Mayenga Farm (17 page)

That short exchange with him just before she left Elands Ridge stayed with Rennie into the small hours of the night. Had Kent meant that he would have liked to kiss her, or had he just talked, as some men will, to enjoy her reactions? And why, when she and Adrian were confronted with financial disaster, should she vibrate with a totally incomprehensible happiness? Her last conscious thought was that nothing made sense, and she went to sleep with a smile on her lips.

The morning broke dear and fresh. Turtle doves edged dose to each other on the grass, touched beaks, and warbled their foolish words of love. A miraculous dew, so fine that it had to be touched to be believed, laid a bloom on the leaves and misted the smooth red top of the stoep wall. The wind had died to a zephyr which murmured seductively, yet it carried the cold sharp tang of stale wood smoke down from the maize fields, an inexorable reminder to the three who breakfasted at the open window of the dining room.

Though Adrian made no significant reference to Kent’s visit to him the previous evening, his instructions that Rennie keep to the house today, and his refusal to debate literary matters till evening, revealed a belated but sincere anxiety, Michael manoeuvring bacon and tomatoes with his left hand, stated gloomily that he was no good to anyone, himself included. Only fools and knaves put themselves out of action when they were most needed.

"Never mind," Rennie consoled him. "You can still read and ponder, and congratulate yourself that your fortune isn’t tied up in a maize farm."

"I hate lounging around, doing nothing," he said. "If you’re absolutely sure I’m superfluous, I'll take sandwiches and clear off for the day. I can still walk!"

Rennie did not discourage him. She felt sure that Kent's aversion to Michael was merely a masculine kind of distrust, but even so it would be more comfortable all round if the two seldom met. For Kent was coming today, to bring Paddy, and Rennie purposely wore a frock of blue and white stripes, with a ribbon in her hair and white sandals.

Michael shouldered his picnic meal and a couple of books, borrowed a stick and set off. Adrian came back from his early duties to fill his tobacco pouch, and lingered over a cup of coffee.

Presently he said: "I’m going to sell my first editions, Rennie. That old judge we met at the Yachting Club was mad to have them, and he'd pay a big figure—enough to put us back where we were last spring. It'll be good to have a few pounds in the bank again."

"Your beautiful books! You can't do it."

He smiled. "That was my opinion, too, till last night. Since then they have become merely tomes of good value. I'm thankful I have them to sell, and to know of a man who will pay what they’re worth."

His studious casualness did not deceive Rennie. The first editions, which had taken him so long and so much trouble to collect, were part of his very existence. In the old days he had cheerfully gone without many things a man needs in order to purchase a treasured volume, and both Rennie and her mother had connived and schemed to help him acquire it. Normally, he was not acquisitive, nor did he demand a high standard of living. But books, particularly those mellow with age and rich with wisdom, were necessary to his complete inner harmony. He loved his first editions individually, revered them, and counted himself blessed to possess them. Rennie was determined to oppose their sale.

"Money will start coming in soon," she said. "With luck we'll receive the cheque for the maize at the end of the month, or very soon after. It won’t be so large as we expected, but it should take care of expenses for a few weeks to come."

"And what then . . . mortgage or overdraft? No, my dear. For once, I’m looking ahead. We’ll start next season with a foreman, and plant every single acre, even the virgin tract at the top. Kent says this farm could be made to yield a worthwhile living, and from now on I intend to devote myself to it."

"But, darling, only a short time ago you admitted yourself no farmer and talked of leaving Mayenga. What about the lecture tour?"

"Pipe dreams." He smiled at her affectionately. "Who ever heard of a scholarly boer? You can't mix two such professions and excel at both ... or even one."

"But the agent wrote that the tour will remain open for the winter months. A round fee and expenses paid."

"And back to Mayenga? It wouldn't do, Rennie. It’s one or the other, and after long and serious consideration of all the aspects, I've chosen farming. I'll go and see the judge about those books on Sunday morning."

Adrian could be surprisingly stubborn when he liked. She knew he would hand over the first editions without a quiver and school himself to forget them, but her heart ached for the subsequent void their loss would create. She wouldn't let him do it.

