Rose of the Desert (20 page)

"She looks young to be alone out here."

"Five years younger than Lynn," Julie replied a trifle stiffly.

"Have you spoken to her?"

"She welcomed us to Bongola before she passed out."

Noticing the dry tones, Clay shot her a half smile,

"I wouldn't take anything she said too seriously. It was probably the drink talking, and drink can say funny things."

"Maybe."

As they walked back to the lounge Clay looked at the sleeping children.

"I'll take a look around and see what other rooms there are. In .the meantime you might like to go out to the car. I think you'll find the second flask is full of coffee and there should be some of Habib's sandwiches left."

"We're not going to stay here, are we?" Julie's eyes sprang wide in hurt surprise. "Why, I just couldn't! And there's the children ... I mean they ... Well, you've only got to look at the place! It's ..."

"Julie." Clay took hold of her sternly. He put a hand under her chin. "When I first saw you on the terrace of the Hotel Gerard I thought you were just a girl out for a good time with as little work attached as possible. After that gruelling ride through the desert and your first week at Guchani I knew you to be of infinitely better quality ... just as I know now you wouldn't turn your back on these people. They need help." His fingers slid to brush her throat. "Now cut along and get that coffee. We'll both feel better when we've had a cup."

There turned out to be two more bedrooms. One was empty apart from two iron bedsteads. The other had oddments of children's furniture, and bunks for sleeping in. Obviously Janet and Mark's room, but the bedding was hopelessly damp. Julie deemed it wiser to leave the children where they were. When she returned to the kitchen the stove was crackling, and it was possible to air one cover each to roll up in for the night.

After tacking the children up, Julie chose the end of the sofa, taking care not to disturb them. Clay stretched in an armchair across the room and snicked off the light.

"Goodnight, Julie."

"Clay," she asked sleepily, "what happened at the customs house?"

"Fortunately for me the other chap spoke my kind of English. I had to sign a couple of forms and swear that everything I had said previously was true."

"How crazy can they get?"

"I got a lift as far as the track and walked the rest of the way."

"I wish I'd waited with you ..." Julie drowsed.

"It
's
going to be all right Goodnight, Julie."

"Goodnight, Clay."

The sun shone warm on Julie's arm, but that wasn't what woke her. It was the gentle touch of fingers.

"You like bleakfast now, ladee?"

She sat bolt upright to see a square brown face with & flat nose. The mouth was split into a dazzling smile.

"Wh ... who are you?"

"I Temkin. I cook ... cook now for ladee?"

"But there was no one here when we came last night."

The young boy shrugged his shoulders and rolled the brown eyes. "When Missus get fire bottle, we go, stay in village, wait for supplies."

"You mean Mr. May hew and you?"

He nodded. "Bwana and me, we always go, stay in village."

"How long have you been away this time?"

"Three ... four days maybe. Cook breakfast now, ladee?" It looked as if Temkin wasn't going to rest until he had demonstrated for her benefit his culinary skill.

"Very well, Temkin," Julie smiled, "I'll have breakfast."

He trotted away happily, the white tunic flapping at his knees, and Julie went in search of the bathroom. By the time she had freshened up, the lounge table was decked out in a white cloth, with various dishes and condiments surrounding a vase of freshly picked flowers.

The cook stood proudly by awaiting her approval.

"That looks wonderful, Temkin." Julie smiled her appreciation, and as there was still no sign of Clay or the children, she asked,

"Mr. Whitman and the children ... have you seen them?" Temkin looked blank. It would appear his English was at its best when confined to local domesticities. Julie tried again,

"The big man ..." and lowering her hand to the floor, "the small ones ... are they here?" She pointed several times to the floor. At last Temkin's face lit up.

"No, no, not here. Go early, fetch Bwana."

Julie^decided to leave it at that. It seemed that Clay and the children had gone off quietly before she awoke. Well, she sighed not unhappily, there was nothing else for it but to sample Temkin's cooking, which looked quite delicious.

