‘Greek fire,’ he observed, more to himself than to her. ‘Betsy is shrewder than I thought. I think she might very well be right about you. It might be very rewarding to find out.’
‘You mean you’ll marry me?’ she said bluntly.
‘On certain terms,’ he nodded. ‘I’m not ready to go back to England quite yet, but I’ll give you British nationality and I’ll take you to England in the end, when I’ve finished my business out here. Will that suit you?’
Hero took a deep breath of relief. ‘Oh yes!’ she exclaimed. ‘As long as I’m British I’ll put up with anything!’
He smiled slowly. Really, she thought, he wasn’t too bad at all. ‘That’s quite an offer,’ he observed, handing her the large, engraved menu.
She looked quickly up at him, but the expression on his face was deadpan.
Hero Kaufman had been alone for more than a year now. She had almost pushed into the background the moment when she had been told that her parents’ light aircraft had come down somewhere over the Tanzanian border. She had not been at home at the time, but was in Nairobi completing her final exams in accountancy. It had been more than a week before the plane had been found, a week that she sometimes lived again in her dreams, but which she had come to terms with in her waking life, more or less. Everyone had been very kind, that went without saying, but it had soon become obvious that no young girl on her own was going to be able to run a mixed farm, miles from anywhere, with only the rather inadequate help of a half-trained African foreman.
Nevertheless, she was glad that her parents had died together. They had been a complete unit on their own, interested, really interested, only in each other. Naturally they had both loved their daughter, but there had been moments when she had felt that they would really rather have been on their own. Because of that she had been glad when they had sent her away to board at the Loretta Convent and, later on, she had been more glad still to stay with her friend Betsy’s family in Nairobi while she was gaining the qualifications her father had chosen for her to work at with an eye to her future usefulness on the farm.
It had taken Hero only a few months to decide that the best thing she could do was to sell up and leave Kenya, but in this she had been baulked at every turn.
It had come as a shock to her to find that she was not a British citizen. She felt British. She had studied English history and English geography at school. She spoke only English and a rather garbled kitchen Swahili that had served her well enough on the farm. Her second language at school had been French, not the German of her father’s family. She looked Greek, or so her mother had never tired of telling her, with her short, curly black hair and olive skin, but what did she know of Greece? That the capital city was Athens, and that Sparta lay in ruins, though she couldn’t have pointed to its position on the map with any accuracy.
She had gone to the British High Commission and had applied to go to Britain, but their rejection had been firm and absolute. Didn’t she know that there were plenty of bona fide British citizens waiting to go to Britain; they had been waiting for years, their resources diminishing daily as they did so; if they couldn’t get there, what made her think that Britain would welcome an alien, one who had no claim at all on the country, before her own citizens?
There had been no answer to that. Hero had decided that she had better stay where she was, though she couldn’t help feeling that sooner or later the Kenya government was going to inquire into her status in that country. It seemed she was nothing and had nowhere to go where she would feel at home.
Betsy, a Kenya national like her parents, had shared Hero’s indignation to the full. She was a volatile, pretty girl, who had done quite as badly at school as Hero had done well. She didn’t generally make friends with other girls. It was not that she disliked them, but she certainly didn’t like them either. Besides, she had very little time left over from her fierce social life, spending her time getting to know any and every man in the district.
‘You’ll have to marry an Englishman,’ Betsy had said one day.
Hero had made a grimace of distaste. ‘I don’t want to marry - at least not for ages.’
‘Personally,’ Betsy had drawled, I can’t wait! The oftener the better!’ She had flicked her long, elegant fingers in Hero’s face to make sure she was listening. ‘The fact is, my dear, you haven’t any choice. Marry someone and let him have the worry of getting you into England. Once there, you can divorce him on some pretext, and there you are !’
‘He’d have to know!’ Hero had objected. ‘I couldn’t pretend to be — fond of a man just like that.’
Betsy had regarded her with tolerant amusement. ‘Why not?’
‘It would be immoral!’
‘Oh, Hero, really! If you gave him a good time and made him feel good while you were his wife — ‘ ‘I couldn’t! I wouldn’t know how to begin!’
