The Orientalist and the Ghost (24 page)

‘Who’s there?’ I shouted. ‘I have my gun.’

In truth all I had was my tiffin-carrier containing some sandwich crusts and was regretting my intervention, when the door of the hut banged open with such force that the walls shook. I peeked around the side of the hut and caught sight of a man streaking behind a row of nearby shacks. A curfew violator, I supposed. I proceeded cautiously round to the front, to see what damage had been done, flashing my torch around the crime scene until it came to rest upon a bare-legged girl in a dress, crouched behind the toppled-over water barrel like a child playing hide-and-seek. Though the girl must have sensed the torch beam,
she
kept her face hidden in her hands, as if she believed that banishing the world from her sight would, in turn, banish her from the sight of the world. In any case, there was no need for me to see her face. I knew who she was.

‘Grace,’ I said. ‘What are you doing here?’

Grace spoke no language but baby-talk, and wasn’t going to start babbling on my account. Hearing her name, however, she realized the invisibility ruse had failed and removed her hands from her beaming face. There was a purplish bruise on her cheek, and her lips were bloody and swollen, as if split by the toothy kiss of an over-amorous Romeo. She stood up, blinking a little in the torch glare, but smiling, happy as a clam. Her dress was wet and torn and clung to her thighs, but her cherubic face bore no trace of guilt or knowledge of wrongdoing. Smiling at me, she put her hand between her legs and rubbed herself, the glint of sexual delinquency in her eyes. Irritated, disgusted and slightly aroused, I grabbed her arm and hauled her roughly outside.

‘What happened to you, Grace? Who did this to you? Have you no pride?’

Grace’s eyes clouded over, her face as pale and empty as the moon. I bristled at the inconvenience of having to escort her back to her hut. It never occurred to me that Grace might have been the victim of a sexual assault, or in need of medical attention. Attitudes to such things were different then. I doubt the police would’ve shown much sympathy anyway. Grace didn’t
seem
the least bit traumatized and was known for her promiscuity. Manacling her elbow, I steered Grace in the direction of her home – a good ten minutes’ walk away.

As I tugged her along Grace stumbled with none of the virtue implied by her name. We hadn’t got very far when a figure came hurtling out of the darkness. My Evangeline, cloaked in moonshadow. Barefoot, frantic and wild-eyed in my torchlight. She panted, shuddering hard, but she didn’t pause to recover her breath. She flew at us, swinging her arm and striking Grace’s cheek with the whipcrack force of her open palm. Grace bucked like a horse startled by lightning, wrenching her elbow from my grip. She turned to flee but Evangeline lunged, grabbed a fistful of her dress and fell on her, pushing her younger sister to the ground. Evangeline pummelled Grace with bare-knuckle punches, the poor simple girl wailing and fending off the blows with flailing arms. Evangeline was a blur of violence, a creature of eight arms, her face hideous with rage. I was afraid she’d lost her mind. I girdled Evangeline from behind, pinning down her arms and hauling her off her sister. Unfortunately for Grace, Evangeline clutched a handful of her hair, dragging Grace along with us through the dirt. When I finally freed Grace’s tresses from Evangeline’s fist, the kicking, screaming momentum of aggression shifted on to me. She thrashed like a hell-cat in my arms, kicking my shins with her bare heels.

‘For heaven’s sake!’ I gasped as she battered my sternum with her elbow. ‘The guards will hear and you’ll be sent to a detention camp.’

Evangeline stiffened at the mention of detention camp. Wary of a resurgence of violence, I kept hold of her, clamping her arms in my backwards embrace. The tenseness of her body dissolved into shaking, her breath coming in sharp sobs. The worst of the hysteria over, I twisted Evangeline to face me.

‘See those huts over there?’ I nodded to the hunched, misshapen row of shacks a stone’s throw away. ‘Everyone who lives in those huts is now awake. The commotion you made woke them.’

The thin wail of an infant drifted through the dark. The windows were dark gaping mouths and the sensation of being watched was overwhelming, as if every pair of eyes delivered a tiny electric shock. Grace huddled in the earth, whimpering and rocking back and forth on her heels. Her knees were grazed and dirt-encrusted, her face a bloody swollen pumpkin. She cowered from her sister, touching the raw and tender spot on her scalp from which her hair had been torn. Evangeline trembled, not far off whimpering herself.

