The Red Pavilion Read Online Free

had said how badly she wanted to reach the home where she was brought up. ‘He’s travelling today, we’re sure to meet him before we reach Ipoh. He’ll probably have a delegation on the platform to try to stop us going — that was the feeling he left me with last night.’
    John Sturgess was in fact standing alone when they reached the platform. He nodded briefly but remained aloof.
    Hardly had their luggage been carried to their compartment and the boy tipped when they were startled by a shout.
    ‘Mr Sturgess, sir! Robbo!’ A well-built man perhaps a little older than Liz’s father advanced on Sturgess with arms outstretched.
    ‘Harfield! George! My God! It’s good to see you !’ The two men slapped each other on the back and gave out cries of greeting and surprise as they performed a kind of spontaneous jig together.
    Liz thought what an ill-assorted couple they made. Sturgess was tall and spare, pale with a triangle of shadow under his fine, high cheekbones, his manner off-putting and unsmiling until he greeted the older man. George Harfield looked like a healthy British butcher who might still give a good account of himself on the rugby field as one of the bigger forwards.
    ‘Thought you were in England.’
    ‘Thought you were in Australia!’ the big man countered, laughing hugely. ‘Thrown you out of there, too?’
    ‘Something like that. And I knew you’d never stay in Blighty!’
    Liz and Blanche exchanged speculative glances and lingered outside their compartment, looking at the two men. Instead of bringing the second man over to introduce him, Sturgess took George Harfield’s arm and led him away along the waiting train. It seemed to Liz that she and her mother were being discussed.
    ‘He wouldn’t know anything anyway,’ Liz concluded, watching them go, ‘not if he’s just come from England.’
    ‘Don’t think much of your Robbo’s manners,’ Blanche said, fidgeting with their luggage on the overhead racks to ensure it was safely stowed. ‘You did dine with him last night, after all. Extraordinarily rude — though he’s damned good-looking in a ravaged sort of way, might have a bit of breeding about him.’
    Liz laughed at her mother’s description.
    Blanche sank into her seat. ‘I feel a bit like that myself already this morning — ravaged. It’s this unrelenting heat. How long does this damned train take? I forget — never mind, don’t tell me, let me be blissful in ignorance a bit longer.’
    Liz pushed up the wooden shutters that served as windows and hoped that when ignorance turned to knowledge they would be rejoicing, quite mad in fact with the happiness of reunion. She watched the two-toned brown carriages begin to curve away as they moved out of Singapore station on this last stage of their journey.
    They crossed the stone causeway from the island of Singapore to the peninsula of Malaya. She smiled to see her mother take out a Delderfield novel to read and, having brought a little of England with her, refuse to be distracted from it.
    Liz felt an overwhelming excitement as childhood memories were relived as they stopped at minor stations. She watched locals energetically appeal for the train passengers to raise their shutters and buy from their trays of fruit, tiny highly coloured rice cakes or hand-embroidered slippers, or take tea from the char-wallahs, with their brass charcoal burners and tea kettles hanging from sturdy bamboo canes. She saw a hand come from a window and steal a cake as a tray was carried along on the vendor’s head.
    This was the Malaya she remembered, the population like the ever burgeoning jungle competing for space, striving for a living in heat like the hottest of greenhouses, growth often outstripping resources. She watched the variety of faces: the Chinese more competitive, their smiles angled to prospective customers; the Malays, she thought, good-natured in the contented way of people whose generous land could grow both basic sustenance and