Old Filth - Jane Gardam [12]
The servant looked at his master, but the master continued to open and shut a little silver box that had been his wife’s pinbox and now held his tooth-picks. Then he took up his glass and looked into its golden depths.
“Yes. Very well.”
Edward was brought in from just outside the door where he had been watching and holding Ada’s hand. He blinked in the glare of light, stared at the tall man’s queer clothes—the starched shirt, the gold watch chain—and the gleam of the table-silver and glass he had never seen before.
“Now then, Edward,” said Auntie May. “Greet your father, please.”
The child looked mystified.
“Your father. Go on.”
She gave him a push. “Bow, child. Hold out your hand.”
The child bowed but scarcely took his eyes from Alistair’s pinched yellow face and sandy square moustache.
Alistair suddenly threw himself back in his chair, dropped the silver box on the table and looked straight at Edward for the first time. His wife’s genial blue eyes looked back at him.
“Hullo,” he said, “Hullo—Edward. And so you are going away?” Like Auntie May, he spoke in Edward’s own Malay.
Edward wriggled and turned his attention to the silver box. “Did you know that you will be going away?”
“They say so,” said Edward.
“You are going first with Auntie May to the Port. For half a year. To learn to speak English, like all British boys have to do.”
Edward fiddled with the box.
“You hear English spoken sometimes, don’t you? You understand what it is?”
“Sometimes. Why do I have to? I can talk here.”
“Because you will one day have to go to England. It is called Home. They don’t speak Malay there.”
“Why can’t I stay here?”
“Because white children often die here.”
“I shall like to die here.”
“We want you not to die but to grow up big and strong.”
“Will Ada come?”
“We’ll see.”
“Can I go back to Ada now?”
“Here,” the father called as the child made off to the verandah where Ada stood in the shadows. “Here. Come back. Take this. It was your mother’s,” and he held out the silver box.
“Does Ada say I can?”
“I say you can. I am your father.”
“You can’t be,” said Edward.
Silence fell and Auntie May’s hands began to shake.
The servants were listening.
“And why not?”
“Because you’ve been here all the time without me.”
Auntie May left with Edward next morning. She felt sick and low.
I’m lugubrious, unattractive, bossy and a failure, she told God. I shan’t come here ever again. That man can rot.
Alistair, however, had been on the landing stage, leaning only a little on his stick, spick and span in his khaki shorts and sola topi. He had shaken hands with Auntie May, acknowledged Ada. Had shaken hands with the little boy, and asked if he had the box safe. Then he had given the order for the boat to be cast off, and had limped away.
“Wave,” said Auntie May, but Edward did not.
Nor did Alistair turn to look at his son’s second—and last— journey down the black river.
As the trees on either winding bank blotted out the landing stage, Edward, who had been struck dumb by the sight of Ada left alone on the tottering platform, began to scream “Ada, Ada, Ada!” and to point back up river. Auntie May held him tight, but he screamed louder, and writhed in her arms. She spoke sharply in Malay and he bit her shoulder, wriggled free and seemed about to jump overboard. A sailor caught him by the belt of the shorts that Auntie May had brought and that had astonished him. The sailor lifted him high. Water poured down the sailor’s silky arms. “Hai, hai, hai,” he laughed and Edward lashed out at him, sobbing. He was a tall, strong boy for four and a half but the boatman lifted him into the air like a swathe of flowers. Something of the boatman’s smell and his happy eyes reminded the child of Ada, and the sobbing lessened and he went limp.
“Why does she stay? Why is she not here?”
“If she came with you, you would never learn English. You and she would talk Malay, as we are doing now.”
“I will talk Malay with you always.”
“Not after we get to the Port. You will learn something new. Ada will follow.”