The White Amah (24 page)

‘Them brown onions are killers. I allus peels ’em in water in the sink. Oh lordy, it’s coming on raining,’ said the housekeeper, sensing a row brewing, and she scurried out to the clothesline.

As soon as she left David gently took the knife out of Mei Li’s hand. ‘We’ve got to talk. Pa is handing over the Baram Harwood Timber portfolio to me and I’ll be travelling to Miri regularly to run my eye over logging contracts. You’ll be able to come with me once we’re married so it won’t be like you’re losing all links with your past, and hopefully all the media interest will have died down by the time we come back.’ It was the perfect solution, so he was stunned by her response.

‘Why you help bad people take our land?’ she asked, incensed that he was working for the company responsible for destroying her people’s traditional way of life.

‘Lumber is required throughout the world and Borneo has vast tracts of forest. The demand for wood and wood products
such as paper is expected to double in the next fifty years. The timber industry is vital to Malaysia’s economy,’ he explained, rolling out the statistics confidently.

‘Land belongs to Dayaks,’ she said stubbornly. ‘When trees go, animals go, fish go and then the people go.’

‘We’re working strictly within the law, Mei.’

‘In your world only one law: strong takes from weak.’

‘Mei, I understand how you feel about the people who looked after you. I don’t expect you to forget about them, and you must know I’ll look after them financially, for your sake. So there’s no need to worry your head on that score, but you’ve got to stop acting like some female version of Tarzan. You’re not a Dayak. You’re white, for god’s sake!’ he said impatiently.

Mei Li had never heard of the Edgar Rice Burroughs hero, Tarzan, the lost child brought up in the jungle by apes, but she knew the tone of an insult when she heard one and her heart grew cold and hard. She was a proud Dayak and she resented his dismissal of her people and their traditional rights. Hadn’t their great chief Pang and his followers fought their way up the river and laid claim to the delta years ago, long before the White Rajahs had ruled over Sarawak? And in a revelation she realised the things that mattered to her didn’t matter to him. How could she marry someone who wouldn’t even try to understand how she felt about Rubiah and her grandparents? Was she supposed to bury those feelings, dismiss those loyalties, write off what went before and forget who she was?

She tore off the ring she’d threaded on a fine ribbon around her neck. ‘Not want ring. Not want you.’

‘Don’t be like that. You’re upset. You don’t mean it.’

In answer she threw the ring at him. It was the last straw.

‘Be like that then,’ snapped David. ‘I’m going to chambers.’ He stormed out of the room and slammed the door.

Ten minutes later Lady Entwistle found Mei Li, suspiciously bright-eyed, chopping vegetables for a spicy Malay chicken soup.

‘Onions,’ Mei Li said, wiping her eyes with the edge of Cook’s apron.

Lady Entwistle wasn’t fooled. She’d heard the raised voices before David had roared off down the drive, scattering the paparazzi pack that was hoping to catch a glimpse of the elusive girl at the centre of the celebratory murder trial.

‘You don’t have to do that, my dear. You’re our guest.’

‘Madam Ling like soup. I cook for her, Dayak way.’

Lady Entwistle raised her eyebrows with a look of incredulity. She couldn’t imagine Xiang wanting to eat anything made by this devious little schemer, but she kept her private thoughts to herself.

‘It smells delicious, but Cook can take over. I’d like to have a little chat. Mrs Smith, please serve tea for two in my sitting room with some of your delicious scones. Take off the apron, my dear.’ She handed Mei Li a delicate square of embroidered white muslin. ‘Mop up your tears and then you can tell me all about it.’

Once they were seated on the pretty, chintz-patterned couch in her private sitting room, Lady Entwistle said in her forthright manner, ‘I heard you squabbling with David earlier.’ She looked out at the walled garden. That’s where I’d like to be, she thought. Out in the sunny courtyard deadheading her prized old-fashioned tea roses instead of closeted with another of her soft-hearted son’s lame ducks.

