The Condition of Muzak (10 page)

The Stage’s Glory
, ibid.

FAIRY BENIGNA
: Poor Afric’s children sigh for liberty.

Alas! That task was not reserved for me.

Furibond; or, Harlequin Negro
, Drury Lane, 1807

From Sumatra it wasn’t too hard to get back to Sandakan and something like sanity, though the sari could not safely be abandoned until he could look down on his yellow palace, last remnant of a great personal empire, his inheritance, in the dark green hills above the desert harbour. Quite a lot of jungle had grown around the building since he had last visited it; trees and architecture were rounded, their contours softened by the hazy light, seeming to merge, and in the distance were the great blue and purple mountains of the island’s interior, the “real Borneo” as Major Nye had once termed it. To see if there were any signs of danger Jerry flew twice over the red and grey town. There were a few steamers at anchor against the broken concrete of the quays; some were already sinking into the emerald water, others were entirely discoloured by rust. On the quay he saw three isolated figures looking up at his giant Dornier DoX flying boat. Perhaps they recognised the sound of the twelve Curtiss Conqueror engines spluttering and misfiring around him as usual. He flew out to sea towards the Philippines, to make a wide turn so that he could begin his landing approach. He now wore a white one-piece flying suit, trimmed with ermine, gold-trimmed goggles and a white kid helmet. He had always been expected to show a little face in Sandakan.

The plane began to drop too steeply. Jerry pulled her up a bit; she responded as poorly as usual, but he managed to keep to his original path until he was almost on top of the broken mouth of the harbour. The Dornier’s huge floats touched tranquil water, bounced, swerved; he was taxiing between sagging, extinguished light-towers, forcing his heavy craft away from the protecting walls which formed an almost perfect circle and towards the mass of rotting steamers and waterlogged fishing sampans, the deserted houseboats and the junks. It began to occur to him that he had not been paying attention to his real responsibilities. He let the flying boat drift in crabwise until it was bobbing against the side of a junk which seemed relatively intact. He shut off the engines and clambered from the door of the cockpit onto the forward floats, clutching a strut to keep his balance as the machine rocked badly, and from the floats boarded the junk, testing its timbers carefully as he crossed the deck to walk slowly down a bouncing, flaking gangplank still resting on the quay. Empty mouldering buildings presented themselves to him, a mixture of Victorian Gothic and Malaysian-Dutch stucco. Rats watched from ledges and windows. Sadly he walked up the hill, through ruined streets where timber-merchants’ and rubber-planters’ offices, shipping companies, importers, exporters, chandlers, money-lenders, insurance brokers, restaurants, bazaars, stall-holders, silk-sellers, paper mask sellers, puppet sellers, sellers of acrid pastries, savoury dumplings, sweetmeats, carved wooden boxes and birdcages, had flourished in lazy competition.

Now a few starved Chinese and Dyak faces disappeared from doorways as he passed by. It was evident that nobody recognised him in his new costume and this saddened him.

The gates of the palace, which stood on its own hill outside the town, were slabs of grey marble on slender white tapering posts. They were exactly as he had left them, their pristine carvings and decoration reflecting a strong Islamic influence. He took a large key from his pocket and with considerable difficulty turned it in the great iron lock, pushing the gates open to find richer colours within. The gravel drive had been freshly raked and the lush shrubs had been trimmed and tended. Even the fountains of the ornamental lake were playing, perfectly orchestrated. Clear water rippled against a background of jade and lapis lazuli. Exotic birds looked carelessly at him as they dragged their glinting plumage about the perfect lawns where bowls, croquet and even cricket had been played in the old days. He reached the house, with its three terraced verandahs, climbing quartz steps between monstrous tigers and dragons of coloured ceramic and polished limestone, noting that the bronze doors, only recently dosed with considerable quantities of Brasso so that it hurt his eyes to look at them, were open, as if in welcome. The doors were twice his height; he pushed them back a fraction and squeezed through, entering the cool shadows of his palace, pausing in the very centre of the hall’s bright mosaic floor, facing towards the main staircase, of graduated shades of marble. There was no dust. He cleared his throat. There was a discreet echo.