Yet, with the elasticity of youth, she could not be cast down for long. Kent came, and she experienced the amazingly sweet pleasure of giving him lunch, and having him stretch his legs in the easy intimacy of the lounge. He complimented her on a lightning recovery.

"But I’d like to see you rounder," he added critically. "Your bones are too sharp and your eyes too big . .. like lakes. You need to be cosseted for a spell."

"My father has the same idea. He’s forbidden me to go beyond the dairy and talks of employing a foreman. We can’t afford it, of course."

"You don’t have to decide at once."

"But he has decided, and there seems to be no putting him off." She looked across at him in sudden hope. "You like books, too, don't you?"

The dark brows twitched. "A somewhat sudden change of topic."

"It isn’t really. You’ve seen my father’s first editions. What do you think of them?"

"Collectively?"

"Yes. Are they worth much?"

"I’m not acquainted with today’s prices for such things, but they're probably worth quite a bit. Surely he's not contemplating getting rid of them?"

She nodded. "But I can't let him. He loves them so much. That beastly judge is after them."

"The judge isn’t at all a bad chap," he said mildly. "Wanting Adrian’s books doesn’t turn him into a fiend. Still, if that's the way it is, he shan’t have them. Whatever he offers, I’ll raise him."

"I ... I didn’t mean that," she stammered. "I hoped you'd say they weren't worth much—except to my father. He might believe that, if you said it, and refuse to take the judge's money."

"You can bet that Adrian has a shrewd notion of the value of the books." He got up and stood beside her chair. "I’ll try to dissuade him, but if I can’t, who would you prefer to have them—the judge or me?"

His brown, fleshless hand hung loosely, not far from her cheek; his nearness caused her heart to cease for an instant, then to beat too fast. She shook her head a little vaguely, but did not speak.

"Leave it to me," he said, guessing her answer. "You’re both coming to dinner tonight. I’ll take soundings."

Much though she wished it, he would not allow her to go to the car with him. Kent was incapable of fussing; he could make her obey him without it.

How he handled her father that evening she did not know, but the precious books remained locked up in Adrian’s bedroom, and he himself had a lighter step and a gleam in his eyes. He teased her about Kent's frequent appearances at the farm, and when she colored his glance went tender and a little apprehensive.

Under Kent’s expert hand their agricultural problems also smoothed out. In no time at all the maize was cleared and transported, the hay from it stored in a symmetrical stack at the back of the sheds. Weeds were turned in and rich dark furrows appeared at the top of the plantation where raw veld had been. The irrigation was overhauled and pipelines put in, windbreaks were planted, the tracks between fields fortified and levelled, the native huts scoured out and disinfected ready to receive new workers.

With his tongue in his cheek Kent instructed Maxwell to set out a row of oak saplings, two thousand feet long. He was getting all his own way on the farm and, gently mocking, he let Rennie know it.

One day he canoed her up-river to inspect, from the water's edge, his newly acquired forest. Here was nature at its most awesome. Mahogany with buttressed roots, cottonwood and teak, immense in girth, with slim seedlings between them reaching avidly and uselessly for sunshine. The dense growth among the trunks was dark and succulent, except where the parasite vines had twisted their great strong branches and sent out mighty, pale green tendrils. The few flowers were huge and exotically perfect in shape, but frail from the dimness and excessive moisture. Because Rennie admired them, Kent leaned perilously from the boat and plucked a few blooms, but even as she caught them they wilted, and he made her toss them overboard and wash her fingers free of the heavy sap, in case it should contain poison.

After an outing with Kent she wore her joy like a warm, caressing cloak which shut out the shrewd winds of doubt. It wasn't important that he never took her into Gravenburg, nor invited her to the polo. She had no right to question his reasons. Sufficient that she saw him almost every day, that his manner was invariably warm and friendly, and that a bond, however tenuous, existed between them.

Michael's varying moods passed her by. She had typed his twentieth chapter and he had air-mailed the parcel of manuscript to his associate in London. He still worked, but erratically, as though he had to drive himself. The second half of his story depended more on his knowledge and experience than on Adrian's historical data, for his heroine's children were growing up and posing problems; an exacting task for an older hand than Michael.

