Pact without desire

by Jane Arbor

  'It wouldn't do any good.' What a craven she had been saved from marrying! thought Sara.

  'Even though Isabel is threatening to leave me, if I don't get a square deal from Rede soon? She's as serious as that!'

  'Moral blackmail won't get you anywhere,' Sara told him coldly. 'Anyway, what about the George Merlin opening? If Isabel is dissatisfied with your chances at Temasik, why don't you take that up?'

  'Because Merlin has only put out feelers so far; he hasn't made me a firm offer, and with Isabel's expensive tastes I can't afford to cut my losses at Temasik and risk being out of a job.' Head lowered, fists thrust into jacket pockets, Cliff paced to a near wall and back again. 'If only Isabel wouldn't nag so! ' he muttered, and then intensely, 'Oh, Sara! as he halted before her and his hands shot out to take her by the shoulders, drawing her into his arms.

  'You're hurting me ! ' The pain for her burning skin was her first reaction, her second, her mental revulsion at his touch, did not register with him in time to check his continuing murmur of, 'The utter fool I was ever to let you go, Sara. To choose Isabel

  instead of keeping you—damned, damned fool ! ' before his lips took hers in a lingering kiss.

  'Don't! ' She wrenched her mouth free and struggled. But he was too strong for her and it was so, held fast as he kissed her straining throat, that to her horror she saw that Rede had come in and was watching them.

  From just inside the door he uttered two words-- to Cliff. 'Get—out,' he said, his pause between the words and their emphasis a threat which Cliff could not fail to understand. He released Sara, stood awkwardly for a moment or two, and then, offering neither defence to Rede nor apology to her, he slunk past Rede and went out.

  He left Sara panting with anger. How dared he crawl away like a whipped puppy at Rede's say-so? She couldn't wait to explain to Rede, but Cliff's leaving her to do it alone was as despicable as his hysterical forcing of her. It was all of a piece with his ruse of getting to see her alone and it put him beneath her contempt. Rede must see that ...

  But Rede, crossing the room to stand over her, made it dear that, whatever he thought of Cliff, he had already judged her on what he had seen.

  'Sit down,' he ordered her. She sat down. 'I thought you would have been told to stay in bed today?'

  'I was, but the doctor said I could get up this evening if I cared to.'

  'And you "cared to" as soon as you saw yourself with the rare chance to entertain your late lover

  while I was away?'

  His glance appraised her negligee, the low-cut nightgown beneath it. 'Charming deshabille,' his sarcasm approved. 'Though if you hadn't meant to dress with any more formality than that, I wonder you didn't invite him to your bedroom instead.'

  Aghast, 'I didn't invite him! Nor plan to entertain him,' she denied, making every word count, she hoped. 'He came uninvited and tricked Malee into letting him in, saying he had to see me—and alone.'

  'Knowing, as of course you both did, that I expected to be away for the night. Too harsh luck for you, wasn't it, that Mai decided she wanted to stay with her people for a few days, leaving me free to come back? And even if you didn't invite him, he seems to have changed his arm to some purpose, to judge by the tableau I happened upon—'

  That infuriated her. 'You think I let him make love to me? That I encouraged him? And—well, look at me as I am tonight,' she demanded, underlining her meaning by throwing open her robe, offering her neck and shoulders for his inspection— 'In this state, do you suppose I'd expose myself to or welcome any man's lovemaking—any man's at all?'

  Rede allowed coolly, 'Feminine vanity being what it is, you have a point. But if opportunities are hard to come by and the need is urgent, I'd

  have thought a mere rash of insect bites wouldn't prove much of a deterrent.'

  `Then you don't believe me?' she flared.

  'Difficult to credit that you weren't flattered by the man's revived interest in you. Not his first attempt at contact, was it? And there have been others more successful since, perhaps?'

  Sara's head went up proudly. 'None for the purpose of his making love to me. Nor was there- tonight,' she said.

  `So you'd have me believe the passionate clinch was only a by-product of some other tense situation between you? What was it?'

