Bonds of Matrimony (15 page)

'And what does that mean? I don't believe a word of it!'

'Benedict says—'

'Give it a rest, dear,' Betsy advised. 'Who cares what the desert is doing?'

'But it's important!' Hero turned on her. 'It's creeping south at the rate of nine kilometres a year. If people like Benedict can do something about it, they ought to be treated as heroes! Wellington and Napoleon only killed people -Benedict may save the lives of thousands!'

Betsy's voice remained kind, but her meaning was unmistakable. 'A little bit of hero-worship never did any harm, pet, but don't mistake it for undying love, will you? That's my department!'

Bob gave them both a puzzled look. 'Anyone with half an eye can see that Hero's head-over-heels in love with the fellow! Why should you care, Betsy?'

Betsy opened her eyes very wide. 'I? Because I didn't have to sell myself to gain a nationality! And because Benedict is strictly on loan to Hero - an old school tie and all that boloney! - but we both know Benedict is mine. Don't we, darling? I'm not the possessive type,' Betsy went on, her eyes hard and bright with anger. 'I don't object to a bit of play-acting, such as we were treated to last night, but don't go too far, sweetie. The limits of friendship can be stretched too far - especially my friendship! I like you, Hero, and I don't often like my own sex, but remember that I can destroy you any time I choose - and I don't like competition. That's the most bearable thing about you, I've always thought. You've never competed with me for anything I wanted and it's too late for you to start now!'

Bob muttered something under his breath. 'You're going too far, Betsy!' he added uncomfortably.

'For whom?' Betsy retorted.

'For me, for one!' he snapped back. 'I'd say most of the play-acting is being done by you !'

Betsy shrugged. 'Who cares what you say, Bob? Hero and I understand each other very well. If you feel so involved and sorry for her, you should have married her yourself!'

Hero sprang to her feet. 'Stop it both of you! I think it's horrid to talk about Benedict like that! He won't stand for you telling him what to do, any more than he pays any attention to what I say, and he's quite right! So put that in your pipe and smoke it!' She glared round the table, and then ran from the room, not at all sure that she hadn't made a fool of herself again. What need had Benedict of her defence?

She watched Benedict as he refuelled the plane and wished she were as certain as she had sounded that he wouldn't allow Betsy to crack the whip round his ears.

If he loved her, he might think she was worth anything, even his career, but Hero couldn't bring herself to believe that. No matter how much he loved a woman, she would have to follow him in his chosen career.

'Are you sure you don't want to go to Nairobi for a few

days?' he called down to her.

She shook her head, not trusting herself to speak. 'Bob will probably help with the planting,' she managed at last. 'He's a very nice person really.'

'He seems to have a lot of second-hand ideas to grow out of,' Benedict commented.

Hero looked up at him, suddenly curious. 'Is that what you think about me too?' she asked him,

'Do you care what I think?'

She nodded. 'Of course I do!'

He jumped down beside her, the nozzle of the pump in his hand. He stowed it away on the fuel tank and began to push the container into the boma he was using as a hangar for the aeroplane. Hero ran after him, eyeing him anxiously. 'Well?' she prompted him.

'I think you'll do,' he said.

'But that's no answer! I want to know!'

He put out a hand and touched her cheek. 'I think you're far too credulous where the people you love are concerned, Liebling/

He turned away, making sure that the fuel tank wasn't leaking and that everything was secure before he shut the door.

The propellers flared into life. 'When will you be back?' she shouted above their roar.

'Heaven knows! As soon as I can!' he shouted back.

She pulled the chocks clear of the wheels, the wind from the propellers whipping her hair against her face and into her eyes. It was that that made her feel like crying and she wiped her face angrily with the backs of her hands. She would not be so silly as to weep every time he went away from her! If she did, what would she

do when he went forever? There would be no bearing it!

Benedict lifted his hand and waved to her and she hoped passionately that he couldn't see the tell-tale trail of tears on her face. She waved back, fighting the misery that had enclosed her spirits. The plane taxied forward to the edge of the airstrip her father had cut out of the bare earth, turned and began its run through the red dust. A second later it rose and circled in a wide arc into the blue

^sk
y.

He was gone.

