Fuel for the Flame Page 3

  ‘Good. I want a check kept on all Indians who arrive here. I am interested in an Indian called Benarjee; he has recently left Calcutta. He may be coming here, but he may have changed his name. Remember that name, though, Benarjee. He has relations here.’

  ‘Yes, sahib, certainly.’

  ‘Now look at this chess-board.’ Forrester pointed to the one he had not solved. ‘See if you can work it out. If you can’t, show it to the best chess player that you know. That clear?’

  ‘Yes, sahib.’

  ‘Good. You are doing very well.’ He put his hand in his pocket and pulled out five twenty-dollar bills and handed them to Mahmoud. ‘Come in three weeks’ time,’ he said.

  When Mahmoud left the room, Forrester got to his feet and shuffled towards the farthest of his three filing cabinets. He unlocked it and took out a file marked ‘Benarjee’. He opened it on a standing desk. It contained only two entries, first the report from London that Benarjee, who had been born on August 3rd, 1910, in Calcutta, had graduated at the University of Bengal, and joined the law firm of Kaserjee and Sutra, had attended in Vienna in December 1952 the Congress of Peoples for Peace held under the auspices of the World Peace Council, where he had made a speech denouncing colonialism in the course of which he had referred to relatives of his in Karak; the report added that in June 1957 Benarjee had applied for a passport to visit the United Kingdom for reasons of tourism and health: that he had left by a Dutch cargo boat—the Flemish Queen—on July 8th, 1957, that no report of his arrival at a U.K. port had been received. The second entry was a note by Forrester to the effect that there was no record in the island of anyone called Benarjee. He now added a footnote to that entry—‘Mahmoud informed, November 28th, 1958.’ He replaced the file and locked the cabinet. He then took out from the top drawer of his desk a cash-book marked ‘Subscriptions’. Against the date November 28th, he wrote, ‘Boy Scouts’ Cricket Club one hundred dollars’. On the last day of the month he would show this list to the financial secretary, who would reimburse him and destroy the list. If he had chosen to write one hundred and fifty instead of the one hundred which he had actually paid Mahmoud, no one could possibly have found out. Nobody was officially aware of Mahmoud’s existence. There was nothing to stop a dishonest officer from pocketing a quarter of the sum that he was given to pay out to agents. He wondered how many policemen were as scrupulous as he. It wasn’t as though he was so well paid, either.

  He put back the subscription book and returned his attention to the chess-board. He looked at it steadily, coming fresh to it; then shook his head. No, he didn’t see it. He didn’t believe that it could be worked out. And if it couldn’t be worked out, then that small fly that he fancied had got through his net was not as secure as it imagined.

  5

  Charles Keable drove with a light heart to the Country Club where his wife was waiting for him. The Club was on the other side of the hill from the Residency. The road to it lay through the residential section; a succession of large white villas lay back from the curving roadway. Their gardens were bright with zinnias and hibiscus. Bougainvillea trailed in mauve and brick-red and pink over their verandas: their lawns were shaded with majestic wide-spreading trees, mangoes, tulip, breadfruit. The sun gilded the scene, a light breeze was blowing from the mountains. His spirits were in tune with the day’s beauty. Had he ever been as happy as this in his whole life? He doubted it. In youth there had been always strain, the struggle to fight out of the ruck, to get his feet planted on the road that led to leadership and success. There had been the responsibilities of an early marriage, a daughter born in the first year; there had been the anxieties of war and wartime separation. Then, when all had seemed smooth and settled, there had come the shock six years ago of that letter he had read in Abadan. ‘My most dear Charles,—The writing of this letter is causing me more pain than anything in my life has done. I have fallen in love, head over heels. I want to be divorced.’

  It had come without any warning. They had never quarrelled, he and Daphne. It had been a genuine love match when they had married. He had been twenty-five, she twenty. When they had come home from their honeymoon, she had said, ‘Whatever happens, we have had the best.’ It was in 1937 she had said that, when the threat of war was dark on the horizon. Their happiness, their honeymoon, had been a gesture of defiance against that threat. When wives had been evacuated from Burma in ‘41, he had thought his heart was breaking.

