Fuel for the Flame

by Alec Waugh

  She walked across to the mirror, turned before it slowly. Charles told her that it suited her to be a little plump, but that was because he was nearly fifty. He did not want her to look too thin. He did not want her to underline the disparity in age. That was the trouble about marrying a man older than yourself. He was excited and flattered by your youthfulness. At the same time he was frightened by it. He wanted to reduce the gap. She had to be careful. She’d go to the ‘keep-fit’ class tomorrow, she assured herself.

  The telephone bell rang. She hurried towards it with an eagerness that made her remember that Esquire cartoon of two blondes seated by a telephone and one of them saying, ‘If the damned thing doesn’t ring within ten minutes, I’ll open a can of sardines.’ She was in a bad way, she thought, if she jumped up so quickly when a telephone rang in Kassaya. ‘Barbara Keable here,’ she said.

  It was Blanche Pawling at the other end. ‘It’s about that party of mine. I’m trying to get the numbers right. There’s such a dearth of eligible men; at least, I don’t mean that exactly. There are too many of them; unattached males I mean, who prop up the bar and don’t contribute anything. I’ve asked Angus Macartney. Now I was wondering about Shelagh. I’d asked him for her, that is the way the land lies, isn’t it?’

  Barbara laughed. ‘I’m not very much in my stepdaughter’s confidence I’m afraid.’

  ‘Come now, you seem such friends.’

  ‘We are, I hope, but we don’t tell each other all our secrets. Shelagh’s said nothing to me about it.’

  Indeed, only last night Shelagh had been asking whether they couldn’t have the young A.D.C. out for his local leave. She had made quite a point of it. Not that she was going to tell Blanche Pawling that.

  ‘But as far as you know it would be all right to aim it as though Angus were Shelagh’s date?’

  ‘If I were Shelagh, I should be delighted.’

  ‘In that case then …’

  There was an exchange of local gossip and then Blanche rang off.

  What a pointless call thought Barbara. The kind of call one made in a place where women had nothing to do with time but kill it. She wished she were in Bangkok or Singapore where married women worked, at whole or half-time jobs; or even in Kuala Prang for that matter. In the big cities of the Orient the days had passed when American and European wives lay out on long chairs on their verandas, clapping their hands and shouting ‘Boy’. Servants cost too much for that and salaries had not kept pace with the mounting cost of living. The life of the white woman East of Suez was very different from what it had been in the days of Maugham; and a good thing too. It was only in oil camps that the problem of the idle wife existed. I’ll rejoin that ‘keep-fit’ class, Barbara told herself. But I must take up something else as well. I mustn’t let myself slide. I owe it to Charles. I owe it to myself. I owe it …

  The telephone went again. It was Julia. Could she come round that morning? Any time that suited. What was wrong with right away? Julia was always a counterblast to one’s own despondency. Even when she was depressed she so dramatized her annoyance that you were stimulated. This morning, however, she was harassed.

  ‘It’s about Basil. I’m worried and I want your help.’

  ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘I’m not sure. He’s moody. He says he needs a change.’

  ‘When is he due for one?’

  ‘In ten months’ time.’

  ‘That’s not so long.’

  ‘That’s what I tell him, but he insists. He can’t stand another week of it, he says.’

  ‘Is he ill?’

  ‘Not in any obvious way. He doesn’t sleep too well. That’s why he drinks too much; so that he can sleep. He’s worrying. That’s all I know.’

  ‘Everybody feels that way sometimes. You do. I do. This very morning I was wishing that I was stationed in Singapore.’

  ‘I know. That’s what I tell him, but he won’t listen. He’s got to go, he says. That’s why I’ve come to you. Can’t you pull strings with Charles?’

  ‘Well. …’

  There was a pause. They looked at one another, pensively. They resented the situation; it hadn’t always been easy to maintain a friendship on equal terms when there was such a difference of age and position between the husbands. They were proud of the way that they had handled it. It had conferred credit on them both. But now a discordant element had been introduced. The one had become a suppliant; the other a channel towards patronage. They were no longer on equal terms. Their friendship was being strained. They did not know whom to blame and rather than blame their husbands they blamed each other. She shouldn’t be putting me in this position, thought Barbara. While Julia was thinking. She need not give herself all these airs because the old man’s her husband.

