by Isobel Chace
He laughed again. `I know a great deal about you, Annot. More than you could ever guess at—'
'It hasn't made you like me any better!' She hoped she sounded less hurt than she felt.
'Oh, I don't know,' he said. 'I guess I dislike you about as much as you hate me! Now, will you get back into the Range Rover and try to keep quiet for a few moments, or I'll send you to bed before I tell you about the photos I think I took for you—no, I'm not going to tell you right now, though I think I got a beauty of that giraffe heading off the basket of the balloon. That will be one to tell our grandchildren about!'
She did as she was bidden and got back into the Range Rover. She was glad to do so, for she was extremely weary,
though she would have died sooner than admit it to James. He'd have to hurry up if he was going to tell his grandchildren anything, she thought nastily. Judith already had one daughter and she was not exactly the maternal type, craving for more babies. Annot had received the distinct impression that Judith found Dorcas more of a nuisance than an asset, and if she had more children it would be to please her husband rather than herself.
It was almost dark when the men had finished folding the balloon and stowed it away in the back of the Range Rover, tying the basket and the rest of the equipment on to the roof-rack.
`You needn't bother to come out tomorrow, Annot,' James said as they piled into the vehicle and made for home. 'You can take a turn at staying put with Dorcas and let Judith have a bit of fun.'
`Can't Dorcas come with us too?' she argued. After all, this was her project and it had nothing to do with Judith Drummond!
'Later on, perhaps.'
Annot said nothing more. It was possible, she thought, that Judith wouldn't want to drive the Range Rover through the dust and the heat of the midday sun; it was more than possible that she would refuse to stir from the lodge and the swimming-pool. She might even remember that Dorcas was her daughter and entitled to some part of her mother's attention.
James put out a hand and patted her knee. 'Never mind, it won't be half as bad as you think. You'll need the time to develop the shots we already have. Can you manage in your bathroom if I get them to black it out for you?'
'Yes, thank you,' she said. She had reason to be grateful to him yet again, but she didn't feel one bit grateful. All she felt was a burning resentment that he should make all
her plans for her and tell her what to do all the time, with all the confidence of—of what?
'Another day,' he went on, 'and I think I might be flying that thing by myself. Norman can drive the Range Rover after that.'
'Oh yes? And what will I be doing?' she asked.
'What do you want to do?' he asked.
`I want to go up in the balloon too,' she confessed.
He laughed easily. 'My word, you never give up, do you? Okay, little one, if I can be sure of landing the thing as easily as we did today I'll take you up for a ride. That's a promise, but you must do your part and not mess up the arrangements before then. Right?'
So he did see her as a child! What was more, a child who could be bribed into behaving as he wished. Well, perhaps she was more childish than she knew, but she couldn't pass up a chance of going up in the balloon, torn as she was between a mixture of fright at the thought and the longing to try a completely new experience.
'Right,' she said.
James patted her knee again. 'Good girl,' he commended her. 'Was it really so difficult to make up your mind?'
'In a way,' she admitted. 'I like to make up my own mind about things—even things like whether I can go up in a balloon that I'm paying for!'
The tart note in her voice made him laugh. 'Are you paying?' he taunted her.
'Aren't I?' The tartness had gone to be replaced by genuine bewilderment. It was true that so far no one had asked her for any money, but surely James hadn't anticipated paying the bill himself?
He bent his head towards hers. 'You see now the advantage in being my fiancee? Noman will render his account to me.'
'But that isn't fair! This is my project!'
'Fair or not, that's the way it's going to be,' he said with a finality that warned her she would be courting more than she could handle if she were to argue the point further with him. He was so stubborn! 'If and when we find Jeremy, I'll sort it out with him.'
'Why with him and not with me?' she cried out.
'He's a man, and you're now but a bit of a girl,' he teased her. 'Be glad that you are,' he added. 'I am!'
