by Anne Weale
“I’m not a butterfly,” she said vehemently, disliking the silly empty frivolity the word implied.
He looked her over thoughtfully. “No, perhaps you aren’t. You think I have dishonorable intentions, don’t you?”
“You hardly know me well enough to have any intentions, Mr. Blake,” she said.
He laughed softly. “On the contrary, for the past quarter of an hour I’ve been thinking that instead of sipping afternoon tea under the noses of all these worthy old dears, I would much rather be in some secluded spot making love to you.”
It was probably the first time in Carey Blake’s experience that a woman had walked out on him in public. Indeed Alex was disappearing through the swing doors before he realized that she had done so, leaving him to look distinctly foolish in front of half a dozen expert gossipmongers. By suppertime the tale would be well on its way. He called the waiter, paid the bill and, muttering vengeance, strode out.
Had Alex not been buttonholed by a garrulous friend of Mrs. Lance’s just outside the store, the incident would have ended there, but as it was Carey waited until the encounter was over and then caught up with her.
“Just a moment, Miss Murray. I don’t know that I care for these abrupt departures.”
“If you asked me out to tea to make risqué conversation, Mr. Blake, I’m afraid you made a mistake. Perhaps you were right in thinking I was afraid of you. Anyway, I suggest you look around for someone more sophisticated who will enjoy that kind of thing.”
She tried to walk on but he caught her arm and said quickly, “I’m sorry. If I promise to behave in an exemplary fashion from now on, will you forgive me?”
His expression was such a droll mixture of piety and lurking impudence that she could not help smiling.
“Come, I want to show you my favorite part of town,” he said quickly, and she decided to relent and go with him.
As they walked along Carey said, “Tell me about yourself. What are you doing in Penang?”
Alex explained that she worked for a charitable society and was staying with the Lances as a paying guest. “Your family is on the mainland then?”
She shook her head and told him briefly about her father’s death and Jonathan’s guardianship.
“What’s the guardian like? A crusty old fellow?”
“No, he’s about your age,” Alex said. “What about you? Where are your people?”
He shrugged. “They were divorced when I was a kid. My mother lives in the south of France with her third husband. My father died some years ago.”
“And what brings you to Penang?”
“I suffer from wanderlust.” He grinned. “After about six months in a place I get an urge to move on. Fortunately my father left me quite a packet, so I can afford to be nomadic in comfort, which, as you’ve probably gathered, doesn’t go down too well with people who have to stay in one place.”
“Won’t you ever settle down?” she asked. “Don’t you want a home and children and that sort of thing?”
He shrugged again. “Maybe. The trouble is that nice girls won’t have anything to do with me. They seem to think I’m a wolf.”
He glanced slyly at her and Alex blushed.
By this time they had reached the waterfront and Carey said, “Here it is. My favorite part of town.” He waved a hand toward a gang of men unloading a freighter, their backs bent under bales of cargo.
“When I’m an old man I’ll spend my days on a quay watching the ships come in,” he said thoughtfully.
Alex watched an old Chinese woman trotting along with two heavy baskets of grain slung from a shoulder yoke. Her wide-legged black trousers flapped around her bare ankles and under her palm-leaf hat her face was like a shriveled apple with little black-button eyes twinkling among the wrinkles.
She understood what Carey meant. There was a peculiar magic about the waterfront where, in spite of the ceaseless activity that went on throughout the night by the light of naphtha flares, there was a strange sense of peace and timelessness. Ships had been unloading and restocking here since Penang was an undeveloped, unknown dot on the map; in fifty years’ time this would still be one of the great trade gates of the world.
“Doesn’t it make you want to pack your bags and go adventuring?” Carey said looking down at her.
“Not really. I’d like to go to Hong Kong and Bali, but I’d always want to come back. It’s my home.”
They strolled along the quayside, looking down into the sampans that lay moored between the freighters. Some of the little boats had tarpaulin canopies and evidently housed half a dozen people. In one sampan a woman was cooking.
