Winds of Enchantment (20 page)

The winds of spring blew hard from the sea, the waves roared over the rocks, calling out her own wild, desolate feelings. Pat crushed them by seeking diversions at the cinema and theatre in Torquay, and by taking out the boat in hazardous seas.

One afternoon early in March she rounded the Rock and climbed among the caves. Half a gale pasted her flat to the cliffs and it was not till she was ready to return to Caystor that she missed the boat
.
The rough tide must have carried it off.

Pat was not dismayed. She had clambered up the face of the Rock many times before. With slacks rolled up to her knees and sweater sleeves pushed back, she began the ascent. Once, from a small ledge, she peered down into the rock-split, creaming waters, and was clutched by fear. Whatever pain the future promised, she had no wish to die. After that protracted moment, she was easier, and turned to climb with new assurance, convinced that soon her inward courage would carry her forward as physical fearlessness was taking her up and over the summit of the headland.

For a breathless moment she stood, whipped by the wind, eyes smarting, hair straining like
torn
yellow silk, before slithering down the rough slope to the rocky expanse beyond which lay her own beach.

She felt exhausted. Her slacks were ripped at both knees and the white jersey was blotched with rusty red from the cliffs. She leapt the rivers that foamed between the boulders and at last reached the untrod sand below the cottage. It was now growing dark, and she took a last look over the breakers for the boat. It was nowhere to be seen, so she dragged her heavy feet through the sand and made for home.

Her young boy friend came racing towards her as she appeared out of the dusk. “You’ve got visitors,” he yelled. “Your door’s open and there’s a suitcase in the porch. Want me to come back with you?”

She shook her head. “I’m tired. Come and see me tomorrow, there’s a good boy.”

He whooped away to his own home.

Visitors? She guessed dully that he meant Steve. She pushed open the gate and walked slowly down the path to the porch. Yes, there was a suitcase! A
full sized
cabin trunk!

Pat laid her hand upon it and indescribable knowledge leapt into her fingertips. It throbbed there, ran along her arms, until it was beating throughout her body. Her knees went fluid, and when she looked up
...
there was Nick. His tall figure came closer, and she felt she was going to faint. She swayed, and was caught, lifted into arms that held her very close as he strode with her into the lounge. For a moment in the lamplight he gazed down into her pale revealing face.

“Oh, Nick,” she whispered.

Her head fell back against his arm and in a wild, impossible dream she felt his warm lips caressing her throat.

“Sweet—my sweet,” his voice was low and savage with emotion. “I’ve been waiting this for months!”

And then she felt the fire and hunger of his mouth on hers, and the dream was reality, and it was Nick whose strong shoulders she was holding, and Nick who was kissing her with such power and love, holding her where he stood in the centre of the room.

They came slowly back to earth, and gently he lowered her to her feet. She blinked the tears from her lashes and saw that he wore steel grey suiting that threw into prominence his teak-tan and the dark point of hair above the lambent green eyes. Their eyes met, clung, while his dominant mouth smiled in a way it had never smiled before. The blood careened in her veins, a spot of dusky colour fired each cheek, then the hunger in her body and sold swept her forward into the vice of his arms again.

He lounged in the familiar indolent fashion upon the settee, while Pat was curled kitten-comfortable on the carpet beside him, the warm glow of the log fire playing over them. She had changed into a soft wool dress that cuddled her slim figure, and a gold silk ribbon held back the still-damp hair from her dreaming face. The fingers of her left hand were locked fast in his.

“Why did you send me away from you, Nick?” she whispered.

“We had to be away from each other for a while, my darling,” he said gently. “You had to learn to need me as I have needed you for a long time. Too often you’ve made of me a father-image, and I couldn’t chance regulating our marriage on so uncertain a basis. My feelings for you, Pat, go far beyond the parental, and you have to feel as strongly about me. It’s the way I’m made child—all, or nothing.”

“You talk of father-images!” Her eyes were ashine with love, and with exasperation. “Nick, hasn’t it ever occurred to you that each time you called me child, I thought that was all I meant to you—a child?”

He gazed down at her, his eyes a shimmering green in the firelight. He touched her hair with his free hand. “Fools, perhaps, the pair of us. I should have made wild love to you the night we married and not gone off to Makai—but you didn’t love me then.”

“I didn’t
know
I loved you.” She pressed her cheek to his knuckles. “Nick, I don’t suppose there has really been a moment since our first meeting when I haven’t loved you.”

“You’ve thrown the opposite at me more than once,” he reminded her quizzically.

“And you, you brute, have bullied me more than somewhat.” She filled her famished eyes with him, sitting there in her chair, the hazel tints gone out of his eyes to leave only green flames. “Why didn’t you write to me?” she asked. “You knew I would come here.”

“It’s a long story, child. Sure you want to hear it?”

“Every word,” she said passionately.

“Well,” he squared to her, and his fingers and thumb closed over her chin so that she could not help feeling the subdued violence in him as he spoke, “you remember—no, perhaps I didn’t mention it to you. But a little while before you left, I had a rather queer fever and went unconscious for several hours. That happened again a short while after you had gone. I wasn’t really worried; malaria was much worse. But when the rubber pool was formed—I’ll tell you about that some other time—I visited all the plantations. In a godforsaken patch of swamp, that same fever took me a third time and I was out for several days. Sweating with fury and wind-up, I rode back to Kanos. The doctor there asked me to go to Freetown to see a fever specialist.”

