Mayenga Farm (6 page)

"Marvellous," cried Jackie. "I don’t know when I’ve enjoyed

anything so much. Do you play again tomorrow?"

"On Saturday," he said. "Get the Gaynors to come. Rennie has too little fun."

"I’ll try. Au revoir, Kent."

Rennie slipped along to the kitchen and placed Adela's milk over the primus to boil. She scarcely knew that her teeth were damped together, her hands shaking. Being pitied did that to Rennie.

She carried Adela's drink to the bedroom, smiled goodnight, and paused in Jackie's doorway.

"Have a good time, Jac?"

"Perfect." Carelessly, she flung the suit she had worn on to the bed and pulled a black silk wrap about her. "It was a gorgeous day, from beginning to end. Kent’s team won, of course. You'd swoon to watch him play— he and the horse seem to be one. His vitality and strength! The chances he takes! My heart was pounding with the hoofs."

"What did you do after the match?"

"The polo didn’t finish till six. We drove to Kent’s house — three carloads of us. We had cocktails before we tidied up, took a look round the house and garden before dark, and then had dinner. Rennie, wouldn’t you love to have a house like Elands Ridge?"

"I don't know. I’ve only seen it from the road. It’s getting late, Jac."

"Not so very." She sat on the stool, facing Rennie, her hair flying out from the brush. She showed not the slightest trace of weariness. " Adela and I are so taken with your part of the world that we’d like to remain here for a week or two. My father hasn't sent the frantic telegram that Adela considers is her due, so she won’t go to him. It sounds childish, but I don’t blame her for teaching him a lesson. Pop’s rather phlegmatic and he can do with it. Even if he does telegraph now, she'll make him wait."

"I'm glad we shan’t be losing you for a while, Jac."

"You're a pet. Naturally, we can't park ourselves on you indefinitely — you have your job to do, and can’t spare the car for our jaunts into town. We might take rooms at the Carlton in Gravenburg — I’m told it’s the best hotel in the district. You could come at the week-ends and we'd have roaring times together." Impulsively, she added, "You looked so pretty and different in evening dress last night — not a bit like a land girl. Remember the sandy-haired man you danced with towards the end ... not bad looking and a good talker? He was at Kent's today and he asked about you. You see how easy it would be to gather men friends if you wanted them. Darling, I wish you would."

"What a subject to get on to at this time of night. I'm going to bed."

Jac said, "Don't go for a minute. Kent's playing again on Saturday,

and has invited us all. Do come this time."

"I'll think it over. Night-night, Jac"

Rennie didn't think it over. The instant Kent voiced the suggestion she had made her decision. He could keep his charity. She'd as good as told him that before. Jackie, having repeated Kent's message, appeared to forget it in the excitement of exchanging residence at the farm for a balcony room next to her mother's at the Carlton Hotel.

They departed from Mayenga on Saturday morning, Adrian drove them to Gravenburg and explained his late return to Rennie.

"They asked me to take them shopping. I've never seen women buy so many garments at one go. It was astounding, I assure you, a piece of education I'd as soon have missed. When we got back to the hotel the lounge was crowded and they — the two Catons — began to attract acquaintances like honey draws bees. Chiefly men. I was glad to leave."

A week passed. Rennie was back in her own bedroom, revelling in the daintiness she had contrived for Jacqueline, but privately somewhat rueful about the expenditure. One way and another the Catons' brief visit to Mayenga Farm had cost about seventeen pounds and, because of a vague disappointment in Jackie, it rankled. Rennie wondered if her father realized that their total ready cash amounted to something under eighty pounds, with the monthly bills still to pay, and expensive jute bags for packing the crops yet to buy. For large-scale farmers, they were in an appalling financial position, with no hope of immediate improvement.

After breakfast on Sunday she counted the sacks in the shed and found them entirely inadequate to take the expected harvest. Hessian, in which to bale cotton ready for the ginning factory, was unprocurable, and any other material was out of the question on account of cost. She hated troubling Adrian about such things, especially on a Sunday, but it took so long for an order to go through, and the first picking should start in a few weeks. They really must decide how to tackle the problem.

