Brittle Bondage (16 page)

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

THAT Monday morning Venetia methodically worked through all the usual ways of passing time. She changed the flowers, dusted the Chelsea porcelain and French goblets in the cabinet, rode a short distance, had a bathe, and even did some hoeing of the flower-beds. The fact that every activity was pointless made no difference; each had to be dawdled over and made the most of.

Instead of going to her room after lunch, she took a book and sat on the wall of the side veranda. With head resting against
a
pillar she could see a plane high in the ultramarine sky, and the tan and green summits and slopes of the mountains.

A
step on the path behind her brought Venetia quickly to her feet. Her pulses hummed, and steadied. It was only
Neil.

“Hullo,” she said. “Didn’t your office open today, after
all?”

“I’ll say it did! We were up to the neck in it all morning, but Mervyn had to go out this afternoon. He gave me a map of the new road to send here to Blake, but I decided to act messenger myself. I didn’t wait to collect my racquet.”

“Never mind—I had a strenuous morning, too. Let’s sit here, and you can tell me how the town is looking after your week’s absence.”

He dropped sideways onto the wall, facing her. “E
l
lisburg’s much the same. I get tired of it. In fact, if it weren’t for you, I’d ask Mervyn to release me from the business. He keeps ramming into me that exams are all-important, but hell, I’m twenty-five; I’ve done enough studying,” Neil could never be downcast for long. “My cousin always deflates my self-esteem. How about letting me beat you very thoroughly at table-tennis?”

Ping-pong with Neil would prevent her from consulting her watch so often and wondering just what Blake and Natalie were doing now. So she helped him to set up the table on the stone floor and gave most of her attention to the game. Neil won, of course, and afterwards he drank greedily of grenadilla. Then the kitchen clock chimed four, and his jaw fell in exaggerated alarm.

“I’d better get back before Mervyn does or he’ll get launched on another of his boring lectures. Wait a minute, here’s the map.” He dragged it from his pocket, made a theatrical business of pressing the folded sheet into Venetia’s hand. “Don’t tell Blake I brought this, or it may trickle through to the office and cause a rumpus.”

“Will Mervyn be angry if he finds out that you were away all afternoon?”

“Sure to be.”

“You shouldn’t have come.”

He grinned. “Where’s the kick in doing only what you should? Afraid I won’t get over again before the week-end. Good-bye, Venetia.”

She took the map into the lounge and placed it on top of the mail which had been brought in by the lorry-driver this morning. She kept thinking: “Blake will come at dusk. He’ll look through me and get on with his letters. We’ll have dinner in one of those terrible frozen silences. He’ll never forgive me for what I said last night, and if I asked for my freedom he’d let me go—gladly.” It seemed as if the dreadful pain of loss already had possession.

On the distant brown ribbon of road a car flashed, silver-grey. Blake was earlier than she had anticipated. Panic rising in her throat, she went to the gramophone, and almost without volition set the needle in the spinning groove of the record which happened to be on the turntable. The sweet, lively strains of the “Scarf Dance” filled the house. Then she had to pause for a moment to regain her breath.

With uncertain fingers she opened a magazine and took it to the chesterfield. She heard Blake in the hall; sensed rather than saw, his enquiring glance into the room, and realised that he had withdrawn and gone to the bathroom to clean up. Not a word of greeting. Nothing to show that he had noticed anything besides the whirling black disc. Pain washed through her and receded, leaving her shaken and weak.

Then Blake was there, standing beside the gramophone and enigmatically regarding the wilting magnolia flower which lay on the low centre table. The music ended, automatically, the arm lifted and the turntable chirred to a stop.

The quietness was sudden and overwhelming. His presence permeated the room, so that she experienced a pang of complete helplessness. Yet she had to speak.

“The mail is behind the gramophone, on the book-table. The pale blue thing is the map of the new road. Mervyn Mansfield sent it up this afternoon.”

“Thanks.” He reached for the map and opened it, scanned it briefly, and flipped it down again. Disinterestedly he ran his eye over the envelopes.

“No letter with the map?” he asked.

“Should there have been one?”

“Not necessarily. Mervyn’s coming here to dinner tomorrow night.”

“Coming
...
here?”

“What’s the matter? Don’t you care for the idea?” The sarcasm in his tone as he glanced at her was heavy and unmistakable. “You and Mervyn should have much in common. He likes to be left alone, too.”

She felt an impact of warning, an almost tangible enmity between them. Swallowing on a painful ridge of suppressed emotion, she said:

“Blake ... I was tired last night. I
...
didn’t mean that.” Her voice went on, unnatural and low, “I was unhappy and in a muddle—”

“You’re constantly unhappy and in a muddle,” he interrupted coolly. “How do you think I feel about it—or had you concluded to your own satisfaction that I have no feelings? If Natalie hadn’t been in the house I’d have shaken reason into you. Sit back and be grateful that you were spared.”

The french door shivered open to his tug, and he disappeared along the veranda. Within two minutes he returned, and the grimness in his face made her nerveless. Her lungs seemed to be closing right up.

“Did you say that a messenger brought the map from Mansfield?”

“Yes ”

“Neil?”

“Well ... yes.”

His breath rasped with controlled fury. “Quite. You’d hardly play table-tennis with a messenger you didn’t know.” You should handle your affairs more adroitly—hide the evidence and assume a smooth smile. And don’t dither when you lie—it’s fatal.”

The magazine slid with a soft thud into the carpet as she stood up, straight and very pale. She took a moment to moisten her lips and draw a deep breath.

“You’ve always been swift to discredit my actions, even when they were misguidedly thought to be for the best. I haven’t lied to you today. Neil came after lunch, uninvited, and it wasn’t till he was leaving that he admitted to being away from the office against Mervyn’s wishes. If I’d known earlier I’d have sent him away. He asked me not to tell you who brought the map in case it should cause trouble for him. It wasn’t important.”

“Oh no, it wasn’t important,” in clipped, icy syllables. “Why shouldn’t the young jackanapes pass all his days playing around my house behind my back and making sheep’s eyes at my wife!”

“Your wife.” Bitterness strangled her speech, hurt her chest. “That’s nearly funny, or maybe I have a distorted conception of the word.”

“Maybe you have! There’s quite a lot that you’re apparently on the verge of learning.” His eyes were narrowed and glittering. “I’m not accusing you of being in love with that cub—I’m pretty sure you’re not—but a woman who’s miserable and uncertain will snatch at any relief which offers. I watched you with him last week—”

“You’ve never stopped watching me since we married,” she cried. “Watching and wondering what on earth had possessed you to marry someone so totally unsuited to you and your way of living. I’ve stood it till I can’t stand any more. You
think
you alone are aware of the ghast
l
y mistake we made. But you’re not. I believe I’ve known it since the day you first brought me to Bondolo.”

He stared at her, his nostrils curiously nipped in. “How enlightening. What made you stay so long?”

“The optimism of youth, I suppose.” Her lips were compressed with a kind of grief, but an implacable anger against him and Natalie, against Neil who had precipitated this quarrel, sparked in her eyes. “A good many times during the past months I’ve despised myself for taking what appeared to be the easy way after my father died, but in part I blame you for letting me do it. You must have realised, even then, that I was the wrong wife for you, that I hadn’t it in me to make you happy, to give you the things you want. The whole arrangement was your responsibility.”

“I don’t deny it. But the success of a partnership depends on two people, not one. From the outset I made it clear how vital your reactions were likely to be, but you haven’t tried to control them. By marrying you with reservations I tied my own hands. Think that over.”

Venetia had the sensation of seeing him from a great distance; tall, well-knit, yet with loose-jointed limbs; mahogany skin,, dark hair, hard forearms and strong, bony hands. Her perspective altered; a muscle tautened in his jaw, his nostrils arched with the intensity of his feeling, and the cold grey scrutiny he turned her way was merciless.

“Rather exhausting to the emotions, being married to someone you don’t love, isn’t it? Makes you wonder if life is worth it. It doesn’t let you out, though. You still have obligations of a kind, particularly where other men are concerned. God knows why you thought you could get away with it. You couldn’t have persuaded yourself that I’d condone your flirtatious friendship with that young loafer.”

Venetia bent to retrieve the magazine and return it to the pile. “Do you have to phrase every sentence in the beastliest way possible? Haven’t we rather worn out the subject of Neil?” Head thrown back, throat working, she demanded, “What about Natalie?”

“We’ll leave Natalie out of this!”

“I see.” She was suddenly reckless. “Natalie is not to be discussed in the same breath with Neil. He’s a jackanapes, a cub and a loafer, but Natalie is an excellent friend, a good farmer, and we keep a spare bedroom for her. Nothing flirtatious about your friendship with Natalie—it goes deeper than that. Maybe next time she comes here she won’t have to sleep alone!”

“Shut up, damn you!”

“Shut up?” She gave a cracked little laugh. “What have I to lose by airing a few truths? I have no reverence nor respect for Natalie. Neil may be everything you call him, but at least he doesn’t pretend to be your friend as Natalie pretends to be mine. I’m not quite the fool you think. What you can’t tolerate is my attempting to enjoy him as an escape from the nightmare of being tied to you.”

In a second he was standing over her, eyes blazing in the set cruelty of his face. She knew that if she hurled one more word at him he would strike her.

Faintly she whispered. “Forgive me, Blake. I—I didn’t mean—”

“Of course you didn’t mean—you told me that about ten minutes ago. You expect to be able to say what you please and get away with it by tacking ‘I didn’t mean’ on to the end. What, for God’s sake, am I supposed to be made of?”

“Somehow, I—I can’t help it. I’ve never lived like this before, so close to bitterness and frustration.” A clot of agony had gathered in her. “We can’t go on as we have been, Blake. We can’t!”

“Don’t worry, we shan’t! A couple of those truths you’ve just ventilated have seen to that.” Harshly he added: “Whatever we had of each other at Umsanga we’ve lost. I didn’t think it could happen, but it has. We’ll have to find something else to take its place.”

Remotely, she heard his steely tones.

“When you’re alone in your room and hating me for the brute I undoubtedly am, remember that in marriage a nightmare for one is inevitably a nightmare for the other!”

Venetia did not notice which way he went. She only knew that he had gone, leaving her drained and empty. There was no longer the torture of trying not to cry, no frightening drumming of blood in her ears.

The numbness passed off, and her brain began to function with sickening clarity. She felt many years older and wiser than the girl who had grasped at a sham security four months ago. Security was not bearing a man’s name and living in his house; it was something warm and steady and sure, which encompassed two people and the home they loved—a quality she and Blake could never hope to share.

She spent the rest of the day in her bedroom. Continually her mind went back over the episode in the lounge, and always it centred upon the mention of Natalie, his exclamation: “We’ll leave Natalie out of this!” had the deadly effect of a well-aimed gunshot. Not the smallest doubt now that he loved the woman.

And yet he spoke unemotionally of struggling on with this travesty of a marriage, of their building a life together on the ashes of a poignantly-sweet friendship. He could bear that, because having denied himself Natalie his heart could never be tom by Venetia. In time he would unbend; they would slip into a more normal relationship and these scars would be buried in the past. But there would be no beauty, no real unity, no love.

She could not view the future with Blake’s objectivity. Her fevered imagination conjured a Blake embittered, and Natalie, a few miles away, a taunt to his needs and passions. And somewhere was the tragic figure of Venetia who had wrecked both their lives.

An hour later Fumana brought a glass of milk and some biscuits. She winced from the light he had switched on.

“Take them back to the kitchen, Fumana.”

“Baas say you must have them.”

“Very well. Bring me some lime
juice and cigarettes.” She tested the milk, found it startlingly cold from the frig, and emptied the glass. She found a cigarette and crossed to the dressing table for matches. In the mirror her face was thin and white, and shadowed.

“I’m going away,” she told it huskily.