Unknown (4 page)

“I don’t, thanks.”

“What about the furniture?”

“It was made expressly for this house, and might as well stay.”

“In that case I’ll make you an offer for the lot. Have you any figure in mind?”

“If I’m compelled to leave the island,” she shrugged, “you can have the house and the title deeds as a gift”

“Don’t be childish,” he took her up sharply. “I had in mind a sum of two thousand.”

“Much too generous,” she answered. “Discuss it with Matt after I’m gone. Can’t we talk about something less harrowing? Will you have tea?”

“I will. But first I must make you understand that I’m deriving no pleasure at all from this situation.” He leaned forward, ostensibly to get rid of his cigarette, but he stayed there, meeting her eyes across the room. “You’ve taken the attitude that I’m the bear in your garden, chasing you out of residence. I don’t want you to think of me that way.”

“Once I leave here,” she told him lightly, “I shan’t think of you at all, so your intentions will hardly matter. At the moment I confess to rather hating you, but—” she gave him a bright smile tinged with malice—“children always hate grown-ups who deliberately misconstrue their
motives.”

Ten minutes later he rose to go. “Thanks for seeing me,” he said, with a trace of mockery. “Bryson tells me he will help you with your packing, but I myself will come for you at about ten on Wednesday morning.”

“To ensure seeing the last of me?”

“Something like that. I shall feel easier when you’re gone.”

“That’s awfully important,” she conceded acidly. “Don’t worry. You’ll do all right in England.” He collected his helmet on the way out. “Choose a good hotel in London and make arrangements to continue learning. Go to a university if you can. You’re bright enough to make a career at something unusual.”

As he swung out into the sunshine Phil could cheerfully have killed him, and it was not till some time after he had gone that her temperature lowered and her fists unclenched. Of all the egotistic, domineering males, Julian Caswell must be the most maddening.

All the next day she waited for some sign from Matt, His house was locked up, his servant absent. Towards evening she made her way down to the store on the waterfront. She dipped round to the back and found Matt's houseboy, singing mournfully as he tipped chopped onions, tomatoes, pimento and peppers into a pot of stew. “Is your master in the store?” she demanded.

“No, missus. Master on ship.” He waved out to where a freighter lay at anchor.

“Who is in charge of the store?”

The boy gave the long, unintelligible name of Matt’s coloured assistant.

“But you are preparing supper for the master?” she persisted.

“I do not know. Last night the master sleep in room here.” He flung up an arm towards the little attic window above the store. “Tomorrow, I don’t know.”

Abruptly she turned away and climbed into the fringe of bush above the store.

Matt had forgotten her. One of his friends had steamed into Valeira Bay and he had neglected everything else in order to eat and gamble and work up a prime hangover for the morning. If he slept at the store last night it was likely that he would do the same again tonight. Shipboard parties broke up late.

Damn Matt! she told herself fiercely in the next breath. Her whole future couldn’t be allowed to depend on the vagaries of a trader. Julian had to be taught that there was nothing she would not do to defend her right to remain in her own house. She had only to evade his threats once to establish herself as a person to be respected and allowed to live in peace wherever she chose.

British boats put in fortnightly or less often. Between the
Bassington
and its successor at the quay would stretch at least two weeks in which to convince Julian that she could be as stubborn as he.

When she reached the house Phil went straight to the kitchen, where Manoela was preparing a meal.

“Manoela,” she said, “would you like the big boat in the harbour to take me to England?”

When she had assimilated this the servant vigorously shook her head. “No, missus. Some man send you?”

Phil nodded. “We will go a journey till the ship has sailed. You see?”

A slow smile pulled wide the tan-coloured lips. “Yas, missus, we go a journey. How many nights?”

“Only one, I hope.”

“We cross the mountain?”

“Lord, no! We hide, Manoela. They will search for us, but we must not be found. Do you understand?”

Yes, Manoela understood. “I fix blankets and food. They will not find us,” she stated.

Phil said, “Good,” and left the kitchen, her mouth compressed. The prospect of a night in the forest might hold its terrors, but there was a pleasurable excitement in defying Julian Caswell.

