CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER THREE

In spite of the heat and the confusion of her thoughts Delia did go to sleep. When she opened her eyes again her heart jumped a little in apprehension because for a moment she didn't recognise where she was.

Then she remembered. She was at Posto Orlando and she had found Edmund and for the next few days she would be near him, living in the same place, sharing a room with him, able to talk to him at last.

A creaking noise alerted her. Raising her head, she saw that the door was opening slowly and she remembered, too late, that she should have locked it. A shaft of brilliant yellow light cut through the dimness and a figure appeared in the doorway.

'Are you rested?' asked Rita in a whisper. 'It's time for us to go.'

'Will I be all right dressed like this?' asked Delia, swinging her legs off the bed and pulling on the canvas baseball boots.

'Of course. Anything which is comfortable will do,' said Rita with a laugh. 'This isn't Rio, or New York or London. The worst sin in the jungle is for your clothes to look all new, not old. Don't forget to bring your notebook and your camera. Oh, and bring some presents for the tribe we're going to visit. Sweets and cigarettes are always popular. So is soap.'

'How long have you been at the Post?' Delia asked as they walked across the bright hot clearing to the battered jeep which was parked in the shade of one of the huts.

Almost six months. Always Manoel wants to be here, in the jungle working with his uncle. It is the sort of work he loves most, but I am always torn with longing to be here with him and another longing to be with our children.' 'Children?' exclaimed Delia. 'How many do you have?' Three, all boys, eight, six and four,' replied Rita, with a sigh.

"But who is looking after them while you're here?'

My family, my mother and my sisters. They're well cared for—but oh, how I miss them!’

'Couldn't they join you here for the holidays?' asked Delia, thinking how much three boys could enjoy themselves here with the Indian children, swimming and hunting and playing.

'Manoel would like that, but I cannot take the risk. Everyone here has had bad malaria. Luiz has it every month and see how ill he is beginning to look. Manoel has had it more than once. And I have had it. For a young child to catch it would be fatal'

'But the disease can be prevented now,' said Delia. 'I've brought pills with me to take every day which are supposed to prevent me from getting it.'

As long as you have them and remember to take them you won't get it,' Rita assured her. 'But such drugs cost money. - That's why your husband is here—to find out what funds are needed for supplying medicine.

He'll make a report on the situation when he returns to England.' She shrugged her shoulders fatalistically. 'It won't be the first report made about conditions, but no one seems to act no matter how many reports.'

'I'm sure Edmund will try to get some action,' said Delia, surprising herself a little. She hadn't realised she had so much faith in Edmund's powers of persuasion.

Manoel was driving die jeep, so Rita sat beside him. Delia sat with Edmund on the back of the vehicle. Jekaro, a young handsome Indian who could speak Portuguese, went with then and held a shotgun across his knees. He was wearing an old-fashioned high-crowned, broad-brimmed straw hat pulled down over his long black hair Edmund wore a similar hat and managed as always in spite of the raggedness of his shorts and shirt to look elegant. It was to do with the lean grace of his body and limbs and the fine chiselling of his facial features, Delia decided, feeling her love for him flare

up suddenly within her, making her wish she could reach out and touch him.

'What's the gun for?' she asked him as the jeep rattled over the hard-baked ground of the clearing in the direction of the forest.

'One of the first laws of living in the jungle is that you must never go anywhere without a weapon because you might get lost and have to shoot an animal for food,' he replied.

'Did you have one with you when you were lost?'

'Yes. I took the one which was in the plane. Is that a hat you have in your hand? Put it on. It will protect your head from any insects which might fall from the trees.'

She pulled the hat on at once as they entered the jungle and followed a rutted track which twisted among giant trees festooned with creepers. It was cool and dim under the trees and there was a strong smell of damp earth. But it wasn't as

frightening as Delia had imagined it to be and she was just thinking it was rather like taking a ride through, an overgrown damp English wood when a large hairy insect fell on to her knee. At once she shrieked in revulsion and tried to brush it off with her hand.

'For God's sake don't touch it!1 yelled Edmund. 'It's a centipede with poisonous hairs.1 He produced a wicked-looking knife from a sheath at his belt, slid the point of the knife under the insect and flicked the hairy wriggling thing away. Behind her Delia could hear Rita and Manoel laughing and her cheeks burned with mortification.

