by Неизвестный
‘The idea struck you as romantic?’ He lounged there drinking his tea, and Merlin was sure she detected a twist of mockery on his lips, as if it amused him that a single woman, obviously lonely because men found her unexciting, should harbour the ridiculous notion that a remote island and a blind man could provide any romance for her.
‘I’m not a person who chases rainbows, mynheer, but I did like the idea of an island far away from the turmoil and dissatisfaction of modern life. Islands remain untouched, don’t they?’
‘Not by natural forces such as hurricanes—I hope you are eating the cakes? My cook will be affronted if you send them back untouched.’
‘Won’t you have one, mynheer?’
‘I would rather smoke a cigar, if you are not averse to the strong Dutch sort?’
‘Oh, please smoke!’ And with a fork poised above a slice of coconut cake Merlin watched the unfumbling way he sought a slim, very dark cigar from a carved box and pressed to the end of it a lighter with the flame inside the cylinder, holding it in position until smoke came from his indrawn nostrils. She marvelled at his adroitness, but then he had always had such certain hands, so confident and dexterous, and somehow his blindness had increased his sense of touch. With her gaze full upon him it seemed incredible that he couldn’t actually see the cigar in his fingers, or watch the smoke make blue shapes in the air.
‘Go on with your cake,’ he said. ‘You don’t have to watch me as if I’m going to set fire to myself ... yes. I know you are sitting there like a mother all tensed to spring to the rescue of an errant infant, but I’m really quite capable, mevrouw.’
‘You’re remarkable,’ she agreed. ‘I never knew that someone sightless could be so—so self-reliant.’
‘Practice, and the very definite urge not to be a burden on the sighted. Like the deaf, my sort can be a pain in the neck.’
‘Oh no!’ She couldn’t suppress the note of pain in her voice, and again she saw his lips take that mordant twist.
‘But yes!’ The strong smoke clouded about his face. ‘Those who can see take a great deal for granted, but there do happen to be compensations for the blinded. The imagination can run riot at times and I can place over the blank faces any sort of mask that takes my fancy. Shall I describe your mask and shall we see how closely it fits?’
‘No, I don’t think I want that.’
‘I’m your employer and you are under my orders, so don’t forget it.’ He flicked ash and it fell in a star to the teakwood floor. ‘You have a rather reserved face, I think, and you wear very little make-up and a very discreet perfume, which probably means that you don’t regard yourself as exciting to men.’
‘I—I’m very ordinary, mynheer.’ And she was also unnerved by his uncannily perceptive image of her, almost as if he knew in advance the person he was describing.
‘But you aren’t ordinary, Miss Lakeside. Such a woman wouldn’t travel halfway across the world in order to work—she might do so in order to marry, but not to carry on the rather tedious task of taking shorthand notes and pounding a typewriter. You are fairly tall for a woman—I can judge so from your voice when you are standing near me—and you have a very slim figure.’
‘But how can you tell that?’ she exclaimed.
‘From the shape of your hand, which is slender, with the tapering fingers of the person who does not put on undue weight. Your colouring remains a mystery, but let me take a guess—your eyes are blue?’
‘No.’ She gave a brief, pained smile. They’re brown.’
‘Strange, one usually associates shy people with blue eyes. I wonder why?’
‘Because the sea is blue and secretive.’
‘Are you secretive, Miss Lakeside—and please let me add at this juncture that you have an unusually attractive surname. What does the M of your first name stand for? Not Margery, I hope, which reminds me of a certain grocery product that is scraped on the sandwiches in hospital canteens.’
‘I’m afraid it’s a little pretentious for someone like me,’ she said. ‘You’ll probably smile.’
‘It’s always good to smile, but do you consider yourself so unpretentious? The majority of women are quite sure of their femme fatalite.’
‘You sound cynical about women, mynheer.’
‘Perhaps I have reason to be.’ As he spoke he raised a hand to the side of his eyes and she saw the iron take its grip on his facial muscles. ‘Sometimes a man comes up against a woman who sets such store by her own witchery that she becomes capable of the most diabolic behaviour if her runes and charms don’t have an effect on him. I am blind because I was immune to such a witch.’