WHEN the sun had reached its zenith they rested. The spot Manoela had chosen was a bank of young ferns beside one of the little streams which rushed down from the mountainside and lost itself in a forest of hairy palms and buttressed kapoks.

“Here we are safe,” she said. “I will cook food.”

“How far are we from home?” Phil asked, gratefully sliding down on to the blanket.

“Eight miles, missus.”

Only eight miles. Except for a break of half an hour, when they had emptied the flask of coffee, they had been walking for seven hours—since five o’clock. Not much more than a mile an hour. The going had been tortuous and wearying. They had not dared to use mules for fear of being traced. Manoela, a load on her head and another on her back, had gone ahead along the overgrown path used by natives for traversing the island, and wielded a lethal-looking knife whenever a branch or evil growth had barred the way. Wading through a swamp and then gradually climbing among tilted rubber trees, the hampering wild things for ever clutching at her bare legs or spattering them with a syrupy sap, Phil had wondered if the moist heat were affecting her brain.

Spend a night among these jungle giants? She shivered, and sudden new sweat joined the river which coursed down her spine. She took off her double felt, soaked a handkerchief in the surprisingly cool water of the stream, and bathed her face and neck.

Placidly, for she had a native’s resistance to fatigue, Manoela placed a pot of water on the Primus and dropped into it a handful of kibbled maize, seasoning and a piece of cooked meat. For herself she mixed manioc meal and laid aside a few bananas. The usual camp fire was impossible here, where everything was sodden.

Phil ate without appetite. A little way away, with her back to her mistress, Manoela scooped her bowl dry and disposed of the bananas. Then she cleaned the pot with earth, rinsed and packed it, and glanced up at the filtered beams of the sun.

“We walk some more, missus?”

“They will not find us here, Manoela.”

“How we know boat gone?”

How indeed? Dejectedly Phil shook her head. “We shan’t know till you can venture near enough to find out.”

“Maybe him gone already.”

“Maybe.”

“I go back some way, missus. Path good now. You sleep two three hours and I am here.”

Phil let her go. Relieved of loads, Manoela loped off, and soon all sound of her was swallowed in a deep, uncanny hush. Phil was aware that no game lived on the island, but this place seemed to be shunned even by the monkeys. The heat and oppressive humidity opened every pore in her body and the blanket she lounged on was saturated from underneath.

If the captain of the
Bassington
had stuck rigidly to schedule by now he was riding the high seas, and she and Manoela might return home shortly after nightfall. She was rent by a shaft of horror. Supposing Manoela were caught! She knew the coloured woman would maintain a vacant silence, but Phil would be abandoned to spend the night in this macabre clearing with no noise but the dripping of mist from the leaves, no company but that of the creeping vines and age-old trees.

As often happens at times of intense fear, her mind went blank enough for sleep to steal over it. The dappled rays slanted, the sky paled with haze and a gentle wind whispered high up and brought the muted roar of the sea.

Phil awoke to stare unbelievingly at Manoela squatting beside her. She struggled up and looked a question.

“No,” the servant said. “Him boat still tied.”

“No one saw you?”

A triumphant smile. “Twice Manoela turn to tree . . . still, like this. Back there they are beating through the forest. Many natives with a white man . . . the little white boss chief”—this meant Drew. “When dark comes they must stop.”

The nausea of fear surged into Phil’s throat. The boat was waiting and the plantation workers spreading a network through the trees. Julian, thwarted, was a fiend with a purpose: to find Philippa Crane and heave her aboard.

Manoela said softly, “We walk now, missus, into the forest to more water. Then sleep till daybreak.”

Phil’s will seemed to have entirely evaporated. She got up and again followed the servant, her knees moving mechanically, her mind dazed beyond fright.

They camped. Manoela made coffee and they both lay down, the coloured woman happily muttering till she dozed and Phil in a nightmare of terror, the automatic hard against her side in her dress pocket.

Eventually a grey light percolated through the thick trees and revealed a hot heavy mist swathing the trunks. It clung in droplets to Phil’s hair and drenched her to the skin.

