And No Regrets

by Rosalind Brett

  “I like privacy,” she broke in. “It isn’t much to ask, that you carry my bed out of your room to the living-room.”

  “Curse it all, no!” The words thumped at her like small blows.

  “I shouldn’t have thought you cared two hoots on a tin whistle what people thought or said, about you,” she scoffed. “Just shows how wrong a girl can be about a man.”

  “And vice versa,” he snapped. “I thought you a girl with some control over female hysterics, but you’re rapidly proving me wrong, aren’t you? First the storm, now this virginal display of modesty. I noticed you spilled the salt pot at dinner—what’s up, did Auntie once warn you that to spill salt means your chastity is threatened?”

  “You sarcastic bully!” Clare could feel herself panting. She wanted to reach out and claw that brown, taunting face. “Why did you choose to bring me out here to this nerve-racking wilderness? Why me?”

  “Maybe I’m an impulse buyer,” he drawled. “I could be regretting the bargain as much as you, you know.”

  “Regret is the word,” she agreed recklessly. “Your bossy temperament is pretty harrowing to live in close proximity with, but as for sleeping near you—”

  “You’re going to have to, baby!” Suddenly he had lunged away from the door, seized her slim shoulders and dragged her close to his white jacket. As her head went back, he pushed his fingers through her hair and next moment had a thick strand wrapped about his hand. Like that, she was at his mercy, unless she fancied the agony of pulled hair.

  “Let me go!” she gasped.

  “The classic female plea, my dear.” His grey eyes mocked her helplessness. “If you were smaller, I’d spank you. As it is, big girls get kissed.”

  He bent his head, brought her face close to his and possessed her lips, crushing her to him from her shoulders to her hips. When after endless, savage moments body and mouth were free of him, when at last he moved away from her, all she could do was look furious and fluffed. Her lips stormed with colour, her eyes with the rage of abused love.

  “Go ahead,” he leant against the chest-of-drawers, looking aloof and unmoved, “call me a brute. It’s another classic from you females.”

  The rage running in Clare’s veins had to find expression, and she heard herself choke out: “Never, never touch me again. I know why you brought me here, because it pleases your cast-iron conceit to have a bunch of natives and a woman at your mercy. All right I was crazy enough to come here because I wanted to get away from Ridgley, but you can’t stop, me hating you. Hating the sight and touch of you!”

  For a few minutes he stood staring at her, breathing heavily, his nostrils curiously pinched. Then he turned away and pulled off his tie with a sharp jerk. “I don’t go back on anything I say or do,” he said heavily. “We’ll share this room as we’ve shared the house, impersonally, unless you want it clacked all round Onitslo that our marriage is already on the rocks. The Pryces are making for there.”

  There was a thickness in his usually crisp tones which Clare, couldn’t help noticing, and she knew that in some way she had got what she wanted. She had hurt him. A pity there was no flash of triumph, but all her senses were still bitterly tortured by those unloving moments in his arms. Her love-hungry lips had wanted to respond to his, her throat still felt the touch of his fingers.

  They had said it in Onitslo, and it was true. He had married her for a convenience. She was just here to see he got decently cooked meals and clean linen on his bed. She was no more than a housekeeper.

  There had been times when she had been happy and joyous here, awake in a dream that might come true, but tonight the dream had come pretty close to shattering, and when at last she lay under the netting of her camp-bed, she let the hot tears escape into her pillow. She could not live without love; her intelligence and vitality demanded it, without it her spirit would perish.

  She stifled a sigh and knuckled the tears from her eyes. She had boasted that she and Ross rarely wrangled ... well, they had had one devil of a wrangle tonight, and she had said things he might never forgive her for. He lay sleeping now, she could hear his even breathing, and he had not said goodnight before sliding the length of himself under his netting. His chin had looked like stone.

  The Pryces spent all next day in the village, returning for lunch and again for dinner. After dinner the four of them sat out on the veranda with drinks and the gramophone going. The men talked forestry, while Clare and Mrs. Pryce yarned about England. Clare had seen several good shows in the West End with Ross, and it took her mind off her troubled thoughts to describe them to the other woman.

