And No Regrets

by Rosalind Brett

  “You’ll have graduated to the big league,” he agreed, ruffling her hair. “But there was colour out there, didn’t you see it? Tropical lightning like an endless shower of raw gold. Celestial fireworks—could be the title of a Gershwin piece, eh?”

  “You always liked me to play Gershwin,” she murmured, her thoughts winging back to Ridgley, to the piano in her aunt’s lounge and Ross lounging beside it in a smart, civilised suit of grey, listening while she played.

  A smile ran teasingly about his lips as he regarded her, then he tilted her chin. “You’ve gone through a baptism of fire and water,” he said. “You’ve witnessed God’s hand over the land.”

  “You love all this wildness, don’t you, Ross?” she said.

  “It’s got into my blood,” he admitted. “It’s made me what I am—a primitive.”

  She laughed breathlessly. “You can be kind when you like,” she said, touching his arm with the tips of her fingers. “I thought for a small terrible time that you were hard all through.”

  “Three-parts of the way through, honey.” He rose lazily to his feet, and she saw him run the backs of his fingernails down the jaw she had slapped. “You yourself can be a vixen in pink ribbons,” he drawled.

  “Are you expecting an apology?” She spoke flippantly. “I couldn’t hurt you. Hitting you bruised my fingers.”

  “That’ll teach you not to be so free with them,” he rejoined. “I don’t happen to like kittens who claw.”

  “Don’t you ever think of me as a woman?” she found herself asking, curiously.

  “If you could see yourself with my eyes.” He put back his head and laughed at her, and indeed she could well see how she must look at the moment, with tear streaks down her cheeks, her hair all mussed, and her lipstick smeared sideways where she had buried her head in the cushions of the lounger. Oh, let him laugh! Better laughing than biting out sarcasms and taunting her for being vulnerable enough to shrink from tropical lightning that could shear a tree to its heart.

  He liked violence. It was in the arrogance of his features, and in the hardness of his mouth. When he had plucked her off this lounger half an hour ago and made her go to the shutters, his fingers had gripped her so hard that her bones had felt as though they must snap within his grasp. She would have bruises tomorrow, if she didn’t have them already. Suddenly she felt washed out and rather sad. What had happened to the glib resolutions arrived at in England? Where now those hopeful resolutions of an unfledged imagination? Her brain was too weary to work it out. She let her head fall backward to rest on the cane back of the seat.

  He was pouring a drink with something less than his usual steadiness, swallowing it with unusual haste. The thunder was limping away into the distance.

  The remaining cases of household gear arrived a little later than expected owing to the heavy rains ... and with them came a piano. Clare was dazzled by the sight of it when the boys and Ross had finally got it in and set it down, a bungalow model, an octave missing at each end. “Oh, Ross,” she had to blink to stop the foolish, pleased tears. “What a lovely surprise.”

  “I’m glad you’re pleased—thought you might be.” He ran his own clumsy fingers along the keyboard. “Maybe not quite so tuneful, as auntie’s grand.”

  “It’s a little beauty!” She sat down on the matching bench and caressed the keys. “The nicest Christmas present I ever had.”

  “Strange to think it’s the season of goodwill and holly, eh, out here where we’ve got a tropical sun blazing?” His hand squeezed her lightly clad shoulder. “You’ll be able to play carols, and I’ll polish up my voice and sing them.”

  And so it was. They had roast fowl and mock plum pudding for dinner, and brought in some greenery to give the living-room an air of festivity. Clare felt suspended on a wave of happiness. There was her baby piano, the gramophone, chintzes and silks, golf clubs and tennis rackets, books and seven-pound tins of sweet biscuits.

  There was also the present she had bought him in London, before they had sailed, and which she had been saving him for Christmas—a silver lighter, bought out of the cheque her father had given her. An attractive, glinting thing shaped like an eagle. When Ross thanked her there was a twinkle in his eye.

  “Do I put you in mind of an eagle?” he queried. She nodded. He always had, from the very beginning, and she thought of that old adage about eagles always flying alone. She hoped to the soul of her that he wasn’t, in the end, going to prove the adage a true one.