  But Sara had remembered the word she had given to Cliff on Sentosa that his confidences were safe with her, and even to justify herself with Rede, she would not go back on it. Besides, Rede had no right to doubt her when she spoke the truth. She had been angry and contemptuous of Cliff, but Rede's refusal to believe her humiliated her beyond measure. If he wanted to know what errand had brought Cliff to her, let him ask Cliff about it or go without knowing. He was not going to hear it from her !

  `I can't tell you that,' she said. 'It's Cliff's own business, not mine.'

  'I see. Business for tete-a-tete discussion at night, and to be sealed with a tender embrace for another man's wife, for whom he had little enough use a while back?' Rede shrugged. 'Well, you're entitled to your vow of silence, of course, though it doesn't

  do much for your case, would you say?'

  'For my case?' she echoed indignantly.

  'Of innocent non-complicity in anything but tea and sympathy for friend Iden's problems—'

  Proof that he hadn't believed a word she had said in her defence! Utterly outraged, Sara demanded, 'And when—when, as your wife, do I have to make a "case" for myself when I'm telling the truth? Or' —bitterly, as a thought struck her—'would you prefer that I should be lying, and that I want to take Cliff back as my lover, because that would free you of the obligations you undertook when you married me?'

  'And do you suppose that, wanting to be free of them, I'd have to make your infidelity my excuse, if or when?' he parried.

  'You could probably convince yourself it was your reason, not your excuse! '

  'Neither of which I'm pleading at the moment— being reasonably content with my bargain so far.'

  'Thank you.' She waited, praying the impossible —that he would enlarge on that; tell her he accepted that she hadn't lied; say something which would bridge the gulf between them. But when he was silent, she had to continue to worry at an argument which dignity should have left where it was.

  'And if that's meant to exonerate me, I suppose you mean to take the rest of the "case" out on Cliff?' she queried.

  'As I see fit,' Rede nodded.

  'And how will that be?'

  It' ll ensure that if he gate crashed tonight and

  misunderstood the warmth of your welcome, it won't happen again. Also he'll understand that any private business between you and him must be my affair too--and mine first.'

  'And you think he'll agree to that?'

  'Why not? Placed as he is in relation to my wife and to me and to the firm, he can hardly fail to agree, I imagine,' Rede replied almost blandly, as if his meaning hadn't a menace all its own. Then, crossing to the main light-switch and with a finger on it, he continued, 'And now it's time you were back where you'll be exposed to no man's unwell come attentions--your room and your bed,' and he held out his other hand to her.

  She went to him and took it, almost drowning in the flood of contradictory emotion he aroused in her—resentment, love, challenge, passion—and longing for the giving of his hand to mean more than it did, his fingers the merest light touch upon hers in a clasp which was only guiding her up the stairs.

  A few days later she received a stiffly-worded letter of apology from Cliff for his 'uncalled-for intrusion' upon her. She had no doubt that its sending had been a forfeit exacted by Rede, showing that his grilling of Cliff had convinced him of the truth of her version. But she destroyed the letter and did not mention it to Rede. Nor did he to her. Evidently he had dealt with the incident to his satisfaction

  and did not feel he owed her an apology of his own for having doubted her word. Or had the sheaf of dark red roses with no message which he had sent her the next day been meant as his mea cul
pa? She had thanked him for them but had scorned to ask. Either scorned, or dreaded a reply which would not tell her anything she desperately wanted to hear. He allowed flowers to speak for him too often, and without love as their language, their beauty was no more than a mockery.

  It was a week before Rede went back to the mainland to fetch Mai, and during that time Sara made a conscious effort to rid her thoughts of the churning poison which Isabel had stirred up.

  Of course it was only natural for Rede to have spent time with Mai after the shock of the girl's hearing about her foster-mother's illness. And if he hadn't had good reason, would he have been indiscreet enough to stay so -long at that time of night, with Sara herself perhaps awaiting his return, even though she had gone up to bed? Another thought—would he dare to judge her so harshly if he were guilty of infidelity himself? And though she wasn't too sure of that last reasoning—men had double standards in such matters, she knew—it all helped her to welcome Mai's return warmly and sincerely.

  It was ironic that it should be kindly Ina Belmont, not Isabel, who was to add fresh fuel to the embers of her jealousy of Mai.

