The district hospital, built in a tropical half-timbered style, has a whimsical charm. Glancing up, William approaches the dark bulk of the administrative offices in the European wing. It’s one of the few two-story buildings in the low, gardenlike hospital—surely Lydia must be somewhere around here. Instinct takes him round the corner. And there she is, her bright hair recognizable from a distance.
Lydia stands on the wet grass beside the building, head turned towards a young Chinese man with a crooked jaw. Judging from his white uniform, he’s an orderly coming off the night shift, but the tension in the way they face each other alerts William. In the dim light, they don’t notice his quiet approach.
“—nothing to do with me,” says Lydia. “You can tell Dr. Rawlings all you like.”
The man opens his mouth, but William never hears what he says because there’s a crash. A flickering shadow that plummets, smashing into the young man’s head. He drops, dead weight crumpling. William runs. Gets on his knees, but it’s no good. He can see it right away. The skull has been smashed in, there are bits of nameless splatter on his hands, his shirt. The iron smell of blood and brains. Someone is screaming, a high hysterical sound. Whatever fell has shattered, but William recognizes the fragments. A heavy terra-cotta roof tile, the kind on the roofs in the hospital, the covered walkways, and wards. He stares upward. There’s nothing to be seen, only the open windows on the second floor and above them, the unbroken ridge of the roofline.
* * *
The whole affair is horrible, shocking even to William to whom blood and open wounds are no strangers. He can’t imagine what it’s like for Lydia, who’s led, crying and trembling, from the scene. The police arrive and take statements. They go up on the roof and note that a couple of tiles are missing, though whether that’s due to last night’s storm or whether they were gone months earlier, no one can say.
“Looks like the roof was being repaired,” says the sergeant, pointing out some tiles stacked in a corner of the building. “It might have hit you, sir.”
“Miss Thomson is the lucky one.” Indeed, Lydia could have easily been killed. A mere two feet separated her from the unfortunate orderly whose head was split like a watermelon.
“Did you know him?” asks the sergeant. “Wong Yun Kiong, also known as Y. K. Wong. Aged twenty-three.”
“He did a lot of work for Dr. Rawlings, I believe.” Remembering Lydia’s words, you can tell Dr. Rawlings all you like, he wonders at this.
“Will you take the day off?”
William shakes his head. “I’ve patients to see.”
When he’s finally released, he notes the tremor in his hands, the weakness in his knees. It’s a tragic, freak accident, but he can’t shake the feeling that there’s something wrong. The instinct that told him, just as the shadow fell, that doom was coming. For after the shock of seeing the body, his first reaction was that the wrong person had died. It should have been Lydia, he thinks, even as he’s filled with sickening guilt. That dark fortune that follows him, rearranging events to save him, has taken an inexplicable turn. Something’s wrong with the pattern, he thinks, even as he walks, dazed and nauseated, back to his office. Or has he been seeing everything upside down?
He stops. There is indeed something wrong, something that registered as a flicker in his vision even in the dimness of the early morning. William turns back to the police officer.
44
Taiping/Falim
Sunday, June 28th
I lay in that double bed with its unyielding pillows, my head on Shin’s chest and wished that time would stop, in this moment, forever. It was morning. The rain had ceased, and there was a clear, bright hush in the air. Shin was asleep.
The darkness was gone. As though the months and years that we’d lived in that long, narrow shophouse over the tin-ore dealership had turned into something else, though what it was exactly, I couldn’t say. I only knew that I was happier than I’d ever been. Dangerously happy. I pressed my lips to Shin’s collarbone. His skin was warm and tasted like salt.
Suddenly worried, I sat up, but the shirt I was wearing was still buttoned and my underwear was in place. In the bathroom, I examined myself seriously in the black-speckled mirror. Love hadn’t done anything miraculous, though my cheeks went pink when I recalled how Shin had pinned me down last night. If he’d kept insisting, I might well have given in though I gave myself a stern talking-to. What were we going to do? I couldn’t see any clear path for us.
