The Passionate Sinner (24 page)

‘I never tried to do that. You have me ... any way you want me.’

‘As well you know it,
meisje.
Mine to do with as I please, until the final pleasure of being rid of you. Twelve weeks, eh? The time has gone quickly—they say time passes swiftly when the days are pleasant. I can’t deny your magic, much as I’d like to.’ He gripped her wrist, forgetful of the bandaged cut halfway up her arm, and shook the bells on her bracelet. ‘Sweet demon in my tropical garden, what wouldn’t I give to look in your eyes and see what they really hold.’

Merlin wished for that as well; for him to see the love in her eyes ... to see her face without that mask he had imposed upon it. To attempt to explain would only anger and bewilder him all the more ... only if he saw her for himself would he at last believe that someone had come to him on this island and given all she had to give, from her heart, with both hands. He might not forgive her for the deception, but he would no longer hate her.

They packed up their moonlight picnic and made their way slowly up the rock stairway, leaving behind them the rush of the breakers and the awesome glitter of the wide ocean under the pagan moon. They had left words and feelings down there on the sands, a stain of blood from her arm, and the echo of a love cry. Merlin held his armto her body, warm and strong around her waist ... there was no knowing what he suspected about her condition, but she was resolved not to say anything until there was no way to hide it any more. There was still time to wish and pray and hope that Paul might be softened to the idea of keeping her with him on Pulau-Indah ... that when she had the baby he wouldn’t harshly decree a separation from this infant she already loved because it was part of him. He had not taken her crudely, selfishly, and forced this baby upon her ... he had let his body and soul delight in her that night of the temple dancers and the doves; the offerings to the jungle gods, and the scent of tangled flowers out there in the thousand-eyed night.

Merlin lifted her face to the moon and her eyes were large with an aching sweetness and her mouth was like a soft red flower ... she wore the face of Paul’s romantic dream, but he couldn’t see to know it!

In the days that followed and turned to weeks a change came over Paul and he no longer hurt her with harsh words, or loved her with less than a tender strength. Merlin felt convinced that he knew about the baby, but he never spoke of it, and she didn’t dare to speak of it. She took to wearing loose, cool dresses, and because she remained comparatively slim she didn’t think that Hendrik noticed her condition, or the boys about the house. Some of the island women might have suspected, but they were graceful, beautifully mannered people who wouldn’t intrude their awareness unless she, the
tuanbesar’s,
woman, chose to confide in them.

Her eyes, if possible, grew larger in her thin, softly tanned face, and a certain poignancy had settled about her lips. There were many beautiful evenings on the veranda when she longed to kneel at Paul’s side and softly whisper that she was having his baby and was proud and yet terribly afraid that he would truly carry out his threat and deny her right to cherish and nurse this small human being they had made together.

The sensuous throbbing of the tropical night was so conducive to the confiding of secrets ... not that it really was a secret, for Paul had to be aware of the child ... he of all people who knew her so intimately, sharing an apartment with her and a bed. She carried the baby well and was rarely upset in the way of some women. She was proud of this and hoped that Paul was, despite the fact that he never mentioned the giveaway swell to her body when he held her in his arms. Merlin couldn’t fathom his restraint when he had spoken so forcibly of hoping she got pregnant so he could enjoy the pleasure of her pain when he took away from her something that was part of her.

He knew she was carrying a baby! He showed it in his lovemaking, treating her with such infinite gentleness that sometimes she would find herself crying in his arms, aching in her very bones for him to say there was no more room for bitterness and they would share what they had and try to put the cruel past out of their lives.

But no, with adamant determination he kept his deepest feelings to himself and Merlin had to find some joy and gratitude in the fact that he no longer snarled at her in a sudden attack of anger, or was nice only to suddenly become nasty. One evening she dared to mention his book and suggested they carry on with it.

‘No,’ he said, and he leaned against the piano where she had been softly playing in the candlelight. Cheroot smoke made patterns around the flames of the candles and Paul’s face above the white material of his tropical dinner jacket was stern without being remotely cruel. ‘I don’t want you sitting at a typewriter for hours on end, listening to those medical terms as I dictate them. You aren’t my secretary any longer, are you?’

