Fuel for the Flame

by Alec Waugh

  She greeted him with a smile.

  ‘This is quite a muddle isn’t it?’ she said.

  ‘I’ll say it is. I could use a drink. I haven’t had one yet. What’ll you have?’

  ‘A gin and tonic’

  He stood with his back to her, as he mixed it. Was this the last time she would watch him fix a drink for anyone? As he leaned forward over the table, his belt slipped a little, and his paunch swelled over it. He was too old, far too old for a girl like Iris. He turned and held out the glass to her. His face was flushed, his baldness and fat cheeks surprisingly enough reduced his age. There was an endearing boyishness about him. She remembered a line from the play when Katheryn had said, ‘You’re just like a schoolboy, that’s how I like you best.’ She was fond of him. Yes, she would miss him.

  ‘What I want to know, Harry, is how you yourself feel about all this.’

  He shrugged. ‘It’s hard to say, it happened so quickly. It was so unexpected. Twenty-four hours ago, I was sitting here, going over my part, with nothing further from my mind.’

  ‘It hadn’t been even a flirtation, had it?’

  ‘Only in as far as there’s always a kind of flirtation with a leading lady in a play, no matter who she is.’

  ‘You were attracted by her, weren’t you?’

  ‘Of course, who wouldn’t be?’

  ‘But you had no idea that she had any special feeling about you.’

  ‘Good heavens, no.’

  ‘And when you found she had, you were flattered and excited.’

  ‘Wouldn’t any normal man be?’

  ‘When Rex Sinclair asked you how you felt about Iris you said you felt about her in the same way that she did about you.’

  ‘There was nothing else I could say, was there?’

  She smiled at that. ‘I should have thought that there were a great many other things you might have said if you didn’t feel about her in that way; and that’s the whole point isn’t it, how do you feel about her?’

  A lost, numbed expression came into his face. I must help him out, she thought.

  ‘Is this how you feel?’ she asked. ‘You’re close on fifty. That isn’t old, but ten years in the tropics are the equivalent of fifteen years in Europe. You had come to think of yourself as middle-aged, with certain things behind you; then this enchanting young creature tells you that middle-age doesn’t matter. The picture of her as your wife dazzles you. You’re over twenty years older than she is. It can’t last. Five, seven, ten years—that’s the most you can expect. But ten such years seem worth it. Isn’t that how it is?’

  He nodded. ‘Yes, that’s how it is.’

  ‘I don’t want to stand in your way, you know. If you feel this is what you want …’

  She looked at him questioningly. They might have been discussing the purchase of a new car or whether they could afford new curtains for the drawing-room; carefully weighing their needs against their wants and means. They had discussed so many such problems in a dozen years; they had never quarrelled over those discussions; they had seen each other’s point of view; just as they were now, when they were discussing breaking their lives. In most of those discussions, in all of them in recent years, though he had maintained the masculine initiative, it was she who had guided their development. She, in the last analysis, had made the decisions; putting ideas into his head, words into his mouth, explaining him to himself. Sometimes she had laughingly thought, I make him think he wants what I want. Was she doing that now? Compunction struck her. Was she being fair to him. In spite of that weight and height, in spite of his bald head, he was so helpless really: such a baby. He needed looking after. What was going to happen to him? Iris might be attracted by his air of power, of understanding, just as she herself had been thirteen years ago. But Iris would see through him soon, just as she had done. And in Iris’s case it would be seeing through a man of fifty not of thirty-five. The young could be so ruthless. What would happen to him without her to look after him? In terms of friendship didn’t she owe him more than that? She had been stressing the attractions of marrying a young girl; ought she not to have underlined its disadvantages?

  ‘You have realized, haven’t you, all the practical difficulties that will be raised?’ she asked.

  ‘Charles Keable gave me a lecture about that this morning.’

  ‘The divorce proceedings will take some time. It may be a year before you see Iris again.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘You said that there was only one answer you could give when Rex challenged y©u: it was a dare and you felt chivalrous. But Iris is a young woman who is perfectly capable of looking after herself. You haven’t broken up a marriage. That marriage was on the rocks already. She’s delighted to be rid of Rex.’

