The Parasol Flower Read online

  “I suppose I can only be agreeing with this decision, madam. It isn’t reasonable behavior. Not for a lady.”

  “So, you agree with the colonel?” It feels like a betrayal. Hannah’s mind whirs. “I’ll tell you why this is unreasonable. Because I am not a tethered cow. And because you are here to protect to me from tigers and other wild creatures. That is your express purpose. You and your expertise. And your gun.”

  “I do not carry a gun, madam.”

  “Evidently not. Oh, do please stop calling me madam. I dislike being called madam almost as much as being called unreasonable!”

  “Sorry, madam. For failing in my express purpose!” Abruptly, Sergeant Singh puts down the stool and paint box and strides away.

  Hannah watches him hastening across the lawn only to trip over a bank of miniature roses, his long legs splaying. Better not to go into the forest with the likes of him. It’s almost comical, the way men stick together. Almost. She’ll just have to finish the strangler fig painting from memory. And create something absolutely moving for the Kew Gardens jury.

  Collecting her supplies, Hannah moves to one of the benches and for a long time simply sits, staring up at the changeable sky. Despite their many other disagreements, the male students at the academy agreed the female students were trivial. They did not use this word. Likely, they never spoke their agreement. But it held, just the same. If girls were there at the school, it was as an experiment, one that some people looked on charitably and others with spite. It didn’t help that most of the female students were from wealthy families who treated the academy as an exotic finishing school or an excuse to ship their daughter abroad, even when these daughters’ themselves had grander ambitions. For her, art school was a beginning. An opening. If it weren’t for Monsieur Godot…stop thinking. Too much thinking leads to no good.

  Fishing out a pencil and paper, she lets her hand draw curls over the page. Clouds change so effortlessly. She is a vessel for clouds. A vessel for change. Soon, there is only the task of balancing void and shape, creating forms that generate points of interest, and she goes on until a painting reveals itself—that possible experience, that possible world, that possible way of feeling. The painting is what has asked to be seen.

  At home, with the sketch block on her easel, Hannah’s eyes leap from purples to greys to airy blues; against these, deep whites are emerging. Quickly she unbuckles her paint box.

  Seven

  As Deputy Resident, George is consigned to the third floor office, by far the muggiest. Resident Finch is installed on the cooler second floor, and in any case has a boy to fan him and to make ice runs. Miss Wing and Miss Pevens share the space on the ground floor where, ostensibly, a member of the public might enter and require assistance, but where in reality the two Eurasian women play cards and read each other’s fortunes. Miss Wing is his, Miss Pevens, Finch’s. Though he knows his supervisor makes special requests of the younger, more vital woman, owing to her stronger skills in alphabetization.

  Finch has told George to stay put for the meeting that day. They will come up to him. Signifying this meeting is off the record? No. Why meet at the office at all, in that case. He straightens the framed portrait of Sir James W.W. Birch, first British Resident of Perak. Rather heavy-handed in his approach, Birch had been assassinated in his bath-house. The killing had been contracted by the local sultans he was supposed to be advising, thus prompting the Perak War.

  “What do you think—why here?” George asks the unswerving Oxbridge gentleman, and Birch looks back at him, askance.

  Before long footsteps are echoing on the stairs, at the very moment George notices how grimy the window ledge and slatted blinds have become. With his handkerchief, he dusts crudely and furiously, then shoves the filthy cloth into a desk drawer.

  “Ah!” he exclaims. “Come in, of course. Come in, come in, gentlemen.”

  “You remember…Dr. Charles…Peterborough,” says James Finch, still puffing from the climb.

  “Yes, of course.” George moves to shake the man’s clammy hand.

  “Deputy Resident…our revenues collector,” Finch elaborates for the doctor’s benefit. “Good man is George. Discreet. Reliable.”

  Dr. Peterborough smiles modestly. He looks around the room, his eyes falling to one of the rattan armchairs.

  “Government-issued furniture,” George says. “But as it manages to support James’s, ahem, ambitions…I’m sure you’ve nothing to worry about.”

