The Pearl of Penang

by Clare Flynn

  Being in the water imbued Evie with energy. She powered up and down the pool, telling herself just one more length, but unable to stop. Eventually, exhausted but revitalised, she clambered out. Reluctant to face the heat, she sat at the pool-side in a shaded area, her feet dangling in the water. The pool ran parallel to the beach and the azure sea looked tempting. She could see the familiar outline of Kedah Peak from here.

  The memory of the manner in which Douglas had left her that morning, his curtness after the tenderness of the night before, made her feel low again. But she was bigger than this. Bigger and stronger than those shallow people at the Penang Club, bigger and stronger than her volatile husband. Evie had a choice – either let Douglas wear her down and make her feel small and insignificant, or rise above his selfishness and find her own path. She wasn’t going to let him drag her down; she wasn’t going to let herself be a hapless victim.

  Sitting here, legs dangling in the cool water, she made up her mind. It may not be the life she’d wanted, but it was so much better than her humdrum existence in Hampshire. Better even than being married to a man like Douglas back in Surrey, left at home while he commuted to the city. So what, if he was away from home for two weeks at a time? At least she wasn’t standing in a suburban kitchen instructing the cook, bored out of her mind, watching the rain through steamed-up windows.

  She breathed in the sea air, felt the heat of the sun on her arms, splashed her legs about and gazed at the beautiful view. Penang was a paradise island, known as The Pearl of the Orient. How could she complain or feel sorry for herself when she had all this to look at and enjoy? She was beginning to acclimatise to the heat. Her role as Jasmine’s stepmother gave her purpose – the trust between her and the little girl was growing every day. She had a good friendship with Mary Helston, and in Dorothy Rogers and Susan Hyde-Underwood she’d met two other women whose company she enjoyed.

  And Douglas? Yes, he had reverted to type this morning when she’d asked where he was going, but last night and first thing this morning he had been everything she’d hoped for. But didn’t that make it even harder? Having experienced another Douglas, it was so dispiriting to find the old one was still very much present.

  Don’t dwell on the bad, she told herself. Focus only on the good and it will grow. He had shown desire for her – maybe it was to the idea of her as mother of his children – but nonetheless he had desired her. That was enough for now. She would do whatever she could to give him a son. She would never deny her bed to him again. And that meant she had to stop daydreaming about Arthur Leighton. He was a married man, out of bounds and she told herself not to confuse his kindness and interest in her with attraction.

  Besides, it wouldn’t be only Douglas who would be pleased by her having a child – the thought of a baby of her own, flesh of her flesh, a little part of her, seemed the most desirable thing in the world to Evie, as she sat here in the sunshine.

  Moving away from the pool-side, she walked across to the retaining wall separating the pool from the sea. The swimming club was raised above a rocky outcrop and Evie clambered down to sit on a smooth rock, cooled by the spray from the sea as it hit the rocks. Behind her was a terrace, vibrant with flowers – scarlet salvias and orange and pink zinnias and below, beyond the rocks, a long sandy beach. The air here was fresher than in the city, cooled by the sea breezes. Gazing towards Kedah Peak, she felt as if she was inside an Impressionist painting.

  Lost in her reverie, she didn’t notice Arthur Leighton until he was scrambling over the rocks towards her. He was wearing swimming trunks and had evidently been in the sea. His hair was wet and his body tanned. Without his usual baggy clothing, Arthur Leighton had a lean sun-tanned body and long muscular legs. Evie had expected him to be scrawny, unfit, but instead Arthur had an athletic build.

  He bent down, crouching in front of her. A drip of water from his hair landed on her leg but the shiver that ran through her was less from this than from the unexpected pleasure of seeing him.

  ‘I didn’t expect to find you here, Evie. What a pleasant surprise.’

  ‘After what Dorothy said last night, I decided I’d have to come and see if this place was as delightful as she said it was.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘It’s magical. Truly beautiful. I had a delicious swim in the pool.’

  ‘It’s a good time to come. It’s always quiet in the middle of the week. Most people turn up at weekends and in the late afternoon or early evening to cool off and enjoy a sundowner while watching the sunset.’

