Dangerous Waters

by Rosalind Brett

  “Possibly.”

  In momentary pique at his casualness, she said, “I believe you always act that way, from a masculine conviction that you know what’s best for anyone!”

  “Don’t begrudge me that,” he said lazily, “or I shall have to remind you of a few things. Shall I tell you something, Teresa? I liked you better on the river than I do here in Penghu.”

  Though what he said hurt, she looked at him frankly. “I think I can say the same about you. I wonder why it is?”

  He shrugged. “Our backgrounds were missing, and though you were scared, it wasn’t the sort of fear you have here. By the way, don’t let your fear of me thrust you into the arms of Roger Payn.”

  “I’m not afraid of you, Pete.”

  “You are.” A pause. “Did Roger collect his due after the wedding?”

  She made a faint gesture. “What do you think? It was just fun.”

  “Glad you enjoyed it,” he said, his tones slightly crisp. “Did you give your sister my congratulations?”

  She nodded and said slowly, “Doesn’t it seem ... odd to you that we should have so little in common here in Penghu? It wasn’t such an effort to talk to each other on the river, but now I find myself casting about for some way to keep the conversational ball rolling.”

  “Well, don’t bother,” he said coolly. “We’ve already proved we can share a silence.”

  This was terrible. He stood straight and tall, taking down his drink and looking as if there were banked-down fires under his chilly exterior. With a quick motion she picked up the drink he had poured for her, and spilled it. He pulled the handkerchief from his top pocket and bent close, mopped up the liquid, turned his head and saw distress in her eyes.

  She swallowed. “I’m so sorry,” she said, with a brisk casualness that didn’t ring true.

  He touched her shoulder. “Stop it, young Teresa. You don’t have to struggle any longer to put distance between us. It’s not necessary. We can be just normally friendly. Can’t you believe that?”

  “I ... I’d like to.” For the sake of her pride she had to prevaricate. “You must forgive me if I’m acting foolishly. I’ve been keyed up over Annette and naturally got rather tired. I ... don’t want...”

  “Leave it, little one,” he said easily. “When you feel you can, you must get back into the mood we shared that last day on the river. We looked scarecrows and had a good time.”

  “And the end was in sight,” she reminded him, in low tones.

  “So it was,” he said laconically. “Finish that drink and I’ll give you another.”

  “No, thanks. This is enough.”

  The momentary softening didn’t really make any difference to the atmosphere in the room. Terry was relieved when a car sounded outside and Pete went to meet Mr. Bretherton.

  The lawyer was a small wiry man with an angular red face and startlingly white hair. He had a rasping voice and a cackling laugh, and yet there was something pleasant about him. Perhaps it was his outmoded method of expressing himself that placed him in a dim and dusty office amid legal tomes; even though he wore a light dinner jacket he retained the old-world, slightly crusty air.

  “Ah, my dear Miss ... er...” He bowed over Terry’s hand, gave her a piercing stare from small eyes and creased his leathery cheeks in a smile. “So you’ve come to Penghu!” Having delivered this, he accepted a whisky and soda, waited for Terry to seat herself and himself took a chair.

  Pete looked at his watch. “You’re on time, as usual. You’re the only man in the Far East who perpetually lives by the clock.”

  “This evening,” stated the little man, “I did very well. I had to call on your friends the Harmsens, with the sort of contract I feel they should sign if your Company buys. I left them exactly fifteen minutes ago.”

  “You work for the Company,” Pete reminded him with a smile. “Don’t let Astrid’s pretty green eyes beguile you into fighting for more than the plantation is worth.”

  “She’s a charming young woman,” the old man nodded. “Next time you come for dinner with me you must bring her with you...” He stopped himself suddenly and drank from his glass. To Terry, he turned an apologetic smile. “Pete always visits me alone and we play chess. I feel we should make a change.”

  “We’ll see about it,” Pete said. “Shall we have dinner?”

