Pact without desire

by Jane Arbor

  PACT' WITHOUT DESIRE

  son Crusoe might have stared at Man Friday, as if she were not quite real, or a being from another planet. After the first dismayed flutter of her heart at the sight of him, she schooled herself to meet his gaze without flinching. And on a chill flash of intuition questioned silently, Was this a chance meeting? Or did Rede expect them to be here?

  Rede was saying easily, 'Ah, Iden —you and Sara know each other, don't you? Isabel, meet Sara, my wife. Sara darling—Isabel Iden, an old friend before she married. You'll be seeing quite a bit of each other, I daresay. Socially speaking, we move in rather a small orbit, and we tend to clan.' He added to Cliff, 'We're staying for Sara to see the dancing. Will you join us for coffee, or haven't you had dinner yet?'

  Cliff said, 'No, we're just on our way to our table.' To Sara he said with stiff hesitancy, 'This is a— tremendous surprise,' while his wife sent him a look of perplexed annoyance before managing a thin smile for Sara.

  She said with false gaiety, suppose I've got to accept that Cliff would have known heaps of girls before he met me—too bad for him, isn't it, if you're part of his dark past catching up with him here ! ' Then she accused Rede, 'You and Cliff have been keeping secrets from me. He'd told me he'd heard you'd married while you were over in England, but not that he knew who your fiancee was.' Her full lips formed a moue. 'I'm hurt—with both of you. But especially with you, Rede. Considering the

  good friends we've been, and that you've been back here more than a week now, you could have confided in me. Yes, I'm hurt, I really am.'

  'Don't be,' he advised. 'And not with Cliff, who's known no more than I allowed the grapevine to publish—that I'd come back married. To whom? Well, I confess I wanted Sara to burst on our restricted society like a meteor, and I'm sure Cliff, for one, would agree that as the perfect English beauty, she does impress ! Mm, Iden? I've won myself a prize?'

  At Cliff's embarrassed murmur of, 'I've always known Sara has all that it takes,' Sara blushed inwardly—for Cliff, for Isabel, for herself, and not least for Rede's sadism. He's enjoying this, she thought fiercely. He's playing cat-and-mouse with us all, and she was never more thankful than when Isabel, with another smile devoid of warmth for Rede and for herself, urged Cliff on their way.

  Sara laid aside her napkin and picked up her bag. 'Do you mind if we leave now?' she asked Rede.

  'Leave?' he echoed. 'I brought you out for the evening, and you haven't had it yet.'

  'I've had enough.' She turned on him 'You knew,' she accused.

  'Knew?'

  'That Cliff and his wife would be dining here tonight, and you intended we should meet!'

  'I gave you the choice to dine at home.'

  'But if I'd wanted to, you would have dissuaded me. You meant to come here.'

  Rede shrugged. 'Why deny it? In the office this morning Iden mentioned that, as it's Isabel's birthday, he was bringing her here to dinner, and it seemed too good an opportunity to allow you to miss.'

  'Of meeting him face to face, on my very first day, with his wife looking on—an opportunity? Rede, how cruel can you get?' Sara appealed.

  He disclaimed, 'Nothing further from my thoughts. Cruel to whom, may I ask?'

  'To Cliff, to Isabel, to—to me.'

  'By offering you the earliest possible chance to achieve the one ambition with which you married me—the first man to ask you and to put you in the way of the triumph you'd promised yourself— cruel?' he taunted.

  'More than—because you were enjoying the spectacle. You could have told Cliff before this that we'd married, but you chose to shock him in front of Isabel, and you impaled me like a moth you'd caught—claiming you think I'm beautiful which I'm not, and inviting Cliff to admire my—my points, as if you were both judges at a Miss World beauty contest. Why did you do it? Why?' she pleaded.

  'Mainly because, in the matter of nose-thumbing at your ex-fiancé and your rival, you didn't appear to be doing much for yourself. 'You may have thought you were "showing" lden the door and flaunting your capture of a husband at Isabel, but no one would have guessed it. You didn't utter a word, and after all I've done to bring about your

  avowed dearest wish, you disappoint me, wife, you do indeed! I judged you better capable of sustain- ing a thirst for vengeance than that, d'you know?'

