Fuel for the Flame

by Alec Waugh

  When Julia and he came into a room side by side, people might well say, ‘That’s a striking couple.’ They might even envy Julia. How little they knew. Of what use to a modern wife were the qualities that he possessed? In the days of the jungle, women had admired physical strength because it was a proof of man’s capacity to fight for them, to protect and fend for them and for their children. But in the jungle warfare of modern industry, the capacity to fight for, to protect and fend for, depended not on physical strength but on the solid, plodding Keable qualities.

  Now, I suppose, I shall three putt, he thought.

  He did.

  The next hole was the longest and the trickiest, par five, doglegged, the problem of your second depending on the courage of your drive. If you ran the risk of trying to clear a hillock with a carry of close on a hundred and eighty yards, there was a possibility of getting on in two. If you took the safe line, the green was three hundred yards away. Basil’s opponent played for safety. Basil smiled wryly. That kind of shot augured well for a promotion. Himself, he hesitated before he took his stance. He was the kind of fool who did not understand the meaning of a calculated risk. He was a gambler. Half his financial troubles were due to that. What were his chances of clearing that hillock? Evens probably. And in match play it might be worth the risk. But not when you were playing against par. He hesitated, then made up his mind. He was the gambling, not the Keable type.

  It was a close thing. He knew that the instant that he felt the club head on the ball. It was not a weak shot, but it was not a strong one. He watched the ball anxiously as it sank. It had not, as that first out-of-bounds drive had had, the sense of going on just when you expected it to lose its power. It dropped towards the hillock; the hillock was covered with thick jungle grass. You had to hack backwards with a niblick. The ball dropped and dropped. It was in, no, it was over. He sighed with relief, but at the same time the sense of his own inadequacy pricked him. He should not have tried the shot. It was too big a risk. He might have lost two strokes when there was a bare chance of gaining one. The bird in the hand indeed.

  His gloom grew deeper. He’d never amount to anything. You didn’t get the sack with Pearl. Pearl was like the armed forces. There was nothing down in writing. You had a new contract every time. The second contract had the validity of a common law marriage. If you had been with the company three years, the company found a niche for you somewhere. Nothing very terrible would happen to him and Julia. They would never go cold or hungry. But he wouldn’t amount to anything, and that precisely was what Julia deserved, a husband who did amount to something.

  He reached his ball. It had rolled luckily on the far side of the hillock, the hole was opened up, a two- or three-iron shot away. The gamble had at least come off. He stood aside while his opponent played. It was a poor shanked shot; a bunker lay between it and the following shot. As likely as not he wouldn’t clear it. This’ll cost him a seven, Basil thought, as he addressed his ball.

  He swung with an easy contained power. He knew before he looked up that the ball was flying straight. He watched it rise in the air, high, higher, then halt in its flight and drop quickly and straight as an iron shot should do. It pitched dead between the two guardian bunkers. The green was fast, but backspin checked the ball and it rolled slowly. Distance was foreshortening, but it shouldn’t be too long a putt. This time he vowed himself to caution. He would make certain of his four. The ball rolled slowly, slowly, across the green. Steady, he warned it, steady, as it neared the flag. Stop now, oh, stop, he adjured it, stop. …

  He blinked and the ball wasn’t there. He stared, astounded. It had never happened to him before, but it had happened now. He had sunk a hundred-and-sixty-yard approach. A par five hole in two. The deficit on the first hole wiped off. He was square with par. The gambler’s throw. The tortoise and the hare. It wasn’t only the Keables who pulled things off. He’d show them in the end.

  Seventy-five minutes later he walked off the ninth green jubilant. He had taken a level toss with par. He had gone round in thirty-two. From the third tee on he had played faultless golf, no flukes and no mistakes. Every approach putt dead. He was as exuberant now as he had been despondent earlier. He saw his whole future in terms of that lucky round. It wasn’t only the Keables of the world who went round in par. The gamblers did too. The careless and the reckless achieved heights that the stolid missed. He would have his chance one day; a chance that would be created simply through his being the kind of person that he was. His chance would come and he would jump at it, and Julia would be at the wheel of a yellow Jaguar.