'I always thought you'd be a liability in the jungle,' said Edmund to her in a low scornful voice. 'Why did you have to shriek like that?'

'I... I ... couldn't help it,' she muttered. 'I can't bear the sight of creepy- crawlies and snakes.'

'I'm not over-fond of them myself,' he admitted, 'but I don't put on such a big performance when I come across one.'

'It wasn't a performance,' she protested. 'And it's not fair to say I'm a liability. I've only just come. This is my first time in the actual jungle and I haven't had a chance yet to prove that I won't be a liability.'

'You're not going to get any more chances, if I can help it,' he growled. 'You're going back tomorrow to Brasilia or wherever it was you came from this morning. When we get back I'll have a word with Luiz about it. All I have to say to him is that I don't think you have the physical stamina . . .'

'But that wouldn't be true,' she objected hotly. 'I'm as strong as you are. Anyway, as a doctor you should know that women are tougher than men and have more powers of endurance.'

'Some women have,' he corrected her coolly. 'But you're not necessarily one of. them. You could get dysentery while you're here and in spite of all the precautions you could get malaria.’

'As if you cared,' she jeered at him shakily, once again close to tears because he seemed determined to reject her.

'Oh, I care all right,1 he retorted. 'The medical staff at the Post have enough to do taking care of sick Indians without having you added to the number of patients in the infirmary.'

'Well, you can say what you like to Luiz, I'm not going back to Brasilia until I've done what I've come here to do, and that is to get enough information for those articles,' she retorted, glaring at him. 'You can't get rid of me as easily as

that. Luiz is on my side.'

Edmund didn't say anything in reply, only gave her a strange ironic glance before looking away down the rutted path along which they had come. Shaking inwardly still as a result of the clash between them, Delia also looked away at

the trees which were now pressing in around them, their branches seeming to strain upwards towards the light. Dead trees leaned drunkenly sideways, unable to fall downwards because ropes of creepers held them up. On the thick carpet

of small plants which covered the ground red and blue flowers with thick sinister-looking petals made flashes of colour against the perpetual green.

They came to a clearing among the trees where the ground had been cultivated and maize grew in rows. In a stiff polite voice Edmund explained to Delia that it was called a roca and that the tribe made a new clearing every year for the growing of staple foods. A little further on he pointed out the previous year's abandoned roca already thickly overgrown by the ever-encroaching jungle.

Another twist in the path and they entered a clearing where three large oval huts with dome roofs were set round a small oblong hut. At the approach of the' jeep thin dogs rushed out of the huts growling and barking and brown bare children ran for cover.

As soon as the jeep's engine stopped the dogs stopped making a noise and the children crept back, staring at the vehicle and the people in it with round inquisitive eyes.

Tall muscular brown-skinned men wearing thick beaded belts and brightly feathered armbands, their faces thick with red paint, gathered round the jeep all talking at once in their strange high-pitched tonal language.

They are very concerned about the old man and want Edmund and Manoel to go to his hut at once,' Rita explained to Delia. 'Jekaro is going to show us round the village.'

Delia remembered the presents she had brought. The sweets, cigarettes and small tablets of soap were accepted with cries of delight. An older woman came forward, took Delia by the hand and led her towards the entrance of one of the huts, gesturing to her to enter.

Inside the hut was cool and airy. Women sat about the floor. They were all working. Some were weaving baskets and others were stirring pots over low fires at each end of the room. Two young women with babies in their arms lay in swinging hammocks. Their bare skin was as smooth as satin and the colour of honey and their faces were almost hidden by curtains of long black hair.

"About twenty people live in each hut,' explained Rita to Delia, translating from what Jekaro was saying to her. 'Each family has its own area and stores its food and hunting equipment on those platforms in the middle of each area

How quiet the children are,' remarked Delia. 'Not one of them is crying.'

"It's a sound I've never heard all the time I have been in the jungle.' said Rita. 'I believe it's because of the simple life their parents lead. They have few possessions and don't seem to want to want any more than they have already. This lack of pressure to acquire material goods gives them plenty of time to attend to their children, to be with them and to love them. Luiz says we can learn so much about living from them, and I think he's right. But oh, how I miss my own children and wish I could be with them. What shall I do, Delia? Leave Manoel and go back to them in Rio? Or bring them here and risk them catching a jungle disease? It's a terrible dilemma I'm in, yet not a new one.'

