Dark Moonless Night. Anne Mather

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       CHAPTER TWO

      THE heat in the station wagon was intense, but to wind down the windows was to invite clouds of choking dust into the car, and therefore the heat was the lesser of the two evils. All the same, Caroline felt as though every inch of her body was soaked with sweat, and she wished David would stop bouncing about from side to side in his determination not to miss anything. Even Elizabeth, more comfortably ensconced in the front of the vehicle beside Gareth, fanned herself constantly with her handkerchief, and could no longer keep up the inconsequent chatter she had bubbled with when first they started off. Elizabeth was invariably at her best when in the company of an attractive man, and the fact that Gareth made only monosyllabic replies to her inane questions seemed to bother her not at all.

      But the afternoon was wearing into early evening now, and the shadows were lengthening beside the mud-baked track. There was a dank smell of rotting vegetation from the jungle-like mass that encroached on the narrow road, and from time to time the shrill cry of some wild animal rent the dying afternoon air. Miranda had long since passed the excitable stage and now curled into her corner, persistently sucking her thumb in spite of Caroline’s reprovals and David’s jeering.

      Caroline herself felt that her awareness of everything around her had been sharpened by the tension between herself and Gareth. Not that anyone else appeared to be aware of it. On the contrary, from the moment Elizabeth was introduced her only interest had been to draw his attention to herself.

      Gareth had accompanied Caroline and the children up in the lift to Elizabeth’s suite. After making his shattering statement in the hall of the hotel, he had diverted his attention to David and Miranda, and while Caroline had burned with resentment and a painful kind of humiliation, he had talked casually to the children about safaris he had made into nearby Tanzania, and the dramatic nature reserve of the Ngorongoro Crater. By the time they reached the suite David was completely won over, and Caroline did not have to introduce her employer to the tall, lean stranger: David did it for her.

      Elizabeth’s headache seemed to miraculously disappear. She immediately left her bed to seek the bathroom and when she emerged at last she had looked cool and feminine in a pale pink dress that clung to her shapely figure.

      Caroline had spent the time that Elizabeth had taken to get ready standing nervously by the window, staring down desperately on to the yard below, willing the whole scene that had just taken place to have been some awful nightmare. But of course it was not. Gareth was there in the room with her, apparently indifferent to her presence, showing a boyish interest in the toys that both David and Miranda had produced for his inspection.

      When Elizabeth finally had joined them, it had been worse. Caroline had had to listen to the other woman laughing about the fact that only that morning she and Caroline had been talking about him, and what a lovely surprise it was to find he was working in Tsaba now.

      Gareth had responded courteously enough, but Caroline had sensed his desire to get away. He had advised them to have an early lunch, then rest on their beds, and he would come back for them at about four o’clock when the heat was beginning to wane. He cleverly evaded Elizabeth’s suggestion that he should have lunch with them, saying that he had business to attend to in Ashenghi, and then he left them with a polite smile, and a casual salute that was meant for David.

      After he had gone, Caroline had had to face Elizabeth’s questions. Had she known he was working in Tsaba? How had he reacted when he had found her in charge of the children? And what exactly did he do?

      Caroline had parried them as best she could. Fortunately for her David was not paying a great deal of attention to their conversation. It was boring stuff after what Mr. Morgan had just been telling him, and so Caroline did not have to suffer his recollections of her confrontation with Gareth. Instead, she had allowed Elizabeth to assume that it had been as much a surprise to her as to anyone else meeting him like that, and therefore she was no wiser as to his present activities than she had been before. It had been a cowardly little subterfuge, she thought now, disgusted at her own duplicity, but the last thing she wanted was to give Elizabeth any reason to suspect that she had come here for any other reason than to help out a friend in need. What small portion of pride that was left to her must remain intact or she might be tempted to funk the whole thing and take the next flight back to England.

      It was dark by the time they reached La Vache and thousands of insects were visible in the headlights’ glare, dying in their hundreds against the windscreen. An enormous moth hit the car with a sickening thud, leaving a trail of fluid to run unheeded down the glass, and Caroline felt slightly nauseated. Last night, driving to the hotel, she had been tired but excited, eager to experience the thinly-veneered primitiveness that was Africa. But tonight she felt bruised and uncertain, more convinced as every moment passed that she was going to regret coming here.

      La Vache was a collection of houses, built for the white population, and adjoining a sort of village compound. In the half light thrown from lighted windows, Caroline glimpsed an open fire and a collection of curious black faces turned in their direction before Gareth swung between some trees and brought the station wagon to a halt before a corrugated-roofed bungalow. Almost before the vehicle’s engine ground to a halt a door was thrown open and a man dressed in white shirt and shorts came hurrying down the shallow steps towards them. Gareth had got out of the car before the other man reached them, but it was obvious that the newcomer had eyes for no one but Elizabeth.

      Caroline levered herself stiffly out of the back of the station wagon, trying to avoid watching the languid way Elizabeth responded to Charles’s enthusiastic welcome, and was glad when the children scrambled out and broke it up, shouting: ‘Daddy! Daddy! We’re here!’

      Ignoring the hand that Gareth had offered to help her out of the vehicle, Caroline stood on the hard track, flexing her aching muscles, and looking about her with reluctant interest. Her first impressions were of the closeness of the community, and a certain sense of claustrophobic unease at the encroaching forest. Was this her jungle clearing? Was this to be the romantic communion with nature which had sounded so delightful when viewed from a distance? It all seemed so different, so primitive and yet perversely prosaic somehow. And that smell of rotting vegetation—one didn’t learn about things like that from books.

      Gareth was unloading their suitcases from the back of the station wagon. Caroline supposed she should be helping him. After all, that was why she was here, wasn’t it? To help! But right now, she felt as though she was the one who needed to be helped, and there was no one to do it. For the first time since leaving England she thought rather nostalgically about the comfortable relationship she had shared with Jeremy Brent, and wondered whether he would accept the severance of their engagement as she had insisted he should.

      Then Charles turned from his family and gave her a warm, comforting smile. ‘Good to see you again, Caroline,’ he said. ‘Glad you made it.’ Then he turned to Gareth: ‘I’m in your debt, Morgan. Come along inside and we’ll all have a drink to celebrate.’

      Gareth made a deprecating gesture. ‘Thanks, but I can’t stop,’ he demurred. ‘I’ve got to get back to Nyshasa.’

      ‘Oh, must you?’ That was Elizabeth, and even the children echoed her disappointment. Only Caroline said nothing, made no effort to detain him.

      Gareth shook his head. ‘I’m sorry. But I have been away since early this morning. Some other time, perhaps.’

      ‘Oh, СКАЧАТЬ