And No Regrets

by Rosalind Brett

  The rain held off long enough for their trek to Onitslo. They took things easily, Clare carried for the most part in the ‘chair,’ while Ross walked ahead, aloof and distant. They had not quarrelled again, but had been very polite to each other. Bill had been puzzled, and Clare had not been able to keep back her tears when she said goodbye to him. “I’ll send those books,” she promised. “You’ll be a medicine man yet, Bill.”

  It had been long arranged that Clare would stay with the Macleans at Onitslo, before she sailed for home. Ross put up at the Planters’ Club; he said he had confidence in Bill’s ability to manage things at Bula; but Clare knew he had business here of a personal nature. She merely smiled and shrugged when he said he’d wait to see her sail away.

  Mrs. Maclean had not been too well, but all the same she planned to give a farewell party for Clare.

  “You don’t have to bother,” Clare protested. “I don’t expect a party.”

  “We can’t possibly let you go without a send-off.” Mrs. Maclean eyed Clare very keenly. “You’re thinner, my dear. A little older, and wiser, eh? I’m so sorry my nephew and his wife are staying here at the present time, and we can’t run to a room you could have had with your husband.”

  “He doesn’t mind staying at the Club.” Clare felt her smile wavering on her mouth. “And I certainly don’t mind sharing a room with Janet.”

  Janet Maclean was a nurse at Lagos, and she was home on leave for the present.

  “Have things gone all right for you and Ross, way out there in the bush?” Mrs. Maclean took and squeezed Clare’s hand. “I’m old enough to be your mother, and I’m sure you don’t resent such a question from me?”

  Clare shook her head. “Ross is staying on those extra three months at the request of the company, though the new man they sent is a stable, reliable sort. Ross is extremely satisfied with him.”

  “That’s certainly saying something.” Mrs. Maclean gave a laugh, and lay back against the cushions rather tiredly. “He’s an exacting man, but I must say you appear to have borne up quite well, Clare. What are your future plans—another plantation?”

  Steel fingers seemed to close over Clare’s heart. “Ross is going to Cape Town for a couple of years, then another plantation ... his own,” she said.

  “How exciting for you.” Mrs. Maclean beamed. “You’ll love the Cape. So civilised in comparison to Bula.”

  “Yet I loved Bula,” Clare spoke nostalgically. “I shall never forget the place as long as I live.”

  Ross had insisted that Clare accept the money for some new clothes, and Janet Maclean went with her on a shopping tour. Janet was a plain, serious-minded girl who insisted that she wanted nothing more than to be a Staff Sister, and eventually a Matron.

  “Marriage is overrated,” she said, after she and Clare had shopped and were sitting over tea and buttered scones in a remarkably English-looking teashop. “Look at some of the women out here and what they’ve turned into. They’re either tropic-wearied, or so tired of being bush-widows that they start affairs with other men. Do you know Patsy Harriman?”

  Clare felt herself lose colour. “Yes—vaguely,” she said.

  “She led her husband a real dance, then finally got a divorce. I expect she has some other man in mind for the role of second husband.” Janet lifted her cup and sipped at her tea. “She’s quite attractive, of course, in a slinky way. The kind men go for, the fools.”

  “Has there been any talk about the—the other man?” Clare managed to ask quite casually.

  “Well, they say he’s a planter.” Janet’s eyes met Clare’s across the table. “She used to hang round Ross quite a bit, before he went home on his last leave ... and came back with a wife.”

  Clare conjured up a smile. “Ross is attractive to women,” she said. “Haven’t you noticed?”

  “Not particularly.” Janet sat looking at her most prim, her hair cut short but not shaped, no lipstick to brighten her mouth, and that turned-down look to her lips that indicated an inner discontent. Clare guessed that Janet was not particularly attractive to men, but .then she didn’t seem to put herself out to be so. She had plainly disapproved of some of the dresses Clare had bought, creamy floating things ... which Ross had always admired.

