Love This Stranger

by Rosalind Brett

  The following Tuesday he drove Tess and her luggage to catch the north-bound express. He bought her some magazines, cigarettes and a tin of chocolates, and strolled up and down the platform with her.

  Sirens created a commotion. Richard put her into her booked seat, smiled and pressed her shoulder.

  “Send me a wire when you’re coming back,” he said. “I’ll meet you.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  PARSBURG had shrunk and become rather dingy. After the dense greenness of the coast the trees looked stunted and gasping, the palms sere, and the gardens pathetic little patches of colour in the everlasting pall of pinkish dust. Fleetingly, because it was unwise as yet to bring Dave too vividly to mind, she recalled his assertion that she wouldn’t think much of Zinto if she had known other places.

  It was not till Tess had booked her hotel room and was signing the register that she remembered Martin. Pen poised, she asked, “Mr. Cramer isn’t here now, is he?”

  The manager’s wife first stared, then became animated. “Of course! You’re Miss Bentley of the Zinto store — hardly recognized you, my dear, and in any case I seldom have local residents staying here. Haven’t you heard?”

  “About what?”

  “Mr. Cramer. He disappeared and left his things behind. My husband got worried and called in the police, but they couldn’t discover anything...”

  Extraordinary how completely Martin had receded from her existence, thought Tess. The woman was still talking.

  “... not too good for the reputation of the hotel, so we were glad when they dropped enquiries. A month passed and we decided the whole thing had blown over. Then there was a startling case in the Parsburg Advertiser. A native had given information to the police that a young white man had bought a hut in one of the kraals and was living in it. Who should it turn out to be but our Mr. Cramer. He was brought to court, and pleaded that he hadn’t known, that living with natives was against the law.”

  “Oh,” said Tess faintly. “Did they ... sentence him?”

  “No, two doctors certified that he was too sick to go to prison. He was extradited — isn’t that the word? The police came here again about ten days ago, and packed and labelled his cases. They were sent to a hospital in Switzerland.”

  “Oh, God.” Tess murmured it shakily, like the prelude to a prayer.

  She scrawled an illegible signature and turned at once to follow the boy who waited with her luggage in the tiny, old-fashioned lift.

  In her small, dusty room she stood with her back against the door, fighting down a dreadful dizziness. In a moment she moved to an old wicker chair and subsided into it, eyes closed.

  Stupid to blame herself. She wasn’t responsible for Martin’s actions. Come to that, she had had as much reason to behave abnormally as he had, but she had done the sensible thing: gone away for a holiday to give circumstances a chance of improving. Except, of course, that she had grounds for believing that Dave loved her, whereas Martin was a man without hope. She hadn’t been fair to him, but through Martin she had behaved even more badly to Dave.

  By morning’s glaring sunlight, Martin faded a little. She had come to Parsburg with a purpose, the first step being to find out whether Dave had yet returned to Zinto. Perhaps the simplest means would be to call on the bookseller who supplied him with newspapers and periodicals; almost certainly he would renew his order at once.

  After breakfast she crossed to the post-office to collect her mail. A quick glance through the half-dozen envelopes, and her hopes, which had wishfully begun a cautious soaring, dropped back to zero. There were two letters from Gerald and one from Alan, some bulky accounts sheets from the lawyer, two pages of close script from the Johannesburg matron she had met in Lourenco Marques and a couple of trade circulars announcing still more ways in which to entice the natives to yield up their pay. She tore up the latter, and slipped the other four into her bag.

  Resolutely she went to the neat bookshop. The elderly woman assistant came forward, disguised a quirk of surprise at the familiar figure in an unfamiliar and beautifully simple linen suit, and smiled a welcome.

  “Good morning, Tess. We thought you’d left these parts for good. Can I help you?”

  “I’ll take the Advertiser and a couple of magazines. Yes, those will do.” Tess paused, leafing through a book which lay on the stand at her side. Without looking up, she asked, “Is the new store owner one of your customers?”

