Ah King (2 page)

I thought her a very agreeable person. I liked her frankness. I liked her quick wit. I liked her plain face. I never met a woman who obviously cared so little how she looked. It was not only her head that was untidy, everything about her was slovenly; she wore a high-necked silk blouse, but for coolness had unbuttoned the top buttons and showed a gaunt and withered neck; the blouse was crumpled and none too clean, for she smoked innumerable cigarettes and covered herself with ash. When she got up for a moment to speak to somebody I saw that her blue skirt was rather ragged at the hem and badly needed a brush, and she wore heavy, low-heeled boots. But none of this mattered. Everything she wore was perfectly in character.

And it was a pleasure to play bridge with her. She played very quickly, without hesitation, and she had not only knowledge but flair. Of course she knew Gaze’s game, but I was a stranger and she soon took my measure. The team-work between her husband and herself was admirable; he was sound and cautious, but knowing him, she was able to be bold with assurance and brilliant with safety. Gaze was a player who founded a foolish optimism on the hope that his opponents would not have the sense to take advantage of his errors, and the pair of us were no match for the Cartwrights. We lost one rubber after another, and there was nothing to do but smile and look as if we liked it.

“I don’t know what’s the matter with the cards,” said Gaze at last, plaintively. “Even when we have every card in the pack we go down.”

“It can’t be anything to do with your play,” answered Mrs Cartwright, looking him full in the face with those pale blue eyes of hers, “it must be bad luck pure and simple. Now if you hadn’t had your hearts mixed up with your diamonds in that last hand you’d have saved the game.”

Gaze began to explain at length how the misfortune, which had cost us dear, occurred, but Mrs Cartwright, with a deft flick of the hand, spread out the cards in a great circle so that we should cut for deal. Cartwright looked at the time.

“This will have to be the last, my dear,” he said.

“Oh, will it?” She glanced at her watch and then called to a young man who was passing through the room. “Oh, Mr Bullen, if you’re going upstairs tell Olive that we shall be going in a few minutes.” She turned to me. “It takes us the best part of an hour to get back to the estate and poor Theo has to be up at the crack of dawn.”

“Oh, well, we only come in once a week,” said Cartwright, “and it’s the one chance Olive gets of being gay and abandoned.”

I thought Cartwright looked tired and old. He was a man of middle height, with a bald, shiny head, a stubbly grey moustache, and gold-rimmed spectacles. He wore white ducks and a black-and-white tie. He was rather neat and you could see he took much more pains with his clothes than his untidy wife. He talked little, but it was plain that he enjoyed his wife’s caustic humour and sometimes he made quite a neat retort. They were evidently very good friends. It was pleasing to see so solid and tolerant an affection between two people who were almost elderly and must have lived together for so many years.

It took but two hands to finish the rubber and we had just ordered a final gin and bitters when Olive came down.

“Do you really want to go already, Mumsey?” she asked.

Mrs Cartwright looked at her daughter with fond eyes.

“Yes, darling. It’s nearly half past eight. It’ll be ten before we get our dinner.”

“Damn our dinner,” said Olive gaily.

“Let her have one more dance before we go,” suggested Cartwright.

“Not one. You must have a good night’s rest.”

Cartwright looked at Olive with a smile.

“If your mother has made up her mind, my dear, we may just as well give in without any fuss.”

“She’s a determined woman,” said Olive, lovingly stroking her mother’s wrinkled cheek.

Mrs Cartwright patted her daughter’s hand, and kissed it.

Olive was not very pretty, but she looked extremely nice. She was nineteen or twenty, I suppose, and she had still the plumpness of her age; she would be more attractive when she had fined down a little. She had none of the determination that gave her mother’s face so much character, but resembled her father; she had his dark eyes and slightly aquiline nose, and his look of rather weak good nature. It was plain that she was strong and healthy. Her cheeks were red and her eyes bright. She had a vitality that he had long since lost. She seemed to be the perfectly normal English girl, with high spirits, a great desire to enjoy herself, and an excellent temper.

When we separated. Gaze and I set out to walk to his house.

