by Alec Waugh
The customs formalities were mercifully brief. A limousine awaited them. The two young women were alone in it. They did not speak. They were too occupied with what lay outside. It was like a film and yet it was not. In a film you always had the suspicion that it had been faked, but this with all its incongruities was real. There had been the vast airport adorned with every twentieth-century gadget. A quarter of a mile away was a village under the palms where dark-skinned children frolicked in semi-nudity. Then there was a collection of trim suburban bungalows; fast long American cars purred along the road; coolies were pedalling their trishaws; there was an impressive bridge; then once again a haphazard conglomeration of straw-roofed huts. Strange odours struck the nostrils, pungent, exotic, not unpleasant. There was a sudden whifF of gardenias, then once again the heavy pervading smell of which she could not guess the compounds, then suddenly they were on the outskirts of an impressive, modern city with high white buildings, and church spires and Union Jacks, and they swung out of the sea-front road into the courtyard of a hotel. So this was Raffles.
An impressive commissionaire helped them to the reception desk. The short, dapper, dark-skinned man behind the desk welcomed them with an apology. ‘Ladies, this is what has happened. A K.L.M. flight had been delayed. The rooms we had intended for you have not been vacated. If you care to wait, but … it may be a question of four hours. What I would suggest … I expect you would like to bathe and change after your journey. … If you would not mind sharing a room, it is only for a few hours.’
Shelagh looked inquiringly at Annetta.
Their main luggage had been checked straight through to Karak. They had only their nightcases with them. ‘Let’s toss for the first bath,’ Annetta said. Annetta won. When she came out of the bathroom, she found a large vase of roses. There was an envelope addressed to her. On the card was written, ‘You made my trip for me. I’m so looking forward to this evening. F.R.’ He did not miss a trick. She wondered where he had got the flowers. Probably there was a flower shop in the hotel. She remembered what he had told her. ‘Have you any plans?’ she called through the bathroom door. ‘Is there anything you particularly want to do? If there isn’t we might do some shopping and leave the sightseeing till it’s cooler.’
Raffles was a city in itself. It had three different restaurants. It had a large dance-hall cocktail lounge. It had a barber’s; it had a curio shop, a jeweller’s. There were two tailors. You could buy any article of clothing. Nothing was particularly expensive. ‘If only we were staying here long enough to have things made up,’ said Shelagh.
‘You can buy the material.’
‘And then pay duty on it?’
‘You can put it with my luggage. I don’t suppose they’ll look at mine.’
‘That would be wonderful.’
They went from store to store, testing materials and prices. ‘I’ll tell you what we must get,’ Annetta said. ‘Jade earrings. They’d bring out the colour in your hair.’
‘Won’t they be terribly expensive?’
‘Let’s bargain. In the East you can always bargain.’
Bargaining got them finally a pair for ten pounds. The jade was probably not very good, Annetta suspected, but a man would not know that. He would only notice the green against the red and the pale cheeks. Tired and a little drunk with shopping, they went back to the hotel lobby.
‘I could use whatever the local drink is after that,’ said Shelagh.
From novels about the Orient, they recalled the name Tom Collins. They sipped at it slowly through their straws; the liquid was so palatable that it was hard to believe that it was alcoholic.
‘I could use another of these,’ Annetta said.
‘That’s what I was going to say.’
A bellboy went by with a large blackboard on which was written, ‘Miss Marsh, Miss Keable wanted at the reception desk.’
Two single rooms were vacant now, they were informed. They looked at each other interrogatively, then both nodded. They were relaxed and cosy as they were. They could not be bothered to get packed again. They returned to their Tom Collins. ‘After this a curry, and after that we sleep,’ Annetta said.
Annetta was still asleep when the telephone rang beside her.
‘It’s me. I’m here. It’s half past four.’ For a moment she could not think where she was, or who was speaking. Then she saw the vase of roses and remembered. ‘I’m sorry, I’ve overslept: and listen, I’m with an English girl; she’s going to Karak, too. You wouldn’t mind her joining us?’