  Back from the village, during the following week, the Pryces brought pieces of carved wood and ivory, native beadwork, and several wide, clay dishes. Some of the pieces had been given as gifts, and Clare bought several of them, though Mrs. Pryce said she would get nicer pieces in Lagos.

  “But they won’t be from our own village,” said Clare. “I want to take them back to England.”

  In the depths of her compassion for an older woman who had sacrificed so much of her youth out here, Clare went out of her way to make the Pryces’ stay a memorable one for them. They ate the best food she could provide, had cool baths awaiting them when they returned to dinner, and slept in a bedroom as devoid of insects as her onslaughts could make it. She also had all their camp equipment, bedding and personal clothing cleaned and laundered, and substituted one of her own good trunks for a shapeless suitcase that peeped at the corners.

  Mrs. Pryce said: “Wherever we go, we are looked after. But no one has ever taken so much care of us as you have done. If you only knew how grateful we are.” The Pryces stayed three weeks, longer than they had ever stayed at Bula. “The house is so lovely now,” said Mrs. Pryce regretfully on her last evening. “So different from when Mr. Brennan was here alone. He is very fortunate in you, my dear.”

  Clare hoped that Ross had not heard this remark, but Mrs. Pryce raised her voice and looked along the veranda to where the men sat, Ross with a cigarette and the missionary smoking the single cheroot he allowed himself daily.

  “I was just saying that you’re a lucky man, Mr. Brennan,” she said, “to have picked a wife who could settle so charmingly in this wild country.”

  “I could always pick winners,” he said, smiling lazily.

  “And like all men,” she said, with the merest trace of acid, “I daresay you take the credit for everything. Even your wife’s good points are your own because by making her your wife you uncovered them. You wouldn’t admit that she could possibly be as good a housewife to another man.”

  “On the contrary,” he answered pleasantly, “another man will have her experience with me to build upon.”

  Mrs. Pryce narrowed her eyes at him, the arrogant planter who had taken for wife the delicate, rose-lipped girl with violet eyes and virginal curves. Ross shot back at the woman his dagger-like charming smile. “Summing me up as a steely egoist who carried off a girl too sensitive for me?” he enquired.

  “I admire Clare tremendously,” Mrs. Pryce shot back at him. “Nor, I think, is she so tractable that you are able to walk all over her, Mr. Brennan.”

  “But had you been her mother,” he drawled, “you would have chased me out of the house with a broom rather than let me beguile her with tales of the tropics, eh? She was dying to come here. What could I do but succumb to her wiles?”

  “I think it far more likely that she succumbed to your wiles, Mr. Brennan. Women are far more romantic than men.”

  “And they let their dreams of romance land them in all sorts of complications, eh?” He quizzed Clare’s profile in the starlight. “Do you agree with Mrs. Pryce’s philosophy, sweetheart?”

  Clare tingled at that mocking endearment. “We are fools, more often than not,” she said coolly. “But everyone has to be foolish before he can be wise.”

  “You’ll be wiser next time?” He gave a short laugh, and then realising that he was perhaps going a bit far in front of the two miss
ionaries, suggested that Clare give them a tune on the piano before they went to bed.

  She went inside and sat down at the keyboard, and her mood was expressed by the Moonlight Sonata, so suggestive of a love that would never shift out of the shadows to blaze freely in the sunshine.

  Next morning, after Ross had bidden their guests goodbye, Clare escorted the Pryces down to the river, where their dilapidated canoe was tied up. They had a picnic lunch, and Clare sat talking with Mrs. Pryce while her husband supervised the loading of their kit.

  “Your village is growing,” said Mrs. Pryce. “There are twenty-eight piccans now. There were nineteen last time we came. About a dozen are already four years old, ripe for teaching. My husband is going to write to Lagos for a teacher, but can we rely upon Mr. Brennan to build us a schoolhouse? Do you think he would do that, or shall I ask for funds?”

  Her eyes twinkling, Clare replied: “I’ll drop one or two sly hints, and in a day or two he’ll begin to think it his own idea to erect a school.”

