by Неизвестный
‘Paul,’ her hand clenched against her body, ‘you couldn’t be so cruel!’
‘I have learned cruelty from a mistress of the art, my dear, and as it’s more than likely that I shall make you conceive, then I shall look forward to the pleasure of taking the baby away from you the moment you give birth. You know that here on this island you have to do as I decree—there isn’t a soul who would assist you in holding on to the infant, or of getting away from me so you might have it in England. Oh yes, by all means have a baby, meisje. I hadn’t realised how I might twist the screw and teach you what it feels like to lose a part of yourself.’
At his awful words a grieving cry was wrung from Merlin. ‘You wouldn’t do it—you couldn’t!’
‘Try me, meisje. Have a son or daughter of mine and watch me take it from you even as you give it to the light. That would be justice, my dear. I’d delight in it.’
Merlin’s mouth was wrenched with pain ... already his baby was inside her and growing each day. Was this why she hadn’t told him, because instinct had warned her that he would take away from her that precious scrap of heaven from the one night in her life when Paul had seemed to show her what it might be like to be loved by him. He could deny it till the stars fell out of the sky, but he had loved her that night, and the tiny life she carried was all she had left of any hope of happiness. He wouldn’t take her baby from her! It was safe inside her and no one, not a soul except herself, knew that the helpless little thing was there under her heart, growing like a flower from a moment of perfect rapture. It would be a divine baby, something special, because being with Paul that night of the temple dance had been lovely and unflawed. There had been a magic in the air. ..
Just as earlier tonight there had been a magic, until he had let the bitterness come spilling back over the sweetness.
Her eyes blurred with tears and suddenly she couldn’t stand it that he had gone and spoiled what had been for a few hours an interlude of sweet romance, as if they truly were lovers who lived for each other and shared an affinity of emotion so fulfilling that they needed no one but themselves. That was how it had felt in his arms, until he had torn the very roots of tenderness out of his heart and punished her for making him feel tender towards her.
Merlin jumped to her feet, so driven by misery that she was going to run towards the sea and strike out for the crested breakers that were now boiling over the rocks, the tide having turned just as Paul’s temper had turned, so that violence had taken the place of the earlier incandescent beauty.
There in the sea she would blot out her agony of heart, the impossibility of making Paul believe in her sincerity. But even as she moved, his senses were alerted to her desperation and he flung out a hand and grabbed her by the ankle, throwing her headlong to the sand. As she landed her outflung right arm struck something sharp, a nearby scorpion shell bristling with sharp points that tore her flesh.
‘What has happened?’ Paul demanded. ‘You gave a cry.’
‘I—I’ve cut my arm on a shell—a rather sharp one.’
‘Then it will have to be quickly cleansed or you may get an infection of the blood.’
‘I hope I do!’ Merlin sat there dabbing at the blood with her handkerchief from the pocket of her poncho. ‘Then I shall probably die and you’ll have me off your hands without any bother.’
‘Now don’t talk like a child,’ he reproved her. ‘Is the cut a deep one?’
‘It is rather.’ From the amount of bleeding Merlin was inclined to wonder if a vein had been torn. She didn’t much care. Maybe like a Roman woman of the past, to whom life had become insupportable, she could let the blood flow away into the sand and sink down gracefully and quietly at Paul’s feet.
‘Have you fainted?’ His hand was groping for her, but with a twist of her body she eluded him.
‘I’m a spiteful, scheming harlot, Paul, and I haven’t the sensibilities that go with the Victorian vapours. I’ve seen blood before, even this amount!’
‘That cut is bleeding badly?’ His voice had sharpened.
‘Like a small gusher, but as I said before—so what?’
‘You are being very difficult,’ he growled. ‘Give me your arm this instant and not the backchat!’
‘I’m all right, Paul. You don’t have to concern yourself for a mere toy, which isn’t so broken that it can’t be mended.’
‘Your arm, meisje!’ His voice menaced and suddenly he had hold of her, and meekly then she permitted him to locate the injury with his fingers. She winced and then watched in stunned silence as he carried her arm to his mouth and began to suck at the wound.