  The curtain was drawn back, to reveal a tastefully set table above which, on the wall, hung a vase that dripped with green trailing foliage and small blue flowers. They were served with hors d’oeuvres, soup, braised game with vegetables, iced fruits and cheese. And while they ate, it seemed, Mr. Bretherton refused to talk business, or even anything else. Terry had never seen an old man so eager for food and wine.

  Pete watched her reaction to the lawyer’s absorption, caught her eyes and grinned. There was a shared moment in which her heart skipped a beat it was never to regain. By turning her head a little she could see through the window a night that was smooth and silky after the rain, with a crescent moon fastened to it like a jewel. A cautious happiness beat gently in her veins. It was silly to worry about the future, about other people who might threaten her peace. Nothing could be better than this; Pete in tolerant good humor and willing to be friendly, the old man as a bond between them, the night outside.

  A Malay boy clothed in impeccable white brought coffee into the main part of the living-room and closed off the nook. Terry poured, Pete gave the old man the liqueur and cigar he liked and offered Terry a cigarette. They sat and talked desultorily. Apparently there were always rites to be performed when Mr. Bretherton came to dinner. Tonight the trend of conversation was also left to him, The cigar was less than two inches long when, at last, the old man looked gravely at the two of them and made a business of pushing away his coffee cup and stretching his short legs. He clasped his loose-skinned, bony hands across his narrow front, drew whiskery white eyebrows together, and said pontifically,

  “Nothing should ever be permitted to interfere with the enjoyment of a good dinner. In any case, business can be unpleasant, and unpleasant thoughts impair the digestion.”

  “Your business with us isn’t unpleasant,” said Pete easily. “I’ll fetch a candle from the dining table and we can all watch the scrap of paper turn to ash.”

  Mr. Bretherton held up a hand. “Don’t let us be hasty, Pete. It is always good to talk matters over before one acts! In looking into this very peculiar case of yours, I discovered something; it’s unique—it has no precedent.”

  “You legal people are always looking for precedents, but I could have told you it was unlikely you’d find a similar chain of incidents to those which led to our signing that bogus certificate in Vinan.” He smiled. “What do you think of this mock-wife of mine, now that you’ve met her?”

  The old man peered at Terry. “She’s very sweet, and too young. I am sorry for you, Miss ... er...”

  “She didn’t have such a bad time,” scoffed Pete.

  “But I’m most relieved,” said Terry, “that we’re now going to see the end of the certificate, Mr. Bretherton. It’s existence has worried me, rather.”

  “And so it should,” he answered abruptly. “Tell me, young lady—wouldn’t you have liked the marriage to be legal?”

  She went scarlet. “Of course not. I didn’t know Mr. Sternham then!”

  “But you have come to know him since. How would you feel about it now?”

  Terry cast a hot, pleading glance at Pete, and he said to the solicitor, calmly, “Don’t embarrass the girl. She’s got her eye on someone else.”

  This shook the little man. His voice sounded like a hacksaw as he said slowly, “Neither of you has any right to make even an engagement contract with anyone else. That marriage in Vinan was legal!”

  The silence was sudden and complete, like the electric pause before a first salvo is fired at the enemy. Pete stood stock still, his face a tight, incredulous mask. From scarlet Terry had gone dead white and clammy. Mr. Bretherton, for some reas
on, looked cross.

  “I must explain,” he said. “I put this case to a Malay lawyer in Kuala Lumpur, and he immediately said the certificate was worthless. It was only yesterday, as I was preparing to return here, that he got in touch with me and told me he’d discovered that the headman at Vinan had been given absolute powers seven years ago, when the start was made on the railway. It seems that many laborers came to the district and he was afraid for the young girls. In order to protect them he wanted permission to banish, imprison and fine, and also to marry those who were not of similar religions. He and his family have always been respected, and the powers were granted. As he is an educated man, it must have been he who had those certificates printed and the seal made.”

