The Blue Mountains of Kabuta (17 page)

At first Jon had refused and she had seen Tim angry.

‘Grow up, Jon. You don't want to get bush-happy.'

‘Bush-happy? What's that?' she'd asked.

‘It's when you live alone in the bush for too long, you get anti-people. You find it hard to talk to them, to make friends, and are apt to retreat into your shell of lonely misery and never leave it. You end up by being such a bore that no one wants to see you. Look, Jon, you're too young to fall into that trap, so you're coming along with me. Right?'

And she had realized that he was right. In
England,
with her friends and work, she had been an extrovert. Here, with so little to do, she was fast becoming an introvert. She couldn't tell Tim, but she knew why! She still could not forget Madeleine telling her that she was the laughing-stock of the neighbourhood and that everyone was waiting for her to be sensible and sell the farm!

So Jon had gone out. Naturally they had to entertain, in return. Often her mother would be there, thoroughly enjoying herself, looking if anything younger than she had done when she first arrived, and obviously having forgotten her first fears and dislikes of the country! All this was largely because of Tim, Jon was thinking, as she deftly pulled out the tough weeds that threatened to suffocate the delicate seedlings.

The Oswalds, too, had helped a lot, she knew. Mark was tall, thin, with long blond hair. He usually wore khaki shorts and a vivid coloured shirt, usually open and showing the blond hairs on his chest. While teaching, he wore sandals. At home he went barefoot. He worked hard in the evenings and Jon found she could help him by going to the library and getting him the books he needed for research, or even writing away to the nearest city for them. Kirsty, his wife, rarely went out except to shop. Short, slender, she looked frail but was tough as nails, as Tim said. She wrote books but rarely sold them. When she did, they paid
the
family bills. Mostly she painted, and even introduced Jon into the fascination of oil painting.

So gradually Jon's empty days were becoming filled. Tim had even induced her to play tennis and now she was helping to cater for the Sunday lunches at the Club. This was all due to Tim, she knew, and she was grateful for it.

Christmas was coming closer and she found it hard to imagine a Christmas where the temperature could be in the hundred zone and the sun always shone. The thunderstorms of their earlier days seemed to have gone, but she knew they could return.

‘If not rain, then hail,' someone had said. Jon had guessed he was teasing, for whoever heard of hail in the summer?

Jon straightened, looking proudly at the small healthy seedlings which would, she hoped, give colour to their garden. This was the wonderful part of this country: even in winter you had roses and sweet peas and all sorts of flowers. She wiped her brow and wondered if it was any cooler in Qwaleni, for her mother had been given a lift there by Alex.

Alex was still the biggest problem of her life, but she was learning to control herself and live with it. Sometimes she thought that he was in love with her mother—at other times she wondered if her mother appealed to Alex because she was so helpless and feminine,
which
he obviously liked.

As she went into the house, it was terribly hot. Even the dogs had deserted her, hiding under the beds which were apparently the coolest spot at the moment. As before, Jon wondered what air-conditioning would cost. She had suggested it to her mother, but she had said it would be a waste of money if Jon finally decided to sell the farm.

Sell the farm? Never, Jon thought firmly, still irritated by people who kept asking her why she wouldn't. Uncle Ned had given her the farm and she was not going to sell it, she would say again and again.

‘Hot, eh?' said Tim, coming out from his room. He had obviously been sleeping, for his hair was tousled, his face wet with sweat.

They sat on the stoep, leaving the doors open in the vain hope of getting a draught through as they drank long cold drinks. Suddenly she heard a terrible frightening roaring sound . . . She looked up and through the open door saw the small white plane, zooming so low over the trees that she felt sure it must hit one of the long branches—or even hit the house.

Somehow she must have stood up and turned impulsively, and she found herself in Tim's arms.

‘It's all right,' he said, holding her close. ‘It's only the plane spraying the plants.'

She began to laugh and cry at the same
time.
‘How can I be so stupid . . .' she began, when Tim kissed her.

Startled, she drew away and he let her go. She stared at him.

