“Why not ... because he does?”
“Don, I’m not going to discuss my private life with you. You have no right to expect me to—”
“I have the right of a—friend.”
“Friends don’t intrude, not the sort I want.”
“Nonsense, if they didn’t have that privilege then they would be mere acquaintances. We’re more than that, Clare ... or we could be.”
“Stop it, Don.” Her eyes were beginning to sparkle with temper. “I’d hate to have to withdraw my offer of hospitality.”
“You wouldn’t turn out a dog on a night like this one. The wind is howling, the jungle is benighted.” He shot her a grin of devilry. “Where would I go?”
“To the village,” she said tartly. “The chief will put you up.”
“Clare,” he sat back and stared at her, the smile fading out of his eyes, “you really mean that, don’t you?”
“If you persist in saying things I can’t allow while my—my husband is away.”
“You do sound prim.” He gave a rueful laugh. “Okay, I’ll behave myself if you insist, but it never hurt to unburden oneself to a well-meaning friend.”
“There’s nothing I wish to unburden myself about—more coffee?”
“Yes, please.” He pushed his cup across the table, a faint groove between his blond brows. “When do you and Ross leave Bula?”
Her heart gave a jolt, for she couldn’t tell a lie, and the inquisition would begin again when she told him that she and Ross were not leaving Bula together. “I go at the end of March, Ross follows in June,” she said, and her violet eyes dared him to make something out of it.
He shrugged. “’m not going to say a word—but I’ll be in Lagos when you said and it would be nice to sail home together.”
After supper, Clare showed him to Bill’s quarters and ensured that he had clean linen on the bed, and a carafe of water.
“Thank heaven for England and water without disinfectant in it.” He smiled and closed his hands over Clare’s shoulders and gave them a squeeze. “You love that guy a devil of a lot, don’t you?” he murmured.
She nodded. “Well, have you everything you want, Don?”
“Not quite,” he grinned, “but I’m hopeful.”
“You’re incorrigible!” She slipped out of his grasp and moved to tire door. “Breakfast is at eight, Don. Goodnight.”
“Goodnight, Clare the shining one. Thanks for putting me up.”
The next-few days passed pleasantly. Don no longer probed, or flirted; he behaved like the friend she had real need of at this time; the unquestioning chum who played card games and draughts with her while the rain tumbled down outside. He talked a lot about himself, his college days, and people he knew in London. His parents had died some years ago, and he was without a brother or sister. Maybe it was lack of family that had drawn him to plantation life in Africa. The majority of men who took on the life out here were rootless, searching for something to take the place of being lonely in England, where most people had someone.
“The tropics have not been my El Dorado,” he said, looking wry. “But I’m determined to find a niche for myself once I get back home. I’m not going to drift from job to job, like a lot of chaps do when they leave the tropics.”
“I wish you every success, Don.” She gave him a warm smile. “You’ve a streak of obstinacy which should get you what you want.”
On Friday she went with him to the landing-stage to await the arrival of the steamer that would take him on to Lagos. “Let’s go home together, Clare,” he urged. “I’ve a feeling you’ll be needing a friend on that voyage.”
She would make no promises, but he said he would stay on in Lagos until the end of March and would be on hand if she changed her mind.
The skipper of the steamer left some mail and took what she had brought, then Don was aboard, the whistle was piping, and all too soon Clare was all alone again at Bula.
Accompanied by Johnny she made for home along the muddy track, coming abreast of the lorry which Ross had parked beneath the trees before setting out for the rubber plantation. For some absurd reason, Clare had a sudden longing to sit inside the lorry for a while, and she climbed into the driving seat and there opened the oilskin package of letters.
The one she dreaded to see was there. Pink-enveloped, perfumed, the writing an undisciplined scrawl, with a smear of lipstick on it as though Patsy had touched the envelope to her mouth. Clare wanted to rip the letter to bits, and to toss them into the mud. She also craved to see what Patsy had written.
