The Black Isle (28 page)

She nodded solemnly, receiving the watch in both hands, impressed by its heft. “Do you want us to bury the big cross also?” She meant, of course, the crucifix in the sitting room.

“That?” Mr. Wee considered for a moment. “No, that should remain. Let it frighten the Japs a little.”

As always, Mr. Wee possessed the dull gray, reassuring aura of someone who routinely erred on the side of caution. But my confidence wavered later that morning. He went into the kitchen and began rummaging in the drawers in search of something. Finally, he emerged with a pair of steel scissors, its looping black-painted handles bringing to mind the ears of a cartoon mouse. He held out the implement to Violet.

“Cut off your hair.”

Violet’s hands instantly went for her lovingly groomed bob. “But, Daddy…”

“Do it, Vi. We’ve already discussed this. Your hair will always grow back.” He forced out a smile. “Be a good girl.”

Her eyes filled up with tears as she took the scissors and, dragged along by mourning feet, slouched up the stairs to her bedroom.

“Cassandra.” Mr. Wee turned to me. “You must do the same. It’s for your personal safety. And put away your pretty dresses. We can never be too careful.” Sensing my resistance, he clutched Daniel’s arm. “Make her do it.”

Burying the valuables was one thing, but Mr. Wee was behaving as if the enemy had already parachuted into Tanglewood and was marching up the street. Only hours earlier, he was Ignatius Wee the civic leader, hatching bold plans with his men. Now he seemed fatigued, as if he’d undergone a change of heart.

Daniel did as he was told. “Darling—” he began warily.

“I’ll do it.” What Mr. Wee said was true—the Japs were animals. “But I want a last look in the mirror.”

“I’ll come with you.” My obedient fiancé curled one arm around my waist and directed me up the darkened stairway. He nuzzled his cheeks against my hair. “Know you’ll always be my beauty, no matter what.”

As the steps creaked under our feet, I told myself,
It’s only hair, only dead cells
. But the pall of premature defeat…I felt a sudden urge to bolt.

“Come now, this is just a precaution.” Daniel’s grip tightened around me. “We can’t be too careful. Better to be safe than—” He stopped, looking stunned.

At the top of the stairs stood Violet, body stiff, face tear-streaked and expressionless. Most of her hair, the best of her features, was gone. At first glance, she could have been a boy who’d been caught playing dress-up in Violet’s things. But this was undeniably a young woman, with a young woman’s soft hips.

She raised both hands mechanically. It seemed the act of butchering her hair had also sapped her will to live. In one hand, she held the scissors; in the other, dead clumps of black fell slowly to the ground.

“We’ve already lost, haven’t we?” she whispered. “This won’t make any difference, will it?”

I knew what she meant. After all, these were the beasts who tore into children and grandmothers.

“Vi…” Daniel eyed her nervously, unsure what to say. “Why don’t you go back to your room?”

I broke free of his arms. “She’s right, you know—this is surrendering. I’m not going to do it. I’d sooner die than be like that! I’d sooner die!”

“Darling, please! Don’t you get hysterical, too!”

Mr. Wee came to the bottom of the stairs. “Let me be clear, Cassandra. I don’t care if
you
die. But God help you if you take the rest of us down with your willfulness.”

“But, Mr. Wee, this is like saying we’ve already lost.”

“Arrogance!” His eyes flashed with an anger I’d never seen. “Daniel, take her to the beach house. We can’t afford this here.” Pursing his lips, he turned to leave.

“Father!” I cried, hoping to reel him back with sentiment. “Father, please!”

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, Cassandra.” He did not look at me. “Daniel. Go.”

Pointedly silent, Issa drove us to the coast that afternoon. The sky was dark, not with storm clouds but thick marine fog that had blown inland and stayed, stranded. On the road in, it seemed like twilight—we could see neither water nor the beach. Yet this wasn’t the only hint that the elements were awry.

The smell of the sea was magnified tenfold, as if we were breathing in clouds of rotting kelp. Even inside the house, with all the windows closed, we couldn’t escape its salty, mineral reek.

Daniel paced the rooms, fidgeting restlessly, his fingers clasping the stack of cigarette cards Kenneth had brought him. He didn’t take well to exile; without his father, he seemed lost. I’d never quite seen him like this.