Over the years David had brought home a series of stray
animals, from a bloody, dying rabbit with a broken leg he’d freed from a snare and insisted she make better, to the box of abandoned puppies tossed from the back of a Range Rover. He’d run their antiquated Rolls into a fence to avoid hitting them and then he’d insisted on rearing them until he could find them good homes. Two of the ugly brutes were even now rampaging through her herbaceous borders in revenge for being turned off the couch.

She knew she had been weak in the past and should have put her foot down. The trouble was, her mild-mannered son was stubborn and fiercely loyal. Trying to dissuade him was like trying to stop an avalanche with a stop sign. But championing this devious girl was another matter. She’d hoped David would see how unsuitable Mei Li was when he saw her in his home alongside young people of his own station. Instead he had grown more protective towards her and she feared that Mei Li was more than just his current crusade.

Roland hadn’t been much help. ‘When that son of yours makes up his mind there’s no stopping him, is there?’ her husband had replied cheerfully when she complained to him. Rather than discourage a relationship with a girl who was little more than a savage, he appeared to be as bewitched by her as David.

Men could be such chumps at times. Why this girl, when he could have his pick of the county? It was so like David. All the same, Mei Li was a guest in her home and she prided herself on being a good hostess.

‘Do you want to tell me about it?’ she asked, her tone consciously kind.

‘I want to go home,’ Mei Li blurted out.

‘Ah,’ said Lady Entwistle, pleased. She had nothing against
the girl personally, but Mei Li was wrong for David. Of course he couldn’t see it but he was only twenty-four, much too young to be considering marriage, especially to the daughter of a notorious murderer. But it was easy to see how the little hussy had ensnared David. Even her uniform of plain white tunic over black shapeless pants couldn’t hide her graceful shape. Her shiny dark hair was loose and fell to her waist. In the sunlight streaming through the French windows, it shone with dark-red lights. In spite of the dark smudges under her eyes, her face was as exquisite as the miniature of a lovely eighteenth-century young lady she’d admired in the local antique shop. It was such a pity about her background, because their children would be gorgeous.

‘We’ve enjoyed having you,’ Lady Entwistle said graciously.

The truth was, she couldn’t wait to be rid of Xiang, her children and Mei Li. It was her dearest wish that she never see any of them ever again and she intended to tell Roland he’d be wise to discontinue his business dealings with Joseph Ling. That way there’d be no opportunity for the little gold-digger to get her claws into her son again.

At least Joe had had the consideration to take himself off to London. The brazen adulterer had decamped to the flat he leased in Belgravia when the story broke. Lady Entwistle couldn’t bear to have him in the house after the way he’d treated poor Xiang, carrying on with that unfortunate young woman right in front of her children. But that’s what happens when you marry a younger man, she thought uncharitably. In no way had Joe’s departure compensated for having his family in her home and the media on the doorstep. For three weeks the paparazzi had been camped outside the gates and she felt like a prisoner in her own home. Sometimes she wished she were living back in
the Middle Ages, when it was acceptable to pour boiling oil on an invading army. That’s how it felt: like living through a siege. Hopefully, life would settle back to normal once this wretched girl had gone back to the jungle where she belonged.

Mei Li was debating whether she should confide in the woman who might have been her mother-in-law if things had worked out differently. Should she take the risk and tell Lady Entwistle she was in love with her son? She needed to talk to someone about her feelings for David so much that it hurt. For days she’d been struggling, trying to reconcile her sense of duty with her natural desire to be with the man she loved. Clearly her responsibility was to her grandparents, the only family she had ever known, but she loved David so much. How could she expect him to give up this – and her eyes roamed round Lady Entwistle’s country-house sitting room – to sleep on a mat in a ramshackle longhouse?

Mei Li thought that if there was one member of the family who might understand about putting duty before desire, it was David’s mother.
‘Noblesse oblige’
was one of Lady Entwistle’s pet phrases, usually accompanied by a bray of laughter as she sailed out the door in a tulle-swathed straw boater, with Mrs Smith in her wake carrying a box of discards for the jumble sale.

When Mei Li had asked David what his mother had meant by the words, he explained that the privileged had a responsibility to help the less fortunate. ‘Ma sees herself as Lady Bountiful,’ he’d said and grinned.

