by Anne Weale
As it happened Ah Kim was still up, and with her assistance Vivien was soon washed and dressed in clean cotton pajamas. Wrapping herself in a thin kimono she lay down on the bed and asked Ah Kim to call Tom.
“I’ve told her to heat some milk,” he said as he came in. “You may not like the stuff, but it will do you good.”
“I suppose if I refused to drink it, you would force it down my throat,” she said with the glimmer of a smile.
With the lamplight shining on her loosened hair and the makeup washed away she looked very young and curiously defenseless.
His mouth twitched. “I think I have bullied you enough for one day,” he said dryly, sitting down on the side of the bed and examining her ankle with the lean brown fingers that could be so strong and yet so gentle.
She winced as he touched the place where she had been kicked.
“Hmm, no serious damage, though it’s more by luck than judgment,” he said, rolling a fresh bandage over her instep. “Is that too tight?”
She shook her head. The lock of dark hair had fallen over his forehead, and she had an absurd impulse to reach out and brush it back.
“It was nice of you to help the dance hostess,” she said abruptly.
He shrugged. “I daresay the fellow didn’t mean any harm. He’s a planter, which excuses a good deal. Any man is liable to make a fool of himself after he’s been cooped up on an isolated rubber estate for weeks at a stretch. He’s probably quite a decent chap when he’s sober.”
She remembered the man’s greedy, bloodshot eyes, his fleshy lips and rough, hairy hands.
“He looked like a brute,” she said distastefully.
Tom pinned the end of the bandage in place.
“There’s a strain of brutality in all of us,” he said quietly. “Most of the time it’s under control, but it’s always there.” Ah Kim tapped at the door and came in with a beaker of warm milk on a tray. Vivien drank it quickly, making a wry face. “Good girl,” said Tom. “Now I’ll leave you in peace.”
“About the dressing on my leg, will you call or shall I come to the surgery?” she asked.
“I’ll come here. Probably after lunch. Good night.”
He held out his hand, and she put hers into it.
“Sleep tight, little one,” he said softly.
When he had gone Vivien said good-night to Ah Kim and switched off the lamp. She tossed the kimono onto the end of the bed and slid her legs beneath the sheet. As she plumped the pillow, she thought that Tom Stransom was the most confusing man she had ever met. An hour ago she had called him insufferable and now ... now what? She was still trying to analyze her contrary emotions when she fell asleep.
Ten days later Mr. Adams came to Mauping.
“I don’t need to ask how you’re liking Malaya,” he said, as they met at the airport. “If I may say so, my dear, you look a different girl.”
“I feel it,” Vivien agreed, smiling. “In fact I’ve never enjoyed myself so much before.”
It was not until after lunch that the solicitor mentioned the purpose of his visit. For the first time since his arrival he saw a shadow cloud Vivien’s eyes.
“The truth is I haven’t really thought about the future,” she admitted. “I’ve been enjoying myself so much that I’ve kept putting it off.”
“I gather you’re not impatient to get back home to England?”
“Impatient!” she exclaimed. “If only there was some way of keeping up this house, I’d spend the rest of my life here.”
“Ah, so you have made up your mind in one direction at least,” Mr. Adams said.
“But what one would like to do and what one can do are two very different things,” she said ruefully.
“That is most often the case, I agree, but not invariably. Anyway, there’s no need to make a decision just yet. I arranged to visit you fairly soon because I thought it possible that you might dislike it here.”
“Surely no one could do that,” she said, looking around the courtyard with an expression that told the solicitor how swiftly the Chinese mansion had captured her heart.
“When you said you’d like to settle here, I take it you meant that the country, as well as this particular house, appealed to you,” he observed.
“Yes, I did. The house is perfect, and I’m living like a duchess, but even if it were an ordinary wooden bungalow with a dusty compound I’d still want to stay. There’s something about the country that puts a kind of spell over me. It’s difficult to explain. Somehow life in England seems so dreadfully drab by comparison. Is that very disloyal, do you think?”