  Now the mists cleared by breakfast time and a savage sun shone from a white-hot sky. Clare arranged and rearranged the newly arrived furniture till the boys were on the point of striking. Her fingers raced madly over the keys of the piano and she sang the dizziest of modern songs. When she grew tired of singing and playing, out would come the gramophone records, and she would dream blissfully through Delibes, Debussy and Lehar, a long citrus drink nearby and sometimes a cigarette between her lips. Ross said it was like living in a one-man night club.

  In time her excitement grew less girlish, and she was content to sit in the comparative cool of late evening and stitch at curtains and cushions and new clothes for herself. Chintzes at the windows and bright mounds upon the loungers and chairs, embroidered linen mats beneath bowls of breathtaking flowers, and a bookcase filled with bright new novels drew from Ross the remark that he had never had it so good out here in the bush.

  In the slightly cooler weather between the ‘little heat’ and the ‘great heat,’ Ross was away all day in the farther reaches of the plantation. It was then that Clare experienced the first drag of monotony. Left to her own resources for all the daylight hours, she would try to plan the time carefully. So many hours exercise, so long at the piano, so many chapters to be read—rationing this delight for fear the books would give out—a quiet rest in the midday heat. But the lack of companionship was a severe test.

  One day she tackled Ross. “Would I be horribly in the way if I came out with you for a few hours each day?” she asked.

  “Not horribly,” he answered. “If it would give you a change, be ready at sunrise tomorrow in your riding kit. You can go with me in the lorry.”

  It was grand to get away from the house for a while and to jolt with him along the baked red rut to the river. Clare was surprised at the shortness of the track that had taken so long to traverse on the journey out.

  It took two hours by lorry, and then they were at the river, a mere runnel compared with the Niger. It was dark and murky, and mangroves grew thickly on each bank, meeting over the water in places to form sinister black tunnels.

  They left the lorry and found the clearing where the natives were temporarily camped. The men were already at work among the timber, felling, lopping, heaving the logs on to the timber rollers and dragging them by chains down to the dump near the landing stage. Ross left her with instructions not to stray, and to fire the rifle he had thrust into her hands if she was scared.

  The sun got up, and she sat on a tree stump, eyes alert, watching the dart of gay-plumaged birds and the myriad movements of grass life, almost unconscious of the eternal hum of the jungle. The massive trees shut out the sun, but as the heat of the day increased the atmosphere became moist and steamy.

  At the hottest part of the day they broke for food. The men gathered round their cooking pots and ate a mess of plantains and herbs. They squabbled among themselves with lazy goodwill.

  Back in the lorry Clare and Ross ate their own lunch, and washed it down with tinned orange juice. Then Ross said: “You’d better go back to the house now, honey. Can you walk it?”

  “Yes, I’ll be glad to.”

  “A couple of boys can go with you. Send them back when you reach the compound.”

  “Can you spare the men from work? I can go alone.”

  “You’d get a shock if I took you at your word,” he laughed.

  “I’d make it, though.” She tilted her chin.

  “Sure you would, Girl Guide.” He gave her pointed chi
n a mocking brush with his fist. “Enjoyed seeing your spouse at work?”

  “I feel for you, having to work so hard in this heat.” Her face still seemed to feel his touch, and the bones of her shoulders ached for his hands upon them in loving discovery. She replaced her topi, pushed her linen blouse into the waistband of her riding trousers, and gave a little shudder of secret pleasure as he brushed a fly from her arm. He climbed out of the lorry and went over to his men to select a couple of boys to accompany her on the walk back to the house.

  In the compound a few weeks later, Clare was brooding like any English housewife over the growth of her garden, when Ross came striding down the path towards her. It was barely two hours since he had left. Suppressing fears of snake-bite or some other evil—he jeered if she jittered—she waited till he reached her. “Hello,” she said. “What are you doing here?”

  He ran a couple of fingers down the collar of her dress. “I couldn’t stay away from you,” he grinned.