Instead, because Clare was honourable and she would keep her bargain with Ross to the last moment of their eighteen months, she slipped the letter in among his others, untampered with. She sat a moment staring through the window above the driving wheel, then she read her own letters from home. Aunt Letty couldn’t wait to see her, she and Uncle Fred would come to Southampton to meet her boat, and then they would take her straight home to Ridgley. Clare smiled a little to herself. Bang went her jaunt round the cinemas and the shops, for she wouldn’t have the heart to refuse her aunt after all this time.
There was also a warm invitation from her father to stay at his Hampstead home with him and his wife. Elizabeth, he wrote, was longing to meet her stepdaughter.
The family tentacles were closing on her already, and Clare ripped open sharply the envelope with Simon's handwriting on it. His letter held an ironical surprise for Clare. His devotion to her had gone aground in Norway, where he had met a girl called Ilse whom he planned to marry ... at the end of March.
‘She’s rather like you to look at, Clare,’ he had written. ‘Clear-skinned, and darkish, with small golden freckles across the bridge of her nose. I shall be bringing her to England, and maybe we can meet to talk about the old days. How long ago and far away they seem! Once it seemed inevitable that we would marry, but life had other things in store for both of us ... other loves, which perhaps neither of us regret.’
Clare shivered at that word regret She would regret nothing, and everything, when she said goodbye to Ross.
The men came home three days later than they had planned, wet, weary, and badly in need of hot food and a good night’s sleep.
“What a benighted place it is!” Bill, unshaven, looked like Bill Sikes.
“It’s a poor show up there right enough,” Ross agreed, expelling cigarette smoke and tiredly rubbing the nape of his neck. “I’m going to let the company know that the place is a flop.”
“If Ross can’t make a go of those trees, then I certainly shan’t.” Bill stretched mightily and yawned.
“Baths for you two,” Clare said firmly, “then hot food, and sleep.”
“Sweet talk.” Ross smiled lazily into her eyes. “I’ve missed you a little, Mrs. Brennan.”
“I’ve missed ... both of you.” She spoke briskly, to hide the leap of her heart. “Now out to the bathhouse, you pair of tramps, while I get busy in the kitchen.”
“How’s your foot been?” Ross wanted to know.
“It’s quite better now. You should join Bill and take up surgery.”
“You can’t teach an old dog new tricks,” he grinned, rasping a hand over his beard. “Do I look as awful as Bill?”
“You certainly do,” she laughed. Her heart yearned over him, and yet felt bruised that he could say he had missed her when he planned to put her out of his life for the sake of someone else. Patsy, to say the least of it, hardly seemed the domesticated sort, and Ross liked well-cooked food and a clean, efficiently run home. But maybe he planned to hire a housekeeper and to keep Patsy just looking decorative, Clare thought tartly, marching out to the kitchen to prepare a substantial meal for the men.
The table was laid, and Clare was standing by the window, absently watching the rain, when Ross strolled into the room. He was fresh and groomed in a white shirt and brown slacks, his dark hair still seal-sleek from his bath. Clare gave him a smile over her shoulder, and didn't move as he came across to stand behind
her ... his presence just behind her shoulders was like a touch, and her nostrils tensed to the smell of pine soap and shaving cream.
“I’ve thought of you a devil of a lot, here all alone,” Ross said, arid one of those brushfire thrills ran through her as she felt his fingers fondling the ends of her hair. “What have you found to do while I’ve been away?” he asked.
It is a fact that love can drive all thoughts from the mind but an awareness of the loved one, and Clare did not consciously lie when she omitted to mention Don Carter’s unexpected arrival at the bungalow. “Oh, I’ve been generally lazy,” she said, “and done quite a bit of worrying about you and Bill. It must have been dreadful up there, what with the rain and the pair of you having to sleep in that dank rest-house. It’s a wonder you both haven’t gone down with a chill.”
“We’re both as tough as boot leather, honey.” His hand curved over her left shoulder, warm and roughskinned against the material of her dress. “Bill isn’t at all a bad sort, Clare. He’s willing to learn, and not over-imaginative. If a chap’s going to work out here for two or three years, then it doesn’t do for him to be on the thinking side. Bill knows, now, how tough the life can be, but I think he’ll settle down all right. His real test will come when we’ve both gone.”
