Circumstance

  Circumstance

  Truth and Lies in the Malayan Jungle

  Rosie Milne

  Monsoon Books

  Burrough on the Hill

  Published in 2019

  by Monsoon Books Ltd

  www.monsoonbooks.co.uk

  No.1 The Lodge, Burrough Court,

  Burrough on the Hill, Leics. LE14 2QS, UK

  ISBN (paperback): 9781912049301

  ISBN (ebook): 9781912049318

  Copyright©Rosie Milne, 2019

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  Cover design by Cover Kitchen.

  Contents

  Prologue

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Prologue

  The District Officer’s bungalow, Kluanak, April 1924

  As Frank made his way along the path to the landing stage, night still hung in fluttering tatters from the branches of the trees and, in the uncanny light of pre-dawn, the ribbons of mist swirling from the river looked to him like ghostly arms stretched in dreadful welcome. But then he puffed out his chest, and he flexed his fingers, and he told himself not to be a damn fool: he mustn’t let Nony’s hoodoo give him the jumps; mist was only mist, and soon enough it would be burned away by the blowtorch of the sun; there was no such thing as black magic; if Nony thought she could chant a bit of hocus-pocus and thereby curse him then he must remember he was an Englishman, that’s all, and not a fellow to fall for any of your native nonsense.

  Still, he quickened his step, and he was relieved to see the higgledy pile of his barang, his luggage, loom out of the dimness. It was loosely stacked on the wooden landing stage, and beneath it, in the water, he could make out a patch of shadow denser than the surrounding darkness: it was the boat, a native perahu, awaiting his arrival. Three crewmen were sleepily lounging within it but, at his approach, they all bolted upright and straightened their shoulders.

  Once Frank attained the barang, two of the crewmen jumped up on to the landing stage to meet him. Frank had Boy, his servant, trotting along beside him. Boy and the crewmen set to loading the trunks and cases; though the air was still cool and fresh, they were soon huffing and sweaty with effort.

  Frank smoked as the Malays worked; the tip of his cigarette scribbled the air like a firefly. Only once the last of his things was safely stowed did he toss the glowing butt into the river. The two crewmen jumped back down into the perahu, making it rock beneath their weight.

  The head boatman, who’d never stirred from his perch in the prow, waited until the perahu had steadied, and then he reached up and he offered his hand to Frank, but Frank didn’t take it. Instead, he too hopped nimbly aboard, and again the perahu set to rocking. He momentarily lost his balance, but as soon as he’d regained it, he waved Boy closer. The servant stepped forward, to the very edge of the landing stage, and he leaned down. Frank adopted a friendly tone, or so he intended.

  “Well, goodbye,” he said. “Serve the next man as well as you’ve served me, and I dare say you’ll profit from it.”

  He feared Boy had prepared a parting address, both overwrought and wordy, so to prevent his delivering it, he turned and he inclined his chin to the head boatman, who nodded back. Frank sat down on a seat fashioned from a rough wooden plank; the head boatman lifted a long bamboo pole from the bottom of the boat, and then he used it to push off.

  After a moment or two, the perahu was swept into the central current, where the water flowed fastest. Frank resolutely kept his face set away from the riverbank, and away from this dashed entangled life he was quitting. He looked straight ahead, downriver, towards fresh fields and pastures new, he thought, with the grim relief of a man who felt he’d been trapped in post for far too long, with a millstone round his neck. He refused to acknowledge he knew damn well Nony was squatting like a frog on the verandah of their former home, watching him go, and quivering all the while with malevolent intent focused on him.

  *

  Nony was indeed stationed at the top of the short flight of stairs that gave access to the raised verandah of the District Officer’s – the DO’s – bungalow. She was sitting quite still, with First Daughter sleeping in her arms, and her face was so blank it appeared as serene as her child’s. She was determined to watch until the perahu, and with it Baba, Husband, had shrunk to such a speck she could no longer distinguish it, or him, from any other flotsam washing down the river. So, he was really going, was he? Then on his head be it! She was not in the least fooled by his apparent disregard of her. She was certain that at this, their ending, she and he each felt a prickling spark of awareness arc between them; she was certain Baba knew she was watching him go, and it consoled her to think he must be unnerved; he must fear he was condemned, notwithstanding the fool scoffed at magic. As if his scorn could save him! She allowed a smile to breach the passivity of her face: by the grace of the spirits, and thanks also to the help of their earthly intermediary, the pawang, it could be, at most, only another few weeks before Baba, her ensorcelled doll, would find himself tossed from the brilliantly shining human realm into the fainter, drearier one of the ghosts. Yes, later this morning she’d cast the spell the pawang had taught her, and thus consign Baba to destruction. Dead, safely distant somewhere miles out in the blue vastness of the sea. Dead, thanks to ceaseless, violent, uncontrollable laughter. Terminal laughter, literally terminal paroxysms so convulsive they shook him apart: shook his bones from his sinews; the blood from his liver; thought from his mind; his soul from his body. But still: merely laughter. Laughable, so onlookers must find its horror funny, and smile behind their hands at the victim of this, the most humiliatingly ridiculous death she and the pawang had been able to conceive.

