Fenella Crabbe displayed firm golden flesh to the huge blue air and Crabbe had never before been so aware of her beauty. But the whole world here breathed easy concupiscence: the bare shoulders of the women, the naked children, the fish-smell, the sea whence life arose, the water that waited, but not passively, to be ravished, the great yellow empty bed of the beach. And so, ardently, he renewed his vows, aware too of his own warm nakedness under the monstrous aphrodisiac of a tropical sun.
“There is such a thing,” he said, “as being blind. I acknowledge my blindness with all humility. I shall never be blind again.”
“And so you do love me?”
“I do love you. And I want to make amends in any way I can. I want to expiate everything.”
“There’s a small thing you can do for me.”
“Anything.”
“I’m going into the water now. I’m going to swim. I want you to come in with me.”
Crabbe drew away from her. “You know I can’t do that.”
“But you said you’d do anything.”
“Anything reasonable, anything you need …”
“Surely love isn’t reasonable, not always? Anyway, this is reasonable, and it’s something very small. Come on, Victor, for me. Come and have a swim.”
Crabbe turned on her in passion. “Why are you asking me to do this? What’s the point of it?”
She sat up and said evenly, “I want to see if you really love me. If you do love me you’ll put the past out of your mind. I want you to break with the past. I want there to be only one woman in your life, and that woman to be me. Come on.” She rose with grace, long, slim, rounded in the smart meagre bathing-dress. “Come and have a swim.”
“I won’t. I can’t. You know I can’t.”
“All right, you needn’t swim. Just wade in. As far as your armpits. The water’s perfectly safe.”
Crabbe looked up at her bitterly. She had shrunk to a calendar beauty. The mood of desire and tenderness had gone. “I can’t,” he repeated. “You know why I can’t. If I could overcome that old fear I would. But I don’t know how to.”
“For years you said you’d never drive a car again. But you do drive a car now. You got over that fear. I want you to get over this.”
“I can’t.”
She smiled, and Crabbe distinctly saw pity in it. “All right. Never mind. I’m going in, anyway.”
She ran down the ribs of sand, sending the sand-crabs scurrying to their holes. The sea sent in its flowers of surf along the long coastline, with a tiny rattle of shingle. Fenella strode in, her arms keeping balance as though she walked a tight-rope. The sand shelved gently here. Only at waist-level did the sudden dips occur, and then an upward-sloping hill would lead to a sand-bar, to a new shore islanded in the sea. Fenella strode on, rose to the bar and stood for an instant as if standing on the waves, then entered the new sea-brink, and soon was far out, swimming strongly.
Dejected, Crabbe lay on his stomach, absently tracing capital letters in the sand. Suddenly, with a shock, he saw what name he had been writing. He swiftly passed his fingers over the weak inscription, obliterating it, but not obliterating her. Fenella knew. But she must believe that he was prepared to try, that perhaps in time the past would have no more power over him. After all, no man could give everything. But she wanted him all, wanted every sullen pocket of his memory turned inside out, wanted to fill him with herself, and with herself only. But the past was not part of him; he was part of it. What more could he do? She must accept the Minotaur. The Labyrinth had many rooms, enough for a life together—walls to be covered with shelves and pictures, corridors in which the Beast echoed only once in a score of years.
Fancying he heard Fenella’s voice taunting him from the sea he turned over lazily, the sun in his eyes, and saw her far out. He heard her voice again and looked more intently. He thought he saw arms flailing, a churning of the sea around her. He stood up. That voice was certainly calling for help. Heart pounding, he rushed to the sea’s edge, straining his eyes narrowly, hoping it was a mistake, a joke. Thinly above the sea-wind her voice called, her body churned the small patch of sea, her arms were wild. He remembered the warnings of treacherous currents, but surely that was only in the monsoon season. Or was it a sea-snake?
