Fuel for the Flame

By Alec Waugh

First published in 1960, this is a tale of an imaginary island on the Equator that has suddenly achieved importance through the discovery of oil - what will happen to the men and women living under the tensions of life on this island?

At one end of this island is the oil refinery where the members of the staff live in constant proximity to one another, and where emotions are heightened by the lack of privacy. The men are goaded by ambitions for power, while the women are drawn into affairs of love and passion. At the other end of the island is a hotbed of politics where a British diplomat is attempting to retain the island under Britain's sphere of influence; where an ailing king is fearful of what will happen when he is succeeded by a young and untrained prince; where a nationalist group is plotting to overthrow the monarchy and seize the oil fields.

Waugh handles brilliantly his political plots, but always interwoven with them are the personal dramas of love and fear, of cowardice and courage. Rich in detail and characterisation, and in the exotic colours and customs of this strange land, the novel has constant suspense and variety.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
• Release date: Oct 28, 2011
• ISBN: 9781448202539

Alec Waugh

Alec Waugh (1898-1981) was a British novelist born in London and educated at Sherborne Public School, Dorset. Waugh's first novel, The Loom of Youth (1917), is a semi-autobiographical account of public school life that caused some controversy at the time and led to his expulsion. Waugh was the only boy ever to be expelled from The Old Shirburnian Society. Despite setting this record, Waugh went on to become the successful author of over 50 works, and lived in many exotic places throughout his life which later became the settings for some of his texts. He was also a noted wine connoisseur and campaigned to make the 'cocktail party' a regular feature of 1920s social life.

Book preview

Chapter One

He noticed her the moment he came in. She was wearing a white cashmere sweater that matched her ash-blonde hair, her pale cheeks and the bright carmine of her lipstick. She was wearing long black earrings, she looked about twenty-two, she was sitting in the corner of a sofa. From the way the jacket fell, he guessed that her figure would be full and firm. He watched her across the cocktail party as he was moved by his host from one group to another; when the man beside her rose, taking her glass with him, he went across to her, carrying a Martini.

‘That man mustn’t be allowed to monopolize you. It was a Martini, wasn’t it?’

‘It was.’

He sat beside her. The earrings had silver figures in their centres.

‘Who gave you those?’ he said.

‘Why do you ask that?’

‘Because they are made in Thailand, that’s near my home.’

‘Where’s that?’

‘Karak. I don’t suppose you’ve heard of it.’

‘Indeed I have. There’s a racing motorist from there.’

‘Can you remember who?’

‘Prince somebody.’

‘That sounds like me.’

‘Really?’

‘I am Prince Rhya.’

She raised her eyebrows. ‘I’ve never met a prince before.’

‘It’s nothing very grand, not nearly as grand as being an English earl.’

‘It’s something, though. It’s better than plain Mr.’

‘Is that what you are?’

‘Is that what I am what?’

‘Just plain Miss Something.’

‘That’s right.’

‘And Miss, not Mrs.?’

‘Miss Annetta Marsh.’

‘Tell me about yourself.’

‘There isn’t much to tell.’

‘What do you do?’

‘How do you mean, what do I do?’

‘You work in some office somewhere, I suppose.’

She shook her head. ‘I don’t do any work.’

‘I thought all the young women in England worked these days.’

‘All except me. I get jobs but lose them. I arrive after the boss and take two hours off for lunch. I was born thirty years too late. I should have been a poor little rich girl in the nineteen-twenties. Except that I wouldn’t have thought of myself as poor. It would have been the life for me.’

He laughed. She was fun. She was frank and direct, with an unself-conscious sense of humour. It was a characteristic of English women that he liked, and there were a great many things he liked about English women. He had heard them called stiff and cold, and perhaps they were with their fellow countrymen. Living on their bleak northern island, breathing the same chill air, English men and women had become like brothers and sisters to each other. They had ceased to be electric for one another. But an Englishman was quite different when he was abroad, and Englishwomen were very different with foreigners. No diplomat complained when he was posted to the Court of St. James.