Clare couldn’t suppress the shiver that ran through her at those words, and Ross turned her round to face him. “You’ve really grown to care for this place, haven’t you, Clare?” he said.
And taking in the tanned cragginess of his face, she wanted so much to say that anywhere with him would be heaven. A tormented heaven because he didn’t love her, but nicer, more exciting than anywhere else on earth.
Instead she had to give him the prosaic, expected answer. “If you live in a place long enough, you either grow to love it or hate it,” she said. “I’ve liked it here, I suppose, because for the first time I’ve been free of the gratitude that made me give in so much to Aunt Letty.”
“Has the life out here eliminated that weakness, Clare?” His brows met in a dark line as he gazed down at her. “Back in England will you live your own life and not follow a course marked out by someone else?”
“I shall try,” she smiled. “I can’t tell at this stage.”
“Clare,” he gave her a gentle shake, “your heart rules you, do you know that?”
“I suppose it does.” She put back her head and met his eyes. “One lesson you couldn’t drill into, me, boss-man.”
“Maybe if I had drilled it into you, I’d have spoilt you.” He grinned wryly. “I believe you came out here with me because I hard-pedalled the lonely angle. Did you?”
She nodded, for she couldn’t say that love for him had motivated her right from the start. He had never wanted complications, and Clare had sworn, since discovering the exchange of letters between him and Patsy, to see that they parted on his terms just as they had started on them.
“If it’s anything to you, Clare,” he said, “these eighteen months have been far less of a drag than they would have been had I come alone to Bula. But—”
“No regrets,” she said quickly. “No saying that you shouldn't have exposed me to fever, and jiggers, and monotony. For such a soft bunny, I’ve come through it all quite well, haven’t I?”
He touched a finger to her thin young face, and felt the thrust of her cheekbone. His mouth was tautly drawn, lines etched at the corners ... but those lines had been present when he had walked in out of the rain with Bill. He was just tired ... she mustn’t go imagining a state of anxiety on her account.
“I would never have forgiven myself if anything bad had happened to you, Clare,” he said sincerely. “You’ve been a real brick—a gold brick.”
“Thank you, boss-man. But why are we talking like this? I have one more week before you take me to Lagos.” Though she smiled jauntily, her throat felt as though it were tied in a knot and each word caused her pain. “I’m glad you got back so—so the three of us can have that last week together.”
“That last week would have been pretty grim if we had had to face it without Bill, eh?”
She nodded. In a way Bill’s presence was a blessing. Being entirely alone with Ross, knowing that each day brought departure from Bula a little closer, would have been unbearable.
Then, amazingly, Ross cupped her face in large hands and laid a light but warm kiss against her mouth. “Just to say thanks for everything,” he murmured. “For smiling when I snarled, for fighting out a fever all alone, for being so game all through. I’m not the easiest of men to get along with, and if things had been different—”
If, her heart cried out, he had not made promises to another woman!
She tilted her chin. “Eighteen months isn’t much to give to a lonely bush-man. You were very welcome, Mr. Brennan.”
And they were standing there, webbed in the most poignant moment of their months together, when Bill strolled in upon them. “Who’s been sleeping in my bed, Goldilocks?” he enquired laughingly. And he held up a pair of bedroom slippers, leather and masculine. “These were under my bed. They’re too small for either Ross or myself.”
“They’re Don’s,” she said, before it occurred to her that she had not yet mentioned his visit. “He must have forgotten them.”
“Don Carter?” Ross said sharply. “Has he been here?”
“He stayed close on a week, and caught last Friday’s steamer for Lagos.” She met Ross’s eyes and saw that they had a peculiar glitter to them. Her heart jolted ... she realised that quite unknowingly she had led him to think that she had been here all alone while he and Bill had been away.
She caught at his wrist, and felt him jerk it free of her fingers. “Don quit his job at Kalai,” she said, a little wildly. “H—he slept here—I couldn’t expect him to camp out in the rain.”