  The malice she read into the bantering words enraged Sara. 'If by "all you've done" you include your having asked me to marry you, then all I can say is that I wish you never had ' she declared, and saw Rede's expression change—frighteningly—as his fingers clamped round her wrist beneath the cover of the table.

  'Say that again—and mean it,' he muttered in a tone of threat. 'Say it again!'

  She couldn't. With his eyes holding hers in unspoken but dreaded ultimatum, she couldn't bring herself to it. 'You heard. I've said it once,' she replied, weakly giving in to the unknown.

  'And about as recklessly, let's hope, as you've made empty, self-martyred declarations before,' he retorted and, as she made to rise, used leverage upon her wrist to press her back into her chair. 'Where are you going?' he demanded.

  'Home. Back to the—your house.'

  He shook his head very slowly. 'Oh no. When we leave, we go together—and not yet. Watching the classical dances of the East is a favourite relaxation with me, and you must learn to enjoy them too.' He released her wrist. A waiter sprang forward to turn their chairs to face the curtained dais at the end of the room. Rede took out his cigar-case. 'May I?' he asked, opening it. Sara nodded her dumb permission for him to smoke.

  She was prepared merely to endure the rest of the evening, but she was soon fascinated by the colour and magic of the scene on the stage. Most of the dances told a story in mime--of the unrequited love of a hideous monkey for a lovely girl; of gallants to the rescue of maidens menaced by dragons; of heroes warring for the favours of gods; of Cinderella themes and of rivals in love.

  The decor was subdued—in deliberate contrast to the colour and flamboyance of the costumes, to the extravagance of headdresses, the metallic sheen of armour and brandished swords, and the incredible beauty of the women dancers, all graceful, speaking movement from literally their supple fingertips to the sway and undulations of their slim bodies. Without a word being spoken, each tale was told to its conclusion in scenes of pure theatre.

  Sara watched entranced, drawn into another world while the spectacle lasted, and when it was over and Rede took her arm to guide her out, she was still so much in legendland that the memory of their acrimony at dinner returned with a shock. Rede called a taxi for their journey back and allowed her to sit as far from him as the cab would allow.

  'You enjoyed that?' he asked.

  'It was out of this world,' she said on a sigh of pleasure. 'The colour, the acting! Are they all professionals, the dancers?'

  'Possibly only one or two we saw tonight are full professionals, but the dance is so much a part of

  the culture out here that the children are trained to it from babyhood, and it's so lofty an ambition with them that the girls in particular will take on almost any job by day in order to be taken for training in the dance schools at night, with the occasional professional engagement as prize.'

  'They were all very beautiful,' said Sara.

  'You noticed that?'

  'Yes—' She checked, remembering his oblique hint of his reason for having sponsored Cliff's marriage and, embarrassed by it still, she hoped he wouldn't refer to it again.

  He didn't. He sat across from her in silence, and by the light of the street lamps which flashed intermittently into the darkness of the cab, she glanced at him covertly—the stranger she had married, whose direction of her dominated her will, to whose assertion of his right to make love to her her body's need had utterly surrendered in passion tonight, yet who, an hour or two later, had deliberately pilloried her and been ruthless with her rebellion.

  Supposing she had defied him and had repeated her wild regret at having married him? What would his r
eaction have been? She didn't know and shuddered to guess—and not only because she feared his contempt, but because his withdrawal from her would matter to her; matter too much.

  She couldn't, could not go through the motions of marriage at his side, without there being some rapport between them—something that would give the lie to the cold calculation of his proposal and

  of her bemused acceptance of him. On some plane or other they had to meet. But where?

  At the house Buppa had left a tray of drinks in the hall, but Sara refused anything, saying she would like to go straight to her room. Rede said, To take a nightcap before I go up,' and bade her goodnight with a light kiss upon her cheek, leaving a desert of unspoken things between them.

  She prepared for bed slowly, listening and hoping. If he came to her, she would try to express some of her thoughts in the cab—that, having married, they had to make it work, that she would do her best; that even if they did not love, they could tolerate and learn—mentally she rehearsed her conciliatory approach to him, imagined his response.

  But he did not come.

