Charmaine Craig - Miss Burma

“I wouldn’t be surprised if you’ve seen many incriminating photos of me, Mr.—”

But Lynton came bounding back, more agitated than even before. “You haven’t gotten her to dance yet?” he reprimanded the American. “The song’s almost over!”

Lynton was up to something, she knew — something that might have been as simple as his wanting the American to shut up and pretend he had nothing to hide in this very unprotected sphere. And all at once the American did seem as though he had nothing to conceal or fear. He smiled that awkward boyish smile again, looking bashfully at her — almost as though he , and not Lynton or the crooner, were pleading with her for the last time to come hold him tight, to be his tonight. And suddenly she felt apologetic about her pregnant figure, her rebelliousness, all the indelicacy she’d just shown him.

“Come on,” she said, sliding out of the booth. “We have our orders.”

“I can’t—”

“It’s now or never,” she threw out with a laugh.

Only when they were fumbling into each other’s embrace did she notice the identical, cheap, government-issued sarongs and suits on almost everybody scampering across the dance floor. She and Lynton had been followed by spies before, though never by this many — at least thirty, forty. Of course, Lynton must have seen immediately that they were spies and trotted her out — to deflect their attention from him .

“Lynton?” she said instinctively.

She found him standing in the light of their table. But he wouldn’t meet her gaze. Wouldn’t dodge her fear and accusation with one of his frustratingly gallant smiles. Wouldn’t look at her at all. He was staring, searchingly, at the man locked in her arms.

It wasn’t so unusual for Lynton to show up alone at the door with a few cartons of cigarettes or bags of rice (as if in guilty compensation for what he’d robbed Benny and Khin of — and what he’d robbed them of appeared to have too much pride to tag along during these visits). But right away when the man appeared in late December, a few days before Christmas, Benny knew — from the steeled look in Lynton’s eyes — that something had happened.

“Is it Louisa?” he asked the general when Hta Hta had left them alone in the living room (Khin was still too proud or ashamed to show her face to the man who’d chosen Louisa this time, and she’d scurried upstairs as soon as Lynton’s car had appeared on the drive). “She’s—” Benny sputtered, meaning to mention something about Louisa’s delicate state. He’d heard from Grace that Louisa was well into a pregnancy.

“She’s all right,” Lynton said, and held up the bottle of whiskey he’d brought with him. “May I?”

Benny sank breathlessly into his chair while Lynton poured them out generous doubles.

“A little nausea, that’s all,” Lynton went on, in a way that made Benny doubt him. He came and pressed a glass on Benny, along with a forced smile.

“Isn’t it late for nausea?”

Lynton shrugged as he sat, as if to indicate that such things — women’s things — were neither of interest nor comprehensible to him. Then, for a minute, he drank and stared at the wind-ruffled trees beyond the window. How out of place he seemed, poised tensely on the chair in this dilapidated old house where no action had occurred for years, other than that which was hidden, internal.

“Have I ever told you,” Benny uttered, surprising himself and trying, he realized, to put off whatever blow Lynton had come to deliver (and also trying to reclaim something else that Lynton had stolen from him?), “have I ever mentioned how it was I came to marry Khin? I was a preventive officer in His Majesty’s — the King of England’s — armed forces. It was my job to inspect the ships and seaplanes coming in and out of the port.” He could have been boasting, but he found himself gazing down into his glass as if not comprehending the clear liquid it contained. “One afternoon, after I’d searched a plane, I was crossing back to my office when I saw the most astonishing woman at the end of the jetty, dressed all in red, and accompanied by a child. Khin was a nanny, then — did you know?”

But Lynton only peered remotely at him, as though transfixed by his own inexorable confusion.

“She was pointing to something,” Benny continued. “She mouthed a few words to the child, and they looked out to the sea. At what? I wondered. I knew every vessel and man that came within five hundred feet of that shore.”

“I’m going to have to take your daughter underground,” Lynton said.

Benny was conscious of the blow having come, of what Lynton meant: that Louisa was in jeopardy. He was conscious that Lynton was speaking of nothing less than their lives being imminently threatened; yet everything about the man’s presence defied this easy interpretation: the steadiness of Lynton’s voice, the clarity of his gaze, the frank way he faced Benny, his perfectly groomed head, how he filled out his uniform, even his hands, which had set down his glass and were composed on his knees yet enlivened with something — a readiness to fight, to win. Yes, everything about Lynton insisted on his being absolutely resplendent with life, absolutely inextinguishable.

“Should we have another round?” Benny finally said.

With genuine respectfulness and a gleam of remorse in his eyes, Lynton stood and filled their tumblers to the top again.

“I always thought the most unbearable thing, the very most unbearable,” Benny said when Lynton had sat back down, “would be to have to leave Rangoon. I was born here, you know. My grandfather was this city’s rabbi once. I’ll never forget the day the Japs started bombing. My fellow officers, most of them, had left. I could have sought refuge in India. Khin wanted me to go. But she wouldn’t leave Burma with me. Louisa was — she must have been one, or two. We still thought of her as a baby.”

But he couldn’t speak another word. All at once, he burst out in convulsive sobs.

“Her mother will be devastated,” he found himself blubbering. And then, over Lynton’s silence: “She pretends to be outraged, but she loves Louisa, painfully!”

He felt Lynton watching him as he collected himself and blew his nose, until, finally raising his sheepish glance to him, he took in Lynton’s firm, frank face again.

“The talks aren’t over,” Lynton said. “But the Burmans are cornering us. It may not be possible to stay in Rangoon until the birth.”

“And William Young?”

Benny was as startled by the turn he’d taken as Lynton appeared to be. There was a moment of hesitation, almost of interest in the man’s disoriented gaze, which soon narrowed, telling Benny that he’d violated something — if not Lynton’s privacy, then his personal code of conduct, in which he alone held the power to determine what he would and wouldn’t disclose.

But Benny, powerless to stop himself anymore from pursuing the course of his rushing boldness, leaped up from his seat and dashed out of the room — all the way down the hall to his study, where, from his peeling old desk, he snatched up the latest volume of his writings.

“Read it!” he said, when he’d returned with the inflammatory thing, which he immediately began to wave wildly at Lynton. “Prove all of my suppositions wrong! And, by all means, pass it along to him if he’s someone you’re working with! It’s all I have to give!”

Lynton gave no sign of being staggered by Benny’s outburst. Rather, he watched him with renewed fortitude and even reverence. Yet suddenly he stood and formally seized the volume from Benny’s hand — to claim or confiscate it — and, just as abruptly, he bowed and said, “She will be protected.”