The Parasol Flower

by Quevillon, Karen;

  No doubt Suria’s heard every nasty word she and the colonel have just exchanged. Is she afraid to be left alone with him?

  She whispers, “He will ask me where you go.”

  “Say what you want to him, Suria.” Hannah observes the housemaid ruefully. There is really no way to politely assure her she’s not an adulteress. “I’m going to the police station about the arson.”

  It is raining steadily. And it feels so good to be touched by the sky, her legs and arms and mind in motion, that she takes a circuitous route. In the stilted homes, the flow of the river, the overhanging mangrove trees, there is such beauty. The women, wrapped in their brilliant headscarves, squint at her through the fog. Mr. Lim the barber is vigorously sweeping the front stoop of his shop. There is so much beauty. She wishes more earnestly than ever before that Monsieur Godot were there in Kuala Kangsa to see it all. What would he make of it? What would he make of Nude House Girl?

  By the time Hannah reaches the police station, the rain has lessened to a patter. Two British officers—the ones named Oakeshott and Dennison or Debenham, who are always paired—are on their way out of the building.

  “Mrs. Inglis! Why, hello!” one of them stammers.

  “Can we give you a lift home?” says the other. “You’ve been caught out without an umbrella it seems.”

  “Oh no, thank you, gentlemen. I have some business here.” She smiles politely and moves past them before they can object.

  She’s never had occasion to visit the police station. It turns out to be small and grubby. In the foyer she counts four cockroaches in plain sight. Indeed, they outnumber the furniture: two chairs, one desk. Behind this desk stands a young pimple-faced officer. Remembering Darshan’s stories, she says, “Congratulations are in order, I hear, on the birth of your son.”

  “Madam!” he says, beaming. “Why, yes, thank you. Thank you. He is doing so, so well. Very big already!” They smile at each other uncomfortably until he adds, “Do you come to report something?”

  “No. Yes. Not exactly.” She leans to look down the hallway and several drops of water fall from her hat and collar onto the desk. “Oh dear.”

  He springs into action, mopping up the splashes with his cuff then hurrying to a closet.

  “Oh dear,” she repeats, seeing him return with a white bed sheet.

  He offers the armful of fabric to her so she is forced to remove her hat before pressing the cotton against her face and neck and shoulders as he waits.

  “I’ve come to speak with Sergeant Singh,” she tells him. “It’s about the arson.”

  “Oh yes. Popular topic these days.” He smiles generously at her as he takes the bed sheet back. Tapping the logbook, he says, “Please sign here. I will check if Sergeant is available.”

  Pen poised, Hannah scans the grid of names. Nothing resembling “Oakeshott” or “Dennison” is recognizable in the log.

  “Here, madam.” He is waving her toward him, down the hallway, still holding the ball of damp bed sheets under one arm.

  As she approaches, a holding cell emerges on her left and through the bars she sees two Malays squatting together, tearing, husk by husk, the straw covering the dirt floor. Like animals in a pen, is her first thought. Her second, with a jolt, is that the female prisoner is Charlotte Peterborough’s genduk.

  “Mrs. Inglis!” Darshan exclaims as she appears in his doorway.

  The young officer looks with curiosity from her to his sergeant, then pivots and flees.

  Hannah closes the door behind her. “I’m sorry to intrude, Sergeant Singh. You must be busy.”

  The skin around his eyes is puffy. The cuffs of his sleeves, ruined by stains. Hannah holds herself back from commenting.

  “Long day,” he admits. He gestures at the chair facing his desk and watches her as she settles in, fondness growing in his eyes.

  “First, please forgive me for being so rude to you about the parasol flower. I suppose I felt…betrayed, on some level.”

  “Mrs. Inglis, I—”

  “What I regret, wholeheartedly, is that I ever doubted your good intentions, Sergeant.”

  “You were unwell.”

  “I’m truly sorry.”

  He nods, smoothing one hand over his beard, listening.

  “And the truth is I wanted the parasol flower so badly to exist. Even though I’d never encountered one, it felt like…well, like something had been taken away from me.”