  ‘Shouldn’t you be at work?’

  ‘Don’t give me away, Evie. I often come to the beach when I get a quiet spell. It can be insufferable cooped up inside all day when I’m here in George Town. And I get no chance to swim when I’m on the road.’

  He looked at her. That same intense look that made Evie feel exposed, slightly uncomfortable, as if he wanted something from her but couldn’t bring himself to ask.

  ‘Come with me. You need to swim in the sea.’ He took hold of her hand and pulled her to her feet. Self-conscious in only a swimsuit, she draped her towel around herself like a sarong, and followed him over the hot sand.

  They walked for a couple of hundred yards, keeping to the shade as the sand was burning hot in the full sun, following the curve of the coast, away from the Swimming Club. The shore was beautiful: the pale sand interspersed by smooth dark rocks like whales emerging from the deep. Palm trees, bent by the wind, leaned over and offered protective shade, as did casuarinas with their distinctive pine smell. In the distance she could see the brilliant primary colours of a small Chinese temple.

  Arthur looked at her. ‘You love it here, don’t you? I can tell.’

  ‘It would be impossible not to.’

  ‘Malaya’s a beautiful country, with kind and gentle people and the sun shining every day.’

  ‘You must be very good at your job to have been sent here.’

  ‘I was lucky. I put the time in. And maybe I got it because I didn’t particularly want it. They’re like that. Reluctant to give you something if you really want it. I actually would have preferred to stay in Nairobi.’

  They sat down on the sand, close to the water’s edge where the beach narrowed and the casuarina trees still cast some shade.

  ‘Why? Is Africa as beautiful as this?’

  ‘It’s different. When I was there, the only way I could get to the beach was if I managed to grab a few days leave in Mombasa. East Africa’s hot but it’s a dry heat. None of the suffocating humidity we have here. Penang is beautiful but it’s tame in comparison. There’s nowhere like Africa – sometimes on the savannah you feel you’ve been transported to prehistoric times. All these strange wild animals moving across empty scorched plains – wildebeests, elephants, rhinos. It wouldn’t be hard to imagine dinosaurs lumbering along among them. Miles and miles of grasslands. Acacia trees. Tribesmen and herders doing what they’ve been doing for thousands of years. Africa makes one feel small and insignificant, a tiny speck in the vastness of the continent. It has a savage beauty like nowhere else. Very different from all this.’ He gestured with his hand.

  ‘So why did you leave?’

  ‘It was time to move on. It was impossible to refuse the job here.’

  She wanted to ask him what Veronica had thought about it, whether she had instigated the move as it was hard to imagine her liking those vast primordial plains, but Evie didn’t want to spoil the moment by allowing mention of Arthur’s wife.

  They said nothing for a while, until Arthur, staring ahead at the distant horizon, broke the silence. ‘I was young, ambitious, but lacking connections. Just pond life lurking in the depths of the Foreign Service, watching while less capable men were promoted ahead of me just because they went to the right school.’ He leaned back, resting on his elbows. ‘I had to work harder, be cleverer than my colleagues, but no matter how much effort I put in, I always came up short. I became the indispensable right-hand man to a succession of very average
, barely competent officers, all of whom patted me on the head like a dog, and then promoted the idiot in the next desk. There’s something bred into public school boys – and the Etonians in particular – a deep-rooted sense of entitlement. I, on the other hand, had to sweat blood and scrabble for the leftovers.’ He sighed. ‘Sorry, Evie, I must sound cynical and bitter. Anyway, I kept my head down and tried to do the job so well that they wouldn’t be able to ignore me. But it never worked. I was always that reliable and indispensable fellow who wasn’t “one of us”.’

  ‘But you went to Oxford, didn’t you?’

  ‘Yes. But that merely gets you in the door of the Colonial Office – it’s the old school tie that gets you advancement. Doug is “one of us”. But the funny thing is, he never gave a damn. He’s always accepted people for what they deliver not where they come from. That’s probably why we get along.’

  ‘But Doug wasn’t in the Foreign Service.’

