They Met in Zanzibar (9 page)

“Of making a woman self
-
conscious?” He considered this. “It’s all in the way you look at things, young Peg. Maybe when I’m with you I’m very conscious of your being a woman, and that makes you aware of it, too. In any case, there’d be no fun in being with a woman if you
treated her as another man. The reverse goes for you, of course.”

She drew on her cigarette and slipped down on to her back once more. Talking to the branches overhead, she said, “You stay here about twenty months without leave, don’t you? How do you manage it, without a girl or two to break the monotony?”

“I don’t, entirely.”

She was stilled for a moment. Then: “That sounds a little odd.”

“There are two or three girls in the town - daughters of officials; they aren’t permanent residents but occasionally come for a visit. They’re not very exciting, but they do break that monotony you were talking about, and they help one to recall the general geography of the younger members of the sex.”

She laughed, but said, “I’m surprised I haven’t heard about them before.”

He said easily, “They don’t invite the older planters to their houses - only the eligibles. But about twice a year there’s a government dance to which everyone’s invited.”

“But
you
’
re
constantly in the social whirl?”

“I do go to the government houses rather often; I’ve several friends among the officials.” He paused and looked up at the sky. “It’s going to rain later on. At the turn of the tide you can always tell what the weather’s going to be like for the rest of the day.”

“Is it low tide?”

“Look at the reef.”

She sat up aid stared. Where a white strip of foam had been there was now a craggy little range of rough pink coral, and the lagoon had narrowed to a width of about thirty yards.

“It’s unbelievable! How could it happen so soon?”

“The beach shelves rather sharply. Want to see some underwater corals?”

“Please! Do we swim for them?”

“You can wade. Just a minute, I’ll find you some beach sandals. It’s prickly out there.”

He went to the back of the car and returned carrying two pairs of grass sandals, one of which was obviously a woman’s. She took them with distaste.

He laughed. “They’re brand-new; I got them early this morning. What do you think I am?”

“I’ll tell you some other time,” she said cautiously.

She shed the blouse once more and went down to the sea ahead of him. At first there was nothing to see, but just beyond the small waves the water was so startlingly clear that the weed-scattered bed of the ocean was blindingly white in the sunshine. Peg was waist-deep when she saw her first corals. There were layers of them, in a myriad colours and shapes; huge grey brain-corals, fiat-topped yellow ones, white candelabra reaching up from the seabed, anemone corals and salmon-pink clusters of fingers which trailed a delicate emerald seaweed. She walked further, stepped on to a coral rock, and shivered. Tiny coloured fish darted happily among those eerie caverns below the water, but Peg was beginning to feel taut and a little sick. She seemed to be looking at a grotesque old world which had been washed over by the ocean, and lost.

“You wanted to come,” Steve said derisively, just behind her. “It does have an odd effect the first time, but you’ll get to like it. Had enough?”

“Plenty, and stop grinning. Will you get me a piece of the pale pink coral?”

“The best is further up. Wait just there.”

Peg waited, looking about her at the heaving ocean. She had seen
him
dive and thought it strange that he should be able to go so far under water that not even a ripple of his movements showed in the waves that rolled in from the reef. They were big waves, and growing larger as the sea decided to curl towards the beach instead of away from it. Standing on her rock she was still only waist deep, but she noticed that the small fish were now scurrying into shelter under the corals.

Anxiously, she stared at the spot where Steve had disappeared. Could he have hurt himself in some way, knocked his head or perhaps got cramp? But surely an injury would have brought him to the top. He was used to this kind of sea, even knew where to find the best coral. Still, it couldn’t be possible for a man to stay under so long without breathing. If he was
finding
the coral difficult to break away he’d come up, and try again.

She couldn’t possibly stand there watching! It was nightmarish. There were octopus in these waters and if one of those things got a stranglehold on a man ... oh, no! She had to find out where he was. Had to ...

She bent, her heart hammering, to wrench off the sandals.
His
sandals might have caught on something, held him down there, battling to get them off. They were dreadful things, tight as wet rope, but she had to get rid of them ... ah, that was one! now the other ...

