The Orientalist and the Ghost (13 page)

‘But she was a friend of Mum’s …’

‘So she says. She might be lying. There’s no way of knowing if she’s telling the truth or not.’

Her objections stop there. Her eyelids falter and her head droops so Adam can see the scraggly parting in her thin blonde hair. He is used to Julia nodding off mid-sentence, words floating away. It used to annoy him. He used to prod her, nag her awake (
I’ve come all the way here to see you
…). But he realizes now she has little control over the ebb and flow of consciousness. He’s learnt not to take it personally.

He stands up, removes the cigarette smouldering between her fingers and stubs it out on a plate of toast crusts on the floor. He takes the photograph, puts it back in his pocket, whispers ‘Happy birthday’ and leaves.

8

WHEN SALLY’S FATHER
asked her to accompany him to Kuala Lumpur, she had wanted to say no. She was a timid girl. She’d left boarding school after a bout of glandular fever at the age of eleven, and had been home-tutored ever since. Sally had no friends her own age. She hid in her bedroom night after night, listening to classical music and reading
Jane Eyre
. The furthest she’d ever travelled before was Marseilles, and she’d no idea where Kuala Lumpur was (though if she’d had to hazard a guess she’d have said India). Had a fortune teller predicted that Sally would live and die in Cricklewood without ever travelling elsewhere, she wouldn’t have minded. What Sally did mind, however, was being separated from her father. Sally’s mother had died when Sally was a baby and it had always been just the two of them. A year was a long time and she’d miss her father very much. The only way to
avoid
the sorrow, she reasoned, was to go with him.

In January 1969 the Hargreaves moved into a spacious, two-storey house on a street of expensive, gated residences in Petaling Jaya, Kuala Lumpur. The house had marble floors, air-conditioning and, in the front yard, Trixie and Tinkerbell, a pair of Dobermann guard dogs Mr Hargreaves installed that Sally was so frightened of she lobbed food at them whenever she left the house – pork dumplings, cold cuts of ham, bunches of green bananas – anything to distract the Hounds of Hell as she ran to the gate.

Like most expat households the Hargreaves had a live-in maid, a Malay girl of Sally’s age called Safiah. Safiah had a pretty, cherubic face and a thick mane of black hair and Sally knew little about her other than that she was very hard-working – forever sweeping, or standing on tiptoe on the banister to dust away cobwebs, or scouring the bathroom floor. Safiah was very cheerful and smiley, and with hopes of friendship Sally borrowed a Malay–English dictionary from her father and approached the servant girl as she knelt in the yard, scrubbing laundry in the wash tub. Standing awkwardly by the washing line, Sally attempted to talk to Safiah, riffling the dictionary pages as she foraged for words. Safiah was confused at first, then she erupted into giggles. She giggled and giggled and Sally was so mad she nearly threw the dictionary at her idiotic giggling head.

Mr Hargreaves also hired a cook, a Chinese woman called Yok Ling. Yok Ling was a much sought-after chef,
recommended
to Mr Hargreaves by an acquaintance at the Royal Selangor Club, and one of the conditions of her working for the Hargreaves was that they allow her to spirit-proof the house first, shifting tables, chairs and the china cabinet in accordance with the principles of feng shui. Yok Ling’s English was excellent, though her tactlessness often made Sally wish she was as mute as Safiah (
Oooh! You are a fat one
lah! Yok Ling cried when introduced to the boss’s daughter:
I am going to have to cook extra for you!
)

Mr Hargreaves was at work until after midnight most nights, and Sally spent her first week in Kuala Lumpur alone. Most days she slept until noon and spent her afternoons sprawled on her bed reading Georgette Heyer novels. Yok Ling rang a bell at mealtimes and Safiah would bring Sally’s food to the dining-room table, before squatting in the doorway to watch her eat (as though it were feeding time at the zoo). Sally whiled away the evenings lying in a cool bath, listening to Cantonese pop-songs on the radio. She wept into her pillow before she went to sleep. She desperately wanted to tell her father that she had changed her mind. But it was too late.

