“On a point of anatomical fact,” said Hardman, “I have no prepuce. It was removed when I was a child.”
Haji Zainal Abidin sulked for an instant. Then he recovered and, in great good humour, introduced a dim Indian who had entered with him. The Indian was smiling and very drunk.
‘This is my colleague,” said Haji Zainal Abidin. “It is his day off today and he tries to spend it in his usual manner. He becomes drunk and he goes and buys things. Fortunately today is Chinese New Year and many shops are closed. But he has already bought two refrigerators, a radiogam and a Sunbeam Talbot. He has signed cheques for all these things and he has not two cents to rub together. But the men in the shops mostly know him now. Today it was mostly the assistants he saw, because the towkays were away drinking. But I have been round and got back the cheques. One day he will find it very difficult. Two years ago they deliver a bulldozer to him and he says he knows nothing about it. That will happen again, only perhaps that time it will be a cinema.”
Haji Zainal Abidin did not proclaim, either in dress or demeanour, the pentecostal grace that traditionally descends on one who has made the pilgrimage to Mecca. He wore no turban, a natty cravat with a horse-head pin was tucked inside his open nylon shirt, his flannel trousers were well-creased and his shoes highly polished. He exhaled a heartening smell of hops, hardly concealed by the breath of garlic. He was in his late forties and depressingly vigorous. He called for beer. Mr. Hung said he had to be going.
“Tomorrow,” said Hardman.
“You owe him money,” shouted Haji Zainal Abidin. “Everybody owes Hung money.”
“I want to open up an office,” said Hardman. “That’s all.”
Haji Zainal Abidin became serious, confidential. “Money,” he said. “You need money. I know.” He leaned over, pushing a great nose, great eyes and the cleft in his moustache into the face of Hardman. “I have told you, there is only one way.”
“I know. I’ve thought about it. I’ve been thinking about little else.”
“What is holding you back?”
“You know what’s holding me back. Or rather, what’s been holding me back.”
“There you go again,” raged Haji Zainal Abidin. “Because she is a Malay. Race prejudice. Race hatred. I tell you again, you English bastard, there will be no peace on the earth until race hatred ceases. Because you are a white man you despise us. You despise me because I am a Malay. You call me a Malay bastard. Well, I am not a Malay. I am an Afghan.” He sat back in triumph. The dim Indian began to sing quietly to himself.
“It’s not that. You know it’s not that, you silly Afghan bastard.”
Haji Zainal Abidin roared with great laughter. Then he said, “She is a young woman. She is only forty-two. And as for her other two husbands, you need not believe the stories. They were both estate-managers. It is highly probable that the Communists killed them. If you are a good husband to her, there is nothing she will not do for you. Nothing.” He winked hugely, seriously. “She has money.”
“It surprises me that nobody has snapped her up already,” said Hardman. “You, for instance. You’ve only got one wife at the moment.”
Haji Zainal Abidin leaned forward, froth on his lips, his face a devil’s mask of cunning, his teeth set as though he carried a knife between them. “I have had four wives,” he said. “I have fourteen, fifteen children. I am not sure of the number. Of these wives only my first wife is left. She is the only woman for me. Late, I realised that she was always that. She has had staying-power. She is the only woman in the world for whom I have any appetite. Any appetite.” He bit off the word itself with something like appetite. Hardman felt his own saliva stir. “There are no women like the Arab women,” said Haji Zainal Abidin dreamily, lyrically. “No women for beauty or fidelity. She was twelve when I first met her in her father’s house, with her dark eyes flashing like fire above the veil. That was in Mecca itself. She is not only a child of Mecca but a lady of the line of the Prophet. A lady, yes. More of a lady than these Malay women, who are no true Muslims. They walk about in their powder and high heels, drinking beer publicly. They have no shame.”
“There’s no way out, is there?” said Hardman. “If I marry her I’ll have to enter Islam.”
“And why should you not?” stormed Haji Zainal Abidin. “It is the true religion, you Christian bastard. It is the only one. The rest are mere imitations.”
“Oh, you just don’t understand.” Hardman felt hopeless again. Soon he said, “You’ll have to help me find a name. A Muslim name.”