  “It’s fantastic,” said Pete. “How can the headman of a Malay village have the power to marry white people? He may have thought he was all-powerful, but he certainly had no right to perform a marriage between an English man and woman. At the time, I half thought he realized it and was going through the paraphernalia to impress the witnesses with his own thoroughness during the cholera scare!”

  Mr. Bretherton lifted his harrow shoulders. “Unfortunately, it seems that when the powers were granted there was no mention of color or race. Vinan, as you probably know, is only a small strip of land—fifty miles long and no more than two miles wide at any point. There your marriage is valid, even if it is not legal elsewhere. I might add that to prove whether or not the certificate is valid elsewhere than in Vinan might bring unpleasant publicity.”

  “But good heavens, man, something has to be done! Neither of us for a moment believed in that ceremony. There was nothing to it! We simply went through the business to give Miss Fremont clearance and her passport.”

  “I understand that. But one’s reason for marrying is not important once it is legally established that the marriage exists. I am telling you, Pete, that in Vinan, if not in the whole of Malaya, you and Miss Fremont are married.”

  “I don’t believe it!”

  It was only then that he looked at Terry. She sat back, her blue eyes staring darkly from an ashen face, her lips parted as if she could not draw in sufficient air. He came to her side, touched her head and spoke in the way that was peculiarly Pete.

  “Don’t you pass out on us at a time like this! The whole business is crazy, and I’ll put it right if I have to go to the High Commissioner myself. Snap out of it, do you hear me!”

  “Pete,” remonstrated Mr. Bretherton, “that’s not the way to treat a young woman who is suffering from shock, particularly when that young woman happens to be rather ... ah, close to you in some ways. Let us be reasonable about this. There is a way of escape, of course. There always is.”

  “There’d better be,” he almost snarled. “I’ve never heard anything so ridiculous in all my life. When some petty chief can tie legal knots there’s certainly something screwy about the law. You’d better make further enquiries!”

  “There is no need. One must accept the facts as they are. You know how it is that one can be married in certain states of America and yet remain unmarried elsewhere? That is how it is with you.”

  “We’ll tear the paper up and forget the whole thing!”

  “That’s the fine, strong man way of handling it, but would you then feel free to propose marriage to Miss Harmsen?”

  Pete looked at him, glanced fleetingly at Terry, and said more evenly, “I want the whole thing cleared up, and you know it.”

  “Good.” The little man turned to Terry. “And you must feel the same if you wish to marry someone else?”

  Slowly, Terry was recovering from shock; her mind began once more to function. “I just want to be free of it—quite free,” she whispered. “Though I still can’t believe that those few words and the certificate can be binding in any way.”

  Mr. Bretherton took his glasses from an inner pocket and put them on, looked at them both over the half-lenses. “Tell me, young lady, how would you feel if you had married in Gretna Green? Would you feel truly married?”

  “No. No, I wouldn’t.”

  “Quite. But once the little ceremony had taken place there, would you feel married?”

  Terry drew in a dry lip. “No ... I wouldn’t feel that, either.”

  “That is what I thought. Unless we deal with this properly you’ll never feel truly free. Annulment in this case should be a fairly simple procedure.”

  “Annulment! But that’s admitting the marriage really existed!”

  “It will be easier if we do admit it. I notice the young lady wears no ring.”

  “There was a ring,” said Pete, non-committally.

  “So? A pity.” Mr. Bretherton shrugged it off. “Well, I must send an extensive report to the authorities together with your affidavits. Every detail of your reasons for contracting the marriage must be given...”

  “Contracting the marriage!” Pete swung savagely across the room. “Do you think I’d normally propose to a girl a couple of days after I’d met her?”

  Terry’s fingers tightened on the arm of her chair. “And do you think I’d have accepted Mr. Sternham’s offer if I hadn’t been in a position where there was no other way out? If I hadn’t been so worried about my sister ...” Her voice cracked, and she broke off.

  Mr. Bretherton coughed politely and drew a notebook from the inside pocket. “There is no doubt at all that an annulment is your only course. It can be accomplished privately and without fuss.”

  “But people will have to know,” she said desperately. “My family and ... others.”

