In spite of my reservations, Willie and his secretary turned out to be easy-going house guests. We hardly saw them during the day: the writer spent his mornings holed up in his room working, while Gerald – the employee, mind you – lazed under the coconut trees. At midday the four of us would meet for lunch before dispersing back to our own preoccupations. In the evenings, like animals coming together at the watering hole, we gathered on the verandah for drinks. Robert and I weren’t bridge players, and Willie didn’t feel inclined to engage in a game with strangers at the Penang Club, so after dinner we would usually adjourn to the sitting room and have a few drinks. Fidgety with boredom, Gerald would drain his whisky and dash off into town. Robert retired to bed early, which left me to entertain Willie. The writer was easy to talk to – too easy – and I often had to remind myself not to let anything slip from my lips. Funnily enough, his stammer no longer set my teeth on edge; in fact I thought it gave his speech an odd rhythm that was distinctively his alone.
I read On a Chinese Screen late into the night. The slender volume was a collection of vignettes of places Willie had visited and the characters – corrupt Mandarins and Confucian philosophers, missionaries and consuls and nuns and Mongol chiefs – who had crossed his path in China. He had recorded their quirks and weaknesses with an unsparing eye, but he did so without any sneer of superiority. In fact he seemed to give the impression that he saw himself in some of those people. Reading those stories, I imagined myself in the towns and villages he had written about, all those places in that country that I knew I would never be able to visit.
Following my fruitless visit to the Tong Meng Hui’s old headquarters, I had made some enquiries around town, but no one could tell me where its members had scattered to. In the end I had no alternative but to visit my brother at the Penang Post.
Geoff and one of his friends had bought the newspaper two years earlier to save it from going under. They had managed to turn its ailing fortunes around, transforming it into one of the most successful newspapers in Penang (there weren’t many, admittedly, but still …). Geoff enjoyed telling people he had bought it solely to keep his job. ‘Who else would employ a fat, lazy, middle-aged editor who spent far too many hours of the day at the club bar?’
A peon showed me into my brother’s office, a hot, noisy space above the printing press. ‘How’s your famous house guest?’ Geoff asked from behind his desk, which was, as always, a chaotic landscape of files and documents and books and crumpled-up balls of paper.
‘Willie lent me his new book,’ I said. ‘It’s about his travels in China—’
‘Any chance I could take a quick look at it?’
‘Oh, I don’t think he’d like that – it’s not out yet. As I was saying before you so rudely interrupted me, he told me he’d heard quite a bit about Sun Wen when he was travelling in China, and he wants to write a book about him.’
My brother gave me a shrewd look. ‘Somerset Maugham wants to write a book about Sun Wen? That’ll be a tremendous coup for him. A book by Willie Maugham, a book that’s sympathetic to Sun Wen could persuade more influential and high-ranking people in England to give their support and assistance to him, to his dream of China.’
‘I wanted to write to Sun Wen and let him know. I went to the Tong Meng Hui’s headquarters to ask for his address.’
‘Tong Meng Hui.’ My brother leaned back into his chair. ‘Haven’t heard that name in a while.’ He looked at me. ‘The Tong Meng Hui doesn’t exist any more, Les. I’m sure I told you already.’
‘What about all those people who went there to fight for his cause? Have any of them come home yet?’
He shook his head. ‘Most of them were captured or killed.’
I could still recall some of their faces, if not their names. I remembered how young and determined they were, those men and women of the Tong Meng Hui.
‘Makes one wonder if they made any difference at all, doesn’t it?’ said Geoff. ‘Poor old Sun Wen – he couldn’t even keep the whole country together.’
I wasn’t about to give up so easily. ‘What about your friends at the Kwong Wah? They’d know how I could get in touch with him, wouldn’t they, wherever he is in China?’
Geoff pushed a stack of files from one side of his desk to another, but it only made it look even more cluttered than before. ‘How’s the old man?’
Sooner or later he would have to be told, I thought to myself. ‘He wants to sell our house. He wants us to move to his cousin’s farm in the Karoo.’
‘Darkest Africa, eh? Well, well …’ Geoff leaned forward, his stomach pushing against the edge of his desk. He had put on even more weight since I last saw him. That wife of his didn’t give a fig about his health at all. ‘No doubt his doctors feel it’s for the best. I’ve always wanted to see the place. You’d better have a guest room for me.’