“Dassim Shan?”

His major-domo did not appear. The deities of a dozen different faiths, bronze, ebony, porcelain, regarded him, some glowering, some tranquil, from alcoves. Diffracted light, entering through coloured patterned glass set close to the ceiling, filled the hall with delicate shadows.

Jerry took a step or two towards the stairs, then paused, hearing a movement overhead in the gallery behind him. A light but perfectly pitched voice, a bitter-sweet voice sang:

“Oh, Limehouse kid, oh, Limehouse kid, going the way that the rest of them did. Poor broken blossom who’s nobody’s child. Haunted and taunted, you’re just kind of wild. Oh, Limehouse blues, I’ve the real Limehouse blues, learnt from the Chinese those sad China blues. Rings on my fingers and tears for a crown, that is the story of Old China Town…”

Languid as one of the peacocks outside, Una Persson leaned against the carved marble balustrade. She wore a long Molyneaux evening gown of the thinnest yellow silk and her hair was cut short in a coolie crop with a fringe at an angle on her forehead, framing her oval face, emphasising her ironic grey eyes. She began to move as he looked up. She was smoking a cigarette without a holder.

Jerry had never seen her like this. “What?”

The gown caused her to stride in a peculiar swaying gait. She walked round the gallery, her heels ticking, until she came to the stairs. “Shall I come down?” she spoke softly, laying a significant hand on the balustrade.

Jerry scratched his head under his helmet. He undid the strap and removed it, shaking out his long hair. “Maybe I’d better come up. I’m a bit more mobile.”

“What’s been going on in the big world?” she asked as she accompanied him to his study which lay almost at the end of the gallery. Some Guerlain perfume or other hung about her, making him uncertain of her identity as well as his own. He unlocked the door, intricately carved from local hardwood, and held it open for her. “It’s delightful.” She went directly to the French windows and opened them, admitting a certain amount of light and one or two insects which began enthusiastically to explore the large room. She swayed out into the sunshine, onto a balcony providing a view of the sea in one direction and the distant Iran mountains in the other, all dark greens, blues and purples. The sky was perfect; blue with a touch or two of pink in it. “Oh, Jerry! This is the loveliest view!”

In the study there was a great deal of dust, as if it had all gathered in one place. Jerry wiped it from his desk with his white gauntlet, making long smears across the mother-of-pearl inlay. “Have you seen anything of Dassim Shan?”

“He’s probably near the swimming pool. He spends most of his time there, I gather.”

Jerry frowned. “Is he all right?”

“Well, he seems to have a rare form of hydrophilia which tends to make him a bit introspective. I shouldn’t go to see him, if I were you, until I’ve had a chance to warn him. The shock could kill him.”

“How long ago did this happen?”

“Soon after the resumption of hostilities.”

“Sod,” said Jerry. With a decisive gesture he threw off his flying helmet and reached to take a pre-wound ornamental turban, of red, green and yellow stripes, from the bottom drawer of his desk. He pinned up his hair. “It’s my fault, as usual.”

“You take too much on yourself,” she said. She returned to the interior but then, when she saw that he intended to go onto the balcony, made a few backward steps so that she was outside again, her hands behind her, supporting her slim body as she rested against the rococo rail.

Adjusting the turban on his head he moved to join her. From where he stood he could see the lawns at the side of the palace, the cypresses which hid the servants’ cottages, empty now. To his left he could make out the roofs of the deserted town. On his right loomed foothills, then mountains. “There are demands on one here,” he told her. He tapped the turban. “There is more to this than a few privileges, Miss Persson. There is, perhaps, even a destiny.”

He drew a deep breath of the sweet, heavy air.

“Duty?” She became immediately attentive.

“It’s silly, I know,” said Jerry as he and Una lay close together, knee to knee in the massive and uncomfortable bed, listening to the waves and the wildlife of the Sandakan dawn, “but I do miss America. I have ancestors there, you know.”

