Singapore Grip - J. G. Farrell [145]
Hours passed. Some time later, in a moment of lucidity which occurred while he was trying to thrash his way out of a net that German spies were throwing over him to prevent him rejoining the League ‘somewhere in the Atlantic’, Matthew found himself hanging upside down out of bed, neatly trussed up in a cocoon of mosquito netting which he had somehow dragged off its frame. From this odd position he had an excellent view of a number of neatly swept floorboards in diminishing perspective. Standing on these floorboards under the bed was what he at first took to be a chamber-pot … a moment later he realized that it was simply a basin which had been put there to collect his own sweat which was soaking through the mattress and steadily dripping into it. The basin was already brimming.
A faint clicking sound approached him across the floorboards and suddenly he found that his own eyeballs were a mere inch or two from another pair of eyeballs; these ones, bulging and bleary, were set in the hairy face of a Chinese demon, of a kind he had hitherto only seen sculpted in stone outside temples. Matthew was on the point of howling for Cheong to come and drive off this horrid little creature (it was not exactly sweet-smelling, either) but at this very instant the German spies, one of whom bore a stern resemblance to the portrait of his father in Walter’s drawing-room, abruptly caught up with him and he was off again like a hare, twisting now this way, now that. His sweat continued its steady drip, drip, drip through the mattress.
When he finally returned to his senses the fourth day since he had been ill was just beginning. He lay half awake, listening for the drip of sweat beneath the bed. But now the silence, except for a distant creaking from outside the window, was complete. He crumpled the sheets in his fist: they were dry. Thank heaven for that! He wondered how many basins of his sweat had been poured away since his fever had begun; he felt so exhausted that it was as if he himself had been poured away.
The distant creaking, he noticed, was punctuated by an occasional thump. Creak, creak, thump! He dozed for a moment and woke again. Creak, creak, thump! Curiosity at last gave him the strength to make a move. Beside him lay a ‘Dutch wife’, a long narrow bolster whose purpose was to allow the air to circulate: he fought with it weakly and at last overcame it. Then with great difficulty he negotiated the fish’s gill exit from the mosquito net. The window shutters were open and he could see that it was already growing light in the compound outside. Somewhere on the other side of the house the sun must be just rising. It was pleasantly cool by the window.
The creaking was coming from the clearing beside the recreation hut where the abandoned vaulting-horse stood with its companion, a big horizontal bar tethered by rusting guyropes. A slender girl who appeared to be Chinese was swinging by her hands from this bar, attempting by a sudden kick and a stiffening of her arms at the elbow to bring her waist up to it. (Did she have red hair or was that just a glint of sunrise?) But what caused Matthew to blink and wonder whether this was still part of his feverish fantasy, now taking a more agreeable turn, was the fact that she appeared to be stark naked.
He scratched his head and set off in search of spectacles, but it was some time before he managed to find them: Cheong, afraid that he might damage them in his delirium, had removed them to a place of safety. He crammed them on and hurried back to the window just in time to see the girl (Vera! Good gracious! Naked!) at last succeed in bringing her shoulders above the bar. She steadied herself there for a moment, recovering from the effort she had made. In the early light