The Passionate Sinner (10 page)

Merlin stroked her hands down over her hips, fine-boned under the silk. In the past she had never sought to look glamorous, believing that it couldn’t be achieved and she’d end up looking a fool. But something in the island atmosphere had got into her blood, and what she felt for Paul had certainly got into her eyes, into the contours of her face, and even into her hah- which under the touch of her fingers felt as smooth as her silk clothing.

Through the mirror, through the ribs of the shutters, the lightning jabbed like steel knives. Wasn’t this the way the sacrificial girls had gone to face Baal, hair and face beautified, slender body encased in silk, to be lifted on to the flaming mouth of the terrible god and swallowed whole, like some luscious morsel that like the turtle screamed as it died.

Merlin shook her head at herself. ‘You’re crazy,’ she told herself, and turning away from her disturbing reflection she collected her handbag, a couple of books, and a handkerchief, and after turning out the lamps she walked from her room with that grace of movement that a long skirt imparts to a woman.

And Delilah played the harlot, she thought, and Samson lost his eyes!

As she went downstairs the house seemed to pitch and roll like a ship in a storm, but in reality the sensation was in her head, induced by the winds and her heightened nerves. She stood gripping the balustrade, suspended, it seemed, between hell and the strangest of heavens. It was incredible, but here she was in the heart of a storm, in a house which that havoc might wreck, entirely alone with the only person in the world who truly mattered to her. Her heart pounded beneath the silk of her shirt, and the hem of her skirt caressed her ankles as she went on down the stairs, creating a sensuous whispering that she was aware of with her blood even as the noise of the wind-driven rain lashed at her ears.

She saw that the great lanterns of hammered bronze had been taken down from the stairwell, everything movable had been put out of harm’s way and there in the big stone-flagged kitchen she had to hunt for plates and a salad bowl, having found cold spare-ribs in the larder that would go down rather well with celery, tomatoes and sliced cucumber, with a big stick of bread, and a pot of strong coffee.

All the time she worked Merlin could feel the vibrations in and around the house, the whining pitch of the wind as it tore at a tree, and the way it hurled itself at the storm doors which Paul had firmly closed, pushing items of furniture against them as added protection.

Merlin knew that nothing would keep them safe from the typhoon if when it struck they were at the centre of it, but in the meantime the heavy doors kept the elements from being driven inside and they gave a sense of security that was welcome, for the rain was falling in such torrents that the kitchen felt to Merlin as if it were undersea. A pair of hurricane lamps provided light, and there at the big wooden table she prepared the strangest meal of her life. At last everything was arranged on a trolley, the salad and spare-ribs, with sliced sweet potatoes she had fried in butter. Rice cakes and pickled plums, the long-spouted coffee pot, and cups with sugar and cream.

She wheeled the trolley to the door, not sorry to be leaving the kitchen that echoed with the sounds of the storm. When she reached the hall she called out for Paul, not knowing in which room he intended them to have lunch. She was glancing into the austere dining-room when she heard him at the far end of the hall.

‘This way,
mevrouw,’
he called out to her. ‘Ah, I hear the trolley, and I must admit I’m ravenous.’

‘A rather mixed
koffietafel,’
she informed him, as she arrived at his side.

‘I smell coffee, and right now I could eat just about anything. It is strange, eh, how danger intensifies our hungers? This,
mevrouw,
is the room where we shall share the typhoon, and with luck live through it. Please to enter.’

Merlin wheeled the trolley inside, finding the room fairly small and completely walled in lovely old tiles, faded to the hue of dusty blue velvet. It had a heavy teak door and reclining chairs in bamboo. Here again hurricane lamps had been lit, playing an amber light over a lacquered cabinet and a model of a Chinese junk whose ivory-wood and shining wires seemed to be on the move in the quivering light.

It was a room embedded in the very centre of the house, and after Paul had closed the door and pushed the bolt into place, he pulled a cord and set in motion a ceiling fan with teakwood blades. Merlin smelled the dust as the blades began to rotate, and she smiled admiringly at Paul’s capability, which even his blindness couldn’t totally impair.

‘Well, what are you thinking?’ he asked.

‘That’s it’s a vast relief,
mynheer,
to have some of the noise shut out.

