65 Short Stories

  ‘Who’s there?’ he cried.

  There was a pause. He looked at the door. The chik-chak laughed harshly. A small boy sidled in and stood on the threshold. It was a little half-caste boy in a tattered singlet and a sarong. It was the elder of his two sons.

  ‘What do you want?’ said Guy.

  The boy came forward into the room and sat down, tucking his legs away under him.

  ‘Who told you to come here?’

  ‘My mother sent me. She says, do you want anything?’

  Guy looked at the boy intently. The boy said nothing more. He sat and waited, his eyes cast down shyly. Then Guy in deep and bitter reflection buried his face in his hands. What was the use? It was finished. Finished! He surrendered. He sat back in his chair and sighed deeply.

  ‘Tell your mother to pack up her things and yours. She can come back.’

  ‘When?’ asked the boy, impassively.

  Hot tears trickled down Guy’s funny, round spotty face.

  ‘Tonight’

  FLOTSAM AND JETSAM

  ♦

  Norman Grange was a rubber-planter. He was up before daybreak to take the roll-call of his labour and then walked over the estate to see that the tapping was properly done. This duty performed, he came home, bathed and changed, and now with his wife opposite him he was eating the substantial meal, half breakfast and half luncheon, which in Borneo is called brunch. He read as he ate. The dining-room was dingy. The worn electro-plate, the shabby cruet, the chipped dishes betokened poverty, but a poverty accepted with apathy. A few flowers would have brightened the table, but there was apparently no one to care how things looked. When Grange had finished he belched, filled his pipe and lit it, rose from the table and went out on to the veranda. He took no more notice of his wife than if she had not been there. He lay down in a long rattan chair and went on reading. Mrs Grange reached over for a tin of cigarettes and smoked while she sipped her tea. Suddenly she looked out, for the house boy came up the steps and accompanied by two men went up to her husband. One was a Dyak and the other Chinese. Strangers seldom came and she could not imagine what they wanted. She got up and went to the door to listen. Though she had lived in Borneo for so many years she knew no more Malay than was necessary to get along with the boys, and she only vaguely understood what was said. She gathered from her husband’s tone that something had happened to annoy him. He seemed to be asking questions first of the Chink and then of the Dyak; it looked as though they were pressing him to do something he didn’t want to do; at length, however, with a frown on his face he raised himself from his chair and followed by the men walked down the steps. Curious to see where he was going she slipped out on to the veranda. He had taken the path that led down to the river. She shrugged her thin shoulders and went to her room. Presently she gave a violent start, for she heard her husband call her.

  ‘Vesta.’

  She came out.

  ‘Get a bed ready. There’s a white man in a prahu at the landing-stage. He’s damned ill.’

  Who is he?’

  ‘How the hell should I know? They’re just bringing him up.’

  ‘We can’t have anyone to stay here.’

  ‘Shut up and do as I tell you.’

  He left her on that and again went down to the river. Mrs Grange called the boy and told him to put sheets on the bed in the spare room. Then she stood at the top of the steps and waited. In a little while she saw her husband coming back and behind him a huddle of Dyaks carrying a man on a mattress. She stood aside to let them pass and caught a glimpse of a white face.

  ‘What shall I do?’ she asked her husband.

  ‘Get out and keep quiet.’

  ‘Polite, aren’t you?’

  The sick man was taken into the room, and in two or three minutes the Dyaks and Grange came out.

  ‘I’m going to see about his kit. I’ll have it brought up. His boy’s looking after him and there’s no cause for you to butt in!’

  ‘What’s the matter with him?’

  ‘Malaria. His boatmen are afraid he’s going to die and won’t take him on. His name’s Skelton.’

  ‘He isn’t going to die, is he?’

  ‘If he does we’ll bury him.’

  But Skelton didn’t die. He woke next morning to find himself in a room, in bed and under a mosquito-net. He couldn’t think where he was. It was a cheap iron bed and the mattress was hard, but to lie on it was a relief after the discomfort of the prahu. He could see nothing of the room but a chest of drawers, roughly made by a native carpenter, and a wooden chair. Opposite was a doorway, with a blind down, and this he guessed led on to a veranda.

  ‘Kong,’ he called.