Quite often, bang in the middle of a morning's writing, he would give up and borrow the car for a drive into town. Adrian dismissed his restlessness as due to temperament and uncertainty; Michael would settle again once he received an independent opinion of his novel's chances. A break from the rigid routine of the last couple of months might freshen his mind.

With less to do on the farm, Rennie began to occupy herself with the womanly pursuits which she had always enjoyed but hitherto had to neglect through lack of leisure. She washed the wide vellum shades of the bedroom lamps, and repainted the sprigs of peach-blossom on them. From a small tea chest and a length of cottage-weave tweed she created a box ottoman which so pleased her that she coaxed George into knocking up another wooden box, in order that a similar cushioned receptacle for large odds and ends could be placed in Adrian’s room. A

lard pail, cleaned and painted, provided by Michael with a long overdue waste-basket and she spent two contented afternoons finishing a woolwork picture which she had actually started eighteen months ago, in the hotel at Durban.

Then there was the large cream linen bedspread, a white elephant from the case of furnishings which they had brought with them from England. It provided a table-cloth and six napkins, and enough hemstitching to keep Rennie busy for several days.

One afternoon, as she sat on the stoep drawing threads, Rennie heard a car and looked up, the familiar leap of gladness in her veins. But it was not the long, maroon car which rounded the drive. A dusty little sports model sped right up to the steps, and Jackie got out. Jackie, in a sparkling white frock with an amethyst pill-box attached to one side of her black curly head, and suede sandals to match. She always contrived to appear as if she had just stepped from a Continental express.

Quenching a tiny thrust of premonition, Rennie extended cordial hands.

"Lovely to see you, Jac. It’s nearly three weeks since you were last here. Sit down and tell me what you’ve been doing."

"Rennie, you sweet!" After this extravagance, Jackie took up from a grass chair a square of material. "Hope chest, darling? It looks like it."

"Hope chest nothing. Our table linen gets scrubbed threadbare by the boy, so I’m fixing some cheap replacements. Nothing in the least romantic about that! You don’t seem to have brought your mother."

Jackie smiled impishly. "There are ways and means, and I’ve learned them all. No menfolk?"

"My father's doctoring a cow and Michael’s hard at it. Like to see him ... Michael?"

Jackie pouted engagingly. "Don’t taunt me, Rennie. I’d come oftener if Michael weren’t living here."

"He's terribly correct when you do meet. I’m afraid he’s falling out of love with you, Jac."

Jackie opened her dark eyes to their fullest extent. Rather primly, for one whose conventions were occasionally elastic, she answered: "That is very wise of Michael. I need no longer be sorry for him."

"Were you?" Rennie hoped she did not sound sarcastic.

"But of course! I’m not heartless, and Michael is rather a lamb, in spite of being a writer. Tell me, Rennie... is the book good?"

"Remarkably so. It’s sure to be accepted and my father doesn’t doubt that he’ll land a contract, but writing alone won't bring in much—not what you’d call much. It takes time to acquire a literary

reputation."

"Depressing, isn't it, considering his toil." Jackie assumed a pretty frown. "Poor Michael. He sent me such charming letters; you wouldn't credit the tenderness and understanding he put into them." Her expression childishly grave, she went on: "He needs a practical wife, one who can be patient and stretch the pennies till he's famous. If loving me has inspired him, I'm thankful."

One couldn't be irritated with Jackie for long. She might be inconsequent and use others to further her little schemes and at times her head might seem rather empty, but there was a disarming streak of honesty in her composition.

"I really came about the party, Ren. It's a dreadful nuisance—my father can't break away from business just now. Adela’s furious."

"What a pity. Your twenty-first, too. Are you going ahead with the arrangements?"

"We can't do otherwise. The invitations are out and the party only a week away. Adela is convinced that he's being deliberately awkward because she hasn't yet joined him in Cape Town. I'm rather sick about it. Pop and I have always been good friends."

"Couldn't you write him a pleading little note?"

"Done already, my pet, but no go. He replied to Adela, not me, and accused her of keeping me here against my will. All very confusing, of course. They're awfully fond of each other and have never been parted so long before, but he won't give in to her this time. Adela, poor darling, can’t make out what's biting him. She’s blaming me for it —says I've been writing to him on the quiet, and giving him an entirely wrong impression. Did you ever hear such a thing!"