‘I’m not going anywhere. My home is here.’
‘Shouldn’t your husband’s health be your priority?’
‘I just feel it’s a grave mistake to move.’ I had no desire to pursue the question of my responsibility where Robert’s health was concerned. ‘He’s much better, you know. Willie’s presence has lifted his spirits tremendously. Did you know he’s homosexual? Willie, I mean. He and that “secretary” of his, they travel everywhere together.’
‘Lots of wealthy and famous men travel with their secretary.’
‘For a journalist you’re awfully reluctant to believe the worst of people,’ I said. ‘Oh, I’ve seen how Willie looks at Gerald – and let me tell you, no man – no normal man – looks at his secretary that way.’
‘Even so, that’s their own private business, isn’t it?’ He smacked his palms together and rubbed them. ‘So, when do I get to meet the famous author? All of Penang is sick with jealousy that he’s staying with you, but I’m sure you’re not unaware of that. Would he be willing to give me an interview, do you think?’
I stood up to leave. ‘You speak to your friends at the Kwong Wah, Geoff, and I’ll make certain you get your interview.’ I sounded more confident than I felt.
‘All right, I’ll talk to them.’ His face became serious, and he was silent for a moment or two. ‘Just remember, Les – we’re pieces of Sun Wen’s past now,’ he said. ‘I very much doubt he’ll ever come back to Penang again.’
The cards had been flocking to Cassowary House ever since Willie arrived – invitations for luncheons and tea, for cocktails and dinner parties. That evening he came out to the verandah and spilled an armful of them onto the coffee table.
‘Good Lord,’ said Robert, looking at a small mound of cards and envelopes and letters. ‘They just keep flooding in, don’t they?’
‘I had hoped no one knows we’re here,’ said Willie.
‘Well, what did you expect when you announced your itinerary – in exhaustive detail – to the Straits Times before you left Singapore?’ I said.
He was annoyed by my tart comment. ‘So, before I sweep … them all into the bin, who are these people?’
We were still sifting through the invitations when Gerald came around the side of the house. He staggered onto the verandah and collapsed into a wicker armchair. The front of his white cotton shirt was blotched with blood, and he was pressing a handkerchief to his nose.
‘What happened?’ I asked. ‘Are you all right?’
‘Get me a drink, Willie,’ he mumbled through his handkerchief.
‘What the hell have you done now?’ Willie asked.
‘Had a spectacular run of luck at my poker game and the bloody Chinks wouldn’t let me leave.’ Gerald peeled away his handkerchief, grimacing at it. ‘Stole all my money too. Had to teach the bloody buggers a lesson, didn’t I?’
‘For God’s sake, go and clean yourself up,’ said Willie.
‘A drink, Willie. A strong one – chop-chop.’ Gerald crumpled his handkerchief on the table, screwed a cigarette in his mouth and lit it, but Willie stopped him. ‘Ah fuck, sorry, Robert.’ He dropped the cigarette onto the floor, grinding his heel into it.
While Willie fixed Gerald his whisky I went inside, returning with a box of cotton wool and a bottle of hydrogen peroxide. ‘You got cut in your face too,’ I said.
‘One of the bastards had a knife.’ He dabbed a finger gingerly on the wound and winced. ‘Well, there go my dashing good looks.’
‘I’ll take you to the hospital,’ I said. ‘You need to get that stitched up.’
‘Forget it, Lesley. I’ve had bloodier scratches from a cat.’ Gerald smothered the mouth of the hydrogen peroxide bottle with a wad of cotton wool, turned it upside down, then pressed the soaked cotton wool onto the cut.
Willie looked at us, mortification flushing his face. ‘I’m terribly … sorry about this.’
‘Ah, we saw worse in the war, didn’t we?’ said Robert. ‘Much, much worse.’
I returned to the invitations, fanning them out across the table. ‘The Resident-Councillor and his wife; the manager of the Chartered Bank; this one, from Judge Harry Yorke. The usual boring—’ I stopped. There – right there, lying under my nose – was the means of obtaining Sun Wen’s address.
