by Alec Waugh
Rhya listened impatiently. Wait and see. Something will turn up. Safety first. Stanley Baldwin’s pipe. He thought of Angus Macartney lying in that hospital. ‘I see your point of view,’ he said. ‘There are always two courses of action. They often have the same results in the end; one has to take the course which suits one’s individual temperament. I shall go off my head if I sit here inactive while my enemies are laying traps. Let us have action, Colonel.’
‘Very well, sir, action it shall be.’
It would not be his fault if that action proved disasterous. He had been given his orders. It was for him to ensure that the consequences were as mild as possible. His first act on his return to his office was to order that Ahmed Abrusak was to be brought to him as soon as was possible.
Chapter Twenty-five
On the Friday afternoon, Basil returned from lunch to find Ahmed Abrusak standing outside his office door. His features expressed worry, fright, astonishment.
‘Terrible thing happen, boss, they arrest my cousin.’
‘Who arrests your cousin?’
‘Police do, boss, they come this morning while we both at work. They search house, break open desk, take papers. When we come back lunch, they take him away.’
‘They did not do anything to you.’
‘No, boss, they do nothing to me.’
They were still standing in the passage. ‘You’d better come in here,’ said Basil. He had a sense of imminent catastrophe; as he sat behind his desk, he remembered the first time he had seen this man, standing in this room before him, an applicant for a post. If only he could have that moment back.
‘Did the police ask you any questions?’
‘No, they no ask me questions.’
‘They must have said something to you.’
‘No, boss, they say “Don’t be a nuisance, you”.mdash;that all.’
‘Have you any idea why they should arrest your cousin?’
‘Politics, I guess.’
‘What were his politics?’
‘Very left wing. Freedom of the people. Independence. Karak for the Karakis. All that kind of thing.’
‘Was he a Communist?’
‘Maybe, boss. I not know.’
‘Didn’t you discuss politics with him?’
‘He talk a lot. I listen, then stop listening; politics a bore.’
‘You were living in the same house as your cousin?’
‘Yes, boss.’
‘Your wife and children too.’
‘No, they still in town.’
‘You told me that you wanted to work here so that your wife and children could live in the country.’
‘That true, boss.’
‘Then why haven’t you brought them out here?’
‘I no find house.’
‘Have you tried hard to find a house?’
‘Sure, boss, sure, I try hard.’
Basil thought. An idea had occurred to him; the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle were fitting into place.
‘Was it your cousin’s idea that you should come out here?’
‘Yes, his idea.’
‘Did he advise you to tell me that you wanted to have this post so that you could bring your family out here.’
‘Yes, boss, he say that.’
‘I see.’
He saw too well Ahmed had been planted here by a Communist or a near-Communist, through the same device that that misguided Indian had been recruited to make an attempt against the Crown Princess; there were many questions that he would have liked to ask. But he knew what was essential. He would only distract and confuse this wretched creature with a cross-examination. Ahmed had enough on his own mind already. Ahmed had come to him, as his boss, to ask his assistance. He was entitled to it.
‘You are not to worry about this,’ Basil told him, ‘you know how touchy everyone is these days about the Communist menace. In a few days you’ll have your cousin back. In the meantime, I would suggest that you moved your family out here.’
He proceeded to sketch out some practical suggestions; as he did so, he followed his own thoughts. This had brought matters to a head. He had got to get out of here.
2
That evening shortly after five a heavy rainstorm swept the golf course. Rex Sinclair was playing a single against Basil Hallett. They were in the middle of the fifth fairway within half a mile of the clubhouse but a long way from any other shelter. ‘Race you to the clubhouse,’ Basil said. They were soaked by the time they reached it.
‘How good that first whisky and soda is going to taste,’ said Sinclair.
Basil shook his head. ‘Too early for me, I’m afraid. I’m going to the play, in the old man’s party. I have to be on my best behaviour.’
‘The old man’s already seen it.’
‘I know, but Gerald Fyreman’s on a visit. They’re fixing up a party for him.’
‘Then I can’t tempt you.’
‘I’m afraid you can’t.’
‘Too bad, but even so that first whisky and soda is going to taste very good.’
Sitting alone on the veranda, Sinclair watched the storm sweep in clouds of rain across the deserted course. On the greens and on the fairways lay abandoned balls while the players clustered under palms and mangoes. Tropical storms were as brief as they were violent, but it would be quite a while before they were back on the veranda.
‘Boy,’ he called, ‘a whisky soda.’
He was finishing his third when the first foursome, damp and draggled, came up the hill to the ninth green. Sinclair looked at his watch. Ten past six. He had promised Iris that he would be back by a quarter past. She had to be at the theatre early. She was not going to have proper dinner; only eggs and coffee. ‘You won’t be late, will you,’ she had urged. He had promised that he wouldn’t. But when he had made that promise he had not guessed that a storm would interrupt the play; that six o’clock would find him warmed and self-sufficient. When you had had three whiskies, it was very hard not to have a fourth. To hell with it. Why shouldn’t he? He dialled his home number.