CHAPTER TEN

Mount Kenya lay behind a pall of mist. Hero looked hopefully up into the sky above her, but it remained as blue and as clear as ever. True, some small clouds were scudding along the line of the horizon, but they didn't look like rain clouds and, in any case, they were going in the wrong direction.

Hero rubbed her hands together and sighed. The last two days had crawled by and her reluctance to go back to the house and make some effort to entertain Betsy and Bob grew every minute that passed. They did nothing but quarrel. Betsy was plainly bored, and Bob was very little better, sulking over Betsy's lack of interest and over Hero's long absences, working on the farm.

The best thing that could be said about the two days was the way the work had gone. The last of the topsoil had been trucked back to the fields, the barricades to hold the earth in place had been finished, and three of the fields they had made were planted with the different grasses that Benedict wanted to try out. That should bring a glint of approval to Benedict's eyes - if he would only come and see all that they had done! And there had been Fulani, the donkey. Even in a couple of days he looked less leggy and more at home in his stable than he had on the wide open spaces of the plains. He was learning to recognize Hero's step too, and came running to the door to greet her. Hero could hardly wait to show Benedict that.

Betsy was alone on the verandah when Hero decided that she couldn't put off the moment of going in and changing for dinner any longer. She was wearing a nylon negligee and very little else.

'Bob may be here at any moment,' Hero pointed out, 'or Koinange bringing out the lamps. We're going to put up the nets so that we can eat out here. It will make a change for you.'

'And have the insects battering themselves to death at every mouthful?' Betsy sneered. 'You do think of the jolliest entertainments for us!'

Hero hesitated. 'If you'd rather eat inside — ' 'Oh, for heaven's sake, Hero, do as you damned well please!'

Hero looked down at her hands, wondering if it would be better to try and reshape the nails, or to give them a good scrub and leave it at that. 'Betsy,' she said slowly, 'would you like to go back to Nairobi?'

'Would I? Honey, you'll never know how much! I knew that life on the farm would never be my scene, but this is beyond anything I could have imagined! To think your parents lived their whole lives here! No wonder they turned into such peculiar people. It's enough to turn the sanest person mad with boredom!' 'You'd find it more interesting if you learned something about the experiments Benedict wants to try here.'

'Spare me that!' Betsy retorted. 'I shan't give Benedict the time to see the results, if you want to know, so why should I waste my time on them?'

'But they're very interesting — '

'Look, Hero, you may worship the ground he walks on, but I don't! All I want from him is a swinging life in Nairobi or Mombasa, not to be buried alive up here! And what this baby wants, this baby gets!'

'Not with Benedict!'

Betsy stared at her with open amazement. 'What do you mean, not with Benedict? Are you trying to tell me that you won't give him up?'

Hero was strongly tempted to tell her exactly that, but she would be no more able to divert Benedict from his chosen course than Betsy would. 'Of course not! Only Benedict isn't the biddable person you seem to imagine he is. Please, Betsy, try and interest yourself in what he's doing. He'll admire you all the more for it!' 'Doesn't he admire me enough as it is?'

'He may do, but he won't give in to you over the way he lives his life. I don't think you'd like him much if he did!'

'Possibly not,' Betsy drawled. 'Okay, darling, you win. You can tell me all about the wonders he's doing tomorrow and then next time he flies off somewhere, I'll see him off and wish him well. How's that?'

'That'll be fine!' Hero managed to say with an unnatural brightness, and made a dash through the house into her bedroom.

She sat on the edge of her bed, wriggling her feet out of her cotton trousers and thinking how much she would like to have a bath. Her feet were stained red with the dust and, try as she might to get them clean in the bowl of water that was her washing ration, they remained obstinately ingrained and disreputable. Oh well, she thought, what did it really matter? When the planting was finished and she was a lady of leisure again, she would soak them until they jolly well did come clean in one of those lotions that advertised themselves for the purpose. The contrast, though, between her own sunburnt face and limbs and Betsy's gleaming whiteness was something she could do nothing about. How nice it would be, she thought, looking at herself dispiritedly in the looking-glass, if Benedict would suddenly prefer someone dark-eyed and as brown as a berry, instead of the pink and white prettiness of someone like Betsy!

