The House of Seven Fountains

CHAPTER ONE

A
s
Vivien buckled
the safety belt across her slim hips, she found that her hands were shaking. For an instant she had a wild impulse to scramble out of her seat and dash to the door, but at the same moment the engines throbbed into life and the great aircraft began to taxi slowly toward the main runway.

With a stab of panic she knew that she had lost her last
chance to change her mind. The j
ou
rn
ey had begun. There was no going back.

To steady herself she drew aside the curtain and peered out of the porthole. The glass was misted with rain, and there was nothing to see but the blurred lights of the terminal buildings beyond the dark, windswept runway.

It was not the prospect of flying that had momentarily unnerved her, even though the first part of the journey promised to be stormy, but the knowledge that from now on she was alone. Whatever lay ahead she must face it by herself with no one to turn to for advice or help.

Everyone had warned her that it was not only a fool’s errand but a dangerous one. During the past five weeks all the possible hazards—and a number of highly improbable ones—had been drummed into her, and several times she had almost capitulated. They had used every means from cajolery to subtle threats to dissuade her from coming, but through it all, some latent core of obstinacy had made her hold fast to her decision. Now, suddenly, her nervousness dissolved, and she felt a surge of exhilaration because the adventure had started, because for the first time in twelve years she was free!

The engines, which had settled into a steady drone, suddenly roared into a tremendous crescendo of power and the aircraft surged forward, faster and faster, until the last of the flashing lights marking the perimeter was swallowed up in the blackness outside. The takeoff had been so smooth that it was not until the
No Smoking sign at the head of the cabin was switched off that Vivien realized they were airborne.

“Do you mind if I smoke?”

It was some seconds before she discovered that the question was addressed to her.

“
No, not at all,” she said hastily. Since boarding the plane she had been too absorbed in her thoughts to take any notice of the man in the next seat, but now, as they would be traveling companions for the next three days and nights, she made an unobtrusive study of him.

He was tall, so tall that the generous seating space barely accommodated his long legs. He was dark, as dark as a Gypsy with close-cropped black hair and a profile marked by heavy brows, a hawk nose and an aggressive jaw. As soon as he had lighted his cigarette he eased himself into a more comfortable position and opened a book. It appeared to be a textbook of some kind, for there was a complicated-looking graph on the right
hand page. Judging by his tan he was returning to the Middle or Far East, and because his height and breadth of shoulder suggested a vigorous occupation, she thought he was probably an engineer or some kind of planter. He was wearing a well-cut business suit and dark tie, but he looked as if he would be more at home in a bush shirt and khaki shorts.

Across the gangway two elegant middle-aged women were chatting animatedly in penetrating American accents, and Vivien could not help wishing that her neighbor was the talkative type. She was too keyed up to read the magazines that she had bought at the airport, and would have welcomed a conversation.

“You can undo your belt now, Miss Connell. We’ll be serving dinner in a few minutes,” the stewardess said, pausing on her way to the rear of the cabin.

Vivien returned her friendly smile, admiring her trim blue uniform and the jaunty forage cap on her neat blond curls. As she undid the straps and tucked them down the sides of her seat, she was surprised to find that she was extremely hungry. Apart from the boiled egg and one slice of toast that she had forced herself to eat at breakfast time, she had had nothing all day.

Reminded of the hostile atmosphere that had clouded her departure, she bit her lip unhappily. If only there had been
one
person to wish her well! But even Roger, the most kindly disposed of her relatives, had said goodbye with a curtness that
had made it clear that this time she had forfeited his goodwill.

“Sherry or martini, madam?”

She was roused from her thoughts by the appearance of the steward with a tray of aperitifs.

As she sipped her sherry, Vivien knew that it was futile to brood over the bleakness of her leave-taking. Then, out of the past, came a half-forgotten echo. Across the years she saw Michael Connell sitting at the head of the dinner table in a Mediterranean villa and raising his glass to the toast “No regrets!” Now, twelve years after his death, the memory of his favorite slogan gave her courage.

Presently the stewardess brought bowls of hot mushroom soup. But although her neighbor put aside his book during the excellent meal he remained silent, and Vivien had not the confidence to make the first remark. After dinner she went to the powder room, and as he stood up to let her pass she saw that his eyes were blue, a vivid sea-blue in odd contrast to his swarthy complexion and crisp black hair.

The powder room was beyond a curtained archway leading toward the cockpit. It was surprisingly spacious, and the shelf beneath the mirror was ranged with bottles of toilet water, cleansing lotion and eau de cologne to supplement the limited water supply, which passengers were requested to use sparingly. Vivien rolled back the cuffs of her poplin blouse and washed her hands. She had never used colored nail polish because Aunt Constance considered it vulgar, but now she
w
as free to do as she pleased regardless of anyone’s disapproval.