‘I'm sorry. It gave me such a fright—that dreadful noise . . .'

Tim smiled. ‘Should I be sorry, too, for kissing you?'

For a moment she was dismayed. Why had he kissed her? Had she encouraged him? She liked him, but that was all . . .

Tim laughed, ‘Don't look so scared, Jon. I've been waiting for a good chance. D'you know you're delicious, delightful and delectable?'

She could laugh, too, sharing the joke.

‘Come and see the plane,' he said, leading her out on to the lawn. The plane came back. Once again Jon wondered how it could dare to zoom so low, but this time her fear was for the pilot, but as they watched the small bird-like plane climb up into the sky at a sharp angle, circling and returning, the pilot—easily seen in his small box-like part—waved. She waved back.

‘Lucky guy,' Tim said enviously. ‘He makes a fortune. Wish I could get such a job.'

‘Have you tried?'

He nodded. ‘Bad eyes.'

As they watched the small white plane glide, swoop and climb and then come back to zoom low over the fields, Tim explained about
spraying.

To Jon, it was a fascinating experience, caught up in her imagination, she felt herself in the plane as it shuddered under her hands and she made it respond to her demands. How lovely it must be—high up in the beauty of the cloudless sky, leaving the earth with its problems far behind.

The plane landed on a distant runway. ‘It's filling up. I want to see, so I'll go over. See you later.'

Jon hesitated. She would have liked to go, too, but she remembered Tim's strongly expressed determination not to be interfered with while on farm work, so she walked obediently back to the house.

She saw that the inside door to the house had been closed, and frowned. She was sure that both doors—the one outside and the house one—had been open when she and Tim were there. Maybe Violet had come to see her . . . or to take the empty glasses away. It never for a moment occurred to her that someone might have been standing there, witnessing the little scene in which she had stood in Tim's arms and he had kissed her. Reading into the scene, perhaps, everything that was not true.

CHAPTER
EIGHT

Christmas came nearer, the shops were bright with decorations and, in some, the soft muted music of carols. Jon, who normally loved Christmas, found it hard to work up any enthusiasm.

She shopped, buying her mother a chiffon negligée and nightie and Tim a pipe, as he was always losing his and accusing the girls of having stolen it.

Surely there was no need to buy Alex a present? She rarely saw him these days except when he came to pick up her mother or they all met at a dinner party. As for Madeleine . . . well, no one could call them friends.

Tim brought home decorations and spent a hilarious evening putting them up.

‘I'll bring up a Christmas tree at the last moment,' he promised.

‘Isn't it rather a farce?' Jon said unhappily. ‘We'll all be out.'

She could not forget the pain she had felt when her mother announced that she was going to spend Christmas with her friends. They had been sitting on the stoep in the early hours of the evening when the sky was streaked with crimson and green and the reddish sun slowly vanished behind the mountains. They were having their usual
sundowner,
when Ursula said:

‘I don't know what your plans are for Christmas Day, Jon darling, but I've been invited to Qwaleni for the day with some friends.'

Jon could still remember the ridiculous hurt she had felt. Looking back, she could remember that in England, and ever since she was seventeen, she had refused invitation after invitation from friends who wanted her to spend Christmas with them. Her mother had known about these invitations and had accepted it as a fact that needed no discussing, for surely no loving daughter would dream of leaving her poor widowed mother alone!

Yet now her mother . . . this, their first Christmas in a strange land . . . Of course she wasn't a widow—but Jon could be lonely, too. Imagine a Christmas all alone!

Tim had leant forward. ‘We've been asked to a braaivleis, Ursula, so don't worry about us.'

Later, much later, Jon had tackled Tim. ‘It was good of you, but you don't have to, Tim. I mean, I know you made it up about that invitation.'

He grinned, ‘But I didn't make it up. The Oswalds asked us, and I've been driving myself nearly silly to work out how we could leave your ma out. The Oswalds aren't her cup of tea, but I didn't want to upset her.'

‘Is that the truth?' Jon asked worriedly. She
could
not bear it if she spoiled Tim's Christmas for him.