“What did you think of the Cartwrights?” he asked me.

“I liked them. They must be a great asset in a place like this.”

“I wish they came oftener. They live a very quiet life.”

“It must be dull for the girl. The father and mother seem very well satisfied with one another’s company.”

“Yes, it’s been a great success.”

“Olive is the image of her father, isn’t she?”

Gaze gave me a sidelong glance.

“Cartwright isn’t her father. Mrs Cartwright was a widow when he married her. Olive was born four months after her father’s death.”

“Oh!”

I drew out the sound in order to put in it all I could of surprise, interest, and curiosity. But Gaze said nothing and we walked the rest of the way in silence. The boy was waiting at the door as we entered the house and after a last gin pahit we sat down to dinner.

At first Gaze was inclined to be talkative. Owing to the restriction of the output of rubber there had sprung up a considerable activity among the smugglers and it was part of his duty to circumvent their knavishness. Two junks had been captured that day and he was rubbing his hands over his success. The go-downs were full of confiscated rubber and in a little while it was going to be solemnly burnt. But presently he fell into silence and we finished without a word. The boys brought in coffee and brandy and we lit our cheroots. Gaze leaned back in his chair. He looked at me reflectively and then looked at his brandy. The boys had left the room and we were alone.

“I’ve known Mrs Cartwright for over twenty years,” he said slowly. “She wasn’t a bad-looking woman in those days. Always untidy, but when she was young it didn’t seem to matter so much. It was rather attractive. She was married to a man called Bronson. Reggie Bronson. He was a planter. He was manager of an estate up in Selantan and I was stationed at Alor Lipis. It was a much smaller place than it is now; I don’t suppose there were more than twenty people in the whole community, but they had a jolly little club, and we used to have a very good time. I remember the first time I met Mrs Bronson as though it was yesterday. There were no cars in those days and she and Bronson had ridden in on their bicycles. Of course then she didn’t look so determined as she looks now. She was much thinner, she had a nice colour, and her eyes were very pretty-blue, you know-and she had a lot of dark hair. If she’d only taken more trouble with herself she’d have been rather stunning. As it was she was the best-looking woman there.”

I tried to construct in my mind a picture of what Mrs Cartwright-Mrs Bronson as she was then-looked like from what she was now and from Gaze’s not very graphic description. In the solid woman, with her well-covered bones, who sat rather heavily at the bridge-table, I tried to see a slight young thing with buoyant movements and graceful, easy gestures. Her chin now was square and her nose decided, but the roundness of youth must have masked this: she must have been charming with a pink-and-white skin and her hair, carelessly dressed, brown and abundant. At that period she wore a long skirt, a tight waist, and a picture hat. Or did women in Malaya still wear the topees that you see in old numbers of the illustrated papers?

“I hadn’t seen her for-oh, nearly twenty years,” Gaze went on. “I knew she was living somewhere in the F.M.S., but it was a surprise when I took this job and came here to run across her in the club just as I had up in Selantan so many years before. Of course she’s an elderly woman now and she’s changed out of all recognition. It was rather a shock to see her with a grown-up daughter, it made me realize how the time had passed; I was a young fellow when I met her last and now, by Jingo, I’m due to retire on the age limit in two or three years. Bit thick, isn’t it?”

Gaze, a rueful grin on his ugly face, looked at me with faint indignation, as though I could help the hurrying march of the years as they trod upon one another’s heels.

“I’m no chicken myself,” I replied.

“You haven’t lived out East all your life. It ages one before one’s time. One’s an elderly man at fifty and at fifty-five one’s good for nothing but the scrap-heap.”

But I did not want Gaze to wander off into a disquisition on old age.

“Did you recognize Mrs Cartwright when you saw her again?” I asked.

“Well, I did and I didn’t. At the first glance I thought I knew her, but couldn’t quite place her. I thought perhaps she was someone I’d met on board ship when I was going on leave and had known only by sight. But the moment she spoke I remembered at once. I remembered the dry twinkle in her eyes and the crisp sound of her voice. There was something in her voice that seemed to mean: You’re a bit of a damned fool, my lad, but you’re not a bad sort and upon my soul I rather like you.”