‘The fan squeaks a little, but we need the ventilation, and we’ll pretend it’s mice. You aren’t afraid of mice, are you?’

‘No, as a matter of fact I used to keep white ones when I was a child.’

‘Ah, childhood, how many dreams away for both of us! Is there a table in here, otherwise I’ll fetch one.’

Merlin glanced around and saw a floor-table tucked away in a corner of the room, of shining hardwood with a trim of pearly shell. ‘There’s one of those low oriental tables, and we’ll have to sit on the floor to eat from it.’

‘Do you mind doing that?’

‘Not at all. The chairs have squab cushions, so we can use those to make ourselves comfortable.’

‘Excellent. Almost all the comforts of home.’

‘The walls are completely tiled,
mynheer.
Did you know?’

‘Ja,
I went round feeling them and that’s why I decided we would take shelter in this little lair. Come, let us have coffee and food! It smells good.’

‘There’s only cold meat, I’m afraid, but the sweet potatoes are hot and there’s a salad. I’ll arrange the table and cushions and wait on you.

‘Like a
geisha?’

‘Wh-what makes you say that?’

He seemed to find her face with his blind eyes and she saw a faint smile twitch his lips. ‘You are still wearing your kimono?’

‘No—I have on a long skirt.’

‘Of silk, eh? I can hear it as you move about.’

‘Yes—defiance of the storm gods.’ She could feel herself blushing. ‘A little foolish, no doubt, and not very practical, but I couldn’t resist wearing something that I might not get the chance to wear again.’

‘You mean to go in style, eh? You should have told me you meant to dress up, then I’d have worn something a little smarter.”

‘You look fine,’ she said, seeing the dust across his forehead, his sweat-tousled hair, the rip in his trousers. He shattered her, the way he looked ... a blind man who had done all he could to make this house as secure as possible from the rage of the storm. She wanted to approach him, to wrap her arms around him and kiss his dirty face ... let her lips be free with all the love words that clamoured inside her to be expressed.

She fetched the table from the alcove, gathered up the cushions and arranged them at either side of a short-legged table. She guided Paul to his seat and as he took a lounging position he seemed to lean a little towards her and she saw the tensing of his nostrils. He had caught the fragrance of her perfume and as she set the plates and served the food she waited for him to make a sardonic remark. Something to the effect that she not only rustled around like a
geisha
but was all scented up like one.

‘Trimahkisih,’
he murmured, as she laid a napkin across his knees and guided his hand to the level of the table.

‘I know what you’re thinking,’ she just had to say something, ‘that I’m dressed up and scented up like—like some tart. I don’t know what got into me! You must think I’ve taken leave of my senses?’

‘I truly don’t think anything of the sort.’ he assured her, taking a spare-rib into his fingers and holding it poised for a bite. ‘It strikes me as perfectly natural that a woman should find some opportunity to wear a dress she has only recently bought. You are wearing eastern silk, for it has an almost sensual sound as it moves against the skin of a woman, and so I realise that you have been shopping in the
kampong.
And there you also bought the perfume, eh? Rather more effective than lavender water, if you don’t mind my saying so?’

His lips quirked and he took a hungry bite of the cold meat. Merlin shot him a questioning look as she lifted the coffeepot and filled their cups. ‘You do think I’m a fool, don’t you,
mynheer?’

‘No, I think you are a shy woman who has rarely dared to be yourself. Why shouldn’t you indulge in a little vanity? There are females who indulge vices you would neither understand nor be capable of executing, so for the sake of heaven don’t call yourself a tart! You felt for once the natural urge to let the woman in you take over from the efficient secretary, and I do assure you that if your perfume offended me, I would request that you scrub it off. This is an excellent salad dressing, by the way.’

‘I’m glad you like it.’ She placed his cup of coffee within reach of his hand, and as always she felt a sense of wonderment as she watched the adept way he handled the act of eating, which to a sighted person offered none of the complications which someone blind came up against. She had taken care to lay his utensils exactly as they were laid by the houseboy, and to place his food as if his plate was a quarter-hour clock, with his meat at the twelve position, his potatoes at three, the salad at six, and the bread at number nine. He then knew exactly where to place his knife and fork and could make conversation quite naturally, without fumbling with his food. Whenever
rijstaffel
was served, the various small dishes were placed in a clockwise position on the table, making it easier for him to select what he wanted.

