Authors: Kathryn Blair
“I’ve been there before,” he said, “but not to stay. The river is almost dry at the Pass and there are rondavels set about every half mile among the trees on the steep banks. You hike about and find a spare one, unload your goods, and you’re set, for as long as you like. The chap who owns the rondavels takes a walk round every Sunday morning to collect the rent.”
“What are the rondavels like inside?”
“Just one round room. You’ll be all right
.
We’ll pack a camp bed for you and plenty of blankets. Think you can manage the food?”
“
Try me!”
He laughed. “It’s only about fifty miles. We’ll leave after lunch on Friday and come back on Monday. You concentrate on food and kitchen goods. We shan’t want much besides shorts and slacks to wear, and I’ll
manag
e the rest of the kit. Won’t it be grand to get away?” Lindsey ignored the implication of his
final
remark, and set about compiling a list of the tinned foods they would require. What did one do for bread on such jaunts, and how to prevent butter from
turning
to oil? Tea, coffee, tinned .milk, condiments—Friday
morning
she would bake some fresh cakes and put them
in a tin
—
potatoes, tinned meat and vegetables, some bacon: Stuart would enjoy bacon frizzled over a
c
amp
fir
e
.
All next day, Thursday, Lindsey was happy. In the morning Stuart drove into town to buy the kit, and most of the afternoon he spent trying to fit it into the luggage carrier. They had tea under the mulberry tree and
dinn
er by lam
p
li
g
ht in the back stoep.
When Daniel had cleared away Stuart raised his feet to the stoep wall.
“I forgot to tell, you yesterday that we’re not going alone to Groenkops,” he said, without expression. “The architect I’m using is coming as well, with his wife. They’ve been married about six months.”
Lindsey said, “Oh,” and nothing more.
“You’ll like Ivor Roberts, and his wife is a cheery little
thing
—I had lunch there one day. She’s just the type to share a hut with.”
Afraid of saying “Oh” again, Lindsey made no reply. “You don’t mind, do you?” he enquired. “Roberts suggested it
.
”
“If you like them
...
”
She let it tail off.
Lindsey would never become accustomed to quick-fire readjustments. She left
him
there and went into the house, got her book from the dining room and took it into the lounge. For the first time, she couldn’t bear to be alone with Stuart.
He had an appointment next morning, but he was back to lunch, and by two o’clock, when the Roberts arrived in their own laden car, they were ready to start.
The architect was a thickset young Welshman with shaggy brows and a pleasant smile. Gwen, his wife, had thin, bright features and a head of tight curls. Both were older than Lindsey, but younger than Stuart.
“Sorry we haven’t met before,” said Gwen Roberts, in her homely Welsh tones.
“So am I,” replied Lindsey, “but we’ve hardly had time, have we?”
The women smiled at each other. Stuart disguised relief with a laugh, and the cars moved away fro
m
“Elliotdale” past the final six houses and out into a narrow road between cactus and thorn scrub.
As fa
r
as the ostrich farm the views were familiar to Lindsey. They had come out several times in the early evening just for the fun of seeing the silly big birds with their families. Ostriches take their parenthood with ludicrous gravity.
Now, the farm left behind,
moun
tains
bestrode the horizon. Fifteen miles in any direction from Port Acland you came across mountains; nothing awe
inspiring,
but solid chunks of grey-green rock up to six thousand feet high that no one ever bothered to scale. There were bouldered stream beds among the scrub, but no gushing waters, for this was dry country, except after the winter rains.
Trees grew denser and higher; pines, karri and yellow-dusted wattle. An occasional native in old trousers and colorful headcloth either trudged the road or threaded the forest, bound for one of the kraals that were often visible on the lower slopes of the
hills.
The kraals looked just like the pictures one saw of them, mused Lindsey. Six or eight round grass houses with conical roofs, crazy fencing, a plume or two of smoke, but little other sign of life.
The Groenkops Pass was a great cleft separating two rambling ranges of mountains. For two miles the road wound downward between ever steepening green walls to a bridge over the river. Thereafter, it rose again, very gradually, till one emerged on to a plateau with the mountains left behind.
