Doctor's Assistant (8 page)

CHAPTER EIGHT

IT was a crescent-shaped beach, cupped in the usual tangle of wild banana, cycads and sea-willows. A few piccaninnies played in the well-trodden sand, and bigger boys on the rickety log landing-stage danced in their impatience to help tie up the
Barracuda.
Some of them had never seen a yacht at such close quarters before.

Good-humoredly, Charles tossed the ropes and spun some coins, and soon he was planted on the precarious structure, and reaching an arm about Laurette’s waist to swing her down beside him.

“This place has a name which means ‘Tumbling Waters’,” he said. “The tumbling waters are actually a few miles inland. If we can get some sort of conveyance we’ll take a look at them. Got your land legs?”

“Yes, thanks.”

“Good. Walk carefully; this thing isn’t too safe.”

His weight made the logs creak, and when the whole landing-stage swayed his grip on her arm strengthened. “Don’t get wet. You can’t walk in on a chief looking like a drowned rabbit.” He looked down critically at her slim brown legs and crepe-soled shoes. “I’m not sure that shorts and a white shirt are the correct visiting garb for a woman, either. Jump!”

She did, and landed with him on the glaring white beach. It was hot; the whole beach shimmered with imprisoned heat, and scarcely a leaf stirred. The piccanins, naked but for loin cloths, plunged into the sea and came out sparkling. A few little girls in faded print frocks primly paddled in the foamy wavelets and at the back of the beach some brown babies scrambled about an upturned canoe. Looking straight across the bay, Laurette was struck by the beauty of a single upstanding palm against the steel blue sky.

“I feel as if I’m arriving on a treasure island,” she said.

“I told you it would be a voyage of discovery,” he answered succinctly.

“You didn’t promise me treasure.”

“Our ideas of what constitutes treasure might differ. Yours is probably still at the diamonds and rubies stage.” She smiled as they plodded up the beach. “What has yours advanced to?”

“Treasure?” He sounded mocking. “Treasure is something good that you’ve never experienced before—something you’ve hoped existed but despaired of finding. When it does turn up it’s anti-climax.”

She nodded. “Maybe the treasure-seekers used to feel a bit flat once, they’d come upon the chest of gems.”

“I expected opposition, not agreement. You should have demanded to know why realization falls so far short of anticipation.”

“But I already know the answer to that one. Most of us hope too hard, and those who don’t are cynics and haven’t much capacity for enjoyment when the things they want do happen.”

“Glib, aren’t you? I suppose I’m one of the cynics?”

She laughed. “Only sometimes. In fact, you’re improving. I wonder if it’s because you’re soon going back to Mohpeng? By the way, when do you leave?”

“Next weekend. These three weeks have flown, haven’t they?”

A shadow fell across Laurette’s face, but she chased it away. Today was not to be spoiled by pointless longing. Charles was here, tall and vital, at her side, and there could be no gain in peering beyond the present. So she made no reply except a smile.

They left the beach and took a worn but narrow footpath into the bush. Charles went ahead, snapping back a protruding branch here and there. They came to a shallow stream set deep in a boulder-strewn chasm, and crossed it by a primitive mud-and-stone bridge. Now, the path had widened sufficiently for them to walk abreast, and the growth had been thinned by much cutting for fuel. They met some girls gathering sticks; Charles spoke to one of them in dialect and received a surprised and eager response from the whole bunch.

“The chief’s at home,” he informed Laurette as they moved on. “Don’t expect war paint and frenzied prancing. These are sober Pondos, not Zulus.”

They arrived at the chief’s kraal quite suddenly. The bush ended and they were confronted by a low pallisade of split poles laced together by long grasses. It was merely a screen, not an enclosure, for the big hut with its patterned doorway stood just beyond it, open to, but isolated from, the rest of the village. The three wives’ huts were the nearest, and one of them was very new with a bright yellow thatch.

Laurette knew they had been seen by several villagers. Involuntarily, she slowed, and the next second her fingers were grasped in a large, warm hand.

“I wouldn’t have brought you if there were danger,” Charles said. “Here comes the old chap. All you have to do is smile. He hasn’t much English.”

Ndibela must already have had word that a white master was on his way to his kraal, for over shabby European clothes he had flung his ceremonial blanket, and round his grizzled head he wore a band of beads.

Standing there outside his hut he looked incredibly ancient. The skin of his face was like wrinkled, polished leather, his hands were fleshless and gnarled, and his bare feet were tough and horny, the toes splayed. His smile, revealing crooked yellow teeth, was yet a thing of serenity, for he recognized Charles and called him by a native name which must have had a humorous meaning, for both men laughed and exchanged a remark about it.