Merlin pushed her own food around her plate and she was glad he had a good appetite even if she didn’t feel very hungry. She had a fateful feeling that the tragedy which had started in London was going to come to a climax here on the island of Pulau-Indah ... the tempest, untamed and ferocious, was building up and she and Paul were facing together what might be their last hours on earth. It was said that confession was good for the soul, but she wanted him to go on respecting her right up to the end ... she shrank from him ever knowing who she really was.

‘You must eat your lunch,’ he said, having caught the restless movements of her knife and fork. ‘It might be hours before we eat again, for as the storm intensifies it will be safer if you remain here in this room. Come, you have provided an excellent meal and food inside you will help dispel the nervous tension. Eat,
mevrouw,
that is an order. I don’t want a fainting woman on my hands, for how should I cope with the method of revival when you are wearing that long silk skirt? It would be most awkward getting your head between your knees,
ja
?’

‘The mind boggles,
mynheer.’
She broke into a smile, and started to eat her lunch, enjoying far more the luxury of feasting her eyes on Paul, lounging there on his cushions, casually eating pickled plums, the light of the hurricane lamps playing over his face. His grey eyes had a sheen to them under the heavy lids, as of oyster-shell, full of light and yet looking only into blackness as he seemed to gaze at her from across the table.

‘We face damnation or heaven,’ he said, his eyes so strangely brilliant above the sculptured bones of his face. ‘I think I am glad that you stayed to keep me company, Miss Lakeside. At least I have had a good lunch.’

Merlin felt her heart’s movement ... she knew that Paul was thanking her in his own way for not leaving him to face the typhoon in his lonely darkness.

‘You are welcome,
mynheer,’
she replied. ‘Would you like some more coffee?’

‘If you please, my
geisha.’

CHAPTER FIVE

As the afternoon waned the winds had reached such force that Paul estimated they must be tearing across the ocean and the island at the rate of fifty to sixty miles an hour, and they still hadn’t reached the peak of their intensity. The ocean swell would be terrific, he told Merlin, the sea rising to meet the rain-drenched skies in a kind of cauldron that a gigantic ladle would be stirring round and round in an anti-clockwise motion.

‘Do you think we might be in the eye of the storm?’ she asked him.

‘The devil’s eye,’ he drawled, cheroot smoke pluming from his lips. ‘If so it will come like a clap of doom and there will be no time for goodbye or regret. Put another record on the gramophone,
mevrouw.
Let us stay as cheerful as possible, and those old recordings help to drown out some of the noise.’

He had found the ancient wind-up machine in the den, along with a box of equally old-fashioned records and they had passed some of the time playing them. He had also brought a bottle and a pair of glasses from that trip to the den; bang wine, he had said, which he was saving for the moment when he felt it would be most needed. He had smiled and explained that bang wine was a slang term for champagne used by the islanders, and upon this occasion more than appropriate.

Merlin sorted through the records and found an oldie with a sentimental title
Goodnight, My Love,
That, too, was appropriate, and as she wound up the gramophone she watched Paul in his bamboo long-chair, his large frame at ease but always a listening tension to the way he held his head. He was waiting, listening with ears far more acute than hers, to the signal for the opening of that long necked bottle with the gold foil around the cork. It was a good champagne, a powerful one, and she knew that he meant to blot out for her that moment, should it come, when the typhoon would rush down on them and sweep them into eternity. She knew it could happen, and the courage she had found to face it was rooted in Paul ... he was all and everything to her, so passionately at the centre of her being that she wanted nothing more than to live and die with him. The elemental forces all around them had brought that passion fully alive in her, and though it could never be released in a physical sense, at least she was free to love him with her eyes, with graceful movements of her body as she moved about the room, or knelt just beyond his hand as she listened to the music from another, more romantic time, when people had been unafraid to be sweet in their loving The honeyed words of the old song filled the room, and the lids of Paul’s eyes had a weight to them that Merlin wanted to touch with her fingertip, feeling the flutter of those gold lashes, bending forward with her heart on her lips to press kisses to where the pain had scorched away his sunlight.