Winds of Enchantment by Rosalind Brett

fresh pineapple, hard biscuit and coffee.
    There was a queer look about him, and something that she thought was controlled violence smouldered in the depths of his eyes. She had never seen him like this before, and the curious sadness that she had felt since early afternoon deepened into a positive ache.
    She cleared the table and gave him a pile of magazines that Steve had sent. While he read she moved uneasily about the room.
    “Give your legs a rest,” he grunted suddenly, without looking up. “They’ve earned it.”
    She was standing behind him in the alcove made by the bookshelves and the gramophone. He had taken off the tight jacket and she could see the powerful moulding of bone and muscle across his neck. “Nick, if—if you stay at Makai six months, I may not see you again,” she got out.
    Fully a minute passed. He thumbed a few pages.
    “Planning to go home?” he asked of a sheet of print.
    “I may be.”
    “I thought you were staying unless the climate got you down. That’s what Bill said.”
    “One doesn’t tell one’s father everything.”
    Another long pause. Then : “Why tell me?”
    “We’re friends, aren’t we?”
    “You’re tired,” he set aside his magazine. “I ought to be going.”
    As he said this Pat was highly conscious of tension between them. She took a step closer to his back, looked down and saw the livid depression that began on the point of his shoulder, slipped under the strap of the singlet and ran several inches diagonally down his chest. She touched the scar, unthinkingly, and at once she felt him stiffen. “Does it hurt?” she asked huskily.
    “No,” in a sharp undertone.
    She drew her fingers away, and stood taut against the bookshelves as he got quickly to his feet. He turned, stared coldly into her eyes for a long moment, then he crossed towards the kitchen and when he came back into the room he was wearing Bill’s oilskins. “Goodnight, Pat.” His glance swung round the room, as though his mind was fixing details. “Don’t dream about the storm, and that muddy trek of ours.”
    “I shan’t” She watched him go to the veranda door. “Goodbye, Nick.”
    There was a rustle of oilskins, then the decisive slam of the door.
    Bill returned jubilant and full of plans. He had bought the two freighters and as soon as the Farland-Brading sheds were up on the new concession along the shore, the vessels would be towed in and slicked up. He was full of ambitious ideas.
    He grinned affectionately at Pat. “We’ll build our own house farther up, nearer the nobs. A storied affair with a double veranda—as good as the best you’ll see in the port. We’ll even fit out a bathroom or two. We’re going up, kitten. Your father’s a company director now.” He gave a gusty laugh. “Bill Brading, gone all brandy and cigars. I shall have to look out my white ducks.”
    His enthusiasm was infectious. Pat went with him to choose a site for the house, an eminence above the belt of casuarinas that cut off the beach. A squad of natives cleared the trees, drove in the mighty piles, prepared the vast quantities of cement and mud to build the two-foot-thick walls. Apart from an occasional squall—the rains were nearly at an end—nothing but the natural indolence of the labourers stood in the way of the rapid completion of the house.
    The other traders were sceptical and envious. Whoever heard of a man of fifty starting a new sort of life in the tropics?
    Pat discussed the house with Cliff Grey, who smiled cynically and said he was all for people believing they could find happiness, anywhere. The trouble was, realism had a way of overcoming idealism; out here, perhaps, more than anywhere else.
    Cliff, talking in this vein, made Pat feel impatient. She couldn’t help contrasting him with Nick Farland—Nick the fighter and pioneer. She thought of the storm, and the steely strength of his hand as he gripped the jack-knife and hacked at the primeval growth of the jungle, his