  In the locker-room he changed his shirt and pulled on a sweater. A breeze sprang up at sunset and it was easy to catch a chill. He ordered a gin and tonic at the bar and took it on to the veranda. It was a quarter to six, the loveliest hour of the day, with the air cooling and the glare diminished, and the foliage of the tropics that had reflected that glare all the day assuming its own individual shades of green. He sat alone, savouring the moment’s peace, a beauty curiously compounded of nature’s craftsmanship and of man’s handiwork. There was the sinuous irregular beauty of the coconut palms, there was the regular, many-boughed splendour of the mango and the breadfruit tree. There were the bursts of blossom, red and white and blue and mauve, but also mingled with the cool evening breeze was the smell, faint and sickly sweet, of oil, and between the stems of the palms were showing a mile or so out to sea the derricks of the oil wells, looking like a strange shoal of sea serpents.

  A foursome was putting out on the ninth green. Another foursome was waiting on the tee. Julia was one of them. As always he felt at the sight of her a sense of quickened living. She was wearing a primrose yellow shirt and dark green trousers. Trousers suited her although she was a little plump.

  She was smiling as she came up the hill. If she had felt aggrieved at his ill humour two hours ago, she would be in a mood now to forgive him. There was a good deal of laughing and bantering on the green. She sounded happy. They all sounded happy. Why shouldn’t they, after all? They had the security of being employed by a company that could only fail if the fabric of civilized existence itself subsided. The worst could not happen to them. This was a happy camp. There was here little of the throat cutting, the ruthless angling for position that must, he was sure, exist in companies subject to slumps and to depressions.

  As Julia came off the green, Basil left his chair on the veranda. He wanted to make his peace as soon as possible. He could not speak to her, as there were others there, but he slipped his arm through hers, pressing it against his side. She looked up with a smile; so she bore no rancour.

  ‘What would you like to drink? I’ll have it waiting for you.’

  They sat together on the veranda. He still could not apologize for his behaviour. They had to be alone for that.

  He felt expansive. He greeted each new arrival with the same announcement, the same invitation. ‘I went round in thirty-two. I’m standing drinks.’

  Julia frowned. He knew what she was thinking. Why must he act like a grand seigneur? He wasn’t a branch manager. If you won a sweep or a monthly medal, that was another matter. But a casually shot thirty-two, on a run-of-the-mill occasion. … Basil chuckled. It was not a run-of-the-mill occasion for him. In ten, twenty, fifty years he would remember this evening, as a sign-post. The playing of that hole had shown him the road his life would take: it was a symbol. He put his arm round Julia’s shoulders, squeezing them. It was his way of saying, Don’t worry. You’re wonderful. That’s all that matters.

  That evening there were to be Balinese dancers at the club. The Halletts were dining with the Pawlings. When Julia came out of the shower, she had only half an hour in which to dress, but Basil who had showered first was still in his dressing-gown. He rose and crossed to her. ‘I’ve been waiting so impatiently for this moment for the last ninety minutes.’

  There was a light tone in his voice, a look of mischief in his eyes, whose purport could not be mistaken. He put his
hands on her shoulders. She was wrapped in a large bath towel. She tried to push him away, but the towel hindered her. ‘Oh no,’ she cried. ‘No, darling, no.’

  He did not listen. ‘I’m maddening, I know it,’ he was saying. ‘I was atrocious this afternoon. I know I was; but it’s only because I so adore you. I don’t want an Austin-Healey for myself, but I do for you. I want you to have the best of everything, Christian Dior dresses, the latest car. I hate to think of you not having them. When somebody else has them, I feel resentful.’ There was a mounting excitement in his voice, a mounting excitement in his hands as they caressed her shoulders; and matching it, blended with it, a mounting tenderness and adoration. ‘Darling, we haven’t time,’ she pleaded.

  He laughed forcefully. ‘Does the fear of missing one cocktail matter all that much to you?’

  She laughed. He could always make her laugh. And once she had begun to laugh she was defenceless. She relaxed, submissive at first and then responsive. She never knew when he was going to make love to her, or where. He was unpredictable. Her marriage was an adventure still. She folded her arms round his neck.