Some time later she heard the sound of a car and hurried to the door. She was in time to see Janet and Mark tumbling from the back seat looking unkempt but happy.

From the other door of Clay's car a feminine figure emerged. Well, well, Julie murmured under her breath. This couldn't be the Stephanie she had seen last night, could it? The hair was brushed and shining now, and the face beautifully made up. She looked long and lithe in tailored slacks and expensive blouse, and strangely out of place in the broken-down surroundings of Bongola.

"Good morning." As Clay helped her out she ran up the steps smiling. "You were sleeping like a baby earlier, so we left you in peace. I've been showing Clay around the place ..." So it was Clay already, was it? "... and then we went into the village, but John's got to wait for supplies, so he'll be up later."

Of course Julie hadn't thought to ask Temkin the whereabouts of his mistress, so why should he mention that she had gone off with Clay?

She took Julie's arm chummily and walked into the house, saying, "Sorry I passed out on you last night. Clay's been telling me how he put me to bedl" She laughed, showing perfect teeth.

Julie forced a tight smile, feeling distinctly flat. Looking at Stephanie now and around the room it was difficult to realise that last night had really happened. The rooms were neat and tidy, which must mean that Temkin was also a good houseboy, and his mistress, instead of being bedraggled and soaked in drink, sat opposite her, cool, composed, and sleek as a racehorse. Perhaps she had dreamed it all.

John Mayhew arrived just before lunch He gripped Julie's hand apologetically.

"Hell, I'm sorry about last night. I had no idea you were due to arrive."

About his wife's height, he was thin with slightly receding hair, and possessed what Julie thought a rather wonderful smile. It started at the cleft in his chin and spread over his teak-coloured face, like sunlight suddenly rushing along a valley. The first time she saw it was when Janet and Mark entered the room, but after that it was little in evidence. He seemed a man much preoccupied with his own thoughts.

Lunch progressed with hardly a word between the May- hews, and Julie was too fully occupied with the children's likes and dislikes to offer any herself. Soon afterwards the two men went off together and Julie decided to see about sleeping accommodation for that evening. She was just pushing the bunks into a sunnier position in the children's room when Stephanie popped her head round the door.

"Don't trouble yourself with that, Temkin will see to it."

Julie looked surprised, but she turned from the room.

"I suppose I could go and see about sleeping quarters for Clay ..."

"It's all arranged. You're to sleep in here with the children. Clay can have the spare room. It will all be fixed for tonight Temkin will see to it."

Poor Temkin! It looked as if he had to run the house himself. Cooking cleaning, bedrooms, the lot ... no wonder he took advantage of his mistress's occasional indisposition to rest up in the village.

"Clay wants me to show you the farm," Stephanie was saying. "Do you ride?"

"Enough to get by. What about the children?"

"Oh, they can potter in the garden till we get back."

"I'll go with you, when I've seen they're all right"

Stephanie didn't comment, but Julie didn't miss the raised eyebrow. The garden was a long overgrown lawn, its far end hanging clear over the valley. Along one side an effort had been made to start a flower plot, and dahlias, nasturtiums, and zinnias showed bravely.

Stephanie said with a slight sneer,

"As you can see, my husband has planted his own little England. It's supposed to be some kind of recompense for what we left behind."

Julie didn't reply. It seemed an unkind comment to make on a person's obviously well-meant labours.

Janet and Mark looked hot and grubby, but as they were entirely engrossed in some game of their own invention, Julie decided to leave them undisturbed. Dolls and toy animals were laid neatly side by side across the lawn, and it looked as if the game would go on for ages.

Later she rode down a rough track with Stephanie. Green tufted hills rose up behind a house that looked shabby but solid from the outside. Below stretched a wild-looking valley, and certain sections of it had been laid out in terraced fields, each in various stages of cultivation.

"Bananas and cotton mainly," Stephanie remarked offhandedly, "though John thinks he'll get citrus and mangoes going eventually." The lips curled slightly. "He likes a challenge, does John."

