Fuel for the Flame

by Alec Waugh

  As Basil’s partner, Iris was invariably at her best. She kept on the fairway. She avoided bunkers. When it was her turn to putt first, she left the ball within three feet of the hole. She rarely missed a short putt.

  This afternoon was no exception. Basil was playing poorly, but they were level as they walked up the ninth fairway. Julia had driven weakly. But the green was within Rex’s reach. He took a light iron. The ball rose high into the air, straight, straight, without the suggestion of a slice or hook. It landed just over the hillock that guarded the green. You could not see the green from the valley in which they stood; but they had all of them played on the course so often that they knew a ball hit like that must be near the flag. There was a self-satisfied smile on Rex’s face as he handed his club over to his caddy.

  Iris’s drive was twenty yards longer than Julia’s and it was better placed in relation to the guardian bunkers, but Basil’s approach was, slightly shanked. It was unlikely to be on the green.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I’ve been a shocking partner. It looks as though the drinks are going to be on us.’

  He smiled; it was clear that he did not care a damn. That’s the kind of man I should have married, Iris thought. They trudged up the steep slope to the green. On the balcony above Harry Pawling was watching them.

  ‘How do you stand?’ he called.

  ‘We’re level.’

  ‘Then it looks as though you were due to be one down.’

  She saw what he meant when they came up to the green. Rex’s ball lay three feet from the hole. Theirs was off the green, in close-cropped grass. ‘A number seven, don’t you think?’ she said to Basil.

  He nodded. ‘Do your best. We’re still alive.’

  She looked from her ball to the hole, judging the line, judging the distance. Nine times in ten the game could be considered over. She would not get within ten feet, Basil would miss his putt, then knock Julia’s ball away. Nine times in ten but this would be the tenth. I’ll will it down, she vowed.

  Don’t raise your head till you hear the ball drop. So she had been instructed. She did not watch the ball. One glance told her enough. It was going straight. She watched Rex’s face instead, saw its expression change, incredulous at first, then darkening into a frown. She saw the frown deepen as the ball dropped with a click into the cup.

  ‘You never do that kind of thing when you’re my partner,’ he complained.

  His voice was sulky. What an appalling man; how could she have ever married him?

  Rex turned to Julia. ‘Whatever you do make sure of this,’ he said.

  As Julia missed her putt, Iris chuckled. Rex made no comment; he did not like losing. If she had missed that kind of putt as Basil’s partner, Basil would have found something gay to say. But then Basil would not have cared.

  ‘So the drinks are on you, after all,’ he was saying now. But there was no gloating undertone to his voice. He played a game for its own sake. Next time I’ll marry a man like that, she thought.

  ‘What shall I order for you at Rex’s expense?’ he asked.

  Iris shook her head. ‘I’m sorry. I’m due for a rehearsal.’

  ‘Then I’ll have yours as well.’

  ‘How late will you be?’ Rex asked.

  ‘I’ve no idea; not too late.’

  ‘What do you call too late?’

  Basil interposed, ‘One’s always too late when one is waited for. Always too early, when one’s not.’

  Julia joined in the laugh but Rex still glowered. He looked like a great ape. I must have been mad, Iris thought.

  ‘How are you getting back?’ asked Julia.

  ‘Harry’s giving me a lift.’

  ‘O.K. then. Let’s have another game next week. Give us our revenge.’

  ‘Let’s do that.’

  Harry was waiting for her in the car park. He had finished his round a quarter of an hour ahead of her. He was flushed from the game and a couple of whiskies at the bar. He’d have to shower and change before he was ready for the rehearsal, he explained.

  ‘That was a wonderful putt of yours.’

  She laughed. ‘I guess you dared me.’

  He shook his head. ‘No, no, it wasn’t that … it isn’t only golf, but watching you sink that putt made me realize it, you’re really very wonderful.’

  She did not answer. She turned, looking at him. Let him say whatever it was he had to say. She wouldn’t interrupt or prompt him; but she smiled encouragingly.

