Home is Goodbye (2 page)

‘Matt’s brother. He hates sisal and wants to write books.’

‘Well, why doesn’t he? The place belongs to Matt, doesn’t it?’

Felicity shook her head.

‘They all own it, as a limited company. There are some cousins in on it too, but they live further north, up round Arusha, growing soya beans. That was one of Matt’s ideas. As soon as he was old enough to have a say, he started telling everyone that the sisal honeymoon was over, but he couldn’t bear to leave it himself. Everyone always does what he wants eventually though, and so they roped these cousins into the company to run the beans
—
very profitably indeed!’

‘I still don’t see why James shouldn’t write his books,’ Sara objected.

‘You will!’ Felicity assured her.

The car came to an abrupt stop outside the house and she sounded the horn with sufficient vigour to bring Africans running from every direction. Sara got out of the car and stretched. It was surprising how tiring driving could be in the hot airless atmosphere. Ruefully she shook her skirt, but the creases were in it until it was next washed.

She would have liked to have made a better showing when she first met her aunt, but she supposed that everyone arrived in much the same condition and that it was
taken for granted.

The house was disappointing. It had been built on one of those barren hillocks that she had noticed all over the country, with the result that there was little but dry dust around it. She wondered whether anything would grow there and hoped that she would be allowed to have a try. She liked to be surrounded by flowers and shrubs, and why shouldn’t she? She was English after all!

Felicity led her on to the verandah that completely surrounded the house, thus shading all the inside rooms and making them cooler.

‘Mother’s probably waiting for you in the sitting-room,’ she said. ‘You’d better go and see her first and then
I’ll show you your room.’

Now that the moment to meet her aunt had come, Sara felt rather nervous and strung up. There must be something about her if everyone spoke of her with that resigned impatience — and what say she couldn
’
t get on with her, as Felicity seemed to think was only too likely? It would be very difficult to live in such close contact with
someone one disliked.

Mrs. Wayne was lying on a chaise-longue with her eyes shut, her small, dumpy figure encased in a shell-pink satin dressing-gown, and with such a litter of sweet papers and magazines all around her that Sara longed there and then to restore a little order to the room.

‘Mother, wake up!’ Felicity broke into the rather uncomfortable silence. ‘Sara’s waiting to meet you!’

Mrs. Wayne opened her eyes sleepily.

‘Show her to her room, dear. You know I always sleep now. I can’t possibly meet anyone!’

The lids came down over her eyes again and her right hand crept out towards the half-finished box of sweets. If it hadn’t been for that, she might indeed have been fast asleep.

Felicity crossed the room and stood in the doorway.

‘I’ll show you your room,’ she told Sara in an odd flat voice, and her face was more sullen than ever.

Sara smiled quickly. She was beginning to understand Felicity’s odd warning and was determined to make things easier for the other girl.

Sara had had no preconceived ideas as to how people would furnish their houses in the tropics. She had read about such things as mosquito nets in books, but they had had little reality; now she was seeing these things for herself.

Her own room was sparsely furnished, with a bed, a table and a chair. One of the corners had been curtained off to give her somewhere to hang her clothes, but the material was already rotting. Either it was very old, or the heat was more damaging than Sara had ever imagined.

She sat down on her bed, glad to be alone for a few moments to get her bearings. The heavy axminster carpet and the hot, woollen-covered chairs in the sitting-room had been rather overpowering. Just who could have chosen that dreadful orangey brown she couldn’t imagine. If they had been hers she would have burnt them as they stood!

She glanced up as there was a knock on her door and Felicity came in with a tea tray.

‘I hope you’ve got everything you want,’ she said awkwardly. ‘I’m afraid I didn’t have time to check before I left for the station, so you’ve probably been left to the mercy of the servants.’

Sara assured her that she had everything she needed. The room was pleasantly cool after the heat outside, and it was at least clean and tidy.
Felicity sat down beside her on the bed, and handed her a cup of tea.

