Fuel for the Flame Read online

  Shelagh walked slowly across the asphalt. She had not expected there to be so large a crowd. It had come, she knew very well, to welcome Prince Rhya’s future bride, but she was conscious none the less of a thousand pairs of eyes upon her. Daddy must have recognized her. There were only two young white women on the plane, and she had red hair; but where was he?

  ‘Shelagh.’

  She spun round as her name was called, and her heart jumped. He was wearing a grey-blue double-breasted suit with a polka dot bow tie. A panama hat, embellished with a club ribbon, was slightly tilted over his eye. His cheeks were bronzed. There was no strain upon the buttons of his coat. A father to be proud of. No wonder Barbara was in love with him. She bounded forward. She flung herself into his arms.

  ‘Daddy.’ Once again the scent of eau-de-Cologne mingled with tobacco was in her nostrils. ‘It’s wonderful. It’s a miracle. You haven’t changed. You haven’t got fat. You look five years younger.’

  He held her at arm’s length. ‘That’s more than I can say for you.’ He looked her slowly up and down. ‘How proud I’m going to feel at the races on Saturday introducing you to everyone. Fancy me with such a daughter.’ He chuckled. Pride surged warmly in his veins; at the same time he felt a twinge of nostalgia. Where had ‘Carrots’ vanished to?

  ‘Where’s Barbara?’ she asked. ‘I can’t wait to see her. Everyone tells me that she’s so attractive. It’ll be wonderful for me, like having a sister.’

  He smiled, a little ruefully. This was clearly a very self-possessed young woman, very capable of looking after herself. She won’t need me, he thought. Then he remembered Daphne’s letter, about her being easily ‘gish’ed up’. Maybe this was a façade. Shy people never appeared shy, and the people who appeared shy were in fact too unself-conscious to notice the impression they created.

  ‘You hurry up through customs,’ he said. ‘We’re going out by plane. You’ll see her within an hour if you don’t take too long.’

  2

  The company four-seater plane was in the corner of the airport. It looked very small in contrast with the vast silver Pan Am Stratocruiser. ‘You’ll see the country better this way,’ he said. ‘We’ve another passenger, Blanche Pawling, wife of our administration manager. She’s always late. Ah, here she is.’

  Blanche was out of breath, her hair ruffled by the wind. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I’d so wanted to be on time to greet you, but everyone in Kuala Prang had the same idea. Not a taxi to be had.’

  ‘Come along, jump in,’ said Charles. He had a voice of command that his daughter liked. He was a real man.

  The plane flew at two thousand feet. Charles pointed out the rows of rubber trees that climbed in circles up the hills and the sugar estates that flowed like rivers between the foothills. Along the beach were groves of coconut palms. There was a wide central plain of rice-fields. There were vast tracts of jungle. Every few miles there would be the wounds of new-turned soil, where a road was being cut to a new drilling project. ‘It’s a big island, as islands go out here,’ he said, ‘over a hundred miles long, and twenty or so across.’

  The flight to Kassaya took half an hour. There were not many signs of concentrated habitation. There was the sprawling town of Kuala Prang; a group of barrack-type houses were gathered round the tall towers of a sugar refinery. On the shore where a river ran into the sea there were clusters of roofs, with fishing boats pulled up on the beach and nets hanging out on poles to dry. But for the most part the countryside was green and empty; it was difficult to see where the half-million inhabitants of Karak lived. On the horizon lay a pale yellow fog. ‘That’s us,’ said Keable.

  Shelagh craned her neck. The fog was pierced by flares. ‘That’s the refinery,’ her father said. It was sited at the farthest point of the island, so that the oil fumes should blow out to sea. Luckily the wind was constant; the fumes were only blown across the camp three or four days a year. ‘It’s a terrific spectacle at night,’ he said, ‘with the towers of the cracking plant lit up. It reminds me of New York when you look across at it from Central Park. Then there’s that cloud of oil fumes blown by the wind with the red exhaust flares dimmed by it; it’s like a Victorian picture of the Inferno.’

