“I came in for some cigarettes. Do you keep Viceroy?”
“A few. Fifty?”
“Thanks. I haven’t brought any money. Will you charge them to Cath?”
“I’d rather not. You can pay next time you’re this way.”
Mariella tapped a varnished nail on the flat red packet and the toe of her snake-skin sandal kept pace with it. Her tongue moistened the pink-tan lips, and then, quite suddenly, she said: “Cheerio. Come up some time, won’t you?” and hurried out.
Martin, who had been sitting behind the opposite counter pencilling an order, looked up with a quizzical smile. “She’s in a state of exquisite torture. She’d have unloaded if I hadn’t been here.”
“Thank the lord you were,” said Tess fervently. “Mariella’s confidences might be somewhat embarrassing.”
“How old is she?”
“About twenty-five.”
“Time she married. She’s losing her poise and becoming over-sexed.”
Idly, Tess questioned, “Isn’t that how men like them?”
“I don’t,” he answered briefly, and bent once more over the pad.
Mariella never did pay for the cigarettes. For a few more mornings she went up to the farm and then her visits abruptly ended. Tess concluded that Dave was working at the other end of the estate, and that for Mariella the pool alone was insufficient attraction.
Tess had forgotten Mariella till the morning when little Hazel Arnold, Cath’s offspring, tripped into the store and loudly proclaimed to Jacob that she sought his “missus.” Tess came out from the office.
“Goodness, Hazel,” she exclaimed, to the child’s delight, “don’t tell me you came all that way on your new pony!”
“Course not” — though she swaggered — “my mommie’s outside in our car. She says you’re to go out and speak to her, but I have to stay with Martin and not make myself a nuisance.”
“Martin’s busy. Jacob will look after you and give you some lollipops.”
Cath Arnold sat behind the wheel, her panama pushed back to reveal an anxious frown. “Morning, Tess. Come and sit with me.”
“Trouble?” Tess slid into the seat and pulled shut the door. “Everard’s not ill?”
“No. In some ways it’s worse than that.” Seen close, Cath’s plain face had a look almost of disaster. “I’m awfully worried about Mariella.”
“Is she still with you?”
“This is her last week. I’ve been puzzling for days what could be wrong with her and last night she told me. She’s in love with Dave Paterson — not just infatuated — but desperately, heartbreakingly in love.” It took Tess some seconds to absorb this. Before she could comment Cath spoke again.
“Dave flattered her at the beginning and she fell headlong. She’s town-bred, and Dave’s worldliness captured her. I dare say you’ve seen her on her way up to Zinto for a swim?”
“Not lately.”
Cath sighed. “No, not lately. Apparently he put over some story about working too far from home to get back to lunch, so she gave that up. He hasn’t been over to see us recently, so yesterday I sent him an invitation to supper. I expressly mentioned that this was Mariella’s last week, but he declined. She read his note and it all came out.”
“Poor Mariella. Couldn’t she see that he’s not the marrying kind? You should have warned her, Cath.”
“I hardly knew it myself,” she replied unhappily. “He’s settled here, and what more natural than his taking a wife? At one time I even hoped it might be Mariella. She’s normally placid and would suit a man of his temperament.”
“It can’t be so very serious. She hasn’t known him long enough.” Recalling Dave’s remarks the night she had met him at Inchfaun, Tess asked, “Has he made love to her?”
“Lightly, I believe. He’s so practised, and she was willingly deceived.”
So Mariella’s “instinctive wisdom in handling men” had been lavished without result upon Dave Paterson. Tess was not surprised. He had probably realized quite early in the friendship that for all her naked shoulders and archness the girl was basically innocent, and lost interest in the pursuit.
“I came to you,” Cath was saying, “because Mariella begged me to. She has a notion that if you were to ask Dave down to your house for dinner and invite her, too — with Martin as a fourth — she would have a chance of being alone with him. I told her it was rather hopeless.”
