Somerset Maugham woke up choking for air. Violent coughing rocked his body until, finally, blessedly, it subsided, and he could breathe again.
He lay in his bed inside the cocoon of the mosquito netting, waiting for his breathing to return to normal. There was the faintest aftertaste of mud on his tongue. He swallowed once, licking his lips, and the taste disappeared from his mouth.
His body felt waterlogged as he pushed himself up against the headboard. He had been dreaming: a great wave had swept him overboard into a turbulent river; muddy water poured down his gullet, flooding his lungs and weighting him down into the sunless depths. It was at that point that he had jerked awake in a frenzy of apnoeic snorting.
Parting the mosquito netting, he sat up on the edge of the bed, planting his feet on the floorboards. He felt more fatigued than he had been when he went to sleep. He had kicked the Dutch wife onto the floor, and he was certain he had cried out at the instant he awoke; he hoped no one had heard. He cocked his head to one side, listening; there was only the slurring of the waves on the beach.
His room was sparsely furnished: a rattan armchair by the windows, a low bookcase spilling out with old and yellowing novels, an oakwood chest of drawers against one wall and, in the corner, a washstand with a porcelain basin. Taking up half a wall was a teak almeirah, his bags and trunks stacked on top of it.
He touched the framed photograph of his mother on the bedside table, making a minute adjustment to its position, turning her face more towards the windows. Her brown eyes had always looked mournful, even in his memories; this morning they seemed more melancholy than usual. He picked up the Dutch wife from the floor and set it back on his bed before padding barefoot across the room. He opened the window shutters and leaned out.
The world still lay under a grey ink wash, but at the edges of the sky a pale glow was seeping in. Set in a corner on the first floor of the house, his room had extensive views of the garden below. To his left, about ten yards away, a low wooden fence ran along the bottom of the garden, marking the property from the beach. By the fence grew a tall casuarina tree, a wrought-iron garden bench in its shade. Squinting at the beach, he made out the figure of Lesley Hamlyn. She was standing at the waterline, staring out to sea. A moment later she turned around and started back towards the house. She slipped through the wooden gate and strolled up the lawn, disappearing beneath the verandah roof without looking up at him.
The houseboy had yet to bring Willie his ewer of hot shaving water. He rinsed his face at the basin and picked out a fresh set of clothes from the wardrobe – a long-sleeved white cotton shirt, a pair of khaki slacks, and a cream linen jacket, pressed by the dhobi the previous evening while they were at dinner. He found his shoes lined up outside his bedroom door, polished to an opulent sheen. The Hamlyns’ bedrooms were across the wide landing, their doors closed. Halfway down the landing was a living area, jutting out to form the top of the porch, the windows on its three sides overlooking the front lawn and the crescent driveway. Beyond this square space were four more rooms. On his side of the landing were the guest bathroom and, next to it, Gerald’s room. Gerald’s brogues had also been shined and set down outside his door. Willie proceeded along the landing to the staircase, pausing now and again to study the row of watercolours on the wall. They were paintings of local shophouses, their thin, black lines – architectural in their precision – detailing the elaborate plasterworks of the shopfronts. The meticulousness of the drawings was enlivened by the brushstrokes of vivid colours, artfully capturing the atmosphere of the teeming, cacophonous Asiatic quarters in the towns of the Straits Settlements. Each one of the paintings had a title in the bottom right corner – Moulmein Road; Bangkok Lane; Ah Quee Street; Rope Walk – and all of them, Willie discovered as he squinted at the signature, had been painted by Lesley Hamlyn.
Downstairs, he made his way through the bright, airy house to the verandah at the back, nodding to the houseboys who stood aside for him in the corridors. Robert and Lesley were already at the breakfast table, walled off from each other behind their newspapers. Willie studied them from the doorway. He remembered Robert as a handsome man, tall and bull-shouldered, so he had been dismayed by the stooped figure who had met him under the porch the previous afternoon, leaning on a gold-headed Malacca cane walking stick and breathing in shallow gasps; the thick head of hair Robert once possessed was gone, the dome of his head now a depilated basilica, with just a narrow fringe of sparse grey hair above his ears. He hadn’t recognised his old friend’s voice either – the resplendent baritone he used to envy had shrivelled to a querulous, fissured tone.
The Doberman lying at Robert’s feet lifted his head and barked as Willie approached the table. Husband and wife lowered their newspapers. ‘Don’t be rude, Claudius,’ Robert said, reaching down to rub the dog’s ears. ‘Morning, Willie. You’re bright and early. Sleep well?’