  The pilot turned the machine seaward, over the fleet of derricks that raised their masts above the water; then turned inwards over the long pier a mile and a half long where tankers came in to be refilled, or to discharge the crude oil that they had taken on in Borneo.

  The plane circled the camp so that Shelagh should get a comprehensive picture of it. She saw the golf course and the tennis courts, and the bungalows with their trim gardens. Beyond the bungalows were the refinery, the marshalling yards and the steel tanks, the maintenance sheds and the rows of offices. It was strange to come upon this, after flying over the rice-fields and the cane-fields and the empty areas of forest. It was a world of its own, separate and apart, just as Abadan had been.

  What would happen to her here? At her age you could not pass a whole year without having something happen. Was she going to meet the man who would decide her life for her, blending it with his own: the man she had dreamed of for so long? Perhaps he was one of the midget-seeming figures on the ground below. Perhaps he was looking up at the plane and saying to the man beside him, ‘The old man’s daughter’s in that plane. I wonder what she’s like.’

  From her car, parked beside the airstrip, Barbara watched the plane circle in the sky, then slowly swoop on to the airstrip. Her nerves constricted. She had been dreading this moment more each day. She got out of her car as the plane grounded. She saw a mass of red hair rise out of the cockpit. The cabin was very small, and you had to lower yourself backwards over the wing. She’s got a good figure, anyhow, Barbara thought. Then Shelagh turned. It was more of a shock than Barbara had expected. Shelagh looked so very like what her mother must have been when Charles first met her. Had she had to be quite so like her?

  3

  So this is it, thought Shelagh. This is my stepmother, this is my new home. She looked eagerly to left and right as the car drove from the airstrip. It looked very beautiful. The bungalows with their neat lawns and flowers; the brilliant colours of the plants, the majestic trees, the blue sky above the roofs and between the boughs; the golden sunlight; and it was not too hot. That was the miracle about it. A breeze was blowing. It was not like Abadan with its heavy, dripping heat, where you were soaked through if you ran ten yards.

  It was shortly after twelve and the roads were empty. Everyone was at home at lunch. It was very quiet. No hooting of horns, no thudding of machinery.

  ‘We haven’t asked anyone to lunch,’ said Barbara. ‘You’ll want to get rested and unpacked, but we have got a few people coming in for cocktails, only a very few. There’s the King’s Cup on Saturday. You’ll see nearly everybody there, and those you don’t meet there, you will meet at the dance at the Residency in honour of Prince Rhya’s marriage. When you’ve decided on the kinds of people that you like, we’ll have a succession of intimate small parties. That’s the best way, isn’t it?’

  ‘Much the best.’

  But she was not really listening to her stepmother. She was too busy trying to take it all in at once. They passed the swimming pool. The pale blue stretch of water was peacefully inviting. It was flanked by the tennis courts on one side, and on the other by a long, roofed-in but wall-less ballroom with a stage at one end and a bar at the other. Beyond the ballroom she could see the football ground. Everything was completely empty.

  ‘I suppose in the afternoon it’s crowded.’

  ‘It’s a pandemonium.’

  ‘Just as it was in Abadan.’

  Everything turned on the oil town time schedule. Everyone knew what everyone was doing at any moment of the day. The car swung up a short steep hill. At the edge of the roadway was a short squat apparatus of pipes and taps. She looked at it puzzled, then remembered. ‘A Christmas tree, of course,’ In all these five years she had not once thought of a ‘Chri
stmas tree’, but the sight of it rang a bell at once. She remembered having had its function explained to her. She could hear her father saying, ‘The oil flows, you see, without the need for pumping,’ It was a reassuring reminder of those early days.

  ‘Here we are,’ said Barbara.

  Shelagh stood in the doorway, her back to it, looking down. She could see why this bungalow had been chosen for the General Manager. The whole camp was spread below her. What an air of authority it gave him. She turned into the house; as she did so, she gave a cry of delight.

  ‘Oh, Daddy, the chest.’