  “Aren’t men children!” Mrs. Pryce allowed herself a rare smile. “Pleased with themselves so long as they’re on top—my dear, are you completely happy with that young man? He’s very cynical—I do declare that he comes out with the oddest remarks.”

  “He just thinks he’s clever, like all men,” Clare smiled, a fist clenching over her heart where hope of happiness with him seemed to be dying. “Let me know if there is anything at all I can do to help you with Bula.”

  “I will, with pleasure. It may be a year or two before we can get started with a school. Things move slowly out here, owing to the long delay between letters. But everything comes—in time. We’ll make Bula village one you can be proud of.”

  “I wish I might be here to see it.” Clare spoke wistfully. “I go home in a year.”

  “We shall be along to see you again before then.”

  Their goods had been evenly distributed along the canoe, and a native with paddles sat at each end. Mr. Pryce shook Clare’s hand with bone-cracking friendliness and thanked her warmly for her hospitality. Mrs. Pryce printed an embarrassed little kiss on her cheek and was warmly embraced in return, and the two lowered themselves carefully in the boat.

  The canoe arrowed slowly away from the landing stage into midstream. They exchanged shouted goodbyes and handwaves, and Clare stood watching until the small craft vanished into a tunnel between the mangroves. She became aware that the sun was at its peak, and that perspiration was coursing down her spine.

  It had been pleasant having visitors, and she felt slack now that they were gone. Once more she would have time on her hands, time to wonder about the future, about her father and Aunt Letty and why they didn’t write, leaving her abandoned here—though it had been of her own choosing—with a man who plainly didn’t love her. Yet, strangely, she didn’t regret the plunge she had taken.

  Eighteen months and no regrets, she reflected. She knew a part of her would die when Ross went off to Cape Town alone, yet still she would not have given up any of this. She had been only half alive in Ridgley, now she sucked a bitter-sweet honey in a wild garden of Eden. She looked about her, and her smile was gallant.

  Turning back to the track, she found Johnny awaiting her. Faithful Johnny, clasping firmly the thick stick with which he would dispose of any snake which lay in her path.

  “Home, Johnny,” she smiled, brandishing a sere blade of elephant grass. “Straight home!”

  Clare awoke a few mornings later with a thick tongue and a headache. It was not yet dawn, but there were noises in the living-room of heavy baggage being lugged across the floor and out through the door to the veranda. Ross’s voice could be heard giving orders.

  She sat up, uneasily conscious of a raw, dry throat and a consuming heat in her body. She pushed aside the mosquito net and swayed to her feet, and scarcely aware of the mechanical movements of her limbs she bathed her face and arms in the pinkish water on the washstand and put on a frock. She then secured her hair with a ribbon.

  In the living-room Ross stood in the lamplight, tossing down a last cup of coffee.

  “I was just going to give you a shout,” he said. “Have some coffee, and then I shall have to be off—it’s getting late.”

  “You’re sure you have everything you need?” she asked.

  “I think so. You’re not properly awake yet. You’ll freshen up outside, it’s quite cool.”

  “Cool? Her face and head were burning, and her hand trembled with the weight of the coffee cup. She set it down with a bang.

  “Are you annoyed with me for not taking you along?” he asked. “It’s a filthy trip, and God knows what condition the rest house is in. It was only a temporary structure—a wooden shed. Probably the rains swept it away. It’s a lousy bit of country, not really fit for rubber trees, but I bought and planted it with the company’s money, and it’s my duty to make it yield.”

  “I know all that,” she assured him, trying to suppress irritation with herself for feeling so odd this morning. “I don’t want to go, Ross.”

  “Then why are you suddenly so—oh, I don’t know.” He shrugged his khaki-clad shoulders. ‘You said you weren’t afraid of being left alone for ten days, and you’ll be safer with coloured servants than you’d be with white ones. Then you have the dogs for company—a pity we had to destroy all the puppies but one, but they wouldn’t have survived.”

  “I’ll be fine,” she said shakily.

  He came a step closer and cupped her chin in his large hand, tilting her face to him. “Are you a little down at seeing me go?” he queried. “Don’t you hate me quite as much as you said?”

