Doctor's Assistant (3 page)

Not the least of the benefits of Port Quentin, thought Laurette as she reached the white wooden gate which her father had made and she had painted, was the comparatively low cost of living. Bought foods were expensive, but the garden produced a superfluity of fruit and vegetables, and it was invariably easy to acquire a chicken from an African on the barter system. Meat was delivered only once a week, and for three days out of seven the Delaneys were happily vegetarian.

In the porch Laurette sighed with satisfaction. She was healthily tired and looked forward to a delicious hour with a book on the divan. Her father was deep in some drawings commissioned by an advertiser, but he would emerge as usual at four-fifteen for a cup of tea.

The door stood ajar about a foot and Laurette spared a moment to reflect upon her single regret about the house.

She would have preferred a hall, even a tiny one, to having the main door open straight into the lounge. Not that it mattered very much; even modern houses in this country were often built that way.

She stepped into the lounge, pulled off her hat and tossed it into a chair, and stretched with sensuous abandon, as one sometimes does when alone.

“Pretty as a sapling,” said a cool voice, and she swung about to gaze with hostile bewilderment at the stranger.

No, not a stranger. There was no mistaking that haughty nose and the sea-green eyes. The beard was gone, that was all. He was tall and tanned and mocking, his white shirt open at the throat, and his hands carelessly thrust into the pockets of his shorts.

“Good afternoon,” she said. “How nice and polite of you to call.”

“Not a bit.” Charles did not move from his negligent position near the false fireplace. “I came to see your father on a business matter.”

The words were almost a snub but the tone was utterly courteous. Laurette was vexed to find herself straightening her belt as if she were nervous.

“I’ll
tell him you’re here.”

“He knows. He’s rooting out some drawings to show me.”

“Oh. How’s the arm?”

He withdrew his right hand from his pocket and showed her a long strip of adhesive plaster on the inner side of his forearm. “It’s nearly right. I heal quickly.”

“You didn’t let Dr. Vaughan stitch it.”

“I didn’t put on this plaster till I came out. It seemed a pity to disturb your beautiful dressing.”

She ignored the hint of sarcasm. “You’ll have a scar.”

“Perhaps, but I can stand the physical sort.”

“You’re probably tough enough to stand any sort,” she said.

There was a silence. Laurette wished her father would come and relieve her of the necessity for small talk. She didn’t care for Charles’ analytical regard, and somehow he made the lounge appear what it actually was: cheap, small and cosy. “What of it!” she exclaimed fiercely to herself. “No one else looks out of place in it—not even monied old Mr. Kelsey.”

“I suppose you’ve just come off duty?” he asked. “Do you enjoy working for Ben Vaughan?”

It hadn’t occurred to her that Charles and Ben were acquainted, though it was perfectly natural that they should have met long before Laurette had come to Port Quentin. Charles spent all his short leaves here; doubtless he knew everyone.

“It’s interesting,” she answered, “and he’s a patient instructor. He won’t let me do any real nursing.”

“I expect he realizes you wouldn’t be any good at real nursing.”

She looked at him with displeasure and exasperation. “You like annoying people, don’t you? What grounds have you got for believing I’m made of poor stuff?”

“I didn’t say you were; you fire too quickly.” Indolently he straightened. “I’m as gifted with judgment as the next chap. You’d do a job of nursing if
you had to, and do it
well, but you’d end up limp as wet string. You’re too young, anyway.”

Laurette did not parry that one, but her chin tilted and tiny sparks shone in her eyes. “I don’t suppose a woman has ever told you before that you’re insufferable,” she said.

“Not in so many words,” he returned evenly. “Most of those I knew could give you ten years, and you’d be surprised at the difference those years mean in poise and wisdom.”

What Laurette would have managed to reply to that she never knew. Her father came in just then carrying a sheaf of papers. He had the genial, absorbed expression which invariably accompanied happiness in his work, and Laurette deemed this a propitious moment to slip away to her room.