“Steve!” she shouted desperately, and dragged the other sandal from her foot. '

And then she felt a cool fingertip run down her spine. She swung about and there he was, laughing at her panic, shoving wet hair back from his brow and waving a glorious pink branched coral close to her face.

The immensity of her relief brought rage. She smashed a hand against the coral, swiping it straight back into the sea, reached out with the same fist for his jaw and glared hatred into his eyes. He jerked from the blow, gave an astonished grunt and lunged forward to grab her wrists. But they were wet and slipped from him, she fell from her rock into the rising sea and furiously struck out for the beach.

Swimming is devitalising exercise when you are angry, and Peg was so enraged that her heart had already reached bursting point before she had toppled. She swam madly, felt her knees graze the sand and slid forward, with the sea washing over her once more.

Then she was being dragged from it, well up on to the dry sand, and Steve was on his knees beside her, lifting her against him, and pushing the strands of lank hair back from her brow and talking quickly.

“God, I’m sorry, honey. I didn’t know you were really frightened. I thought you’d guess I’d swum through an opening in the reef. The minute y
o
u yelled I let you know I was there behind you. Peg, stop trembling. Look at me.”

But it wasn’t his words that made her look at him. Of their own volition her fingers had slipped along his arm till they reached the great looped scar near his shoulder. They quivered over the indentation, moved along it and her head went back on to his other arm and she gazed at him with eyes gone big and lustrous, and pleading. Her lips were parted and tremulous, and with a soft exclamation he tightened his arms and found her mouth with his. The kiss hurt Peg right through her body; it had been as inevitable as the tide.

She thrust away from him and stumbled upright, somehow managed to walk back to the car. She took a towel and her clothes, dressed among the trees and came back, pale and with eyes downcast, to where Steve waited.

He started the car, said quite calmly, “I took a lot of trouble to get that coral. Next time we go coral-picking you can wait on the beach.”

She knew he expected a smile from her, but that was more than she could contrive. He spoke two or three times as they drove, but Peg scarcely heard.

Till he said, “I was going to take you to my place for tea, but I daresay you’d like to wash the sand out of your hai
r
, so I’ll drive you straight home. All right?”

She nodded.

At the house he pulled in just behind Jim Maldon’s wagon. Jim was in the living room, looking at a newspaper, and when he looked up it was without a smile.

Peg said, “I need to tidy up. I’ll send some tea for you two.”

But outside the living-room door she paused. Her father had looked peculiar, cold and a little aged, and he had stared at her searchingly. Had Mr. Gracey let him down?

She heard Steve say carelessly. “We went over to Nabanui. Peg hadn’t been there before.”

Jim said heavily, “There are a good many places Peg hasn’t been to, Steve, and a good many things she hasn’t done. Her innocence probably intrigues you, but I think I ought to tell you she’s not quite so young as you think.”

“She’s young, all right, but she’s intelligent.”

“I won’t have you trifling with her.”

“Oh, now, Jim.” Steve sounded crisp. “I wouldn’t hurt Peg. You’re in a foul mood or you wouldn’t suggest a thing like that.”

“You could hurt her because she’s not your kind. Perhaps I ought to tell you she’s not free.”

“Not free? At her age?”

“At her age,” Jim echoed in flat tones. “She’s practically engaged to a man in England. He’s a very fine chap and will give her the sort of home she should have. He has a grand family home and enough money, and in a few months he’ll be coming out here for her.”

There was a silence which seemed, to Peg, as she stood palpitating outside the door, to last an hour. Then Steve spoke less clearly, as if he were near the door.

“That’s fine. Peg couldn’t do better than marry a man of substance and live in England. I’ll be seeing you, Jim. So long.”

Peg went into her room. She felt too wrung out even to weep.