She could also indulge her longing for pretty clothes. Ever since leaving school she had worn the clumsy tweeds and dowdy silk dresses that Aunt Constance thought “ladylike” and which suited her sturdy, florid-faced cousins but were all wrong for Vivien’s own slender figure and unusual coloring.

Her hair, which she wore smoothed back from her forehead and held by a tortoiseshell Alice band, was the true honey gold that seldom outlasts childhood, and she had inherited her mother’s creamy complexion. But the sensitive curves of her mouth, the slanting gray green eyes and flyaway eyebrows were a legacy from her father. It was her likeness to the rapscallion Michael that her relatives had always resented.

She was just about to return to the cabin when the aircraft gave a violent lurch, and she had to seize the edge of the hand
basin to save herself from falling. Before she had time to feel anything but surprise the plane steadied, and she heard the engines vibrating as strongly as ever.

Back in the cabin everything seemed normal. Then, as she had almost reached her seat, it happened again—a sickening bouncing motion as if a giant hand had buffeted the plane off its course. Vivien made a wild grab at the back of the nearest seat, missed it and pitched straight into the arms of her taciturn neighbor.

Scarlet with embarrassment, she struggled to regain her
footing and found herself gripped firmly around the waist.

“Did you hurt yourself?”

He spoke as calmly as if strange girls frequently catapulted onto his lap.

“No
... it
just ...
I’m terribly sorry, I wasn’t expecting it,” Vivien explained confusedly.

“Are you all right, Miss Connell?” The stewardess had hurried up.

“
Yes, thank you, perfectly all right,” Vivien assured her, feeling thoroughly foolish.

“
Lucky you fell on Dr. Stransom,” the stewardess said cheerfully. “We seem to have hit a rough patch, but it isn’t anything to worry about. You should fasten your safety belt for a little while in case we get any more bumps.”

To confirm her advice the warning sign switched on, and she moved away to reassure the other passengers that the jolting was only a temporary discomfort.

“
I hope I didn’t hurt you,” Vivien said apologetically when she was securely strapped into her seat.

“You’re not exactly a heavyweight. ” Dr. Stransom looked faintly amused by her evident mortification. “Have a cigarette to soothe your nerves. These air pockets are a bit unsteadying on one’s first flight.”

“
No, thank you. I don’t smoke. How did you know it is m
y
first flight?”

“
You waited for the takeoff as if you were facing a firing squad,” he said coolly.

She flushed. Had her nervousness been so apparent?

“Don’t
worry. We all feel a bit green the first time,” he said.

“Have you flown a lot?”

“
Quite a bit,
”
he said briefly, and before she could pursue the topic he had retrieved his book from the floor, where it had been knocked by her abrupt descent, and began flipping over the pages to find his place.

He needn’t make it quite so obvious that he doesn’t want to talk,
she thought crossly.
What a detestably brusque man. Don’t worry, doctor. Nothing would induce me to say another word to you.

Soon after midnight they landed at Rome airport, where hot coffee and snacks awaited them. Most of the women passengers, including Vivien, made a beeline for the souvenir stalls where pure silk scarves, cashmere sweaters and Italian mosaic jewelry were temptingly displayed.

Vivien bought a cyclamen scarf and three little hand-carved deer before going into the restaurant where she shared a table with the two Americans. She noticed that Dr. Stransom was sitting alone, still deep in his book.

Back in the airplane, the passengers settled down for the remainder of the night. With the central lights lowered, the cabin was restfully dim, and Vivien slipped off her shoes and wrapped herself in the light blanket that the stewardess had provided. She hoped that her skirt would not be too crumpled by morning and then remembered that tomorrow they would reach the sunny coast of Lebanon, and she would be able to wear the summer dress packed in her overnight bag.

Adjusting the air vent so that a cool breeze fanned her forehead, she lay back and let her thoughts drift.

This time last night she had been tossing restlessly in her narrow bed at home. Home
...
her aunt’s house had never really been that. From the day of her arrival as a bewildered ten-year-old she had been an outsider, always alien, always conscious of being a poor relation.

She had been bo
rn
on the French Riviera, and her earliest recollections were of blue skies and sunlight and the scent of flowers wafting down from the hill above the whitewashed villa. Her childhood had been utterly carefree, and Michael and Imogen Connell, still passionately in love with each other, had been more like an elder brother and sister than parents. Then, when Vivien was ten, they had both been killed in a tragic car smash, and before the child had recovered from the terrible impact of her loss, Mrs. Constance Sinclair, a forbidding middle-aged Englishwoman who, incredibly, was Imogen’s sister, had arrived at the villa and swept Vivien away to the dank gray gloom of England in midwinter.

