Dangerous Waters

by Rosalind Brett

  “Do you think you’ll want to stay on in the Far East, Vic?” she asked.

  “I shouldn’t be surprised, you know. I’ve taken to it.”

  “And what about Annette?”

  “Oh, lord,” he said gloomily. “She comes first with me, of course, but can’t you make her regard this as an adventure, Terry? After all, anyone can see that you’re still dog-tired, but you lap up every new sight as if it were the most beautiful thing in the world. Why can’t Annette be like that?”

  “Because we’re different. She was made for the bright lights, and to be admired. Physical beauty doesn’t last all that long. Why should she hide it in the jungle?”

  “She could make up her mind to be thoroughly happy here for the next three years. After that, we’d decide together about the future.”

  “What does she say, when you put it that way?”

  “That she’ll be twenty-seven—old.” His voice, trying to imitate Annette’s, was comical. “She just doted on modelling. I hated it.”

  “There’s such a thing as compromise. Were you compelled to sign a contract for three years?”

  “No, only for one year. I didn’t really sign up till I knew Annette was on her way here.”

  “You’ll admit that was a grubby trick.”

  “Yes, but I was sure that, having decided to come, she would settle in. I still think she will.”

  “Supposing she had decided not to come?”

  He looked a little grey. “I’d have had to work out the year, but we might have parted.”

  “Vic! How can you talk like that?”

  He sighed. “When you’ve done as much arguing as I have, it gets easier every day to be callous. Annette insists that if we’d stayed in England she could have continued working. Well, there are, some jobs a man might not mind his wife doing, if she finds it necessary for her ego, but modelling isn’t one of them. You thought I was a nasty, dogged creature when I took this post without telling Annette, didn’t you?”

  “Dogged, but not nasty.”

  He smiled faintly. “Thanks for that, Actually, I had two reasons for putting in an application. I really was—and am—keen to work out here for a spell, and ... well, it looked like a good basis for a showdown with Annette. If she wanted to stick with me she could only do it as my wife in every sense of the word. I don’t want a model for a wife.”

  “You’re certainly difficult, you two. And they say love is a leveller and all-powerful! If I hadn’t heard you both declare most emphatically that you love each other, I wouldn’t believe it.”

  “You can believe it, all right,” he said, a little hopelessly. “Annette never bothers with other men and I’ve never even seen another girl since we met.” He pondered and added moodily, “It might do her a bit of good if I suddenly began paying attention to someone else.”

  “And vice versa,” Terry reminded him. “She has more scope than you have.”

  “We just can’t do it to each other. Many other things, but not that.”

  Terry smiled. ‘You both think too much about your incompatibilities. Why don’t you just drift into a seventh heaven and not emerge from it till your honeymoon is over? I bet you’d find that most of your difficulties had disappeared. Where are you spending your honeymoon, by the way?”

  “We get a plane trip to a coastal place down south—wedding gift from the firm.”

  “Very nice, too. Do they give you a month?”

  “I think so. You’re staying here till we come back, aren’t you?”

  Terry’s smile faded, she looked out once more into a darkness lit by fireflies.

  “I don’t know. There’s nothing for me to do here. We can have your flat ready quite soon, and once you’re married I might as well get back to England.”

  “But that’s ridiculous,” he said warmly. “Even for your own sister, you can’t travel all this way and stay just a week or two. Vida is expecting you to live here at least a month ... and there’s Roger.” He paused, and looked at her a little curiously. “You wrote to him quite often from England, didn’t you? He was always disappointed if more than a couple of weeks went by without a letter from you.”

  “We were fairly good pen pals,” she said lightly. “I’m sorry he went chasing off to find me.”

  “You know why he did it, don’t you?”

  “He thought I was daft enough to get lost, I suppose. You’re sure he’ll find out that I’ve reached Penghu?”

  “He’ll find out.” Vic leaned a little towards her, spoke in lower tones. “Have you gone cold on Roger? You sound it.”