  Clare wore one of them the evening of her farewell party. Ross had not yet put in an appearance, and after dancing with a shipping clerk to the bellow of the gramophone, Clare was seized upon by two women in their early thirties. Both were bush-widows, the fair one unwillingly. She madly wanted to go into the bush to live with her husband—as Clare had—but Jimmy wouldn’t have it. He couldn’t have borne watching her fade beneath his eyes, she declared, staring at Clare. Blondes always did fade fast in the tropics. Was Clare’s silver streak natural? she suddenly asked.

  “That’s a memento of life in the bush,” Clare informed her ironically.

  “Glad to be going home?” asked the brunette, who had just whisked another drink off a passing tray.

  “Well, I’m not sorry,” Clare said, rising with a smile to dance with Doctor Maclean.

  At eleven o’clock a sandwich supper was served. Those who could not find chairs squatted on the floor. Clare was among them. Someone pushed her down on to a cushion, and her hand caught at a white jacket. She turned her head and looked up .... and there was Ross.

  “Mrs. Brennan should have a chair,” someone said. “After all, it’s her party.”

  “I’m quite comfy,” Clare said, though inwardly she wasn’t now Ross had arrived. She was afraid all the time that they would betray themselves to other people, and these people so loved scandal.

  Ross leaned forward and drew her to her feet. “Change places with me,” he said. “I was lucky enough to grab a chair.”

  “You’ll be far less comfortable on the floor than I am,” she protested.

  “Change places just for the sake of peace and quiet.” His voice was quiet but insistent.

  Reluctantly she got up and took his chair, and he lowered himself to the cushion and edged his long legs into an inadequate corner of space.

  With nothing much to take her attention, Clare became conscious of the brown head resting against her knee. The blonde bush-widow had drawn him into conversation. “Jimmy wants me to go, really,” Clare heard her say. “But he says he loves me so much that he’s afraid of what the life will do to me—the heat and flies, and things.”

  “He sounds an admirable lad,” Ross drawled. “Only a cad would expect a woman to live in the bush.”

  “You’re not a cad, are you?” the girl asked.

  “A brute,” he said dryly. “But I learned my lesson.”

  “You mean you took your wife out with you? How awful of you, and how brave of her!” The girl sounded quite in awe.

  Ross gave a laugh ... one, Clare noticed, that was quite unamused. A houseboy came round with drinks, and Ross said, without glancing up at Clare: “I’ll have a whisky and water, honey.”

  She lifted a tall glass from the tray and handed it down to him. As he took it, Clare caught the bush widow staring at her. Clare smiled, as if to say: “Yes, I’m the brave little woman who went with this brute into the bush.”

  Someone said: “It’s nearly midnight.”

  Mrs. Maclean rose from her chair, looking whacked out. “We’re winding things up at twelve,” she said. “Mrs. Brennan must have a good night’s sleep. Goodness knows what the accommodation will be like on the packet boat.”

  Murmurs of one sort or another began to drift about Clare, and she said awkwardly: “I’d hate the party to break up on my account.”

  “Oh, we’ll go on to the Richies’,” a woman laughed. “We’ll have Ross on our necks if we overtire you.” The guests began to drift away, most of them assuring Clare that they would be at the boat in the morning to see her off. At a quarter past twelve Clare was in the bedroom—Janet had gone back off leave that day— and seated on the edge of one of the twin beds, feeling weary but not sleepy. The lamp cast but a small l
ight, the rest of the room was shadowy.

  Clare was realising, and how it made her heart race, that the people at the party had put a very basic construction upon her departure for England. A smile distorted her mouth. They thought she was going to have a child.

  As she stooped to unloosen her shoes, Ross came into the room and closed the door. “Doing a little mooning on your last night on West African soil?” he said with a touch of brusqueness.

  For an undecided moment he stood between the beds, and then with one of his lithe movements he sat down beside her. His palms rested on his knees, then he said abruptly: “You’ve put me in a bad spot.”

  “How do you mean?” She looked at him, startled.

  “You’ve landed me with a conscience, Clare.”

  “I’m sorry—” then she broke into a smile. “Oh, Ross, you’ll get over that. Remember what we said in England, that when the time came we’d part without regrets?”

