African Assignment

by Carol Gregor

  'I agree. Let's try and be civilised about ours.'

  'Civilised!' She had never felt less civilised in her life. She wanted to scream and howl with pain. Instead she said tightly, 'I'll go and pack my things.'

  Mechanically she folded clothes and collected together her few books. Most of her things, she suddenly remembered, were still at the hotel in Nairobi, but she felt too broken to care.

  A girl reporter. She could guess the type. Pushy, self-confident, no doubt with wall-to-wall shoulder-pads and a long line of lovers behind her. The image made her feel very young and insubstantial, and suddenly the thought of home, of her own narrow bed in her own room in Yorkshire, seemed more enticing than anything that was left for her here.

  She walked forlornly out of her room. Cal had gone down to the sea, but his telegram lay discarded on the table. She picked it up, and her eyes widened in shock as she read it.

  Darling! My lucky day. Assigned poaching story. Arriving Mombasa Thursday 5 p.m. Expect days—and nights—of fun. Remember Islamabad? All love and kisses. Tania.

  There was a noise behind her. She turned. 'And just what happened in Islamabad?'

  'It's only a joke.'

  Her eyes stripped across his. Her heart was a raw, beating muscle of pain.

  'You've been her lover!'

  'There's no point exhuming the past.'

  'That means yes.'

  'All right! Yes! Now are you satisfied?'

  'And will be again!'

  'Leave it, Frankie! Every affair has its ending and— Tania or no Tania—everything tells me this is ours.'

  'Well, she seems to think so, at any rate!' she drove on, waving the telegram in the air.

  He shot her a scathing glance. 'Even if she does, these things take two—as I shouldn't have to remind you.'

  She shut her eyes, remembering how the full tropical moon hung over the beautiful plains of Africa. Surely he would find it hard to resist such an available offer? Especially knowing what she knew now about his physical needs and vigour. And why should he, anyway? She would be back in London, just another name from his past. Her eyes filled with tears, but she did not want him to see her pain, so she whirled away from him.

  'You'll be OK, Frankie. You're tougher than you know.'

  'Am I? Well, thanks for the information. I'm sure it'll come in handy some time.'

  He drove her in silence to the airport and booked her onward flight to London. He also telephoned the hotel and arranged for her suitcase to be delivered to the airport. She sat motionless, a bundle of hating misery, until her flight was called.

  'I suppose I can't even kiss you goodbye?' he said.

  She shut her eyes, but he took her in his arms anyway, and she felt the warmth of his arms, the familiar press of his lips. She pushed him away.

  'Go and find Tania. She's probably panting with impatience!'

  'Vulgarity doesn't suit you,' he said sharply.

  'Neither does rejection.' She picked up her bag and began to walk towards the door.

  'Frankie --'

  She looked back, over her shoulder. He was standing motionless. Their eyes met, but there was nothing they could say. 'Goodbye,' he said. And she turned and walked on, and it was over.

  Although many people would have said it was the beginning, not least her friend Alice, who declared she had come back from Africa looking totally wonderful and completely changed.

  'That Cal Fenton must have something about him,' she had fished.

  'He does. A heart of ice and a skin like leather! The only good thing he did for me was to put a camera in my hand,' she said.

  Aunt Jenny was touchingly pleased to see her, when she arrived back in Yorkshire. 'I was worried sick,' she confessed, 'thinking about you out there alone in the bush with that man.'

  'Don't worry, Aunt,' she told her. 'I'm tougher than I look..'

  She rang the Sunday Globe and talked at length about the photo-spread of her work they were planning. 'I think you should come and see me. I think you could probably do some more work for us,' said Doug MacArthur.

  'I'm in Yorkshire,' she said dully. She knew she ought to be jumping round the room in excitement, but she felt half dead with misery, killed by the aching hurt she carried inside.

  'Get a train,' he said, with evident impatience. 'That's if you really want to be a career photographer. If you're only interested in taking holiday snapshots, forget it.'

  'I'll be there,' she said, finally stung into action by his curtness.