“What do they get out of life, I wonder?” he said. “Herded together like rats, scraping a living.”
“They’re probably as happy as we are,” Alex said defensively. She had been brought up to regard the Chinese as inheritors of a culture far greater than any Western civilization. She told Carey the story that she had always loved as a child, of how in China the peasants bound tiny reed pipes to the pinion feathers of pigeons so that when the birds soared up into the sky the beating of their wings made a faint flutelike music.
As she told him it occurred to her that he would probably think it silly and fanciful.
“You see,” she said anxiously, “because they live in dreadful squalor without modern sanitation and inoculations and refrigerators, people forget that when we were savages the Chinese were weaving silk and making porcelain and writing poems. And even now they are much cleaner than we are. They let flies crawl on their food, but they’re always washing themselves.”
It was not often that Carey Blake found himself talking to an attractive girl about racial traditions and living standards. He was surprised to find that it did not bore him. On the contrary, when an ancient Chinese man with a wispy gray beard and tattered garments passed them, instead of thinking, poor old devil, Carey noticed that in spite of his obvious poverty there was a benign serenity in the old fellow’s face.
“How come you’re so fond of them?” he asked Alex.
“I had a Chinese nurse when I was a little girl,” she said. “I suppose one is always fond of people one knows well.”
He slipped a hand under her elbow to steady her as a group of children suddenly swarmed past them, shouting and jostling.
“So if I stay in Penang for a while there’s a chance you might become fond of me?”
This time she was not angry. She laughed.
“It’s time I went home.”
“Have you a date?”
She shook her head.
“Then how about calling and telling them you’re going to the cinema?”
Alex looked doubtful.
“I promise to behave like a grandfather and deliver you to your doorstep on the stroke of ten.”
“All right.” She was still dubious.
“Your enthusiasm goes to my head,” he said wryly. “Come on, let’s find a phone.”
In the foyer of the cinema they encountered a number of other Europeans and as they went up the stairs into the cool darkness of the air-conditioned auditorium, Alex felt several pairs of speculative eyes following them. Although Mrs. Lance had made no comment except “Have a good time, dear” when Alex told her on the telephone that she was going to the cinema with Mr. Blake, the girl could not help wondering if Mrs. Lance had really approved.
The film was a star-studded American musical and Alex soon forgot her doubts. When they emerged into the clammy night air, she expected Carey to try to persuade her to go for a drink or a moonlight drive, but he got the car and took her straight home.
“Now that wasn’t such an ordeal, was it?” he asked quizzically as they swung into the driveway.
Alex colored. “It was great fun.”
“Then how about going to a dance with me tomorrow night?”
“Thank you. I’d like to.”
“Good girl.” He leaned across to open the door for her and although for a few seconds he was so close that s
he could smell his shaving cream, he made no attempt to kiss her.
Watching him drive away, Alex began to think that much of the gossip must be exaggerated.
Carey did not break his promise. Whenever Alex went out with him—and their dates became more and more frequent as the weeks passed—his behavior never overstepped the bounds of friendliness. She was fairly certain that had she given him the slightest encouragement he would have discarded this platonic facade, but he was evidently leaving the lead to her. She decided that he was quite harmless and that, if he had been involved in a number of scandals, the girls concerned must have asked for trouble.
Gradually she weaned him away from the tourist clubs and introduced him to Chinese and Muslim restaurants where the next table might be occupied by a trishaw rider or a vendor but the food was infinitely superior to the exorbitantly priced dishes provided by the select clubs. They ate nasi goreng and mah mee and Alex taught Carey to manipulate chopsticks, dipping each morsel in soya sauce in the approved fashion.
One day, however, Carey rang up to say he had booked a table for the opening of the new Yellow Sarong Club and would she be ready by eight o’clock.
“You aren’t falling for Carey, are you?” Pippa asked as both girls were dressing to go out.
“No, of course not.” Alex slipped a new dress of cream organza over her head.
