A Durable Fire

by Robyn Donald

  ‘With Helen and Tim Goudge.’

  Arminel protested, ‘Darling, that’s enough! You mustn’t ask so many questions.’

  ‘How else is she to find out?’ Kyle got to his feet, towering over them both, then extended a hand. ‘Come on, get up. You can’t stay sitting in the water like a mermaid for ever.’

  She got up without any help, suffered his slow, taunting appraisal in impotent anger and said, ‘We were just going up.’

  ‘Are you going to offer me something to drink? There’s not a soul stirring at the Goudges’ and I’m dying of thirst.’

  Arminel looked at him in silent hostility, but Felice answered for her. ‘Yes, come up and have some coffee. Mummy likes coffee, but I don’t.’

  ‘No?’ Kyle lifted a quizzical brow. ‘What do you like?’

  ‘Water. And milk.’

  Picking up the snorkelling paraphernalia in one hand, he held out the other, and Arminel watched in astonishment as her daughter took it. But why should she be so surprised? This was just an extension of his formidable charisma. Apparently it affected any female, not only those who were nubile.

  ‘You’re very quiet this morning,’ he said. ‘Didn’t you sleep well last night?’

  She had seen the quick glance at the shadows under her eyes. ‘Too well,’ she lied. ‘I always feel headachy if I’ve slept too heavily.’

  It would have been better to admit the truth. His smile was openly sceptical, but he said nothing more until they reached the house.

  Then he looked around, flagrantly evaluating the place, his gaze finally coming back to his reluctant hostess. ‘Very—opulent,’ he drawled unpleasantly. ‘It suits you. Did your husband build it for you?’

  ‘No.’ She was determined not to be provoked. ‘Just dump those there, will you, and come on in.’

  The floor was ceramic tiles, cool and pale and easy for Asena to sweep clean of sand. Arminel led the way to where they ate beneath a rondavel beside the pool, and there was Karen, yawning, clearly not particularly surprised at Kyle’s appearance.

  ‘Hi,’ she smiled. ‘How are you? Super party, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Wasn’t it?’ His answering smile was a masterpiece, friendly, worldly and making it quite clear that he enjoyed the sight of Karen’s curvy form attired in a brief scarlet bikini with a gold chain emphasising her waist.

  ‘Kyle’s come for coffee,’ said Arminel in her coolest hostess’s voice. ‘And you could probably tempt him with some pawpaw or mango, Karen.’

  ‘There’s toast, too,’ Felice offered cheerfully. ‘Do you want some bacon?’

  He grimaced. ‘No, thanks, I’ll stick to toast and coffee.’

  Karen chuckled. ‘Oh, come now, you can’t have a hangover! You weren’t drinking much. Boy, I’ll bet there are several nursing sore heads this morning!’ She named the actor, continuing cheerfully, ‘He wanted to know all about you, Arminel.’

  ‘Did he, indeed?’ Arminel felt as though this was the last straw. As she poured coffee she said on a grim note, ‘I hope you fended him off.’

  ‘Sure. Told him that you valued privacy only slightly less than you valued your life and that anyone who stayed here had better learn it quickly. He’s a bit full of himself, isn’t he? Nice-looking, though, and that fabulous voice, like dark velvet!’

  Kyle made some teasing remark and their laughter blended. Felice grinned happily as she picked up a slice of pawpaw and attacked the glistening apricot flesh. From the pool the sun’s reflection shimmered up at them and the fresh warm morning air caressed their bodies, potent as a sorcerer’s love philtre. Arminel looked down at her coffee and felt like screaming at the top of her voice. In fact she visualised the scene. Karen would be horrified, Felice frightened. And Kyle? Oh, he would smile in that half-mocking, disagreeable way and understand exactly why she was impelled to lose control so disastrously.

  How dared he? How dared he come here and look at her with his cruel beautiful eyes and tell her without words that he felt nothing for her but scorn and disdain and a lust which was an insult.

  ‘Mummy,’ Felice said patiently, ‘Mummy, can I go?’

  ‘What, darling?’

  Felice sighed, looking at Kyle with a resigned tolerance, ‘Sometimes she goes off into dreams,’ she explained. ‘Mummy, Kyle’s going up to the look-out point tomorrow. Can I go too?’

