The Orientalist and the Ghost (17 page)

Most of the other laboratory technicians are women, a decade or two older than Adam. At break time he joins the circle of comfy chairs in the tea-room and listens to the chatter about families and last night’s TV while steam from the electric kettle fogs the windowpane. Adam likes his colleagues, though he can’t endure their mundane chit-chat for longer than it takes to gulp down a mug of coffee. The other technicians like Adam too. They like the youth he takes for granted, and are intrigued by the diffident way he carries himself – like an outsider, a mysterious refugee. They like his shyness – the way he blushes and stutters and gets the syllables of words back to front. They think it’s endearing that Adam is often stage-struck mid-sentence or mid-word, as if he lacks the confidence to finish his lines. The women technicians mollycoddle Adam, flirt with him, relishing his obvious discomfort. Every one of them projects upon Adam a romantic back story of their own invention, to explain his notorious timidity. Three of Adam’s colleagues regularly fantasize about seducing him; of bursting into the stock-room where he eats his lunch and knocking him off his stool; of popping open their lab-coat stub buttons and peeling off knickers and support tights to let him fuck them – gleefully betraying their husbands to shatter the boy’s celibacy (or virginity, as some imagine).

What would Adam think if he knew about these
daydreams?
If he knew what these middle-aged women wanted to do to him, as he sits among the shelves of hazardous chemicals and stacks of scientific catalogues, eating the bread and cheese he brought for his lunch? Adam would probably be a little embarrassed, a little scornful, though amused enough to smile. But he wouldn’t dwell on it for long as his habitual obsessions return to haunt him: his ex-boyfriend Mischa and his sister and Rob. If one of his colleagues
were
to take the initiative and barge in, grabbing him by the lapels, Adam would be annoyed. He likes to be left alone at lunchtime to brood. If it were a girl who exiled herself in this way the other technicians would be offended. They’d wage a whispering campaign until the offender meekly returned to the tea-room. But Adam is forgiven his solitariness because he is a man, and his co-workers have long taken it for granted that men are different.

Some nights he leaves his flat and walks. He’ll walk into the city, cold draughts of air ventilating his lungs, the austere slap of the pavement against the soles of his shoes, the stone vaulted architecture belonging to him alone. Or he’ll walk to a street of restaurants, slowing to stare at the candlelit diners – the woman in the silk scarf, lifting a forkful of linguine, throwing her head back to laugh at her male companion. Sometimes Adam goes further east, over the flyover to Stratford, past the mosques and churches, night sky impaled by steeples, to the dingy bedsit land of Romford Road (where he lived after his grandfather died and swore
he’d
never go back to, though he often does). On these city rambles Adam loses track of time, ceases seeing, only maintaining the level of perception necessary to avoid colliding with lamp-posts, drunks stumbling out of pubs. Only after he has retraced his steps back to Mile End, to flop exhausted into bed in the early hours, do the muscles in his legs begin to ache. When Adam walks, introspection staves off fatigue, distracts him from other night prowlers and the possibility of violence. To walk is to remember, and possessed by memories of Mischa Adam has traversed every inch of London. He has meandered along the banks of the Thames to Hammersmith, mind cast back to the nights of lying awake beside him as he slept, his heart speeding in fear of being discovered as a fraud, inept at intimacy. Ill-equipped for something as simple as happiness. Adam has lost his way in the suburbs of Essex, taking wrong turning after wrong turning, remembering Mischa’s coarse tongue tracing the outline of his spine, fingers blossoming into touch. Mischa’s childhood memories are lodged in Adam’s mind. Mischa the clown, the class chatterbox, exiled to the hall by his teacher, only to get another bollocking minutes later for joking with passers-by. The pale scar above his left eyebrow, from the time he flew over the handlebars of his bike, in a street in Cambridge when he was eleven years old.

The memory of infatuation is as bittersweet as yesterday. The shadows under his eyes, his stomach turning over, words freighted by fear. Mischa came and
went
like a firework, a chrysanthemum of light, before vanishing from Adam’s life. Resign yourself to it, Adam thinks. Get over it. Walk it off. Like a drunk walking off inebriation in the cold.

