Authors: Unknown
He was still remote and unbending, but she had to place her hand on his lapels and raise her head. “I’ve been a beast,” she whispered. “You’ll come next week?”
“Not till Friday. I’m not risking another ten-minute skirmish on the way back from Lagos.”
He held her and kissed her, but without tenderness. In the hard mouth she felt his hurt and anger, his wish to have done with women for a while. She let him go and went back to the house.
The print wrap lay where she had let it fall earlier this evening, near the foot of her bed. About the room still hung the faint perfume of toilet soap from her bath. Expensive sandalwood soap, which Julian had brought her. Somehow it reduced the scene with Julian to an unvarnished fact. In his own words a phase had ended. Tonight, Phil felt peculiarly dry of emotion. Julian was on the high seas, the yacht creating a wondrous cool breeze of its own. Had he loved her, she would be there with him.
FOR some weeks Matt had not been feeling too good. His digestion was haywire and he was awakened early each morning by a backache so severe that he had to get up and sit in a straight-backed chair. No joke, at his age, to stumble out of bed in the dark and sit like a mummy waiting for the pressure to lift.
Julian had become anxious and persistent. “You go to Goanda, Matt. Grenfell will put you right. Use the afternoon coaster on Friday.” Later, when the arrangement was complete, Julian had said: “If Phil asks, tell her how I’m fixed. I’ll go over next week-end.”
Matt was only half deceived. One didn’t need an outsize brain to calculate that a considerable number of the journeys Julian had made during the last five months had had Goanda as their destination; nor was the reason obscure. He considered Phil ,a young idiot, but he was not sorry for her. She’d got what she wanted, or an important part of it.
No, Matt was not sorry for her . . . not till the Friday evening when the boat pulled in to the Goanda landing-stage, and he was met by a slim, unhappy girl whose face was so pale and sick with disappointment that he knew she had been straining every hope that the boat would bring Julian, who hadn’t come last week, or the week before.
“Well, Phil,” he said, laying a thick red hand on her arm. “The old place hasn’t changed much. Beats me how you stick it.”
“It does me, when I stop to weigh it up. I’m glad you found time to come over, Matt.”
“Necessity, lovey. I want the doc to go over my points.”
“Have you been ill?”
“Not ill, just seedy. The heat, I shouldn’t wonder. It’s had a go at you, too, hasn’t it?”
“This place is shut-in and steamy, like a hothouse; you tend to grow pale and leggy. Will you come straight to the house, Matt? Supper’s just about ready.”
The brittle lightness of her tone depressed Matt more than if she had flicked away a tear and asked at once about Julian. He was not a man given to deep and smouldering passions—his nature was bedrock and tolerant—but looking at the stains beneath Phil’s eyes as they both came into the bright lamplight of the doctor’s lounge, he felt a grumbling anger against Julian. This was no way to treat the kid. She’d begged for it—no doubt about that—but Matt had thought better of Julian.
It was arranged at supper that he have his examination the following morning.
“You have lived too long in the tropics, my friend,” Grenfell told him across the table. “A doctor knows the tricks, but even he may slip up. You careless men continually amaze me by your own good luck in avoiding most evils, and your tenacity. Don’t worry about your health, Mr. Bryson. It is your will that is at fault.”
“Why, damn it!” Matt ejaculated; he remembered the women and continued with less vehemence. “No one ever accused me of spinelessness before.”
“Nor am I doing so now. But there is nothing more deadening to the human will than year upon year of excessive, malicious heat. If you were to move to a temperate climate you would experience immediate benefits: a lowering of blood-pressure, a stronger heart action, a clearer brain, and so on. I repeat this advice to every planter and trader who comes here, but it would be a sad day for West Africa if they followed it.” He smiled in his perfunctory way. “Have some stewed pineapple, Mr. Bryson; cooking dispels the acid to a large extent.”
Matt could imagine no dish less tempting than stewed pineapple. Nor did he wish to linger any later than tomorrow afternoon at Goanda. He excused himself rather hastily and went outside.
