Authors: Rosalind Brett
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
ON alternate days it was Blake’s habit to send the lorry
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driver for the Bondolo mail to the post office in town. Occasionally, however, when he drove in on business, he would collect the letters himself. That was what happened on Wednesday morning, when Venetia accompanied him to Ellisburg. She came out of the hairdresser’s to find the empty car at the kerb with a note attached to the wheel: “Have gone over to see Mervyn Mansfield. Won’t be long.”
Venetia had become fairly well acquainted with the town. Mansfield’s office was down there on the right, above the bank. She sat in the car, combed the varnished stiffness from the golden-brown hair, and slit the wrapping from the roll of glossy magazines. For ten minutes she scanned the glossy pages, and then looked up to see Blake on the opposite pavement conversing with a thick-set man of average height, whom she recognized as the elder Mansfield.
The men parted, and Blake came and got into the car. She noticed him sniff, quickly trace the scent to her hair, and thereafter give his attention to manoeuvring the car between an ox-team dragging a log-laden cart and a straggle of native school-children.
“Did you come across your letter?” he asked, as the shops began to thin out and give way to houses. “It’s with the others—one from Thea.”
“No. May I find it?” Eagerly she thumbed through the envelopes which lay on the seat between them. “Here it is, but it feels scanty.”
She tore the flap, flattened the sheet and let her eyes rove over the few lines. Quietly she slipped the letter into her pocket.
“What does she say?” he queried.
“It seems that she has finally nailed her long week-end—from Friday till next Tuesday. She suggests spending the whole time at Bondolo.”
He stared ahead, expressionless. “That will fit in nicely I shall be away for those days, and you and Thea can have Bondolo to yourselves.”
“Away?” she echoed. “Where are you going?”
“Among my mail was a note from Mansfield, asking me to call in at his office. I got through my other business, came round to pick you up and discovered I was early. So I decided to see Mansfield right away. He tells me that he has the job of surveying and mapping a new road in the north of the province, and three miles of it will have to run through the Garrard wattle estate.”
“The estate that was your father’s?”
He nodded.
“How far is it?”
“About eighty miles. Mansfield is arranging to go on Saturday and come back Sunday evening, but I’ve been promising myself a day or two on the estate, and Friday till Tuesday will give me ample time for a thorough inspection.”
“Supposing Thea hadn’t written,” she said carefully, “were you going to take me with you?”
“I’ve only just talked with Mansfield. I hadn’t got round
to thinking about it.”
Which meant that he had intended going alone, or with Mervyn Mansfield. Wonderful to feel so wanted, she thought bitterly.
“I’ll let Thea know she’ll be welcome,” she said.
He did not expand about the forthcoming trip, but he did say, “As Mervyn Mansfield will be absent this weekend, that cousin of his won’t be coming this way after all.
”
When they reached home he had a conference with the foreman, and most of the next day he spent driving round the plantation and at the sheds. He had his bathe at five instead of six, and put on a light tropical suit for dinner at Vrede Rust. Despite his absorption of the moment, their engagement with Natalie had not slipped his mind.
Venetia dressed with care, and wore the pearl and diamond earrings. Perhaps because something more momentous was imminent, her sh
rinki
ng from Natalie had lessened from the urgent thing it had been a few days ago.
The Benham homestead had an atmosphere of ageing respectability. The faded chintzs retained their glaze, the blackwood gleamed, and the rocking-chairs flanking the klompie brick fireplace creaked with mellow years. By contrast, Natalie, in a rose brocade cocktail suit with a necklace of amethysts set in gold peeping between stiff revers, scintillated like a new planet against an age-old languorous night sky. Her figure and face were taut and beautiful, her composure aroused in Venetia the old feeling of inadequacy and the usual longing to be somewhere else.
It was not till they were about to leave that Blake mentioned tomorrow’s journey to the wattle estate, and explained the circumstances governing it.
“With Mervyn?” Natalie’s surprise had a thread of contemptuous amusement. “Is he really shedding his shell? He’s a strange man.”