‘Of course not. I’ll be in the lobby. Don’t take too long, though, it gets dark at six.’
He had hesitated for a moment before he replied, but his voice when he did was as light and casual as before. When he rose to greet them in the lobby there was in his welcome no suggestion of aggrieved irritation. Things were not turning out the way he had hoped: it was too bad, but there would be other times, in other places, with other women.
‘This is Shelagh Keable. Her father runs the oil camp in Karak.’
‘Keable, Keable … now wasn’t he in Abadan?’
‘Yes, just after the war. I was there, too.’
‘You were? I can’t say that I remember you. I don’t think I met your mother, but your father, yes. I remember him quite distinctly. We played golf one day. He was diabolically accurate with his putter. You didn’t get your red hair from him.’
‘That’s from my mother.’
‘A lucky legacy and how well those jade earrings go with it.’
‘What did I tell you, Shelagh?’
He looked from one to the other inquiringly. Annetta explained. He laughed. ‘What every young girl needs is the advice of a woman who’s attractive to men and knows why she attracts them. You’re a lucky gilt. Miss Keable.’
He said it friendlily. There was no implication of ill-will. ‘Let’s be on our way,’ he said.
He had a chauffeur-driven convertible. ‘I’ll sit in front and be a guide,’ he said. They drove slowly along the waterfront, past the cricket field and the courts of justice, round the pier, into the business section with its banks and offices. There had been a shower of rain twenty minutes earlier and the roadway glistened in the evening light. The pavements were crowded with a variegated collection of Tamils, Malays, Chinese, Europeans. They were hurrying, most of them, yet there was no air of their being driven. They seemed at their ease, happy within themselves.
The car swung right, into the Chinese section. They crossed a river. ‘This is where we get out,’ he said.
They stood on the bridge looking down at the curving river, with the sampans moored one against the other against the sides. The river was broad, the houses flanking it were low, brick-built with tiled roofs and Chinese signs hanging outside. They looked much older than the impressive Colonial buildings. There was incessant activity along the river front; barges were being loaded, barges were chunking their way slowly to the sea, Chinese coolies in blue trousers and blue, loose-sleeved jackets were toiling bales on to the barges; others were trolling bags with long bamboo carriers on their shoulders, with tin cans balancing one another at each end. There were eating houses and stores. The curve of the river made it beautiful in the same way that the old Regent Street of Victorian London was beautiful: a perfect symmetry of design, with its harmony of breadth and height embellished by the Chinese signs, the sampans, the activity of river life.
‘We’ll take a stroll,’ he said.
They turned away from the river front, into a broad street lined with stalls.
‘Is this market day?’ Annetta asked.
‘No, it’s always like this. It’s how they like shopping.’
The articles on sale were such as you would find in the average ten cent store—hardware, haberdashery, stationery, pharmaceuticals. They were inexpensive and pleasantly set out. There were several food stalls. He stopped at one where cane stalks were being inserted in a press and crushed: the juice flowed into a large glass tank in which floated
lumps of ice. It was pale yellow-green, there was a foam upon the surface.
‘It looks very good,’ said Shelagh.
‘I’ll get you a glass.’
She hesitated before she sipped it. ‘Is it safe?’
‘If you’ve had your T.A.B. inoculation, and I’m sure you have, you don’t need to worry about much.’
She sipped the cool sweet liquid. It was surprisingly refreshing.
He took them into a Chinese temple. It was dark, with carved woodwork, fragrant with joss sticks. The gold image of a Buddha glimmered through the dusk. They took their shoes off in the doorway. From behind a long bare table a Chinese woman offered them a small quiverful of wooden spills. ‘You shake it till one comes out,’ she told them. ‘That’s your fortune.’
To both of them, the fates promised kindly peradventures. ‘We’ll see the other side of the picture now,’ he said.
They drove out of the town, into the residential section. Bungalows with wide verandas stood back from the roadway along gentle slopes. Most of the gardens were small, but they were bright with crotons, poinsettias, hibiscus. The air was scented with the small white flower that is given a different name in every country, that here was nicknamed ‘flower of the night’.