  ‘You’re so young,’ he said, ‘so pretty. And yet there’s so much depth in you. I hadn’t realized it till we did this play. When you were first suggested for the part, I must admit now, I was doubtful. I thought, She’ll look all right. She’s pretty and smart and gay but can she enter into a big part like Katheryn? I never thought you could. But then after the first rehearsal … it was a revelation. I hadn’t realized there was so much in your part; in addition—and this is a funny thing—I hadn’t realized how much there was in my part until I’d seen you act. You inspired me. I felt I was King Henry.’

  He paused, but she said nothing. There were times when it was better to let a man go on talking; some men found it hard to start, at least there were many Englishmen who did; when they were once started, wiser to let them have their say out.

  ‘I’m more impatient for the first night than I can say; not for my own sake simply, but for yours. You’ll be such a surprise to everyone. People who have thought of you as just a very pretty girl won’t believe their eyes when they see how much more to you there is.’

  There was a warmth in his voice that she had not heard before, except when he was acting. How many whiskies had he had? He couldn’t have had time for more than two. He had been only three holes ahead of them. She went into the Pawling drawing-room to wait while Harry changed, glowing with flattered vanity.

  Blanche was listening to a programme of dance music. She was not reading or smoking. She was sitting with her hands in her lap. She looked tired and drawn.

  ‘Isn’t it awful about young Macartney?’ Iris said.

  ‘What’s happened to him?’

  ‘Haven’t you heard about his being shot?’

  Blanche’s mouth fell open. To Iris she looked as she had seen runners do on the Movietone News at the end of a race, struggling for breath with eyes half-closed, like a fish after it had been landed, barely conscious.

  ‘Shot, dead?’ she gasped.

  ‘Not dead but badly wounded.’

  ‘Oh.’

  Iris told her the little that she knew, noting carefully as she spoke the changing expression on the older woman’s face. ‘He can’t be so very bad,’ she said. ‘Shelagh’s going in to see him.’

  ‘Shelagh.’

  It was snapped out on a note of venom that made Iris start. What had young Macartney meant to Blanche that the news of this accident should affect her so? By the time that Harry came down, Blanche had recovered, but the memory of those moments of collapse could not be effaced. There was a thoughtful brooding expression on Iris’s face as Harry drove her round to the rehearsal.

  3

  Shelagh arrived at the Residence shortly after nine. Gerald came out to welcome her.

  ‘Lila’s gone to a cinema,’ he said. ‘She’ll be back in about twenty minutes. The chief’s dining out. They all asked me to apologize. They were arrangements that had been made long before. What about what to eat? Have you had dinner?’

  ‘A sandwich on the way.’

  ‘Will that be enough?’

  ‘If I could have a cup of cocoa in my room.’

  ‘Fine; and I expect that you’d like to see Lila, wouldn’t you, as soon as she gets back?’

  ‘Of course … and …’ she hesitated. She had to play this part through logically. ‘Any more news of Angus?’

  He shook his head. ‘Except that they seem certain he’ll recover.’

  ‘Will there be any lasting effects; will he be lame or anything?’

  ‘Oh no, I don’t thin
k that, he was shot across the body.’

  She blushed, remembering suddenly that Gerald was victim of the same fate; a young athletic man struck down. In Angus’s case it did not seem to matter quite so much. There had been no question of his becoming a Test Match cricketer.

  ‘If there’s anything that I can do, you know, don’t you, that you’ve only got to ask?’ he said. ‘And may I say, you have all my sympathy. I can guess at what you must be feeling, the anxiety and the shock.’

  ‘That’s very kind of you.’

