by Anne Weale
The storm held off for another twenty-four hours. It was now unbearably hot and stuffy. To make matters worse, on the afternoon of Jonathan’s return a sudden flash of lightning split an ancient tree not far from the house and the stricken branches fell to earth, tangling the electric power lines as they crashed. Without fans, the heat was like a Turkish bath.
Jonathan arrived to find the family lounging wearily in the sitting room, with the last ice cubes from the now silent refrigerator rapidly dissolving in a jug of lemonade. He was less oppressed than they by the humidity, being accustomed to the hotter climate of the mainland and fewer fans. His manner was so normal that Alex felt half-inclined to think she had dreamed their last encounter.
“I wish you had insisted on Alex going up to the hills, Jonathan. She looks quite ill again,” Mrs. Lance said during a meal for which nobody except Jonathan had any real appetite and that Alex, laboring under two burdens, scarcely touched.
“It’s only the weather,” Jonathan said and began to tease Pippa about her latest beau. His ward, braced for another discussion of her health, felt a surge of gratitude for his understanding.
After dinner the two men sat down to chess, Pippa went out, Mrs. Lance settled to needlework and Alex tried to concentrate on a novel. The Westminster clock on the bookcase chimed the quarter hours. Eight ... quarter past ... half past. Mr. Lance rang for lager and biscuits. Nine ... half past ... quarter to ten. Mrs. Lance took off her sewing glasses and folded her work in an old damask napkin.
“I’m going up to lie in a bath. If this storm doesn’t come soon we shall all melt,” she said.
Ten o’clock ... quarter past.
“Got you, sir,” Mr. Lance cried triumphantly. “Well, I’m going to follow Laura’s example. It’s getting too close to breathe. I hope those damn engineers turn up soon. These kerosene lamps make the place much hotter; still, you’re used to them on the estate. Good night, Alex. Night, Jonathan.”
Now, Alex thought, now he will ask me.
“Why are you so nervous?” Jonathan ate a biscuit and strolled around the room.
It was futile to deny that she was nervous. Her hands were shaking uncontrollably and she could hardly stop her lips trembling.
“I don’t know,” she said in a small voice.
He sat down opposite her, stretching out his long legs and lighting a cigarette.
“I’m the one who should be nervous.”
“Why?”
He paused in the act of extinguishing the lighter flame, his finger on the lever.
“Because my fate hangs in the balance. Have you decided what you want to do, Alex?”
She looked at him. A man she had known only a few months, who in so many ways was still a stranger.
“If you really want me, Jonathan, I will marry you,” she said.
He put the lighter back in his pocket, inhaled deeply and blew out the smoke with a little rushing sound that might or might not have been a sigh of relief.
“Thank you.”
Is that all, she thought wildly, just thank you? Surely now he will kiss me or discuss the future.
He smiled. “I expect you’ll sleep better now the die is cast.”
Alex felt on the verge of hysteria.
“If you don’t mind I’ll go to bed,” she said.
“All right. Good night.”
“Good night, Jonathan.”
In the early hours of the morning the storm broke. Blinding sheets of lightning illuminated the night sky. Thunder crashed and rolled in terrifying crescendo. At first the rain fell in great slow drops, then faster, faster, until it was drumming on the roofs, cascading in a curtain of water from the eaves and gushing and swirling along the deep concrete gutters around the house. For two hours it poured out of the dark heavens with a ferocity unknown in European countries and at last, as abruptly as it had come, it stopped. All the staleness and smells of the dry spell had been washed away. The air was fragrant and soft with wet leaves and wet grass. Dawn, slowly breaking, glinted on the pools and rivulets.
Jonathan was last down to breakfast.
“Sorry I’m late, Laura. Morning, George, Pippa. Good morning, Alex.” He dropped a light kiss on the top of her head as he passed her chair and then, noticing the astonished glances of his host and hostess, said easily, “By the way, you should be congratulating me. Alex has promised to marry me.”
