Oriental Hotel (37 page)

‘When do you expect your husband?' Brit asked.

They were lying together in the huge bed, scene of the previous night's sensuous union, the silk sheets draped luxuriously across their nude bodies, their legs and arms entangled.

‘The steamer arrives in four days.' Elise felt languourous, happy, totally satisfied. Not even the prospect of Gordon's arrival could shake her mood. There were still four days before he reached Singapore, four days when she could be with Brit – provided she made no demands on him. She would not look ahead. She would not look back. Nothing must mar this precious, stolen time– four days to last for the rest of her life.

‘I love him,' she thought. ‘ I love him, but I mustn't even think about whether he loves me. I must just be glad I had the chance to find out what love could really be like.'

At the thought that she could have lived out her life and still never known, she shivered. Ignorance of something so vital, so totally basic was an awesome prospect.

For nearly six years I have shared a marriage bed, I have borne a son and crossed the world with a man, and yet I never knew it could be like this. Elise Sanderson, wife, mother – and emotional virgin. Thank you, Brit. Thank you for giving me this, for showing me something within myself I can still hardly believe really exists, for exposing me to forces beyond my comprehension …

‘Four days,' Brit said thoughtfully and the unspoken agreement was there between them. They would take what they had; she had passed the acid test. She would not be an encumbrance or a clinging vine. There would be no duel at dawn.

The first knife-thrust of preconceived pain penetrated her happy mood and she thrust it away, sitting up, pulling the sheet off him to expose strong brown legs, one with its hollow-cave scar.

‘You're lazy! Come on, I'm hungry – I could devour breakfast. And then I want to look round Singapore.'

‘Why? You've seen it all before.'

‘But not with you. I want to see it with
you
.' She didn't add that she wanted memories to store up, hundreds upon hundreds of memories to sustain her over all the years ahead.

‘All right – you want the tourist bit, you shall have the tourist bit!' He swung his legs over the side of the bed and she watched the muscles ripple up his back as he sat up. ‘Just don't blame me if your husband wants to know how you got your blisters.'

‘Blisters!' she scoffed.

But by dinner that night she had to concede that blisters were indeed a possibility. Together they had explored again places which were already familiar to them and seen them through new eyes – Change Alley, with its bargains and bargain hunters; Chinatown, where butchers slaughtered ducks before the customers' very eyes; and Bugis Street, which turned at night from a busy thoroughfare into a gathering place for beautiful but totally deceptive transvestites, who danced and drank together like broken butterflies.

They had stopped to buy meat doused in coconut sauce from a gross Indian and eat it with their fingers from a banana-leaf plate. They had listened with amusement to the claims of the Chinese medicine men, mixing their cure-alls of rhino horn, snakesoup and lizard skins. They had laughed, holding on to their valuables, as families of small monkeys surrounded them in the Botanic Gardens. And they had stopped to watch the calligraphists bent over their portable desks, carefully lettering ribbons of red paper in gold.

Because she was so fascinated – and because it seemed to sum up the shining look of her eyes – Brit bought her a good luck paper reading ‘Double Happiness.' But when they were approached by a fortune teller with the small bird he had trained to pick out a reading, she shook her head.

‘Go on – they all say the same, anyway – you'll be lucky and healthy, but you will have to work hard,' Brit told her, laughing, but still she shook her head, moving on away from the wizened brown man with the all-seeing eyes. Fun it might be, but she did not want to be reminded of the future. Today was for living and loving. Tomorrow …

Time seemed to be gathering speed now, like a bicycle running away down a hill with wheels and pedals and moving ever faster, Elise began to experience something like panic: one day gone, three to go! Rushing by – rushing away with her – time gone and no way to stop it. Oh, slow down, please! Don't take me back to the real world just yet!

On the afternoon of the second day they visited Tangs, her favourite little shop in River Valley Road. From the outside it was scruffy and unprepossessing, but once through the long bamboo curtains the interior opened up to show a veritable Aladdin's cave. Pieces of beautiful oriental furniture lined the walls, grotesque masks grinned at haughty porcelain dogs, piles of embroidered slippers winked and glinted to brighten the dimmest corners.