‘Like a … baby,’ Willie stammered.
‘Help yourself, Willie,’ Robert said, nodding his chin at the sideboard.
Willie opened the lids of the chafing dishes. Kippers and bacon and sausages and eggs and toast, as he had expected. There were also plates of cheeses and bowls of local fruit – bananas and mangoes and starfruit. He filled only half his plate and sat down at the table.
‘Don’t be shy, Willie,’ said Robert.
‘I still can’t get’ – Willie’s jaw jutted out, struggling to force his next word out – ‘get used to the Falstaffian appetites of you people here,’ he said, finally overcoming the blockage in his throat that made people regard him with pity and impatience. ‘The heaps of food at … every meal … in this … heat …’ He turned towards Lesley. ‘I saw you … on the … beach.’
‘My morning walk,’ she said. ‘Your secretary – Gerald – is he up yet?’
The hitch in her words was delicate, but Willie caught it. Holding her gaze, he said, ‘He’s not an … early riser. It won’t cause any inconvenience, I trust?’
‘Don’t be daft, Willie,’ Robert replied, and added to Lesley, ‘Tell Cookie to set something aside for him every morning, won’t you, my dear?’
Robert cut a wedge of Camembert and fed it to the Doberman. The dog wolfed it down, licking its chops. ‘Claudius loves his cheese.’ Robert grinned as he fed the dog another piece. Lesley’s lips, Willie noticed, had disappeared into a thin, taut wire.
‘You have a visitor.’ He pointed to a monitor lizard emerging from the bottom of the hibiscus hedge. The creature was about three feet long, its thick tail almost the length of its body. It crawled across the lawn with a squat, muscular grace, its tongue flicking in and out. The sparrows pecking on the grass flew off.
‘Oh, that’s just Monty,’ said Robert. ‘He showed up here a few years ago. Takes his daily dip in the Warburtons’ pool next door. So what’s on the cards today, old chap? Lesley’ll be delighted to show you the sights.’
Lesley cut in before he could reply. ‘I’m meeting the church bazaar ladies today, and I have errands to run in town afterwards.’
‘Well, one of these days, then,’ said Robert. ‘The old girl’s quite the expert on our island’s history, Willie. Knows everything about the place. Used to give our friends from abroad tours of the town. We showed that German writer around when he was in Penang – what was his name, dear? Hesse, wasn’t it? Yes. Hermann Hesse.’
‘Quiet, lazy days on … the beach, that’s all I want,’ Willie said. ‘I’ve piles … of books to read, and Gerald hasn’t fully recovered yet. He needs his rest, lots … of it.’
‘The poor boy did look rather peaky last night.’ Robert peered over his spectacles at Willie. ‘And so do you, if you don’t mind me saying.’
‘The past few weeks have been rather … trying. Herman Hesse was in Penang?’
‘Eleven or twelve years ago. I’ve never read any of his stuff. Have you?’
‘A couple of them. If you’re finished with that paper, Robert …’
Robert passed him the Straits Times and they ate their breakfast in a comfortable silence. Lesley excused herself and went inside when Robert left for his chambers in town. Willie remained at the table, nursing his cup of tea.
A squeaking noise made him look over the balustrade. A white-haired Tamil in a singlet and khaki shorts had come around the side of the house, pushing a wheelbarrow. He stopped at the edge of the lawn and selected a short-handled scythe from his bundle of tools in the wheelbarrow. Sinking onto his haunches, he began to swing the scythe in a languid rhythm, the sickle blade spitting out tufts of grass as it skimmed over the lawn.
Going up to his bedroom, Willie stopped outside Gerald’s room and pressed his ear to the door. He heard nothing. ‘Gerald,’ he called softly. There was no reply, not even the faintest stirring from within. Hardly surprising, thought Willie, considering the number of drinks he had polished off the previous evening.
He collected his journal and returned downstairs. The houseboys had already cleared the breakfast table. Stepping out onto the lawn, he decided to follow the gravel path and explore the garden. The turning and twisting path gave the impression that the grounds were more extensive than they actually were, an illusion heightened by the tall, impressive trees: a fig tree buttressed in place by the triangular wedges of its roots; nutmeg trees in fruit, remnants of the spice plantations which Robert told him used to cover this side of the island; a pair of pinang trees from which, he recalled reading somewhere, the island took its name. And there it was, the raintree Robert had boasted about last night. ‘Three hundred years old, Willie. One of the oldest on the island. Its trunk is so wide it takes three men with their arms fully stretched out to encircle it. Walter – he’s the superintendent of the Botanic Garden – he regularly brings people to see it.’
