Stars Over Sarawak (8 page)

 'Your husband?' he queried briefly, and she nodded her head.

 'Yes, Mr. Denver, my husband.' 'I see.' Again he became thoughtful and Roanna was driven to say,

 'Do let me come with you. I must find out what happened to Rolfe. Andrew and I are very anxious to get married.'

 He said after another silence,

 'I've never been hampered with a woman on one of these trips and I'm darned sure I shouldn't start now.'

 Her pulse leapt, but she maintained a rather anxious mien.

 'I won't hamper you, Mr. Denver. I'll help in any way you want me to. I can cook,' she thought to add brightly, but was deflated at once as Carl Denver told her that Tangan could cook better than any woman. 'I'll wash the clothes, then,' she told him with a fluttering smile.

 'I'm quite adept at that myself,' he told her. But his brow was furrowed in a way which convinced her that he was accepting unreservedly the advantage of allowing her to accompany him. It would save him a week in time and as he had obviously planned his survey work to last for a full month the loss of a week was going to make a great deal of difference — not only in the amount of work he could manage but also in the actual plans he had so carefully made. Malcolm had told Roanna that Carl took weeks to prepare for these excursions into the interior. 'There's the question of your hotel ...' Frowning heavily, he pursed his lips. 'It isn't practical or sensible. I must be mad!'

 'You're taking me?' she breathed. 'Thank you very much, Mr. Denver!'

 His glance was cool, dispassionate.

 'I shall have to send messages with the men here.'

 'They'll be able to get a message to my hotel manager?'

 'That shouldn't be too difficult. In any case, the Malay from whom you hired the boat will probably have done something about it. You did give him the name of the hotel in which you were staying, I suppose?'

 'Yes, I did.' And Kayun would by now have told him everything, she thought.

 'Then they'll know why you haven't turned up — or they will know soon.' He talked a little about the trip, but it was very briefly and Roanna was reminded of what Charles Cosgrove said about Carl's never using two words where one would do. 'I still don't know whether or not, from your point of view, the trip will be profitable.'

 'I can only hope it will be. Surely some of these Natives will have some news to give me.'

 'I've no idea.' He looked straightly at her. 'Make no mistake, Mrs. Barrett, I'm allowing you to come with me solely because it suits
my
convenience.'

 'Yes, Mr. Denver,' she said meekly, 'I do understand. But I shall be able to make inquiries from the chiefs at the longhouses we visit, won't I?'

 'There'll be nothing to prevent you from doing that. In fact, you can do as you wish so long as none of my time is wasted by your activities.' Curt tones and carrying a warning. Roanna was beginning to wonder if she had made a blunder in suggesting he take her with him. Perhaps it would have been better had she kept her mouth shut, in which case he would have resigned himself to taking her back to the coast.

It was when they were on the river, gliding along the tributary of the Yangai, that Carl Denver brought up the matter of Roanna's clothing. She would have to wear one of the dresses he had brought up as presents for the Native women, he told her, and she nodded gratefully.

 'The problem of washing what I have on has occurred to me,' she owned, flushing slightly at the amused curve of his mouth. 'I expect you have brought sarongs with you as well,' she added, thinking of her own presents, now lost.

 'One always brings sarongs for the women — and even for the headman.'

 A rather lengthy silence followed as the two Natives, Tangan and Agwai, began negotiating some rapids. Roanna watched, fascinated, as with skill and knowledge they brought the
prahus
safely through, then steered towards the concave bank so as to take advantage of the less violent flow of the current.

 'It's a fascinating river.' Roanna murmured the words to herself as she sat comfortably in the boat, opposite to Carl, and gazed ahead. The Dajang was noted as a pretty river, Carl had previously said as they swung on to it from the Yangai, and Roanna could appreciate how the river became so famed for its beauty. Winding through the pristine dense jungle, its gleaming water was slightly stained by substances exuded from floating vegetation, giving it richness and depth. At the edge where stream met bank arum and calla lilies grew in profusion, while just beyond these the white-flowered barringtonias rilled the banks. 'Colour is scarce,' she mused, again speaking to herself.

 'In Sarawak colour is scarce,' he agreed. 'We don't have vivid exotic colour of the kind you would find in the West Indies, for instance.'

 Roanna looked faintly surprised that he would trouble to speak, since she had clearly murmured to herself, her words scarcely audible. But he said no more and Roanna once again gave herself up to a contemplation of her surroundings. Fantastic butterflies, some of an enormous size, fluttered about among the flowers, or alighted for a few seconds, their wings moving as if in time with the beating of the creature's heart.