‘You mustn’t!’ she gasped.
‘I have just told you,’ he spat blood and grit to the sand, ‘that you run the risk of an infection, and I wouldn’t in my present state perform a very tidy amputation of this slim and delectable arm—oh yes, my girl, it could come to that! Now have you something to bind round this?’
‘M-my handkerchief is already a mess.’
‘Then use mine.’ He nicked it out of his pocket and handed her the speckless square of cambric. ‘You should know how to apply a bandage, and make it a fairly tight one to stop some of that bleeding.’
Merlin silently obeyed him, quite unable to forget how he had sucked her arm and created inside her a sensation she still felt ... a totally primitive one. As she tucked in the end of her makeshift bandage she ran her eyes over his face. He was so incredibly complex that he made her head go round. One moment a snarling brute who told her she wasn’t fit to be the mother of his child, and the next minute so concerned for her, to the actual point of using his mouth to draw from the cut any possible contamination from the things which crawled in and out of the shell as it lay on the beach.
‘Thank you,’ she murmured. ‘What you did—it couldn’t have tasted very pleasant.’
‘It wouldn’t be pleasant for you to lose an arm.’
‘I think I’d prefer that to losing my—that is, if I had a baby—in the way you said. You told me I deserved to lose a part of myself.’
‘And that is how you would regard my child, as part of yourself?’ He frowned and fingered her bandaged arm. ‘You seem to have a fund of sweet talk, meisje, designed to disarm a man.’
‘Do I disarm you, Paul?’ Her arm had been hurting, but in the most curious way his touch seemed to ease the soreness and she realised anew that the healing in his hands was God-given; that he had been meant to give back to the badly injured a body that was no longer hurt or hideous. It had never been just a matter of good training; Paul possessed that extra something in the very roots of his fingers. Merlin closed her eyes and submitted to his stroking fingers on her arm ... if only she had the power to touch his eyes and make them see again.
‘I am sorry about this,’ he said, ignoring her question. ‘It was my fault you took that tumble, but I sensed you were going to rush headlong into that high tide and as a sightless lifesaver I would not be too proficient. You swim well, my dear, but there are rocks along the shore and those breakers are powerful from the sound of them. You could be smashed like a turtle egg against the rocks.’
‘Would you care, Paul? Would it make you just a little sad if you didn’t have me to chastise with scorpions?’
‘Ja, there is every probability that I would miss you, you impulsive, maddening little witch. I am but a man and I still haven’t got you out of my veins—how long have we been together? For me time has an odd way of running day into night and I lose count of its passing.’
‘Do you mean how long since I came to the island, mynheer?’
‘No, I mean how long have we been man and paramour?’
‘Paramour, Paul?’ she winced at the word.
‘Yes, you are more that than you are a wife. You know what holds us together and when that’s gone—how long, meisje, since the night of the temple dance?’
‘Almost twelve weeks, Paul.’
‘I see.’ He was thoughtful a moment and Merlin’s breath caught in her
throat as she felt his hand pressing into her waist. He didn’t say anything, but he was a medical man and there was every chance that he detected that slight swell to her contours, and still twisting about in her mind were those things he had threatened with regard to their baby. Merlin loved him with a passion she couldn’t have put into words, but she couldn’t let him take the baby away from her ... she felt it would be easier to die than to see the little thing carried out of her sight and sent away to his unknown grandmother. Oh yes, he would feel himself justified in doing that to her ... it would, as he said, be an exquisite way of getting vengeance for himself.
If only she could make him love her ... if only she could convince him that she would never hurt a man out of sexual vanity as that other nurse had hurt him. But in his blindness he had convinced himself that she was that vain, cruel, oversexed creature, and at every turn he set out to prove it to himself. Tonight, but a short while ago, making love to her with the sort of violence that type of woman would glory in. Hadn’t he noticed, had he been too carried away to care that she had been unable to respond to him as she had responded to his tenderness? Did it never cross his mind or his heart that she had some compassion and kindness in her?
‘Paul,’ she said quietly, ‘what kind of a woman could you really care for?’