  ‘Good lord, can you imagine? Doug and diplomacy are not a marriage made in heaven.’

  Pushing away the thought that neither were Doug and Evie, she continued to listen, rapt.

  ‘To cap it all, as a single man, I wasn’t exactly first choice in the pile either. The foreign service like to get good value for money and see wives as unpaid employees. They even assess them and grade them, as well as their husbands.’

  ‘Really? Why?’

  ‘So much of the job revolves around entertaining people, and the wife is key to the success of that. The service want their men to choose wives who are perfect hostesses and conversationalists, as able to chat to an irascible Turk with poor English, as an African tribal chief or the Sultan of Selangor.’

  ‘And Veronica can do all that?’ Evie hoped her voice didn’t give away her disbelief.

  ‘Veronica is a consummate actress. For her, it’s a role and she steps out onto the stage and plays it. She has a limitless supply of small talk, always knows the best places for visitors to go, the right people for them to meet. And she knows better than anyone how to flirt and flatter and is bloody good at organising things.’

  Evie reflected that, apart from bossing her about and telling her where to buy her clothes, Veronica had never thought it necessary to do any of this in her case.

  Stretching her legs out in front of her alongside Arthur’s longer ones, Evie churned up the sand with her heels. ‘If you don’t mind my saying it, Arthur, you two seem an unlikely couple. But I suppose they say opposites attract.’

  He gave a dry laugh. ‘We’re more alike than you think. At heart we’re both selfish ambitious people.’

  ‘You don’t strike me that way at all. Not selfish. And there’s nothing wrong with being ambitious.’

  ‘Maybe there is when it causes you to do things you’re ashamed of.’

  She looked at him, puzzled, but he looked away, avoiding her eyes, jumped to his feet and reached out to pull her up. ‘Enough talk. It’s time we had that swim, then I must get back to the office.’

  They ran together into the warm sea. Evie struck out, cutting her way through the blue water. Arthur was right. It was even nicer being in the sea than in the swimming pool. And there wasn’t a soul around. He swam after her, catching her up. ‘You’re a strong swimmer,’ he said. ‘It’s hard keeping up with you.’

  Arthur was laughing, the sun lighting up his tanned, wet face. He looked different without his glasses. Less serious. Until today she’d never seen him as sporty, but now she was all too aware of his strong athletic build. Suddenly she didn’t want him to go back to his office. She wanted him to stay here all afternoon with her, talking to her under the casuarina trees, telling her about Africa.

  But what was she thinking? They were both married. The problems with Douglas were clouding her judgement. Evie started to swim back to the shore, but Arthur grabbed her arm and pulled her towards him. For one insane moment Evie thought he was going to kiss her. He pulled her closer. Their eyes met and she held her breath, but he moved away.

  ’Sorry,’ he said, speaking too quickly. ‘I thought there was a shoal of jellyfish. But it was only seaweed.’

  She looked back at him, angry with herself for misreading the signs. Then, without knowing how it happened, she was in his arms and he was kissing her, as she had never been kissed before. They were almost out of their depth and Evie held tight to him, wrapping her legs around him to stay afloat as they kissed, frantically, passionately.

  Arthur moved his head back and broke away. ‘That was unforgivable of me. I’m so sorry, Evie. I promise you it won’t happen again.’

  She reached for him, holding onto his arms as they drifted further out of depth. ‘It wasn’t just you. It was me too. And I want it to happen again.’

  He closed his eyes. ‘You’re my best friend’s wife. I had no business starting what can never be finished.’

  Evie was swamped by a wave and he took her hand and they struggled back out of the sea. Collapsed onto their towels, she was confused, no longer sure of herself. Sure only that no matter how wrong that kiss had been it had felt more right than anything she’d done since coming to Penang.

  She had to break the silence, the terrible silence that was surrounding them and smothering them. As if to mirror that, a rogue cloud crossed in front of the sun, darkening the beach.

  ‘Douglas doesn’t love me,’ she said. ‘He only married me to have a child. I have threatened more than once to go back to England. Every time, he promises to change, but he never does. He’s cold towards me. I sometimes think I disgust him.’

