Winds of Enchantment (6 page)

Cliff, talking in this vein, made Pat feel impatient. She couldn’t help contrasting him with Nick Farland—Nick the fighter and pioneer. She thought of the storm, and the steely strength of his hand as he gripped the jack-knife and hacked at the primeval growth of the jungle, his satanic exultation when at last he dragged her through the path, his body shielding her from the worst blows of the wind.

Bill wrote to him about the two freighters, describing the new wharves with the company’s name printed across them facing the sea, and boasted of the new white villa. Nick replied that all of it was good work; he had severed his connections with his former shippers and Bill could expect the first boat
l
oads down the river within the next fortnight.

Bryant, the young agent whom Bill had relieved, came back and took over. Till their own house was ready, the Bradings moved into the one that was vacated when the Melvilles packed up and went home to England. Bill bought up
the
old shooting car that Melville had left for his successor.

Soon the villa above the casuarinas emerged white and striking, with pillared screened verandas and a high green roof. Later the garden would be planted with palms and hibiscus, jacaranda and bougainvillaea. Furniture was being made in the town, fabrics had been ordered, and baths were on their way from Marseilles.

Bill fretted in enforced idleness, waiting for the promised loads of crepe rubber. He wrote again to Makai: “Devil take it, Nick, your plantation had better yield quicker than this or we’ll all go hungry.”

To which came the reply: “Keep your shirt on, Bill, you’ll soon be wondering where to store it all. By the way, how’s finance? I’m thinking of cutting a section of road to meet the jungle highway so that we can use trucks.”

Although at least several months must pass before a new road could be completed, Bill ordered lorries in readiness.

Then came the great morning when the first laden boats tied up in the small harbour at the river mouth. Thousands of thin, milky sheets of rubber were transferred straight into surf-boats which zigzagged through the flats to the steamers. In spite of all the business with customs officials, one of the freighters left at midnight and the other in the misty dawn.

Two ships were not enough, Bill growled. There was a chap down the coast with a fleet of idle vessels and he meant to have some of them.

It was astonishing, in this place where everything moved with painful slowness, how soon the sheds were bursting with rubber, and the boats plying at regular intervals. Bill, unable to resist a spot of trading, had hardware and salt and cheap clothes brought in the empty boats from England, which he sold at a profit to Cliff Grey, who in turn made his own percentage out of the natives.

For Pat, despite the heat, life at this time was full of interest and excitement. After mail day, and a letter from Steve, she would feel faintly restless. But England was so distant, its cool shores so utterly remote from this tropic strand, that along with Steve it assumed in her mind the shape of some land she had visited in dreams; elusive and unreal.

She had an office built on to the Farland-Brading sheds and ordered account books with the firm’s name indented on the covers. A desk was put in, and a typewriter, and the drawers were filled with printed stationery and office sundries. For a few weeks she had lessons from an accountant she had met at the club and gradually, with the aid of a native clerk, she took over the whole of Bill’s office work, which pleased him mightily.

Bill was having a grand time. Between shipments he cruised up the coast and made contracts with export agents of foreign firms. “They’re fighting for our stuff,” he reported to Pat. “Nick’s rubber is the best quality down the coast and they know it. Look at these contracts, kitten!”

Then one lunch time, Bill waved a letter of Nick’s under her nose. “Nick’s invited me to Makai for a few days, to see how the rubber’s made.”

“How soon can we go?” Pat asked, smiling.

“He doesn’t include you, kitten.”

“He’s probably forgotten my existence.” She shrugged. “But I might as well see how they get that infernal rubber we have with every meal.”

Bill wasn’t so sure. “I doubt if they can put you up.”

“I’ll take a camp bed and sleep on the veranda. She was faintly surprised by her own eagerness. “Say I can come, Bill.”

He looked thoughtful for once, but could not deny her anything so easy to give.

“Okay, you coaxing female you.” Grinning, he reached across the table and patted her hand. But don
’
t blame me if Nick kicks up the dust. Makai, from all accounts, is no place for a woman.”

CHAPTER FIVE

A WEEK later they set off up the river at dawn in a shivering mist. The boys sang and poled energetically till the sun came up, when the pace was more sluggish and except for the dip of the paddles the river was an endless channel of silence. Just before dusk they reached a village, where the local preacher put them up for the night.

Again next morning they made an early start, and soon they came to the branch river that led to Makai. About mid-morning the scene to the left of the river changed. A clearing appeared, and a native village, followed by rubber trees, young ones not yet tapped. A few miles farther on began the fully grown trees with their
little
grey cups sheltered by peaks to keep out the rain. They were perfect
l
y spaced,
the
earth flat and leafy between them.

After a couple of hours of looking at these regimented ranks of trees, Pat closed her eyes and drifted off to sleep against her mound of cushions.

They came to Makai soon after midday. On a modern-looking cement platform lolled a few boys, and nearby in khaki drill, his eyes shadowed by his helmet, stood Nick Farland. Bill sprang out and jabbed his partner’s ribs in greeting. Nick came down the steps, put a foot in the boat and gave Pat a hand. She jumped ligh
tl
y up beside him, and met those green-flecked, ironical hazel eyes that were like no one else’s. “So you had to come as well,” he drawled.

“My curiosity got the better of me,” she smiled. “Do you mind?”

“Not much good minding, is it?” He turned to Bill.

“This is what I call a plantation!” Bill exclaimed. “This is really something, my lad.” Smiling to himself, the older man strolled ahead through a path between cocoa trees.

“Patricia,” Nick drawled sof
tl
y, “did you come to see me or the rubber trees?”

She smiled, borrowing his mockery. “I couldn’t bear to imagine your disappointment if Bill turned up alone.”

