“That’s Shakespeare,” he said, rolling his eyes and sighing heavily, letting his shoulders fall in a gesture that was meant to be disdainful; he had obviously affected it in imitation of some overbearing housemaster from his youth. “As I see it,” he said, swelling with self-importance with every passing second, “you’re trying to confuse the moral of the story by bringing in love and tragedy and all that romantic nonsense. The point is clear. She was married, he was her husband’s brother, they knew they were in the wrong. They got what they deserved.”
“Q.E.D.,” I said. “Very good.”
“I agree with Frederick,” one of his cohorts said. She was a young, plumpish woman named Una Madoc who spoke briskly in a businesslike manner, and with the faintest of Scottish accents. Of the tropics she had declared the heat unbearable and the sausages “strange, not at all like the ones back home.”
“It isn’t that simple, darling,” her husband said. He was a quiet man with a full-prawn moustache that smothered his words. “What we know of Francesca comes from Dante, and he was plainly seduced by her. He was completely taken in by her story. We don’t actually know the whole truth about this woman.”
“But weren’t you moved by her words?” I said. “Like Dante, I felt faint with pity when I read her story.”
Honey grunted in derision.
“Yes, it’s undeniably sad,” Gerald Madoc said, “but how do you know you can trust her? Is she above twisting the facts to her advantage, to gain your sympathy?”
“I must say,” I said with some indignation, “that seems very cynical.”
“Always remember what the monstrous Minos says to Dante: Be careful how you enter and who you trust. Did Paolo really seduce her, or was it the other way round? It isn’t so simple, that’s all I’m trying to say.” He beckoned to an ancient Chinese servant bearing some drinks and called, “Boy.” There was no response.
“You still haven’t got the measure of it,” Honey said. He turned to face the room and bellowed, “Boy!”—which promptly secured him the attention of several servants. “Another stengah?” he said smugly. He and the Madocs proceeded to converse in a language I could barely comprehend. One half of their vocabulary consisted of abbreviations, the other of pidgin Malay. Madoc, for example, was APC. I took this to mean his employers, rather than his status. There were, I deduced, people who were employed by Guthries or Sime Darby. Una had lunched with Mrs. ADO in that ghastly PWD house. The makan was awful, and there was a scene because the syce hadn’t been given his gaji. Nowadays, it seemed, the chop of Socfin didn’t count for anything, not amongst the Malays at least, and if they weren’t careful, Bousteads would soon follow suit.
“You must all come round for pahits,” said Una Madoc. “Our boy mixes a very passable gin pahit.”
“Cocktails,” Madoc said, noticing my frown. “Pahit actually means ‘bitter,’ but that’s what Europeans call cocktails here in the FMS.”
“Frederick says you’re an actor,” Una said to me, looking me up and down. “It’ll be marvellous to have one of those around.”
I began to feel hot and very uncomfortable. My collar cut into my neck and I felt somewhat constricted. “I’m afraid Mr. Honey has been misinformed, but thank you anyway,” I said. I strode across the room, cape flowing magnificently in my wake, onto the verandah. I fumbled in my pocket for a cigarette, which I lit inexpertly on the third attempt. Then, as now, I abhorred nicotine, but I thought that a cigarette or two, properly mounted in an ebony holder, would suit the rest of my attire nicely.