  There was a lot that she resented about this deception programme, but there was nothing she disliked more than having to play a part in front of Gerald Fyreman. She did not want to have him thinking of her as being crazily in love with Angus. She wanted to be natural, to be herself with him; she remembered that talk at the dance when they had been so in tune. How could they be like that again when they were meeting under false pretences, when he was picturing her as being in love with Angus? Why on earth couldn’t Lila come out into the open? Was she ashamed of Angus, was it a device to maintain her own independence, or was it a means of keeping him on tenterhooks? Did she enjoy making him unhappy? A mixture of the lot, she supposed.

  ‘We are all very much looking forward to your visit to Kassaya,’ she said.

  ‘I’m looking forward to it myself.’

  No doubt he was. Ten days under the same roof as Barbara. Something should happen in that time.

  4

  In the hospital Forrester sat beside young Macartney. Angus had slept through the afternoon. He was rested and ready to be questioned.

  ‘I won’t keep you long,’ said Forrester. ‘I can guess more or less what happened. You went to your father’s desk to see if there were any papers that would explain his odd behaviour. He thought you were a burglar and he fired. Had you any reason to believe that there were any papers there?’

  ‘He must have papers somewhere. I did not see where else they could be.’

  ‘Did anything happen that day to make you decide to make the attempt when you did?’

  ‘It seemed a good opportunity.’

  ‘A better opportunity than any other night?’

  ‘I was in the mood that night.’

  ‘What did you and your father talk about that night at dinner?’

  ‘We didn’t dine together. I went to the wedding. I got back late. My father had already gone to bed.’

  ‘Was he asleep?’

  ‘I listened outside his door. He was breathing heavily.’

  ‘So you thought you could break into his desk. But you must have realized that he would discover his desk had been broken into.’

  ‘If I had got the kind of paper I was looking for that wouldn’t matter. If I found nothing, he might not suspect me. I hadn’t thought it out in detail. The great thing was to see if there were any papers there.’

  ‘Had you time to get hold of any?’

  ‘I emptied the drawer.’

  ‘Where did you put the papers?’

  ‘In my pockets.’

  ‘Had you a coat on?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Where are those papers now?’

  ‘Most of them are at home. They took off my coat.’

  ‘Who’s they?’

  ‘The servants. While they were waiting for the doctor, they bandaged me up as best they could.’

  ‘What about your trousers? Did they take them off?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Were there any letters in the pockets?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘They are probably here then. Did you lose consciousness?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Would you let me take the letters from your pockets?’

  ‘Of course. I was going to have given them to you anyhow.’

  ‘I’m very grateful to you. You were very brave. If you’d done that in a war you’d have got a medal.”

  5

  Next morning Lila and Shelagh drove down to the hospital.

  ‘How do you want this played?’ asked Shelagh. ‘Do we go in together, then I go out and leave you?’

  ‘Of course not. That would look as though he wanted to see me. You know how nurses gossip. I’ll leave the two of you together, then next week I shall have an alibi for going down to see him; I can go on your account, to report back to you.’

  ‘I see.’

  Angus looked tired; but he did not look ill. His black hair and pale dark skin against the pillowcase gave him an air of elegance. His arms lay outside the sheet, the palms of his hands flat against it.

  ‘We’ve brought some flowers,’ Lila said.

  ‘That’s very kind of you.’

  They were orchids from the Residence. The nurse brought in a vase and the girls arranged them. Forty hours ago, Angus thought, I was striding up and down that flat, with hell and heaven in my heart. He felt that it had happened in another world; in another period of time. Forty hours ago. He looked at Lila steadily. He remembered how the sight of her had inflamed him as he had turned in that queue beside the bridal couple to see her a yard from him. He had wanted to spring at her. Now he was only conscious of his body’s pain.

  She looked at his hands lying on the sheet; the fingers drawn up under the palms. She remembered how fiercely, how tenderly those fingers had caressed her, how those hands had closed upon her shoulders; they looked so frail, so motionless. Yesterday; how she had dreamed of yesterday; she had foreseen herself this morning reliving in her memory the details of that yesterday. Well, that was that.

  She smiled. ‘Now I suppose I must be tactful and leave you two young things together. Good luck, Angus, get well quickly.’