Laurette was introduced and the chief called to a woman that she must bring stools. The three were seated, Charles on the highest and most ornate of the stools, Ndibela and Laurette upon smaller ones covered on goatskin.

She had not the slightest inkling of the subject of their conversation. Occasionally, the old man dipped his head in her direction, and once Charles cast her the suspicion of a wink, but the Bantu noises clicked on and on till she felt drowsy.

It was past midday and the heat in the village was even more concentrated and intense than it had been on the beach. There was almost no activity. Across the clearing, a woman half-heartedly pounded something between two stones, and farther away another woman knelt in the dust and solemnly plastered red mud upon a hideous headdress. The younger men, Charles had told Laurette, were away in the Transvaal, working in the gold mines.

Presently food was brought, a white sticky mess which had been scooped from a pot and dropped in a heap upon a clay dish.

“Mealie porridge,” Charles whispered to Laurette. “Don’t worry. It’s not for us.”

The visitors’ portion was fruit piled, unprepared, upon an immense platter; small papaws, pineapples, oranges and bananas. Ndibela drew away from them to eat his mealie pap, and Charles mentioned in an undertone that the old boy ate only from politeness; he was accustomed to one meal a day, in the evening.

Ndibela’s two wives peeped from their Huts; they were middle-aged, their children had grown up. They wore Mother Hubbards and, except for bead and metal anklets and bangles, were no more spectacular than the rest of the village women. All were sullen-looking and quiet; even the children who trooped back to the huts had shed the boisterousness they had shown on the beach.

When the light meal was finished, the old chief threw off his suffocating blanket and led them a
little way from the huts to a spot, behind two great boulders which acted as a windbreak, where three boys worked with an old mart at one of the oldest crafts of the native. They were forging heads for assegais. One boy kept the fire going with a crude goatskin bellows, the other boys heated the blocks of metal whilst the shrivelled old worker hammered the red-hot metal into shape on a blackened stone. It was a scene which might have taken place a hundred or more years ago.

“Do they still use assegais?” Laurette wanted to know.

Ndibela, anxious to impart all the information he could, looked enquiringly at Charles, who obligingly translated. The chief turned to Laurette.

“Each of our men owns assegais,” he said very slowly and painstakingly in English, “but these we sell to a master who comes for curios for the shops.”

“Tourist trade,” Charles murmured near her ear. “Sadly unromantic, isn’t it?”

Ndibela had picked up a sharpened assegai head and was fixing it to a long smooth haft. Holding it across his hands he bowed to Laurette.

“You will keep this from Ndibela? It please me to make a gift to the woman of the white master, Charles Heron.”

“It’s very kind of you,” she said, rather pink.

“You’ve been promoted,” Charles told her softly. “Come along, woman.”

They saw painted pottery drying in the sun, beadwork, and animals carved in mvule wood. By the time they arrived back at the hut Laurette was loaded with odds and ends which the dignified chief had insisted on her accepting. She was unaware then that the custom which demanded that a white visitor be burdened with gifts had two sides to it. Charles took good care to tender his own offering of money and tobacco while she was engrossed elsewhere. Possibly he considered it would be a pity to shatter the rest of her illusions too soon.

The tour of the village had taken so much time that it was mid-afternoon before two ponies were saddled to carry them the four miles to the waterfall. Laurette eyed her pony distrustfully, but Charles, having declared that the animals were totally without spirit, helped her up and told her to hold the rein loosely and let her mount follow his.

“I’ve never ridden before,” she said a little vexedly, as they started out.

He gave her a charming, paternal smile. “This isn’t riding, little one. If you ever go to Basutoland you’ll have to ride nearly everywhere—and the Basuto pony is a real horse. Come on, now.”

Apart from a tendency to slip to one side, Laurette did not do too badly, and it was exciting to realize that she was actually travelling on horseback through the African bush. For much of the way Charles kept about three lengths in front, but now and then he pushed to one side in the trees and waited for her to come level.

“All right?” he asked once.

“Amazingly so.”

“Keep it up. You’re a heroine.”

“Do I look terrible?”

“No”—with a closed sort of smile—“you look like a perspiring ten-year-old, but you’ve got the rhythm nicely.” The path dropped into a stream bed, rose sharply and threaded a stony track between the trees; another drop, and they were riding in the depths of a gorge, with rocky, brown, tufted cliffs towering above them and a white river boiling away to their right.

