The Pearl of Penang by Clare Flynn (best mobile ebook reader txt) 📕

marry Veronica, he’d recommend me for promotion to a dream posting, as long as it was far away from Kenya.’

‘He said all that? Just like that? What did Veronica say?’

‘Nothing. She sat there in silence, looking at the floor.’

‘So what did you say?’

‘I told the DC I wanted to stay in Africa. I wanted to be promoted on my own merit.’

‘And?’

‘He told me if it was based on merit I’d have been promoted two years earlier and unless I married Veronica and got her out of his way I’d continue to be overlooked. Not an ounce of remorse. He bumbled on about about how he’d been caught on a sticky wicket and that things had gone further than he’d intended. The fact that he was Veronica’s boss and married with five children had no apparent bearing on the matter. The unspoken implication was that Veronica was a latter-day Jezebel.’

Evie bit her tongue – her saying that it was a pretty accurate description was unlikely to be well received.

‘I was stunned. I asked Veronica what she wanted to do. She said she wanted to marry me. Begged me to agree. So I did.’ He sighed. ‘I’m not proud of it. I was young, foolish and in need of a wife. She was alone, pregnant and facing the certain loss of her job.’

‘I don’t know what to say.’

Arthur was still pacing up and down. ‘We left Nairobi a few weeks later, as man and wife. Veronica set out to make my career advancement her personal mission. She became the perfect administrator’s wife, playing the part so well she’s forgotten where fiction and reality meet. I’m the only one who’s ever seen the other side of her: the frightened little girl whose childhood was stolen by a drunk in a filthy Nairobi shanty. I’m the only one who ever witnesses her when the black cloud descends and she’s filled with self-loathing to the point where she sometimes wants to take her own life.’

‘She’s tried to kill herself?’

‘Threatened to.’ He shook his head. ‘But I’ve no doubt she’d do it if it came to it.’

‘What about the pregnancy?’

His face clouded. ‘Veronica lost the baby. And she can’t have any more. She saw that as a punishment. Another reason to hate herself.’

Evie felt a twinge of guilt, remembering how she had put Veronica on the spot the night before about her and Arthur being childless.

Arthur reached for his towel. ‘So that’s why I can’t leave her. Why I can’t abandon her. It would be placing a sentence of death upon her.’ He rubbed the towel through his hair. ‘But it’s not only that. We’re both selfish and ambitious and, if I’m honest, I’m more so than she is. The truth is I recognised in Veronica something in myself – a burning desire to better herself. I don’t love her. I never have. She doesn’t love me either. We don’t even sleep together. That’s another thing. Despite her promiscuity, Veronica doesn’t actually like that side of things. I live like a monk.’

He looked up above their heads into the dark interior of the casuarina tree, then dropped his gaze again to meet hers. ‘You are the only person on earth I’ve told about all this, Evie. My marriage to Veronica is a form of mutualism – we have a symbiotic relationship. If I were to leave her it would also be the end of my career. They don’t like divorced men in the civil service.’

He pulled his trousers on over his sun-dried trunks and said, ‘I have to go. I’m already late. I’m sorry.’ Giving her a tight-lipped smile, he turned and made his way along the beach towards the glint of metal through the trees which was his car.

Evie felt numb. Yet at the same time, relieved. She told herself that what had happened in the sea had been a flash of madness. They had both been caught up in the moment, and now she had to put it behind her.

Arthur Leighton had gone out of his way to try to make it hard for Evie to feel anything for him. He had tried to persuade her he was a selfish, ambitious man who had put his career before everything else. But she sensed his main rationale for taking on Veronica had been compassion. The idea of Arthur as a cold and ruthless careerist didn’t square with everything else she knew about the man who had just held her in his arms and kissed her passionately.

There was something corrupting about Malaya. A sense of decay. Something that made even the most decent of people lose their moral code. Just thinking about the oddness of the Leightons’ marriage made her feel queasy. She reminded herself that her own was no less odd and had also been born out of pragmatism not love.

14

A few days later, looking for distraction from her almost constant thoughts of Arthur Leighton, Evie collected Jasmine after school for a visit to the Waterfall Garden, the botanical garden on the outskirts of George Town. They wandered through the tropical paradise of winding footpaths, colourful flowers and waterfalls, with wild monkeys screaming as they swung through the trees. Jasmine had never visited the place before and was delighted to see the monkeys at close quarters.

They lost track of time and had to hurry back towards where Benny would be waiting for them in the motor car. Jasmine skipped along beside Evie and after a few minutes she reached up and took her hand.

‘I’d like you to be my mummy, but I don’t want you to die.’

Evie pulled up short, horrified. She bent down beside the little girl and scooped her into her arms. ‘Of course I won’t die, Jasmine. What on earth gave you that idea?’

‘I’m the only girl in my class at school who doesn’t have a mummy. Betty Foster says my mummy lost the will to live. She said her mummy told her.’

‘What nonsense. Betty must be a very silly girl.