The Passionate Sinner (5 page)

‘Why is your hand shaking?’ he drawled. ‘What are you so nervous about, Miss Lakeside?’

‘I—I’m probably feeling a little fatigued, and you have to remember, Mynheer van Setan, that I have never been this far from home before. I’m feeling strange, that’s all.’

He took his cup with a murmur of thanks. ‘You live alone in England, eh?’

‘Yes.’ She added cream to her own cup of tea and had a brief vision of that Tottenham bedsitter where she had spent so much of her life since her dismissal from the hospital, where she had lived in the adjoining nursing quarters. She could have gone North to stay with her mother and stepfather, but there would have been too many questions to answer, and all she had wanted was to be on her own, and the bedsitter had been a kind of cell each evening when she returned from her job, and there for weeks and months she had served a kind of sentence, blaming herself as much as that other nurse for not noticing that the fluid in the eye-cup had a different odour ... but Paul had performed a sort of miracle on that woman’s face and she had been so carried away by the wonder of his skill, and by him, that all she had wanted was to help to soothe his poor tired eyes as quickly as possible.

‘Yes,’ she said again. ‘I lived alone, for as I wrote and told you,
mynheer,
I’m a spinster and I have only the responsibility of earning a living. I liked the idea of working on a island for a few months.’

‘The idea struck you as romantic?’ He lounged there drinking his tea, and Merlin was sure she detected a twist of mockery on his lips, as if it amused him that a single woman, obviously lonely because men found her unexciting, should harbour the ridiculous notion that a remote island and a blind man could provide any romance for her.

‘I’m not a person who chases rainbows,
mynheer,
but I did like the idea of an island far away from the turmoil and dissatisfaction of modern life. Islands remain untouched, don’t they?’

‘Not by natural forces such as hurricanes—I hope you are eating the cakes? My cook will be affronted if you send them back untouched.’

‘Won’t you have one,
mynheer?’

‘I would rather smoke a cigar, if you are not averse to the strong Dutch sort?’

‘Oh, please smoke!’ And with a fork poised above a slice of coconut cake Merlin watched the unfumbling way he sought a slim, very dark cigar from a carved box and pressed to the end of it a lighter with the flame inside the cylinder, holding it in position until smoke came from his indrawn nostrils. She marvelled at his adroitness, but then he had always had such certain hands, so confident and dexterous, and somehow his blindness had increased his sense of touch. With her gaze full upon him it seemed incredible that he couldn’t actually see the cigar in his fingers, or watch the smoke make blue shapes in the air.

‘Go on with your cake,’ he said. ‘You don’t have to watch me as if I’m going to set fire to myself ... yes. I know you are sitting there like a mother all tensed to spring to the rescue of an errant infant, but I’m really quite capable,
mevrouw.’

‘You’re remarkable,’ she agreed. ‘I never knew that someone sightless could be so—so self-reliant.’

‘Practice, and the very definite urge not to be a burden on the sighted. Like the deaf, my sort can be a pain in the neck.’

‘Oh no!’ She couldn’t suppress the note of pain in her voice, and again she saw his lips take that mordant twist.

‘But yes!’ The strong smoke clouded about his face. ‘Those who can see take a great deal for granted, but there do happen to be compensations for the blinded. The imagination can run riot at times and I can place over the blank faces any sort of mask that takes my fancy. Shall I describe your mask and shall we see how closely it fits?’

‘No, I don’t think I want that.’

‘I’m your employer and you are under my orders, so don’t forget it.’ He flicked ash and it fell in a star to the teakwood floor. ‘You have a rather reserved face, I think, and you wear very little make-up and a very discreet perfume, which probably means that you don’t regard yourself as exciting to men.’

‘I—I’m very ordinary,
mynheer.’
And she was also unnerved by his uncannily perceptive image of her, almost as if he knew in advance the person he was describing.

‘But you aren’t ordinary, Miss Lakeside. Such a woman wouldn’t travel halfway across the world in order to work—she might do so in order to marry, but not to carry on the rather tedious task of taking shorthand notes and pounding a typewriter. You are fairly tall for a woman—I can judge so from your voice when you are standing near me—and you have a very slim figure.’

‘But how can you tell that?’ she exclaimed.

‘From the shape of your hand, which is slender, with the tapering fingers of the person who does not put on undue weight. Your colouring remains a mystery, but let me take a guess—your eyes are blue?’

