Brittle Bondage

by Rosalind Brett

  “I won’t.” Thea leant over and squeezed her shoulder. “The small hours are discouraging, aren’t they? Maybe we can get together early next week—just we two. You could come to town for a day. Nothing looks impossible by daylight. Would you like a sleeping capsule?”

  “No, thanks.”

  “Tumble in, then, and sleep well.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  NOISELESSLY, in pitch darkness Thea regained her own room. She took off the rest of her clothes, got into pyjamas, cleansed her face with cold cream and slid between the sheets. Sleep was elusive. She lay staring at the rectangle of window which was powdered with stars, feeling both hopeless and frightened

  At last she dozed, and soon afterwards dawn paled the window and a rainbird called, and set the weavers chirruping. Grey was merging into flame when Mosi locked. Thea stirred and answered him, sat up in bed and dropped a thick forehead into her hands.

  This was disgusting—a real hangover. She would swallow a draught as soon as she reached the hospital and follow it up with caffeine citrate—kill or cure. A shower or a bathe would have helped, but she had the energy for neither. A cool wash had to suffice.

  When she came from the bathroom her breakfast-tray was lodged upon the bedside table. In search of coffee, she drew back the cover. Grapefruit juice, a boiled egg, toast and preserves. Mechanically, while she dressed, Thea ate and drank; without appetite she stoked against the physical demands of her work.

  There was no excluding Venetia from her thoughts any longer. She circled the room, hung up the dejected parchment silk suit, secured pearls and engagement ring in her handbag, and dropped her pyjamas into the neat pine linen-box. Meticulously she folded back the bedclothes and blew specks of powder from the mirror. Then she went from the room.

  At the door of Venetia’s room she hesitated. She would go in brightly and say: “I’m off, my dear. Thanks again for the wonderful party ... and if I can nip over for an hour I will.” Yes, it would be wiser to ignore last night’s short conversation till they could be more sure of an uninterrupted discussion, preferably away from Bondolo.

  She turned the handle, took a step into the room, and halted. Her knees went weak and her heart seemed to move in her body. The bed was as she had seen it last night, trim in its eau-de-nil cover, with the fluted pillow in matching chenille at the head, and the foot of it still dented where she herself had sat four hours ago. A couple of objects were missing from the dressing-table, but Thea couldn’t remember what they were.

  And then she saw the suitcase standing beside the wardrobe. She let out a breath which had been imprisoned too long, hurried over and knelt beside the pigskin-case. It was locked, and very heavy.

  Her head rose. Peremptory with fear, she called, “Venetia!”

  No reply, but she had expected none. She sprang up, and unconsciously roved an unsteady hand up her cheek and into her neatly brushed hair. She turned and almost ran to the kitchen.

  “Mosi, have you seen the missus this morning?”

  “No, missus.”

  “Did she mention she might be going out early?”

  “The missus never say that. She don’t go out before breakfast. No missus.”

  Irritated by the preponderance of “missuses,” Thea swung round to Fumana. “What about you?”

  Fumana blinked. “This minute I make tea for the missus. Every morning we take tea or coffee at seven.”

  “You haven’t seen her yet?”

  “No, missus.” His surprise was pardonable; obligingly he tacked on, “At seven I see her.”

  “Is the Baas in his room?”

  “The Baas is in the garden. There.” Fumana indicated first the window and then the open door.

  Blake’s figure was visible between the orange trees. He had his hands in his breeches pockets and a cigarette between his lips, and he paced slowly and thoughtfully. Thea sped out and down the back steps.

  “Blake!” she cried. “Blake!”

  He looked up at once, flicked his cigarette into the earth and started towards her with long strides. She brought up in front of him, and he grabbed at her arms and gazed into her white face.

  “Thea! You’re shaking. What the devil’s happened?” The grey eyes changed, took on the rare stabs of green. “Is it Venetia?”

  “Blake ... she’s gone!” She flinched from the excruciating dig of his thumbs. “I’ve been to her room. The bed hasn’t been slept in, and her locked suitcase is on the floor ... it’s packed. I spoke to the boys...”