  ‘Has Basil asked you to ask me this?’ said Barbara.

  ‘Not in so many words, but that’s what he meant, after he’d been to Harry.’

  ‘So he went to Harry first?’

  ‘Of course, he had to.’

  ‘Had he?’

  ‘Naturally. A subaltern can only see his colonel by asking his captain first.’

  ‘There’s as much protocol as that then is there? I’m the new girl here, you know. I haven’t learnt all my lessons. What did Harry say?’

  ‘He wanted Basil to see the doc, Basil said to hell with that; he wasn’t a psycho case; there was nothing wrong with him that showed.’

  ‘I see.’

  There was a pause and the tension mounted. I feel like a cross-examiner, Barbara thought. She guessed at what Julia was feeling. Well, was it her fault if her husband was the general manager and her friend’s a junior assistant?

  ‘Of course I’ll do my best,’ she said. ‘I’ll talk to Charles. …’ She checked: this was getting like a routine interview, ending with a ‘I’ll ring you up about it’ which nine times in ten was a polite way of saying ‘No’. They’d got to snap out of this, at once.

  ‘Listen, I’ll do my best,’ she said, ‘but you know how it is with me. I’m a newcomer here. I don’t know how the score adds up. I’ve only been here a year. You know much more about it all than I do. The G.M.’s wife ought to be someone who has gone up stage by stage with him, who can be an opposite number, who can do for the women what he does for the men. I can’t do that when I’m younger than three-quarters of them and at a disadvantage even with a contemporary like you. I’m always afraid I’m going to make a mistake of some kind. Something that seems common sense to me is against protocol. I expect that this whole thing is far, far simpler than I imagine and that Charles will say, what on earth have we been making all this fuss about. Let’s hope so, anyway. Let’s have a glass of sherry, even though it is only ten o’clock; in terms of English hours it would be half past twelve.’

  The wine revived them. Two sips and they were back to their old harmony, chattering away, relaxed, at ease; but nevertheless there had been that period of tension. A seed had been sown.

  2

  When Charles came back for lunch, he raised his eyebrows at the sight of dirty glasses.

  ‘On a week-day?’

  ‘Julia’s been round; a crisis,’ she explained.

  He shrugged. ‘That’s certainly a problem child,’ he said.

  ‘Can you do anything to help?’

  ‘How can I? His contract says three years. He hasn’t a doctor’s certificate.

  ‘But don’t people get moved sometimes to another camp, before their time is up?’

  He shook his head. ‘Only under special conditions. If a man has fallen down on a job and Basil’s not done that; or if a man deserves to be promoted out of turn, or if there’s a vacancy and no one else can fill it. But that’s not Basil’s case. He isn’t ready for promotion; heaven knows when he will be. He’s not the most valuable member of my staff.’

  ‘You couldn’t make an exception in his case?’

  ‘If Pearl made exceptions like that, it wouldn’t be the firm it is.’

  ‘Must I te
ll Julia that?’

  ‘No need for you to. I’ll have a talk with him. Not in my office; here. I’ll put it tactfully: butter him up a little. Perhaps he feels he’s not appreciated. One or two little things have not gone right. Kingsford was telling me about some careless slip he made. It’s a strange life out here. Men get hallucinations. A little thing can start it off; in the same way the littlest thing can put it right. I’ve seen so much of this. I remember a doctor saying to me once, “If one’s any good, one acquires an extra sense; one guesses at what’s wrong.” I shouldn’t be a bit surprised if in the course of a little chat I didn’t put my finger on the trouble. Let’s have them up as soon as possible, and make it a rather special dinner.’

  She made it that. From the start Charles set the tone. ‘There’s so much red tape here in this job of mine,’ he said, ‘I spend so much time with people who are supposed to be important, that every now and again I need to relax with friends with whom I don’t need to put on dog.’

