Authors: Kathryn Blair
Lindsey leaned upon the back of a kitchen chair and looked out through the door at the riot of datura and plum
ba
go which overflowed the path .to the lawn. A sound like the
r
egular
thud of a wooden mallet indicated that Meta was
rubbing
up the red polished floor
o
f the back stoep, and
grunting
an accompaniment.
The gate crashed and Brutus barked. A delivery boy, she guessed, watching the window for a laden bicycle lazily trundled by a round-faced woolly-head. The young boys’ placid faces always delighted Lindsey, reminding her
o
f the babies tied to their mothers’ backs; they had the same smooth cheeks and air of naive surprise.
No boy appeared, and Lindsey tautened with sudden premonition. If the visitor were Tony, he could go straight back to town. She wouldn’t even accept a lift to Gwen’s house. He was decent and well-intentioned, but she was determined not to be beguiled into attending any more parties. Dragging off the pink frilly apron, she cast it aside and ran out into the corridor and down to the hall.
There she stopped. Her heart moved in love and fright.
Stuart smiled. He was standing with his back to the light, so that his expression remained dark and unreadable.
“What a welcome.” His beloved, familiar tones plucked at her nerves.
Lindsey stood poised on the edge of the carpet, mouth parted, cheeks flushed, her hair thick with the dark, shining gold of muted sunlight. He bent and lightly brushed her temple with his lips and she surged with joy.
“I didn’t expect you till tomorrow,” she said breathlessly. “I’m so glad I was here.”
“And I.” Somehow they were in the lounge, and the warmth of his fleeting touch on her elbow sent sparks to her fingertips. “You look quite well, Lindsey. The change has done you good.”
“That’s the oven and the sun. I
...
I've missed you.” Dreadfully, dreadfully, cried her heart; I haven’t dared think how much, till now.
“Funny,” he said. “I missed you, too. I wonder why? We haven’t had time to become a habit with each other.”
There was a short, awkward silence. His hands dug into his pockets to find cigarettes. He had not altered, she foolishly rejoiced; as though she had imagined his features might lose their aquilinity, his hands their lean strength in a fortnight!
“I came here straight from the plane, intending to take the car and pick you up at ‘Komana’.” The unlighted cigarette rolled backwards and forwards between his fingers. “What time are they expecting you back?”
“Not at all. I spent last night with Gwen Roberts.” She gave him details. “Daniel will cycle down to telephone Gwen and I’ll collect my things tomorrow.”
“So we can take it quietly? Thank heaven.”
Faint lines of tiredness showed round his eyes; his mouth was pulled in. Lindsey quenched an almost overpowering need to take his face between her palms.
Retreating to the safety line she asked, “When did yon last eat?”
“I had a couple of sandwiches and coffee just before we left.”
“That must have been hours ago. I’
ll
start dinner and make you some tea now. Today’s ma
il
is in the writing table.”
“It can wait,” he said, and followed her to the kitchen.
She felt him watching her actions from his perch on the table.
“Kitchen cups?” she asked. “They’re the pretty ones I bought in town.”
He acquiesced. “Let’s have it
right here. Gosh! How pleasant it is to be free from formality. Any ban on the cakes?”
“No; but you might restrain yourself till they’re arranged on a dish.” She filled his cup and slithered it near, sat down and rested her elbows on the table, her face raised to him. “Tell me about Johannesburg. Did you accomplish all you set out to do?”
“Not quite, but I’d had enough of
i
t. An agent is completing my enquiries.” He flicked a crumb along the shiny blue-and-white table cover. “If you’d been at ‘Komana’ the night before last when I telephoned, I’d have told you I was flying back today.”
“You could have mentioned it to Adrienne.”
“I suppose so, but I’m not sorry I didn’t. They’d have taken it for granted I’d go down tonight.”
He’d rather stay here with me, Lindsey cautiously exulted. The hand resting on his knee was so near that she need move scarcely six inches to lay her face upon it. Judging by the scrubbed stains on his first two fingers, he had been smoking inordinately; and the hand looked shorn.