He looked at the girl beside him, then made up his mind. ‘I’d like to persuade you to dine with me tonight.’

‘You wouldn’t have to try very hard.’

‘Then I shan’t need this.’ He pulled a small envelope from his pocket and tore it in half.

‘What’s that?’

‘A ticket for Drury Lane.’

‘For My Fair Lady?’

‘Yes.’

‘And for tonight?’

He nodded. ‘When I go to a cocktail party, I buy a single seat for a theatre; if I don’t meet anyone amusing at the party, then I’ve got my evening taken care of. If I do, I tear the ticket up.’

Her eyes widened. ‘I hope you’re going to find me worth it!’

When they got up to go, he saw that she was nearly five feet ten. ‘I’d no idea you were so tall.’

‘Does it matter?’

‘Not in the least.’

He had a furnished flat in Curzon Street, over a fashionable restaurant where the head waiter always kept a table for him until nine o’clock.

He handed her the menu, but she shook her head.

‘I’d like to drink champagne. Order what you think goes best with it. I haven’t any allergies. I’m rather hungry.’

She leant back in her chair. ‘It’s your eyebrows, that’s what it is,’ she said.

‘What do I take that to mean?’

‘Your being diabolique. That’s the first thing I thought when I saw you across the room. Diabolique. I thought it was your being dark and your hair shining. But it’s not. Your eyebrows go up at the end, that’s why it is.’

The orchestra was playing a slow foxtrot. ‘I’d like to dance this,’ he said.

‘Doesn’t it embarrass you, dancing with somebody so tall?’

‘Not in the least.’

She had developed her own technique of dancing. She let her right arm hang loose, against her side, she turned her left side against his right, so that they formed a right angle. Their steps fitted well. ‘Most medium-sized men are embarrassed dancing with me,’ she said. ‘It’s quite a nuisance. I like dancing, and it’s hard to find enough tall men whom I like.’

‘Perhaps you should dance with very short men. I’m shorter than nearly every girl I meet. I’m so used to looking up to women that it doesn’t make much difference whether I’m looking up three inches or seven.’

‘What a pity I didn’t wear high heels. I much prefer them.’

Except when they were eating, they danced all the time. When the band packed away its instruments, he said, ‘I don’t think I mentioned it, but I live here. What about a final drink upstairs?’

‘Why not?’ she said.

An hour and a half later she stretched back luxuriously, her arms behind her head. ‘I do hope that you found me worth it. It was fine by me.’

Chapter Two

In Karak, nine thousand miles away, Prince Rhya was being discussed on the following morning by the British political agent, Kenneth Studholme, at the conference of local notables which he convened once a month to discuss the island’s problems.

‘Prince Rhya as heir to the throne constitutes,’ he was saying, ‘the chief obstacle to our peace of mind. During his father’s lifetime, we have no cause for worry; afterwards, anything may happen.’

He paused and looked slowly round him. He had been here now half a year, and these meetings were his innovation. They were attended by ten to a dozen men of prominence, British in terms of passport, but half of them racially mixed—Indian, Malay, Chinese—as befitted an island south-west of Borneo. Each one made a special contribution to his own general picture, but he relied chiefly on three men—Colonel Forrester, adviser to the C.I.D., Charles Keable, the general manager of the Pearl Oil Company’s installations at the far end of the island, at Kassaya, and Angus Macartney, whose father owned the chief rubber estate—the island’s relative prosperity being based on oil and rubber.

Studholme was in the middle forties. He was tall and spare with grey thinning hair; he had tired eyes, but he gave the impression of capacity, intelligence and vigour.

‘The King,’ he was continuing, ‘has been the friend of Britain all his life. His grandfather had signed a treaty with Britain before he was born. He was taught in childhood that British rule had brought order and prosperity to his people. He accepted that teaching and its implications. During the Japanese occupation, he was loyal to the spirit of his treaty with us. He believed we would return. He has always trusted us. In his lifetime we have no cause for worry, but his son—there is a very different matter.’