  A touch of gloom seems to come over the sergeant as he considers this. But he says, stalwartly at first, “It very well may exist, Mrs. Inglis. Don’t forget that. Why else would there be a legend? I may have added a few details here and there, how I imagine the legend, but those details can’t negate what’s out there, somewhere. In fact, I’m sure my depiction is not half as wondrous as a real parasol flower. When I’m done with this infernal case I may finally have a chance to get back to the woods.”

  Quietly, she says, “I can think of other reasons why there would be a legend.”

  “Can you?”

  “Well, yes. Why are there legends about anything? People like something extraordinary to talk about.” He appears unconvinced by this alternative. “Parasol flower or no parasol flower,” she tells him, “I have fond memories of our time together.”

  “This is sounding like our time together has come to an end.” He leans back in his chair.

  “I don’t know.” She looks down at her hands and notices they are shaking slightly. Her nails are rimmed with burnt sienna. She tells him the good news first. “I’ve been painting, Darshan. Something quite good, I think. I think it could be a contribution.”

  “A contribution! That is wonderful.”

  “Yes.” She smiles at the space between them.

  “Is it a botanical?”

  “No. A portrait of a house girl. Not a traditional portrait. An abstract, I suppose you’d call it. Darshan, did the cabin burn down completely? The cabin at Idlewyld.”

  “Oh. Odd question.” He laces his hands together behind his head. “Three walls and a few of the beams are holding up but—”

  “And are they”—she points through the door behind her—“suspects? I’m assuming you are in charge of the investigation.”

  “I am. Although you are proving rather good at interrogation, Mrs. Inglis. I could use your help.”

  “Pardon me.” She twists in her chair, looking down for a time at his desk. “The girl out there in the holding cell. But, of course,” she remembers, “you know her from our waterfall trek. She’s a suspect, is she? That’s why you are keeping her?”

  “Mrs. Inglis, I cannot speak with you about the investigation.” He frowns, his eyes unfocused. Where the blue cloth of his turban meets his skin an uneven ring of sweat has formed and dried. “I am keeping the two of them at the request of the Resident. For questioning.”

  “Eva is convinced this girl set the fire.”

  “I thought we agreed that Madam Peterborough’s judgments may not be the most reliable.” He is choosing his words with care. “Why would this girl set the fire?”

  Hannah meets his eyes. She thinks of the photograph of Roki, which would have proven her point neatly. Out of embarrassment, in part, and out of consideration for poor Roki, she’d decided against bringing it to show him. As evidence, it should have been destroyed along with the rest; she would have to explain how she’d got it. And if she were honest with herself, there is also the plain and rather ugly fact that she wants the photograph for herself. She could not risk him seizing it. She replies, “Eva believes that the girl wanted revenge.”

  “For…?”

  If she thought for a moment that Charles Peterborough was continuing his “research.” If she didn’t feel so strongly that what’s happened was apt and just in itself. Coward, she tells herself. You’re no better than George.

  “Reven
ge for what, Mrs. Inglis?”

  “I don’t know,” she replies unhappily. “She felt mistreated, perhaps, by her employers.”

  Sergeant Singh hangs his head for a moment, arms planted against his desk. “Let’s consider this. A servant wants revenge, and so she sets fire to an abandoned shed in the middle of an abandoned coffee orchard. Instead of setting fire to the main house? Or stealing something? She was their genduk, after all, Mrs. Inglis. She had access to everything in that mansion, including their only child.”

  “You’re very good at this,” she says without thinking. “But of course you are.” She shifts again in her seat. “I warned Eva that it didn’t make sense, but she begged me to speak to you on her behalf. And I felt, considering how much she has helped me over the past months, that I owed her at least that much.”

  He cracks his knuckles loudly. “I am fed up with this blasted investigation. Nothing making sense. Everybody sticking an oar in.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Not you, Mrs. Inglis. You are simply discharging a duty to a friend.”