CHAPTER THREE

LATER, while Laurette and her father were at dinner, she learned the real reason for Charles Heron’s visit. It seemed that Charles, upon hearing that John Delaney turned out really good drawings, had reconsidered a pet scheme of his which had to be shelved some time ago. The scheme was simple, designed to persuade the Basuto that proper cultivation and tree planting would enrich their land and the people themselves.

“He thinks a thin book with many pictures and descriptive text in large print would help a lot,” said John Delaney. “The whole would comprise the story of a Basuto family, their agricultural ups and downs, the solutions to their problems, and so on. He’ll provide the prose in Sesuto.”

“And you’ll do the illustrations?”

“That’s his suggestion. For those who can’t read, the pictures must tell the story, and he wants humor in them. He’s given me an English version of the text, and I’ve promised to make a dozen preliminary sketches. After that we’ll talk it over again.”

Laurette helped herself to tomato and pineapple salad. “Is he sure of finding a publisher?”

“To start with he’s financing it himself, but it’s possible the government will like it enough to order several thousand copies. It will have to be distributed free, of course.”

“He doesn’t give one the impression of being an altruist.”

Her father laughed. “He’s not a gentle personality, if that’s what you mean, but I believe I understand him fairly well. His life is like a soldier’s, only more exacting. He has a tremendous comprehension of black people’s problems and much sympathy for the people. He has faith that gradual education will solve most of the difficulties.”

“He might extend some of his tolerance to white folk.” He shrugged. “You can’t have everything in one man. Men will drive in one direction are often blind in other ways.”

“He
isn’t blind,” she retorted with a trace of tartness. “He sees everything and puts his own construction on it.
He’s a self-centred, self-opinionated beast.”

The Captain raised his brows. “Strong words,” he said mildly. “He’s pretty well impregnable, I grant you, but hardly as bad as that. However, from the woman’s viewpoint I daresay he’s the sort you love or loathe, and frankly”—with a quizzical twist to his mouth—“I’d rather you didn’t love him. There’s too much steel in Charles Heron.”

“Don’t worry, darling,” she said. “I’ll never have the smallest wish to compete with Basutoland.”

John Delaney began making his sketches the very next day. He used Bwazi as a model for one of them, and persuaded a woman who happened to be passing the house with a flat basket of green mealies on her head to stand still for ten minutes while he got down her posture. But many of the pictures had depict village life, and he decided that as the mud kraals of Pondoland were little different from those in use throughout the rest of southern Africa, he would go out into the hills so that his villages should have the authentic mountainous background.

He chose Saturday afternoon for his excursion, and Laurette accompanied him. They started off in the rickety little car, wound for some way along the high cliffs which looked down over the tunnel of the river, then climbed out of the coastal range and seemed to be weaving about the top of the world, with mountains crumpled all about them as far as eye could see.

Except for a few wisps of white cloud, the sky was a deep, African blue. The mountains were rust, the innumerable valleys green, threaded with the silver of little rivers. And everywhere one looked there were kraals, composed of five to a dozen round huts with conical thatched roofs, set in a circle of beaten earth and surrounded by the new fresh green of mealie fields. The Pondos keenly preserved the privacy of their families by building their kraals at least half a mile apart. This was native country, hundreds of square miles of it veined all over by footpaths and served by tiny, isolated trading stations.

The road became hardly discernible from the short tough grass on either side, and as they hit a big rounded boulder the Captain groaned.

“This poor old bus! If I’d known the house would work out so cheaply I’d have gone in for a new one. You need the best on these roads.”

“It’s coughing, too.” Laurette did not sound very concerned. There was too much exhilaration, too much sparkle in the atmosphere. “We never go far—it suits us.”

They saw the mission in the distance, a big, rectangular building of the same mud and thatch as the huts, with smaller buildings nearby. Considering the dense population of the reserve—each kraal housed between twenty and fifty people—here were very few signs of life. Here and there the dark figure of a woman could be seen pounding corn or merely squatting against a wall in the sun, an occasional piccaninny strutted, stark naked, from a doorway or a round-faced boy herded cattle, but an air of lazy serenity pervaded the country.

