Fuel for the Flame

by Alec Waugh

  He looked at them closely as they exchanged their first sentences of greeting.

  ‘This is a pleasant surprise for me,’ she said; her voice could not have been more casual.

  ‘It is pleasant for me, very pleasant, but I can’t say it is a surprise.’

  ‘Not a surprise?’

  ‘I knew that you were here. I was looking forward to seeing you again.’

  ‘But you didn’t know that you were coming here. You told me definitely that you were not coming here.’

  ‘I often have to change my plans.’

  ‘I shall be very inquisitive until you tell me why you did, in this case.’

  ‘I’d like to be able to say it was your presence here, but I wouldn’t be altogether truthful if I did.’

  He underlined the word ‘altogether’. Studholme, looking from the one to the other, thought, They know each other better than I’d realized.

  ‘Did you hear about that chap who tried to shoot me?’ Annetta asked.

  ‘Of course, but I did warn you, didn’t I?’

  ‘Not in so many words.’

  ‘But I think I said …’

  She interrupted him. ‘When I heard that you were coming here, I wondered whether that attempt had had anything to do with it.’

  ‘That’s very flattering to me.’

  ‘I didn’t mean that way. You told me that you fished in troubled waters. That episode may have made you feel that the waters here were more troubled than you had suspected.’

  He looked at her thoughtfully, as though he were asking himself a question. His half-smile was a little crooked, was half-affectionate.

  ‘One doesn’t know for certain why one does half the things one does. One has a spontaneous reaction; one can analyse it afterwards but even then one can’t be sure. I don’t think I tried to work out why I had that hunch that it would be a good idea for me to come here, but maybe, yes, very likely, the news about that attack on you may have been the deciding influence.’

  How smooth he was, how convincing he made himself appear. But she had known that he was coming here long before that episode. Sir Kenneth had known for weeks; he himself must have known when they met upon that plane that he was coming here. He was a cheat, a liar. Was she the only person who had seen through him?

  ‘Where were you when you heard about that episode?’ she asked.

  ‘In Kuala Lumpur.’

  ‘Did they talk about it much?’

  He shrugged.

  ‘Do people ever talk much about anything that’s not their direct concern? Londoners during the war didn’t bother about what was happening in the Pacific and to Australians the Battle of the Atlantic seemed very remote. So many dramatic things are happening in so many different places, and thanks to radio and TV they seem to be happening in our own drawing-rooms. Each day has its own sensation. Nobody has the time to worry for very long about anything that does not immediately concern him, but in your case …’ He paused. ‘I myself did feel rather personally about that.’

  The tone of his voice changed. It assumed a caressing quality. She resented it and yet it warmed her. He might be a liar and a cad but he had felt something for her. That was where people like him were such a menace. They had their sincere side. They only cheated every now and then. But he must have had all his plans laid to visit Karak before he had heard her news in Kuala Lumpur.

  ‘When people spoke of it,’ she asked, ‘what explanation did they give?’

  ‘The explanation that was given in the Press: a Communist plot.’ ‘Is that what you thought yourself?’

  ‘What else was there for me to think?’

  What else indeed. If she only knew what he really did think, what he really knew. She was glad that she had put Colonel Forrester on his tracks.

  ‘Dinner is served, milady.’

  Lila turned to Angus. ‘I haven’t seen you since that lunch party when Annetta arranged to go out to the oil camp. What have you been doing with yourself?’

  ‘Nothing in particular. You know what the routine of life is here.’

  ‘I know my own routine. I don’t know yours.’

  ‘Mine’s not so very different.’

  ‘Oh, but it is, it must be. You’re a man and I’m a woman: you are a bachelor, I’m a carefully chaperoned young woman, the stepdaughter of a knight. Think what a difference that makes.’

  Her tone was brisk and social. She was enjoying this, he knew, chuckling to herself over the dramatic irony of the situation. He enjoyed it too, remembering how different she had been, ninety minutes back, in her lax abandonment to pleasure. At the same time he resented her detachment, her air of immunity.

  ‘I’d give a lot to see your diary,’ she was saying. ‘To know what you were doing hour by hour. I never had a brother; my stepbrother is too young to be any use. Not having a brother’s a great drawback. You’re incomplete. You never see men relaxed. You only see the men who are interested in you in what is called “that way”. You have no easy friendship with young men, at least we in England don’t, with our segregated boarding schools. That’s why I’m so inquisitive about young men’s lives; what they do, how they think. When I went out that day and saw you playing cricket, I thought, How nice it would be if I had you as a brother.’

  ‘A brother!’

  She chuckled inwardly. He wanted to have me sit next him, and now he doesn’t like it.

  ‘I’d like to have had a brother like you,’ she said. ‘Somebody good at games, who enjoys life, who’s alive. You could tell me so much, as a brother. How men feel about things. I read a symposium once, where a number of men were asked what they would choose if a genie out of a magic bottle offered them a choice. One man said, “I’d like to be invisible so that I could hear what women talk about when they are alone together after dinner.” Women would like the same. They want to know how men talk together—about them. Now tell me, Mr. Macartney …’

  ‘If you think of me as a brother you might at least call me by my Christian name.’

  ‘Should I? Perhaps I should. Now tell me, Angus, what kind of women do you like, what kinds of thing do you like most in a woman?’

  She paused, interrogatively. He did not answer. His eyes looked very directly into hers. There was a yearning look in them. She recognized what that look said: I may have liked other women in my time, but now there’s one woman only for me—you, and because of you every other woman that I’ve known has become a pallid spectre. There is only you, and at this instant I have one wish only in the world, to be alone with you. If a genie were to wreathe out of a magic bottle, I would say just this to it, ‘Let me be alone with her.’ That was what that look said and the impulse was strong upon her to answer it with the look it longed for, a look that said, I too, my dear, I too. But something stayed her: the prescience that the time had not yet come to her for that. One day there would be in her life a man whose look across a table she would answer with the look that Angus longed for. But Angus was not that man. Her nerves might quiver at his look, at the sound of his voice; her senses might vibrate to his touch, but she did not love him. He was a forerunner.

  She smiled brightly. ‘Now tell me this about yourself; it’s something I’m very curious to know. Are you a type-lover? Do you always fall for brunettes or blondes or redheads; or is it like the rotation of crops— that’s how I read of it once—after a blonde, a redhead: first someone tall then someone small: someone very slim then someone bien en chair: or is it a kind of mental affinity? I’ve read of that—or is it incalculable, unpredictable? You just don’t know whom you’ll fall for. Now be a brother, tell me about the way it is with you. It’ll be such a help to me, when my time comes, when I fall in love.’

  He’s loathing it, she thought; she gloated in the knowledge and the heady sense of power that it gave her.

  ‘I’m relying on you. You must tell me everything,’ she said.

  On the other side of Angus, Shelagh was talking to the A.D.C.

  ‘Have you mad
e any decision yet about your future?’

  ‘Up to a point. I’ve decided to give up the army and I’ve decided to look for a job abroad.’

  ‘Why abroad?’

  ‘I want to start a new life altogether, among people who didn’t know me before this happened; I don’t want to be pitied, I don’t want to be explained. In England I should have the feeling every time I went out of a room that somebody was saying, “Do you know who that is?” I want to start a new life, among strangers. Another thing, too. I don’t want to be reminded by meeting old friends, going to familiar places, of the person whom I thought I was going to be. I need to re-create myself, for myself.’ He paused. ‘I’m being terribly egotistical: talking so much about myself.’ He smiled. ‘The trouble about you is, or rather the nice thing about you is, that you make it so easy to talk about oneself to you.’ She flushed. He really was a terribly nice person. He would be so right for Barbara.

  ‘You have such a way of seeming interested,’ he said.

  ‘But I am interested.’

  ‘I know that’s what one feels. Most people are only interested in themselves, and in other people only in relation to themselves. You aren’t that way.’

  Oh, but I am, she thought. She did like him for himself, and she was interested in him for himself, but at the same time she was interested in him as the solution for all their problems; hers and Barbara’s, her father’s and her mother’s. It would be so wonderful if it could work out this way: five people would be better off, five people who were not too happy now; no one would suffer; usually somebody had to pick up the bad hand in every deal, but this time there was no bad hand. Oh, but what peace, what content if she could get her parents back together; to have a real home again, somewhere where she belonged. It wasn’t the same thing with a stepmother or a stepfather. That had been her bond with Lila; but Lila now was on her own.

  ‘You thought once of going into Pearl,’ she said. ‘Does that idea still appeal to you?’

  ‘I’m toying with it—Pearl or some equivalent of Pearl.’

  ‘In that case, then …’ she hesitated. An idea had struck her.

  ‘Why don’t you come and spend a week with us? Then you could see what the inside life of an oil camp is.’

  ‘That’s an idea.’

  ‘You have leave, don’t you?’

  ‘I’m due for local leave. I was thinking of taking it in Singapore.’

  ‘That would cost you a lot of money. You might not have too much fun, with people you don’t know. You could have a real rest with us, and it would be a holiday. I mean you’d be doing different things. It is a world of its own, you know, an oil camp. It’s like nothing else. The same people seeing each other every day. You can’t tell what it’s like by coming down for a two-day visit, as you have done. When it came to the point you might not like it. You know Julia Hallett, don’t you?’

  ‘I’ve met her once or twice. I’ve not had a real talk with her.’

  ‘But you know the kind of person she is; she’s sensible, stands on her own two feet. This is what she said to me when I first came out. You’ll have a wonderful time, she said. All the advantages, none of the disadvantages. We have a good time, don’t think we don’t. But it’s a life sentence for us, the way it’s not for you. You’re here on a short stretch. You can see an end. We can’t. That’s what makes some of the young wives desperate. They can see no end. It’ll be one contract after another, one oil camp after another till they’re old and finished. “You can say,” Julia said to me, “in a year’s time I’ll be in London.” One can stand anything as long as there’s a limit set.’

  She was talking quickly, garrulously, thinking to herself as she talked. Her voice sounded to her like a gramophone record. She was repeating a thesis that she knew by heart. It went on without her having to phrase the sentences. She was playing for time.

  ‘There’s another thing, too, that Julia said,’ she was continuing. ‘“The first thing that will strike you here,” she said, “is everybody’s friendliness. And that’s not a first impression that you’ll have to make second thoughts about. We’re exiles here and we try to make the best of things for each other; yet we don’t make friends easily. We’re on our guard against becoming too intimate with someone we’re going to see all the time. We don’t go all out into a friendship until we’re quite sure of the other person and by the time we are quite sure the contract’s up and we or they have moved to another camp.” That was why, Julia said, it was such a godsend to her, having my stepmother there. They’ve known each other all their lives. There’s nothing they can’t tell each other. Like those gangsters in The Beggar’s Opera, they know enough about each other to hang each other. It isn’t all as straightforward as it looks from the outside. Don’t you think that you should come down and see how it looks from the inside?’

  ‘It’s not a bad idea.’

  ‘It’s a very good idea. When do you think you could get that local leave?’

  ‘Any time I apply for it. I’ve been here a year.’

  ‘Then I’ll ask my stepmother when it would be most convenient for her. How long would you like to stay—a week, a fortnight?’

  ‘From a Friday to the Monday in the following week. That would only count as a week against me.’

  ‘Ten days. Fine.’

  A lot could happen in ten days. Everything could happen in ten days. Things could be brought to a head and settled there. A momentary sense of guilt flickered her conscience. Was she playing a very crooked game, cheating behind their backs people who had trusted her, laying traps for them? She shook her head. How could she be behaving badly, when five people would be the better off as a result of what she was scheming?

  4

  Dinner was over. Lady Studholme had led the women into the drawing-room. Studholme moved round the table and took the chair next to Reynolds. Now, he thought, what secrets can I extract?

  ‘I should very much value your views on what is likely to happen in Singapore,’ he said. ‘What happens there will have its repercussions here, particularly in the Chinese community. I’m wondering …’

  The door opened. A servant came in to whisper in Gerald’s ear. He rose. ‘Will you please excuse me, sir.’

  He was back within half a minute.

  ‘It’s London, sir. I think you should take the call.’ He followed his chief into the office. Reynolds and Angus were left alone.

  ‘Tell me,’ said Reynolds. ‘I haven’t had a chance of asking you, but how is your father? I’d heard he wasn’t well.’

  ‘Do you know my father?’

  ‘I haven’t met him, but I’ve heard about him; who hasn’t after all? Yours is a well-known family. They told me in Singapore that he had practically retired from the business. Is that true?’

  ‘As far as attending the office, yes, but I spend two or three nights a week there. He keeps in touch with everything that’s going on. It’s he who makes all the big decisions. I only make minor ones myself.’

  ‘But he is seriously ill, isn’t he?’

  ‘His chest is bad and his heart is weak. I suppose that one day soon his heart will give under the strain.’

  ‘Isn’t he very bored, out there by himself? What does he do all day, read?’

  ‘He spends most of his day working out chess problems.’

  ‘Chess, indeed.’

  It was interjected quickly, on a sudden note of interest.

  ‘Chess must have been a great consolation to him during those months in prison,’ Reynolds said.

  ‘It would have been if he had played it then.’

  ‘So this is a new craze then?’

  ‘During the last eighteen months.’

  The door reopened. Studholme returned. The significant moment that he had foreseen had come and gone. He had not been there to notice it.

  5

  Forrester raised his eyebrows when Angus gave his account of the dinner party on the following day. Chess, and Reynolds had looked surprised; ha
d momentarily dropped his guard: another piece of the jigsaw puzzle had slipped into its place; soon he would be able to glimpse the general picture. At the moment there were only unconnected colour patterns. He could not see how one fitted in within another. But soon, very soon he would get an inkling.

  ‘I’ll have to come down to see your father and one day soon,’ he said.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Barbara was bored. It was eight-thirty in the morning. For eighty minutes she had been by herself. For the next three hours her boredom would not be disturbed. Her diary was a blank. Charles had left an hour earlier for his office. Shelagh had left ten minutes ago for her ‘keep-fit’ class. She ought to have gone with Shelagh, but her attendances during the last two months had become increasingly infrequent. The scales had not yet sounded their warning note; but they would, she must not fool herself. When you started a diet you did not notice any difference for ten days then suddenly the ounces became pounds. In the same way when you quit a diet, there was no change for a fortnight, then suddenly like an avalanche weight descended. That was how it would be with her, if she was not careful.

  She stood up, her arms above her head; she swung them down. No difficulty at all. The tips of her fingers brushed her toes. Was there any twinge behind her knees? She did not think there was. She raised her arms again and swung them down. Did she feel a twinge this time? If you expected to, then of course you did. Everything was mental, wasn’t it? Except appendicitis.