Dangerous Waters

by Rosalind Brett

  “I am Kim Mali,” he said, as if that explained everything. “You wish to see me?”

  His voice was high-pitched and sing-song, but his pronunciation was good. He was probably the product of an Eastern university. Pete Sternham explained that Miss Fremont wished to get through to Penghu as soon as possible.

  The man nodded, and opened her passport. He was not to be hurried. He put on a pair of steel-rimmed spectacles, read a few details and gazed at Terry.

  “You are Teresa Fremont?”

  “Yes.”

  “I see that you are twenty years old and come from England. Why do you travel alone?”

  Pete did the explaining in spare phrases. Kim Mali nodded again, put Terry’s passport into a drawer, turned the key and then placed the key in the top pocket of his jacket. Though the action was ominous, he was all graciousness as he leaned forward over the desk.

  “You have heard of the sudden troubles we have had here two days ago?”

  “With the utmost regret,” said Pete smoothly. “One can understand how your people felt.”

  “Their fathers saw cholera sweep the countryside; they were terrified it might come again, and goaded the sons to act. We have had to be stern, and in order to do so with authority, I have invoked some regulations which were in force when the epidemic came to Vinan thirty years ago. These regulations, I might say, were prepared by the British, and strictly applied. The epidemic died. This time we do it as a preventative. We have decided in council that the rules will be rigidly enforced for three months.”

  “Very wise,” Pete commented. “How do they apply to us, exactly?”

  “To you, sir, now that you have a permit, they do not apply at all. You are free to go whenever you wish, so long as you use the river and produce the permit at any village on your way where it is demanded. Miss Fremont is under the age of twenty-one, which is mentioned in our regulations, and she is also unmarried. She must go back to Shalak.”

  “It’s a little hard on her,” Pete said, before Terry could speak. “She has to attend a sister’s marriage in a few days’ time. Can you suggest anything?”

  The great shoulders lifted. “We cannot make exceptions, Mr. Sternham.”

  “But ... wouldn’t you, give me permission to go with Mr. Sternham along the river?” Terry demanded desperately. “I suppose the reasons for your rule was necessary in those old days, but...”

  Pete broke in swiftly and tactfully. “It’s an excellent rule, even in these days. I suppose if she were my sister I could take her through?”

  The old man was wily. He smiled. “But she is not, Mr. Sternham. There are no loopholes. In any case, it is here in print that a woman may go with her husband only, and if she is travelling alone she must be proceeding in the company of a male to join her husband. There are no other circumstances in which a white woman may travel through Vinan at this time.”

  “Is it possible for me to see a copy of the regulations?”

  “Of course.” He drew a yellow and crinkled sheaf from a drawer. “Take this and read it at your leisure. May I offer you tea?”

  “No, thanks. It was good of you to see us.”

  Kim Mali ponderously stood up. “Miss Fremont could have gone with Dr. and Mrs. Van Breda to their station—it is in Vinan territory, but I am afraid she would be even more cut off from Penghu there than in Shalak. I am very sorry, but there is nothing I can do.” He had paused and moved round the desk when he added, “You two are strangers to each other? You have met only on the steamer?”

  “‘That’s right,” said Pete.

  “I suppose,” remarked the old man, smiling, “that had you known of our conditions here you would have bribed the captain to stop the ship lower down the river, where you could have procured a canoe and tried to slip past Vinan in the darkness. May I mention, merely to ease any blame you may attach to yourself, Mr. Sternham, that you would not have succeeded? We have a guard across the river from sunset till dawn—that, too, is one of the old regulations to combat the dread disease of cholera. Read them well, for your own sake—we are enforcing them without sentimentality.”

  After that, there was nothing to say but goodbye. Terry went out into the blanketing heat and waited till Pete Sternham came beside her and began the slow, tiring walk back to the jetty.

  “Sly old so-and-so,” Pete commented. “Mind-reader, too. When I leave this evening my canoe will be searched for stowaways.”