‘I’ve been caught up by the storm. I think I’ll stay on here, and fix myself a sandwich when I get back.’
‘A very good idea.’
‘You’ll be all right, won’t you. I mean to say …’
‘Of course, I’ll be all right.’
‘It isn’t as though we’d planned an evening, is it?’ The sound of her voice, her nearness through the telephone gave him a sense of guilt. ‘After all …’
She cut him short. ‘Don’t fuss. I’ll be all right. I must rush now, I’ve a lot to do. I’ll see you later.’
He heard the click of her receiver. She had not minded in the least. He need not have felt any guilt. She had even sounded as though she were relieved; perhaps she was, probably she was. She’s sick of me, tired of her life here. She’s happiest when she’s away from me. That’s why she’s enjoying the play so much, because I’m not in it. That’s how it was; and what was there that he could do about it? He returned to the bar. ‘A whisky soda, boy.’
Iris had left by the time Rex returned. She had eaten in the kitchen. The coffee cup bore the red stain of lipstick. A basin was in the sink. He filled it with warm water and washed the cup. The rubbing off of the scarlet stain had for him a significance that he did not attempt to analyse. He left the dirty plates to soak. I must have something to eat, he thought. But he was too lazy to make himself a sandwich. He opened the cake tin. There was the last quarter of a currant and sultana cake that Iris had bought ten days ago for a morning coffee party. It would be stale by now, but it would be preferable to the bother of cutting and buttering bread and slicing ham. He divided the cake in half. Munching it, he crossed into the bedroom. Iris’s day dress lay across the bed. The wardrobe door stood open. He gazed at the row of dresses. Each one had its particular associations. He had bought that Chinese jacket in Singapore. It was the first article of clothing he had bought her. He had felt very proud, buying it, very proprietary. Her
going-away dress hung beside it. Beyond it … but he could not look beyond it, could not stand here staring at these accusing witnesses to other times.
He crossed into the sitting-room. There was the usual litter of magazines beside the wireless. The room looked very dreary without Iris in it. She had accepted the standardized camp furniture without any attempt to make it personal. When she was in the room, you did not notice that. You were too aware of her, as the full moon dazzled the neighbouring stars; but now when she was away, the ordinariness of the room reminded him of how commonplace everything was without her. He could not stay here alone, through the whole evening, reading a detective story, listening to the radio. He hesitated. Should he go into the village? What were the alternatives. The bar by the pool would be empty. The main club had been taken over by the play. If he were to go into the village, he would only brood and worry; and because he was alone, he would empty off the bottle. Better go to the play again, even if he knew the thing by heart.
A single seat was vacant in the back row. Rex took his place as the curtain rose. Iris was alone on the stage. She was seated, plucking at a stringed instrument. She could not play, so the actual music came from behind the scenes. She was wearing a bright red dress, long-necked, long-sleeved, with ruffles at the wrist and throat. It must have been very hot, on a tropical night, but she looked exquisitely cool. The scenery represented a room in the Palace at Westminster. Much care had been devoted to the scenery. Occupation had been found for as many restless wives as possible and the programme listed half a dozen names.
For a few seconds Iris sat on her stool, strumming on the instrument. She was joined by a lady-in-waiting, who had been the confidante of her amours from the early days when she had lived as a seventeen-year-old girl in her aunt’s house. One of a group of wild young people, the sixteenth-century equivalent of the nineteen-twenties’ bright young people. Before the serious rehearsals had begun, Rex had heard Iris read her lines a dozen times, had read the lady-in-waiting’s part so often that he was word perfect in it. Yet he had the feeling tonight that he was hearing for the first time Lady Katheryn discuss with her confidante the indiscretions that she had committed as a girl. Katheryn was wondering how much had been known of those indiscretions. Was the secret buried? Surely the young men would not have boasted of their conquests. ‘It wasn’t really conquest. I just wanted to know about lovers. I wish now I hadn’t been so silly.’
Rex had not seen his wife on the stage since the first night. She had been uncertain of herself then and he had been nervous on her account. But now, confident through success, she spoke with a sincerity that was contagious. The audience felt that she was Lady Katheryn; all that was to say except himself. She was only able to act like this, because she had ceased to act. She was not Lady Katheryn she was Iris Sinclair. Acting in this play she had discovered herself. The dramatist had put her own thoughts into her mouth. This was how she felt about herself, ‘… not really a conquest. I just wanted to know about lovers.’ Wasn’t that why she had married him? She had been fretted by her inexperience, and now she wished she had not been so silly. As she spoke those lines, she was seeing that first poor music master as the equivalent of her own husband, as someone whom she would outgrow and pass beyond, someone indeed whom she had outgrown already, was preparing to pass beyond. As the act developed, he felt that he was beside a priest in the confessional listening while his wife laid bare her soul.
