Mayenga Farm (13 page)

"Yachting is a leisurely sport," he commented, a smile in his voice. "When I’m fifty I shall drop polo and take it up. It seems to be the natural sequence in these parts. Did you know that old Mr. Morgan was once a good polo-player?"

"No," she answered mechanically. "Was he?"

"There’s a picture of him complete with horse and stick in the pavilion at the field, taken when he was my age. People say I'm like him."

Involuntarily, she laughed at the absurdity of a similarity between Kent and Mr. Morgan of the rubicund cheeks and white whiskers.

"It was worth prevaricating to get a grin out of you," Kent remarked to her averted head. "For one on pleasure bent, you’re much too sober ... or perhaps you’re harking back to the pact we made a week or two ago? At the moment I’m on your side of the river, but we’ll push into neutral waters midstream if you’d prefer it."

"The bargain could hardly apply to the whole length of the Lamu."

"It might. Depends on the strength of the feud and the cause of it."

"Are we . . . at war?"

"Slightly." He paused. "You disliked me at first sight, didn’t you?"

"Yes, I did. You went out of your way to antagonize me."

"I deny that," he said, without heat. "Maybe I made no effort to please, but neither did I intend us to be enemies. Have you ever speculated how pleasant the past weeks might have been if you'd accepted me as a friend from the beginning?" His feet planted square, he teetered back on two legs of the stool. In a curious tone he added, "Of course you haven't You’ve been too busy detesting me."

"How ridiculous," Rennie said unevenly. "Why should I detest you?"

"Because, my child, I perceived things that you were successfully concealing from everyone else." He spoke with more depth, more warmth, and bent slightly her way for emphasis. "At first I admired your pluck — and your motives. Then it made me angry that you should go on futilely struggling when a little assistance might have halved your troubles. You’re a pighead."

Rennie was saved from an immediate retort by a concerted burst of hilarity from the surrounding boats. One of the racing yachts had capsized and all the craft were making for the river bank, near the club.

"The race is over," Kent murmured with mock regret "And we're not even aware who won. Are you hungry?"

"No . . yes."

"Make up your mind," with patient sarcasm. "I take it you're not desperately hungry but you'd feel more comfortable back there among the lights and people?"

"It . . . isn't that. If I don't show up with the rest my father will be anxious."

"Are you sure that's all?"

She looked towards him. Her face, pale in the merciless light, was sharply shadowed and had an air of appealing distress. As she met his turquoise stare his mouth compressed as if to quell some further sarcasm.

"I meant to get rid of the boy so that we could talk," he said curtly. "But you must choose. Shall we stay for a while, or go in? "

Stay, pleaded her heart. But the floodlamps flickered, the safe daylight was swallowed in warm, perilous darkness, and Kent was so near, and somehow threatening.

"All right," he said abruptly, and gave an order to the boy: "Start her up, Jacob, and head for the jetty."

Rennie felt a gentle pressure on her shoulders and obediently sat down. She closed her eyes and realized their hot heaviness, the dry ache in her throat and an inward hollow exhaustion. She seemed without nerve or will.

So this was how it happened. She was twenty years old and grown up — or so she had fancied. But she had not grown up till a moment ago, when a combination of emotions had revealed that she no longer . . . disliked Kent.

The launch was arrowing swiftly upstream. Kent was standing with his feet set wide, his hands in his pockets, a baffling frown creasing his forehead. The peaked cap was pushed back as if he had forgotten it were there. Black hair and eyebrows, she thought wryly. It can't be.

Presently she was able to say, "Did you hear about Rufus?"

His head bent. "The big dog? Has something happened to him?"

In a few words she explained.

"Filthy luck," he said briefly. "I’ll get you another."

"No. Not yet, anyway." She had only told him because speaking of something a little sad and closely related to her affections had helped to dispel some of the inward fright and numbness.

They approached the jetty and gently bumped alongside. The boy leapt out and tied up. Kent followed and gave Rennie a lift which landed her beside him. They mingled with the jolly strangers who were gradually filtering into the club. He had his hand on her arm and Rennie held herself completely stiff, commanding herself to ignore it

"You look pale," he said in an undertone. "Wait here and I'll bring you a drink."

