Home is Goodbye Read Free

be alone for a few moments to get her bearings. The heavy axminster carpet and the hot, woollen-covered chairs in the sitting-room had been rather overpowering. Just who could have chosen that dreadful orangey brown she couldn’t imagine. If they had been hers she would have burnt them as they stood!
    She glanced up as there was a knock on her door and Felicity came in with a tea tray.
    ‘I hope you’ve got everything you want,’ she said awkwardly. ‘I’m afraid I didn’t have time to check before I left for the station, so you’ve probably been left to the mercy of the servants.’
    Sara assured her that she had everything she needed. The room was pleasantly cool after the heat outside, and it was at least clean and tidy. Felicity sat down beside her on the bed, and handed her a cup of tea.
    ‘I’m sorry we can’t have it in the other room, but Mother’s still sleeping. She sleeps in the morning and in the afternoon and then wakes up at night when it’s cooler. You mustn’t mind if you hear her wandering about the house, she won’t disturb you in here. ’
    Sara said nothing. She sipped at her tea and gloried in it as it slipped slowly down her parched throat. She had never been a great tea-drinker in England, but in Tanzania she saw that it might easily become her greatest weakness. The heat from the tea was more cooling than any cold drink could have been, and it made her feel welcome too. She smiled appreciatively at Felicity.
    ‘D o you always have tea at this hour?’ she asked.
    ‘Round about half past four usually. The houseboy goes off between two and four, and everyone sleeps. Never ring anyone up at that hour, it’s the most ghastly faux pas ! And that reminds me, if you want anything washed leave it on the floor. We used to have natty little baskets, but somehow or other we’ve given them up.’
    It was a long time since anyone but Sara had done any of her washing and she felt some qualms about turning it over to anyone else, but the thought of clean and beautifully ironed uniforms appearing every day overcame her scruples. She leaned back against her pillows and felt deliciously spoilt.
    ‘You must tell me what you want me to do in the house,’ she said carefully. ‘I don’t want to take over all your favourite jobs.’
    Felicity looked at her in some surprise.
    ‘The Africans do all that sort of thing,’ she said. ‘And anyway, even if they didn’t, you’d find a day’s nursing in this heat more than enough for you!’ She gave one of her slow, attractive smiles. ‘It was nice of you to offer, though. I expect you were terribly well brought up and think we’re quite frightfully slapdash!’
    Sara, who had had her mind’s eye on the sitting-room, coloured a little.
    ‘Of course not!’ she denied quickly, but Felicity only laughed at her.
    ‘I’ll take the cups out, ’ she said rather abruptly, and disappeared out of the door, slamming it shut with a push from her foot.
    Sara smiled to herself. She was going to like Felicity, she thought. It had been kind of the girl to bring her some tea.
    Mrs. Wayne announced that she was ready to meet Sara at six o’clock.
    ‘Bring her in just as she is, dear,’ she told her daughter. ‘I want to see her before she gets herself ready for dinner. I know what you girls are! You can be quite plain during the day, and then on goes the war-paint and you look quite different! I want to see Sara au naturel — after all, that’s how he will be seeing her!’
    Felicity didn’t have to ask who ‘he’ was, she thought she could probably guess. She was accustomed to her mother’s endless scheming for her own ends, and, because she had a mild distaste for getting her own way through such means, preferred to keep aloof from her machinations as far as that was possible.
    Sara was surprised to find that her aunt was a pretty woman. No longer overcome by pretended slumber, Mrs. Wayne had a subtle, girlish charm that she found herself responding to