Dangerous Waters

by Rosalind Brett

  “With ice, please.”

  “Mind if we call you Pete?”

  “Not at all,” he said lazily. “That goes for you, too, Teresa. You don’t have to preserve the conventions now.”

  Terry shot him a tiny dagger from her blue eyes and said nothing. Annette laughed again, delightedly, and tilted her head to look up at the lean, unfamiliar face. “I can just imagine you two in a canoe miles from nowhere. But you must have been rather glad that Terry was all stiff and Victorian, even if it was a little boring.”

  “Your sister is not a bore,” he said tolerantly. “She’s merely young.”

  The Winchesters came out then, and Vida added her glance of surprise to her husband’s. The introductions were pleasant, Vida took her drink and leaned back in a chair. Mr. Winchester put the usual enquiries and poured himself a whisky and soda. By now Pete was one of the seated circle, and somehow Terry had been unable to slide into a chair at some distance from him. The arm of her lounger was no more than ten inches from the arm of his, and a slanting glance showed his hand negligently resting on the rattan curve. She knew the strength of that brown hand, its gentleness, too. Intensely she wished he had declined Vic’s invitation; he was under no obligation—he could have refused.

  But by the mockery in him she judged that he had thought it might be amusing to meet the people she had told him about, particularly Annette. He looked across at the red-gold head rather often, and Terry thought resignedly that it was probably some time since he had met a titian blonde. Casually, no doubt, he was reflecting that it was rather a pity she happened to be engaged; it cramped a man’s style.

  Mr. Winchester was saying, “We’ve all seen rubber growing, of course, but we haven’t met the men who grow it. I’ve heard that you have quite a township out there.”

  Pete nodded. “All the big rubber companies provide practically everything for workers and staff. We have lines of huts for the tappers and their families, a hospital, a school, a processing factory with quarters for the workers, and separate houses for the manager and assistant manager. In addition there’s a block of apartments for the senior Malay staff. It’s a big set-up!”

  “Sounds interesting. Someone told me that you now have an airstrip as well.”

  “That’s so. It was completed while I was away, and the first plane will touch down the day after tomorrow.” Pete paused. “We’ve some V.I.P.s coming. You might like to drive out and see the ceremony”

  “I certainly would.”

  “Then come, all of you The visitors won’t stay long, but you might like to have lunch with me.”

  Vida said, “I’d love that! Wouldn’t you, Bill?”

  Her husband nodded.

  “I’m afraid I won’t be able to get away,” said Vic, “but I’m sure Annette would like to be there. And Terry.”

  “It’s settled, then,” said Pete. “The big moment is at eleven-thirty, and you’ll see the road to the airstrip as you turn on to our property. How long will it be before our bridge into Penghu is ready for use?”

  “Eight months,” thought Mr. Winchester. “We’re completing it first, though the steel work on one of the others will also be well on the way by then. We shall have to leave the Mawa Bridge till last. It’s the trickiest, and we’ll have met a good many problems with the others, which might help.”

  “Good bridges are going to open up the whole district. We prefer to transport our stuff to the coast or to Kuala Lumpur by lorry when we can, and others will do the same. I know some men who are anxious to set up an extraction plant for palm oil and we shall probably attract a few other industries, and get better roads. A lot can be done without spoiling the district.”

  “Spoiling it?” echoed Annette. “Are you serious?”

  Pete turned his dark eyes her way, interestedly. “You don’t care for Penghu?”

  “Well, I suppose it’s all right, for what it is. But what is there here to spoil, for heaven’s sake? Surely anything that pushes back the jungle is good?”

  “For the country’s prosperity, yes.” He paused. “You haven’t your sister’s capacity for enjoying palm trees and the feel of mud between the toes?”

  “Perhaps I’ve grown out of it.”

  “I don’t think you ever had it, but there’s no doubt at all that you have other capacities which she hasn’t. If you bother to think it out, we all even up with each other.”

  “Are you telling us that your ability to push along a jungle river in a canoe is balanced by a sizeable blind spot in some other direction? Would you admit that?”