  It was four feet long, from Ispahan, carved, dark with age, studded with gleaming brass. She ran towards it, she put her hands on it, stroking its time-worn surface. ‘Daddy, I loved it so. Do you remember how you used to sit me on it when I was little? There must be so many things here we had in Abadan, things that I’ve forgotten about. Ah look, that blowpipe. Do you remember that curry tiffin when the doctor got so gay and Mummy put on that green kimono?’

  Barbara winced. This was something on which she had not counted. Usually when there was a divorce, the wife took the house and furniture, and the husband started a new home with a new wife. But in this case Charles had kept nearly everything. The business of shipping home the furniture would have been too great. Besides, it was furniture adapted to the tropics. She herself, on the other hand, had brought out practically nothing, had moved into a ready-made establishment. Nearly everything here was Charles’s. Everything here would remind Shelagh of times she had had in Abadan. Because they reminded her of Abadan, Charles would be continually reminded of incidents, people, moods, that he had in large part forgotten. Yes, it was more than she had bargained for.

  ‘What about a cocktail?’ she called out. ‘We don’t usually have them at lunch, except over week-ends. They make your father drowsy. But this is an occasion.’

  She mixed them five to one. Martinis in a crisis. That was a selling slogan.

  ‘Don’t expect too much of the food here,’ she warned Shelagh, as they sat down at table. ‘The fruit is good, but nearly everything comes out of tins.’

  ‘This seems very good.’

  This was an avocado stuffed with chicken salad.

  ‘It’s the spécialité de la maison. You’ll have so much of it here that you’ll avoid it for the rest of your life. We lunch very lightly. For the same reason that we don’t have cocktails—so that Charles shan’t get drowsy afterwards. Sundays are different. That’s our curry tiffin day; but you must have learnt all about curry tiffins in Abadan.’

  ‘You bet I did.’

  ‘I’m told they make them better here. It’s a Far Eastern not a Middle Eastern dish. But you mustn’t expect too much.’

  ‘At the moment I’m too excited to be hungry.’

  ‘And I can’t wait to see the clothes that you’ve brought out. I’m out of date already. I’ll be so jealous that I’ll insist on swopping.’

  Charles, looking at them, thought, This is going to work out. They’re going to like each other.

  Afterwards, Barbara sat on the bed while Shelagh unpacked her suitcases. She watched her set out her photographs; one of her mother, a school group, a very old one of her father.

  ‘What, no young man?’

  ‘No, no young man.’

  ‘No broken hearts behind you, you with your looks?’

  ‘Perhaps they aren’t so much as I sometimes hope they are.’

  ‘Idiot.’ She’s a sweet kid, Barbara thought. I must be nice to her. This isn’t her fault. She’s probably going through hell inside.

  ‘That pink blouse of yours will drive the young men wild,’ she said.

  ‘Are there many of them?’

  ‘Enough to pick from. There’s a bachelors’ house called Shangri-la. Though it’s not in the least like Shangri-la. It’s like a club. Bar, billiards table, card-room. There are about thirty of them. They have a room to themselves. The senior ones have suites where they can entertain. But it isn’t made too comfortable—on purpose, I believe. Pearl prefers its employees to be married. They work better when they are. In the old days they were discouraged from marrying young; they kept local girls instead. But that’s all over. With air-conditioning and refrigeration this is as healthy a climate for the white woman as England is, healthier in some ways: think of those London fogs. But your mother must have told you all this already.’

  Shelagh shook her head. ‘She didn’t want me to have preconceptions. I must find out for myself, she said.’

  ‘That’s very wise of her. She didn’t make it sound too glamorous.’

  ‘On the contrary, she warned me against getting bored. She told me that the mornings would seem very long.’

  ‘They do. They start so early.’