If he doesn’t come to the point soon, thought Forrester, I’ll fall asleep. Forrester was nearly sixty. He had expected to retire this year, but his record in the Middle East had been so impressive that Studholme, who had been stationed in Cairo during the war, had pulled strings to secure his appointment here. Forrester was short, bald, wrinkled like a walnut, shrivelled by tropic suns. Half the time he looked as though he had just woken up or were about to go to sleep. There had been a Masonic banquet on the previous evening and he had retired late. If only his nibs were less verbose, he thought.

‘His son … How shall I put it?’ Studholme was continuing. ‘Prince Rhya, because of his father’s respect for all things English, was sent to Eton. I am an Etonian myself. I consider Eton the greatest school in the world. It is more than a school, more even than a club, as some have called it, it is a way of life. But even so, I do not fail to recognize that it has produced, in addition to some of the finest Englishmen in history, a very small minority of the very worst. There are those for whom its atmosphere is too heady. It makes playboys of them, and the most tiresome kind of playboy. From all I hear—I have not myself met him— Eton has had that effect upon Prince Rhya.’

Angus Macartney shifted in his chair. In spite of his Scottish name, he looked half East Indian. He had smooth black hair, very dark brown eyes, pale, colourless cheeks, a short straight nose, rather thin but delicately chiselled lips. He was tall and slim. He was twenty-six years old. His father was an invalid who each month left more and more of the direction of the business to his son.

Angus was bored. He was also impatient. He was playing cricket that afternoon, and he wanted to practise at the nets. There also might be a message waiting for him at his office that would require the replanning of his day. Keable had come into town in the Pearl Company’s aeroplane. It was very possible that Blanche Pawling, the wife of one of the Pearl employees, had come in with him. For the last few months she had taken every opportunity of making the trip. When she did, she visited him in the small flat he maintained above his office. She never knew till the last moment whether she could come or not. She could not ring him up from Kassaya. He had to be ready to rearrange his schedule at a moment’s notice. That was fine on ordinary week-days. He rarely had any luncheon appointment that he could not cancel. But Saturday was different. Cricket in the afternoon. He liked to take the morning quietly, in preparation, with half an hour at the nets to get loosened up. Why on earth did the old boy have these meetings on a Saturday? Because it did not interfere with the routine of a working week, presumably. Saturday was a slack day in offices. He might have remembered that for younger ones Saturday was a playing day and sacrosanct. Not that you could expect a man of his age to consider that, particularly a man like Studholme. It was hard to realize that he’d ever been young. He seemed to have been born middle-aged. You couldn’t imagine him proposing to a woman. How had he ever done it? To an attractive woman, too. Perhaps she’d proposed to him; a widow, after all. What had that first husband of hers been like, the one who’d been shot down over Dunkerque? Very different from H.E., presumably. There was nothing wrong about the daughter.

Was his wife faithful to him? Angus wondered. Out here she had to be discreet, for here there was no privacy. But back in London, that was another thing. If I’d met her in London two years ago, he thought, I’d have a try. She was very much his type, or rather had been his type, little and dark and plump: and he had liked women older than himself. He had lacked experience and responded to it. But now his tastes were changing; now … his thoughts followed a separate trail.

Charles Keable also was finding it hard to concentrate his attention upon Studholme’s speech. He was impatient to get down to the docks, where a car—a first anniversary present to his new wife—was being landed. Tall, heavily built, a man of forty-eight, he had worked for Pearl all his life, for most of the time overseas, and all this was familiar ground to him. It was true enough, of course. But why did Studholme have to tell them what they knew already? Did he feel that a meeting had to last an hour, and that it might be over in half an hour if it was confined to the essential business?

‘I hope,’ Studholme was saying, ‘that we shall have the King with us for very many years, but his health is not good, though he is barely sixty. We have to be on our guard, and I have received a letter this week from the security authorities in London warning me that we are faced with a very serious danger of Communist infiltration.’

