The Orientalist and the Ghost (33 page)

‘You like it nice and warm, don’t you?’ Julia said.

‘It’s the tumble-drier,’ said Adam, ‘and I’m cooking pasta.’

Julia sat on the sofa. The naked 100-watt ceiling bulb exposed what the decaying shadows of her flat had concealed: the yellow sclera of her eyes and the bloody-edged scabs that scavenging fingers never let alone to heal. Too much scalp showed in the parting of her hair and as she tucked some limp strands behind her ear Adam saw the cigarette burns bejewelling her knuckles.
She
was so thin she was painful to look at. A skimpy vest was all she had on under her denim jacket, her skin tinged blue like skimmed milk, ice crystals thawing in the blood.

Adam offered her a cup of tea, a bowl of pasta (a memory flashed of his sister crying and bolognese smeared, smacked by Frances for playing with her food). But Julia, her appetite blunted for years, wanted only water. Adam went to the kitchen and turned off the gas ring under the boiling pan. He held a glass under the shrieking tap.

‘Where d’you sleep?’ Julia called.

‘That sofa folds out into a bed …’

‘Comfy?’

‘It’s all right.’

‘You live alone?’

‘Yeah.’

‘No one special in your life, then?’

‘No.’

‘Thanks …’

Julia took the water, throat undulating as she gulped it down. Adam wheeled the swivel chair out from under the computer desk and sat opposite. Julia was on her best behaviour; back straight and gaze clear and direct, as if Adam were interviewing her for a job. It was false and out of character and Adam preferred the stoned, apathetic mood of her flat. The rims of her sticky-out ears were wind-chapped and raw (ears that, as a paranoid teenager, she’d taped back every night for a year). She hadn’t had a fix in a while – she had that
lustre
about her. The tiny jerks and tics of a speeding metabolism, aching to be suppressed.

‘How d’you know where I live, Julia?’

‘You wrote it down for me. Remember?’

Julia passed him an old bus ticket and Adam recognized his scrawl on the back. She reached sideways across the sofa to place her empty glass on the bookcase. There were two framed photographs on the shelf: one of Julia, aged eight, astride a BMX, a pink-gummed gap in her grin where her eye-teeth had been; and the other of Frances, smiling as she cradled baby Adam, arms bare in her summer dress, dimple-cheeked and youthful under her thick bouncy fringe. Adam had found the photos in one of their grandfather’s shoeboxes after he’d died, but only put them out the week before. Julia glanced at the pictures briefly, disinterested, as if they were of strangers, someone else’s family.

‘Mind if I smoke?’

Adam shook his head and passed her an ashtray. Ancient shreds of tissue, dilapidated as cobwebs, spilt from Julia’s pocket as she fumbled for her Benson and Hedges. The match flared and the cigarette trembled as she sucked in the flame. Amputated forefinger clamped the filter to middle finger, and Adam stared at the smooth regenerated skin, the severed tip having been reduced to heat and bone-ash in a hospital incinerator over a decade ago. Julia tugged the stream of tar and phenols into her lungs, satiating one of her lesser, legal desires. Adam dislikes the claustrophobia of
cigarette
smoke and never smokes indoors himself.

‘Why’ve you come, Julia?’

‘I wanted to see you.’

A lie. Julia would never travel across the city, hopping on and off buses and navigating unknown streets, for the sake of seeing him alone. He got the feeling that Rob was pacing three floors below, muttering and sneering at Adam’s neighbours as they scurried past him with carrier bags of Marks & Spencer’s ready meals.

‘I wanted to talk to you.’

‘Is Rob with you?’

Julia looked offended. ‘Rob doesn’t know I’ve come here,’ she said. ‘I wouldn’t ever let him know where you live. Anyway, I’ve left him. That’s why I’m here.’

‘Left him?’ echoed Adam.

Adam sensed her agitation, sparks flying from nerve endings, flaying her under the skin. She cared about her next fix, not breaking up with Rob. She was too dependent on Rob, and he on her. They were Siamese twins; respiring through the same pair of lungs, the same heart pumping blood around the same diseased body. But even if it were a lie, he couldn’t let her down. Julia had never expressed sentiments about changing her life before. He had to encourage it.