  Since Mai's first arrival, Ina had been interested

  in her and had invited her out to meet other young people at picnics and at her house. And it was after one such date for Mai that Ina commented worriedly to Sara,

  'That child is unhappy. She's lost a lot of spirit since she went back to Kota Tongii. Have you any idea as to the cause?'

  Sara hadn't noticed a change in Mai and said so. At which Ina conjectured, 'Could be it's nothing to do with her trip to the mainland, but simply a worsening case of hopeless hero-worship. Or hadn't you noticed either that she's suffering from that?'

  'Hero-worship?' Sara questioned. 'Of whom?'

  'Of Rede, of course,' Ina returned bluntly. 'For her, the sun rises and sets at his approval of her. It's a common teenage complaint, very painful at the time. Didn't you ever suffer from it? I had it badly for my music tutor at school, and did it hurt when he didn't even notice the sheep's eyes I made at him until I got over it, as one grows out of growing pains! '

  Sara managed a faint smile to cover her dismay. 'Supposing he had noticed you and—well—encouraged you, would you have flattered yourself he was in love with you? Or might he even have been? In love with you, I mean?'

  Ina shook a vigorous head. 'No chance of that, and I don't know that I ever wanted more than to shine and to succeed for him. As Mai does for Rede, and is dispirited for the same cause—that she recognises that in his eyes you'll always outshine her in

  everything. No, he loves you, and she knows it. Accepts it too, and isn't even jealous of you in the 'ordinary sense; only competing for the bit of him that she needs to admire and praise her work.'

  'Where I'm in no competition with her at all,' mused Sara, taking heart if Ina's theory were true.

  'Exactly,' Ina agreed. 'Knowing Rede for the perfectionist he is, she wants to be perfect too. All very natural at her age, but in a very little while she ought to be taking up with a boy-friend. We must find one for her. I'll look into it,' Ina con duded.

  All of which Sara might have allowed to be reassuring if it hadn't proved to her that other people were aware of the closeness between Mai and Rede. Which meant that it showed, exposing her to the malice of Isabel and the idle speculations, if no worse, of their friends. But even then she might have discounted it and taken comfort in Ina's perceptive judgment if chance had not shattered the faith in Rede's loyalty which she was struggling to gain and keep.

  Mai was to join them for dinner one evening when Sara had been to an afternoon concert with Ina. After it she had gone back to Ina's house for tea; some friends of Ina's had dropped in for drinks, and Sara reached home only shortly before Buppa would expect to serve the meal.

  Sara hurried to the kitchen. 'Hold things back a little, please,' she told Buppa. 'Is Tuan Forrest in yet?'

  Buppa turned down heat and adjusted the position of the pots and pans on her cooker. 'Tuan home, yes,' she said. `Missee Mai come too. They in the garden, but they come in now, I think. Mem tell when she is ready for me to serve—yes?'

  'Very shortly,' Sara promised. 'I must freshen up a bit first.' But before she went upstairs she went to the west-facing room where she and Rede usually met for a drink before dinner.

  The sun, a fiery ball almost at horizon level, was casting long deep shadows across the room, causing Sara to halt at the door and adjust her vision to the semi-darkness within.

  As she expected, Rede and Mai were there, two figures in silhouette, not sitting apart from each other with glasses in their hands, but standing close; no distance between their bodies, Mai's tiny head and face lowered and hidden by Rede's embracing arms, Mai's lime juice and Rede's Daiquiri discarded on a low table beside them.

  Sara, ready to greet Mai, caught the breath which would have sounded the words. She stood transfixed; they hadn't heard her at the door; they weren't facing her way. Now Rede was smoothing the ebony sheen of Mai's hair; she nestled her hidden face still closer to his chest, and Sara, her heart pounding in hammer strokes against her ribs, turned and fled.

  So it was true! Isabel knew it. Ina Belmont too, and how many others? Isabel had minced no words about it; Ina must have tried to warn her with

  understatements about its being only a one-sided hero-worship on Mai's part, while knowing all the while of Rede's involvement in it. So how many others of their friends were sniggering behind their hands at Rede's adroit coup in putting Mai under his own roof without having to stoop to calling her his 'cook'—when 'protegee' was so much more acceptable a term!