  Arminel found no help from Kyle. From above his coffee cup his eyes mocked her.

  ‘Oh, darling, no. Kyle won’t—’

  ‘He said I could.’

  Damn you, her glance said. Aloud she protested, ‘But it’s such a long way. You’ll get awfully tired.’

  ‘I can ride. He’s going up on one of the horses.’ Felice’s little face was pleading. ‘Why don’t you come too, Mummy, and Karen? We can take our lunches with us and the glasses for seeing through. Oh, please, Mummy!’

  ‘Why not?’ said Kyle, setting his cup down. ‘It sounds to me like a pleasant way to spend a day. And as far as Helen’s concerned, the more the merrier.’

  Karen said nothing, but it was quite clear that she wanted very much to go. Arminel smoothed the frown from between her brows. Kyle had her in a spot and he knew it, and the best way to deny him full enjoyment of this form of harassment was to ignore it.

  ‘Why not?’ she said lightly. ‘Have you organised the horses, Kyle, or would you like me to cope with yours as well as ours?’

  ‘I’ll do that,’ he told her quite pleasantly, but when he left Karen giggled and said, ‘Well, I know now never to offer to do anything for him. That is one very macho man.’

  ‘Oh, you’re so right.’

  ‘Clearly you and he didn’t get on five years ago and you’re not going to try now.’ Karen leaned her chin on the heel of her hand and viewed Arminel contemplatively. ‘Which is a pity, because I rather think he has a yen for you.’

  ‘Rubbish,’ Arminel told her, steadying her voice. ‘We don’t like each other much.’

  ‘But you’re both too well-mannered to let it show?’ Karen grinned. ‘He seemed rather taken with Felice, and she with him.’

  Which had surprised Arminel too; normally Felice treated strangers with a wary reserve until she knew them well enough to admit them into her friendship, or not, as the case was. But she had certainly opened up for Kyle.

  ‘He is a menace to womanhood,’ Karen said dreamily. ‘But oh, what a gorgeous menace! If he didn’t make it so perfectly clear that there is absolutely nothing doing I’d try for him myself. He makes my toes curl. You should have seen them all trying last night, the McLauchlan sisters especially, all fluttering lashes and lascivious dancing, and he was so charming and none of them got anywhere! Why do some men make all others look like shadows?’

  ‘Because they’re stuffed with male arrogance,’ Arminel snapped. ‘And stupid women think it’s a sign of—oh, forget it!’ She produced an unconvincing smile. ‘He’s got looks and strength and he’s as sexy as hell, but there’s no gentleness there, no kindness. If you’re looking for a lover choose one with some consideration, even if he’s not as seething with machismo.’

  ‘Well, I haven’t got a chance with him, anyway,’ Karen said frankly. ‘Oh, he flirts very nicely, but it’s you he’s got his eye on. Now, what’s to be done today? I know there’s a stack of letters waiting for answers.’

  Plenty, fortunately, and after lunch they slept. Then Felice insisted on a shell-collecting trip, so they wandered along the beach in the opposite direction from the Goudge house before playing a fairly hectic game of chase through the palms.

  After a prolonged dinner Arminel read some of Lorna Doone while Karen washed her hair and played her latest album and read a romance in between dancing energetically to the music.

  Finally Arminel showered and took a sleeping pill and went to bed exhausted as if she had spent the day running. As she had, in a way—running from memories, running from herself, but most of all running from the implications of Kyle’s presence.

  They had
decided to start early before the heat of the day and it was a wildly excited Felice who was first to hear the sounds of the horses’ arrival on the crushed coral road.

  ‘Oh, come on,’ she begged for at least the twentieth time. ‘Mummy, Karen, come on! You’ll be late!’

  Arminel laughed, fixed the hard hat firmly on to the curly head and said, ‘No, darling, never with you around.’

  Because Helen had insisted on providing the food they had only to take a bag of clothes and such necessities as the tropics make essential, as well as extra water for Felice, who dehydrated quickly.

  Outside under the feathery shade of the palms the horses stood quietly, turning their curious heads towards the house as Felice ran down the path.

  ‘Super morning,’ Helen greeted them, her curious glance flickering from Kyle to Arminel and back to Kyle as he lifted Felice up on to the small pony which was hers.