  The first hooter went at half past six. Offices opened at seven, closing for lunch at eleven-thirty. Work was resumed at one. The final hooter went at four. ‘From lunch time on it’s easy sailing,’ Barbara said. ‘But the four and a half hours of the morning are the young brides’ problem. They feel completely lost at first. They have been busy all their lives, now they have nothing to do at all. Everyone has to have a hobby of some kind—amateur theatricals, photography, dressmaking. Morning coffee parties aren’t enough. If they haven’t one, we try and find one for them. And if …’ She checked, she burst out laughing. ‘I’m talking like the G.M.‘s wife. I’m sorry, please forgive me. I’m not in the least like that. But I have to entertain so many V.I.P.s. They ask me questions about the morale of the camp. I find myself making the same little speech to every one of them. When I once get started I can’t stop. It’s like putting on a gramophone record.’ She paused. She smiled. With a quick, impulsive gesture she flung her arm round Shelagh’s shoulders. ‘Please don’t think of me as that kind of person. It’s wonderful to have you here. We’ll have loads of fun.’

  4

  Except on Saturdays, activities close early in the tropics. Everyone has to work. They wake with the sun, and the sun rises early. The sun has exhausted them during the long bright hours. They dine lightly. It is supper rather than dinner, and hardly anyone is awake to hear the B.B.C. news bulletin. Barbara, after the cocktail party, served only soup, cheese and a fruit salad. At twenty past nine she rose to her feet. ‘I’m sorry, I’m all in. I’m packing up. See you in the morning, Shelagh. I think you’ve everything. I’ll see you later, Charles.’

  She had risen on purpose early. Charles had had hardly a moment with his daughter. There might be something that he had to say to her.

  There was, but he did not know how to say it. Shelagh was a stranger to him. He must, he supposed, look much the same to her, but to him she was no longer ‘Carrots’. She was someone he was meeting for the first time. It was pointless to behave as though they were intimate when they were not.

  ‘I hope you’re going to be happy here,’ he said. ‘If there’s anything that puzzles you, but I don’t think there will be. …’ It was the kind of public relations talk that he gave to members of his staff when they first came out. She appeared to be listening attentively, but he could not tell. He rose to his feet. ‘I don’t know how you’re feeling, but I’m dead beat.’ He put his arm round her shoulders. He fancied that she responded. She was his daughter, after all.

  Barbara was sitting up against the pillows, reading, in a pale-blue dressing-jacket.

  She looked up inquiringly.

  He shook his head. ‘I didn’t say anything. I didn’t know what to say. It’s better to say nothing than the wrong thing.’

  She nodded. ‘It was easier for me, meeting her for the first time. Not that I said much.’

  He sat beside her. ‘It’s going to be all right, isn’t it?’

  ‘Of course it’s going to be all right.’

  ‘She’s a nice kid, isn’t she?’

  ‘What else did you expect your daughter to be?’

  He took her hands in his, fondling her wrists.

  ‘You’ve been wonderful abou
t all this.’

  ‘What do you expect me to do? Have hysterics?’

  ‘No. But all the same … you know.’

  ‘I know.’

  She pulled away a hand, put it on his arm above the elbow. There was a fond light in her eyes. ‘Hurry up and get undressed,’ she said.

  5

  Across the passage, Shelagh turned in her sleep, tossed by the frenzy of a dream. She was at the wheel, her stepfather beside her. They were talking, joking. It was not yet dark; the beginning of an autumn twilight; too early to turn on lights. The road was empty. The car ahead was going slowly. It was a temptation to accelerate and pass it but she knew she mustn’t. Not till she reached a straight stretch of roadway. A car was coming from the opposite direction. The car in front of her slowed down. There was a turning on the left. They were approaching a small town. There was a thirty-mile limit sign. She turned to her stepfather with a laugh. ‘Oh, goodie, now we can go at thirty miles an hour.’ In that half-second, when her eye was off the roadway, when she was looking at her stepfather, there came out of a small turning … but it happened so quickly that she did not know what happened; there was a gasp from her stepfather, a cry of half-grasped alarm; her foot stamped on the brakes; there was a shock, a dizzying loss of balance; the crash of a thousand drums upon her ears, the flash of a thousand lights upon her eyes, then darkness, and then silence. …