‘One I could trust,’ he said instantly. ‘A woman whose heart would be as cherishable to me as her body. I’m no saint, I don’t pretend to despise my own sensuality with regard to a woman’s body. I’ve never concealed the fact that I need a woman.’
‘But in my case you care only about my—body?’
‘Yes,’ he said shortly.
‘But you don’t really approve of the—feelings I arouse in you. Are the Dutch puritanical deep down?’
‘Some of us have our standards and the Jesuits were my teachers. I have never gone in for wholesale promiscuity, and I react against what you arouse because of who you are. I don’t say I don’t enjoy it, if you must have the truth. You know I enjoy making love to you.’
‘Love?’ she murmured.
‘Euphemistic term, is it not?’ He spoke sardonically. ‘Hardly expressive of the primal feelings involved when a man takes a woman. You enjoy it as much as I do!’
‘Yes.’ Warmth rushed from her breast to her brow. ‘I love it when you’re tender with me.’
‘Love!’ It was his turn to say the word, and he put into it a coldness and scorn that made Merlin flinch as if from a whip.
‘The Jesuits believe in the scourge, don’t they, and the hair shirt. Would you like to put me into a hair shirt, Paul?’
‘It’s what you deserve, but the damnably sweet feel of you in silk is too much for even my sense of discipline.’ Abruptly he drew her to him and kissed her neck and shoulders in the opening of her poncho. ‘Your skin is like cool silk—it grows late, meisje, and we must be getting home.’
‘Home is such a lovely word,’ she murmured.
‘Don’t get too fond of my Tiger House.’ There was sudden bitterness in his voice even as his lips moved against her as if unable to control the impulse. ‘You and I haven’t come to a full reckoning as yet, my lovely devil, but it will come, just as the moon pulls the tide on the turn, and the papaya trees drop their fruit. The elemental air of this island is like a wine that goes to my head, but one day I shall be cold stone sober about you, Merlin, and I shall throw you out of my life and be free of your skin like cream in my mouth—free of your hair like a chain of silk binding my arms about you. So strange that in my darkness you seem so much lovelier than I remember you. You had a certain obvious glamour when I could see you, but now as I hold you and can’t see you, I have an image of a face I must have dreamed of,as a romantic boy. Large eyes with an aching sweetness to them, and a mouth like a soft red flower. That is the fool you make of me—in my blindness! If I had my sight right now—‘
He heaved a sigh against her and as Merlin felt the warm rush of his breath she went weak with the impossible longing to give back to him what she had helped to take away. She clasped her arms about him and for once he didn’t resist her compassion; he let himself accept it, moving his head in a kind of torment as he let her kiss his eyes.
‘I never meant to hurt you, my dear,’ she whispered. ‘I’d give you my own eyes—the corneas if they could be grafted Could that be? Is there a possibility?’
He was suddenly very still against her, absorbing the passion of her words.
‘No. It was never a case for corneal grafting—come, we must be going from this beach before I begin to believe your sweet lies.’
‘No lies, Paul!’
‘Then your conscience must be troubling you.’
‘Please, don’t say that to me!’
‘I can say any damn thing I like to you, Merlin. Don’t think you soften my heart with your soft body.’
‘I never tried to do that. You have me ... any way you want me.’
‘As well you know it, meisje. Mine to do with as I please, until the final pleasure of being rid of you. Twelve weeks, eh? The time has gone quickly—they say time passes swiftly when the days are pleasant. I can’t deny your magic, much as I’d like to.’ He gripped her wrist, forgetful of the bandaged cut halfway up her arm, and shook the bells on her bracelet. ‘Sweet demon in my tropical garden, what wouldn’t I give to look in your eyes and see what they really hold.’
Merlin wished for that as well; for him to see the love in her eyes ... to see her face without that mask he had imposed upon it. To attempt to explain would only anger and bewilder him all the more ... only if he saw her for himself would he at last believe that someone had come to him on this island and given all she had to give, from her heart, with both hands. He might not forgive her for the deception, but he would no longer hate her.