They left the hut, stepping carefully among the colourful macaws and parakeets which were acratching the floor for bits of food which had been dropped, out into the bright sunlight. The old woman who had led them to the hut pressed a parting gift into Delia's hand. It was a small beautifully woven basket, and seemed so much better than sweets or soap that Delia was overwhelmed by such generosity.

Edmund and Manoel were leaning-against the jeep talking to a well-built, heavily painted young man who had feathers stuck in his hair. All three seemed to be very serious.

'He is the chief,' said Rita, once more translating Jekaro's explanation. 'You know, Delia,' she added in a more confidential way, 'I think that you are also in the same dilemma that I am in.'

'Oh ! What do you mean?' exclaimed Delia. 'I haven't any children.'

'I know that, but you have a husband who likes living with and working for these primitive people as much as Manoel does. The government protection service has difficulty in finding doctors to work at the hospitals in the interior or who are willing to fly to out-of-the-way villages. It hasn't the funds to pay them, so most of those who come are young, inexperienced volunteers. There are very few who are as highly qualified as Edmund. I know that Professor Rodriguez has asked him to consider staying at Posto Orlando. If he decides to stay you'll have to decide whether you want to stay with him or go back to England, won't you?'

'I suppose I will,' muttered Delia, knowing that Rita was glancing at her with bright enquiring eyes as they walked across the clearing to the jeep. But deep down there was doubt in her mind. Already Edmund had shown he didn't want her at the post, not even for a short visit, so it seemed unlikely he would ask her to stay with him should he decide to offer his services to the Brazilian government department which looked after the tribes.

He didn't want her there. She could even see rejection of her in the way he took the seat next to Manoel in the jeep so that he didn't have to sit with her. She had come all this way in the hope of re-kindling the fire of love which had once blazed between them, but it seemed very much as if there was nothing left, only cold ashes.

She felt depressed and subdued as they drove back through the fast-dimming green light, passing a group of Indian hunters returning to the village from the depths of the forest, bows and rifles slung over their shoulders and arrows clutched in their hands, strangely romantic figures who disappeared almost as suddenly as they had appeared, melting into the darkness of die forest,

At the Post supper was ready and she was hungry enough to find beans and rice with some fried fish tasted delicious.

While they were eating Luiz put forward his plans for her during the next few days and she sat listening to him, watching Edmund's lean enigmatic face, waiting for him to do what he had threatened to do, suggest to Luiz that she should return to Brasilia the next day.

W e shall go to Binauros by river,' said Luiz. 'Then you will see how beautiful the jungle can be. It will take us two days to get to the other post and on the way we'll spend one night sleeping out. You will stay there another two days and then fly back here to catch the next supply plane returning to Brasilia. While we are at Binauros there will be an opportunity for both of you to fly to one of the most inaccessible villages in the park where you will stay with one of the most attractive of the tribes.' He turned with a smile to Edmund.

'And when that is all over, my friend, it will be time for you to return to civilisation and put in that report of yours from which we are hoping so much.'

Edmund flicked out the match with which he had just lit a cigarette, inhaled and blew out a cloud of smoke to deter the persistent mosquitoes before he spoke.

'I have to admit I don't want to leave and go back to civilisation,' he said, 'Being here, living here and in Fenenal and all the other places has been a tremendous experience for me. For the first time in my life I've come near to living as I always wanted to live, simply and naturally.' He drew hard on his cigarette and the smoke curled in grey spirals about his face. 'There were times, particularly in Fenenal, when it seemed like paradise on earth,' he added.

'Ah, no,' said Luiz, laughing. 'We have saved paradise for you until now, to visit in the company of your pretty wife. This journey we shall take down river to Binauros and the flight to the other village will be a second honeymoon for you both. May I suggest, Delia, that you go to bed now? It has been an exciting day for you and you're tired. We shall he leaving at dawn. Sleep well.'

Although reluctant to leave the table while Edmund was still there with Luiz in case he should attempt to persuade the kindly Brazilian to send her back to Brasilia the next day, Delia had to admit she felt tired, to she said goodnight and walked across the moonlit clearing to the sleeping hut.