  The maid Malee brought Sara's continental breakfast to her room the next morning at nearer ten o'clock than nine, far later than Sara wanted to rise, but hadn't asked Rede when he would expect to see her. Tuan hadn't wanted Mem disturbed earlier, Malee said, but he would come to see her before he left for the office, if that suited Mem's plans.

  Sara wondered what plans of her own he thought she could already have in this house, this city, this country, all new to her. More likely, she thought, that Malee's tact had edited Rede's message, and that such plans as there might be would be his, for her to carry out.

  And so it proved. When he came, he bent across the bed to kiss her with as little feeling as he had kissed her goodnight. Then he said, 'I shan't be around all day, but I'm asking a friend to call and take you out and put you in the picture as far as she can. Her name is Belmont, Ina Belmont. She's a widow, and has been a Singapore fixture for years. She goes everywhere and knows everyone—a walking gossip-column, in fact. But as you won't be able to avoid knowing her sooner or later, you may as well begin at once. She'll be taking you out to lunch, then around the city wherever she thinks best.'

  'Oh,' said Sara to this programme. 'That will be kind of her, but does it have to be today?'

  'Why not today?'

  'Well, oughtn't I to get to know your staff; learn about the running of the house and all that?'

  Rede's gesture was impatient. 'It's run very satisfactorily ever since I've owned it, and I daresay it will survive for as long as you need to look about you further afield. In any case, when I married you, I didn't see you in the role of a hausfrau--all domestic chores and penny-pinching. What makes you think I did?'

  Sara said unhappily, 'I don't know how you saw me. You never told me.'

  'No? Well, primarily as a wife.' He paused. 'As I thought I made you understand when we met again last evening. If not, I'll furnish as many more lessons as you like—a pleasure, I assure you !'

  'Rede, don't, please! ' she protested in agony. 'Don't sneer at me, at—at our relationship. We both took it on, and I didn't deny you—I didn't cheat. You didn't have to force me, and I didn't think you ever meant to, and I was grateful. Please believe that! '

  'Grateful? For what?' he questioned.

  'To you—for being gentle with me and for pretending enough to save my face that you weren't taking me merely as a duty you felt you owed me as—your wife in name.'

  He laughed at that, and she looked at him, hurt. But the laugh had softened his expression, and from where he had walked over to the window, he came back to stand by the bed. He said indulgently, 'Evidently I'm further ahead of you than I thought. For don't you know that a man can rarely "pretend" to make passionate love to a woman for the sake of saving her pride or whatever? He either can or he can't. It's as basic a fact of nature as that.'

  'But he can make love without loving,' Sara said forlornly.

  Rede shrugged and turned away. 'True. But that's another thing again, and when you married me for your own purposes, I don't remember that you made loving and being loved a condition of the deal?'

  She stared at his back. 'Of course not! I hadn't the right—'

  'Correction. It never entered your head to ask it. Any more than it entered mine that in accept-

  ing me, you could possibly imagine I had plans for a life of celibacy for both of us. In my view marriage means what it says—which I've already demonstrated, and intend to.'

  As if that ended the argument, he moved towards the door, but Sara couldn't let him go without making the effort she had planned overnight. She appealed, 'Rede, I'm sorry I exploded last night. Because if you really thought I couldn't wait to confront Cliff with my marriage to you, I suppose you were justified in doing what you did.'

  He turned to face her briefly before he left. 'Making excuses for me? Don't bother,' he advised. 'If it had the desired result, I congratulate you an on inspired revenge, and as a spectacle alone, it was worth my trouble.'

  'A—a spectacle?' But her outraged echo spoke to empty space.

  In spite of his advice, when Sara went downstairs she went to the kitchen quarters to make Buppa's better acquaintance and to ask about marketing and menus and the domestic routine of the house. Both Buppa and Chakan seemed gratified by her interest, but she sensed Buppa's reluctance to hand over any reins. Buppa said, 'Mem doesn't need to bother her head,' too often for Sara's encouragement to play mistress of the house, and she saw that her acceptance in that role would call for some tact on her part. But how was she going to fill her time, if she hadn't Rede's backing for her running of his home?

  Mrs Belmont rang up to say she would be calling at about noon, and Sara was putting in time in the garden, waiting for her, when Malee came to say she was wanted again on the telephone.