Unable to resist, Elise bought slippers for Su Ming to replace those lost in the torpedo attack, and a delicately woven bamboo tray. But it was an oriental urn in the shape of a dragon that really won her heart. Perched precariously on a rail rosewood stand, it glowered at her with metallic ferocity, and she laughed with the delight that bubbled up in her so easily since Brit had taught her to love.

‘Just come and look at this! He's trying so hard to look fearsome, but somehow it's just not coming off. All he's managing to do is look sweet!'

Brit smiled vaguely, amused by her enthusiasm but unmoved himself by the piece. His home at Shek-o was full of oriental treasures – he took them for granted and had never shown much interest in them.

‘I wish I could buy him.' Elise traced the outline of the urn with a reverential finger. ‘He would remind me of Singapore. Singapura – the Lion City.'

‘But that thing's not a lion. It's a dragon.'

‘I know that. But it's similar.'

‘Women!' He shook his head. ‘Well, if you want it – get it!'

She hesitated. ‘I don't know. It's an awful lot of money …'

Even as she said it she was surprising herself. The value of money was not something she had ever considered before. Except for that time as a child when her father had been on the verge of bankruptcy and she had been afraid – really afraid – for the first time in her life that there would be no money for what she had been brought up to consider the bare essentials, she had ordered what she wanted and not given a thought to the cost.

Perhaps, she thought, there was a link there from one line of insecurity to another. Or perhaps her values were changing along with so many other things. Maybe, after too long as a feckless, spoilt child, she was growing up …

‘But you would like it?' She looked up to see Brit's eyes on her and something she read in them melted her soul. Not desire now, not blatant sexual attraction, something more, something deeper … or was that just wishful thinking?

‘I'd love it,' she said, with feeling.

Brit nodded abruptly. Then without another word he turned to the Chinese assistant, haggling and bargaining in what sounded like fluent Cantonese.

‘Thank you …' Words seemed superfluous. She was delighted with the gift and delighted too with his generosity in buying it for her because
she
liked it when
he
thought it an ugly monstrosity.

‘We ought to get that thing back to your hotel room,' Brit said as they emerged once more into the tropical heat of the street. ‘We can't carry it around with us, that's certain.'

Back to the Raffles they went, with the dreamlike atmosphere of Tangs lingering.

‘I'll take it up to my room.'

‘Fair enough. I'll meet you later in the Tiffin Room.'

She left him and went upstairs. Then, balancing the awkwardly-shaped package containing the dragon on her hip, she unlocked her door. As it swung open she looked down to replace the key in her bag and then stepped inside.

The voice coming from the depths of the rattan chair startled her into immobility.

‘You're back, then?'

‘Gordon!' she said.

He rose slowly, smiling his familiar, gentle smile – standing, waiting, clearly expecting her to run to him. But she could not move.

He shouldn't be here yet! He shouldn't be here for two more days. But here he was.

Somehow, illogically, she had felt that when he came, when she saw him again, the madness with Brit would end. It was eight long months since they had been together, but she had believed that when he was back in her life, the rudder in her tossing boat, the rock she had learned to cling to, everything would revert to normal. She had even wondered in quiet moments whether perhaps, now that her sexuality was aroused, she might experience with him some of the sheer delight she had found with Brit. After all, she had loved him in her own way and he was her husband.

But now he was here, totally unexpectedly, and it was like coming face to face with a stranger.

She stood with the parcel still clasped in her arms, shaken by the lack of feeling.

‘Well, don't I get a kiss?' Gordon asked.

‘Yes – yes! But Gordon, what are you doing here? I didn't expect you …' She was trying very hard to behave normally. But her mind was racing, keeping time with the jerky rhythm of her pulses.

