Death of a Huntsman (14 page)

‘It will probably last for two days,' he said. ‘Perhaps three. I'm afraid you'll find it very exhausting.'

In a white dress of low cut, with a transparent organdie insertion across the breast, she looked remarkably cool and she said:

‘Isn't it a good chance to get up into the hills? Couldn't you take a day off and come with me?'

He rested easily on the firm ground of his local knowledge.

‘That's the curious thing about the
leste
,' he said. ‘It's even hotter in the hills. You'd hardly believe it, but the coast is going to be the cooler place.'

‘I might go myself.'

‘Oh! no,' he said. ‘Don't think of doing that.'

‘Why not?'

‘Oh! in the first place—Well, it's hardly the thing. You see you can only drive so far. After that it's a question of mule-track. You need several days——'

‘I have plenty of days.'

‘Yes, but not while the
leste
is on,' he said. ‘Really not. It can be absolutely ghastly up there when the
leste
is on.'

‘How would you know?' she said. ‘You've never been.'

His coffee, which should have been cool after so much conversation, sprang down his already anguished throat like hot acid. He felt unable to speak for some moments and at last she said:

‘I think you look awfully tired. Don't you ever want to get away from here?'

‘Not particularly. I suppose eventually——'

‘Not when the ships come in? Don't you ever suddenly feel hell, for God's sake let me get away—don't you ever feel like that?'

‘I can't say I do.'

‘I think it might do you good to get away.'

For a second he was touched, and then bewildered, by her concern. He was disturbed too because she had, as he now noticed for the first time, no coffee to drink.

‘Didn't you have any coffee?'

‘I had orange instead,' she said. ‘It's cooler.'

‘I suppose I ought to have done that,' he said. ‘But I always have coffee. I can't get out of the habit of it somehow——'

‘Would you come on this trip to the hills?' she said.

‘I honestly don't know.'

‘I shall go,' she said. ‘I'll fix it up. I like fixing things. Would you come if I fixed it?'

‘It's awfully difficult for me to say,' he said. ‘You see, everybody's on leave. Charlton, my chief, is on leave. The only really good local clerk has gone to Lisbon for a week. It's very doubtful if I could leave the office in any case——'

‘You've got the weekend.'

‘I know, but——' He found himself being helplessly absorbed, as his breath had been absorbed in the stifling purser's cabin on the ship, by her enlarged diffused eyes, almost pure white, their true colour extinguished until they gave out a curious impression of nakedness in the dark morning shadow. ‘And apart from anything else there's the
leste
——'

‘If we wait till the
leste
is over?' she said. ‘If it blows for two or three days it ought to be over by the weekend, oughtn't it?'

‘Well, you can't tell——'

‘Shall we chance it?' she said. ‘Shall I fix it up?'

‘Will it do if I decide this evening?'

‘I'm going to fix it during the day,' she said. ‘If the
Alacantara
comes next week I haven't much time.'

‘All right,' he said. ‘I suppose I could come.'

As she got up from the table she smiled and touched his arm, telling him to drink his coffee. Her body was held forward to him, the partially transparent inset of her dress exposing her breast. He was aware of the falling
discoloured band of yellow in her intense black hair and it disturbed him again more than anything she had done or said, and as he stared at it she smiled.

‘Do I look so awful?' she said. ‘I haven't combed my hair since I went down to the harbour. I must go and do it now.'

He called after her to ask what she was going to do with herself all day. ‘You must take it easily. Don't go and exhaust yourself,' he said.

‘I'll probably swim,' she called back from the stairs.

‘Be careful of the swell,' he said. ‘It's terribly deceptive. It can sometimes be twenty or thirty feet even on the calmest days.' After all he had a certain responsibility for her now. ‘Don't go out too far.'

The road to the central ridge of mountains wound up through gorges of grey volcanic rock, under steep declivities of pine and eucalyptus closely planted as saplings against the erosion of a sparse burnt soil, red and cindrous, veined yellow here and there by courses of long-dried water. The car crept upward very slowly, beetle-wise, on black setts of blistered rock that gave way, beyond the last windowless white houses, to a track of pot-holes sunk in grey and crimson sand.