Sick with apprehension and hopelessness he walked into the sea. It rose thirstily, higher, lapping round his ankles, shins, knees, thighs, waist. Then, without warning, the shelf plunged a foot or so, and he found himself frantic, feeling the green foam-flowered water round his chest. He panicked, kicked, turned, sobbing, towards the shore. It was no good, it was just no good. He lay panting at the sea’s lips, not daring to look back, frantically trying not to hear the thin distant voice.
“All right, darling.” Fenella was beside him, comforting him with her wet body. “Perhaps that wasn’t fair, really. But I just had to know.”
“You’re all right?” Relief began to modulate to anger. All that for nothing … “You were only pretending?”
“Yes. It’s as safe as houses. Safer. Come on, now.”
He lay gasping on dry sand, she beside him.
“I just had to know,” she repeated, swabbing her face, arms, shoulders, with a towel. “When you thought the bandits had got us you were able to drive the car. You seem able to exorcise demons when you yourself are concerned. It’s the old instinct of self-preservation. But if my life only is involved …”
“That’s not fair. You know it’s not fair. Water’s elemental, it’s an enemy, it’s different …”
“It’s not different. You just couldn’t make the effort this time, that’s all. It wasn’t really important enough. It doesn’t matter. I’m not blaming you. But you see now that it won’t work. I’ve known for some time now what I had to do. This was just a rather spectacular way of showing you.”
“It wasn’t fair. I still say it wasn’t fair.”
“That doesn’t matter. I’m really sorry for you, Victor. I should have had the sense to see before. You’ve never really been unfaithful to me, because you never started to be faithful. All that stupid business with the Malay girl, and then this affair with Anne Talbot. It didn’t mean what it seemed to mean. And now I know what I have to do.”
“What have you to do?”
“I have to go home. And perhaps, at leisure, we can arrange a divorce. There isn’t any hurry. But it’s all been rather a waste of time, hasn’t it?”
Crabbe sulked, saying nothing.
“Thank God I’m still young. And you are too. Things will sort themselves out somehow. But not between us. Perhaps I’ll find somebody to marry, somebody for whom it will be the first time. And you’ll never marry again, I’m quite sure of that. You can go on being faithful to her, which means revelling in guilt. But it isn’t fair for anybody to have to feel guilty about two people. You won’t have to feel guilty about me again.”
He still said nothing.
“And you needn’t even feel guilty about the waste of time. It’s been a waste of time for both of us equally. And I think perhaps you’ve suffered the most.”
Crabbe said, tonelessly, “What do you want me to do?”
“Get in touch with Federation Establishment. Get them to book me an air passage home. I’m entitled to that. I think you should be able to fix things in about a week.”
“And what will you do in England?”
“Oh, there are several things. I shall go back to Maida Vale first of all. Uncle will be glad to see me. And then there are several jobs I can get. The Abang’s made me a very tempting offer. He wants me to be a sort of secretary to him. I think I should be good at that. It means travelling around. It will be good to see Europe again. But I haven’t decided yet.”
“You are cold-blooded, aren’t you?”
“Me? Oh, I don’t think so. I’ve just got to make up for lost time, that’s all.” She pressed his hand, smiling. “Cheer up, darling. It’s all for the best, you know.”
Crabbe recognised the feeling that
passed over his limbs, the pain of life flowing back after cramp, and was surprised to find that it could be called relief.
“Now,” she said, “we’d better get back. There’s a lot to do, and I can’t start too soon.”
They trudged back over the sand to the waiting trishaw and woke the snoring driver. In the narrow double seat they sat, as long before, like lovers, his arm round the back of the seat, their bodies crammed together. Paid off in the house drive, the trishaw man gaped in incredulity at the single note. Five dollars! A whole week’s holiday. The white man certainly had more money than sense.
17
“BUT I TELL you,” said Hardman wearily, “I tell you for the tenth time that she was a client.”