  Sara went about her brief toilet with mechanical haste, her thoughts almost a physical weight of pain inside her. She had to face the other two across her own dining-table, be pleasant with Mai, make conversation with Rede; take food and drink which, provided by him, ought to choke her, and watch ... watch every glance or gesture they exchanged.

  On her way downstairs again it struck her that if Rede loved her, at sight of her and Cliff together, he could have suffered as she was doing now. But he did not love her. He had never claimed he did. Only that he had bought rights in her and was satisfied with his deal.

  She went straight to the dining-room, asking Buppa to serve the first course after she had called Rede and Mai to the table. But neither of them appeared until after the food was brought, and then it was Rede who arrived alone, having taken an inordinately long time to cross the hall.

  Sara's lifted brows asked the question which he answered as he sat down. 'Mai did turn up, but I've taken her home again,' he said. 'As you weren't in, we had a drink together, but she must have been

  o

  overworking, catching up after her time out on the mainland. She was weepy and nervy and at last said she couldn't face eating with us tonight, and asked you to excuse her, if you would.' He helped himself to the chicken rice handed by Buppa, and began to eat.

  'Is she ill?' Sara asked too sharply.

  'I don't think so.'

  (Nor do I, was Sara's caustic but unspoken thought.) Aloud she said, 'Because if she is, you shouldn't have let her go back to the cottage to be alone. I'd better go to her.'

  There was a pause. 'I shouldn't, if I were you,' Rede said.

  'Why not? Are you afraid I might question her as to why she was in your arms in the garden-room just now?'

  Rede looked up from his plate. 'You saw us?' he asked.

  'You didn't hear me. I came to the door.'

  'And misread what you saw?'

  Sara held his gaze with her own, hoping she could force him to remember the scene with Cliff. 'An unexpected onlooker sometimes does, sometimes not,' she said.

  'And on this occasion did,' he said.

  'Then you weren't—? Mai wasn't ?'

  '—Was merely needing a shoulder to cry on,' he cut into her pause. 'Yours, anyone's, would have done as well in the welter of self-pity and self-blame she's indulging at the moment.'

&n
bsp; Could Sara believe him? Had he really been

  caught by ill chance, as she had been with Cliff, or was he making a dever case for himself and Mai? And if Mai had only needed sympathy, what had shamed her into refusing to spend the evening with them?

  Sara asked Rede that and he said, 'In fact, I sent her home. If she had stayed, you would only have condoled with her, and it's bracing, not sympathy, she needs. "Needs" as opposed to "wants", that is.'

  'You were condoling with her,' Sara reminded him.

  'In the stress of the moment, affording her a few pats on the head and the usual "There, theres" in the face of trouble.' How plausible was that? Or how true? Sara wondered.) He went on, 'But that did nothing at all for her mood, and being, in her right mind, a sensible girl, she knows she has to work through this lot for herself.'

  (If he were guilty, could he sound so prosaic, so hard?) 'Through which lot?' Sara questioned, her doubts of him on the wane.

  'This conviction she's nursing, that she's no good as a dancer; that she'll never make any sort of grade, least of all the top one. She's even talking of giving up the School and going home—which would be madness.'

  That could be true, if there were a liaison between them, and Mai felt guilty about it, thought Sara, her doubts veering again. 'And would you consent to that?' she asked Rede.

  'Of course not,' he snapped. 'She's a natural, and it would be criminal to encourage her to abandon her career at this stage. I've attended some of her rehearsals at the School, and there's no doubt she has what it takes. No, she's staying here, as I've told her.'

  It was news to Sara that he had kept in such dose touch with Mai's progress. Neither of them had mentioned it ... In an effort to probe the truth even further, she asked, 'Have you ever thought that Mai could be lonely in the cottage? That she might be happier with the other trainees of her year in the Dance School's hostel?'

  As if he sensed that his answer was important, Rede took time to consider the question before he parried it with one of his own. 'Does that mean you wouldn't mind being rid of her?' he queried.

  Startled, Sara blushed. 'I? Why no,' she denied. 'Why should I want her to go? I'm—very fond of her. It's just that there must be some reason for her losing all that bubbling enthusiasm she came with, and it occurred to me that loneliness could be it. An idea, that's all,' she finished lamely.