Soberly, Tess observed: “She must be sunk, to grovel like that. Dave’s never been inside my house. He’d think I’d gone mad.”
“But you could try it, Tess.”
Tess said queerly, “You don’t expect me to do it?”
“Is it pleading for so very much? Put yourself in Mariella’s place — or thank God from the bottom of your heart that you’re not in it. Love with no outlet is a terrible thing.”
“He’ll say no, and Mariella will drown a second time.”
“But we must attempt it for her, Tess.”
After Cath and the sticky Hazel had departed, Tess wondered if she had given in too easily. She hated the thought of Dave entering her lack-lustre rooms, being sarcastic to Martin, inflicting the death-blow on Mariella, and driving carelessly home with a tune on his lips.
With foreboding, at twelve-thirty, she drove out the jeep. The track was smoother than when she had last come this way, and the pickers were industriously stripping the Valencias, canvas bags slung over their shoulders and bright, oiled clippers in hand.
Tess stopped the jeep under the green spikes of a palm. Her knees actually trembled, but she sternly commanded herself to remember Mariella, and use control. Nevertheless, she could not hurry to the dazzling, open lawn.
A boy, whose confiding smile She connected with Dave’s grocery lists, came out to tell her that the boss was not yet here. Would she please sit down and drink? She recognized the formula and firmly stated that she preferred to wait in the garden. By the time Dave, apprised of her presence by his boy, had joined her, her resolution was wilting.
“Hello,” she said awkwardly.
“Hello to you. What’s biting?”
He was grimy, his shirt clung with sweat and he was tired with a morning in the sun. She wished profoundly that she had not come.
“It’s a friendly call, though I dare say I could have chosen a better hour for it. Will you come down and have dinner with me tomorrow night?”
His eyes narrowed. “Why — expecting a police raid?”
“You needn’t be insulting.”
“I’m afraid I distrust you in hospitable mood. Tell me outright what’s wrong and I’ll do what I can to help.”
“Nothing’s wrong. I’m merely asking you to dinner.”
“Not without a motive — not you. Let’s reverse it, and you come here.”
“Alone?”
An unpleasant little smile pulled back one corner of his mouth. “I see. You’re planning a party. Count me out, little one.”
Tess drew a rueful breath. “I suppose there is a way of approaching you that gets results. You’re not completely insensitive.”
“That line won’t get you anywhere, either. Mariella bores me, more so since she has you enlisted as Cupid.”
Tess was stung by his half-sneering tone. “You made love to her, raised her to some seventh heaven and left her to slide out of it as best she could. You’re enjoying a silent laugh at her expense...”
“Now, now, no histrionics!”
“You’re a brute and a beast. It wouldn’t tax you to meet her for the last time and be pleasant. You owe her that.”
“My dear child, if anything, Mariella owes me a bit. I suffered her for weeks before showing her the door, and it’s hardly my fault if she fancies herself in love with me.”
“So you don’t care?”
“I don’t intend losing sleep over it, and you’re an idiot to become involved in the business.”
“Well, that seems to dispose of the matter.”
She began retracing
her way to the jeep, with Dave close behind. He caught at her elbow. “Come in and have lunch with me.”
“No, thanks. Katie has mine ready. Besides, I’d rather not look at you for a few days.”
His laugh was grim. “We judge these affairs from opposing viewpoints. The fact of being loved by someone entails no obligation. Perhaps it’s unholy in me to compare Mariella with Cramer — he’s of finer stuff, and your relationship with him is purely intellectual ... isn’t it?”
A faint bitterness crept into her voice. “I’m not in love with Martin, but I could never hurt him as you’ve hurt Mariella. If I did, it would stay with me for the rest of my life.”
She did not linger to experience more of his cynicism. Everything he said seemed to have sharp edges, and they were beginning to stab her bewilderingly, so that she was afraid his next remark would turn in her heart, like a sword.