‘You can stay here,’ he said. ‘I’ll take some time off work and help you come off. I’ll take care of you.’

‘That’s not what I want, Adam.’

‘But where else can you go?’

‘There’s this crisis centre. They put you on a two-week detox programme, but they don’t have a bed free for
another
four nights. I’m going to stay in a hostel until then.’

‘But why not stay here? It’s safe and clean here. In a hostel you’ll have to sleep in a room with a load of strangers. They let anyone in.’

‘I have to do this my own way.’

Adam was silent, thinking of how to persuade her.

‘The hostel is fourteen pounds a night.’

‘You can stay here for free.’

‘I’ll be using, Adam. I’ll be using till the programme starts.’

‘It doesn’t matter.’

‘Yes, it does.’

Julia coughed into her fist, chest revving like a car that won’t start. She stubbed her cigarette out in the ashtray.

‘Why now?’ Adam asked. ‘Why are you leaving him now?’

‘He wants me to go on the game.’

She wielded the fact bluntly, with no emotion in her voice. Adam had tortured himself with the thought hundreds of times before, but was shocked to hear it said out loud. He realized that, as much as he had hated him, he’d trusted that Rob had some minimal decency. Trusted that he’d never bully Julia into selling herself to anyone who could scrape together a few quid. But it had happened. Julia had left him. But Adam still felt sick.

‘Julia,’ he said, ‘stay here. I don’t mind you using.’

‘I can’t. I don’t want to mess things up for you.’

‘Look at this place. There’s nothing in my life to mess up. Nothing that matters more than you.’

‘I can’t.’

‘Stay for just one night.’

‘I have to do this on my own.’

‘Promise me you won’t go back to Rob.’

‘I won’t, I promise. I don’t want to go near him.’

It was her earnestness that made Adam doubt her. As a teenager Julia had lied every time she drew breath, without any tell-tale flickers of guilt. He knew that sincere, wide-eyed, clear-as-water gaze. He had two options. Refuse to give her money and risk not seeing her again; or give her money and have her come back. Adam went to the jacket hanging on the back of the front door and rummaged in the pocket. (
She hasn’t left Rob – she made it up because she knows you hate him, and now she wants her cash reward
.) He opened his wallet. There was roughly thirty quid in there. (
She’s already on the game – has been for years. You’re pretending not to know because you can’t stomach the truth
.) He scooped out the notes and coins and gave her the lot. (
Rob is waiting outside for her. Go to the window. Look …
)

Julia thrust the money into her pocket, afraid the sight of her counting it would tempt her brother to ask for it back.

‘I’ll pay you back soon as I can.’

‘Don’t worry about it,’ he said. ‘If you come back tomorrow, I’ll give you some more. I get in from work about six. What’s the address of the hostel you’re staying at?’

She told him and Adam jotted it down. ‘You’ll go straight there, won’t you? And if it’s shit you can come back here. It doesn’t matter how late it is. Please don’t go back to Rob, whatever you do.’

‘I won’t.’

Julia stood up, eye on the door, impatient to leave. She buttoned her jacket, the denim dirty and thin.

‘Do you want to borrow a jumper? It’s freezing out there.’

She let him give her a jumper, which she draped over her arm. She said goodbye and went. Adam listened to her footsteps receding down the hall.

Alone in his flat, empty wallet hanging open in his hand, Adam was motionless. The city devours people, secretes them in its darkest crevices, thousands missing every year. There was much worse out there than Rob.

21

FRANCES’S LIE ABOUT
the cancelled maths lesson confused Sally. Frances hated maths. She hated Mr Leung too. So why leave Sally out, like a child too selfish to share her toys? The next morning the girls had swimming first lesson, for which Sally had forged a note from Mr Hargreaves saying that she had her period (in reality the thought of her father knowing her menstrual cycle was too horrific to contemplate). As Miss Van der Cruisen scanned the note with a snort of disbelief (
Your third period this month, Hargreaves! What fertile ovaries you have!
), Frances scuffled up alongside her with a similar forgery to submit for ridicule.