“You’re obsessed with your relatives.” She reached for the silver filigree thermos jug and poured herself an inch or so of iced lime juice. She lifted the jade beaker to her lips. Already their affair had taken one or two turns for the worse.

He shrugged his blue silk shoulders. He flashed her a grin, his teeth unnaturally white against his unnaturally dark skin. “I have so many, Una.”

The electrics were working unexpectedly well. As the dawn continued to bloom the four-bladed fan overhead hummed in sympathy with the voices of a thousand waking insects.

Jerry pulled back the netting and walked in bare feet to his dressing room next door and from there to the toilet. The suite was almost all polished mahogany, Victorian, designed, it appeared, to resist the Orient. He sat down on the elegant seat, at last able to relax. But within a moment or two she had joined him, quite naked apart from two ivory bangles on her left wrist, an Egyptian cigarette in one hand, the jade beaker in the other. She leaned against the door jamb, sipping from the glass. She studied his naked lower quarters. He regretted now that he had not locked himself in.

“I wish to God we could get some news, Jerry.” She took a brief, nervous puff on her cigarette. “How’s Dassim coming along with the radio?”

“He’s had to cannibalise. From the plane. No luck so far.”

“I’m frightfully bored, you see.”

“I understand.”

“I thought you’d be rounding up your faithful retainers, getting everybody back to work, clearing the harbour, sorting out the rubber and so on. There isn’t one horse left in the stables. No ostlers or anything. You’ve done nothing except write in your notebooks.”

“There’s nobody to round up, you see,” he explained. “They’ve either gone inland or else they’re mentally deficient. The only people left in town are idiots.”

“I quite agree. You couldn’t give me a lift to the mainland, could you?”

“This is the mainland.” He pointed through the door to the dark map on the wall behind her. He took a sheet of music manuscript from the floor and began to crumple it, soften it. He stood up and wiped his black bottom.

“Of Borneo, though, darling.”

He was still disorientated by the rôle she had adopted. He dropped the paper into the bowl and operated the lever to flush it away. “Where would you want to go?”

“What about—where is it?—Australia?”

“We’d have to stop for fuel before we reached Darwin. That DoX is a very greedy aeroplane, for all I’ve converted a lot of her passenger accommodation to fuel reserves. The only station I know of that’s safe, because everyone’s forgotten it, is Rowe Island. Moni?”

She sighed. “Too many skeletons.”

“I must admit that’s my feeling. One too many, at least.”

“What about the other way?”

“We’ve only got a flying boat, don’t forget.”

“Singapore?”

“Singapore’s out.”

“Bangkok?”

“Bangkok’s completely out.”

“Anywhere else? Hong Kong? Formosa? Shanghai?”

“They’re all out, too.”

“Well, the Philippines, then.”

“I told you what happened to the Philippines. Besides, I’d still have to come back and fuel would be a very serious problem.”

“We’d be all right in the Philippines, wouldn’t we? We could explain.”

“I couldn’t. I’ve had enough of that.” He rolled his eyes and began to Charleston from the toilet. Gradually the Charleston turned into a Cake-walk and from a Cake-Walk became a coon-dance. “I know where I’m well off.” His arms flapped and jogged. “What do you think I was after in Sarawak? And I only left there in time!” He retreated into his netting again, peering at her through it. He stretched out on the bed. “I’ve no objection if you take the plane yourself.”

“Oh, I’d never learn to fly.”

“The last time I saw you—I think—you had a licence. Didn’t you?”

“I may have told you something like that.” She was vague, upset by the reference.

“It’ll have to be Rowe Island, then. I’ve got to get back. I wouldn’t be allowed into Australia under any circumstances.”

“But your son…?”

“I shouldn’t have mentioned it.”

“Ghosts,” she said.

“You wouldn’t recognise them now,” he told her, parting the curtain and taking her hand. Tenderly he drew her back into the net.

The lean steam yacht sailed fastidiously into Sandakan harbour, furled her white sails and dropped anchor. A little cream-coloured smoke drifted from her gleaming aristocratic funnels; her white sides were turned greenish blue, reflecting the water.