‘Send them my regrets, Gerald,’ said Willie. ‘All of them.’
‘I want to go,’ said Gerald. ‘It’ll be fun, hobnobbing with the locals. Don’t you think so, Lesley?’
I stabbed at the white, gilt-edged card with my forefinger and skimmed it across the table to Willie. ‘Say yes to this one, at least.’
Willie picked up the card. ‘Noel Hutton. Who’s he?’
‘Noel owns one of the oldest trading companies in Malaya,’ I said. ‘Legend has it that Hutton & Sons was founded by one of his ancestors who had been with Francis Light when he landed in Penang. They say it was this Hutton who had given Light the idea of firing silver dollars from the ship’s cannon into the interior – a way of spurring the men to clear the jungles.’
‘A fairy tale spread around by the Huttons themselves,’ Robert said. ‘But Noel’s a solid chap. Poor bugger lost his wife a few years ago.’
‘Istana – that’s “palace” in Malay, isn’t it?’ Willie asked, studying the card.
I nodded. ‘That’s the name of his house. It’s magnificent, utterly magnificent,’ I said. ‘You’ll meet heaps of fascinating characters at his party. Not just the Europeans, but Malay royalty and Straits Chinese.’ I knew the words were tumbling out of my mouth, but I couldn’t help myself. ‘Everyone will be there. Everyone. You’ll find lots of ideas for your stories.’
‘A quiet verandah, within the circle of … light from a paraffin lamp – that’s where a man feels the strongest inclination to unburden himself to a stranger passing by,’ said Willie. ‘Not at a … party, oh no.’
In my desperation I even looked to my husband for support. ‘He’s invited us too. We must go, darling.’
‘Very considerate of him, as usual. But it’ll be crowded and noisy, and everyone’ll be smoking like blazes.’
‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, Robert, when was the last time you went to a party? And Noel’s one of our oldest friends too. He’ll be hurt if we refuse.’ I looked at Willie and Robert. ‘Fine, if you two don’t want to go, I’ll go on my own.’
‘Well, I’ll take you, Lesley,’ Gerald said. ‘It’s bloody boring staying home every night.’ He winked at me. ‘No aspersions cast on your gracious hospitality, of course.’
I flashed him a grateful smile. ‘Noel would lose face if you don’t accept, Willie. You can’t hide yourself away,’ I said. ‘Your readers in Penang will be bereft if they don’t catch a glimpse of you, absolutely bereft,’ I pressed on. ‘You’ve come all this way here, you can’t disappoint them.’
Willie’s fingers drummed a tattoo on the armrest, his eyes never leaving my face. All at once his fingers stopped moving. ‘We’ll all go, all of us.’ He raised his palm as Robert began to object. ‘You’ll enjoy it, Robert. We’ll leave any time … you want to. But we’ll march in there, you and I, and we’ll charm the … socks off the ladies. It’ll be just … like the old days, eh?’
I retrieved the invitation card from Willie and rose to my feet. ‘I’ll telephone Noel straightaway.’
For dinner I had asked Cookie to prepare a variety of local dishes for our house guests. I gave Willie brief descriptions of every dish brought to the table – its ingredients, the way it was cooked, how it should be eaten: jiu hoo char, tau eu bahk, assam fish, assam laksa, char kway teow, otak-otak. Willie could not get enough of Cookie’s famous choon pneah – deep-fried crab meat spring rolls served with a dipping sauce that he had concocted himself, a blend of soy sauce, Worcestershire sauce, some cinnamon and cloves and star anise, and finely chopped red chillies.
‘My compliments to your cook,’ said Willie when we came to the end of dinner. ‘This was the best … meal I’ve ever eaten in the East. This evening I tasted flavours I had never … known existed.’
‘You won’t find anything like it anywhere in the world,’ I said. ‘Over the centuries Penang has absorbed elements from the Malays and the Indians, the Chinese and the Siamese, the Europeans, and produced something that’s uniquely its own. You’ll find it in the language, the architecture, the food.’ I cast a cool eye towards Robert. ‘I can’t think of anywhere else in the world I’d want to live.’
Robert pretended he had not heard me. ‘You know what the locals’ favourite pastime is?’ he asked Willie. ‘Eating!’ He slapped his palm on the table and laughed.