CHAPTER FOUR

It t
ook Jim Maldon almost a week to return to his normal buoyancy, but return he did, and to Peg’s relief he talked freely about the company’s new proposition. He had accepted the fact that he would be the only dissentient, and in a way his isolation boosted his ego. He, Jim Maldon, would stand out against big business whatever the cost. If they refused to buy his copra or made shipping difficult, he would send a report to various famous newspapers; the press could be counted on to champion the small man. Peg did not point out that important newspapers on the other side of the world were hardly likely to bother with a coconut planter on Motu. At this stage all she could do was hope.

She didn’t see Steve during those days, and didn’t want to. He had been working towards an affair with her; painfully, she realised that now. She loved Paul Lexfield, had possibly loved him most of her life, and when he was free of Vanessa she would marry him.

What she felt for Ste
v
e was something quite different. There was nothing sweet and comfortable about it. It was an agony in the throat, a bur
n
ing behind the eyes, a throbbing need, a wrenching of her nerves. It was Steve, big and male and overwhelming. And she wasn’t equipped, even in a small way, to deal with him; no doubt Steve had discovered that much for himself. Compared, for instance, with the girl who had come to Zanzibar, to meet him, Peg Maldon must be immature, to say the least.

She took a chance and approached her father about a house for Nosoap and his wife. Jim gave her a tolerant, paternal smile.

“That’s something I can’t start, chicken. If I build a new house for my house servant, there’ll be others, in a worse plight, demanding that I do the same for them.”

“But don’t you understand - they’ve turned a two-roomed house into a six-roomed one and there are at least three separate families living there. Apart from lack of privacy, it can’t be healthy.”

“These people don’t live in their houses,” he said. “They only sleep in them, and live outdoors. Don’t you worry your sweet head. The Motu islanders are the happiest people in the world.”

“Would it cost such a lot to build half a dozen new houses?”

“Cement is expensive, but all the other materials are local. I’d have to pay men to build, though.”

“But would it be costly?”

“Too much so, at the moment. If I’m compelled to sell my copra through an agent I’ll have to wait for my money, and I’ll need all I have in the bank to see me through the bare patch. Those families over at the huts are all right. They couldn’t have a more easy-going employer than I am.”

Peg had to leave it there. Seemingly, the workers expected nothing better than they already had and it wasn’t fair to badger her father just now. But she was very glad she was able to offer the plantation hands a little light nursing service. The women seldom asked for anything for themselves, but they brought their
c
hildren often. The fat toddlers, either naked or wearing funny little skirts of banana leaves, were Peg’s special delight. She dressed their little sores and bu
rn
s, pincered thorns from their bare feet, dosed them with a mild bismuth mixture supplied by the doctor and was soon able to see, very quickly, whether a child should be taken at once to the clinic. Sometimes she drove a couple of patients up there herself, in her father’s estate wagon.

Although the work never took longer than two hours each morning, Peg found it more rewarding than convalescent nursing.

There came a subduedly happy letter from Paul. Vanessa’s second operation had been a success, but now she had to go through the tedious business of physiotherapy. She was allowed to sit up for a few minutes each day, but at this stage she had to be watched very carefully. She was cool and brave about it all, “and entirely self-centred, which is understandable.” wrote Paul. “Her whole life now revolves round her cure. So does mine, of course. I pity Vanessa deeply, but I have no other feeling about her at all. I mark off each day as one step nearer to you. I feel Motu Island is the wrong place for you and I wish desperately that I hadn’t let you go. But I’ll have you back, perhaps sooner than you think, and I’ll take care of you here at Berners End. I’ll smother you with love, wrap you close in it so that you’ll be snug and protected for ever.”

Snug and protected. Peg wondered fleetingly, whether it was what she wanted, but she did not dwell upon Paul’s expression. He was offering her all he had, and it was far more than she felt worthy of, particularly since that moment on the beach, when she had yielded to Steve Cortland.

Michael Foster brought a note for Jim Maldon from Steve. Jim was out when he came and Peg gave him a cup of tea and some cherry biscuits she had made herself, and talked with him for half an hour. Michael was finding life easier now that Steve had taken over.