  “I remember a lot of things,” he growled. Then he tugged something out of his jacket pocket and dropped it into her lap. It was hand-made of metal and inlaid with semi-precious stones.

  “For me?” she asked, fingering the workmanship. He nodded, and taking the box from her he turned up the lid and disclosed on velvet a thin, beaten-gold bracelet. He slipped it over her hand and secured it just above her wristbone. “Do you like it?” He held her forearm critically.

  “Yes, I like it, Ross.” She glanced up at him. “Is it my parting gift?”

  He frowned slightly, then nodded. “Have you written your people when to expect you?”

  “Yes. Aunt Letty and Uncle Fred are meeting me.”

  “What will you tell them ... about us?”

  “I shall tell them the truth. They’ll understand.”

  “They’ll condemn my selfishness, Clare, but it’s no more than I deserve.”

  “You’re taking this too seriously.” She managed to smile at him. “I wouldn’t have believed it of you. In a few months the time we’ve spent together will seem like a long-drawn-out dream. We may never meet again.”

  He spoke in edged tones: “Can you see us face to face in ten years’ time? I the same as now, plus a few more tropic-etched lines, you, blooming, with a husband and a couple of children?”

  His voice sharpened. “Will it be Carter, or Longworth?”

  “Simon is marrying a girl he met in Norway,” she said, fingering the bracelet on her wrist, and tasting tears in her throat.

  “So it will be Don Carter?”

  “Why not Don?” Then she added recklessly: “He’s as good as your second choice, if not better.”

  His fingers went to the knot of his tie; the stony expression of his face was uninformative, but his eyes had narrowed and his jaw was rigid.

  “Goodnight, Clare.” He got to his feet. “I’ll call for you tomorrow to take you to the boat.”

  He was gone. Slowly she subsided into the pillow, filled with an inarticulate misery. Her tears had formed into a hard lump in her throat, so there was no relief to be found in weeping.

  Next morning the crowd turned out in strength to speed her departure. A space on deck had been cleared and a table with drinks set against the rail. A dapper little skipper informed them that they had fifteen minutes in which to make their adieux.

  “Help yourself to drinks,” said Ross. “I’m going forward to see what they’ve made of the cabin.”

  He was holding Clare’s arm, pushing her firmly in front of him. It was a cabin for two, and Clare guessed at once that Ross must have paid well for it. Not luxurious, for the boat, which would pick up more cargo and passengers at Lagos, was hardly a cruiser. “Well, there isn’t much more to say except goodbye,” Clare said quietly. She was facing him, looking up into his darkened eyes.

  There came between them the whiff of tropical flowers on a wall table, a mass of them, certainly not provided by the shipping line. “Thank you for those,” she smiled. “And for bringing me out here. You’ve been a marvellous companion. I ... hope you get that plantation you want.”

  “Shut up, for heaven’s sake.” He spoke roughly. “You’ll have me in tears.”

  “That would be something to see.” She held out her hand, but he didn’t take it, and she let it fall back to her side, to clench on the material of her dress.

  “I can hear the skipper clearing the decks.” Ross backed to the cabin doorway. “Maybe I’ll see you again, Clare.”

  “Maybe.” The tears were breaking up inside her, and if he didn’t go quickly she would make a fool of herself in front of him. “Hurry, Ross, or they’ll be pulling up the gangplank. I—I can feel the engine throbbing—” He gripped her then, gazed down hard and long into her thin, gallantly smiling face. He muttered something—maybe goodbye—then turned and strode out of the door, banging it shut behind him.

  Clare stood very still; hammer-strokes seemed to be directed at the soles of her feet, driving nails that would fix her to this spot for ever, gazing with tear-blinded eyes at the door out of which he had walked without a backward glance. The vessel was moving ... and then she moved, to one of the beds, where she sank down as though her legs were no longer capable of supporting her. It was all over, her dream of winning his heart, and holding him for always as a real and loving husband. Her hand gripped the bed-cover, her slim body was racked by a long, dry sob.

