The Corpse in the Garden of Perfect Brightness

by Malcolm Pryce

SCARFACE

  Mercy? What’s that? How about a little kiss instead?

  The faces of SCARFACE and MILLIE fill the frame. Their mouths inch closer as SCARFACE forces himself on MILLIE. When SCARFACE’s lips are almost touching MILLIE’S, a knife appears at his throat and cuts. He falls. We see the holder of the knife. It is Cho Lee.

  CHO LEE

  Missy good?

  EXT. THE SHIP AND OCEAN. NIGHT

  SQUIDEYE clings desperately to the anchor lashed to the hull. He slowly begins to climb the chain.

  INT. SHIP’S CORRIDOR. NIGHT

  CHO LEE turns to MILLIE and presses his index finger to his lips, as if to say, Shhh! They creep along the corridor. MILLIE is clutching a flask of the chloroform. SOUND of raucous drunken singing from the men’s quarters. CHO LEE and MILLIE reach the open door from which the singing is coming. MILLIE hands the chloroform to CHO LEE, who breaks the seal, removes the stopper and rolls the flask into the cabin, quickly closing the door afterwards and locking it with a key.

  They wait and listen to the singing. It quickly dies down to be replaced by LOUD SNORING.

  EXT. THE SHIP AND SEA. NIGHT

  A giant monster of the deep watches the ship with one cold gleaming eye. It is a giant squid, the biggest ever known.

  INT. CAPTAIN’S CABIN. DAWN

  MILLIE lies sleeping in the arms of SQUIDEYE. CHO LEE bursts into the cabin in distress.

  CHO LEE

  Captain, Missy! Come quick! Big squid!

  EXT. SHIP’S DECK. DAY

  The entire front portion of the ship is entwined with the coiling tentacles of the LEVIATHAN. The metal of the deck buckles as the monster begins to squeeze. His single implacable eye is the size of a cartwheel.

  The LEVIATHAN squeezes harder, the metal plates in the hull shear and squeal, rivets pop out.

  EXT. LIFEBOAT. DAY

  SQUIDEYE, CHOO LEE and MILLIE sit in the lifeboat and watch the giant squid wrestle the tramp steamer down to the ocean floor.

  Apparition of the VIRGIN MARY, wearing a sou’wester, appears in the lifeboat, sitting next to MILLIE. The LEVIATHAN turns his attention to the escaping lifeboat. He spots SQUIDEYE and emits a squeak of recognition.

  VIRGIN MARY (voiceover)

  It was as if two ancient warriors, battered by life and worn out by their years of combat, met for one final time on the world’s edge. Captain Squideye, the most fearsome sea dog who ever set sail, here again facing his old foe, the Squid who took his eye off Valparaiso. It was as if a look of mutual recognition passed between them. The giant squid, recognising his old foe, raised a tentacle gently and gave our boat a shove and pushed us clear as the old tramp steamer sank to the bottom of the sea.

  LEVIATHAN

  SQUEAK, SQUEAK

  Chapter 14

  The arrival of two new guests, Sam Flamenco and Solveig Connemara, occasioned much fuss in the lobby. They had travelled with so much luggage they had to engage a room simply to keep it in. It was piled up in reception the way the belongings of folk moving house are piled up awaiting the removal firm. It did not appear that the hotel staff recognised them, or at least that they especially revered them. The two conducted themselves with the air of royalty travelling incognito but secretly hoping to be recognised all the same. We stood to one side and watched the bustle.

  Mr Earwig joined us and wished us a good morning. ‘St George’s Day,’ he said. ‘The tote ends today. She’s a long way short. To be honest, I’ve given up hope.’

  ‘I have a mind to box your ears,’ said Jenny.

  ‘Oh really?’ he said, surprised.

  ‘Yes, it seems you took my husband to a house of ill repute.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Earwig, relaxing as he perceived Jenny was being playful, ‘I shouldn’t worry about that too much, he fell asleep.’

  ‘So you both say,’ said Jenny, ‘but I would expect you to agree on a story between you. Chaps are like that.’

  ‘Yes, they are, but in this case there really was no need. It was a filthy place, we went there only to show Jack the sort of thing that scoundrel Curtis got up to. Their mothers sell them, you know. Damnable thing to do.’