A concerted “Good heavens!” from Mr. and Mrs. Lance and a shriek from Pippa greeted this announcement.
“I had no idea!” Mrs. Lance held the coffeepot in midair while she digested the news.
“Aha, so this is why Alex mutters in her sleep, is it?” Pippa said. “You sly thing, you never breathed a word.”
“My heartiest good wishes, Jonathan.” George Lance cast his paper aside as if to stamp the occasion with his personal approval by this unprecedented gesture. “High time you married, and Alex is just the girl. When’s the wedding to be?”
“Whenever the bride says. Next week would suit me.” Jonathan grinned at Alex.
“Certainly not. That won’t give us nearly enough time for all the arrangements, and Alex has to order her trousseau,” Mrs. Lance said firmly.
“Well, I have to take her into town to find a ring, so we’ll talk it over and let you know at lunchtime,” he said.
“We must give an engagement party for you.” Mrs. Lance was in her element at the prospect of large-scale entertaining. “Can you stay over for a couple of nights, Jonathan? I could arrange it for tomorrow evening.”
“I don’t see why not,” he said. “I don’t get engaged every day of the week, and things were running smoothly enough when I left.”
“Oh, you are lucky, Alex.” Pippa sighed enviously.
“In being engaged generally or being engaged to me in particular?” Jonathan inquired with a twinkle.
“Both, really,” Pippa said candidly. “I don’t suppose I’ll be engaged for years.”
“You’d better be, Philippa Jane. If you aren’t off my hands and my bank balance pretty soon I shall pack you into a convent,” her father said mock-sourly.
Driving into Georgetown, Alex said to Jonathan, “Must we have a very grand wedding?”
“Not if you don’t want to. I thought all women liked a traditional affair.”
She noticed that now they were alone together his manner was more restrained.
“I’d rather have a few friends, if you don’t mind.”
“My dear child, it’s your wedding—have exactly what you want.”
“I’m not quite used to even being engaged yet,” she said.
He slowed the ear to let a group of Chinese schoolchildren cross the road.
“Don’t take it too seriously,” he said as they moved on. “You can still escape if you can’t bear me after all. I shan’t sue you for breach of promise.”
“Don’t joke,” she said.
He took a hand off the wheel and felt for one of hers.
“It’s sometimes the easiest way to get over life’s difficult patches, Alex,” he said gently.
He took her not to Georgetown’s most exclusive European jeweler but to a Chinese establishment in a quiet side road. The proprietor, a benign Cantonese man in a tussore jacket, evidently knew Jonathan, and when he was told the nature of their quest he bubbled with felicitations and called his assistant to fetch chairs, cooling drinks and cigars. Then he hurried into the back premises to fetch his selection of rings.
While he was gone Jonathan said, “Have you anything in mind? Any favorite stone?”
She shook her head. “No, I’m afraid I’ve never thought about it before.”
“Well, you must choose whatever you like, but there’s a ring he showed me last time I was in here that I think you might care for.”
The shopkeeper returned with several flat wooden cases and a roll of black velvet that he unfurled along the counter. Then he unlocked the cases and set out for Alex’s consideration the most beautiful collection of rings s
he had ever seen. Diamonds, sapphires, emeralds, rubies ... a pink topaz flanked by baton diamonds ... an amethyst circled by seed pearls ... five graduated zircons in a gold claw setting.
“That ring you showed me last time I was here—the opal. Have you still got it, Mr. Leong?”
“Ah yes, I know the one you mean, Mr. Fraser. Not many ladies like the opal stone, you know, they say it is unlucky. I show it to you again.”
This time he returned from his vault with a small shagreen box. Inside, on a bed of white satin, lay a ring that Alex knew at once was exactly what she would like. The opal—a translucent blue green stone shot with crimson fire—was surrounded by tiny diamonds in a platinum setting on a band of the same silvery metal.
“Try it on,” Jonathan said.