  ‘Lovely!’ Arminel would never be as good a rider as Helen, or as Felice promised to be, but she had come a long way since Kyle had first put her up on to Tessa. Now she smiled at the Fijian man who helped her into the saddle and asked him about his wife, who had just gladdened his heart by producing a delectable son.

  After a few moments of organising they were ready to go. With them was the oldest of Helen and Tim’s sons, a pleasant child named Martin who, at the age of eight, felt superior enough to Felice to keep an eye on her. The Shakespearean actor was also a member of the party. He viewed his mount with charming ruefulness and told a long but extremely funny story of the trials of coping with a horse in full armour in an epic film he had made in Spain.

  It was delicious to ride through the plantation, the horses’ hooves muffled on the soft grass, while about them birds and butterflies flew, as gaily coloured as the living jewels of the reef. Occasionally there came the faint smell of drying copra, the only indication apart from the trim rows of palms that much of the island was a working and profitable concern.

  Once out of the plantation the original vegetation of the island clothed the rising ground and the soil changed from the sandy loam coconuts love to a rich volcanic red, freely interspersed with rocks ejected during one of the many volcanic explosions which had formed the Fijian islands aeons ago. Here grew bananas and the ubiquitous breadfruit with its great, immensely valuable fruit; the swampy patches held cultivated taro.

  Then the ground became even steeper and the semi-cultivated air of the lower reaches vanished. The track wound through rain-forest seething with life, thick, almost oppressive in spite of the exquisite beauty of form and hue manifested in the dim depths beneath the canopy.

  ‘Green,’ Felice said cheerfully. ‘All colours of green. Mummy, how long till we get to the top?’

  ‘Quite a way yet, my cherub. Are you tired?’

  A faintly disgusted look was her only answer. Felice had no intention of giving in even if she had to be strapped to her pony. A faint frown pulled at Arminel’s brows. Sometimes it didn’t seem normal for a child to be as determined as Felice.

  ‘What’s the matter?’

  Kyle had dropped back and was looking at her with cool interrogation.

  ‘Nothing.’

  He wasn’t fooled, of course. As his glance moved across to the child he said, ‘She’s managing very well. In fact, I’d say of the two of you she has more stamina. You look as though a flick of the finger would have you out for the count.’

  If I treat him as just any man, she thought, just as if he were some nice man I’ve met for the first time, then maybe I can reach some sort of equilibrium. So she smiled without any hidden bitterness.

  ‘As that sort of comment can usually be construed to mean that I look dreadful, I’ll ignore it. How do you like our island?’

  If her straightforward response surprised him no hint of it escaped. ‘Very much. A perfect hideaway for the very rich. No stresses, no strains, surroundings of exquisite beauty and enough activity to fill the days so that one doesn’t ever get bored.’

  ‘Well, that’s a backhanded compliment, if ever there was one,’ she said cheerfully. ‘Don’t you approve of wealth, Kyle? Or is it your own kind you resent—and look down on?’

  The broad shoulders moved in a shrug, but beneath his half-closed eyes his glance was shrewd and as sharp as a lance. ‘I think you’ve read me wrongly. As you pointed out, I’m the last person to disapprove of wealth—if it’s honestly gained.’

  ‘You mean inherited?’ Damn, damn, damn, she hadn’t intended to say that. It was offering open provocation!

  He smiled narrowly, his eyes fixed for a moment on the gold gleam of her wedding-ring. ‘That doesn’t worry me. If the inheritors are not fit to have it they usually dissipate it, give someone stronger and more able the chance to acquire it. What I dislike is the pursuit of wealth—or power—for its own sake. And the bartering of all self-respect for the things that money can buy.’

  Oh, he knew how to hurt, each word exquisitely calculated to wound like an arrow, leaving behind poison that would fester for years.

  Harking back to her earlier decision to forget the past and all that had happened, Arminel said lightly, ‘Oh, I’m sure everyone dislikes that sort of person. But they usually make their own punishment, surely? A person lacking in self-respect is a poor apology for a human being.’

  ‘How right you are,’ he mocked.

