Now her brain felt light and clear. The fever had been frightening because she had had to suffer it alone, but now she could think clearly again, she was dismayed at the way she and Ross had parted for these ten days. He had been angry ... coldly, aloofly angry, the worst sort with him.
She sighed and curled down among the cushions of the lounger with the only puppy left out of Edwina s litter. Ross had had to destroy the others the day before his departure; he had no doubt gone off thinking she was sulking with him over the puppies. She had been distressed at the time, but she had known that it had been necessary to put the weak little things out of their misery.
She caressed the soft coat of the puppy who had proved the hardiest, and as he made contented little noises, she smiled to herself. “We’ll have to call this little guy Lucky,” Ross had said with that mock-tender grin of his. In a gay mood, she occasionally glimpsed gentleness in him; felt that nuggets of tenderness might be buried in that aggressive heart of his, but if she so much as lifted a tentative probing finger, he would say things most calculated to make her bristle. Though there were times when she was almost madly happy—as on walks in the bush by night when he held her close beside him in comradeship without passion, or when their eyes met over some shared joke—she despaired of ever reaching his innermost corners. That could only happen in the improbable event of his feelings towards her becoming those of love...
The following day, feeling much more energetic, she decided to have a look at Ross’s clothes to make sure there were no moths or other pests worming their way into the material.
She went into his bedroom, her nostrils tensing at his lingering cigarette smoke, and opened the closet in which he kept his suits and jackets, etc. One by one she gave them a thorough shaking ... and it was out of a pocket of his white dinner-jacket that the small square of chiffon drifted like a cloud. Clare bent to pick it up, recalling that Ross had last worn this jacket the evening they had quarrelled here in his room. The other times he had worn it had been at Onitslo ... and her fingers tensed on the chiffon handkerchief as she noticed across the material a smear of poppy-red lipstick, and in one corner the silver-thread initials P.H.
Patsy Harriman! Ross had run the girl home after that final party at the Macleans, and it looked as though the girl’s poppy-red mouth had left their traces on his face, or his mouth, which he had wiped away with her handkerchief. Then, in the emotion of the moment, he had pushed the chiffon square into his pocket and forgotten all about it.
Clare shouldn’t have felt such a sharp thrust of resentment, hadn’t she seen for herself back in England that Ross drew the eyes and the attention of women like a magnet? And she knew from Mrs. Maclean that Ross had known Patsy before going on leave to England.
She replaced the chiffon handkerchief in his pocket, and hung up the jacket. She slammed the closet door on its starched whiteness, then turned and marched out of his room.
Mark, the houseboy, was awaiting her. A boat had just pulled in at the river, he told her. It was the boat of a Mr. Carter, who was now on his way to the house ... Clare tensed sharply at the news. The first casual visitor in the six months they had been here, and he had to make his appearance while Ross was away from home!
CHAPTER FIVE
WHEN Don Carter eventually reached the house, Clare had coffee and a meal awaiting him. He was a wiry young man of middle height, with untidy platinum-fair hair, the clear blue eyes of English blood and a bit of a cleft in his chin.
“So you’re Mrs. Brennan?” He stood just inside the doorway of the living-room, still holding his topi, the top button of his drill jacket unbuttoned, and a smile of delighted amazement on his good-looking face.
Clare treated the young man to her gayest smile. “What a shame my husband isn’t here right now, so you could enjoy some man-talk,” she said, feeling a little thrust of misgiving at the way those gay blue eyes embraced her cotton frock and what was inside it.
“I heard in Onitslo that Ross had brought out his wife,” Don Carter strolled into the room without a touch of shyness. “Has he spoken about me at all?”
“Your name is familiar ... let me take your hat, Mr. Carter, and do please sit down.”
He accepted the invitation with alacrity, and the cup of coffee she poured out for him. “Ross and I used to meet once or twice a year when he was out here before—I’m thirty miles up the river,” the blue eyes roved her face. “On my way back there now, from leave.”
“I’m so sorry Ross is not here—”
“Oh, don’t be,” he hastened to say. “I’m not a bit sorry, Mrs. Brennan.”