‘I’m sorry we can’t have it in the other room, but Mother’s still sleeping. She sleeps in the morning and in the afternoon and then wakes up at night when it’s cooler. You mustn’t mind if you hear her wandering about the house, she won’t disturb you in here.
’

Sara said nothing. She sipped at her tea and gloried in it as it slipped slowly down her parched throat. She had never been a great tea-drinker in England, but in Tanzania she saw that it might easily become her greatest weakness. The heat from the tea was more cooling than any cold drink could have been, and it made her feel welcome too. She smiled appreciatively at Felicity.

‘D
o you always have tea at this hour?’ she asked.

‘Round about half past four usually. The houseboy goes off between two and four, and everyone sleeps. Never ring anyone up at that hour, it’s the most ghastly
faux pas
!
And that reminds me, if you want anything washed leave it on the floor. We used to have natty little baskets, but somehow or other we’ve given them up.’

It was a long time since anyone but Sara had done any of her washing and she felt some qualms about turning it over to anyone else, but the thought of clean and beautifully ironed uniforms appearing every day overcame her scruples. She leaned back against her pillows and felt deliciously spoilt.

‘You must tell me what you want me to do in the house,’ she said carefully. ‘I don’t want to take over all your favourite jobs.’

Felicity looked at her in some surprise.

‘The Africans do all that sort of thing,’ she said. ‘And anyway, even if they didn’t, you’d find a day’s nursing in this heat more than enough for you!’ She gave one of her slow, attractive smiles. ‘It was nice of you to offer, though. I expect you were terribly well brought up and think we’re quite frightfully slapdash!’

Sara, who had had her mind’s eye on the sitting-room, coloured a little.

‘Of course not!’ she denied quickly, but Felicity only laughed at her.

‘I’ll take the cups out,
’
she said rather abruptly, and disappeared out of the door, slamming it shut with a push from her foot.

Sara smiled to herself. She was going to like Felicity, she thought. It had been kind of the girl to bring her some tea.

Mrs. Wayne announced that she was ready to meet Sara at six o’clock.

‘Bring her in just as she is, dear,’ she told her daughter. ‘I want to see her before she gets herself ready for dinner. I know what you girls are! You can be quite
plain
during the day, and then on goes the war-paint and you look quite different! I want to see Sara
au naturel
— after all, that’s how
he
will be seeing her!’

Felicity didn’t have to ask who ‘he’ was, she thought she could probably guess. She was accustomed to her mother’s endless scheming for her own ends, and, because she had a mild distaste for getting her own way through such means, preferred to keep aloof from her machinations as far as that was possible.

Sara was surprised to find that her aunt was a pretty woman. No longer overcome by pretended slumber, Mrs. Wayne had a subtle, girlish charm that she found herself responding to almost in spite of herself.

‘You’re pretty enough!’ Mrs. Wayne told her. ‘I like the way you do your hair too. Do you bleach it?’

Sara shook her head.

‘I inherited it, I think,’ she said. She began to think that everyone in Tanzania was given to making these personal remarks.

Mrs. Wayne looked a little like a satisfied cat. There was something rather feline about all her movements in spite of her plumpness.

‘That’s good. He doesn’t go for the synthetic at all, you know,’ she giggled childishly, ‘especially not synthetic ropes! But then that’s understandable, isn’t it?’

Sara wondered whether she was referring to Matt.

‘I don’t suppose he’ll have time to notice me,’ she said, and hoped that the remark didn’t sound falsely modest.

‘Oh, he’ll notice you!’ Mrs. Wayne assured her. ‘As soon as I found that old photograph of you and saw how fair you were I thought of him!’

Somehow Sara didn’t think her aunt was as naive as she sounded. She looked at her rather doubtfully.

‘I don’t quite know what you’re planning, Aunt Laura,’ she said, ‘but I’ve come out to work, not for any other reason.’

‘Of course not, dear! Nobody thought that you had! And please don’t call me aunt, it makes me feel so old. And I’m not your aunt really, I just happened to marry your uncle.
C
all me Laura. Everybody does!’