Mr. Adams shook his head. “I don’t think so, my dear. There are some of us who are born to travel and find a new place for ourselves. I’ve spent nearly forty years in Singapore and I daresay I shall stay there till the end of my days. I’m proud to be a Scotsman, and I often think of the hills and lochs that I knew as a boy, but if I were to return to them now, my heart would be here.”
“Yes, I know what you mean,” she said. “I’ve only been in Malaya a little while, but I feel more ... more alive somehow. And there’s so much to do that I could never have done in England. The people in the settlement, for instance; they need someone to help and look after them. Oh, I forgot to tell you, I’ve asked Dr. Stransom and Miss Buxton to dinner tonight.” She told him about Miss Buxton, and how she was teaching the children from the home to swim.
“I thought of starting a sort of nursery class for the children in the settlement,” she went on. “But I suppose it would be foolish as I won’t be here for long.”
“Well, perhaps it would be best to wait a while,” he advised.
“Mr. Adams, do you think that it would be possible for me to get a job in Singapore or Kuala Lumpur so that I could stay out here?” she asked.
“If you sold the house you wouldn’t need to earn your living, and I’ve no doubt you’ll getting married before too long.”
“I can’t very well count on that, can I?” she asked, laughing. “Besides, I would have to have some sort of work to do. Nobody leads a life of complete leisure nowadays. And I wouldn’t want to sell the house to just anyone.”
“Your godfather’s collection of jade is worth a very large sum of money,” he pointed out. “That alone would bring a price that would enable you to stay in this house for a considerable length of time. In the past few years a number of connoisseurs have offered most generous amounts for individual pieces. There would be no difficulty in finding a buyer.”
“Yes, I’ve already thought about that,” said Vivien. “But I think it should go to a museum if it goes anywhere. I don’t like the idea of making money out of something that took my godfather years to build up.”
They continued their discussion until teatime, after which Mr. Adams retired to his room and Vivien supervised the arrangements for her little dinner party. She had had a long consultation with the cook earlier in the day, and they had agreed on a menu beginning with bird’s nest soup, a great Chinese delicacy, and ending with pineapple mousse. The piece de resistance was to be a roast suckling pig. Ah Kim had arranged a sunburst of bronze tiger lilies for the table centerpiece, and the youngest houseboy was busily stringing colored-paper lanterns across the courtyard.
Having seen that everything was ready, Vivien went to her room to change. She had decided to wear a dress of primrose organza with a halter neckline and a very full skirt supported by several petticoats of stiff tarlatan. The waist was bound by a sash of jade green gauze with loose ends that floated down to the hem of her dress. She had seen the design in an old copy of a French fashion magazine in the restaurant of Mauping’s one European-style store, and the Chinese tailor had copied it perfectly for a fraction of what the original model must have cost.
Tom and Miss Buxton arrived together at half-past seven, and Vivien was waiting on the veranda to greet them.
“There, did you ever see anything so charming, Tom?” Miss Buxton said, her own vast figure being encased in a mauve silk d
ress with a jacket of black lace. “You look like a butterfly, m’dear.”
Vivien thanked her, but it was the flicker of admiration in Tom’s eyes that brought the soft color to her cheeks. As she led the way to the drawing room where Chen was presiding over the cocktail trolley, her pulses quickened with excitement. Since their first meeting on the plane at London airport, Tom had been by turns aloof and friendly, angry and gentle, teasing and sarcastic. Tonight, for the first time, he had looked at her as a man looks at a lovely and desirable woman. For the space of a few seconds his gaze had swept over the filmy dress and rested on her rose-tinted mouth, and then, like a drawn blind, the mask of polite detachment had returned. But in those seconds Vivien’s heart plunged like a wild thing, a strange fire coursed through her veins, and she was filled with a new and unfamiliar longing that was half delight and half fear.
Almost at once Miss Buxton and Mr. Adams discovered that they had mutual friends in Singapore, and as the Scotsman had already met Tom on several occasions, there was none of the preliminary warming up that is inevitable among guests who are unknown to each other.
