Terry took it and thanked her, sipped and nodded that it was good. The woman smiled shyly and withdrew. Terry finished the drink, poured water and drank that too; but plain, it tasted of disinfectant and reminded her of Pete Sternham. He seemed careless and indolent, not easily perturbed about the rest of the world, but there had been that moment after he had spoken to the little official at the end of the jetty when he had looked taut as steel and rather an unpleasant man to cross—the type, perhaps, to dip disinfectant into every well in Vinan. Though their regulations—that rigid set of canons set up by a District Officer so many years ago—undoubtedly instructed that every source of water supply in and around the district be heavily loaded with antiseptic.
Terry sat down on the chair and at once stood up again. To pass the time she used some of the water to brush her teeth, but after that there was nothing to do. She stood in the doorway of the rest-house and looked about her. Palms grew in wild disorder to right and left; it was as if a rectangle had been cleared especially for the hut, and left open only on the village side. There was a wide path between lalang grasses and trees, a glimpse of a couple of houses set back on stilts among the branches, and that was all.
Terry walked a few yards up the path, turned back to find a Malay policeman only a pace behind her. Worried and exasperated, she went back into the hut and sat down, dropped her head into her hands. What could she do? Even if she got back to Shalak within a few days, which seemed unlikely, she would still have no means of direct communication with Annette. And the day after tomorrow Annette would become anxious and start making enquiries. She might hear that no trains were coming through from Vinan, but would it occur to her that Terry was safe but compelled to travel by a much longer route from Shalak? And how soon, for heaven’s sake, would it be possible to find a post office which would send a telegram?
After an age, the sun went down, crickets chirped and fireflies winged about in the sudden darkness. The Malay woman brought a bowl of rice and stewed meat that tasted strong. Separately, on a shiny green leaf, she gave Terry a small yellow tablet.
“Tuan,” she said, and touched her mouth.
Good old tuan thought Terry wearily. She could imagine him leaving behind him a tube of anti-malaria tablets with instructions that the white woman was to be given one of them every day, and watched till she swallowed it. He’d be on his way by now, of course. Well, good luck to him; she hoped he’d get stuck in a swamp and hole the canoe.
Then, sickeningly, it occurred to her that she had given him no note for Annette; she had not even told him where to find her. True, it might be easy to locate a newcomer among the white women of Penghu, and to give him his due, she thought she could trust him to do his best, but he was the kind to put things boldly, without preamble. And there was Annette, already keyed up for a marriage she was not too sure she wanted...
Terry had to leave the meat and rice. She walked round the small room, decided she must have air, and went outside again. There were faint points of light among the trees and she could hear talking and the inevitable rustling. The smell of woodsmoke mingled with that of cooking food, and from somewhere nearby came the dank, earthy perfume of jungle flowers. Her guard was squatting between two young palm trees with a rice bowl on his knee. He watched her with interest, but made no move to follow her as she squeezed past the palms to walk round the back of the hut. There, she was surprised to discover another small room—a cubicle which contained a galvanized bath full of tepid water. Flies floated, a bar of mottled soap sat in an old-fashioned metal soap-basket that hung lopsidedly over the edge of the bath, and a carefully folded strip of brown towelling lay on the floor.
Past thinking very clearly, Terry stripped, immersed herself, dried and immediately began to perspire; she got back into her blouse and skirt. She went inside the hut and lay down, slipped into the sort of coma in which the slight movements of others go unnoticed. She did realize that the Malay woman had come in and unobtrusively stretched on the floor near the wall, but that was all, till she awoke several hours later in complete darkness. From then until dawn, she was aware of every movement of the guard outside, every breath of the woman who slept so peacefully on the hard floor. And she was so sunk in despondency that she could have wept and wept. She had promised Annette, and had let her down. The whole journey had been useless, and it would have been much better if Annette had known from the beginning that she could not count on Terry. Annette was perhaps at this moment lying awake in her room at Penghu, and longing to be able to talk out all the things which had happened since her arrival; telling herself, no doubt, that it wouldn’t be long before she and Terry got together.
It was no use reminding herself that Annette was twenty-four and much more sophisticated than she herself would ever be. Sophistication is a dependable quality in ordinary circumstances; but Annette was out of her element, uncertain. During the last week before she married there would be no one but Terry whom Annette would want, no other woman, anyway. Over and over again Terry’s brain repeated the final paragraph of the letter from her sister. “Nothing seems in the least real—not even Vic...”
The Malay woman slipped out of the hut and the next moment, seemingly, dawn broke, and the village came to life. Terry swung down her legs and held her aching head. Was it any use demanding to see that massive headman who had looked as if he knew too much yesterday? Was there anything he could do, if she did? She was alone here now; as far as the outside world was concerned, this place wouldn’t exist till the next boat came up the river with a gang of Malay’s who would begin some time to repair the little railway. Would she get away on the boat? And if she did, would it be good or bad to be drifting back down the river to Shalak, the seedy little kuala she had left two—no, three days ago?
Annette, I’m so sorry, so terribly sorry. I can’t bear having to do this to you!
She forced herself to her feet and went round to the rustic bathroom. The bath had been emptied and fresh water stood in a large gourd on a stool, with a clean towel beside it. She washed, went back into the hut and combed her hair. She hadn’t the heart to get out a clean blouse; there was something so final about opening up one’s suitcase and finding somewhere for a few dresses to hang and get rid of their creases.
She heard a rustling outside, told herself that if the Malay woman brought rice she would scream the place down. But it wasn’t the Malay woman who came into the room. Terry lifted her head and stared, lips parted, felt her chin tremble and her jaw muscles tighten up, to steady it.
“Good morning,” said Pete Sternham. “How do you feel?”
Terry had not known she was strung up. She only knew now that the relief was so great that her limbs had gone useless.
“Hallo,” she almost croaked. “Wouldn’t they let you go, after all?”
“Yes, I could have gone. Had breakfast?”
“I don’t want any.” Her voice gathered strength and she made the understatement of the year. “I’m glad to see you. Why didn’t you let me know you were staying?”
“I did come along at about midnight, but you were asleep. A troubled sleep, by the sound of things, so I turned you over on your side.”
“You ... you what?”
He smiled negligently. “That’s what you do to children, isn’t it, when they dream? Anyway, it worked. Come out of this black hole. I want to talk to you.”
“Do you bring hope, or have you come to say goodbye?”
“That’s up to you. Let’s turn along this path away from the village. We’ll be followed, but it doesn’t matter. There won’t be any trouble.”
As they moved along under a fine tracery of ferns and a ceiling of thicker leaves, Terry felt her nerves quietening. That was what knowing a white man was near did to you, even if the white man did happen to be this cool character. “Are you definitely leaving this morning?” she asked.
He nodded. “Don’t walk too fast or you’ll be tired before the day’s begun. We’re not trying to escape, anyway.”
“Is it quite impossible for me—escape?”
A shrug. “Weigh it up for yourself. The river boundary of Vinan is about fifty miles long and this is where it begins. There are several villages in those fifty miles, and at every one of them the sudden stranger, white or brown, will be questioned. One could slip past them in the dark because their precautions won’t be so strict as those enforced here, but it would mean loitering between villages and taking a week or more to do just fifty miles. Even then you couldn’t be sure of getting away with it. If you were caught, incarceration would be a sight more uncomfortable than it is here. And the whole thing would depend on your being able to shake off this chap who’s right behind us, and a hundred others who are within call. Force wouldn’t get us anywhere at all.”
“Then ... then persuasion?” she queried hopefully.
He shook his head and let out a long breath. “I tried it last night, played chess with the old chief for four solid hours. I even got him to take off his jacket so that I could slide a finger into his pocket for the key to the desk; he’d hidden it.”
She smiled weakly. “Thanks for trying, anyway. Did you ... did you really stay because you hoped you could help me?”
“Don’t get any wrong ideas,” he said, a trifle crisply. “I merely happen to be the only white man around, and you’re a bit too young to be left about in the jungle. I didn’t like the idea of your travelling back alone on the steamer, but when I thought it over, leaving you here seemed worse. It’s not that you’d come to any harm, only that you’re so unfamiliar with it all that you’d drive yourself nuts just thinking about things. I talked myself hoarse with the headman, but it did no good. If I’d known what to expect here I could have said from the beginning that we were travelling together—cousins or something like that. I might have moved him. But I’ll admit it never occurred to me that an educated Malay could be so stubborn about the letter of the law. He was kind and courteous, promised that you would be looked after in every way and that he would give instructions for your care on the steamer back to Shalak. But that was all. You’re twenty and unmarried.”
She thought of something, said breathlessly, “Supposing I was going to Penghu to get married? I could pretend that, couldn’t I?”
He looked at her enigmatically. “You’d have told him yesterday, wouldn’t you? He wouldn’t believe it now that he knows it was your sister’s marriage that brought you.”
Her face was young and thin as she bent her head; faint hollows showed below her cheekbones. She spoke quietly and without hope.
“I had a horrible night. For a while I slept heavily, but after that I lay awake thinking about Annette. The last I heard from her was the week before I sailed, and she’d written that about ten days before. I don’t know what’s happening, or how she’s feeling, but I do know that she’s depending on my arriving at Penghu before her marriage. I’d do anything to get there soon ... anything.”
There was a brief silence. Then he said coolly, “There’s a way that we can do it, all fair and above board. There’d still be the sticky canoe journey, but nothing else to worry about. You’d get your passport and a permit. Want to hear about it?”
She looked up, startled. “Of course! I’ve told you I’ll do anything!”
He plunged his hands into his pockets, drew a breath and said, with a slight drawl, “The old chap is the headman of the whole territory. He’s magistrate, registrar and chief of police—in fact, seems to have absolute powers. He says he’s willing to marry us.”
“Good grief,” she whispered. “He must be mad!”
His faint grin mocked at her. “That’s exactly what I thought, but why shouldn’t we please him, to get you away from Vinan? I’m absolutely certain he can’t marry English people, but if he thinks he can, why not take advantage of it? He looked up some of those musty old papers he keeps, and told me the ceremony is a short civil ceremony, after which he has to sign a certificate, with us. He seemed to think that having stayed one night in Vinan was sufficient residential qualification.”
