The Black Isle (24 page)

“I’ll bet you were just the same,” I said with a bit of an edge. “Anyway, Daniel can’t help his background, no more than
you
can.”

“No, you’re right. I can’t help my background either. I grew up in an attap hut. Eight to a room, if one can call that a room. Worked at my father’s fish stall at Ellenborough Market after school, every day for ten years.
Ikan bilis
, pomfret, stingray. Even today I can still smell them on me.” He took a long sniff of his right hand. “Mackerel’s the pits.”

I now recognized the strained, slightly forced quality in his voice to be carefully buried anger. The arrogance, the knowingness—all of it was a cover. But I also felt a stab of instant kinship. He, too, had lived in more than one world; he, too, had known the high price of keeping those worlds separate.

The moment of confession over, Kenneth’s cockiness returned. “I can proudly say that I’ve never spent a single night in an air-conditioned room in all my twenty-one years. Yet I’m no worse for it, am I? Look, I don’t even perspire!”

“And why is that?”

He grinned like the Cheshire cat. “Because God made me special.”

I hadn’t heard any footsteps, but all at once, Daniel and three of his friends—two girls and a very spoiled-looking boy—appeared before us, bearing pink lemonade.

“That’s where you’ve been hiding,” Daniel said, a bit confused at our unlikely comradeship, since he hadn’t introduced us. “Kenny. I didn’t even know you were here. When did you get back?”

“Your father invited me,” Kenneth said, as if that explained everything.

“Did you know each other from before?” Daniel asked us, still perplexed.

“
Before
? You mean from the fish market?” Kenneth pulled out a loaded smile.

Daniel laughed uneasily, and I suddenly felt the need to protect him.

“Kenneth was just telling me about life at Oxford,” I said. “Apparently quite dull.”

Daniel tried to smile, but it was more of a wince.

“Oh, Kenny,” said one of Daniel’s friends, a flirtatious girl with arms as thin as bamboo, “you speak four languages, you run, you swim, you’re good at games,
reasonably
good-looking, and, I’m told, a magnificent dancer. What
can’t
you do?”

“I’m rather poor at forgiveness,” Kenneth replied without missing a beat. He shot a quick look at Daniel, who cast his eyes away.

“Heavens, Kenny!” exclaimed the other girl, even more affected than the first. She’d spotted the empty bottle. “What
have
you done with the champers?”

I had spent months avoiding Issa. It was all right when somebody else rode in the car with us—I usually asked one of the servants—and I arranged my chores so I never had to be left alone with him. Those looks he threw me in the mirror when nobody was paying attention, those insidious, knowing smiles, I dreaded them. It was as if we’d shared some terrible, sordid history, not just a chance encounter at a public fairground.

One day, the inevitable arrived. The tailor called for me to pick up my new collection of dresses, and I had to show up in person for the final fitting. It was a Thursday, which meant Daniel was swimming laps at the club. Violet was taking her afternoon nap, so I invited Little Girl along for the ride—Little Girl, who liked me even less after the engagement than during the earrings debacle. As we pulled out of the driveway, she decided she had some sudden chore to attend to and jumped out.

I was alone with Issa. Even the slick knot of hair at the back of his head repulsed me. He was male arrogance personified, with his long mane and silly gold gypsy earrings. It was a wonder that the Wees, such sticklers with the other servants, hadn’t held him to a more orthodox dress code. But the rules didn’t seem to apply to him, and his renegade status only gave him more cause to gloat. As we drove, I kept my sunglasses on despite the cloudy, overcast sky.

The journey to the tailor’s passed in a taut, bearable silence. But once I had collected my dresses and returned to the car, the silence was no more.

“So, Cassandra,” he boomed. “It’s been three months. Our little chat. When can we have it?”

“We have nothing to talk about.” I tried to be neutral yet firm, neither hostile nor evasive. Hostility would only make the ride—and all future rides—intolerable.

“You’re wrong. You know you’re wrong. We have plenty to talk about.”

