Authors: Unknown
“He
and Manoela?” she echoed, startled.
Matt cleared his throat. “I guess Manoela did most of it, but he carried you in here and stayed the night, forced crushed sulphonamide tablets down your throat every four hours and injected quinine in the intervals, to kill any malarial bug you might have picked up.”
“No wonder I’m floating,” she murmured. “Where’s Julian now?”
“Gone home for a shave and breakfast. He waited till your temperature was down and you were breathing better. He’ll be back.”
Phil was silent, and Matt filled in by fussing with the carafe and lemon-squeezer.
When she had drunk she lay back. Dispiritedly she said, “You let me down, Matt.”
“I didn’t, you impulsive little fool!” Matt had got so far before recalling that she was ill and not to be bawled at Less vehemently he went on, “I had it all arranged with the skipper of the freighter that was anchored in the bay. You were to go aboard and stay there—just there. I would have told Caswell you were in good hands and would remain hidden till the
Bassington
had sailed. He wouldn’t have suspected the Novada freighter.” Matt gave another of his gusty sighs. “I never felt so blasted sold in my life as when I came here in the morning at about six, with seaman’s slacks and a jersey over my arm, to find the place locked and you and the half-breed flown.”
“Oh, Matt!” she laughed weakly, “what a lovely idea! I’d have hopped aboard disguised as a seaman. If only I’d known!”
“No use telling you till I was sure the skipper agreed, and it was too late that night to call on you. In fact, I slept at the store.”
“What did you do when you discovered I’d escaped?”
“Made another damfool error,” he grunted. “I got it into my head that you’d paid someone to take you a few miles round the coast in a motor-boat so that you could hide snugly in one of the caves. I wish to God you had done that, Phil.”
“It didn’t occur to me. If it had, there was no one I could trust.”
“I suppose not. Anyway, I laid into ’em down on the waterfront, and ran my own motor-boat right round as far as the Novada harbour. When I returned it was late and Julian Caswell Was barking orders for work to cease and the search to commence. He was mad as the devil. ‘That girl’s this side of the mountain,’ says he, ‘and she’s got to be found.’ By sundown he was looking pretty haggard, and I was fairly rattled myself. He led a search-party all night, but I had to rest.”
“Poor Matt. I’m so sorry.”
“If you’d seen us yesterday you’d be sorrier. When I decide to do away with a body I’ll choose the jungle in preference to the sea. Several hundred of us, and we couldn’t even smell a hair of you. Caswell had instructed the
Bassington
to leave in the early morning, hoping you’d crawl out of hiding, but she had some trouble and couldn’t sail till the afternoon.”
“Manoela watched for me.”
“Caswell dragged the story out of her last night. Some girl, Manoela.”
“He wasn’t horrid to her, was he?”
“No, only abrupt. He’d been through a lot, but he certainly can take it. You should have seen him this morning after forty-eight hours without sleep.”
Phil was glad she hadn’t seen him; listening to Matt was tiring enough. She’d prefer to be stronger before inviting a scene with Julian Caswell.
Matt gave her another sip of the lemon-water, and pulled the mosquito net right back, as she requested.
“Now that we know you’re going to survive to plague us,” he said jovially, “I’ll get along. Shall I send Manoela?”
“No, thanks. I may sleep again. I’ll make up to you for the worry, Matt.”
She lay on her side, looking through the oblong between the half-open shutters at the tall palm fronds tom one way by a hot wind, and round white clouds careering across the blue. A change from the usual breathless haze; one of those mornings, rare in Valeira, when colours were lucent and fresh, and the sea from pure joy smashed green and white over the rocks. After a while Phil dozed. Manoela brought coffee.
“The white master is here,” she said conspiratorially. “Are you well, Manoela?”
“Yas, missus. You will see the white master?”
Not much point in refusing. You can’t be high-hat with a man who has doctored you through a chill.
“Ask him to come in.”
But Manoela hadn’t reached the door before Julian pushed it wide open. After she had passed out he closed it from the inside and crossed to the foot of the white enamelled bed.
Hands in his pockets, the blue gaze critically roving her pale cheeks and tousled hair, he said, “Did Matt give you the couple of tablets?”
