by Anne Weale
Hussin was a voluble conversationalist and it was an hour before his account of his son’s progress at school, his grandmother’s bad leg and the shortcomings of the new constable was exhausted.
Alex said good-night and walked around to the veranda. Her sandals made no sound on the damp grass and it was not until she reached the steps that she realized she had arrived at an inopportune moment.
For Joanna and Jonathan were sitting on the couch and Joanna’s arms were around his neck and she was gazing up at him with rapt eyes and parted lips.
With a muttered “excuse me” Alex almost ran across the veranda to her bedroom. She shut the door and leaned against it, sick with shock and disgust.
How could Jonathan behave like that? But what else had she expected? Why should he resist Joanna’s blatant allure?
Alex shivered with distaste at the triumph that had lit Joanna’s eyes.
The dressing table was cluttered with jars of cream and spilled face powder. Automatically Alex began to tidy up the mess, throwing the soggy lumps of cotton batting with which Joanna had applied her makeup into the waste basket.
She stared at herself in the mirror. I’m a fool, she thought fiercely. I found out what he was really like at Penang. Why should this hurt me?
Unbidden, she remembered the morning they had stood side by side on the ferry. She had been so happy with his arm around her shoulders. Happier than ever before.
Oh, why did it have to go wrong, her heart cried bitterly. If only I hadn't heard those women talking about him; if only she hadn't come here.
She took off her dress and took her pajamas from under the pillow. She couldn’t face those two again tonight. Jonathan was probably livid with her for coming upon them without warning. Well, let him be angry.
Wearily she climbed into bed, pressing her fingers against her eyes, trying to shut out the picture of Jonathan with Joanna in his arms.
The next day was torture for Alex. She was tempted to pour out her troubles to Miss Emmeline but somehow she could not bear to reveal to anyone the torment of her unhappiness.
“Let them go away tomorrow. Please let them go away tomorrow,” she prayed silently, limp with relief when Duncan said at lunchtime that they would have to be moving in the morning. His cold was better and he told Jonathan that he was a lucky chap to have such a competent little nurse in the house.
Jonathan made no comment. At least he was not a hypocrite, Alex thought.
Joanna said goodbye the following day with the light of conquest in her eyes.
When Jonathan returned from seeing them off at the airport Alex asked if she might speak to him about something important.
“Well?” he inquired, surveying her with an enigmatic stare that she found difficult to meet.
“I’ve been thinking about the future,” she said. “I’ve decided I want to get a job.”
“Hmm, so you’ve decided, have you?” His tone was not encouraging. “And what sort of work are you qualified to do?”
She flushed. “I’ve finished high school. I could be a clerk or a typist. It wouldn’t take very long to learn shorthand.”
“And put a Chinese employee with a family to support out of work.”
Her temper rose.
“By that reasoning I’m surprised you feel justified in working here when the estate could be run just as efficiently by a native of the country.”
“I don’t consider you are old enough to live independently,” he said. “In England, yes. Here, no.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re not ill-favored and a personable girl living by herself in the East is an open target for a peculiarly unsavory social element that thrives out here.”
“How ridiculously narrow-minded,” she said hotly. “I admit I made a fool of myself in Penang, but after all I couldn’t be expected to be on my guard with you. Once bitten, twice shy. I wouldn’t be dazzled so easily a second time.”
He caught her wrist in a steel grip. “What the devil do you mean by that?”
“You ought to know.” She twisted her arm unavailingly. “Let me go!”
“Not until you explain yourself.”
“What is this? A lesson in jujitsu?” Miss Emmeline’s amused voice interrupted them. Jonathan released Alex.
“The time-honored method of dealing with recalcitrant wards,” he said lightly. “I am seriously considering locking her in her room on a diet of bread and water.”
“Very proper,” Miss Emmeline chuckled, but she had not failed to notice the red imprints of Jonathan’s fingers on the arm that Alex hastily put behind her back.
