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slightest amount of exertion on his part.'
They walked on for another half hour and then Clive said it was time
for their midday snack. Finding a flat ledge near the entrance to
another cave, he discarded the rucksack, whereupon Faun opened it
and took out some of the contents. All around was the teeming, humid
jungle, with only the cave entrance dry and clear of vegetation. To
Faun's delight a baby orang-utan came out of a thicket, and a moment
later its mother appeared. Faun and Clive had settled down with their
snack, and a silence had fallen between them. So the most famous of
all Borneo animals had come out, unaware that his closest of all
cousins Homo sapiens was being delighted by the antics of
mother and baby.
'Oh, weren't they sweet!' Faun spoke when at last it was plain that the
animals, having disappeared, were not coming back. 'I adore them!'
Clive turned his head, eyeing her in a thoughtful way. She could not
help contrasting this man with that arrogant, egotistical person who
had so contemptuously refused to admit that women could fly planes
with the same safety and efficiency as men.
'I once remarked that you were becoming more feminine every day.'
Clive's quirk of humour which accompanied these words only added
to the attractiveness of his appearance. 'I find that you're in fact very
feminine at times.'
'What about the Amazon?' she could not resist asking, a hint of
mischief in her voice which she would never have used before at
least, not when speaking to Clive.
'Ah7' the Amazon?' He pretended to become engrossed in reflection.
'She seems to be more concerned with flying than with anything else.'
Faun laughed.
'In other words, I'm feminine when not engaged in anything to do
with my job?' Clive merely nodded and Faun found herself saying,
'Mother always maintained I had a dual personality.' And then she
stopped, for whenever she thought of her parents, and especially her
mother, she felt a pang of anxiety, for although she was in fact
enjoying herself at this time, she knew that her mother would be
almost out of her mind with worry.
'She did? Tell me about your mother,' he invited.
'She's the loveliest person imaginable.'
'And doesn't mind that her daughters do men's jobs?'
'She has never interfered with our ambitions. Nevertheless, she does
regret our not having anything to do with men by that, I mean, she
would like us to marry and provide her with grandchildren. Her
friends have these grandchildren visiting them at the week-ends and
Mother feels rather left out of it.'
Clive's lips twitched.
'You don't have anything to do with men, you say?'
She coloured, unaware that she was appearing most attractive to this
man sitting beside her, in this 'lost- world' jungle, this primary rain
forest where nature reigned supreme.
'I've never had time for dates and dances,' she said.
'Dates and dances ...' His expression altered, becoming serious and a
little stern. 'You should never allow your work to dominate your
whole life, Faun. There are other things to do, other pleasures to
partake of.'
'Meaning?' She spoke the one word softly, thinking of Ingrid and the
affair that had clearly gone on between her and Clive, a purely
physical relationship, Faun had decided right at the start.
'Meaning dates and dances, as you so aptly put it. The company of the
opposite sex can be very pleasurable.'
She smiled faintly.
'I suppose I'm not one for dallying,' she commented seriously. 'I told
Mother that when the right one comes along I shall give him my most
careful consideration.'
'Good lord! What did your mother have to say to a statement like
that?'
'She said,' answered Faun with a laugh, 'that I'd frighten him away if I
took that sort of a businesslike attitude.'
'She's right, too! Careful consideration indeed! You have a lot to learn
about love, my girl!'
Love ... She slanted a glance at his profile, memory bringing back the
various occasions when this man had affected her senses, and just a
short while back, when their hands had touched ... She felt the colour
mount her cheeks, knew again that warmth she knew when Clive had
said she was a strange girl but an interesting one. She recalled that her
career had no longer been the one shining star on her horizon, that it
had been eclipsed by a man who, she had once thought, had erected
an invincible barrier between them, this owing to his intense dislike
of women.
She found herself asking about his aunt, aware that she was 'fishing',
desirous of hearing something about his wife as well. He, like Faun
herself, appeared to be affected by the isolation and primitive
surroundings in that he became expansive, just as she herself had
been.
She sat quietly and listened, learning that his aunt had gone off with
another man. His uncle had been so shattered that he had put Clive
into a boarding-school and gone off to travel the world. Clive had,
therefore, suffered a second upheaval in his childhood. He paused
after this and as Faun looked at the hard and bitter outline of his
profile she felt a great wave of sympathy sweep over her. She recalled
her own happy childhood. She and her sister had never known
anything but love, deep, deep love, and this had come from both her
parents, who had an extremely strong sense of parental obligation. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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