Willie pressed his palm to the hard, crocodilian bark. He pictured the great roots of the tree clawed deep into the earth, keeping the colossus upright. The trunk itself climbed almost sixty feet to the sky, spreading out into an intricate filigree of branches and leaves that reminded Willie of the network of bronchioli and alveoli in a set of lungs.
He resumed his stroll, nodding a greeting to the syce washing the Humber outside the garage. Behind the garage lay a tennis court, the scuffed white lines interrupted here and there by mounds of dead leaves and puddles of rainwater. A crow perched on a rusting net pole, turning its head left and right as though refereeing a game.
Willie returned to the bench under the casuarina tree. The area around the tree was littered with its twigs and small, spiky seeds. He pulled down one of the low-hanging branches and examined it, his thumb rubbing the long, grey-green twigs and the leathery leaves.
The kebun dropped his sickle blade and scuttled towards Willie, grabbed the rag slung over a knobbly shoulder and with a show of vigorous effort wiped the dew off the bench. When he finished Willie offered him a cigarette. The man flashed him a vampiric smile. Willie winced inwardly: even after all these months travelling around the Federated Malay States, the sight of teeth stained blood-red by betelnut juice still made him queasy.
He settled into the bench and opened his journal to a new page, uncapped his fountain pen and printed the date on the top right corner: 2nd March, 1921. He tapped his pen against his teeth, then added in his neat writing: ‘Arrived in Cassowary House yesterday afternoon. Still weak, but feeling much improved today.’ He ran his writer’s eye over the house. Gerald’s windows were open, a breeze pawing at the curtains. He thought for a moment. ‘The house is of a comfortable size, square and double-storeyed, similar to many of the Anglo-Indian styled houses I’ve seen in Malaya. Compared to the houses along Northam Road I saw on the drive from the harbour yesterday – mansions with Corinthian columns and great pediments capping cavernous porticoes – Cassowary House looks unpretentious, it is a house at ease with its own unassuming lines.’ He paused, before adding, ‘The terracotta roof tiles – they look like a pangolin’s hide.’
He paged back to the entry he had written on the evening over a month ago when he and Gerald had returned to Kuching from the interior. He scanned a few paragraphs, then stopped. The events were still too upsetting to read. He scanned the notes on Penang he had made from his copy of Bradshaw’s Through Routes to the Chief Cities. The island was once part of the territory ruled by the Sultanate of Kedah on the mainland. In the late eighteenth century Captain Francis Light obtained a lease on it for the East India Company from the Sultan and named it Prince of Wales Island. Light had turned it into a free port to divert trade from the Dutch colonies on the other side of the Straits of Malacca. The island was Britain’s first outpost in South-East Asia and the capital of the Straits Settlements (‘Britain’s most important Crown Colony in the Far East’, his Bradshaw proclaimed). From Penang they had extended their reach down to Malacca, Singapore and, eventually, into the Federated Malay States and the Unfederated Malay States. In the eighteenth century, tin mining attracted coolies from southern China, while indentured Indian labourers were shipped in to work in the rubber plantations.
He studied the map of Penang he had copied into his journal. The island was about a third of the size of Singapore, its shape reminding him of a wildebeest’s hide Syrie had splayed on the floor of his sitting room. He had found it loathsome and had demanded that she get rid of it. This had, inevitably, sparked off another one of their rows.
Willie pushed her out of his mind. From the moment he left England, months ago, he had not thought about her, and he had no desire – or any need, thank God – to think about her now.
The kebun was padding barefoot around the garden, his soles surprisingly pink, his footsteps as light as … Willie foraged in his mind for a description, finding it a second later: as though he was but a brief sojourner in a strange land. He murmured the sentence to himself a few times, testing out its rhythm. He liked it, and jotted it in his journal. He eyed the page lying open on his lap. He had written just two sentences since he sat down. He closed his journal and pocketed his fountain pen. I’m not going to feel guilty. I came here to recuperate. I’m not going to do a stitch of work. I will rest and swim. I will read the books I want to read and play bridge and explore the island.
