Domenica found herself wondering how many guests the pirate village received. She had assumed that not many people ended up here, but then she remembered the story of the Belgian anthropologist. He had been a guest too. She looked at Mrs Choo. Perhaps this was the time to start asking a few questions, now that she was seated comfortably and Mrs Choo was offering to make the two of them tea.
“Is your husband,” she began. “Is Mr Choo a . . . a pirate?”
Mrs Choo laughed. “Yes, I suppose he is,” she said. “It sounds very odd to say it, but I suppose he is.”
Domenica frowned. It was a rather insouciant answer that she
had been given and she wondered whether this was the right moment to begin her research, but Mrs Choo seemed happy to talk and it might be useful to clear the ground before she started to make detailed charts of relationship and social function.
“Has he always been a pirate?” she asked.
Mrs Choo shook her head. “Choo used to be a train driver,”
she said. “Then he met the headman of this village in a bar in Malacca and he invited him to come down and look at their business. That’s how he became involved.”
Domenica nodded her encouragement. “And you were married at the time?”
“Yes,” said Mrs Choo. “Choo and I had been married for eight years.”
“Were you not worried that he was going to be doing something illegal?” asked Domenica. “After all, it’s a dangerous job.”
“Not all that dangerous,” said Mrs Choo. “I sometimes think that it’s more dangerous to be a train driver or virtually anything else. Most jobs have their dangers.” She paused. “We haven’t lost any of the men over the last five years. Not one.”
Domenica expressed surprise at this. Pursuing large ships on the high seas could hardly be a risk-free occupation, she thought.
After all, some of the vessels would return fire these days. “But what about the illegality?” she pressed. “Aren’t you worried that the men – and that would include your husband – may be arrested?”
Mrs Choo waved a hand in the air. “There’s very little danger of that,” she said. “Nobody has been arrested so far.”
Domenica changed tack. “But do you approve?” she asked.
“Do you think that piracy is right?”
The question did not appear to embarrass Mrs Choo. “I’m not entirely happy about it,” she said. “After all, I come from a very law-abiding family. My father was the headmaster of a school. And my mother’s people were a well-known mercantile family from Kuala Lumpur. But it’s not as if Choo is involved in anything too serious. Just a little piracy.”
Domenica decided that she would not press the matter at this stage. But she would return to it in future, she thought. There 220
must be substantial dissonance of beliefs there; it would be fascinating to investigate that. There was, though, one question that she wanted to get out of the way now, and so she asked Mrs Choo about the Belgian anthropologist. Had she known him, and how had he died?
She asked the question and then sat back in her chair, awaiting the answer. But for a time there was none. Mrs Choo seemed to freeze at the mention of the Belgian. She had been sitting back in her chair before Domenica asked it; now she sat bolt upright, her hands folded primly at her waist. It was not body language which suggested readiness to talk.
There was silence for a good few moments before Mrs Choo eventually spoke. “That man,” she said coldly, “went back to Belgium. He went back to where all those other Belgians live.
That is what happened to him. More tea?”
Domenica, an astute woman, even in unfamiliar social circumstances, guessed that the conversation was an end. It had been a mistake to stray into matters of controversy so quickly, she thought. People did not appreciate that, she reminded herself.
They liked subtlety. They liked discretion. They liked the circumlocutory question, not the brutal, direct one. So she immediately made a superficial remark about the attractive colour of the orchids on the veranda. Did Mrs Choo know that one could buy such orchids in Edinburgh? They were imported, she believed, from Thailand and Malaysia.
“They are very attractive flowers,” said Mrs Choo, warming a bit. “I am glad that people in Scotland like orchids.”
“Oh, they do,” said Domenica. “They are always talking about them.”
Mrs Choo looked surprised. “I’m astonished,” she said.
“Always talking about orchids? Even the vulgar people?”
Domenica smiled. It was such a strange expression, but she knew exactly what Mrs Choo meant. “Maybe not them,” she conceded.
Domenica spent a further hour or so drinking green tea and talking to Mrs Choo. She did not wish to overstay her welcome, but it very soon became apparent to her that her hostess had very little to do. In fact she said as much at one point, when she referred to the heaviness with which time hung on her hands now that her children were at school. But apart from the occasional self-pitying remark, she was a light-hearted companion who made Domenica feel appreciably better about her situation.
And her situation, of course, was that of having been the victim of a rather uncomfortable scorpion sting.
At the end of the hour, though, the swelling on the tip of Domenica’s left foot had diminished considerably, and
