Chris!” and stay standing until I tell them to sit down. Lovely kids, nice and smiley and well-behaved... the boys have names like Farouk and Faisal and Abdul Aziz and there’s about six Mohammads in every class... the girls are cute and funny and shy, Siti Hanisah and Nurul and Rokiah and Qistina and Rabiatul...’
She took a longer swig at her drink, tipping the glass so much that the ice slipped and bumped onto her upper lip. Gulping the mouthful down, she licked her lips with a slow swipe of her tongue and then, setting down the glass, she dabbed her chin, squirrel-like with the back of both hands. Time for a top-up...
I went on. ‘And because we start early in the mornings – I get up at five and I’m clocking in at six-thirty – school’s all over by one o’clock in the afternoon. I go home, a lovely big house on wooden stilts on the bank of the river, I have a shower and lunch and maybe take a nap because in the afternoon it’s sweltering hot, then at five I’m out running or on my bike, getting a bit of exercise once the day starts to cool down.’
I finished my drink too. The dregs were just ice-water. ‘And then,’ I said, waving my empty glass and picking up hers, ‘home again for another shower and feeling very thirsty after all the exertion. At six-thirty, exactly at sunset, the call to evening prayer comes wailing out of the mosque – it’s called the maghrib prayers – but for an infidel like me it means something else... time for a great big, hefty big, swirly big gin and tonic.’
I stood up, with a glass in each hand. ‘Juliet, the ones you make are nice, don’t get me wrong, nice and refreshing like lemonade or barley water. But shall I make the next one? The kind I make for myself in Borneo?’ I moved across the darkening room, in the direction of the drinks cabinet. ‘Have you read Somerset Maugham’s stories from South East Asia, when they have a “gin stengah” in the club in the evening? Well, “stengah” is the Malay word for half. So I make my gin and tonic the old-fashioned way, half tonic and half gin.’
And so we’d had a second drink together, and then a third. I made them. A tall glass half full of gin. Drop in a handful of ice, so that the level comes close to the top of the glass. Oh dear, not much room left, only enough for a splash of tonic. My fault. Later, when the night was so velvety-black that it seemed to oily-ooze from the woodland and through the French windows into the room itself, Juliet’s little frame was snuggled into the softness of the sofa. And I was feeling comfortably weightless, boneless, the alcohol loosening and dissolving my skeleton...
And loosening our tongues. I’d told her about the swift in the tower bedroom and how Lawrence and I had dealt with it, although I hadn’t mentioned the confrontation we’d had or the strange thing he’d muttered to me. I hadn’t told her, I thought I would never tell her, that for a bewildering moment I’d been afraid of her son. When the conversation had shifted from my cheery, uncomplicated students in Marudi to my first impressions of Lawrence and my inklings of the kind of progress we might make in forming a relationship, I’d recounted the earlier incident, when he’d lost his temper and smashed the model plane into pieces.
‘He gets angry,’ she said, ‘that’s the issue.’ She had a bit of trouble with the word, the sibilance on her tongue. ‘He gets angry. How did you make him so angry?’
‘I don’t know. He just exploded. He was trying to show me the kind of plane his father flies... the kind he used to fly... and I didn’t get which one he was talking about. The green one, the grey one... I don’t know, he’s got so many hanging on the ceiling up there, and they all look the same to me.’
She pricked up at something I’d said. Her face, which had fuddled and lost some of the sharpness of its features, flickered back into focus. ‘Look the same? That’s an issue with
She took a longer swig at her drink, tipping the glass so much that the ice slipped and bumped onto her upper lip. Gulping the mouthful down, she licked her lips with a slow swipe of her tongue and then, setting down the glass, she dabbed her chin, squirrel-like with the back of both hands. Time for a top-up...
I went on. ‘And because we start early in the mornings – I get up at five and I’m clocking in at six-thirty – school’s all over by one o’clock in the afternoon. I go home, a lovely big house on wooden stilts on the bank of the river, I have a shower and lunch and maybe take a nap because in the afternoon it’s sweltering hot, then at five I’m out running or on my bike, getting a bit of exercise once the day starts to cool down.’
I finished my drink too. The dregs were just ice-water. ‘And then,’ I said, waving my empty glass and picking up hers, ‘home again for another shower and feeling very thirsty after all the exertion. At six-thirty, exactly at sunset, the call to evening prayer comes wailing out of the mosque – it’s called the maghrib prayers – but for an infidel like me it means something else... time for a great big, hefty big, swirly big gin and tonic.’
I stood up, with a glass in each hand. ‘Juliet, the ones you make are nice, don’t get me wrong, nice and refreshing like lemonade or barley water. But shall I make the next one? The kind I make for myself in Borneo?’ I moved across the darkening room, in the direction of the drinks cabinet. ‘Have you read Somerset Maugham’s stories from South East Asia, when they have a “gin stengah” in the club in the evening? Well, “stengah” is the Malay word for half. So I make my gin and tonic the old-fashioned way, half tonic and half gin.’
And so we’d had a second drink together, and then a third. I made them. A tall glass half full of gin. Drop in a handful of ice, so that the level comes close to the top of the glass. Oh dear, not much room left, only enough for a splash of tonic. My fault. Later, when the night was so velvety-black that it seemed to oily-ooze from the woodland and through the French windows into the room itself, Juliet’s little frame was snuggled into the softness of the sofa. And I was feeling comfortably weightless, boneless, the alcohol loosening and dissolving my skeleton...
And loosening our tongues. I’d told her about the swift in the tower bedroom and how Lawrence and I had dealt with it, although I hadn’t mentioned the confrontation we’d had or the strange thing he’d muttered to me. I hadn’t told her, I thought I would never tell her, that for a bewildering moment I’d been afraid of her son. When the conversation had shifted from my cheery, uncomplicated students in Marudi to my first impressions of Lawrence and my inklings of the kind of progress we might make in forming a relationship, I’d recounted the earlier incident, when he’d lost his temper and smashed the model plane into pieces.
‘He gets angry,’ she said, ‘that’s the issue.’ She had a bit of trouble with the word, the sibilance on her tongue. ‘He gets angry. How did you make him so angry?’
‘I don’t know. He just exploded. He was trying to show me the kind of plane his father flies... the kind he used to fly... and I didn’t get which one he was talking about. The green one, the grey one... I don’t know, he’s got so many hanging on the ceiling up there, and they all look the same to me.’
She pricked up at something I’d said. Her face, which had fuddled and lost some of the sharpness of its features, flickered back into focus. ‘Look the same? That’s an issue with
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