  She senses he is just being kind, which makes her feel even more badly. She takes a breath and says, “There’s another reason why I’ve come. I told you I’ve been painting.”

  “Yes,” he beams, “a contribution.”

  “I was painting at home, you see. And the colonel found me out.” She tips her head back a moment and shoots air toward the ceiling. “He was so…angry. He confronted me.”

  “Confronted you?”

  No suspect, she thinks, would be able to withstand that look! “He didn’t touch me. Though I’m surprised he didn’t!” She laughs self-consciously. “He told me to get out of the house.”

  “Mrs. Inglis.”

  She looks up to find him rapt, leaning toward her. “The problem, really, is that I admitted to George…that I had been trekking this summer at Idlewyld, and painting. That I had been trekking with you.”

  “What?”

  “He was just so condescending! So insulting! He had that look on his face. And was making accusations and…I didn’t want to deny you, when you’ve been such a help, a friend, to me. At the LAP meeting they were all slandering you, Darshan, and I tried…well, I didn’t try very hard. I felt sick inside. Rightly so. But with George, I didn’t deny anything. I couldn’t deny you. I simply couldn’t.”

  The sergeant unleashes a long, guttural groan. “Trouble and more trouble.”

  Trouble for him, he means. Fumbling, she finds a handkerchief and gets her feet under her.

  “Stay, Mrs. Inglis. Please. The fact is any of the Peterboroughs or their servants could have made this information known to him at any time. Or your servants. Or my men. Eh?” He waits until she looks up at him. There is no animosity in his eyes. Only fatigue. “I appreciate, Mrs. Inglis, that you did not deny our friendship.”

  “I never told you. I’ve heard from the Kew Gardens jury.”

  “And? Well?”

  “They hated Strangler Fig. They called it ‘displeasing to the eye’ and ‘childish.’ Oh, and they said the composition was ‘wildly imbalanced.’” She pats her eyes.

  “Wildly,” he says. “That is…kind of a laugh.”

  She giggles. “Yes, isn’t it.”

  “I am only glad to hear you are painting again.”

  “You are?”

  “Of course, Mrs. Inglis. I was wrong. You must let no one stop you. Not Madam Peterborough, or lack of Madam Peterborough. Not your husband, not your neighbors, not even your famous art teacher. And certainly not the jury of the Grand Society of Pompous Criticizers of Paintings.”

  “Goodness, Sergeant, I take your point!” She can’t help but grin.

  Just to think of her new painting in the nursery makes her feel a little triumphant. The labor she has put into it, and the further labor she will do. Her commitment to the work itself. She must try to show some of her paintings, somewhere, for who will ever see them at this rate? Would Monsieur Godot have any…no, she mustn’t count on him. He’s never going to write to her again, is he?

  Darshan has found a fresh page of paper and is writing in his impeccable tiny script, glancing up at her occasionally. What a minefield the poor man is navigating! Of course he must get back to woods. Can she help him with that? She must help him, for once. How was this all going to end? The distress of the poor Malay girls, George’s hostility, everyone’s hostility, even Monsieur Godot’s disappearance. If it weren’t for art, how could one bear any of it? But you can bear it, Hannah. Because you will always have this work, which is your life’s work. It is a knowing that wells up into her out of nowhere. Surprised, she remarks, “Perhaps nothing is coming to an end, after all.”

  There is a hard double-knock and Deputy Onkarjeet opens the door. He sizes them up and says, “Sir, we are required to submit the report.”

  “We were discussing the case, Deputy.” Sergeant Singh glares wearily at him. “Continue drafting the report. I will join you shortly to make corrections.”

  “Thank you so much for your time, Sergeant. I’d best be going,” Hannah says loudly. Tying her bonnet on, after Onkarjeet has left the room, she whispers, “What’s bothering the deputy?”

  “Me.”

  “That was his look exactly! Sucking politely on a lemon.”

  “Never mind. He and I, we have been working much too closely this past week, that is all.”

  Darshan rises to see her out. For a moment, standing near him, she feels a tremor of foreboding pass through her.

  He voices it first. “Will you be all right? At home?”