Her smile faded somewhat at that daring remark. “Ross found it necessary to go down river to look at some rubber trees... ah, here comes my houseboy with some food for you. You must be feeling very hungry, Mr. Carter.”
“I must admit that I am feeling peckish,” he agreed, skimming appreciative eyes over the pawpaw salad with sliced ham which Mark placed In front of him. “You’ve made a real heaven of this bungalow of Ross’s, if you don’t mind my saying so. Gosh, when I think of my own shack! He’s a lucky son of a gun!”
Clare had to smile, marvelling at the way the tropics either aged an Englishman, or kept him curiously boyish. But then Don Carter had only just returned from his leave and was obviously still feeling very fresh and flushed, no doubt, with his success with the ladies. He was certainly a charmer with the platinum hair and that devil-cleft chin.
He tucked into his meal with gusto, and told her that he had rounded off his leave with a gay fortnight at Onitslo. “One has to dose up with parties in preparation for the monotony of plantation life,” he said, spooning pear coated with pink jelly and whipped cream. “How do you find life in the bush, Mrs. Brennan? It must be pretty boring for you with Ross away right now?”
“I have the house to see to, and my garden to work in,” she said. “I keep happy.”
“Gosh, I still can’t take you in,” Don Carter sat back with a repleted smile. “They said at Onitslo that you were a looker, but the jungle can do awful things to a woman’s complexion and temperament. Coming across someone like you, Mrs. Brennan, is like coming across a dewy daisy in the jungle.”
She gave a laugh, yet, felt a warmth in her cheeks at the compliment. Each night she pampered her skin with a lanolin cream, but this climate could wreak havoc with a woman’s looks, and for Ross she wanted to stay youthful and fresh. Ross had called her an attractive creature more than once, lightly, as he might say it to a dozen others, but from him it always left a glow.
“Say, I’ve brought you some mail!” Don suddenly exclaimed, going to the battered case he had brought with him and clicking it open. “That was one of the reasons I stopped off here. Are you pleased at getting your letters three weeks earlier?”
“Thrilled,” she said, taking from his hand an exciting little bundle. There were seven letters for Ross, and three for herself. She recognised her father’s handwriting, then her aunt’s, and finally the writer’s scrawl of Simon Longworth. “I am grateful to you for bringing these, Mr. Carter.” Her eyes were glowing. “Letters here in the wilds are like gold dust.”
“You’re more than welcome.” Don cast his gay smile over his shoulder, then he turned from his case with an armful of magazines and dumped them on the bamboo table. “Mrs. Maclean sent those, good soul that she is, along with the wish that you’re keeping up your pecker and finding Africa up to your expectations. I’ve a crate of oranges on the boat for you, which Doc Maclean sent, and this box of rum truffles from a friend of yours named Patsy Harriman.”
Clare stared at the circular box of truffles, and felt resentment wing its way through her heart again. “Good of her,” she said, somewhat acidly. “But she isn’t a friend of mine. I daresay she means the sweets for Ross.”
“She is a bit of a man-eater, isn’t she?” he grinned, lounging on the arm of a chair and taking out his cigarette case. “Do you smoke, Mrs. Brennan?”
“I will have one.” Cla
re accepted a cigarette and held it between fingers that shook slightly. Don’s lighter came to the tip of it and she was conscious of his gaze on her face. She drew in a lungful of smoke and held on to it, then released it down nostrils taut with pain. She had hoped that Ross’s savage kiss that night in his bedroom, might have at the back of it something more than anger. But it seemed, after all, that he placed no deep importance upon his kisses.
“A cigarette helps, doesn’t it?” Don murmured.
She cast an enquiring look at him, and saw that he was regarding her with a rather sympathetic smile.
“I don’t quite know what you mean,” she said stiffly.
“I think you probably do,” he quizzed his own cigarette with narrowed blue eyes. “We all know here in the bush that Ross Brennan is a tough, marrow-sizzling guy. Living with someone like him must present a few problems for a girl such as yourself.”