There was a start from everyone except Forrester. Forrester had already studied the report, and had known that Studholme was to make it the chief topic of the morning’s talk; for that reason he was able to respect the more the employment of surprise with which his chief had introduced it. It was a method that he himself adopted in his interrogations of a suspect. He would talk and talk, boring the man across the table, convincing him that he was dealing with a blockhead, then suddenly he would shoot his question. Studholme might get nothing out of this meeting with his notables, but there was a hundred to one chance he might. He was playing it the right way, anyhow.

‘I would like to know,’ he was continuing, ‘whether any of you have seen any signs of this infiltration in your offices and factories. Angus, have you seen anything?’

Angus was taken off his guard. His thoughts had been far away. He replied at random. ‘There is a great deal of Communism in India, sir. We have a great many Indians in our factory. They keep in touch with their relatives in India.’

‘What about your Chinese employees?’

‘We have not very many Chinese. The Chinese prefer to work on their own, in shops, laundries, restaurants or as market gardeners.’

‘How many Chinese work for you?’

‘I could find out, sir.’

‘I’d be grateful if you would. And there is one other question I’d like to ask. Have you noticed any change in the Indians themselves since India was granted independence? Twenty years ago their relatives in Bombay and Calcutta were British subjects, as they were themselves, but today those relatives are independent citizens. Has that made a difference to them?’

‘It’s given them a pride in being Indians, sir.’

‘As Indians, apart from being British subjects?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Do you think that they might therefore come to think of themselves as Indians first and as British subjects secondly?’

‘I think they might, sir.’

The Chinese must feel the same, thought Studholme. They might be anti-Communist, but they are proud of China’s power.

‘So you think they are more receptive now to ideas coming to them from India?’ he continued. ‘What I am getting at is this. You have reminded us that there is a great deal of Communism in India. It is possible, isn’t it, that the Communist Party in Calcutta might see an opportunity of infiltration? Gentlemen,’ he turned from Angus and addressed the table at large, ‘what we have been told by Angus Macartney is, to me, very illuminating. It does show why there may be a particular danger to this community. There is now a direct channel of communication through India, and perhaps through China, to Soviet Russia. I would like to ask Colonel Forrester whether he thinks we should take any special precautions in this matter.’

Forrester sat upright, as though he were a soldier called to attention on parade. ‘I am a spider, sir, sitting at the centre of a web,’ he said. ‘I have spread my net. The meshes are drawn as close as the forces at my disposal permit. I watch the port and airport. I watch the exchange of cables; to a more limited extent I watch other channels. A small fly could get through the meshes of my web if it was lucky, but a big fly would, I believe, hit a mesh. If anything unusual happened, I should, I trust, become aware of it. In the case of danger I should need to tighten my web, but I could only do that if I had more means at my disposal.’

He spoke in a slow, almost drawled voice. He had a manner that nettled certain people. It nettled Studholme.

‘You do not see the need, Colonel, in view of this letter from Whitehall, for taking additional precautions?’

‘I have taken, sir, all the precautions possible in terms of the forces at my disposal. I have many responsibilities. I have to maintain order, to safeguard property and persons. The individual resident, as a taxpayer, has a right to be protected. If additional precautions are required, I should need additional funds and personnel.’

‘Do you consider there is a need for that?’

‘No, sir.’

‘In spite of this letter from Whitehall?’

‘Because of that letter from Whitehall. If the police force were to be increased, the guilty would be warned. I believe in letting sleeping dogs lie, sir.’

‘Are you telling us that as far as you can see there is no Communist infiltration here?’

‘I wouldn’t go as far as that; there have been times in this last two months when I have suspected that one or perhaps two very small flies have got through my net.’

