Paul Theroux - The Consul's File

Miss Harbottle's face fell. 'I never pay,' she said. 'I don't carry much cash.' She squinted at me. 'That's pretty unfair.'

'I don't want money,' I said.

She said, 'You should be ashamed of yourself. I'm fifty-two years old.'

'And not that either,' I said. 'Your payment will be a picture. One of your watercolours for every night you stay here from now on.'

'I can't find my brushes.'

'I'll buy you some new ones.'

'I see,' she said, and as soon as we finished eating she went to her room.

Late that same night the telephone rang. It was Peer-aswami. He had just come from a meeting outside the mosque. Ali Mohammed was there, and Mekmal, and City Bar, and the men from the river, the rubber tappers— everyone with a grievance against Miss Harbottle. They had discussed ways of dealing with the woman. The Malays wanted to humiliate her; the Chinese suggested turning the matter over to a secret society; the Indians had pressed for some expensive litigation. It was the first time I had seen the town united in this way, their single object — the plump Miss Harbottle — inspiring in them a sense of harmonious purpose. I didn't discourage Peeraswami, though he reported the proceedings with what I thought was uncalled-for glee.

'I'm afraid there's nothing I can do/ I said. She was Rogers' guest, not mine; Rogers' friends could deal with her.

'What to do?' asked Peerswami.

'Whatever you think best.’ I said. 'And I wouldn't be a bit surprised if she was on the early bus tomorrow.'

In the morning, Ah Wing woke me with tea and the news that there were twenty people in the garden demanding to see me. I took my time dressing and then went out. They saw me and called out in Malay, 'Where is she? Where is the orang putehi'

Ah Wing shook his head. He said, 'Not here.'

'Liar! ' Peeraswami yelled, and this cry was taken up by the others.

Ah Wing turned to me and said, 'She left early — on the Singapore bus.'

'Liar!' said Peeraswami again. 'We were at the bus station.'

'Yes,' said Ali Mohammed. 'There was no woman at the station.' He had a stick in his hand; he shook it at me and said, 'We want to search your house.'

'Wait,' I said. 'Did you see a European?'

'A man only,' said Ali Mohammed.

'A fat one,' said Peeraswami with anger and disgust. 'He refused Mekmal to carry his boxes.'

I'm sure my laughter bewildered them; I was full of gratitude for Miss Harbottle. I loved her for that.

The insects warbled at the windows, and on the wall a pale gecko chattered and flicked its tail. It was one of those intimate late-night pauses — we had been drinking for two hours and had passed the point of drunken chit-chat. Then, to break the silence, I said, Tve lost my spare pair of glasses.'

'I hadn't noticed,' said Strang. A surveyor, he had the abrupt manner of one who works alone. He was mapping this part of the state and he had made Ayer Hitam his base. His wife, Milly, was devoted to him, people said; it seemed an unusual piece of praise. Strang picked up his drink. 'You won't find them.'

'It's an excuse to go down to Singapore for a new pair.'

Strang looked thoughtful. I expected him to say something about Singapore. We were alone. Stanley Chee had slammed the door for the last time and had left a tray of drinks on the bar that we could sign for on the chit-pad.

Still Strang didn't reply. The ensuing silence made my sentence about Singapore a frivolous echo. He walked over and poured himself a large gin, emptied a bottle of tonic into the tall glass and pinched a new slice of lemon into it.

'I ever tell you about the Parrishes?'

A rhetorical question: he was still talking.

Married couple I met up in Kota Bahru. Jungle bashers. Milly and I lived there our first year — looked like paradise to us, if you could stand the sand-flies. Didn't see much of the Parrishes. They quarrelled an awful lot, so we stayed as far away as possible from their arguments. Seemed unlucky. We'd only been married a few months.' He smiled. 'Old Parrish took quite a shine to Milly.'

'What did the Parrishes argue about?' Was this what he wanted me to ask? I hoped he was not expecting me to drag the story out of him. I wanted him to keep talking and let it flow over me. But even at the best of times Strang was no spellbinder; tonight he seemed agitated.

'See, that shows you've never been spliced,' he said. 'Married people argue about everything — any thing. A tone of voice, saying please, the colour of the wallpaper, something you forgot, the speed of the fan, food, friends, the weather. That tie of yours — if you had a wife she'd hate you for it. A bone of contention,' said Strang slowly, 'is just a bone.'

'Perhaps I have that in store for me.' I filled my own drink and signed for that and Strang's.

'Take my advice,' he said. 'No — it was something you said a minute ago. Oh, you lost your specs. That's what I was going to say. The Parrishes argued about everything, but most of all they argued about things they lost. I mean, things she lost. She was incredible. At first he barely noticed it. She lost small things, lipstick, her cigarettes, her comb. She didn't bother to look for them. She was very county — her parents had money, and she had a kind of contempt for it. Usually she didn't even try to replace the things she lost. The funny thing is, she seemed to do it on purpose— to lose things she hated.

'He was the local magistrate. An Outward Bound type. After a week in court he was dead keen to go camping. Old Parrish — he looked like a goat, little pointed beard and those sort of hairy ears. They went on these camping trips and invariably she lost something en route — the house keys, her watch, the matches, you name it. But she was a terrific map-reader and he was appalling, so he really depended on her. I think he had some love for her. He was a lot older than she was — he'd married her on a Long Leave.

'Once, he showed how much he loved her. She lost fifty dollars. Not a hard thing to do — it was a fifty-dollar note, the one with the mosque on it. I would have cried, myself, but she just shrugged, and knowing how she was continually losing things he was sympathetic. "Poor thing," he says, "you must feel a right charlie." But not a bit of it. She had always had money. She didn't take a blind bit of notice, and she was annoyed that he pitied her for losing the fifty sheets. Hated him for noticing it.

'They went off on their camping trips — expeditions was more like it — and always to the same general area. Old Parrish had told me one or two things about it. There was one of these up-country lakes, with a strange island in die middle of it. They couldn't find it on the map, but they knew roughly where it was supposed to be — there's never been a detailed survey done of the Malaysian interior. But that's where the Parrishes were headed every weekend during that dry season. The attraction was the monkeys. Apparently, the local sakais — they might have been Laruts — had deported some wild monkeys there. The monkeys got too stroppy around the village, so being peace-loving buggers the sakais just caught them and tied them up and brought them to the island where they wouldn't bother anyone. There were about a dozen of these beasts, surrounded by water. An island of wild monkeys — imagine landing there on a dark night!

'In the meantime, we saw the Parrishes occasionally in the compound during the week and that's where I kept up to date with the story. As I say, his first reaction when she lost things was to be sympathetic. But afterwards, it irritated him. She lost her handbag and he shouted at her. She lost her watch — it was one he had given her — and he wouldn't speak to her for days. She mislaid the bathplug, lost some jewellery, his passport disappeared. And that's the way it went — bloody annoying. I don't know what effect this had on her. I suppose she thought she deserved his anger. People who lose things get all knotted up about it, and the fear of losing things makes them do it all the more. That's what I thought then.