“I wish you’d listened to Daddy.”

“Your father was acting like everything’s over. Remember how he said he didn’t care if I died? I believe him, Dan. He doesn’t care.”

“But at least we’d all be together in the house.”

I thought of what he’d said just days before, about spending a carnal weekend at the beach house. What a cruel irony that we were now here, alone as fantasized, but the mood was all wrong. Still, I slid up against him and began unbuttoning his shirt.

He brushed my hands away. “Darling, this is hardly the time…”

Let him sulk, then,
I thought. I threw off my shoes and walked out to the beach.

The mist had begun to lift and pink-orange late afternoon light was gradually peering through.

It was low tide but the sand was barely visible. This time, it wasn’t the fog. The shoreline was covered with parachutes—not down from the sky but up from the sea, each the size of a man’s handkerchief.

Jellyfish, hundreds upon hundreds of them. The flat yellow sheaths were edged with petticoat frills, pale and ladylike, yet their gelatinous legs curled into long-fingered fists, symbolizing, even in death, defiance. They were everywhere, spanning the coast as swarms of buzzing flies descended on them.

The dead jellies alarmed me less than the few that were still pulsing, wriggling, advancing ever so slowly toward the house. Though it seemed impossible they would ever reach it, their invertebrate will was chilling; it was as if they were striving at all costs to reach us and deliver a warning.

“Daniel!” I burst through the back door and into the sitting room, just as he put on a record—“Blue Skies” by Josephine Baker, one of his favorites.

“What’s wrong?”

I led him by the hand to the back verandah.

The instant we stepped out of the house, a cosmic switch tripped. A deep rumbling began at our toes, spread to the soles of our feet, then up our shins, our knees, our thighs. Immediately, a thunderous roar took hold, trapping our torsos in its cage of noise and shaking us until we weren’t sure if we were being ripped from the earth or if the earth was being ripped from beneath us.

Our eyes scanned the sea. Even without speaking, we both knew what the other was thinking, fearing: A tsunami was upon us, a towering wave that would vomit from the bottom of the world creatures far worse than jellyfish…

I grabbed Daniel. “It’s coming!”

But not from the water.

High above, piercing the fog and the gray clouds, were flying metal crosses, appearing one by one until they formed a V. As the planes passed over our heads, the red circles on the base of their wings stared down upon us like blood-filled eyes.

We became a single statue, frozen, unable to run. And in this moment, I felt something I never thought I’d feel: This wasn’t how I wanted to die, clinging to a rich man’s son, my own adventure barely begun.

We stood paralyzed until we glimpsed the tailfins of those soaring sharks. They were headed to the city—we’d been spared, at least for now. I unglued my beau and staggered inside on jellied legs. If he called after me, I did not hear him.

The house continued rattling with after-echoes. Every screw, every nail, every cup seemed to be bobbing, vibrating, alive. The Victrola needle jumped from groove to groove, striking random notes on the vinyl like a broken talking doll, yowling to be put out of its pain. The moment I flicked it off, a pencil shimmied off the dining table, hit the floor, and split into two.

When the rumbling finally ceased, I slumped into a chair.

Daniel appeared at the door. He looked at me with the forlorn expression of a child who’d done wrong yet didn’t know what the wrong was. My face must have softened because he darted over and locked me in a tight embrace.

Caught in this awkward huddle, we both began sobbing, producing a weird harmony. In the distance, the bombs began falling, with long-tail squeals that lashed deep into our ears. We cried harder to camouflage the blasts. Six, seven, eight. What were they hitting? City hall, the esplanade, the tram depot? Nine, ten, eleven. Chinatown: Were Li and Father hit? Was everybody dead?

Air-raid sirens sounded in the distance, tragically late and tinny as the whines of desperate mosquitoes. The blitz, it seemed, was suddenly over.

A boom, this time much closer, shook us. Then another. Somebody was pounding on the front door. Were they already on the ground?

“Who’s there?” Daniel shouted, his voice wobbly.

“It’s me,” came the unmistakable purr of Kenneth Kee.

Daniel instantly pulled himself away from me. The banging on the door began anew.

“I’ll handle him,” I said.

“Stop that, damn you!” Daniel cried at the door.

I let our visitor in. A mournful chorus of sirens trailed in behind him.

