by Jane Arbor
'But suppose he gets wind of trouble before then, as she thinks he may?' Sara pressed.
'As a willing and eager informer on him, she's probably prepared to risk that—even getting a thrill from the chance he gave her to play traitor to him. Revenge is always very sweet'—Rede paused. Then, 'But that's the point at which your headache begins, isn't it?' he challenged. 'Where, the girl suggests, Merlin boasts that he can get out from under by
incriminating a scapegoat—Iden?'
Sara nodded dumbly.
'I'd be right in concluding that the whole object in your running to me with the story is your concern that pitch shouldn't touch him?'
She had to admit that her first impulse of alarm had been for Cliff. 'I suppose so--largely,' she said. 'As if I couldn't guess! '
Rede's tone was edged with the ice she had feared when Cliff's name had to come up, but she went on, 'Well, shouldn't I have hoped that you could see the danger for him too?'
'And that, seeing it, I should dash to his rescue on the nod? For the sake of the old times you and he had shared, perhaps? Or even in the name of his current yen for you—who knows?' Rede scoffed.
'That you might do something, yes,' she returned steadily. 'I trusted you to know what might be possible, and I did think you could care enough for his reputation and for Isabel's at least to warn him against George Merlin on what we know.'
'Why me? I'm sure he would prefer you to do any warning! '
Sara ignored the gibe. 'There's another thing. Both he and Isabel have people—Cliff, elderly parents in England, and Isabel relatives here too. So if Cliff gets implicated for want of a warning he could be given, what about them?' she demanded.
'So—what about them?' Rede echoed.
'Don't you care then about how much they could be hurt if Cliff gets into trouble?'
'Enough.' Rede's lips snapped shut on the word before he repeated it. 'Enough to see that, if it isn't already too late, Iden gets his warning. After that, it's his scene and his problem. Well?'
'If you mean am I satisfied that you will do what you can—yes. And thank you,' Sara said.
'Yes, well—I meant rather more than that. As well as your gratitude, I'd like your assurance that in asking my help, you aren't casting me in the role of tame cuckold to Iden?'
Sara flinched at the stark word. Had he been within reach, she would have been tempted to strike him. But he was yards away; she could picture the shame of his warding off her hand as she raised it, and her only weapons were words.
'How dare you imply that Cliff is my lover?' she raged. 'All right—you may have thought you had reason to think it on one occasion. But I told you then, and I'm repeating it now—he means nothing to me. Nothing, do you hear?'
'And, dupe or not as I may have been, I believed you then.'
'But not now? Not now—just because I plead for a man we both know, who meant a great deal to me—once, and who's in trouble? A man with a wife who, for all I know, may have been more than "just good friends" with you? Dupe indeed! You suspect I was lying then and you think it still, because you can't believe that, without wanting to see either of them again, I can care what happens to them —'
-
She broke off, spent with her own vehemence, and from the long look with which Rede studied her, she took a little heart that she had convinced him at last. But when he spoke all he had for her was a pseudo-reasonable, 'You almost persuade me—if not quite. For you see, I can't forget that your emocernedtions have never been tepid where Iden is con
'
'They were tepid, if not stone cold, as soon as he jilted me! '
Rede shook his head. 'Not "as soon as". Even when I came along, they were hot and steamy and vengeful enough to make you willing to put any man's ring on your finger, in order to prove to Iden that you could.'
'I might have expected you to bring that up,' Sara muttered.
'Why not? It was my first glimpse of your fury at his rejection of you, and your passionate plea for him, now that you have him at your feet again, could well be the other side of the same coin, the same infatuation.'
'He is not at my feet! He jilted me for Isabel and he loves her.'
'Does he? Considering his continuing interest in you, I'd only believe that if he told me so. Or if Isabel ever wore the air of a happily fulfilled wife, which she doesn't.'