  The blind was drawn aside and his boy came in. The Chinaman’s face broke into a grin when he saw that his master was free from fever.

  ‘You more better, Tuan. Velly glad.’

  ‘Where the devil am I?’

  Kong explained.

  ‘Luggage all right?’ asked Skelton.

  ‘Yes, him all light.’

  ‘What’s the name of this fellow-the tuan whose house this is?’

  ‘Mr Norman Grange.’

  To confirm what he said he showed Skelton a little book in which the owner’s name was written. It was Grange. Skelton noticed that the book was Bacon’s Essays. It was curious to find it in a planter’s house away up a river in Borneo. ‘Tell him I’d be glad to see him.’

  ‘Tuan out. Him come presently.’

  ‘What about my having a wash? And by God, I want a shave.’

  He tried to get out of bed, but his head swam and with a bewildered cry he sank back. But Kong shaved and washed him, and changed the shorts and singlet in which he had been lying ever since he fell ill for a sarong and a baju. After that he was glad to lie still. But presently Kong came in and said that the tuan of the house was back. There was a knock on the door and a large stoutish man stepped in.

  ‘I hear you’re better,’ he said.

  ‘Oh, much. It’s terribly kind of you to have taken me in like this. It seems awful, planting myself on you.’

  Grange answered a trifle harshly.

  ‘That’s all right. You were pretty bad, you know. No wonder those Dyaks wanted to get rid of you.’

  ‘I don’t want to impose myself on you longer than I need. If I could hire a launch here, or a prahu, I could get off this afternoon.’

  ‘There’s no launch to hire. You’d better stay a bit. You must be as weak as a rat.’

  ‘I’m afraid I shall be a frightful bother.’

  ‘I don’t see why. You’ve got your own boy and he’ll look after you.’

  Grange had just come in from his round of the estate and wore dirty shorts, a khaki shirt open at the neck, and an old, battered terai hat. He looked as shabby as a beachcomber. He took off his hat to wipe his sweating brow; he had close-cropped grey hair; his face was red, a broad, fleshy face, with a large mouth under a stubble of grey moustache, a short, pugnacious nose and small, mean eyes.

  ‘I wonder if you could let me have something to read,’ said Skelton. ‘What sort of thing?’

  ‘I don’t mind so long as it’s lightish.’

  ‘I’m not much of a novel reader myself, but I’ll send you in two or three books. My wife can provide you with novels. They’ll be trash, because that’s all she reads. But it may suit you.’

  With a nod he withdrew. Not a very likeable man. But he was obviously very poor, the room in which Skelton lay, something in Grange’s appearance, indicated that; he was probably manager of an estate on a cut salary, and it was not unlikely that the expense of a guest and his servant was unwelcome. Living in that remote spot, and so seeing white men but seldom, it might be that he was ill at ease with strangers. Some people improve unbelievably on acquaintance. But his hard, shifty little eyes were disconcerting; they gave the lie to the red face and the massive frame which otherwise might have persuaded you that this was a jolly sort of fellow with whom you could quickly make friends.
r />   After a while, the house boy came in with a parcel of books. There were half a dozen novels by authors he had never heard of, and a glance told him they were slop; these must be Mrs Grange’s; and then there was a Boswell’s Johnson, Borrow’s Lavengro, and Lamb’s Essays. It was an odd choice. They were not the books you would have expected to find in a planter’s house. In most planters’ houses there is not more than a shelf or two of books and for the most part they’re detective stories. Skelton had a disinterested curiosity in human creatures, and he amused himself now by trying to make out from the books Norman Grange had sent, from the look of him, and from the few words they had exchanged, what sort of a man he could be. Skelton was a little surprised that his host did not come to see him again that day; it looked as though he were going to content himself with giving his uninvited guest board and lodging, but were not sufficiently interested in him to seek his company. Next morning he felt well enough to get up, and with Kong’s help settled himself in a long chair on the veranda. It badly needed a coat of paint. The bungalow stood on the brow of a hill, about fifty yards from the river; and on the opposite bank, looking very small across that great stretch of water, you could see native houses on piles nestling among the greenery. Skelton had not yet the activity of mind to read steadily, and after a page or two, his thoughts wandering, he found himself content to watch idly the sluggish flow of the turbid stream. Suddenly he heard a step. He saw the little elderly woman come towards him, and knowing that this must be Mrs Grange tried to get up.