“And what kind of girl am I, Mr. Carter? After one hour, I am sure you are quite an authority on my character.”
“You’re winsome, emotional and sensitive,” he said blandly. “I might look a mere boy to you, but I’m thirty and I’ve seen a bit of life. I can sum up people.”
“You could never be accused of shyness, Mr. Carter.”
“Please call me Don,” he coaxed. “All the nice girls do.”
“What do the other sort call you?” Despite her feeling that he was a trifle too fresh, she heard herself laughing.
“D’you mean girls like Patsy Harriman?” He was gazing innocently through the open shutters, at the flame blossoms that she had trained over the framework of the veranda.
“Her name keeps cropping up,” Clare said, almost too casually. “What did she ask you to give Ross beside the rum truffles—her love?”
“Her love wouldn’t be worth having, Mrs. Brennan, and I daresay Ross knows that only too well. But girls like that are always dangerous because girls like you take them more seriously than men do.”
“You are a philosopher, aren’t you, Mr. Carter?”
“Don,” he cajoled.
“If I call you by your first name, you’ll expect the same concession from me, won’t you?” She gave him a straight look, then abruptly decided that she was taking him too seriously and broke into the smile that woke a dimple beside her mouth. “My name is Clare ... Don.”
“Clare, the shining light.” His eyes looked pleased. “It suits you. You have something pristine about you, Clare, like the light that clean, untouched snow gives off when the sun touches it.”
“Snow goes to slush when the sun touches it,” she rejoined. “Sometimes I do almost melt here in the jungle—how Ross gets through so much work in it I’ll never know.”
“He’s a maxi of iron,” Don quipped. “I’m sure you know that.”
Their eyes clashed, and then with a small shrug she admitted it, and realised that only here, miles from civilisation, was it possible to hold such a personal conversation with a stranger. She had not discussed life and love in the abstract since the old days with Simon ... she wondered what Simon had to say in his letter. He had hoped they might marry....
“You’ve a lovely garden, Clare.” Don nodded through the open shutters at the bright compound. “It used to be maize and cotton almost up to the door. Ross is a great chap for making land yield dividends.”
“Let’s stroll round my garden,” she suggested. “I planted quite a few English flowers, but they’ve sprouted most oddly, some of them.”
“Oh, the jungle is renowned for impressing its personality upon all who sink their roots into its lush soil,” he grinned. They went out into the garden and sauntered together along the paths. She had made them as neat as possible, but big clumps of weed soon sprouted in this climate to spoil the effect
“You amazing girl.” Don couldn’t admire her garden enough. “Nicotiana as well, I see. Must smell like a breath of England itself when the two of you sit on your veranda in the cool of the evening.”
“It is pleasant,” she agreed. “If you’re staying long enough to have dinner, then you can enjoy a breath or two of my flowers.”
“I’m shifting off in the morning,” he said with a tinge of regret, “but thanks a million for inviting me to dinner.”
“I’m glad of the company while Ross Is away,” she smiled.
She gave him the use of her husband’s room for a wash and a shave, and then made her way to the kitchen to discuss the evening menu with Luke. It would be ages before Don Carter had a meal arranged by a woman and she decided to make a fuss of him. She sent Johnny to the village for a nice plump fowl, and told Luke to prepare baked yams, corn and peppers. She whipped up a batter pudding, cut avocado pears into halves and made a dressing for them. Then she prepared a custard and opened a tin of pineapple chunks.
Luke cast a few curious glances at her, as if wondering why she was making such a to-do over Mr. Carter. He probably regarded such enthusiasm as an affront to the big boss-man, but darn Ross! Clare was truly wild with him over that lipstick-marked handkerchief in his jacket pocket—Patsy Harriman might be a girl to do the chasing, but there had been no need for Ross to collect a prize!
“Now, be careful not to let the chicken get too dry,” she warned Luke, and went off to have a bath. She took the three letters from England with her to her room and stowed them away in a drawer of her bedside table for perusal at bedtime. She smiled to herself, for she was becoming adept at storing up pleasures and making them last.
