Dangerous Inheritance (32 page)

‘But the Sinhalese Kingdom had continued to survive with its capital at Kandy, and early in the seventeenth century the King of Kandy asked the aid of the Dutch to check the inroads of the Portuguese into his territories. By the middle of the century the Dutch had ousted the Portuguese and for the next hundred and forty years all Ceylon's trading posts remained in Dutch hands. Then, in 1795 the British sent a strong expedition against the Dutch and in less than a year had totally defeated them.

‘The penetration by the Portuguese and the Dutch gave the British, who succeeded them, mastery over a large part of the island but, even so, the Kandayan Kingdom maintained its independence for another twenty years. It was not until the excesses of a tyrant King led to the British taking full possession of it in 1815 that, after nearly two and a half thousand years, the people of the Lion race finally lost their independence.'

Fleur ceased speaking for a moment, then she concluded, ‘I
hope I haven't bored you; but I did want you to appreciate that, whatever the faults of their present government, the Sinhalese are a great people and should be regarded by us as in every way our equals.'

‘You certainly haven't bored me,' declared Rex heartily. ‘Most of what you've told us I'd never heard before, and I found it fascinating.'

Simon smilingly nodded his appreciation, and Truss added his thanks; but while Fleur had been giving them the history of the country of her adoption his mind had not been altogether on the subject.

His eyes had never left her face, the contours of which were made still more beautiful by the subdued light out on the verandah, except, now and then, to dwell on her long legs and supple body.

When they went off to bed his mind was still full of her and excited by the sort of craving that he had learned to know very well. In vain he tried to get to sleep, but memories of the nights he had spent with her in Corfu chased one another through his mind as vividly as episodes in a recently seen film.

During the past five days they had, by tacit agreement, refrained from tempting one another to become lovers again; but to resist such an urge on a deserted beach behind the cover of rocks was one thing, while to do so when they were in bedrooms separated by only about thirty feet was, he felt, quite another.

At length, after twisting and turning for an hour, he decided that, whatever her decision might be about the future, he must at least once again hold her lovely body in his arms before they parted. Getting out of bed, he slipped on his dressing gown and cautiously opened the door of his room. As they had sat up late the other visitors at the rest house had gone to bed before them. It was now quite silent and the verandah only dimly lit. Treading carefully he made his way along to Fleur's room and quietly tried her door. To his relief it was not locked; so he gently eased it open and slipped inside. The room was almost in darkness but, through the jalousies, the moon gave enough light for him to see that Fleur was sleeping peacefully.

On tiptoe he approached her bed, slid an arm beneath her shoulders and, bending, kissed her on the mouth. It opened to savour his kiss. Only partially aroused from sleep, she threw an arm round his neck to draw him down on to her.

Suddenly, becoming fully awake, she tore her mouth from his, put her free hand on his chest and thrust him violently away. Then, giving a gasp, she sat up.

‘Honey! It's me, Truss!' he strove to reassure her. ‘I just had to come along. All evening the sight of you has been driving me crackers. I've got to have you! I've got to!'

‘No!' She shook her head. ‘Please, Truss! Please don't try to persuade me. God knows, I'm tempted to let you. But not yet! Not yet! Until I've made up my mind about the future I want to remain faithful to Douglas.'

‘Oh, damn Douglas,' he retorted angrily. ‘You know that he's gone stale on you and you don't really love him any more. Haven't the past few days meant anything to you? It's brought us closer together than ever before. You can't deny yourself to me just because in a crazy fit you got married to him.'

‘It was not a crazy fit,' she protested. ‘I knew perfectly well what I was doing. And if it weren't for his bloody relatives and their archaic ideas about a wife being a sort of favourite slave without any individuality of her own, I'd be happy with him still. That … that is … if you hadn't come on the scene.'

‘But I have. And you've got as big a yen for me as I have for you. Come on; admit it. Time's come, Fleur, when you've got to make up your mind what you mean to do.'