  ‘You mean the girls are sold to … to … the …’

  ‘Yes. When they get to fourteen or fifteen. At that age everyone has to earn a living, you see. They don’t greatly mind in the way we would, they regard it as a duty to do whatever they can to help the family.’ A thought creased his brow and he turned to me. ‘I should imagine you can’t conceive of your own mother doing such a thing?’

  ‘I never met my mother,’ I said. ‘I was brought up in a railway servants’ orphanage.’

  ‘That’s a shame,’ he said. ‘Although to be honest, I seldom met my mother, she was always ill. It was Wang Amah who looked after me.’

  ‘Who was that?’ said Jenny.

  ‘I suppose you would call her a nanny. We were in China. My father was a missionary, in Tsingkiangpu.’

  ‘My knowledge of the geography of China,’ I began apologetically, ‘is a bit—’

  ‘I shouldn’t worry, you won’t have heard of it. No one has. We were the only Europeans for hundreds of miles. Father got some sort of thrill out of that. We moved there in 1904. It was a walled town. The first thing you saw when you approached on the main road was heads of criminals on sticks above the gate, and there were plenty of occasions when it looked like our heads might join them.

  ‘Father would set off for days at a time with a knapsack containing a Bible and food, and off he would walk. A week later he could come back with bruises on his face and spittle on his clothes. Dog bites too. In ten years he made less than ten converts. It didn’t deter him, though, he was doing the Lord’s work and didn’t expect the Lord to make things easy. The Chinese were mystified by him. They had no idea of sin, the notion that they were sin-blackened because of the actions of Adam and Eve was incomprehensible, and as for Jesus, they couldn’t understand why they should care about him, or he about them.

  ‘I had two brothers and a sister, they all died – two in quick succession from cholera. It came every year and swept hordes of people away. In summer there were mosquitoes and flies filling the sky – they used human ordure to fertilise the fields, you see, it was everywhere. In 1906 there was famine in the north and even Father wouldn’t dare go out then. Have you ever seen those films on the Pathé Gazette showing armies of ants on the march, eating everything in their path? It was like that. Armies of emaciated people marching south, clogging the roads. They were so hungry they ate everything – cats, dogs, the bark from trees, even each other. Sometimes they would curl up on our doorstep just for somewhere to die.’

  ‘That all sounds rather dramatic,’ I said.

  ‘And you were brought up by your nanny?’ said Jenny kindly.

  ‘Mother was always sick, so Wang Amah looked after me. She did everything for me.’ He stopped and thought. ‘Wang Amah had led a hard life and I suppose she … she treated me as her own. Then, when mother died of tropical sprue, I was sent to school in England. That’s where I met Spaulding and Roger. They gave me an awful beasting when they found my photo of Wang Amah.’ He laughed but his eyes misted with pained bewilderment. ‘They called her rude names.’ He took out his wallet and pulled out a badly creased black and white photo. He handed it to Jenny. The photo showed an old Chinese lady, very short and almost bald, smiling with one tooth. It was held together with Sellotape. She posed with two young European boys, one a year or two older, with his arm on the shoulder of the smaller boy.

  ‘That’s me.’ He pointed at the taller boy.

  ‘Who is the other chap?’ I said.

  ‘My brother Ben. He died. He had a weak heart.’

  ‘Looks like your photo has been in the wars,’ said Jenny.

  ‘That was Roger, he tore it up. I was blubbing, you see. All the new boys did, of course, but Spaulding said it brought shame on Elgin House.’

  ‘That was very mean, to tear your photo up,’ said Jenny,
visibly shocked.

  ‘Oh, it was just horseplay. They were always playing tricks on me and things. Spaulding was captain of the rugger team and he was quite intolerant of boys who weren’t … I was always sick. The food was worse than in China. It came in boxes marked Unfit for Human Consumption, it was just ghastly. If you were sick they made you eat it up again.’

  ‘Oh dear!’ said Jenny.

  Earwig turned to me, hoping for an ally. ‘I expect that happened at your school?’

  ‘No,’ I said, ‘there was never anything like that.’ I stared at him, suddenly seeing him in a different light. Up until now I had found his company most uncongenial, but the sad story of his childhood made me think I ought to revise that judgment.

  He took the photo back and stared at it. ‘In her youth she had been a great beauty, so they had to hide her in the well when the soldiers came. She had bound feet. When she was little she had to sleep in the outhouse because her crying at night was keeping everyone awake. Imagine that!’ He put the photo back into his wallet.