He stopped, and she winced as his fingers ploughed through her hair. “During the weeks before I saw the Freetown doctor, I had plenty of time to think. Physically, I was well enough, but I had a bug in me that might strike me down at any moment...”

“Nick,” she was staring up at him, “why didn’t you send for me? Why did you bear all that alone?”

He smiled briefly. “Those weeks were hellish—not just because of the bug; I got used to that idea. But it cut you out.”

Her glance was long and puzzled. “Why do you say that?”

“I couldn’t come to you, or even write to you till the germ was out of my system.”

“Was that fair?” she asked unsteadily.

He swung down his legs and leaned forward, gripping her shoulders and speaking tensely. “God knows, it was hard enough, but I thought it best. You and Africa have been the only two loves in my life. I can talk about Africa, but what I feel for you is too big to be put into words. I knew it even when you left, but Africa hadn’t quite done with me then—and I still believe that we needed to be apart at that point in our lives. All, or nothing, that’s me. I had an idea you—felt something for me. I wasn’t taking a chance on it being a father fixation.”

She reached up and closed her hands round the rich tough leather of his forearms.

“Nick—are you through with Africa?”

He nodded. “And she with me. The specialist said that once a rare bug gets into the body, it’s time to quit.”

“But I should have thought that sort of advice would have made you fighting mad!” Pat was bound to say that.

He gave her a small grin, and made a feint with his fist at her chin. “It did. But when I got back to Kanos, several of the whites were down with blackwater. Nursing a couple of them was one of the most horrifying tasks I ever did. I imagined you there, risking terrible infection, and that settled it. I sold out and came home.”

After a quivering silence: “The villa?” she whispered.

“I handed it over to the hospital for use as a training centre for native doctors and nurses.”

“You’ll miss the rubber trees,” she said, catching her breath, going forward into the arms that lifted her so easily.

He smiled with a hint of the old teasing. “That’s up to you,” he murmured, his lips at her ear.

“Human saplings,” she murmured.

His mouth was mocking and tender. She felt his arm go tight across her back and her heart thrust up to block her throat. For minutes a torrent of sheer love united them in a long, breathtaking kiss. A kiss that healed. A kiss that promised. A kiss that bound them, one to the other.

Presently she asked, “What will you do, Nick?”

“Reynolds came over on the boat with me—his wife is back here, you know. We’re forming a committee to speed up the education of the natives. The rubber pool will provide funds. You know, Pat, I believe more can be done from London than on the spot. You see
...
”

For a while he expanded on one of his favourite subjects. She listened, smiling, and scarcely heeding, to the quick vibrant tones. Nick was home—all was well. All was wonderfully well!

“Will that keep you busy enough?” she asked finally. “That, and horse-breeding, and polo.”

He got up, lifting her with him. “Show me this cottage I’ve heard so much about.”

With him in them the rooms shrank and were too chintzy. Nick was massive oak and riding crops and big windows that flung wide. “Quite a good cottage,” he conceded, after their tour of inspection, “but we’re not staying.”

“Nick...”

“No, Pat. I’m determined about this. If we lived here, you’d go on thinking about the past. It’s the future we have to think about.”

“Wherever you go, I’ll go with you, but we could keep the place as a sort of—escape.”

He said forcibly: “Your mother and father were one pair of people, we are quite another pair, and I won’t have us hedged about by a cobwebbed past.”

“This cottage is part of me—”

“Shackles become indispensable if you wear them long enough. This is where you shed yours. Bill Brading’s daughter is now Nick Farland’s wife—do you hear?” At the sudden trembling of her lips, his tone softened. “We’ll stay a while, for a honeymoon, and then we clear out. We’ll take a small estate and farm it,” his smile had a new tenderness. “Dig nice little holes to take those human saplings you’re longing for. That should make you happy.”

She blinked away the sting of tears. “Only your happiness can do that, Nick.” Then fear jabbed for a moment. “Will you feel the pull of Africa?”

“Come to that—will you?” he asked lightly. “Farming is in my family blood—roving is in yours.” He took both her hands in a steely clasp, bent and gave her a short, firebrand kiss.

“We’re the same kind of people,” he said, “and we’re in this together.”

Later, while he hoisted his trunk inside and got it upstairs, Pat wandered down the front path to the gate in the starlight. Her heart brimmed with the fullness of Nick’s return and the promise of the years. He was still Nick as she had always known him, strong, self-willed—and with a new tenderness that thrilled her blood. As yet she had not had time to renew acquaintance with the devil in him, but she knew it was there still. She was equally sure that he would settle and become a countryman of the best kind, a spirited hater of current evils. Only time would prove whether she and England between them could finally snap the savage spell of Africa.

From within the cottage she heard his disjointed whistle as he put energy into his present task; then came a crash and a muttered curse. The trunk must be causing trouble.

Warmth ran through her. Her heart wept with absolute joy ... a quickening joy as his firm step sounded behind her on the path. She shifted to make room beside her at the gate and gave a sighing
little
laugh as he fitted her shoulder into his armpit. Soft dusk soothed the waters and shrouded the cliffs. Everything was quiet.

“Something to confess already,” he said. “I’ve smashed the stair-rail.”