Privately, Pippa did not see that there was any “of course not” about it with a man like Carey. If Alex had not been so calm and self-possessed Pippa would have been more than a little worried about these dates with him.
“I wish I was going to the Yellow Sarong,” she said. “Charles tried to get a table, but they were all booked because Miss Lin is singing.”
“Who’s she?”
“Oh, I forgot, you wouldn’t know. She’s a fabulously beautiful Chinese singer who made her debut here about two years ago and has just come back from a season in Hong Kong. There are all sorts of romantic rumors that she’s the last of one of the great mandarin families and whatnot. Anyway, she’s certainly not a taxi-girl type.” “Trust Carey to have a ringside seat,” Alex said cheerfully.
The Yellow Sarong was already crowded when a waiter showed Alex and Carey to their table. The opening of a new supper club was an event in the social life of the island and the room was full of affluent Europeans and Asians and their elegant womenfolk.
The walls were hung with beautiful batik sarongs patterned with exotic flowers and fanciful birds. Tendrils of blue smoke wreathed from beaten silver censers hanging from the ceiling and the elusive fragrance of burning sandalwood hung in the air.
Alex enjoyed dancing with Carey; she had been relieved to find on earlier occasions that he made no attempt to hold her too close or murmur provocative remarks in her ear. After dining they danced again until a clash of cymbals announced the beginning of the cabaret.
First came a conjurer followed by an Australian acrobatic dance team and finally—the highlight of the evening—the appearance of Miss Lin.
The lacquer lamps illuminating each table were dimmed by a master switch, the band began to play a plaintive slow-beat song and the bright pinkish spotlight that had played on the preceding acts changed to a blue green pointer of brilliance focused on a handsome Coromandel screen to the left of the bandstand. An expectant murmur ran through the room, followed by attentive silence.
Alex had expected to hear a popular love song sobbed out with a pseudo-American accent and much hip swaying—the technique generally affected by Chinese cabaret girls. Instead a sweet, clear soprano voice floated over the screen, as pure and disembodied as a bird’s song, telling of a mandarin’s daughter imprisoned in a jade tower guarded by white doves. It was not a song that might be calculated to appeal to an audience of prosperous businessmen and sophisticated women, and yet no clink of glass, no smothered cough, no murmured commentary destroyed the atmosphere. As the last notes of the music echoed into silence, the most beautiful Chinese woman Alex had ever seen stepped from behind the rich screen.
She wore a high-necked cheongsam of silver lame, so closely molded to her slender erect figure that her least movement caused a shimmer of the metallic threads. Her black hair was drawn smoothly back from a pale forehead and held by combs before cascading in a lustrous veil down to her waist.
A prolonged outburst of applause swept her audience. Miss Lin bowed.
Her second song was another haunting ballad of old China and while she sang she moved among the tables presenting white blossoms to the men with a charming formal obeisance. Her profile and milky skin were as flawless as carved alabaster.
Then, as she offered the last flower to a man sitting alone at a corner table, Alex bit back a startled exclamation. For the man’s well-shaped head and shoulders were all too familiar. It was Jonathan Fraser.
At once the snatch of gossip overheard so many weeks ago in the E. & O. powder room came back to her. “A terrific affair with a Chinese beauty—a cabaret singer. The talk of Georgetown.”
That Miss Lin was the singer in question, Alex had no doubt. Why else would Jonathan come all the way from the estate for her opening night? Had he been in Penang for any other reason, surely he would have called on the Lances and inquired after his ward’s well-being.
The bitter disillusion that had swamped her brief happiness on that first visit to the island and gradually ebbed in the ensuing weeks swept over her again, a tide of misery against which she had no defense. With an uprush of jealousy that appalled her she saw that Miss Lin, having bowed repeatedly to the enthusiastic applause, was returning to Jonathan’s table and he was holding a chair for her, smiling his congratulations.
Alex was thankful when the band struck up a quickstep and Carey led her onto the floor. This time he held her closer, and deriving a kind of comfort from his nearness she yielded to his clasp, unaware of the quick surprised glance he shot at her.