Down on the path he stood swearing to himself. What a filthy, cursed mess! Here was Phil incarcerated with a couple of talking corpses, burning herself out with a wrenching, hopeless love. Julian knew about it, of course; nothing naive or blind about Julian. He might be fond of Phil, but it just wasn’t in him to give her what she craved to make her happy.
For the life of him he could not see how Phil was to avoid the final and bitterest heartache unless she cut loose right away, denying herself further contact with Julian. And how, in the name of a sacred monkey, did one accomplish such an end? The curry had brought Matt out in a sweat; his thoughts made him cold.
As Phil came quietly beside him he yanked out a handkerchief and wiped his neck and face.
“You get hot nights here, lovey.”
“I don’t mind them.” Then, coolly, “Any message from Julian, Matt?”
“He’s busy—just back from ten days in Lagos. He had to meet one of the company’s directors there, but it turned out to be two directors and the daughter of one of them. All four returned in the yacht and they’re staying at Julian’s house.”
“The daughter too?”
“Yes. Fine-looking girl and a good dresser—about twenty-five.”
A pause. “Has he mentioned anything recently about coming here?”
“He did say he’ll try next week-end. The visitors are supposed to shove off the middle of next week, but she’s a headstrong woman and attracted to Julian.”
“And . .. he?”
“It’s hard to tell, but you can be certain he’s aware he could marry a directorship in the plantation any time he likes.”
In a minute or so Phil said flatly: “Julian enjoys playing host. Matt,” a tremor ran through her, “I’m thinking
of leaving here in a week or two. You might pass the information along to Julian.”
“Where are you going?”
“To England.”
“You’ll keep in touch with us, Phil?”
"I'll try.”
Matt left it there. He felt more exhausted than after a night of guzzling and poker.
Next morning, in Dr. Grenfell’s surgery, he answered many queries and stripped himself for prodding and sounding. He compared his gross torso with the spare frame of the doctor and shied away from making a similar comparison between his own and the doctor’s bank balances. With truculence he assured himself that that was the way of the world. Blast it, he wasn’t going to turn sanctimonious in his old age.
To his relief the doctor shed his stethoscope and folded away the old-fashioned blood-pressure contraption.
“You’re too fat,” was the verdict, “and your body needs a cleansing diet. I don’t have to tell you that you drink too much whisky and not enough water. You know your excesses better than I do. But let me say this: your heart is degenerating, your arteries stiffening and your breathing is much too shallow. Without observing you for a while and taking tests, I can give no diagnosis regarding your internal organs, but judging by your general condition, I’d be faintly accurate in stating ...”
Feigning a wholly spurious interest in the doctor’s monologue, Matt struggled up and put on his shirt. Having learned that, accidents apart, death was still a few years off, he had lost concern over his aches and indigestion. All he wanted now was to get away from the atmosphere of iodoform and tragedy.
He wrote a cheque, ate an appalling dry fish sandwich and prepared to leave. He said goodbye to Phil at the landing-stage.
“Why don’t you look around for a bit of adventure?” he stated tritely. “Plenty of excitement about for a girl like you.”
“I’ve had enough. A quiet life for me from now on.”
On the way out to the freighter Matt asserted to himself that Phil was taking it hard because she was young, but she also had the elasticity of youth. Under the shivering northern skies her experiences in the tropics would assume a dream-like unreality. In time she would settle to a career, and maybe fling herself headlong into a more normal love affair. He’d be damned grateful to get aboard and soak up a real drink.
Phil waited till Sunday evening after supper before telling Dr. Grenfell and Nurse Briggs of her decision to leave Goanda. Neither asked for explanations, doubtless because they had long ago realized that her sojourn here was a thing of convenience, to be utilized by them while it lasted.
“What do I do—take the mail boat?” she asked.
The doctor nodded. “It’s due here next Saturday with mail and supplies. You could go back in it to Port Andrew and from there you’d have to book another passage to Lagos. The coastal service from Port Andrew is excellent.” Saturday. That would allow Julian his chance, though she knew inside her that he would not come. Carefully she made piles of his belongings. The portable gramophone and records, his hundred or so books; the Coolette he had brought so that she could have a cool drink at night; the cabinet of playing-cards and chessmen.