The two cars turned off at the bridge in the depths of the Pass, and stopped on the grass
al
ongside
the river bed, a wide expanse of rounded boulders among which water trickled in darkling threads. They all got out and stretched, inevitably reached up towards the lacy green walls of their chasm.
“The spring growth has hidden the rondavels.” commented Roberts, “but if we climb
this
trade we’re sure to find one. Are you girls staying below?”
“Yes; but don’t be long,” said his wife. “I’m dying for my first cup of smoky tea.”
When the men had vanished, Gwen sighed contentedly. “I love coming to Groenkops because it always reminds me of home. More magnificent and lush, but
something
like it. I was
born
on a farm near Capel Curig, but I met Ivor down in Cardiff, where we were both studying.”
“Do you miss Wales?”
“Don’t we all miss home? Though I wouldn’t be anywhere but here. Ivor has been in Port Acland two years now. I came out to marry
him
some months ago. I used to feel sore about things—having to wait to get married and all that. I’m twenty-seven, you know. But it’s been worth the waiting. I shall never want to leave
this
country. Will you?”
“I don’t know,” said Lindsey. Africa was breathtaking in its beauty and variety, but of secondary importance to Lindsey.
“Hi!” came a disembodied shout from above, followed by Stuart’s whistle.
Gwen cupped her hands. “Found one? Shall we come?
”
“Yes,” from Roberts.
“Don’t ca
rr
y anything, Lindsey, and do be careful,” from Stuart.
Lindsey guessed that had they been alone he’d have come down for her.
The girls climbed, sliding on the springy grass between the rocks and grasping at branches to help them. Gwen, giggling with joy, took her time. Lindsey looked up. Stuart, casting appearances to the winds, was slithering down towards her. He shoved an arm about her and lifted her with him up the final twenty yards to the
small
green ledge where the rondavel stood. Perfunctorily, he did the same for Gwen.
Roberts, sitting cross-legged before the rondavel door, creased his forehead in astonishment.
“Couldn’t you two make it?”
“Lindsey wasn’t
born
in the Welsh mountains,” Stuart returned a trifle shortly.
Gwen said happily, “Ivor and I have done so much climbing together that we forget others haven’t. It’s a rule with us that he blazes the trail and I follow.”
A trivial happening. The men laughed and cursed as they hauled up the beds and blankets, the food and kitchenware. Gwen hopped about, unpacking and dividing, while Lindsey swept out the little round cement house with a brown-thatched roof, and opened the single high window. But a trace of some kind of emotion lingered about Stuart’s mouth.
The camp fire crackled, the kettle sputtered. Lindsey spread a cloth over the grass and sliced a loaf. Stuart dropped the tin-opener and split a plate.
Inside the rondavel Ivor was claiming his goods, and he and his wife were arguing in the high-toned, lilting talk affectionately reserved for each other.
“Where is it you put my new tube of shaving cream, Gwen?”
“In your grip, bach.”
“Is it sure you are?”
“Why wouldn’t I be sure when I put it there myself? Did you look, then?”
“Would I be asking if I didn’t?”
“You might be.”
“Will you find it for me, bach?”
A pause. Then: “There it is, right under your nose, man. What did you do before you had a drudge of your own?”
“I couldn’t tell, and that’s a fact. There’s a good wife you’re going to be, Gwen, when I’ve
finishe
d the taming of you. Ach, now, no pouting!”
Sideways, Lindsey glanced at Stuart, expecting, hoping, to share the joke with him, but his head was
turned away. By the line of his jaw she could see that he was not amused. As if he had put it into words, she knew that hardly any fellow feeling existed between Ivor Roberts and himself. Why, then, had he consented almost with gusto to this long week-end in the other’s company? His next remark was enlightening.
“At any rate, we’re not in that blamed house,” he said brusquely, “rattling around like a couple of peas in a basin. Did you remember to bring matches, Lindsey?” She moved to search one of the bags. His hand closed over hers.