Annot was effectively reduced to silence for the moment. Of course she couldn't leave matters there—he was being ridiculous and so old-fashioned that it wasn't true. Yet there was something in his attitude that caught at her heart-strings and made her want to cry.
'I've always paid my own way!' she exclaimed. 'James, don't be daft! What do you hope to get out of it?'
He was silent for a moment, then he said, 'Let's just say that Jeremy is a friend of mine, and I should have done something about his disappearance long before you turned up on the scene. I didn't like what he'd become, but that doesn't excuse my lack of action.'
For an instant she thought she had got the better of him. 'But Jeremy is my uncle,' she said somewhat smugly, 'he isn't related to you at all!'
'Thank God!' he retorted. 'But the ties of friendship have their responsibilities too.' He gave her a smile which it was almost too dark to see. 'A man has to do what a man has to do!' he quoted at her, as she had once quoted it to him.
'And a woman doesn't?' she countered.
'You've done your bit,' he answered her. 'You've found a man to do it for you!'
'You're so conceited!' she told him. 'I'd manage just as well on my own! Women do nowadays, you know!'
'In the cities perhaps, not out here,' he squashed her. 'Drop it, Annot, there's a love. It won't do you any good to argue the toss with me and you know it. I mean to have
my own way, and your best plan would be to give in gracefully and thank me nicely when it's all over! Do you think you could manage that?'
'Never!' she decided.
He sighed a deep, mocking sigh. 'What a good thing women are renowned for changing their minds!' he said sotto voce.
Her lips trembled on the edge of laughter—or was it tears? 'They have the last word too,' she reminded him. 'I shall enjoy that!'
`Content yourself to have had the last word now,' he said with a gentleness she didn't usually associate with him. `We've reached the barrier and we'll have to get the night-watchman to open it up for us. The reserve shuts down at seven o'clock, and we're supposed to be back at the lodges by then.' He glanced over his shoulder. ` Okumu?'
It was darker than Annot had thought; she could hardly follow the progress of James and the Samburu as they made their way to the warden's office. She wished she had gone with them, but that would have left Norman on his own. The Englishman had been silent for so long that she had almost forgotten all about him, and she searched her mind for something to say to him now, wondering that she should find it so hard now to talk to him when it had been so easy the evening before.
`Norman, how much do you charge for the use of the balloon?' she burst out.
There was an uncomfortable silence. 'I haven't worked it out yet, but it isn't cheap, Annot. I had to hang round here for weeks looking for an alternative client after your uncle disappeared. I had one or two bookings from people who wanted to know what it's like to go up in a balloon, but there wasn't anything definite until James came along.'
Annot noted that even he was apparently convinced that this was James' adventure and not hers at all, but she had
hopes of Norman. He was much more easily managed than James Montgomery would ever be! He wouldn't ignore her claims to having a hand in the getting of the photographs for her own series of articles.
'Will you submit the bill to me?' Annot pressed him, anxious to get the whole thing sewn up before James came back to the Range Rover.
'It was James who hired me—
'
'No, Jeremy did that! I get a reasonable expense allowance for completing the assignment for him, you know, and there's no reason why James should come into this at all.'
Norman was obviously uncomfortable about her request. 'It's expensive, Annot. A joy-ride can cost twenty pounds a person back in England.'
Annot blenched. 'Twenty pounds? Whatever is this trip going to cost?'
'I told you it was expensive. You'd best leave it to James to settle up with me, and pay him back when and how you can. I don't want to press the point, my dear, but I need paying on the nail. If I hadn't had James' guarantee I wouldn't have taken the risk of staying on here. You do understand, don't you?'
He sounded so apologetic that Annot said she did. She understood very well, she thought bitterly. James had won again! It was as if he were determined to drive home the fact that she couldn't manage without him But she wouldn't give in. It was more than time that someone showed him that he couldn't interfere with impunity in her affairs! With a brief shudder, Annot suppressed the memory of the but that had been Jeremy's and which James had spared her from having to sleep in, and the flood of gratitude she had felt when she had seen it for herself. She had nothing to be grateful to him for now! He was merely being insufferable, superior and—and masculine!