“He’s got to the top by being a painstaking engineer,” Blake said.
“But he’s a complete social duck,” she finished lightly. “A man is only half a man who shuts himself away in a fastness of wild buck and parakeets.”
Blake smiled. “It’s been rumoured that you had something to do with that.”
She laughed. “Rumours are like molasses; they seep all over till the source is lost. They’re just as unappetizing, too. I hardly know Mervyn.”
Yet Neil had had it that his cousin, a man whose emotions ground slowly but inexorably, had come very near to asking Natalie to marry him. And vividly Venetia recalled the woman’s brief exchange with Neil that day of the tennis tournament, her unmistakable condemnation of his facetious attitude towards Mervyn’s idiosyncrasies. What could be her object in deceiving Blake?
“A decent evening, wasn’t it?” said Blake, as they drove home. “One can’t help admiring Natalie. Both house and farm are a credit to her.”
“And with it all,” Venetia agreed, a chill hand closing over her heart, “she manages always to look lovely. Why hasn’t she married?”
“Natalie’s proud. She couldn’t marry anyone less competent than herself and she won’t contemplate giving up the farm except for a larger, more prosperous one. The ideal would be for her to marry a neighbouring farmer and join her land to his, but all the local men have wives—though I daresay,” he added musingly, “she could have had any one of them if she’d wished.”
Venetia thought so too. Also, sharp as a sword, came the realization that but for Richard Lindley’s death Natalie might now be installed as an expert wife to Blake.
He garaged the car, came indoors and pushed home the bolts. Venetia was standing near the reading-lamp in the lounge, drinking a cup of coffee from the flask which Mosi had filled and left for them. She had used a handkerchief to freshen her face and unwittingly erased the thin film of powder. The light showed her pale, with
faint
blue hollows under her eyes and shadows within them.
“You shouldn’t be drinking black coffee before bed,” he said. “You look terribly tired.”
“Tired, but not terribly. I shall sleep.”
He took her cup, edged it on to the table and turned back to her. He put his arms round her and laid his cheek against her temple.
“Venetia, you mustn’t keep worrying. We ourselves created the position we’re in, and only we can alter it. I can’t pretend to be any happier than you are, but I’m a man, and older—I see the pattern of this infernal situation more clearly. You’ve got to have trust.”
As she didn’t answer, he held her away from him; he misread the heavy eyes and the clenched fists which lowered to her sides. A hardness overlaid his lean features, and he sank his hands into his pockets.
With a brief good night he passed through to the
dining-room
.
Thea showed up at about three the following afternoon. Blake had been ready for an hour, and she apologized for causing him a late start.
She pecked his cheek. “Good-bye, old thing. Don’t be later than five on Tuesday. I’m due back on the job at six.”
He looked down at Venetia. “Take care of yourself.” For an agonized second she was motionless. Then she clutched his sleeve and raised her lips. He bent and kissed them. For Thea’s benefit, she told herself, as the car moved forward and down the drive, shimmering in the blur of her tears.
“Cheer up,” said Thea quietly. “He hasn’t gone to the North Pole, you know.” She pushed back her shoulders and lifted her head. “I’m going to have a whale of a time, and so are you. Thanks for suggesting that I invite the girls along, by the way. About ten of them are coming tomorrow—not all together, of course, or the hospital would have to close down—but we shan’t have a lonely moment. You’ll enjoy the girls. And I hope it’s all right for Paul to come to lunch on Sunday? He seems to cling to the idea of showing you his garden, so he may carry us back there. Why should he be so certain that you’re more of a gardener than I?”
Venetia contrived a smile. “Maybe he talks gardens with me, and other things with you.”
They walked up to the veranda. Thea called Mosi and bade him fetch her bag from the two-seater. She paused in the porch.
To Venetia she said gently, “Aren’t you on good terms with Blake?”
The response came swiftly: “What made you ask that?”