  “There was never anything between us.”

  “Why should he think there is, then? Because he does.”

  This was too much for Terry. With every hour she was feeling more normal, more able to cope with Annette’s nerves and discontent; but Roger Payn had to stay outside. Whatever she had dreamed in England and on the boat had gone stale as last week’s bread. Now, in spite of the snapshots he had sent her, she couldn’t even remember what Roger had looked like!

  “I gave him no reason,” she said shortly, and stood up. They went into the sitting-room, and presently Vida Winchester and her husband came in, followed about ten minutes later by a sparkling Annette. Terry was glad to notice that Annette still caught and held Vic’s glance whenever she entered a room; surely such a bond between two people would survive the disagreements and upsets?

  After dinner a few people arrived. The company accountant and his wife, the doctor, and an agent who talked incessantly about the importance of opening up the district. The agent’s wife was an avid-looking woman, yellow-complexioned and atrociously dressed; it was she who had started the other women on their obsession with bridge.

  Everyone was most cordial to Annette’s sister. If, privately, they considered her rather below Annette’s standard of loveliness, they certainly did not show it. She was offered information and advice, questioned about the canoe trip, admired aloud for her courage. Well, it had to be got through; after tonight they would no doubt let the whole thing die.

  Next morning Terry drove with Annette, in Vic’s car, to view the flat. She had imagined a building on the lines of English flats but smaller, but the block in Penghu was delightfully tropical in appearance. There were balconies in ice-cream colors, fretted brickwork, tobacco-colored reed sun-blinds and a background of palms. In all, there were only sixteen flats, and each, presumably, was a replica of the one on the top floor, which Vic had rented.

  A long lounge opened on to a balcony, a dining alcove was just behind it, there was one large bedroom, another room which would take a single bed but not much else, and a box-like kitchen and bathroom. The rooms were airy and supplied with ceiling fans, and as they had never before been occupied the floors were an even honey-color, the walls a flawless matt white. The only snag seemed to be the lights; the place was wired ready for future developments, but Vic would have to supply his own batteries or use paraffin lamps.

  “Paraffin lamps!” Annette repeated, after she had given this information. “It’s like going back to the Middle Ages.”

  “Of course it isn’t. There are still a good many places in England where they use them. I like lamplight.”

  “You would. I prefer brilliance, but even with batteries we won’t get it. I believe they have to be charged continually.”

  “Have both, and you can’t go wrong. Have you measured for curtains?”

  “Oh, Terry, how dull can you get! In any case, the moment I began to take an interest in color schemes Vic would think he had me hooked. I’ve got to feel right before I get married.”

  “Of course you have, but you’ll admit you’re going a strange way about it. You’ve now been engaged to Vic for ten months, and during the whole of that time he would have married you any day you chose. Surely you don’t think you can stay out here, postponing the day once a week!”

  Annette smiled wearily. “No one here knows that anything is wrong between Vic and me—you must rem
ember that. I only postponed the wedding because I was anxious about you. I’ll give you my word here and now that if I don’t marry Vic tomorrow week it will be because I’ll already have left for England.”

  “Annette!”

  “It’s all very well for you to look horrified. You don’t know how it feels to have to give in all the time and be offered life in a steamy little jungle town for three years as a reward. I’m beginning to think that Vic and I are so terribly unsuited that it would be best for us to part at once.”

  Terry wished she could find no sympathy at all with this attitude of Annette’s, but since her arrival the whole affair had looked much more puzzling than she had anticipated. She had received no communication at all from her sister since the letter written just after Annette’s arrival in Penghu, several weeks ago; during that time, it seemed, the uncertainty which had shadowed Annette’s final weeks in England had deepened. Yet Vic, bless his stolid heart, hadn’t changed at all.