 The scene changed and the river now wound between jungle-clad hills, its banks smothered in the mangrove bushes and giant colocasias. These marshy shores of the Dajang, uninhabited and lonely, were inaccessible, and backed by primeval, inscrutable jungle growth. The two
prahus
made a soft swish as their outboards took them through water suddenly choked by the bulbous stems of the water-hyacinth, and at one point Tangan was forced to slip over the side and disentangle the screw. A mile or so farther on a succession of shallows had to be negotiated by poling. Carl helped with this, his grim strength employed with ease and silence except for one or two quiet orders given in the Dyak language. With the shallows left behind he took possession of his seat again, merely glancing at Roanna as he did so. There was to be little conversation between them, she concluded wryly. Carl Denver was one of the strong silent type and from what little she knew of him Roanna decided he was more often than not content with his own thoughts.

 Like Roanna, he was gazing ahead; the river appeared to be blacked as the boat glided into a gloomy tunnel of drooping forest trees, a tunnel from which spread a maze of channels separated by small islands caused by river braiding, islands covered with reeds and huge clumps of other aquatic plants — trees and shrubs whose branches dipped into the water, and through which the
prahus
had to sail.

 'What an abundance of growth!' The exclamation escaped Roanna involuntarily as through a break she caught sight of the slopes rising distantly to the water-shed. They were covered with gigantic jungle trees whose branches were heavily interlaced with lianas, clinging tenaciously for support.

 Carl Denver's eyes moved slowly to her face. A small frown appeared on his forehead and she coloured, instantly aware that she had intruded into his privacy. Without speaking he looked away again and for a long while she sat rather unhappily staring at nothing in particular, fearing that Carl was already regretting his decision to have her with him.

 'Oh— !' She stopped as he turned and instinctively put a hand to her mouth. 'I'm sorry.' It was a good ten minutes later and this time the exclamation resulted from their emergence from the dim semi-shade into a scene of sheer enchantment where shafts of sunlight pierced the vegetation to settle on the lake whose placid translucent waters mirrored the tall trees and flowering bushes along its western bank. 'I'm sorry,' she said again. A hand was spread impulsively. 'It's so beautiful — the lake we're on, and the incredible scenery around it.'

 'I did tell you that the Dajang is one of the most attractive rivers in Sarawak,' he said quietly.

 'Yes.' She looked uncertainly at him, wondering if she dare use his comment as the start of a conversation. 'I had no idea it was as beautiful as this, though.'

 'Make the most of it,' he advised. 'We're going far into the
ulu
and some of the affluents we shall use will affect you very differently from the way this one is affecting you.'

 'They're dismal, you mean?'

 'Dismal and often choked by water-weeds and
batangs
.'

 
'Batangs?'

 'Dead trees that have fallen into the river—'

 'Of course. We had trouble with one or two on the way up from the coast.'

 Carl was speaking to Tangan and she wondered whether he had heard her. Tangan spoke to Agwai and the boat began to glide smoothly towards the far side of the lake. At last it came alongside the bank.

 'We're camping here,' Carl told her. 'You'll be roughing it, but that's what you wanted.' Unconcernedly he leapt off, turning to extend a supporting hand to her. 'I happen to have an extra tent with me; you can have that. The boys sleep in rather primitive shelters which they make for themselves.' His next words were directed at Tangan, to whom he spoke for a few minutes, while Roanna, glad to be on firm ground for a change, took stock of her surroundings.

 'It's beautiful,' she breathed, but this time so softly that no one heard.

 Agwai was seeing to the second boat while Tangan was already beginning to get some of the things off the first one. Carl helped and when Roanna asked if there was anything she could do she was told she could help Tangan with the meal.

 This was cooked on a butane stove — or rather, warmed up, as the meat was from a tin and so were the vegetables. Tinned pudding followed, and then, in the case of Roanna and Carl, coffee was taken, but the two Natives drank
tuak
, a Dyak wine.

 The sun went down swiftly and for a few minutes its rays illuminated the fantastic cloud formations gathered above the watershed.

 'Malcolm was telling me that nowhere in the world are to be found such cloud formations as you see in Sarawak.' Roanna spoke timidly, but urged by the desire to talk just a little before retiring to her small tent which the two Natives had put up for her.

 'That's true.' Carl glanced skywards. 'Most people can make out such things as palaces and ballet scenes and all kinds of animals.' A humourless smile touched the hard outline of his mouth. 'I must be lacking in imagination, for to me what I see there are clouds — nothing more.'

 Roanna was shaking her head.

 'I see wonderful things,' she admitted diffidently. 'I see a palace, and a lovely fairy setting — like a stage setting at Christmas. I can also see a lion sleeping.'

 A faintly cynical laugh before he said curiously,

 'What makes you so sure it's a lion?'

 'I can see its mane, and its body is the right shape.'

 'You've strained your imagination to create that lion,' he asserted firmly. 'Where is it?'