’Che Normah walked the length of the sitting-room; did a brisk turn up-stage and resumed her vilifications. It had been reported to her by many, she said, not only Malays, that this Chinese woman had entered his office, dressed shamelessly and provocatively in a high-slit cheongsam, and had stayed closeted with him for an hour. Some said an hour and a half, others an hour and a quarter, yet others an hour and five minutes. But it was certainly an hour. An hour was a long time, much could happen in an hour, one did not spend a whole hour on legal business.
“But it was a complicated business,” protested Hardman. “It was about a car accident. It took a long time to get all the details.”
She would believe all that when cats had horns. “Ruperet,” she said, cooingly, “Ruperet, you must be very, very careful. I expected you to be different from the other two. But you have got drunk and you have been with other women and you have cursed the name of the Prophet in the white man’s club.”
“I haven’t. I haven’t looked at another woman.” And that was true. Normah was a full-time job. “And I haven’t said a word about the Prophet.”
“You have said that the Prophet could not read and write.”
“But he couldn’t. Everybody knows that.”
“And the Kathi and the Mufti have been hearing about you and they are saying that you are not a good Moslem. How do you think this makes me appear in the eyes of the town?” Her clear eyes caught the light and flashed silver. “It is me you are making look a fool. But I will not be made to look a fool. The other two discovered that, but they were too late. You I give warning to. There are men up the road who have little axes.”
“Oh, I’m sick and tired of hearing about these blasted axes. Haven’t the people here anything better to think about than axes, axes, axes?” His voice rose on the repetition—“Kapak, kapak, kapak.”
“Ruperet, I will not have you shouting at me. All the time you are shouting.”
“I am not shouting,” shouted Hardman.
“Because I am kind and forgiving, you try to take advantage all the time.”
“Look,” said Hardman, getting up from his chair, “I’m going out.”
“Oh, no, you are not.” She stood, arms folded, by the open door, backed by harsh daylight and coarse greenery. “Your office is closed today. I will not have you going off to see your debauched white friends and skulking behind their closed doors and desecrating the fasting month with drinking. You will stay here with me.”
“I have no white friends,” he said angrily, “debauched or otherwise. You’ve seen to that. You got rid of my best friend, you had him thrown out of the State. Just because he was trying to help a dying man. And then you say that Islam is tolerant. Why, Islam is …”
“You will not say bad things about religion,” she said quietly, undulating a step or two towards him. “I have warned you about that. And that white friend of yours was a very bad man. He was a Christian. He tried to kill that schoolteacher because he had entered the True Faith. He made him eat something bad and he put poison all over his body.”
“Oh, you don’t know the first thing about it,” moaned Hardman. “You just don’t want to know, any of you. Look here, I’m going out. Get away from that door.”
“I will not. You are not going out.”
“I don’t want to use force,” said Hardman. “But you’d better realise once and for all, that I’m going to have my own way. I’m going to be master. And if you don’t get away from that door, I shall …”
“What will you do?”
“I’m going out, I tell you. Don’t be a fool.”
’Che Normah stayed where she was, her magnificent full body confronting his delicate weak white one. Hardman turned, and strode towards the kitchen.
“Now where are you going, Ruperet?”
“I’m going to the jamban.”
“No, you are not. You think you are going to get out by the back door.”
Hardman ran for it. He clattered down the three stone steps to the big cool kitchen, into the yard. But the yard door was locked and the rusty iron key not in its accustomed hole. He heard Normah’s light laughter behind him and turned angrily.
“God Almighty, am I supposed to be a prisoner?”
“I have the key and I have also the key of the car.”
Hardman leapt lightly on to the dust-bin that stood by the low yard wall. He scrambled on to the top of the wall and prepared to jump.
“Ruperet! I will not have you making a fool of me! Come back at once!”
Hardman jumped into the street, surveyed by two open-mouthed Malay workmen with dish-towels round their heads.
“Mad,” one said to the other.
“They are all mad.”
“Ruperet!”
Hardman ran to the corner and jumped into a trishaw. The driver was maddeningly slow and stupid.
