by Anne Weale
It was one hell of a situation, he thought restively.
Pippa Lance was also uneasy. Although Alex and Carey spent most of their time together on the island’s many secluded beaches, people were beginning to gossip. Alex had been seen coming away from Carey’s bungalow, and with his reputation even the most charitable souls would be liable to misinterpret their relationship.
Several times Pippa tried to warn her friend, but Alex appeared not to understand these tactful hints. On the brink of confiding in her mother, Pippa decided to make a final and more outspoken attempt to save Alex from becoming the scapegoat of the gossipmongers. Her opportunity came one teatime when Mr. and Mrs. Lance were out at a cocktail party.
“You know, Alex, the grapevines are beginning to buzz a bit,” she said hesitantly.
“Oh, yes. What’s the latest scandal?” Alex looked pale and tired and there were faint smudges under her eyes.
“Well...” Pippa concentrated on twirling the honey spoon. “To be honest, sweetie, you are.”
“Really? How flattering.” Alex met her eyes with a hard bright glance that defied her to press the point. But this time Pippa was not to be put off.
“Alex, don’t be angry with me for saying this. We’ve always got on so well together. You know it isn’t that I dislike Carey now that I’ve met him once or twice, but he has a pretty fierce reputation and if you’re seen with him constantly,, tongues are bound to wag in a place like Penang.”
“And what is your private opinion on the matter?” Alex asked coldly.
“I assume that you’re in love with each other,” Pippa said gently. “There’s no reason why you shouldn’t be. Carey is very charming and the fact that he’s played around in the past doesn’t mean he won’t make an awfully good husband in the future. They always say reformed playboys make the best—”
“There’s no question of marriage,” Alex cut in sharply.
Pippa began to lose patience. “Then I don’t think you should spend every minute of your spare time together. If you don’t care what people say you might remember that mother and dad will, and that they are technically responsible for you. What’s more, I think you’re being pretty naive. Carey may have behaved perfectly up to now but quite apart from his reputation he’s only human.”
“What exactly do you mean by that?”
“I mean that when a man and a woman go out together to the exclusion of everyone else they usually wind up by getting married or—” She gave a little meaningful shrug. “And if you don’t care a hoot for him, why on earth do you go out with him?”
“Because he’s amusing and I’m quite fond of him.”
“Or because you’re trying to forget someone else,” Pippa said with a flash of insight. But who else, she thought. Alex had gone out with several young men when she first came to Penang, but there had never been any signs that she was falling in love with one of them. Then, in an instant, Pippa knew. Suddenly the whole complex tangle was clear. But why in heaven’s name didn’t—? But before she could frame the question Alex had left the table and retreated upstairs.
So that's how the wind blows, Pippa thought with a sigh of relief. In that case we must see that some of the gossip does spread—as far as Taiping.
Spinning along the tree-lined avenue in a trishaw, Alex reread for the dozenth time the brief, formally worded note that had been delivered to her the day before. It was an invitation to tea from Miss Lin.
Scanning the fine legible handwriting, Alex wondered what possible motive the Chinese singer could have for suggesting a tete-a-tete. Her immediate reaction had been to make some polite excuse, but later increasing curiosity had prompted her to return an equally formal note of acceptance.
The trishaw swung into a driveway leading to a select apartment block. A Chinese lad in a neat white uniform took her up in the elevator and led the way along a corridor to number seven.
Miss Lin herself opened the door.
She was wearing a simple cotton dress and braided raffia sandals. Her long black hair was coiled in a smooth chignon, and although by daylight she looked just as beautiful, her appearance was somehow less formidable than at the nightclub.
“Ah, Miss Murray. How good of you to come. Please enter.”
She ushered her visitor into a large airy living room with French windows flung open onto a stone balcony. Unlike most Chinese homes with their profusion of family photographs, hard upright chairs and ornate sideboards, the singer’s apartment was furnished with European regard for comfort combined with Chinese decorative taste at its best.
A couch and several low-slung bamboo chairs were upholstered in delphinium blue linen. The only other furniture was a low scarlet and gold lacquer table and a massive chest of pale teakwood. In opposite corners of the room stood white-painted Shanghai jars filled with tall branches of bamboo, the dull green blade-shaped leaves quivering in the draft from the fans. On a glass shelf running the length of one wall a collection of jade, ivory, alabaster and porcelain figurines was arranged. The general effect of these carefully chosen appointments was cool and restful and somehow indicative of the calm, selective personality of their owner.
“Please sit down.” Miss Lin proffered a box of cigarettes.
“I expect you are wondering why I asked you to visit me, she said, seating herself in a chair opposite her guest. “You see, when we met at the club the other night I saw that you very much disliked me and I was curious to discover the reason.”
Alex was considerably taken aback by this blunt declaration. The singer took pity on her guest’s confusion.
“Many Englishwomen have disliked me, Miss Murray,” she said. “Usually it is because they are afraid I will flirt with their husbands or sons. But I had hoped that we might become friends.”
At this point an amah entered the room wheeling a tea cart and Miss Lin turned her attention to pouring tea and plying Alex with sandwiches and creamy éclairs. The tea was served in porcelain cups so fine as to be almost transparent, and the pale amber liquid itself, unadulterated by milk or sugar, had a strange elusive tang very pleasant to the palate.
