Evie felt rebuffed, afraid that Mary must think her silly. ‘Well, you could say the same about building churches.’
‘I do.’ But her friend squeezed her hand. ‘Anyway I’m glad this monk has revived your spirits and made you feel more positive.’
‘Do you think he’s right about needing to show forgiveness and understanding to Doug? You were there at Batu Lembah. You saw that woman.’
Mary stretched her legs out in front of her. They were sitting on a fallen log on the shore, under the casuarina trees. Further along the beach Jasmine and her friend Penny were racing each other between two rocks. Mary tilted her head in the direction of the girls. ‘I know nothing about marriage, but I’m going to ask you a question. Why do you think Penny spends so much time with me?’
Evie felt a rush of guilt. It had never occurred to her to ask. She had been grateful never to have had to have anything to do with Penny’s mother, Rowena, one of the members of Veronica’s ‘witches’ coven’. ‘I suppose I imagined her mother was always busy,’ she said, lamely.
‘If you call being passed out in bed drunk or dosed-up with pills busy, then yes, she’s often busy.’
‘Gosh. That’s dreadful. Poor Penny.’
‘And when she’s not out cold, Rowena’s at it hammer and tongs with her husband. We can hear them through the walls, screaming at each other night after night.’
Evie put her hands up to her mouth, shocked. ‘Why?’
Mary shrugged. ‘They just don’t get along. In fact they can’t stand the sight of each other. Not helped by the fact that Rowena found out Bertie had been having an affair with one of the taxi girls at the Eastern & Oriental Hotel.’
‘Taxi girls?’
‘Professional dance hostesses. Men pay the E&O for a ticket to dance with them and the girls get half the proceeds. While most of them are perfectly respectable, some of them are rather too willing to do more than dance.’
‘And he got caught out?’
‘He did indeed. Red-handed. Rowena plays bridge most afternoons. Bertie Cameron is the director of one of the shipping companies, so, as the tuan, he can come and go from his office as he pleases. One afternoon, Rowena was feeling unwell during her bridge game. So she ducked out after a couple of rubbers and went home to lie down. She walked in on them in bed.’
‘How horrible!’
‘Yes. Rowena’s been exacting her revenge ever since. The atmosphere between them is poisonous. That poor child is caught in the middle.’ Mary sighed. ‘Don’t be like Rowena, Evie. Try and find a way to forgive and forget, for Jasmine’s sake and your baby’s.’ She studied Evie’s face, her eyes anxious. ‘I hope you don’t think I’m a terrible gossip? Only, since Rowena would win all the prizes for that herself, I feel somewhat justified.’
‘You see their problems as Rowena’s making?’
‘No. Definitely not. They’re both as bad as each other. He’s not shown an ounce of remorse. In fact it’s as if he resents her for finding him out. I suppose he thinks she should have been a dutiful little mem and pretended she’d seen nothing. No, I can’t blame her for raising the roof. But I blame them both for doing nothing to heal the wounds afterwards and making that poor child suffer as a consequence.’
Mary gave another sigh, an anguished expression on her face. ‘Look Evie, I’ve been agonising about whether to tell you this but I’ve decided I’m going to. I overheard Penny talking to Jasmine. She seems to think that her parents are so caught up in bickering with each other and have no time for her, and that’s proof that they don’t love her.’ Mary paused. ‘Jasmine told her that she thinks you and her father are going to be like that too. I hate to let you know this, but Jasmine believes it’s her fault that you and Mr Barrington have fallen out. She traces it back to her having to use the toilet on the way back from Taiping. I know it’s wrong but it’s her childish logic. When I heard her I didn’t think it would be right for me to intervene. Maybe you need to find a way to straighten her out. It’s not up to me. But if you follow that monk’s advice and start building bridges with your husband she won’t need to be straightened out, will she?’
Evie stared at her, stricken. ‘Jasmine blames herself?’
‘Children often get the wrong end of the stick.’ Mary looked at her sadly. ‘I’m going to pass on one piece of advice. My Granny once told me that the secret to a happy marriage was to think of love as a verb and not as a noun. It’s something you do and you show; not a state you’re in.’
‘I think your Granny would have got on well with my monk!’
‘Very probably.’ Mary got to her feet. ‘If I could change one thing in my life it would be to have buried my pride and tried to forgive Ralph. Once he was dead, pride and indignation and hurt feelings meant nothing. Come on, we’d better get those girls back for their tea. Mum has been baking queen cakes.’
That night, after Jasmine was in bed, Evie put on the pearl ring her husband had given her at Christmas. Downstairs, she sat down at the ornate lacquered desk in the study, took a sheet of paper and wrote a brief letter to her husband, telling him he could come home at the weekend. She decided against stating the terms for his return and the change in the allocation of bedrooms. That could be left until he was here and she could deal with it face-to-face.
The following morning, she