The answer came without hesitation. Studholme looked at him thoughtfully. Had Forrester said that to cover himself, or had he really seen danger signs? There was no way of guessing. You could never know exactly where you were with the boys in counter-espionage. They had to justify their jobs. They had to prove that there was a need for them. They could not perpetually send in nil returns. This report from Whitehall might be the result of an idle officer finding occupation for a wet afternoon, wondering where there was likely to be trouble next, deciding that Karak was as vulnerable as anywhere, and working out a fictional menace. He did not want to appear an alarmist before his ‘notables’.

‘You have talked to us about this net, Colonel Forrester,’ he said. ‘I appreciate the simile. But perhaps you could be more explicit. Perhaps you could explain what happens when a large fly or perhaps a careless fly hits against a mesh?’

‘Something unusual, sir.’

‘Unusual?’

‘Something for which the obvious explanation is unsatisfactory.’

It was the answer that Studholme had expected. But he had wanted this particular thing said to this particular audience. He hoped that they were loyal. He believed that they were loyal. But there might be, there probably was, one at least among this dozen who needed to be warned.

‘Can you give us an example of that, Colonel Forrester?’ he asked.

The Colonel smiled. ‘May I, sir, quote you the example that was quoted to me on a staff course at Scotland Yard? A very well-dressed Londoner in the middle forties changed his tailor, there was no reason why he should. The new tailor to which he went was not any better, he was neither cheaper nor more expensive; he was an exact opposite number in the world of tailoring. He did not appear to have had any quarrel with his cutter or with the manager. He had settled his accounts regularly. Why had he changed his tailor? It set the police wondering. The reason why he had put him behind iron bars.’

Studholme had watched the Colonel as he spoke. How bland, how innocent he seemed; a good mixer who liked one drink too many—but only one—and chuckled over a risqué anecdote. But he did not miss a point.

‘What makes you think that a fly may have got through your mesh?’ he asked.

The Colonel shrugged. ‘I have a hunch. I cannot say why, but I have a hunch that something unusual is going to happen soon.’

Studholme looked at him thoughtfully, then smiled. He knew the kind of man that he was dealing with. A man older than himself, wiser in many ways; but a man who had always worked behind the scenes, and perhaps resented—though he was not sure of that—the recognition that went to others. A man of depth, but a man of limitations. In many ways the most valuable member of his staff. He’s got to stay on my side, he thought. ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘Thank you very much. That will be most helpful to us all.’

2

The meeting had been held in one of the smaller reception rooms in the Residency. Studholme’s study lay on the other side of the hall. A mail had just arrived, he was faced with a full morning’s work, but he liked to look in on his wife whenever he had a free five minutes. It was a habit that, he suspected, she did not relish. She had said more than once, ‘Men should go to offices after breakfast and not come home to lunch.’ But since that was not their routine, he took advantage of this disadvantage. He found a minute or two of his wife’s company a refreshing pause in the course of his daily duties.

His wife, Muriel, with her daughter Lila, was taking morning coffee on the veranda of the dining-room. She was wearing a hat.

‘Where are you going?’

‘I told you at breakfast. To see the nurses at the children’s hospital.’

‘That doesn’t sound exciting.’

‘I can think of more thrilling things to do. Not here though.’

She said it with a smile, but her voice had, or he thought it had, an acid undernote.

‘I’m afraid you have to do a great many boring things.’

‘If I didn’t, I’d go off my head with boredom. Will you have some coffee?’

‘Thank you. I’d like a cup.’

‘Lila, will you ring the bell?’

Within half a minute it had been answered by an Indian butler in a white, stiffly pressed, high-collared jacket and ankle-length skirt; his long hair was held in place on the crown of his head with a high tortoise-shell comb. In London, Muriel had complained that with no servants she had so much housework that she had no time to do the things she really wanted. Here, where she had a large staff, she had to occupy her leisure with boring duties. She really doesn’t like it here, he thought.

‘What kind of a meeting did you have?’ she asked.

‘Not a bad one. Angus Macartney was quite helpful.’

‘That man,’ said his stepdaughter.

‘Now, Lila.’ That from her mother.