  He had dressed in Chinese trousers and an open shirt. Instead of cocktails, he had had a bottle of Danish aquavit chilled to freezing point; Barbara had prepared some anchovy canapes. ‘A change from whatever the purists may say. I don’t believe pure spirits spoil the palate for good wine. At any rate we’ll run the risk,’ he said.

  He served with the crabmeat cocktail a white Anjou wine that had the suggestion of a sparkle. With the bird—a local woodcock—a Châteauneuf du Pape. ‘They say that it’s too heavy for the tropics, but I was given a tip when I was in Abadan by a Burgundy salesman. “It may sound heresy,” he said, “but in the tropics I put a red wine in the icebox for an hour. The first sip may surprise you, but within ten minutes the bottle will have taken on the temperature of the room and will be as nearly right as you can expect it to be in the tropics.” I’ve always considered that very sound advice; how do you feel, Basil?’

  He set himself out to charm, playing the role of the uncle rather than the contemporary. He did not as he had so often in the past, and as his vanity tempted him to do, behave as though he were one of them, linking himself through Barbara with Julia and Basil. Instead he talked from the vantage point of twenty years’ seniority. Without monopolizing the conversation he talked of the Orient and the Empire as he had known them before the war. But he did not speak nostalgically.

  ‘I’ve seen many changes,’ he said. ‘If I had been told in 1936 that the world would be the way it is today, I’d have thought, If that’s how it’s going to be, I don’t want any part of it, but actually now that is has turned out that way, I don’t find anything so very wrong. The standard of living’s higher. More people stand a chance of making something of their lives, there’s no lack of variety and fun. I still wake up with a sense of anticipation, wondering what the day will bring.’

  It was planned as reassuring talk for young people on the threshold of a fast-changing world. Before he had his quiet talk with Basil, he wanted the atmosphere of the evening to say, ‘Take a long view. Things work themselves out. Look back three years, are any of the issues that were worrying you then still problems? Look forward three years. Nothing that worries you now will be worrying you then.’

  A cheese soufflé was accompanied by a tawny port. ‘It’s good,’ he said, ‘to think of all that wine maturing in Oporto. When this wine was tipped into that cask twelve years ago, where were we, what were we thinking about?’

  When Barbara and Julia had gone into the drawing-room he refilled Basil’s glass.

  ‘I love the taste of port, but I’m not sure that what I love about it most isn’t the realization of all the trouble that’s gone into its making. Have you ever been to the Douro and seen the harvest? You should. It’s a fiesta. All those peasants coming down to the farms, marching or rather trotting in step; with a flute-player at their head, singing the traditional songs; the gathering of the grapes by day and the treading them in those great stone troughs; the music at night and the women dancing and all the courtships that begin there; then the wine coming down the river in square-sailed barges, the great casks where it matures, the constant care of it, the replenishing with wine and brandy as it evaporates; all that twelve years’ labour for our half-hour’s pleasure. It makes one feel a millionaire. It also makes one feel a little humble; it helps one to be patient.’

  He paused. He looked at Basil with an avuncular benevolence.

  ‘When I get depressed,’ he said, ‘and who is there that doesn’t, I like to think of those casks in Oporto, and the wine slowly mellowing. Whatever else in the world around us may be deteriorating, that at least is getting better. One of the things that I most look forward to when I retire is laying down a cellar; to be able to stare every day at those rows of bottles getting better every day. One misses a great deal here. When I was your age I’d get depressed at that. One’s only young once, I’d think, and one’s wasting one’s best years where one can’t get the full value for them. But at my age I recognize how much there is that’s left, how much of the best is left.’

  He had, he hoped, lulled Basil into a kind of coma before he changed the subject, without altering his tempo.

