by Неизвестный
‘If to be romantic is to know that there is something always a little out of reach, until one day it is suddenly there, tangible, touchable, visible.’
He broke off, a sigh dropping from his lips. ‘Yes, perhaps I was romantic, for I was aware of this—this strange unseen but felt presence in my life, waiting to take shape as a woman I could—love.’
Such unexpected words from Paul, who had always looked so aloofly sure of himself and how he meant to shape his life, taking in his own good time a cool and soignée wife who would grace his home and be intelligent in the company of his medical friends. Merlin’s eyes raced over his strong, commanding features and her gaze fell more slowly to the deep neck opening of his shirt ... he had seemed more complete than other men, with all his priorities firmly listed and little margin left for even a scribbled note that he wanted to fall in love and experience for himself all the mystery and excitement of falling for an unknown girl who might be unsuitable for a high-ranking surgeon. It had seemed a foregone conclusion that he meant to select a wife from among the smart, socially well-placed women whom he dated.
Love? Strangely enough Merlin had never been able to imagine the commanding Paul van Setan in the grip of passion, his eyes stormy, his mouth hungry, his hair unruly on a hot forehead. He had seemed not to need that kind of emotion, an inspired healer of bodies rather than a lover.
How innocent her own love had been in those days ... how warm and aware it poured through her veins right now.
Human like this, though blinded, he was even more desirable and she had to grip her hands together in case they obeyed a compulsion of their own and reached out for the firm column of his neck and those powerful shoulders across which the brown silk was taut and just a few shades darker than his tanned skin. As she watched him he raised his grey eyes to the sky and she ached that he saw only blackness and none of the blueness. ..
Blue ... she looked as well and caught her breath. The sky was darkly mottled in patches and the sun had a sulphurous look.
‘Has the daylight darkened?’ Paul demanded.
‘Yes, it has.’ For a startled moment she wondered if he could see a little.
‘I thought so! The sun has cooled against the skin, which means it isn’t direct any more but is being diffused by a thickening haze. Am I correct?’
‘Yes—does that mean?’
‘Assuredly. Can you see anything of Ramai? He should have been back by now to tell us what Lon has picked up on the radio.’
‘I can’t see him about—should I go and look for him?’
‘Ja.’ Paul struck the rail of the veranda with his fist. ‘I feel so helpless, damn it, having to rely on others to do what I would due done with more efficiency. Curse the gods for this! Curse that little bitch for what she did to me!
Merlin closed her eyes against a deep stab of pain. ‘I—I’ll go and find Ramai.’ She was about to dart away when Paul’s voice arrested her.
‘Shoes!’ he rapped at her. ‘Go and put them on before you go down to the valley in search of the boy—no, better to find Lon. Ramai has parents and a batch of siblings in the kampong and he may have gone first to them with possible bad news. Find Lon!’
‘Yes.’
‘And don’t worry too much. These things—blow over.’ His smile was sardonic as he turned away from her and seemed to be looking at that bruised sky. His profile might have been sculptured except for the muscle that worked in his jaw; he was a man of action who hungered to do something decisive, but he knew that being blind he could only get in the way of those who would have to set about shuttering the house and making it as secure as possible.
Merlin hastened indoors and ran upstairs on trembling legs. She felt as if the typhoon had already set up its storm in her heart, more potently filled with Paul than ever before, brimming with a love she had to keep bottled inside her. There in her room she flung open the cupboard in which she kept her clothes and quickly laced her feet into a pair of plimsolls from her nursing days. Before leaving the room curiosity made her take a look at her reflection in the mirror that stood on a carved chest ... she stared at herself as if at the face of a stranger, seeing the shadowed hollows under her cheekbones and the poignancy of her own mouth. She realised that what she felt for Paul had fined her face to these interesting contours and subtle shadings; she had a new kind of look, not exactly a prettiness, for there was a coy sweetness to being pretty, but noticeable, eye-catching, something that would induce an observer to wonder about her.