Gratefully, Rennie subsided among some cushions. A band was tuning up and already men were choosing partners from among their friends in sailor frocks. The room was bathed in brilliant orange light the floor — what could be seen of it — a bowering surface of polished hardwood which reflected and magnified the great bowls that hung from the ceiling. Rattan chairs and sofas were against the walls, and at intervals between the munching, drinking groups, Rennie glimpsed pedestals supporting urns of flowers. Somewhere at the other end of the room the buffet tables creaked beneath the weight of glass and silver, mounds of sandwiches, trays of cold savories, colored concoctions in tall glasses, nuts and sweetmeats. And not far from the food scintillated a very new and well-stocked cocktail bar.

When Kent came back she smiled at him with an attempt at jauntiness and slipped along the seat so that he could sit down and place the tray he had brought between them.

His glance, as it roamed over her, was searching.

"You’re thinner," he said. "There are smudges under your eyes and your nerves are not too steady. What the hell is Adrian thinking about!"

She tried to control the sudden startled drumming of her heart

"You’re imagining things. I’m not thinner, just peckish." She transferred a wedge of cheese and a biscuit on to a plate but made no effort to eat them. She would have given much for a cup of very

black coffee. "Have you seen my father?"

Kent jerked his head towards the balcony. "He’s up there. I made signs to him that you’re here and all in one piece."

"Thank you." She sipped the drink and shuddered. "What is this?"

"It’s known as a Singapore. The boys used to swallow one at the end of a flight."

He had never before mentioned his flying days.

"A nerve restorer?" she asked.

"Something of the sort. When did you last eat?"

"At lunch-time."

He took the glass from her and replaced it on the tray, "In that case," he said decisively, "the Singapore stays there till you’ve refuelled. Eat up that cheese and try a sandwich. It’s no use protesting. For tonight, I’m in charge. I’d like to have control of you — and Mayenga — for about a month. You’d hardly know each other after it."

Rennie could summon no banality to fill the pause, so she nibbled and found, to her astonishment, that her throat could take it, and the very act of chewing made her feel more normal. Apparently she still had the power to eat and drink.

What on earth had come over her ten minutes ago? There was nothing soul-shattering in the discovery that she no longer disliked Kent. How could she continue at enmity with a man whose only object in taunting her was to batter down her defences, and help wherever he could?

By degrees her color came back, and she managed to insert a few comments into the conversation.

"Down that drink," he bade her. It’ll make you want to dance."

"I want to now."

"With me?"

"If you wouldn’t hate it too much."

He laughed softly. "I've performed more painful duties. As a matter of fact, I privately determined as far back as Christmas to dance with you at least once."

"It was then that I told you I loathed dancing, from which you gathered that I was a rotten dancer. Remember?"

She nodded and stood up with him. The danced, and Kent made a tiny jeering sound when she missed a step and had to fill in. Certainly he made no errors.

He said, "Your father's waving down at you, and there’s a naughty gleam in Mr. Morgan’s eye. I can see it all the way from here. I wonder if the old chap planned that launch business?"

"Why should he?"

"Why indeed. I did once admit to him that you were a difficult wench."

"And I told him weeks ago that you were an overbearing beast."

"Dear, dear. How well we’re acquainted." A pause. "Don't you agree that the feud has gone on long enough?" "Yes," she answered breathlessly. "Oh, yes."

"Good. I invite myself over tomorrow for a Sunday morning cup of tea."

They stopped at on opening, and Rennie felt a sweet warm gust of air over her skin. A strange and wholly exquisite sensation ran through her being.

"Come outside," he said.

The door led to a back veranda overlooking acres of unbridled veld, which the keen yachtsmen appeared in no hurry to convert into gardens. The sky was the usual spangled velvet, and myriads of cicadas trilled among the mimosa and wild fig scrub.

Kent inhaled deeply. "Smell the wattle?"

"The bitterish scent? It’s more like mimosa than mimosa itself. Yours doesn’t bloom yet, does it? How long will it be before you can call your miles of saplings a wattle estate?"