But I can’t believe it! Why should he consent to it? He knows we’re strangers to each other.”
“In spite of his education he has the fatalistic oriental outlook. A Malay sees a girl who would suit him, and so long as her parents are willing, he marries her. The girl’s permission is not sought, neither does she get to know the man before marriage. So that aspect hardly occurs to old Kim Mali.”
She laughed nervously. “Will he believe that you looked at me and decided I might make a good wife?”
Pete rubbed a meditative hand over his jaw. “He doesn’t know me, so he might. He merely said point blank that if I was so anxious to get you away from Vinan I could do it legally, by a simple form of marriage. I’m not sure that even he feels the marriage would be binding; he didn’t say and I naturally didn’t ask, and risk his retracting. I simply thought it over during the small hours and decided that if I’m to get back to my job and you’re to attend your sister’s wedding, this bogus knot had better be tied. The only other way is to try an escape, without your passport and permit, but the whole village—and probably the villages up-river—will be alerted if we do. Whether you like it or not through the strangeness of the circumstances you’ve become important here. I’m less so because I’m a man, but they’re watching me too. I doubt if anyone could sway them from the hard-and-fast course. Kun Mali is venerated here; he comes from a line of sultans.”
She nodded, and again bent her head. “But it’s not the sort of thing you can do lightly, is it? Not even in pretence. We’d both feel horrible frauds.”
“Is your sister worth it?”
He would have to put it like that, of course. Terry said, “Yes, she’s worth more ... much more.”
“Then shall we go ahead with it?”
Her throat had gone dry. “Well ... what about you. If it became known you might find things unpleasant.”
“It won’t become known. The marriage certificate, or whatever it may be, will get us through Vinan territory, and after that we’ll tear it in small pieces and sprinkle them on the river. If you won’t accept it for your own sake, you’ll have to do so for mine.”
“For yours?” she echoed blankly.
He gestured impatiently. “They’re expecting me back at the rubber estate in six days’ time. I can’t stay here any longer in case there are hitches on the way, and I haven t time to take you back to Shalak. I’m not going to leave you bucketing about in a strange country.”
“But why not? I’m not your responsibility.”
There was an expression almost of distaste on his angular face as he answered, “I’m not suggesting anything that any other man in my position wouldn’t suggest, if he were unmarried, but anxious to return to his job. If I set out without you I’d probably have you so much on my mind that I’d turn back and waste, a couple of days.’ He paused and added, “If you really want to attend your sister s wedding this is your only chance.”
“You’re sure it’s ... just a sham?”
“Good heavens, do you suppose I might consider accepting the old man’s offer if there were the least chance of it’s being the real thing?”
She shook her head. “No, you wouldn’t. I don’t seem to have much option, do I, but I do wish I had time to think about it.”
Very casually, but with brutal directness, he said, “If you’re afraid I might take advantage of a phoney marriage certificate, you needn’t be. I’ll have my hands full with getting us there—no time or energy for going all romantic with an English rose under a Malayan moon.”
She gave him a pale fleeting smile. “I wasn’t thinking about that. You’ve just been on holiday, and probably had a surfeit of romance.”
“Could be,” he said laconically. “You’d better leave the arrangements to me. I’ll come to the rest-house as soon as everything is settled.”
It was strange, but as they turned to retrace their steps she felt his withdrawal as if it were physic
al. He stalked at her side with his head up and his mind apparently on the organization of the trip. When he left Terry at the rest-house she went inside and stood still, with heat beating at her forehead and pins and needles in her limbs. Why, oh, why, wasn’t she suddenly exhilarated by the knowledge that, if all went well on the river, she would not disappoint Annette? Why did even the contemplation of this bogus marriage with Pete Sternham make her feel as if she were taking a nightmarish step with her eyes bound? After all, however lazy and arrogant he might appear, he was an Englishman and presumably chivalrous as well. She had to trust him. But trust a stranger who seemed to care so little about other people? Well, she would have gone with him without question yesterday if old Kim Mali would have allowed it—gone blithely and gratefully for the several days’ trip to Penghu, and tried to do her share of the paddling and food preparation. That was the way she had to regard it now. The ... the mock marriage was merely to placate the old headman. It meant nothing whatever to either partner in it.
Still, she thought hollowly, as she dropped her toilet articles’ into the floral bag, relations were going to be rather strained for the first fifty miles—until he destroyed the evidence of the expedient they had to use in order to escape from Vinan.
CHAPTER TWO
THE ceremony was brief and not real enough to be harrowing. Terry stood beside Pete in that dim little office with lizards running up and down the walls and flies buzzing about the reed blind. Kim Mali sat behind his desk, and two Malay policemen were witnesses. The old man read a few questions from a faded card.
“You are Peter Maxwell Sternham?”
“Yes.”
“You are Teresa Claire Fremont?”
“Yes.”
“You have a ring, Mr. Sternham?”
Trust Pete with the details. He produced a heavy little band which looked like a circular plait made from gold snakes.
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