  She wished it were true! She pointed to a tall plant with wide, bushy leaves stuck, yucca-wise, on the end of a thick stump. “You wouldn’t think it possible an honest English cabbage seed could produce a monstrosity like that, would you?”

  “You must have mixed the seeds,” he drawled.

  “I’m certain I didn’t,” she retorted indignantly.

  “Then his roots have got mixed up with someone else’s— funny how that can happen.” For a few minutes he seemed inclined to linger. It was pleasant here now that the mist was gone and the sun not yet malicious. Clare insisted on his admiring her flowers and reaching down some sprays of jacaranda.

  “Believe it or not, there was a reason for my returning this morning,” he said. “The Pryces are coming.”

  “Oh? Who are the Pryces, and how do you know?” She gazed up at him under the wide brim of her grass hat.

  “My foreman heard they were on the way and told me. Mr. and Mrs. Pryce are missionaries.”

  “Are they nice?” She was naturally interested because it was such ages since either of them had seen another white woman.

  He shrugged. “I guess you’ll like them ... though I’d rather they’d stayed away.”

  “Why, do they make trouble in the village?” she asked.

  “No, it isn’t that. The inhabitants forget them as soon as they’re gone.” He turned to walk down the track at her side. “We’re getting along on our own. We don’t want others butting in.”

  At the house steps, he said: “They’ll be here before dark, so it will be dinner for four. And I’m rather afraid they’ll expect to stay in the house this time, with you here.”

  “That should work out ... all right,” she was too preoccupied with thoughts of food and entertainment to really take in what was at the back of his reluctance to have these people stay overnight.

  “They pitched camp at the edge of the village before,” he grunted. “I only saw them in the evenings. Clare, this means you’ll have to turn out of your bedroom as it’s the only one with two beds. We’ll—have to put a camp bed in mine.”

  Words that scattered her housewifely thoughts at once. She gazed up at him, speechlessly. He nodded. “The world outside is moving in on us, Clare. Mrs. Pryce likes to gossip—”

  “You mean she’d think it funny if I made up a camp-bed in the living-room,” Clare murmured, her heart pounding. “Your room is small, Ross. We can make the excuse that we’d stifle in there together.”

  “It could be stifling, all right,” he muttered, kicking at a tussock of weed near the steps. “I hope they don’t stay more than one night—and now I’ve wasted long enough!”

  When he had gone, she had the boys freshen up the bedroom in which the Pryces would be sleeping. Even the new mosquito nets and flowered bedcover, she reflected, couldn’t entirely eliminate the severely monastic appearance of the room. There was nothing, she thought, looking round, that revealed here the presence of a man. Would Mrs. Pryce notice? Would she guess that this was virtually the bedroom of a single girl? Clare frowned at herself in the mirror of the dressing-table, and her fingers played with her jade and gold wedding ring.

  Ross’s bride of convenience. Still that, and half a year of their tune together had already flown by on wings.

  Sharply she turned and went out to the living-room. She called Luke from the kitchen and spent with him an edgy half-hour planning a dinner worthy of the house of Brennan.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  MRS. PRYCE was small and tough. Her thin face and neck were leathery and lined, and a fan-shaped set of wrinkles sprang out beyond rimless glasses from the corner of each eye. She wore shirt and breeches, and her voice was rather nasal. It was her habit to rub her left forefinger over the bridge of her nose when she was talking, as though speech let loose an irritant in the bone. It was this mannerism, displaying at frequent intervals her heavy gold wedding ring, that helped tighten Clare’s nerves to such a pitch that she was developing a headache.

  The Pryces were deeply grateful for a real bedroom and meals to which one might dare bring an appetite. As practically all their travelling was by the river they had to travel light, and their usual food consisted chiefly of baked beans and meat concentrates, a diet which their complexions alone proved utterly unwholesome in the tropics.

  But it was fun having visitors, and being able to converse with a woman, even one as far removed from social contacts as Mrs. Pryce. Although her own dress never varied, she worked up an enthusiastic interest in materials and styles, and was ravished by the elegant, simplicity of the flowered frock which Clare wore.