  He smiled tantalising. “Of course. When you know me better you’ll realize just where the blind spot is.”

  “So you’re willing to know us better.” Annette’s half-closed eyes appraised him in the soft lamplight. “That’s a concession, from one of you plantation types, isn’t it?”

  “Bestowing one’s company on charming women is never a concession, from any man.” Pete’s half-bow included Vida Winchester. He pushed away his glass. “Well, meeting you has been very pleasant.”

  “But you’ll stay for dinner, won’t you?” asked Vida. “We’d love it, if you would.”

  “It’s kind of you, but I have a date with another plantation chap.”

  “Then will you come tomorrow?”

  “Sorry, but I’m booked up with this man every evening for about a fortnight. He wants to get the place and his books into first-class shape and sell out.” He flickered a sideways glance at Terry. “He’s a cool-blooded Swede, and he’s decided to go back home. The plantation belongs equally to him and his sister, and they naturally want to get the best price they can.”

  Terry heard herself asking offhandedly, “Is she going home as well—the sister?”

  “As a matter of fact, she’s staying,” he answered calmly. And then, with the sort of smile that might have been slightly malicious, if one could have seen it, “She’s not coldblooded, like her brother.”

  Pete declined another drink and stood up. Bill and Vic got to their feet, but Annette lay back in her chair, the half curious, half enigmatic smile on her lips as she watched Pete. The men were making those final remarks that one does make as a guest is leaving. Pete said goodbye to Mrs. Winchester and Annette, appeared to forget Terry till he had gone down a couple of the steps.

  He stopped and turned his face her way. “In the car I’ve got a couple of those ivory nuts you were interested in. Like to see them?”

  She stared, and slowly got up. Ivory nuts? “Oh, have you?” she said with reserve. “All right, I don’t mind.” He waited till she joined him, lifted a farewell hand to the others and walked at her side to the car he had left under the giant meranti. He opened the back door and gestured. “There they are. They really exist.”

  Large brown things, that she couldn’t see very clearly. Terry nodded. “Are you going to give me one to play with?”

  “You may take proof back to the house if it’s necessary. I wanted a word with you, that’s all.”

  “Yes?”

  “Yes,” he stated flatly. “It won’t take long. I saw that lawyer friend of mine. He’s semi-retired, but does corporation law for the companies in the district. He’s a pedantic old man and said he wouldn’t like to destroy that certificate till he’s been assured it’s worthless by someone younger and more up to date on the laws of the country. I pointed out that the paper and print look several years old, and he said he agrees that we can be certain the thing is invalid. But he still has enough of the English solicitor in him to be unconvinced by anything he can’t see verified in a law book.”

  “I hoped the certificate was already burned. I know it’s just a scrap of paper, but while it exists there’s always the risk of someone else seeing it. I ... I’d hate my sister and the others to hear about it.”

  “So would I,” he said, a dry add in his tones. “Believe it or not, I’d sooner keep my own friends ignorant of it, too. The certificate is safe enough with Bretherton, and he’s promised that th
e minute he gets word from his associate in Kuala Lumpur he’ll send for me and we’ll get rid of it. It can’t be too soon for me.”

  “You mustn’t think I’m ... ungrateful...”

  “I don’t want gratitude,” he said roughly. “Just don’t look at me again as you did when you suddenly saw me up there in the veranda. I came this evening because it would have been impolite to refuse an invitation that was given as a sign of thanks. Their wish to see me was natural, and I did the natural thing in coming along for half an hour.”

  “You didn’t have to invite us to your house!”

  “They got what they angled for,” he said abruptly. “They seem a pleasant bunch, and they’re all likely to go on living here for a few years. Why shouldn’t we be friendly?”

  Her head lowered. “Can’t you wait till I’ve gone?”

  “Very well,” crisply. “After they’ve been out to the plantation I’ll drop them for a while. You’d better go back.”

  “Pete, I know I must seem to be the most ungrateful creature in the world,” she began miserably.