‘Oh no!’ He couldn’t see that Merlin’s eyes had filled with horror—sheer horror that he should believe such a thing. She wanted to protest that it wasn’t true, but to declare herself innocent of that diablerie would reveal her identity and she could see from his face that he’d be quite merciless in dealing with her. The blinding pain and terror had clawed too deeply into his mind to ever make it possible that he would forgive the woman he thought of as a kind of Delilah, robbing him of his precious sight and his ability to heal people. Like Samson, the tall pillars of his temple had been brought down at his feet and the strength of his talents had been blasted.
It was awful and Merlin came very close to throwing herself at his knees, within reach of those strong hands, which could very easily snap her neck. ‘Believe me ... believe me,’ she wanted to cry out. ‘I never wanted to hurt a hair of your head ... I’d give you my eyes if they’d be of any use!’
‘The truth is often grim,’ he said, sensing that he had shocked her. ‘So provide me with the lighter side of the Janus mask that fits all of us—make me smile!’
‘I was christened Merlin, after the bird and not the wizard.’ The effort to speak lightly brought a fine perspiration out on her upper lip and she reached for the teapot. ‘Can I pour you another cup of tea?’
‘Please.’ He reached for his cup at the same time as she did and their fingers collided; abruptly he gripped her hand. ‘You feel cold, Miss Lakeside, called Merlin after a falcon and not a seer. You aren’t accustomed to an employer who talks as I do, of witchcraft and devils, eh? Blind men become introspective and life takes on different images for them—you will get used to me, and if you don’t there is always Lon to fly you off in the helicopter. Anyway, have another cup of tea and then go up and unpack your belongings. Once you have made the room look more like home, then you’ll begin to relax.’
His hard, warm fingers relaxed from hers and she felt a sense of deprivation as he lounged away from her in his long chair, lifting his cigar to his lips, his sightless eyes looking beyond her, to him the drab, cold spinster with the name of a swift-winged bird ... a falcon flung into the vivid blue skies of a faraway island.
As Merlin handed Paul his tea, she lived again that moment when she had handed him the eye-cup. A shudder ripped through her. Every hour and every day spent with him would be a heavenly hell, for the old worship of the hero had turned to something else and she knew she loved the man with every fibre of her body.
Even yet she felt his touch and unbeknown to him she pressed to her cheek the hand he had held ... he had said that she was cold; he hadn’t any suspicion that a flame was burning at the core of her heart.
CHAPTER THREE
Long sea breakers combed the sleek silvery beach, shifting pebbles and small shells and the tiny marine creatures in the rock pools. The spume made a rainbow as the sun caught the fine mist.
Merlin stood gazing upwards as a boy climbed the incline of a coconut palm, his calloused feet gripping the ridges of the tall trunk. There among the long plumy leaves he hacked with a knife at a large green nut.
The vibrant sun played over the scene and the water beyond was lizard-green shot with blue. Clumps of lacy coral lay here and there on the sand, and Merlin shifted her bare feet in the gritty warmth and sank her teeth into a slice of pineapple. She felt like a child playing truant, and for a wh
ile she could surrender to the magic of the island, the glorious colouring and primitive spell of it all. She wore narrow knee-pants and a thin shirt, and her hair was set free to her shoulders and the sun had found the tortoiseshell shadings of honey and amber.
Palm leaves rattled and a coconut thudded to the beach. A few moments later Ramai had followed and stood grinning at her. ‘For breakfast, nonya. The meat of the young nut can be eaten like a boiled egg and the tuan very fond of it. You think you like?’
‘Why not?’ Her own smile was tentative, for this house-boy could cause her destruction if he ever let slip in front of the tuan that she wasn’t the staid mevrouw who Paul imagined was working for him.
‘We say that when the nut is green the flavour is sweet —like a woman.’
‘Really?’
The boy flicked a look at her pants and shirt and his gaze dwelt upon her long hair. ‘Why you pretend to be old, nonya?’ It was out, said at last, what always lay in Ramai’s eyes when he served her at table with Paul, or brought cool drinks to the den where they worked, she at the lovely Chinese desk with its many lacquered drawers, and Paul pacing the Chinese carpet that spread from wall to wall of the room.