'Well, it's not Cliff's fault if she isn't one, and you've said yourself that she's discontented by nature. And if you were really as jealous of him as
you sound, you couldn't wait to find out from him whether he still wants me or not. But of course'— Sara paused to gather the full forces of her scorn— 'you aren't jealous of me in any red-blooded, common human way. It's only your pride of possession of merchandise that you bought and paid for that you're defending, isn't it?'
For a frightening moment Rede allowed her to see the naked anger in his eyes. Then, after a swift lowering of his lids, it was gone. Then he countered, 'And if only fish-cold blood runs in my veins, why do you suppose I promised you I'd do what I could to warn Iden of his danger?'
Sara thought. Why had he? At last she said, 'I don't know.'
'And perhaps you think I didn't mean it?'
'No. You promised, and I'm sure you will.'
'Good. I'm grateful for that crumb of faith.' The slight dip of his head was an ironic bow in her direction. 'But if you're quite blind as to why, what about considering I may have done it in self-interest?'
'Self-interest? Yours?'
'Mine. Iden came out here on my recommendation and on my judgment of him as a good man for the job. In the long term, given his goodwill, I could have shaped him for it and been right. But in the short term I was wrong, and it isn't going to do anything for either my self-esteem or my reputation if he's to be branded and hounded as a criminal's yes-man. Do you see?'
Sara said slowly, 'I suppose so. You're afraid that the pitch—the mud or whatever—mightn't cling only to him?'
Rede nodded. 'A possible reason for my co-operation, wouldn't you say? Or even a probable one, perhaps?'
'Yes,' she agreed. 'And more than probably your only one, since you wouldn't have considered doing it because I asked it of you—for Cliff.'
When he said nothing to that, she left him standing and went out of the room.
'Not for me. Not for me!' her heart was crying. Nothing ever for her, but what he, in his arrogant ownership of her, chose to give. That night, she expected that he might come to her to insist on his rights, as he had done before.
But after that scene he did not visit her room again.
Before the police had perfected their case against George Merlin, rumour had begun to walk and talk. It was the gossip of - the bars and the restaurants and the clubs that all was not well with Merlin Enterprises, but speculations as to its trouble were vague. The police kept a low profile, and no accurately accusing finger was pointed at its chief until Cliff, warned and acting as decoy, was able to report that George Merlin had personally ordered two marked boxes of orchids to be withdrawn from a particular consignment for Europe.
Cliff withdrew them; turned them over to the
police, waiting on such a chance for weeks; both crates were found to be carrying illicit drugs in tiny concealed compartments—proof that Merlin's guilt of the traffic was only too real.
But evidently he had his own active spies. He had gone too far, risked too much, and his scapegoat, Cliff, was already on the side of the enemy. But before a warrant was issued for his arrest, he disappeared. One day he was there; the next he was not, irrevocably lost to justice in some haunts of Asia or Europe or North Africa to which no doubt he had planned to repair, in the unlikely events which had overtaken him. His creditors moved in like vultures; his business kingdom folded almost overnight, leaving the field of the export of orchids wide open to his new competitors, Temasik. For his many field workers and his staff his collapse was traumatic, and while for many of the former there would presently be work with T
emasik, there was no room in the Temasik offices for any more executive personnel—among whom of course Cliff was one.
Sara knew from Rede that Cliff's help had been co-opted by. the police, but apart from that she learned only the barest details of Rede's _manoeuvres on Cliff's behalf, and she suspected he would have kept from Cliff the satisfaction of hearing that she was concerned for him. Even when the case against Merlin broke wide open, Rede hardly discussed it with her, treating it as news in which he was not over-involved.
During those weeks she thought they were farther apart than they had ever been in the months of their marriage. Her body might ache for his, but in her heart there was a stone of hurt resentment of a withdrawal from her which she knew she did not deserve.