  He let her go so suddenly that she staggered, but the next moment she was running after him, into the house, and through to Venetia’s bedroom. She stood panting while he flung wide the wardrobe doors.

  “She can’t have taken much,” Thea said thinly. “Most of her coats and dresses are still there.”

  He wrenched open a drawer, then turned from it to examine the shot bolt of the french window. His silence rasped her.

  “It doesn’t matter how she went, Blake. She’s gone, probably with the intention of getting a lift into Ellisburg. She couldn’t take the case because it was too heavy. She ... went out in the dark—”

  “Be quiet,” he said savagely.

  Her years of self-discipline were washed away by a tide of fury and foreboding. “Why should I be quiet! If Venetia’s run away you’ve driven her to it. You’ve never tried to make her happy, to make her feel wanted here. She’s always been afraid of you. It’s a terrible thing to marry someone you don’t love.”

  “For God’s sake mind your own business! You know nothing about it!”

  “So you do acknowledge that Venetia’s too loyal to confide in me. You have learned that much about her—”

  “Save it,” he cut in grimly. “If she’s walking she can’t have got far. There’ll be no traffic about yet.”

  “She may have lost her way in the darkness.”

  His teeth snapped. “Thea, for the love of heaven! I can imagine all the horrors for myself.” In clipped tones he added, “There’s a possibility that she arranged for someone in town to pick her up.”

  “All the people she knows were here last night.”

  “Except young Mansfield.”

  The look in his face scared her. “Where are you going?” she asked.

  He made no answer.

  Thea followed him out. She heard him bark the names of the boys and launch at them a spate of Kaffir.

  At the study she slowed. As if from habit she turned the handle and thrust the door ajar. She twisted and beckoned towards the kitchen, cried out in an urgent, husky whisper:

  “Blake! Quickly!”

  He came behind her. She felt the sharp yet long-drawn intake of his breath and his hands hard on her shoulders as he moved her aside.

  Venetia, still wearing the pyjamas and sky-blue silk dressing-gown was in the chair at the desk. A shaft of sunshine fell across the radiant head as it lay sideways on her out-stretched arm. At first it looked as if she slept exhaustedly, like a child. Then her breathing became audible, irregular with a hoarseness in it, and both saw the strange flush and the moving yet soundless lips.

  Blake touched her hand, drew from it a crumpled sheet of paper and lifted her back against the chair. “She’s ill, Thea!”

  She nodded. “Looks like a chill. Carry her into the bedroom and try to rouse her. I’ll take a look through the medicine chest and we’ll dose her with something till Paul can get here.”

  With nightmarish haste, Thea found some tablets and drew a glass of water from the tap. When she reached the dressing-gown was in the chair at the desk. A shaft of bedroom Blake already had Venetia lying between the sheets and was vigorously chafing her hands. The purplish lids flickered, feverish eyes stared up, unseeing, and closed again.

  With a break in her voice, Thea said: “It’s more than a chill, Blake. I think it’s a nervous collapse as well. Paul will have to decide the treatment. I’d arranged to meet him, so if I go now he’ll be here very soon. I’ll have to go on to th
e hospital, but I’ll come back the minute I’m free.”

  Blake spoke thickly. “Get a move on, Thea. Somehow I’ll get her to take these tablets.”

  But Venetia could not be awakened. Her body, when Blake held it, burned through the thin pyjamas. Her skin was dry and her head sagged to one side. Her breathing was a shallow rattle.

  When Paul arrived twenty minutes later he confirmed Thea’s opinion. Venetia had caught a chill last night, and spending the small hours out of bed had aggravated it. The unconsciousness was due to a breakdown in the nervous system. She was strong, she’d get through, but it would take time.

  “Our first task is to lower her temperature. I’ll send out a nurse.” Paul paused, not looking at Blake’s lean, taut face. “I hate to say this, Blake, but it will be best if you’re not about when she comes to. She mustn’t be agitated.”