Now Mei Li looked into Lady Entwistle’s face searchingly. The older woman’s eyes were gleaming and her stern expression had been replaced by a smile of satisfaction. She’s happy because I’m leaving, Mei Li thought, and she closed up, hoping
she wouldn’t break down in front of David’s formidable mother. I’d be a fool to give her another chance to say something hurtful, she thought. Mei Li remembered how Lady Entwistle had raised an arched eyebrow when she had used the wrong fork at one of her elaborate dinner parties, and made sure everyone at the table noticed.

‘I was just telling Colonel Pemberton that you’ve come to us straight from the jungle of Borneo, my dear,’ Lady Entwistle had said and turned to the man seated next to her. ‘It’s simply marvellous how she’s adapted, Colonel. Only weeks ago she was probably eating rice with her bare hands and slurping soup from a wooden bowl. That’s right, isn’t it, Mei Li?’ She had laughed conspiratorially as if she and Mei Li were friends.

But Mei Li hadn’t been fooled. She had glimpsed the enmity behind the smile. But she had felt reassured when David squeezed her hand under the table.

Later that evening Lady Entwistle had told Mei Li to ask Cook to replenish the sherry.

‘She’s just the Lings’ maid, Rosemary,’ Mei Li heard her say to the blond girl with the prominent front teeth and the pale, well-manicured hand resting on David’s arm. ‘The poor girl’s practically mute. I’ve given her a little job, David,’ she explained when she saw him frown, ‘so she doesn’t feel out of things. One must do one’s part to make her feel at home.’

In the sitting room, the silence had gone on too long. When Mei Li finally spoke, it was so quietly that Lady Entwistle had to strain to hear her.

‘Now that mother is with the spirits, it is my responsibility to care for my grandparents.’

For once Lady Entwistle was at a loss. She picked up her
cross-stitch and put it down again. ‘That woman … wasn’t your mother. Your real mother’s in prison charged with her murder.’ She shuddered at the thought of how maliciously the county would talk if her son married this tainted girl. ‘But I do understand, my dear. One must act according to one’s principles,
noblesse oblige
and all that.’ She looked at the clock and frowned. Where was the housekeeper with the tea? ‘Mrs Smith is taking a long time with the tea tray. I’ll just see what’s holding her up.’

When Lady Entwistle left the room Mei Li got off the couch, drawn to the sunshine streaming through the open French doors. The view of the garden swam before her brimming eyes and she fought to stop them from welling over. She’d been in shock since she’d been told that Rubiah had been brutally murdered by Tuff, her birth mother. The horror of her quarrel with David had been too much, coming on top of the trauma of the last dreadful weeks, and she was holding back her emotions with difficulty. She knew if she started crying again she’d never stop. Not only had she lost the only mother she’d ever known, but now she also had to give up David, the only man she would ever love.

Lady Entwistle came back carrying the tea tray herself. She was pleased with the outcome of her talk and she searched her mind for an errand to keep Mei Li busy after she’d finished her tea. She didn’t want her troubling poor Xiang. Looking at Mei Li’s innocent face, it was hard to believe such a lovely girl could be so deceitful, inveigling herself into a position of trust in the home of her mother’s lover. But like her husband often said when he was talking about their friends’ children, the acorn never fell too far from the tree. Obviously Mei Li had taken after her unspeakable mother.

She sighed when Adele opened the door and handed her the
post, eyeing the uneaten scones and gooseberry jam greedily ‘Tea?’ she asked resignedly.

‘Yes, please,’ replied Adele, and she sat down, unaware of the strained atmosphere, and helped herself to a scone. ‘There’s a letter for you, Mei Li,’ she said, dropping crumbs from her overstuffed mouth.

‘So there is,’ said Lady Entwistle, looking at the prison envelope, and she shuddered theatrically. The chatty postman would have spread the story all over the village by now. It was mortifying. Was there no end to the shame this girl was inflicting on the family? All the same she was curious. ‘Shall I read it to you, my dear?’ She picked up her paper knife.

‘No, no, I read it later. ’Scuse me, please.’