Fuel for the Flame

by Alec Waugh

  Everyone had laughed. Harry had laughed too; his vanity had been flattered at her having schemed to get him back; it had made him feel valued and important. It had restored his self-esteem. He was as likely as not now to develop into a No. 1. Harry had had his lesson.

  She supposed she had too. There were moments when the ache for Angus became hard to take. It wouldn’t have worked, she tried to tell herself. You were too old for him; it couldn’t have lasted, marriage would have been impossible. You took it too seriously, because it was the first time. Next time you’ll be more sensible. For there would be a next time. She was convinced of that. A fire had been lit in her veins that would not be quenched easily. She had no wish to quench it. She was not forty yet. She looked barely thirty. The heroine of half the novels that one read were married women of thirty with husbands older than themselves. She was exactly what a young man who did not want responsibilities was looking for. There were plenty of such young men around. Next time she would be more careful; once bitten, twice shy. She would not commit herself so fully, next time. … Sitting back in the pew, she wondered what he would be like.

  Barbara shifted to the right, then to the left. She wished that Charles would not stand so close to Shelagh, or would stand a little farther forward. He was blocking the view of the train from everyone on the left side of the church. It was the guests on the left side of the church that mattered; and she had been at such care about the train with its patterning of beads. Ah, that was better: he had shifted forward slightly. It was just the right train for Shelagh. Everyone could see it now.

  The young couple were moving forward to the altar. Charles had stepped back, to his seat beside her. She slid her hand along the seat to his. It was a symbol, this, of what their life together was about to be; Shelagh going forward with her new life, Charles coming back to her. They would be alone together now. It had been a strain having Shelagh with them; she had tried not to let Charles know. She believed she had concealed her feelings, but all the time Shelagh’s presence had reminded her of that other woman; it was over now, and in the spring … she had not told Charles yet, but she really had no doubt. The mouse test had been positive. Next summer there would be the three of them. Her heart was warm. She had not a worry in the world. Julia had left two days ago. Barbara had been glad to see her go. That chapter was a closed one.

  She supposed that among the congregation, one or two of the guests were wondering what she was thinking. Whether she was envious of her stepdaughter in a white church wedding, a marriage to someone near to her in age. How different the stepmother’s marriage was, they thought. She smiled. They could not believe that she had fallen in love with Charles, in just the way that a young girl dreamed of doing. They presumed that she had married for security, providing their own psychological up-to-date explanation of seeing her father in the husband because her father had died when she was a child. If that was what they wanted to think, then let them think it. She knew better.

  Charles pressed the hand that had touched his. It should be Daphne’s hand that he was pressing at this moment. Poor Daphne, all those miles away. He hoped that Shelagh would write her a real letter, telling everything; a letter full of love.

  Lila at her mother’s side was thinking, Good luck to you, but I don’t envy you. It’s right for you, it wouldn’t be for me. You need reassurance, after your broken home. After that ghastly car smash. You need solid rock under your feet, a wall round you and yours, safety within a citadel. I don’t. I could have had that with Angus if I’d wanted it. I didn’t. I need to be reminded of my power, to test my power; those little fools at St. Mary’s. How I’ll show them. Maybe I’ll never marry, but if I ever do, it’ll be something.

  Her veil lifted above her head, Shelagh came down the aisle on Gerald’s arm. She glanced to left and right, smiling at her friends. She supposed she shouldn’t; that she ought to be demure and serious, blushing with downcast eyes, or else radiantly absorbed in her own happiness, thinking only of her husband. She could not help it. Her heart was singing. She wanted to embrace the entire world. If only Mummie were here too. She would ring her up tomorrow.