12

THE BROUGHTON FAMILY
, minus Jack, left Heathrow airport early one morning in April 1995 on a flight to Kuala Lumpur. For thirteen hours they flew against the spin of the earth, the aeroplane scudding through darkness and oceans of cloud, before soaring into the sunrise of the East. Frances had swallowed a sleeping pill in the departure lounge and lost consciousness before the plane left the runway (seat-belt clipped on, chair aligned for take-off), but Adam and Julia didn’t sleep a wink the entire journey. The furthest they’d been before the midnight flit was Southend-on-Sea and the long-haul flight was an adventure.

A taxi drove them from the airport to the shop house on Sultan Road where Madame Tay had lived alone for twenty-five years. She was waiting outside when the taxi arrived, sheltering from the sun under a lacy parasol. When Frances saw her old ayah she gave a cry and flung
open
the passenger door. She fell out, scraping her hands and knees, staggering up the roadside gutter on to the kerb. From the back seat Adam and Julia watched as their mother doubled over in her nurse’s pinafore, hands pressed to her mouth, shaking as though hysterical with laughter. Madame Tay’s parasol fell and rolled in an arc as she shuffled over to comfort the prodigal daughter. Frances collapsed into the frail old woman’s arms, sobbing in broken Cantonese.

As he and Julia climbed out of the cab, Adam dug his fingernails in his palms and swallowed hard. They’d never seen Frances cry before. She clung to Madame Tay as if she were the last person on Earth, the tightness of her grip bruising her arms (though no pain registered on the ayah’s face). Frances and Madame Tay embraced, blind to all onlookers: the stunned children, curious shoppers, the taxi driver impatient for his fare, and the Good Fortune Fabric Emporium manageress, patting her bouffant grey hairdo and smirking at the messy scene.

Adam and Julia lugged the suitcases up the stairs and Madame Tay put Frances to bed (their own mum – forty-three years old and put to bed like a child!) before turning her attention to the children, unconditional love beaming from the wrinkly depths of her face. Madame Tay had twenty-five years of bottled-up affection to squander, and the object of her doting was Julia (Adam privileged with the privacy and dignity afforded to teenage boys). The old ayah launched herself at Julia, who climbed on top of wardrobes and
dived
under beds to escape her insatiable liver-spotted arms. As Madame Tay kissed and cuddled her and massaged stinky tiger balm into her mosquito bites – which swelled all over Julia like mumps – Adam got the impression she wanted to eat her alive.

Madame Tay couldn’t speak English and communicated with them by shouting very slowly in Cantonese, as though they were retarded Chinese children. They picked up some of the language this way and were soon able to recognize the words for dinner time, bedtime, bath time, and wake your mother (or
Mei Mei ah!
as Madame Tay called her). When Madame Tay wasn’t chasing Julia she was cooking up on the roof-terrace kitchen, or cleaning the apartment, or watching Hong Kong soap operas with bizarre plot lines. Adam was ambivalent towards her. Sometimes she seemed little more than an innocuous old lady with ill-fitting dentures and a diaphanous cloud of hair. Other times Madame Tay seemed sinister and he was paranoid she had mind-reading powers and could tell when he’d been bad-mouthing his mother or wanking in the bathroom. Adam and Julia’s caginess around Madame Tay wasn’t helped by the sleep deprivation of the first week. Both cursed by over-sensitivity to disrupted circadian rhythms, they were badly jet lagged, tossing and turning night after night, eyes burning holes in the dark. Tired and apathetic, they rarely ventured out, and the apartment became like some shadowy nether realm between waking and sleep as they wandered listlessly, napping in unsatisfying fits and starts. Every night at
eleven
o’clock they went to the bedroom they shared (an arrangement they were far too old for, though neither objected when Madame Tay showed them to the room) and lay on beds veiled by mosquito net mantillas. The darkness gave free rein to the unquiet of wakefulness; the mangling of sheets and frustrated sighs; the hourly flush of the toilet after restless bladders had leaked a thimble of urine; shallow breaths never plunging beneath the surface of consciousness. A few times the sleep-starved Julia cried. She’d sit up and sob, calling out to Adam,
I hate it here! I want my dad!
and Adam would go to her, sweeping aside the netting to sit beside her. He’d give her shoulder a squeeze and reassure her he couldn’t sleep either. One night, when Julia wept, Adam hugged her – something he hadn’t done for years. She was slippery with sweat, her skin searing as though her homesickness was burning her up inside. In his arms Julia was all gangling bones, her shoulder-blades jutting sharply through her thin vest. Her sobs subsided as he soothed her. She shifted closer to him, touched her face to his, her tears wetting his cheek. She hooked her arm round Adam’s neck, and slackened, so her weight would pull them both down on the mattress. Adam teetered for a moment, unsure of whether to let himself fall. He thought of how nice it would be to lie with her, for their bodies to press together. But then, sickening, and with a strange ache of heart, Adam unhooked his sister’s arm from his neck and lay her down alone. He turned his back on her and lifted the mosquito nets to get back to his own bed.
Go
to
sleep
, he said, as if that wasn’t the problem, and Julia began to snivel again. Adam lay awake listening for a while, guilty and irritated, but less than an hour later the insomnia broke and they both slept until noon the next day.