Kenneth looked as he always did—immaculately dressed, not a hair out of place, a manner informed by a reserve of reserve. From him came no hellos, no hugs, just a cold, unemotional order: “Put on the wireless.”

I looked at him. “There’s no wireless here.”

“Then we have to settle for hearing the news firsthand.” He went to the window and stared out. Together we heard a big blast followed by impotent antiaircraft fire, then sirens—round after round of sirens wailing from the city. Kenneth had on a strange sort of smile. I wasn’t even sure
he
knew what he was feeling.

“That, my friends,” he said, “is the sound of the British Empire, dying.”

“What are you doing here, Kenny?”

“Your father told me to make sure you two were all right.”

“Daddy? He sent us here in the first place. How did
you
get here anyway?”

“I drove.”

“You drove?”

“I taught myself. At Oxford.”

“Well, we’re perfectly capable of taking care of ourselves. We don’t need you.”

Kenneth took a deep breath and slipped out the door wordlessly, but before I could chastise Daniel for his harsh words, he was back. Cradled in his arms were a kerosene lamp, a bale of blackout fabric, and a warm bottle of champagne.

“Let’s keep calm till the morning,” said Kenneth, carefully avoiding Daniel’s eyes. “I’ll take you both home then. In the meantime, let’s not turn on any lights. And use this to cover the windows.” He handed me the blackout material.

“What about food?” I said. “I’m afraid we may not have enough for three.”

“She’s right,” Daniel jumped in.

Kenneth smiled lightly. “Don’t worry about me. I don’t need anything.”

“You don’t sweat, you don’t eat. What
are
you, Kenneth Kee?” I asked him.

He shrugged. “A ghost.”

None of us slept that night. The champagne hadn’t helped; the sugar from it was buzzing through our veins. From our bed, Daniel and I could hear Kenneth prowling around the house, checking and rechecking all the doors and windows. He had taken it upon himself to be our watchman, and he did the job with more verve than mere duty.

“I know him. He’s doing this on purpose,” Daniel said. “To keep us awake.”

But it wasn’t Kenneth who was keeping me up. I couldn’t stop thinking about Li and Father. Were they still alive after those bombs? I feared that their vigilante pride had put them on the roof of some Chinatown high-rise where escape would have been impossible. And then there were the ground troops. The amphibious Japs would soon find their way ashore, probably under the cover of night. An island, after all, is open in every direction, and we were trapped in a house, mere feet from the open strait…

With the house sealed shut, the air had become sticky and stale. I had grown so accustomed to sleeping in air-conditioned rooms that I found the humidity unbearable. Daniel and I had taken off our clothes and stripped the covers and still it was no use. I moved to the edge of the bed, fleeing the monsoonal warmth of our anxious bodies.

“Don’t run away.” Daniel rolled toward me and wrapped his arm around my waist, pulling me back into the inferno.

“It’s too hot…”

He held me even tighter and pressed me facedown on the mattress, lifting my sweat-drenched hair to kiss the moist nape of my neck. “Don’t let him affect us.”

“What?”

“He barged in here, acting like a hero. Like we’re helpless without him.”

“I’m sure he’s just doing what your father asked him to.”

“That’s the trouble—my father. Nobody asked Kenny to come back, yet ever since he’s been back, he’s been at those bloody meetings, behaving like such a great son. He’s why I sit in—in case my father’s friends think he really
is
his son. And I’ve seen the way he looks at you. I won’t let him steal
you
from me as well.”

His kissing grew more fevered, and when I tried to pull away from the heat of his lips, he gripped my arms with a new fierceness and pushed my legs apart with his knees. “Don’t you…,” he hissed into my ear. Before he could complete the thought, he had forced his way into me.

I was ashamed of my moans—Kenneth was just beyond the door, and I didn’t doubt he had ears as sharp as his tongue—but Daniel did all he could to make me submit, and as loudly as possible. Biting my neck till I cried out, he plunged into me with such ferocity that the wooden bed squealed with every thrust.

“Say my name.”

“Please, be gentle…”

“Isn’t this what you always wanted? Say my name!”

I refused. He dug his fingers into my jaw and pulled my chin closer to his ear.

“Why won’t you say my name? Say my name.” He twisted my arm. “Come on, scream out my name…”