She lifted her hands to her cheeks in an uncertain way, and her own eyes seemed to quiver with mocking little lights. Little fool, had she thought that she could feel so ardently about a man and not have it show? She had come in pity to Paul van Setan and now she found that pity had turned to passion. He had only to enter a room and her heart seemed to turn over ... she hadn’t known that love could be so physically tormenting, and had truly believed she could serve him and it would be enough to be a sort of—acolyte.
But this was Paul, not some kind of ascetic parson, and there was no way to end the torment except by being tough enough to pack her belongings and leave him.
Leave Paul ... she backed away from the distress that sprang into her reflected eyes, those flecks of gold giving her brown eyes a fevered look. She turned and ran from the room, down the stairs, finding Paul gone from the veranda as she made her way in the direction of the tea valley.
There were gashes of crimson in the sulphurous sky and the heat was like a pressure on the head. A tropical weight of air laden with the scent of tea-bushes, and what the rising wind was stirring out of the jungle where many kinds of trees were entangled in webs of liana, a long rope-like vine that wove itself in and out of the branches, lacing them together and studding them with strangely delicate flowers. Her forehead was beaded with moisture and dragon lizards scurried from her path, rough steps cut in the side of this immense bowl of fragrant tea. She could also smell nutmeg and pepper and the wild mimosa clustering at the edge of the valley. A benign and ancient stone god reclined beneath the entwined branches of a huge old banyan.
Jiwa merah, she thought. Soul land where the women became the souls of the men they loved. It was like poetry, disturbing and sensual like the scents that were growing headier as the storm gathered its forces. Deep and primal, rooted in a belief that no longer seemed relevant in the modern world she had abandoned for this island ... that love was still the most passionate experience of a lifetime, whether or not it gave joy or pain.
Merlin raised her eyes to the smoking gold of the sun ... leaves rattled sharply in a sudden gust of wind and almost stunning was the impact of tea-bush and spice trees. She clutched a handful of liana to hold her to the steps, for the wind had clawed at her shirt and swept her hair across her eyes, and she heard the monkeys chattering in a high-pitched way in the foliage of the forest.
The typhoon was coming closer and soon it would roar its way across Pulau-Indah, smashing and uprooting and destroying, and whatever happened, whatever the cost, Merlin was glad she’d be with Paul. She flung back her hair and gave the sultry sun a defiant look ... she was part of all this, even if it tore out her heart.
CHAPTER FOUR
The day had grown forbiddingly dark ... a restless, menacing darkness. Merlin had found Lon and had it confirmed that a typhoon was heading this way. Already the wind had a high-pitched whine to it and the palm tree foliage was in perpetual motion, whipping back and forth, until quite suddenly a branch would snap off with a sharp click and go flying away.
Relentlessly it was coming, and Lon had told her to return at once to the Tiger House and inform the tuan that the people of the village were going to shelter in the tea valley; they were nervous of the big wind and down in the valley it didn’t sound quite so forceful. She was to ask Paul if he would be coming down as well, but Merlin knew the answer in advance. He wouldn’t budge from the house, but he would probably suggest that she join the villagers and their children; he might even insist, and
Merlin was all girded up for a battle of wills. There was no way, short of throwing her down the cliffside, that he would get her to leave him to face the typhoon alone. He wasn’t made of stone. As the storm intensified he’d need company like everyone else.
She flinched at the heaving, creaking sound the palms were making, and the moaning that seemed caught in the big banana fronds. And deep in the forest she heard the devilish tattoo that Ramai had spoken about, the rain arriving on the mass of foliage that formed almost a solid roof over the tangled mass of bush and vine.
The wind-chimes swung crazily as she mounted the steps to the veranda and paused to catch her breath in that section of the porch that was screened for coolness by a huge knotted creeper whose tough stems were thick with flowers, aromatic and deep gold. Her fingers combed the hair from her brow, and she watched as a great red-tinged cloud sailed into the sky and seemed to cast flame over the thatched roof of the house.
Suddenly a young houseboy came running from the direction of the kitchen and seeing Merlin he came to where she was and brushed a hand across wet eyes. It was Tutup, the boy who led Paul when he wanted to go to the beach or the kampong. ‘Tuan say I must go to valley without him, nonya. He blind, not see, be killed by big wind up here! You tell him come!’