  'Mr Forrest?' Sara enquired.

  'No, mem. Mr Iden his name, he says.'

  Cliff? For her? Ringing here? Sara heard her voice rough with dismay as she answered, 'Sara, Sara Forrest here. Yes?'

  Cliff said urgently, 'Sara? You are alone? I've got to see you. Where and when can you meet me today?'

  'I can't,' she said flatly.

  'Why not? You must. I can't come to the house!'

  'Obviously. But a Mrs Belmont is coming to take me out to lunch and to show me the city. I'm expecting her any minute now.'

  'Ina Belmont? That busybody! But you still must make time to see me.'

  ' Why?'

  'Because—damn it, you must know why, Sara. After last night—I've got to know how and why you've arrived here, married to Rede Forrest. For can't you imagine what it did to Isabel, finding we knew each other? She gave me hell later, and she's still thirsting for blood if I don't explain—why I was shocked, which I was, and who you are, and what we were to each other.'

  Sara said coldly. 'Well, I'm afraid that's your problem. I've enough of my own.'

  'What do you mean by that?'

  'Nothing. Anyway, I can't meet you. That's final.'

  'You must. Please, Sara. I've got to have something reassuring to tell Isabel. You know the Raffles Hotel?'

  'No, why should I? I only flew in yesterday.'

  'I meant you must have heard of it. It's a landmark, and any taxi-driver can bring you to it. I shall be there at three, and I shall expect you.'

  'Don't,' said Sara, 'I shan't be there,' and rang off as Malee showed in an elderly woman with greying blonde hair, prominent blue eyes and a skin weathered to a map of wrinkles. She came to Sara, announced, 'I'm Ina Belmont. Call me Ina, everyone does,' kissed Sara on both cheeks, then held her off at arm's length. 'So you are Sara, Rede's bride, and a peach. He is a fox, keeping you under wraps until now, never bringing you out here while you must have been engaged. But better late than never. You'll be a wow with the men, if Rede will let them near you. Anyway, what would you like me to show you? Fond of flowers? Antiquities? Objets d'art?' Without waiting for Sara's c
hoice, she decided on a visit to the botanical gardens to see the orchids and the lotus flowers, and then to the Jade House, a mansion housing a private collection of priceless jade and porcelain.

  She was a lively, talkative companion, relating her life story of Army service in India under the Raj, of losing her colonel husband twenty years earlier and of her settling for good in Singapore- the East, the only place for a woman when her blood is turn-

  ing thin, my dear.' She whisked Sara at speed along sun dappled avenues, past fabulous flower-displays where Sara would like to have lingered, and 'did' the jade collection with the surefire expertise of a tourist guide. She said Rede had suggested they should lunch at the Singapura Hilton, adding ingenuously, 'It'll go on Rede's account, dear, so don't be mean with yourself if you want to choose the most expensive thing on the menu.'

  Sara found her amusing, if slightly exhausting. Clearly her interest was mainly in people and their affairs. She name-dropped shamelessly and treated Sara to potted biographies of as many of Rede's friends as she forecast Sara would be meeting. After lunch they went window-shopping in the city's luxury stores and then for a drive along leafy Queen Elizabeth Walk with its magnificent view over the harbour.

  'I shall take you to tea at the Raffles Hotel,' Ina announced, and at Sara's involuntary start, asked, 'Not the Raffles? Why not?'

  'Sorry—I didn't mean No.' Sara had taken a swift glance at her watch to see that the hour was long past three, so there was no danger that Cliff would still be there. 'I'd like that,' she added. 'It's quite famous, isn't it?'

  'Straight out of Kipling and Somerset Maugham, dear. Like Shepheard's in Cairo and Reid's in Madeira. Out of its generation now with all these multi-storey jobs crowding it. But it's the only place where you can get cucumber sandwiches and Earl

  Grey tea, a la Ritz—too utterly nostalgic, I assure you,' Ina enthused.

  She left Sara to enter the foyer while she parked the car. Straight out of the dazzling sunlight into the dim cool interior, Sara had difficulty in focusing her eyes, and as she stood waiting to do so, a hand gripped hers frenetically and the figure between her and the reception desk proved to be Cliff's.