The dinner was a great success. The suckling pig, decorated with rosettes of spiced dough, was carried in with due ceremony on a silver dish, and when Vivien had served her guests and herself it was returned to the kitchen to be shared by the servants. At the end of the course Chen handed around linen cloths wrung out in hot water for the visitors to wipe their hands. When the meal was over Vivien called for the chef and complimented him on his skill. Then, rather shyly, she stood up and said, “I should like to drink a toast to my godfather. I never really knew him, but since I’ve been here I’ve learned what a fine man he was, and I’m very proud to have inherited his home. To John Cunningham!”
“That was a very nice thought, m’dear,” Miss Buxton said as the two women returned to the drawing room, leaving the men to enjoy a glass of fine old brandy. “It’s a great pity that John didn’t ask you here before. He liked young people, and you’d have been good for him.”
“I wish he had,” Vivien said. “But I suppose there was a good reason why he didn’t.”
Presently the men returned and for a while conversation flowed easily over a variety of topics. Then, when Miss Buxton and Mr. Adams had become absorbed in a discussion on the laws pertaining to child adoption, Tom said to Vivien, “Shall we take a stroll around the garden? I don’t think we shall be missed for ten minutes.”
They slipped quietly out of the glass doors and through the lantern-lighted courtyard to the lawns.
“Oh, look! How pretty!” Vivien exclaimed.
The shrubbery was alive with fireflies, glowing pinpoints of greenish light that flickered among the leaves like winged jewels.
“I wonder where they go to in the daytime?” she said softly, glancing up at him.
The moonlight accentuated the strongly chiseled lines of his profile, marking the faint cleft in the square chin, and casting shadows beneath the high cheekbones.
“In the daytime they are just ugly little insects tucked away in crevices,” he said.
“It’s hard to believe. They look so lovely by moonlight, like fairy creatures,” she said.
“Moonlight has that effect on many things. It’s like water. You look in a pool and see a stone that appears to be only a few inches below the surface, but when you put your hand in you find it’s out of reach. Moonlight distorts reality in the same way.”
She smiled. “Are you a naturally down-to-earth person or is it the doctor in you that insists on seeing everything in its true colors, no illusions allowed?”
“Both as a man and a doctor I prefer facts to fancies,” he answered. “If a thing is of real value it doesn’t need to be shown in a favorable light.”
They were walking along a narrow path that bordered the lawn. A few feet beyond the path was the thick hedge that divided the gardens from the surrounding undergrowth. Suddenly Tom’s hands closed like a vise around Vivien’s wrist. “Stand perfectly still,” he ordered.
Startled into unquestioning obedience, she froze. Then, five seconds too late (had she been alone) she saw the dark shape on the path. It looked like a twist of rope, but with a stab of fear she knew that it was a snake. For less than a minute—but it seemed like five—it lay there, its stillness making it doubly evil. Then, with a questing movement of its head, it slithered forward and sideways, disappearing into the grass within a yard of her shoes.
“All clear,” Tom said, dropping her wrist. “I wonder what brought him over here. They usually stay under cover in the lallang.”
“Was it ... poisonous?”
“Probably not, but there was no point in taking a chance. What’s the matter?”
“Nothing ... I just ... She was unable to control a shudder of revulsion.
Suddenly his arms were around her, and her face was pressed against his shoulder.
“There’s nothing to be afraid of now. Snakes don’t strike unless they’re taken by surprise. That fellow is probably half a mile away by now, scared out of his wits,” he said reassuringly.
“I’m sorry. I’ve never seen one before.” Her voice was muffled.
He tipped up her chin. “All right now?”
“Yes, quite.” She drew away, ashamed of her foolishness. “I’m not usually nervous. I don’t mind mice at all,” she added awkwardly.
He threw back his head and laughed.
“In that case I’ll forgive you for being afraid of snakes,” he told her teasingly. “Come, I expect you’ll feel safer in the house.”