  Levelly, Blake said, “You’re the doctor.”

  Mid-morning, Paul was once more waiting for Thea in the Sisters’ office at the hospital. She came in and closed the door behind her, leaned back on it as if for support. Then she gave him the ghost of a smile.

  “Thanks for sending me a note the minute you got back from Bondolo. You really think she’ll be all right?

  “The pneumonia’s mild—she could be clear of it in three days. You’re flat out, darling. Why the deuce don’t they provide you with a decent armchair!”

  “If they made us too comfortable there’d be a superabundance of nurses, and that wouldn’t do.” She subsided into the chair at the desk. “What about the ... nerve trouble?”

  He let out a sigh. “It’s serious. I feel inclined to pass the case over to the hospital neurologist.”

  “No, don’t do that! It would do no end of harm if she realized that she was in the hands of a specialist. Besides, we know the cause of her illness—another doctor wouldn’t.”

  “But do we know the cause of it? You say Blake has treated her badly, but I disagree. In fact, I think you’ve got the wrong angle entirely. For one thing you were sure she’d packed the bag to run away, but Blake told me that he’d grown so worried about her that he’d decided to take her to Umsanga today for a short holiday. He’d told her yesterday.”

  Pensively she rested an elbow on the desk. Blake, too, had been persuaded that Venetia had run away—she might have been trying to escape from the trip to Umsanga.

  “It’s hard to believe that such things are happening in one’s own family. However you look at it, Blake is the cause of her collapse. D’you think she’d recover more quickly away from him?”

  “Frankly, I don’t. He’s so shot away by the unexpectedness of this illness that he’s sure to be tender with her. Venetia’s the sort to respond to that sort of treatment in time. But nervous breakdown is tricky. No two cases are identical, and some of them take quite a while to clear up.” He bent over and kissed the top of her head. “Don’t let this get under your skin; there’s no need to postpone our wedding. If Venetia isn’t fit by then we’ll do it quietly.”

  “Paul!” She grasped his wrist between both her hands. “We’re not marrying for six weeks. You can’t mean that it’ll take that long to make her well?”

  “You’re a nurse, my love. You know as well as I do that her cure won’t depend on medicine. By the way, to all those people who are bound to enquire about her, she has pneumonia with complications.”

  “Complications,” echoed Thea dimly. “Poor Venetia.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  MORE than a week passed before Venetia left her bed. She didn’t very much want to get up then, but Nurse Manning had been instructed by Paul to get her moving, so at about noon that day the strong arm took Venetia’s light weight from the bed to a chair.

  The nurse said: “That’s better. Now you have a change of view. The appetite always picks up as soon as you start getting about.”

  Deftly the woman stripped the bed and remade it with fresh linen. She bundled up the soiled sheets and pillowcases and bore them out of the room.

  Venetia sat facing the french window. The glass doors were closed because rain had cooled the atmosphere, but the vent above them was wide, and had she bothered she could have taken deep breaths of aromatic air. But it was almost too much trouble to breathe at all.

  The days had moved slowly by, each a succession of daylight hours patterned to some extent by routine but otherwise lifeless, followed by a long, drug-induced sleep from which she roused reluctantly and unrefreshed. She was not sad or yearning, she was not bitter or desperate; she was nothing at all. The week-end following Thea’s engagement party was a blank in her mind, but she was not sufficiently interested to ask someone to fill it in for her.

  It was as if a wind had blown out the candle flame of her life and left her heart beating.

  A few minutes later Blake came into the room from the corridor. He bent and kissed Venetia’s cheek.

  “It’s great to see you up,” he said. “Paul says that if the rain holds off you can sit on the veranda tomorrow, but I think he’s going rather fast. Is your head clear?”

  “Yes.”

  He pulled forward another chair and sat on the arm of it. “You’ll soon be ready to do some reading. I’ve brought you a couple of chunky novels from town, and there’s a new supply of English periodicals in—that’s two lots you haven’t read. You’ve slacked for ten days.” In the manner of a man who has learned the craftsmanship of the one-sided conversation, he went on without haste, “The servants are going haywire without you to keep them in order. We’ll have to keep on Nurse Manning, if only to prepare your meals. She makes a first-class job of an invalid tray, doesn’t she?”