  What was it their stepmother had said, just before Annette’s departure? “Annette is two people, and Penghu will reveal which is the stronger. Either she’s definitely the career type and should marry a man of the same outlook here in England, or at heart she’s a little woman who’s romantically in love. She’s shown such tenacity in clinging to Vic that I wouldn’t like to prophesy one way or the other.”

  Terry wished there were someone outside the family whom she could consult. No one here in Penghu imagined there was any doubtful element in Vic’s engagement to Annette Fremont ... no one but Pete Sternham. He’d possibly gathered that there was more in her own determination to get to Penghu than mere anxiety to be present at a sister’s wedding. He had hinted as much, once or twice. But she couldn’t consult Pete; didn’t want to think about him if she could help it.

  There was not much joy, late that afternoon, in walking through the workshop of the carpenter who had been commissioned to make the company furniture. The tables and chairs were plain and square, the twin beds uninspiring and the grass mats no different from those which hung in dozens outside the stores. Anyway, why should the company provide more than the basic necessities? It was up to the bachelor or the married couple to embellish and give charm to their home.

  The bolts of material which almost every shop displayed were gay and appealing. With a foundation of honey-hued wood, bright cushions and curtains could turn the flat into a home which might delight even Annette.

  They were passing a little leathery man with a sparse white beard who was seated in a doorway doing leather-work, when Annette said, “You know, I don’t seem to get really near to Vic any more. We seemed to be closer in our correspondence than we are now.”

  “It might be natural. You can often write things that you might feel are too silly for speech, and yet those very things make for intimacy. When you’re a long distance apart you’re scared of putting into writing anything that might make the other unhappy for weeks—till your next letter. If you’d let yourself, though, you could have been near Vic from the moment you arrived. He wanted it very badly.”

  “Well, I don’t know...”

  Annette let the words tail off. She seemed to have built a sort of wall round her mind, to guard against being softened up in this way. And yet she could still look suddenly glad to see Vic. Terry wondered.

  A sudden rain-storm sent them into an open-fronted shop which reeked of spices and was crammed with thin brown people in sarongs and shorts. Half-smiling with the pure pleasure of being thrust among others in the same predicament, Terry saw, in the dimness, their light-colored clothing, white teeth and the whites of their eyes. Their faces merged with the background, and so did their chatter. She listened to the soft speech, saw the smooth brown features of a girl who was nearer than the others, and thought how very beautiful the girls were, with their lustrous hair and pool-deep eyes.

  The rain stopped, and the people left cover. It was dark now, the sky overcast as though it would not be long before it rained again. The trishaws, those bicycle-carriages which one could sometimes hire in the main street, had disappeared. As the two girls came to the end of the covered walk in front of the shops, Terry waved a hand at the quagmire ahead.

  “I’m not going to ruin my sandals,” she said. “I’m going to paddle home.”

  “In this mud!” exclaimed Annette. “I’d rather spoil all the sandals I have than go barefoot.”

  “That’s because you’re sophisticated, darling,” said Terry cheerfully, as she drew off the high-heeled sandals. “The mud feels delicious. You should try it.”

  “Not I. You look an engaging urchin—with that windblown haircut, and all—but I’d look plain sloppy. A case of types again.”

  “A model can be anything!”

  “In a studio, yes. Remember that glamorous beach outfit the Bondress people gave me before I left England I haven’t worn it once.”

  “Of course not. It’s definitely honeymoon wear. Are there beaches where you’re going?”

  “White sand and palms, I believe. Somehow I feel as if I shall never see them.”

  “Rot. You’ll have a heavenly time there with Vic. Tomorrow we’ll talk about wedding details, and give up wondering whether it’s going to happen. And we’ll go ahead with the flat furnishing. By the way, when does the mail go out?”

  “Tuesdays and Fridays, by helicopter. I’ve posted only three letters since I’ve been here—two to the parents and one to you. Are you writing to Elizabeth?”

  “Of course. Oh, look—naked children!”