Gerald stretched across the table for the last piece of spring roll. The cut on his cheek had stopped bleeding, but the skin above his left jaw was ripening into a monsoon cloud. ‘Thank God we’re only here a fortnight,’ he said, popping the crunchy piece of spring roll into his mouth and chewing it noisily. ‘I’d grow fat as a hog if we stayed longer.’
Perhaps it was just my imagination, but a shadow seemed to fall across Willie’s face.
As we left the dining room, Willie’s attention fell upon a wooden panel hanging in the passage. The panel measured one and a half feet wide by six feet long. Painted upon it was a hawk drifting over a misty gorge, the bird no larger than a child’s palm.
‘It’s the left leaf of a pair of doors,’ I said. The paintwork was faded, leaving blank patches in the mists. Emptiness swirling within emptiness. ‘Taken from a clanhouse in Penang. Late eighteenth century.’
‘Lesley picked it up in an Armenian Jew’s shop in town.’ Robert flicked a questioning glance at me. ‘Got it for a song too, didn’t you, darling?’
Willie pointed to the quatrain of Chinese calligraphy above the hawk, its brushstrokes as delicate as new bamboo shoots. ‘What do they say, do you know?’
‘“Evanescent path of dreams/in the summer night/O Bird of the mountain/carry my name beyond the clouds”.’ Brushing my palm lightly over the panel, I recalled the other morning when I had done the same on the doors of another house. ‘A Japanese warrior composed it, just before he killed himself.’
We proceeded down the passageway into the sitting room (I watched with mild amusement as Willie, certainly not a man of considerable height, dipped his head slightly as he went through the doors, as though he were a much taller man – it was one of his habits which I had started to notice) and settled into our usual chairs. The lilies I had bought at the Pulau Tikus market on the day of Willie’s arrival were already wilting. I made a mental note to replace them.
Looking around me, I felt anchored by the objects in the room, objects that had become so familiar that I scarcely noticed them any more – the William Daniell watercolours of early Penang scenes; my Blüthner piano in the corner which Robert had bought for me; but most of all, my collection of Straits Chinese porcelain – the kamcheng and tiffin-carriers, the teapots and teacups, the plates and bowls – which I had built up over the years. Robert didn’t care for them – he thought they were gaudy – but to me they were exquisite.
The imperfections of the room were comforting to me as well: the long, thin crack in the wall above the sideboard which always appeared again no matter how many times we painted over it, the light fitting that had begun to slip out of its bracket, the corner of a window frame that had been chipped off. I lifted my eyes to the white wooden floorboards that formed the room’s ceiling. My sons often got a good telling-off from me if they thumped across them when we were entertaining. The sitting room had the faint, medicinal scent of the old teakwood floors mingled with the fragrance of the star jasmine from the garden. All these smells, blended by time into a sillage that could never be replicated in any other house.
From the day I married Robert, this house had been my home. We had watched our sons grow up here; we had taught them to swim in the sea outside, to dig for horseshoe crabs on the beach; their birthday parties had been held in the garden under the trees. I couldn’t imagine living anywhere else in the world, especially a place hundreds of miles from the nearest sea, the sea that was eternal yet ceaselessly changing, from wave to wave, swell to swell.
Willie reached for a piece of pulut tai-tai on the Straits Chinese porcelain plate. He had, I discovered, a sweet tooth for these colourful, rhomboid-shaped glutinous rice desserts, cooked in coconut milk and dyed a vivid blue. They were my favourite too. He ate it in two bites, wiped his fingers with his handkerchief and pointed to the painting of a brown-skinned youth clad in a loincloth hanging behind Robert.
‘Gauguin, isn’t it? Bought it after you … won a case?’
‘Ah, you still remember my old habits.’ Robert’s eyes lit up. ‘You collect his works too?’
‘The odd piece or two.’
‘“The odd piece or two”,’ Gerald said, smirking. ‘Tell them about Papeete, Willie.’
The writer gave his secretary a warning shake of his head.
‘Oh, go on – tell us,’ Robert said.