“After the heavy rains there’s no path here,” Charles said. “The river rushes along the whole width, and you can see the falls only from the top.”

“Are we near them?”

“Yes. Listen.”

Above the swirl of the river came a distant thundering. As they progressed the sound increased to a deafening roar and soon the spray was drifting about them like smoke. A twist in the gorge and they had to rein in, for there were the “Tumbling Waters”, gushing over a hundred-foot-wide ledge to drop three hundred feet into the black well of the gorge. It was a magnificent, frightening sight.

Charles drew Laurette forward, away from the horses, laid an arm across her shoulder and dug his other hand into his pocket.

“Few people come here,” he said. “Africans say it’s a place of evil spirits, and if their children wander this way they have to find their own way home, or perish.”

She shivered. “It’s beautiful, but I wouldn’t care to come here alone. Were you alone last time you came?”

“No, I brought a woman on that occasion, too. She wasn’t like you, though. She owned a plantation near Port Quentin and was an excellent horsewoman.”

“Was that... long ago?”

“About two years. She got married and went to Kenya.” The subject had a loose end, yet Laurette could think of no way of phrasing what she ached to ask. Charles must have been conscious of the sudden tension in her, for he said lazily,

“There’s nothing to be scared of. It’s been like this for thousands of years. If you ever go back to England this will be something to remember.”

“Don’t talk like that!”

“Nerves!” He looked down at her and tightened his hold of her shoulder. “What’s wrong?”

Already she would have given anything to retrieve the exclamation; defensively, she threw out a hand. “A while ago you said, ‘if you ever go to Basutoland’. Now it’s ‘if you ever go back to England’. I don’t know why, but it ... it rasped.”

“My dear Laurette,” he said reasonably, “one never stands still. You know darn well that you won’t stay in Port Quentin for the rest of your days. You’re too young; you’ve too much yet to experience. Why, this time next year...”

She uttered a choked, “Please!”

“Very well, if you’re determined to be an ostrich.” He let a full minute elapse, before adding quietly, “How are things with Ben? Are you going to continue working for him?”

It took several seconds to adjust her thoughts. “Why not? He says he wants me to,”

“It’s dangerous.”

“How can it be?”

“You like him and you pity him. Next thing you know you’ll be marrying him.”

For no reason she could work out his objective attitude speared her. She knew a reckless desire to get under his skin but was too unpractised to find a way.

“One could do worse than marry Ben,” she said. “He’s sincere and uncomplicated.”

“Exactly. He’d hardly sweep you into ecstasy,” he replied with sarcasm. “Ben may be a good sort but his job comes first every time. That’s natural in a doctor, and in some other men, too. I have the same failing. You need someone young, for whom those grey-blue eyes of yours will hold the whole world.”

Laurette moved slightly forward, so that his arm had to fall. A bitterness had seeped into her thoughts, and with it came a kind of fear. She had never felt like this before. Rather blindly she turned towards the horses.

“I have something in common with the Africans,” she said. “I don’t like it here.”

“Let’s go, then.”

He had her up in the saddle and at once they wound along the gorge, away from the falls. Gradually the sounds receded, and in due course they climbed out of the gargantuan cleft into a land drenched in the dusty gold of late sunshine. Here, Laurette could breathe freely and call herself stupid. She had permitted her mind to be influenced by the sinister, echoing gorge, the mighty, smoky torrent. Why shouldn’t Charles have been there before, and with a woman? He must have known many women as intimately as he knew Laurette Delaney. And why should it bother her that he viewed with equanimity the possibility of her marrying someone young and adoring? She was being girlish and silly, behaving in just the way he abhorred.

He looked over his shoulder and smiled. “Better now?”

“Yes. The air’s marvellous.”

He hung back till they were riding side by side. “Are you tired?”

“Not particularly. Do we have to stay long in the village before returning to the yacht?”

“I’ve been thinking about that. Ndibela said his people would like to dance for us tonight. I accepted, but if you’d rather we sailed before dark I can call it off.”

She stared at him. “If we did stay for the dancing we couldn’t get back to Port Quentin before dawn.”

“Later than that,” he said carelessly. “The chief has put the new hut at your disposal. The celebration would finish at about midnight, you’d have a few hours’ sleep and we could be away by seven in the morning. Would you like to see native high jinks?”

“Very much, but...” She hesitated, and trained her gaze upon the path. “Won’t your uncle and my father be anxious if we don’t show up tonight?”

“I don’t think so. I did mention the possibility that we’d take our time and return tomorrow.”

