Fourteen

There is nothing in Kuala Kangsa’s year quite like the queen’s gymkhana festival. In addition to the horse-racing, the cricket match, and the brass band, there is bobbing for apples, a kite-flying competition, boat races, shaved ice, a tent-pegging competition, stilt-walkers, a clown who juggles knives, donkey rides, an egg toss, three-legged races, and the large baked goods table hosted by the Ladies Association of Perak. Festival day is excess and exception. Even the vigilant members of the Ladies Association encourage their customers to eat too many sweets.

Like the rest of the village, Hannah is in a bright mood as she weaves her way up the sloping parade ground to the LAP baked goods table. Chastened by her encounter with Lucy and Hazel at the post office, she has volunteered for two shifts this year. Around her, Malays are strolling in sisterly chains, their colorful headscarves floating on the breeze behind them. A family of Dutch homesteaders are laughing at each other as they attempt the apple bobbing. She makes a large detour around a queue of Chinese women and children waiting for the egg toss. Two English officers—she remembers their faces but not their names—strut through this same commotion in uniform, looking like smug peacocks. They are heading for the racetrack, she supposes, where the colonel will be found.

She herself will not spend a penny that day. Not even on a kebab, she tells herself. Their spicy meaty scent seems to be following her, making her mouth water. Her measures of austerity brought her through to the next installment of her stipend, from which she promptly removed payment for an order from Schlauerbach’s. A reduced order, but an order nonetheless. Knowing that seven tubes of paint and twenty metres of canvas were making their way from France is as gratifying as anything she could enjoy at the festival.

“Is it going well, then?” Hannah says as she reaches the LAP table. “The location is good this year.”

“No, it’s not. We’re well out of the way up here,” grumbles the lady manning the table, Myrtle Something-or-Other. A flushed, porcine woman, she is married to the bank manager.

“The view is inspiring!”

“But they’re not going to trudge all the way up here for the view, are they?”

“I suppose that’s why we have the baked goods.” Hannah moves in around the tables, assuming her place in the second empty chair. “Such a lovely breeze, too.”

Myrtle is so overheated that droplets are forming on her temples. “Did you not bring any baking?”

“No,” Hannah admits. She’d not wanted to squander pantry ingredients, but this decision seems churlish and wrong now that she sees how generously the others have donated. “I’m afraid my upside-down cake fell flat,” she fibs.

Myrtle peers at her skeptically.

Hannah turns to check the roster, hoping Myrtle is about to head off shift. No such luck. When she looks up again, she sees the crumpled hat coming nearer through the crowd. Soon the Peterborough woman is standing across from them at the baked goods table, hand in hand with a girl of about ten. Behind them, a light-skinned Malay servant waits.

Hannah greets the mother and daughter warmly, giving a brief tour of the goods on offer.

“I’m Eva Peterborough,” the woman interrupts her.

“Oh yes, I know.” Hannah laughs nervously. “Though I didn’t know you had a daughter.”

“The gossip mill failed to report that I have a daughter?”

Myrtle snorts.

“Well it…probably not,” allows Hannah. “I just don’t take much notice of gossip.”

Eva’s mouth crooks into something resembling a smile. “You’re telling the truth, aren’t you? This is my daughter, Charlotte. Charlotte, this is Mrs. Inglis. The artist.”

Charlotte looks much like her mother, though shorter and somewhat fairer. She nods politely and they exchange greetings.

“She’s lovely,” Hannah says to Eva. Exactly how the lady knows who she is, “the artist,” is that owing to the same gossip mill?

The Peterboroughs order two plates of various squares and biscuits and two slabs of fruitcake. Myrtle, recording the tally on a clipboard, brightens considerably.

“I think you should know,” Eva says, as she and Hannah come together over the fruitcake, “that Lucy Finch has just cautioned me against you.”

“Why? What do you mean, cautioned you?”

“Just what I said.” They confirm that Myrtle is busy dispensing cups of lemonade to Charlotte and her girl. “I’m not sure of her purpose.” Eva squints. “I believe the charge was fraternizing in the public gardens with an undesirable.”

“What? Good grief!” Hannah exclaims. Lucy, or one of her spies, must have seen her with Sergeant Singh. “We were discussing… It doesn’t matter. Sergeant Singh works for me. Or rather, he used to. When I painted in the jungle.” It’s a false characterization in more ways than one. That anybody should be “cautioned against” her! And that Mrs. Peterborough should confide in her about it!