‘I am sick of this!’ she said. ‘I am sick of looking after her. I forget to lock the door just once …’

I concede I had seen none sicker than Evangeline. Resentment poisoned her blood, and the violence had purged her of not one drop.

‘Well, what good will come of beating your sister to a pulp?’ I hissed. ‘For goodness’ sake pull yourself together. Now is not the time. Look!’

Scything along the darkness of the trail were three circles of torchlight, swaying in the distance like
luminous
spectres. Fortunately, Evangeline’s breakdown was not so severe that she didn’t grasp the urgency of our situation.
Over there
, she said, pointing towards a ditch. Together we shoved and bundled the cowering Grace towards the chest-high trench. Evangeline and I lowered ourselves in and Grace fell in after us with a splash. The errant sisters and I crouched ankle-deep in the filthy water, the surface a flotilla of mosquito larvae, effluent scum and other vile flotsam. The stench made me gag, and I held my nose so the odour was less pervasive. Grace grizzled softly and Evangeline silenced her, clamping a hand over her mouth and muttering fiercely in her ear.

The guards had seen us jump down into the ditch. I knew it in my bones. My eardrums were taut with listening for footsteps, waiting for the swoop of torch beams upon us as we squatted like dirty animals in our hiding place. Paranoia taunted me with illusory sounds: whispers of
Mistah Ingerris
and the tittering of guards sneaking up to the ditch. However, when the night patrol did eventually pass us by (much louder than the phantom footsteps of my imagination) the tenterhooks withdrew from my heart. They were a procession of men dead on their feet; somnambulists, their numb muteness only broken by the odd wheeze, a tarry cough. When they were far enough away I climbed out of the cesspit, shoes squelching, the foul wetness clinging to my trouser turn-ups. I then lent a hand to Evangeline and Grace and helped them out too.

I saw the Lim sisters back to their hut in a furious
silence
. How had they managed to embroil me in such a shambolic episode? I didn’t utter a word to Evangeline, whom I blamed entirely for everything, and Evangeline knew better than to speak to me. The mooncalf Grace smiled as she followed us, the throb of bruises all she retained of the night’s misadventures. I said a few terse words in parting at their door –
Make sure this never happens again
– before turning my back. It was remarkably cold of me, but I wanted my displeasure to be known and was determined to wash my hands of the pair thereafter.

That night I slept fitfully, in a turmoil of dreams. I dreamt the guards of The Village of Everlasting Peace filed into my hut, a dozen or so men, with gouged hollows where their eyes ought to have been. They gathered around my camp-bed, where I lay terror-drenched and paralysed, their empty sockets glaring at me.

I dreamt I was up in the watchtower and a gigantic moth flew in; a lepidopterous beast with the wing-span of a serpent eagle. The moth flew in wild circles, then crashed into the kerosene lamp so it smashed to the floor and set it on fire. The moth dive-bombed me and I remember the shiny armour of its thorax and the blue iridescent beads of its eyes, bulging large as apples. I drove it off with a calligraphy scroll, beating at its wings so the scales disintegrated into mottled-grey powder, which, falling, invigorated the kerosene flames like some flammable dust.

I dreamt I lay in the darkness, breathing in the hot viscous air, when a whorish naked Grace lifted my mosquito net and climbed on to my mattress. Grace straddled me, sheathing me, sliding her tight slippery warmth up and down on my Judas erection. I lay back in horror and arousal as Grace writhed, moaning in the throes of lust. She molested me with damp stumpy hands, groping my chest and leaning close so I could smell the sour-milk smell of her succulent flesh. She bit my cheek, pressed her parted lips to mine and probed me with her muscular tongue. I could not fight her off. Invisible forces pinned me down as Grace the succubus, the harlot-rapist, leant back, moaned and fondled her small breasts, clenching and quickening her rhythm, manipulating me towards an orgasm filled with incestuous sickness.