‘We’re going to the Country Club,’ he said.
The clubhouse was an adjunct to a golf course: it was long and low, with a broad veranda facing the eighteenth green. The fairways wound their way through the jungle from which they had been reclaimed. The grass was very bright. The brilliant blossom of the Poi tree stood out in primrose yellow against the dark background of the palms and mangoes. They went on to the terrace.
‘I don’t think the mosquitoes will worry you. If they do we’ll go inside,’ he said.
It was just after six and the swift equatorial night was falling. A final foursome was coming over the crest of the hill towards the green; there were two Western women, a Western man and a Chinese.
‘There’s no racial difference here,’ he said.
‘Is there any in Karak?’
He shook his head. ‘There are many mixed marriages and they work out as well as other marriages, on the whole rather better. Each partner is resolved to make a success of it; because there is usually a little opposition at the start they try the harder to prove that they were right. There’s no real racial problem.’
‘What is the problem then?’
‘Nationalism, Communism, the people having been unsettled by the Japanese occupation. But I think it’ll work out. There’s so much goodwill, so little ill-will. Look round you now.’
The terrace was crowded; the club had been founded under British auspices, but there were as many Chinese here as there were Westerners: and very frequently Chinese and Westerners were seated together over their beers, their Tom Collins, or their Coca-Colas.
‘You can consider yourself very lucky, Miss Keable, in going out to Karak instead of to the Middle East.’
He clapped his hands. ‘Boy,’ he called.
The suddenness with which night fell astonished Annetta. She had read about it, but she had not visualized it. One moment you were in brilliant sunshine; half an hour later the sky was black; nor was there any drop of temperature. It was incredible that three nights ago she had been in Highgate. It was half past one there now: her father was finishing lunch, was preparing to go back to take his class, and tomorrow this time she would be in Karak.
Their glasses were nearly empty. ‘I’ll get the chit,’ he said. ‘We can have the other half at Raffles.’
‘Are you staying there as well?’
He nodded. ‘But as I’m not an in-transit passenger I’d taken the precaution of booking in advance. I’m in the greatest luxury.’
‘You’d better show it to us,’ ‘I will.’
The chit was brought over and he signed it. He must come here a lot, Annetta thought, if he could sign chits in a club within half a day of his arrival.
‘We might as well dine at Raffles,’ he said, ‘since Pan Am’s paying for your dinner.’
If we’d been alone, just the two of us, Annetta thought, he’d have taken me somewhere special: to a Chinese night club or to one of the à la carte rooms, the Tudor or the Elizabethan. He wouldn’t take to a table d’hôte dinner the kind of woman he took out in a special way.
He was generous though in terms of wine. ‘Champagne is the only drink for your first dinner in the tropics.’
Afterwards they sat out on the lawn by the traveller’s palms; electric bulbs lit the flower beds, the white woodwork of the first-floor galleries shut out the noises of the street. The air was warm and scented and from the main building came the sound of music. Had they been alone here, he and she, they would have danced, and he was the kind of man, she was very certain, who danced well. He would not have talked while they were dancing, but while they had danced, while she had yielded to his guidance, she would have remembered those scattered remarks that he had made to her on the plane about finding yourself alone with someone whom you would never see again; this, she would have remembered, was her last night of freedom. And when the music stopped, and ther returned to their table by the palm, and he had begun to talk in that warm, assured way of his, might she not have been moved, might she not have felt curious, might she not have had that last-time feeling? She did not know. She did not want to know. She stood up.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I’ve had no real sleep now for three nights. I can’t keep my eyes open.’
His handshake was firm and friendly. ‘Good luck,’ he said.
He did not offer to show them the luxury in which he lived.
Later, looking across at Shelagh curled up and asleep in her twin bed, Annetta felt a glow of gratitude.
I’m glad that you were here, she thought. If ever I can do anything for you in return, I will.
Chapter Seven
‘In five minutes we shall be landing in Kuala Prang. Will you please fasten your seat belts and no smoking, please.’