“I have some news for you,” Miss Emmeline said. “The mail that has just arrived has brought me something rather unexpected—an offer of marriage.”
“Oh, Miss Emmeline—from Colonel Liskard?” Alex forgot her own troubles at this intriguing information.
“Yes, my dear. From the colonel. As I told you, I had met him several times when my dear brother was alive, and our unexpected encounter in Penang revived a friendship that has existed over many years. Naturally at my age the idea of any other relationship did not occur to me, but as he points out in his letter we are both of a generation that is rapidly dying out, we have many mutual interests and we might as well spend our few remaining years chatting together instead of boring younger people with our reminiscences.”
“You’re going to accept, then. I’m so glad.” Alex hugged her chaperon affectionately.
“I’m afraid this revives your problem,” Miss Emmeline said to Jonathan when they had both finished congratulating her.
“No. As it happens Alex is anxious to be off, so it all fits in very well,” he said, ignoring Alex’s astonishment at this change of heart.
“Well, well. I’ve no doubt you’ll be glad to revert to peace and quiet,” Miss Emmeline said cheerfully. “When and where are you going, child?”
“I’d prefer Penang,” Alex said. “As soon as possible.”
“I’ll see what I can arrange for you,” Jonathan said. His ward, her point won, experienced a sudden sharp despair.
CHAPTER NINE
For the first time in four months, Jonathan returned to an empty bungalow.
The veranda, bereft of feminine impedimenta, had a forsaken air. Mat had set a single cup and saucer and a small teapot on the table. A last slice of Miss Emmeline’s favorite coffee layer cake lay forlornly on a plate.
Jonathan looked into the two bedrooms, already tidied and impersonal. In Alex’s room the wardrobe door had swung open. A lavender sachet hung from the rail. She had forgotten to pack her rubber bath slippers. He picked them up, wondering why Rama had not thrown them away. The insoles had worn thin and bore the imprint of narrow, arched feet.
After tea he opened a book. But solitude was no longer habitual; the pattern of long silent evenings that had passed week after week, month after month until Edward Murray’s death, was broken. The mood was lost. He tossed the book aside. Even Mat looked depressed.
Jonathan had a shower and wandered through the house with a towel knotted around his waist. But this small masculine license did not, as he had hoped, engender a feeling of relief at being alone again and free of the proprieties imposed by feminine society.
He drank a brandy and ginger and had a sudden savage impulse to finish the bottle and spend the evening in a pleasant haze. But the impulse was momentary. Years of rigid self-discipline were not easily overruled.
He smoked steadily for an hour, forcing himself to think about estate problems, but the recurrent mental image of a slim, tawny-haired girl with troubled eyes refused to be subdued. The hunger that had broken down his control in Penang mounted again with an urgency of longing that made him clench his fists.
He cursed himself for being fool enough to let an inexperienced child get under his guard. Thank God she had gone or he might have been even crazier than he was already. He need never see her again except under the most formal circumstances, and in less than two year
s his responsibility would be discharged and that would be the end of it.
At nine, he ground out his last cigarette, quenched the lamps and went to bed. But, lying in the hot moonless dark listening to the night noises, a dozen memories tormented him.
The time a leech had fastened on her leg and he had held a match to the thing’s humping back so that it shriveled and fell off. Dabbing antiseptic on the place, it had taken all his force of will not to crush her in his arms.
The time he had come home from the factory and found her sitting on the veranda steps drying her hair, and had wanted to reach out and run his hands over those slender bent shoulders.
The time Joanna Oliver had screamed at the sight of a centipede and he had seen Alex sitting up in bed veiled by mosquito netting like a young and virginal bride.
Alex a bride! Alex going off on a honeymoon with some clumsy young fool. Alex resting in a man’s arms as confidingly as she had in his under the pergola at Penang.
A stab of blind reasonless fury ran through him, and, self-contemptuously, he admitted its root. He wanted her himself.