"Don't you?" Julie asked pleasantly, thinking that perhaps Stephanie wasn't feeling quite so cheerful as she had appeared a short while ago. What had happened? Had she already found out that her husband wasn't going to be as easily swayed as she had hoped?

"Why should I like this kind of challenge," Stephanie was saying scornfully, "when I had everything I wanted in Kenya ... friends, entertainment, successful nightclub?" She flicked the horse and tossed her head in sudden irritation. "What possesses a man to leave all the comforts of civilisation and settle in some godforsaken spot to start all over again?"

"Perhaps to help a young country get going?"

"Why should we sweat our guts out? The natives can do it just as well. Besides, John hasn't done serious farming for years." Stephanie didn't look to be doing much sweating, Julie thought, and she was obviously overlooking the fact that her husband's experience in farming could bring quicker results than the laboured efforts of the locals.

"You don't like it out here, do you?" Julie said, trying to put a humorous slant on the situation.

But Stephanie wasn't to be drawn so easily from her resentment. She cast a withering glance over the land where women bent low, and smiling dusty children waved from behind their skirts.

"Tell me honestly. Would you?"

Julie smiled. "It is a bit cut off, but don't they say that every place has
something
to offer?"

"And don't they say when a man has got no family to think of he looks for something else to put his energies into? Something like this, for instance?"

But surely that's up to you, Julie thought. She rode on in worried silence. Taking Clay's advice last night, she hadn't paid too much attention to Stephanie's ramblings, but the more she saw of things today the more she was convinced that Stephanie had consented to take the childly ren for one reason to use them in a tug-of-war between her husband and the farm. And judging by her present mood she wasn't too optimistic. So what was going to happen to Janet and Mark? They needed love and affection now more than anything else in the world.

Her worries increased by the evening.

Dinner was a disaster, with Temkin putting on a valiant effort to do everything single-handed, and failing only because he couldn't be in two places at once—the kitchen, and at the table.

Stephanie, stunning in black velvet, was blatantly charming to Clay throughout the meal. She ignored everyone else, but kept a firm hold on her wine glass. Ever since John Mayhew's arrival at lunchtime, Julie had sensed the current of suppressed anger passing between husband and wife. Sooner or later she reckoned things would have to come to a head, and finally after dinner the storm broke. Not just outside with torrential rain, but inside between John Mayhew and his wife.

"Isn't it time you let a little dust settle on that bottle the way you do everything else around here?" With stony eyes he watched her replenish her glass for the fourth time.

"Temkin does the dusting—why don't you tell him?"

"You put far too much on Temkin's shoulders. But for the fact that I've had him with me ever since he was a kid, he wouldn't be here now slaving over the work that you've flatly decided you want no part of."

Julie buried her face in a magazine. The situation was all the more embarrassing because she and Clay were compelled to sit in the room. To put a foot outside now would mean an instant drenching, and how does one retire to one's room when the hosts are blocking the way and facing each other like angry tigers?

"He gets paid, doesn't he?" Stephanie was saying airily.

"He gets paid to cook, and see to the running of the kitchen, and from now on that's all he will be doing. Until we can get more help in the house you'll do your share. It's high time you pulled yourself together anyway."

"I'll do that if and when we get out of this hole!"

John Mayhew swung round on his wife.

"You should know better than to make conditions with me. We're here to stay, and the sooner you realise it the better."

Stephanie's tones rose a little higher.

"We have the children now ... what time will you have for them in this jungle?"

"We're likely to learn more about that when we've made it less of a jungle, aren't we? And given the chance Janet and Mark will do fine here. One thing they
don't
need is nightclub life!"

He turned and slammed out of the house. The roar of the car engine could be heard above the sound of the rain and then all was silent. Stephanie, glass in hand, swayed off towards her room.

Julie fingered her chair, searching for words. She could hear the torrents of water splashing down from the roof of the veranda. Clay lay back in his chair, a glass in one hand, a book in the other. From his face one could assume he hadn't heard a single word. There was nothing there but the immediate interest of what he was reading.

Slightly irritated, Julie asked,

"Clay, do you think this is the right environment for Janet and Mark?"