“I don’t start my shift until tomorrow afternoon,” he said, closing his eyes. “Stop talking. I need to think.”
I couldn’t tell whether he was just using it as an excuse to go to sleep, but I left him alone. The train jolted along slowly, the trees passing in a steady green blur. The breeze from the open window blew away the cobwebs in my brain.
Ren, I thought. Are you still alive? Yi had said he’d discovered that as long as he lingered on that shore, he could draw Ren to the other world. The world of the dead. Perhaps the finger, that dried blackened digit that rattled in my bag, exerted the same weighty pull. Ren seemed driven to obey whatever promise he’d made, to the point of running out into the night when there was a tiger outside. Or perhaps he’d been lured out to be shot and killed in the dark.
The best I could do was to complete the task for him and bury that finger. Sever at least one lingering attachment that drew him towards the dead. The other one, however, I feared was too strong. The train rattled onward, the jungle passing like a dream, and I closed my eyes.
There was a grinding hiss. With a start, I discovered that the train had shuddered to a stop.
“Sleep well?” Shin looked amused. I had, in fact, though I realized with embarrassment that my head was pillowed on his shoulder. People were lifting their luggage off the racks overhead. We were the only two without belongings.
“You were knocked out, too,” I said, as we clambered off the train. “Or were you just ‘thinking’?”
He seemed to be in a remarkably good mood. “No, I’m done with that. By the way, who was that girl at the dance hall? The one who tried to pull my hair out?”
“That was my friend Hui,” I said.
Somehow, I felt uneasy about this interest. Please, Shin, I thought, not Hui. So far, Shin had never dated any of my good friends, no matter how they made eyes at him. It hadn’t mattered to me before, wrapped up as I’d been with Ming, but it did now.
* * *
The Taiping Railway Station was a low, pretty building, built along the same colonial lines as the station in Batu Gajah with deep shady eaves and gables. Taiping, situated in a lush basin at the foot of limestone hills, was famous for being one of the rainiest towns in Malaya, as well as for its proximity to Maxwell Hill, a small hill resort popular with honeymooning couples. Not that that would have anything to do with me, since it was highly unlikely that I’d become Mrs. Robert Chiu in the near future.
Shin said, “What are you grimacing about?”
“Robert,” I said. “It’s all over with him.”
“Does it matter to you?”
“I was hoping he’d lend me some money. To pay off my mother’s debts.”
Shin stopped. “Don’t ask him. If you need money, I’ve got some.” Irritated, he started walking again.
“Why was he with you today anyway?” I asked, running to catch up.
“He came looking for you at Mrs Tham’s, then kept following me. I couldn’t get rid of him if I tried.”
“I suppose he was bound to find out. Though I told him long ago that we weren’t a good match.”
“What do you mean, ‘long ago’?”
Too late, I remembered how Ming had told me not to mention Robert’s kiss. “Before you went to medical school.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I told Ming,” I said defensively.
For some reason, this seemed to annoy Shin even more, but he didn’t say anything. Why did he care anyway, when he’d told me last week that it would be good if I got married? We walked along in silence; I was sorry because we were arguing again.
* * *
According to the ticket seller, the Anglican cemetery was about a mile away, near the Botanical Gardens. Shin stopped at a couple of different shops near the station and emerged with a brown paper bag. I hadn’t accompanied him in because I was still wearing my emergency spare frock that I’d changed into at the May Flower, a canary-yellow slip of a dress. It looked more suited to going to a party than traveling around on the Federated Malay States Railways.
“What did you buy?”
He opened the paper bag. Inside was a brand new spade. There were other things too—a toothbrush, sticking plasters, and another flat package—and I asked him why he’d bought all of it.
“Because it looks suspicious to buy just a spade. They’ll be wondering what I’m planning to dig up.”
“I always knew you had a criminal mind,” I said.
Shin laughed and the unease between us dissipated. We had a quick bite at a nearby coffee shop, though I was itching to get to the cemetery. What if Dr. MacFarlane wasn’t buried there at all? But Shin said he wouldn’t go on without eating and neither should I.
