by Anne Weale
WINTER IS PAST
Anne Weale
“I expected you to be a child.”
It was a brutal shock to Alexandra when after waiting five years to return to Malaysia she arrived to find that her father had been killed. Her situation wasn't helped by the fact that he'd left her in the care of a guardian—the darkly attractive Jonathan Fraser, who persisted in treating her like a child. Alex couldn't tell him that where he was concerned, she was very much a woman!
CHAPTER ONE
Alexandra Murray peered out of the window of the Malayan Airways plane and saw, far below, the rolling gray green jungles of the country to which she was returning after live years of lonely, anxious exile.
She had been in her first term at an English boarding school when an emergency had been declared throughout the Federation of Malaya and her father, a rubber planter, had written to tell her—reluctantly but adamantly—that until the Communist terrorists had been routed from their jungle hideouts, he would not risk allowing her to come home for the Christmas and summer holidays as they had planned.
Alex, cast adrift in the unfamiliar regimented society of a famous school, among hundreds of girls whose backgrounds were so very different from her own, had wept bitterly at the decision and bombarded her father with persuasive letters. But he, although as desolate as the child at the prospect of a prolonged separation, refused to change his mind, especially when in the first months of the emergency, his bungalow was attacked twice by terrorists.
It was the second time in Alex’s fourteen years that she had been exiled from the exotic, sunlit country of her birth. The Japanese occupation had forced the Murrays to flee to Australia, where vivacious, auburn-haired Madeleine Murray had been flung from a horse and killed instantly when Alex was nine.
After the war, father and daughter had returned to Malaya and another rubber estate in Perak, and for a time life had proceeded placidly. The child, all her affection now concentrated on her father, had been perfectly content. While he was busy with estate affairs, she read voraciously, chattered with the Malay house servants or played with imaginary companions. Once a week she accompanied her father to Taiping, the nearest sizable town, to order provisions, and while he made business calls, Alex puttered happily around the silk bazaars and fish and fowl markets, haggling with the vendors in fluent Malay as she spent her pocket money on a sandalwood fan, a fluffy brown duckling or a gilt bangle. To the wives of the Methodist minister, the bank manager and the district officer she appeared a forlorn little creature, her skinny brown arms and legs made more boyish by the drill shorts and cotton shirts she invariably wore. They would like to have seen her dressed in smocked voile, with neat silk bows instead of elastic bands on her long brown braids.
“Poor little motherless scrap,” they said to each other. “Edward Murray ought to marry again for the sake of the child. What will become of her brought up in that uncouth fashion miles from anywhere? She should be having music and dancing lessons. Why, she’s more like a boy than a girl!”
Edward Murray was well aware of the deficiencies in Alex’s upbringing but, bereft of his adored wife, he dreaded sending the child away to a more conventional milieu. However, realizing that at his death she would be quite alone in the world, he eventually decided that she must go to England and receive a first-class education.
Alex rebelled vigorously against the idea, but this was one of the rare occasions when her father put his foot down, and she had to give in with good grace, cheered up slightly by the prospect of coming home to the beloved bungalow every summer and winter.
As it turned out, she spent five years in England with only the regular weekly airmail letters from her father to look forward to. Twice he planned to visit her by air and both times the exigencies of the emergency obliged him to cancel the arrangements.
Alex never settled down in England. Born and bred in a land of tropical heat and torrential rains, she found the bleak, drafty, drizzling British climate a misery. Nor did she make friends readily with her classmates, whose enthusiasm for team games and sentimental crushes on senior girls and teachers seemed to her infinitely stupid. Since the death of her mother her world had been almost exclusively masculine and she found it difficult to reconcile the direct, matter-of-fact standards set by her father and his friends with the adolescent intrigues and complex taboos of the new life. She would, for instance, have liked to explore the local countryside by herself, but sedate single-file walks on Sunday afternoons were the rule, and there was never time to sit and daydream because of the succession of clanging bells, set tasks and study periods.
The holidays were spent at a hostel for the children of diplomatic and consular officials stationed in remote places. It was run by two well-meaning elderly ladies who referred to their charges as “the dear kiddies” or “our little people” and believed in porridge for breakfast every day of the year. Alex endured it stoically, wishing the years away.
At last her final term was over and with the terrorist activities in Malaya reduced to a sporadic road ambush, there was no reason why she should not return home. So here she was, flying over the gaunt crags and cloudy tin-mining pools of the rich Kinta Valley, less than an hour away from the longed-for reunion with her father.
The years had changed her from a gawky unkempt child to a girl whose unusual tawny coloring and quiet, withdrawn manner set her apart from the usual run of bouncing young womanhood. She was still too thin, but with a compensating grace of carriage and gesture. Her eyes, a warm golden hazel color, were as steady and unblinking as a cat’s, and like a cat’s seemed often to look through people and beyond them to a far more interesting private spectacle.