  4

  The new Austin-Healey was garaged beside a two-storied house, on the highest piece of land within the camp’s perimeter, built in the new Arab style, with the rooms facing inwards on to a garden in which a fountain played. The sitting-room on the first floor, though furnished with company chairs, tables and sofas, had a personal lived-in feeling. Charles Keable had brought back many souvenirs of his years in Persia. There were Damascene brocades and cedarwood chests and spears from Ispahan.

  Barbara was still bemused by the arrival of her car, as they sat over their evening cocktail. ‘It’s a dream, darling. If anyone had told me two years ago that I should ever own a car like that. …’

  He watched her fondly. ‘How do you think I should have felt two years ago if anyone had told me that I should have someone like you to give it to. …’

  ‘You say the sweetest things.’

  ‘I say the truest. Have you tried to picture my life two years ago? Do you think it was much fun coming back on leave to England by myself?’

  ‘You seemed to be having a good time when I ran into you.’

  ‘I didn’t take very long snapping out of it, though, did I?’

  ‘I’ve always considered that I was very clever about that.’

  He looked at her thoughtfully. Daphne’s letter had contained some news that would upset her. He had meant to keep it back for a day or two, till the opportune moment came. He did not want to spoil her excitement about her car, but perhaps this was the opportune moment. The matter might seem trivial now, when she was glowing and relaxed. ‘Are you feeling strong?’ he asked. ‘I’ve a letter I’d like to have you read.’

  ‘That sounds mysterious.’

  ‘On the contrary, it’s very simple. It’s from Daphne. I won’t look at you while you read it.’

  It was the first time that Barbara had seen her predecessor’s handwriting. It was firm and competent. It did not seem the handwriting of a woman who at the age of thirty-five would throw her bonnet over a windmill. She looked to see how it was signed. ‘Affectionately, Daphne.’

  ‘Dear Charles,’ the letter ran. ‘Frank has been killed in a motor smash.’

  ‘Is Frank her husband?’

  ‘Yes.’

  She hesitated, then read on:

  ‘Shelagh was driving the car. It wasn’t her fault. One of those crazy speed boys took a corner too fast and lost control. He got six months for it. I’ve put it bluntly like that, because that’s the easiest way for me, at this moment anyhow. What really matters, and that’s why I am writing, is how this will affect “our daughter”. [Why the inverted commas? Barbara thought.] It has been a terrible shock to her. I can’t tell how big a shock, she is a reserved person. As I said, she wasn’t to blame at all, but naturally she has a sense of guilt. She wonders whether if she had done something differently … you know how it is. What I’m working round to is this. Could she come out and stay with you? I believe what she needs is a change of atmosphere. She doesn’t want to be reminded of the tragedy. She was very fond of her stepfather. Frank was wonderful with her. And for myself too—I’d like to get away by myself alone. But I won’t go into that, I’ll only just add this—I don’t think she’s going to find it easy to be natural with me for a while. She’ll imagine that I’m blaming her and perhaps I am, without knowing that I am.

  ‘It’s a terrible lot to ask of Barbara, but you yourself, you’ll surely want to see her, and Barbara might be the best thing for her, being nearer the same age, and having solved so many of the issues that are problems to Shelagh now. Not that she’s a problem child, don’t think that, but she’s at that age when you’re on the brink of so many things, so adult in so much, so ignorant in so much more, and so inquisitive. It’s not that she’s morbid or neurotic but—how shall I put it—she gets “all gish’ed up” more often than she should.’

  ‘Gish’ed up?’

  ‘Over-emotional, worked up, laughing and crying at the same time. It’s a phrase we had, after seeing Lilian Gish in a Chekhov play. One of those family jokes, you know.’

  ‘A phrase we had.’ ‘One of those family jokes.’ That explained the inverted commas for ‘our daughter’. Another family joke. She went on reading.

