‘You look worried,’ she said. ‘Something is wrong.’
‘Nothing.’
‘You talked about something and it’s worrying you.’
‘Merde! We didn’t talk about anything. We’d had a fight, that’s all. A fight over you.’
She clutched him, with sudden violence, and kissed him again, her teeth touching his through her soft cold lips. He tried to swallow, his throat dry and tight. He wished to God he hadn’t had that brandy. She held on to him, in the gently vibrating machine, and would not let go. There was a quiet frenzy about her now, a hint of hysteria. He tried to pull away and she murmured, in a quick whisper: ‘Don’t go, don’t leave me!’
He didn’t move; he couldn’t move; if he had wanted to leave her, the only place to go was a few thousand feet down into the jungle. It occurred to him that she might have conceived some wild unreasoning passion for him. He began to grow wary. He preferred to make the running in these matters. Girls who took the first step were usually bad news — especially one who was unhappily married to an American agent.
She was still clinging to him, rocking next to him in her hammock-seat while Ryderbeit and No-Entry slept on. It was nearly five o’clock. It wouldn’t be long now till they landed at Luang Prabang; and he wondered, with some apprehension, whether there would be further transport down to Vientiane that night. There was only one place to stay in the Royal Capital, a tourist hotel built by the French, and he had visions of the night ahead. Another quart of whisky scrounged from the local Americans; three men and a girl; trouble. And Maxwell Conquest was going to want to know what had happened to her.
Then another theory occurred to him, something even less comforting. Was it possible that her husband had sent her here — sent her on this rice-drop to watch him, cajole and spy on him? That these clutching hands and quiet passion were all an artifice of the Central Intelligence Agency? That Maxwell Conquest had somehow learnt something, and was anxious to find out more?
‘Why did you come on this trip?’ he asked her.
‘I wanted to.’
‘But why?’
‘I had nothing to do, I was bored.’
He could feel her breath, warm and clear of whisky, stirring against his cheek; and he remembered her standing in the reception that first evening, her tall body in the sheath of deep-blue silk; and he hoped there would be no plane that night out of Luang Prabang.
PART 5: THE NIGHT OF SISERA
CHAPTER 1
Murray locked the door on the inside and put the key on the table by the bed. The fan from the ceiling swung with a faint clanking sound; the air was cool and the hotel quiet. It was almost dark.
He turned and looked at her. She was still standing with her back to him in front of the window, looking out across the sharp black banana leaves. The window was open and in the stillness insects went on pinging against the wire mesh. He moved across to her without switching on the light. Her face was a shadow under the black hair, her body firm and mysterious as he took hold of her arms just below the shoulders, feeling her quiver through the coarse combat-tunic. He had known how it would be the moment they began the bus ride from the airport, round the hill in the centre of the town with the little pagoda at the top, glinting in the dying sun like a golden dagger.
There had been no plane on to Vientiane — nothing until noon next day. The hotel was a shabby concrete building with a live bear in a cage in the garden and two French pilots drinking Pernod in the bar. The only other guest was a thin grey Dutchman who was in Luang Prabang compiling a dictionary of local dialects and roamed about the lobby, grumbling about there being no plug for his electric shaver. There was also no free whisky, but after a thrifty dinner Ryderbeit had got into conversation with the pilots, who bought him and Jones a bottle of rusty wine. Murray and Jackie evaded them with care, and managed an early unobtrusive escape upstairs.
He kissed her now on the neck and she said, ‘Is the door locked?’
‘It’s locked,’ he whispered, without moving his lips. ‘They’ll be downstairs drinking for hours, if I know Ryderbeit.’
She nodded: ‘French pilots — in an empty hotel — drinking bad French wine. Don’t you think it’s sad?’
‘Why should it be? They chose the job — they weren’t conscripted.’
‘Undress me,’ she said, without moving.
He started on the five olive-green buttons and the tunic dropped to the floor. Her body was very dark against the white bra, which he snapped off, feeling her shiver all over now.
Smooth lean shoulders and rounded belly with the neat diagonal fold of the navel, which is the symbol of French surgery. Breasts plump and stiff-nippled as he gripped them and squeezed her to him, turning her round, feeling himself harden against her, ripping skilfully at the zip of her trousers, peeling them off her buttocks and down her long legs, thinking wildly, It’s too good, too soon — the girl’s crazy, I’m crazy — lying with her now on the bed, kissing the triangle of dark deep-scented hair, feeling her writhe and arch her spine, while the insects pinged and the fan swung with its slow clanking swish.
He made love to her in rhythm with the fan, until the sound was lost in her sighing and moaning, and a final long cry that carried into the night of Luang Prabang, in the jungle-heart of Laos. He lay limp and giddy, growing slowly conscious of the burning of her