She slipped it over the third finger of her left hand. It fitted perfectly. The shopkeeper switched on an electric bulb and handed her a black eyeglass through which the stone was considerably magnified. It was flawless, shot with a myriad delicate colors—pink, pearl, flame yellow and again that rich flash of crimson.
“It’s beautiful,” Alex said, handing the eyeglass back to the old man. “But isn’t it fabulously expensive?”
“Do you really like it? Better than anything else here?”
“Oh, yes, it’s heavenly, but I don’t think ...”
“Right. We’ll have it, thank you, Mr. Leong.” He brushed aside her concern for his finances, signed a check and after a courteous exchange of farewells shepherded her out of the shop.
“Now how about drinking a toast to ourselves?” he said.
Drinking a champagne cocktail at half-past eleven in the morning, Alex decided she wouldn’t bat an eyelid if a troop of tigers suddenly pounced into the quiet bar. The events of the past week were so astounding that she felt sure she had lost the capacity to be surprised. Perhaps it was the effect of the champagne cocktail, but, perched on the stool with Jonathan smiling indulgently at her, she felt on top of the world with the future a golden vista. She spread the fingers of her left hand and the diamonds glittered.
“Will you have a white dress?” Jonathan asked.
“Oh!” She looked up, considering this new question. “I don’t know. What do you think?”
His eyes traveled over her.
“Yes. I would like my bride in white. You know, most of your contemporaries, although they are probably just as virtuous as their great-grandmothers were, have a flair for looking quite the reverse. A girl who still looks virginal after her eighteenth birthday seems to be a rarity. I was rather afraid Penang might take away that chaste look of yours, but it hasn’t succeeded.”
She blushed vividly.
“There, you see.” He touched her rosy cheek with a light forefinger. “You even blush.”
He waved to the waiter for his bill. “Drink up your cocktail, my girl, and we’ll go back and tell Laura to restrain her extravagant nuptial plans or we’ll foil her by eloping.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
The electric power lines having been restored, on the evening of the engagement party the Lances’ garden was illuminated by strings of colored fairy lights and painted paper lanterns. For the younger guests Laura Lance had arranged a barbecue and dancing on the lawn—a Western innovation that caused the kebun to wail with horror—while their elders played bridge indoors or gossiped and imbibed brandy on the terrace. The festivities—and by the end of the evening most of the Europeans on the island seemed to have put in an appearance—attracted a cluster of interested locals who gazed over the hedge grinning broadly and passing candid comments in mellifluous Tamil or one of the Chinese dialects. One little fellow even shinned up a tree and perched in the branches, watching the gyrations of the mems and tuans with bright fascinated eyes.
The betrothed couple was too busy accepting good wishes and answering questions about their future plans to see much of one another for the first hour or two, and it was not until after eleven that Alex, passing through the hall, felt a light grip on her elbow and found Jonathan propelling her toward George Lance’s study.
None of the guests had so far penetrated this sanctum and it was strangely quiet after the noisiness of the other rooms.
“Now sit down and put your feet up for ten minutes,” he told her firmly. “You still aren’t a hundred percent well and I don’t want you carried to the altar on a stretcher.”
He poured two cups of coffee from a jug on the desk and placed one of them and a plate of thin honey and melon sandwiches at her elbow.
Alex relaxed luxuriously in Mr. Lance’s capacious armchair and sipped the steaming-hot coffee. Jonathan’s care for her had undergone a subtle change since their engagement—he was less the mentor and more the servitor. But it was likely—she suppressed a smile—that he would revert to disciplinarian tactics if she showed any inclination to oppose his judgment.
“Who is that huge woman with the bad-tempered Pekingese?” Jonathan inquired.
“I don’t know. A friend of the Lances, I suppose.”
“Hmm.” He munched an olive. “Perhaps she’s a jewel thief and the little dog is full of loot,” he said idly.
Alex giggled. It was, she realized, the first time she had heard him make an absurd, flippant remark.
“What time are you going back tomorrow?” she asked.