‘We were there three years ago,’ Gerald said, when Willie remained mute. ‘The village headman’s wife – she was massive, built like an elephant – she told us there were some of Gauguin’s paintings in another village a few miles away. We drove there immediately. The place was a slum, like all of the villages there. Naked filthy brats running about, mongrels slinking through the lanes. We asked the villagers about Gauguin, and they directed us to a house on a slope. The place was falling to pieces, but right before our eyes was the Gauguin. On the door.’
I leaned forward. ‘Painted on the door?’
‘Painted on the glass panel.’
‘What did you do?’ I asked.
‘We knocked – carefully, of course. The owner came out. He told us that his parents had looked after Gauguin when he was sick, and Gauguin had painted the glass panels on three doors for them. “Where are the other two doors?” Willie asked. “Oh, it break,” the owner said. Seems his little brats had been chucking stones at them. Willie asked him to sell us the door. “But I must buy new door,” the owner said. “Well, how much is a new door?” “One hundred francs.” “I’ll give you two hundred.” The man agreed. I walked – as casually as I could, of course – to our car and got a screwdriver from the toolkit. I had to stop myself from running like the devil back to the house. We got the door off its hinges and somehow managed to cram the whole thing inside our car. I still don’t know how we did it. Anyway – back at our hotel we sawed off the top half with the glass panel, packed it in a crate and shipped it back to London.’
‘Two hundred francs.’ Robert punched his fist into his palm. ‘A bargain, an absolute bargain. What was the painting?’
Willie took another pulut tai-tai from the plate. ‘A bare-breasted Tahitian … Eve holding an apple under a tree.’
‘You cheated that man,’ I said.
‘Cheated?’ Gerald said. ‘Nonsense. He got what he wanted – a new door – and we saved a priceless piece of art from being lost for ever.’ He crooked an eyebrow at me. ‘Would you rather we’d left it there? It would’ve been smashed to pieces sooner rather than later.’
‘I’d rather that you had paid him a fair price for it.’
‘I’m sure the man found it more than fair,’ Robert said.
Before I could deploy a stinging retort Gerald drained his tumbler, plonked it on the table and announced he was off to town. The writer’s eyes clung to him as he slouched out of the sitting room. It was obvious what Gerald saw in Willie, but what on earth did Willie find desirable in him? Perhaps Gerald was a fantastic lover. The idea of the two of them writhing about in bed – the very idea of two men in bed – was grotesque. His poor wife – how did she put up with it?
‘Some of your stories were related to you by people you met on your travels,’ Robert said, reeling Willie’s attention back to us. ‘Isn’t that so?’
‘They were based on the stories that were told to me,’ Willie replied, a tetchy note souring his voice.
‘Why on earth would people reveal the shameful things they’ve done to you, a complete stranger?’ I asked.
The writer crossed one leg over his knee. ‘I see myself as an anonymous gentleman in the parlour, a traveller sitting in the half-shadows, ready and … willing to listen to anyone with a tale to tell. I suppose they see me like that too.’ He paused. ‘I’m also a traveller who’ll be gone by the morning, never to come their way again.’
‘But, even so, why would they do it?’
The answer was obvious, the look he gave me said. ‘The urge to confess, of course. For some people, getting away with a crime is a heavier … burden to bear than the fear of being caught.’
‘Poppycock,’ Robert said. ‘Nobody ever gives a full and complete confession. A chap will only confess to as much as he needs to exonerate himself. I’ve seen it in court time and again. Witnesses edit their memories about the things they’ve said and done; they rearrange the facts. All of us do it – we play with truth, mould it into the form that shows our best side to the world.’ He laid his chin on the trestle of his interlaced fingers. ‘You only hear one aspect of it. You can never get the whole truth, the whole story.’
‘No one can, Robert. All we ever get is the incomplete picture,’ said Willie. ‘A writer’s job is to fill in the gaps. And he decides how the story ends.’
It was something that had never occurred to me before: we all had the power to change our pasts, our beginnings – or our perception of them, at least – but none of us could determine how our stories would end.
‘Speaking of endings, Willie – my God, those last lines of “Rain”!’ Robert leaned towards the writer. ‘Sadie Thompson – she leaps off the page. I suppose you must have based her on somebody you knew?’