He took her hand in his and led her across the lawn.
“You must think me an awful fool,” she said in a small voice as they reached the courtyard.
He paused, looking down at her with a solemn face. “Well, I must admit that some women would have shown more initiative,” he agreed. “After all, I am your guest. The decent thing would have been to have thrust me aside and killed the beast with your shoe.”
“Oh! You’re teasing again,” she said, half angry, half laughing.
He grinned and gave her hand a little squeeze.
“You’re a very teasable child,” he said. “By the way, the army is throwing a gala dance next week. I wondered if you would care to go?”
“Oh, Tom, I should have liked to, but Julian Barclay has already invited me.”
He let go of her hand and took out his cigarette case.
“I wish you had asked me earlier,” she said impulsively.
“I’m sure you’ll enjoy yourself with Barclay,” he said, offering the case to her.
She took a cigarette and inclined her head to his lighter. “You don’t like him, do you?”
He shrugged. “I have very little to do with him.”
“That’s evading the question.”
He drew on his cigarette and stared up into the branches of the frangipani tree.
“I don’t think your godfather would have cared much for him,” he said in a flat tone.
“Why not? Julian’s quite harmless. He’s been very kind to me.”
“Barclay’s type make a career of being kind to women.”
“That’s a nasty thing to say. I know he’s a flirt, but there’s nothing wrong in that.”
“Providing you don’t take it seriously.”
“Of course I don’t. We’re just good friends.”
“As long as he realizes that,” Tom said meaningly.
“Why shouldn’t he?”
“Because his relationships with women in the past have not been confined to friendship.”
“I didn’t realize you paid attention to gossip,” she said coldly.
“I don’t. I just recognize the type.”
“I think you’re being extremely unjust,” she said crossly.
“You asked what I thought of him. I tried to avoid telling you.”
“I think I’m capable choosing my own friends,” she said with dignity.
“My dear child, nobody suggested that you
were not. It is nothing to do with me who your friends are.”
“I wish you wouldn’t keep calling me a child,” she exclaimed vexedly. “I’m twenty-two.”
As soon as she said it she felt a pang of contrition, for when, a moment ago, he had called her “a very teasable child” she had liked it. In fact, the amused indulgence in his tone had given her an odd little uprush of pleasure.
“I’m sorry,” he said stiffly. “It won’t happen again. Shall we join the others?”
He turned toward the drawing room, and she was obliged to follow, foolish tears pricking her eyelids. She blinked them away and compressed her lips to stop their trembling. Why must there always be this antagonism between them? Just when they seemed to be establishing a friendship, something would go wrong. Now the evening that had begun so happily was spoiled, and in the face of his withdrawal she had not the courage to try to recapture their earlier harmony.
At the door he stood aside to let her pass, and she saw that his face was blank with indifference.
Long after midnight she lay awake in the great mother-of-pearl bed, too troubled to sleep. Again and again she told herself that it was absurd to let a trivial wrangle with Tom upset her. Yet the fact remained that it had done so.
“Why? What does it matter? Why should I care what he thinks of me?” she whispered aloud.
The minutes ticked away, and as the hands of the clock reached one she tossed the sheet aside and climbed out of bed. Wandering restlessly about the shadowy room, she wondered why it was that her relationships with Tom and Julian were so different. With Julian she was relaxed and at ease. With Tom she experienced a whole gamut of unpredictable emotions, ranging from a kind of childish bliss when he was gentle with her to a burning animosity when he was sarcastic and overbearing. Tonight he had almost reduced her to tears.
I hate him, she thought passionately. I hate his confidence and his cold politeness and the way he raises his eyebrows when he doesn’t approve of something. I hate everything about him. I wish I’d never met him!
And it was then, telling herself that she hated him, that she knew she loved him. Unwanted and unwelcomed, love had crept under her guard and twined its clinging tendrils around her heart. The discovery was a bitter one, for she knew that loving a man like Tom Stransom could never bring happiness.