“It is a pleasure,” said Haji Zainal Abidin. “It is my duty, too, for you are my friend. You shall become also my son in God. You shall be Abdullah bin Haji Zainal Abidin. No, no. There are better names than Abdullah. I must think of a really good one.” He thought.
“Tonight, then,” said Hardman, “I shall propose.”
“There are many good names. I was just going through the names of my sons. I cannot remember them all. Latif? Redzwan? Redzwan is a good name. It means grace.”
“I can’t be called Grace. That’s a girl’s name.”
“You shall be called what I say,” Haji Zainal Abidin nudged the Indian, his sleeping partner. “Wake up! This is a solemn moment.”
“I shall go round to her house after dinner,” said Hardman with gloom.
“We shall all go,” cried Haji Zainal Abidin. “We shall have a party. We shall go round and collect the others. We shall buy beer. We shall call for Kadir first. He has a motor-cycle and sidecar. Kadir is a good name. Abdul Kadir. You shall be called Abdul Kadir. Abdul Kadir bin Haji Zainal Abidin. That shall be your name.”
“LL.B. Barrister-at-law. A bit of a mouthful.”
“Let us go,” said Hardman’s father in God. He stood up and seized his Indian friend by the scruff. The Indian woke smiling. “This is a great occasion. An infidel has been called home to the true way. Allah be praised.” He drained his beer standing, sighed with satisfaction, banged down the tall glass. He led the way out, singing in a thin muezzin’s wail.
Rupert Hardman followed him into the dim-lit dark, Abdul Kadir bin Haji Zainal Abidin, heir to two cultures. Allah be praised.
3
“THERE MUST BE somebody at home,” said Fenella. “There’s a car.”
“A Land Rover.”
“Try again.”
Crabbe rapped once more, but the faint wooden noise seemed swallowed by vast Malayan distances, and they became oppresed by a great loneliness. The lizards darted into familiar sand-holes; the sun howled down; a distant goat wavered a plaintive call. Things went indifferently on, and nobody wanted the Crabbes. Perhaps they, like their side-walking namesakes, should dig holes and then bed down in sight of the vast empty sea, rejected of the warm-blooded inland world. But Victor Crabbe decided on action. He walked into the house and looked shyly round a large sitting-room, all buff-painted wood, pictures, mats, gin-tables, books, Trengganu fans, Kelantan silver, empty chairs. Uncertainly he called: “Is anyone at home?”
The silence chewed this over. Then, sluggishly, the emptiness stirred itself into movement. A door opened, one of the three doors that presumably led to bedrooms. A man appeared, wearing the uniform of the Home Guard, three stars on his shoulders. He was dark-haired, moustached, big, his face a cliché of handsomeness—straight nose, cleft chin, deep brown humorous eyes, small ears, a healthy tan: a face no intelligent woman would look at twice. Crabbe could see that the uniform had only recently been reassumed: there was a certain carelessness about buttons, the shorts were somewhat baggy, the hair had been hurriedly welshcombed. He listened with sympathy to the soft Scottish voice.
“Would you be looking for Talbot? He’s not normally back till about three. Mrs. Talbot will be coming out in a wee while. She and I have been rehearsing a scene from a play that we’re going to do. We were shouting a wee bit, so we couldn’t have heard you knock. Just arrived, I suppose? I’m Bannon-Fraser.”
Hand-shakes. Bannon-Fraser smiled with
interest at Fenella. “We don’t see many fair-haired ladies out here,” he said, “not nowadays. You’ve probably heard all about that.”
“No,” said Fenella, “I haven’t.”
“Oh,” said Bannon-Fraser, “it’s the Abang. You’ve heard about the Abang?”
“I’ve read about him,” said Crabbe. “At least, I’ve read about the office, the Abang-paradigm, you might say. What has the Abang got to do with fair-haired women?”
“What’s he got to do?” Bannon-Fraser laughed, showing, inevitably, strong white teeth. “What’s he got to do with fair-haired women? He loves ’em, laddie, can’t have too many of them.” The schoolboy salacity disappeared from his look. Seriously he said to Fenella, “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. You’re in Education, aren’t you? Well, you’ll be all right, I suppose. It’s only at the Drainage and Irrigation level that he starts any funny business. Or Agricultural Department. Of the earth earthy. I should think Education’s a bit outside his scope. I’ve got to go now. Mrs. T. will be up, out, any minute now. Do come round to the mess sometime. Or see you at the club. We’ll have a drink,” he added, as though this thought were a sudden inspiration. Then he left with the hurry of a man who has fulfilled a duty that, with the long passage of time, has become more and more perfunctory, a function that has developed economy of action, a routine as gratifying as the fiftieth cigarette of the day. Crabbe and Fenella decided to sit down, hearing the Land Rover roar away up the road.