I dreamt that a stranger came and slid a sheaf of papers under my door.

I woke to a hot bright morning. Flies attracted by the lingering stench of ditch buzzed merrily about my feet. A trip to the bathing hut was in order. As I yawned and stretched and collected my towel I saw, with a strange sense of déjà vu, an envelope bearing my name on the floor. I dropped my towel and pounced upon the letter. And it wasn’t until I was tearing open the seal that I realized how many questions I had and how badly I wanted answers.

16

CHARLES DULWICH APPEARED
by the fireplace in his seersucker suit, Little Lord Fauntleroy curls poking out like the springs of a disembowelled clock, a dangerously smug smile on his face.

‘Guess who I’ve just seen!’

The gas fire was off to save money and I sat in the armchair under a pile of blankets, my breath a pale cirrus mist. Charles, the lucky bugger, was immune to the bitter chill. Whereas I’d lost sensation in my toes, Charles was sweating like a pig on a spit. He plucked a hanky from his pocket and delicately patted his forehead. A drop slid down the slope of his nose to the tip, where it hung with a menacing quiver before plummeting to the carpet.

‘Aren’t you going to guess?’ he asked.

I had better things to do than play Charles’s silly guessing game. For the past five minutes I’d been trying
to
drink my toddy of hot milk and whisky. My hand trembled as I gripped the mug, the amplitude of shaking increasing the higher the mug was lifted, until boiled milk slopped over the rim and scalded my knuckles. At this point the mission had to be abandoned and the mug lowered to the safety of the trestle table.

‘Spoilsport,’ Charles accused.

The children were asleep in the bedroom and I was loath to wake them by quarrelling with Charles. Julia has been so naughty of late that every night she sleeps peacefully under my roof is a blessing.

‘I haven’t the foggiest. Who d’you see?’

‘Guess. It won’t be any fun if I just tell you!’

I was dubious that there was any fun in it for me at all, but I said: ‘Police Lieutenant Percival Spencer.’

‘Ha, ha! Old Periwinkle! I haven’t seen the Boy Wonder and his amazing flying intestines for half an eternity.’

‘He was here looking for you the other day …’

‘Have another guess!’

‘Oh, I don’t know, Charles …’

‘Go on!’

‘Kip Phillips from the Bishop’s Head plantation …’

‘Ha, ha! Wrrrong! Guess again.’

‘Give me a hint. Was he Chinese, an Englishman or Malay?’

‘The person, who is of the non-male gender, is of Chinese blood.’

My heart gave a nasty lurch. ‘Evangeline?’

A vampire feeding on the anxiety of others, Charles smiled, then sank his fangs in deeper. ‘Haha,
you wish
! I haven’t seen that knackered old donkey and her mad trollop of a sister since heaven knows when.’

‘I’d appreciate it if you would kindly refrain from speaking of her like that.’

‘Oh, c’mon, Christopher, she was hardly a paragon of feminine virtue. You
do
know about the slutty Lim sisters and the Japanese, don’t you?’

Blankets tumbled to the floor and my dressing gown came agape as I stood up and pointed to the door.

‘Shut up! Get out!’

Charles was not remotely cowed. ‘Calm down or you’ll wake the snivelling brats next door,’ he said. ‘Seeing as you’re so hopeless at guessing, I will describe her. She is as tall as your armpit and seventeen years of age. She has raven silk hair and almond-shaped eyes; hazel and gold-flecked in sunshine, deepest brown in the shade. Tawny-limbed and no breasts to speak of. Her school uniform a grey pleated skirt and cap-sleeved blouse … Have you guessed who she is yet? Here’s another clue: she was smoking one of your cigars. Yes! The disobedient child was blowing smoke rings out of her bedroom window and across Sultan Road for everyone to see. Really, Christopher. Just because she was born out of wedlock doesn’t mean you ought not to teach her some manners.’

I was winded, my solar plexus punched by an invisible fist. Weak-kneed, I sank down on to the armchair again.

‘Frances.’

‘Yes. Well done. Got there eventually.’

‘But how did you recognize her? You’ve never seen Frances before. You died when she was a baby. Your lives scarcely overlapped.’