During the time her children were wretched with insomnia Frances slept like the dead. She slept around the clock, literally dragging herself out of bed to eat the meals Madame Tay had cooked and stumbling back there as soon as she’d laid her chopsticks down. At first Adam and Julia were jealous of their mother: all she had to do was lay her head on the pillow and that was that – out like a light! But as the sleeping continued, the envy became anxiety. No matter how long Frances spent in bed, sprawled like a lazy starfish, or a swastika of arms and legs, her appetite for sleep was never sated. When Frances spoke she sounded drunk, slurred with fatigue, tongue drained of strength. She’d never been that way back in London. Back home she was always vacuuming, nagging, the knife a blur as she chopped vegetables. She’d eaten her breakfast on her feet, pacing the linoleum as she spooned up her bran cereal. But in Malaysia, helping Madame Tay with the chores, faded headscarf tied over her greying hair, Frances tired in minutes, abandoning feather duster and broom to go for ‘a lie down’. The children harassed her during her brief hiatuses from sleep –
You’ve slept the whole week! Are you ill? Drink some coffee!
– and Madame Tay quietly took over the duties of motherhood, making Adam and Julia eat their vegetables, sending them to
bed
at eleven and wagging her finger when they fought.

The sleeping bothered Julia the most. She invented excuses to go and wake her.
Mummmy
… she’d whine in a babyish voice, tugging Frances until she lifted her head from the pillow and squinted as if trying to recognize the lanky girl with the skinny blonde plaits. Julia usually asked Frances for permission to go across the street and buy ice cream. And Frances would mumble her consent, waving towards the handbag on the dresser.
Take what you want
, she’d say, eyelids fluttering shut. This liberal attitude to ice cream frustrated Julia. Ice cream wasn’t allowed. Not every day. And definitely not an hour before dinner. And on the rare occasions it was allowed, Frances counted out the money, warning the recipient to return with change.

‘She wasn’t even sleeping. Just lying there with her eyes open,’ Julia told Adam as she licked her flavourless cone. ‘I saw.’

Though Chinatown was on their doorstep Adam and Julia spent most days lazing indoors, cross-eyed with boredom. Stuck with each other, they played hours of blackjack and poker, until Adam shuffled decks in his dreams. When they were sick of cards they persuaded Madame Tay to unlock their grandfather’s study (the grandfather they’d been told was dead, but was actually alive and living two miles from their home in east London). The study was a museum of Mr Milnar’s scholarly past, the shelves stacked with reference books,
geographical
surveys and travel memoirs; the filing cabinets stuffed with sheafs of foolscap covered in Chinese calligraphy, some characters practised hundreds of times per leaf, as though Mr Milnar had been in a hypnotic trance. On the desk was an Olivetti typewriter with a desiccated ink ribbon, a yellowing wad of manuscript paper (the palimpsest of a letter composed in Mandarin on the topmost layer) and a globe that squeaked when spun on its axis. Adam and Julia spent hours rifling through the old man’s stuff, pulling out drawers and reading his private correspondence (
Look at this!
they’d cry, waving a photograph of their grandfather in a loincloth and Iban warrior headdress, posing before a jungle backdrop). Imaginations whetted by the roomful of artefacts, Adam and Julia regressed to the role-playing games of their childhood. They adopted secret code-names and pretended to be the CIA, shooting each other in the hallway with their grandfather’s fountain pens. They found a magnifying glass in the bureau drawer and, dressed in his moth-eaten suits and panama hats – Julia with a brown felt-tip moustache on her upper lip – made believe they were detectives. It was the most fun Adam had had in ages, but he was deeply embarrassed to be playing with his little sister at the age of fourteen, and whenever the burden of shame became too much he gave her a Chinese burn.