Rennie came out into the air and sneezed from the dust The sun was ferocious this morning, the sky a purplish, African, blue. Trees hung limp and still, but insects still chirred happily in the grass. She ran up the steps to the house, passed along the stoep to the open French door of the lounge, and called:

"Are you there, darling?"

A short pause and a movement within. Then: "Are you addressing me?" And Kent appeared from the shadows and actually grinned down into her face.

Rennie cast a quick glance behind her at the drive.

"No," he replied to the unspoken question. "The car isn’t there. I rode over, and left my horse at the mercy of your cows in the pasture." He was smiling almost teasingly, and there was none of the usual hardness in him. In fact his manner put Rennie on guard, particularly when he queried, "Is ’darling’ your father? I like the way you say it. You color nicely, too."

"Have you seen him?" she asked abruptly.

"I have. He and I are doing a deal in book-lending. He has a couple of first editions I'm keen to read, so I’m begging them and leaving half-a-dozen biographies as security. You might like to look through them, as well."

"Thank you," politely. "Have you had a drink?"

"No. Adrian suggested one, but switched his attention to books and left me high and very dry."

The action was so typical of her father that she caught in her lip to stifle a quirk of amusement. It wouldn’t do to unbend too drastically with Kent. She crossed to the small wine cupboard and opened it,

"Help yourself, won't you."

"The name is Kent," he gently reminded her. "Or don’t you

care for it?"

"It has an English flavor."

"My mother’s maiden name. I’m a third generation South African."

"Originally from England?"

"Yes, on both sides."

She acknowledged this piece of information with a slight inclination of the head.

"That doesn’t mean," he said, "that I’m in favor of everything English. That doggedness you're famed for annoys me, so does your brand of pride. And your conceit is phenomenal."

"Conceit!" Mechanically, she accepted the tumbler he thrust into her hand. "Snobbishness, perhaps, but not conceit."

"Conceit," he repeated, clinking his glass against hers and taking a pull at it. "You come out here knowing nothing but book-talk and hearsay about the country, bankrupt yourselves to buy a chunk of our land, and settle down to plod through the lean years to the fat ones, for all the world as if there were no vestige of doubt about the outcome. Only the English would have sufficient conceit to believe themselves capable, with little money and no experience, of turning raw veld into arable land, and at the same time expect to make a living out of it. The devil of it is, you do it!"

"Is your prejudice against the nation or the individual?" she challenged.

"It isn’t a prejudice; it’s a savage sort of admiration. One must hand it to you. You're never dismayed, or if you are you don’t show it. Your father is a typical example."

Immediately defensive, she said, "I thought you'd have to get down to cases sooner or later. You can’t keep off it, can you? Why should our farming methods concern you so much that you have to allude to them every time we meet?" Suddenly fearful, she added in a lower tone, "Have you talked to my father about it?"

"Not yet, but I've been near doing so once or twice."

She stared straight up at him, the grey eyes wider and more pleading than she knew. "Please don’t. He’d worry so much."

"He ought to worry," Kent said brutally. "And worry like hell. Wasn't it his idea that you came here in the first place?"

"It had to originate somewhere, but I was equally as enthusiastic." He was between Rennie and the cabinet, and she looked from side to side for somewhere to put down her glass.

"Drink it," he said.

Her head tilted at the command, but after a moment she obeyed and he took the empty glass and held it with his own, between strong brown hands. The straight black brows were divided by a single, determined-looking furrow, and the blue eyes which looked down into hers were peculiarly penetrating.

"Farming — the way you do it — is gruelling and packed with perplexities, and you’re damfool enough to try to carry most of them yourself. I’ll wager your father is totally unaware of three parts of the set-backs you encounter. Hardly a woman exists who could work seven hundred acres without a man at the back of her. You stood a chance while Fourie was with you; he made up for your father's lack of ground knowledge; he could rate the boys in their own lingo, and get ten times more work out of them than they’ll ever do for a girl."

"The boys are working very well," she flashed back.

The glasses clanked as Kent shoved them behind him on to a table.

"Yes, they will while you watch them," he conceded. "I’d sooner judge by results. You've made serious miscalculations — the cotton was one of them____"

"So you told me before, but the seed is in, and the plants are growing."