“Yes.”
“At eight o’clock?”
“I think so. My watch has stopped.”
“It’s nearly twelve. Time for the next dose.”
He came to the bedside-table and opened the drawer, extracted the white tablets and poured water. Obediently she swallowed.
“There are four more. You take two at four o’clock and two at eight. Don’t deceive yourself that because you’ve no pain there’s nothing wrong with you. No one can spend thirty-six hours in a swamp without paying for it. I’m putting you on your honour to stay in bed for three days and not to bathe in the sea for a fortnight.” Giving her no time to reply, he added grimly, “You’ve chosen to remain on the island and I shall make no further attempt to kick you out. But whether you like it or not, from now on you have a police boy on guard during the dark hours. Is that clear?”
She nodded, and drew in her lip. Matt was wrong; the two nights’ vigil had marked Julian. There were tiny lines of strain at the comers of his eyes and his jaw was pulled so tight that a muscle twitched in his lean cheek.
“I thought you’d just be . . . angry, not upset,” she said unevenly.
His voice was cold and bitter. “You didn’t weigh up the spot you were putting me in. The men know of my decision to send you to England against your wish, and had anything happened to you I’d have been labelled a murderer.”
“Was that why you . . . looked after me all night?”
“Explain it how you please.” He half turned to the door. “Send your servant up to my house if you need anything.”
He was going.
“I made a horrible mess of it, Julian,” she said quickly.
His teeth clicked. “You’re learning all the time,” he returned curtly.
The door snicked shut. Phil sagged in the bed and pressed fists over her aching eyes.
THE cacao and oil palm harvest had just ended. On the other side of the mountain where several small plantations existed beside the huge Novada estate, they were celebrating a heavy yield in Portuguese wine and song. Up at the mission, which was equally distant from both harbours, the natives got together for a thanksgiving service held by the old Catholic priest, and thereafter fights ensued between workers from the different plantations, which culminated in a gathering of Africans on the beach and the opening up of hidden “shebeens.” The result, according to Roger Crawford, showed fewer casualties than last year: only five killed and forty injured. Not bad.
Since he had returned from his vacation and labour-recruiting trip a month ago Roger had renewed zest and energy. In Lagos he had met a friend from England who was cruising about in his own ketch. The fellow was just starting on a honeymoon trip—he had married the daughter of a Lagos official—and had promised to call at Valeira in a few weeks’ time. The couple intended first to tour the Canary Islands.
When she heard this Phil exulted. A white woman, possibly little older than herself! Not a jaundiced skeleton like Sister Harrington, but someone pretty and youthful and well dressed. Straightway she ordered some lengths of material from Matt Bryson and began industriously to stitch. The dresses and new slacks were finished and hung away, and Phil came round to the cynical reflection that three parts of humanity were either fickle or liars.
Mostly she still wore brief shorts and a shirt, and tied her hair back with a ribbon. She fished from a canoe in the lagoon, and marvelled at the loveliness of the overhanging cliff and the palms which bent to examine their images in the rippling water. She bathed and lay on her back in the shade, regarding the sky and soliloquizing.
One day a shape materialized between her vision and the heavens. She blinked hard and took another look. A mouth, well cut and smiling, a clipped black moustache and dark, subtle eyes. She made a sudden sound of amusement.
“Clin! I thought it was the devil himself.” She sat up and reached for her shirt. “When did you get back?”
“About an hour ago. There was no boy to prepare a bath, so I decided to take a dip.” He dropped beside her. “No hurry, though.”
“Where have you been this time?”
“Fernando Po. It was lousy.” Clin Dakers leaned back on one elbow, watching her. “The job hung on, and I was sick to death of palm-olive cooking.”
“Not much change from that on Valeira.”
“There’s poker . . . and you to watch and speculate about. You’re going to be beautiful, Phil.”
She laughed. “Going to be?”
“In about five years. If you were only pretty now, I wouldn’t say that. But you have the features and intelligence for real beauty.”
“How nice. I wonder where we’ll all be in five years' time?”
