Winds of Enchantment (4 page)

On the ride home she was strangely quiet.

CHAPTER THREE

FOR the next week or so Pat was very busy. Her father’s right arm being out of action, she had to wade down to the sheds and write up his books as the surf
-
boats unloaded. As might have been expected, several of his company’s steamers put in during this period and daily, for many hours, Pat was forced to stew in a wooden hut, her shirt clinging with sweat, the waist of her shorts itching so painfully that her skin blistered and burst into a rash.

To help matters, the audit clerk paid his biennial visit and carped at Bill’s book-keeping.

“The devil take it,” roared her father, “I’m turning over half as much again as the agent. If you think I’m going to fret myself over those darned ledgers
...
”

It irked Bill to be working for a boss. Previously, he had reigned like a petty king in his own small colony. Natives brought him their produce, or it was collected from distant villages and stored ready for shipment in his own chartered boats. To pay the natives he bought cargoes on the shore; cottons and salt and tobacco. Very little money changed hands.

Those days were over. Most trading was done through agents of reputable firms. Bill talked of moving down the coast to one of the sleepy towns where cargo ships called once a month and the old profitable system of barter prevailed.

He actually made a few enquiries and Pat accompanied him down to Balabok on a prospect. The tiny port had changed, grown a lot more active, and Bill lamented the advance of progress. Three English companies and one American had put up their names and the natives actually slept on the roads in order to be early at the stores with their goods.

“No romance in trading these days,” grumbled Bill. “Four companies! I’ve handled a port that size all on my own. Let’s try Cape Rue.”

So the little boat nosed farther along the coast and when it came to Cape Rue did not even put into harbour. For the stores and huts were burned flat, the whole place looked abandoned, and a huge yellow flag draped the seaward end of the jetty. “Yellow fever,” grunted Bill. “Well, kitten, it looks as though we stay in Kanos a while longer.”

They sailed back and tied up once more at Balabok, where Pat bought some carved ivory to send to Steve, and a metal statuette of a Bantu woman. It had a pagan beauty which Pat liked and she decided to keep it for herself...

The cruise had been grand, the African coast a revelation.

Bill’s arm was rather a long time mending, and it still bore a bulky dressing when Nick Farland called, a fortnight after the incident.

Since the morning mist had cleared the sky had been cloudless and brazen. Pat, still a little weary from her spell of work, stayed in the house doing jobs that had lately been neglected. She had the boys rub the floors with paraffin to keep down the jiggers. She shook spiders from the curtains and tried desperate measures against the ants.

Her father was late for lunch. He ate quickly, and was ready to go back when a car pulled up on the track outside. “Young Farland,” he said. “I wonder what he wants?”

Pat’s hands unconsciously clenched at her sides as
Nick Farland came in smiling, and dropped his sun-helmet on to a chair.

“Well, Brading?” And with a suggestion of the mockery she remembered, “Hullo, Patricia.”

“Hullo, Mr. Farland,” she said coolly.

Bill grinned. “
C
an I pour you something, Nick?”

“Thanks. I see your arm’s still bandaged. Not so good?”

“It’s not infected, just devilish slow healing up. My age, I suppose. Fifty’s old in the tropics. How’s the shoulder?”

“Practically sound again. It was worth it,” with a laugh and a glance at Pat over the rim of the glass her father had handed him.

“Ah, well,” Bill said philosophically. “No one leaves Africa without scars of some sort, and the physical ones give least trouble. When do you go back into the bush, Nick?”

“No hurry. I’ve earned a rest.”

The two men talked supplies and prices. To Nick, it seemed, the bush meant rubber, mile upon mile of tapped trees sweating latex into little cups. From the conversation Pat gathered that he had first come out on a twenty-four-month surveyor’s tour, had been captured by the spell of forest and swamp, and decided to stay. At thirty he was an old hand of five years’ standing.

Bill was saying: “You ought to ship and market your own stuff. The Farland Rubber Company. Plant and boats would cost you a packet, but you can’t go wrong in the next few years with rubber.”