  But he cut in, “I suppose that now your sister has postponed her marriage you’re regretting your hurry, and blaming me for it!”

  “Oh, of course not. I can never thank you enough for all you did for me.” She looked at him in distress. “Here in Penghu you ... you’re not the same, and I daresay I’ve changed, too. I ... I just counted on your not coming into our circle, that’s all.”

  “What difference can it make?” he asked in hard tones. “It would be far more peculiar if I refused to have anything to do with your people. You’re behaving like a child.”

  “I’m not. I ...” she lowered her head, “I did enjoy our trip—most of it, anyway. But it’s ended, and I think you’ll be the first to admit that you and I are not types who’d normally come together. Everything that ... that happened to us was due to circumstances that don’t exist any longer.”

  She stopped, and because he made no reply she raised her head. In the darkness he looked angry in a detached fashion, and she had the fatal conviction that if she let him go without another word she would never really see him again. A pain probed her heart.

  Shakily, she began, “Oh, Pete ...”

  But he interrupted. “Don’t upset yourself, Teresa. These things iron out—so long as you don’t fight to keep them rugged. Run along indoors.”

  She turned from him, feeling hopeless. But before she had taken a pace, a modern but very dirty little runabout swerved round the square and stopped at the foot of the Winchesters’ steps. A man got out of the vehicle, peered across at the two who were standing close to Pete’s car, and approached with a hurrying stride. He was fair, his skin reddish in the faintly glowing darkness.

  He stopped and put out his arms, flung them about Terry and pressed his cheek to her hair.

  Her eyes wide and frightened, she stared across his shoulder at Pete. But Pete wasn’t looking. He was reversing his car, driving away with a look of cold indifference in his face.

  Terry pushed herself free, looked up, and gave a small nervous laugh. “Hallo, Roger,” she said.

  Breathing rather hard, he pulled at the open collar of his shirt. “I took rather much for granted, didn’t I? The past few days have been so frustrating that I was beginning to think I never would meet up with you. You can’t imagine what a relief it was to see you right here, outside the house!”

  By now, Annette and Vic had come down the steps and were welcoming Roger Payn. Vic laughed and slapped his shoulder, told him to come up and have a drink; he was just in time for dinner.

  Terry used the respite to look at the young man who had stayed in her mind for many months in England. He was almost too good-looking; his hair, fair and wavy, drooped engagingly over one temple, and his eyes in the light were a clear amber. His khaki drill suit was travel-stained, but somehow he looked more like someone who had been out for a day’s fishing than a man who had flown backwards and forwards in a frantic search for a girl.

  Over a drink, while he gazed at Terry, he told them all about it. “I left the bus at Khota Mipis and took a plane south. I was stuck there in some benighted spot for a whole day, but managed to leave by train next morning for Shalak. There I couldn’t find out a thing, except that Terry had booked one day to go on a steamer. They told me she could easily have come back on the same steamer and gone out to the coast. So I got another train and might have been stuck at the coast for ever, but a pilot flying a private plane said he would take me north, if I didn’t mind stopping at a few places on the way. I got him to follow the river, but it was all forest—nowhere to land. Eventually we did land and I made some more enquiries. Well-meaning people advised me to come back here before setting out on further travels.” He was still staring at Terry and shaking his head as he added, “I’ve been well punished for not meeting you at the ship. Till Pryce heard about his wife’s accident we all thought you two would stay together all the way to Penghu, and as I’d just had word from my father that the branch here would have to be wound up if it didn’t show an improved turnover, I thought I’d better stick to the job!”

  “I’m so very sorry,” she said, a little jerkily. “I was perfectly safe.”

  Annette, lounging back in her chair with another drink, lifted an eyebrow at him. “Wait till you hear everything, old boy. We’ve just been entertaining the he-man type who brought our Terry all the way from Vinan by canoe!”

  “Oh, please,” begged Terry. “Roger would probably like to clean up a bit before dinner.”