“Later is better. Fewer people around,” he said as he polished off a plate of char kway teow, fried rice noodles garnished with bean sprouts, eggs, and cockles.
“What if it rains?”
Shin shrugged. “Don’t forget, this was all your idea.”
His dark eyes held mine, and despite all my willpower, I flushed. It made me feel dizzy, being looked at like that. There was a light in Shin’s eyes, a queer flicker that made my stomach knot as though I was falling down a hole. His gaze traveled slowly down my neck, the hollow of my throat. The canary-yellow dress I was wearing clung flatteringly, because it was cut on the bias. A new method, Mrs. Tham had explained, accentuating the natural figure. Involuntarily, I crossed my arms over my breasts.
“Do you always dress like this for work?” he asked.
“No.” I started to explain that this was a spare frock that I didn’t often wear. Shin listened as I stumbled over my words, and all the while he watched me with that unreadable gaze, so direct that it felt more like being touched than looked at. “Do you not like it?”
“I like it. I think a lot of men would.” He turned his head away, so I couldn’t see the expression on his face.
“I’m sure the girls in Singapore dress better than this,” I said, trying my best to make a joke.
“None of them look like you.”
I was suddenly keenly aware of how close we were sitting, and how his legs and mine were scissored beneath the small round marble-topped table. If I wanted to, I could reach my hand out under the table and place it on his thigh. Slide it up slowly, feel the hard muscles contract. But instead, I put both my hands on the table and stared fixedly at them.
“Shin—” I said.
“What is it?”
“I’m sorry I’ve put you through so much trouble. I wish I were a better sister to you.” An unbearable sadness filled me.
“Are you really sorry?” His expression was sharp and fierce.
“Yes, I am.”
“Don’t be. I haven’t been a good brother to you, either.”
He got up abruptly and paid the bill.
39
Batu Gajah
Saturday, June 27th
William has been busy. Busy in a way that he dislikes, making small talk and ferreting out information, but he does it anyway, pressed by the memory of Lydia’s hungry, needy insistence, her eyes shining with emotion. We need to talk, she’d said in the hospital ward. What is she planning? Better to prepare an ambush than be trapped, he thinks.
The first person on his list is Leslie. If anyone has gossip, it will be him.
“Lydia?” says Leslie, looking up from his slice of pineapple. They’re on tea break at the hospital canteen. “Are you finally interested in her? I’ve always thought the two of you were a good match.”
William hides a grimace. Apparently Lydia isn’t the only one with this impression. “Why is she out here?”
“Isn’t she looking for a husband?”
“I wouldn’t think she’d have trouble on that front.” Lydia is attractive and there’s a bigger pool of men in London than in a small town in Malaya. It’s not even like Delhi or Hong Kong, where she could meet the rising stars of the Civil Service.
Leslie rubs his nose. “Well, there’s some talk about why she left. A broken engagement—apparently he died.”
“What did he die of?”
“Drowning. A boating accident.”
William thinks that he ought to be more sympathetic to Lydia, but the memory of her sharp eagerness, the way she said that the two of them were alike, still unnerves him. There has to be more. He can feel it.
Next is the wife of one of the plantation managers, a friend of Lydia’s mother. It’s easy enough to run into her in town when she’s buying groceries on Saturday morning with her Chinese cook. William suspects her cook is cheating her; the bill sounds far too high.
“Poor Lydia’s had a hard time,” she says as she writes down figures in her housekeeping notebook. “Such a pity about her fiancé.”
“I might have known him,” says William, lying through his teeth. “Andrews, was that his name?”
“No, it was a Mr. Grafton. A gentle, scholarly man—her parents were so fond of him.”
“Did he drown?”
“Oh no. It was heart failure, on a train of all places. Apparently he was quite sickly. Such a disappointment to the family.” And there’s nothing else she has to add, despite William enduring another half hour of chitchat.