‘It was a stroke of genius to bring the cook,' she said.

He did not feel that this was flattery. It really was, he thought, rather a stroke of genius on his part to think of the cook. The idea of the cook sprang from his recollection
that, at the top of the mule-pass, there was also a rest-house. For practically nothing you could put up there, cook meals and so on and do the thing in comfort. He was very pleased about that. It saved a lot of trouble. He didn't think he could have come all the way up that hot dreary track otherwise.

The
leste
, after all, had died. The air in the mountains was still hot, but height began to give it, as the car climbed slowly, a thinness that was fresh and crystalline. Objects began to appear so vivid that they stuck out, projected by strong blue lines that were pulsations rather than shadow. In a curious way everything was enlarged by scintillation.

Perhaps it was this that made Manson, sitting at the back of the car with Miss Vane, fix his eyes hypnotically on the black hair of the cook, sitting in front with the driver.

The head of the cook was like an ebony bowl, polished to a sheen of greasy magnificence by brushings of olive oil. Below it the shoulders were flat and square, the erectness of them giving power to the body that was otherwise quite short and stiff, except when it bent in sudden bows of politeness to Miss Vane.

Sometimes the car jolted violently in and out of pot-holes and Manson and Miss Vane were pitched helplessly upward and against each other, taken unawares. But the shoulders of Manuel, the cook, were never disturbed by more than a quiver and sometimes it seemed to Manson that they gave a shrug.

This hypnosis about the neck of the cook lasted until
the car-road ended and the mule-track began, winding away into a thick scrub of wild bay-trees and stunted, blue-needled pines. At the foot of the track the mules were waiting, four flickering skeletons brought up by two bare-foot peasants wearing trousers of striped blue shirt material and black trilby hats.

Manuel loaded two osier baskets of provisions, Manson's rucksack and one of Miss Vane's scarlet-labelled too-neat suitcases on to one of the mules, and the peasants began to lead the mules up the hill.

After Manuel had shouted after them the two peasants came back. They both looked down-trodden in protestation and Manuel, standing over them, square and erect, looked more assertive than before.

‘What is it, Manuel?' Miss Vane said. ‘Is something the matter?'

‘No, madame.' He pronounced his English fully and correctly, elongating the final syllable.

‘What is it then?'

‘They want to go with us, madame.'

‘That was the idea, wasn't it?' Manson said.

‘It's not necessary, sir. I can manage without them.'

‘You know the way?' she said.

‘Yes, madame,' he said. ‘I've done it before.'

After that the taxi driver drove away and the peasants disappeared up the hill. Manuel took the first and second mules, Miss Vane the third and Manson the fourth. Manson had never been on a mule before and his legs seemed so much too long that he felt gawkily ridiculous. But looking ahead, beyond Miss Vane and the provision
mule to the leading figure of Manuel, he was relieved to see that Manuel looked, as he thought, still more stupid.

His preoccupation with the back of Manuel's neck had been so absorbed that he had not really noticed that Manuel was wearing the black suit of a waiter. And as Manuel turned to look back at the column Manson saw that he was wearing the tie, the shirt front and the collar too.

It took three hours to climb through paths among bay-tree and pine and tree-heath and an occasional eucalyptus stunted by height to the size of a currant-bush, as far as the rest-house. As the mules marched slowly upward, jerky and rhythmical, the mountains seemed to march rapidly forward, shutting in the heat and shutting out much of the sky. And as the heat developed oppressively Manson called once to Miss Vane:

‘You'd hardly think there would be snow up here, would you?'

‘There is no snow up here, sir.'

‘I thought there was always snow. After all, it's six thousand——'

‘Not on this side, sir. You're thinking of the Santo Carlo side. There is never snow just here.'

Manson did not speak again and it was half an hour before he noticed, glinting in the sun, what he thought were iron sheds of the power-station framed in a gap ahead.