From then on everything was changed. Vivien’s wild mane of honey gold hair was screwed back into tight pigtails, her shorts
and
espadrilles were replaced by a hideous navy serge gym tunic and stout walking shoes, and she was dispatched to a famous boarding school where her cousins, Judith and Margaret, were already established. After the complete freedom she had always known, the strictly disciplined community life was a purgatory that transformed her from a lively, laughing imp into a wan
-
faced, tongue-tied little misery. The holidays were even worse. Her cousins baited her unmercifully, and Mrs. Sinclair was constantly reprimanding her for various unwitting transgressions. The final blow came when she was told that, by Sinclair standards, her adored father was a blackguard and a wastrel. When Vivien had sprung to his defense, her aunt had forbidden her to mention his name.

“
I can only hope that we shall be able to eradicate any unfortunate characteristics that you may have inherited,” she told her niece severely. “Now go to your room and try not to give way to any more of these shameful displays of temper.”

Soon Vivien learned that it was useless to fight against her aunt’s inflexible will. By the time she left school submission had become habitual, so that when Aunt Constance overruled her tentative suggestion that she would like to train for a career, she accepted the decision that she should learn to drive and to type and act as Mrs. Sinclair’s secretary. But while on the surface she was quiet and docile, inwardly she longed for the day when she would be able to escape from her aunt’s domination.

When at last her chance came in the form of a solici
t
or’s letter she could scarcely believe it was true. Her godfather, John Cunningham, whom she had not seen since she was seven, had died and left her a capital sum and an estate on the other side of the world. When Vivien had announced her decision to visit the property, the Sinclairs had thought she was joking. When they realized that she was serious they were aghast. That their quiet, meek cousin should actually contemplate traveling eight thousand miles to inspect some ramshackle house left her by an eccentric old man with an unsavory reputation was incredible. Even more startling was the determination with which Vivien had clung to her plans in the face of their objections.

Finally Aunt Constance had issued an ultimatum.

“If you persist with this wildcat scheme I must warn you that you cannot expect me to support you any longer, Vivien,” she had announced. “I am amazed that you should think of deliberately flouting my wishes in this selfish way. If you leave now, you leave for good.”

And with the rashness that had been one of her father’s “unfortunate characteristics,” Vivien had said, “Very well, Aunt Constance. I’m sorry you feel like this about it, but whatever happens I’m going to Malaya.”

Now, lying back in the darkened cabin with the first lap of her long journey an accomplished fact, she wondered if she had been crazy to rebel against her aunt’s wishes. A large portion of the money her godfather had left her had already been spent on her return fare to Singapore, and what remained would not keep her forever. She could sell the estate, but it might not be worth much, and then she would have to return to England and find some means of supporting herself. One thing was certain. She would never appeal to the Sinclairs for assistance. She knew that she should be grateful to them for taking her into their home. But although they had fed and clothed and educated her, they had never loved or even been fond of her.

It’s a gamble,
she thought sleepily.
A mad gamble that I shall probably lose. But Michael was a gambler. He always said that if you never took a chance, you never won a prize. Anyway it’s an adventure, something to look back on when
I’
m old. I wonder why Godfather John left the house to me. Perhaps there was no one else. I wonder why
...

When she awoke t
he pale light of morning was filtering through the curtain. She sat up eagerly and pulled it aside. Ahead, the sky was a blaze of gold, streaked with mother-of-pearl and citron. Twenty thousand feet below the Mediterranean glimmered like a vast expanse of rippled gray silk. The plane, its wings silvered by the rising sun, flew on into the dawn.

A movement behind her made her turn. Dr. Stransom was waking up, stretching his long legs into the aisle and wincing with stiffness. He ran a hand over his chin and grimaced at the audible rasp of stubble.

“Beards have no respect for circumstances, I’m afraid,” he said wryly, catching her eye.

“I don’t expect any of us look very presentable.”

She caught sight of the two American matrons who were still sleeping, their elaborate coiffures wrapped in tulle bandeaux.

The doctor followed her glance.

“Tweedledum and Tweedledee,” he said with a smile. She had estimated him to be about thirty-five or six but, smiling, he looked considerably younger. Although he seemed to smoke fairly heavily, his teeth were very white against the tan of his skin.

“I think I’ll get along to the washroom before the crush starts,
”
he said, standing up and taking both their overnight bags from the luggage rack.

“
Oh, thank you.
”
Vivien wondered if she had been too hasty in her judgment of him. This morning he seemed quite friendly.

In the powder room she washed her face and changed into a beige linen dress. It was not a particularly becoming garment, but at least it was cool. By the time she had concluded her toilet most of the other passengers were waking up. Few of the women had removed their makeup the night before, and the result was unattractive. Vivien felt grateful that, although her clothes were dowdy, her complexion was presentable in its natural state.