‘Not old, Ramai,’ she corrected him, ‘but more the style of person the tuan desired as a secretary. It does no harm and I need to work for my pay as you do. If he finds out I’m younger than he believes, then he’ll fire me.’
‘Set fire to you, nonya?’ Ramai looked horrified.
She smiled and swiped a fly from her nose. ‘That’s another way of saying he’ll send me away in disgrace, and then I shall be out of work and will have to find a job that won’t be as nice as this one.’
‘Why should the tuan want a motherly woman when he can have a young one? I think, nonya, that he be much pleased.’ Ramai’s smile became impudent. ‘Tuan Paul still a man even if he cannot see, big man that make your heart beat fast.’
‘That will be enough, Ramai!’ She spoke sharply. ‘You mustn’t say things that could cause mischief.’
‘There be much mischief he learn for himself you make out to be motherly.’
‘He won’t find out unless you go carrying tales to him— do you want to get me into trouble?’
‘No, nonya.’ The boy tossed a coconut, weighing it in the palm of his hand. ‘The house nice since you come, with flowers in the pots and the music you play on the big piano, and Tuan Paul not at his prowls so much. He go much prowling before, sometimes swim at night when the big sharks are out there.’ He gestured at the sea, which at this moment looked too impossibly green-blue and shimmering to harbour the menace of those grinning jaws filled with grinding teeth that could saw off a limb in just a few seconds. Merlin gave a shiver as she pictured Paul swimming blindly in the dark ocean, aware of the menace and yet undeterred by it, almost as if he didn’t care if Nemesis came in the blunt-nosed shape of a killer shark, dragging him down where the blackness was complete.
‘Then you’ll keep my secret, Ramai? You’ll let Tuan Paul go on believing what it does no harm for him to believe?’
‘We say to destroy an illusion is to tear the wings from a butterfly.’ Ramai gave her a wink of conspiracy. ‘Good for tuan to have woman in his house, even if he thinks her skinny, grey-haired woman instead of nice-skinned girl with hair like turtle-shell. White people most peculiar in such matters. Island man soon touch and find out the truth.’
‘You’re a young devil, aren’t you?’ Merlin blushed furiously, and yet felt curiously elated. No one had ever said such saucily nice things to her, especially about her hair, which during working hours was woven into a nape-knot, its mottling of amber and honey less noticeable than right now.
‘Nonya like me all the same.’ His teeth gleamed white against his brown skin. ‘Now I go take nuts to the house for tuan’s makan pagi. You coming?’
‘In a little while.’ She glanced at her wristwatch. ‘I just want to stand here and get a breath of sea air before the sun gets too warm.’
The boy sauntered off, leaving Merlin alone on the shore, her bare white feet splashed by the breakers as they swirled to the sands and then smoothly withdrew, like great bolts of silvery jade silk. What a place! And how sad that Paul couldn’t see the vivid colours for himself. She sighed, but was glad that she and Ramai had come to an understanding, for she couldn’t endure the thought of being dismissed from the island, never to see Paul again, working with him in the den, listening to that deep, faintly accented voice as he dictated the notes that she later typed, reading them back to him for corrections to the manuscript. It was all she had of him and she clung to it like a starfish Lo a rock, her starved heart expanded like a flower in the sun, her body awake and aware even if there could be no physical fulfilment in being with him.
She bent to pick up a piece of deep pink coral, playing her fingers over the lace, closing her eyes and trying to imagine what it was like to depend on touch and smell and sound. The sound of her voice could bring his eyes to her face, but beyond that her features were a blank which he had to mask with his imagination.
As he thought of her as a lonely, unattached spinster, then he probably had a mental image of a plain, unexciting face, with grey hair drawn back from a lined brow. Her safety lay in that image he had of her, yet she was only human and couldn’t suppress a wistful smile as she thought of what Ramai had said about her skin and hair, and that an island man would soon have learned the truth by touching her.
