And so they drive on, each with their own thoughts. Past the Lipis trunk road, past a few deserted roadblocks made from barrels and planks, past the first faint, sludgy signs of the Kampung Ulu swamp. Tom keeps up a tactful silence and Mary a quarrelsome commentary.
‘So sharp, ar, braking. Trying to push my head off its shoulders, is it? No, far enough already. Here, stop here.’
They’ve circumnavigated the swamp and they’re on the far side where the San once was. This whole area was evacuated during the Emergency, with villagers snatched up and loaded onto trucks without time to put on so much as a pair of shoes. Since then it’s been deserted, except for the San, of course. The odd itinerant family sets up house here and there, but they don’t stay long. They can smell the blood.
A crumbling wall runs a few metres along the road, all that’s left of the San’s compound yard. Ferns sprout from the edges of the tarmac and the ground’s claggy and drenched. The remains of the San loom over the swamp, chilly and shadowed. Tom feels a vague, cloudy guilt every time he thinks of the games they used to play. ‘Locks on the gates,’ they used to sing, but now he imagines all those poor patients burnt alive in their beds. He’s learnt sympathy in his middle age.
‘Mary-Auntie … hold on, let me get your door.’
He scrambles out of the car but Mary’s already gone, stumping her way down the track with her carrier bag over one shoulder. From here Tom can see mud caking the bottom of her sari and dragging it down stiff as a weighted curtain. He sighs. He’s neglecting a lot of work in order to stand here on the edge of a swamp and watch Mary-Auntie walk away without so much as a thank-you-for-bringing-me. Back in the hospital three little Varghese children have come down with dengue fever simultaneously, writhing in hospital cots with their arms spasming. Tom doesn’t know it, but in just over a week the smallest boy will die and Tom himself will be moved off the surgical team – he should have noticed the first signs during pre-surgical checks, he’ll be told – and onto the wards to look after old ladies and their Christmas cards. No wonder he feels put upon.
And it isn’t an easy trip, either. Mary-Auntie likes him to park right near the swamp, and although he does his best not to look up, he’s always aware of the banyan tree across the water. And the smell, of course. That rot-and-water smell hooks right into his guts and pulls them out through his toes. It brings her back to him.
He approaches the edge of the water with a sideways, crabbish stride. He needs to get at it sideways, he needs to pretend it isn’t there. He sits down to wait, pulling his knees up to his chest and watching the surface of the water, broken only by banyan roots. He thinks of Karthika and the feel of her high, swollen breasts; thinks of Alice too – lovely, legitimate Alice – and pretty nurses who won’t and never will and just might some day. But it’s no good. Wherever he turns he can see somebody’s smile flickering under the water. Somebody’s fingers clutching beneath the surface.
You don’t go away, do you, Peony, he thinks. You mix yourself up in everything, like a drop of dye in water. You stain everything with yourself.
Not half a mile away, Mary snorts. Not much count, she thinks, that boy. Getting that Peony-girl drowned, then strutting back as though nothing happened. He shouldn’t be allowed to get over things so easily. Not when other people – and here Mary switches her thoughts onto a different track, thinking of daughters and granddaughters – don’t ever manage it.
She’s out of sight of the car now, right down amongst the trees. The San looms black and squat in front of her. The gates are closed, but the walls have long since fallen in, and Mary steps carefully over the rusty barbed wire and the scattered blocks of stone.
‘Locks on the gates,’ she mutters to herself, and for a second she could swear she hears a giggle. She steps inside the lobby of the San, through the doors that are jammed open, and looks around. It’s a maze in here, all dead-end corridors and walls that have tumbled down. She passes closed doors and others overrun with crawling vines. A sink drips in the corner, and a flake of rust breaks off as she turns into the largest room. There are a few bed-frames left in here, coated in mud or rusted right through. You can barely see where the handcuffs were.
Mary sits herself down on one of these beds. There’s a heap of rubbish by one wall. Old cooking pots tip over onto plastic sandals, and layers of mouldy cloth melt into each other in a shirt-socks-sarong jumble. Left-behind families don’t look after themselves too well, and every time a new group moves in they scavenge from what’s left.
Mary clacks her teeth in disapproval, and starts to pull gift-wrapped parcels noisily out of her striped carrier bag. Usually there’d be a grubby rag-tag of left-behinds by now, snatching at the toys as though they think they deserve ’em. She doesn’t want her daughter to pick up those sorts of manners, though. Not when she’s old enough to know better.
She takes the toothbrush out first, then a packet of sweets and a pair of beautiful drawing pencils. And then, finally, a doll. Nothing special, just an off-the-shelf rubber girl-doll from Robinson’s, but Mary’s carefully chosen it nonetheless. It’s an Indian doll – the ones she brings always are – and they’re always in satin saris. Durga, she’s written on the inside of its blouse collar. Francesca shouldn’t be allowed