“Where’s your ring?” she queried.
He took it from his pocket and pushed it on. In an instinctive flash, she knew that he had not been wearing it. The ring with which he had married her. Idiot, she chided herself. He must have thrust it into his pocket last time he washed his hands and left it there.
He talked of the plane trip, which had started and ended unspectacularly.
Presently he said, “I think I’ll change.”
“The bath water won’t be hot,” she apologized, “unless you care to wait a little.”
“A cold shower will do. After dinner I must write a few letters to England, and if you don’t mind I’ll turn in early. I’ve averaged about half an hour’s sleep each night during the past fortnight.”
“It’s always difficult to sleep in hotels,” she agreed.
“The fault wasn’t entirely the hotel’s,” he rejoined cryptically and, throwing her a likeness of his old quizzical smile, he went out.
For Lindsey, that evening held an identical quality of suppressed excitement as the first few evenings she and Stuart had spent together in this house. She wore pale green silk, and the candlelight in the
dining
room lit tawny flames in her eyes and darkened the redness of her lips. The night was warm, windows and doors stood wide, admitting gargantuan moths and sounds from the veld that would have scared her pink had Stuart not been there. Lindsey had the sensation that they were alone in the bush; ineffably sweet while it lasted.
Stuart, in tropical slacks and shirt, teased a bit and smiled often, even if he did avoid physical contacts. Lindsey went to bed that night balanced precariously on the rim between wild, unreasoning hope and sober conjecture.
Awakening in her own bed and finding Meta there offering grape-juice filled her with an instant, heartwhole thankfulness. The glass three-quarters full of clear topaz signified that Stuart was up and in charge. She drank and at once got up. Tailored white silk this morning, she derided, to enhance her tan, and a touch of rouge for the same purpose. The natural pink that went with her coloring seemed to have vanished from her cheeks. Well, Stuart wasn’t the only one to suffer sleepless nights.
He was in the back stoep, propped up
on
two legs of a garden chair, his feet crossed
on
the low rail. Nearby, the table was set with rye biscuits, curls of butter and a dish
of
finely-chopped pineapple. He smiled good morning, seated her on the opposite side of the table and shouted for Daniel to shake a leg with the coffee. As usual, he served the fruit, passed the dredger to Lindsey, and then proceeded to smother the mound of juicy pineapple in front of him with cream and sugar.
“Quite by chance I met our landlord in Jo’burg,” he said. “A nice old boy with an Afrikaans wife. I was wrong about the elephant’s foot. It wasn’t great-great-grandfather who shot the thing, but a wicked uncle in Kenya, who gleefully wrapped up the four legs and posted them round to his snooty relations.”
“Oh, dear, I wish you hadn’t told me.”
“The old chap was amused that you should be fond of it, but he wouldn’t sell.”
“I’m not sure that I want it, after hearing the story.”
Stuart laughed. “He tried to sell me this house, though, with or without the furniture.” He broke a roll and smeared a piece with butter before adding rather offhandedly: “I said there was nothing doing; that I would either go in for a new house nearer town, or a small flat. Ah, bacon, sausages and eggs,” he exclaimed as Daniel placed a large silver dish before him. “A little of each, Lindsey? Come on, to please me.”
She gave him his coffee. The weather was too hot for grilled savouries, but she valiantly accepted her plate. She would pay a higher price than that for the miracle of breakfasting with Stuart after the bleakness of the past two weeks. He made a great play, but he
w
as not eating too well himself, Lindsey noticed, though Daniel had to provide a second supply of coffee.
After breakfast they strolled down the garden, but even that harmless pastime prickled with dangers. Growth and the future go hand in hand, and the future, she realized, loomed like an unscalable wall. She could not say, “How soon will those purple blooms grow into bananas?” Or: “I’ll cut some of these reeds with brown heads for the tall vase in the hall. At least they’ll last over the weekend, which is more than the flowers do.”