  There was an awkward silence, which Jenny broke by changing the subject. ‘Did you get a present for Sugarpie?’

  He brightened instantly. ‘Yes, yes, I did. Something rather rare, I think she’ll like it. I really am most grateful to you for suggesting it.’ He walked back to the hotel.

  Later we were invited into the reading room for a small ceremony. Sugarpie was about to open her present. She sat in a rattan chair, a gift-wrapped parcel on her knee. Her eyes glittered with excitement, and Earwig stood before her, shifting his weight awkwardly from leg to leg. The expression on his face was a war between bubbling anticipation and an attempt to appear cool and uninterested. Sugarpie tore at the wrapping paper the way a child would. The paper was silver and reflective and looked rather expensive. Inside, the present was wrapped in tissue, a further obstacle to discovery that managed to raise Sugarpie’s expectations to fever pitch. Finally, she unveiled the gift. It was a book, The House at Pooh Corner. Second-hand by the looks of it, with a paper dust cover that was torn and distressed at the edges.

  ‘It’s a first edition,’ said Earwig proudly. ‘Jolly difficult to get hold of. They only printed a thousand.’ Two or three other guests had stopped to watch. ‘Cost a packet, I can tell you.’ Sugarpie was looking as if she had just unwrapped a lizard. ‘Why give me book?’ she said in voice filled with bewilderment. ‘Why not buy gold? Must buy lady gold! Book is stupid.’

  ‘One does not give money as a gift, it is vulgar.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘Vulgar? An offence against good breeding.’

  ‘I no understand. Good man must give gold to lady.’

  ‘Gold is nothing to the artistic treasures contained in that book.’

  Sugarpie placed the book, unexamined, on the occasional table next to her chair. ‘I think you make fun of Sugarpie.’

  Earwig looked thunderstruck. He reached down for the book, retrieved it and thrust it back at her. ‘Now look here you, I went to a lot of trouble to get you this. You’ll have it and like it. I expect a handwritten note of thanks, too.’

  Sugarpie twisted her head pointedly away so that she was staring at the ceiling, glowering. Her eyes were aflame and it was evident that a fury was brewing within her.

  ‘Take it,’ hissed Earwig.

  ‘My aow!’ she said.

  ‘Take it!’

  ‘My!’

  ‘Take it, I say!’

  She turned furiously at Earwig. ‘My aow, na!’

  ‘Yes!’

  ‘My! My! My! My aaaaaaoooow loei! Nangseu arn len my aow ny loei. Yu tong hy gold dee gwa!’

  Before Earwig could reply someone clapped loudly in the manner of one asking for silence at a toast. We all turned. It was Kilmer.

  ‘Quiet, everyone, please, I have a very important announcement. As you may know, today is Sugarpie’s birthday, and I’ve got rather a special present for her. Sugarpie, how would you like to take a little trip on the plane?’ He pointed out towards the flying boat moored in the river. ‘We are going to test her out and I thought it might make a rather special birthday present, we could have a picnic.’

  Sugarpie’s face lit up as if a flashbulb had exploded under her chin. ‘Go on plane?’ she said. ‘Go plane?’

  ‘Sure, if you want.’

  It was evident to all that she did. She squealed, jumped up and threw herself at Kilmer and hugged him.

  ‘You are all invited,’ he said over her shoulder. ‘We are going to stop and have a picnic at Mueang Samut. We leave at eleven. Bring a sun hat.’

  A man appeared in the doorway.

  ‘And let me introduce, fresh arrived from Singapore, our co-pilot, an old friend of mine: Joe Webster.’ There was a smattering of polite applause.

  Webster spotted us and made a mock salute.

  The flying boat was bobbing serenely on the waters, resting on her belly and supported by a float on each wing. Also on each wing were two propellers. The day was already hot; staff from the hotel were ferrying our picnic into the plane. We followed, walking down the jetty and entering by the forward door, which was situated at the bottom of the fuselage, on the port side. The area immediately inside was curtained off, with a smoking lounge to the left that also contained a metal ladder up to the bridge immediately above. A corridor, slightly offset to the port side, ran the length of the craft, passing the galley and two toilets, and opening into a cabin amidships that provided seating for three.