“Don’t worry, darling,” says Eva. “I understand completely.” She stands, chewing a macaroon, for a few moments longer before bidding Hannah goodbye.

“Well, that was very odd,” Hannah says to herself.

“She’s an odd duck, if nothing else.” Myrtle mops her brow as the Peterboroughs disappear into the shifting crowds below. “I’m surprised they came into town today to fraternize with the hoi paloi. Hannah, do make sure to replace the doily over the lemonade jug if you’re serving from it. The wasps are voracious.”

“What is that?” Hannah points. At the corner of the parade ground, a party of servants is struggling over something massive. What on earth are they hauling between them? She strains to see as onlookers crowd in; the little mob moves slowly across the field. Others rush across the grounds toward the men. Hannah comes around the table. “That’s not a game. I don’t think that’s part of the festival.”

“Mrs. Inglis?” calls Myrtle. “Where are you going? You’re on shift!”

She wanders down the lawn, side-stepping darting children and their ayahs, pursuing in fluttering sarongs. The newcomers at the center of the melee are natives. Their miners’ jumpsuits are rolled down their waists and bamboo poles are yoked to their bare shoulders. Hannah stumbles and falls into a horseshoe pit.

“It’s George’s tiger,” she says, righting herself. Back on her feet, she continues down the slope.

The majestic cat is upside-down, bound by its legs to the crossed poles. It is large enough, and the men short enough, that the back of the body is dragging against the scrubby grass as they travel. As Hannah nears, she sees that one of the arm bones protrudes near the shoulder. The surrounding flesh looks to have been hacked at. Even in this state the fur—a warm apricot brown with strokes of jet black—appears exquisitely sumptuous. Instinctively, she puts out her hand.

“Is this for sahib colonel?” she calls to them.

Some in the crowd move aside as she nears. The hunters do not turn or break stride. The weight must be staggering. She runs to the head of the party and catches a glimpse of the beast’s sympathetic countenance. Dead. Riddled with bullets.

The crowd forming around the tiger and its hunters causes them to slow and finally stop. Malays and Chinese and Europeans alike are poking and pinching and jeering at the carcass. Two men lift the great muzzle by the lips, exposing the fangs. They drop the head back down with a crack. Hannah becomes aware of the flies buzzing over the body, especially at the anus and along a gaping wound on one flank. When the breeze shifts direction, forcing a metallic wet-fur stench upon her, she claps a hand over her nose and mouth. Eva Peterborough, she notices, is watching, farther up the slope.

“Please,” Hannah says to the men, raising her voice even louder. “Are you bringing this animal to Sahib Colonel Inglis?”

One of the miners, struggling to keep his footing near the beast’s head, looks up at her.

“Then I’ll fetch him! I’ll fetch you the colonel. Just…stop trying to move the poor thing.” Then she shouts, “And the rest of you: go away! Leave it alone. This animal is not your property.”

Swallowing her disgust, Hannah turns and runs.

For George, gymkhana festivals give diminishing returns. The best bit is early on, when he directs the opening military maneuvers. It is a duty he enjoys immensely, leading the cadets in formation, putting them through the drills. Not a hair out of place. The crowd cries out in appreciation as the trumpets crescendo and, at the finale, cannons boom. Thwock. Thwock. The sound that all will be right in the world.

He turns to the crowd, hoping he will see Hannah in the audience. And fearing that, seeing her, he’ll lose his resolve. Arrangements have been made; he is hard-pressed to recall just how it unfolded. But concern is widespread. That is what he knows, and how he thinks he will start. Concern for you, Hannah, is widespread. Though this sounds too impersonal? All of us here are worried about you.

George is sitting trackside now with some of the other officers. Each of his damned horses has turned out to be slower than the last. He drinks and curses their lungs, ill-suited for tropical heat, and mulls over his wife’s disregard for propriety. Was it her unconventional upbringing? That ridiculous academy? His gut feels like someone is trying to cut through it with a butter knife. Foolish woman. Too young, perhaps, to realize what an opportunity she has on a frontier like this one, to perform above her class. To relocate herself socially. Leaning back in his chair, George closes his eyes and concentrates on breathing.

“Pinky, how long have you been out here?” It is Dennison’s voice, to his right.

“Three or four hours I should think.”

Oakeshott answers to George’s left. “Ten years, isn’t it?”

“Christ, that’s a lifetime in ordinary years, old boy!”