“Mana, tuan?”
“Anywhere. No, wait. To the Haji Ali College. To the house of the guru besar.”
“I do not know where that is, tuan.”
“Get going, quick!” urged Hardman. “Round this corner.”
Many men, women and children, clothed in bright raiment for the Sabbath, saw with a faint flicker of interest and surprise a very white man on a trishaw, and the driver pedalling with unseemly haste. Allah, his creditors were after him, or an axe-man, or perhaps his wife. The patterns of the East are few.
‘So it has come to this,’ thought Hardman, as they sped down the main road. ‘My only refuge is a man who believes I have wronged him. But he will help, he must help.’ He looked behind him once more, but there was still no sign of the pursuing Fury. He took a deep breath and drew from the breast pocket of his wet shirt a letter which he had received at the office the previous day, a letter already much crumpled, read and re-read.
My dear Hardman,
It was pleasant to hear from you after all these years. I am sorry that your Oriental venture has not been going as well as you expected. But, then, I think that the days when a man could expect to make his fortune in the East are dead and gone. Indeed, the time seems to have come for the reverse of the old process to apply, and for the East to dominate the West. We have here, in at least two Departments, very able lecturers with unpronounceable Indian names, and they are the life and soul of Faculty meetings. There seems to be a certain energy there which has long burnt itself out in Europe. However, this is as may be. I was interested in your inquiry about the possibility of your joining the Department. It so happens that there is a vacancy for a Junior Lecturer, occasioned by Gilkes being appointed (you will remember Gilkes?) to the Law Faculty of a rather disreputable minor university in, I think, Louisiana, or certainly one of the southern states of America. He wrote a book, you may remember, on the Napoleonic Code, and now he will have an opportunity to devote his life to reproducing it to young men with crew-cuts. The book was, I thought, ill-written. However, this post falls vacant in October. The salary of a Junior Lecturer is, as you know, not high, and you may find it hard to adjust yourself to a life without the luxuries which the East has, undoubtedly, accustomed you to taking for granted. However, do write and let me know if you would definitely like to be considered for this post and I will set the machinery in motion.
With all good wishes,
/>
Yours sincerely,
E. F. Goodall.
And now he must raise the fare. He remembered that Crabbe had told him about his getting a share of a lottery prize in Kuala Hantu. Surely a loan of, say, two thousand dollars was not out of the way? After all, they were united by the tenuous cord of blood and a common Alma Mater.
Hardman saw himself, heart beating with hope and excitement, catching the plane from Singapore, watching that island drop down out of his life, and, behind it, the slim limb of the peninsula which he never wanted to see again. About leaving Normah he had no qualms. She could keep the car and his law books and the small balance in the bank. After all, she was entitled to that—restitution of the mas kahwin on the husband’s desertion. And, once he was back in England, she could have no further claim on him, outside the tentacles of Islamic law, for the marriage had no secular legal status.
And there he would be, back in the pleasant musty smell of the Law Faculty, with Professor Goodall and his nicotined moustache, his pipe that would not draw, and there would be arguments about torts and statutes, and the soothing droning voices of the world where he really belonged, the rain and the weekly papers, the clanking trams and the sooty trees and the girl students in jumpers and silk stockings. But no, it was all nylon now. The world changed behind one’s back.
Behind his back there was only the dusty road and a vista of barren coconut palms. He reached the cluster of Malay houses that enclosed Crabbe, paid off the driver, and, his throat dry, climbed the steps that led to Crabbe’s veranda. The house was silent and, he thought, rather dusty. There were patches on the walls where pictures had been and no flowers in the vases. Hardman stealthily walked into the open sitting-room. There was no carpet on the floor, only the ghost of the carpet defined in an oblong of unpolished wood. The desk looked alive, however, littered as it was with papers and files and letters. Hardman could not help seeing one letter, clumsily typed:
The Malayan Trilogy Page 36