  And that was how it started. The Sunday Globe offered her another assignment, which she took, but completed only with the greatest difficulty. She had longed for Cal constantly on a personal level, now she yearned for his professional help and advice as well.

  'It's no good,' she told Doug, after her second attempt at the job. 'I know what I'm trying to do, but I haven't got the skills to achieve it. I need a proper grounding in photography.'

  'You're right. You need to work with a professional. Cal Fenton, someone like that. You know him, don't you?' Doug shuffled impatiently among the spilling papers on his chaotic desk. 'Shall I see what I can fix up for you? All these photographers use assistants from time to time.'

  'No!' She started up, her response so sharp that Doug stared at her in astonishment.

  'He's good,' he said mildly. 'He's the best. Just look at this --' From beneath a tottering pile of photographs he pulled a copy of the Sunday Observer. 'Tomorrow's paper,' he explained. 'Someone brought in an early edition.'

  Her eyes ripped over the front page and Cal's picture leapt out at her. He was leaning against the Land Rover, his eyes narrowed against the sun, his hair blown by the breeze, his expression enigmatic. How could she have forgotten how unbearably handsome he was? Her heart seemed to leap into her throat. Standing close beside him was a glamorous, dark-haired girl in trousers and a safari-shirt, with a triumphant expression on her face. Jealousy rose up like a red mist before her eyes, fogging the print beneath their picture. 'Stopping the carnage at last. . .latest triumph for Sunday Observer's prize-winning team. . .major poaching-gang rounded up. . .considerable personal danger. . .praise from the country's Environment Minister. . .'

  Doug turned the page impatiently. 'Oh, that's just the usual stuff. But just look at these pictures—aren't they something?'

  He was right. And that something was both graphically sickening and electrically triumphant. Cal had not flinched from shooting the gang's handiwork in nauseating detail, nor had he missed a beat of the way they had been stalked and challenged and captured. In the final photograph one poacher lay sprawled shot on the ground; the rest were penned dejectedly in the back of a decrepit lorry whose contours she could remember in every vivid detail. And as she stared at the pictures, the essence of Africa, and of the man she loved, seemed to leap out at her, to overwhelm her senses yet again in an aching flood of loss.

  'They are,' she got out tightly. 'Is the story as good?'

  'Oh, Tania's a tough reporter. They make a great team.'

  'I see.'

  She turned away, frightened that her raging jealousy might show in her eyes.

  'So,' Doug leaned back, looking up at her. 'Why don't you want to work with someone like that? It's the quickest way I know of mastering the job.'

  'Let's just say I know Cal Fenton well enough to know I could never work with him. He's too arrogant,' she said tensely. 'Anyway,' she added quickly, 'what I really want to do is a proper college course. There's a good one in West London that I've heard about.'

  'OK, do it your way.' Doug nodded. 'I'll give you a reference. That should make sure you'll get a place. But how will you afford it?'

  'My father left me some money.' She looked up. 'Mike O'Shea. You might remember him?'

  Doug nodded slowly. 'I did wonder. It explains a lot about your eye for detail. He was a great correspondent. You should be proud of him.'

  'I am, and now I'd like to do something that would have made him proud of me,' she replied, hef
ting her camera-case on to her shoulder. 'I'll come back to you when I feel I'm ready to start working properly, if that's OK?'

  'Do,' he said. 'I look forward to seeing how you turn out.'

  Her weeks at college turned out to be both the shortest and the longest of her life. The days and evenings when she absorbed herself in work seemed to fly by. She loved what she was learning, and was delighted to discover a real flair for her chosen profession. Yet at night, when thoughts of Cal crowded her head, the dark hours seemed endless and tilled with misery. She heard nothing from him, and did not expect to. She was sure he must have virtually forgotten her existence, especially as his work was appearing from every corner of the world, as if he was travelling ceaselessly and working himself into the ground.

  Neither, she lectured herself firmly, did she want to. Someone who could treat her like that, who was so cold and utterly uncaring, was better out of her life forever. But every night, before she slept, she held the photograph of him that she had snapped in the garden of the beach-house, and looked into his darkly smiling eyes, and ached with emptiness inside.

