The Glass Palace (58 page)

Almost every evening the house echoed to the sound of parade-ground voices and loud laughter. They seemed never to stop laughing, these young officers—the smallest joke would set them roaring, pounding each other on the back. They usually brought bottles of whisky, gin or rum from their mess. Sometimes Kishan Singh came with them to serve them their drinks. They would sit out on the veranda, sipping
stengah
s
and gin slings. As if by magic, vast quantities of food would appear on the dining-room table. Alison would lead them in and then Arjun would take over, showing his friends round the table, explaining the dishes in minute detail: ‘Look over here, this is duck—it's cooked in sugar-cane juice, you've never tasted anything like it. And here, see, these prawns? They're made with flowers—ginger buds—that's what gives them that amazing taste . . .'

Dinu would look on, like a spectator at a circus: he knew that the part of host should have been his own to play. But with each of these evenings he could feel his presence in the house diminishing, shrinking. It didn't seem to matter whether Arjun came alone or was accompanied by a troop of his friends. He seemed to have a way of filling the house, even when he was on his own. There was no denying that there was something magnetic about him—a self-confidence, a habit of command, an exuberant abundance of appetites. Dinu knew he could not hope to keep up with him.

At the end of each meal, Arjun would crank up the gramophone and clear the rugs off the hardwood floors. He and his friends would take turns dancing with Alison. It was a revelation to Dinu to discover how well she danced—better than anyone he'd ever known, just as well as dancers in the movies—with flair and rhythm and an energy that seemed inexhaustible. Amongst the men, Arjun was the best dancer by far. At the end of each night, he would put on his favourite record—Tommy Dorsey's band playing ‘I'm Getting Sentimental Over You'. Everyone else would pull back to make space for them, and when the record came scratching to a stop the room would fill with applause. At the end of these evenings Alison seemed scarcely to remember that he, Dinu, still existed.

Once in a while Arjun would announce that he had succeeded in scrounging some extra petrol from the ‘pilot chappies' at the airstrip. They would set out on an expedition, sometimes just the three of them, sometimes as a part of a much larger crowd. One such foray took them to the lodge
that sat atop the summit of Gunung Jerai. A group of pilots had commandeered the place for a party; they were to be Arjun's guests.

They went in a Ford V8 staff car. To get to the summit they had to circle around the mountain driving past quiet
kampong
s with palm-shaded mosques. Children waved at them from ricefields, standing on tiptoe to reach above the grain-heavy stalks. It was a cloudy late November day and there was a cool breeze blowing in from the sea.

The road that led to the summit was not much better than a dirt track. It tacked back and forth across the slope, rising steeply. The mountainside was thickly forested and the track wound through dense patches of jungle. It was several degrees cooler than in the plain, and the sun was blocked by a constant, quick-moving blanket of cloud. At the top the vegetation ended abruptly and the lodge appeared—it looked a little like an English cottage, except that it was surrounded by a balcony that provided dramatic views of the coast and the surrounding plains.

The balcony was crowded with servicemen in grey, blue, khaki and bottle-green. Scattered among the uniforms were a few women dressed in brightly printed cottons. Somewhere inside the lodge a band was playing.

Arjun and Alison went off into the lodge to dance and Dinu was left to himself. He walked round the balcony, past tables that were draped in flapping white cloths. The view of the plain was hindered by a mantle of clouds blowing in from the sea. But every so often the wind would tear the cloud-cover apart, providing spectacular glimpses of the plain: he caught sight of Sungei Pattani, at the foot of the mountain, with hundreds of acres of rubber stretching away from it in all directions. In the distance, he spotted the craggy peaks of the island of Penang and the finger-like wharfs of the port of Butterworth. The north–south highway ran like a great stripe across the landscape, approaching from the southern end of the plain and disappearing towards the north, where the border lay. Along the west lay the Andaman Sea, alight with the bright colours of the sunset.

On the next clear day, Dinu promised himself, he would bring his cameras to the lodge. For the first time in his life, he regretted never having learned to drive: for this view alone, the effort would have been worthwhile.

The next day Arjun was back at Morningside again, at an unusual hour—at eleven in the morning. He was driving a motorcycle, a wasp-waisted, pigeon-breasted Harley-Davidson, painted a dull, military green. It had a sidecar attached. Arjun drove up to the house from the plantation office with Alison sitting in the sidecar.

Dinu was in his dark room when Arjun shouted up from the porch: ‘Dinu! Come down here. I've got some news.'

Dinu went running downstairs. ‘Well . . .?'

Arjun laughed, punching his shoulder. ‘You're an uncle, Dinu—and so am I, Manju's had a baby—a girl.'

‘Oh . . . I'm glad . . .'

‘We're going to celebrate. Come with us.'

‘Where are you going?'

‘Down to the sea,' said Arjun. ‘Jump on. Behind me.'

Dinu glanced at Alison, who looked away. He felt his feet growing leaden. Over the last many days he had struggled to keep pace with the two of them, but he could not be what he was not. He did not want to be with her just so that his presence would weigh on her as a reminder—anything but that.

‘I don't think you really want me with you,' Dinu said quietly.

They sounded a chorus of protests.

‘Oh, Dinu. Rubbish!'

‘Oh, come on, Dinu. Don't be an ass.'

Dinu turned on his heel. ‘I have work to finish in the dark room. You go ahead. You can tell me about it when you get back.' He went back into the house and ran upstairs. He heard the coughing sound of the motorcycle's kick-starter and could not keep himself from looking down, from a window. The Harley-Davidson was speeding down the drive, heading into the estate. He caught a glimpse of Alison's scarf, fluttering like a pennant.

