroked her, whispering: “It’s ghastly, isn’t it, Edwina? And you going to have puppies, poor thing.” But Edwina made no tail-wagging response.

  Ross came in from a bath, took in Clare’s position on the floor, and said curtly: “Get away from the dog—she might turn on you and snap at you in this heat.”

  “Poor girl,” Clare murmured, shifting slightly along the grass mat. “Her time seems to be near, Ross.”

  “And you fancy doing a spot of maternity-nursing, huh?” He grinned derisively and pushed the damp hair back off his perspiring forehead. “Luke!” He raised his voice and made Clare jump. “Bring coffee, boy!”

  “Hot coffee?” she grimaced.

  “Sweats the heat out. It isn’t good accumulating inside—get up off the floor, honey—you look like a kid!”

  She scrambled to her feet and went to stand in the door of the veranda. From grey-blue the sky had turned to a brassy yellow. A tropical storm was brewing.

  Ross came and stood just behind Clare; she could hear him breathing above her head, then his hard brown arm moved past her to rest against the frame of the door. “A last stormy throw,” he said, “then some hot, dry weather, thank God.”

  He sounded tired, spent, and she had to control an urge to turn towards him and stroke away the tension she had noticed in his face a few minutes ago. The clouds over the compound had built into thunder-capped pyres, and Clare felt, blinking against the eye-straining atmosphere, that any minute now the rain-laiden clouds were going to burst their seams.

  She gave a shiver. Here there was nothing temperate. The climate, the people, the emotions, all were touched by the primitive, as it must have been at the beginning of things. The elemental was let loose here ... perhaps that was why Ross had put a boundary line between them. Perhaps that was why he had suggested a disciplined marriage.

  The afternoon passed in a lethargic nightmare—the rain held off like painfully suppressed tears in that awful brazen sky. Now and again there was a mutter of thunder and an occasional play of lightning, and Clare found a cool corner for Edwina and then drifted languidly into her room. The blinds were closed, and the shadiness suggested coolness.

  She dozed under her netting, then hearing the tinkle of tea things went out to the living-room after splashing her neck and face with tepid water. The room darkened. Ross appeared, tossed off a cup of tea, grimaced over his sweat-soaked shirt and went to change it. The lightning was incessant now, flashing fire across the purplish-black sky. Still it did not rain. As soon as Ross had finished eating he put on his jacket and got into his oilskins.

  “You’re not going out?” she exclaimed.

  “I left some sheets of figures down at the sheds. If they get wet it will mean a week’s work lost.”

  “Don’t be long,” she said, studiously casual.

  Ross cast a glance over her face, pale and triangular in the gloom of the room, but he said not a word as he went out into the brewing storm.

  The boy came and cleared the table. She heard the clatter of dishes, then he came back to ask if anything further were wanted. She told him he could go, and a few minutes later was left alone in the house, wincing, even with closed eyelids, from the stabs of lightning, and plugging her ears with her fingers.

  Then, with tropical violence, the storm broke directly Overhead. The first terrifying crash of thunder sent her headlong, face downward, on the lounger, where she stayed, pushing her face into her arms, and trembling with a fear as old as time. Rain hammered on the tin roof, thunder cracked without pause, and lightning blazed as through the gates of hell. Clare sweated and shivered and wished she were dead.

  She did not hear Ross come in and discard his oilskins, nor know that he was in the room with her till he touched her shoulder. She turned to him a pale, wet face.

  “What’s the matter?” he jeered. “Suppressing some more screams in the interest of that endurance course you’re taking?”

  “Ross, please, close the shutters!”

  “There’ll be lots more storms before you’re through out here, so you’d better get cured right away,” he said harshly. “Go and close the shutters yourself.”

  “Y—you heartless beast,” she breathed, gazing up stricken at a smile curling, almost tigerishly, on his lips.

  “Come on, I’ll help you close the shutters,” he invited.

  “I—I can’t—I’m afraid of the lightning—”

  “The best cure for fear is to face what you’re frightened of.” He grasped her shoulders and hauled her to her feet.

  “I won’t go over there!” She fought with him, hysterically, feeling as though he and the world had gone mad. Then, with the lightning playing lividly over his face, he hoisted her off her feet and carried her across the room to the shutters, and he made her stand there while he fastened them. She was sobbing tearlessly through her teeth—she hated him—hated him!

  “I warned you what it would be like, living with me out here,” he said through clenched teeth. “Are you satisfied with your glimpse over the wall of Ridgley into the big, untamed world? Does this tropical Eden live up to your girlish expectations?”

  Fright and hate boiled up in her and had to find relief in physical action. She raised her hand and slapped him across the face, hurting her fingers, feeling them tingling as with fire as she turned and fled into her bedroom. She threw herself on the bed and cried like a hurt child.

  She didn’t hear him come in, a nerveless, washed-out bundle as he gathered her into the crook of one arm and made her sip whisky from a glass in his other hand. She shuddered as the burning stuff went down her throat, her face wet with tears, her dark hair streaked with sweat. “You’re the hardest man I know,” she whispered.

  “And you married me,” he gibed. “There, d’you feel better?”

  “Considerably.” She gave a little hiccup.

  “So the girl who calmly accepts all other evils is afraid of a flash or two of lightning,” he mocked.

  “A flash or two!” She pushed at her hair and gave him a disgusted look. “Well, now you know that I’m not such a hardy scout, Mr. Brennan.”

  “The endurance really snapped, didn�
�t it, my pet?” His smile, now, was not quite so unkind. “You’re not afraid of bush noises in the dark, nor flying beetles and great red ants. Even snakes don’t terrify you unduly—and, God knows, even a man may be excused fear where snakes are concerned. But a thunderstorm!” he gave a brief incredulous laugh.

  “I’m a floundering chick, remember.” She sat up and pushed out of his encircling arm; his touch right now did not thrill or comfort. His hardness only appalled. “Perhaps I had a fright as a kid a—and the noise—”

  He gazed reflectively at her ravaged young face, then he said: “Honey, will you trust me to do what I think is best for you?”

  She gave him a swift glance. “W—what are you going to do?” she asked, nervously.

  “Nothing, unless you agree. Will you go to the veranda door with me? You can hide your eyes in my sleeve if you want to.”

  Her nostrils twitched uncontrollably! Then: “All right,” she said, and on shaky legs she followed him out of her room, across the living-room and so to the door of the veranda. He put an arm around her, then pulled open the long door, so that the noise of the storm rushed in at them.

  Clare shrank against his side. Livid flashes lit up the trees and the foliage all around. The driving wind bent the slender palms to its will, rain hurtled down, so that great leaves seemed to cower together for protection. Suddenly there came a sizzle of lightning, a long glittering revengeful blade, shearing down out of the sky and rending a nearby tree from its crest to its heart. It seemed to shriek and roar with pain, but was in reality Clare’s cry of fright as she buried her face hard against Ross and clung to him.

  Again he lifted her, carried her to the cane lounger and set her down among the cushions. “You’ve seen the lightning do its worst, honey,” he murmured just above her head. “When we’ve seen the worst of anything, or anyone, we have from then on the courage to face them with confidence.”

  “Th—thank you for the lesson, boss-man,” she murmured, deep in the cushions like a kitten. “I’ll really be fit to face anything after a year and three more months with you.”