“I wonder who the escort is,” he murmured. “I wouldn’t have thought her the type to play around with Europeans.”
“That—” Alex tried to keep her voice casual “—is my guardian.”
She looked back on the rest of the evening at the Yellow Sarong as one of the most critical tests of self-control that she had ever endured. When she and Carey returned to their table the waiter handed Carey a note—an invitation from Jonathan to join them. Alex felt she would never forget having to watch the open warmth of feeling between Jonathan and the lovely Chinese woman. It was torture to see those pale fingers on his arm, the delicate flowerlike face turned up to his.
Toward Alex, Jonathan’s manner was politely noncommittal. If he disapproved of Carey he gave no sign.
Driving home Alex felt sapped of all vitality, utterly cast down. In her efforts to appear bright and composed she had relaxed her limit of two drinks and now, in the cool night air, she felt weak and confused like a small boat that has slipped its moorings and tosses uncertainly on stormy, uncharted seas.
When Carey brought the car to a halt some distance from the Lances’ gateway and slid his arm around her shoulders, she made no demur. His kiss was very gentle and she submitted without protest as he drew her closer against him.
“Alex...” His lips caressed her cheek. “Do you remember how angry you were that afternoon we had tea in town and I said I wanted to make love to you? Are you angry now?”
The shy, inexperienced response of her lips as he kissed her again gave him his answer. This time, in spite of his deliberate caution, he could not wholly control the blaze of passion that sprang up within him at her long-awaited acquiescence. But even as he checked himself, remembering that the girl in his arms was very different from the usual run of his amours, her arms slipped around his neck and he felt her heart thumping with communicated excitement. When at last he raised his head they were both trembling and a little breathless. It took all his willpower to push her gently away and start up the car.
Usually when he drove her home she slipped out of the car and was into the house bef
ore he had time to switch off the ignition, but tonight she waited while he walked around to open the door for her.
They stood side by side in the shadow of the veranda, and, unable to resist the temptation of her upturned face, Carey pulled her against him.
“Tomorrow?” he asked huskily. “There’s so much I want to teach you, darling. Oh, God, you’re so sweet. Your lips ...” The rest was lost as he strained her against him.
It was the salt taste of tears on her cheeks that finally brought him back to earth.
“You’re crying! What is it? You’re not frightened of me, Alex?”
She shook her head mutely, brushing the tears away and attempting a smile.
“Poor little darling, you’re tired out.” Carey was all contrition. “Off to bed with you, sweetheart. I’ll pick you up at your office tomorrow and we’ll go for a picnic.”
He propelled her solicitously toward the door, kissing her hands in farewell.
Highly strung, poor sweet, he thought as he drove away. By heaven, though, there was fire beneath that cool, virginal exterior. For all his experience he had nearly lost his head. Tomorrow he would have to keep a tighter rein on himself or she really would take fright. He pressed his foot on the accelerator and as the car sped forward he began to whistle.
But Alex, creeping into bed, lay sleepless for a long time, knowing that even Carey’s expert kisses could not assuage the depths of her heartache.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
In the following weeks Carey Blake spent much of his time puzzling over the sudden and unexplained volte-face in Alex’s attitude. From his own experience he recognized the quality of her response to him and knew that it was not prompted by love but by some desperate need for reassurance or escape. Strangely, this knowledge did not pique his vanity nor did he attempt to take advantage of the readiness with which she slipped into his arms whenever they were alone, the almost feverish abandon with which she returned his kisses. For the first time in his checkered love life he felt a surge of protective tenderness.
Once, when they had spent a rainy afternoon at his bungalow and her sweetness had almost stretched his control to breaking point, he had had a wild impulse to ask her to marry him. Fortunately they had been interrupted by his manservant bringing in the tea, and afterward when Alex had gone home and Carey could reason calmly again, he had thanked heaven for the narrowness of his escape. Marriage had never been among his plans for life, and much as he wanted Alex he was not prepared to sacrifice his freedom to get her.