Plantation Doctor (5 page)

CHAPTER FIVE

It
seemed
to Lyn next morning that she had been living for a very long time at Denton. She knew every scarlet blossom in the flower-bed beyond the veranda, the shape of the sky from her wicker chair and the outline from her window of her neighbor’s house, two hundred yards away. He was of the scholar
l
y few and seldom visible. Adrian’s house, over on the other side of the compound, remained shrouded in green mystery, but she had grown as accustomed to the picture it made as if she had been established here for weeks instead of days.

In fact, this was her first Saturday on the Coast. She remembered it incredulously, remembered also that apart from the cable she had sent from Freetown advising him of her arrival in Africa, she had not communicated with Mr. Latimer. He wouldn’t worry; the old pet dwelt most of the time among his treasures. In any case, it was pointless to write till she and his sister-in-law had come together. What with the heat and uncertainty Lyn did not feel capable of corresponding with people in England.

She was glad that Melia Ducros had charge of the housekeeping. Melia, with her mixture of Latin blood and African upbringing, suffered the climate and pests uncomplainingly. Her sallow gauntness cloaked considerable physical strength; even when the air was suffocatingly still and the sun scorched down from directly overhead, Melia would carry on with her baking, or trot over to the doctor’s kitchen for supplies. She would have been content to stay for ever in this sprawling, orderly village of white people, serving the young “madam” and bossing the house
-
boy and the “small” boy who cleaned and filled the kerosene cooking-stove each day.

But Lyn was becoming restless, more so since her talk with Claud Merrick last night. She didn’t care for the sensation of not belonging anywhere, of being so utterly at other people’s mercy. In a land like this it was easy to be frightened, to imagine evil where none existed, simply because one was alone.
She had always thought of herself as possessing slightly more than average courage. During her grandmother’s last illness, when she had had to be prepared for the severance of the close and lovely relationship which had existed since her childhood, she had been poker-backed and tearless. When it was over she had wept, but sensibly set about selling most of the furniture and vacating the house. And without too much heartbreak she had moved to Bournemouth, and started making new contacts, new friends. To be solitary in England was not the same as to be alone in this place, where men of widely varying types predominated, and the few women were seasoned to the Coast, and married. There was no hope of making undemanding friendships.

Being Saturday, a desultoriness pe
r
vaded the settlement. By noon all the men had returned to their homes, to take a bath, eat a meal and rest till the sun lost some of its ferocity. From four till six there would be tennis, or golf on the Palmas course.

Lyn dressed in blue tailored silk touched here and there with white, and sat on her veranda to await Claud. It was fortunate that the path out to the Palmas road ran alongside her dwelling; unless he met someone on the road there would be no need for anyone to know that she would be lunching elsewhere. She would be back in good time to play tennis with Mrs. Baird and the others.

She heard the car, swept up her topi from another chair and ran down and round to the path to meet Claud. He bumped to a halt, leaned over and opened the door for her. In the brilliant sunshine his smile was very white, his skin admirably tanned. His slacks and silk shirt were impeccably pearl-grey, but his tie scintillated. About Claud there was invariably a spot of gaiety.

“Remarkable woman,” he said. “Ready on time. Did you have any trouble?”

She pulled the car door shut and rested the helmet on the floor beside her. “What sort of trouble?”

“With the body-guard.” He nodded jeeringly at the expanse of grass splodged with white thatched houses. “There’s no romance about the place, nothing tantalising. The folk down in Palmas may not be so healthy either in mind or body, but they do live.” He trod on the accelerator and swung the wheel. “Our friend Adrian’s too keen that his men shall have a future.”

“That’s rather important, isn’t it? Some of them are only here for three years. After that they have to settle down to a job in England.”

They sped away, first through a belt of cleared timber and then over the road between mile upon orderly mile of rubber trees. It was fifteen miles into Palmas, and the whole way lay through the Denton rubber forests. This was the first time Lyn had made the journey in daylight. She saw the straight, tall trunks with triangular gashes in the bark dripping latex into covered metal cups. There was no grass between the trees, only leaf-strewn earth flattened out by bare, black feet. The estate ended at the hill above Palmas, and the port lay spread before them, a medley of roofs, peeling stucco and trees. The stone jetty stuck out into the big grey rollers, with freighters tied up alongside.

“That’s the Denton fleet,” Claud said. “I have to send my quota by the coastal service whenever they have space to spare. That’s why it often spoils before it gets away.”

“
Couldn’t you sell your bales to Denton and let them handle them with their own?”

His glance at her was smiling and indolent. “My stuff doesn’t rise to the Denton quality; they wouldn’t touch it. I’ll take you round the place one day. We’re not averse to a sprinkling of vine flowers and orchids among the trees.”

“One day,” she echoed. “Are you breaking it gently that you can’t fix a passage for me to Akasi?”

“Of course not. I wasn’t thinking.” He smoothed her hand as it lay between them. “I put out feelers in a few directions this morning, but being Saturday I couldn’t get far. I’m hoping for results on Monday.”

“But that will be too late. I can’t risk passing Mrs. Latimer on the way.”

“We’ll arrange something. Don’t jitter
—
it makes lines in your face.”

She had to be satisfied with that and go on hoping. Claud pulled up at the club and they had lunch in a
nearly
empty dining-room. He ordered wine, but when she refused it he did not insist that she take some. He was setting himself out to please her, and she was grateful. Claud
’
s personality was light and entertaining, but just a little obscure. He gave the impression of yielding part of himself and being willing to yield more. And he had the way
—
all too rare among men
—
of making her feel that there was no one else in the world with whom he would rather be. With him Lyn felt mature and happy.

