And No Regrets (20 page)

At last his raid on the jiggers was over, and he was bathing Clare’s foot in disinfectant and binding it up. “You’ll have to rest this foot as much as possible, honey. Can’t risk infection.”

“I must get about in the kitchen
,”
she said. “With Luke sick, there’s no one to do the cooking. The other two boys are hopeless over a stove.”

I can manage to open tins and dish up cold stuff,” Ross said, firmly. “This foot needs rest.”

“What about our trip to the rubber plantation?” She
gazed up at him in consternation. “You’re going tomorrow.”

“Yes, we must go—not you, Clare. You’ll have to stay here, I’m afraid. Maybe it’s just as well, for it isn’t a nice part of the bush where we’re going. Horribly steamy now the rains are setting in.”

“Da
rn
jiggers,” she muttered. “I’ve been here all this time without any trouble from them, and now they have to choose this particular time to burrow into my foot.”

Ross sat down beside her and slipped a cigarette between her lips. He clicked his lighter
impatiently
, then applied the flame to the wavering cylinder. “Are you that scared of being alone here?” he asked. “Johnny and Mark will be on hand. They’re thoroughly devoted to you—”

“No, I’m not scared,” she protested. “I was looking forward, I suppose, to that trip. It’ll be my last out here with you.”

“I’ll be taking you to Onitslo,” he reminded.

Her teeth almost met through the cigarette, and having ruined it she stubbed it out. “If I’ve got to stay here, then so be it
.
” She conjured up a smile. “Thanks for operating on me, Ross. I didn’t know you had such a gent
l
e touch.”

“Oh, there are still a few things about me you don’t know.” He grinned. “You thought you knew all my secrets, eh?”

Then something about her unsmiling expression made him lean forward. “You’re supposed to laugh,” he coaxed.

“
I just can’t rise to it
.
” She met his eyes, and despite the torment of disillusion, she longed to rest against his shoulder, to touch with her hand his lean brown cheek.

“Tell me something, Clare,” crispness edged back
into his voice, “do you remember that message from Patsy Harriman that Bill delivered?”

“Vaguely.” Oh, Clare, she thought, you liar! You can’t stop thinking about it. It’s been the knell of your hopes since Bill lumbered it out into the open.

“I’m glad you haven’t made anything of that message,” Ross said. “Good scout.”

Yes, terribly good scout, she thought, her eyes on him as he got to his feet and began to re-pack the first-aid box. He took the bowl of pinkish water out to the kitchen, then came back to inform her that he had put on the kettle for some tea. “I’ll brew you a pot, then I’ll have to be getting on down to the sheds.”

“Thanks,” she said. “Mustn’t I use my foot at all?”

“
In emergencies.” He shot her a grin. “I’ll see to the grub. You have a rest and a read—if there isn’t a book or a magazine you haven’t scoured from end to end.”

“There’s one I’ve been saving. It’s on that bottom shelf, the one with the blue and gold wrapper.” She watched, carefully, as he opened the book bureau and bent down to seek the book. He glanced at the tide, then at the name of the author.

“Longworth!” he exclaimed. He took a look inside at the fly-leaf, and the message Simon had scrawled. “You didn’t tell me he’d sent you a copy of his first novel,” Ross growled. “Why not?”

“It’s autobiographical,” she said coolly. “Maybe I didn’t want my husband reading about the other man in my life.”

He crossed the room and tossed the book into her lap. “D’you imagine I’d have felt jealous?” he crisped.

“No, I just wanted to avoid sardonic remarks about Simon. You haven’t any time for his sort, have you, Ross? It’s action all the way with you. When you want something you wade right in and grab it, and the devil take anyone who’s in the way. Simon,” her knuckles, gleamed whitely as she gripped his book, “is different.”

“He’s a dreamer, eh?” Ross stood tall above her, his brown hair ruffled, tan silk shirt open at his throaty the base of his chin very square and obstinate. “Are you trying to tell me, Clare, that he’s what you want now you’ve had your fill of Africa?”