  ‘Don’t move,’ she said.’ I only came to see if you had everything you wanted.’ She wore a blue cotton dress, simple enough, but more suited to a young girl than to a woman of her age; her short hair was tousled, as though on getting out of bed she had scarcely troubled to pass a comb through it, and dyed a vivid yellow, but badly, and the roots showed white. Her skin was raddled and dry, and there was a great dab of rouge on each cheek-bone, put on however so clumsily that you could not for a moment take it for a natural colour, and a smear of lipstick on her mouth. But the strangest thing about her was a tic she had that made her jerk her head as though she were beckoning you to an inner room. It seemed to come at regular intervals, perhaps three times a minute, and her left hand was in almost constant movement; it was not quite a tremble, it was a rapid twirl as though she wanted to draw your attention to something behind her back. Skelton was startled by her appearance and embarrassed by her tic.

  ‘I hope I’m not making myself too great a nuisance,’ he said. ‘I think I shall be well enough to make a move tomorrow or the day after.’

  ‘It’s not often we see anybody in a place like this, you know. It’s a treat to have someone to talk to.’

  ‘Won’t you sit down? I’ll tell my boy to bring you a chair.’

  ‘Norman said I was to leave you alone.’

  ‘I haven’t spoken to a white person for two years. I’ve been longing for a good old talk.’

  Her head twitched violently, more quickly than usual, and her hand gave that queer spasmodic gesture.

  ‘He won’t be back for another hour. I’ll get a chair.’

  Skelton told her who he was and what he had been doing, but he discovered that she had questioned his boy and already knew all about him.

  ‘You must be crazy to get back to England?’ she asked.

  ‘I shan’t be sorry.’

  Suddenly Mrs Grange seemed to be attacked by what one could only describe as a nerve storm. Her head twitched so madly, her hand shook with such fury, that it was disconcerting. You could only look away.

  ‘I haven’t been to England for sixteen years,’ she said.

  ‘You don’t mean that? Why, I thought all you planters went home every five years at the longest.’

  ‘We can’t afford it; we’re broke to the wide. Norman put all the money he had into this plantation, and it hasn’t really paid for years. It only just brings in enough to keep us from starvation. Of course it doesn’t matter to Norman. He isn’t English really.’

  ‘He looks English enough.’

  ‘He was born in Sarawak. His father was in the government service. If he’s anything he’s a native of Borneo.’

  Then, without warning, she began to cry. It was horribly painful to see the tears running down the raddled, painted cheeks of that woman with the constant tic. Skelton knew neither what to say nor what to do. He did what was probably the best thing, he kept silent. She dried her eyes.

  ‘You must think me a silly old fool. I sometimes wonder that after all these years I can still cry. I suppose it’s in my nature. I always could cry very easy when I was on the stage.’

  ‘Oh, were you on the stage?’

  ‘Yes, before I married. That’s how I met Norman. We were playing in Singapore and he was there on holiday. I don’t suppose I shall ever see England any more. I shall stay here till I die and every day of my life I shall look at that beastly river. I shall never get away now Never.’

  ‘How did you happen to find yourself in Singapore?’