After Miss Emmeline’s startling announcement and his sudden capitulation to Alex’s plea to leave the estate, Jonathan had set about arranging her departure with the brisk competence with which he dealt with factory business.
Within a fortnight he had organized a job with a Penang welfare society and found an English family that was delighted to accommodate her as a companion for their daughter of the same age.
At the same time that Jonathan was prowling restlessly around the bungalow, Alex was unpacking her cases in the bedroom that she was to share with Pippa Lance.
The Lances’ stone house overlooked a private beach. Mr. Lance was managing director of an important trading company and wealthy enough to command every tropical amenity. The bedrooms were air-conditioned and already Alex was enjoying being able to dress in a cool atmosphere.
Pippa’s room was decorated in cool shades of turquoise, from the deep turquoise blue rugs on the black and white tiled floor to the pale voile curtains and paler quilts of glazed cotton on the twin beds. In spite of these luxurious surroundings, Alex could not help feeling a pang of homesickness for the little wood-paneled room in the bungalow with its bright rattan mats and creaky bamboo chair.
Pippa Lance, a sprightly blonde girl, welcomed her eagerly.
“You’ve no idea what a ghastly pack of dowdies most of the other girls here are,” she confided, helping Alex to hang her frocks in a closet lined with camphorwood. “What kind of men do you like?”
Alex, somewhat startled by this blunt interrogation, had no time to consider the question before Pippa said, “I like them dark and worldly. I’ve just met an absolute dream ... a naval officer. His name is Charles.” She sighed blissfully and Alex suppressed a grin at the thought of how Jonathan would disapprove if he knew that Miss Pippa Lance was an incorrigible flirt.
“He’s bound to have several decent friends for you to choose from,” Pippa said. “Honestly, every time I see him in that gorgeous white uniform I feel quite sick with ecstasy.”
“Do your parents let you go out with anyone you like?”
“Oh, heavens yes.” Pippa grinned. “They’re very well trained. Anyway, just because I like to have fun I’m not a fool like that idiotic Jane Rogers or Carol Bletcher.”
“What happened to them?”
“Anne got mixed up with an army officer who turned out to be married and Carol fell for Carey Blake, our Big Bad Wolf. Hasn’t his reputation penetrated the mainland yet?”
Alex shook her head.
“He’s terrifically wealthy and even more attractive. He came to Penang six months ago—on a kind of lifetime world tour—and since then there have been four major scandals. For about three weeks Carol and he were seen everywhere together and then suddenly her father packed her off to England and there were rumors that she was ruined, as they say. Probably only talk, because Papa Bletcher didn’t rush round and horsewhip Carey. Most of the men won’t have anything to do with him, but the women still cluster like flies. I’d be scared stiff to go around with him. Carey isn’t the kind of man who pleads for a good-night kiss and then trots happily home. He’s the all or nothing type.”
Alex thought that Mr. Blake sounded like a self-satisfied bore but she said nothing.
After the first week she settled into her job, her quick intelligence and willingness making up for lack of experience. Her social life also fell into an agreeable pattern. As well as the young men she had met at her first dance on the island, she made many friends in Pippa’s circle. Once a week she wrote a stilted note to Jonathan and received an equally polite reply.
The office closed at four o’clock and before taking a trishaw back to the house Alex usually wandered through the shopping center. Having explored all the main streets, she ventured into the side streets and was soon perfectly at home in the sprawling warren of alleys and markets.
One afternoon, wandering along the crowded five-foot way among sacks of meal, baskets of dried fish and semi-naked infants playing marbles, she noticed a kitten straying into the road just as a gleaming Packard swung around the corner. Without considering the risk, Alex darted into the road and scooped the kitten from under the wheels, jumping back not quite swiftly enough to escape the sharp impact of the bumper.
The driver of the car, a European, sprang out.