‘I rather think that's the new power-station,' he called
to Miss Vane. ‘They had great difficulty in getting the pipes up there——'

‘That's not the power-station, sir. That's the old pumping station for the
levadas
. They don't use it now.'

‘Where is the power-station?' Miss Vane said.

‘It's over the other side, madame. You won't be able to see it from this direction.'

‘And where is the place you can see the two coasts from?' she said. ‘You know—the sea both sides?'

‘You will be able to go there from the rest-house, madame,' he said. ‘It isn't far. You'll be able to climb up there.'

Manson stretched out his hand and snatched at the leaves of a eucalyptus tree, crushing it sharply with his fingers and then lifting the leaf to his nose. The harsh oily odour of eucalyptus was unpleasant and irritated him. It reminded him of times when, as a child, his chest had been very bad and he had coughed a lot and he had not been able to get his breath.

He unconsciously kept the leaf in his hand until, at the suggestion of Manuel, they stopped to rest. ‘We are half way now, madame,' Manuel said.

Manuel poured glasses of export beer for Manson and Miss Vane and served them with stiff politeness and then retired to a respectful distance among the mules. From masses of rock above them, studded with pale flat cacti that were like blown roses of delicate green, water dripped in large slow drops, like summery thundery rain.

‘Well, this is marvellous,' Miss Vane said and lifted her glass to him, smiling with huge blue eyes in which
Manson felt he could see all the summery wateriness and the great scintillation of mountain sky.

He lifted his glass to her in return, re-experiencing a sudden rush of the intimacy he had felt over her dishevelled bed and her handbag and that recurred whenever he looked at the yellow streak in her hair. He had a wild idea that presently, at the rest-house, they might be alone together.

‘There's an awful smell of eucalyptus,' Miss Vane said.

He flushed, pounding with anger at himself, and said:

‘I'm afraid it's me. I crushed a leaf. Don't you like it?——'

‘I loathe it,' she said. ‘I can't bear it near me. I hate it. You'll have to go and wash your hands.'

He went away in silence and washed his hands among the cacti, under a spilling cleavage of rock. The water was icy in the brilliant, burning air. He washed his hands carefully and then smelled them and it seemed that the smell of eucalyptus remained. Then he washed them again with slow, rejected, clinical care.

It was not until the rest-house came in sight that he emerged from a painful and articulate silence during which he had done nothing but stare at the sweat oozing slowly and darkly down the mules' neck. He was pleasantly startled by hearing Miss Vane call back:

‘Hullo there. Asleep?' Her voice was solicitous and friendly once more and was accompanied by a sidelong dazzling smile. ‘You can see the rest-house. We're nearly there.'

‘I think it was the beer,' he said. ‘Made me drowsy——'

‘Look at it,' she said. ‘It's exciting, isn't it? I'm excited.'

‘Oh! yes. It's bigger than I thought——'

‘Aren't you excited?' she said. ‘This is really something. This is what I wanted.'

The track had widened. She reined the mule and waited for him. Then as she turned the mule half-face to him he noticed the shape of her body, pressed heavily across the dark animal flanks. She had ridden up in a sleeveless thin white dress, the skirt of which was drawn up beyond her knees. He had never been able to make up his mind how old she was and now, in her excitement, her skirt drawn up above bare smooth legs, her eyes enormously shining, he thought she seemed much younger than she had done down in the scorching, withering period of the
leste
, in the town. She seemed to have left her hostile restlessness behind.

‘Oh? it's marvellous and it really wasn't far, was it?' she said. ‘It didn't seem an hour. It was easy after all.'

He said he didn't think it had been far either and he was aware suddenly that Manuel had gone ahead. The impossible waiter-suit, mule-mounted, was almost at the verandah steps. A hundred yards separated him from Manson and Miss Vane, and again an over-powering sense of intimacy came over Manson, so that he felt tremulously stupid and could not speak to her.

‘Now aren't you glad I made you come?' she said.

‘Yes,' he said.

‘Back there I thought you were mad with me.'