The weekend, tomorrow, tonight even, were unpredictable. When Stuart judged the time right, he would force a discussion. She did not deceive herself that the parting had heightened his feelings for her. Her dreams in that connection had evaporated with the single cool kiss on the temple and his subsequent restraint. But he had come back a day early, and he had missed her; mere wraiths upon which to nourish her famished heart.
She was afraid to look at
him
too often, for inevitably their glances collided, and his had too much shrewdness and calculation in it for her comfort. She doubted if he remembered the cruel kiss at the airport.
He got out the racquets and they played a knockabout game on the lawn till the heat drove them inside for cool drinks. Then Stuart went out to free Brutus, and took him for a chase in the bush.
It was just after lunch. In the lounge Stuart sorted the contents of his briefcase, while Lindsey sewed beneath the mulberry in the garden. At intervals she watched the lithe bounding of the Alsatian, who was gradually responding to civilized treatment. He was a handsome dog, well-marked, with fine, upstanding ears and the air of breeding of all highly-strung animals of unmixed blood. A movement down the garden would lift his haunches, raise the fur between his shoulders and send him
slinking
through the trees in the manner of his wolf forbears. He was a hunter, a killer of dassie, monkeys, moles and venturesome turtle-doves. Not a lovable dog, but one to admire for his strength and fearlessness and to respect for his white fangs.
In one of the outhouses Kiasa sang the usual rhythmic chant with a blare at the final
word; the same two phrases over and over, undeviating in time and emphasis. Lindsey wearied of it, but not for the world would she have curtailed his pleasure. Kiasa’s slow smile was a thing of brown-and-white beauty, his frown a solemn grief. The two constituted his only means of communication with her. He understood a little English, but spoke none, so that when she instructed him the smile was his sign of comprehension, the frown a sorrowful negation.
Lindsey dropped into her lap the stocking she was mending. What with the heat and the vibrant uncertainty in her bones, needlework was the last job she was fit to tackle. If she weren’t so sticky all round the waist, she would take a walk while Stuart was busy. And she had never experienced so unquenchable a thirst in her life.
A little way away on the grass Brutus was playing with something, growling at it and biting. At first, Lindsey thought the large round object must be a native gourd he had picked up in the veld. Then she saw it move, and her heart gave a nauseating jump. It was a live tortoise.
“Drop it, Brutus,” she cried. “Drop it!”
But Brutus happened to be partial to the leathery head and limbs. He snatched up his trophy and removed himself to the other side of the lawn. Lindsey followed. The dog had the tortoise between his paws. Swiftly, she grabbed it
,
and Brutus sprang, jaws snapping, at the arm she held aloft.
“Kiasa!” she screamed, shielding her face.
The white dress ripped from the armhole downwards, twice, before the boy had hauled the dog to the ground and sat on him, clasping tight the great jaws. The tortoise slid into the grass.
Stuart came running. She felt him gripping her shoulders, staring into her face.
“Are you hurt, Lindsey? Answer me! Are you hurt?”
“No,” she managed. “Only
...
horribly frightened.”
He muttered something which, even in her dazed condition, made her blink, and held her close till she stopped shaking.
“Tie the dog up,” he grimly ordered Kiasa. “I’ll deal with it later.”
His arm still about Lindsey, he led her indoors. He bade her drink some brandy and sat with her on the chesterfield, stroking back the damp curls from her brow.
“My dress,” she wailed weakly. “Seven good guineas and I’ve only worn it twice.”
“How like a woman to forget she has escaped with her life and grieve over her clothes. If you hadn’t already suffered enough, I’d spank you for that.”
Her head was resting near to his shoulder, her hand lay between them. She closed her eyes, the more acutely to savor the exquisite pain of his nearness.
“
I
wish you would beat me, Stuart,” she said dimly. “Better that than ... nothing at all.”
A short pause.