‘Your paramour, Paul?’ she said, running her fingers along the keyboard of the piano.

‘No, the wife of the blind man, for what it’s worth,’ he growled, and then he walked out of the open glass door into the garden, moving at night with that strange instinct that made him seem almost sighted. Merlin stayed very still on the playing stool and listened as his footfalls died away and the sound of the cicadas filled in the silence that followed. He would walk in the forest with a fearless disregard of what hunted there, and she would remain here in this room and die a little with each passing second. Paul knew he was to be a father and he was blind and it was that, rather than hatred of her body harbouring his child, that made it something he wouldn’t speak about. He was in his middle thirties and ready for the responsibility of becoming a parent ... but not like this! Tied to a woman he neither trusted nor truly loved; a sightless man who craved to be a man of purpose, with an important and satisfying role to play in his world of restoration surgery. He had been one of its leaders; he cared passionately for the mutilated people he had helped, and needed desperately to use his great skill.

It broke Merlin’s heart in pieces that she could only give him comfort when he came to her and silently took it. That he needed her was something to cherish, and that the bitter violence had gone out of him was something to rejoice in.

In order to try and close her mind to Paul out there in the forest that was so menacing at night, Merlin played to herself a soft and sentimental song from far-off days ... Dream, when you’re feeling blue. Dream and it might come true. ..

Chords crashed and she leapt to her feet, feeling the jump of her heart as if her baby moved. Snatching at the full skirt of her jade-green dress in softest shantung with wide elbow sleeves edged in creamy lace, she went out into the garden. Tonight the moon was full again and when she reached the compound each tree seemed to stand in a pool of silver and she could see the enormous moon-moths flying about, their wings faintly green and iridescent. The air was laden with the scent of tea-bushes, and the
laan
into the forest was hung with pale bellflower, rose of Sharon, mauve hibiscus that in the moonlight looked like dark velvet. She walked beneath the curving branches of the banyans, the spirit trees, her arms brushed by golden-bird orchids in big fragrant sprays. Clusters of living stars cascaded down huge tree trunks, elephant-ear leaves waved against her as she passed, and the path itself was silver striped by the moon slanting down through the treetops.

She wanted to be with Paul... it terrified her, the mood of pained regret that had made him walk out into the night as if he didn’t care what became of him. She cared, with a passion that burned blindingly in her eyes so she had walked into a thorn bush before she could stop herself, feeling the silk of her dress catch on the jungle barbs. They held on to her dress and ripped it as she tried to struggle free, wincing as the barbs scratched her hands. All around her brooded the iron trees with scarlet flowers, the yellow champac and the raintrees with long green tresses hanging down into the deep lakes of fern. Huge liana stems gave off an earthy scent and Merlin felt the menace of the night and the strange noises seething in secret places, and the silk of her dress gave rippingly all down the side of her leg as she forced herself away from the nail bush.

She stood there a moment, feeling the thud of her heart, and wished now that she hadn’t obeyed her impulse to try and follow Paul. Though blind he knew his way better than she did along this
laan
that led to the
ham-pong,
and she stood hesitant and decided that she had better turn and go back to the house.

It was then that the nightmare began ... then that she caught the sound of someone crashing through the dense foliage at one side of the
laan ...
that someone came out on the path ahead of her and a shafting beam of moonlight fell upon the dark, panting figure. Merlin stood petrified as the moon struck the blade of the
parang
in the man’s hand ... he was holding it aloft and his eyes were crazed in his dark face, and then he started towards her and she knew he was going to cut her down with that deadly blade that could slice thiough the thick sugar-canes with such ease.

A native gone amok, and there seemed no escape as he sprang at her and she heard the scream rip from her lips ... and in that same instant felt the strong thrust of a hand that sent her spinning to one side as the deadly
parang
came slicing down into a white-clad arm.

Paul ... taking her place in the path of the madman and suffering the slash of the blade on his upraised arm.