“I’d have got through.”

“No doubt,” she answered. “It would take more than a woman to supplant the rubber at Makai.”

“You know me very well,” he agreed drily. The turn of a
corner
revealed a white, tin-roofed house. “You share this with Bill. The superintendent has transferred to my place for your stay. Run along in, child, and take a nice cool bath and a long cool drink. They’ll make you feel a new woman.”

“Nick,” she confronted him, chin tilted, amber eyes shaded by the brim of her sun-helmet, “haven’t you yet made up your mind whether I’m a child or a woman?”

He gazed down at her ironically. ‘You’re a mixture of the two, Patricia. A dappy kid who sees the world through dream-specs. I hope a hard taste of reality isn’t waiting round the
corner
to shake your dreamworld all out of perspective. I’m not good at mopping up the tears of little girls.”

“You’re better at dragging them through the jungle in a storm, eh?” She gave a laugh. “I wonder if you are such a tough nut as you make out, Mr. Farland.”

“There’s one thing for sure, young Pat,” he clicked his fingers under her tilt of a nose, “I’m
the
big-wheel around here, and don’t you forget any of my orders. No wandering off among the trees—the atmosphere isn’t exactly that of a Surrey pinewood.”

“I wouldn’t dream of disobeying you,” she mocked. “You might decide that I’m a
little
girl, after all, and tip me over your big brown knee for a spanking.”

“You could do with one of those, I reckon.” He quizzed her, none too kindly. “Getting spoiled out here, with all those men wanting to marry you, and Bill putting up a white villa where you can act the princess?”

“You didn’t have to say that.” She felt stung, recalling all the hours she spent poring over the account books in the Farland-Brading office.

“No, I didn’t have to say it.” His mouth softened a fraction. “You can be a heck of a good kid, Honey Brading—especially in the rain.”

They grinned at each other, then he swung on his heel and walked across the compound with that long, easy stride of a body in perfect trim. A hard, tall enigmatical man. Pat nipped at her lip, still uncertain whether she liked him, or was fascinated by his achievements here at Makai. There was one thing for certain, in lots of ways he wasn’t quite so nice as Steve. He didn’t make her feel comfortable and at ease; their banter was edged, as though it could cut deep and make a wound.

During the following days at Makai, Pat slept
lightly
, and the slightest sound in the compound stabbed her into instant wakefulness.

Madden, the superintendent, was a sociable sort, and one morning she went with him on his rounds. They met Jameson, the assistant manager, and stayed for lunch with him. Unused to feminine companionship and interest, the superintendent had taken longer over his day’s work than was customary, and the evening meal was waiting when he drove Pat back to Makai. She told them to start without her and ran in to wash and change, but when she returned they were still standing about in the living-room, and Nick gave her a hard,
intent look which made a pulse jump in her throat. Over coffee he asked Madden: “You saw Jameson?” The superintendent nodded, then he gave an exclamation. “Gosh, I’m sorry! I clean forgot your message.”

Nick’s fist thumped down on the table. “That’s a day wasted, Madden, d’you realize it?”

Pat glanced from one man to the other. “I think I’m to blame,” she said. “We met Mr. Jameson at lunch time and I made rubber talk taboo.”

Nick gave her a cool stare. “What did you talk about?” he enquired. “Rose trees and chintz covers?”

“Yes,” she retorted, “and the cinema and Hyde Park, the Boat Race and the Cotswolds. Fresh milk and roast beef, and Christmas with holly and everything else that isn’t Africa. For an hour we decided to be human.” Bill laughed. Nick made no reply, and when the meal was cleared the men settled to play cards while Pat went out into the sultry moonlight and looked out over the stunted trees of the compound to the orderly walls of rubber. Each morning Nick would come out to the same scene: coffee trees and plantains amid elephant grass, and that maddening, symmetrical boundary of rubber.

His house was well furnished, the houseboys good, but the cooking was unimaginative and too often from tins. He had some good horses here, but what was the good of riding if the only paths lay between those interminable trees? He was sacrificing a diagonal slice of the plantation to the new road, but only so that he could make the money quicker to plant still more acres.

She leaned against the veranda post, listening to the night noises all around. Then she heard a step, and knew at once that it was Nick’s. He came to her side, pulling his cigarette case from his pocket. “Smoke?” he extended the case, of scuffed buffalo-hide matching his lighter.

“Not right now,” she said, her hands gripping the rail as she noticed the hardness of his chin, the haughty jut of his nose in the flare of his lighter. He snapped it shut, and inhaled deeply.

“Going to scold me for running off with Madden?” she asked
lightly
, though that funny
little
nerve still jumped in her throat.

“Like a child, you like your own way,” he said cur
tl
y, “and Madden can’t see farther than those cat’s eyes of yours. What do you think of Makai?”

“It’s very rubbery, and you really could do with a few rose trees around this compound to try and quell the odour of rubber. Doesn’t it sicken you, Nick?”

“I’m used to it—and it butters my bread.”

“Delicious combination!” She gave a husky little laugh. “I’ve never known anyone quite like you, Nick. You remind me of a machine that works without fault, and has no feelings to break down the mechanism. You’re a bit inhuman, aren’t you?”

“Thanks for the compliment, little one.” He laughed in his throat. “Are you comparing me with anyone in particular?”

She thought of Steve, but somehow she didn’t wish to bring him into the conversation. Nick was in the mood to jeer, and she might defend herself with a reckless remark
...
and she wasn’t quite ready yet to admit to feelings for Steve that went deeper than friendship.

“I’m comparing you to everyone I’ve known,” she replied. “Even Bill is not quite the jungle fanatic that you are. Doesn’t this place ever bore you?”