  Their separation had lasted for four years. But it had seemed worth it when they were together again, the two of them with Shelagh, in Abadan. They had picked up the threads where they had dropped them. The honeymoon might be over, but so much else had come to take its place, tenderness, devotion, understanding—love in its deepest sense. There was not a married couple in the world he envied, and Daphne had been as wretched as he when they had decided that Shelagh, now she was twelve, must go to school in England, and that for the first two terms at least her mother must stay in England with her. She had been in tears when passengers had been ordered to emplane. Her letters had been fond and frequent. He had torn open the envelope of that final letter with the same happily eager anticipation that he had torn its predecessors.

  I’ll never get over it, he had thought, never, never.

  And he hadn’t really, had he? At least the Charles Keable who had read that letter hadn’t. It was a new Charles Keable altogether who was driving now on this bright November morning to take his twenty-two-year-old wife to collect her anniversary present.

  Barbara Keable was sitting in the hall of the Country Club, lolled back with her legs crossed, turning the pages of a Tatler. He stared, taking, as it were, an inventory: he noted her light hair with its poodle cut, the full parted mouth and the straight classic nose. She turned a page: there was power in her fingers: they were neat practical hands. He drew a long slow breath; then walked across to her. ‘Hello there, Honey.’

  She jumped to her feet, she flung her arms round his neck. ‘Darling.’ Her body was lissom against his: in her hair was that new scent, Fracas. His arm went round her waist. He wanted to caress her shoulders, but he restrained himself. Once, at a Saturday-night club dance, when he had stood in the doorway, his hand on her shoulder, fondling the soft skin of her arm, someone had said with a sarcastic undertone, ‘Need you be so uxorious?’ It was jealousy, no doubt, of another’s happiness. Uxorious. Why had the word acquired a derogatory undertone as though it wasn’t fitting and proper for a man to caress his wife? He had learnt his lesson then. Thank heavens he didn’t need to be demonstrative in public. Soon enough they’d be alone together. How lucky married lovers were! Not to have to rely on dates fixed in advance, ‘the little grace of an hour’; they talked about free love but was there any real freedom in love outside marriage? He pitied the unhallowed lovers who had, no matter what their mood, to take advantage of each stolen second that fate vouchsafed them.

  ‘All set?’ he asked.

  She slipped her arm through his, pressing it against his side.

  ‘I’m so excited.’

  The ship had docked upon the previous night. The unloading had already started. The gigantic arm of the crane was lifting crate after crate out of the hold.

  ‘The cars will be coming next,’ an official told them.

  ‘I can’t wait,’ said Barbara.

  The sun was high now in the sky. The heat was refracted from the pavement, the concrete warehouses, the corrugated iron roofs. The docks were airless and stifling; impregnated with the sickly smell of copra.

  ‘Shall we move into the shade?’ he asked.

  ‘All the way over there? No, no, I want to get my first sight of it from as close as possible. Is that it, darling?’

  A green Hillman Minx was glittering in the sunlight. He shook his head. No, it wasn’t that. Car followed car, large family cars, small practical runabouts, a station wagon. Each time a car was lifted into the air, she turned to him interrogatively. He had never seen her so excited. There was a wa
rm feeling round his heart. It was lovely when you were in love to be able to spoil the loved one, to bring this look of excitement into her face. With Daphne he had had to watch every penny.

  A long, low grey-green car swung out of the hold. He watched her as her eyes followed it. It was an athlete, a poised runner among cars, lean and swift; an aristocrat with its effortless assumption of superiority. The sun glittered on its polished flanks. Barbara’s lips parted. How wisely I chose, he thought.

  She turned round quickly, a look of incredulous wonder on her face. ‘Darling, that isn’t it!’

  ‘Whose else would it be?’

  ‘But I can’t believe it, oh …’

  She ran towards it. She spread out her arms, as though she would embrace it. She stood beside it, she put out her hand, timidly; as though she was afraid to touch it. She stroked its smooth, bullet-headed bonnet. She murmured to it softly, ‘My beautiful, my beautiful. My lovely grey flamingo.’