‘No.’ She gave a brief, pained smile. They’re brown.’

‘Strange, one usually associates shy people with blue eyes. I wonder why?’

‘Because the sea is blue and secretive.’

‘Are you secretive, Miss Lakeside—and please let me add at this juncture that you have an unusually attractive surname. What does the M of your first name stand for? Not Margery, I hope, which reminds me of a certain grocery product that is scraped on the sandwiches in hospital canteens.’

‘I’m afraid it’s a little pretentious for someone like me,’ she said. ‘You’ll probably smile.’

‘It’s always good to smile, but do you consider yourself so unpretentious? The majority of women are quite sure of their
femme fatalite.’

‘You sound cynical about women,
mynheer.’

‘Perhaps I have reason to be.’ As he spoke he raised a hand to the side of his eyes and she saw the iron take its grip on his facial muscles. ‘Sometimes a man comes up against a woman who sets such store by her own witchery that she becomes capable of the most diabolic behaviour if her runes and charms don’t have an effect on him. I am blind because I was immune to such a witch.’

‘Oh no!’ He couldn’t see that Merlin’s eyes had filled with horror—sheer horror that he should believe such a thing. She wanted to protest that it wasn’t true, but to declare herself innocent of that diablerie would reveal her identity and she could see from his face that he’d be quite merciless in dealing with her. The blinding pain and terror had clawed too deeply into his mind to ever make it possible that he would forgive the woman he thought of as a kind of Delilah, robbing him of his precious sight and his ability to heal people. Like Samson, the tall pillars of his temple had been brought down at his feet and the strength of his talents had been blasted.

It was awful and Merlin came very close to throwing herself at his knees, within reach of those strong hands, which could very easily snap her neck. ‘Believe me ... believe me,’ she wanted to cry out. ‘I never wanted to hurt a hair of your head ... I’d give you my eyes if they’d be of any use!’

‘The truth is often grim,’ he said, sensing that he had shocked her. ‘So provide me with the lighter side of the Janus mask that fits all of us—make me smile!’

‘I was christened Merlin, after the bird and not the wizard.’ The effort to speak lightly brought a fine perspiration out on her upper lip and she reached for the teapot. ‘Can I pour you another cup of tea?’

‘Please.’ He reached for his cup at the same time as she did and their fingers collided; abruptly he gripped her hand. ‘You feel cold, Miss Lakeside, called Merlin after a falcon and not a seer. You aren’t accustomed to an employer who talks as I do, of witchcraft and devils, eh? Blind men become introspective and life takes on different images for them—you will get used to me, and if you don’t there is always Lon to fly you off in the helicopter. Anyway, have another cup of tea and then go up and unpack your belongings. Once you have made the room look more like home, then you’ll begin to relax.’

His hard, warm fingers relaxed from hers and she felt a sense of deprivation as he lounged away from her in his long chair, lifting his cigar to his lips, his sightless eyes looking beyond her, to him the drab, cold spinster with the name of a swift-winged bird ... a falcon flung into the vivid blue skies of a faraway island.

As Merlin handed Paul his tea, she lived again that moment when she had handed him the eye-cup. A shudder ripped through her. Every hour and every day spent with him would be a heavenly hell, for the old worship of the hero had turned to something else and she knew she loved the man with every fibre of her body.

Even yet she felt his touch and unbeknown to him she pressed to her cheek the hand he had held ... he had said that she was cold; he hadn’t any suspicion that a flame was burning at the core of her heart.

CHAPTER THREE

LONG sea breakers combed the sleek silvery beach, shifting pebbles and small shells and the tiny marine creatures in the rock pools. The spume made a rainbow as the sun caught the fine mist.

Merlin stood gazing upwards as a boy climbed the incline of a coconut palm, his calloused feet gripping the ridges of the tall trunk. There among the long plumy leaves he hacked with a knife at a large green nut.

The vibrant sun played over the scene and the water beyond was lizard-green shot with blue. Clumps of lacy coral lay here and there on the sand, and Merlin shifted her bare feet in the gritty warmth and sank her teeth into a slice of pineapple. She felt like a child playing truant, and for a while she could surrender to the magic of the island, the glorious colouring and primitive spell of it all. She wore narrow knee-pants and a thin shirt, and her hair was set free to her shoulders and the sun had found the tortoiseshell shadings of honey and amber.