They packed up their moonlight picnic and made their way slowly up the rock stairway, leaving behind them the rush of the breakers and the awesome glitter of the wide ocean under the pagan moon. They had left words and feelings down there on the sands, a stain of blood from her arm, and the echo of a love cry. Merlin held his arm to her body, warm and strong around her waist ... there was no knowing what he suspected about her condition, but she was resolved not to say anything until there was no way to hide it any more. There was still time to wish and pray and hope that Paul might be softened to the idea of keeping her with him on Pulau-Indah ... that when she had the baby he wouldn’t harshly decree a separation from this infant she already loved because it was part of him. He had not taken her crudely, selfishly, and forced this baby upon her ... he had let his body and soul delight in her that night of the temple dancers and the doves; the offerings to the jungle gods, and the scent of tangled flowers out there in the thousand-eyed night.
Merlin lifted her face to the moon and her eyes were large with an aching sweetness and her mouth was like a soft red flower ... she wore the face of Paul’s romantic dream, but he couldn’t see to know it!
In the days that followed and turned to weeks a change came over Paul and he no longer hurt her with harsh words, or loved her with less than a tender strength. Merlin felt convinced that he knew about the baby, but he never spoke of it, and she didn’t dare to speak of it. She took to wearing loose, cool dresses, and because she remained comparatively slim she didn’t think that Hendrik noticed her condition, or the boys about the house. Some of the island women might have suspected, but they were graceful, beautifully mannered people who wouldn’t intrude their awareness unless she, the tuan besar’s, woman, chose to confide in them.
Her eyes, if possible, grew larger in her thin, softly tanned face, and a certain poignancy had settled about her lips. There were many beautiful evenings on the veranda when she longed to kneel at Paul’s side and softly whisper that she was having his baby and was proud and yet terribly afraid that he would truly carry out his threat and deny her right to cherish and nurse this small human being they had made together.
The sensuous throbbing of the tropical night was so con
ducive to the confiding of secrets ... not that it really was a secret, for Paul had to be aware of the child ... he of all people who knew her so intimately, sharing an apartment with her and a bed. She carried the baby well and was rarely upset in the way of some women. She was proud of this and hoped that Paul was, despite the fact that he never mentioned the giveaway swell to her body when he held her in his arms. Merlin couldn’t fathom his restraint when he had spoken so forcibly of hoping she got pregnant so he could enjoy the pleasure of her pain when he took away from her something that was part of her.
He knew she was carrying a baby! He showed it in his lovemaking, treating her with such infinite gentleness that sometimes she would find herself crying in his arms, aching in her very bones for him to say there was no more room for bitterness and they would share what they had and try to put the cruel past out of their lives.
But no, with adamant determination he kept his deepest feelings to himself and Merlin had to find some joy and gratitude in the fact that he no longer snarled at her in a sudden attack of anger, or was nice only to suddenly become nasty. One evening she dared to mention his book and suggested they carry on with it.
‘No,’ he said, and he leaned against the piano where she had been softly playing in the candlelight. Cheroot smoke made patterns around the flames of the candles and Paul’s face above the white material of his tropical dinner jacket was stern without being remotely cruel. ‘I don’t want you sitting at a typewriter for hours on end, listening to those medical terms as I dictate them. You aren’t my secretary any longer, are you?’
‘Your paramour, Paul?’ she said, running her fingers along the keyboard of the piano.
‘No, the wife of the blind man, for what it’s worth,’ he growled, and then he walked out of the open glass door into the garden, moving at night with that strange instinct that made him seem almost sighted. Merlin stayed very still on the playing stool and listened as his footfalls died away and the sound of the cicadas filled in the silence that followed. He would walk in the forest with a fearless disregard of what hunted there, and she would remain here in this room and die a little with each passing second. Paul knew he was to be a father and he was blind and it was that, rather than hatred of her body harbouring his child, that made it something he wouldn’t speak about. He was in his middle thirties and ready for the responsibility of becoming a parent ... but not like this! Tied to a woman he neither trusted nor truly loved; a sightless man who craved to be a man of purpose, with an important and satisfying role to play in his world of restoration surgery. He had been one of its leaders; he cared passionately for the mutilated people he had helped, and needed desperately to use his great skill.