Free The Man in the Wooden Hat by Jane Gardam

alone. What does Isobel say?”
    “She’s disappeared. As she always did. She was never any help with people’s troubles, was she? She just stared and pronounced—if she could be bothered. She’s burdened with her own secrets but she never lets on.”
    “I suppose she must tell someone. Some wise and ageing woman with a deep, understanding voice. And a beard.”
    Elisabeth laughed and said, “Can I pull this teat out now? She’s asleep.”
    Nick came in. It was very late. Very hot.
    Elisabeth, lying on the camp bed near the kitchen sink, listened to the clamour outside in the sweltering streets, the thundering muted lullaby of the mah-jong players in all the squats around.
    “I have no aim,” she said. “No certainty. I am a post-war invertebrate. I play mah-jong in my head year after year trying to find something I was born to do. I have settled on exactly what my mother would have wanted: a rich, safe, good husband and a pleasant life. All the things she must have thought in the Camp were gone for ever. Impossible for me, the scrawny child playing in the sand. Hearing screams, gunfire, silences in the night, watching lights searching in the barbed wire. I should be the last woman in the world to recreate the old world of the unswerving English wife. I am trying to please my dead mother. I always am.” She slept.
    And woke to Mrs. Baxter flopping about with teacups saying, “I tried not to wake you. Are you staying long? Shall we say a prayer together?”
    She and Elisabeth were alone, except for the baby, whom Mrs. Baxter ignored. Nick, Amy and the rest were already about the Colony and the nursery school and the clinics. The noise from the streets was less than in the night and the monks below were still silent. The telephone rang and it was Edward.
    “Found you at last. Are you safe?”
    “Of course. I’m going shopping.”
    “Shall I come?” He sounded afraid of the answer.
    “No. Do I have to come and sign things?”
    “Not yet. I’m organising it. I’m planning our trip. Oh—Pastry Willy wants us to dine with them tonight.”
    “Can’t,” she said. “Sorry. Next week? I must earn my keep here.”
    “As to that, are you all right for money?”
    “Rolling in it,” she said.
    “Unexpected expenses—? Wedding dress and presents for . . .”
    “You’re the one for presents. First, Eddie, to Amy. She needs them. Don’t dare to give her money; she’ll just put it into a savings account for the children. Look—I’m staying here. They’re my family. Until the wedding.”
    “Willy’s wife will be upset.”
    “No. I want to be married from Kai Tak with the planes all roaring overhead.”
    “Can you—I mean. Darling”—“Darling!” Progress?—“is there anywhere to wash there? A bathroom. To get ready on the day?”
    “No idea. I must get on. I have to clean the kitchen.”
    “Shall I come over? I think I should.”
    “It’s a free and easy place. Don’t come in spats.”
    “What on earth are spats?”
    “Oh, stuff it, Edward.”
     
    Mrs. Baxter, pale as a cobweb, had been listening at the kitchen table where she was doing something with needle and thread. “Was that a conversation with your fiancé?”
    “I suppose it was, Mrs. Baxter.”
    She was silent as Elisabeth scoured away at the scum in the rice pot, black outside, silver within. Huge and bulbous. The black and silver raised a sense of longing in Elisabeth, of memory and loss: the outdoor kitchen in Tiensin, the servants’ shouting, the stink of drains and cesspits, the clouds of dust, the drab sunlight and her mother appearing at the veranda door. The amah would come and pick up little Elisabeth, wiping her face with a grey cloth. She saw her mother’s plump arms open towards her as she stretched her own stubby ones up to her mother. They all laughed. Her mother had been a blonde. She had twirled around with glee, swinging her baby. The servants were scouring the rice pots until their silver linings