Mr Hargreaves hired a chauffeur to ferry Sally to and from school every day and though the twenty-minute journey to the prestigious Amethyst International School for Girls was her first trip into central Kuala Lumpur Sally was too nervous to look at the early-morning streets. She sat rigidly on the leather-upholstered back seat, her new blouse tucked into the
waistband
of her new pleated skirt, an empty satchel on her lap and a fearful rhythm in her heart. When the car passed the gates of the Amethyst school, Sally’s first sighting of the colonial-era mansion of wood and woven bamboo did nothing to calm her nerves. With the car parked a little farther down the street, Sally turned to look out of the rear window and watched the girls flitting through the gates; tall girls, short girls; one girl pedalling a bicycle, another speedily hopping on crutches; girls monogamously arm-in-arm. There were girls in every stage of adolescence, from skinny prepubescence to the fullest bloom of womanhood; every shade of hair, from palest blonde to Arabian black. The pupils of the Amethyst school seemed frighteningly ‘other’ to Sally – as though they belonged to some secret sect of girlhood. In the flagstone yard a gang of older girls shared a surreptitious cigarette, shooting casual looks of disdain at the younger nonsmoking pupils. Girls gossiped around the earthenware pots of flowers, or queued to jump a long skipping rope, chanting rhymes Sally had never heard before. The driver, who’d been silent throughout the journey, eyed his passenger in the rear-view mirror;
Missi, we already here
lah!
You better hurry or you’ll be late
. Sally pulled the handle and inched open the door. But overcome by an irrational fear of the distance to the kerb, she slammed it shut again and squeaked to the driver,
One moment, please!

Eventually, after the bell had rung and the yard was empty, Sally left the car and scuttled into the school
building
. The secretary led her to the fifth-form classroom, where the form tutor, Miss Ng, brought Sally to stand next to her on the teaching platform. The class of sixteen-year-old girls hushed their chatter about the Christmas holidays and stared at the larger than average newcomer, who stared back at them, fighting the powerful urge to throw up. How slim and pretty they were. How well-groomed and fresh-looking, as though lightly misted with dewdrops. Sally blazed with self-consciousness, her classmates’ inquisitive eyes like ants crawling over her skin. Whatever must they think of her? Of her weight? Of her wild tumbleweed hair (unsmoothed by the nightly applications of olive oil, singed from the unsuccessful attempt to iron it flat that morning)? Miss Ng asked Sally to introduce herself and, blushing, Sally whispered her name.
What did she say?
a voice called from the back row. Miss Ng repeated what Sally had said and sent her to an empty desk.

The majority of Sally’s classmates were British or Australian, with a few mixed-race girls of dual nationality thrown in. To Sally’s horror the classes were very lively. She sat meekly at her desk as the lessons moved swiftly along, praying she would not be called upon to speak.

The bell rang for lunch at half past twelve. There were seven tables in the dining hall, one for each class, and lunch was a refined affair with silver cutlery, napkins on laps and tea served from teapots. Miss Ng presided over the fifth-form table, and three lunch monitors served the rest of the class vegetable consommé,
asparagus
, new potatoes and slices of chicken, and then little bowls of vanilla ice for dessert. A wild anxious fluttering in her belly prevented Sally from eating a single bite, and as her classmates chattered she stared at her plate, feeling as though she could no more join in than converse in Tagalog. Fortunately, after the soup course, the girl sitting next to Sally came to the rescue.
Do you like Cliff Richard?
the girl whispered (as if whispering the codeword for a secret underground organization).
Yes, I do
, Sally lied. The girl flashed a broad metallic grin and said her name was Melissa. After lunch Melissa took Sally to the library, where she showed off her Cliff Richard scrap-book; the pages were crammed with magazine clippings, song lyrics and fan-club letters. As Melissa reverentially turned the pages, preaching the gospel of Cliff, Sally stared at the snaking metal wires harnessing Melissa’s teeth – the work of a mad visionary of an orthodontist. Melissa was a crashing bore and listening to her was torturous, but in the terrifying wilderness of teenage girls she was a friendly face, and Sally was grateful.