  “It’s lovely to see a woman dressed so prettily,” she smiled. “The few wives I meet in the bush dress as I do, mannishly.”

  “Much more practical,” Clare agreed. “But I find breeches too hot.”

  “Your houseboys are admirable,” Mrs. Pryce said at the end of the meal, being now alone with Clare while the men smoked cigarettes on the veranda. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen bush boys respond so well to training.”

  Clare gave a little pleased laugh. “Ross barks at them, and I laugh at them, and I suppose you could call them tolerably obedient. I’m very fond of Johnny, the little one. I’d like to keep him for life.”

  Mrs. Pryce said gravely: “I hope you won’t allow that liking for him to persuade you that he might be happy in an English household. The bush is his home. Why, it even grows on white people to such an extent that they can’t stay away from it. Look at your own husband, my dear. I can’t say I’m surprised that he returned but I must add that it was wise of him to bring back a wife. Life in the bush can be unutterably lonely for a man, and though the life can be extremely trying to a woman, she has the compensation of knowing that she is making her man’s life a little !more comfortable and happier.”

  The missionary quizzed Clare through her rimless glasses. “Do you find the lonely life here very trying, Mrs. Brennan? You are a smart, pretty girl, and few other white people pass this way.”

  “More coffee, Mrs. Pryce?” Clare bent her head over the pot as she poured out. “In a strange way,” she said quietly, “I’m happier than I’ve ever been in my life before.”

  “I am glad to hear you say that—thank you, my dear!” Mrs. Pryce added sugar lavishly to her cup. “Some of the bush wives I meet—well, the lonely life leads to wrangles with their husbands. The monotony gets on their nerves, and they have to take it out on someone, and human beings have an unhappy way of taking out their grievances on those they love the most.”

  “Ross and I try not to argue,” Clare murmured. “He works so hard on the plantation, and the heat gets at his nerves and his vitality—luckily I have the piano,” she gestured to it with a smile. “I employ music to soothe his savage breast.”

  Mrs. Pryce laughed appreciatively. “The bush can make or break a man—he is, I must add, looking better than the last time I saw him. There had been an accident with a tree, his boys had to pull him out from under it. He’s strong and luckily he sustained on
ly severe bruising, but when a man is laid low in this climate it takes its toll of him.”

  Clare caught her breath. Ross had never mentioned anything about an accident ... darn him, he talked to her so little about himself!

  The Pryces retired to their room, and Clare moved round the living-room straightening cushions and picking up dead flower petals. The boy, Mark, had blithely made up a camp-bed in Ross’s bedroom, and now she didn’t know how to ask her husband to bring it out here to the living-room. What was she afraid of? he would ask, sardonically. Hadn’t he proved in the six months they had been together that he was immune to-her charms?

  “You’re mooning about like a cat who wants someone to open the door so she can streak out of it.” Ross closed down the piano lid with a sudden snap. “If you’re like this because we’re about to spend a monastic night together, I dread to think what you’d be like if my intentions weren’t strictly honourable.”

  “Don’t be so sarcastic.” She gave him a glare. “I—I want the bed brought out here.”

  “And I refuse to bring it out here.” He sat on the piano bench and gave her a steady, almost impudent look. “I don’t want it all along the bush grapevine that my marriage is strictly a platonic one.”

  “Frightened of spoiling your virile image?” she jeered.

  He stood up then and she saw the violent bunching of his hands in his pockets. His eyes narrowed to metallic slits, and Clare’s heart gave a jolt of apprehension beneath the thin flowered chiffon of her dress. Ross was not a man you could try too far, yet something was driving her to try him. She realised with a pang that she was provoking him to a quarrel because she wanted to shake him out of his indifference to her as a woman.

  She saw him cast a glance at the door behind which the Pryces were sleeping—or listening—and suddenly he was standing over her, catching at her arm and marching her forcibly into the other bedroom. With his foot he kicked the door shut behind them.

  “If we’re going to argue, then let’s do it in privacy,” he crisped. “Look, don’t you think you’re being a shade on the melodramatic side over all this? These people will be gone in a few days—”