The wind frisked the topmost branches of the trees. Golden orioles flitted around the garden. Listening to the waves fizzing on the sand, Willie felt the knots in his body slowly unravelling. He was looking forward to a slothful, restorative stay here with Gerald, free from all cares.
Lesley had appeared on the verandah. She waved something she was holding at him. His eyes followed her as she came down the steps and crossed the lawn, heading straight towards him. She was of medium height, her slender build and rigid posture adding inches to her and giving her an assured bearing. Probably hard on forty, Willie guessed. She was dressed in a cream silk blouse and a matching skirt. She had been solicitous when they arrived yesterday, serving them tea and sticky rice cakes in the sitting room, but there was something wary about her, something tightly closed-up.
‘Don’t get up, Willie,’ she said as he half rose from the bench. ‘Your mail from Singapore.’ She handed him a bundle of letters and a small parcel wrapped in brown paper. Her long, thin fingers moved with the articulated grace of a spider’s legs. ‘I’m off to town. Cookie will have tiffin ready at one. Robert will be home by then.’
‘Is he … well enough to work?’
‘He’d be bored stiff if he stayed at home all day. Anyway, he only works until lunchtime. Oh – if you’re going out, get one of the houseboys to run out to the road for a rickshaw. It’s fifteen cents into town. Don’t pay more than that.’
‘We’re not going anywhere today—’
‘Excuse me, Willie.’ She beckoned to the kebun weeding by the cannas. ‘Bala!’
The man hurried towards her, the cigarette Willie had given him still unlit and tucked behind his ear. Lesley strode around the garden, pointing at the shrubs and beds, the kebun nodding vigorously at her instructions. Willie listened to her giving a list of tasks to the gardener; she spoke not the hodgepodge of English and Malay that the memsahibs used when giving orders to the natives, but what sounded to his untutored ears like fluent Malay.
Willie put on his reading spectacles and thumbed through his mail. The letters were graffitied in tangles of crossed-out addresses and arrows of various colours, pursuing him around the world. He recognised a letter from his lawyers in New York and one from his wife. He frowned – most likely Syrie would be asking for more money – she had been going on and on about redecorating their house before he left London. He dropped her letter to the side, unopened, and turned all his attention to the package.
It was from his publisher, and he knew straightaway what lay inside. He unwrapped it slowly, resisting the urge to rip it open, and took out a copy of his latest book, On a Chinese Screen. It was the first time he was holding it in his hands – he had left England shortly after delivering the manuscript to his agent.
He examined the cover and was pleased to find no mistakes or imperfections. He brushed his fingers along the spine, turned the book over and then to the front again. Bringing it to his nose, he thumbed through the pages, losing himself in the ascetic fragrance of a new book. He stroked the title and his name on the jacket. Even after so many novels and countless short stories, he still felt a warming surge of pride every time he held his latest book in his hands.
Resting the book on his thigh, he picked up the letter from his lawyer and opened it. It was probably an offer from a publisher or a theatre producer. He read it once, then he read it again. He had invested £40,000 – all of his money – with Trippe & Company, a brokerage firm in New York. He had hoped that he would make enough from the investment so that he would never have to write for money again.
Trippe & Company had collapsed, his lawyers regretted to inform him. He had lost all his money, every penny of it.
A hot, acidulous nausea flooded his stomach, searing his throat. He fought back the urge to vomit. He sat there, the letter pinched between thumb and forefinger, its corners twitching in the breeze.
‘Are you all right, Willie? Willie?’
He jerked his head up, squinting against the bright sunshine. Lesley had come back to him. Her face, hovering over him, was blurry. ‘My goodness, you’re white as a sheet.’ Her eyes darted to the letter in his hand. ‘Not bad news, I hope?’
He swallowed once, and then swallowed again, forcing down his nausea. ‘Just the … the … colitis, that’s all.’ He was mortified that he was stammering more than usual. Fighting against it would only make it worse, he knew, but he couldn’t help himself. ‘It comes and … goes. I haven’t … completely … recovered from it. Caught it … in … Java.’
‘You don’t look well. I’ll send for Dr Joyce.’
He raised his palm. His arm, his whole body, felt leaden. ‘I’m … all right.’ He folded the letter and stuffed it into his shirt pocket. His movements tipped his book off his lap onto the grass. He bent down to retrieve it, using the opportunity to draw in a few long, deep breaths to calm his thoughts.
‘Are you sure?’ said Lesley.