He took her into the club library and showed her specimens of African carving and leatherwork, old stuff which differed tremendously from that turned out for tourists. On the wall was an aged framed chart of the West African coast, and he confessed to an ambition for a study of his own, where the seventeenth-century maps he had collected and sent to England for safe keeping could be hung and treasured. On the back of an envelope he sketched for her the cottage in a backwater in the north of London which was his and his sister’s.

“Hazel uses it occasionally at week-ends, but most of the time she shares a flat in Notting Hill with another stage aspirant. Budding actresses always cling together. She’s twenty-four, and sick with the longing to get into a good repertory company.”

“A dramatic actress?”

“That’s her aim.”

“You’re fond of her,” said Lyn sympathetically.

“I am,” he admitted. “If I could afford it I’d put on a West End play with Hazel in the lead. She’d make a go of it, too and bring me a fortune. You’d like her,” he finished. “She’s all that I’m not
—
a sticker, and terribly sincere.”

The hours passed quickly. There was much about Claud Merrick that roused an instinctive wariness in Lyn: his worldliness and look of dissipation, the case with which he conveyed compliments and his open distrust of the professed principles of other men. But the wry softness with which he spoke of his sister’s yearnings, his affection for his maps and the family cottage
—
they were qualities which she understood and cherished.

It was after half-past four when he returned her to Denton, and when they parted he had her promise to spend Sunday afternoon with him, viewing the Merrick plantation and the teeming river which snaked along its boundary and was used by his latex-laden canoes.

As soon as he had gone Lyn hastily changed into a pleated tennis frock, and got out the racquet which Roger had lent her. A dusting of powder did not disguise the fact that she was perspiring, but she was too late to subside into an easy chair and cool off.

She crossed the clearing diagonally, passed between two of the houses and came to the beautifully kept hard courts which were covered about twenty feet up by a thick red roof that was supported all round on slim tree logs. Both courts were occupied, and so were the several canvas chairs which faced them.

Lyn made her way round towards the spectators. Roger stood up to give her his chair, but Adrian’s was nearer. She murmured her thanks and sank into the seat. There was a shuffle of rearrangement, and when they were all settled again, Lyn found Roger on her right and Adrian a foot or two away to the left.

Roger bent nearer and whispered, “They played the game without you, Lyn. Peter partnered Mr. Baird in your place and Mrs. Baird and Dr. Sinclair opposed them. I said I thought we ought to hang on a while for you, but the doctor wouldn’t.”

“Oh!” She spoke sharply, with vexation. It was only ten minutes to five, more than an hour till dusk. “No definite time was mentioned. I was merely invited to
play
tennis between four and six.”

“I know. I’m sorry.”

For some time after that both were quiet. A fast match was in progress and she tried to give it all her attention. Adrian was conversing sporadically with the man on his other side, and Mrs. Baird was well down the line, only her bright, darting fan visible.

The match ended in a burst of clapping. Two young men were on their feet, urging Lyn and Roger to join them. Smilingly, she shook her head.

“I’d slow you down. I’ll watch you instead.”

“But you came out to play,” one of them protested. “You’ll make the game more interesting.”

Again she declined, more decisively. Roger and the other two found a fourth player and went on to the court. The piccanin who was ball-boy scurried round the wire netting doing his job. A racquet was spun and the game began.

After a few minutes Adrian leaned towards Lyn, his tone cool and mocking. “That was wise of you. You look as if you’ve already had enough sport for one afternoon.”

Stung, she answered. “I don’t think so. I’d have played if there had been another woman. But I may have had enough of Denton.”

“That would be a pity,” he said casually, “because I’m rather afraid you’ve quite a bit more of it to endure. I received word today that the swamps have widened and risen in the Akasi area and postal delays are inevitable. It may be another week before Mrs. Latimer receives my letter.”

Lyn turned her head quickly his way. His straight mouth had thinned and curved almost to a sneer, the stony eyes stared at her critically and without friendliness. A premonitory shiver ran down her spine and, wordlessly, she turned back to contemplation of the game.

At last dusk closed in and the courts cleared; the piccanin accepted his pay and ran off. Everyone was standing, moving in one direction, towards Adrian’s house.

Lyn heard his say quietly, at her back. “You’ll come with the others for a drink, won’t you, Miss Russell? I dare say you’re more in need of black coffee than a cocktail, but I expect we can run to it.”

Electricity was in the air, a small circle of it which seemed to encompass Adrian and herself in the midst of the unwitting crowd. To refuse to enter his domain would be to admit defeat at his hands; it would also appear odd to the rest. Besides, she felt that that was what he wanted and his manner put her into a mood of hostility. So, her heart beating unevenly and her pulses drumming a little with annoyance, she strolled with the others along the footpath which had been worn from the courts to the gateless path which wound among the trees to Adrian’s white abode.

The house was even larger than Lyn had guessed. It stretched away under the heavy, sun-resistant roof; with a hundred-foot by ten veranda in the centre and a solid block of excellently finished stucco at each end. Like those of the other houses, the windows were glassless but mosquito-wired and shuttered.

As they entered the veranda, lights sprang on and some of the shutters were pulled wide by white-clad servants. Following Mrs. Baird, Lyn walked into a lounge as big as the ballroom at the club. Except for a massive inlaid desk which was mainly black, all the furniture was in a golden, satiny wood and, though of no particular design, it had pleasing curves and uniformity of style. Involuntarily,
it came to Lyn that in England, where wood-borer, white ant and damp rot were the exception rather than the rule, Adrian would make an enviable job of furnishing a house. Here he had done his best with the materials and craftsmanship available on the spot, and chosen an unusual color scheme of dove-grey and turquoise with the golden wood, against dead white walls.