The Chinese air hostess passed down the aisle with a tray of iced drinks and Alex accepted a carton of lemonade gratefully. The three-day flight from London to Singapore had given her no chance to become acclimatized and the dank heat was already taxing her energy. She pushed her heavy shoulder-length hair, now free of pigtails for good, away from her hot neck, and flapped one of the colored rattan fans provided by the airline in lieu of air conditioning.
At last they were circling over the landing strip outside Taiping and Alex strained to see her father’s tall, thickset figure among the group waiting outside the customs buildings.
With the other Asian and European passengers, she thanked the air hostess for a pleasant trip and hurried across the dry brown turf.
But Edward Murray was not there.
At a loss, Alex looked round for old Hussin, the Malay servant who had always driven the car.
“Miss Murray?”
She turned and found a tall, darkly tanned Englishman at her side.
“Yes.”
He held out his hand and took hers in a firm grip.
“My name is Fraser. I run the estate next to your father’s now. I’m afraid he couldn’t get here himself, so I promised to pick you up.”
She hoped her acute disappointment did not show on her face and wondered what could be important enough to hold up her father today of all days. She looked around for her luggage, a single worn leather suitcase containing the books and a few personal treasures she had collected in England. The ugly uniform, wool stockings and heavy shoes she had left behind. A bearded Sikh customs officer glanced perfunctorily inside the case, scrawled a chalk mark on the lid and handed it over to Mr. Fraser who swung it down from the wooden counter and led the way out to the parking lot.
Walking behind him, Alex noticed that he wore a heavy cartridge belt around his narrow hips. A revolver protruded from the holster. She remembered now several references to Jonathan Fraser in her father’s letters. She had assumed that they were contemporaries, whereas he looked quite young, perhaps twenty-eight or thirty.
Against th
e deep sunburn of his skin, her own flesh seemed unhealthily pallid.
His car was a powerful dark green Humber with an armor-plated windshield. Alex settled herself in the front seat and Fraser slid behind the wheel and lighted a cigarette before switching on the ignition. He did not offer her one and she was slightly piqued, since now that she had left school she felt entitled to adult courtesies.
“How is father?” she asked eagerly as they swung out of the airport gates.
Fraser hesitated, and in that instant she sensed for the first time that something was wrong.
“I’m afraid I have bad news for you, Miss Murray,” he said. “I didn’t tell you at the airstrip because I thought you would prefer to hear it in private. Your father was ambushed yesterday.”
“Ambushed? What do you mean?”
“He was out on the estate, inspecting trees. Several bandits opened fire on him. It’s the first incident in this district for over six months.”
“Is he—” her voice shook slightly “—very badly hurt?”
He glanced at her, thinking how young and unfledged she was to take the blow that was coming.
“I’m afraid he died early this morning.”
She said nothing, sitting very still beside him, looking at a yellow flannel duster hanging untidily from a pocket. After a moment she reached out and tucked it away.
Fraser had seen that curiously blank expression before on the faces of planters’ wives when they heard their men had been murdered. He had lived with the threat of ambush and night attack for so long that it had ceased to disturb him. He had become a fatalist. But fatalism was hardly to be expected of a nineteen-year-old girl on hearing that her father and only relative had died two hours before her homecoming.
He turned the car off the main road and for half an hour they raced along a winding fern-banked side road before turning in at the tall wooden gates that Alex had last seen as a gangling, snub-nosed child. Still she said nothing and Fraser knew that nothing he could say would assuage the first impact of shock and grief. A few minutes later the Humber drew up outside the white-painted bungalow with its striped rattan sun blinds and rust-colored iron roof. A crowd of tappers’ wives and children stood in the dusty compound, silent, watchful, knowing that Tuan Murray lay dead and that the little mem had come too late.
The strange green dusk that Alex remembered as a childhood signal for bedtime bathed the garden. She sat by the window of her old room—now fortified by a wall of sandbags—her arms drooping over the sides of the chair in a gesture of exhaustion and hopelessness. Presently she reread the letter that her father had written months ago when terrorist activity was a daily menace.
My dearest child,
If anything should happen to me before you come home, do not let it set you against this country. Terrorism will end as the war ended and Malaya will need enterprising, energetic youngsters. I would like to think of you settling down out here, but if you prefer to stay in England there will be enough money for you to live in reasonable comfort until you marry.
However, I am fairly certain you will choose Malaya and since, until you are of age, I don’t like the idea of your being entirely alone, I have asked Jonathan Fraser to become your guardian in the event of my death. Malaya has its fair share of scoundrels and I would rest easier knowing Jonathan was keeping his eye on you until you are twenty-one.
The rest of the letter concerned capital and investments. Alex folded the sheets of paper and put them in her pocket.
The swift tropical nightfall blotted out the garden. She sat alone, silent, in darkness.
Dr. Hepburn came out onto the veranda where Jonathan Fraser was leaning against a pillar, a cigarette between his thin brown fingers. Jonathan glanced around as the older man appeared.
“Drink?”
The doctor nodded wearily and sat down in a bamboo armchair, watching Fraser pour brandy into two glasses and fill them up with ginger ale. Even after dark when the air was a trifle cooler, straight liquor brought on a sweat.