Her foot on the accelerator, she sat looking before her at the speeding track, stubbornly ignoring her emotions as one might strive to ignore a leopard in the undergrowth, hoping it would vanish before one looked again. She had to brake and draw in under the pines which flanked her gate, to sit with arms crossed on the wheel, her fingers clinging to it as one clings to ease a physical pain, her head down, her mind fighting an unconquerable tide.
Half an hour passed before she could stir to go indoors and put into words on notepaper Dave’s refusal to bid farewell to Mariella.
CHAPTER FOUR
MARTIN was preparing for his trip to Johannesburg. They had decided to leave his rickety sports car in the garage. Tess would drive him to Greenside, which was on the main line, and from there he would catch an express from the coast. Owing to the infrequency of the train service he would be gone six days. He complained that six days was much too long.
During the last month his features had sharpened, heightening his aesthetic good looks. It was natural that he should be anxious, but Tess, examining him at odd moments, thought his worries groundless. She prayed that the doctor would give him the news he craved; prayed it as much for herself as for him, for if Martin were free and whole her immediate problem would be resolved. Quite soon, her father would be back and they could discuss the future. Never before had the future assumed such importance.
She and Martin went to Parsburg to buy his ticket and a new suitcase. They had dinner at the hotel and looked in at the tiny town hall for an hour to watch a very old film. When they came out into the cool, starry night he tucked her arm in his and set out briskly for the car park. She returned his smile.
“You forgot the haircut, Martin.”
“So I did. Does it look awful?”
“Longish at the back, but it suits you.”
“I’ll try to remember to have it off as soon as I reach Jo’burg.” He squeezed her arm against his side. “We must do this often when I come back. If all goes well I’ll trade in the old bus for a new one. There ought to be another cheque in the mail soon.”
“Then when Ned’s here — if he’s all right — we could go to the coast for a short holiday. I haven’t been to the sea for nearly three years.”
“Haven’t you?” He looked at her tenderly. “You’ve had a strange sort of life for a girl, haven’t you? I’d like to give you all the things you’ve missed.”
“Incidentally,” she said quietly, “they’d coincide with things you’ve missed, too. You don’t have to walk so fast for me, Martin.”
“Sorry. Tonight I feel like running and singing.” He did hum to himself in the car, and even cruised along for a while with his left arm across her back. At the house he got out with her and held wide the gate. It closed between them, but they remained near, holding hands in a familiar, amicable way. Then he let her fingers go and took light hold of her shoulders, pressing her to him while his face hid in her hair.
“You’re not putting up with this to be kind?” he whispered unsteadily.
“Don’t be silly.”
“I can feel your heart beating.”
“Yours is doing overtime.”
“Tess,” his clasp tightened, “you’re so wonderfully sweet. I’m scared of losing you.”
“You’re being silly again.”
“Damned silly,” he agreed, and a tremor ran through him.
She felt the movement of his mouth close to her ear, the shy exploration of his hands over her shoulder-blades and the gate denting the soft flesh of her side. After which there was coldness where his warmth had been. “Good night,” he muttered, and swiftly got into the car.
The following Friday they left early for Greenside. In a new grey suit with a darker grey silk shirt and a crocus-blue tie, Martin looked young and handsome. While they wound over dun-coloured hills and through somnolent dorps, he enlarged upon a couple of ideas which he hoped to expand into articles on his way north.
“It’s funny,” he said. “When I first came to Zinto I could only write in the quietest surroundings, and here I’m planning to utilize a train journey. Your influence again, Tess.”
“Good food and plenty of sleep,” she corrected him. “I hope you’ll find a quiet hotel.”
“It won’t matter. One of these days I’ll take you to Johannesburg just to show you how lucky you are not to live there.”
The train came in a quarter of an hour late and remained at the platform for twenty minutes. Both Tess and Martin chafed at those twenty minutes for whatever they said was a repetition of earlier conversation and neither relished an atmosphere of anticlimax. Tess boarded the train and inspected Martin’s bunk, stood with him in the corridor and watched the native children playing in the rubble street of a small location of railway workers. The sordidness was appalling.