When I went back into the room, Shin was still lying in bed. I bent over him, admiring his long lashes, and he grabbed me by the waist. Several breathless minutes ensued. “We have to catch a train.” With an effort, I disentangled myself.
“Why do you always say no to me?”
“I just don’t think this is right for us to do.”
“You’ll regret it,” he said. “Do you know how hard it is to get away like this? To go to a different town, find a hotel where nobody knows us?”
I thought at first he was joking, but the look in his eyes was deadly serious. He unbuttoned the shirt I was wearing and began to kiss my throat. I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t resist as his hands roamed over my skin, touching me skillfully, making my legs weak, my stomach clench.
“Stop!” I gasped.
Shin’s face was flushed. “Ji Lin, please,” he said, in a husky voice I’d never heard before. “Please, please.”
I knew what he was asking. My heart gave a treacherous lurch, but I was sure that if we did this, it would be the wrong way, the wrong order. Miserably, I said, “I’m sorry. We can’t. Won’t you wait?”
He got up abruptly and went to the bathroom. I could hear the water running as he stayed in there a good long time. I put my head down on the warm place where Shin had lain, feeling obscurely wretched. Perhaps he’d think that I didn’t really love him. After all, Fong Lan had been so willing to give herself to him. Thinking of Shin’s other girlfriends made my chest tighten painfully. How had he learned to kiss like that and what else had he done with them? But I wasn’t going to be jealous, I thought. I wouldn’t be like that, clinging and crying, even if he left me one day.
When Shin returned, he was back to normal. His dark hair was sleek with water and my yellow dress, which I’d hung to dry last night, was on his arm. “Trade your dress for that shirt,” he said, jokingly.
“What about your shirt from last night? Isn’t it dry?”
“I want the one you’re wearing.”
I turned red, and surprisingly, so did Shin. I went into the bathroom, changed, and gave him the new men’s shirt I’d been wearing, now sadly crumpled since I’d slept in it. After that, not knowing what to say, we went down and checked out of the hotel. The same clerk was there and she gave us a look.
“There was some noise from your room last night.”
“Yes,” said Shin. “I fell off the bed.”
She pursed her mouth, and I had to stifle the hysterical urge to giggle, squeezing Shin’s hand instead. And so we left Taiping, that rainy, romantic little town between the limestone hills. One day, I thought, I’d like to come back with Shin. And do everything properly.
* * *
I was headed to Falim, since I wanted to check on my mother. Shin would go on to Batu Gajah for his shift at the hospital. “Be careful when you go home,” he said. We’d held hands secretly all the way on the train; it wasn’t proper to display physical affection in public, but when no one was looking, Shin had sneaked a couple of kisses. I was so happy that I must have been grinning like an idiot, and Shin wasn’t much better.
“I can keep a secret,” I said.
In answer, Shin put his lips against my ear. “See?” he murmured. “You’re all flustered now.”
I hated to admit it, but he was right. Recalling how Shin had said, I’ll make you mine, I wondered if all men had this power over women. Whether by laying hands on us, by caresses and sweet words, they could bend us to their will. I didn’t like that idea. But no, Robert had kissed me before and the results had been disastrous.
“Shin,” I said slowly. “Do you have another girl?”
“No.”
“Then whose ring is this?”
“It’s yours. Didn’t I give it to you?”
I was dumbfounded. Certainly, he’d handed it to me in front of Matron, but I’d assumed he was just playing along. Shin looked sheepish. “I meant to do it in a better way—not like that.”
“I thought you had a girlfriend in Singapore. Koh Beng said so.”
“That’s because when I’m in Singapore, I say I’ve a girl back in Ipoh, and vice versa. Otherwise it’s troublesome. People ask if I’m available, or try to set me up. But it’s always been you.”
I felt giddy. “You bought a ring for me?”
In answer, he kissed the palm of my hand. “I thought I might as well go for it. Especially since Ming got engaged.”
“But it doesn’t fit.”
“The way you eat, I thought you’d be fatter by now.”