It was nine o’clock when she went to bed. Taking the lamp with her, she made her way through to her bedroom, the only other room in the small house. Above her bed, suspended from an exposed rafter, hung a voluminous mosquito net. It was a comfort for her, a luxury, the only means of ensuring a night untroubled by stinging insects.
Sitting on the edge of her bed, she blew out the lamp’s flame and slipped behind the net. The bed was narrow, but not uncomfortable, and it seemed to her that the sheets had been freshly laundered, for they were crisp and sweet-smelling. She wondered who had gone to all this trouble. It was unlikely that the pirates themselves – crude types, she suspected – would have bothered to ensure her comfort in this way, and if they had not done this, then it could only be Edward Hong who was behind it. In fact, the more she thought of it the clearer it became to her. In Edward Hong M.A. (Cantab.), she had a protector, a man who cared for her welfare. It was a reassuring feeling, a feeling that can normally be expected to induce in many single women a warm feeling of contentment. And Domenica, for all that she was a distinguished anthropologist, was a woman; and what woman would not be pleased to know that there was a lithe young man immediately at hand, at her beck and call, while, in the background, there was a more mature and urbane M.A. (Cantab.) who had her interests at heart?
With these pleasant thoughts in her mind, Domenica began to feel drowsy. It had been an unusual and demanding day. The walk down the track to the village had been physically tiring, and the change of surroundings had also had an effect.
As she lay there in this state of agreeable tiredness, Domenica allowed her mind to wander over what lay ahead. Tomorrow, she would introduce herself, with Ling’s assistance, to the people of the village. She would introduce herself to the women first, as they would be the focus of her scientific inquiry, and then in due course she would meet the pirates themselves. For a moment she thought of pirates, and a few snatches of Gilbert and Sullivan A Nocturnal Visitation 177
came to her mind, faintly, as if from a distant, half-heard chorus: For he is a pirate king! Hurrah for the pirate king! And it is, it is a glorious thing, to be a pirate king . . . How absurd, thought Domenica sleepily; how completely inappropriate. It was not at all glorious; not at all.
57. A Nocturnal Visitation
Domenica was a sound sleeper, even if she had a tendency to awake somewhat early. In Scotland Street, in the summer, she would often find herself wide awake at five in the morning; it was, she felt, the finest part of the day, and she would often go out and walk round Drummond Place at that hour, enjoying the quiet of the morning. In Malaysia, where the day was divided into two roughly equal parts, it would still be dark at five and she imagined that if she woke up that early she would stay in bed for a while before getting up and starting the day. Once the sun rose, of course, it would be too hot to stay in bed anyway, and one might as well get up and begin by pouring a large jug full of tepid water over one’s face and shoulders. She looked forward to that; bathing oneself in a place without running water was an almost sacramental act, underlining the preciousness of that water that one takes so much for granted when it flows from a tap.
However, she did not wake up at five that morning, but closer to two. She did not confirm that it was two o’clock; it just felt like that, when she suddenly became conscious of her surroundings and of the shafts of moonlight which came through the small window above her bed. The moonlight, soft and diffuse, fell half upon the folds of the mosquito net and half upon the floorboards.
Beyond it, the room was filled with dark shadows; the shape of the roughly-finished chest of drawers in which she had stacked her clothes before retiring; the form of the table and the small pile of books that she had piled there on retrieving them from her suitcase; the low hillock of the chair near the door. But then, between the bed and the chest of drawers, just touched in part 178 A Nocturnal Visitation
by the moonlight, was the shape of a man, standing quite still.
The first thing that came to Domenica’s mind was a literary reference. She had read somewhere, some time ago, that one of the most disturbing experiences in this life was to wake up and discover that one is not alone in a house in which one had gone to bed believing oneself to be alone. Who had said that? Who?
It was John Fowles; yes, that was who it was; not in The Magus, but somewhere else. Or at least she thought it was him; and now the words, whatever their provenance, came back to her, and caught at her wildly palpitating heart.
She did not move. She lay there, her limbs heavy beneath the sheets, her eyelids the only part of her moving, and very slightly at that, as she watched the still figure at the end of her bed.
For a moment she wondered if she was imagining it, if this was just another shadow, a trick of the light; but it was not, and she knew that it was not. She thought: I can scream. I can wake people up. It’s a small village and they will all hear me. People would come; Ling, the young man, the family in the house next door, which was not far away. And if I scream and this man comes for me, I can throw myself off the bed; there is a mosquito net between him and me, and he will have to fumble with that, which will give me the time to escape. She wondered if the man could see that her eyes were open. Probably not, she thought, for her head was in the shadows and he would not be able to see her face. That made her feel better. And the fact, too, that he was just standing there made her fear subside slightly. He was looking at her, just looking, and there was no sign that he was planning to attack her. And again, unbidden, there came to her mind another literary reference; this time its source quite clear. Carson McCullers, she thought. Reflections in a Golden Eye. The private soldier, the slow one, watches the Major’s wife from outside her window; that is all he does, he watches her. And then he comes into the house and watches her there too. He is gentle, unthreatening, a watcher. Boo Radley, she thought; another gentle watcher; the man who watches Jem and Scout Finch; watches over them, really, and saves their lives eventually. I am being watched. That is all this man is doing. He is watching me.
Moving In, Moving Out 179
She felt calmer now, and for a moment almost as if she would laugh, with the release of tension. The figure in the shadows had ceased to be threatening; it was as if he had become a companion. That is what she now thought, and it was at that moment that he stepped forward; not a great step, but just a small movement in her direction. And as he did so, the moonlight fell on his face, and she saw who it was. It was not a man at all. It was the boy, the teenage boy who had carried her suitcase and whose photograph she had taken.
She caught her breath in surprise, a gasp that he heard, for he turned round quickly and ran out of the room.
“What do you want?” Domenica called out. “Why are you here?”
Her voice was not loud at all, and the boy probably did not hear it. Or her words might have been lost in the sound of the outer door slamming behind him.
She reached for the box of matches on the table beside her bed and struck one to light the lamp. In the glow of the lamp, the shadows resolved and became solid, unthreatening objects.
Domenica no longer felt alarmed, just curious. She had frightened the boy away, and in a strange way she was sorry about that.