The fraudsters sat on the shady poolside bench as their classmates, anonymous in goggles and slick red caps, swam warm-up lengths, limbs churning up the water like a spate of shark attacks. The poolside air drizzled humidity, settling on their skin like silt. ‘Bless
you,’
said Frances, when the chlorine fumes tickled Sally’s sinuses into a sneeze. Frances gnawed her fingernails. Sally opened her biology textbook and pretended to read.

‘Are you really on the rag?’ asked Frances.

‘No,’ replied Sally, without looking up from the frog’s digestive system on page 92.

‘Me neither. I just wasn’t in the mood for swimming today.’

‘Hmmm.’

For a good ten minutes neither girl said a word. The fifth form queued to practise diving, one by one climbing the ladder, the board arching as they strode to the end and, in a flash of thighs and ballerina toes, plunged head first into the pool. They struggled to the surface, doggy-paddled to the side and heaved themselves out; then, waddling and plucking the clinging fabric of their navy one-pieces from their buttocks, they joined the queue again.

The silent treatment worked. Frances blurted that she was sorry. She knew it was wrong of her to have lied about the lesson being cancelled, but it was very important that she was alone with Mr Leung. She and Mr Leung had become friends while Sally had been ill with stomach flu. Mr Leung was teaching her about politics. Frances had become
very passionate
about politics, and if Sally had been there she’d have had to forfeit her ad hoc politics lesson for a normal algebra lesson instead.

Sally was dubious. ‘Do you fancy Mr Leung?’ she asked.

Frances didn’t flare defensively as she’d expected, but remained calm. ‘You don’t understand,’ she said. ‘In the last few days Henry has taught me so much! I feel as though a switch has been flipped in my brain and I finally see things the way they are. The situation in this country is awful. Really awful.’

‘
Henry?
’ Sally gawped. ‘Mr Leung lets you call him
Henry
?’

‘I told you. Henry and I are friends now. He has been educating me. He has helped me to realize how tough things are for the Chinese; how we are denied jobs, access to higher education and land, and treated as second-class citizens …’

‘You’re not a second-class citizen, though,’ said Sally. ‘Your father is very rich and a member of the Royal Selangor Club.’

‘Just because we are better off than most doesn’t mean I’m not aware of the suffering of the Chinese community. Henry has helped me to realize lots of things about my own life too. Like how my father wants to turn me against my Chinese heritage by sending me to an English school.’

‘But you live in Chinatown,’ said Sally, ‘and you live with Madame Tay. She teaches you about Chinese heritage, doesn’t she?’

‘My father wants me to be English. He wants me to graduate from an English university and marry an Englishman, like all these girls here.’

‘And what’s wrong with your father wanting the best for you?’

Frances sighed. A spray of chlorinated water splashed up from a nearby swimmer, douching their shins.

‘But it’s not what
I
want. I want to stay here, in Malaysia. But this country has to change. We need a proper democracy. The Alliance have dominated since Independence and right now Malaysia is run by the Malays, for the Malays.’

‘You’ve got Chinese in government,’ interrupted Sally. ‘I’ve seen them on TV.’

‘The Alliance is a party of privilege and the Chinese politicians in it know nothing about the everyday working-class Chinese. They represent the rich middle classes, who accept the Malays’ constitutional special status to keep the peace. Meanwhile the poor suffer, are denied jobs, land, education … That’s why the Democratic Action Party is so important. They represent Chinese from every walk of life. They stand for a Malaysian Malaysia. They are campaigning for the eradication of exploitation of man by man, class by class, race by race.’

Exploitation
?
Eradication
?
Constitutional special status
? Sally was speechless, mystified by rhetoric. Frances, meanwhile, was radiant, exhilarated by her recent discovery that she belonged to an oppressed minority. Her eyes shone black as liquorice. Sally had never seen her so thrilled.