“I see you enjoy Chinese tea,” Miss Lin observed. “Unfortunately this particular leaf is very difficult to obtain now. It is called Cloud Mist because it grows on the mountaintops of Kiangsi, a province of China, so high up that it has to be plucked by trained monkeys who bring it down to the reach of men.”
She smiled and suddenly all Alex’s mistrust and jealousy dissolved and she said, stammering with embarrassment, “Miss Lin ... I’m sorry if I was rude the other night. It was not intentional. You see—”
She hesitated and the Chinese girl laughed and said lightly, “Oh, no, not rude. Rather too polite. But I could sense a hostility beneath this cold politeness. I want to tell you a story, Miss Murray.”
She put down her cup and, rising, went to the French doors and stood there with her back to Alex. When she began to speak again her voice was low and infinitely sad.
“As you know, most of the Chinese in Malaya are immigrants who came over to work in the tin mines or on the rubber estates. In China they or their parents were laborers. They left their own land because to stay meant starvation. Some of them have become millionaires.
“My grandparents were aristocrats who fled here in one of the uprisings that shattered China at the beginning of this century. My grandmother had bound feet and spent her life lying on a couch. My father and mother are what you would call the old school and their views are very strict. Until I was sixteen I led a most .sheltered existence and accepted that one day they would arrange a marriage for me with the son of an equally conservative Straits-born family. But before that day came, I met a young Englishman and fell in love with him. We met in secret and eventually I ran away with him.”
Miss Lin turned back into the room and took a cigarette from the box. Her face was drawn, as if in recounting the bare facts she relieved the anguish of the past.
“East is East and West is West and
never the twain shall meet,” she said at last. “We Chinese believe that as much as your people. When my parents heard what I had done they disowned me. I expect they have not mentioned my name since that day. Perhaps if I had told them I had a lover they would have forgiven me and accepted the disgrace, but they would never have permitted a marriage. My husband was a soldier, fighting the terrorists. For six months we were very happy and I never regretted my wild action. Then one day his jeep was ambushed. He was shot dead. Soon afterward I found I was pregnant.”
“Oh!” A murmur of horror at such a tragedy escaped Alex.
Miss Lin crushed out her cigarette and continued.
“I had enough money to keep me until the child was born. I had no claim on the British army because we had kept the marriage secret. Young officers are not encouraged in entanglements—especially with Chinese girls. Afterward there was only one way to support myself and my son, by working as a taxi girl in a cabaret, dancing with whoever could pay for a ticket. I hadn’t realized, being very innocent of the sordid side of life, that most of my partners would assume I was also a harlot. One night your guardian came to the cabaret with a party of Europeans. He alone was not drunk. He danced with me and I think he realized I was not at home in those debauched surroundings. Several days later we met in the street and I had my child with me. For the first few months his hair was fair, and he has blue eyes like his father. Jonathan made me tell him the story. He insisted that I should leave the cabaret and gave me money for a hotel room. Some weeks later he went to Hong Kong on leave and took me with him to stay with some married friends of his.
“It was the intention that I should become a children’s nurse, but the wife of Jonathan’s friend had been a singer and she discovered I could sing, too. She trained me and they helped me to start a career. In a few months I was able to pay Jonathan all he had lent me. Now I have quite a success. But without him I would have gone down and down. Sooner or later most taxi girls take to prostitution or drink or opium. My child would have been a street urchin. Jonathan saved our lives.”
Miss Lin paused, looked at Alex with a peculiarly penetrating expression in her beautiful dark eyes and said, “I have told you all this because my friendship with Jonathan from time to time has been misinterpreted by evil-minded people with nothing to do but gossip. When you looked at me so coldly the other night I guessed that you had heard some exaggerated tale and thought me an adventuress. Now come and meet my son.”
She led the way through the flat to a smaller room. The amah who had served tea was sitting on a low stool sewing, and near her a little boy with black hair and eyes as blue as forget-me-nots was playing with a wooden engine. As soon as he saw his mother he jumped up and ran to her, pouring out an excited tale in a mixture of English and Chinese.
“Say good afternoon to our guest, Peter,” Miss Lin said.
The child took stock of Alex with unwinking, speculative eyes and then held out his small, hot, surprisingly firm hand. The blend of European and Asian features in him was uncanny. His hair, slanting eyes and high cheekbones were pure Chinese, but his sturdy build, square jawline and those vivid blue irises were unmistakably English.
“Would you like to see my engine?” he said politely. “Uncle Jon gave it to me at New Year.”
Alex evinced suitable admiration for the scarlet-painted engine.
“You’re English, aren’t you?” he said. “Mommy is Chinese and I’m English and Chinese because my daddy was an English soldier. I’ll show you his badge if you like.”
He trotted across to a toy cupboard and returned with a cardboard box containing the cap badge of a famous British regiment. It was obviously the child’s most treasured possession.
When, half an hour later, the two women returned to the living room leaving Peter to be bathed by the smiling amah, Miss Lin said, “Life may be difficult for him with this mixed blood. But already he is very like his father. I don’t think the world will hurt him too much.”