Resolved against bringing up Cliff's name again with him, she was left to speculate on how Isabel was taking Cliff's loss of his job on the collapse of George Merlin's empire. Isabel, Sara felt sure, would conveniently forget that it was she who had pushed Cliff into resigning from Temasik, and how was she going to react to his complete loss of prospects now? It was odd, Sara reflected, how her own fiery resentment of Cliff's jilting and her sick jealousy of Isabel of only a few months ago had wisped away like smoke. Neither of them could hurt her now. That power had switched to Rede's mistrust and contempt of her, both of which, he had brutally claimed, she had invited.
People said of the Idens that they would probably go back to England, where Isabel's father might pull strings for Cliff. Others had it that Isabel was threatening to leave Cliff; to stay indefinitely with her Singapore relatives. But on both counts the gossips had got it wrong when Isabel announced to Sara in some triumph that Cliff was returning to Temasik at Rede's invitation.
To say the least, Sara was surprised. Even this move Rede had not seen fit to confide to her! But pretending to know all about it, she frowned, as if
searching her memory.
'Let's see, did Rede tell me Cliff was to get his old job back or not?' she mused aloud.
'He's being promoted! ' Isabel returned sharply.
'Ah yes, now I remember'—Sara murmured sagely. But Isabel was quick to detect a flaw in her ruse.
'If Rede told you he'd begged Cliff to join Temasik again, surely he must have told you as well that he's promoting Cliff—to the Hong Kong branch?' Isabel demanded.
Sara had to shake her head. 'No, really?' she queried. 'Hong Kong? That must have been a later decision which Rede hasn't had time to tell me about.'
'Any more, at a guess, than he's bothered to tell you how desperate he was to get Cliff back?' Isabel challenged.
This was more than Sara was prepared to take. 'Was he? Rede, I mean—desperate? Now that's odd—when I remember he once told me he'd made a business mistake in bringing Cliff out here at all! '
She had made her point. 'You're lying! ' Isabel almost spat, and then fired her parting shot, 'Because if Rede hasn't any use for Cliff, why has he taken him back at all?'
She didn't wait for an answer, but Sara couldn't care that there was none she could have given. For the news of Rede's dismissal of Cliff and Isabel to the thousand-mile distance and comparative ob-
scurity of the small Hong Kong office was music to her ears and enough stimulus to her spirit to tell him when they met, 'I hear from Isabel Iden that you're sending her and Cliff north to Hong Kong?'
'Yes,' said Rede.
`Why?'
'Because their removal seemed the best solution to a problem.'
(She wouldn't concede that Cliff was any problem between herself and him, which she guessed was what he meant.) 'What problem?' she asked aloud.
He looked straight at her, through her. 'You should know,' he said. 'We've lived with it long enough.'
That told her nothing. But she hadn't expected anything less than cryptic words from him. As she had dared to taunt him, he couldn't know what impassioned jealousy was, when he was only concerned to guard from Cliff a wife he had taken in cool calculation of her use to him and whom he had treated with the minimum of tenderness since. No— he had simply rid himself of the nuisance value of Cliff as he would have despatched any other business problem. There was, she was convinced, no more troubled heart to his jealousy of Cliff than that.
Now Rede's frequent absences from home, in Thailand or on the mainland, linking what was left of Merlin's export business to Temasik's new traffic in orchids, had the effect of her finding a
certain companionship with Mai, and Mai seeming to find the same with her. Perhaps it was because they shared the same reason for missing him— because they both loved him, Sara thought wistfully, or perhaps because, when he was not there, they were free to indulge in easy woman-talk without any undercurrents of tension running between them.
Mai continued to do some advanced work at the dance school, and though she did not seem as anxious as she had been to take some pupils, she was now getting some professional engagements, and was saving, she told Sara, towards paying her own way.
Often she and Sara now ate together, and she taught Sara many Malaysian and Chinese dishes in return for Sara's demonstration of Western ones. But their friendship remained on that undemanding level; whenever their talk verged upon the personal, Sara sensed Mai's withdrawal. She would change the subject, giving Sara no chance to probe whatever trouble had brought her to the despair of those abandoned efforts to write to Rede.