He shrugged. “As early as I can stagger out of bed, but it doesn’t look as if this show will be over for quite a time.”
Finishing her coffee, Alex went over to a lacquered mirror and repaired her makeup.
“I’ve seen that dress before, haven’t I?”
“Yes, I wore it at my birthday party.” She glanced down at the white silk dress remembering the night, an age ago, when they had danced the tango and she had felt the first stirring of love.
“This is pretty.” He strolled over and touched the gossamer texture of an Indian gauze scarf twisted around her waist with the loose ends drifting behind like green and gold dragonfly wings.
She pulled the top off her lipstick case. Jonathan stood behind her, his dark face reflected in the mirror above her own. He watched her run the lipstick over her upper lip.
“Your hand is shaking,” he said gently.
“Oh ... party nerves. I always get them.”
“Indeed.” The inflection was politely disbelieving.
He put his hands on her waist. It was the first time that he had touched her in private. Although publicly his behavior was as demonstrative as that of any Englishman in love, when they were alone he had made no attempt to caress her. Gently he turned her around to face him. She could feel the warmth and strength of his hands through her thin dress. Now, now at last, he would take her in his arms and tell her that he loved her and that their marriage was no risk at all but a wonderful, unquestionable certainty of happiness. She closed her eyes...
“So there you are!”
Mrs. Lance stood in the doorway, smiling indulgent reproof at them.
“Naughty creatures, sneaking away from us all,” she said. “Your guests are demanding your presence. Come along—you’ll have plenty of time for a tete-a-tete later. Alex, old Colonel Portishaw wants to dance with you.”
On the morning of her wedding day, Alex opened her eyes and looked at once toward the open wardrobe where her white lace wedding dress hung on a satin-padded hanger—tangible reassurance that today was a reality.
For a while she lay staring at the dress and thinking of the momentous ceremony ahead of her. In five hours she would be Jonathan’s wife, bound to him for the rest of her life. Perhaps in twenty years’ time the dress, a little yellowed and redolent of camphor, would be taken from its tissue wrappings and worn by her daughter—Jonathan’s daughter. The implications of this thought stirred the disquiet that had pricked her contentment in the past few weeks. There were so many things they had not discussed, so many barriers between them. Since his return to the estate the morning after the engagement party Jonathan had written to her almost every day, but the letters beg
inning “My dearest Alex” and signed Jonathan” had revealed nothing of his deeper feelings. They were not at all the love letters she had imagined a man would write to his fiancée in the last weeks before the wedding. If only Mrs. Lance had not burst in on them that night when he had seemed on the point of saying something important!
Fortunately for Alex’s peace of mind there had been a great deal to do in the intervening days—a trousseau to order, presents to unpack, flowers to choose, the reception to organize. In spite of her preference for a quiet wedding it had gradually developed into a full-scale affair that Alex was secretly dreading. But the Lances had been so kind to her and were obviously enjoying the preparations so much that she had not the heart to protest. Jonathan had suggested by mail that the honeymoon should be spent up at the government resort on Maxwell Hill near Taiping, and she had agreed to that, too, thinking that wherever they went it would, in the circumstances, be an ordeal.
It was seven o’clock. Alex got out of bed, prodded Pippa’s huddled form and went through to the shower. She was rubbing herself dry when Pippa, now sufficiently aroused to have remembered the importance of the day, called, “How do you feel?”
“Fine! How am I supposed to feel?”
“In a bridal dither, of course. Aren’t you honestly the least bit jittery?”
“No.” It was odd, Alex thought, that with so many doubts and indecisions in her mind, she had none of the physical symptoms of panic. No shaking hands. No pounding heart. No jellified knees.
“Perhaps it’s too early.” She sat down to brush her hair. “I shall probably fall in a swoon at the church door.”
“They say you go through it in a kind of daze,” Pippa said knowledgeably. “Grooms are usually in more of a flap than brides. They buck themselves up with whiskey and then have to swallow peppermints so as not to breathe fumes over the minister.”