“I’ve persuaded her to take a sedative that will at least give her some artificial rest,” the doctor said. “What a homecoming, poor child! She was sitting there like a sphinx when I went in ... Much better if she broke down. The psychological repercussions of a shock like this are incalculable.”
Fraser jabbed out his cigarette and almost immediately lighted another. He feels Murray’s death as much as she does, the doctor thought. Besides, it might so easily have been him.
“It will be a new experience for you—guardian to a young woman,” he said aloud. In spite of his sorrow and anger at the wanton murder of an old and respected friend, the doctor could not help seeing a certain droll humor in the resulting situation. Of all people, Fraser was an odd character to be left in charge of a girl who, in normal circumstances, was probably as high-spirited and impatient with restriction as most young creatures. The doctor smiled inwardly, envisaging a battle of wits between Alexandra Murray and Jonathan Fraser.
Fraser was frowning. “It’s an experience I don’t relish,” he said curtly. “Malaya is no place for women at the best of times.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” said the doctor mildly. “I imagine a wife and children do much to improve the planter’s lot even in these trying times.”
“If he’s selfish enough to isolate a woman from all normal feminine pleasures.”
“It’s surprising what women will put up with for men they love,” the doctor said shrewdly. “They enjoy making sacrifices—providing there are certain intangible rewards.”
“It’s not a subject I know much about,” Fraser said shortly. “However, I daresay Miss Murray will have her own plans and I shan’t interfere with them unless it’s absolutely necessary. No doubt she’ll marry soon enough.
He finished his drink.
“I think I’ll turn in. We’ve got a heavy day ahead of us. Good night sir.”
“Good night, my boy.”
Left alone, the doctor wondered how long it was since Fraser had talked to an attractive, single Englishwoman. Months, probably—an unnatural state of affairs at his age.
While not wholly condoning the drinking bouts and liaisons with Chinese taxi girls in which some of the young, unmarried planters indulged, the doctor understood the mounting pitch of loneliness and boredom that drove them to excesses. Fraser’s austere way of life in circumstances that made a degree of laxity excusable was an interesting study in willpower. Dr. Hepburn suspected that the young planter was very far from being a born ascetic, but for some reason he imposed on himself a rigid discipline, curbing a temperament that was, if the doctor was any judge, as hot-blooded as that of any of the wildest spirits of the planting fraternity.
Murray’s murder had ended a close friendship that had been Fraser’s one emotional safety valve. While understanding the deep confidence that had prompted Alex’s father to leave her in the care of so young a guardian, the doctor wondered if the dead man had not unwittingly put Fraser’s self-control to an impossible test.
Musing afresh on the complexities of human nature, Dr. Hepburn turned down the kerosene lamps and retired to bed.
CHAPTER TWO
Early the following day, Edward Murray was buried in the British cemetery at Taiping. Velvety white frangipani petals drifted gently down to the grass around his grave as the sad, solemn words of committal were read and the rich, moist earth of his adopted country received his body.
There had been a message of condolence from the High Commissioner, and many distinguished Europeans and Asians, horrified at this latest outrage, had come from all over the district to attend the simple funeral. Afterward Jonathan took Alex back to his own estate.
When she had gone to bed that night he sat for a long time wondering whether he had been a crass fool to accept responsibility for her for the next two years.
Next morning Jonathan went off to the rubber factory, leaving instructions that the young mem was not to be disturbed if she slept late. He deliberately
stayed away from the bungalow all day to give her time to compose herself without the burden of making polite conversation. When he returned in the late afternoon he found her sitting on the veranda talking to Rama, his houseboy’s wife.
“I shall have to learn Malay all over again,” she said ruefully as he came up the steps and the Malay woman slipped discreetly away to the servants’ quarters.
“It will come back to you by degrees.” He noticed she was wearing the striped cotton dress she had worn yesterday. “We’d better go into town soon and fix you up with some clothes. I don’t imagine your English gear will be much use out here.”
“Thank you.”
She looked troubled, and guessing her thoughts he said. “If you’re wondering about money, until your father’s affairs are in order I’ll give you an allowance. You can pay me back when your income is settled.”
“You’re very kind. I’m afraid it’s a great nuisance for you having me rocketed into your household like this. I’ll try not to get in the way too much.”
On the contrary, it will be an agreeable change for me to have someone new to talk to in the evenings. I’m afraid I shall have to leave you to your own devices during the day. If there is anything you want you must ask.”
She wondered if he really did welcome her, this tall, brisk, unsmiling man who also mourned her father. In the first stricken hours after he had broken the news to her, she had scarcely noticed him. Now, recovering from the immediate stupor of loss, she studied him covertly.
The white open-necked shirt and drill shorts suited his long limber body well; indeed he looked as if he would be ill at ease in formal clothing and artificial surroundings. After a long hot day on the estate, fatigue lent an added severity to the stern cast of his features, although the ruffled dark hair was oddly boyish.
From the comfortably dilapidated cane chair that was evidently his favorite, he reached for a lacquered box of cigarettes.
“Smoke?”
“No, thank you.”