“That’s a good deal to read into the sound of a voice,” I smiled.

“She came up to me in the club and shook hands with me. ‘How do you do, Major Gaze? Do you remember me?’ she said.

“‘Of course I do.’

“‘A lot of water has passed under the bridge since we met last. We’re none of us as young as we were. Have you seen Theo?’

“For a moment I couldn’t think whom she meant. I suppose I looked rather stupid, because she gave a little smile, that chaffing smile that I knew so well, and explained.

“‘I married Theo, you know. It seemed the best thing to do. I was lonely and he wanted it.’

“‘I heard you married him,’ I said. ‘I hope you’ve been very happy.’

“‘Oh, very. Theo’s a perfect duck. He’ll be here in a minute. He’ll be so glad to see you.’

“I wondered. I should have thought I was the last man Theo would wish to see. I shouldn’t have thought she would wish it very much either. But women are funny.”

“Why shouldn’t she wish to see you?” I asked.

“I’m coming to that later,” said Gaze. “Then Theo turned up. I don’t know why I call him Theo; I never called him anything but Cartwright, I never thought of him as anything but Cartwright. Theo was a shock. You know what he looks like now; I remembered him as a curly-headed youngster, very fresh and clean-looking. He was always neat and dapper, he had a good figure, and he held himself well, like a man who’s used to taking a lot of exercise. Now I come to think of it he wasn’t bad-looking, not in a big, massive way, but graceful, you know, and lithe. When I saw this bowed, cadaverous, bald-headed old buffer with spectacles I could hardly believe my eyes. I shouldn’t have known him from Adam. He seemed pleased to see me, at least, interested; he wasn’t effusive, but he’d always been on the quiet side and I didn’t expect him to be.

“‘Are you surprised to find us here?’ he asked me.

“‘Well, I hadn’t the faintest notion where you were.’

“‘We’ve kept track of your movements more or less. We’ve seen your name in the paper every now and then. You must come out one day and have a look at our place. We’ve been settled there a good many years, and I suppose we shall stay there till we go home for good. Have you ever been back to Alor Lipis?’

“‘No, I haven’t,’ I said.

“‘It was a nice little place. I’m told it’s grown. I’ve never been back.’

“‘It hasn’t got the pleasantest recollections for us,’ said Mrs Cartwright.

“I asked them if they’d have a drink and we called the boy. I dare say you noticed that Mrs Cartwright likes her liquor; I don’t mean that she gets tight or anything like that, but she drinks her stengah like a man. I couldn’t help looking at them with a certain amount of curiosity. They seemed perfectly happy; I gathered that they hadn’t done at all badly, and I found out later that they were quite well off. They had a very nice car, and when they went on leave they denied themselves nothing. They were on the best of terms with one another. You know how jolly it is to see two people who’ve been married a great many years obviously better pleased with their own company than anyone else’s. Their marriage had evidently been a great success. And they were both of them devoted to Olive and very proud of her. Theo especially.”

“Although she was only his step-daughter?” I said.

“Although she was only his step-daughter,” answered Gaze. “You’d think that she would have taken his name. But she hadn’t. She called him Daddy, of course, he was the only father she’d ever known, but she signed her letters, Olive Bronson.”

“What was Bronson like, by the way?”

“Bronson? He was a great big fellow, very hearty, with a loud voice and a bellowing laugh, beefy, you know, and a fine athlete. There was not very much to him, but he was as straight as a die. He had a red face and red hair. Now I come to think of it I remember that I never saw a man sweat as much as he did. Water just poured off him, and when he played tennis he always used to bring a towel on the court with him.”

“It doesn’t sound very attractive.”

“He was a handsome chap. He was always fit. He was keen on that. He hadn’t much to talk about but rubber and games, tennis, you know, and golf and shooting; and I don’t suppose he read a book from year’s end to year’s end. He was the typical public-school boy. He was about thirty-five when I first knew him, but he had the mind of a boy of eighteen. You know how many fellows when they come out East seem to stop growing.”