  “He wasn’t at first — till his wife came. She opened an account with us right away. A nice, homely sort of woman.”

  “I’m glad. I suppose Zinto is back to usual now that Mr. Paterson is home?”

  “Is he home?” The woman was perplexed and eager. “When did he arrive?”

  “I was guessing. I only got in myself last night.”

  “Then I think your guess must be wrong, Tess. Mrs. Arnold of Inchfaun was in here the other day and she didn’t mention Mr. Paterson at all. Yet she told me herself about a month ago that Mr. Arnold is looking after Zinto and that she would let me know the date of Mr. Paterson’s return, so that he shouldn’t miss his periodicals. Will that be all? Thank you.”

  So! Tess came out into the sunshine and drew a long, unsteady breath. What now? A casual visit to Cath Arnold in search of the latest information? Would it strike the Arnolds as odd that she should part with a large taxi fare in order to spend a friendly hour with them? Cath was as capable as the next woman of sorting the, important features from a seemingly innocuous conversation, but Tess was in a condition to risk a good deal. She wouldn’t hear the gossip, anyway, and only the meanest-souled woman would repeat it to Dave.

  According to Mrs. Marais, Dave had intended being away from eight to ten weeks. This was his ninth week, so he might be on the plane for Johannesburg. Supposing she learned from Cath that he was due home within a few days, what could she do about it? Very little, it would seem. Previously, Dave had come often to town, to the bank or the post-office, to the seed merchant or the co-operative depot. He had also made friends at the Sports Club. She knew, him well enough to be certain that he would find out where she was staying, and if he still smarted a messenger would be sent daily to Parsburg, and Dave would reserve his social calls till the evening, when there might be little chance of an encounter.

  And, of course, Daye did still smart, or he would have written her, however briefly and cynically. But that aspect Tess firmly thrust away, for subconsciously she was convinced that even Dave could not go on wounding her when he became aware of her regret and willingness to atone. Perhaps — her heart leapt — he would hear about Martin and realize that she had obeyed his will after all. He would hurry to her and take her into his arms, curse himself for a savage-tempered brute.

  She had come to a standstill beneath a cement portico. Blindly, she gazed at the wide entrance to an office block. Oh yes — the lawyer. Might as well get that over. She mounted the white stone steps to the upper floor, walked along the corridor and automatically turned left and into the small office where a typist presided. Five minutes later she had passed through to the lawyer’s sanctum.

  She listened, not very intently, to his explanations regarding the account, and wrote a cheque to cover the debt.

  “I have transferred an amount of three thousand four hundred to your brother Alan in London,” he said, “and sent Gerald a full statement of the financial transactions. I presume you will no longer wish me to act for you?”

  “Seeing that we’ve gone out of business,” she shrugged, “there’s nothing for you to do. But tell me something. How did we really come out — we Bentleys? What did the business and stock fetch, apart from the property?”

  “It’s easy enough to work out. The buildings and land were valued at two thousand six hundred.”

  “Was Mr. Paterson told of the valuation?”

  “It was he who authorized it, when he made the deed of gift. I gave him the figure and he was very pleased. I remember him saying you deserved it.”

  “
How kind.”

  “In just a few months Mr. Paterson has increased the value of the property by about ten per cent,” the lawyer said, “though his instructions are to sell at the amount he paid.”

  She sat motionless for a minute. Then, with desperate deliberation, she got out cigarettes and matches. She lit up and blew a cloud of smoke, folded the few papers which rested on her side of the desk and inserted them into her bag.

  “So he’s ... giving up Zinto?”

  “Exactly, and I already have someone interested. It won’t even be necessary to advertise the farm or to put it into the hands of an estate agent.” The man was mentally rubbing his hands.

  Carefully, Tess enquired, “When is Mr. Paterson coming here?”

  “He isn’t coming. We’ve been corresponding about this matter and he is leaving the sale entirely in my hands. It’s my belief that very soon I shall be in a position to send him the documents for signature, and after that the transfer will take a matter of weeks.”

