“It’s beautiful,” I said. She rose from the seat and walked slowly to the kitchen, her dress — a shapeless silky smock hanging loosely over equally voluminous trousers — obscuring the outlines of her figure. I began to follow her, but found Frederick Honey in my path instead. He held a drink in each hand and offered one to me. “Enjoying the party?” he said.
“I loathe spirits,” I said, looking at the tumblers of whisky.
“I was never overly fond of scotch myself,” he said, continuing to hold the drink before me, “until I came out to the tropics. Away from home — many thousands of miles away — my tastes have changed. I rather enjoy my whisky now; I drink it all the time. It’s much better for you than the filthy water here.”
“How Byronic of you, existing on alcohol and nothing else. Was that a tip you picked up at the School of Oriental Studies? Any other helpful hints you’d like to pass on?”
His face contorted slowly into a smile: mirth did not come easily to him. He leaned in close and pressed the drink into my unwilling hand. “Everything’s different here. Forget home; the same rules don’t apply. Just bear that in mind.” The smile faded and he left to regale Una Madoc with an inebriated, out-of-tune serenade, which she greeted with exaggerated hilarity. They linked arms and did an awkward little jig as if they had been transported back to the Scottish Highlands; they looked like Siamese twins suddenly separated, constantly falling away from each other but somehow unable to let go. The other guests looked upon this spectacle with bemusement; they remained resolute in their reticence, chatting quietly as they had before. Some hardly seemed to notice the commotion. Dancing, it occurred to me, was not a very Chinese activity. I looked around for Snow but she was nowhere to be seen.
Afterwards, Johnny accompanied me as I cycled back to the rest house. I gave him my miserable cape and he wrapped it around himself, letting it trail behind him in the dark. His words were still rushed from the excitement of the evening. “Snow’s father cannot believe how a person like me can be friends with someone as cultured as you are.”
“Johnny, please,” I started to say, but I knew that nothing I could say would change his mind. I was feeling strangely exhausted, and wanted to be on my own.
“In his eyes I am an uncivilised animal and whatnot, you see. How can a sophisticated Englishman be my friend? With his daughter, yes, because she is educated and so on and so forth. Snow’s father thinks it is impossible for me to communicate with you, I know that for certain.”
“Does it matter what he thinks?”
“When he looked at me this evening I could see in his eyes, for the first time ever, that he was impressed, et cetera. He regards me differently because of you, I think.”
“He can think what he likes, it makes no difference to anything.”
We rode on in silence for a while. My head began to throb; even at this time of the night the heat had not abated.
“Peter,” Johnny said. I had not even realised that he had stopped bicycling. His voice, quieter now, emerged from the dark some distance behind me. “Can I ask you something?”
I didn’t answer.
“If anything bad happens with the Japanese,” he said, “you’d help me, wouldn’t you? Me and Snow. I don’t care about the others. Just me and Snow.”
“We don’t know yet that anything is going to happen at all,” I said.
“But if something does happen.”
In the dark, I remembered the picture of his innocent, trusting face squinting into the sun as we stood on that hill. St. John. Friendship. Love. Sacrifice. The first time I had ever known the truth of those words.
“Yes,” I said, “I promise.”
THIS AFTERNOON we were taken on a shopping expedition to Malacca Town. Half a dozen of us squeezed into the rickety minivan, a clatter of walking sticks and obdurate wheelchairs refusing to fold. Merely getting into the vehicle was a military campaign, I thought, as I sat serenely in the front passenger seat, disassociating myself from the unearthly clamour behind me. It is a wonder that these trips do not more often result in someone leaving behind a prosthetic limb. “Taking a group of eighty-year-olds anywhere is an act of mercy,” Alvaro said as he took his seat.
“Not an act of mercy,” I said, peering at him from behind my sunglasses, “an act of foolishness.”
The purpose of our trip was to buy presents and a few sad little decorations for Christmas, still two months away — plenty of time for the boxes of chocolate to be forgotten (or eaten) and the baubles lost amidst the general confusion that holds reign over our House. As usual, the instigator of this idea that we, the residents, should participate in Christmas festivities was Alvaro. “We can’t let the House organise everything,” he said when we learnt that a special collection had been made at Sunday Mass for us that week. “We are not a bunch of invalids!” he cried.