  Arthur jerked his head round. ‘That’s impossible. How could you disgust him? You’re the loveliest person I’ve ever met.’ He put his head in his hands and bent forward. ‘Oh, Evie. If only things could be different. In another life. I know I could make you happy.’ He took a sharp intake of breath. ‘I think I’m in love with you and have been since the ship. I think about you all the time. I’m going crazy.’

  Evie stared at him, astonished, but at the same time her heart lifted inside her, her breath jerky and uneven as she took in what he was saying.

  ‘But you have to know, I can never do anything about it. It would be wrong. I could never betray Doug. And I couldn’t do it to Veronica.’

  Evie felt a rush of anger and indignation. She had never expected to have been put in this position, to be sitting half-naked on a deserted beach, with her husband’s best friend, after the most passionate kiss she had ever experienced. Adultery went against everything she believed in, but how could she possibly deny the reality of how she was now certain she felt about Arthur?

  ‘You can’t do it to Veronica? What about what she’s done to you?’

  Arthur stared at her, visibly shocked. ‘You know? About her affairs? How?’

  ‘I’ve become friends with Mary Helston.’

  He squeezed his eyes shut and his lips formed a hard line. ‘Look, Evie, I know how it looks. You probably think like wife, like husband. But I promise you, until today, I’ve never laid a hand on another woman. I was out of bounds. It won’t happen again.’

  A rush of bitterness hit her. She’d never had to grapple so closely with so many emotions and felt ill-equipped to do so.

  ‘I feel a fool. A stupid fool. You won’t tell Veronica, or Douglas?’

  ‘Why would I do that?’ He looked horrified.

  ‘I have no idea.’ She felt tears rising. ‘I have absolutely no idea about anything anymore.’

  ‘It’s all my fault. I should never have let it happen. I could tell you were unhappy. It made me want you all the more. To show you how I feel, but I’ve made everything worse for you.’ He took her hand in his. ‘Evie, I am in love with you, but I can’t ever leave Veronica. I had no right to behave in the caddish way I’ve done today. Please forgive me.’

  ‘I don’t understand. If you don’t love her why did you marry her in the first place? Why are you so bound to Veronica?’

  ‘Because she’s an extremely vulnerable woman. And because I owe
her my career.’

  Misery wrapped around Evie like a thick fog. Any capacity for joy had been sucked out of her. ‘What do you mean? I don’t understand.’

  Arthur sighed, reaching behind him for his trousers. He pulled out a cigarette from a crumpled packet and lit it. ‘Veronica can’t help herself where men are concerned. Dr Freud would have a field day with her.’

  Evie nodded, feeling hollowed out. How had this magical time turned so quickly into abject misery?

  ‘She’s more vulnerable than she appears. Dark moods descend on her without warning, like a blanket, blotting everything else out. She suffers from a kind of existential despair.’

  Evie felt scornful. Surely, he didn’t expect her to believe that?

  Arthur continued to avoid her gaze, his voice quiet. ‘When she gets one of these black spells, she shuts herself away and will see no one.’ He lifted his eyes to meet hers at last. ‘That’s what was wrong on the ship. She wasn’t seasick at all. I’m sorry.’ He gathered up a handful of sand and let it trickle through his fingers. ‘Veronica’s a complex woman. Far more than I realised when we first met. Yes, she’s shallow, rude, snobbish, all those things that I know you see in her. I cringe myself at her behaviour. But the Veronica I first knew was very different.’

  ‘How?’ Evie stared at him, feeling angry.

  ‘For a start, even though she acts as if she were to the manner born, she comes from a humble background.’

  Evie’s eyebrows shot upwards and she couldn’t help a disbelieving snort.

  ‘Her father was a Russian merchant seaman and her mother was a half-caste – the grandmother was a Kikuyu woman who was the common-law wife of an Irish settler. She was shunned by her tribe when she went with him. He died of drink in a Nairobi slum and Veronica’s mother became a prostitute. So not exactly out of the top drawer. Veronica has always gone to great pains to keep her family tree a closely guarded secret.’

  Evie was dumbfounded. ‘No one knows?’