The tiny room was still hot and two mosquitoes were droning around the bare electric light bulb which lit it. She sprayed the room with insecticide to get rid of them. While she was preparing for bed the light went out suddenly and she assumed the generator which supplied the current had been switched off for the night.

The smell of the spray tickled her nose and the bites on her legs and arms itched as she lay in the darkness between damp sheets. A second honeymoon—Luiz' laughing remark had seared her. What chance was there of a second honey-moon for her and Edmund when there was such a wide gulf between them? The months they had spent apart were a much longer period of time than they had ever spent together.

Mentally she calculated the days and weeks she had lived with Edmund. Barely four months out of two and a half years of marriage. Was it any wonder she understood him so little ? But then when they had been together had she bothered to try and understand him?

No she had to admit that she hadn't. As long as he had been with her, as long as he had come back to her and had made love to her nothing else had mattered. The one time he hadn't treated her with gentleness and consideration, the' one time he had shown that he could behave violently she had reacted in an immature way. She hadn't even tried to listen to his attempts to explain why he had behaved the way he had.

The door of the room opened and closed. The beam of a powerful torch flickered over her bed, then wavered about as Edmund moved into the room. She heard him swear as he stubbed his toe on her luggage which was lying on the floor. Then the beam of the torch lit up the entrance to the wash room as he went in there. Water gushed and tinkled as he washed. The beam of light slanted back into the room, came very close, then illuminated the ceiling when he placed the

torch on the small table between the two beds. There was the plonking sound of shoes being dropped to the cement floor, the rustle of clothing being taken off. The other bed creaked when he lay down on it and the torch went out.

For a few moments there was a heavy silence. Then

Edmund's bed creaked again.

'Delia,' he whispered. 'Are you awake?'

'Yes.’

'I'd like to know why you asked Luiz not to tell me you were coming here," he said. 'You said you'd explain.'

She licked her lips which were suddenly dry. Her head was pounding with pain and her tongue felt thick as a result of the still oppressive heat. She wished she had the courage to tell him why she had come, but she was afraid of being

rejected again.

'I ... I ... thought that if you knew I was coming you'd leave the Post,' she muttered.

'And would that have mattered?' he asked,

'Well ... er .... yes. It would have mattered very much to the people who are depending on you to make that report to O.S.P.P.' she replied, quite truthfully, remembering the conversation she had had with the chairman of the organisation before she had left England. On no account, he had

said, was Edmund to be upset or prevented from finishing the survey of the health of the tribes and the situation regarding medical supplies. The survey had been held up for various reasons, such as Edmund being lost in the jungle and

the death of the other two members of the team, and the chairman hoped she would be able to persuade Edmund to return to England and make his report as soon as possible.

'Is that the only reason?' Edmund queried, and she thought she detected a note of despondency in his voice.

Yes. O.S.P.P. would like that report soon,' she said warily.

'I know. They'll get it in due course,' he said.

'You are going back to England, then?' she asked.

'Not if I can avoid it.'

'Oh, but Edmund, you must! 'she exclaimed.

''Why must I?'

To make the report.'

' I can send it from here.'

'But that won't be the same,' she said urgently, sitting up in bed and trying to see him in the darkness, but it was impossible to penetrate the gloom. 'Surely you can see that. Much more notice will be taken of the report if you can present it in person. Mr Tyson said I was to tell you that.

'Shush ! Keep your voice down. The walls are thin. Manoel and Rita are next door to us and they'll be able to hear everything you say,' he whispered fiercely.

'I don't care if they do,' she countered, but lowered her voice just the same. 'Why don't you want to go back to England?'

'Because there's nothing there for me to go back to,' he replied, and she felt as if he had driven a knife into her heart. ''And there's something for me to do here. I'm needed here and can do the work I'm trained to do. And having a pirvate income I don't have to be paid to do it.'

She was silent while she coped with the pain which was racking her. Tears welled in her eyes and she bit her lip hard. The rejection she had feared a few minutes ago had happened. Nothing in England for him to go back to. Apparently it had never crossed his mind to go back to her.

'By the way,' he drawled sleepily, 'I asked Luiz to send you back to Brasilia tomorrow, but he refused, God knows why. I hadn't the heart to tell him that neither of us is interested in having a second honeymoon, so the trip to Binauros is still on.' He laughed shortly. 'Come to think of it, we never had a first honeymoon, did we?' He yawned suddenly and the bed creaked again as he moved. 'G' night he muttered.