“I didn’t mean to hurt you,” he said quie
tl
y, “only we seem to be becalmed in a patch of something sticky. We’ll come out the other side, though. A wind always blows up from somewhere.”
Lindsey had just time to twist her hand and lock her fingers through his for a moment before the others came out. Her eyelids stung, but the tightness was easing round her heart
.
CHAPTER
SIX
LINDSEY never forgot that first dawn above Groenkops. Ivor Roberts had hammered on the door.
“There’s coffee out here for them as wants it, and a dawn like a picture-postcard. What about it, ladies!”
Gwen bounded out in her dressing-gown, but Lindsey slipped into a house frock and grabbed up a comb. Sleep had been elusive. Gwen had chattered for an hour, finished on a mighty yawn and drifted off on a dream. Lindsey had lain awake, listening to crickets and small rustlings. Much later she heard the rasp of a match outside. One of the men was awake, too, and she doubted if it were Ivor. She had slept for about an hour when he thudded.
She stood in the doorway, facing the great wall of mountain on the other side of the river. Jagged peaks tore into a canopy
of
purple, flame and magenta, while directly overhead arched translucent azure, deepening each minute to that blue which can only be described as African. They were enclosed within a vivid green bowl and the air was potent as champagne.
The dawn paled and day was come, sparkling over the ferns and leaves, dappling their ledge with living gold.
The men had fetched water from a pool higher up the river, and obligingly set off again to fill the second bucket and a large saucepan while the girls washed and started the breakfast.
There is no more appetizing meal than sausages and bacon fried over a camp fire accompanied by quantities of toast and coffee and topped with a cigarette and pleasant conversation. The Roberts were good company, and their slant on life was so normal that Lindsey began to see why Stuart had been prompted in the first instance to join them. Outwardly, at least, theirs was early marriage as it should be.
“Shall we pack a thermos and some sandwiches and climb?” suggested Ivor. “The view should be good from up there.”
“Doesn’t matter if it isn’t—we’ll have the fun of climbing,” said Gwen. “Let’s start before it gets too hot.”
A strenuous, invigorating day. They climbed and sat on the top of the world, slid down to the river bed and leapt the rocks till they found a running stream where they could paddle and fish, and even put out in a derelict canoe. They swam and sun-bathed, read a little, and sometimes went to sleep.
At seven, in the gathering darkness, the camp fire was re-kindled, and they ate and sprawled, healthily spent. Ivor Roberts began to sing in his Welsh baritone; Gwen joined in and Lindsey helped her. Stuart hummed, just enough out of key to reduce them all to laughter.
“How would we have done with him in the choir, Gwennie?” groaned Ivor, wiping his eyes. “It’s an
Englishman he is, with merchants’ blood in his veins and London fog in his throat.”
“Hush, bach,” she reproved him. “Stuart may be no singer, but he has the makings of a grand crooner.” Lindsey loved his tunelessness and his sardonic grin at them, his lean features in the firelight, and strong features in the white, open-necked shirt
.
That night she slept deeply.
Next morning they climbed again, one of the heights across the river. When, after lunch, the Roberts lightheartedly contemplated another ascent, Stuart demurred.
“You please yourselves, but Lindsey’s had enough. We’ll stay.”
Not at all averse from an afternoon alone, the others set off, carrying a flask and some cakes. Lindsey opened her book and lay full-length on the rug. Stuart sat at one
corner
of it a notebook resting on his knee, his gaze speculatively on the other side of the ravine. Now and then he scribbled, or flicked back the leaves to re-read an item.
“Would you like some music?” he asked presently.
“Music?” She looked up. “The car radio?”
“No. When I went out searching for a camp bed last Thursday I bought a portable gramophone and some records. They’re over there, among the masculine morass. I’d forgotten them till now.”
Why remember them at this moment, when we’re alone for the first time in nearly three days? wondered Lindsey. “What are the records?” she queried.
“Light classics, a couple of selections from musical shows, some ballet.”
He rooted out the leatherette case, dusted and opened it. Lindsey closed her eyes and waited.