  “I advise it,” he stated, “but whether you keep your own counsel is your own affair—yours and Pete’s. You have never taken his name...”

  “Oh, stop it!” she cried, and dropped her face into her hands.

  Pete stood over her, his hands dug into his pockets. “Please a grip on yourself,” he said. “I don’t want this any more than you do, but if it’s the only way to get free I’m going right ahead with it. If you disintegrate it won’t help a bit.”

  She lifted a haggard face, drew a deep breath and pushed back her hair. “I’m sorry. I feel as if my life has fallen about me in pieces. It doesn’t seem possible that something we entered into so lightly could have such appalling results.”

  “Ahem, yes,” said Mr. Bretherton’s dry voice. “Then just a few questions. Pete may answer them for both of you.” He fiddled with an ancient fountain pen. “You entered into this ... arrangement because it was the only way to get Miss Fremont away from Vinan?”

  “Yes.”

  “And she agreed to it because she was anxious to reach her sister?”

  “Yes.”

  “You could not have left her in Vinan and brought a message to the sister? Why not?”

  “She would have been the only white person there—and a woman, at that. It was proposed that Miss Fremont go back to Shalak on the next steamer, but there would have been no white people on that, either.”

  “That is a good point, taken in conjunction with the cholera scare. You did not wish to leave a young woman who was a complete stranger to the country among people of a different race who were a little excited by circumstances.” He wrote, pedantically, then asked, “This is a delicate question, but it is one which must be answered in my report. You have not taken advantage of this ... er ... marriage contract, in any way at all?”

  “In no way at all,” said Pete in tight, distinct tones.

  “Then I think I may promise you an annulment within, say, three months.”

  “Three months!” echoed Terry faintly. “By then I shall be in England.”

  “That will make no difference. You will be notified,” the lawyer said flatly. “It’s a very clear case and you have nothing to worry about. I will get out the papers within the next day or two, you may call at my office or I will bring them here, for signature, and after that your fate will be in the hands of the authorities. Your reason for entering into the marriage is perfectly obvious and I doubt if you will ev
en be questioned by anyone else.” He gave a cackling laugh that sounded relieved. “I must apologize for shocking you both, but no doubt you were better able to stand it after dinner than you would have been before it. I give you my word that no one here—not even my clerk—will know about this; I will even type out the documents myself.”

  “Thanks,” said Pete, with an unpleasant smile. “Like a drink before you go?”

  “No, my boy.” The little man stood up, slipped his notebook and pen back into his pocket and took off his glasses. “I’m afraid I must give you a word of warning. There is no harm in your remaining friendly with this young lady, but ... well ... you must be circumspect.”

  Pete didn’t let him say anything more. He almost hustled the man out of the house. Terry stood up, surprised that her legs would carry her. She felt frail and washed out, too sickened and overwhelmed to think clearly. She went to one of the windows and leaned her brow against the cold pane. The night was still beautiful, tauntingly so; the crescent moon was slipping down behind the trees and innocent stars winked against the smooth dark sky and penetrated the spear-like branches of the palms. Mr. Bretherton’s car roared softly and moved away. Then Pete came back into the room.

  He crossed straight to the cabinet and poured two drinks. One of them he placed in Terry’s hand.

  “It’s whisky,” he said. “You need it.”

  The stuff burned her throat but she swallowed it automatically. She put down the glass, rubbed her fist against her neck, closed her eyes momentarily, and then stared at the rug.

  “I suppose you think I ought to have guessed this might happen,” he said brusquely. “I had no idea ... and neither had Bretherton when I first mentioned it to him. You heard him say the case is unique.”

  She nodded and kept her head bent. “It seems incredible that such a small thing can spoil one’s whole life.”

  “What do you mean by that?” he asked sharply. “There’s no need to tell anyone—not for a while, anyway.”

  “It’s there, isn’t it?” she said dully. “Even after we’re free neither of us could ... become engaged to anyone without telling them about it first.”