Authors: Unknown
“Which one of you . . . captured him?”
“He wasn’t captured. I was crouching in the ferns above the beach when I caught sight of him flat on his front and drawing himself along one of the paths to the lagoon. He heard me and got up to run, and I let him have it in the leg.” In a voice like steel he added, “I meant to take him alive.”
“But, Julian, what good . ..”
“I crippled him, but the woman—your servant—sprang up from nowhere and stuck a knife in his back.”
“Manoela,” she breathed, her eyes wide and dark. “How . . . frightful!”
“He was lucky,” he said in clipped tones. “Here, drink your coffee.”
He questioned her about the sensations in the injured arm, and spread a brown ointment over the bruise.
Presently she had the courage to say, “What did you do to Manoela?”
“Nothing. We let her escape.”
“I’m so glad. I hope she’s gone back to her room in my garden to wait for me.”
There was a silence. Then Julian said: “You won’t be going back to the house on the cliff. It’s burnt out.”
She pushed up on her right hand, staring. “Burnt . . . out?”
“The heat was too fierce to trace a cause. At first it looked as if Dakers might have thought he’d killed you and returned to destroy the evidence, but it must have blazed up as soon as you left. It was an inferno when I got down there.”
“I remember,” she said dully. “The lamp fell.”
“That was my conclusion. No use fretting about it.”
“My piano,” she reminded him bleakly, “and the books and tapestries. My clothes ...”
“What about them?” he demanded roughly. “You might have fainted and perished with them. Can’t you be grateful you didn’t?” He sat down again and inclined her way. “Later on, Matt’s coming up for a talk. Meanwhile I’ll have one of the sheds cleared and a wooden floor and ceiling put in. It’ll be primitive, but we’ll do our masculine best to contrive a decent, all-purpose room for you by this evening.”
“Thanks.”
She lay back and managed to turn her head away, to face the, wall. He went through for a bath and a shave, and in a few minutes Sam came to set the table. Despairingly, she wished Manoela were here with warm water, a towel and a clean dress.
Teeth clamped, she swung down her legs, used a chair-back for support and stood up. After a moment’s vertigo she got out to the veranda and leaned against one of the posts. Sam must have called his master, for Julian strode out, mopping off traces of his shave with a face towel, which he threw down on to a chair. He sat on the rail and looked up at her, squeezed her fingers and let them drop.
“Hell, isn’t it, being a lone woman . . . but you chose it, Phil, and you’ve no option but to take what comes. I’d drive you up to the mission if it weren’t so full of disease.”
“I shall be all right,” she muttered. “It’s odd, but losing the house—and everything, is much harder to bear than this,” indicating her swathed arm. “I’ve no home, no clothes, and for the next six months, till my yearly allowance comes from the lawyer in Cape Town, I shall be penniless.”
“None of which is important,” he said crisply. “I’ll provide you with food and shelter, and Matt will order you some clothes. What worries me,” teasingly, “is how to get you washed and slicked up now. The best way would be for you to have a shot at it in my bedroom, and to call me if you’re stuck.”
His demeanour, though considerate and helpful, dared her to give in. The time for collapse was past and from now on she had to build. His attitude was: “We’ll help you, but don’t forget that you brought it on yourself.” Like everything else at the moment, it hurt.
Matt’s mien, when he strolled in mid-morning, was more sentimentally sympathetic. He patted her head and clucked with distress, and his jaw literally slipped when he noticed the discolouration at her throat.
He stayed to lunch, and afterwards the two men conferred over her temporary quarters and left Phil to rest. At about four Sam brought tea, and when Julian came home at dusk she was sitting on the veranda, the small capable hands locked together in her lap, her face colourless and resigned.
He brought her gin in a lime and soda and had something similar himself, but he made no effort at conversation till the glasses were empty and Phil had returned to moody contemplation of the black outlines of the trees.
Then he said: “Crawford’s peeved that you should have fought your way out here last night when he and Drew were only two hundred-odd yards from your house. I told him you were probably driven by an instinctive dread of passing Daker’s place.”
“I suppose that was it,” she agreed dispiritedly. “You’re sorry you came to me?”
“You’ve been very kind, and it’s wonderfully generous of you to arrange living space for me, but . . .”
She halted, and Julian, apparently, had no intention of helping her out. He finished his cigarette and stubbed it.