The writer’s reluctance to elaborate was obvious, but perhaps he knew Robert well enough to know that he wouldn’t be fobbed off easily. ‘We were … in Pago Pago for two … weeks,’ he was stammering again. ‘Sadie Thompson was in … the room next to mine.’
‘So, everything you wrote – the missionary, what he did with her, all of that actually happened?’
‘Not all of it. Despite what … some critics aver, Robert, I do possess a smidgen of imagination.’
‘You shouldn’t have used her real name,’ said Robert.
‘Oh, for … Christ’s sake, Robert, not you as well. I liked her name. It suited her character. And I admired her.’
‘A prostitute?’ I said. ‘Surely not.’
‘Why not? She wasn’t a hypocrite.’ His sleepy, brown eyes slid from me to Robert and back to me again. They blinked once, slowly, and I had the feeling that I was a fly being observed by a chichak on the wall. ‘Can any of us in this room say that about ourselves? I know I can’t.’
A heavy silence weighed down on us. Robert, looking more drawn than usual this evening, yawned and announced that he was turning in. We watched him walk slowly out of the sitting room; a minute later his slow and heavy tread could be heard crossing the floorboards above our heads.
‘I’m glad you talked him into going to Noel’s party,’ I said.
‘You seemed so terribly … set on going, I couldn’t disappoint you, could I?’
Had I been so obvious? ‘Oh, Noel gives the best parties, it would’ve been unforgivable if we had missed it. We used to go out every evening, every evening, would you believe it?’ I said. ‘But Robert was … changed … when he returned home from the war … he was … different. He couldn’t cope with crowds or noisy places. He’d lock himself away in his room, refusing to come out, refusing to eat or talk to anyone.’
‘It’s shell shock, Lesley.’
‘I know what it’s called,’ I said sharply. Softening my tone, I went on, ‘Do they ever get over it?’
‘Perhaps he just needs a change of scenery, a holiday somewhere in a dry climate.’
‘A change of scenery. A dry climate.’ A laugh, abrasive and bitter, scraped out from deep within me. A mystified expression came over Willie’s face, and I decided to enlighten him. ‘Robert has a cousin, a sheep farmer somewhere in the Karoo – I don’t even know where the bloody place is – he’s offered to build us a house there. The air will work wonders on Robert’s lungs, he says.’
‘You’ve decided to go?’
‘Robert has. He told me – he announced it to me – just before you came. He wants to move there by the end of the year.’
‘But … why the deuce didn’t he tell me? Good Lord, you must have a thousand … things to do! It’s totally unacceptable – I’ll tell Gerald to move us into the E&O tomorrow.’
‘You’ll do no such thing. You hear me, Willie? You will do no such thing.’
I had expected him to put up a spirited fight, but to my surprise he caved in without even putting up the semblance of a struggle. ‘If you’re sure,’ he said.
‘I won’t go,’ I said. ‘I won’t leave Penang. I refuse to.’
‘The desert climate will ease his lungs, you know.’
There was not a trace of condemnation in his voice, nevertheless I felt myself bristling. ‘What would you do if your wife – if Syrie – were ill, like Robert?’ I asked. ‘Would you give up your exciting life in London and move to some place in the middle of nowhere because it would make her remaining days more bearable?’
He slapped at a mosquito on his wrist. ‘You’re not moving … to Ultima Thule. Believe me, modern travel these days, there’s nowhere on earth you can’t get to. And, anyway,’ his mouth softened into a reassuring smile, ‘I’m sure … you’ll be back here again, once Robert’s health improves.’
‘He’s not going to get better, and you know it. He’s worsened in the last few months, in fact.’
For a while he was silent, his gaze resting on something far away in time. The garden seethed with the tinnitus of the cicadas. ‘After Liza was published,’ he said, ‘I told Robert I wished I could give up … medicine and make my living as a writer. He encouraged me to do it. Urged me. Said I’d be wasting my … talents if I didn’t. He gave me money to … tide me over.’ He smoothened a crease in his trousers and looked at me. ‘Did he ever tell you that?
‘He doesn’t talk much about his London days.’
Lying in bed that night, I thought about the man sleeping in the room next to mine, the man I had married. Willie’s words had polished the lens through which I had always viewed my husband, and yet, at the same time, they shifted him slightly out of focus.