“We should be celebrating you, never mind Her Majesty.”

The officers laugh. George puts on a smirk he hopes will pass for good sportsmanship. Tallying the years in his head, it is in fact closer to thirteen since he set out for Malaya. It is surely some sort of paradox that the past three years—years in which he’s had the greatest means, the greatest respect of the Resident, the company of a beautiful young wife—have been outstandingly the worst. He opens his eyes and announces he needs a walk.

Past the north side of the racetrack, he makes out teams of Sikhs, their towelled heads in two rows, standing at the ready. A whistle shrills and sends them scurrying.

“Rather pointless skill, isn’t it,” mutters George. “Not as if one often needs to raise a tent at breakneck speed.”

Dennison and Oakeshott appear to be suddenly on either side of him. As they stroll, Dennison leans in toward him. “Let’s put in for the hill cottage, Pinky. We’ll bring our wives up, escape this dreadful heat for a week or two. What do you say?”

Oakeshott says, “Finch could supervise your hunt for you. He’s plenty of safari experience.”

George doesn’t respond to any of this. Is it Dennison who came to him last year? Oakeshott, or Dennison? Dennison, he thinks, who had been unfortunate enough to witness Hannah and her sergeant walking up the high street together, sopping wet, laughing, their clothes stuck to their bodies. Oakeshott must have a story, too; they all have stories. Who is the one who saw her at the docks, paying prostitutes to pose?

“So, will you have the head stuffed?” Oakeshott is saying. “Finch’s trophies have taken over the entire lounge of the Residency.”

“To Lucy’s chagrin,” sniggers Dennison.

Their chatter irks George. Their need to point out the obvious. They’re too young to have any tolerance for suffering. “I haven’t caught a tiger yet, gentlemen. I have matters pending.”

Waving them off, he shuffles away. Ahead, the sultan’s family is billowing in the breeze like a parachute. Standing next to Izrin is Resident-General Swettenham himself. Yes, those are unmistakably his pin-thin, navy limbs. A yellow cravat blooms at his throat. Has Swettenham come to pressure Izrin personally, about Dr. Peterborough’s request? More likely he’s come for the pomp, like everybody else.

The colonel steers away, too, from the sultan, the resident-general, all of them, veering back toward the tent-pegging competition. Dozens of color-coordinated Sikhs are still running about like trained monkeys. Where is he? Where is her trained monkey?

The team in white has nearly unfolded their canvas and is already fixing the poles together into a brace. George eliminates one sweaty face after the other until he’s located Sergeant Singh. Singh is bending to hook down the skirting that edges the canvas; his team is behind their rivals, with the hardest part still to come. They must position the canvas precisely over the main pole so its perimeter reaches the ground evenly, with enough slack on each side to fit over the brace, yet not so much slack that the peg wires become useless. With a deep-throated “three, two, one!” from Singh his team hurls the canvas over the central pole. So, he fancies himself a leader.

“Go, Perak!” shouts a filthy boy in a topknot. “Kick their Hindu-loving arses!”

A crowd of natives surrounds him: Indian mothers and sons, gangs of Malay children, a few Eurasian railroaders sprinkled throughout.

“George! There you are! I’ve been looking all over for you.”

“You have?”

Hannah is standing before him, a hand pressed to her side. “The men at the track told me you’d wandered off.” Panting, she glances at the Sikhs in the clearing, hammering their pegs and hollering directions.

They watch the final seconds of the competition together. Sergeant Singh’s team wins. Hannah claps and cries, “Bravo!” as if she were at the theatre. For a moment, it looks as if she catches Singh’s attention.

“They’ve killed your tiger, George.” She turns him by the shoulders and points. “Look.”

He does see the commotion. It went unheard, drowned out by the cheering at the tent contest. “Sphectacular!” he slurs.

She purses her lips. “Come with me. They’re destroying the poor thing.”

Indeed, a throng of darkies seems to be pecking at it, the thing he still can’t quite see. The procession is carnivalesque. He feels Hannah’s fingers hook into his own as she pulls him along. It’s a good start, he tells himself. This is a good start. “I’m ill, Hannah. I don’t feel right.”

“You’re drunk.”

“No. Not so much. What I need…” I need your help. I need you to care for me.

“Sahib Colonel, tuan Colonel,” he hears the natives addressing him as they approach.

Soon after, he is face to face with the red-foamed mouth of the great carnivore.