  ‘I know all that.’

  He was not anxious to discuss it. He was beginning to show a weak man’s mulish obstinacy. Why am I bothering? she thought. But she must go on.

  ‘I wonder if you’ve considered this; when a young girl marries a man older than herself, she is impressed by the things he stands for, by his position in the world; as Katheryn was by Henry’s. He had money and power. He could give her a great deal. You won’t be able to do that for Iris. You won’t be as well off then as you are now. I have some money of my own, but it won’t be enough to keep up a home in England for the children and myself. I may marry again. I hope I shall, but that is something we can’t bank on. Taking one thing with another, Iris will be rather worse off as your wife than she is as Rex’s. Have you thought of that?’

  ‘I’ve thought of that.’

  ‘There’s the point, too, of your promotion. Do you think you’d stand much chance of being made a G.M. when you are the husband of a divorcee who was once the wife of an employee? You know how Pearl feels about its top men setting an example.’

  ‘I know.’

  It was her turn to shrug. What was the good of going on? He had closed his mind to reason. There was nothing that she could do. Five years of Iris outweighed the grey, grim winter that would follow them, and she could see his point. What was that line of poetry she had learnt at school? ‘Better fifty years of Europe than a cycle of Cathay.’

  She finished her gin and tonic and stood up, ‘There’s nothing more to say,’ she said. ‘The Keables have suggested I should spend the next few days with them; then I’ll go into town. I’ll come over on Monday morning and pack what I need.’

  There would not be much to pack except her clothes. During her married life she had moved from one company bungalow to another: her personal possessions were in her parents’ home in England. She walked towards him. She ought to feel desolate and abandoned but she did not. On the contrary hers was the wistfulness with which one says ‘good-bye’ to an old friend who is starting on a journey from which he may not return.

  She put her hands on his shoulders, she raised herself upon her toes. She kissed him lightly on the cheek. ‘Good luck,’ she said.

  It was half past six. The swift dusk of the tropics had fallen while she talked to Harry. The western horizon was coloured with a final flush of lavender against which a solitary palm tree stood in silhouette, but above her the sky was black, moonless, studded with stars. She drove slowly past the tennis courts. In bungalow after lighted bungalow she could see behind undrawn curtains small informal parties grouped over their evening drinks; or parents watching their children eat their supper. In how many of those bungalows were not she and Harry, Rex and Iris, the sole source of gossip. What was going to happen? Everyone was asking the same thing. Well, and what was going to happen? At the moment, nothing.

  As soon as possible, on the Tuesday probably, she would go into town. She would see about her passage home, preferably by boat. Not that she had much luggage. She needed the rest and quiet that a sea voyage would give. If only she could wait long enough to take the same ship as Angus. Angus. She had hardly dared consider what a different situation in regard to Angus this whole drama had created. Now Angus would not be
alone in London. She would be there to welcome him, before any other woman had a chance of getting him. He would be refreshed and fit after the long sea voyage. The betting was a million to one against his meeting an exciting female on a cargo boat. He would be ravenous for love. Better not to travel back with him; to be fretted by the discomforts of a ship; far better to be there, awaiting him, with her own flat and all the easy intimacy of a city life. They would pick up the threads where they had dropped them.

  She turned into the car park that lay behind the golf course. From the veranda of the clubhouse she could hear the low swell of talk. Discussing her, no doubt. She was tempted to walk out there, just to hear the sudden hush of voices when she did; but she needed to be alone with her own thoughts. She switched off the engine. She leant across the wheel, her head in her hands. When Charles had broken the news, she had thought only of Harry and their joint life together. Now she thought of herself and how it affected her. To be alone and free with Angus. It was something she had never dreamed of happening. She was married irrevocably. That was how she had seen herself. ‘That’s one of the best things about it,’ she had said. ‘We don’t have to make plans, or look ahead. There’s nothing to break up. No one’s being injured. We’ll live in the moment and enjoy it as long as we are able to.’