“
Perhaps.” All at once she was alienating Ross almost deliberately, protecting the love he didn’t want from her. “I’ve known Simon most of my life, and a long perspective puts things in a clearer light.”

“Meaning you couldn’t see the wood for the trees?” Ross broke into a dry smile. “Life out here with a timber man has taught you several things to take home to Simon. I hope he appreciates them.”

“We’ll see.” She flipped open the book, and heard Ross go from the room. Mark came in with her tea-tray, and after pouring herself a cup, she sipped it and resolved to be very snappy and bright until Ross had gone off with Bill to check up on t
h
e rubber trees.

They left early the following morning, Johnny and Mark having been given firm orders to sleep in the kitchen while
the little missus was here on her own.

“We’ll be back as soon as possible,” Ross assured her. “Rest that foot, and don’t brood.” Then he broke into a
wi
cked grin. “Of course, I’m forgetting, you’ve got dear Simon’s novel to keep you entertained. I hope he hasn’t revealed too many secrets of your adolescent romance.”

“Sometimes, Ross,” she said in exasperation, “I could throw something at your head.”

Bill, who had gone out discreetly on to the veranda, obviously thinking they wanted to indulge in a ‘fond’ goodbye, now poked his head round the door and remarked that
th
e sun was getting up “It looks a bit smoky,” he added.

“I daresay it’ll rain before we reach the canoe,” Ross said, carelessly. “Got your oilskins?”

Bill nodded, and smiled at Clare. “I’m sorry you’ve
got to stay behind, Clare,” he said. "Still, a rubber forest is hardly the place for a woman.”

“I’d have enjoyed seeing it. I hope the rains keep off,” she added anxiously.

“Tuck your head under the cushions if the lightning gets bad,” Ross advised, shouldering a heavy rucksack.

“But you taught me how to face it like a real scout,” she reminded him pertly. “I’d hate to go soft now you’ve toughened me up.”

“You’ll never be tough, my honey.” He bent over her and unexpectedly kissed her nose. “Be good. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”

He strode out after Bill, and a minute later she heard the lorry start up. She hobbled to the veranda and stood watching the lorry out of sight
.
The sound of it died away, and her glance lifted to the sky. A smoky ribbon tied the blackish clouds in an untidy package, and she knew that it would rain heavily very soon. Her breath caught on a sigh. He had said not to brood, but she would be bo
u
nd to. Despite the excellent writing of Simon’s novel, it couldn’t enthrall her half as much as sitting and going back over the events of the past eighteen months.

She withdrew into the living-room and curled herself into a ball on her favourite lounger. There was a tin of nuts and raisins on the bamboo table beside her, and a jug of grapefruit juice, and feeling almost cosily isolated from the world of people, she let her thoughts drift back to Ridgley and those short weeks of getting to know Ross—as well as anyone could know him. Those few short weeks that had woven the first threads of what was to lead her into a web of strange, tormenting enchantment

Once a year Ridgley held a race meeting, and Clare had gone with Ross. It was raining when they had set out in the sports coupe he had on hire, but by the time the course was reached, the sky had brightened and
r
acegoers were discarding their mackintoshes and opening out their sports seats. Ross, fingers under Clare’s elbow, led her to his place in
th
e stand, dropped her bag and gloves upon his own seat, then used the glasses to scan the course. In tweed jacket over
d
ark-brown slacks, he had seemed to Clare the best-looking man at the meeting. A mounting excitement had coursed through her veins
... then had come the first intimation that what she felt was more than physical attraction.

She loved horses, and had a small bet on every race, amusing Ross intensely because she would ignore his advice and ba
ck
s the horse which most p
leased her eye. “You’re asking fo
r trouble, betting with your heart instead of your head,” he had jibed.

Considering
him
from beneath lowered lashes, she knew that she could only see him with the eyes of her heart
.
Narrow-hipped, his long bones sparely covered, his face arresting at all angles. Once or twice he had smiled amusedly in her direction, showing boyish teeth, and crinkling the
corner
s of his eyes.