“You said that last time we met,” Nick answered. “I thought it over. You’re only the relief here, aren’t you? When does the other chap return?”

“In about two months.” Bill’s eyes had narrowed, and Pat saw his large hand clench on his whisky glass.

“Good,” Nick smiled lazily, “you’re well-lined and
I can find a few thousand. We’ll go together, Bill. I produce the stuff—you can trade it. The Farland-Brading Rubber Company.”

Sharp glances twanged between the two men and suddenly they both laughed.

“Let’s drink on it,” said Bill. “Pat, you’d better have one as well. My share will be yours when the mosquitoes get me.”

She lifted her glass and met those penetrating hazel eyes over the rim of it. They seemed to change and harden as though sensing an alien, but his mouth smiled, and he nodded as if in agreement with an unspoken toast.

“I’ve work to do,” said Bill suddenly. “Stay and chat with Pat. Do her good to talk to a civilized human.” When he had gone, Nick lowered himself to the arm of a chair and drew one ankle up on to the other knee. He looked across to where she stood, near the slatted window, and spoke almost without expression.

“Your father’s wrong if he thinks we of the other end are more civilized than traders, or anyone else. The restricted society, everlasting shop talk, drink and cards, help the heat to bring out the worst in us. I’m always glad to get back to Makai after a few weeks in Kanos.”

“
You’re alone at Makai?” she asked, strangely unrelaxed in his company, yet not really certain why. In his lightweight suit he was civilized enough, despite what he said, with a well-groomed appearance despite the heat. Ah, she had it! Nick Farland was a cool customer, but in a controlled, iron-nerved way—as though, indeed, anything might be hiding behind that lazy, self
-
assured facade.

“There are two houses,” he replied, “my own and that of one of the superintendents. At the other end of the plantation are three more. My assistant manager and two juniors five there.”

“No wives?”

“A woman’s nerves crack up in Kanos. She wouldn’t last a month at Makai. We’re happier without them. Five white men and two thousand natives.”

His tone was strange.

“Africa’s got you under its spell,” she said, “just as it got Bill years ago. If I were a man it would get me too.”

“It may yet,” he drawled. “Had any fever?”

“No. Bi
ll
stands over me each morning while I take my five grains of quinine. It seems to work.”

“It will, till your resistance weakens. I get a dose about once a year, but what the hell—here it’s malaria; in England it’s ’flu. I know which I prefer.”

He felt for cigarettes. With an indolent stride he moved across the room to offer them. As he held a match for her, he said: “Do you recall a couple of men you ran into at the club? They’re anxious to meet you again. I said I’d invite you up for an evening.”

“I’m quite happy here.” Her smile was cool.

“You’re out of your setting among the ruffians.” He ejected smoke down narrowed nostrils.

“My father’s one of them.” She could feel herself bristling.

He grinned at her tone. “Bill’s not a ruffian. He isn’t anything—just Bill.”

She looked up defiantly. “I’ve driven through Kanos a few times at night—I’ve seen what some of the women are like. I don’t wish to join them.”

“They aren’t to be judged, after several years out here.” He snapped his fingers sharply. “If you came up one evening you wouldn’t meet any trouble—I’d see to that.”

“I’d rather not, thanks all the same, Mr. Farland.”

“Determined little cuss, aren’t you?” he observed agreeably. “Do you ride?”

“I used to hack a bit in Devonshire.”

“Then ride with me tomorrow morning. I’ll mount you.”

Her brows went together, her lips opened defensively, but his laugh broke in, hard and provoking. She smiled and blew a delicate grey stream of smoke into his face. Then her breath caught, somewhere deep down in her throat, as those flecks in his eyes seemed to sharpen into points of green fire. Ah, he had a temper under the ice! She wasn’t a bit surprised, and suddenly it struck her as rather childish to throw away the chance of a gallop on a good horse because she didn’t much like the man.