  But that had been when there had been no question of Harry and herself breaking up, when it had never seemed possible for Angus and herself to share more than occasional stolen hours. It would be very different when they were alone together for days, for weeks on end; when their lives became interwoven. How long was it he had said he would be over, six months, nine months, a year? Within a year her divorce would be through or almost through. Would Angus find it easy to say ‘good-bye’ to her when the year was up? They should have grown very close. If he were able to stay on in England, the idea of marriage would not occur to him. They could go on happily as they were; but he had to return. That would mean his saying good-bye to her for ever. Would he have the strength for that? Would he not urge her to come back with him. There was only one way in which she could do that, as his wife. Why shouldn’t he want to marry her, if marriage was the alternative to losing her. He was only six years younger than herself. Men were marrying women older than themselves all the time. Could one say that marriages in which there was a disparity of age against the woman were any the less successful than those in which there was the copybook six years’ difference in the man’s favour. Women stayed younger than men, nowadays. When Angus was fifty he would look as old as she did. And even suppose he did at the age of forty feel the need for a younger woman, she’d have had those twelve years first. Nothing would take those from her. She was in the same position as Harry, they were both gambling on the few good years, on the recovery of youth; a gambler’s risk.

  There was a buzzing beside her. Her neck began to itch. Mosquitoes. One couldn’t after dusk sit in an unwired space. She slipped back the clutch, released the brake. In the same boat, she and Harry? No, but it was not the same. If she were to marry Angus, she would live in comfort, and if eventually he were to turn to a younger woman, she would be well looked after. No lack of money. There would be her children; before long her grandchildren. She would be no worse off than half the women over fifty. Most women had to accept ten to fifteen years of widowhood. Married as she herself was to a man several years older than herself, a man moreover who was now older than his years, she had been long resigned to twenty or twenty-five years of widowhood. She would be no worse off if Angus left her.

  But Harry, what a shipwreck of his last years would be left when Iris left him, as she would, inevitably. An old man needed money if he was to retain his dignity; and Harry would almost certainly squander his capital in a desperate attempt to keep Iris amused and happy. Might not Charles be right? Oughtn’t she to save Harry from that fate? Thirteen years ago, she had taken a solemn vow before an altar. For better, for worse; for richer, for poorer, in sickness or in health. One meant the thing to work, one was resolved to try to make it work; but at the back of one’s mind one knew there was an exit that would entail no disgrace: one would be allowed a second chance. But even so, one had undertaken a responsibility. For better, for worse. Could she now casually abandon Harry to disaster?

  She drove slowly back, past the lighted bungalows. For three days, for a week, in every one of those bungalows she would be the first, the centre topic of conversation; then she and Iris would be on their way back to England, and the customary routine of the camp would be resumed; unless she followed Charles’s advice. How she would fool them, if she did. If she calmly announced that she could not be bothered with such nonsense and behaved as though nothing at all had happened. It would be fun to do that, a whole lot of fun.

  Charles looked at her questioningly as she came into the drawing-room. She shook her head. ‘Nothing was decided either way,’ she told him.

  The others were sitting over their evening drinks. A long-playing record was turned on. ‘Don’t turn it off,’ she said.

  She did not want to talk. She wanted to think through the sound of music. Shelagh and Gerald were still together on the sofa, sitting at opposite ends of it, turned towards each other. Gerald’s back had been turned to her as she came down the stairs, but now she could see his face. There was a glow on it that reminded her of Angus. In just that way had Angus looked at her, when they had met unexpectedly at some party; her heart beat faster. The fire in a young man’s eyes; the quiver in his voice; what richer gifts had life to offer. All this talk of what a mature man could offer; experience, understanding, tact, knowledge of the world, what were they in comparison with the untarnished steel of youth; the intolerance, the urgency, the blending of adoration and brutality; the knowledge that you yourself were revealing to him an enchanted kingdom; feeling yourself simultaneously a goddess and a slave; the need for you endlessly renewed; there was no equivalent for that. Your life had been half-lived if you had never known it; and if you had known it once, to be deprived of it … What aching hunger, what thirst in the wilderness. Was there anything you would not risk, anything you would not sacrifice, to get it back? She drew a long slow breath into her lungs. She had her answer.