  When the course was finished, she took her portfolio along to the Sunday Globe. Doug grunted in appreciation, then looked up. it's good. I like it. Would you like to do a job for us in Egypt? We've got a writer going out to cover some new excavations in the far south. It'll be rough travelling. No home comforts.'

  She thought quickly. Maybe on boats and planes and trains she would manage to forget Cal, just as he had clearly managed to forget all about her. 'I'd love to.'

  Doug grunted again. 'Good. I'll get some details together, but not now.' He checked his watch. 'God, is it that time already? I've got to go. I promised I'd get to Fenton's opening tonight.'

  Her eyes widened and her heart leapt and banged at the shock of the familiar name. More than six months had gone by since she had last seen him, but it seemed like yesterday, and her mouth was suddenly dry at the knowledge that he was here, in London, close at hand.

  He paused as he shrugged on his jacket. 'Why don't you come? Might learn something. He's the best there is.'

  'I know.' She swallowed. 'What's he opening?'

  'Not him. He's got an exhibition on at the Photographer's Gallery. It opens tomorrow. There's wine and what-not tonight, but it's practically over. I'll have to put my skates on ‑'

  She had a split second to decide. She ought to say no, of course she should, but instead she found herself saying, 'I'd love to', and then they were down the stairs and in a taxi before she could change her mind.

  She was as tense as a bow-string as she walked through the door, but she soon realised that in the crush she would never know if Cal was there or not, and rather than peer nervously through the throng, she detached herself from Doug, and began to tour the exhibition.

  All Cal's usual haunting, powerful images were there, and now, as a professional photographer herself, she could appreciate their technical skill as well as their emotional content. Even so, she moved rapidly, desperately wishing that she had not come. She knew Cal must be somewhere in the room, and she wanted to get away, unscathed, as quickly as she could.

  But there were two sections at the end which stopped her in her tracks. One was called 'colleagues', and showed half a dozen pictures of television crews working under fire, or journalists besieging famous faces. And there, in the middle, laughing out of a picture of a group of men around a cafe table, was her father, his eyes merry, his glass raised to the camera. An ache of love and loss seared through her as she saw his familiar features, frozen in time, and she knew from the surroundings that the picture had been taken in Beirut, and that he must have been toasting one of his last days on this earth.

  She moved on hastily, tears blurring her vision, and stood blinking before the last two pictures in the exhibition. It was a moment before she could read their joint title, 'Two women in Mombasa'. Then she looked up sharply and confronted her own laughing features, looking with shyness and mischief towards the camera as she caught her fallen sarong up to her shoulders.

  The shock held her throat in a vice, flooding her with sensual memories. And the sensuality was there in the picture, too, which hinted at her nakedness behind the thin cotton, and showed the texture of her skin and the intimacy of her relationship with the person behind the lens.

  She looked round sharply, but no one seemed to have noticed her. They were all too busy talking and swigging wine. She looked back. 'Two women. . .' the caption said, and there indeed was the other one. Tania. She knew it instantly. Not only did the woman look familiar, from the crumpled newspaper picture that she had smoothed out and peered at so often in the past lonely months, but also it was the same garden, the same palm trees, the same time of year. Although there the similarities ended. This woman lay on an elegant sun-lounger, dressed in a fashionable swimsuit and a wide straw sunhat. A drink and a newspaper lay by her side, and her hand was raised to pull down her sunglasses and look with knowing, lowered lids at the camera.

  The two photographs had the impact that was clearly intended. She looked young, carefree and sensual. Tania looked cool, controlled and sophisticated. But, she noticed, the latter also had a perfect figure, dark almond eyes and a firm, even mouth.

  Frankie swallowed, the burning sourness of raw jealousy rising in her throat. The sight of the pictures had re-opened all her wounds, until she felt she was raw and bleeding all over.

  She turned, looking for the door, but someone was behind her.

  'Ah, the mystery revealed at last!' said a drawling female voice. She looked up, straight into the same almond eyes which she had just studied in the photograph.