  She raised her voice loudly enough for anyone who had been listening outside to hear. In the doorway, she waved her hand. ‘I’ll be waiting downstairs, Shelagh.’

  Angus and Shelagh looked at one another. How long was it since they had driven back together from that cricket match? Seven weeks, eight weeks. How much had been crowded into those eight weeks. Would eight weeks ever again contain so much drama for him? No doubt a time would come when he would look back enviously to those eight weeks thinking, I was really alive then. Now he was conscious of nothing but exhaustion and the slow pain that niggled at his wounds; the pain that would suddenly grow acute, so that he would press on the bell beside his bed, querulous for the needle that would bring relief.

  Shelagh was in the same chair that Forrester had sat in last night. She looked very pretty, far prettier than Lila. She was a nice kid. She hadn’t had any fun out of this, filling the gooseberry’s role: sitting in that far room reading a detective story; being dragged in now to cover up for Lila. Well, that was over now.

  ‘You’ve been very sweet about all this,’ he said. ‘It must have been a bore. You don’t need to bother with it any more. I’d rather Lila didn’t come here again. When I’m well, I’ll take a trip somewhere. By the time I’m back, you’ll have returned to England; that will let us both out; no need for alibis, though if you ever did feel like looking in when you are in Kuala Prang, of course I should be grateful.’

  ‘You don’t want to see Lila again? You can’t mean that.’

  ‘There’s no use now.’

  They sat in silence. There seemed nothing more to say. Shelagh stood up. ‘Isn’t there anything that I can do for you? There must be something. You haven’t got a sister.’

  ‘There is something, but it’s rather difficult.’

  ‘I’ll do my best.’

  ‘I’d like to see Prince Rhya.’

  ‘I could fix that, I think.’

  ‘But not through official channels. I don’t want it to go through the Residence.’

  ‘I could do it through the Princess.’

  ‘You could?’

  ‘We travelled out in the same plane. We got to know each other very well. I could ask her that.’

  ‘I’d be grateful if you would.’

  ‘Is there nothing else?’

  ‘There’s nothing el
se.’

  ‘There’s not much point in my staying on here is there?’

  ‘I don’t think there is.’

  ‘Good luck then. I hope it won’t be all too bad.’

  Lila looked surprised at seeing her so soon.

  ‘You didn’t stay long.’

  ‘There wasn’t anything to stay for.’

  ‘Hadn’t he any messages for me?’

  ‘Only that … well, he didn’t see any point in your coming in again.’

  ‘Then that lets me out.’

  How callous can you get? thought Shelagh.

  ‘There’s no point either in my staying on then, is there?’

  ‘I don’t see that there is.’

  They drove back in silence.

  ‘I might as well go back this afternoon.’

  ‘There isn’t all that hurry.’

  ‘I’ve got things to do. This theatrical show for instance.’

  ‘I see.’

  Lila came up while Shelagh packed, stretching herself out on the other bed, her hands clasped behind her head, just as she had done on the evening of the dance; and just as she had done that evening, she talked as though she were talking to her herself.

  ‘It’s strange, but when I saw him lying there, I didn’t feel a thing. No pity, nothing. It isn’t that I’m heartless. He wasn’t the same person. Forty hours ago I met him at the wedding party. We made a half-date for that evening. We hadn’t been alone together for eight days. Three months ago I wouldn’t have thought it possible to feel so electric about anyone. He felt the same way about me. I could see the way his fingers twitched. Only forty hours ago; when I saw those hands lying out on the sheet, so still, so helpless, they weren’t the same hands. He must have felt the same. I’m glad he did. It would have been such a bore if he hadn’t, if I’d had him moaning and pleading round the place. I’ve read of that happening. The electric side of it suddenly dying for one of the pair, but not for the other. What luck it didn’t happen that way. Now we can both go on to the next thing with our consciences clear. I wonder what the next thing will be, when it will be.’