Delia didn't reply. She was afraid he would hear that she was crying. After a while she could tell by the regular sound of his breathing that he was asleep. But she couldn't sleep She was too tormented by her thoughts as well as by the heat and the bites on her body which itched and itched. She tossed and turned, becoming hotter and itchier than ever.

At last she gave up and sitting up inched groped for the torch. She found it and clicked it on. Moving as quietly as possible, she slipped off the bed and went over to the one chair where she had left her handbag. Tiptoeing back to bed she shone the torch for a few seconds on the other bed. Edmund was lying on top of the thin blanket and he was wearing only underwear briefs.

Directing the torch's beam back to the table she found a bottle of sterilised water, opened it and poured a little into a glass. She took a small phial of pills from her handbag and shook one pill into her hand. Tossing the pill into her mouth, she washed it down with a little of the water.

Taking a tip from Edmund in the hopes of feeling cooler, she stripped off her nightdress and pushed it under her pillow. She covered herself with a sheet only and lay down again, closing her eyes determinedly. Slowly the pounding of her heart and head eased as the pill took effect and she slipped into a deep sleep.

She was awakened suddenly by the feel of a hand on her shoulder shaking it and the sound of a voice calling her name. The hand left her shoulder and suddenly the sheet was twitched away from her. She opened her eyes in alarm and snatched the sheet back to gather it round her nakedness. The shutters were open and the room was full of pale grey light and Edmund was standing by the bed looking

down at her. He was wearing a long-sleeved sun-faded dark blue shirt and long white cotton pants and he was standing with his hands on his hips and his eyes were dancing with devilment between thick bronze-coloured lashes.

Why did you pull the sheet off me?' she demanded crossly. Her head was heavy and she longed to lie down again to continue sleeping.

It was the only way I could get any reaction from you,' he replied. 'You and I have a date this morning to go down' river and it's time you were moving about and packing your bags" He bent forward from the hips to stare more closely at

her, first at one of her eyes and then the other. 'You look pretty groggy,’ he remarked. 'And you were sleeping heavily. You look drugged.' His voice sharpened on the last word and he turned to glance at the table. The phial of pills was lying there in full view. 'Did you take one of these last

night' he demanded curtly, flashing an icy glance in her direction.

'Yes. I had a headache and I couldn't sleep.'

'Do you often take one?'

'Only when I can't sleep.'

He didn't say anything but sat down suddenly beside her an the edge of the bed and taking her left wrist curved his fingers about it to feel her pulse while he stared at his wrist watch

The gentle touch of his fingers on the thin skin of her wrist, the warm male smell of him in her nostrils, the sight of golden brown skin against the blue of the half-buttoned shirt went to her head. She swayed slightly towards him, aware suddenly of her own bareness. Desperately she clutched the folds of the rough sheet against her breasts she fought against a desire to cast it aside and fling her arms about him and press herself against him.

The feeling made her shake. He felt the quiver and gave her a sidelong glance from beneath his lashes.

'What's the matter now?' he drawled.

'N . . . nothing.' Her tongue seemed to want to stick to the roof of her mouth when his eyes glinted with scepticism 'I'm perfectly all right,' she insisted, 'so don't you dare go and tell Luiz that I'm not, Doctor Talbot.'

'The way you're quaking anyone would think you'd never been examined by a doctor before,' he retorted with a sardonic twist to his mouth as he released her wrist. 'Your pulse is sluggish, but that's not surprising after taking one of those. You're not going to take any more,' he added, rising to his feet and .scooping the phial up in his hand so he could study the label.

'A young woman like you shouldn't have to take anything like this to sleep. Who prescribed them for you?'

'A doctor in London.'

'Why? Have you been ill?' He sat down beside her again and was looking her over with such an expression of concern on his face that she found it difficult not to give into a longing to rest her head against his shoulder and tell him everything.

'In a way,' she muttered.

'What way?' he persisted.

'I'm not going to tell you. It ... It's none of your business,' she replied defensively.

'Yes, it is. Come on, tell me.'

'Why should I?' she countered, flinging her head back so she could glare at him. 'You never tell me anything about yourself. Why do you want to know? Because you're a doctor or because you're my husband?'

