Free They Met in Zanzibar by Kathryn Blair

his old self, mocking and tolerant. “How do you know I don’t? You’re not inside me, watching an exuberant girl look despondent and pretty. You’re a queer one, Peg - candid and uninhibited about many things yet prickly as a barb-apple when your own or your father’s emotions are involved.”
    “What’s a barb-apple?”
    “It’s a local wild fruit that tastes good if you’ll take the risk of picking and peeling it. Its skin is shiny and covered with hair-like thorns.”
    “And I’m like that?”
    He grinned. “Only figuratively. Your skin would be smooth to the touch; kissing-skin, don’t they call it?”
    Peg was conscious of a sudden thin tension between them, but she spoke offhandedly. “Do they? You seem to have a well-developed flair for conversation with women; you must have had lots of practice.”
    He lifted his shoulders and threw out a hand. “I’m not a boy, honey. Do you want me to promise I won’t practise on you?”
    “What would you do instead?”
    His grey glance was tantalising. “What is there to do with a blue-eyed blonde if you don’t talk?” He let a silence take possession for a moment, then said, “Let’s make it a date for tomorrow. I’ll pick you up at ten in the morning and we’ll take a picnic to Nabanui. Remember our picnic on Zanzibar?”
    “You’re not so snappish now as you were then.”
    “I hadn’t quite accepted you.”
    “And now you have?”
    “I’ve a feeling,” he said with deliberation, “that it will never be wise to take you for granted. Part of the time you’re like a highly-strung colt, but there are moments when a sort of brooding passion looks out of those remarkable eyes. You’re going to be quite a woman, Peg.”
    “Thanks. I think you’d better go now, don’t you?”
    “That’s hardly the way to treat a guest, but you could be right.” He moved towards the door with disconcerting promptness. “Don’t forget - tomorrow at ten. Goodnight.”
    He went out of the house with maddening indifference, and Peg heard him begin to whistle just below his breath as he got into his car. It was quite some minutes later, when she had put out the lamp and was lighting the one in her bedroom, that she discovered her teeth were clamped and her hands clumsy.
    Next morning Jim Maldon was quieter than usual and he ate only one egg and two pieces of toast. He made no reference to Steve’s visit of the previous evening, but he did mention that he would be out to lunch; he intended going over to see old Gracey and would probably stay there for a few hours. Peg’s heart ached; she knew how her father would spend those hours with the anachronistic Mr. Gracey.
    She told Nosoap that he needn’t prepare any lunch and that he could go over to the workers’ quarters if he wished, till tea-time. Nosoap was pleased.
    “They are cutting new grasses to make walls,” he said happily. “My wife make wall to her father’s house for us to live. My wife’s father is the tuan’s headman.”
    “You told me it was your cousin’s father,” Peg pointed out.
    “My wife’s,” he reiterated, showing yellow teeth in a grin. “My wife is my cousin.”
    “Oh, is she? You actually married your cousin?”
    “No,” he said with a charming bow. “I marry my wife. She is the cousin of my half-brother. Always my cousin, also, till we married.”
    “I see. How can she build a wall to her father’s house?”
    “Inside,” he said simply, “to make one more room.”
    Peg visualised the small, presumably two-roomed huts. “How many rooms are there in your father-in-law’s house?”
    Nosoap spread his hands. “With the new one there will be six. One builds a wall and there is the room!” With pride, he tacked on, “In our room we will have only one grass wall because we are at the end of the house. My wife’s brother is not so happy - he has two grass walls.”
    “And how have you been living so far?” Peg queried.
    “All of us together,” he said blandly.