The Pearl of Penang by Clare Flynn (best books to read for students txt) 📗

A rush of bitterness hit her. She’d never had to grapple so closely with so many emotions and felt ill-equipped to do so.

‘I feel a fool. A stupid fool. You won’t tell Veronica, or Douglas?’

‘Why would I do that?’ He looked horrified.

‘I have no idea.’ She felt tears rising. ‘I have absolutely no idea about anything anymore.’

‘It’s all my fault. I should never have let it happen. I could tell you were unhappy. It made me want you all the more. To show you how I feel, but I’ve made everything worse for you.’ He took her hand in his. ‘Evie, I am in love with you, but I can’t ever leave Veronica. I had no right to behave in the caddish way I’ve done today. Please forgive me.’

‘I don’t understand. If you don’t love her why did you marry her in the first place? Why are you so bound to Veronica?’

‘Because she’s an extremely vulnerable woman. And because I owe her my career.’

Misery wrapped around Evie like a thick fog. Any capacity for joy had been sucked out of her. ‘What do you mean? I don’t understand.’

Arthur sighed, reaching behind him for his trousers. He pulled out a cigarette from a crumpled packet and lit it. ‘Veronica can’t help herself where men are concerned. Dr Freud would have a field day with her.’

Evie nodded, feeling hollowed out. How had this magical time turned so quickly into abject misery?

‘She’s more vulnerable than she appears. Dark moods descend on her without warning, like a blanket, blotting everything else out. She suffers from a kind of existential despair.’

Evie felt scornful. Surely, he didn’t expect her to believe that?

Arthur continued to avoid her gaze, his voice quiet. ‘When she gets one of these black spells, she shuts herself away and will see no one.’ He lifted his eyes to meet hers at last. ‘That’s what was wrong on the ship. She wasn’t seasick at all. I’m sorry.’ He gathered up a handful of sand and let it trickle through his fingers. ‘Veronica’s a complex woman. Far more than I realised when we first met. Yes, she’s shallow, rude, snobbish, all those things that I know you see in her. I cringe myself at her behaviour. But the Veronica I first knew was very different.’

‘How?’ Evie stared at him, feeling angry.

‘For a start, even though she acts as if she were to the manner born, she comes from a humble background.’

Evie’s eyebrows shot upwards and she couldn’t help a disbelieving snort.

‘Her father was a Russian merchant seaman and her mother was a half-caste – the grandmother was a Kikuyu woman who was the common-law wife of an Irish settler. She was shunned by her tribe when she went with him. He died of drink in a Nairobi slum and Veronica’s mother became a prostitute. So not exactly out of the top drawer. Veronica has always gone to great pains to keep her family tree a closely guarded secret.’

Evie was dumbfounded. ‘No one knows?’

Arthur’s lips stretched into a mirthless smile. ‘Doug knows. He doesn’t care a jot about such things. But no one else has a clue. No one in Malaya has ever guessed that she has a less than perfect pedigree.’ He laughed drily. ‘In fact, they probably think she married beneath her station with me.’

Evie said nothing. Everything she had understood to be truth was imploding.

‘What I’m about to tell you no one else knows. Not even Doug. Can I trust you?’

She nodded, feeling miserable.

‘One of her mother’s clients…’ Arthur turned his head away from her. ‘One of them interfered with Veronica when she was only twelve. Look, Evie, I’m not going to beat about the bush – he raped her.’

Evie was shocked. It was hard to comprehend something so horrible happening to Veronica. ‘That’s horrible – she was a child!’

‘She ran away and was found on the streets and brought up in an orphanage by missionaries. Despite what happened – or maybe because of it –Veronica has a core of steel. She worked hard and eventually talked her way into a job in the typing pool in the District Commissioner’s Office.

‘She was a good worker and already knew how to project herself in a positive light – she charmed the DC.’ Arthur paused, brushing sand off his leg as he gazed out to sea. ‘You have to understand something else about Veronica, what happened to her made her promiscuous. It’s a compulsion with her, as though she believes her only value lies in her body and men’s appreciation of it. She’ll sleep with a man she despises, because knowing she’s desired makes her feel better about herself.’ He looked up at Evie. ‘But the truth is she despises herself.’

‘That’s awful. But why did you marry her?’ Evie could hear the resentment in her own voice.

He scratched the back of his palm, evidently nervous telling her all this.

‘We were friendly. But no more so than with anyone else in the office. Then one evening, after everyone had gone home, I found her crying. She thought she was alone in the office.’ He stopped, frowning. ‘Or maybe she wanted me to think she’d thought she was alone.’ He gave a dry laugh.

‘It all came out. She’d been having an affair with the DC. A man in his fifties. Married with children of course. And she’d just found out she was pregnant.’

Evie gasped. ‘Had she told her boss?’

‘At that point, no. I urged her to tell him the next day.’

He got up and started pacing back and forth in front of Evie as he spoke. ‘The next morning the DC summoned me into his office. Veronica was already in there. He was angry that Veronica had confided in me about what had happened. Otherwise he’d probably have dismissed her and hushed the whole affair up. He said if I ever told anyone what had actually happened between them my career would be over.’

Evie opened her mouth.

‘But if I were willing to