  1

  The Ryton Cove Hotel, Dorsetshire, August 1924

  Four months was not long for a man to find himself a bride, especially when he was under the pressure of a bet, and Frank was horribly aware that two of his had already passed. Indeed, he was feeling rather dispirited as he pushed through the door into the tearoom: he’d been mistaken, perhaps, to have left London for Dorsetshire. Granted, the sea air was as bracing as he’d hoped it would be, so already, after only three hours of breathing it, he could feel it rinsing the lingering damp of Malaya from his lungs, but if first experiences were any guide, then the company threatened to be sadly lacking in delicious young topsies. He swept his gaze from tea table to tea table, intending to confirm to himself that nobody in here would be under 60 – but half a minute! There was one young woman; one young woman in all these talcum clouds of old ones he kept encountering everywhere.

  Some sixth sense caused Rose to turn her head: there was a man standing just inside the doorway and he was looking at her. For a long moment their gazes snagged. Under the force of this man’s gaze, Rose felt electrified and terrified in equal amounts. The intimacy of it was too much, so she looked away. Nonetheless, she remained as aware of the man as she would have been of a wo
lf in the corner of the tearoom. To her great chagrin, she felt her cheeks grow warm.

  Daphne noticed the blush spreading across her daughter’s cheeks. She twisted in her chair. Well! A man! A man standing alone, a rock of youth and masculinity in a room awash with old women. A whole man to boot, she noted, one in possession of all his limbs. Furthermore, nothing about his behaviour, or his demeanour, immediately suggested that his mind was scarred: no jerky movements; no waving his fist at the ceiling, and shouting. In the vicinity of 30, she judged, and tall enough for a girl of an unfortunate five foot eight. It was too bad he didn’t have the looks of a Rudolph Valentino, or a Douglas Fairbanks, but then, who did, in real life, in England? And in any case, the shallow luxury of aiming for a handsome catch was one no girl could afford these days – and no more could a mother. After all, apart from the newcomer there were only – what, four? – yes, four other men in the tearoom, not counting the pianist, a sad-looking specimen, middle-aged and drab in shabby tails, and three of those four must be 70 if they were a day, and the fourth, though young enough for Rose, had a flabby hole where his right cheek should have been, and his right eye was quite gone, the socket closed, now, by a flap of skin, and who knew what injuries he bore to his soul? She twisted back and she met her daughter’s eye.

  “I say! He must be a new guest, don’t you think?”

  Rose attempted to look oblivious.

  “Who must be, Mummy?”

  Daphne ignored such an amateurish attempt at dissembling. There was a tiered glass stand of tempting pastries at the centre of the tea table, and she happened to be holding a strawberry tart, as yet untasted, which she’d just selected. She now regarded it a moment, admired the glossy scarlet of the shiny berries. She said, “And no little woman tucked under his arm.”

  “Mummy!”

  Daphne shrugged.

  “It doesn’t mean, of course, he has no little woman waiting for him at home.”

  Rose, at 23, shared her mother’s despair that her real life, her life as an adored wife, was never going to get started. Nevertheless, she had her pride, and she now felt both humiliated and furious. But what could she say? Since nothing occurred to her, she reached for her teacup – a pretty one, the icy white porcelain decorated with a design of blue flowers. She took a sip of tea, hoping this would somehow discourage her mother from further presumption.

  Daphne took a bite of her strawberry tart, one so neat it scattered no crumbs and set no juice dribbling. After a pause for eating, she said, “You’ll want to meet him, won’t you. After all, it’s dull for you there are so few young people in the hotel.”

  Duller than a dun-coloured dress, agreed Rose.

  “I don’t mind.”

  Daphne again ignored her daughter’s attempt at dissembling. She ate another bite of strawberry tart and then she said, “Well, we most hope he’s suitable, that’s all.”

  Rose continued to sip her tea. She knew her mother meant suitably dynastic. The current sad shortage of men notwithstanding, it was clear that Mummy simply wouldn’t allow her to marry just anybody – a wrong sort of person. A man whose people were grocers, say, or railway engineers, that kind of thing. It just wouldn’t do.

  *

  The Ryton Cove Hotel was a ponderous monument to the dated Victorian Gothic style. The faux-baronial morning room was gloomy and chilly, even in August. For now it was empty apart from Rose, who was sitting at a desk by one of the windows, reading a letter from her cousin Beatrice – the two of them were as close as sisters, and they corresponded daily. Beatrice was spending August in a house her parents had rented for the month, in Suffolk, and as Rose read yet another account of parties and picnics, all of them attended, it seemed, by one Mr Edmund Marchmorant, she couldn’t help resenting that dear Bumbles appeared to be having a much jollier time of it than she was.

  The morning room door was of dark oak panels liberally sprinkled with iron studs; it looked as if it should creak, but the hotel management kept the hinges well oiled, and it opened silently. So when Frank pushed through it, he did not attract Rose’s attention; he was able to observe her a moment, without her realising she was being observed: what a stroke of luck! It was that girl again, the one from the tearoom yesterday, the one who’d so flatteringly refused to meet his eye, except for the briefest moment. Well! It would be jolly rude to ignore her in this otherwise empty, and echoing room. He squared his shoulders.