He wished she would stop talking. ‘I’m all right, Lesley,’ he said again, peevishly. To divert her attention he showed her the book. ‘My latest book.’
‘Oh, how marvellous,’ she said, ‘you must be terribly pleased.’ She noticed the title on the cover. ‘On a Chinese Screen. Very evocative. A novel?’
‘A collection of … sketches … of what I saw in China – the places I visited, the people I met.’
A watchful expression stilled her face. ‘When were you there?’
‘Two years ago.’ He patted the space on the bench beside him.
Lesley remained standing. ‘Where did you go?’
‘We started … from Shanghai. We travelled two thousand miles up the Yangtze in a rice barge, into the heart of China. The Yangtze is the longest—’
‘The longest river in China, yes, yes, I know all that. How long were you there?’
‘Four or five months. We travelled deep inland, walked our feet flat.’
‘Did you ever …’ She stopped, then began again. ‘Did you ever come across any mention of Dr Sun Yat Sen?’
‘Just about everywhere we went. Intriguing chap, from all that I heard. Speaks English fluently too, apparently. I wish I could have … met him and talked to him.’
‘He passed through here about ten years ago.’
‘Really? What was he doing in Penang?
‘Raising money for the Tong Meng Hui, his party. He planned his revolution while he was staying here, you know.’
‘Did you meet him?’
‘Robert and I did, yes. A few times.’
Willie stared at her. This was getting more interesting. ‘I’d like to hear more about him. I’ve been thinking of writing a novel about China for some time now. Sun Yat … Sen would make a most unusual … character.’
She took a step forward, into the shade of the casuarina. ‘What was it like there?’
His gaze turned inward, down into the long tunnel of his memories. ‘I’ve worked in the worst slums of London, but I’d never witnessed so much misery until I went to China,’ he said, relieved that his stammer had left him. ‘Warlords fighting one another, the bodies of slaughtered soldiers and civilians piled high in the fields; townsfolk fleeing their homes to hide in the countryside. We saw villages lying in ruins and thousands of peasants dead or dying from hunger and pestilence.’
‘Ten years after the revolution, ten years after they got rid of the emperor,’ said Lesley, ‘and nothing has changed, has it? Nothing.’
The bitterness in her voice made him study her more closely. On his travels around the Federated Malay States and the Straits Settlements he had never met any European – man or woman – who had shown the faintest interest in China or, for that matter, in any other country in the East. Instead, they had wanted to hear only about the happenings in England, the latest West End shows, the newest cafés and shops in Piccadilly. Willie had found himself travelling from London to the opposite end of the earth, only to be interrogated about the world he had left behind.
‘When were you there?’ he asked.
‘China? I’ve never been there.’
She reached out and took the book from him. She turned the pages unhurriedly, her eyes skimming them from top to bottom. She seemed, Willie thought, to be dredging the text for something buried in it.
Keeping his body completely still, Willie studied her. Lesley’s hair was a pale blond, falling down to an inch or two above her shoulders. The sunlight sculpted out her sharp cheekbones. The climate had not sagged her skin or smudged the line of her jaw, but fine lines sprouted from the outer edges of her deep-set eyes, which were the colour of old tea. The corners of her mouth were slightly curled, pulled downwards by another tangle of lines, giving them an anatine look.
Not a great beauty, Willie had decided when he first met her yesterday afternoon, and now confirmed it to himself again; nevertheless, her face had a compelling, doleful quality.
She closed the book before she came to the end. She studied its cover once more, then relinquished it to Willie.
‘Would you like … to borrow it?’ he asked, surprising himself – he never lent anyone the first editions of his own books.
‘Oh, I’m sure Robert’s ordered a copy already – he has all your books, you know. We have an excellent bookshop in town – Ackroyd’s on Bishop Street. It’s as good as any in Singapore.’
‘You won’t find this on the shelves here for a few more months yet.’
‘I’ll wait.’
Giving him a nod, she turned around and strode across the lawn. He watched her take the three low steps onto the verandah and disappear inside the house.
A voice was hailing him. He looked up and saw Gerald leaning out of his windows. ‘Bloody gorgeous morning, eh?’
Even with his hair mussed by sleep, his cheeks gaunt and unshaven, he looked magnificent, Willie thought. The heaviness in his chest lifted momentarily.
‘Be down soon!’ Gerald said, tucking his head back into his room.
Willie pulled out the letter from his pocket and read it again. Forty thousand pounds. All the money he possessed in the world, gone up in smoke.