  She nods, hardly knowing how to reply. Will you? she wants to ask him. Instead she says, “Do take care.” And, “Thank you for understanding.”

  Forty-Four

  Hannah times her return: away long enough that the colonel will have cooled off considerably, not so long that her brushes are irreparable. In the public gardens, she delays herself, huddled from the drizzle under a sycamore, schooling her imagination in the colonel’s pain and humiliation. She will need to speak with him and apologize fully and sincerely. Then try to reassure him—of what? That she is not a monster. He won’t trust her again. How, then, could she ever give him what he wants? It’s a riddle she cannot solve, so at last she resolves to ask George himself.

  Darkness has fallen by the time she arrives home, and it is only once she’s indoors that she realizes quite how wet and chilled she has become.

  “Come, mem!” Suria appears at her elbow to take her coat.

  “Good grief, you must have been hiding in the closet.” Hannah’s heart bumps belatedly from the surprise. Slipping off her overcoat, she rubs her arms. “What’s the matter?”

  The old woman says nothing. Throwing Hannah’s coat over the banister, she pulls her by the hand, leading her through to the kitchen. The room is quite warm, the stove still hot from the supper preparations. Hannah sighs with relief, stepping up to it to be warmed. But Suria moves her aside to twist open the oven door. She jabs a finger at the glowing coals. Weightless ashes swirl in the in-rushing air.

  “What? For pity’s sake, what are you trying to show me, Suria?”

  The old woman looks petrified by the cast-iron stove. “Tuan make us burn them. Anjuh and me. Your big paintings, mem. Tuan watch me do it. Ooh, such a look on his face, mem, I think he asks me to climb in after.”

  Hannah sinks to her knees at the oven door, squinting into the wave of heat. Nothing. She sees nothing at all. That can’t be right. “What are you talking about, Suria? They were on stretchers, on frames. These were canvases. Some of them quite big canvases.” She draws rectangles with her arms as if they are playing charades.

  “Yes, yes! Anjuh break with the axe. Tuan, he gives me garden scissors.”

  “My paintings? You’re saying he had you chop up and burn my paintings?” Tuan might as well have taken t
he garden shears to her lungs. It was breathtaking. And deliberate. For this would have taken some time to accomplish. If only she’d come straight home, instead of stewing over how to make amends with the colonel’s precious feelings. She might have saved some of them!

  “Where is the case?” she manages to ask. Monsieur Godot gave her the leather portfolio as a leaving present. The real learning, he’d said to her, will be outside these walls. “Suria, where is the actual case?”

  “In,” she says, nodding fearfully at the stove.

  “And…and what about the new painting? It was on the easel in the—”

  “Mm.” Suria sucks her thumb. “He do that one himself, first.”

  Hannah looks around the room. The colonel could be spying on the two of them now, standing quietly against a wall, to witness her in agony. Had he torched all of that effort, all the undiscovered and undocumented specimens, all of her precious learning, and simply gone to sleep? “Where is he? Where is sahib now?” she demands.

  Suria raises her eyes to the ceiling.

  “And my copybook? The book!” It was one fresh horror after another.

  Before the ayah can reply, Hannah bolts upstairs to see for herself. The nursery is bare except for a bundle of paint-smeared rags. On the third floor, in her writing garret, all of the crates have been shifted and pillaged. Her satchel has been pulled-open, plundered, her notebooks are missing. Her copybook? Gone, too.

  Nor is there any sign of the colonel. Except, as she treads toward their bedroom, the soft clunk of a key being turned in the lock.

  At some point, Hannah pours herself a brandy and sits at the dining room table.

  “Mem.”

  “What? What now?” What is the woman still doing, hovering, awake? Why had she bothered waiting for her arrival in the first place? The paintings, everything, is gone and nothing could be done about it. Hannah lifts her head.

  The lamp lights Suria’s creased forehead and high cheekbones. “I very sorry for you, mem. Very sorry.”

  She nods, exhausted. “It’s not your fault, Suria. I realize that.”