His eyes blinked twice as if he had been struck in the face and bone gleamed whitely through the taut freshly shaven skin of his jaw.

"When were you ill? Recently?' he asked quietly. 'I'm not going to tell you,' she replied stubbornly. Now the room was filled with rose-tinted pearly light as the sun came up. Tension twanged between them as they stared at each other. Then Edmund stood up and turned away.

All right, have it your own way,' he said. 'But you're not going to take any more of these pills.' before she could object he strode towards the wash room, the phial of pills in his hand. Gasping at his arrogance, Delia got out of bed, grabbed the clothes she had been wearing the day before and dressed quickly. She arrived in the wash room in time to see the last pill being washed down the oulet in the basin.

You had no right to do that!' she accused furiously. 'Of course I had,' he retorted curtly. 'On two counts. As a doctor and as your husband.' Pushing1 past her, he strode back into the bedroom. 'I'll make sure you haven't any more them tucked away.'

Turning, she followed him across the room in time to see him take hold of her handbag and tip it upside down so that the contents fell out of it on to the table. Angrily she flung herself across the room to snatch at the bag and to collect up her scattered belongings.

'You. . . you . . . Oh, how dare you!' she choked, scarcely able to speak, she was so angry, but he had turned away and looking round she saw he bad unzipped her travelling bags and! was tossing clothes out of them.

'I haven't got any more sleeping pills, only pills for malaria,' she shouted at him, careless of whether Rita and Manoel could hear her. 'Please leave my things alone!'

Edmund ignored her, searching the bags thoroughly before tossing the articles of clothing back into them, not worried whether they were folded or not.

'Oh, look at the mess you've made of everything!' she wailed, going down on her knees by the bags and taking the clothes out again.

'You can pack when you've had breakfast,' he said crisply. 'And put your boots on. Never walk anywhere without them.'

'I ... I'd no idea you could be so bossy and arrogant,' she seethed as she pulled on her boots.

'Well, you know now,' he returned coolly. 'There's a lot I don't know about you too, so the next few days are going to be interesting as we get to know each odier, aren't they? Now come and get your morning coffee before the odiers drink it all.'

The longing for coffee fought a battle with a longing to defy his brusque orders and won. Scowling mutinously, Delia followed him across the compound. It must have rained heavily in the night, for the ground was covered with muddy puddles from which a faint white mist was rising as the'sun, already hot, began to suck up the water. Parakeets and macaws were chattering noisily as they perched on the roofs of the huts, but there was no sign of any people.

There was no one in the eating room either.

'I thought Luiz said we were going to leave at dawn,' exclaimed Delia as she sipped hot sweet white coffee which Edmund brought her from the kitchen. 'According to my watch it's past eight now.'

'By dawn he meant four-or five hours later,' said Edmund with a grin as he took a seat opposite to her. 'Another Brazilian would know he meant that. You'll get used to the casual attitude to time. Here there are no deadlines to be met, no

trains or buses to catch.' He gave her an underbrowed marching glance. 'You know, living here even for a few days might do you some good, relieve that hyper-tension you seem to be suffering from.' He struck a match and put the flame to the cigarette he had inserted in his mouth. 'It'll do you far more good than those pills you've been taking.'

What would he say if she told him that the hyper-tension had been caused by worry about him and by over-indulgence in vain regrets about their estrangement? "I thought you didn't want me to stay,' she retorted challengingly.

"That was yesterday. I feel differently today,' he replied tantalisingly. 'You're here, we're going on a journey together and there isn't anything I can do about changing the plan.' He shrugged his shoulders and smiled across at her, the first time he had smiled properly since she had arrived, and she felt her knees go weak. 'What will be, will be,' he added. 'Have you a long-sleeved shirt you can wear? There isn't much shelter from the sun on the river boat and even if long sleeves make you feel hot they're preferable to having scorched skin.'

Everything he said seemed contradictory. He didn't want her to be with him, yet he kept showing concern for her welfare as if he felt responsible for her, reluctantly responsible.

Delia looked at him from under her lashes. The last year spent mostly in the jungle had carved changes in his lean face He looked older and wiser and sadder. Yes, that was it. There was a sadness in his face which hadn't been there before. the same sadness which was in Luiz' expression. Wrist had put it there? The suffering he had seen among the pinple primitive people of the tribes who had been uprooted from their land and wrenched from their way of life by the

white settlers? Or was it the plane crash and the death of his team-mates? In particular the death of the woman Ingrid.