  “But what in the world am I to do? I just can’t go all the way back to Shalak. Annette will be frantic, and I’ll have come thousands of miles for nothing. I’ll get a canoe for myself, and escape!”

  “Don’t get any fancy ideas. You’re being watched, even at this moment. They learned their lesson well thirty years ago, and you haven’t a chance. I’ll see you back to the boat and get the skipper to leave at once. He said he was fed up and determined to get out soon.”

  . Terry looked down at the path, drew in her lip. “You just don’t care, do you? I know there’s nothing you can do, but at least you might show some sort of regret. I think you must dislike women pretty thoroughly.”

  “You’re wrong,” he sounded cynical. “I like women, but I don’t care for woman in the singular. As soon as you concentrate on any particular girl you’re sunk.”

  “Did experience teach you that?”

  “Not my own—other people’s. A man doesn’t need a wife out here.”

  “My sister’s fiancé seems to think he does.”

  “He’s a new arrival, I daresay. Get through a year on your own and you belong to yourself for life. I’ve just had a whale of a holiday—been over Burma and Siam with hardly more than a rucksack. Couldn’t do that with a woman round your neck.”

  “So you get through life without women?”

  With a tantalizing inflexion he answered, “I wouldn’t say that, Miss Fremont. I get through without a wife.” He glanced at her face and laughed. “You’re just a kid. It’s years since I saw a genuine blush. You get back to Shalak and keep safe till someone comes for you. I’ll go on to Penghu and tell your sister you’re there.”

  She shook her head and sighed. “You don’t understand at all. Annette is counting on me. She didn’t want to come here in the first place, and if I don’t turn up she’ll regard it as an omen and perhaps even cancel the wedding. Besides, I’d give anything to be there!”

  “If it were only a matter of money, we’d be on our way already.”

  She cast him a quick glance. “You would take me, then?”

  “Let’s say I’d escort you, in another canoe.”

  She almost wailed, “It does seem wrong that these people can prevent my going to Penghu. Can’t you possibly think of something?”

  Terry never knew what he was going to reply because they had now come within sight of the jetty, and he made a sharp exclamation. The steamer was gone. On the logs, looking forlorn and abandoned, stood two suitcases, a pigskin grip, a rucksack, and a floral bucket bag over which was draped a light tweed coat. The grip and rucksack were Pete’s, the rest belonged to Terry.

  Pete loped to the end of the jetty. The steamer was not even in sight. He turned and went into the hut, held a staccato conversation with the little man in charge. When he came out his jaw was tight, his eyes narrowed and hard. But to Terry he still spoke casually.

  “Seems the skipper was sure I’d be able to arrange something, so he put your stuff ashore. He and the official had a slanging match, and he’s sworn never to come here again. But I understand another boat is due up here in a couple of days with a repair gang for the railway, and you can go back on that.”

  In the hot, humid sunshine, she shivered. “And what do I do till then?”

  “There’s a rest-house. You’re to stay there under guard.”

  “Under guard!”

  He snapped his fingers irritably. “Don’t stare at me as if I made the damned laws! On the whole they’re good ones, and the natives know it. They’re terrified of cholera and they�
��ll go to any lengths to keep it away. To them, it seemed that the train might bring a greater number of cases on the next trip, so a few militant youths among them wrecked it. With the old red tape enforced they feel they’ll be safe. The fact that they stick to it literally in every sense is good, not reprehensible. It’s just too bad that you turned up a few days late.”

  “So I’m to be victimized!” she said. “I come all the way from England to attend my sister’s wedding, only to find that one tiny state in Malaya won’t let me through. I can’t send a telegram or telephone her...”

  “I’ve told you I’ll be there in three days. Before I leave here I’ll have another talk with that old chief, and get a Malay woman to stay with you. Malays are gentle people—they’re good to white women.”

  Terry’s throat was full. “Go away,” she said. “Get into your beastly canoe and vanish. I know it’s not your fault, but if I’ve got to stay here while you go free I’d rather not see you again. Tell someone to take me to the rest-hut!”