He started off with a czardas, which brought to her lips a reminiscent smile. It was one she had heard many times over the cheap little radio at the Pendlesea cottage .
.
. in the lounge with bottle windows and Stuart’s photograph on the mantelpiece. She had meant to show him
that photograph some day, when their love had had time and fair weather in which to blossom.
For a bit Lindsey did not heed the music. Intensely, she was in the past, living six heartbreakingly happy months with Lionel. Then gradually, like the stealing of a narcotic over the senses, the poignant, magical melody of a Chopin waltz took possession of her.
An abrupt snap cut off the music before its end. There was a moment of intolerable stillness, during which her eyes remained shut.
“For heaven’s sake, relax,” he said, his voice roughened. “It’s childish to weep over music.”
“I’m not crying,” she said, adding contradictorily, “not over Chopin.”
“Yes; it is over Chopin. I’ve been watching you. You smiled at the Hungarian dance, went dreamy through
Les Sylphides
and became tearful after the first few bars of the waltz. You shouldn’t allow music to play such tricks with you.”
His tones, cool now and forceful, made her turn to look at him. He was leaning back on one elbow, the dark brows drawn in above a penetrating stare.
“Lots
o
f people find some music emotionally upsetting,” she said. “I don’t as a rule, but the first record reminded me of Lionel, and the others sort of
...
piled it on.”
“Lionel?” He looked a little startled and hostile. “Do you still miss him badly?”
“Not his presence, of course,
but ...
well, he was all I ever had. I can never remember him without feeling lonely.”
She could not see his eyes now, but his mouth had set
.
“Were you lonely just then?”
“Not really,” she answered quickly. “I can’t quite explain
...”
“Don’t try,” he clipped out. “You looked sad—horribly.”
There was a long silence. Stuart had hardened. He seemed older, no longer casual and charming.
“I’ve something to tell you,” he said. “Next Thursday I’m taking the plane to Johannesburg. I may be away a fortnight.” Still intent upon the quivering tops of the trees below, he went on, “You won’t be lonelier without me than you are with me. Have you any objection to staying at ‘Komana’?”
Lindsey did not reply directly. She cast aside her book and sat up.
“How long ago did you decide on this trip?”
“It’s been in the air ever since we
came. You know that.”
“I mean ... definitely.”
“Last night—and just now.”
“You don’t want me with you?”
“What would you do in Jo’burg? You know no one there and I shall be busy most of the time.”
“You
don’t ...
want me?” she repeated.
He remained averted. “To be honest, I haven’t allowed myself to
want
anything since we married. A fortnight apart will do both
of us good. When I come back we’ll have a serious talk. You remember on the boat we agreed that our relationship couldn’t remain static?”
“You said we’d either ... love or loathe.”
“I still say it. We’ve already taken a step in one direction or the other, but we—you, anyway—are too hemmed in to recognize which way you’re going.” With calculated offhandedness, he ended: “Even your romantic brain must realize that we can’t go on as we are much longer.”
Hollowly, Lindsey said, “Parting for a fortnight won’t make any difference, but if that’s your decision
...
” He sprang up and went striding down the track. Lindsey turned and buried her face on crossed arms. The hot sun on her back increased the pain that filled her. She thought she could stand it if he said outright, “I don’t love you yet, Lindsey. You see there was another woman only a few weeks before I left England and all this has happened about a year too soon. I’m deeply fond of you, Lindsey,
but...”
No, she couldn’t bear that, either. She had to avoid being frank with him at all costs until he forced her to face finality.
Stuart came back with the Roberts. By that time Lindsey had washed and changed her dress, and put away the gramophone.
Gwen was tired and subdued. She had slipped about a dozen yards on the mountainside and had to hang on to a branch until Ivor could rescue her. The incident had shaken her husband. Wherever Gwen went his glance followed, and when she came and sat with him, his arm drew her close to his side and kept her there.
If a thing of that kind happened to Stuart and me, thought poor, heartsick Lindsey,
I
’d know at once whether there were a chance for us. But one couldn’t go stepping off mountains with impunity.