  ‘Well, it was soon after the war, I couldn’t get anything to suit me in London, I’d been on the stage a good many years and I was fed up with playing small parts: the agents told me a fellow called Victor Palace was taking a company out East. His wife was playing lead, but I could play seconds. They’d got half a dozen plays, comedies, you know, and farces. The salary wasn’t much, but they were going to Egypt and India, the Malay States and China and then down to Australia. It was a chance to see the world and I accepted. We didn’t do badly in Cairo and I think we made money in India, but Burma wasn’t much good, and Siam was worse; Penang was a disaster and so were the rest of the Malay States. Well, one day Victor called us together and said he was bust, he hadn’t got the money for our fares to Hong Kong, and the tour was a wash-out and he was very sorry but we’d have to get back home as best we could. Of course we told him he couldn’t do that to us. You never heard such a row. Well, the long and short of it was that he said we could have the scenery and the props if we thought they was any good to us, but as to money it was no use asking for it because he damned well hadn’t got it. And next day we found out that him and his wife, without saying a word to anybody, had got on a French boat and skipped. I was in a rare state, I can tell you. I had a few pounds I’d saved out of me salary, and that was all; somebody told me if we was absolutely stranded the government would have to send us home, but only steerage, and I didn’t much fancy that. We got the Press to put our plight before the public and someone came along with the proposition that we should give a benefit performance. Well, we did, but it wasn’t much without Victor or his wife, and by the time we’d paid the expenses we weren’t any better off than we’d been before. I was at my wits’ end, I don’t mind telling you. It was then that Norman proposed to me. The funny thing is that I hardly knew him. He’d taken me for a drive round the island and we’d had tea two or three times at the Europe and danced. Men don’t often do things for you without wanting something in return, and I thought he expected to get a little bit of fun, but I’d had a good deal of experience and I thought he’d be clever if he got round me. But when he asked me to marry him, well, I was so surprised, I couldn’t hardly believe me own ears. He said he’d got his own estate in Borneo and it only wanted a little patience and he’d make a packet. And it was on the banks of a fine river and all round was the jungle. He made it sound very romantic. I was getting on, you know, I was thirty, it wasn’t going to be any easier to get work as time went on, and it was tempting to have a house of me own and all that. Never to have to hang around agents’ offices no more. Never to have to lay awake no more and wonder how you was going to pay next week’s rent. He wasn’t a bad-looking chap in those days, brown and big and virile. No one could say I was willing to marry anybody just to ...’ Suddenly she stopped. ‘There he is. Don’t say you’ve seen me.’

  She picked up the chair she had been sitting in and quickly slipped away with it into the house. Skelton was bewildered.
Her grotesque appearance, the painful tears, her story told with that incessant twitching; and then her obvious fear when she heard her husband’s voice in the compound, and her hurried escape; he could make nothing of it.

  In a few minutes Norman Grange stumped along the veranda.

  ‘I hear you’re better,’ he said.

  ‘Much, thanks.’

  ‘If you care to join us at brunch I’ll have a place laid for you.’

  ‘I’d like it very much.’

  ‘All right. I’m just going to have a bath and a change.’

  He walked away. Presently a boy came along and told Skelton his tuan was waiting for him. Skelton followed him into a small sitting-room, with the jalousies drawn to keep out the heat, an uncomfortable, overcrowded room with a medley of furniture, English and Chinese, and occasional tables littered with worthless junk. It was neither cosy nor cool. Grange had changed into a sarong and baju and in the native dress looked coarse but powerful. He introduced Skelton to his wife. She shook hands with him as though she had never seen him before and uttered a few polite words of greeting. The boy announced that their meal was ready and they went into the dining-room.

  ‘I hear that you’ve been in this bloody country for some time,’ said Grange. ’Two years. I’m an anthropologist and I wanted to study the manners and customs of tribes that haven’t had any contact with civilization.’

  Skelton felt that he should tell his host how it had come about that he had been forced to accept a hospitality which he could not but feel was grudgingly offered. After leaving the village that had been his headquarters he had journeyed by land for ten days till he reached the river. There he had engaged a couple of prahus, one for himself and his luggage and the other for Kong, his Chinese servant, and the camp equipment, to take him to the coast. The long trek across country had been hard going and he found it very comfortable to lie on a mattress under an awning of rattan matting and take his ease. All the time he had been away Skelton had been in perfect health, and as he travelled down the river he could not but think that he was very lucky; but even as the thought passed through his mind, it occurred to him that if he happened just then to congratulate himself on his good fortune in this respect, it was because he did not feel quite so well as usual. It was true that he had been forced to drink a great deal of arak the night before at the long-house where he had put up, but he was used to it and that hardly accounted for his headache. He had a general sense of malaise. He was wearing nothing but shorts and a singlet, and he felt chilly; it was curious because the sun was shining fiercely and when he put his hand on the gunwale of the prahu the heat was hardly bearable. If he had had a coat handy he would have put it on. He grew colder and colder and presently his teeth began to chatter; he huddled up on his mattress, shivering all over in a desperate effort to get warm. He could not fail to guess what was the matter.