  With an effort, she said: “She must be expensive. I’ll soon be able to look after myself.”

  “Of course you will, but we won’t take risks while the weather’s unsettled. These autumn rains will stop soon, and the air will be drier and clearer. Our winters are perfect and wonderfully healthy. Are you tired?”

  “A little.”

  “How long have you been up?”

  “I don’t know, but my back aches.”

  “The nurse is having her lunch. I’ll get you into bed.” Blake did not make her walk, as the nurse had. He turned down the bedclothes and gently carried her to the bed. Easily he took off her dressing-gown, and then he pulled up the light covering.

  “Want anything?”

  “No, thank you.”

  “You’ll try to eat more, won’t you?” he said. “I’m so very anxious to have you well again.”

  When he had gone, Venetia lay staring at the white ceiling. She felt safest like this, with no will to speak of and her physical well-being in the hands of a doctor and nurse. She hoped they would not make her get up again.

  But they did. Next day Paul himself helped her out of bed and he wouldn’t give her any more support than that of a grip at her elbow.

  “Good heavens,” he said, “I’m a poor, worn doctor! Don’t expect me to carry around a girl of nineteen. Come on, let’s go outside.”

  He led her to the veranda, left her standing alone against a pillar, and carelessly sat upon the wall and lit a cigarette.

  “Want one?” he asked.

  “No, thanks.”

  “Angry with me?”

  “What for?”

  “Dragging you out into the broad light of day. You’ve been like a silkworm in a cocoon. You were fit enough to get up several days ago, but that husband of yours was terrified of a relapse. You gave him a pretty bad shock, you know.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “You’d better be sorry enough to pull round quickly. What with sitting beside you night after night and worrying himself sick, Blake’s not too grand, either. You must have seen that for yourself.”

  She hadn’t. In fact she had not properly looked at Blake since the night of Thea’s party. Nor did she wish to. He was there, kind and thoughtful, ever ready to do the smallest thing for her comfort, and had he been absent she would have missed him. But
to examine his face, to become aware, perhaps, that his eyes were strained at the corners and the grey streaks at his temples more pronounced, was at the moment beyond her capacity.

  “I’m better now,” she said. “He can stop worrying.”

  Paul took another pull at his cigarette and as if absent-mindedly he drew forward a wicker chair for her. When she was seated, he said:

  “Thea’s coming to see you this afternoon. Believe it or not, she’s getting quite nervous as our wedding approaches.” He grinned. “These Garrards are frauds—flinty exteriors but soft and vulnerable inside. They need normal people like us to manage them, Venetia.” He shot back his cuff in characteristic fashion and consulted his watch. “I must go. You’ll be all right here till the nurse finds you. So long.”

  When Venetia returned to her bedroom she found the bed neatly covered and the fluted pillow at its head; a divan had been placed against one wall.

  “If you rest on the divan during the day,” Nurse Manning said, “you’ll sleep at night without a sedative. When you’re convalescing it’s change you need, and plenty of it.”

  Vaguely Venetia knew that it was ungrateful in her to accept all they did with docility and disinterest, but her mind was still too ill to exert itself. She lay on the divan, ate a scrap of steamed fish and some junket for lunch, and slipped into that slightly bemused condition in which nothing has much importance.

  It was about a quarter to four when Thea brought in some tea. For a minute or two she stood looking down at the wan child who was her sister-in-law. Then Venetia opened her eyes, and Thea smiled and sank into a nearby chair.

  “Paul told me you were up. Did your legs feel rocky?”

  “Not only rocky—full of pins and needles.”

  “That phase soon passes. Shall I pour tea?”

  Venetia nodded. Thea knew that she would sooner have been left alone in the bedroom, without tea. This was the most dangerous period in such disorders—the deadly apathy while the body was still weak. The next week or two were crucial.