Betsy had sighed. ‘No,’ she had agreed finally, ‘you would make a mull of it and blurt out the truth just when it would do the most damage. What a pity our positions aren’t reversed. Now I should actually enjoy the whole affair!’
‘Would you?’ Hero wasn’t so sure. Betsy liked to be thought dashing, but it was mostly talk in Hero’s opinion. ‘Anyway, as an idea it’s out.’
‘Don’t you believe it!’ Betsy had smiled. ‘I’ll find you a man, Hero, my sweet, a solid English-born Englishman whom you’ll be able to wrap round your little finger. What’s more, I’ll tell him why you have to marry him myself and then you’ll be able to do something more than blush and stammer like an idiot when you meet him. If you want to be English, then English you will be!’
Hero had laughed. She hadn’t expected to hear any more about it, but Betsy was nothing if not determined, and she had found a man.
‘He’s fantastic!’ she had declared happily. ‘But fantastic! Best of all, he’s willing.’ And that was that. Now
Hero had met ‘the man’ for herself and she wasn’t at all sure that she could ever like him, and she would have described him as frightening rather than fantastic. She felt uncomfortable at the thought of having to spend much time in his company, but perhaps she wouldn’t have to.
She put the menu away from her, her appetite destroyed.
‘I don’t think I can many you after all,’ she said in a small, husky voice. ‘I’m very sorry to have put you to so much trouble - but I can’t !’
‘I see,’ he said, as grave as she. ‘Don’t you think you may be hungry? When you’ve had something to eat you’ll feel much more courageous — you’ll even be able to take me in your stride!’
‘But that’s the trouble!’ she confessed in a rush. ‘Even in an arranged marriage like this one, I’d have to see quite a lot of you, wouldn’t I? But you see, I’ve got used to being by myself..I don’t fit in with other people very well.’
He looked at her from beneath his eyelashes and she wondered what he was thinking. The colour rose in her cheeks and she picked up the menu again, glad to hide behind it until she had recovered her savoir faire.
‘I think it’s too late for you to withdraw,’ Mr. Carmichael said, his voice as inflexible as steel, and yet gentle. ‘I want your farm, Miss Kaufman. I’ve always wanted to own land out here. It’s important to me — ‘ ‘Why?’ she asked baldly.
He shrugged his shoulders. ‘I have my reasons, isn’t that enough? They are important enough for me to be willing to take you into the bargain. I consider them to be more important than either of us and our squalid motives for getting married to one another. You want to be British and I’ll make you British. That will have to be enough for you !’
Hero gave him a look, half dogged and half scared. ‘I think I have a right to know what your reasons are. I don’t know anything about you!’
‘One of the penalties of being an adventuress,’ he told her dryly. ‘You have to back your own judgments of people, because they’re most unlikely to tell you the truth.’
Wide-eyed, Hero retreated further into her
chair. ‘I’m not an adventuress,’ she whispered.
He raised his brows, saying nothing.
‘I’m not!’ she declared more loudly. ‘How dare you call me such a thing?’
‘Wouldn’t you call someone who marries for profit to herself an adventuress?’
‘I’ve told you, I’ve changed my mind!’
He shook his head at her. ‘Too late. You’re going to marry me, Miss Hero Kaufman, whatever you think of me. It won’t be half as bad as you think. You may even get to like it.’
‘Never!’
He paid her no heed, turning his attention to the menu and what they were going to eat. He ordered for both of them, ignoring her gasp of protest as she slapped her copy of the menu down on the table. She had wanted to choose her own meal, she had wanted to enjoy every mouthful of this unexpected treat of eating in such a restaurant.
‘Does your non-drinking go as far as not taking wine with your meals?’ he asked her.
She had never tasted wine in her life. ‘Of course not! I don’t like the taste of spirits, that’s all. If I did, I’d drink you under the table, I dare say. Adventuresses do, you
know!’
His mouth showed amusement as he ordered a bottle of some vintage she had never heard of and sat back, his eyes never leaving her face. Goaded into further speech, Hero muttered something quite unintelligible and then burst out: ‘If anyone’s an adventurer, it’s you! Does your little pet snake know that?’