There was a picture on the wall that caught Crabbe’s attention, an obviously amateur picture. Female breasts, greatly elongated, grew up, tufted like brushes at the points, into a forest. The dendromorphs were painted in nursery colours, like children’s beakers. Crabbe’s appetite receded. Fascinated, he looked at others: a snake entering a woman’s mouth; a stylised satyr leaping out of a cuplike navel; a parade of pink haunches. Each picture carried the bold vermilion initials: A.T. Soon they were both wandering about the room, colliding at intervals and saying, “Sorry.”
“Trying to shock,” said Fenella, as the two of them craned at a sort of erotic Laocoon, poster-paint flesh and ill-proportioned limbs. “He wants everybody to think he’s interestingly depraved. It’s all very childish.”
“You don’t have to look at them,” said a voice. They turned guiltily. “I do these for my own amusement.” The speaker lounged at the bedroom door, her mouth wagging a cigarette. She was slim and seemed to be wearing a sort of ballet practice dress. Her face was that of a boy gang-leader, smooth with the innocence of one who, by the same quirk as blinds a man to the mystery of whistling or riding a bicycle, has never mastered the art of affection or compassion or properly learned the moral dichotomy. Her eyes were small and her lips thin, her black hair parted demurely in Madonna-style. Her voice was faint, as if her vocal cords had been eroded by some acid. Crabbe suddenly heard the voice of a Malay girl who, a year ago, had enticed him from a lonely roadside: “Tuan mahu main—main?” But Tuan had not wanted to play: in the strained whisper spoke the aristocratic disease of love.
“I’m Anne Talbot,” she said. “I suppose you must be expected or something. My husband never tells me anything. Please sit down, both of you.” Fenella flushed: she had not stood up, she had merely been standing. She remembered vaguely a film about a Restoration trollop promoted to duchess: “No ceremony here, ladies.” She did not sit down until she had finished counting fifty. The counting also kept her mouth shut.
Crabbe announced his name and, for some reason, suddenly felt ashamed of it. It carried the wrong connotations—crustaceans, pubic parasites, instead of innocent wild apples.
“Crabbe,” said Mrs. Talbot. “Crabbe. That’s a nice name. It reminds me of wild apples.” (I was wrong, he thought, in thinking them innocent.) “I used to be very fond of crab-apple jelly, back in England, of course, when I was a young girl. I never get it now. Never. There are a lot of things I don’t get.” She leaned back in her armchair and blew smoke feebly. “One becomes so very tired of it all.”
Fenella was now seated. She looked at Crabbe and Crabbe looked at the floor and both felt a slight chill of premonition adding its draught to that of the ceiling-fan. Crabbe felt also shame. All this had been set out years ago in the stories of a man still well remembered in the East. Willie Maugham, damn fine bridge-player, real asset to the club, remembered me, put me in a book. Things here were all too simple. That Elizabethan play of adultery and jealousy, Fenella remembered, that play with the unironic title of A Woman Killed with Kindness, had reflected a civilisation a thousand times more complex. Fenella and Crabbe looked at each other briefly, and the business of the anonymous letter was already torn up. “A drink,” said Mrs. Talbot. “Our servants have taken the day off. I can’t understand how two Malays could possibly have Chinese cousins, but that was their story, so off they’ve gone to celebrate the New Year. Perhaps you, Mr. Crabbe, would like to give us some gin and vermouth. It’s all in that cupboard. And there’s ice in the refrigerator.”
“I don’t particularly want a drink,” said Fenella.
“Nor I,” said Crabbe, “particularly.”
“Well,” said Mrs. Talbot, “I do.” She gave Crabbe a five-second glance of her small eyes and a grimace of her thin red lips, then she shrugged her very thin shoulders, got up, and lounged to the drink-cupboard. Crabbe made a frog’s mouth and slightly raised his hands at Fenella. Then a car-noise approached and was ground out in front of the bungalow. They both breathed relief Heavy feet mounted and Crabbe rose.