He went back into his dark room and found that his eyes were smarting. In the past he'd always been able to count on the ambience of the dark room for reassurance; its dim red glow had been an unfailing source of comfort. But now the light seemed too bright, unbearably so. He switched it off and sat crouched on the floor, hugging his knees.

His instincts had been true from the start. He'd known that Arjun could not be trusted—nor Alison, not with him. Yet what could he have done? They were adults, and he had no real claim on either of them.

In a while he touched his face and found that it was wet. He grew angry with himself: if there was any tenet on which he'd wanted to build his life, it was that of never giving in to self-pity—that was a road that would not end, he knew, once he had started down it.

He rose to his feet and walked around the room in the darkness, trying to recall its exact size and layout as well as the placement of every bit of furniture and every object. He counted his paces and every time he touched a wall or bumped against something, he started over again.

He came to a decision. He would leave. It was clear that Alison had lost interest in him and there was nothing to be gained from remaining at Morningside. He would pack his things and spend the night at Ilongo's mother's house. Tomorrow he would go to Penang, to wait for a steamer that would take him back to Rangoon.

The motorcycle headed due west, down a road that dwindled into a fraying ribbon of tarmac, fringed by dust and sand. They drove through a small town with a blue-domed mosque and then the sea appeared in front of them, sparkling blue. Waves were climbing gently up a long shelf of sand. The road turned left and they stayed on it, driving parallel to the beach. They came to a small hamlet and the road ended. The marketplace smelt of salt water and drying fish.

Alison asked: ‘Should we leave the motorcycle here?'

‘No.' Arjun laughed. ‘We don't have to. We can take it with us. This Harley can go anywhere.'

The villagers gathered to stare as they drove through the marketplace, slipping through the gaps between the shacks. The motorcycle whined as it climbed over the dune that separated the hamlet from the sea. The sand was blindingly white in the noon-day sun. Arjun kept to the edge of the beach, where the ground was held together by a thin carpet of weeds. He drove slowly, dodging between the windblown trunks of coconut palms.

They left the village far behind and came to a cove that was sheltered by screwpines. The beach consisted of a thin, white fingernail of sand. At the mouth of the cove, no more than a hundred yards from the shore, there was a tiny island. It was thickly wooded, with green bushes and dwarf pines.

‘Let's stop here,' said Alison.

Arjun wheeled the motorcycle into a patch of shade and pulled it on to its kickstand. They took off their shoes and left them on the sand. Arjun rolled up his trouser cuffs and they ran across the burning sliver of beach, straight into the water. It was low tide and the sea was very calm, with gentle waves lapping at the shore. The water was so clear that it magnified the shifting patterns of the sea floor, giving them the appearance of coloured mosaics.

‘Let's swim,' said Arjun.

‘I didn't bring anything.'

‘It doesn't matter.' Arjun began to unbutton his khaki shirt.

‘There's no one here.'

Alison was wearing a workaday cotton dress. She'd been holding it up, keeping the hem above the water. Now she let it drop. The water soaked quickly into the cotton, rising towards her waist.

‘Come on, Alison. We have the whole place to ourselves.' Arjun's shirt-tails were hanging loose, the buttons undone.

‘No.' She laughed. ‘It's December. You have to respect our winter.'

‘It's not cold. Come on.' He reached for her hand, his tongue flicking over the sparkling line of his teeth.

She dug her toes into the sand. Through the clear water, she spotted the curved edge of a seashell, buried between her feet. Reaching into the water she dug it out. The shell was unexpectedly heavy, large enough to fill both her hands.

‘What is it?' said Arjun, looking over her shoulder. His khaki trousers were wet almost to the waist.

‘It's a nautilus,' she said.

The shell had an elliptical opening at one end, like a horn: the colour inside was a rich mother of pearl, tinged with silver highlights. Its body was coiled into an almost perfectly circular mound. A spiral line ran along the mound, ending in a tiny protrusion, not unlike a nipple.

‘How do you know what it's called?' Arjun asked. She could sense his presence behind her. He was looking over her at the shell, his chin resting lightly on her head.

‘Dinu showed me a photograph of a shell like this one,' she said. ‘He thinks it's one of the greatest pictures ever made.'

His arms reached round her shoulders, encircling her body. His hands closed on the shell, his fingers dwarfing hers, his palms wet against the back of her hands. He ran his thumb along the edge of the mother of pearl mouth, over the line that encircled the swelling body, to the tiny nipple-like point that topped the mound.

‘We should . . .' She felt the touch of his breath blowing through her hair. ‘We should take this back for Dinu,' he said. His voice had gone hoarse.

He let his arms drop and stepped away from her. ‘Let's go and explore,' he said, pointing in the direction of the island that lay at the mouth of the cove. ‘I bet we could walk over. The water's very low.'

‘I don't want to get my dress wet.' She laughed.

‘You won't,' he promised. ‘If the water gets too high I'll carry you on my back.'

He took hold of her hand and pulled her deeper into the water. The ground dipped until the water was at waist-level.
Then the sandy floor began to rise again, sloping up towards the island. Arjun began to move faster, pulling her with him. They were running when they reached the shore. They raced across the sun-baked fringe of sand, into the shaded interior of the island. Alison fell on her back, on the soft, sandy earth, and looked up at the sky. They were encircled by bushy screwpines, screened from the shore.

Arjun threw himself down beside her, on his stomach. She was still holding the shell and he prised it free of her grip. He laid it on her chest, and ran his finger along the shell's spiral edge, cupping its body with his palm.

‘It's so beautiful,' he said.

She saw how badly he wanted her; there was something irresistible about the insistency of his desire. When his hand slipped off the shell, on to her body, she made no effort to stop him. From that moment on, when it was already too late, everything changed.