  ‘I was having a talk with Harry Pawling the other day and we were mentioning you,’ he said. ‘He told me that you weren’t too happy about yourself; that you wanted a change. He was worried; wondering if anything was wrong; on his own account, I mean. He felt he couldn’t be handling things in the way he should be if you felt that way. I reassured him. I told him that we all felt like that when we were young, that that kind of depression was one of the occupational hazards of working for a firm like Pearl; we all feel like that and we all get over it. He was afraid that he had been unsympathetic in some way. He mentioned something about a slip-up you’d made at some shipping conference. I forget what it was. I know it was quite unimportant. But he was afraid that you might be bothered, that you were thinking he didn’t appreciate your work; which of course he does, as we all do. You’ve got a flair. You’re impetuous, you make mistakes occasionally, but it’s only the man who plays for safety who doesn’t make mistakes; and though a firm like this needs the cautious men who try out the strength of a bridge before they put their weight on it, we also need, in fact we couldn’t do without, the adventurers, the innovators like yourself. You did a wonderful job for us in that rearrangement of personnel. You paid your salary for the whole time you’re here. We all know, certainly Harry Pawling does, how valuable you are. He’s a little touchy. Not as young as he was, and between ourselves, in confidence, he hasn’t taken too good care of himself. He has doubts every now and again about himself. That’s probably why he comes down on you rather hard sometimes. He’s adjusting a balance with himself. It wouldn’t be at all a bad idea if you had a little talk with him one day, and told him how much you enjoy working for him, say what a help it was to work under someone of his experience: butter him up a little; I’d be very grateful if you would.’

  Later Charles told Barbara what he had said. ‘I shall be surprised if that doesn’t put things straight. I made him think that Harry, not he, was the problem boy. That should give him a sense of responsibility. I don’t expect to have any more trouble there. I’m glad to have got on to it in time. That’s thanks to you. What would I do without you?’

  Back in the Halletts’ bungalow there was no such atmosphere of peace. Basil strode up and down the room, a whisky soda in his hand; Julia sat by the radio watching him, letting him talk on. ‘It didn’t work,’ he said. ‘I didn’t get a chance of speaking. He wouldn’t let me speak. He went on talking. Oh yes, he was very nice of course; very suave and smooth. But what good does that do me? I’ve got to get out of here.’

  He went on talking, repeating himself, sipping at his whisky.

  ‘This place is wrong for me. I’ll go off my head if they make me stay on here. Why can’t they understand that?’

  ‘If I can’t understand it, how can you expect them to?’ Julia said.

  ‘If you can’t understand it …?’


  ‘It makes no sense to me.’

  He checked. He stood in front of her.

  ‘What makes no sense to you?’

  ‘This sudden craze of yours to get away. It can only mean one thing. That you’ve some reason that you haven’t given me.’

  ‘Why should you think that?’

  ‘Because there can only be one other reason, that you’re off your head. And you’re not that. There is some other reason, isn’t there?’

  ‘Well, and if there is?’

  ‘You’d better tell me, hadn’t you?’

  ‘I can’t. I’m sorry.’

  ‘Is her name so very sacred?’

  ‘It isn’t that.’

  ‘Of course it is. There are three reasons why a man feels he has to leave a place. He’s queer and he’s being blackmailed; and you’re not queer. Or he’s borrowed money from the petty cash and can’t pay it back and you’re not a thief. There’s only one other explanation, that he’s got himself mixed up with a woman and can’t face the consequences. Is she married and her husband’s after you; or is she a respectable debutante? Have you made Lila pregnant?’

  Her voice was sharp, angry and contemptuous.

  ‘You’ve got it wrong. There isn’t any woman in this thing.’

  ‘What is it then? You’re running away from something. What are you running from, if it is not a woman?’

  He could not answer that. He had to turn the talk on to the one issue of which he could speak sincerely.

  ‘I’m as much in love with you now as I was on our wedding day.’

  ‘Are you? How am I to know? And even if that’s true, it wouldn’t prevent you having your bits of nonsense on the side. That’s the male prerogative, the double standard; and it’s fine for men until they make the kind of slip that you’ve made now, and then it’s just too bad.’

  She spoke spitefully, savagely. Her anger made it easier for him. He could side-track the issue into an area where he was safe. He pulled a pouffe beside her and knelt on it. ‘Listen,’ he said. ‘There’s never been any woman in my life but you; there never will be.’