Manoela prepared sweet black coffee and hard biscuits with meat paste. Phil drank, but she could not bear to look at the food. Her limbs ached and her throat was sore; her head felt as though it had received a blow from an axe.

As the hours passed Phil’s eyelids grew heavy and, unaccountably, her chin trembled. It was all she could do to keep her teeth from chattering. She wished she had brought brandy and a waterproof groundsheet; she wished she had never conceived this fool escapade.

At about one o’clock Manoela decided to take another trip to the spot from which she could see the harbour, and Phil, after stumbling a little way along the trail with her, came back to slump down with her head in her hands and to weep a few tears of weakness.

By the end of that afternoon she knew each blade, each rubbery plant within sight. The dense green walls of ruthless vegetation no longer terrified her. She was too sick to be scared.

The light was lifting and leaving shadows when at last Manoela came in sight, riding one mule and leading another.

“Boat sailed!” she gleefully announced. “I wait and watch him go. When he small I run for mules.”

Phil felt no flash of pleasure, no tingling of success. “Are they our mules?”

“No, missus. They feed in the bush. Belong plantation.”

Phil asked no more questions. As soon as Manoela had secured her bundles, camel-fashion, over the back of one of the mules she accepted her help up on to the other. It needed concentration to stay astride an unsaddled mule with nothing to cling to but a sparse mane. Her brain swam and she was conscious of sharp pains like glass splinters in her chest and back. The intolerable ache persisted in her arms and legs, and, though the evening had gone shudderingly cool among the trees, her whole being was suffused with a dreadful wet heat. I’m going to die, she thought, and hardly cared.

Night washed in in a dark tide, but by now Manoela knew the track too well to make mistakes, and an hour later the mules emerged into the low bush from which the houses on the cliff could be distinguished as distant points of light. Where the bush petered out into long grass and occasional tufts of wild banana Phil slid to the ground, and Manoela did the same.

The servant took charge of the bundles and went ahead, quicker and quicker. Phil saw her scuttle past each of the houses bent like a monkey, and then she forgot Manoela in the effort of moving one foot in front of the other and trying to breathe. Past Drew’s bungalow, past Dakers’ untenanted dwelling, past Matt’s, where a single window glowed.

Her own house was already lamplit at the back, but Phil was nearer the front gate. She hung on it for a second and closed her eyes. A sharp oath made her go rigid, a rough hand swung her round, and she was grasped by the shoulders and staring into the blazing eyes of Julian Caswell.

“So you’ve come back!” he bit out. “You deserve a damned good hiding.”

His grip tightened cruelly and he shook her with such violence that a spear shot up from the base of her neck, and she cried out:

“Julian!”

For a moment longer he held her thus, his expression merciless, his fingers brutally clamped over her shoulders. Then the house door opened and Manoela stood there with a lamp whose radiance illuminated the girl’s sweat-streaked temples, the white face with coins of feverish colour high on the cheekbones, and the bruised look under her eyes.

“My God!” he said, and slipped his arms under her and carried her into the house.

When Phil regained consciousness next morning Matt was seated on the other side of the mosquito net. Matt in freshly laundered shorts and a shirt decently buttoned, his entire appearance clean and chastened. Strange to see Matt just sitting, no glass near by, no cheroot, not even another chair upon which to cross his feet.

“Matt,” she whispered.

He leaned forward and cautiously drew back the net a few inches. “Awake, lovey?” He, too, spoke softly, as if his usual rolling tones might be more than she could stand. “How do you feel?”

“Lightheaded, and there’s a fearful taste in my mouthlike one of your hangovers. I’ll be better when I get up.”

“You’re staying right there for a few days. You’ve just missed a go of pneumonia—had us stiff with fright. Want a drink?”

“In a minute. Tell me what . . . what happened after I got here last night”

“All right—if you’ll stay quiet.” Matt sighed and shook his head. “We were in a hell of a fix, with darkness come again and no sign of you. Caswell was leaving my place when he saw you at your gate. I’ve never known a man move so fast. I couldn’t leap any walls and by the time I got here he had you laid out in the lounge, and you were babbling. I drove up to his house for his drug-chest while he and Manoela sponged you down and got you to bed.”