'But you will take me up one of these days, won't you?' Annot deliberately tempted Norman.
He responded immediately. 'I'll say I will! Or better still, we could get away by ourselves in my van and leave the others to get on with things. It would give you a rest from quarrelling with James.'
'I'd like that,' Annot said softly.
'Then we'll do it, my dear.' He leaned forward in the back seat until his head was on a level with hers. 'James has no reason to object, has he?'
'None at all,' she declared.
Norman expelled his breath in a rush of relief. 'That's all right then, just as long as we all know where we stand. You're a very desirable girl, Annot, but I wouldn't care to put James' back up. You know what I mean?'
'You won't with me,' Annot assured him, wondering at her own bitterness as she said it. `To do that, you'd have to show an interest in Judith—'
'In Mrs Drummond?' Norman's surprise came, in turn, as a surprise to Annot.
'Didn't you know?' she asked dully.
'Mrs Drummond? I thought he was engaged to you.'
'I told you,' she said, 'that's just an arrangement until we find Jeremy. Neither of us has the faintest intention of marrying the other!'
She felt better when she had said that out loud; it made it more believable to her. It also gave her a funny feeling in her middle that she coutdn't account for. Perhaps she was only hungry, but she was very much afraid that the hollow sensation had something to do with a future in which James would not be there to take charge and to order her about in the odious way he had ever since the first moment he set eyes on her. For, she remembered with an embarrassment that set her heart pounding within her, it had been he who had first seen her, some time before she had opened her
eyes and had seen him sitting on that chair, watching her as she slept.
'Good,' said Norman. 'It's a long, long time since I spent a day with a pretty girl! I'll get them to pack us up some lunch and we can be gone for hours. Getting to know you, darling, will be one of the highlights of my time at Amboseli—maybe the best moment of them all!'
Annot wasn't sure if there was a query at the end of that remark or not, but if it was a question she preferred to ignore it. Indeed, she was beginning to wonder if she was going to find Norman as easy to manage as she had supposed. But that was ridiculous! She had never had the faintest difficulty in drawing the line with the men she knew before. However it was, she knew only relief when she saw James coming back to the car, an elderly African beside him bearing a hurricane lamp which he shone into the car, curious to know who was inside.
He and James shook hands, and then he shook hands with Okumu, still talking all the while. He was evidently a garrulous old man, but James showed a patience with him that came from genuine liking. Eventually, he put back his head and sniffed the air.
ltanyesha?' James asked.
The African nodded, pushing his worn hat more firmly on to his head. :Maybe it will rain tonight,' he agreed. 'I have smelt it coming all afternoon.'
'I can smell it now!' James agreed.
'Yes, it will come tonight,' the old man considered. 'How will you manage with your balloon then?'
'We'll manage,' James promised. 'We had a good day today. If we keep going, we may finish before the rains really set in.'
'I hope you are right.'
Everybody shook hands again and the old man stumbled forward to undo the catch of the iron bar that stretched
across the road when the reserve was officially closed.
It wasn't far from there back to the lodge. Annot barely waited for the Range Rover to draw up outside the reception hall before she was out and making her way down the path towards the room she shared with Judith and Dorcas. The rooms had been made in more or less separate buildings, reminiscent of a Masai village, and the effect at night was to cast black shadows hither and thither across the path, in and out of which the lizards, startled by the sound of footsteps, scuttled with nervous haste, seeking sanctuary from the unwelcome intruder.
There was a particularly beautiful male lizard by the lamp outside the door to their room and Annot paused to admire it before rapping on the door.
'Who is it?' Judith's voice called out.
'It's me, Annot.'
The door was flung open by Dorcas with an enthusiasm that Annot found touching. 'I can swim!' the child told her, jumping up and down in her excitement. 'Truly, I can! A man taught me—a German man—and I can do three strokes without touching the bottom or anything!'