'Where is Fenenal?' she asked.

'West of here. It's an island in the middle of a huge river It's very beautiful, completely untouched. Two tribes live there. Contact was made with them only a few years ago b a Brazilian explorer called Pedro Silveira,' he said.

'Why did you say it seemed like paradise on earth?'

'Because living there was so uncomplicated and we were cut off completely from the rest of the world. No regular supply flight, no radios. Time lost all meaning.' He sighed and his eyes, slitted against the smoke rising from his cigarette, looked past her as if he were seeing something which wasn't there.

'Did Ingrid feel like that about the place too?' she asked feeling envy stir within her again.

'She might have done,' he replied, giving her a puzzled glance, 'although I never heard her say so.'

'What did she look like?' she asked impulsively and his eyebrows went up in mocking surprise.

'What's this? An interview for Geography Illustrated?' he scoffed. 'Would details about Ingrid made your articles about the jungle more interesting for the women readers of the magazine, be a sop to the women's liberation groups?'

She couldn't control the surge of pink colour to her cheeks betraying that her interest in Ingrid was personal rather than objective. Edmund's eyes narrowed suspiciously, then were hidden as he looked down. He sighed and the slight sound so expressive of a feeling of regret stabbed through her.

'All right,' he said. 'I'll tell you about her. She was small, smaller than you are and very slight. Her hair was fairish and cut short. It fell forward in a wave over her forehead and she had a way of running her fingers through the wave.

pushing it back when she was excited. She had grey eyes, large ones which seemed to shine with goodness, and she had very sound white teeth which she showed a lot when she laughed.' He paused, leant an elbow on the table and shaded his eyes with his hand. 'She was beautiful in every way,' he added in a low voice. 'Both Neil and I loved her.'

Shock tore through Delia. Hardly aware of what she was doing, she groped for his cigarette packet and took a cigarette. He held a lighted match to the end of the cigarette for her and she met his scornful glance.

'That's really what you wanted to know, isn't it?' he jeered. 'Just as you wanted to know once if I found Marsh attractive. Well, now you know I loved Ingrid, and so did everyone else who knew her. She was that sort of person.

But it doesn't mean I slept with her or had a love affair with her. We were friends working together, living in a close-knit tribal community. And since you're so keen on lurid details, she was older than I am—about eleven or twelve years older.

Now is there anything else you'd like to know? Or can you make up the rest using that over-active imagination of yours'

His scorn had a crushing effect on her and the taste of tobacco smoke was bitter in her mouth, but no more bitter than the taste of humiliation.

"My imagination isn't any more active than yours is,' she retorted. 'You imagined once that 1 was having an affair with Peter.'

'And could still be having one for all I know,' he jibed nastily. 'But your memory is letting you down again. You've forgotten that I had a fact, a personally-observed fact on which to build my theory about the relationship between you and him. I saw the two of you making love . ..' 'We weren't making love,' she denied hotly.

'Weren't you? Then what the hell were you doing?' he queried harshly,

'I tried to tell you at the time, but you wouldn't listen,' she flung at him.

'And later, after you'd gone I heard it all from the great lover himself,' he said dryly.

'From Peter?' she exclaimed.

'Yes, from Peter. I went to his place that evening to see if you had gone there.' He selected another cigarette from the packet and lit it with the one he had finished smoking.

'What did he say?' she asked.

'Oh, he was very pleasant, surprised when I asked for you. but pleasant. Invited me in so we could talk it over in a civilised fashion as friends should, and he pointed out in that calm practical way of his how crazy it had been for an un-domesticated freewheeling type like me to get married in the first place.' He rubbed at his chin and slanted her a mocking glance. 'I couldn't help but agree with him. I knew at the time I married you that the balance of my mind was disturbed.'

'Was that all he said?'

'No. He told me you were unhappy," he said flatly.

'And you believed him?' she exclaimed. 'Oh, Edmund. how could you?'

'It wasn't difficult after what had happened between us at the flat,' he replied dourly. 'You'd fought me off as if I were a stranger instead of your husband just home after putting in several weeks of -celibacy in the most God-awful scenes or devastation I'd ever seen in my life.'