Only once during that time did Sara catch a glimpse of her with a man. That was on one morning when Sara was again leaving the store where Katin worked, and saw Mai ahead of her, wheeling her bicycle and walking beside a young Malay. They parted at a street corner, Mai riding away on her machine and her companion having disappeared on a side street by the time Sara reached the corner
herself. She felt a little frustrated. Without being able to place him, she had a vague idea she had recognised his back view. But when Mai did not mention him, nor did she, having by now reluctantly accepted Mai's barriers to her private life.
It was when she had done some small purchases for Mai and had taken them to the cottage that she was to realise how mistaken that indulgence had been. She knew Mai had no classes that morning and she expected to find her at home. But when there was no answer to her knock, Sara noticed that the key was in the unlocked door, and walked in.
She halted in the bright living-room and called a greeting which was answered by silence. She looked about her at a strange difference in the room, a neat emptiness caused by the absence of all Mai's personal things—her books, the two or three silk panels which she had hung upon the walls, her vase of joss-sticks, and most noticeable void of all, the gilt Buddha image before which she laid a tribute of a single flower every morning.
No flower. No Buddha. That told its unbelievable story, as did Mai's bedroom, stripped of her clothes, her luggage bags and her toilet articles. Mai had gone, leaving the cottage as denuded of herself as she had found it. Gone, this time without begging Rede's permission to escape—but where?
Sara wandered back into the living-room, noticing now on the table a bulging envelope addressed to Rede. Surely a very long letter to him? Recalling the details of their ill-starred affair? Telling
him where she had fled to? Asking his forgiveness, as she had tried to do before; pressing her right to retreat from an impossible situation? Or what?
Sara relocked the cottage door and took the letter with her back to the house. She rang Rede at his office and asked to be put through to him urgently. He came on the line. 'What is it? What's the matter?' he asked.
She told him. 'And the letter? What does it say?' he wanted to know.
'I don't know—I haven't opened it. It's addressed to you,' Sara told him.
'Tcha ! What of it? Open it now and read it out to me ' He checked. 'Or no—better not, over the phone. Read it yourself, and I'll come back at once. Meet me at Mai's place and keep Buppa and the staff away from it at the moment.' He rang off.
Sara opened the letter with fingers that shook. What was it
going to tell her about Rede and Mai? Her knees were shaking too as she sat down on Mai's couch to read it.
It wasn't a long letter at all. The bulk of the package was a thick wad of dollar notes which she didn't count. The letter, on a single sheet, explained that they were in part payment for Mai's tuition and keep; all she had been able to save to date. For the rest there were two short sentences.
'Please, Rede, do not try to find me. You will hate me for what I have done to you, and this I could not bear to see.'
That was all. But to Sara's reading of it, it told her all she had been afraid to know. For what could possibly cause Rede to 'hate' Mai, but her guilty desertion of his love?
Before Rede came to her, Sara's fingers had creased and pleated the letter into a spill as narrow as a wax taper. She wished she could use it as one.
CHAPTER EIGHT
REDE noticed the roll of notes on the table as soon as he came in.
'What's this?' he asked, picking it up.
`She explains here.' Sara smoothed out Mai's letter and gave it to him.
He read it, frowning, then looked up. 'And what does this mean to you?' he asked.
'Well, that she wants the money to free her of some obligation to you
'Obviously. But the rest?'
Sara's mouth went dry. `Much the same as it does to you, I suppose,' she managed.
Rede snapped, 'It means nothing comprehensible to me, except that she's done a moonlight flit and has the nerve to expect we'll let her go without a trace. But to you?'
`To me'—Sara paused to choose her words—`it
means that she knows the wrong she's done you by running away, but that she can't live with her conscience any longer by staying.'
'And so she should have a conscience over such a low-down trick!' Rede exploded.
'You've misunderstood me. I think you've misunderstood Mai. She's telling you that she can only finish with the guilt she's suffering by running away. From you,' Sara added with a meaning which he must surely understand.
If he did, he gave no sign. 'From me?' he echoed. 'Why from me in particular?'