  “You mean ... he’s never coming this way again?”

  The man laughed good-humouredly. “That is his intention. I’m afraid others don’t take to our countryside as we do. In his opinion Zinto is dried-up and godforsaken.”

  “Will he remain in Lokola?”

  “I rather think he will. There’s a mine in which he owns a share, and within days of his arrival at the place he was asked to give technical assistance at a government mine in the district. Men like Paterson are soon snapped up for good positions in the tropics.”

  “What about the car he left in a garage in Johannesburg?”

  “I’ve sold it for him.”

  “And the house furniture?”

  “It goes with the property.”

  Tess paused, willing herself to get up and go. But she had to ask it. “Has Mr. Paterson ever mentioned the store in his letters?”

  “He did in the first one. Apparently Mr. Arnold wrote him that you had moved out and he wanted reassurance from me that all the monies had been correctly apportioned between you and Alan, and paid out.”

  “That was all?”

  The lawyer nodded. “Are you settling in Parsburg?”

  “No, I’m not.” Tess was surprised to find that her legs would hold her. She went to the door. “Goodbye, and thanks for all you’ve done for my brothers and me.”

  She walked back to the hotel and took the stairs to her room. Without hesitation she dragged out her trunk and began to fold into it the dresses she had hung out last night. Once or twice she tried to blink the ache from her eyes and to swallow on the burning obstruction in her throat. This was worse than if he had died, this purposeful severing of every link with which he considered past folly. Well, at least she had the slap in the face to remember him by. And the pain would have to lessen. It couldn’t possibly go on tearing her apart like this.

  The midnight train from Greenside carried Tess away for good. She sat up through the dark hours fighting down the bitterness and the shattering sense of hopelessness and loss. The sun rose above the thick green trees of the coastal belt and washed in lurid streams across an ultramarine back-cloth. She refused breakfast but drank some coffee.

  At eight o’clock the train pulled in to Port Cranston. Tess had her belongings transferred to a taxi and directed the driver to the hotel. They passed along the Esplanade; to the left stretched the line of date palms in close-cropped grass and the white beach lapped by a slumbrous blue ocean.

  The taxi curved up the drive and was paid off. Two native boys dealt with the luggage. Tess mounted the steps to the elegant porch and gazed dully into the eyes of Richard Barnwell.

  For a moment neither spoke. All his attention was concentrated upon her incredible lack of colour and the smudges under her eyes, her entire appearance of defeat and grief.

  Instead of the swift exclamation of pleasure which had risen to his lips, he said gently: “You’ve travelled all night. You must be very tired, Tess.”

  “I feel ready to drop dead,” she said unemotionally. “In fact, I wish I could.”

  BOOK II

  CHAPTER ONE

  A MOUNTAIN range smothered in giant ferns, the clefts packed tight with wild banana and tall, stringy rubber trees, meandered between the coastline arid Lokola. Streams spouted high up in the green faces, joined in a foaming waterfall to form an inland river which, before it had channelled a dozen miles, seeped out on each side into the tangled jungle, creating a formidable swamp which had so far proved an unbridgeable barrier to railway construction. The ores mined in the region had to travel across country on a narrow-gauge track to meet the main line.

  The white residents of Lokola numbered fourteen, and of these nine lived in the sedate houses at the station proper, and the other five dwelt in four oblong mud houses with thatched roofs which had been set up in a small clearing about half a mile to the north. One of the four houses was Dave Paterson’s.

  Years ago, when he had first come to Lokola, Dave had been allotted a splendid white house alongside the district officer’s. But he had quickly tired of the stilted atmosphere and monotonous parties patronized by the same few people; more to his taste was a stroll up the track for a game of cards and an exchange of yarns with Walton, the palm-oil trader, and Brigham, who at that time had no particular occupation beyond scratching below the surface of the red-brown earth for signs of copper and tin. Redding wasn’t a bad chap, either, so long as one veiled one’s curiosity as to the source of his ivory supplies.