‘I’m sorry, Mummy, but I think he’s awful: that oily, greasy look.

I’m sure he’s like that inside. He gives me the shivers. I can’t see what you all see in him.’

‘We don’t see anything particular in him,’ Studholme said. ‘We have to make the most of what there is here, and it’s less difficult to make something out of him than certain other gentlemen.’

Lila wrinkled her nose. She was not at all like her mother. Muriel Studholme was small, dark, plump, kittenish. Lila was amazonian, tall, fair-skinned, fair-haired, with a strong nose. Her stepfather had done his best to like her, but without success. He prayed for the day when she’d get married. Why couldn’t the A.D.C. fall in love with her? Wasn’t that what A.D.C.s were for? And she was quite good-looking.

‘By the way,’ his wife said, ‘Judy Farrar rang up. She’s down with ‘flu. She can’t dine on Tuesday.’

‘Too bad. We must find another girl. Have you any suggestions?’

‘Not off hand.’

‘Then I’ll get our young man on to it.’

Their young man, Captain Gerald Fyreman, was a casualty from Cyprus. He had lost his foot there, and with it a very good chance of playing cricket one day for England. He had taken on the job of A.D.C. as a form of sick leave, during which he could make up his mind whether or not to retire from the service. He was twenty-six years old, of medium height, stockily built, with sandy hair. He was not exactly good-looking, but he had a friendly, open face. He was waiting in Studholme’s study.

‘Miss Farrar’s just rung through, sir. …’

‘I know. We’ve got to find another female. Can I see the guest list?’ He glanced down the names. It was a routine party for certain local notables.

‘I don’t worry about even numbers, but we can’t sit down thirteen. I wonder …’ He paused. He looked at the list and then up at his A.D.C.

‘Wouldn’t this be a good opportunity for you to have an evening off? I don’t want to make a slave of you. You can see us in to dinner, then

There was a twinkle in his eye as he said it. But the A.D.C. did not respond. He flushed. He looked embarrassed. ‘I’m sorry sir … if you don’t mind … but really, this particular party … I had been looking forward to it … if you don’t mind … I would prefer …’

His flush deepened, he became more flustered. His chief looked at him steadily. What’s behind this? he thought. Some woman, clearly. Who?

He looked down at the list. The only unmarried girl on it was Lila. It couldn’t be she. Gerald saw her every day. Had the young idiot fallen for some married woman? He looked up at his A.D.C. There was an expression of marked anxiety on his face. It made Studholme want to smile, but at the same time it sent a twinge of nostalgia along his nerves. It was good to be twenty-six and feel that the whole world was lost if you didn’t see a certain person on a certain night. ‘All right, Gerald. You pick out somebody respectable upon our list: anyone you like.’

He watched his A.D.C. walk with a slight limp towards the door. The limp replaced nostalgia with remorse: perhaps it was not so good after all to be twenty-six in a world like this; to be sent on a tragic mission, to lose one’s chance of an English cap, to be denied so many of the things to which one’s youth entitled one. His remorse was tinctured with guilt. He had not seen action in the war. He had been in Cairo in September 1939. His ambassador had insisted that he was indispensable. For seventy months, while London was being bombed, while his contemporaries were being killed and maimed in every corner of the globe, he had worked in warmth and comfort: with a sense of shame that he had let no one see.

He shrugged. It was no good going over that. He had done what he had been told to do. He had lived austerely. He had worked relentlessly, he had become a genuine Arabist, he had perfected his French and German. To those six years of unremitting work was due his fast promotion since the war. If he made a success of it here, it would be hard to put a limit on his progress. He was only forty-six.

Two piles of letters were set out on his desk. The larger was the official mail: the smaller one was personal. He flicked over the smaller pile. It contained, as he had hoped it would, a blue air-letter form, addressed in the Italianate script that had recently become the fashion in English schools. It was from his son Eric, now in his last year at his prep. He would read that first, then tackle his official letters.