  Chapter Three

  Kassaya was at the western tip of the island, a hundred and twenty miles from Kuala Prang. The Keables had to drive slowly, as the car was not run in. They lunched on the way. It was four o’clock before they reached the camp. They could not have arrived at a more dramatic moment. Work stopped on Saturdays at eleven-thirty. Lunch was late, preceded by cocktail parties or ‘sessions’ at the swimming-pool bar. But by four o’clock siesta time was over and the employees at the refinery were scattering with their wives and children to the swimming pool, the tennis courts and golf course. Barbara parked outside the club and a crowd gathered round her quickly. It was the first of the new Austin-Healeys to be landed in Karak and she wore it like a buttonhole. It was a symbol of her youth, her looks, her power to attract; a vindication of her womanhood. She was windblown from the drive, her cheeks were flushed and her eyes shone. Charles, at her side, in spite of his grey hairs partook of glamour. It was he who had brought that look into her eyes, it was he who had pinned that flower in her lapel.

  A short plumpish young woman wearing slacks and a tight-fitting jersey pushed through the crowd.

  ‘Darling, it’s wonderful. It’s so you. I’m so happy for your sake.’

  She leant forward and kissed Barbara on the cheek.

  A tall, thin, rangy-type young man watched her with a twisted smile. Happy for her sake, envious for your own, he thought. That’s what comes of marrying a general manager, instead of a third-level ne’er-do-well in personnel. His wife, Julia, had been at school with Barbara. When last spring the camp had been galvanized by the announcement that their new general manager was bringing back with him from leave a bride of twenty-one, and everyone was wondering what she would be like—‘The old man needs a hostess and he’ll have picked the kind of woman who likes that kind of job’—Julia Hallett had picked up the paper, studied the announcement, then burst out laughing. ‘I know her extremely well. She’s not at all like that.’

  ‘She will be after she’s been here a month,’ Basil retorted.

  ‘Not if I know my Barbara.’

  Basil had been sceptical but Julia had been right. Barbara had welcomed Julia as though they were not only contemporaries but equals. Whenever the G.M. threw an unofficial party the Halletts were invited. Basil was never reminded by his host’s behaviour that he was a very junior member of the staff. But he was fretted all the same by inferiority.

  He watched, impatiently, the two young women, as they gossiped, their heads together. How different they looked, Barbara with her light hair, pink and white complexion and classic features, Julia pale-skinned, dark, with an amusing pushed-in face, her hair cut short and brushed forward, like an Attic helmet—a gamine type. How different they looked and how different their lives had been. Who could have guessed, seeing them seven years ago seated side by side in blue school tunics with inky fingers, that life was preparing to deal them such different hands; which was why, Basil thought, the adage went, ‘Always be polite to girls, you can’t tell whom they’ll marry.’

  It didn’t go that way with men. There was only one way in which a man could amount to anything—through solid work, month after month, year after year. You had to fight for your place and you had to fight to keep it. There was no short cut. That was why Julia was out of luck; why there’d never be a blue-green Austin-Healey in her garage. Basil knew himself for what he was. He was not the steady, slogging type. He was feckless and irresponsible, far too often during a working week taking that one extra drink that made him not quite on the ball next morning.

  A wave of irritation struck him at the sight of the two girls chattering across the gleaming car. He did not want to be reminded of the difference between them. He pushed forward and put his hand on his wife’s elbow. ‘We must be on our way. You know what a crowd there’ll be. Everyone wants to play on Saturday.’

  There was a rasp of impatience in his voice. He had not intended there to be, but he could not control his voice when his nerves were twitching. Julia looked round quickly, shaken out of her mood.

  ‘What, why, oh yes, of course, I’m sorry.’

  ‘Unless you’d rather stay. It isn’t far for me to walk. You could come on by car.’ Again there was a sneer in his voice. Why? Why couldn’t he be different?

  ‘Don’t be absurd,’ she said.

  ‘Of course I’m coming.’