He grinned, the confident, masculine look in his eyes very much in evidence. ‘She’ll learn all about me, I expect, before we’re through, but I don’t think she’d much like being called a snake. Most women don’t.’
‘It was you who called her that!’ He shook his head. ‘Leonardo da Vinci.’ His smile widened. ‘As a matter of fact,’ he went on, grinning easily, ‘I’m beginning to think I’m lucky enough to have drawn the eel from the bag — ‘
‘Eels have a wicked bite!’ she informed him with a satisfaction that she couldn’t adequately explain to herself.
‘Conger eels. This one is a small, friendly eel who’s rather frightened to find herself loose in the ocean. I don’t think I’ll have any trouble with her,’ he concluded.
CHAPTER TWO
‘ISN’T he simply super?’
Hero had her own opinion about that, but Betsy’s enthusiasm was hard to withstand. ‘He gave me a very good lunch,’ she said. ‘We had wine too!’
Betsy laughed. ‘How did he talk you into that?’
Hero wished she had kept quiet about the wine. She hadn’t been able to decide whether she had liked it very much, or whether she had just thought she had because Benedict Carmichael had been so sure that she wouldn’t. It had given her a warm feeling and she had almost become reconciled to the man sitting opposite her.
‘Well, tell me!’ Betsy prompted her. ‘You know you’ve never touched a drop of intoxicating liquor in your life —’
‘I’ve never had the opportunity before,’ said Hero.
‘But don’t tell him. He thinks I’m a connoisseur.’ ‘He thinks what? Don’t be ridiculous!’
‘I told him my mother had taught me all about it,’ Hero went on. ‘I told him I preferred retsina because I don’t think you can get it in Kenya. I hope not! I’m not sure what it is, are you?’
‘Greek resinated wine,’ Betsy supplied. ‘I should think you’re pretty safe there. He may even have believed you, your mother being Greek. But whatever induced you to play the fool like that? He’s no fool! I told you that before you went to see him.’
As Hero hadn’t been able to explain to herself why she had taken it into her head to pretend to a sophistication that her parents had always positively disapproved of, she couldn’t explain it to Betsy either.
‘I didn’t like him,’ she said at last.
‘You don’t have to like him!’ Betsy protested. ‘What does it matter what he’s like? All that matters is that he’s your entrance ticket to England. That’s what you want, isn’t it?’
‘He called me an adventuress!’
Betsy’s eyes shone. ‘Did he though? How splendid! I do think you’re lucky, Hero!’
‘And immoral,’ Hero added. ‘He was horrid about it!’
‘I love horrid men!’ Betsy declared.
‘You love any man,’ said Hero.
Betsy smiled to herself. ‘But it’s such fun! Darling, couldn’t you bring yourself to fall a little bit in love with him? It’s quite easy when you try. I do it all the time! All you have to do is concentrate. You have to think about all his good points and ignore all the bad ones —’
‘He hasn’t any good points!’
Betsy frowned at her. ‘Don’t be difficult. Everybody has some good points. He’s willing to marry you, isn’t he?’
Hero bit her lip, almost as nervous now as she had been when she had been sitting opposite Benedict Carmichael in that enormous dining-room. ‘I told him I’d changed my mind —’
‘You did what?’
‘But Betsy, I had to. You might enjoy such a situation, but I don’t find it so easy. He was right, you see. It is an immoral thing to do. One shouldn’t use marriage as a convenience. But when I told him that I couldn’t do it, he told me I had to, that it was too late for me to withdraw. He says he’s going to make me marry him!’
‘But that’s the most romantic thing I’ve ever heard!’ Betsy exclaimed.
‘There’s nothing romantic about it!’ Hero said
sharply. ‘I think he’s mad! He’s in love with somebody else too - he told me so. Not that he seems to care what she thinks about him. He thinks all women are snakes and should have their fangs drawn
- by him, for preference, I should think - or some such nonsense. Only he thinks she might be an eel. He said
she’s rather a darling. I feel terribly sorry for her if she
* /
is -‘
‘Hero, what are you talking about?’ Betsy interrupted her.