‘You tell him go.’ Paul’s voice seemed to leave a vibra-ation in the air. ‘The little pup dared to argue with me, but I won’t leave here, and I won’t have him up here when it really begins, and it’s going to, eh? Lon confirmed it?’
‘Yes, mynheer.’ She cast a sympathetic look at Tutup, who was devoted to Paul and who looked stricken by his master’s unexpected harshness. ‘You had better do as you’re told, Tutup. Your family is down there with all the others and you don’t want to make your mother anxious.’
‘You will go this instant,’ Paul insisted, ‘and you will take the mevrouw with you, do you hear me? Hurry before the rain starts lashing down.’
The boy looked obstinate. ‘Why I have to go with woman? You come too, tuan, or let me stay.’
‘You will do as you are darned well told, my boy. And so will you, Miss Lakeside.’ Paul stood there looking in the general direction of Merlin, his hair roughly tousled from the wind and an iron set to his jaw. ‘I won’t have an hysterical woman and a child on my hands when this things hits us. Have some sense, the pair of you! I’m blind as a blasted bat and I’d be of no use to either of you should you be hurt, so you will both do as you are told and be off while you can still climb down those cliff steps without being blown down them.’
‘Come on, Tutup.’ Merlin had decided instantly what she was going to do, and taking the boy by the hand she hurried him away from the irate Paul. ‘It’s no use to argue, and you should be with your family.’
‘Tuan be all alone.’ The boy tried to drag her back towards that solitary figure, standing there unseeing, with the palm crowns crashing above his head and the rain increasing its volume. Lightning flickered, red-tipped, like angry barbs.
‘Do come on,’ she said urgently, but when they reached the valley steps and the stabs of lightning were turning to prongs, she let go the boy’s hand and called out to some other people to take him down with them to join his family. ‘The tuan’s orders,’ she told them. She had no intention of obeying those orders herself, and could hear Tutup yelling with protest as she hastened back towards the house. The air was rampant with the moist, earthy scent of jungle flowers being bruised by the rain that was now coming down solidly. Her shirt and pants were plastered to her before she reached the compound of the house and her hair was like a wet whip lashing against her skin as she ran those last few yards and flung herself up the steps. Raucous parrot cries mingled with the belting rain and the whining wind.
‘Who is that?’ Paul towered in the dimness of the porch, nostrils flared.
‘It’s me.’ Merlin said breathlessly. ‘I’ve seen to it that Tutup has gone down to the valley.’
‘You! I told you, ordered you to go with him!’ Merlin stood before that angry figure and felt her knees lock with actual terror as temper flared in his eyes, flame thrown on to oil when she added: ‘You can’t be alone up here. I want to keep you company, mynheer.’
‘You want?’ He took a violent step towards her. ‘I’m the one who’s in charge, not some snip of a woman who has never faced a typhoon before. I don’t want you, do you hear me? Crying and whining all over the place when the wind reaches full force and seems as if it will never relax its hold on the eardrums. Now get out and leave me alone! There’s still time.’
‘You can’t see the lightning,’ she shot back at him, frightened though she was of the temper she had released in him. ‘I’d sooner face you than run through that one more time. I shall be struck if I go out in it!’
‘You might be struck if you stay here.’ His fist clenched, as if he truly felt like hitting her for her disobedience. ‘You are a damn fool, mevrouw, do you realise it? If you get hurt I couldn’t see to put a bandage on you properly.’ ‘Oh,’ she exclaimed, ‘stop feeling so sorry for yourself!’ ‘What—what did you say?’ He looked struck himself.
‘You heard me, mynheer. You want to be in charge of things, but because you’d only get in the way, you are taking your temper out on me. The villagers will be all right with Lon, and I am staying here.’
‘You know what I’d do with you if I had my sight like other men?’ He looked grim as he stood there, his shirt and trousers moulded to his body by the wind, the pillars of the veranda making of it a proper setting for a dramatic scene.