  She turned back to Barbara. ‘Darling, it’s a heavenly car. Good luck to it. Will you be at the club tonight?’

  ‘I may be. I’m not sure.’

  The Halletts’ car was parked by the swimming pool. It was a ten-horse-power Chevrolet.

  ‘A little different from the Austin-Healey,’ Basil said.

  ‘It’s all we need. It goes quite fast. It uses very little petrol.’

  ‘But don’t tell me that you wouldn’t rather be sitting at that wheel than at this.’

  ‘I’d rather be dressed by Christian Dior than by Swan and Edgar. But I don’t live in terms of Christian Dior.’

  ‘Your girl friend does.’

  ‘Isn’t that nice for her?’

  It was snapped impatiently. She’s mad at me, he thought. Another second and we’ll start a row.

  He drove on in silence. The nine-hole golf course was half a mile away. There were only three or four others in the clubhouse when they arrived. There had been no need for them to hurry. He had known there wasn’t. But he had been aggravated by the sight of Julia and Barbara together. He walked up to the bar.

  ‘A pony whisky and soda.’ He tossed it back in a single swallow. ‘Another please,’ he said.

  2

  Charles Keable had noted the way in which Basil had spoken. As the two hurried to their car, he looked interrogatively at Barbara, but she made no comment, so he made none either. He had learnt the value of silence where the Halletts were concerned.

  ‘Are you going to swim right away?’ he asked.

  ‘I’d like to. I’m sticky after the drive out.’

  ‘Then would you drive me round to the office first. I left before the mail arrived.’

  Six letters waited on his desk. The top one was a blue air letter. He started at the sight of it. Daphne’s handwriting. Every now and again she wrote to tell him about Shelagh. Nine times in ten, in spite of dissension and divorce, two people who had produced a child had forged a bond that only death could break. But it was three months since he had heard from her. He stared at the address. It was over twenty years ago that he had first seen that handwriting. How little it had changed. Large, firm, forward sloping, practical but feminine. So much had happened in those twenty years, so much change in everyone. Muscles sagged, lines deepened round mouth and eyes, hair lost its thickness and its colour, a voice grew hoarse, blue veins lifted between white knuckles, yet the forming of letters on an envelope stayed constant. He shrugged. It was no good thinking about that; he slit the flap.

  3

  Kassaya had the advantage over many oil camps, of being built on unlevel ground, the bungalows were not set out in rows, like b
arracks, and the nine-hole golf course that had been reclaimed along the shore out of swamp and jungle was an affair of slopes and hillocks. It had been cleverly designed; with par at thirty-two it did not penalize too heavily the high handicap man’s mistakes, but to the good player it set a number of tricky problems.

  Basil Hallett with a handicap of three was the best player in the club. He had a loose-limbed easy swing and late in the evening after several whiskies, he could persuade himself that if he lived in England he would be a scratch player within eighteen months, entering for the Amateur, surviving a round or two, perhaps even … I’ll break thirty-four today, he thought as he teed up.

  His nerves were steady after the two whisky and sodas. As his club face met the ball, he had the authentic thrill of perfect timing. There’d be that extra fifteen yards on it. He looked up confidently, expecting to see his ball, white against the blue, sailing to the right of the mango tree, but to his dismay he saw that it was going to the left.

  ‘Exactly what I expected,’ his opponent said. ‘You were facing quarter left.’

  In self-hating silence Basil watched the slight hook, that would give it that extra run, carry his ball farther to the left. A ball less cleanly hit might have stayed on the course, but this time, there was no doubt, it would be out of bounds. Playing three, he thought.

  How typical of him it was. Carelessness, nothing else. Facing quarter left. No wonder Julia had to drive a five-year-old Chevrolet. When he was playing badly, his golf became the symbol of everything that was amiss in him as a citizen, a husband, as a Pearl employee. In a deep trough of gloom he walked down the fairway to play the second that had become his fourth. He was hopeless, worthless; he might be quicker-witted than the others, but what was the use of that when he made his quick-wittedness an alibi for not taking the pains those others did. How often had that extra drink at night let him down on the next morning when a special effort had been needed.