Dr. Stransom was already back in his seat. He had taken off his jacket and rolled up his shirt sleeves. As she sat down she caught a faint aroma of shaving cream.

Soon after breakfast the aircraft began to lose height preparatory to landing at Beirut. As they walked across the airstrip in the blazing sunlight that even at this early hour glared fiercely down upon the shadeless landscape, it seemed incredible that barely twelve hours ago they had all been shivering in the chilly dampness of an English January evening.

To
Vivien, t
he following day and night made a kaleidoscope of changing scenery, strange costumes and unknown tongues. On and on they flew, over the Persian Gulf, across the measureless continent of India and so, at last, on the evening of the third day, to Burma and the verdant city of Rangoon with the gilded dome of the Shwe Dagon Pagoda flashing in the late sunlight.

After forty-eight hours in the air the passengers were hot, jaded and badly in need of a bath and change of clothes. Most of them were still wearing winter clothing and sweating uncomfortably in the cloying heat. Even Dr. Stransom’s shirt clung moistly to his back, revealing powerful shoulders above a lean waist.

The hotel where they were staying overnight was a large building with echoing marble floors and huge electric fans suspended from the ceilings. Having signed the register in her neat legible handwriting, Vivien followed a lanky Indian baggage porter up to her room—a lofty apartment with tall windows overlooking an enclosed courtyard. The bed was shrouded in white mosquito netting on a wooden canopy, and there was a comfortable bamboo couch beneath the window.

The porter switched on the overhead fan, accepted her tip with a mute salaam and departed, his bare feet making a faint slithering sound on the stone floor.

With a murmur of relief, Vivien stripped off her sticky garments and stood under the fan enjoying the current of air blowing down on her hot skin. Then, slipping on a dressing gown, she went in search of the bathrooms. At the far end of the corridor an Indian lad in a singlet and khaki shorts was squatting on his heels. He jumped up as she approached.

“Missy want bath?” He grinned at her, his black eyes friendly.

Vivien nodded and the boy opened a door, ushered her into a spacious bathroom and turned on both hot and cold taps. Then he arranged a wooden board beside the bath, made a gracious gesture, which evidently meant that he was presenting her with the finest bathing facilities in the whole of Burma, and went out.

Vivien locked the door and slipped off her shoes. The water was very rusty, but the sound of the gushing taps was so refreshing that she could scarcely wait to climb in. But as she removed her robe, she gave a gasp of horror. The largest cockroach she had ever seen had emerged from beneath the bath and was crawling toward her bare feet, its feelers quivering threateningly.

For fully thirty seconds Vivien was petrified with loathing. Then, within a yard of her unprotected toes, the giant beetle suddenly turned in its tracks and scuttled back into hiding. She was strongly tempted to call the bath boy to come and kill it, but then she realized that even if he understood what she asked he would think her excessively silly to be afraid of an insect that was probably as common here as a house fly in England. If she was going to stay in the tropics she would have to accustom herself to the greater number of creeping things. She might even encounter a few snakes.

The thought of meeting a python sent her scrambling into the bath, and, since it was possible that the cockroach might decide to crawl up the side, made her forego the idle ablutions that she had intended to make. Instead she washed standing up, keeping a wary eye on the rim of the bath in case those sinister feelers should reappear.

An hour later, wearing a clean blouse and cotton skirt, she went downstairs. Passing the cocktail bar she saw the air crew relaxing over well-earned drinks. The stewardess had changed into a pale yellow dress and looked even more glamorous.

She paused on the threshold of the lounge. Dr. Stransom and Professor Linton, a thin, white-haired anthropologist to whom she had talked for a while at Calcutta, were sitting near the doorway with tall glasses of iced lager on the table between them.

“Ah, Miss Connell. Will you join us?” The professor smiled at her and drew up a third chair.

Vivien thanked him and glanced at the doctor. He had risen to his feet, but his face was expressionless, and she could not tell if he
shared the professor’s welcome. He had not spoken to her all day.

“What would you like to drink? I recommend the lime juice. Nobody makes fresh lime juice like the Burmese.” Professor Linton beckoned a waiter.

Having given the order, he said, “This time tomorrow we shall have reached our destination. I cannot say that I enjoy traveling by air. It’s a great time saver, of course, but I sometimes wonder if the
modern
urge for speed is a destructive rather than constructive force. I suppose I am old-fashioned.”

“What takes you to Malaya, Professor Linton?” Vivien asked.

“I’m making a study of the aboriginal tribes. Very little is known of their origin. Dr. Stransom has been telling me about a number of expeditions he has made into the interior—most interesting. You say you are in practice at Mauping, Stransom? That is in the northern state of Perak, is it not?”