  ‘All gish’ed up,’ the inverted commas, ‘a phrase we had.’ How they revealed, how they illuminated, the reality of her husband’s fifteen years’ association with another woman. They had shared so much, those two, built up so much; they had a vocabulary of their own. Ways of talking in shorthand to one another. It had been a happy marriage. It would never have broken, if Daphne had not felt it her duty to return to England with her child, to be exposed there when she was without the defences of a home and husband to the temptation that probably, if the truth were told, shook most women after fifteen years of marriage.

  Barbara did not feel jealous, but she felt cheated. There was a note of intimacy, of easy friendliness, about that letter for which she had been unprepared. Would Charles ever feel as close to her as he had to Daphne? She had given all of herself and had got in exchange another’s leavings. And within a few weeks this girl would be here to remind him—and herself—of how close that early bond had been.

  ‘But I mustn’t “blather on”.’ the letter finished. ‘If you can have her out this spring, it may save everything.’

  Barbara decided quickly.

  ‘Let’s cable her right away,’ she said.

  ‘You really mean it?’

  ‘Naturally. As Daphne says, we’re nearly the same age. I always wished I had a sister. Fill up my glass, let’s drink to it.’

  She gulped the half of it in a single swallow. You knew this would have to come, she told herself. You’ve always known it. I warned you, didn’t I? It’ll come, I said, and when it does, jump in and welcome it. Well, and I did, too, didn’t I? I didn’t hesitate or hedge or make things awkward. You can’t marry a man in the middle forties, and fool yourself that he didn’t have a life before you. The past has made him what he is. You’ve got to accept that. Act like an adult, if you aren’t one.

  She rose and put her arm about his shoulders. He’d got to feel happy about this. She lowered her head, rubbing her cheek against his.

  ‘It’ll be the greatest fun for me,’ she said. ‘But one thing I do warn you, I’m not going to let her drive my car. It’s mine, and mine alone and I adore it … and you for finding it.’ She kissed him and ran up the stairs. ‘Let me have twenty minutes for my bath,’ she called over her shoulder.

  The telephone bell rang. It was Julia. Her voice was gay, breathless, a tone lower than was normal. Barbara smiled. She knew Julia well enough to know what that tone meant. She had heard it in their school holidays when she and Julia had gone on double dates and she had heard it again here at Kassaya when Julia had been confidential. She knew what Julia called ‘the boudoir details’ of her friend’s married life. She
knew how Basil and Julia had been spending the last half-hour. Envy flicked at her; once again she had that feeling of being cheated. She could not be more loved than she was by Charles. But this thing that Julia had, that had made her voice vibrant now—the spontaneous irresponsible love-making of youth—was something she had never known, and now could never know since she had been moulded on another pattern. Wasn’t it part of a woman’s birthright, to have just that?

  ‘Darling, you must come tonight,’ Julia was saying. ‘Those Siamese dancers are fantastic. Everybody says so. I’m feeling so high, on nothing. We’ll be getting there at ten. Do join us.’

  Barbara hesitated. She was not sure that in her present mood she was very anxious to see her friend ‘high, on nothing’. Nothing indeed, as though there was anything in life that mattered more. At the same time, she was no longer in the mood for the quiet evening that she and Charles had planned. She liked such an evening at least once a week, and Charles needed it; there was so much official entertaining. Charles was a cosy person to gossip with after dinner. But tonight their talk inevitably would concentrate on Shelagh’s visit. She did not want to think about that at the moment. ‘O.K. We’ll be there.’

  5

  The Siamese dancers were fantastic. Decked in gold and scarlet with elaborate, ornamental head-dresses, they swayed backwards, forwards, sideways to a music that quivered on the edge of rhythm without ever touching it. They danced with their hands as much as with their feet. Their fingers through endless massaging since cradle days were capable of standing back from their palms at an angle that made their knuckles appear double jointed; as they passed their hands before their faces in a series of modulated gestures, their eloquence became articulate. Charles Keable watched them in drowsy fascination. He had enjoyed himself; he was still enjoying himself but he had had enough. As soon as the show was over, they could go. It was not so very late. Tomorrow was Sunday. No half past six hooter. They’d sit together, he and Barbara, for a few minutes over a final drink. She would be light-hearted after the dancing. She would be in a grateful tender mood over the car. It might be one of the loveliest nights in their whole marriage.