Island - Aldous Huxley [34]
“Thank goodness,” said the little nurse when he had gone.
“What was his offense?” Will enquired. “The usual thing?”
“Offering money to someone you want to go to bed with—but she doesn’t like you. So you offer more. Is that usual where he comes from?”
“Profoundly usual,” Will assured her.
“Well, I didn’t like it.”
“So I could see. And here’s another question. What about Murugan?”
“What makes you ask?”
“Curiosity. I noticed that you’d met before. Was that when he was here two years ago without his mother?”
“How did you know about that?”
“A little bird told me—or rather an extremely massive bird.”
“The Rani! She must have made it sound like Sodom and Gomorrah.”
“But unfortunately I was spared the lurid details. Dark hints—that was all she gave me. Hints, for example, about veteran Messalinas giving lessons in love to innocent young boys.”
“And did he need those lessons!”
“Hints, too, about a precocious and promiscuous girl of his own age.”
Nurse Appu burst out laughing.
“Did you know her?”
“The precocious and promiscuous girl was me.”
“You? Does the Rani know it?”
“Murugan only gave her the facts, not the names. For which I’m very grateful. You see, I’d behaved pretty badly. Losing my head about someone I didn’t really love and hurting someone I did. Why is one so stupid?”
“The heart has its reasons,” said Will, “and the endocrines have theirs.”
There was a long silence. He finished the last of his cold boiled fish and vegetables. Nurse Appu handed him a plate of fruit salad.
“You’ve never seen Murugan in white satin pajamas,” she said.
“Have I missed something?”
“You’ve no idea how beautiful he looks in white satin pajamas. Nobody has any right to be so beautiful. It’s indecent. It’s taking an unfair advantage.”
It was the sight of him in those white satin pajamas from Sulka that had finally made her lose her head. Lose it so completely that for two months she had been someone else—an idiot who had gone chasing after a person who couldn’t bear her and had turned her back on the person who had always loved her, the person she herself had always loved.
“Did you get anywhere with the pajama boy?” Will asked.
“As far as a bed,” she answered. “But when I started to kiss him, he jumped out from between the sheets and locked himself in the bathroom. He wouldn’t come out until I’d passed his pajamas through the transom and given him my word of honor that he wouldn’t be molested. I can laugh about it now; but at the time, I tell you, at the time…” She shook her head. “Pure tragedy. They must have guessed, from the way I carried on, what had happened. Precocious and promiscuous girls, it was obvious, were no good. What he needed was regular lessons.”
“And the rest of the story I know,” said Will. “Boy writes to Mother, Mother flies home and whisks him off to Switzerland.”
“And they didn’t come back until about six months ago. And for at least half of that time they were in Rendang, staying with Murugan’s aunt.”
Will was on the point of mentioning Colonel Dipa, then remembered that he had promised Murugan to be discreet and said nothing.
From the garden came the sound of a whistle.
“Excuse me,” said the little nurse and went to the window. Smiling happily at what she saw, she waved her hand. “It’s Ranga.”
“Who’s Ranga?”
“That friend of mine I was talking about. He wants to ask you some questions. May he come in for a minute?”
“Of course.”
She turned back to the window and made a beckoning gesture.
“This means, I take it, that the white satin pajamas are completely out of the picture.”
She nodded. “It was only a one-act tragedy. I found my head almost as quickly as I’d