The Harmony Silk Factory

I went up to my room and had a long soak in the cavernous roll-top bath. One of its claw-and-ball feet was missing, replaced by a sturdy block of wood. As I reclined in the lukewarm water I looked at the flakes of peeling paint on the ceiling and the glossy green-black moss forming on the cornices. The rugs on the floor were threadbare, patched and tufted like mange on a feral Malayan dog. Nonetheless, my bath seemed transcendentally luxurious after an arduous day on the road; it brought relief to my aching muscles and washed away the red dust that had formed a film on my skin. I made a quick mental note: not even Rolls-Royces are immune to the forces of nature.

At the bottom of the sweeping, dimly lit stairs, I paused to straighten my tie. I wanted to make sure that Snow saw me in the best possible light: freshly scrubbed and shaved, immaculately dressed, fully revived, and bursting with joie de vivre. The voices from the dining room drifted into the foyer, muffled and inarticulate but audible nonetheless. I listened for Snow’s voice but heard only those of Kunichika and Honey. They spoke softly but firmly, forming each word carefully and with great deliberation. One or two words were emphasised heavily, but their voices were never raised.

“Ah, Wormwood,” Honey said breezily when I walked into the room. “What will you have — whisky? Always take it neat in the tropics. Kills the germs, you see.”

“I know, you’ve already told me that. How kind,” I said, accepting the cigarette he offered me. I looked at Johnny. He wore an ivory-coloured shirt of mine, which I had given to him some days earlier. I had noticed him looking at it longingly, and told him it had been made for me in Paris (I had in fact bought it in Tunbridge Wells). When I gave it to him he said, “That is the kind of thing I want to sell in my new shop.” This evening he was wearing it for the first time, and he looked awful. The yoke was too tight across his shoulders, the sleeves were too long, and the colour was too pale for his complexion. His face looked flushed and damp with perspiration, and he stared resolutely at the melting cubes of ice in his drink. With his forefinger he drew shapes in the moisture on the glass, his eyes hollow and unblinking.

For the rest of dinner, Honey held court like a schoolmaster lecturing a group of fifth-form boys. His stories of petty tin-mining heroics failed to impress anyone. He filled his chair magisterially, speaking with an air of studied superiority, frequently exhaling plumes of cigarette smoke. In every respect he resembled a young child imitating the mannerisms of an adult. He looked at Johnny as he spoke — singling out the easiest target, as it were: no one else seemed interested.

“Nonsense,” I said, challenging every assertion he made. I spoke with as much sang-froid as possible. Snow had now joined us, and it was important to pitch my voice in exactly the right manner: clever but not cynical, involved but not aggressive. I cast a quick glance at her. I was not surprised to see she was looking at Kunichika, and he at her.

“I don’t believe a word of it,” I said at the end of Honey’s long and implausible story about the killing of an English tin miner by a Chinaman coolie. Whatever control I had had over my voice seemed suddenly to have vanished, and I was aware of the sharpness of my words: waspish, acidic, adolescent. It was too late now, and I lashed out at the inconsistencies of his story. To my surprise, this unseemly little rant raised a smile from Snow — though I could not decide whether the subject of her mirth was me or Honey.

We had an execrable meal of réchauffé leftovers — bacterial soup of an unidentifiable variety (though mutton was clearly an important component), bland chicken, and lumpy rice pudding. “I think this presages the end of the Empire, don’t you?” I said. A string quartet sat under the dry, drooping leaves of an enormous potted palm. Like the plant, the members of the quartet seemed near death. They moved their bows feebly and played out of tune, turning every piece into a sad, funereal farewell. Even the most recent songs were somehow transformed into antique death marches—“J’attendrais,” for example, a blithe and simplistic song (learnt, no doubt, from an itinerant French planter), was executed with moaning top notes which begged to be accompanied by the tolling of an Orthodox funeral bell. Over this horrific continuo, Honey sounded off on every conceivable topic. He was a soi-disant expert on everything relating to the tropics, from fungal infections to the politics of the Malay sultanate. The cacophony was so distracting that I barely noticed Snow slip away from the table. I waited a minute before following her, making the appropriate excuses as I left. I thought I might catch her before she got to her room — I would use Johnny’s “illness” as an excuse to engage her in conversation.