  Finch, already easing himself into one of the chairs, guffaws and pats his moist face with his handkerchief. Dr. Peterborough brushes his hands over his trousers, front and back before lowering himself into the second rattan and the three of them talk about nothing of consequence for a while. Finch’s mood is characteristically agreeable; the doctor fusses with his spectacles.

  At a lull, Peterborough scratches his forehead and says to George, “You are on good terms with the sultan? Do I hear correctly?”

  George thinks of the raja, the slight old man in his bright yellow kefti, invariably topped with the military jacket he was so fond of. The raja was a shrewd man and a kind one, who’d lived too long in a compromised position. Yes, I am quite fond of Izrin, he wants to say, I’d rather be chatting with him. Instead he tells Peterborough, “I’ve known Sultan Izrin for twelve years now, thereabouts.”

  “And he has his people’s interest at heart?” Expressed in the same skeptical tone.

  “To a point,” Finch interjects. “We’ve always been able to pursue our own best interests, where money is involved.”

  At this, Dr. Peterborough looks a little skittish.

  “Haven’t we, George?”

  “Yes,” he admits. “The raja has usually considered it prudent to negotiate where it concerns money. Or for certain commodities with which we can supply him. Pocket watches. Dickens,” George adds. “Izrin is a fan of Charles Dickens’ writing.”

  “True!” James bellows. “Funny little man!”

  Dr. Peterborough smiles at them both, a dead smile.

  Before long the doctor is on his feet and, wiping his hands again on his trousers, makes an excuse to leave. He stops at the image of Birch.

  “Ah, Sir James,” chuckles James. “A pity, isn’t it.”

  “That is what you get,” Peterborough responds drily, “for depriving a people of their slaves.” With that, the man rises on his toes then strides from the room.

  George and James go to the window to watch Peterborough’s suited figure exit the building and cross the high street toward his waiting blacktop.

  “Uses a blacktop,” George remarks. The rest of them, even Finch, make do with bullock carts and oxen. “Long drive, I suppose.”

  Finch resumes his seat. “He’s rich as a horse with papers. And damn well-connected.”

  “Connected? Do you mean, Swettenham?”

  This is impressive. Swettenham is the governor of Malaya and founder of the colony. He served as the Resident of Perak for its first fifteen years.

  “A whiskey wouldn’t go amiss, George.”

  On Finch’s request, Miss Wing was dismissed early that day. George makes for the liquor cabinet himself and sorts out the tumblers and the whiskey, considering whether James is going to let him in on this great stress of his, this cloud of anguish and bother associated with the evolutionary scientist he’s brought to see him. “I’m not going downstairs for ice,” George mutters. Miss Wing would have been there and back already.

  “Why do you think he came here in the first place?” Finch says.

  “What, the Peterborough fellow? You brought him.”

  “Not here today. Here to Malaya.”

  “To conduct his research, was it? What did he say he was studying? Something about the Indo-Malaysian line.”

  “Pinky, think of all the places in the world you can find savages and dark races. And the Peter
boroughs happen to headquarter themselves in Perak, the very province where…”

  George considers this coincidence. Families as ancient and wealthy as the Pellingham-Peterboroughs may well have decent connections in any of the colonies. In fact, didn’t Charles mention they had lived for a time in New South Wales? The Peterboroughs must have come to Perak around the time he had brought Hannah back with him. Magical, that journey feels in retrospect. As if he’d gotten away with an impressive trick. Her new skin against his mouth, under his nose, on his tongue; the constant, faint nausea induced by the roll and pitch of the seas.

  “Hallo in there!” booms Finch. “You’ve not heard a word I’m saying, I’ll venture. What’s the matter with you? Gut troubles again?”

  George is about to reply that nothing is the matter when he hears his own voice, plaintive, saying, “A tiger killed my cow.”

  “Christ. Lucy mentioned something.” Sternly, Finch growls at him. “If we have a man-eater on Ridge Road…”

  The Residency, where Finch and Lucy live, is the nearest neighboring home on Ridge Road. The insinuation is that George has been putting them all at risk.