“I’ll be established in the South Seas. When my contract is up I shall travel south by stages, pick me a plump Tahitian girl who can cook, and settle beside a coral reef. I’ve seen enough of the primeval forest to last a lifetime. And you—” he span a pebble—“you’ll be back among civilization, Phil, married to a handsome young man who’ll blindly adore you, but will never come near understanding you.”
“Poor thing. Why shouldn’t he?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know, but that’s how it is when you’ve lived for any time in places like this. The tropics alter you fundamentally; There’s no explaining how—it simply happens.”
His eyes lingered on Phil’s small, vital face. Vaguely he recalled spring in his native Gloucestershire and the pale green willows by the river. His blood quickened and his gaze lowered.
“May I cadge some food from you when I’ve had a bathe? Later on I’ll send down an order to the store.”
Lightly she jumped up, slipped a finger round the legs of her swim suit to loosen them and slung her shorts over her shoulder.
“I’ll tell Manoela to take a tray to your house in an hour. Will that do?”
“Perfectly. I’ll squat amid the mildew and eat.”
His eyes pursued her till she had clambered out of sight. His mind followed still further, probed her knowledge and her innocence. In the seven weeks of his absence she had changed, was more serene and womanly. Grief over her brother’s death no longer dominated her emotions. There was something else. Clin was intrigued; he was also weary of philandering with women in pidgin Portuguese.
With Clin and Roger both anxious for tennis in their spare time and neither one of them eager to play with the other, Phil was engaged as partner almost every day for the hour before sunset. She could beat Roger about once in every three games, but never had she had a clear victory over Clin.
The forestry man was exciting on the court, and away from it he had a certain cheap glamour; the regular-featured film actor’s face, the flashing smile, the dark, unstable eyes. Phil preferred his superficiality to Roger’s increasing devotion; she could handle it more easily.
Since the episode of the
Bassington
she had had few contacts with Julian. Twice, after British boats had put in, he sent down fresh bacon and white flour, and on the second occasion she had reciprocated with a freshly baked chocolate sponge cake. A week later, after meeting him on a path through his own oil palms, he had helped her dismount, unsmilingly, but his expression agreeable. Drew was there, earnestly directing the boys who scaled the sixty-foot palms to sever the great pods. Julian had invited her to walk with him to where the nuts were being loaded into a mule wagon, and had expanded on the relative merits of palm oil and coconut oil, and the rising market for copra. Not once had he deviated from the subject of planting, but just before he lent a hand to get her back into the saddle he said she looked well, and flicked the brim of her hat with his forefinger. It really did seem that he might be recovering from the jolt she had given his ego.
The only man for whom Julian showed friendship was the trader, but when they knew him, everybody liked Matt. Two or three times a week he dined at the manager’s house. Much less often, Julian came down for an evening at Matt’s place on the cliffs.
Clin was taking a period of leave. All day, when it was too hot for tennis, he lazed on his veranda, and if he grew tired of the view of the jungle that grew up to his doors and sent sprouts through the plank wall, he sauntered down to pass some time with Phil.
Roger chafed. “Every day when I come home he’s draped over your veranda wall chowing away as though you’d just met. I can’t think what you two find to talk about all the time.”
“Clin’s had heaps of experiences. He’s never dull.”
“He sets himself out to fascinate you, and you seem to fall for it. Surely you don’t believe everything he puts over?”
“No, about half,” she said, smiling. “Clin aims to entertain, not to deceive.”
“Do you bathe together?”
“Not by arrangement. We’ve overlapped occasionally.”
“Does he ever eat with you?”
“Nothing more solid than a fairy cake with a cup of tea. Stop being an idiot, Roger, and I’ll let you come in for a drink and some music.”
For the moment he was mollified, though deep down he knew that his suspicions sprang only partly from jealousy of a colourful rival. It was her complacent acceptance of himself that irked. Phil was too high-spirited and sensitive to be casual to a man with whom she was falling in love. She wouldn’t be able to help showing it in some way.
Clin, whose employers were Portuguese, suggested a trip over the mountain to the Novada estate. The Portuguese were known to be exceptionally hospitable, and he considered that Drew, Crawford and himself were sufficient bodyguard for Phil.