Palm leaves rattled and a coconut thudded to the beach. A few moments later Ramai had followed and stood grinning at her. ‘For breakfast,
nonya.
The meat of the young nut can be eaten like a boiled egg and the
tuan
very fond of it. You think you like?’

‘Why not?’ Her own smile was tentative, for this house-boy could cause her destruction if he ever let slip in front of the
tuan
that she wasn’t the staid
mevrouw
who Paul imagined was working for him.

‘We say that when the nut is green the flavour is sweet —like a woman.’

‘Really?’

The boy flicked a look at her pants and shirt and his gaze dwelt upon her long hair. ‘Why you pretend to be old,
nonya?’
It was out, said at last, what always lay in Ramai’s eyes when he served her at table with Paul, or brought cool drinks to the den where they worked, she at the lovely Chinese desk with its many lacquered drawers, and Paul pacing the Chinese carpet that spread from wall to wall of the room.

‘Not old, Ramai,’ she corrected him, ‘but more the style of person the
tuan
desired as a secretary. It does no harm and I need to work for my pay as you do. If he finds out I’m younger than he believes, then he’ll fire me.’

‘Set fire to you,
nonya?’
Ramai looked horrified.

She smiled and swiped a fly from her nose. ‘That’s another way of saying he’ll send me away in disgrace, and then I shall be out of work and will have to find a job that won’t be as nice as this one.’

‘Why should the
tuan
want a motherly woman when he can have a young one? I think,
nonya,
that he be much pleased.’ Ramai’s smile became impudent. ‘Tuan Paul still a man even if he cannot see, big man that make your heart beat fast.’

‘That will be enough, Ramai!’ She spoke sharply. ‘You mustn’t say things that could cause mischief.’

‘There be much mischief he learn for himself you make out to be motherly.’

‘He won’t find out unless you go carrying tales to him— do you want to get me into trouble?’

‘No,
nonya.’
The boy tossed a coconut, weighing it in the palm of his hand. ‘The house nice since you come, with flowers in the pots and the music you play on the big piano, and Tuan Paul not at his prowls so much. He go much prowling before, sometimes swim at night when the big sharks are out there.’ He gestured at the sea, which at this moment looked too impossibly green-blue and shimmering to harbour the menace of those grinning jaws filled with grinding teeth that could saw off a limb in just a few seconds. Merlin gave a shiver as she pictured Paul swimming blindly in the dark ocean, aware of the menace and yet undeterred by it, almost as if he didn’t care if Nemesis came in the blunt-nosed shape of a killer shark, dragging him down where the blackness was complete.

‘Then you’ll keep my secret, Ramai? You’ll let Tuan Paul go on believing what it does no harm for him to believe?’

‘We say to destroy an illusion is to tear the wings from a butterfly.’ Ramai gave her a wink of conspiracy. ‘Good for
tuan
to have woman in his house, even if he thinks her skinny, grey-haired woman instead of nice-skinned girl with hair like turtle-shell. White people most peculiar in such matters. Islandman soon touch and find out the truth.’

‘You’re a young devil, aren’t you?’ Merlin blushed furiously, and yet felt curiously elated. No one had ever said such saucily nice things to her, especially about her hair, which during working hours was woven into a nape-knot, its mottling of amber and honey less noticeable than right now.

‘Nonya
like me all the same.’ His teeth gleamed white against his brown skin. ‘Now I go take nuts to the house for
tuan’smakan pagi.
You coming?’

‘In a little while.’ She glanced at her wristwatch. ‘I just want to stand here and get a breath of sea air before the sun gets too warm.’

The boy sauntered off, leaving Merlin alone on the shore, her bare white feet splashed by the breakers as they swirled to the sands and then smoothly withdrew, like great bolts of silvery jade silk. What a place! And how sad that Paul couldn’t see the vivid colours for himself. She sighed, but was glad that she and Ramai had come to an understanding, for she couldn’t endure the thought of being dismissed from the island, never to see Paul again, working with him in the den, listening to that deep, faintly accented voice as he dictated the notes that she later typed, reading them back to him for corrections to the manuscript. It was all she had of him and she clung to it like a starfish
_L
o a rock, her starved heart expanded like a flower in the sun, her body awake and aware even if there could be no physical fulfilment in being with him.