"I'll grant that half of them are making a brave attempt. If nothing attacks them they may replace the seed you bought with a little over, but you’ll be way down on costs. Whatever your argument, the battle of the soil is no work for a girl like you. You're not built for it, mentally or physically. Don't tell me it's no business of mine what you do. Be matey, and accept a little help once in a while."

At this point Adrian appeared, one book under his arm and another open in front of him. His mildly astonished glance moved from Rennie to Kent.

"This room is vibrating," he commented. "What have you been doing?"

Kent's bearing relaxed and he smiled, half-satirically, his eyes narrowed at Rennie.

"We were at odds about Shakespeare. Your daughter, like the young, tender thing she is, prefers to believe him a true Romantic. I contend that he inserted romance into his plays to fill the gallery. He had a shrewd eye to the business aspect of playwriting."

Adrian was deceived. Thoughtfully, he stroked his chin. "Yours is the cynic's view, Kent. To me, Shakespeare's love scenes have a clear ring to them. Beauty, humor, passion. . .

"And sincerity," put in Rennie. "What about the sonnets?"

"The sonnets," Kent echoed mockingly. " ’Hunting he loved, but love he laughed to scorn’ — till she taught him better. Heigh-ho. Who am I to offer disillusionment?"

After a little further back-chat in similar vein, Adrian enquired if he might have some coffee, and Rennie went to the kitchen to make it. When she came back Kent and her father were discussing the two books. She poured the coffee and listened, inwardly surprised at the obvious friendliness between the two men — the scholar and the planter. Watching Kent, she had an odd feeling that the long pale scar beneath his jaw had vanished, or maybe it only showed in moments of tension or anger.

After he had gone, Adrian said, "Kent's agreeable and interesting, isn't he? It must be comforting to be so sure of oneself as he is. In small doses, he's quite a tonic."

Kent had been tolerably nice this morning, Rennie privately agreed, and he had respected her wish that her father should not be treated to a distressing lecture on his own drawbacks as a farmer. Perhaps he realized that it might do heaps more harm than good. If he continued pleasant, Adrian might cautiously revive the subject of the oak saplings. The farm needed trees so badly, and even purchased in bulk lots they were costly. Better to tread warily, though. Wouldn’t do to give in too readily to a man like Kent.

C H A P T E R F I V E IN the middle of the following week Jackie came over in a borrowed coupe. Adela, prostrated by the malicious heat of the midsummer sun, was spending the afternoon in her hotel bedroom, and Jackie had seized the opportunity of a few hours alone.

As it happened, when Jackie drove up Rennie and her father were taking a quick cup of tea under an old Cape chestnut tree in the garden. The coupe was parked on the path nearby, and Jackie jumped out to greet them.

"Hello, Ren, darling . . . Mr. Gaynor. No tea, thanks. How are you, Rennie?" The dark eyes darted uncertainly, but Jackie was as gay as ever. "Sorry I haven't been over before, but it's frightfully difficult, without a car of one’s own. The time has just flown." As Adrian got up her scarlet finger-tips hovered about his sleeve. "Please! I’ll sit on the grass."

But Adrian insisted that he had to work to do, and strolled indoors.

Apart from the eternal hot, sweet noise of the insects the garden was peaceful. Jacqueline turned from brief contemplation of a yellow and black butterfly on a bunch of thick foliage. Rennie, faintly perspiring from tea and a couple of hours’ maize grinding, leaned back in her grass chair and studied the expensive, olive-tinted face. Surely there was never so perfect a bloom as Jackie’s.

"Thank goodness there’s no fear of interruption," Jackie exclaimed, and now she was tense, unsmiling. "Oh, Rennie, I’m in an awful jam — the very worst of my life! You’ve simply got to help me."

"Why, Jac!" Rennie cried incredulously. "What is it? Of course I'll help you, if I can."

"I knew you would." She gave a relieved sigh, but her eyes were anxious as she bent towards Rennie and dropped her tones. "Tell me something, Ren. Have you ever been indiscreet — not naughty, just indiscreet — with a man? No, of course you haven’t. You’re too modest and reserved. You’d hide your feelings rather than air them. You haven’t been tempted to scream at stiff-backed old grandparents and kick over the traces as I have."

"You exaggerate. About this problem of yours. . ."