Yes, she thought, you’d see me, recognise me, and not merely march me out of your house but throw me out, into the storm! T know I’m being obstinate,’ she said. ‘But could you leave someone alone in a typhoon while you streaked off to a hole in the ground, someone who couldn’t see to defend himself? What do you take me for, mynheer}’
‘A damned little fool! All right, expose yourself to danger, but don’t come howling to me for comfort when the furies are let loose, and by God they’ll be let loose before very long. Was there any information on the radio about that?’
‘Lon said the news was that the typhoon was in this area, but he also said that they’re unpredictable phenomena and it might pass in another direction.’
‘Let us pray so! All the same the winds will be bad—
the villagers know that and they have taken sensible pre
cautions. Now why don’t you do as you’re told?’
‘No chance, mynheer.’ She glanced across the compound, where the water was cascading out of the sky rather than falling like the rain she had known in England. ‘You can hear the rain.’
‘Yes,’ he said grimly. ‘You must be wet?’
‘Somewhat.’ She felt her shirt with a wry smile. Beneath it her skin was uncomfortably damp and her hair was still dripping.
‘Then you had better go and dry yourself. I am going around the house to make sure all the shutters are in place—the heavier ceiling lamps were taken down before the boys left, and pictures and ornaments put safely away. Go to your room and get dry.’
‘Am I to stay there—as a sort of punishment?’
‘Now don’t add petulance to foolish disobedience,’ he rejoined. ‘When you have changed your clothing you will see about some lunch for us, while I decide where best we might find a little sanctuary from the tumult when it arrives. Go! Take a hot shower. A chill in this sultry atmosphere is easily come by.’
Merlin left him and made her way upstairs to her room, feeling a trifle exhausted by that battle of wills. Whatever lay in store for them in the coming hours, at least they would be together. She wouldn’t have to endure the torment of knowing he was alone up here, entombed in a darkness made into a nightmare by the baying winds, like hell hounds let loose, their fangs tearing open the sky in rips and gashes of scarlet.
She stood at the windows of her room and there above the valley, through the pelting rain, it was as if Krakatoa had burst again and lit the sky with omi
nous fire. Flickers of flame-tipped lightning through the bruised, deepening darkness. Soon it would be like night, and she shivered, dragged off her wet things and hastened into the bathroom that was fitted into a curving alcove of her bedroom. She stood under the shower-head and turned the tap, the warmth of the spray gradually taking the chill from her body. Wrapped sarong-like in a large towel she returned to the bedroom, walking across the creamy rugs of the blackwood floor. She lit the lamps of opal glass on copper bases, watching as the wicks bloomed, bringing some illusion of cosiness back into the room, with its carved furniture and vast bed of teak and ivory brocade embroidered with scarlet poppies.
She had just laid down the match box, for all the lamps in the house were lit by kerosene, when a movement in the mirror caught her eye. She gave a start and swung round to face the figure standing in her doorway. Paul! She gripped the towel closer around her, as if her body was visible to him.
‘W-what do you want?’ Her voice shook uncontrollably.
‘It’s all right,’ he drawled. ‘I haven’t decided to make an orgy of what might be my last few hours on earth. You are quite safe from a blind man’s gropings, mevrouw. I merely came to see about your shutters—have you closed them?’
‘No.’ Her entire body felt as if it were burning with in the folds of the towel, for in that instant of seeing him at her threshold the crazy thought had flashed across her mind that he had come in search of—comfort. Yes, why not call it that? A woman in his arms while the storm raged, and loving him so desperately Merlin would not have resisted him. As it was, his sarcastic retort had made her feel as if she was scorching on the cone of Krakatoa.
‘Every shutter in the house must be secured,’ he said. ‘I had better close them for you.’ He moved forward into the room, but this one, unlike most of the downstairs rooms, had thick, shaggy rugs scattered here and there on the floor, and Paul had caught the toe of his shoe on one of them before Merlin could cry a warning. He went sprawling as she jumped forward, the towel falling away from her bare body as she caught at his arms in the instant he fell hard “to his knees, his face contorting more with anger than actual pain.