  Finch says, “Why do you need a cow, eh? Use the tinned milk, like everybody else.”

  “Tinned milk is a…a capitulation.” George hands Finch his drink. “Besides, I like cows. They… I have a right to pasture a cow. Surely you’re not blaming this unfortunate event on me!”

  “Easy does it,” Finch drawls.

  “I’m arranging for a hunting party, you know.”

  “Good then,” says Finch. “Good.” He surveys the near-empty bookshelf beside them. “And is Hannah, is she all right?”

  “Yes, of course. Why do you…We were in bed when it happened, James. She was nowhere near the creature.” They hold each other’s gaze for a moment. George has confided in Finch in the past about his younger wife—her coldness, her painting, her unsociability, her jungle treks. He adds, “As a matter of fact, Hannah has given up the forest trekking.”

  “Has she?”

  “And I’ve reduced her stipend. Why should I pay for any of it anymore?”

  Finch raises his remarkable eyebrows. Two lengths of frayed rope.

  “What?” George demands.

  “I’m only…a little surprised at that, my dear fellow.”

  “Well, don’t be.”

  “From our previous conversations…”

  The man is insufferable! “What? From our previous conversations, what?”

  “We both know Hannah’s not like my Lucy.”

  “Oh, is she not?” George snaps. One evening, when newly married, George and Hannah had hosted supper for their Ridge Road neighbors. Hannah brought out her book of copies, something she’d made in art school. A painted record of all the “famous” works that inspire her. The Rembrandt had impressed Finch, in particular. In what he’d said, and more so how enthralled he’d looked as Hannah answered his questions, it was clear to George that his new wife could only make things worse between the two men.

  “She’s complicated,” Finch says vaguely. “Creative types, you know.”

  George lets the matter drop; he’s in no mood for indulging the old man. There is this new mysterious task for Peterborough, this providing of Malayan women. For it will be his task, no doubt. On top of that, the need to scrounge up a hunting party. He gulps back his whiskey. God, he’ll be spending all week groveling with the natives.

  On cue, Finch announces, “So. I’ve told Peterborough we can support him.”

  The royal we. The reason for Peterborough’s visit, then, must have been to acquaint himself firsthand with his agent.

  “You’re sure he approves of me, then?” George quips.

  “Of course. You’re my man. And Izrin trusts you. You’ll be able to get his cooperation.”

  “And what exactly…I mean, what should I tell Izrin that he wants them for, these women?”

  Finch swabs his forehead. “Interviews. We’ve told you.”

  Whether Izrin finds this idea as preposterous as George does remains to be seen. He doesn’t press the question. Were it unproblematic, Finch would have already related the truth. The fact is George is pleased to be relied upon for such an apparently inconvenient matter. It bodes well.

  “Izrin trusts you,” Finch repeats.

  “Yes, well, I’ve spent a good deal of time with him.”

  The Resident rests his empty glass on his belly. “And it’s a considerable sum of money. Considerable.”

  It strikes George as a pity he’s to leverage his hard work with Izrin for this doctor’s queer research. Evolutionary science, hadn’t that fallen out of fashion?

  Eight

  Fruits, fish, vegetables, spices, candles and kerosene, cut flowers, fabric, chamber pots, bamboo chairs, pickles, parakeets, holy water: at the market, you can get most everything. Malu watches from across the stalls as the English colonel limps into the hut of the opium dealer, Ah Sip. Malu takes good notice of the longos. Her father, whoever he is, is one of them.

  Before she can spy the colonel leaving, Omar, the jeweller, calls her over. “Hey, girl, what you looking so mean for?”

  “Born with this face!” Malu retorts, furrowing her brow even harder. She should not speak this way to an elder. But Auntie Nattie dislikes Omar, and besides, Nattie is busy with Bird Mem. As with every customer this month, her aunt is singing the praises of their new monkey.

  “Fifteen,” she hears her quote the woman. “He can play domino!”