‘Not yet.' Again she shook her head and pushed him away. ‘Anyway, if I do decide to leave Douglas it's got to be a clean break, and I'll not let you sleep with me till then.'

Agonised frustration led him to say sharply, ‘You're putting him before me and I take that hard, honey. Maybe I'll have second thoughts about wanting a wife who's still so attached to her first husband.'

Tears sprang to Fleur's eyes. ‘Oh please, Truss. Try to understand. It's not that I wouldn't love to have you sleep with me. It's simply a matter of principle. I know that in the past I
behaved like a slut, but one doesn't have to remain one all one's life. I only want to do the decent thing by him until I've made up my mind whether I really must make a break and leave him.'

‘And when will that be?'

‘I'll let you know when we reach Trincomalee. Honestly I will. Please bear with me till then. If I have decided to leave him, and you feel you don't want me after all, I can always go back to England and try to start a new life there.'

Releasing his hold on her he took a step away from the bed, and said a shade ungraciously, ‘O.K. Have it your own way. But your holding out on me like this doesn't indicate that you've the feelings for me that I'd hoped you had. And I'm not the guy to play second fiddle to Douglas Rajapakse just because you don't hit it off with his family.'

‘Oh, Truss!' she cried, stretching out her arms. But he had already turned on his heel and, without a backward glance, he walked out of the room.

The following morning the party spent two hours visiting more of the most interesting remains at Polonnaruwa, then set off on the sixty-odd-mile drive to Anuradhapura. They passed many of the smaller ‘Tanks' and two that were the size of great lakes. Here and there on the bright blue surface floated big patches of red lotus, open in the midday sun; wild pigs wallowed in the mud of the banks, herons and kingfishers skimmed the waters.

The area covered by the ruins of Anuradhapura is of even greater extent than that at Polonnaruwa for the city measured more than eight miles from side to side. After lunching at the rest house they went out to see some of its staggering remains.

Of these the four great
dagobas
are the most impressive. They are huge white domes rising direct from the earth and crowned with a spire, which were built to hold relics of the Buddha. Their vastness can be imagined from the fact that the largest was higher than the dome of St. Paul's Cathedral and that it has been estimated that with the bricks used in it eight thousand houses could have been built, forming a town the size of Ipswich.

But Anuradhapura had many other unique sights to offer. Among them were the Sacred Bo-Tree grown from the branch sent from India and said to be the oldest tree in the world; the Eight Places of Worship to which thousands of pilgrims come every year; the Queen's Pavilion with its beautiful carvings; the enormous Elephant Stables, and the Brazen Palace, built by the great King Dutugemunu.

This last was a monastery. It rested on one thousand six hundred granite columns in forty rows each forty columns long. It had nine storeys and in each of them were one hundred apartments. The outer walls were plated with silver, the roof covered with copper tiles, and it was embellished both with jewels and festoons of leaves made of gold that tinkled in the breeze. The upper storeys, being made of wood, had disintegrated, but the forest of twelve-foot-high granite pillars still stood to be marvelled at.

They slept at Anuradhapura on the Saturday night and, there being so much to see, did not leave on their eighty-mile drive to Trincomalee until five o'clock on the Sunday afternoon. Then, when they were still twenty miles from the city, misfortune overtook them. On coming round a sharp bend in the road they came face to face with a herd of buffalo. Truss, who was driving, braked hard then swerved sharply to one side in an attempt to avoid the animals. He got past the nearest, only scraping its side, but he had had to run partly off the road and the car was brought to an abrupt halt by hitting an old tree-stump submerged in the coarse grass. When he attempted to back away it was found, to their consternation, that the stump had broken a steering rod.

Three-quarters of an hour elapsed before a motorist came by who promised to have help sent to them from a garage in Trincomalee; then for another hour and a half they kicked their heels impatiently until at last a mechanic arrived in a small van. As it would take a day or more to repair the damage, they decided to leave the car to be towed in next day and, crowding into the mechanic's van, had him drive them into the city.