About three miles farther on the track petered out altogether. There were still no trees, and the Captain said they would just have to do without shade. The spot at which he eventually stopped gave magnificent views, and not so far away to the right was an excellent kraal of eight houses set against a craggy eminence whose outline suggested the head of a lioness.

“Made for me,” he said; and, jamming a misshapen straw hat upon his head, he settled himself with paper and board.

Laurette read a book for an hour, then she walked out to the brow of their hill to get still another view of this strange reserve. This was Africa, even more so than the sub-tropic lushness of Port Quentin. She loved the groups of huts, looking, in the distance, like fairy rings of toadstools on countless hillsides. She wished it were possible to communicate with the occupants and find out more about them.

Contentedly, she wandered back to the car and poured tea from the flask. Her father accepted his cup and indicated a couple of drawings.

“Put them away for me, will you? I’ve finished. When we’ve had tea we’ll go back the way we came.”

“It’s only five, and this is the first time we’ve been for a drive in months.” With a biscuit tin in one hand and hugging her knees with her other arm, she gestured towards the westering sun and went on dreamily, “If I were you I’d rather work in water colors. Look at the light and shade over the hills, and the marvellous lavender and gold of the sky. It’s achingly peaceful.”

“I thought you preferred upheaval to peacefulness.”

Her smile at him was affectionate. “I’ll take life mixed—it’s more interesting. I’m mostly at peace when I’m with you, anyway.”

He gave her the suspicion of a wink. “I’m only your father.”

In similar spirit she answered, “The only man in my life!”

He said no more for a while, but presently he spoke of Peter, up in Nigeria; the boy’s letters revealed that he loathed the climate.

“He needn’t renew his contract,” Laurette said comfortingly. “In a year he can go back to England, or even come down here to us.”

“I’ve always been uneasy about him,” her father admitted. “You’d think a man of twenty-five would have grown out of wild ways—but not Peter. He has far less mental stamina than you have.”

“One day he’ll marry someone solid and become a model husband. Peter’s all right, I’ve always loved him as if he were really my brother.”

“I’m glad of that. He’s fond of you, too.”

They sat on, gazing at the changing scene, till the sun had dipped, and the lavender of the sky turned mauve and the early darkness began to brush in from the east. Then Laurette got up and offered a hand.

“Yes, we daren’t leave it any longer,” said her father. “There’s the track to find and some tricky mountain bends before we hit the river road. Slide in, child.”

She obeyed. The Captain took his place and thumbed the starter. The battery, always reluctant, refused to act. He tried again, with a similar negative result.

“It ought to be sound,” he grumbled. “It isn’t so long since it was charged.”

“Perhaps the carburetor’s run dry through standing so long in the sun,” she offered. “Have we any loose petrol?”

“No. I’m not much of a mechanic, but I think it’s the battery.” He had another go, without result. Sighing with exasperation, he pushed back his hat. “There’s only one thing for it. I’ll have to go to one of the huts and get some boys to come up and give us a shove. You stay right here, Laurette, and if I’m not back within twenty minutes switch the headlights on and off a few times, in case I’ve missed the way.”

“Please let me go with you.”

“No, that would be foolish. It’ll be pitch dark soon and we might both lose our bearings. It’s safer for you to stay.”

She hated to see him go. She watched him striding erectly down the first slope, saw him drop out of sight and reappear much farther away, a small figure vanishing into the dusk. She peered at her watch, then leaned back uneasily in her seat.

The brief twilight was nearly spent. She looked about her and saw a clump of spiky aloes which were spectral and threatening in the dimness, and tiny scattered points of light which were the native fires. Faintly, she smelled the woodsmoke and other veld scents released by the night air. She felt alone in the whole of black Africa.

Growing fear accelerated her heartbeats. Again she looked at her watch, calculating the very second when she might switch on the car beams. If the battery was down they would be weak. She mustn’t waste them. She would have given anything, just then, for an ordinary, homely torch.

The minutes passed, and at last it was the moment to send out her signal. She timed herself: on and off, then a minute’s interval—ten times.