Outside, she could hear Koinange clattering round, registering his disapproval at having to-put up the netted screens round the verandah. He would need help, Hero knew, and hoped that Bob would be around to aid in slotting the pieces into their proper places. Obviously, however, he was not, for a few seconds later Koinange knocked on her door and, without waiting for Hero to open it to him, began a long complaint as to how he could not be expected to put up the screens by himself.

'I'm coming, Koinange,' she assured him. 'Where's Bwana Andrews?'

The African sniffed. 'He is not on the verandah.'

'I know that!' Hero retorted, exasperated. 'But where is he? He must be somewhere!'

'Ndiyo, memsahib.'

'What do you mean, yes? Where is he?'

Koinange sniffed again. 'He is in his room, mem-sahib,' he told her, very much on his dignity.

'Right,' said Hero. She advanced down the corridor, her skirts rustling, to her old room and banged on the door with her open hand. The only answer was a faint groan. 'What's the matter with him?' she demanded of Koinange, who was reluctantly following in his train.

'He not feeling well,' Koinange murmured. 'Leave

him, Memsahib Hero. He will feel better shortly.'

But Hero was more concerned than ever. There were few facilities for anyone to be seriously ill on the farm and it was a long, long drive to Nanyuki and the nearest proper hospital.

'Bob!' she called out. 'May I come in?'

'If you must!' Bob discouraged her.

She opened the door a few inches, conscious of Koinange's rigid disapproval behind her back. Bob was lying fully dressed on his bed, grey in the face, and with a curious disconnected look about the eyes.

'What's the matter?' Hero asked, her anxiety getting the better of hen 'Oh, Bob, are you running a temperature? You might have malaria, I suppose, but you haven't been down to the coast recently, have you? You look awful!'

'Merely a trifle under the weather!' Bob moaned. 'There's nothing to do here, that's the trouble! And you don't keep so much as a bottle of whisky, Hero! What does Benedict do, or has he gone teetotal like you?'

Hero flushed a little. 'I'm not teetotal,' she denied. 'I drink wine.'

'Big deal! Is that all you allow Benedict?'

'Of course not!' she disclaimed. 'I meant to buy some whisky the last time I went to Isiolo, but it wasn't on the list and I forgot. You could have slipped in and bought some if you'd wanted to.'

'Thanks very much! I thought I'd make do with some of Koinange's malwa, not being on speaking terms with Betsy today, any more than I was yesterday, or the day before, and it's got a kick like a

mule! If you love me, Hero, you'll leave me to die in peace.'

'Well, I don't!' Hero declared. 'It's just as well my father isn't here, let me tell you. He'd have had something to say to you.'

Bob made a face at her. 'My dear girl, there's nothing very heinous —'

'I'm not your dear girl.'

'Poor little Hero! You're nobody's dear girl, are you? That's the trouble with both of us. You want Benedict, and I want Betsy, and neither of them gives us so much as a second glance!'

Hero stood up very straight, with her head in the air, quite unable to keep the gleam out of her eye. 'I wouldn't say that,' she said carefully. 'Benedict would always have a care for his wife.'

'Want to bet?

She considered that for a moment. She had been brought up to believe that betting was very nearly as bad as being drunk and disorderly in someone else's house. 'How much?' she asked with a quiver of nervousness, 'Ten bob?'

'Oh yes!' she exclaimed. 'I could manage that!' 'You're on,' said Bob. 'If Benedict objects to my making a pass at you when he gets back you'll be ten shillings the richer! But he won't! Haven't you seen the way Betsy looks at him. What man could resist that invitation? Not Benedict, not me, not anyone!'

Hero gave him an uncertain look. 'You won't tell Betsy, will you?'

'Wouldn't listen to me if I did!'

'She might,' Hero went on worrying. 'I don't think I will have a bet with you after all, Bob, if you don't mind. Benedict wouldn't like it and - and I'd rather not.'

'Running away!' he nodded. 'Very wise. I'm bound to win with Betsy around. Worse luck!'

'Then you won't make a pass at me?'

He grinned at her, pulling himself up into a sitting position. 'You'll never get your man, young Hero! You play fair, and you're everything that ought to make even Benedict think twice about hanging on to you, but he won't. He's hooked on Betsy like the rest of us.' Hero didn't want to listen any more. She set her jaw at a stubborn angle and forced a superior smile to her face. 'Koinange wants help with the netting screens on the verandah. Do you feel well enough, or shall I help myself?'