  3

  Though the last performance of the play had been cancelled, the arrangements for the closing party had been allowed to stand. Charles and Barbara had decided not to go to it, but Shelagh and Gerald thought they would. They left soon after dinner.

  ‘It looks as though you would soon be having an addition to your family,’ Blanche said.

  ‘There’s nothing I should like better,’ said Charles. Barbara nodded in agreement.

  ‘If I were her mother I should be delighted. I feel for Shelagh as a sister. If I’d come here as an unmarried girl, Gerald would have been my first choice.’

  Blanche hesitated. There was one thing she wanted to know, but that she was shy of asking. Why hurt yourself, she warned herself; but her curiosity was stronger than her prudence. ‘We all thought that she was in love with Angus. There surely was something in the air.’

  Barbara shook her head. ‘I thought so at the time, but I’m not so sure now. It may have been something cooked up by Lila. I heard about it from her mother first. Lila is dominant. Shelagh was very much under her influence. Perhaps Lila thought it would be a good idea for Shelagh.’

  ‘Perhaps that’s how it was.’

  But if it was, why had Angus behaved so curiously on her return from England? He had wanted to marry Shelagh. It might be that; and as a prospective bridegroom, he would have wanted no entanglements. With his Portuguese background he would have a Latin concern about the innocence of a future bride, and because he had Oriental blood, his vanity would be attracted by the idea of a European mother of his children. He had been in a confused, uncertain state of mind. Poor boy, it was her fault for having left him alone so long. She’d be on her guard in future.

  ‘Shelagh is very young,’ she said, ‘but a girl is as likely to guess right at sev
enteen as she is at twenty-seven. How old was Julia when she met Basil. Not much more, surely. Basil’s not the husband I’d choose for my own daughter, but I’d say that that marriage was one of the most successful in the camp. They’re still electric about each other.’

  At the mention of Basil’s name, Barbara’s fingers closed tightly on the armrest of her chair. In the drama of the Pawling incident and the budding romance between Gerald and her stepdaughter she had been able to forget the threat that had been levelled at her. She could not keep it in the background for much longer.

  Blanche went to bed early. I’d better get it over quickly, Barbara thought.

  ‘You’ve enough on your mind,’ she said, ‘without my adding to your worries, and I know I’ve no right to interfere; I’m being a nuisance, and you’ve already given me the answer. But hearing Blanche mention Julia and Basil reminded me Julia’s desperately worried; and I’m worried for her sake. Basil is becoming hysterical because he can’t get away. I don’t know what the trouble is, and nor does she. He won’t tell her what it is. It may be that he’s got mixed up with some woman. That’s what Julia suspects. But I do feel it’s serious; that if Basil isn’t got away from here something terrible may happen. I know I shouldn’t be asking this. I remember what you said, “One can’t make exceptions.” But Julia is my oldest friend, I can’t sit by and watch her whole world collapse.’

  She was pleading, and she knew it, a bad case. She raised her voice, trying to give conviction of her arguments. Charles watched her closely, puzzled and concerned. He had never seen her so worked up before. He let her go on talking, thinking that perhaps some phrase, some intonation in her voice would give him the clue to her disturbance.

  ‘I’m choosing the wrong time but it’s exactly because it is the wrong time, that I am asking you,’ she said. ‘There will be more than one change in the staff because of this trouble at the play. Rex Sinclair will be leaving; you said that Harry might have to go. When there are so many changes in the air, couldn’t you slip in another? If Harry had to move, you could suggest that he and Basil worked so well together that you feel they should stay together as a team; or if Harry stays on, couldn’t you say without criticizing Basil, without putting a black mark against his name, that Harry in a critical state of mind needs a rather different kind of man as his No. 2. Oh, darling, there must be something you could do.’