How it happened, how it could be, was all part of the nightmare until Merlin caught the sound of voices and people rushing upon the scene and someone crying out that
mem
had been right there and the
parang
would have crashed into her skull. Now the cutting knife was on the ground and the villagers had the madman struggling in a hunting net, and in her torn skirt Merlin ran to Paul,who stood rocking on his feet, clutching his arm, the blood gushing on to the white material of his dinner-jacket. Lon was there and it was he who had warned Paul that of a villager was running amok with a
parang ...
they had found her gone from the house and had come to find her.

Her scream had triggered Paul’s swift reaction, and she was
ashen-faced but firmly in control of herself as she and Lon helped Paul along the
laan
to the house. Once there they had to act with speed to stem that awful flow of blood, and with every atom of remembered nursing skill Merlin applied pressure binding to that dreadful slash in her husband’s arm.

‘Meisje?’
he murmured. ‘You are all right,
ja?

‘I’m fine, my dear.’ She stroked the moist hair from his brow and knew from the drawn lines of his shadowed mouth that he was in great pain. She returned to Lon and quietly asked him if it was possible that there was any morphine on the island. There was a dispensary down in the
kampong
and Lon ran off like a young stag to see what he could find to relieve some of the shock and pain for Paul. Merlin knew the injury was a grave one, and when Hendrik came hurrying in, roused from sleep and wearing his robe over bare legs, Merlin told him that Paul would have to be taken to the mainland at once for hospital treatment.

Hendrik stared at his cousin, and then turned to pour himself a stiff brandy. ‘My God,’ he said. ‘That arm—how it’s bled!’

Paul’s shirt was scarlet, and his coat on the floor was sticky with blood. Merlin swayed a little and then took a firm grip on herself. She didn’t dare buckle under, for it was obvious that Hendrik wasn’t a stout rudder in a storm and she was going to need every nerve in her body, every bit of grit in her to help Paul... her Paul, who had saved her life out there on the path, stepping in her place and accepting that fearful blade through his flesh and bone.

There was no morphine available, much to her distress, but Lon brought something from one of the temple priests that he said would ease the worst of the pain. It was a whitish liquid in a small gourd, obviously a drug of some sort prepared from wild poppy or mandragora root, but Merlin didn’t hesitate to pour a measure of it into a glass and give it to Paul. After only a few seconds it made him drowsy and the tension in his face began to relax. ‘Opium,’ he murmured, and his lips quirked. ‘Thanks to heaven you don’t lose your head—you have realised that I am almost amputated?’

‘No!’ She put her hand over his lips. ‘Lon is preparing the helicopter and he’s going to land it in the compound —yes, I know it’s dangerous, but he wants to do it. He loves you.’ She swallowed the scalding lump in her throat and hung on tightly to her control. ‘All of us do— we’re going to fly you straight to hospital and I won’t let you lose your precious arm. I won’t, Paul, I promise you!’

His face against the cushions of the couch was a mask of shadows, and then the lids of his eyes closed in several hard blinks, as if he were fighting with tears. Merlin leaned forward and kissed his face. ‘You’re so brave, my dear. Be brave a little longer. ..’

His eyelids lifted and again he blinked, as if the opium was making him feel dizzy. ‘Angel face,’ he said, and his head fell sideways on the cushion, and his eyes closed heavily ... deliriously.

He was sleeping a little and Merlin was thankful for it. She accepted a glass of hot milk and brandy from one of the boys, and another brought her a cloak from her wardrobe; the huge blue one embroidered with a peacock on the shoulders, which Paul had had made for her down in the
kampong.
It was somehow incongruous for this desperate flight to the mainland, and yet also in a strange way it was appropriate ... the wings of the bird stretched out with her feelings, as if she would carry Paul in her very arms.

Hendrik was leaning forward in his chair, staring at the floor. ‘You love him like hell, don’t you?’ he muttered. ‘That girl of mine, Sarinha, she thinks you’re having a kid. Is it true?’

Merlin hesitated, then inclined her head.