Back in the car Lisa asked, ‘What ball?’
Grace laughed. ‘Not exactly a ball, Lisa. A dinner at one of my clubs. There will be some very influential guests. I hope you will be able to come.’
Lisa was still flushed with the unaccustomed pleasure of her purchases. Her earlier ambivalence towards Grace had mellowed and, although still uncertain about this bewildering and contradictory woman, she felt somehow closer to her now, knowing that she and her father had been lovers. Being close to her was like being close to her father. She took Grace’s hand, feeling genuine affection, and squeezed it. ‘I hope so, too,’ she said.
The south-facing windows along one wall of the dining room were closed against the heat and brightness of the midday sun. But large French windows at one end opened out onto a shaded area of the lush green tropical garden that grew wild behind the high walls that surrounded Grace’s villa. The rumble of traffic from the road seemed distant and unreal, like a dream on waking. The hum of insects, and the squawking of tropical birds among the luxuriant greenery of the trees, was the only real intrusion on the peaceful semi-darkness of the room.
Lisa sat alone at the long dining table, drinking strong black coffee under the gentle cooling downdraught of the fan overhead. The girl who had served them lunch had cleared the table, and Grace had left the room a few moments earlier to take a phone call. Lisa could hear the soft murmur of her voice somewhere deep in the house. She drained her cup and got up and walked slowly to the open French windows to stand framed in the doorway, smelling the damp, sweet fragrances of the fleshy-leaved tropical plants and flowers. The garden was a profusion of wild growth, a lotus pool choked with leaves, fruit trees untended, papaya, mango, the fruit of countless seasons rotting in the dark damp soil.
Over lunch, Grace had seemed distracted. She was quiet for a very long time before suddenly looking up and asking Lisa if she was still a virgin. Lisa had, again, flushed deeply. It was something she had never discussed with anyone. Even her mother. Anything to do with sex had been a subject of great embarrassment in her house. It had come from her mother and transmitted itself to Lisa. She had known nothing about the periods that would afflict her in adolescence until the first blood ran from between her legs at school. Then she had panicked, locking herself in the toilets and weeping hysterically in the certain knowledge that she was dying. The brutal truth had been conveyed to her by an unsympathetic form mistress who had sent her home with an angry note for her mother. Lisa’s mother had, in turn, been angry, masking her embarrassment by accusing Lisa of stupidity, as though somehow the child should have known without having to be told. In the years that followed, it had only ever been referred to in the house as the curse.
Sex was something she had learned about from giggled tales told by fellow schoolgirls, vulgar jokes provoking raucous laughter. For a long time Lisa had laughed too, without fully understanding why. In retrospect she had often wondered how many of her friends had been equally mystified. True knowledge seemed to rest in the hands of just a fortunate few. She could smile now at her ignorance, but the fear of the unknown, the sense of taboo, had never left her.
‘Well...?’ Grace had inclined her head, amused by her embarrassment.
At first Lisa had denied it. Of course she wasn’t a virgin, she’d had lots of boyfriends. Grace had raised a sceptical eyebrow, and her penetrating gaze seemed to see through Lisa’s flustered deceit with startling ease. Lisa felt her cheeks burn again. ‘Well, one anyway,’ she said.
‘And he has made love to you?’ asked Grace.
‘Not exactly.’ Lisa stared hard at her hands on the table in front of her.
‘Then you are still a virgin.’
‘I suppose so.’
Grace smiled fondly at her, marvelling at such innocence. ‘Well, don’t worry about it,’ she said. ‘It’s not necessarily a permanent condition. There is a cure.’
In spite of herself Lisa smiled. ‘Only it doesn’t come on prescription.’
‘I should hope not!’ The idea seemed to shock and amuse Grace. ‘The only cure for virtue’ — she smiled wickedly — ‘is vice. It’s delicious. Not a bit like medicine.’
Lisa wondered now, as she gazed out at the garden, if Grace had simply been poking fun again. She knew she must seem very naive to a woman like La Mère Grace, but wondered what pleasure the woman derived from taunting her with it. There seemed no malice in her, just amusement, but it did nothing for Lisa’s confidence, serving only to increase her sense of vulnerability.
She remembered that, not so long ago, what she had craved most was safety, the security of her home, her mother, David; and for a moment she almost regretted forcing open the trunk in the attic. It was as if, in that one action, she had closed down her past and opened up a future of bleak uncertainty, where the only light, glowing faintly in the distance, was the knowledge that somewhere in this hostile world was a man who was her father. She knew that somehow she thought that in finding him she might find herself. But it appeared that the closer she got, the less, rather than more, certain she became of who she really was. What was she doing here? What did she hope to find? And, in that moment, she was almost overwhelmed by a feeling of being completely and hopelessly alone.
A movement in the garden caught her eye. A glimpse of pale lilac caught in dappled sunlight. It was the girl who had served them lunch. She wore a simple lilac shirt over short, baggy, black trousers. Her dark hair was bobbed, cut short high into the nape of her neck, and her feet flapped in open rubber sandals as she padded from the house along an overgrown path. There was something odd in the nervous, secret intent of the girl’s carriage that banished Lisa’s thoughts of only a moment before, and aroused her curiosity. She stepped out on to the terrace and ran quickly down the half-dozen steps to the garden to follow the girl along the path.
By the time Lisa reached the spot where she’d last seen her, the girl had disappeared and the path seemed to peter out among the fronds that grew in prolific clusters all around. The garden appeared to stretch endlessly away on either side, and Lisa stood on tiptoes trying to catch a glimpse of the lilac shirt. She listened intently in the hot broken shade for some sound to give her a clue, but all she heard were the insects and the birds, and a rustling among the undergrowth that might have been a snake. She pushed quickly on through the fronds and found the garden opening up, suddenly, into a paved clearing.
The paving stones bore all the scars of neglect that characterized the rest of the garden, cracked and broken, weeds reaching up from the rich damp earth below. At the other side of the clearing, the girl in the lilac shirt was sunk on bended knee, sticks of burning incense pressed between palms raised to her bowed forehead. Her discarded sandals lay on the ground behind her. In front of her a large square stone table stood before a jumble of shrines raised on brick pillars, tiny replicas of houses and temples bedecked with flowers and strings of jasmine blossom. Laid all around, pointing upwards towards the shrine, at an angle of forty-five degrees, were a dozen or more red and white cylinders, some of which were four or five feet long. The upward ends were round and elongated like helmets, and Lisa realized, with a sudden sense of shock, that they were giant phalluses, an arrangement of enormous erections directed towards the shrine.
She stood for a moment, then turned, startled by a touch on her elbow. Grace stood by her side, smiling.
‘Erotic, isn’t it?’ she whispered.
‘What is it?’ Lisa asked.
‘The fertility shrine of San Chao Mae Tap Tim. The phalluses represent the Hindu god Shiva. Phallus worship is an ancient tradition in Thailand. But, of course, it originated in my own Cambodia more than seven hundred years ago.’