“And you...” Alex asked. “Will you marry again?”
The singer shrugged. “Perhaps. A man of my own race sufficiently Westernized to understand my past. However, I enjoy my work and I am content to live alone for a while.”
“Thank you for telling me,” Alex said. “I feel very ashamed of myself.”
“Come again soon,” Miss Lin said. “Then we can talk of other, happier things.”
Alex spent the evening following her visit to Miss Lin’s apartment in a state of suppressed exaltation. It was as if, after groping her way through a dark and seemingly interminable labyrinth, she had suddenly emerged into the light.
What a fool she had been ever to give a moment’s credence to a snatch of idle chatter. The whole wretched impasse between her and Jonathan was of her own making. If only it was not too late to redeem herself! The first thing was to humble her pride and apologize for that hotheaded note written on the morning after the E. & O. dance.
She was consumed with longing to see him again, but in view of their strained relations it seemed unlikely that he would come over to the island and there was no possible pretext for her to return to the estate.
Pippa Lance came home from the tennis club with the disquieting news that a girl called Jane Allardyce was in hospital with poliomyelitis.
“Hmph! Hope we’re not going to have an epidemic,” her father said in concerned tones. “You two girls had better not go to the swimming pool for a while. I daresay the authorities will close it anyway.”
“It will be a frightful thing if little Jane doesn’t pull through,” Mrs. Lance said. “You know the Allardyce boy was killed in Korea. It would finish Dr. and Mrs. Allardyce to lose both children. Did anyone seem to know how bad she was, Pippa?”
“No.” Pippa shook her head. “Apparently she’d been complaining of an achey feeling and then late last night she collapsed. She’s such a marvelous swimmer and tennis player, you know. It always seems to hit athletic people hardest.”
“Then I don’t think we need have any fears for this decadent pair, Laura,” Mr. Lance said teasingly, but there was a troubled crease between his bushy gray eyebrows.
In spite of this sobering news, Alex slept more soundly than she had done for weeks. She dreamed that she was hiking back to the estate. It was very hot and she was wearing only bath slippers and a sunsuit. She kept losing her way in side lanes and having to turn back to the main road. Every time a car passed she tried to thumb a lift but nobody would stop for her. At last, when she was almost exhausted, she saw a tall man striding down the road toward her and as he drew nearer she recognized Jonathan. She began to run and was almost up to him when she heard, “Come on, lazybones.” Pippa’s voice woke her up a second before she could fling herself into his outstretched arms.
Alex moaned and drew the sheet over her head in a futile attempt to reenter the world of sleep. But the image of Jonathan, so real to her only a moment ago, had already faded.
She glowered at Pippa who laughed and said, “So sorry. Did I disturb a séance with Gregory Peck or someone?”
A note addressed in unfamiliar scrawl awaited her at the breakfast table. It began:
Dearest Alex, forgive me for saying goodbye like this but there are several reasons why I have to leave Penang at once...
Alex read it through calmly. Twenty-four hours ago this would have seemed like a betrayal, but in the light of her talk with Miss Lin perhaps it was almost opportune that Carey was going away. She could even be glad that he had evaded a personal farewell.
Dear Carey, she thought. Perhaps even he will fall in love eventually. I hope he does.
“Now remember, girls,” Mrs. Lance said as they left for work. “If either of you feels the least sign of a headache or a sore throat you are to come home immediately. Don’t forget now. I don’t want you in hospital like poor little Jane.”
But if Alex’s problems seemed to have resolved themselves, there was one aspect she had overlooked. The gossip that Pippa had warned her of was sti
ll rife, and rumors via his houseboy of Carey’s sudden departure had already stimulated conjecture. On her way to work Alex was cut dead by one of Penang’s most influential matrons. The incident upset her, for while she did not care what people thought of her, that people’s unsavory suspicions might reflect on the Lances was a possibility that could not be ignored.
During the afternoon she felt sick but, forgetting Mrs. Lance’s warning, attributed it to something she had eaten for lunch. She developed a headache, and although it was a particularly hot day she felt chilly and slightly dizzy whenever she bent forward. Then, just before four o’clock, a spasm of violent nausea made her dash for the washroom. At last the sickness passed, and shivering, scarcely knowing what she was doing, she went back along the corridor to her office. The door handle seemed to be stuck and she was fumbling to turn it when the burly Sikh commissionaire rounded the corner. He was just in time to catch her as she fell.
CHAPTER TWELVE
From the shadowed caverns of oblivion ... slowly ... sense by sense ... Alex regained consciousness. She opened her eyes and, dazzled by the glare, shut them again. Her head throbbed; her mouth was dry and sour. When she stirred restlessly a vicious pain stabbed the nape of her neck.
“Just lie still, Miss Murray. We’re looking, after you. Try to sleep again,” a strange but reassuring voice said close to her ear.
Sounds—the rustle of starched cotton, the clink of glass, the creaking of rubber-soled shoes on glossy linoleum—disturbed her. She felt sick, but too weak to get out of bed and go to the bathroom. Perhaps if she lay quite still it would pass off.