She did ride with him next morning, and a week later she wore green chiffon to a dinner at the club. She was new out here, fresh and with something touch-me-not about her. Several of her dance partners wanted to make a beeline for the palms and camphors of the club gardens, but Nick, as though sensing her reluctance, was there each time to whisk her smoothly out of danger.

She told Bill about the dance at breakfast next morning, adding with a laugh that Nick made a good bodyguard.

“Nick’s like I was at his age,” her father grunted. “Trading was my mistress—the jungle’s his.”

“You mean—he doesn’t care for women?”

“He can do without them—for months at a time, anyway.” He was quiet for a moment, then: “Tell me when it gets you down, kitten. I was always a blind fool where women are concerned. I know you like Kanos and while you keep fit you can stay. But I won’t have you marry out here. Whatever happens, you mustn’t go the way of your mother.” He paused again, and added with apparent irrelevance, “The mail’s about due. You’ll be hearing from Steve again.”

The letter came, and she read it in her small bedroom—he and Celia had split up! They were not marrying after all! It would never work, he realized that more strongly than ever since Pat’s departure for Africa
...

Pat’s hands clenched on the sheets of paper, she stared unseeingly across her room at the gently moving blinds, hearing the night sounds of Africa beyond the slats. Steve was free! And it was plain from his letter that it was because of
her
that he had broken his engagement. Her thoughts were in a whirl, and she couldn’t have said what the emotion was that took her to the table, and why it was that she wrote him a letter so charged with tenderness. Was it the sudden realization that often a week went by out here without Steve entering her thoughts at all?

After folding the letter and sealing the envelope, she wandered down to the edge of the sea and dipped her toes in the calm black water. She looked along the beach, beyond the square shapes of the wharves to the lights of Kanos, set like so many jewels in the jet of the bay. A lovely sight.

From the nearby native village stole the thud of drums—she knew a wedding feast to be in progress. The girl would sit facing the boy she was to marry, there would be dancing and chanting for a couple of hours, then the girl would be taken back to her family for a few weeks,
till
the cows and goats and tobacco of her purchase price were paid up to her father. So simple and primitive.

Pat drew a sigh. Her body felt curiously weighted, as though she had taken on a burden.

The rains had set in with a vengeance. Each day opened with an inevitable downpour, which developed after lunch into an avalanche that hammered on the roof as though it would beat it open. It was hot, damp, and Pat’s thirst was unquenchable. The filtering apparatus was slow and consequen
tl
y she absorbed quantities of flat, brackish boiled water edged with lime. Eating became a tremendous effort; even Bill’s appetite was affected.

On the surface his mood remained unaffected. He could still smile and chaff, and during this period the sweetest intervals were those rainless nights when a yellow moon thrust above the trees and a million stars studded the sky. Then the atmosphere tingled with a sub
tl
e magic.

One such night, Pat drove out at Nick’s side along the sea road. The palms stood black against the silver-gilt of the sea and sky, waving
gently
in a warm breeze. The tufted islands in the bay were like ghostly mirages, and Pat’s heart turned with the mystery of it all.

The sea road ended at a wide sweep of marsh which eddied and sucked round the car as it curved to meet the jungle road. Trees advanced. Mahogany and cottonwood, tall enough to shut out the moon; closely spaced and clogged so thickly with liana bine and giant weeds that they formed an impenetrable wall on either side. The headlights raked the forest, picked out the green orbs of star
tl
ed beasts and the red eyes of bull-bats. The windscreen was black with insects.

Presently
Nick stopped the car, switched off the engine, so that all was quiet but for the surrounding, primitive music of the jungle. Pat felt curiously keyed-up. This green place stirred in her a queer excitement that was akin to fear.

“Talk,” she said ur
gently
. “Please talk.”

So he told her, something of amusement in his voice, about the surveyor’s trek in the Northern Province which had led to him working out here. She questioned him and he went back to the various jobs he had tried in England and elsewhere. His parents having died while he was young, he had been brought up by a bachelor uncle, who had died four years ago, leaving him enough money, with what he already had, to start the plantation.