  He shrugged those annoyingly broad shoulders. “Getting steamed up won’t help you. You shouldn’t be here, anyway, and from the sound of things, neither should your sister. Go back into the shade, and I’ll make the necessary arrangements.”

  Terry tightened her teeth, lifted her chin, and walked back along the jetty to the shade of a widespread jungle tree. Her disappointment was so acute that she could have beaten with her fist upon the rocklike tree-trunk. She didn’t, of course. She stood there, with her back to the river, her body thudding with heat, her teeth aching with tension, and rivers of sweat coursing down her back.

  A few minutes later that hatefully calm voice said, “The rest-house is just along the river bank. Things are well run here and you’ll find it clean. I’ll see that you get everything you need.”

  Terry did not answer. She walked ahead of him, straight behind the skinny Malay who carried her luggage. She entered the darkness of the rest-house, stood in the centre of the single square room while the Malay dumped her goods next to a camp bed and pulled up the reed blind to let in muted daylight. Not a foot from the window opening hung dense palm leaves of a brilliant green.

  The Malay whispered away on bare feet. Pete Sternham examined the atap walls, the thatched roof, the crackling mattress on the camp bed. “It’s cooler in here, anyway,” he said. “I’ll see if I can find you a chair and a decent blanket.”

  “Don’t bother,” she said bitterly. “Just go away.”

  To her chagrin, he did. She was left alone in a rustling room which had an earth floor, a grass mat for a door and a bed that looked as if it had been knocked up on the spur of the moment about fifty years ago and been the home of termites and damp rot ever since. She had no idea what to do, how to accommodate herself to such surroundings. The impenetrable greenery, so fascinating from the deck of the steamer a while ago, was horribly close when viewed through the aperture that served as a window. There were odd thuds on the roof, movements and noises in the woven walls that sounded human, and sudden raucous laughter from the throat of a parrot that set her nerves jumping again.

  But on the whole it was not her own predicament that worried Terry. The place and the people were strange, the prospect of being alone here rather terrifying, but neither formed the core of her anxiety. Till this moment, when it looked as if she would not see Annette for a long time, she had not realized how imperative it had been that she should have a week with her sister before the wedding.

  Terry remembered the uneasy months between Vic Hilton’s departure and Annette’s decision to go out to Penghu and marry him Often, during that time, Annette had paced the bedroom she shared with Terry, and wondered aloud whether she and Vic were really suited to each other, whether two people of such different temperaments could possibly be in love. Annette, cool and poised as she modelled clothes or was photographed to advertise and embellish a new car or a washing machine, had become uncertain and flurried in her private life. She’d had men friends galore, so there was no doubt at all in her mind when Vic asked her to marry him; he was the chosen one for Annette—till he came to see her that day and told her about the job in Penghu. He had applied for it without telling her, brought her his success as if it were some gift that would send her straight into heaven, with him. For a week after that they had almost literally been in hell, estranged, desperate and unapproachable.

  Because they were in love, they had come together again, but Vic hadn’t climbed down. He was the rugged sort and keen to have a few years abroad before he settled into a rut; he persuaded Annette that this was their chance to gain something that most people had to do without, that if he gave up the idea both of them would regret it later. He might dislike Malaya, she said at last, capitulating, and would not marry him before he left. Far better for him to try it out first while she kept her job and saved.

  Vic’s airmailed letters had arrived with fair regularity, but they had always been ten or eleven days old. Annette had chafed, and twice been on the verge of breaking her engagement. Had it not been for Terry she would have passed that point. Terry had fought wordy battles, from Vic’s angle. Perhaps because she herself had always known a yearning to travel, she had steeped herself in literature about the Far East, absorbed the details of Vic’s descriptions and gone starry-eyed whenever they talked of life in a small white community among the smiling Malays.

  “I wish all this were happening to me,” she’d said many times, “‘that I was in love with someone who wanted me to come out to him. If there were no other way, I ... I’d walk it!”