  When he had driven away from Lokola presumably for good, he thought he had abandoned his dwelling to damp rot and the swift disintegration which attends anything that is uncared for in such places. But Walton, that far-seeing, gentle, sly comrade, had ordered a weekly cleaning and airing of the place. Upon his return, Dave had found his house and furniture much as he had left them, except for the heaps of ant-dust inside the cupboards, a sagging thatch and several rotten floorboards. And Luke Walton was there, pleased and unsurprised, his long rangy body propped against the door-frame while he watched Dave’s cursory inspection of the couple of rooms.

  Luke had said calmly: “You can borrow some of my blankets and linen and china till yours come through from the coast. I expect you’ve ordered supplies?”

  “Not yet, but I will.”

  Luke had given a satisfied sigh. “I don’t want to know why you’re back, Dave — but I’m glad you are. It hasn’t been the same here without you.”

  Dave had nodded across at the tidy bed and the clean lamp on the bedside table. “Looks as if you were expecting me.”

  “Well, you wouldn’t sell up the tin workings and often your letters sounded sort of savage. I just couldn’t see you growing roots among orange trees — not unless you picked up a wife and decided to go in for a family.”

  “Forget it, Walt,” had been the brief reply.

  Luke had promptly obeyed. He gave the news. Brigham still lived next door with the Malay, but since the woman had had a baby she was not so well and was seldom seen; probably she was again pining for her own people. Redding had done a lunatic thing only a month ago — married a woman he had run into at Freetown and brought her here to live with him; a dark, good-looking creature who had obviously used him as a get-out from some mess or other. She despised poor old Redding because he was fifty and hadn’t quite the polish of a gentleman; she hated Brigham for a “fat, degenerate toad,” and tolerated Luke Walton because he himself was tolerant and kind.

  “Her name is Avia,” he ended. “God knows where she originated or what she’s been through in her twenty-eight years, but one thing is certain — she hooked Redding because she was hard up, that’s all. What I can’t get at is why she didn’t marry someone working in Freetown and grab herself a gay time.”

  Dave had made a disinterested comment. Later, when he had met Avia Redding and heard Brigham’s ribald view of the marriage, he concluded, still without interest, that the woman had been married before and that possibly her union with Redding was bi
gamous. One continually came up against the unconventional in equatorial Africa.

  News came through that the orange farm was sold, and later his bank advised that the purchase money had been paid in. Within four months of shaking off the pungent-sweet scent of Zinto, he was back where he had been two years ago ... except that now he was without any objective beyond the expert handling of his machinery and squads of natives.

  Gradually, he revised his estimate of Avia Redding; there couldn’t be a lot of harm in a woman who succeeded in being a fairly good wife to someone for whom she had an undeniable contempt. Her tropic pallor, her age and obvious sophistication, placed her in a familiar category. Dave accepted her story that she had come out from England five years ago to teach and nurse at a native mission and had rocked the settlement to its worm-eaten foundations by marrying a Belgian seaman. Sheer filthy luck, of course, that the man should succumb to a fever and Avia find herself alone, penniless and ostracized. She had been tossing up whether to return to an unpalatably strenuous life in London or to offer her services to a hospital in Freetown when Francis Redding had suggested a more comfortable way out.

  “Do you blame me?” she once asked Dave, challengingly.

  “No — so long as you’ve the sense to realize that this can’t last. I give you a year at most with Redding.”

  Avia had smiled and slanted at him a smoky glance. “That will be enough. You underestimate your own magnetism, Dave. I’m already curious about you.”

  “Curiosity won’t get you anywhere,” he had told her bluntly.

  She had shrugged, undismayed. “We’re both civilized, and I’ve learned the value of being a white woman in a masculine red hell. I’ve also heard rumours about you. Tut, tut, David.”

  Avia certainly possessed an undemanding and rather subtle charm. Experience had taught her restraint and the incalculable worth of a cool brain, however torrid the atmosphere; and where her deepest desires were at stake her patience was infinite.