  She pulled free of him, querulously.

  “I don’t like leaving you,” his eyes hardened as they dwelt on her face, “but this is my job and the rains will soon be upon us again. I just can’t put it off any longer.”

  She pressed a weary hand against her head. “I’m sorry, Ross. It’s hard to be merry and bright at this time in the morning.”

  “Have another cup of coffee and eat a biscuit.” He took up his gun and a box of cartridges. “I’ll take these, out and see if the boys have loaded the lorry properly.” She heard him take the steps in one leap, a minute later the lorry began to chug, then he came striding in again ... looking so lean and darkly fit that he made Clare feel positively fragile. She hated the feeling, hoped desperately that she wasn’t starting, a fever. Would he stay, if she mentioned her fears? Her eyes scanned his face, her lips moved, but women only begged of those who loved them. They held on to their pride with those who felt indifferent to them.

  “Ready, honey?” He tossed a cube of sugar into his mouth and crunched it ... he had a sweet tooth, this tough-fibred husband of hers.

  She nodded and followed him outside, hesitating at the top step. From the lowest he glanced back.

  “Where’s your hat?” he demanded.

  She fought down panic. “Ross, I’ll say goodbye to you here ... not go with you as far as the river. Do you mind?”

  “Scared of the dark?” The remark would have sounded teasing, if there had not been a razor-keen edge to his voice. “It will be light before we get there and still cool for the walk back.”

  “I—I’d rather not go.” Her moist hand was gripping the veranda rail, and again there arose in her the desire to tell him that she thought she had picked up an infection. But, if she kept him from his work, he wouldn’t be pleased ... he might even send her home to England if he thought she was becoming enervated by the climate out here.

  Frowning, he mounted the steps until their eyes were level. “We’ve stopped being pals, Clare,” he said quietly. “I don’t like that.”

  She leaned against the veranda post to still the trembling of her knees. “Don’t be silly,” she tried to speak lightly. “It’s just that I’m tired and want to go back to bed.”

  “You can sleep day and night for the next ten days. There is something, isn’t there?” He drew a deep, exasperated breath. “How typical
of a woman to choose a moment like this for a display of temperament.”

  “Please stop accusing me of temperament,” she pleaded, feeling a disturbing throbbing in her head, wishing desperately that he would go. “Hop off to your rubber plantation and forget me for a while.”

  “Don’t talk like that,” he said, with a hint of pleading. “It’s bad enough leaving you here alone, without parting as if we didn’t care a damn.” He took a cigarette from his case and slipped it between his lips. “Why don’t you say if you’re frightened?”

  “You don’t like me to be frightened of things,” she managed, quite brightly. “And as it happens I’m not, this time.”

  He flicked his lighter, then blew a firm jet of smoke.

  “You’re dying to see the back of me, aren’t you?” he said.

  She swayed at the words. Oh, God, she had never felt like this in her life! “Please go, Ross.” Sharpness threaded her voice.

  He turned, went down the steps, leaving his cigarette smoke to smart her heavy eyes. “Well, if you’re determined not to go a little way with me, then I’ll be off.” He swung himself into the lorry. “You’ll take every care?”

  She nodded.

  “So long, then.” She saw the flash of his eyes, their queer mixture of anger and perplexity.

  “Goodbye,” she called out, and watched the lorry lurch out on to the track and rock along the first precipitous half-mile. Soon it was out of sight and sound, and now that her anxiety lest he should touch even her hand and guess her temperature was gone, she felt unreasonably chagrined that he should have accepted her distant farewell.

  She walked slowly back to the living-room, turned out the lamp and groped her way into her bedroom. Her head was reeling.

  For three days she sweated and dozed in a faint delirium from which she emerged at intervals to absorb far too much quinine in an effort to throw off all traces of the bout before Ross’s return. On the fourth day her temperature went down, but she was too weak to move. On the fifth day she got up for a few hours in the evening, and on the sixth resumed her normal rising hour, feeling shaky and suffering the unpleasant after-effects of too much quinine.