Touched by Paul, those strong and sensitive hands fondling her skin and finding her soft to his fingers. She gave a tiny groan and felt the sweet ache of longing in her very bones. Love was as tormenting as it could be joyful. For her it held as much risk as it held rapture during those evenings alone with Paul, her fingers on the piano keys playing those songs remembered from the music sheets her mother had hoarded from the war years, while that figure in tropic whites smoked a cigar by the veranda windows, the night moths drifting in, attracted by the lamp on the piano.
Stolen days and nights, a pretender in his house, and yet someone he was coming to depend on. He didn’t say, but she sensed it. And he liked those old sentimental songs and didn’t pretend that he wanted Chopin music, or the melancholy of Beethoven. Merlin was glad about that, for she had been taught how to play by her mother and the classics weren’t in her repertoire.
‘You have a joyous touch,’ he had said to her the other evening, ‘on the piano keys.’
‘Thank you,’ she had replied, and longed to transfer that touch to his face, his shoulders, a longing to embrace him that was beyond telling.
It had to be enough, the miracle of being here on this island with him, of getting accustomed to the house where everything, every large to middling object had felt his touch. Sitting down to high table with him, eating the steaming white rice served in porcelain bowls, with subtle wine in jade-green cups. Gasping from the hot curry and hearing him laugh as he caught the sound, and when he laughed it mended some of the agony which had seemed so overwhelming. Love, how it could grip her by the throat, like the morning when he came to the den with a baby turtle in the palm of his hand. ‘Killing turtles is forbidden on this island,’ he had told her. ‘See, it has a tiny shell already.’
See ... only he couldn’t see, not the hurt or the happiness on her face as she stood and stroked a finger across that tiny shell as the small primal creature walked on his palm.
What, she wondered, did she do with the love as it built up inside her and there seemed no way to release it except by just being here ... being where Paul was and hoping with each new day that he wouldn’t find out, wouldn’t suddenly realise that she was the person he had just cause to hate.
What did she do with the hate if she suddenly found herself at the mercy of it, deadly in the blind eyes, raw and torturing in his voice, so cruel in the hands that had been so gentle with the baby turtle!
Merlin stood there silently and still and watched the light boats, with a great wing of coloured sail, going off to fish w
ith the emblem of the snake-king painted on the prow; Naga who sat upon a thione of rubies. Island of superstition and subtle charm, the women with their babies slung in the coloured slendeng on a graceful shoulder. The women did most of the cultivating of the yams, rice and pineapple, pretty creatures with golden-brown skin and birdwing eyebrows above dark slanting eyes which held an allure Paul must have felt ... had he been able to see them. He had promised her that the next time the villagers held a dance at the temple he would take her to watch the bell dancers, and the men who wore formidable masks to perform in mime some of the old Indonesian legends.
How long, she asked herself, could the dream last before reality had to break the spell and drag her awake? Being here on Pulau-Indah was like a dream, but she knew how fragile was her hold on the dream and the awakening would be terrifying, not to be endured even in her thoughts. Paul, knowing her at last behind the compliant, agreeable, spinsterish mask his imagination had placed over her face ... bitterly angered by the deception ... the sleeping tiger aroused and snarling.
She turned quickly and hastened towards the rock steps, running from her thoughts in her bare feet, her raffia sandals forgotten at the foot of a palm tree. She crossed the bridge across the tea valley almost unaware and walked beneath the embracing curves of the banyan trees, brushed by sprays of wild orchids, lady-finger bananas within reach of her fingers.
Paul was standing on the veranda between the palm supports, clad in cream trousers and a brown silk shirt. He seemed unaware of her until she actually wished him good morning. He turned at the sound of her voice and as always his eyes seemed to find her face and she felt the stab of apprehension, the guilty fear that she was as visual to him as he was to her. He was always closely shaven by the other houseboy, who acted as a sort of valet to him, and his thick white-gold hair was scrupulously combed back from the powerful forehead.^ was, especially this morning, hard to believe that he wasn’t blind. In no way had he let himself go physically; his body was even harder and stronger than it had been in England, and the skin was so tanned by the island sun that his hair shone like a metallic helmet above those firmly controlled features.