“Would you like to go to your quarters now?” he asked offhandedly, “or will you stay to dinner?”
“I’ll go now,” she chose.
He brought a flashlight and took a firm, impersonal grip of her right arm, just at the back of her elbow. They passed the fermenting sheds and the garage, a large storehouse and some smaller sheds. The last but one had three new white wooden steps leading up to a door. Julian went ahead to open up; he scraped a match and set it to the wick of a lamp.
Light grew in the room, illumining a whitewashed wood ceiling and log walls, an iron bed covered by a large blue blanket, and a vaguely familiar Belgian rug on the new floor. The lamp stood on a lowboy, its plain cream shade reflected in a square mirror. Away in the shadows lurked an armchair, a dining chair and a small table. As she surveyed one article after another, Phil’s chest went harsh with emotion.
“It’s crude,” he said, “but you can superintend improvements. We’ve fixed you up with an outhouse which you can use as a bathroom, and so on.”
He’d thought of everything. Phil tugged in her lip between her teeth.
“I’ll send Sam over with an extra lamp and a meal.” He paused. “I doubt if we’ll be able to hire you another woman servant. Manoela must care a lot for you. Could you stand having her around again?”
“Yes. Oh, yes.”
“I’ll chase her up tomorrow. She can prepare your food in my kitchen and sleep next door. You needn’t worry at night. A couple of boys always patrol the buildings in case of attempted theft.” He laid his box of matches beside the lamp and cast a final glance around the room. “Whatever you want, tell Sam. Shoot the bolt when I’m gone and he’ll knock. Good night.”
Mechanically she answered and obeyed his instructions. Restlessly, she drifted back to the lowboy and pulled open the top drawer, expecting it to be empty. But inside there were a pile of printed handkerchiefs such as Matt sold in his store, and a few large white ones with a J in one corner; a new military hairbrush and a black comb, a card of hair grips, a canister of talcum, a toothbrush, toothpaste, sponge and soap.
Heartstrings unbearably stretched, Phil examined the next drawer. Towels, sheets, pillow-cases, check tablecloths and napkins. The bottom drawer held lengths of material from Matt’s bales, and ... a cellular shirt and a pair of shorts!
Phil sat on the side of the bed, cradling her wounded arm, her whole being heavy with useless longings. She ate a little of the dinner Sam brought, and got ready for bed. Slowly and painfully she sloughed her clothes. Then she put out one lamp and dimmed the other, and turned down the blankets.
On the crisp white pillow lay the final push to the floodgates: a folded suit of men’s blue pyjamas. Phil laid her cheek against them and cried.
AS soon as she could use her arm Phil’s buoyancy returned. It needed courage to visit the blackened area where her house had stood, but already the pale green of new growth speared from the ashes, and it would not be long before all traces of the fire were overlaid by a young jungle. So she looked on it as dispassionately as she could, and passed on. Clin Dakers’ house, too, was demolished, leaving only Matt’s solid structure and the cream-washed building shared by Roger and Drew.
In her own log cabin, kept sweet and polished by Manoela, and in the small garden which had been fenced off in front, she found plenty to fill her time. Apart from replenishing her wardrobe, there were curtains and bedcover to stitch, and mats to embroider. As a change from sewing and gardening she made a couple of sketches of the waterfront, and knocked up frames to contain them. Impossible, of course, to get hold of any glass, but one benefit of creating one’s own pictures was that when flies had ruined them new ones cost nothing.
Yes, there was plenty to do and see, and when night had swept in and noises ceased Phil could, if she wished, loop back a curtain and enjoy the sense of companionship offered by the lights at the house. Entertaining was beyond her hut’s capacity, but occasionally Matt or Roger came over at sundowner time, the trader bringing his own bottle of whisky and Roger more than willing to absorb the lime or grenadilla she served.
Phil had written to the lawyer in Cape Town stating her plight and begging him to send part of next year’s allowance. At the rate mails moved in equatorial regions she would be lucky to receive a reply within six weeks, but it would be good to be independent again. Even here, where she could run a stores account with Matt and tot up Manoela’s wages against the day when her cheque would arrive, it irked to possess no ready cash. A trip through the market was no fun at all if you couldn’t purchase a few yams or a pair of beadwork slippers that caught the eye.