Her own things fitted easily into the little wooden box, for she had given away to various patients her sketching materials and the clay models. Her year’s allowance was half gone and her ticket to England would make a hole in the rest, but at the hospital she had become accustomed to dull and frugal fare. The financial side of it left her unmoved. Nor did she ponder what she would do in the strangeness of London. When the heart is an open wound the head has to work alone. Emotionally, Phil was vanquished.
Friday evening passed. A peculiar hush hung over the clearing, like the stillness before a squall. Phil missed the rustling among the palm fans, the whispering of the reeds and elephant grass. She sat in her room and wrote a note.
I am going to England
.
Later I shall make my home at the Cape. When you are ready to take legal proceedings
,
please get in touch with my lawyer; you have his address
.
Thank you for everything
.
Goodbye.
Lest it should fall into other hands she neither addressed nor signed the letter, but sealed it in an envelope which she slipped into the gramophone.
Far into the night she sat in the balcony. The darkness teemed with tiny life. The brazier continued to glow, the river to sparkle in patches where stars dipped closest. Lazy smoke plumed from the village, where fires were kept going to frighten away wild things and evil spirits.
And there, in the centre of the beaten earth expanse between hospital and river, spread the gigantic and ancient baobab tree, symbol of the timelessness and immutability of Africa.
A scrawny cock was crowing when Phil sought her last few hours’ rest in the austere little bedroom.
A JUTE and rubber magnate had once built himself a stucco eighteen-room mansion overlooking the ocean and about three miles from Port Andrew. Soon afterwards the poor man had gone the way of many another in the tropics, and the house had begun rapidly to follow his example, when Dr. Levalle, on the lookout for just such a bargain, happened along and bought the place for a modest couple of thousand. A further and considerably larger expenditure converted the pretentious place into the Levalle Institute for Tropical Hygiene.
When Levalle succumbed to one of the plagues he was aiming to combat it seemed as if his Institute would have to close down. Then Charles Metcalfe, who had just completed two years as a medical officer in Sierra Leone, came along and accepted the principalship, and the experiments were carried on from where Levalle had left off.
The fly in the amber of Charles’ content was Madame Levalle. He admired her alien beauty and at times she disturbed him physically, but her callousness, her malice and vanity repelled him, so that when the shining burgundy limousine snaked up the drive, as it did this morning, it was an effort to smile and congratulate her on still another superb costume.
Today she wore blue silk, high and loose at the neck and moulded to the mature loveliness of her small figure. She was Charles’ own age, or perhaps a little older. She gave him a tiny, red-tipped hand, holding it high as though expecting him to kiss her fingers. Charles didn’t, but he smiled falsely as if he would have, liked to. The woman could make so much trouble if she chose.
Sonya Levalle sank gracefully into one of the capacious canvas chairs on the terrace.
“Coffee, please, Charles. Stay with me. I wish to speak to you.”
He ordered coffee from a white-coated boy, and took the other chair near the table.
“About the Institute, Madame?”
She frowned, a drawing together of perfectly arched black brows above dark, watchful eyes. People said Sonya had Hindu blood, that ten years ago Levalle, middle-aged and curiously unpractised in the ways of women, had rescued her from a Pondicherry gutter and been flattered by her youth and unusual looks into marrying her. Certainly her hair was blue-black silk and her complexion ashen as a Malay’s, but her features were finer, more pointed and greedy than the gentle Indian contour. She said she was French.
“Do not call me Madame, Charles, especially when we are alone. No, it is not about the Institute. I am giving a dinner party and I want you to be there. Next Thursday.”
“That’s charming of you. Thanks.” He loathed Sonya’s parties, which were merely a series of picture frames for Sonya. He could see from her expression—an expert curving of the mouth and the tilt to the chin—that she was recalling to them both her last dinner party, when he had kissed her. She was like a sleek cat, still purring over last week’s cream.
“Here’s the coffee,” he said. “Will you pour?”
She gave him his cup and lit a cigarette at his lighter. Her forefinger stroked his knuckle.