It was a quiet evening and they retired early, for Ivor had to pack up and leave in time to reach his office by nine o’clock the next morning.
Soon after dawn, Lindsey stood down in the Pass beside Stuart, and waved the car off. Then, together, they mounted the track to the rondavel.
“Have you any appointments today?” she asked, as they reached the ledge.
“Nothing before tomorrow afternoon. But we’ll get off straight after breakfast.”
Lindsey was pale and heavy-eyed. On the way home in the car her head ached. Whatever his purpose in arranging the week-end at Groenkops, it had failed. She could feel it both inside herself and in his silence.
At “Elliotdale” he left Daniel to unload and clean the car, and himself brought Lindsey’s lime and soda to the side stoep.
“You look the victim of a first-class binge,” he said. “Take some aspirin and rest. There’s a note indoors
from my mother to say that she’s coming up after lunch.”
“Oh ...
is she?”
The glass trembled in Lindsey’s hand. He took it from her and set it down on the stoep wall. His manner was gen
tl
e, but impersonal.
“You’re strung up. Perhaps you can see now why we should part for a while. As things are, we’re not too healthy for each other.” His tone lightened, yet had an edge. “
Think
how much worse it could be than plain uncertainty. Supposing one of us fell in love, but not the other. We didn’t weigh up such a possibility, did we? That would be hellish, don’t you think?” He gave a brief, harsh laugh.
Lindsey’s throat locked. He was harking back to that other woman who had cared too little.
“I wish I could make you happy,” she said.
For an instant his hand rested on her shoulder. He smiled.
“You do. The termites must have got under my skin this last week. Think you can hold the glass now without drowning your dress?”
He went away. Lindsey finished her drink and wandered through
th
e room, which, as usual, showed no speck of dust and smelled strongly of wax polish. She gathered the flower vases and filled them, prepared some veal chops from the refrigerator with forcemeat, and sliced potatoes for crisping. They would have an early lunch to allow time for Meta and Daniel to finish clearing before Mrs. Conlowe came. Although her mother-in-law had never expressed an opinion on the subject, Lindsey was sure that she would disapprove of hearing kitchen noises during her visit.
Meta said, “Please, ma’am, will you lend me four bob?”
“Shillings,” Lindsey automatically corrected her. “Do you usually borrow money in the middle
o
f the month?”
“I want to buy
muti
for my mother.”
“
Muti?
What is that?”
Daniel came into the kitchen and Meta had the grace to appear discomfited.
“My mother has bite of
nyoka.
She is sick.”
Lindsey was about to part with the four shillings when Daniel coughed.
“Excuse, please. Meta is not truthful,” he said. “Her mother did not get bitten by a snake. She needs no medicine. Meta, tell Madam the truth.”
While admiring and thankful for Daniel’s sobriety, Lindsey spared some sympathy for the girl, who so obviously hankered for bright, if primitive, life, and was condemned to live in the shadow of his righteousness.
“Meta,” reiterated Daniel, “tell Madam why you want four s
hillin
gs.”
The girl, her face one huge, nervous smile, twisted her fingers together and swayed backwards and forwards upon her flat feet.
Sententiously, Daniel addressed Lindsey. “Meta smoked cigarettes that belong to Madam. She stole them from the bedroom.”
Meta burst into a spate of Kaffir, clicking her syllables like castanets. Lindsey assumed her most grave expression and shook her head.
“Why did you do it, Meta?”
“There was feast yesterday. Daniel not let me go. Meta feel wicked, smoke cigarette and have no money buy more.”
Unlucky Meta,
pegged
down by Daniel’s distrust of laughter and singing.
“It must not happen again,” Lindsey said tritely. “I shall stop the four shillings from your wages.”
Certain that Daniel considered her handling of the case deplorably feeble, Lindsey escaped to the dining room. One of the most likeable characteristics of the southern natives is their excitability and love of simple enjoyments. People had told her that it isn’t done to enquire into their customs, that they resent curiosity.