“Nothing very definite. You’re miserable, and he
kissed you as if he were merely off to the sheds for five minutes.”
Venetia’s voice was pitched a shade high. “You don’t need me to tell you that Blake isn’t demonstrative.”
Thea knew better. He was too possessive, too vital, not to demand the utmost from a wife. She gave Venetia’s arm a little shake.
“I’m your sister, the only one you have, and I like you more than somewhat. Any girl placed as you are would ache for another woman to talk to.”
“I do, but I don’t propose to bore you the moment you get here. We’ve the whole week-end. Shall I come in and help you hang out your clothes?”
With her sister-in-law in the house, Venetia’s bearing eased. From Thea, calm, thoughtful and slightly humorous in outlook, emanated an aura of bedrock sanity. She did everything thoroughly, even her lazing. Her point of view on any matter had a basis of logic, and a silence shared with her had the tranquillity of dreamless sleep.
Venetia detected in her a subtle change, not the least symptom being the alacrity with which she had invited the party of nurses to Bondolo. Thea had never before admitted to having one friend among her associates, let alone ten.
The “girls” began to arrive, the first four in a rickety car driven by a grey-haired woman who sported slacks and a continental blouse. They all wore bizarre clothes and big cheap straw hats, in revulsion, probably, from blue cotton and stiff, white cuffs. They sat anywhere on the steps, cross-legged on the lawn or propped on the soil against a palm trunk, and their collective appetite was prodigious. On the whole they were a strapping bunch. They bathed, argued music and poetry, and amid much laughter hacked the male nurses and housemen to pieces.
Noise waxed and waned, worked up again as newcomers appeared. Thea’s colleagues had taken her open invitation literally; they had brought relatives and friends from town, and those who were not free till the evening came escorted by the male nurses and housemen who had been the subject of comment in the afternoon. They were agre
e
able young men, asking no more than to dance for a while, to drink moderately, and to sing a great number of popular songs.
By ten o’clock the last of their visitors had departed. Thea lit a cigarette and said: “Well, that’s that. Comic crowd, aren’t they?”
“They’re grand,” was Venetia’s verdict. “I wish I’d been trained as a nurse.”
“At your age you’d still be a pro, and hating it. You’re not the type, my dear. You’ve got to be cut out for it.” She inhaled contentedly. “It’s a great job, once you get used to it—about the best substitute there is for marriage because you never have an opportunity to feel unwanted.”
“Surely you don’t regard it that way, Thea!”
She shrugged. “Why not? Psychologists say there is no pure happiness without service. In marrying you serve only a husband and children. The nurse serves the whole of humanity.”
“That isn’t the least bit reasonable, and you know it,” exclaimed Venetia. “Once a nurse, always a nurse, whether you’re married or not. A doctor ought to have a wife familiar with nursing. Apart from doing her bit in his practice, they’d understand each other.”
“Too bad if the man happened to fall for a schoolmistress.”
“The odds are against it; doctors meet too many good-looking women in caps and aprons.” Venetia paused. “One of those nurses was whispering about a Dr. Dennis. Who is he?”
“The Don Juan of the medical fraternity in Ellisburg,” said Thea flippantly.
“He likes you a lot?”
“They’re crazy. Dennis happens to be attending several cases in Ward Three, that’s all. He’s a friend of Paul. They have a working arrangement that one shall be on call when the other isn’t.”
“Oh. I’m glad Paul knows him.”
Thea’s mouth curved, but she said nothing. She lit another cigarette and this time Venetia had one as well. They sauntered outside, laughed a bit at the disarray of the veranda and the oddments left about on the grass, yawned deeply and parted for bed.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Paul, when he came for lunch the following day, seemed to Venetia to have lost a fraction of his solid good
-
humour. There was no pinning down the difference, for his courtesy and kindness were unchanged, his interest in everything just as keen. But the tiny lines at the
corner
s of his eyes were more noticeable, and his smile had constraint. He had probably been up all night, poor man.