William Boyd - The Blue Afternoon

The first rains arrived early that year but Dr Salvador Carriscant, ever prudent, had been carrying his umbrella with him since the end of January and, as the first fat drops hit his head, he congratulated himself on his foresight. He folded away his small easel and sketch pad and closed his box of water-colours before retreating to the shelter of a nearby bamboo grove, where he was still afforded a clear view of the Calle Lagarda and of the entrance to the Sieverance home. The bamboo grove was on the other side of a small overgrown creek – the estero San Miguel – from the Calle Lagarda and its spacious villas. Conscious of the risks he had run on the last occasion he had indulged in espionage, he had gone to some lengths to make his presence here plausible should he be discovered. In his sketch book were several indifferent and half completed views of this undistinguished portion of Manila 's suburbs. An expanse of marshland, some rice fields, a few palm trees and in the distance the neat dome and campanile of the San Sebastian church and convent. He had always vaguely planned to take up water-colouring as a hobby and respite from the relentless demands of the operating theatre and had seized on this pastime as the perfect way both to satisfy this urge and 'innocently' observe the Sieverance home. He had to admit, however, it was the proximity of the house and its occupant that distracted him and dominated his mind and not the soothing effect of his daubings.

Colonel Jepson Sieverance and his new regiment, the 1st Nebraska Volunteers, had embarked for Mindanao five days previously on the steamer Brewster, according to the gazette in the Manila Times, a fact that Paton Bobby had confirmed too. With the husband gone, Carriscant knew he had to see Delphine once more, but without the presence of Nurse Aslinger as chaperone. The nurse, he reasoned, must quit the house occasionally, but three days of patient water-colouring – two hours the first, four and a half the second – had seen no-one but servants enter or leave the compound. He checked his pocket watch: he had been out for almost three hours again today, and now the rain had started he wondered if it were worth lingering further. He looked up at the turbulent, livid sky. Rain in the Philippines is a full-blooded, uncompromising, natural phenomenon. The big drops noisily battered the material of his umbrella and he could feel the ground beneath his feet beginning to soften and deliquesce. Above his head the fine spiky fronds of the bamboo stands were thrashed and flung this way and that by a robust breeze. Some beetle droned by searching for shelter, an angry noise in a black dot…

A faint clatter of hooves made him look sharply across the estero as, to his surprise, he saw the gate to the Sieverance compound open and a small carromato emerge containing, indubitably, the mackintoshed and ample figure of Nurse Aslinger. It trotted down the Calle Lagarda towards the Malacanan Palace and as it did so, Carriscant, bent beneath his umbrella, hurried upstream to the Marquez bridge and splashed his way down the dirt track that led back into San Miguel. He was at her front door in five minutes. Two minutes later he was pacing damply about her living room waiting for the maid to inform Mrs Sieverance that Dr Carriscant was here to visit her. In his hand he held her copy of East Angels by Constance Fenimore Woolson. As a dutiful and responsible borrower, he told himself, he was returning the book promptly to its owner.

She came slowly into the room, walking with two sticks to help carry some of her weight. She was wearing an apple-green dress and her hair was up. Her wide smile of welcome was pronounced and irrefutable. His nervousness returned with perplexing force.

'Dr Carriscant, what a surprise.' She frowned, suddenly. 'I haven't forgotten, have I? We hadn't planned -'

'No, no. Ah… I was visiting my colleague, Dr Quiroga. I took the opportunity of returning your book.' He thrust it forward as if he had just learnt the meaning of the phrase, realised it was going to be awkward for her to take it, what with her two sticks, and looked around foolishly for a table on which to set it down.

'Let's put it back in my library,' she said, diplomatically easing his dilemma. 'Have you seen my library, Dr Carriscant? I shall need your help in any case.'

He refused her offers of lemonade, tea and coffee and followed her into a small study which led off the living room. One entire wall was lined floor to ceiling with bookcases and in front of a window that overlooked the rain-drenched rear garden was a small antique desk with a worn maroon leather top, cluttered with writing materials.

'I was writing to Jepson,' she said, hastily clearing away pen and many leaves of paper.

'Long letter,' Carriscant said. For heaven's sake the man had not been away a week. My God, I'm jealous.

'Well, actually it's a play.'

'A play? You're a writer? A playwright too.'

'Not unless the aspiration itself permits the title. I've written journalism, some pieces for magazines, Harper's, The Atlantic. The play, well, it's a bit of a dream. But now he's away I've got no excuse.'

'What's it about?'

'It's about a woman – ' She paused, and she looked disquieted. 'It's about a woman who is married, but who feels that she's made a terrible… ' She stopped again. 'It's about the terrifying power of social institutions.'

She seemed suddenly embarrassed by all these revelations and turned back to the view. 'Lord, look at that rain! Is this it now?' she asked him. 'Le deluge est-il arrive?' Her French accent was fine, he thought, with an odd touch of pride. Intelligent, cultivated woman.

'I'm afraid so,' Carriscant said, and embarked on a short disquisition about the rainy season in the Philippines, the enervating, moist heat, the typhoons, the constant downpour. 'You can go up to the hills of course, where it's not so humid, but most of us endure it. Look forward to October and the cool nights.'

She reached for a small tin on her desk, opened it and held it out to him. Crystallised violets, dusted with fine sugar.

'The ones you gave me,' she said. 'I'm running out.'

He declined her offer. 'I'll get you some more,' he said. 'My source is very reliable.' She took one of the violets and popped it in her mouth. He watched her suck on it briefly, her cheeks concave, her jaws moving as she worked to extract its sweetness.

'Perhaps I will have one, if I may,' he said, his fingers taking a small mauve cluster from the reproffered tin.

'I have a complete obsession for these sweets,' she said. 'I think it's because I like the idea that I'm eating a flower.'

Carriscant felt he might pass out at any moment, the room seemed insufferably hot, the musty smell of the leather-bound volumes… He raised her novel in weakening, lethargic fingers.

'What should I do with this?'

'If you don't mind replacing it – Oh yes, what did you think of it? Didn't I tell you she was a fine writer?'

'Most enjoyable.' He could not remember a word. He had read the book in a kind of daze, seeing the words, not understanding them.

'That episode where Esmerelda bests the despicable Captain Farley is quite wonderful. Such fine satire.'

'I couldn't agree more. Absolutely.' His enthusiasm, he hoped, he assumed, would conceal his total ignorance.

'Now that is the type of independent woman I admire,' she said. 'Don't you agree?'

'Mmm. Now where should I -'

She pointed at a high shelf, one from the top of the bookcase, at the dark oblong slot of a missing volume.

'The Woolsons are all up there, I'm afraid,' she said. 'You'll have to use the library steps.'

She indicated a sturdy-looking oak chair, which seemed unimprovably chair like, until a second glance showed that it possessed rather too many broad redundant struts and a brass captain's hook hanging uselessly from its side. 'It unfolds into steps,' she explained.