‘Dear Daddy,’ it ran. ‘We beat Highfield 3-2. I did not score a goal but helped get two. Mr. B. said Well played afterwards. It has rained a lot. Gainsford has made a whacko model aeroplane. May I get a kit like his? Mason has got German measles. Perhaps we shall have to cancel our match against Remenham. I hope not. When will you be made a knight? I shall be so proud writing Sir Kenneth Studholme. Sorry no more news. Love, Eric’

When would he be made a knight? Karak had been a trivial dependency thirty years ago, but the discovery of oil had made it an important contributor to the national economy—particularly since the loss of Abadan. His post of British Political Agent carried the rank of minister. He had been here now six months. If his name did not appear in next year’s Honours List, it should be in the Birthday List in June … if nothing went wrong first. And why should anything go wrong?

He crossed to the window. The Residency was built half-way up the high hill that flanked the town. A broad terrace stretched in front of it. The main entrance was on the other side. A row of steps led to the tennis courts. The courts were flanked with crotons. The gardens to the left and right were shaded by mango trees. The sun had mounted in the sky, and the palm fronds and the broad tattered leaves of the banana plant glistened like burnished shields. Half a mile away, the straight streets of the city smouldered in the heat. Beyond, a faint pale blue, scarcely visible through the haze, the sea stretched to the horizon. You would scarcely recognize that it was the sea but for a ship, its white superstructure gleaming in the sunlight, that was passing on its way to Singapore. It all looked so beautiful, so peaceful. Why had he this niggling fear that he was seated on a volcano?

3

Angus Macartney’s offices were in the centre of the town. They were on a corner and were a block in depth. They had three entrances. That was why he had chosen to install his flat here. It made it easy for him to be visited discreetly.

He hurried back there straight from the Residency meeting. ‘Any messages?’ he asked.

The girl shook her head.

So Blanche wasn’t coming. If it had been any day but Saturday, or had this happened three months ago, he would have felt foiled and disappointed: with the sensation of living in a vacuum. But the affair had been going now half a year; they had lunched on Monday. And it was a Saturday.

The desk clock marked ten past ten. There was only a small pile of letters on his desk, and there was not a mail plane out till the Monday night. He could get his desk cleared by eleven. That would give him time to get down to the cricket ground. A little bowling at the nets, and then a sandwich lunch; no hurry: that was the way to start a cricket match, rested, one’s limbs loosened and one’s nerves at peace.

The telephone bell rang. ‘Is that you, Angus? It’s me. I’m here. I had to do some shopping. I couldn’t call before.’

She had a quick breathless voice that made his heart beat faster. It was her voice as much as anything that had first attracted him. She had a fascinating way of saying ‘little’ without pronouncing the ‘t’s, making them sound like a slurred ‘d’. He tried to ask her questions to which the answer would include the word ‘little’.

‘How soon can you get round?’

‘Right away.’

‘You mean really right away?’

‘Within half an hour.’

That ruled out the nets.

‘And when does your plane leave?’

‘Quarter past two.’

And the match began at two. But the airport was half an hour away and the cricket ground ten minutes. That should work out all right.

‘Wonderful,’ he said. ‘Hurry now.’

The moment she had rung off, he called the captain of his cricket team. ‘I don’t think I shall be late. But I may be; not more than five minutes. I’ve a lunch date.’

‘I know what that means.’

They laughed; they were good friends who understood each other. ‘Next time don’t have it on a Saturday,’ the captain said. ‘You can’t bowl fast after that kind of lunch.’

‘Oh, but I can. You wait. You’ll see.’

Angus picked up the pile of letters. He’d take them upstairs and read them while he was waiting. He had not long to wait. With a cry she ran into his arms.

She was little and lithe and blonde, vivid and vivacious, with a birdlike, pointed nose. She cuddled close against him.