He smiled rather wearily as she looked up sharply when he mentioned celibacy." 'Oh, yes, I was faithful to you while I was away, both times. A lot of good it did me,' he added.

'I was frightened. You were so angry. I'd never seen you angry before,' she whispered defensively, thinking all this should have been said fifteen months ago. If both of them had been more loving perhaps all the long months of soul-searching and unhappiness would have been avoided. "At the time T thought I had every right to be angry,' he said slowly, reflectively. He laughed a little self-mockingly. 'You know, I behaved conventionally possibly for the first time in my life. I reacted to the age-old situation of the husband coming home to find his wife in the arms of her lover in an age-old way.'

'Peter wasn't my lover,’ she asserted as loudly as she could without drawing the attention of the two Indians in the kitchen.

'According to him he was,' he drawled. 'He was lying, honestly he was, Edmund. I used to go out with him when he invited me because he assured me you wouldn't mind and chat you had in fact suggested it to him. Did you?1

"Not in as many words. I might have said casually "watch out for Delia for me", but I didn't suggest he should act as a 'shadow husband". That was entirely his idea,' he replied.

' I'don't think I did mind that first time I was away. I trusted you and I trusted him until that evening, and then suddenly I found myself in a situation which I'd always resolved to avoid if possible,' He gave her a hard level iook across the table.

'The sort of situation I'd seen my father caught in twice,' he added softly and bitterly.

'Oh! You mean your mother . . .?' Delia gasped, and her hand went to her mouth. 'I didn't know.' Of course you didn't know, because I never told you.'

‘I wish I had known, though,' she said thoughtfully. 'If I’d known that I might have understood why you were so angry. But Peter should never have told you I was unhappy. Did he tell you why he thought I was?’

‘He said you expected more from marriage than you were getting from me. He said you needed the sort of husband he could be, who would come home every night at five, would buy you a house you could furnish together with a garden you could dig in together and would give you the children you could rear together.' He broke off with a crack of laughter and raked a hand through his hair as he shook his head. 'Hell, it was quite a lecture on my shortcomings!

By the time it was over I was convinced I'd committed a sin. against you by marrying you and should get out of your life as quickly as possible before I messed it up any more. So I did.'

'Peter had no right to tell you that,' she complained miserably. 'And you—oh, you had no right to believe him or to go off the way you did without telling me where you'd gone. Oh, why did you, Edmund? Why did you?'

'I deserted you, darling," he said with a sardonic lift of his upper Up as he crushed out the remains of his cigarette in the tin lid which was used as an ash-tray. 'The idea was to make it easier for you to get a divorce. Didn't Pete tell you?' He swung off the bench and stood up. 'I want to look at the patients in the infirmary before we leave. You'd better go and pack your bag so you'll be ready when Luiz appears and says it's time to go.'

He went out, and Delia -sat sipping the last of her coffee, thinking over all that he had said. So much had been explained. Now she knew why he had left her. Peter, his best friend, had convinced him that she didn't want him any more.

But he might not have been so easily convinced if she hadn't run out on him that evening or if she had returned. Delia groaned and for a moment clutched her head between her hands in an agony of remorse and regret as she recalled her own outraged behaviour. If only she had been more loving; if only she had responded to him instead of taking fright if only, if only . . . There, she was doing it again. Wasting time in regrets instead of taking action. What action should she take? How could she show Edmund-she was sorry so many months after the event? How

could she approach him when he was so obviously not in love with her any more? How could she undo the damage Peter had done to the beginnings of -a tender passionate relationship which might have grown into a strong trusting love?

Voices at the door of the room made her look up. Luiz and Manoel were coming in. They greeted her and after fetching coffee sat down at the table.

'The engine of the boat is old and a little temperamental,' Luiz said. '

Manoel has been persuading it to go. We would like to have a new faster boat for visiting the river-bank villages, but there isn't any money for one. You might mention it in one of your articles and maybe some kind person somewhere will read it and donate a boat to us. Are you ready to go?'

Not quite. I have to pack my bags,' replied Delia, rising to her feet.

Bring one only with you containing enough clothes for a few days. Lock everything else in your other bag, because you'll be returning here. I'll send

Jekaro along to your room to carry the bag down to the boat for you.'

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