'Good for you!' said Annot.
'She can certainly pick them,' Judith drawled, flat on her back on her bed. 'He can't speak a word of English, but that didn't stop him from joining us for lunch, giving us tea, and wanting to have drinks with us as soon as it showed signs of getting dark.'
'That was kind of him,' Annot suggested.
'Wasn't it?' Judith sat up to make her sarcasm more pointed. 'Terribly kind! Men usually are when they want something from you! How did your day go?'
Annot began to tell her, her resentment at James' high-handedness spilling over as she warmed to her task. 'He won't let me do anything!' she complained.
'How nice for you,' said Judith. 'Isn't that what you
expect from a man who claims to be in love with you?' 'But James isn't--'
The two women stared at one another in an appalled silence.
'He isn't in love with you?' Judith probed carefully.
Annot shook her head. 'He's making up his mind about someone else, and he's a friend of Jeremy's, and he was worried what sort of a hash I'd make of things by myself.' The rush of words died to a trickle. 'I don't think he even likes me very much,' she added miserably.
'What a fool the man is!' Judith said disparagingly. 'And I suppose he thought I wouldn't mind a bit?'
'I don't know,' said Annot, 'I don't know what he thinks about anything! I thought at first he was hoping to make you jealous, but now he says it's because he's a friend of Jeremy's. It can't be that, though, can it?'
Judith shrugged, narrowing her eyes as she looked thoughtfully at the younger girl.
'And how do you feel about him?' she inquired on a silky note.
'Me?' Annot put back her head and laughed, and then stopped because she thought -she sounded hysterical rather than amused. 'I hate him! I've never hated anyone before, but I hate him! I wish he'd mind his own business and leave me alone!'
'Fair enough,' said Judith, 'I'll do my best to see that he does.'
CHAPTER EIGHT
JUDITH took the wheel of the Range Rover with an air of martyrdom. 'I don't mind driving,' she told the men, 'but as for anything else, don't rely on me! Okay?'
'Ab
solutely,' James assured her.
'Beast!' she said without heat. 'You always make me out to be a lazy so-and-so.'
`That's justice,' he murmured. 'How many times have you got me to do your work for you? You can't complain because now I'm making use of you.'
Judith looked at him, her eyes soft and warm. 'I'm better able to cope than Annot is. Have you thought of that?'
James' face turned to granite. 'I'll look after Annot,' he said, 'there's no need for you to pitch in on her behalf.'
Annot felt uncomfortable, but Judith was quite determined to say her bit now she had started.
`No need? The girl was quite exhausted last night! And instead of hurrying her home, you had to keep her out until long after dark—'
'Drop it, Judith,' James advised her. 'Or has Annot been complaining to you?'
No, no, I haven't!' Annot said quickly, 'not about that! That was just one of those things!'
He smiled slowly at her. 'Have an easy day today and I'll take you out tonight if you promise to wear your prettiest dress.'
But there's nowhere to go here!' Annot objected.
James smiled more widely. 'I know a place,' he said. `Do you want to come?'
She meant to say no, or at least to ask if the others were
coming too, or even whether he wouldn't prefer to take Judith, but she did none of those things.
`Yes, please,' she said in a rush. 'I'd love to come!'
His smile reached his eyes, warming her. 'Anywhere, or with me?'
It was Judith who answered him. 'Don't ask leading questions, James! Can't you see you're embarrassing the girl? You frighten her to death—that's quite obvious! And she isn't old enough to know that you'll flirt with anything in skirts and not mean a word of it! Leave the girl alone! '
James straightened himself up. 'Stay out of it, Judith. Annot understands me very well, and if she doesn't, she has only herself to blame. Besides, she has a tongue in her head. Al she has to do is to ask what I'm about and I'll tell her. You don't have to fight her battles for her. She's a grownup lady, even if she does seem sometimes to be as young as Dorcas! '