  “I believe you would,” her sister had answered. “You’re one-track and enthusiastic. I do work I simply love, and the very thought of living in a country that’s all jungle gives me nightmares. You know, it’s a great pity you didn’t see more of Roger Payn. If you had, we might both go out there as prospective brides!”

  “Yes, he was sweet, wasn’t he?” Terry had murmured reminiscently. “If I come out to be your bridesmaid I’ll vamp him.”

  Annette had laughed. “I’ve an idea you won’t have to. What about those letters he writes you?”

  “They’re affectionate without being sloppy. I write back a little stiffly, to maintain the balance, but I wouldn’t mind knowing him better.”

  Annette, her golden head thrown back as she regarded the bedroom ceiling, had smiled and sighed. “I envy you, Terry. When you fall in love you’ll have no bother at all. You’ll just give in to the man and revel in whatever he plans for you. I can see you with someone like Roger—young and happy and fond. You won’t brood all over the place as I do.”

  Annette, for all her outward serenity, was never a completely happy person. Perhaps because she remembered their own mother, she had never got along really well with their step-mother, whereas Terry, who had been four years old when her father re-married had found Elizabeth a just if not indulgent mother, and a good friend. Annette had grown up feeling slightly cheated, but the conviction had lessened as she found herself becoming more and more attractive to men. Being in love had softened her, but Vic’s determination to try out the job in Malaya had undone some of his best work on her character.

  Terry remembered that final week before Annette had taken the plane to Singapore; the long nights, when her sister would get up and make coffee, smoke numerous cigarettes and huddle, shivering, on the side of Terry’s bed.

  “Why do you always seem so strong, Terry?” she had wailed once. “I’m your big sister, I earn twice your salary and I could marry a bank manager tomorrow, if I wanted to. Yet here I am, a jellified bit of nothing, wishing to heaven you were going with me, to laugh at everything and go mad over the sights, and tell me how absolutely lucky I am. I wish I’d never met Vic!”

  “You should thank your stars you did,” Terry had answered soothingly. “There’s nothing to worry about. If the life out there doesn’t suit you, he’ll bring you home.”

  “He won’t, you know,” Annette had stated despairingly. “I couldn’t dissuade
him even when we were only just engaged. Once we belong together I won’t stand a chance.”

  “You’ll be in a stronger position, and in any case, Vic couldn’t bear to see you wilted and languid. For his sake, you have to give it a trial.”

  “And what about me?”

  “It’s for your sake, too. If you’d managed to scotch the whole thing you’d always feel you’d denied him something he wanted very much. Well, he’s having his fling now, and he wants you to share it. You should be thrilled!”

  “The way I feel,” Annette had returned hollowly, “my wedding will be the gloomiest on record. Whatever happens, you’ll come, won’t you? You’d never let me down—promise!”

  Terry had promised, earnestly and with sparkling eyes. Then, her own departure by a cheaper mode of travel had been three weeks away, and she had felt she could hardly wait. Only four days before she had left England Annette’s letter had arrived. True to her word, she had given a long description of the air trip to Singapore and up the coast of Malaya, of Vic’s meeting her at Khota Mipis and the journey in his car to Penghu. In almost a formal manner she had given details of Penghu and Mr. and Mrs. Winchester, with whom she was staying. She had ended: “Nothing seems in the least real—not even Vic. I feel completely void. You don’t know how much I wish we had scraped together the air fare for you, Terry. Thank heaven you’ll soon be on your way. I couldn’t face this outlandish way of getting married if you weren’t here.”

  And now, it seemed, she would have to face it alone or postpone the wedding. Terry couldn’t bear to think about it.

  She left both cases locked, and took toilet articles from the bucket bag. While she was wondering where to put them, a Malay woman came in, carrying a primitive bamboo chair which had a plaited grass seat. The woman had smooth features and doe eyes and she wore a sarong with a baju, a costume which showed a coffee-brown midriff. She went out, and immediately returned, bearing a wooden tray that held a clay pot full of water and a couple of earthenware cups. One of the cups contained a little yellow liquid, to which the woman added water. She brought the drink to Terry, proffering it with both hands.