  The impression the whole gave me, surprisingly perhaps, was that of a railway carriage in which a corridor ran the length of the left-hand side, with a series of compartments to the right. The effect was heightened by the rectangular windows on the port side, which had an elbow rail beneath to hold on to while admiring the view, and above it a small rack for luggage, just as in a train. Unlike a train, however, the seats allowed reclining the back.

  I had decided to approach Mr Flamenco about Curtis at the earliest possible occasion. It seemed likely that if anyone knew of his whereabouts then Mr Flamenco, as his informal business partner, would know. I was also aware that the arrival of Flamenco and Connemara, along with Webster as co-pilot, made it likely that they would set off on their expedition imminently. Perhaps even tomorrow. Time was slipping through our hands. If my understanding was correct, the three chaps would leave shortly after the plane took off, leaving Jenny and me alone in the hotel, with the trail gone cold.

  Sam Flamenco and Solveig Connemara commandeered the smoking saloon in a manner that suggested it was a private berth, and so we took our seats in the forward promenade lounge. The ladder to the upper deck was accessed via the galley and I climbed up for a quick peek. Kilmer and Webster were manning the controls, and Sugarpie sat in the wireless operator’s seat with her back to them, looking as pleased as it is possible to imagine anyone could possibly be. The walls were bare, and curved above our heads like the walls of an Anderson air-raid shelter, a lattice of metal struts and reinforcing bars. The floor was wooden, but stained with oil that had leaked from the Exactor hydraulic controls. The anchor was housed in a stowage compartment immediately beneath the captain and his first officer. The engines were Bristol Pegasus 9-cylinder air-cooled radials.

  Mr and Mrs Kuribayashi arrived with three Siamese men carrying Hoshimi and her chair. They walked past us to the rear saloon cabin.

  ‘Where are we going?’ I asked Fink.

  ‘Meuang Samut,’ he said. ‘The hotel owns a beach house there.’

  Kilmer passed down a request that we take our seats, and as we did a boy from the front desk arrived to inform me that they had an urgent phone call for me. I made my apologies and was assured they would be happy to wait. I followed the boy back up the lawn. At the desk, the receiver was lying off the hook on the counter top, waiting for me. The man behind the desk picked it up and held it out.

  ‘Hello,’ I said. ‘This is Mr Wenlock.’

  The line crackled, and there seemed to be no one on th
e other end of the line, just the hiss of static that waxed and waned. But as my ears grew used to it I detected amid the crackling another sound: a man weeping.

  ‘Who is this, please?’ I said.

  More weeping, soft and whimpering. ‘Curtis.’ Then he hung up.

  Chapter 15

  As we approached the town we spotted a little train puffing dreamily across a flat landscape below. From aloft it looked like a child’s wooden toy engine. We overshot the town and landed just off a beautiful crescent of beach further south that ran for about six miles between two promontories.

  A collapsible dinghy was produced from the rear cargo hold to ferry us ashore. There was little to see in the way of human habitation – a few fishermen’s shacks, no more. The rest was an expanse of white sandy beach stretching in either direction for as far as the eye could see. It was so bright it hurt to look.

  We walked across sand hot enough to fry eggs to a grove of palm trees beyond, in which stood a bungalow. The boys from the hotel set up deckchairs and parasols on tall poles, and erected two three-sided tents. Hoshimi was installed in one, and here she sat staring out at the glittering ocean, her paper flat on the table before her. A steward served us orange juice to which both salt and sugar had been added, but it tasted refreshing nonetheless. On the beach some way away they built a fire upon which it seemed they intended cooking fish procured from some local men who had appeared out of nowhere. Jenny and I watched them from afar, clutching our orange juice.

  ‘He didn’t say anything else?’ asked Jenny. ‘Just said, “Curtis” and wept?’

  ‘That’s all.’

  ‘What sort of weeping was it?’

  I laughed softy at her determination to make something of such poor materials. ‘What sorts are there?’

  ‘I don’t know … was it a sort of agony of heart, utter despair and hopelessness, regret, madness …’

  ‘I think it was utter dejection, a man so consumed by despair that he no longer has the strength of heart to weep loudly.’

  Jenny nodded as if this told us something, which of course it didn’t. But at least we had learned one thing: he was alive. Instinct told me he was calling from Bangkok.