  Had she really said that it was Don Carter whom she wanted? What an actress she had become, if her eyes had not revealed the true state of her heart to Ross.

  Lying there as the packet boat steamed on its way, the cabin redolent of the scent of his flowers, Clare took no heed of time. It could have been hours later—though it wasn’t—when knuckles rapped her cabin door and someone came in. “I—is that you, steward?” Clare did not look round. “Could you bring me some tea, please?” The cabin door closed, and then she sat up, pushing the tumbled hair from her wet eyes and turning to slide off the bed. She never completed the action. Her heart turned over, there was a thundering in her ears, the walls bent inwards then righted themselves ... Ross stood with his back to the door. “You?” she whispered. “You—Ross?”

  “Am I such a painful surprise, honey?” he asked quietly.

  She couldn’t answer, she could only gaze at him as though her dazed mind and her hungry heart had made him materialise. And then he moved, a tall, white-clad figure coming closer all the time. She caught her breath, and realised that he was no figment of a dream. “Didn’t you have time to get off the boat?” she whispered.

  “Ample time, honey. I didn’t want to get off ... had no intention of doing so. I booked for the passage to Lagos.”

  “Of course.” Her eyes dulled over again. “Patsy’s there, waiting for you.”

  “Darn Patsy!” he said explosively. “If you throw that creature in my face once more, Clare, I swear I won’t be responsible for what I do.”

  As his words sank into Clare’s mind, she gazed at him disbelievingly. He had called Patsy a—creature! “Stop looking at me as though I’m a ghost,” he growled, and suddenly he was sitting beside her on the bed, vital and very real. “If I tell you, honey, that Patsy Harriman couldn’t be your successor in a million years, will you say the same about Carter?”

  “Is this a game?” she asked, like a bewildered child.

  “A game that turned into something I wasn’t prepared for.” Still he quizzed her but did not touch her. “Which pawn shall I move first, Clare—the one named Patsy?”

  Her teeth clenched together. She nodded.

  “Patsy’s an orchid on a wilting stem,” he began. “A type doomed to make a hash of her life, but right from my college days I’ve had a tendency to get mixed up in some way with her sort—I don’t mean romantically, Clare. I mean that I feel sorry for them, that I can’t resist their appeals for help. Do you know what I’m getting at?”

  “Not quite.” Clare shook her head, still dazed by his very presence here beside her.

  “Patsy Harriman is suicidal,” he sa
id bluntly. “I roomed with a guy like that when I was at college. He got mixed up with a girl from a sweetshop in the town, had her back to our room when I wasn’t about. It slipped out, as it always does, that a girl had been seen coming and going to and from our room, and Pat—”

  “Pat!” Clare exclaimed.

  “Pat Raymond, charming but weak as water. His family wasn’t all that well off and they had worked hard so he could take his degree. Expulsion from the college was something he just couldn’t face, and he threatened to take a boat on the weir and not come back. He meant it, his emotional sort always do. So I let it be thought that I had been entertaining the girl, and I got sent down. My father,” Ross looked his old cynical self for a moment, “wasn’t at all pleased. Nothing I did ever pleased him very much, I’m afraid.”

  “So that was the Pat you were mumbling about in your delirium,” Clare said, and her eyes were really beginning to shine as she sat looking at him. “Pat was a man, after all.”

  “What delirium?” Now it was Ross’s turn to look bewildered.

  “Oh—you weren’t supposed to know.” She gave him a guilty smile. “I—I came into your room and looked after you, that time you had fever at Bula. You didn’t remember—and you kept mumbling about this Pat, and I thought—well, she had been writing to you—”

  “I said she could, Clare.” Now he took hold of her hands and held them tightly. “Her marriage wasn’t working out, and I said she could write to me every time she felt—despondent. Clare,” she saw the white glimmer of his teeth, “did you think those pink epistles were tokens of a violent love?”

  “D-don’t mock me—” she tried to pull away from, him, but it was quite impossible, for now he was gripping her by the elbows. “Ross, what are you doing here? We made a clean break, now we’ll have to go all through it again at Lagos.”