  Bird Mem bends to watch the creature scratching vigorously at his toenail. Her face, Malu thinks, is almost as ugly as the monkey’s. The same close-together eyes and puffy upper lip. Her bright eyes shift and flicker, coming to light on Malu’s. “No, I don’t need a macaque,” she tells Nattie.

  Bird Mem has been coming to them for years now. To buy birds, mostly, but she sometimes asks them to catch her other animals—fish, reptiles, even insects. So the fact that she is bothering to look in the cages is curious.

  “Bird today,” prompts Nattie. “Bird you like? What bird?”

  “Give me a twirl,” Omar says behind Malu. “Old times, girl. Come on.”

  When she was a kid she twirled for him, this was true, and sometimes received a coin to buy paan. Malu twirls theatrically, coquettishly, then holds out her palm. This, Nattie certainly wouldn’t allow. Omar laughs and tosses her a five-cent piece. Malu is saving money for English medicine. Her mother has stayed faithful to the fortune teller’s cures all these years, and now she deserves some English medicine, whatever Nattie thinks of it. Malu turns the coin between her thumb and finger, wondering, as she does these days, about how to get more.

  Bird Mem and her aunt have moved close enough that Malu must appear attentive.

  “A bird of paradise. Paradisaea apoda, preferably. You don’t have any.” Bird Mem measures the air with her gloved hands.

  “We’ll catch one for you. Or two,” says Malu, entering the conversation. “We always do.”

  Auntie Nattie’s mouth opens. This is too confident to the Malay ear. Nattie still hasn’t learned that the English like confidence.

  “Yes,” Bird Mem smiles, “you are reliable. I…I wonder…”

  “Describe which bird you are looking for, please?” Malu says to the strange woman. It comes back to her that she needs to be patient when dealing with this woman. Bird Mem’s words are sometimes uncommon, and she has trouble—or else refuses—to use simpler ones. Nattie, impatient and poor with English, has steered Bird Mem to Malu. Catching Malu’s eye, her aunt fades into the background.

  “The males are dark blue or grey in color and they have a…sort of ornament. It hangs from their facial plumage, you see. Like a worm from a fishing line.” Bird Mem demonstrates by holding her arm out in front of her forehead, her gloved hand dangling like bait in front of her face. “An
d they dance.” She totters back and forth on the straw-strewn floor, kicking her legs out here and there and waving her arms in circles.

  Malu feels Nattie watching them through the cages. “Yes. I can catch one for you. One? Pair?”

  “A pair? A pair would be… Yes, thank you. But these birds are notoriously reclusive. Shy.”

  Malu nods. “We know these birds, memsahib. These are called God’s birds, the manuk dewata.” She is already familiar with one place where the birds come together. The usual way of hunting them is to hide under leaves until daybreak. An arrow, fitted with a plug of rubber, can knock them dead without tearing the brilliant feathers. As for taking one alive… “Yes, they are very shy. Special price for shy birds.”

  One of her straggly eyebrows arches. Bird Mem is plainer even than most Englishwomen, with big teeth and gaping nostrils. Wearing that crumpled hat, you’d think she never bothered to look in a mirror. “All right,” she says, “I will pay your ‘special price.’ But only once I return and find that everything is in order.”

  “Of course.”

  They trade numbers briefly, ending on something that makes the job well worth the effort. Malu offers a shallow bow to conclude the transaction.

  But Bird Mem does not back away. “Is she your mother?” she asks Malu in a low voice.

  “Mother’s brother’s wife.”

  Bird Mem waves Nattie closer. “Speak? Can we…? I wonder if I might hire your girl. Not for catching birds. For something else.”

  Nattie is struggling, her face contorted. “Higher her?”

  “Employ her. Pay her to work for me.”

  “Oh!”

  “I need a helper for my daughter.”

  Nattie smiles broadly. Her aunt would be happy to get her out of the way. Wasn’t it always Umi’s good-for-nothing child who ate the last cup of rice? At market, Nattie complained that Malu tripped her up and put off the customers. Too dark-skinned for your big ideas, too light-skinned for hard work.