He made a dramatic gesture. ‘Cross my heart and all the rest. We'll have great fun, just the four of us. Mark's great at braaivleis and we can talk and talk and talk.'

So Jon had laughed and accepted the situation. But try as she might, she could not see her mother's side of it, and she had a vaguely unhappy feeling that her mother no longer loved her as she had before. Obviously her mother's friends were of a different age group. But they had been in England, too, yet her mother had loved the family Christmas, even though there were only two of them.

Suddenly she thought of something: Was it with Alex that her mother planned to spend Christmas?

It was a week before Christmas when Tim and Jon had been invited to the Oswalds for the evening. Jon's mother had already told them she was going out for the evening, but not who with. She rarely mentioned names these days, Jon thought miserably. There was no doubt about it, she and her mother were growing apart. Jon was in the bath when her mother called goodbye.

‘Have a good time, Jon darling. I may be home late, so don't worry about me.'

Jon called goodbye and leisurely soaked in the refreshing bath. The Oswalds rarely dressed up, so she slipped on her red kaftan.
She
loved the loose swinging sleeves, the comfortable feel of the silk material next to her skin.

As usual Tim was late, and Jon waited patiently. When he joined her, he was wearing a safari suit.

‘Ready?' he asked impatiently, just as if she hadn't been already waiting for nearly an hour.

‘We're late.'

‘So what?' he grinned.

But when they got to the cottage the Oswalds were renting, they found a note pinned to the door.

‘We waited as long as we could to tell you Mark has to go to Qwaleni about his job. We'll dine at the Prince Inn, so maybe see you there. Sorry and all that, Kirsty.'

Jon began to laugh. ‘It must be important to drag Mark all that way.'

‘Let's go to the Prince Inn, Jon. I've never been there.'

‘Horribly expensive,' she warned him.

He grinned. ‘Then let's go dutch, okay?'

‘Okay.' Jon settled down by his side as the car shot off.

She was never very happy driving with Tim, for he not only drove fast but took chances. Once he had told her jokingly that he must have ninety-nine lives as there could be no other explanation for his continued survival.

Jon loathed back seat drivers herself, so she forced her hands to lie on her lap and kept her
legs
stiff so that her feet would not jam on imaginary brakes. She closed her eyes as the car jerked and swung round corners, bumped over corrugations, in and out of deep ruts. She must make herself think of something else . . .

Where was her mother dining that night? she wondered. It was strange how little she knew about Ursula's outings. Of course she didn't have to tell her, yet, in the past, she had seemed to delight in telling her everything, all she had done, and then would have asked Jon what
she
had done, too! Now she seemed quite uninterested. Jon tried to laugh at herself. Perhaps it meant that her mother now accepted the fact that her daughter was a woman and not a child! All the . . .

Jon stifled a startled sound as the car hit a bump, seemed to leap in the air, then landed with a bounce before roaring on.

Tim laughed, ‘That was a close one. Stupid goat!'

‘Did . . . did you hit him?'

‘Course not. I'm not that daft. Why so quiet? Disappointed about the Oswalds?'

‘Of course not. Just thinking.'

‘About what?'

Jon clung to the side of the car as they went round a steep corner, swerving sideways. ‘Life after death.'

Tim roared with laughter. ‘Am I giving you the jivvies? Am I going too fast?'

‘A . . . a bit.'

‘Yellow,
that's what you are. Chicken, Jon. All the best drivers in the world act crazy.'

Jon was wondering what Alex would have said when Tim shouted:

‘Hold tight!'

The car plunged through a stream that meandered over the road, splashing up water so that the windscreen was nearly covered and Jon was splashed through the open window.

‘They must have had rain earlier today, because that's new.' He sounded joyous. ‘Bet that gave you a fright.'

‘And how!' She could hardly speak as she wiped the muddy water off her face. ‘Tim, I wonder if we're dressed enough for the Prince Inn? You haven't got a tie on.'

‘Does that matter? Anyhow, let's give it a try.' He looked at her. ‘We'll be off the earth in five minutes and then you can relax.'