"A few years. I’m in no hurry. I’ve another timber concession to work on yet."

"Another — besides Elands Ridge?"

He nodded. "A tract up-river. I was offered it recently and snapped it up. Superficially it’s near-cousin to a jungle, but there are hundreds of valuable trees there, some of them mahoganies. I’m looking forward to clearing them and getting a good close-up."

A vibrant note had entered his voice. Strange, thought Rennie, that trees could do that to him; and she was vaguely annoyed.

"Forestry means a great deal to you, doesn’t it?" she said.

"No other work has quite the same fascination and sense of fulfillment." He sounded thoughtful and rather aloof. "Finely-figured timbers are the deuce to rear, you know."

"I suppose that’s why they’re expensive."

"Partly. The chief reason is the time required to produce a trunk of sufficient girth and height. It’s the years that put grain into the wood and gnarl it, and make it hard and solid. In our garden when I was a boy we had a walnut tree about eighty years old. In those days I used to speculate about it and wish we could fell it and slice it up into beautifully-marked planks. It may still be there."

"The tree existed before the house?"

"Years before. Our garden was like that." As he lowered himself to the veranda wall where she perched, he smiled reminiscently. "There were cypresses and twisted old olives, and a whole grove of lemon trees. In the days when my father bought you could acquire land for next to nothing, so we owned a young park. Duiker and rooibok used to graze on our lawns, and from the branches of the walnut you could see herds of zebra and wildebeest on the plains between Gravenburg and the mountains. Occasionally we saw giraffe and impala, and leopard used to raid our pet enclosure." He let out a breath that was half a mocking sigh. "So much for progress. The beasts have been driven to seek less civilized pastures and women till their former hunting grounds. We even have guest farms — retreats where young novelists may board and imbibe local color to take back to Hampstead and Chelsea." Sardonically, he tacked on: ‘We Outspanned at Dawn, by Michael Rogers."

Smiling at this tilt at herself, she spoke up for Michael.

"That isn’t the title, and anyway, it’s a very good novel. You won't find a jarring note anywhere."

"I quite believe that," he said drily. "I have immense respect for Adrian’s literary qualities and unerring sense of fitness. How far has this magnificent chunk of fiction advanced?"

"Nearly halfway. Michael is putting in ten or twelve hours every day."

"And he's hoping to burst into two-inch headlines?" Rennie felt that he was being a little unfair. "Not quite that. You see, he’s one of the unfortunate people whose careers were halted by the war. Poor Michael has to find his feet again, and it's not too easy. At the moment he's using up what money he has and is earning nothing. He's investing everything in the book."

"He must have colossal confidence in his own abilities," Kent observed.

"That's necessary to success, isn’t it.. . particularly in the profession he's chosen. If the novel should fail he'll lose more than a career."

Kent cast her a swift glance. "How do you mean?" "He'll be

penniless, without a job, and____" she hesitated.

"And no hope of marrying?" Kent finished for her, a trifle tersely. "Does he think it takes just one novel to make a novelist? Supposing this book is accepted and sells, how will he contrive a second without a benign godfather to polish and prune and counsel restraint? But perhaps," coolly, "he'll decide to remain at Mayenga, or carry you and your father home to England with him." A few seconds passed. "Would you like to return to England?"

"Some time ... if we're ever able to afford a holiday. But I'm sure that after a month or so I'd long to get back to Mayenga. We were badly fleeced when we bought the place, but I've come to forgive, and love it."

"Like a mother with an unmanageable child. So your husband, when you acquire one, will have to fit into the farm?"

Rennie turned to look out over the dark, murmurous veld. Her tone was quiet and introspective. "Marriage alters one's conceptions. It is the individual who counts then, not the environment."

His next question was blunt and disconcerting. "Do you want to marry?"

"What woman doesn't?" she returned lightly. "Quite a number of men do, too — believe it or not. I doubt if even you are an exception."

"So do I," he replied unexpectedly but with irony. "I may even confound my severest critic and fall in love."

"If that should happen," she countered in the same carefully airy tone, "your severest critic will be the first to offer felicitations."