  “A fine morning,” he remarked.

  Rose glanced up, saw who was speaking, and, as so often, she felt herself betray herself by blushing – drat her traitorous cheeks. She put down Beatrice’s letter, hoping that the eagerness with which she did so was not too horribly ill-concealed, and then she glanced out of the window, as if to check whether or not the morning was indeed fine, but really to give herself a moment to compose herself. The window was a tall, arched affair with a stone frame, and leaded panes; beyond it was the terrace which gave onto the formal gardens.

  “Yes,” she said, to the shrubs outside. “A fine morning.”

  Frank noticed the effect he was having on Rose; nobody could call him conceited, but really there wasn’t a fellow alive who could have resisted feeling smug. By Jove, if only Slinger could see him now!

  “Sunny,” he smirked. “But not too sunny, a breeze, but not too breezy.”

  Rose dared to shoot him another glance: he was wearing a tweed jacket and plus fours.

  “For golf?”

  “Waiting for the fellows who’re going to make up a four with me.”

  By now, Frank had walked across the morning room. He was looming over the writing desk, and, wordlessly, he and Rose appraised each other.

  This girl was perhaps not the jammiest bit of jam, thought Frank, but even on the very closest inspection, nothing about her suggested any delicacy of constitution. She was slender, but not so thin she looked ill, and her complexion, though pale, was healthily clear. As to her features? Her nose was retroussé, which rather appealed. Her eyes were green, unusually so, and attractively large and round. Her coppery auburn hair was shingled, and though he thought the style unfortunate, he could nonetheless imagine it: he could imagine his hands in her hair … though such imagining was perhaps best avoided before tiffin, by a fellow on his way to golf, and certainly he must not let his eyes linger on this girl’s bosom, where it swelled invitingly full beneath the bodice of her cotton frock.

  For her part, Rose felt for a moment as if she were wheeling into the limitless blue of this man’s blue eyes, falling, flailing, through an icy sky … Not that she was one for nonsense. She reined herself in, and she told herself, with protective prissiness, that the stranger had about him a delightfully boyish air, a blonde and carefree air, to match his colouring. Open. He looked open. Candid – not at all a tortured dark prince. Alas, she could not judge him conventionally handsome. He was tall, six foot or very nearly, but he wasn’t attractively rangy: he had about him a softness and a fullness that suggested in a few years he’d run to fat; the lines of his face were too round for male beauty, his features were somewhat doughy and his complexion was marred here and there by pock marks. Still, she found his looks touching; after all, she knew what it was to confront the world from behind a face judged ordinary. And in any case, how marvellous it would be to sink into his manly arms … not that she could let herself think about that just now; it would be worse, even, than fancying herself tumbling through the boundless sky.

  *

  Frank knew he had to push things along, and Rose saw no need to slow them down, so although it was only a few days since they’d first talked to each other in the morning room, they were already on first-name terms – and, indeed, almost inseparable. Now they were playing tennis. The hotel’s court was badly sited; there was only open ground, and no wind brake of trees between it and the cliff half a mile away, so the slightest sea breeze set tennis balls bobbing and swirling until they became unplayable. But on a calm day, such as today, with the sky like a blue blanket sprea
d to dry in the sun, there could be, thought Rose, no prettier spot for tennis. And certainly there was no one in the world she’d rather be playing than Frank whom, she thought, looked edible in his tennis whites. Likewise, Frank thought Rose, in her own tennis whites, looked as lickable as a vanilla ice and he admired her graceful athleticism just as much as she admired his.

  Frank was much the better player. Though in each game he’d given Rose fifteen, she’d barely troubled him at all on his own serve, and she’d only held her own because he’d let her. Now, he was serving for the match. He dawdled before he tossed the ball, relishing this chance to show off. Then: up went the ball; thwack, his racquet connected. The ball made a purposeful parabola through the still, warm air. Rose darted across the grass court, a flash of white against green. Thwack, her return went straight into the net.

  “Oh, rotten luck!” cried Frank, delighted to have won.

  Rose was eager to compliment him.

  “Luck? Not at all. It was a splendid serve.”

  The two of them left the court, laughing and panting. They swung their heavy, wooden racquets as they walked to the welcome shade of a canvas awning; beneath it were a couple of cane chairs, and a table set with glasses and a big jug of lemon barley water. Rose flopped down into one of the chairs.

  “So hot!” she said, fanning her face.

  Frank began to pour the lemon barley water.

  “Hot?” he echoed, with exaggerated incredulity, as he passed over her glass. “This would be a cool afternoon in Saramantan.”

  Frank delivered the word Saramantan casually. Nevertheless, Rose seized on it as a clue in a treasure hunt. She assumed, of course, that Saramantan must be someplace somewhere in the Empire, some otherwise sad and benighted patch of the globe, where, luckily enough for the natives, Britannia now held sway.