“For God’s sake, what d’you mean dashing out like that?” he said furiously. Then, seeing the scrap of mangy fur in her arms, “Do you mean you risked your neck for that moth-eaten little carcass?”
“You would have driven straight over it,” Alex said.
“One less half-starved animal,” the man said. He saw the blood trickling from her grazed leg. “Get in and I’ll take you to have that cut dressed—not that you deserve it.”
By this time the inevitable knot of gaping spectators had gathered around, doubly interested since the participants in this interesting drama were Europeans. Still clasping the cat, Alex moved toward the car.
“Oh no. I don’t want to catch mange, thank you,” the man said crossly. “Leave it with one of these kids.”
“In that case I won’t bother you anymore,” Alex said coldly and began to push her way through the crowd.
“For Pete’s sake!” he said in exasperation. “I give in. We’ll take your Persian protégé with us.”
Driving smoothly through the busy streets in the opulently upholstered Packard, Alex had some misgivings about the advisability of adopting the kitten. Like so many animals in the East, it was in appalling condition with several raw places on its back and liquid oozing from its eyes. Mrs. Lance would probably have a fit when she saw it.
“And who may you be?” the stranger asked peremptorily.
“Alex Murray. I live with Mr. and Mrs. George Lance.”
“Well, Miss Murray, I’ll tell you frankly that if it wouldn’t have lowered the great British prestige in public, I’d have whaled the daylights out of you just then,” he said severely, leavening the reprimand with a friendly grin.
“My name is Blake,” he said. “Carey Blake, at your service.”
So this was the famous reprobate. Alex eyed him cautiously, seeing a slimly built man of about twenty-six with a handsome mobile face and eyes that, catching her out during this covert inspection, twinkled gaily.
“I gather you have already heard of my evil reputation and are wondering whether to fling yourself from the car.”
“I was thinking you have a very Asian attitude to animals.”
“I certainly wouldn’t risk my neck for that thing. What do you intend to do with it?”
“Clean it up and feed it.”
“I didn’t know such philanthropic young women existed among our local butterflies,” he said lightly. “This is where you get patched up.”
They drew up to the curb outside the Georgetown Dispensary, and Blake jumped out and ran around to open the door for her. The graze was only s
uperficial and when the wound had been swabbed and lightly bandaged Alex insisted that she was perfectly capable of finding her own way home. But Blake refused to listen to arguments and bundled her back into the car.
The Lances were having tea on the terrace when the car drew up at the house and after the necessary explanations they could hardly have avoided asking Carey Blake to join them. For a quarter of an hour he chatted to them, almost ignoring Alex, and then took his leave.
“Well really, he’s very pleasant. Not at all as I imagined,” said Mrs. Lance.
Her husband grunted. “Doesn’t seem a bad sort of chap. Still, there’s no smoke without fire, even in Penang.”
Pippa, much chagrined to learn that she had missed the Big Bad Wolf in person, besieged Alex with questions.
“You’ll have to watch out,” she said finally. “Once Don Juan Blake has his eye on a woman it’s danger signals.”
Alex laughed. “I don’t think he regarded me as a woman. Anyway, I was quite rude to him and he probably feeds on flattery.” She went off to supervise a bath for the kitten.
But the next morning a charming Victorian bouquet made up by the island’s most expensive florist arrived for her, and the signature on the card was that, of Carey Blake.
CHAPTER TEN
“Why are you afraid of me?” Carey asked, watching Alex pour out tea. They were sitting in a corner of Whiteaway’s cafe, the cynosure of several disapproving European matrons.
“I’m not in the least afraid of you.”
“Yet it’s taken me three weeks to persuade you to have a respectable cup of tea in a most respectable restaurant with me.”
“Has it occurred to you that I might have refused simply from lack of interest?”
He grinned, not at all put out. “And was that the reason?”
“Not entirely.”
“Then you were scared of me,” he suggested.
“I didn’t think we could have much in common.”
“The social pariah and the unspoiled young butterfly, eh?”