That was the way his eyes crinkled when she played the piano for him. Her gift was a natural one, which her aunt had wanted trained, and which her father had paid for. When she played, a new, troubled emotion got into the music. Ross informed her that she played remarkably well
... up to a point “You think I need to grow up, is that it?”
sh
e said to him.

Whenever he talked about Africa, she felt an odd, inward tremble. The tropics
... and Ross. This man with the controlled restlessness and the natural assurance. A man who had schooled himself always to get what he wanted; whose vitality was the more forceful for being restrained.

She just couldn’t resist questioning him about West Africa, and he answered grav
el
y, still betraying by those crinkling eyes a faint enjoyment in her naive thirst for information. Those weeks of Ross’s leave had
been curiously exciting, and unsettling. She felt stripped of all resistance, yet he did not try to batten down her will, or expect her to be a little yes-woman.

Clare had to invite him home. Aunt Letty showed surprise but did not flutter
,
placing him several places along the dinner table from Clare. Afterwards they all played bridge, and Clare smiled inwardly as he seated her aunt and walked lazily round the table to his own chair opposite. “I admit he’s charming,” Aunt Letty said later on. “I played atrociously this evening, but he wasn’t a bit put out
.
There’s something about him, though—he isn’t our sort, Clare. He’s been around!
”

“That’s what makes him an interesting fellow,” spoke up Uncle Fred. “And I’d say his motives are absolutely above board where our Clare is concerned. Straight eyes, the chap’s got—did you notice?”

“A straight eye for a pretty girl,” snapped Aunt Letty. “Clare, I don’t think you ought to see him any more. I’ve a feeling—well, I think he’s capable of making you very unhappy.”

“Auntie dear,” Clare laughed, “he’s just a friend.”

“I wonder if Simon will think so,” said her aunt tartly.

Simon and Ross were like chalk and cheese. One was as fair as the other one was dark; and the planter, unlike the writer, was not a man to accept the thrusts of fate without fighting back instead of probing their inner meaning. He boldly took the course of his life into his own hands.

She knew he found her a likeable companion, and she had no intention of wrecking their friendship by demanding more than he was prepared to offer; yet to be with him was at once a delight and a terror, and an exquisite anguish. She enjoyed dancing
with him best of a
l
l, though he was no Gene Kelly on the dance f
l
oor. After a foxtrot or a quickstep, they would stroll out on to the terrace of the country club. As it was
summertime, the sun went home later, dropping down below a distant line of trees, leaving a spread of gold that paled into saffron splotched with the mauve of high, still cloud. The scent of roses and stocks came up from the garden below. From nearby, came the long, deep note of a blackbird, that evening they sat on a bench and he asked her, a smile on his lips, what sort of a little girl she had been.

“All pigtails and prim obedience,” she had grinned
.
“I’ve always been, terribly grateful to Aunt Letty and Uncle Fred for having me live with them.”

“They should be grateful to you for being such a dutiful child,” he
had said, a thoughtful smile in his eyes.

“How does
i
t feel
... small-town England after the vast tropical jungle?” she wanted to know.

“Nice, calm, nerve-soothing.” His fingers played with the ends of her fine-textured hair. “There’s not much that’s glamorous about West Africa, you know, but I was always keen to go and I enjoyed it as much as any man could.” He threw up his head and light shone on his firm, arrogant jaw. “The place can be hellishly lonely, and I wasn’t built for stupendous loneliness. You haven’t any conception of it, Clare. My nearest neighbour was thirty miles away, and he a man.”

Then Ross had left her for a week, to go to London. Left her to see Simon occasionally, and to wander in imagination through the places she ached to visit, noisy bazaars, forgotten villages, and raw jungle. She visualised giant trees and astonishing, dank green vegetation, and over all the torrid heat of the African sun. She hadn’t dreamed that Ross would return from London to put to her a suggestion that would make her dreams come true
... almost.