  “Now that I’m here,” he said, “and you’re here, I can wait for all the rest. Terry ... you can’t guess how I feel now.”

  “You can tell her all about it later on,” Annette promised him with a wink. “Without an audience.”

  He laughed and stood up, a rather slightly built young man whose movements were almost graceful. Terry avoided his lingering glance, but watched him as he went through the doorway into the corridor. It was odd, but the Roger of the letters, the Roger who had taken her out a few times and inarticulately bidden her goodbye many months ago, was missing. Or perhaps her own power of assessment had altered. Whatever it was, this young man, for all his good looks and family associations with the magic Far East, had become merely another male. It was just as if, she thought hollowly, her whole sense of values had undergone a drastic and irrevocable change.

  The dinner turned into a celebration. An extra course had been slipped in and Mr. Winchester opened some wines. The canoe trip was gone through and roused the correct degree of horror in Roger, and then he went into more detail about his own chase. At about eleven the Winchesters went to bed, and Annette strolled outside to see Vic on his way.

  Terry, alone in the lounge with Roger, fingered an ornament and straightened a heap of magazines. She felt him coming close, and tightened up. But he was only offering a cigarette.

  She took one and let him light it, blew smoke before she looked at him. “You must be worn out,” she said.

  “Beat,” he confessed, “but very happy. Great luck to be here in the same house with you; I hope you think so too.”

  Light-hearted does it, she told herself. “No opinion at the moment, but I’ll let you know, when I have one. Why is your business suddenly slack?”

  “It’s not sudden. Before I came we had a Chinese manager who wasn’t too honest. My father sent me to take over because I’m one of the Payn family and therefore have prestige. But he expected a miracle, and I’m no magician.”

  “Still, with the bridges and the projected new roads, your trade should increase, shouldn’t it?”

  “That’s what the old man says. But I don’t want to be logical tonight. Let’s go out and star-gaze.”

  She shook her head hurriedly. “Annette is out there. Roger, I feel we ought to understand each other from the beginning. We ... we’re quite strangers, you know.”

  “Of course we’re not. Even back in England I told you that you had eyes like forget-me
-nots.” He grinned. “They’re darker out here—do you know that? And there’s a little red in your hair except when you’re close to Annette. She’s red-gold, but you’re the brown of very ripe wheat. As a matter of fact, I rather go for you, Miss Fremont.”

  “You’re letting your relief at getting back lead you into saying things you shouldn’t. Till Annette is married I shan’t be able to think about anything else.”

  “That’s all right,” he said firmly. “So long as we’re normally happy together, I’m not impatient. Where shall we go tomorrow?”

  “It’s a working day, isn’t it?”

  “Our first day together? Lord, no! I’ll take you into the hills.”

  She shook her head. “You’ve ignored the business for several days, through me. I’m not taking you away from it tomorrow.”

  He groaned. “Very well. For you, I’ll work. By the way, I’m trying to get Vic to have me as his best man. You’re the bridesmaid—would you like that?”

  She smiled perfunctorily. “It’s up to Vic. I really must go to bed now. There’ll be plenty of time for talk.”

  “But not nearly enough.” He sighed. “Terry, I haven’t been thinking about you the way you’ve thought of me. Your letters were guarded, but I knew you were modest and not keen on showing your feelings till you were sure of yourself. Trouble is, I’ve been sure of myself ever since I first met you.”

  “I’ve told you I can’t think about those things yet.”

  He came close to her, smiled at her in a way which had once caught at her heart. “Well, shall we make a special date? A day or two after Annette’s wedding we’ll go out for a picnic and explore each other’s minds. Promise?”

  “I won’t promise, but I’ll try. And, please, Roger, try to be ... just nice, till then.”

  “Well, don’t sit about looking too sweet, that’s all. I haven’t even kissed another girl since we met!” He paused and added teasingly, “Have you kissed another man?”

  She lifted her chin, gave him a careful smiling glance. “You’ve no right to know, Mr. Payn. I’m going to bed now. Good night.”