  It was all Arminel could do not to hit him across his handsome smiling face. Anything to wipe that taunting sneer from it. Even as her hands clenched she forced them to relax and repressed the turbulence of her emotions. Later, in the privacy of her own home, she could swear, or weep, or scream. While Kyle stayed on the island the only way to get through the days was to ignore him. And if it had the effect of maddening him, so much the better, some unregenerate part of her brain whispered.

  So she composed her expression into one of smiling yet reserved interest. He is a pleasant stranger, she reminded herself. Aloud she asked, ‘How long are you planning to stay?’

  It was abrupt, but she had to know. And that would be the last betrayal. From now on in she would be Dan Evans’ wife. And he could like it or loathe it, there was nothing he could do about it.

  ‘Oh, for as long as Helen will have me,’ he answered casually.

  Hearing her name, Helen demanded to know why they were discussing her; after being told of his remark she said, ‘Why, Kyle darling, you can stay as long as you like, you know that! Your mother said in her last letter that you haven’t had a decent holiday for years! This is such a perfect place to unwind.’

  ‘Oh, it is indeed,’ he said, his expression coldly amused. ‘Marvellous. Like a dream come true. If I’d planned it I’d never have found a better opportunity.’

  Helen looked pleased, but to Arminel his words were ominously close to a threat. With wild frightened eyes she stared ahead until her lashes came down to hide her fear. Every instinct urged her to run, to get out of Fiji before he carried out whatever it was he had planned for her.

  Only for a moment, and she was immediately ashamed of such a display of panic. Who was he to frighten her away? If he did it once he could do it again and again, finding out from Helen when she was holidaying there and reappearing each time like the ghost at the banquet.

  After all, what could he do? Nothing. If she refused to allow him to see how much his poisoned remarks hurt he would never know, never realise that after all these years she was as hopelessly in love with him as she had been.

  When she had married Dan she had started grimly on a programme of self-improvement, somewhat to his amusement, although he had encouraged it. Perhaps he had realised how inferior she had felt at Te Nawe when they had discussed books she had never heard of, people who were only names.

  At first it had been a hard grind, but gradually she became enthusiastic, the beauty of the things she read engraving themselves on her brain, enriching her life.

  Especially poetry, which for her had been almost destroyed at school by an insensitive teacher. Wh
en she was free to enjoy without having to analyse she found much unbearably beautiful and began to learn it.

  Some lines came into her head now; when first she had read Sir Walter Raleigh’s ‘Walsinghame’ she had hoped fervently that they were false. Now, it seemed, they were only too prophetic:

  ‘But true love is a durable fire

  In the mind ever burning;

  Never sick, never old, never dead,

  From itself never turning.’

  That was like her love. A durable fire, sometimes damped down, for long years dimly glowing coals, but always there, always burning beneath the prosaic surface of everyday life. If she gave into it, as she had once done, it could set her alight and burn her into ashes.

  With a new resolution she looked around her, chin lifted delicately.

  ‘You look as though you’ve come to some decision,’ Kyle murmured, softly enough so that no one else heard him.

  Willing her eyes to be frank and clear, she laughed. ‘No, just remembering some poetry.’

  One dark brow climbed. ‘Do you make a habit of recalling poetry?’

  ‘Frequently,’ Karen chimed in, her voice dry. ‘She learns the stuff, too.’

  ‘A romantic, Arminel?’

  She flashed him a smile, ignoring the sardonic inflection in the deep tones. ‘Why not? It’s fashionable once more to be romantic, didn’t you know?’

  Helen came in cheerfully, ‘Kyle darling, all women are romantic; we’d all sacrifice our souls for the sort of love that poets praise and writers try to describe. It’s only when we can’t get it that we settle for husbands.’

  Even Tim laughed at this, comfortably secure in the fact that although his wife could not help herself flirting with any handsome man he was one of the kingpins of her life.

  The conversation became general, then petered out as the track wound its way across a steep pinch before reaching a kind of plateau. The sound of water falling from a height became louder. When they reached a cliff of blackish stone heavily overhung with creepers and ferns and orchids, green, primeval in its lushness, it was like cool music in their ears. A little stream chattered down from above before falling over the lip into a wide, smooth basin at which everyone looked yearningly. So far above sea-level the air was cooler, but cooler in the tropics was still hot, as Tim said, and he was not the only one whose shirt stuck to his back.