3
Three rows in front, Basil, too, was following the play in terms of his own situation. Katheryn had learnt that the King was taking an interest in her and that the existence of her earlier lovers might prove dangerous. She was incredulous. ‘He could hardly kill me for what I did before I knew him.’ Basil chuckled inwardly. How little she knew. How little any of them knew; these young women, who did what they liked, as debutantes believing that a wedding ring would settle the account. It was not as easy as all that. Where one sowed, one reaped. Did Barbara, now at his side, see the parallel between Katheryn’s case and hers? She, too, had married a man older than herself. She, too, had committed indiscretions. She must have done, however much Julia might deny it. Was this play giving her the chance to realize how precarious her own position was? Was she asking herself how Charles would behave if he knew the secrets that she had locked away? Might not this play give him the chance of applying to Barbara the screw that was being applied to him? In the interval he’d see how the land lay.
Two places away Shelagh was also watching the play in terms of her own position. Did not the play give her a chance of saying something to Gerald that she had had a long time on her mind? In the first act Henry was shown carrying a stick and limping: prematurely aged through self-indulgence. Yet without any doubt Katheryn fell in love with him. Gerald needed self-confidence. Because he could no longer play cricket, he suspected that a woman would be unlikely to fall in love with him. He needed to be reminded diat she could.
4
The curtain fell on the first act. There was a burst of applause. No wonder, Sinclair thought, the audience had been moved. A woman who had had two lovers, was about to take a third, but had summarily dismissed that lover because a richer man had offered her better opportunities. Yet this woman had been made to seem not only attractive but sympathetic, because the part had been played with complete conviction; because Iris had entered into it, had been herself in it. He had been married to her for a year and only tonight had he seen what she was really like. A woman who went from man to man, who experimented to discover what she was like inside herself, who felt no regret or shame, who said ‘I’m sorry I was so silly’ and went on to the next lover. I need a drink, he thought. He needed several drinks.
5
The Keable party moved on to the terrace. ‘Fresh air rather than a drink,’ said Charles.
Basil stood next to Barbara. ‘Isn’t this play contemporary?’ he said. It’s written about the days when kings had the power of life and death in their own hands. It happened four hundred years ago. Yet the essential situation is being repeated every day, on every side of one.’
‘What do you mean by the essential situation?’ Barbara asked.
‘A young girl absorbing the ideas of her day and her generation, behaving wildly, believing that it does not matter, because everyone else in her set behaves like that. Then suddenly she discovers that it does matter because she marries or falls in love with someone who isn’t of her set or generation. Someone with different ideas. You remember Katheryn wondering how Henry could object to things that she had done before she met him. In her set or her age group it wouldn’t matter, but Henry does not belong to her set or age group. It’s then that she regrets. It’s then she starts getting frightened.’
‘Is that what this play’s about?’
‘Don’t you think it is?’
He looked at her very straight. He had spoken openly. There had been no pretence of its being a private conversation. The others could have listened, had they wanted.
‘You’ve seen it before, haven’t you?’ he asked.
‘I was here on the opening night.’
‘The first time one sees a play one misses a great deal. This is the fourth time I’ve seen it. I used to live near Canterbury and the Old Stagers did it. Listen to the next act very carefully. You’ll see what I mean. You’ll see how it all recoils on Katheryn; how incidents that seemed trivial at the time become frighteningly important. There are dozens of young women in England who find themselves in that position. Think of your own contemporaries. How many of them must have something in their pasts that they don’t even now consider to have been actually wrong; “silly” is the strongest word that they’d apply to it; but they’d give anything now not to have had it happen, because the discovery of it may destroy their happiness. It all turns on whether a girl marries a man out of her own set, who has different standards; or out of her own age group. That’s really more important. Different generations have different points of view. Listen carefull
y during the second act. You’ll see what I mean. Look at it through Henry’s eyes.’
He dropped his voice. He changed its tone. He might have been giving her a warning. He watched her closely. Did her expression change? He thought it did. If it did, then he had sown the seed.
Beside him Shelagh was talking to Gerald Fyreman.
‘Did you see South Pacific? she asked.
‘I saw the picture.’
‘Then you’ll remember the Colonel’s speech about young women being attracted by mature men. I was thinking of that when Henry proposed to Katheryn. A young man can’t understand how that can happen. But it doesn’t puzzle a woman in the least. Even when, in the case of Henry, it’s a man who is sick and limps. Young men so often make that mistake, not realizing what is important and what is unimportant to a woman. They set so much store by athletics that they can’t imagine a woman being attracted to a man who isn’t, how shall I put it, dominant as an athlete in a college group. But that isn’t important to a woman.’
‘What is important to a woman?’
‘So many things. What he is like inside himself. His character, the way he thinks, the way he feels.’
‘You surely aren’t telling me that where a woman’s concerned a man’s looks don’t matter?’
‘Of course I’m not. They’re terribly important; the way a man smiles, the way he looks at you, tones that come into his voice, the way he does things, how he lights a cigarette; they’re important because they’re indicative of him, they express him. Any woman will tell you that.’
Was she making herself clear, she asked herself. Was she preparing him for what she had to say, the point she had to make. She thought she was. She hoped she was.