That was another kittenish little untruth. Both Matt and his mother had referred to her strictly as Mrs. Wayne.

‘Pour Sara out a sherry, Felicity,’ Laura Wayne said suddenly.

Felicity did so, her hands shaking slightly. She spilt it slightly as she carried it over to Sara and apologized.

‘I think I heard a car, Mother,’ she said.

Mrs. Wayne sat up straight and peered out of the window. She too looked a little nervous.

‘It’s Matt, I think,’ she said.

There was a silence as the car came up the long drive.

‘I
—
I think I’ll go and change,’ Felicity said hurriedly. She looked quickly round the room, half-smiled at Sara and vanished.

‘She’s always been terribly shy!’ Mrs
.
Wayne said automatically. Sara had the feeling that she had always said that about Felicity. But Felicity hadn’t seemed at all shy with her. Still, it could be different where Matt was concerned. Girls often behaved quite differently with the opposite sex.

The car vanished round the side of the house and they could hear footsteps on the verandah.

‘Just called in to tell you I would be sleeping down here, Mrs. Wayne,’ a voice began in the doorway. It was Matt all right. He stood stock still in the doorway and stared at Sara.

‘Who are you?’ he asked.

Sara found herself staring back. Surely, she thought, he must know who I am!

‘This is my niece, Sara,’ she heard Mrs. Wayne saying in the background.

‘How do you do?’ she said automatically.

She watched him go slowly white with temper and in spite of herself began to feel afraid.

‘
Did you say your niece?’ he asked Mrs. Wayne.

‘Yes,’ Mrs. Wayne agreed, her eyes, always a little cold, looking a little dangerous as well. ‘She travelled up in the same train as you did.’

‘She did what?’ Matt asked quietly.

Sara looked anxiously from one to the other of them.

‘I told your mother she was coming while you were away,’ Mrs. Wayne continued. ‘She’s going to act as the other nurse that you needed. Mrs. Halifax was kind enough to suggest it, and it does give us all a little more reason for staying on here in this house, doesn’t it?’

Matt turned his back on her, quite deliberately. It was a snub that Mrs. Wayne wouldn’t forget in a hurry, Sara thought. She met Matt’s eyes as calmly as she could, and was astonished to see that they were as blue as her own in spite of his dark colouring.

‘It seems that you have been exceptionally badly treated, Miss Wayne,’ he said quietly. ‘Had I known that you were coming, I should have made arrangements for someone to meet you at Dar-es-Salaam. Women do not customarily travel on our trains alone! It’s true that Mrs. Wayne mentioned you to my mother as a nurse, but naturally she thought that all arrangements for your passage would have to be made, and that can be rather difficult at this time of year. We had no idea that you were on the point of arrival!’

There was an agitated little silence.

‘
I —
I thought it had all been agreed!’ Sara whispered. ‘There was no one at Dar-es-Salaam, it’s true, but I thought perhaps that was usual. I sent a telegram saying what train I was catching.’

‘It is not at all “usual”, Miss Wayne!’ For a moment she thought she saw a glimmer of humour in his eyes. He looked her up and down as though she was something that he was buying. ‘I suppose you are a nurse?’ he asked.

‘
Yes
.’
she said. She wondered almost desperately why she didn’t tell him all about her qualifications, but somehow she could not.

‘Well, that’s one thing we can soon find out! You can
s
tart a month’s trial at the hospital tomorrow, but you must understand that if you’re not up to our standards here, no consideration for your uncle’s family will make me keep you on!’

S
ara’s head went up. ‘Our standards’ indeed!

‘I
shouldn’t want to be kept on under those circumstances,’ she said proudly.

He nodded curtly.

‘Good! I’ll see about your work permit.’

He walked calmly out of the room without bothering to glance at her aunt. Sara looked at her a little nervously. She still wasn’t sure exactly what had gone wrong. Her aunt looked more pleased with herself than ever.

‘I knew he wouldn’t be really angry once
he’d
s
een
you!’ she said.