‘Oh, darling, darling, I was so afraid I wouldn’t get here. Harry wanted to come, too. It was only at the last moment that he found he couldn’t. And if he had come, what excuse would I have had for coming in next week? After Monday, too. Oh, darling, you can’t imagine what it’s like out there. It’s a kind of prison. All day long there’s nothing but talk of oil. There’s the smell of oil in the air. It pervades everything. Seeing the same people every day. Nothing new to talk about, except the Jones’s curtains. Those endless mornings. Harry out of the house by seven. All the housework done by eight. Nothing to do till he comes back at half past eleven. And is that anything to look forward to? I ask you. After twelve years of marriage. And then the heat. Oh, darling, I’m so hot now. Let me take a shower.’

He had bought her a Japanese kimono; a soft cerise pink silk, that barely reached below her hips. She slipped her feet into his sandals. The curtains were half-drawn and the room in twilight. It was impossible to believe that she was thirty-three, that she had a son of twelve, a daughter of nine. The harsh tropical sunlight might show the wrinkles by her mouth and eyes, but here in the dusk she seemed seventeen. She sat on the edge of the low divan. ‘Are you going to give me something long and cool to drink?’ she asked.

‘All in good time,’ he said.

4

Forrester and Keable walked away together from the meeting.

‘What about a gimlet at the Club?’ the policeman asked.

Keable shook his head. ‘I’m going down to the docks. They’re unloading Barbara’s car.’

‘And she’s come in to see it?’

‘You bet she has.’

‘If it doesn’t make her jump, then she’s made of marble, which I don’t think she is.’

‘That’s how I hope it will be.’

‘See you here next month, then.’

‘Unless you’re dining at the Residency next Tuesday.’

‘Am I ever at that kind of party?’

They laughed together. ‘Why don’t you come out to Kassaya one day and check on our security?’

‘Oh, you know me. I’m the lazy old spider sitting in the centre of his web. I leave all that to my young men.’

‘Even so, you might come out one day. We have good parties there, you know.’

‘I do know, and I might at that, and bring the old Prima Donna, too. She doesn’t get the fun she should. No, I’ll not forget.’

It was ten past ten and Forrester’s head was aching. The temptation to look into the club was tantalizing, but it was too early, when one was alone at least. One gimlet became two, twice two were four, the day was ruined, and he had work to do.

The Police Offices were in the centre of the town, part of the general square of office buildings, the secretariat, the law courts, the customs. They had been built in the eighteen-eighties and had a solid, dignified, Victorian look.

Forrester’s room was on the second floor. It looked over the harbour. He had a telescope, and he liked to watch the movements of shipping. It was a large untidy room, with stacks of newspapers piled upon the floor, a large safe and three filing cabinets. There was a book case, filled with reference books; over it was a large poster of the Queen, on horseback. Beside his desk was a table on which two chess games were set out. There were only a few pieces on each board. He had had a large mail in that morning, but he turned to the chess problems first. They had fooled him that morning, but now he saw how one of them worked out. That wasn’t bogus anyhow. He turned to the other. That still puzzled him. He’d leave it until after lunch.

He sat at his desk and pressed a button at its side. A smartly turned-out policeman answered it.

‘Is Mahmoud here?’

‘Yes, sir. He waiting half-hour now.’

‘Right, show him in. He’s lucky not to have waited longer.’

Mahmoud was an Indian, short, neat, wearing a dark summer-weight suit. There was nothing noticeable about him. He made no impression at a first or indeed at a third meeting.

‘Have you arranged for some friend of ours to join the chess club?’ the policeman asked him.

‘I have.’

‘Have you a list of the members?’

‘Not yet, sahib. I am not sure that one exists.’

‘The secretary must have a list. At any rate, get all the names you can, in particular the new members. Perhaps we should introduce a second member, but not anyone who knows our friend.’

‘I see, sahib.’

‘Have you anything to report about the Orient bookshop?’

‘My friend has made friends with the proprietor. He has purchased some left-wing literature. He has discussed Communism with the proprietor in a guarded manner.’

‘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 warm 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