“So what if you saw me at Wonder World.”

“Wonder World?” he guffawed. “I saw you that night in the rain. Near the roses. Digging like a dog.”

My spine tensed for a long second. Issa’s driving remained steady, hand over hand as he made deft turns on the winding road, giving no external indication that he’d said anything provocative. But I knew that he knew he had shaken me.

Was he the one who’d sprung me from the room that night? Was he expecting a reward?

“Nobody cares about those stupid earrings anymore.”

“The earrings?” He laughed again. “You were dancing, inside the darkness.” At the next stop sign, he turned his face to me. To my surprise, he looked concerned. “You see, we are not so different.”

His smooth brown face brought to mind a warrior from another time and place, maybe Tongan, maybe Maori. Or perhaps an indigenous tribe that preceded the rest of us invaders, exiles, and immigrants.

“I saw it all,” he said gently.

I froze. How could he know about my dance, my hallucination? Odell’s visitation had only been a memory—
my
memory—and there was no way Issa could have witnessed any of it. Unless…

The car behind us honked twice, a Mercedes carrying a suite of anxious Europeans. The traffic policeman had flipped the sign to
GO
. With the tranquillity of the superior man, Issa pulled aside and allowed the car behind to overtake us. Then he drove us into a private residential cul-de-sac and switched off the engine.

“Trust me,” he said. “I can help you.”

What was he saying? That he, too, was cursed? Or was I reading too much into his words?

“I know you are scared. But I can teach you how to take control. I come from many generations of bomoh. Medicine men. Seers.”

Witch doctors
. Black magic was the last thing I wanted to hear about. I led a
clean
life now. That world no longer touched me.

“I don’t need your help,” I said. “And I’m not scared. Start the car, will you, and take me home.”

“You think they are gone, yah? They are not gone. You can never get rid of them.” His eyes creased with unearned intimacy. “They are still here, only they are waiting and waiting. And you can’t blame them. Death is the most difficult thing we’ll ever have to accept.”

What did this shaman want? Why was he trying to subvert my new happiness?

“Do you want money? I can pay you.”

“Oh no,” he chuckled. “Money won’t solve anything. You should know that.”

He shot me a suggestive smile that made me chillingly aware of my vulnerability. I looked outside. We were parked in a dead end—nobody drove by. The bungalows around us were abandoned, empty shells slated for demolition, their lawns in disarray.

“Issa, I
order
you to start the car and take me home.”

“As you wish,
madam
,” he said, and very slowly turned on the ignition. Driving, however, did not stop his taunts. “Just remember they’re waiting. Hell is going to happen, and all of them will be unleashed, the good ones as well as the bad ones.”

“Then perhaps I should wish you the best of luck.” Thank goodness we were approaching the resplendent rain trees of Tanglewood.

“If you don’t believe me, I’ll bring you a candle that’s been blessed by a bomoh. Watch how quickly it burns and you’ll know. Or the next time you look in the mirror, look closely. They are still here, hiding behind your shoulder. They are everywhere. They are just waiting for the gates to open…”

Our gates were finally here. I prepared to sprint from the car as soon as Issa rolled it to a stop. But before pulling up the handbrake, the pirate turned to me once more. “I am here. But if you come too late”—he pursed his lips—“sorry.”

I slammed the back door and dashed into the house, nearly bowling over the servants who had scurried out to carry my dresses. I felt Issa’s eyes burning into my back as I ran all the way upstairs and slumped into bed.

That night, when Daniel and I were alone in our room, I tipped the long antique mirror on its stand so we could see the both of us. Me, in the foreground wearing my new red silk kimono, Daniel behind me reclining on the bed, naked. Despite Issa’s words, there were no ghosts. It was just the two of us.

“Take off your robe.”

My coat fell to the floor with a whisper and Daniel eyed me like a connoisseur.

“Flawless.” He smiled. “You’re good enough to eat.”

I must admit that, in the nude, we made a glamorous couple. I almost couldn’t recognize my own reflection. There was a very handsome man in the picture, almost a Siberian prince, gazing at me with pure desire. And my face showed such joy. Amazement, even. I wanted to freeze this perfect tableau in a photograph—our bodies supple and eager, our eyes seeing only each other. In old age, we could both look upon such an image and marvel at our firm flesh, our immodest innocence.

Then I saw it.

A hand, yellow and sinewy. It reached up from behind the headboard and rested itself on Daniel’s cheek, letting its long, bony fingers flail like a skeletal drape across his eyes. Daniel clearly felt nothing and saw nothing. I spun around, and it was gone.

Daniel lay stretched out in the same position, unchanged and untouched. He wore the lazy smile of a cat reclining in the sun, eager to be stroked.

“Come here,” he purred.

I turned back to the mirror. Again, the yellow claw, caressing his cheek. Another unknown hand was reaching around his waist and running its fingers down his thigh. His flesh looked so defenseless, so soft, so human.

They are still here
.

Issa was right. I hadn’t outrun them.

“Stop admiring yourself.” Daniel patted the empty half of the bed. “Come to me.”

I tilted the mirror away from us and leapt into his arms, the strong, familiar swimmer’s arms I believed had saved me from the darkness of the world. Rolling us over, he propped himself up on top of me. Our faces were inches apart.

“My dearest, why are you crying?”

It was then that I realized I was looking at him through a new veil—and not just of tears. Daniel was every bit as gorgeous, every bit as kind, every bit as loveable as before, but the enchanting quality that I’d attributed to him, the special sheen that had made him my knight and savior,
that
had vanished.

“I’m crying because I’m so happy.” This wasn’t a lie, but I knew now that this happiness couldn’t last.

“You’re even more beautiful when you cry, you know that? It’s such an irony. Such a wicked irony.” He kissed the corners of my eyes, and soon our kisses were mingled with the salt of my deep, unspeakable sorrow.

When he entered me, I held him so tightly that it seemed impossible two people had ever been closer. I clutched his face with both hands, reclaiming him from those defiling, monstrous claws. I kissed and licked his eyes and ears and cheeks, cleansing them of the horror that had tried to taint him. I wrapped my legs around his back and pulled us even closer, letting his every movement and every shudder reverberate through all of me. I wanted him to hurt me, to make me even more alert to the sacred intensity of the present.

“Bite me,” I begged him. “Bruise me.”

“No.” He stroked my cheek and kissed me tenderly.

“Please, Dan, I want you to hurt me…”

“Absolutely not,” he whispered. “I love you.”

We made love through the night, drifting to sleep only to wake each other up every hour or so with a murmur, a kiss, or a caress. We had spent many nights together but never one with this kind of sensual compulsion. Yet, as much as I pleaded, he refused to mark my flesh with even the smallest nibble.

In the morning, I woke up the instant I felt Daniel pry my arms off his waist.

“Darling, you’re holding me so tight I can barely breathe.”

“Don’t ever leave me.” I hugged him tighter yet. “I couldn’t live without you.”

“I’m not going anywhere.”

I nuzzled his arm with its dark, curly hairs and pores filled with the familiar, reassuring essence of Daniel: chlorine and Cussons Imperial Leather, musky with a full night of love. There was crust in his eyes and his lips were chapped—yet I had never seen a more alluring face.

“I want to bottle your scent,” I said.

“Be my guest.”

“Stay with me forever.”

“That’s my long-term goal.” He smiled and kissed my hair. “As for my short-term goal, I want to take you back to the beach house. I want to make love to you in every room until the whole place smells like us. We’ll bring bread and cheese and wine. We’ll walk around naked for days and make as much noise as we like. We’ll live like animals.”

He had a dreamy, faraway look, the look of a boy speaking of dragons and snow-capped mountains, and I felt a surge of leonine protectiveness. I wanted to protect him and his fantasies; I wanted to protect us; I wanted to protect all the goodness in our world—for as long as I could.

“And we must go back to the cave,” he said. “Our secret cave…That’s where we should make our first child.”

Our first child
. Those words, that belief in our future, that faith in me. They struck me so profoundly I could no longer hold back my emotions.

“Hey, don’t cry.” He brushed away my tears with the kindest, gentlest hands I had ever known. “I know you’re very happy, my dearest, but please, don’t cry…”

That night, I found a red candle on my dressing table. A gift from Issa, no doubt.

When I lit it, the wick sizzled like a firecracker, leaving behind in less than a minute a scarlet pool of wax.

I
STAND AT THE WINDOW AND INHALE
. My breath is jagged from all this talking. The memories hit me harder still. I have never met a sweeter, more honorable boy than Daniel. He should never have been with me. Violet was right. He was too good for me.

How long have I been caught in this spell? A night and a day? Two nights, two days? It’s bright outside, hardly the best time for a black reckoning. But I know better than to trust the face of things. The gnarl in my stomach has tightened again.

From the eighth floor in the clarity of noon, the city is one drab postwar Legoland, all crisscrossing telephone wires and boxy, rumbling generators atop each roof. But clear blue sky—no kamikaze crows. Miss Maddin is my crow, I suppose. She and I colliding; that would bring us symmetry, wouldn’t it?

I’ll take to my bed now and recharge. But quick, let me sweep up the bone dust I’ve strewn along the doorway. A fervent gesture at night, it looks ridiculous by day. Can’t come across as a substandard housekeeper to my Professor Crow. First impressions can follow you to the grave. I should know.

THE DOORBELL
. What timing. I’ve slept only, what, three hours. Not even that.

But she is here at last. My tardy savior.

My heart pounds.

“You certainly took your time,” I say into the intercom.

No reply.

I buzz her into the building. Instead of the elevator, she takes the stairs. Quick, steady footsteps echo up eight floors of stairwell, and before long, a middle-aged woman appears in my peephole. Obviously quite fit and determined to flaunt it.

I scrutinize her. So this is Professor Maddin. Certainly not what I’ve been expecting. She’s not Dutch or South African or even European—she’s Oriental. Should I be using the more politically correct term? Asian. Most likely Chinese, maybe Korean.

She leans in, the peephole turning her nose into a beige tuber. “May I come in?”

I creak open the door. She’s tall and plain with an awkward smile, straight black hair. Under her navy blue blazer, she wears a white blouse and matching navy blue skirt. Business attire of the most generic, innocuous kind. No makeup, no jewelry. Should we compete at anonymity, she wins the gold.

She stands before me. I observe her short intake of breath as she registers my age, my stooped posture, my former beauty, such as it was, long gone to seed.

“Come in, come in,” I say.

“Sorry for taking forever. I had to make some arrangements—as you know, every little thing has to be done in person in this country, and by hand. Japan…” A flicker of a smile creases her thin, pale lips. “What a paradox.”

She steps inside. Her eyes dart across my little flat, comparing it to the image she’s had in her mind.

“Did you have to travel far?” I look at her; she’s empty-handed.

“Quite.” She does not elaborate.

I follow her reptilian gaze around the living room. Can she see as I do? Or does she see even more?

“Please, sit down. Would you like something to drink?”

“No thank you,” she says, too quickly. “I never drink.”

Is this her idea of humor? Finally, we shake hands; hers are cold but not unfriendly. She has unusually soft skin for someone who’s no longer a child.

She invites herself to my armchair.

“Please, don’t let me stop you now.” She gestures me toward the sofa, as if I were
her
guest—or patient. “Carry on. Lie down, if you like. Where were you?”

I stare at her. Who is she?
What
is she? She promised to bring me what I’ve been searching for. But would she?

“Ling, I have eyes. I have ears. I can see you’re in the middle of a story.” She pats the seat of the sofa. “Come on. Finish it and then we’ll chat.” She gives me her first real smile. “I’ll meet you on the other side.”