“Don’t tell me, don’t tell me,” said Talbot. “It’s Bishop. We’re back together again. God, it’s been a long time. Mrs. Bishop, how are you? Young and beautiful as ever, despite the heavy weight of the years. And the other boys, how are they, Bishop?”
It was the moon-face of a yokel, a lock of straw-straight hair kissing one lens of the cheerful spectacles. The fleshy face and paunchy stumpy body, clad in a blue shirt and what looked like running shorts, spoke of a hopeless euphoria. Talbot seemed in his middle forties. He was evidently reaping the dank straw harvest of marrying a much younger wife. He was too cheerful. Soon, it was evident, he would talk with enthusiasm of his hobby, probably something laborious and harmless. The face was not that of a man of talent or temperament: it was too knobby and unlined, and the metal-gleaming teeth were too readily shown in an empty desperate smile.
“Crabbe,” said Crabbe. “You may have had a letter about me.”
“Crabbe,” said Talbot. “I thought you were Bishop. You’re very like Bishop. And of course there must be a connection somewhere. Let me see. Yes. Bishop was an eighteenth-century drink. Dr. Johnson was very fond of it. And you use crab-apples for making lamb’s wool. That, you’ll remember, was an Elizabethan drink. ‘When roasted crabs hiss in the bowl.’” He made ‘bowl’ rhyme with ‘owl’. “Or perhaps there was a Bishop Crabbe. There must be somewhere in Anthony Trollope. Are you any relation to the poet?”
“Distant. But my grandmother was a Grimes.”
“Well, well.” Talbot seemed pleased. “I suppose you’ve come to take over the College. I must say they’ve been pretty quick. Foss only went two days ago.”
“They kept us hanging about for a month. Back in Kuala Hantu.”
“Oh, God, that horrible place. Well, well. This calls for a drink. Anne, give us all a drink.”
“They said they didn’t want a drink. They were absolutely certain that they didn’t want a drink.” Mrs. Talbot came back with a full glass for herself.
“You see,” said Crabbe, “it’s the old business of an empty stomach.”
“My dear fellow,” said Talbot. He spoke as if Crabbe had committed a sin which was canonically mortal but because he, Talbot, was a Jesuit of the world, could be softened and attenuated till it disappeared like ectoplasm through the confessional grille. “My dear fellow.” And then Crabbe knew what Talbot consoled himself with. The successful grew fat on plovers and cream; the unsuccessful on bread and jam and swigs fro
m the custard-jug. “My dear fellow, you ought to eat. That’s the trouble with my wife. Thin as a rake, because she won’t bother to order anything. Says she’s not hungry. I’m always hungry. This climate has different effects on different people. I always have my lunch out. There’s a little Chinese place where they give you a really tasty and filling soup, packed with chicken and abalone and vegetables, with plenty of toast and butter, and then I always have a couple of baked crabs.”
“Yes,” said Crabbe.
“With rice and chilli sauce. And then a pancake or so, rather soggy, but I don’t dislike them that way, with jam and a kind of whipped cream they serve in a tea-cup. Anne, what is there to eat?”
“There’s nothing laid on, and the servants have gone. There, I’ll give you that as a free gift. You can start writing an intelligible poem for a change.”
Talbot laughed indulgently, as if to say, “Isn’t she a one?” He turned adoringly to her and said, “There must be something in the larder. Dig something out.”
“Crabs are good at digging,” said Mrs. Talbot. “Perhaps Mr. Crabbe would like to help me.”
“Yes, yes, do that, Crabbe. And then I can talk to Mrs. Bishop.”
Crabbe and Mrs. Talbot entered the sun-hot store-room. There were many tins and jars. “You can have cocktail sausages and gherkins,” she said, “and tinned cheese and anchovies and pork-liver pâté. Or beetroot and Gentleman’s Relish. We could have a little picnic. We could eat off the leaf, as the Malays say.” She was not near him, but the hot room diffused her scent. If he were to kiss her now she would taste it as casually and dispassionately as a fingerful of Gentleman’s Relish or a cold lean sausage. He remembered his hunger and said, “This, I think. And perhaps this.”
The Malayan Trilogy Page 23