‘I'll tell you all that later. Now, put this thing down so that I can say hello to you properly.' He took the urn from her, putting it down on the rosewood table, and her eyes followed it possessively.
Don't touch it! Don't take it! That's mine … mine and Brit's!

‘Elise! Oh darling, it's so good to see you again!'

He hugged her, the chaste, almost paternal hug that had long since become their greeting, and her face was pressed into his chest. There was no smell of tobacco from the white clucks – Gordon did not smoke – and his shirt had the smell of home, conjuring up visions of the wash amah at work in their house in Kowloon.

A strange poignancy twisted through her – a sense of belonging, yet not belonging. He stroked her hair, smoothing it away from her face and massaging the nape of her neck gently with his fingertips. She stood impassively beneath his touch and after a few moments he held her away.

‘Let me look at you.' His light blue eyes scanned her face, loving yet faintly puzzled. ‘ You are all right, are you, darling? You've had a terrible time.'

‘Yes, I'm all right now. But Gordon, how did you get here so soon? I wasn't expecting you until the day after tomorrow. ‘

‘Hugh de Gama brought me down on his yacht. He promised a long while ago that he would come down to Singapore for you once you made it this far.'

‘Oh – Hugh.' Without knowing why, Elise shivered.

Hugh was a Portuguese whose family had lived in Hong Kong for almost as long as the Brittains. Their sprawling house on the Peak had been built in the days when social standing was determined by how high on the Peak one lived – and when Chinese were not allowed to live there at all. He was a flamboyant character, Oxford-educated and darkly good-looking, noted not only for his yacht and his business enterprises but also for his string of handsome Irish setters. When he had helped to steer Gordon through the official tangle of setting up business in Hong Kong, the two men had become close friends. For some reason Elise had always been a little afraid of him, though there was no single thing she could pin down and say: ‘That's what I don't like about him!'

Unless it was his eyes, she thought. They were cold and grey as the Atlantic on a November morning, but seemed to see everything. There could be a robot behind those eyes, she thought: recording, filing, assessing. Frightening Hugh, with his clever brain and his steely eyes.

‘I think he would have sailed to Cairo for you if he could,' Gordon was saying. ‘Hugh thinks a great deal of you, Elise.'

She did not reply. That was the other thing she might have said about Hugh: that though he had never said or done anything out of place, never behaved as less than a perfect gentleman, he did not think she would like to be left alone with him. There was a waiting about his wiry body which matched the watchfulness in his eyes. And she knew that if ever he put a foot out of place and was careless enough to be caught doing so, that quick, clever brain of his would supply an answer so prompt and convincing that it would be his accuser who would stand accused.

‘We berthed this afternoon.' Gordon led her over to the deep blue chaise that faced the rattan chair across, a low rosewood table, and drew a silver tray with cups and silver tea-set towards him across its polished surface. ‘I ordered tea as soon as I got here. That's the only thing about Hugh's yacht – the food is superb, the liquor flows free, but the tea never tastes as tea should. Would you like some?'

‘Yes.' Anything, anything to put off the moment when he would take her in his arms again. ‘ They let you into my room, then?'

‘Of course they did.' His voice held mild surprise. ‘I told them I was your husband.'

She reached out for one of the delicate bone china cups.

‘You didn't bring Alex.'

‘No. Why – did you think I might?'

‘I wondered. I
hoped
. I can't wait to see him, Gordon.'

‘But you know he gets sea-sick.'

‘Yes, but …' How could she say that she had thought perhaps he would have arranged for them to go straight to Australia from here, without making it sound as if she couldn't wait to leave him again?' He will have to cope with sea-sickness on the way to Australia,' she ventured.

‘Australia? The evacuations have stopped, Elise.'

‘I know that, but …'

‘I can't understand why everyone is panicking so. Just look at the confusion it's caused! We should be left alone to get on with our lives.'

She looked at him in amazement. A war was going on, yet he was burying his head in the sand, pretending it was not going to affect him. If he had shared her experiences of recent weeks he would never think like that – never. For the first time since she had met him, Elise felt older than her husband.