“You did?” she queried on a curious note.

He shrugged. “Of course. I prepared them in case we developed engine trouble or met a squall and had to run into a river mouth for shelter.”

“Oh. Well, couldn’t I sleep on the boat?”

“Even on the Wild Coast it’s as well to observe the conventions, my child. I couldn’t leave you alone on the
Barracuda,
but I can leave you alone in a hut and roll up in a blanket outside. We’ll have two or three hundred black chaperons.”

She smiled. “I didn’t think of that.”

They jogged along in silence, till Charles observed, “The hut has just been completed for the chief’s son—he’s getting married. It’s never been used so it’ll be clean and free from vermin. I wouldn’t have you sleep in one of the others, but you may enjoy the experience, just for one night.”

It seemed to be settled. Laurette had the strange sensation of being utterly without volition. Charles was managing this outing and she would have done whatever he proposed, because her trust in him was implicit.

“I’m hungry,” she said.

He laughed. “So am I. We’ll have dinner and a rest on the yacht and stroll back to the village at about nine. To be on the safe side we’ll bring the ship’s blankets, and to make doubly sure, I’ll give you a couple of anti-toxin tablets. It’s a healthy village, though.”

The rest of that evening was not quite real to Laurette. She dined with Charles on deck, under the early stars. He was suave and bantering, and she got the impression that this was by no means the first odd situation he had shared with a woman; though it was possible that he purposely imparted the impression to still any anxieties she might cherish.

But Laurette had no worries. When the time came she
walked back with him to the village, felt him strong and close at her side and loved the swinging beam of the hurricane lamp he carried.

Fires had been lit all over the village but the biggest were on the far side to illumine the beaten earth expanse where they held their junketings. The villagers squatted in a huge circle, mothers with their babies, old people huddled in faded red blankets, dozens of adolescents of both sexes who had bright expectant faces. Laurette sat on one of the stools, with Charles on one side and the chief’s dapper son in a tailored suit and brown-and-white shoes on the other. On Charles’ right sat Ndibela, and beyond the old chief several other men squatted on the ground. There were no wives among the honored few.

The drums were beating, voices chanted and the dancing began, and once it had gained momentum it seemed it would never stop. Dark bodies writhed, trinkets jangled, the chanters screamed and muttered, and tough feet stamped the ground till the air was thick with choking red dust. The spectacle, vivid in the leaping glare of the fires, lost its appeal. Even Charles’ commentary, conducted below his breath for her express benefit, ceased, after the first hour, to amuse.

But like all things, good and bad, it had to come to an end. Kaffir beer was tipped into gourds, and when it had been drunk the people straggled off to their huts. Laurette went back across the village with Charles and, apprehensively, she entered the circular mud hut with its central pole supporting the conical roof. He rested the lamp on the floor and surveyed the wide, cool interior.

“Clever, isn’t it, and it costs nothing but the effort of collecting materials and building.” He nodded down at the camp bed. “The chief’s son is civilized, but I expect the mattress is filled with mealie straw. It will tickle. Think you’ll be all right?”

“Yes. I’m so drowsy I could sleep on the floor.”

“Poor kid. Perhaps I’ve made you do too much, but you can be lazy all day tomorrow.” His face was bronze in the glow and he seemed overwhelmingly big. “Pull the matting down over the doorway when I’ve gone, and don’t forget to put out the lamp—it may give off fumes.”

Her eyes as she looked up at him were big and sleepy, her face a small and appealing oval. “Thank you, Charles.”

“Not sorry you came, are you?”

“No, not a bit! It’s been wonderful.”

“It’ll be better still in retrospect.”

There came a pause. The village at last was hushed, and because of the noise which had gone before, the quietude had a deep and brooding quality. One felt the trees pressing in, the throbbing magic of Africa.

Perhaps what followed was the most difficult part of that evening to credit, afterwards. Charles’ arm about her, his mouth pressing so hard upon hers that her neck became painfully stretched; then his cheek alongside hers as he said softly, mockingly,

“You’re used to a good night kiss from your father, aren’t you? Tonight you’ll have to make do with one from me. If you get frightened, give a shout I won’t be far away.”

The next moment he was gone, and she sank suddenly on to the crackling mattress and felt for the reassuring navy blanket from the
Barracuda.
Her whole body was jumping, her lips tingled, and her heart threatened to escape from its prison.

It was much later, when she lay in the darkness staring at the pale shaft of light which fell through the high, slatted window, that she realized the devastating truth. She must be in love with Charles Heron.