It was astonishing, when one was forced to begin again at scratch and accumulate fresh property, what a vast number of goods make up the normal person’s quota. Phil’s most difficult acquisition was a swim suit. Matt stocked only woolen trunks, most of which turned out to be moth-chewed or mouldy. She selected the best she could find and made a flowered top which shrank lamentably and had to be discarded in favour of another cut from a pair of interlock pants.
Some time she would have to visit the mainland, to buy underclothes which matched and felt sleek to the skin and one or two tailored dresses, and to search around for a gramophone and records. She missed music more than books.
A few weeks after Clin’s death Rodrigo Astartes came to the plantation. Astride a well-groomed mule, his generous torso and limbs clad in a pale grey flannel suit, Rodrigo made his way down the mountain-side to where the road widened, and sent a man ahead to announce his coming and to entreat the loan of a car for the last three miles of his journey.
An hour later, after Rodrigo had bathed away his sweat and taken a double whisky in cold soda, Phil was summoned to pour tea for Julian and his guest. When she entered the living-room, blinking a little till her pupils became accustomed to the dimness, Rodrigo’s small eyes scintillated, and he bowed and clicked his stubby heels in the way she remembered from their single brief meeting eighteen months ago.
“But how charming,” he exclaimed. “Do not ask me to believe that you are the child who abandoned her education in order to nurse the poor brother! You were so young and big-eyed.”
“So different,” murmured Julian drily. “Believe it or not, senhor, the child is as rooted in the island as our trees. One day, of course, she will go wrong in the head, commit suicide and become a legend.”
“You joke, Mr. Caswell. She is as sane as you are. Look at the wide, smooth forehead, the clearness and depth of iris in her eyes, the humorous mouth.” Rodrigo closed his lids for an ecstatic moment. “Senhorita, you are everything I thought never to meet on Valeira. You have beauty, simplicity, courage.”
Apparently Julian deemed it time to curtail the flattery. To Phil he said: “Senhor Astartes likes mint tea, the way you prepare it. Do you mind?”
She gave him a demure, half-mocking glance, to which he returned a tolerant smile. Unspoken between them lay her challenge that since she had lived in the plantation buildings he had never invited her into his house unless a second man were present.
Over tea, which Rodrigo praised with locked fingers, he gave reasons for his visit.
“Only this week, senhorita, have I heard of your misfortune—the burning of your house. It grieved me profoundly. Mr. Caswell will tell you that the Novada casa has many rooms, all of them furnished. It is my desire that you will accept whatever furniture you need.”
“How extraordinarily kind,” said Phil warmly. “Mr. Caswell and Mr. Bryson have provided me with a home and all that goes with it—everyone has been overwhelmingly helpful. . . .”
“Pardon, senhorita . . . these gentlemen must have denuded their own homes to fill yours. We exiles in the wilderness prize certain possessions—if you have lost something you valued may I not be permitted to replace it?”
“I loved the house for its associations,” she said simply.
He spread his hands. “Will you not relieve my crowded rooms of a single article? A cabinet, a desk . . . something? Surely there is one thing you miss as though you had lost a dear friend?”
“Two things,” she admitted, spearing a slice of lemon and setting it afloat on a second glass of tea for Julian. “My piano and gramophone.”
“Ha! That is good. We have two pianos, and my sons no longer use their little gramophone since my wife brought back from Lisbon a large one. It will make me very happy to provide you with music.” .
“But, Senhor Astartes ”
Sharply, Julian broke in: “I didn’t know you’d lost a gramophone. You can have mine.”
Rodrigo, his round face puckered with hurt, looked from one to the other. “I have intruded? You are perhaps . . . fiances?”
“Not at all,” said Julian. ‘Till she leaves the island I am Miss Crane’s unofficial guardian.”
“I should have understood that,” Rodrigo answered with humility. “Later I will ask your permission to send the senhorita a gift.”
An awkward moment expanded and held the room. It was Rodrigo, the exquisitely polite Latin, who ended it with a delighted laugh.
“Now for my news. My elder son is to be married! You remember him, senhor . . . Amino? My wife spent two exhausting months in Lisbon and has now made a contract with a girl of good, but impoverished, connections. Amino will meet her at Libreville and be married there. We think it wise that they should be united before the young lady experiences life on Valeira.”