  'Tania.'

  'The very same. Mmm. . .' The tall woman looked down at her with a mocking glance. 'I'm afraid I've no idea who you are --'

  So Cal had never even mentioned her name. Truly she must have been out of sight and out of mind.

  'Francesca O'Shea.' She drew on all the trembling dignity she could muster.

  'Well, well,' Tania drawled, 'I must say, I wondered why our Cal took so long to warm up when we were out in Africa together. I decided he must have caught some nasty tropical disease, and didn't like to tell me. But I can see now that his needs had been very well provided for before I even arrived! He probably needed some R & R before he could get going again.'

  'I don't know what you're talking about.'

  Tania's eyes narrowed, taking in Frankie's glossy curls and green gaze with a jealous stare. 'Come, come. Don't tell me you're a long-lost cousin!'

  'I was his assistant. That's all!'

  'Darling!' Tania's mocking laugh was so loud that heads turned in their direction all around. 'Anyone can see at a glance what your relationship was with the man with the trigger. Assistants don't walk around with no clothes on, for one thing!'

  'You're talking nonsense!'

  'Oh, why bother to deny it? After all, we're both in the same boat.'

  'Excuse me. I have to go.'

  But Tania's eyes held hers. 'He's a disaster for women, you know, an absolute disaster. I've known him for years. Take my word for it. The only thing Cal Fenton loves with any passion is his work. The rest he just --' she shrugged '—snatches on the hoof as it passes by.'

  'I'm sure that's very true. But it's of no relevance to me whatsoever. Now, if you don't mind --' Frankie pushed past the woman, heading blindly for the door, only to be stopped abruptly by a pair of hands whose feel she remembered so well that time dissolved and she was immediately back at the beach-house again. Her head reared up.

  'Get your hands off me!'

  He let her go, and she went straight on past him, not even looking at his face, out into the night where a light rain cooled her face and masked the shaky tears that brimmed in her eyes. Immediately she began to walk as fast as she could, away down the street.

  Then there were running footsteps, and Cal caught her and whirled her round.

  'Wait!'

  'Let me go.' She shook him off forcefully.


  'Why did you come here tonight, if you didn't want to see me?'

  'I came with Doug. There wasn't time to think it through properly. If I had, I wouldn't have come near!'

  'Doug,' he snorted. 'That sounds very pally.'

  She looked up at him, taking in the sight of him properly for the first time. He wore his familiar black leather jacket, with a fresh white shirt. He was every bit as handsome as she remembered, if not more. She longed to lay her head against his chest and be held in his arms forever. Then she remembered Tania, and her gaze hardened on his. 'It isn't, as a matter of fact. I simply happened to be in his office when he was leaving. But what would it matter to you if I was?'

  He ignored the question, stripping his gaze over her. 'You look different.' She saw him take in her fashionably tailored suit, the combs that caught her hair back from her face, and the way that work and grief had hollowed away the last vestiges of girlhood from her cheeks. His eyes seem to burn into her.

  'Of course I do. I'm older—and a great deal wiser!'

  'What are you doing now?'

  'I can't believe you care!'

  'Oh, I care all right!'

  'You have very funny ways of showing it!'

  'Maybe I do!'

  They glared at each other, chests heaving, antagonism flooding between them. Nothing had changed, she realised, since they had last stood together at Mombasa Airport, nothing at all. Although he certainly looked more strained and tired. A pang went through her, but she forced herself to push it down.

  'I've just finished a photography course. I'm hoping to start work now.'

  'I could help you --'

  'You must be crazy!'

  Cal raked his hands through his hair, eyes glittering. 'Suppose there was something I wanted to give you?'

  'You've given me enough already, thank you!'

  His eyes narrowed. 'What do you mean?' His gaze darted instinctively to her slender waist.

  She laughed harshly. 'Oh, don't worry. The gods were on your side. You didn't make me pregnant. That was something, at least, to be thankful for!'

  She saw him register her bitterness, and she cringed inside at the harsh sound of her hating voice.