They had expected to arrive there at about half past seven
but, as a result of the delay, it was not until half past ten that, tired and hungry, they reached the Welcome Hotel. By the time they had had a wash and a drink and eaten the ham and eggs that the manager had knocked up for them in lieu of dinner it was getting on for midnight; so the obvious move was to bed.

Although Truss had not made any actual arrangement with Fleur he had intended to take her for a walk after dinner, and she too had expected that evening to be able to tell him of the decision she had come to; but they now had no option but to go upstairs with the others.

Nevertheless, when Fleur got into bed she had put no night cream on her face, and made no attempt to go to sleep. Instead she kept her bedside light on and tried, without much success, to concentrate on a book. Three-quarters of an hour later, when the hotel had become entirely quiet, her expectations were realised. The door opened and Truss slipped into her room.

Smiling, he walked over to the bed, sat down on the side of it, took one of her hands in his and said in a low voice:

‘Now; have you made up your mind, honey?'

She returned his smile. ‘Yes. Have you made up yours?'

‘Sure. For me you've always been the tops in women—ever since I was a kid. This week with you has brought it all back, and stronger than ever. You've dealt yourself a rotten deal so far. Now, you've just got to let me take you away and make it up to you.'

‘Dear Truss.' Her eyes were shining and she put up her free hand to stroke his face. ‘I'm so glad and that's what I want. You are right, too, about this week we've been together. I couldn't go back to Douglas and life in Colombo after that—even if you didn't want me.'

He gave a low laugh. ‘Bless you, sweetie. You must get free of him just as soon as you can. Then we'll have great times. Start life again all bright and new, as though we were a couple of eighteen-year-olds.'

‘You mustn't be too impatient,' she said seriously. ‘It's not as though I were leaving a husband who had been mean and
beastly to me. I couldn't bear to hurt him more than I have to.'

‘Yes, he's a decent guy,' Truss admitted. ‘Though he ought never to have asked you to marry him in the first place. He was old enough to know there was a big risk that it wouldn't work out. Still, there's no point in going into that again. We won't have much chance to talk in the morning, and we've got to make some sort of plan.'

‘As far as I'm concerned it's made already. When I get back to Colombo I mean to tell Douglas that I feel that I must have a holiday in England; then when Uncle Simon returns from this trip he is going on with you I shall get him to take me home when he leaves with Greyeyes. Directly I get there I shall write to Douglas, tell him that I have definitely made up my mind not to return to him and ask him to send me evidence that will enable me to divorce him. He may not want to, but he will realise that, if I don't mean to come back, the only way he can keep face with his family and friends is not to admit that I've run away from him, but lead them to suppose that I found out that he has been having an affaire with someone else while I was away on holiday.'

Truss nodded. ‘Clever girl. That's certainly doing the best you can for him. Now, what about us?'

She smiled. ‘That's up to you, darling. Both England and the United States are a long way from Ceylon. No-one here is likely to learn how I was behaving myself in either. So if you like I'll willingly become your mistress until the divorce comes through.'

‘Thanks a lot, honey. That's fine by me, and I'll just love showing you the high-spots in New York. I mean to be mighty careful of your reputation, though. Still, that's no great problem. I'll fix it for you to stay as a guest in the apartment of a middle-aged widow I know. She's been left badly off, but she's a good sport and will be glad of the money to act as a complaisant chaperon.' For a moment he was silent then, with a grin, he added:

‘But do I have to wait until you get to New York?'

‘Darling, no! Why should we?' Fleur threw back her head
and laughed up at him. ‘From now on I'm all yours to do as you like with. Take off your things and hop into bed.'

As he cast aside his dressing gown, she pulled her nightdress off over her head.

Just four minutes later the door opened again, and Lalita d'Azavedo walked into the room.

At the sound of the door opening Truss pulled away from Fleur. Both of them sat up in bed. Giving a gasp of dismay she swiftly jerked the sheets up to cover her naked breasts. For a moment they stared at Lalita, who had been followed into the room by a woman and a sergeant; then Truss roared: