When the World Was Steady (14 page)

The house was in chaos when she returned. Max was lying on the vast raised bed in front of the television, with three women buzzing around, mopping his brow and fanning him. The television was on, and the women’s directions were delivered at a shrill pitch to transcend the racket. Jenny emerged pestling leaves in a small bowl, to make a poultice for the wounded boy. Buddy and K’tut conversed in hushed, frowning tones. Around all this, preparations for the party continued unabated. The spicy heat from the kitchen was stronger by far than at dawn, and the two women who had so methodically examined the mosquito netting were busy encasing the veranda with it.

‘What,’ Emmy asked Jenny, ‘is going on?’

‘It’s Max.’ Jenny was crushing furiously at the juicy leaves. She had been crying.

‘What’s happened?’ But Jenny had moved on.

Emmy tried Buddy next. He was slightly more forthcoming, less panic-stricken. ‘He’s been bitten. By a mother-fucking
monkey. Looks like he’ll be going to town for some shots.’

‘Rabies?’

‘Yeah. Not a pretty notion. You would’ve thought he’d know better.’

K’tut looked mournful, and said, ‘I will take him with me. We will go to the doctor together.’

‘And the airport? What about the plane?’

‘Seeing as you mention it, you could do us a favour,’ Buddy said, looking full at her for the first time in days. He had a rim of sweat on his upper lip that made him seem imperfect, needy, and Emmy knew she would acquiesce.

‘It’s a question of time, you see. K’tut here has got to get to the doctor, and now Max too. And I’ve got to be here, no question, to oversee the party. So if you could pick up Ruby and well, if anyone’s with her, like Aimée or someone? And then K’tut and Max’d swing by with the bus and bring you back. In plenty of time for the party, of course.’

‘But I won’t recognize them, will I?’

‘Yeah, you will. Take my word for it. You’d really be helping us out.’

It was true, Emmy thought, that she hadn’t been earning her keep. ‘It’s the least I can do. If it’s a help.’

‘Great. You’ll be going right after lunch, right?’

K’tut lingered at Emmy’s side after Buddy had drifted away. ‘What is the expression? Better you than me, I think you say.’

Loading Max into the bus was not easy. This was not due to his wound itself—a nip which, had its provenance been other than it was, might have passed unremarked—but rather to the attendant fuss, whipped up, in particular, by Jenny: it entailed piling more cushions upon the already plump bed at the rear of the bus; installing Max, still prone, swathed in a batik sheet, with cushions strategically placed in the small of his back and at the nape of his neck; loading water, and juice (in case he felt faint),
and a large rush fan. And of course, an individual was enlisted for the purpose of fanning, should the need arise. Nyoman, witness to Max’s trauma, volunteered for this mission, and it was agreed that she should go, as she would, if necessary, be able to provide any details of the experience that Max, in his fevered condition, did not recall.

Max didn’t seem too shaken to Emmy. He just seemed to be annoyed, playing the role of spoilt child more aggressively than usual. He hadn’t liked the poultice, he didn’t like being trussed up, he didn’t want to go to the doctor, but Jesus it hurt, could everyone please just leave him alone?

Soon after they set off, Emmy made her way to the back of the bus. Nyoman, far from fanning Max with subservient devotion, as Jenny would have willed her to, had succumbed to her exhausted eight-year-old nature and gone to sleep, curled at his side amid the tumbled bolsters. Emmy whispered, so as not to waken the child. ‘You all right?’

‘Of course I’m bloody all right. You’d think I was topped, wouldn’t ya, with all the bloody carrying on.’

‘You were bitten by a potentially rabid ape, weren’t you? I mean, there is some cause for concern?’

‘I just didn’t see the fucker. Took me by surprise.’

‘They give me the willies, those monkeys. That forest is a nightmare. What were you doing there, anyway?’

‘Are you my fucking mother?’

Emmy, who a fortnight before would have been horrified at such language, took this without flinching. ‘Sorry I asked. Just thought you might like to talk about it. The argument, or whatever it was.’

‘There wasn’t any argument.’ Max patted at the gauze on his neck and sat up against the pillows. ‘If you want to know, it’s the whole frigging thing. The set-up, the party—the guests, you’ll see—the arrival of my “sister” ’—he spat this word—‘oh, and of
course, my unofficial stepmother, who could easily be mistaken for my girlfriend. The whole thing. Him.’

‘Are you angry with your father then?’ Emmy felt like the counsellor she had been to talk to when William first left her: foolish, clumsy, inadequate.

Max leaned back. ‘Not in principle. He’s allowed. Mostly I hate my own stupidity. I can’t go home now, not for ages. I could’ve gone tomorrow.’

‘Sorry?’

‘The rabies.’ He bared his teeth. ‘I might go mad. Foam at the mouth. Devour you all.’

‘How will I recognize these people at the airport?’ Emmy asked.

‘You will. Ruby’ll probably be the littlest on the plane. And she’ll either be with her nanny, or with Aimée. And if it’s Aimée, you’ll know.’

‘Is she very beautiful?’

‘Nothing like. It’s not that. You’ll know.’

In order that K’tut might make his appointment on time, and to ensure that the doctor would fit in both his ulcerous and his rabid clients, the bus let Emmy off at the airport some time before the plane was due. She had nothing to read; she bought a Coke and sat on one of the plastic seats to wait. She recalled her arrival at the airport not so long before, dizzied by valium and strong drink, suddenly loosed at dusk into the tropical smells and the teeming bustle she had imagined from inside the air-conditioned comfort of the jet. There had been porters and taxi drivers, hawkers of all sorts, sinister to the bewildered person she had been, all trying, she had thought, to lure her into their vans or cars, drive her to remote corners of the darkened island and dismember her.

In the shaded afternoon silence, she found those irrational fears painful to recall, as she envisioned her puffing, flustered former self hauling her suitcase across the floor, brushing away offers of help
like so many equatorial insects. How much of that arrival had been imagined? How full and clamorous could this hall have been? The image of her staggering self seemed murky, distant, unrelated to the calm, browned woman in linen shorts she had become, sitting in the shade with a Coke, watching a handful of airport employees loiter with as much professional poise as herself.

All her most pressing anxieties had receded also: since taking on the problems of Buddy’s household, she found those of her own hard to remember. Emmy sat thinking of William, of her own place in Sydney society, of being divorced, of her alien daughter and Pod’s still more alien boyfriend—it was almost inconceivable that so distant an existence could continue concurrently with the one in which she now found herself. That a world of turquoise swimming-pools, modern art and picture windows overlooking Sydney harbour, of coiffed, bejewelled women and well-manicured, suited men, could proceed beneath the same glowing sunrise and the same thick, black night as the world of K’tut, or Jenny, or even Buddy himself—it was hard to believe. That world of Emmy’s entire adult life felt as distant as the blurred, childhood photographs in her mind’s eye: herself and Virginia raising a secret command tent in the back garden of their south London terraced house, or Emmy’s fìstfìghts at school, when Virginia would purse her lips and inform the teacher that her sister was ‘at it again’.

When Emmy had left Sydney, she hadn’t considered staying away more than a month. Sitting in the airport lounge, she couldn’t imagine going back, just as she had never considered returning to a London she wouldn’t even know, and she wondered when the urge, the need, for her real life might overcome her. Until she had made certain things clear to herself, she knew the allure of the island would not allow her to leave.

When she had decided to climb Abang, Emmy had been looking for a change, a spiritual sign by which to guide her old
life. She had found many things, as yet undeciphered, that crowded around in the still, scented afternoons and the blackest nights. She felt but could not see them, and she longed for the filter that would make them visible, throw them into moral relief. Emmy, in this Sparke life, was simply waiting, watching, until her own outline might become clear.

The plane from Bangkok was the only one due to arrive that afternoon, and few people came to meet it. But Emmy had not realized that the flight from Bangkok was also the flight from Jakarta, Kuala Lumpur, Abu Dhabi and London. What landed was not a modest jet but a great silver fish, a Garuda 747, which spilled out hundreds of people of all ages and races and sizes on to the steaming tarmac.

Within moments, the sleepy airport was transformed: taxis and
bemos
lurched up to the doors; customs officers leapt into their plexiglass booths; the agents at the hotel and car counters stubbed out their cigarettes and stepped forward with professional eagerness. Noises erupted everywhere, whirrings and clatterings, the aggressive thud of immigration stamps, the whooshing of feet, suitcases and trolleys on the linoleum floor. And above all, the calling, growling and screeching of nervous tourists and polished salespeople, striking bargains and making deals for the ride to the beach resorts. Emmy was more discomfited by this activity than she liked, and was forced to concede that her inner transformation was less than complete, but more than that, she was aware that in this vast stream of people, she was likely to miss little Ruby altogether.

The sea of faces was overwhelming: British, unboiled and boiled, starting or continuing their vacations; leathered Australians stopping off for R&R on their way home; urban Javanese who had flown rather than driven to their holiday site; a few Balinese returning to their families; and a sprinkling of Thais and Malaysian Chinese, whose reasons Emmy could only guess at. It was among these last that she would hope to find the child, at the side of a
woman, either recognizable or not. Emmy craned her neck. Looking for Ruby, she stood up and tried to peer between the crowd’s knees. She was jostled and bumped as she stood.

Only when the flood thinned to a trickle did Emmy see, and know she had seen, the right faces. They were standing at a customs desk, or rather, Aimée was, with Ruby propped on her hip. Ruby was Eurasian—Emmy had forgotten that she would be—with dark, almond eyes and pale skin, the solid, purposeful air of Buddy and a tiny replica of his bulbed nose. She resembled a small, darker version of Max, her chubby child’s body smothered by a pink frilled concoction that looked both inappropriate and expensive. As for her mother, Emmy thought, Max had been right. She just knew that the woman was Aimée, and could not entirely explain why.

The woman was very young—she looked no older than Pod. She was not particularly beautiful; not, certainly, in the way that Suchi was. Nor was she elaborately dressed: she wore jeans, a white T-shirt and sandals. She resembled a Sydney university student. But she moved and looked around her with a certain assurance—or was it determination?—that spoke of experience, perhaps of disappointment, and of a bitter will. She was the sort of woman who attracted attention, who elicited in others at once a vague unease and a desire to protect.

‘Aimée?’ Emmy asked, when at last the woman and child walked through to the waiting area.

‘Yes?’ The woman’s gaze was harsh.

‘I—my name is Emmy Richmond—I’ve been sent to meet you. By Buddy. There was something of a crisis, Max was bitten, and … May I help you carry something? This must be Ruby?’

‘I see. Horace was not able to come himself.’ She said this as a statement, and not a pleasing one. Her accent was finishing-school British.

‘Well, as I’m sure you know, the party … and K’tut and
Max have gone to the doctor. Rabies shots, you see. They’ll be along soon, I expect.’

Ruby tittered appreciatively and tugged at her mother’s hair. But Aimée only said again, ‘I see.’

‘Would you like something to drink? Was the trip tiring?’

‘The landing is difficult for Ruby. Her ears. Yes, a drink. Very nice.’ She spoke to her daughter in Thai. When she did, her face changed, let go, became prettier. ‘Ruby will have a grape Fanta. And I—a gin and tonic. Thank you.’

Emmy puzzled over the choice as she left them to settle in the sticky vinyl seats. It was so laughably wrong, like the little pink dress. But there was no laughter in this young woman.

‘I should perhaps explain,’ Emmy said on her return, ‘that I’m not—my connection is—I’m just staying with the Sparkes. A coincidence, really.’

‘A friend from Australia?’

‘That’s where I live. But no, we met climbing Abang, you see, and Max, you know, Buddy’s, uh, son—he offered me a place to stay. I’m just visiting the island on my own.’

‘Sacred Abang, of course. Horace is very keen on conquering that mountain, time and again. In Thailand, there are other things that have the same effect on him.’ She sipped daintily at her gin and tonic and watched Ruby sucking at the Fanta. Ruby’s lips and tongue were purpling, and Emmy knew it was only a matter of time till there was purple down the front of her dress as well. Ruby wore pink shoes. Her little socks were trimmed with lace.

‘Your daughter’s beautiful. A lovely little girl. And so well-behaved.’

Aimée seemed almost to laugh. Then she said, ‘I would like her to grow up in Australia. Or in England. I would like that very much.’

‘Would you? Surely in Thailand …’

‘Bangkok is not a good place for children. I know—I myself
was one not so long ago.’

Emmy smiled a fake smile. She could not think of an answer to that. After a moment, she said, ‘I had a lovely childhood in London. Of course, that
was
a long time ago. I suspect one city is much like another, nowadays.’

‘I do not,’ Aimée said.

Emmy felt annoyed. She had, after all, just been making conversation. She looked at her watch. The airport had sunk to its earlier sleepy state and she dreaded the wait for her vaccinated saviours. It was not easy to speak to this old young woman, who seemed unable to laugh, and who already made her feel an interloper. As if watching were not such an innocent activity after all.