HE WAS close to his house, on the narrow track with jungle on either side, when he heard raucous music, added to the hum of mosquitoes, the croak of frogs, and the racket of cicadas. He hoped it was coming from Saidee’s quarters, but alas, parked outside his house was a Mini, its colour lost in the moonlight. He knew it was red and belonged to Jean Hislop. She was making herself at home, though it was half-past eleven. She intended to stay the night. She must have brought the record with her. His, she complained, were either too high-class or old-fashioned.
In a panic he thought of reversing all the way to the public road and spending the night in a hotel, but there Jean was, on the verandah, giving him a wave, with a glass in her other hand. Her face and arms gleamed. She had put on cream to repel the mosquitoes. With her fair hair she had tender skin.
‘Where the hell have you been?’ she cried. ‘Not at the Shamrock, I hope.’ She laughed, coarsely.
He had often noticed that though she would parade naked in front of him she nevertheless had a curious shyness in relation to sex. She tried to disguise it with obscene words and gestures. For all her toughness she was vulnerable. If he told her what he had been rehearsing to tell her she might go to pieces.
Did he love Leila that much? More important, did Leila love him that much? She had let him kiss her and, being half-Oriental, she would never have done that if she didn’t love him; but, because she was half-Oriental, he could not confidently predict her reactions. It would be ironical indeed if he suffered the unpleasantness of telling Jean that what was between them, whatever it was, was finished, only to find that Leila had been flirting with him. After all, she was half-Occidental too.
He got out of the car and went up the steps to the verandah, slowly.
‘My, we’re all dressed up,’ cried Jean. ‘You must have been at the Shamrock, or was it Lady Mortimer’s? Same difference, eh? Lots of high-class whores there too.’
Though staunchly British, she liked joking about the stuffiness of those who frequented the Residency.
‘Let’s go inside, for God’s sake,’ she cried. ‘These little buggers are biting my boobs off. There’ll be nothing left for you.’ Again she laughed.
Was it to his advantage that she was drunk or nearly so? Should he wait till she was drunker still? She mightn’t then completely understand what he was saying to her and so her reception of it would be that much less furious or distressful.
She was wearing a thin white dress that hardly covered her thighs: just that, a brassiere, and skimpy briefs. The mixture of scent and sweat was aphrodisical. He remembered Salim’s slavish praise of her. Golf Club and Yacht Club members envied him having her soft on him. They would be incredulous, and disgusted, if they heard that he had jettisoned her in favour of a coloured woman: for they would not take into account that Leila’s mother had been white. Two days ago he would have agreed with them.
Jean poured him a whisky and handed him the glass. She replenished her own.
‘How can I sit on your lap if you don’t sit down?’ she asked.
He couldn’t bear the whining banalities of the song.
‘Would you mind turning that off?’ he said.
‘Anything to oblige.’
She did it and hurried back to him.
He didn’t want her on his lap but couldn’t very well keep standing.
He sat down on a basket chair: he sighed and it creaked.
Jean at once plumped herself on his lap. There were more sighs and creaks. She was no lightweight. Her bottom was soft, warm, and damp. How could he help feeling roused? Especially as she kept squirming and giving him whiskied kisses.
‘You’ve jaloused I’m staying the night,’ she whispered.
She knew he liked using old Scots words.
It was his opportunity to tell her she must go. He let it pass.
‘Have you heard about the new regulation?’ she asked, indignantly. ‘I just heard this evening. Only natives to get top jobs in future. So you’ll never be Principal and I’ll never be Matron. Do you know what I say? I say, go to hell; stick your jobs up your arse. If I met His Fatness I’d tell him to his face. I’ve been thinking, Andy, why don’t we pack it in and go home. Edinburgh’s a lot nicer place to live than this hot stinking midden.’
He imagined himself walking along Princes Street with her. He would be given many admiring, envious glances.
Then he imagined Leila as his companion. The glances would be admiring, yes, but perhaps not envious.
His body was intent on betraying him.
She knew it. Those squirms informed her.
‘Let’s get into bed,’ she whispered. ‘Would you like to feel how ready I am?’
She took his hand – it went with an awful willingness – and pushed it inside her briefs.
She got up then and pulled him towards the bedroom. He resisted but not so that she noticed.
Even if, he thought desperately, I have sex with her – it could hardly be called making love – it will not commit me. I’ve done it before and never felt committed. She’s the one who’s always wanted it. With her in the state she is, and me in the state she’s got me in, how can it be avoided and how can I be blamed? And need it have any more significance than the upside-down mating of those chichaks on the ceiling?
It was soon over though she did her best to prolong it.
‘Do you know something?’ she said, as they lay side by side under the net. ‘I stopped taking the pill two weeks ago. I was going to ask you to use a french letter. I brought one with me.’
He was dismayed. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
‘I thought if I got pregnant it would get you to make up your mind about us getting married. They all keep warning me that you’re the kind that’ll never get married. You’re a big selfish bugger satisfied with your books, your records, your orchids, and your fly visits to the Shamrock. I tell them they’re wrong. They don’t know that your grandfather was a Free Kirk minister and that your mother brought you up to hate women.’
The chichaks were making the shrill noise that had given them their name. He imagined they were being derisive.
She went on: ‘I could tell that a bit of you was thinking it was sinful, us not being married. To be absolutely honest a bit of me too. I’m Scottish as well, you know. But it will be different when we’re married, won’t it? It’ll be better too.’
That was all very well, but she had cheated by not using a contraceptive. Fair-minded people would say that that absolved him from responsibility.