Annetta craned her neck. Karak was grey on the horizon, a towering range of jagged peaks. Well, this is it, she thought. The grey turned to green. It all looked very small. From a height of three thousand feet, the circling aircraft appeared to cover the entire island in a single sweep. She saw the flares of the oil refinery, then a second later the roofs of Kuala Prang. It was hard to believe that eighty thousand people lived in that cluster of toy houses. The criss-cross of the tarmac runways looked like a child’s game of noughts and crosses. The earth below her tilted and then straightened. The airport was a shack among the palm trees; the wheels bumped upon the ground. ‘Will passengers please keep their seats till the aircraft has come to rest.’ On both sides of her was a bright green stretch of rice-fields, then the machine swung round and she saw, pressed against the wire barriers beside the customs shed, the same variegated patch of colour that she had seen at Singapore. It was Singapore upon a smaller scale.
The purser leant beside her. ‘Will you please come off first, Miss Marsh.’ This was where it started. The tourist cabin was in front. Shelagh turned to wave to her. ‘Good luck. See you soon,’ she called.
Annetta blinked as she came down the gangway. Would she ever get accustomed to the glare? She was acutely conscious of the crowd beyond the barrier, waiting, watching her, curious, inquisitive. Rhya was at the foot of the gangway. She had forgotten that she was so much taller. When she reached the ground, she felt that she was still standing a rung above him. Did they kiss? Would it look ridiculous? What did the crowd expect of them? She was relieved when he stretched out his hand. ‘I hope you won’t mind. There isn’t a band to welcome you,’ he said. She blushed. She had in point of fact been expecting one. ‘I hope they looked after you all right in Singapore,’ he said.
‘Pan Am was like a fairy godmother.’
‘I don’t mean Pan Am. The man from our legation.’
‘There wasn’t anyone from your legation.’
‘You weren’t met?’
‘Only by Pan Am.’
He shook his head. ‘I might have known. It’s the kind of thing that maddens me. There’s a breakdown of some kind everywhere. There aren’t enough people trained to carry out a routine job. I should have gone myself. Only it wouldn’t have been considered proper.’
‘It didn’t matter.’
‘But it might have done.’
She smiled at that. It might have. She was glad he had thought of having someone meet her.
‘My Aunt Ladda is in the waiting-room,’ he said.
She was to stay with his aunt. It would have been improper, so Rhya had explained in his last letter, for her to be in the same house as he or to stay in an hotel. A small, slim woman, in a tight-fitting black dress stood up, set her hands together and raised them before her face. She seemed very young to be Rhya’s aunt.
‘Welcome to Karak, welcome to our house,’ she said.
She spoke with an attractive singing accent. ‘It is a very simple house, but soon you will have your own home.’ She laughed as she said it. It would have been a nervous laugh if she had not seemed so self-composed. A long heavy car was waiting in the courtyard. A chauffeur in a white highbuttoned jacket opened the door for them.
‘My Aunt Ladda does not trust my driving,’ Rhya said.
Ahead of them rode an armed policeman on a motor bicycle. A second policeman rode behind. They crossed a bridge. Launches, barges and canoes were plying down a broad brown river. There was the same contrast that she had noticed on the outskirts of Singapore between the occasional large house and the clutter of small attap huts beside the roadway. She was struck too by the same smell, half sweet, half acrid.
‘My aunt lives a little outside the town,’ said Rhya.
On each side of the roadway ran a narrow canal. Every fifty yards there was a bridge leading to a white pair of gates. There must be a number of rich people living here, Annetta thought.
‘Here we are,’ said Rhya.
It was the kind of house that had been built at the turn of the century by rich London businessmen in Wimbledon and Hampstead; solid, capacious, with a garden round it: yet though it looked like a suburban house, it had the air of a country one, with outlying, adjacent buildings, the contemporary equivalent of stables; a great many people seemed to be very busy about nothing in particular, people who, as the car drove up, bent forward, their palms set together and raised before their faces. Annetta looked at her watch. Half past ten. As bad a time as you could find to arrive in a strange house, though heaven only knew what time schedule the Karakis kept.