‘It was something Leonardo da Vinci said about matrimony being like putting your hand into a bag of snakes and hoping to draw out an eel. He said he was going to practise on me!’
‘I told you he was frightfully clever,’ Betsy said. ‘If he was quoting from Leonardo da Vinci, it probably has some clever classical allusion that we don’t know anything about. I never understand things like that.’
But Hero did. She didn’t much like snakes, though they didn’t send shivers up her spine like spiders did, but she was well able to recognize an implied insult to her whole sex even when it was cleverly wrapped up in a quotation from Leonardo da Vinci.
‘He was being unpleasant,’ she explained. ‘He is unpleasant! Really, Betsy, he’s the most awful man I’ve ever met!’
Betsy began to look concerned. Hero recognized the signs of the start of a stubborn rearguard action in her dogged expression. Betsy hated to have any plan she had made changed by anyone other than herself.
‘You haven’t thought enough about the advantages of marrying him,’ she told Hero, her voice filled with a new determination. ‘If you dislike him, so much the better! It
might be very awkward if you were to get fond of him and then have to go through with getting a divorce from him. If you find him so awful you won’t mind at all! You’ll find it much less wearing emotionally. He’s bound to have the good manners to let you divorce him —’
‘An irretrievable breakdown of marriage doesn’t put the blame on anyone,’ Hero said. ‘Besides, one couldn’t describe him as well mannered!’
Betsy’s eyes flashed. ‘Meaning that you’re hurt because he didn’t like you,’ she began, ‘but you don’t have to be rude about him. He liked me well enough!’
‘They all like you.’
Betsy laughed easily. ‘Oh, Hero, you’re not trying to like him. If he’s as awful as you say he is, you’ll have to concentrate even harder on liking him, and more important still, getting him to like you. That’s half the battle, I always think. It??
?s hard to dislike even the nastiest of men if he thinks you’re absolutely marvellous! Yes, you’d better think about how you can make him fall in love with you. That will give you something to do to take your mind off those snakes he talks about.’
‘But I don’t want him to be in love with me !’
Betsy rolled her eyes up heavenwards. ‘Don’t be difficult, darling! Of course you do! It will be much more comfortable for you if you can get the upper hand straight away. No, we’ll have to think of a plan as to how you can bowl him over with your wit and beauty, and then he won’t be any trouble at all!’ Hero’s mind boggled at the thought of her doing any such thing. ‘I’d have a job!’ she said dryly. ‘No, I shall write him a polite note thanking him for being willing to marry me, but that I’m going away and I no longer need his help.’
‘I think you look lovely sometimes!’ Betsy declared. ‘Perhaps it would be best if you delivered the note,’ Hero went on in the same wry tones. ‘I’m sure you’ll be able to make him forget all about me if you smile at him!’
‘Yes, I expect I could,’ Betsy retorted, annoyed. ‘But that won’t make him forget about your farm. Not even the drought could do that!’
‘Well, I’m not going to marry him for that!’ Hero said with a violence that was quite foreign to her usual calm nature. ‘In fact I’m not going to marry him at all!’
Hero walked down the street with a buoyant feeling of release. The many-coloured bougainvillea pleased her eye and she noticed with added pleasure that the jacaranda trees were just coming into flower. If she went to England, she would have to give up all such familiar sights. She had never been to England and she very possibly wouldn’t like it as a place to live. Now that she came to think about it she had heard such stories of the difficulties of life there that she was glad to be staying in the country of her birth.
As she came closer into the centre of the city the pavements filled up with people, half of them rushing to wherever it was they had to go, and the other half standing, staring into space, with nowhere to go. No matter what the government did, more and more people poured in from the villages to look for work in Nairobi, imagining they would find an easier and a better life there. Some did, but many of the young boys were unable to find work and even when they succeeded in getting a job sometimes found themselves regretting the fact that they had exchanged the simple life of their home villages for the barely adequate living which they managed to earn in the bustle of the big city.