  “Their parents probably sent them out to take a shower. Some of them even stand in a downpour soaping themselves. What a place!”

  Terry laughed. Her feet, sloshing through mud and puddles, felt beautifully cool, and she had a sensation she hadn’t known for a long time—of youth and ease and nonchalance. There were small lights in the Malay houses, larger ones in the dwellings that surrounded the square. The roots of the palm thickets stood in lakes, and pools had formed near the steps of the houses.

  “Everything for convenience,” Terry remarked. “I can wash off the mud before I go up into the veranda.”

  Annette moved slowly up the steps. Terry swirled one foot and drew it back, let the other one down into the pool. She swirled again, and idly looked upwards into the veranda.

  Her movements stilled, the smile froze on her lips and her tongue stole out to moisten them. She bent her head and again moved the foot in the pool before walking up the steps.

  “Good evening, Teresa,” said Pete, in the rare drawl that she remembered. “Having fun?”

  Her throat hot and dry, she said stiffly, “Annette, this is Mr. Sternham ... my sister.”

  Annette was gazing at him in frank astonishment, and perhaps with something else in her expression. “Well, hallo,” she said, in her most cultivated voice. “I thought you’d look like a bulldog.”

  “Really?” To Terry he sounded too charming. “Perhaps that was how your sister saw me. How are you, Teresa?”

  “Fine, thank you.”

  In one long glance she took in his dark, sleekly-brushed hair, the immaculate tropical suit, the rich brown tie and white shirt; well dressed and suave, but he was still Pete.

  She looked a question and he said, kindly but with a touch of the well-remembered sarcasm, “Your sister’s fiancé got in touch with me. He thanked me for bringing you here and Mr. Winchester invited me over for a drink. I thought it very decent of them.”

  “I’m sure you did,” she heard herself saying. Then, catching Annette’s startled glance, she added hurriedly, “I’m not being rude. I feel at a disadvantage. Do you mind if I take time off to put on my shoes?”

  “Not at all. Sit right here.”

  She sank into a chair and heard Annette query, interestedly, “Why do you call my sister Teresa?”

  While gazing at the red-gold hair, he appeared to give the question his full consideration. “I don’t really know—perhaps because Terry sounds a trifle adolescent.” He
paused. “May I say that you’re every bit as beautiful as she said you were?”

  Annette was smiling more happily than at any time during the past couple of days. “You may. And now I’d like to add my thanks to Vic’s. It was extremely good of you to bring Terry from Vinan and take care of her. If we’d known she was in such good hands we wouldn’t have worried nearly so much.”

  His left eyebrow rose. “But you would have worried, just a little?”

  Annette laughed. “Only a very little. A child like Terry would be perfectly safe with you. I’d say you like them a bit more worldly.”

  It was Terry’s turn to lift a startled glance. Pete was lounging against the post at the head of the steps and Annette was leaning back on the table in one of her poses—the one that showed off the season’s offering of casual wear. For a moment they looked as though they were absorbed in each other.

  Then Pete looked down at Terry. “Can’t you fasten that strap? Like me to do it?”

  “Certainly not!” she said crossly. She thrust the strap home and stood up.

  Annette’s tones were gay. “You know, Terry has hardly mentioned you at all, Mr. Sternham, and she was very much against our getting to know you. Our questions about you have always had the same answer. ‘He’s just a man,’ she said, ‘a man who was in a hurry to reach his plantations. I tagged along, that’s all.’ I believe I know now why she wouldn’t go into details. You treated her as if she were twelve instead of twenty.”

  He gave her a sardonic grin. “Maybe that’s how she kept safe,” he commented. “Teresa was a good little scout.”

  Vic arrived with bottles, followed by a servant bearing a tray of glasses and snacks.

  Vic was cheerful. “I heard that. I’ve told Terry that she’ll always be my favorite sister-in-law. What will you have, Mr. Sternham—whisky?”