  The reception was being held on the veranda; the guests could wander in the garden or, if a sudden tropic storm intervened, seek shelter in the sitting-room. One by one the guests filed up. A year ago I didn’t know a single one of them, thought Shelagh. How many of them will I ever see again? In a couple of months, she would be going back to England, for Gerald to have his six months’ training; then they would be posted, heaven knew where abroad. For the next quarter of a century her life would be cut up into a succession of three-year contracts. Each time they arrived at a new camp they would be asking, ‘I wonder if we’ll find here somebody who was at our wedding.’ They would have no real friends, they would never be part of a community, except on a short-term basis. She remembered what Julia had said. ‘We are afraid of making friends too quickly with people we are going to know too well.’ They would be terribly dependent on one another, she and Gerald; the foreknowledge of that increased her happiness.

  One by one, the guests filed by, the Forresters, the Studholmes, the Pawlings, Annetta and Prince Rhya.

  Annetta kissed her. ‘Sometimes it seems only yesterday that we caught that plane together. Sometimes it seems a century ago.’

  Lila kissed her too. ‘Good luck. There’s no one in the world I’d sooner see this happen to. I’ve never had a friend like you.’

  The last guest had filed by. ‘Now we can enjoy ourselves,’ said Charles. The young couple moved aside. He stood by Barbara looking round him. Everything, everyone looked very happy under the blue sky, in the heavy sunlight. The brown and ochre crotons, the bougainvillea mauve and rust-red and scarlet, a yellow cassia in flower, the women in their bright cotton dresses; the champagne sparkling in the glasses. ‘You’ve given them a wonderful show,’ he said. ‘I can’t begin to thank you.’ He paused. He put his arm round her shoulder. ‘Isn’t it good to think that tomorrow we’ll be alone together?’

  Studholme was talking to Prince Rhya. ‘How is the King?’ he asked.

  Prince Rhya shrugged. ‘We had the X-rays yesterday. There’ll have to be an operation.’

  ‘You don’t know anything for certain?’

  ‘We shan’t until the operation.’

  ‘You’ll tell him, won’t you, how concerned I am?’

  ‘I will.’

  ‘I’ve never met in public life a man for whom I’ve had more respect and more affection.’

  They talked for a little, and then moved apart. Annetta and Prince Rhya were alone.

  ”.oday makes me feel rather guilty towards you,’ he said.

  ‘Guilty?’

  ‘Seeing that other English girl go off into the kind of marriage you should have made.’

  ‘I had several chances of making one.’

  ‘I know, but this … a woman wants to give her children the best possible life that’s within her range. Is there any woman in the world today who’d choose to have her son a king?’

  Annetta shrugged. ‘One accepts one’s fate. One doesn’t choose it.’

  ‘I believe you’ve been a Buddhist all along, without your knowing it.’

  ‘Have I? Perhaps I have, perhaps my happy-go-luckiness was a kind of Buddhism. The world is a bridge, therefore build no house on it. I’d never heard that till you told me, but wasn’t that the kind of way I lived, as though I believed just that? Perhaps that’s why you asked me to marry you.’

  ‘Perhaps it is.’

  She looked over his shoulder at the crowded garden, all these happy faces bright with unreasoning hope. Then she looked down at him. ‘I hope our child’s a son,’ she said.

  Author’s Note

  The action of this story takes place in an imaginary island in the China Seas. There is nowhere an exact parallel for the political situation existing in that island. The characters are all of them imaginary. In obtaining background material about the conditions existing in
an oil community, I am indebted to the management of Royal Dutch Shell, whose guest I was in Borneo, Trinidad and Venezuela, and to the management of British Petroleum, whose refinery in Little Aden I visited and who showed me some of their films in London. I express to them my warmest gratitude. I am also indebted to the author, and to Samuel French, Ltd., for ready permission to make several quotations from Clifford Bax’s play, Rose Without a Thorn.

  This electronic edition published in 2011 by Bloomsbury Reader

  Bloomsbury Reader is a division of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 50 Bedford Square, London

  WC1B 3DP

  Copyright © by Alec Waugh 1959

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  ISBN: 9781448201211

  eISBN: 9781448202539

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