She dressed in a lacy gown that made her skin glow warm against the cream colour. The tendrils of hair at her temples had a dark shimmer, and as she applied dawn-pink lipstick, she couldn’t help noticing that she looked at her best tonight. Well, she was only human and it had bucked her up no end to be treated to a dose of uninhibited male admiration out here in the wilds. But she would have to watch her step with Don Carter ... as he had said, he wasn’t the boy he looked.
When she came out of her room, he was awaiting her in the living-room, shaved and slicked up in a tropical dinner-suit. “My, you do look nice.” His admiring eyes slipped over her. “I’ll say it again, Ross Brennan is one heck of a lucky fellow, and I hope he appreciates his luck.”
“Oh, he does,” she said ironically. “He’s always assuring me that I’m a paragon of the virtues.”
She poured soda and limes with a splash of gin, and holding their tall glasses they stood in the veranda doorway watching the jag of fire above the trees that was the sun on its way home. The wings of dusk were folding over the sky, and birds were making those strange evening calls in the jungle. The palm tendrils rustled, and the bamboos gave little rattles as though shaken. A breeze was getting up, dispelling the heat of the day.
“There’s the moon,” Don gestured with his free hand. “Kind of looks like a boat tipping up in a dark blue sea.”
“You men love the jungle, don’t you?” Clare murmured.
“She’s like a woman, full of mixed moods that drive a man to quick hating, then fierce loving. Elemental, Clare. Warm, rich with life, mazed with paths leading to danger and pleasure. Yes,” he took a deep breath of the night air, “the jungle gets into a man’s blood.”
Dinner was a complete success, and afterwards, at Don’s coaxing, they put on gramophone records and danced to them. With the chairs and loungers pushed back against the walls, the living-room .was quite large, and Clare laughed gaily as Don swung her around to the music ... laughter that died abruptly as booted feet sounded on the steps of the veranda and a tall figure loomed in the doorway.
Clare had not been expecting Ross’s return, and the shock was showing on her face as she pulled out of Don Carter’s arms. Nor had Ross been expecting to see her laughing and dancing with another man, that was only too plain from the frosty, chiselled look of his face.
He entered the' room with his wolfish stride, and tossed a rucksack to a chair. It whacked against the cane, and Clare winced. “You—are back early,” she managed to say. “How did you find the situa
tion at the rubber plantation?”
“Not exactly to my liking,” he crisped, and the look he raked over Clare seemed to suggest that he had come back to a similar situation. “What are you doing here, Carter—apart from giving my wife a whirl?”
Don, looking a trifle less perturbed than Clare, explained that he was making his way up river from a spot of leave, and that he had called here to deliver some mail and some fruit. “Mrs. Brennan was kind enough to invite me for dinner,” he added, his fingers at his bow tie, as though he were feeling suddenly hot and wished to unloosen it. “My boys have pitched me a tent in your compound—I hope that’s okay?”
“Sure,” Ross drawled, and it was Don’s turn to receive the rake of those silver-grey eyes. “You’re welcome to a meal here, and to bed down in the compound.”
Clare flushed at Ross’s tone of voice, and she didn’t like the way he pressed down on that word ‘bed.’ Surely he didn’t imagine—
“Any of that dinner left for the master of the house?” he demanded.
Luke had gone home to the village by now, so Clare went to fix him a tray herself. From the kitchen she could hear the two men talking, and her earlobes tingled at the way he had spoken upon finding her cutting a rug with Don. He had said he would be away about ten days, now he appeared on the seventh and she didn’t dare hope that he had been worried about her, or missing her. Either emotion, if one or the other had brought him back, had been killed stone dead when he had walked in and seen her all dressed up and laughing like a kid on her first date.
Clare carried his tray into the living-room, where he was now sprawled out in a cane armchair, a whisky and soda in hand. Don was hovering, suitcase in hand, some of his gaiety quenched. “I’ll be off to camp now, Cl—Mrs. Brennan,” he said. “Dinner with you made a nice break.”
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