With a sense of release she heard the slam of carriage doors and hurried from the carriage with Martin. The world was right side up again, bustling and vivid. He held both her wrists.
“There won’t be time for corresponding, Tess.”
“No. I’ll meet the train next Wednesday.”
“Good-bye, my dear.”
“Good-bye.” Involuntarily, she raised her lips, and was conscious of his rush of gratitude and devotion as he kissed them. “Good luck, Martin. Good-bye.” He sprawled from the window, long hair whipped forward by the gathering speed of the train, which gradually vanished into the midday haze. Beset by a sudden loneliness, Tess hastened to the jeep and set it moving.
It was in a depressed frame of mind that she went home to supper and to a lesser degree the melancholy mood persisted throughout the week-end. In the days before Martin, when Zinto had stood empty and her only companions were natives, she had never been lost for tasks to fill her leisure. But at the moment, even the old guitar failed her; she must have grown out of its adolescent appeal.
When Dave was working near home he used a gelding instead of the car. The rhythm of a horse under him reminded him of polo at Lokola and the races on the West Coast. It set him thinking about Brigham, Redding and Walton, who had derided his ambition to settle on a farm. They had even offered five to one on his crawling back to Lokola within a year. They would have lost; it was already sixteen months since he had sailed from Accra.
Brigham had written that the mine looked like paying at last. If he wished to sell out there would be no more profitable time than the present. Dave’s reply had told him to mind his own business; no tippling tin-miner was going to advise him about his investments. It did him good to see his own flow of profanity staring up from the notepaper.
Since the peak of the season had passed he had taken to returning mid-morning to the veranda for a refresher. Today, he reined in at the Marais bungalow on his way up, and called to Piet, who was drinking his mug of coffee in the yard with a youngster tugging at each trouser leg.
“Did you send for that seed, Marais?”
“The boy just got back.” Apologetically, Piet shook off his encumbrances and came across to the low fence. “They made him take the lot in a packing-case — said sacks are still scarce.”
“He could have borrowed a dozen at the store on his way up.”
“I asked him why he didn’t and he said the store’s closed.”
Dave pondered. “That’s odd. Didn’t he see anyone?”
“Only old August Mkize. Seems that Tess opened at eight and shut up shop an hour later.”
“She’s well?”
“I guess so — she always is. But I’ll send down again, if you like.”
“No,” said Dave, “I’m going that way myself.”
He backed out the car and nosed it down the track at more than his usual speed. This was Monday and Cramer was not due back till Wednesday. Maybe he should have followed his inclinations yesterday and come down to see her; she couldn’t still be upset over that Carr girl. Though Tess Bentley’s reactions to anything were incalculable.
The Bentley house looked about as drab and lifeless as ever. He drove round, parked at the corner and remained in his seat, speculating. The store was shuttered, not merely locked up for an hour or two while she went into Parsburg. And then he noticed the swaying door of the garage and the jeep inside. Tess must be in the house—in the house, and the store shuttered. What the hell?
He was out of the car and striding across the yard, through the thin line of gum trees and into the wilderness of a garden. At the foot of the steps he had to pause, for Tess was coming out and closing the door behind her. In her white shirt and a short, red skirt made from one of her old dresses she looked about fifteen, but her face had tragic lines of maturity. The blue eyes flickered at him, she took a firmer grasp of her bag and descended to the path.
“What is it?” he said quietly.
Her head bent and he saw her eyes close and her jaw go taut. Her voice had the roughness of swallowed pain.
“I had an air letter this morning from a man in Rio. My father’s dead.”
Instinctively, his arm went round her. “Oh, God. Tell me about it.”
She couldn’t, for a minute. Her shoulder leaned into his chest and she shivered with a fresh surge of grief.
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