Winds of Enchantment Read Online Free

mustn’t take it like this, Pat.” He leaned forward, meeting her eyes across the table. “If it weren’t for knowing what the tropics did to your mother, I’d take you with me.”
    She caught her breath. “Bill!” Her eyes started to shine. “Dad, take me with you! I promise not to be ill. I’m not delicate as Christine was. She always said I was a tough Brading. Oh, Bill, this is just what I’ve been wanting—how soon can we go?”
    “Not you, kitten,” he argued.
    “Please—oh, please!” She jumped to her feet, ran round the table, and wrapped beguiling arms about his neck. “Don’t walk out on me, Bill. I—I couldn’t bear it—not any more.”
    “Is that a fact?” he growled.
    She dropped a kiss on his red hair and hugged him. “What is there here for me, if you go?” she whispered. “Steve is marrying Celia in the summer. I’ll lose his friendship, then.”
    “D’you care a little for him, kitten?” Bill wanted to know.
    “I—don’t really know, Bill,” she said. “We might have meant a lot to each other, if he hadn’t chosen Celia.”
    “The fool,” muttered her father. Then, heaving a deep breath: “All right, my girl, I can’t say no to you. Come to Africa with your ruffian of a father, if that’s what you want before anything else.”
    They went to London to visit the shipping office, to buy tropical kit, and take in a few shows. Then, while Bill was in Liverpool fixing final details, Pat spent four days alone at Caystor.
    When she told Steve the news, his eyes darkened. “This is a bit of a shock,” he said.
    “What else could I do?” She plunged her hands into the pockets of her slacks.
    “I don’t know.” He kicked at a tussock of grass. “Perhaps this is best.”
    She said: “I’ll send you oddments for your den—things I know you haven’t got.”
    His mouth twisted wryly. “Will you miss me?”
    She nodded, not looking at him, her eyes on the sea.
    “Why couldn’t you have stayed a rum kid?” he murmured. “ Your growing up has spoiled everything.”
    “Is that what you thought, Steve—that I’d never grow up?” Her tone was husky. “It’s because I’ve grown up that I’m going away.”
    Her father came back and Pat began to pack. They were leaving in the middle of March. Before February was out the sun burst through the unusual warmth. In the cottage garden the grass sprang green and tender, the crocuses belled purple and yellow amid jade spears. Pat stood beneath the bare branches of the copper beech and something wept soundlessly within her for the years she had spent here.
    But the spring tide matched the surging in her veins. The dappled English sky and cliffs, the golden sand and the cool sea were part of a phase in her life that was almost over. The boat was sold, and Steve had bought the cottage—she knew deep in her heart just why.
    That last day Pat cried a little . By eight in the evening everything was packed and the rooms already bare. “Have your bath and get to bed,” said Bill. “We must be up at three in the morning. I’m going to the Mermaid to say farewell to the lads. Think, Pat! This time next month we’ll be in Kanos ! ”
    When he had gone, she dragged the bath from under the kitchen table, tipped in the boiling pans from the stove, cooling the water from the rain butt outside. Slowly she soaped her body, staring into the heart of the fire with brooding eyes. She had a feeling that this was the last night she would ever spend in the cottage, and it was saddening to remember the careless joy of the days when her emotions had been transient and childish.
    Pat reached for the towel, still deep in thought. Tropic shore and stupendous jungle, astonishing growth, mangroved rivers, native drums.
    She slipped into clean paisley silk pyjamas, and raked back her hair. Then she scooped the bath water into the sink, and the old pipe gurgled so boisterously that she didn’t hear a rap at the back door; nor was she aware that Steve