modern architecture. There are shopping malls and McDonald’s and tube trains and six-lane motorways … The Chinese aren’t Communists any more, Charles, they’re entrepreneurs! You really ought to go and have a look. I think you’ll be impressed.’
But Charles is mysteriously deaf to my accolades. Frustrated, I once pinched a travel agent’s brochure and flipped it open under his nose.
‘See, this is Merdeka Square, and this fireworks display is for the annual Independence celebrations …’
Charles yawned, patting his open mouth. ‘Oh, put your story-book away, Christopher. I’m too old for fairy-tales!’
It’s as if the history of the world ceased for Charles when he passed away in 1953. Maybe all ghosts are impervious to events occurring after their death, their mental ectoplasm is resistant to current affairs. Nearly every day Charles promenades into my kitchen, announcing news fifty years out of date.
‘I say! Did you hear they’ve killed the Bearded Terror of Kajang? They’ve strapped his corpse to the bonnet of a lorry and are driving him around the village to show the Min Yuen. Oh, how the mighty idol has fallen …’
‘Do you fancy some monkey stew? That imbecile Spencer just shot it on a jungle mission. It was standing on its hind legs and he mistook it for a bandit. Ha, ha, ha!’
Sometimes I suspect Charles fakes his ignorance of Malaysia’s progress. After all, he can see Adam and Julia (whom he refers to as ‘the spawn of Beelzebub’) and my ageing body (which he calls ‘your withered bag of bones’). Perhaps he pretends not to see the photographs of modern-day Kuala Lumpur because they contradict the gloom-mongering predictions he made five decades ago. The more I think about it, the more likely this seems. Charles does so hate to be in the wrong.
On the evening of our drinking party Charles ranted on and on. Too drunk to listen, I was oddly transfixed by his nose, which had turned a startling shade of vermilion . Lieutenant Spencer was stuporous in his chair and, though he’d had quite enough, some self-destructive reflex kept him lifting glass to mouth. When he spoke it was in a patois of cockney and pidgin Malay, intelligible only to Charles.
‘Mwargh bandits, me and my men’ll sort ’em, makan haji eff off.’
‘Ha, ha, ha, quite right, Spencer,’ agreed Charles.
Only Detective Pang, compulsive nibbler of sunflower seeds, had his wits about him. I glanced at the overflowing ashtray on the table, queasy in the knowledge that many of the nicotine-stained filters were mine. My stomach lurched and I realized I had to leave before I vomited or lost consciousness or worse.
‘Goodnight!’ I said, my chair toppling over as I stood up.
Charles and the detective wished me goodnight back, and Lieutenant Spencer roared at me:
Bugger off!
On the veranda I gulped the fresh night air like water in a land of drought. Bugs chirruped and a nightjar sang, the melody advancing through the treetops in an echolalia of birdsong. A two-man silhouette went by the perimeter fence, carrying rifles. As I stood there my view of the village tilted one way, then the other. I gripped the railing and wondered how the devil I was going to get back to my hut with all the blasted tilting. Woozy-headed, I started down the veranda steps. The next thing I knew I was sitting at the bottom, dazed and discombobulated, my buttocks throbbing as if they’d just had a good old paddle-whacking from the Latin master . I had fallen and my bum had bounced off every step (rendering it swollen and purplish for a week).
Whoopsadaisy!
I cried. Then I crawled a few yards over the trampled earth and was violently sick.
I didn’t notice the figure on the veranda until after I’d vomited out the alcohol sloshing about in my stomach. The wooden boards creaked and I looked up, strands of hell-broth hanging from my mouth to the puddle I’d made on the ground. I recognized the height and girth of Charles and the
But Charles is mysteriously deaf to my accolades. Frustrated, I once pinched a travel agent’s brochure and flipped it open under his nose.
‘See, this is Merdeka Square, and this fireworks display is for the annual Independence celebrations …’
Charles yawned, patting his open mouth. ‘Oh, put your story-book away, Christopher. I’m too old for fairy-tales!’
It’s as if the history of the world ceased for Charles when he passed away in 1953. Maybe all ghosts are impervious to events occurring after their death, their mental ectoplasm is resistant to current affairs. Nearly every day Charles promenades into my kitchen, announcing news fifty years out of date.
‘I say! Did you hear they’ve killed the Bearded Terror of Kajang? They’ve strapped his corpse to the bonnet of a lorry and are driving him around the village to show the Min Yuen. Oh, how the mighty idol has fallen …’
‘Do you fancy some monkey stew? That imbecile Spencer just shot it on a jungle mission. It was standing on its hind legs and he mistook it for a bandit. Ha, ha, ha!’
Sometimes I suspect Charles fakes his ignorance of Malaysia’s progress. After all, he can see Adam and Julia (whom he refers to as ‘the spawn of Beelzebub’) and my ageing body (which he calls ‘your withered bag of bones’). Perhaps he pretends not to see the photographs of modern-day Kuala Lumpur because they contradict the gloom-mongering predictions he made five decades ago. The more I think about it, the more likely this seems. Charles does so hate to be in the wrong.
On the evening of our drinking party Charles ranted on and on. Too drunk to listen, I was oddly transfixed by his nose, which had turned a startling shade of vermilion . Lieutenant Spencer was stuporous in his chair and, though he’d had quite enough, some self-destructive reflex kept him lifting glass to mouth. When he spoke it was in a patois of cockney and pidgin Malay, intelligible only to Charles.
‘Mwargh bandits, me and my men’ll sort ’em, makan haji eff off.’
‘Ha, ha, ha, quite right, Spencer,’ agreed Charles.
Only Detective Pang, compulsive nibbler of sunflower seeds, had his wits about him. I glanced at the overflowing ashtray on the table, queasy in the knowledge that many of the nicotine-stained filters were mine. My stomach lurched and I realized I had to leave before I vomited or lost consciousness or worse.
‘Goodnight!’ I said, my chair toppling over as I stood up.
Charles and the detective wished me goodnight back, and Lieutenant Spencer roared at me:
Bugger off!
On the veranda I gulped the fresh night air like water in a land of drought. Bugs chirruped and a nightjar sang, the melody advancing through the treetops in an echolalia of birdsong. A two-man silhouette went by the perimeter fence, carrying rifles. As I stood there my view of the village tilted one way, then the other. I gripped the railing and wondered how the devil I was going to get back to my hut with all the blasted tilting. Woozy-headed, I started down the veranda steps. The next thing I knew I was sitting at the bottom, dazed and discombobulated, my buttocks throbbing as if they’d just had a good old paddle-whacking from the Latin master . I had fallen and my bum had bounced off every step (rendering it swollen and purplish for a week).
Whoopsadaisy!
I cried. Then I crawled a few yards over the trampled earth and was violently sick.
I didn’t notice the figure on the veranda until after I’d vomited out the alcohol sloshing about in my stomach. The wooden boards creaked and I looked up, strands of hell-broth hanging from my mouth to the puddle I’d made on the ground. I recognized the height and girth of Charles and the
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