Later that day, after her chauffeur had dropped her home, Sally stood in the yard, her mind galloping. Why had her father chosen such a posh school? The lessons were too difficult and her classmates too pretty and accomplished. Back in Cricklewood, where she’d been home-tutored surrounded by the potted palms of the conservatory, Sally had been the star pupil. But at Amethyst she was the class dunce, the lumbering class
elephant
. Sally dumped her satchel (bulging with textbooks and assignments she didn’t understand) on the ground, and there and then decided not to go back. She’d look in the
Encyclopaedia of Tropical Maladies
and fake the symptoms of some illness until her father got her a private tutor. Inner peace somewhat restored, Sally tiptoed past the Dobermanns, snoozing in the afternoon sun, to rinse her hands under the standpipe. As water splashed over her sticky fingers and into the drain, Sally heard a
clank, clank, clank
at the gate. Trixie and Tinkerbell heard it too, and leapt up, barking, heavy metal chains dragging across the yard as they ran over to the small Chinese girl rattling a stick back and forth across the railings. The girl smiled at the snarling dogs and rattled her stick faster. She wore the same blouse and grey pleated skirt as Sally, and Sally guessed she was a student in one of the years below. Laughing, the girl tossed the stick high over the gate into the Hargreaves’ yard. Trixie and Tinkerbell lunged after the stick, tails wagging.

‘Hello,’ said the girl. ‘You’re the new girl. I saw you in my class.’

Though the girl looked pure Chinese, her English accent was perfect. Sally had no memory of having seen her at school that day.

‘How d’you get here?’ Sally asked.

‘Flew,’ came her breezy reply.

Sally asked her if she lived near by, and with an unsubtle shiver of distaste the girl said, God, no; she lived above a shop in Chinatown, and had just come to
Petaling
Jaya to visit her mad aunt. She pointed at the Christian hospice at the end of the street.

‘She lives over there,’ she said, ‘in that loony bin. When I was a baby she covered herself in petrol and set herself alight. They chucked a bucket of water over her to put the fire out and she had a heart attack. She’s OK now, though she’s paralysed down one side and disgustingly scarred.’

Sally didn’t know what to make of this information. She wiped her damp hands on her skirt and went nervously up to the gate. She asked the girl her name.

‘Frances Milnar,’ she said, slipping her small hand through the railings. ‘
Enchantée
.’

Sally asked Frances if she’d like to join her for afternoon tea, and Frances laughed, showing off her tiny vampirish teeth. For a moment Sally thought she was laughing at her offer, but then Frances announced she was starving, adding in a mock sophisticated drawl that tea would be
absolutely divine
. Sally unlatched the gate and let her in. Frances was tomboyish and scrappy-looking; five-foot nothing and flat-chested as a ten-year-old. She had short hair that she tucked behind her ears, small almond eyes, and freckles on her snub nose like the speckling on a bird’s egg. Frances skipped over to Trixie and Tinkerbell, and the chained beasts reared up to paw Frances’ school uniform and lick her giggling face. Sally was horrified. Her friend of less than five minutes was about to be mauled to death by her own dogs! But they merely sniffed her and smothered her with loving, slobbery licks.

The ceiling-fan blades gently chopped the air of the dining room. Sally lifted the wicker cage on the table to uncover the jug of lemonade and the plate of red-bean pastries.

‘Wow!’ said Frances. ‘Are all these cakes for you?’

‘They’re for my father too,’ Sally replied, defensively.

There was only one glass, so Sally called for Safiah, who padded to the doorway, barefoot and giggling. Sally pointed at Frances and mimed drinking out of a glass.

‘That’s Safiah,’ Sally said, as the servant disappeared into the kitchen. ‘She never speaks.’

When Safiah returned, Frances spoke to her in Malay, and Sally, listening as the servant girl strung together sentences of three words or more, was peeved that she hadn’t made a similar effort for her on the afternoon of the Malay–English dictionary.