“You weren’t going to mention that he’d been here,” Ross said, his eyes narrowed to glittering slits. “You were going to play the brave little angel and let me believe that you’d put up with ten days of monotony and storms all on your own. So he’s at Lagos? What, waiting for you to turn up so the pair of you can go home together?”
There comes a moment when one false word, one careless spark, can blow a couple apart for always. Torn by love and the pain of being unjustly accused, Clare spoke recklessly. “Yes,” she heard herself say, “Don’s waiting for me at Lagos. How clever of you to guess. He’s waiting for me just as Patsy is waiting for you!”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
LUNCH next day dragged interminably. Clare could not eat, and even Ross pushed aside one dish and left it untasted. She knew that it was not in his nature to allow evasions for long, so braced herself for the coming onslaught when, after lunch, he told Bill to go down to the sheds without him.
When he and Clare were alone, he took out his cigarette case and extended it. She shook her head. She was quivering inside with nerves, and felt curiously cold, despite the fact that the sun had broken hotly through the clouds and was filling the air with its false gold.
“I’m not going to question the wisdom of your decision to go home with Carter,” Ross spoke in a clipped voice, one elbow resting on the back of a chair near where she sat. “There’s just one thing I’d like to know, though. Had that message from Patsy Harriman anything to do with your decision?”
“Not really. Should it have?”
He leaned forward, and the cigarette between his fingers dropped ash on the cretonne cushions. “I wouldn’t want to think that Patsy Harriman was driving you into this guy’s arms.” His voice was grimly mocking.
She flared, “What do you think I am?”
“Since you ask,” he said softly, “I think you’re a little fool. I saw up at Kalai that the guy was trying to get at you—are you the reason he’s quit his job?”
“No, I’m not!” She was pale, her knuckles gleaming whitely as she clenched the arm of her chair. “Don, like me, wants to get back to civilisation.”
“And when he turned up here, the pair of you
made this cosy little plan to go together, eh?” He drew hard on his cigarette. “I did a lot of hard thinking last night, Clare.”
“Really?” She had wondered if it were he or Bill pacing the veranda in the small hours. “You shouldn’t waste any sleep over me. It will interfere with doing your job efficiently.”
“You must have had Patsy on your mind for some time?”
He was merciless, and she was afraid ... deeply afraid of what he might draw out of her.
“Does it matter?” she asked, fighting to sound casual. “I’ve never been a real wife, it’s true, but discovering you’d already chosen my successor was a trifle shattering.”
“Sarcasm doesn’t become you, Clare.” His grey eyes had that glittering look again.
“All of us haven’t your godlike capacity for taking everything in their stride,” she rejoined. “I suppose my pride was flicked, or my vanity.”
With a grunted oath he straightened and crossed over to the bookcase. He fingered an ornament on the top of it, then swung to face her. “I’m disappointed in you, Clare,” he said. “I thought you had more grit than to let wounded pride lead you into a—situation with a man you don’t love.”
“You seem very sure that I don’t love Don,” she flung across the room.
“You’re just using him.”
“Oh, you would say that,” she said bitterly. “You’ve never had an emotion yourself that wasn’t rooted in self-interest. Thank heaven I’m getting away from you!”
He stared across at her, then a cloud of cigarette smoke obscured his face.
“Thank goodness I’ll be getting back to a normal existence,” she added.
He came back and stood above her, one hand thrust hard into a pocket of his working breeches. “Go with Carter, go back to normality, and for God’s sake,” he added savagely, “give yourself time to see the guy properly before taking on any more girl-scout stuff. D’you hear?”
“I hear,” she said tiredly. “Ross, please don’t let’s quarrel for the last few days. I ... I can’t bear that.” She stood up and pushed shaking fingers through her hair, then she slowly left the room, taking up her topi and going outside into the sunshine. In the compound everything had suffered the violence of rain. She wandered down the path, telling herself with hazy insistence that she was glad to have reached the verge of goodbyes to the jungle and its chattering inmates. Willingly she acknowledged defeat ... and told herself the intolerable ache at heart would grow dim in time.
And No Regrets Page 16
