Dark Moonless Night. Anne Mather
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‘No one’s asking you to live here,’ retorted Caroline calmly. ‘Just to spend a few weeks with your husband because he’s unable to come to England and spend them with you.’
Elizabeth nodded. ‘I suppose you’re right.’ But she didn’t sound convinced.
‘Now look,’ said Caroline, ‘if my husband spent the better part of nine months of the year away from me, I’d have to do something about it.’
‘Would you?’ Elizabeth’s eyes narrowed. ‘Like not getting married, for example?’
Caroline flushed now. ‘I don’t know what you mean.’
‘Oh, yes, you do, Caroline.’ Elizabeth didn’t look half so defenceless when she was on the attack. ‘As soon as you discovered that Gareth Morgan had no intention of giving up his overseas appointment and settling to an office job in London, you turned him down—flat!’
‘Elizabeth, I was only seventeen——’
‘That doesn’t matter. You had more sense than to tie yourself to an engineer with wanderlust in his veins instead of blood——’
‘It wasn’t like that——’
‘Wasn’t it?’ Elizabeth sounded sceptical. ‘I wonder what he’s doing now? Gareth, I mean. Where he is? The last time I heard he was in charge of a hydro-electric project in Zambia——’
‘I’ll see about your toast and coffee.’ Caroline refused to discuss the matter further.
Elizabeth was instantly contrite. ‘Oh, Caroline, I haven’t offended you, have I, darling?’ she began, resuming an appealing tone.
‘No, of course you haven’t offended me,’ exclaimed Caroline rather shortly, and went quickly, closing the door behind her.
But it was not so easy closing the door on her own thoughts. After all, there had been some truth in Elizabeth’s allegations, even though the passage of time had served to nullify the less pleasant aspects of that situation seven years ago. She even felt a sense of guilt at not having told Elizabeth that she knew that Gareth Morgan was working in Tsaba now, building a dam on the River Kinzori not too many miles distant from La Vache. But how could she tell her that when she had no idea how Gareth would take her presence in Tsaba, when he himself had no idea that she was coming?
Thrusting the difficulties she might have to face at some future date away from her, Caroline went in search of the children. Miranda was obediently putting on the cotton dress she had worn to travel in and Caroline made a mental note to find a sunsuit for her to wear after breakfast, but David, it appeared, had not yet come out of the bathroom and when Caroline went to see what he was doing she found him naked under the shower, and the floor swimming with water.
‘Oh, David!’ she gasped in exasperation, quickly kicking off her sandals to walk barefooted through the pools of water to turn off the shower. ‘Go and get dressed at once before I find a more painful method to put a tan on your small bottom!’
David giggled and grabbing a towel edged his way out of the bathroom, leaving Caroline to mop the floor. Fortunately the tiles soon dried, and she emerged in time to prevent the children going into their mother’s room.
‘Mummy’s resting,’ she explained quietly. ‘We’re going down to the restaurant to have our breakfast, and then later on I expect Daddy will telephone and let us know how and when we can go to La Vache.’
Miranda tugged at her short fair curls which were so much like her mother’s. ‘Will it be today?’ she asked excitedly. ‘Will we see Daddy today?’
‘Possibly.’ Caroline didn’t want to raise their hopes too high. ‘La Vache is all of seventy miles from here, and the roads aren’t like our roads in England. They’re just tracks after you leave the city behind.’
‘How do you know?’ asked David, practical as ever. His hair was plastered to his head now, but Caroline thought that in this heat it wouldn’t take long to dry. She herself was already sweating from the mild exertion of mopping up the bathroom floor and she dreaded to think how Elizabeth would cope if she was expected to do anything physical.
But now she said: ‘I’ve read books. And I know what your daddy has told us when he’s been home on leave. Besides, if you knew a little more about the climate you’d realise that things don’t stay the same here as they do back home.’
She saw that Miranda was frowning at this and as they traversed the wide corridor to the lifts she tried to explain how lush and luxuriant was the vegetation that could overnight undo the work of the day. In truth, she found it hard to accept herself. She had never witnessed the destructive power of liana creepers, strangling the life out of struggling undergrowth, entwining trees together into an impassable living mesh that had to be hacked away with machetes. And yet it did happen, and the children were morbidly fascinated by her revelations.
Downstairs, a wide hall with an enormous revolving fan opened into the various public rooms of the hotel. Flowering, climbing plants rioted over low ornamental trellises, while huge stone urns spilled exotically coloured lilies and flame flowers over the cool, marble-tiled floor. It was obvious that no expense had been spared in making the Hotel Ashenghi as attractive to its guests as was humanly possible in a climate verging constantly on the unbearable.
As Caroline paused to get her bearings she encountered the eye of a man who appeared to be the head waiter standing in the arched entrance to the restaurant, keeping his waiters under surveillance. He bowed courteously as she approached him, and asked if she required a table. His English was quite good, so Caroline thanked him, and after he had shown them to a table set in a window embrasure, she said:
‘Mrs. Lacey—the children’s mother—is not feeling well. She’d like some coffee in her suite, and would it be possible for her to have some toast?’
The head waiter smiled, his teeth startlingly white in his black face. ‘Of course, madam. I will see to it myself. Now, what would you and these children like to eat?’
Caroline had coffee, but David and Miranda chose fruit juice, and they all tried the warm rolls spread with conserve. The butter that was provided in a dish of ice cubes wasn’t to their taste and David, with his usual lack of discretion, said in a clear, distinct voice that it was rancid. Of course, it wasn’t, but even Caroline preferred to avoid it. There was a dish of fruit on the table, too—mangoes and bananas, pawpaws and oranges, but Caroline advised the children to wait before trying anything too unfamiliar to their stomachs. All in all, it was an enjoyable meal, the fans set at intervals about the room creating a cooling draught which was most acceptable. Clearly, the air-conditioning kept the temperature down, but the fans helped to disperse the flies.
Judging by the number of used tables it appeared that by this hour of the morning most of the hotel’s guests had already partaken of breakfast, and Caroline and the children were the last to leave. They were walking towards the lifts when a man who had been talking to the receptionist turned away from the desk and saw them. He was a tall man, lean and muscular, dressed in narrow fitting mud-coloured pants and a cream bush shirt, but what attracted Caroline’s attention was the man’s hair. It was corn-fair, streaked with a lighter shade, as though the sun had bleached it, and it was startling against the dark tan of his skin. She had only known one man with hair like that, one man whose ice-blue eyes could turn to green when he was emotionally aroused, one man who had once asked her to marry him, and she had turned him down because she had youthfully asserted that she didn’t intend to marry a penniless engineer and go and live in some awful, Godforsaken, undeveloped country. How stupid she had been, how careless with the one thing in her life she had ever really wanted …
The man was standing quite still now staring at her, and she moved uncomfortably under that intent scrutiny. But for a moment she had felt as shocked as he must be at seeing her here. What could he be thinking? What kind of a coincidence did he think this was?
Realising that it was up to her to make the first overture, she took a few steps towards him and