Diamonds at the Lost and Found by Sarah Aspinall

Diamonds at the Lost and Found by Sarah Aspinall

Author:Sarah Aspinall [Aspinall, Sarah]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2020-06-11T17:00:00+00:00


15

Pearl of the Orient

I REMEMBER THE HEAT, and the cycle rickshaws, and the deafening roar of surf on a white sand beach. I remember monkeys with tufty beards and their babies clinging to their middles, a snake temple and a man seated on the ground with a python around his shoulders. I remember red Chinese letters and a sign saying PRECIOUS PAGODA and the yellow of the pagoda towers behind. I remember the funicular up Penang Hill and big colonial villas with dusty gardens and cool rooms, sparsely furnished with bamboo furniture.

Or do I? How much of these memories comes from photographs shown to me on our return I’m not sure. Back in Southport there would be the darkened lounge, the glow of an electric fire, and the endless slide shows with the click of the carousel turning and the Kodak colour images popping up on the screen, as my mother relived our travels as if they were just extended holidays. Of course the audience might only be Auntie Grace and Uncle Phil, sitting a little tight-lipped and disapproving with their very small glasses of sherry, so it was probably wise of her to play things down. This process normalized the experience, and turned us into intrepid tourists rather than the desperate pair we really were. ‘There’s Sally at the old fort. Oh and look, there’s Sally with the monkeys at the botanical gardens.’

I have freckles and pudgy legs and smile and smile for the camera. ‘And there’s Uncle Les getting us a rickshaw.’ Friends of my mother who got past the acquaintance stage were always given the prefix Uncle and Auntie to make my use of their first name sound more polite. She had heard someone refer to me as ‘precocious’ and this alarmed her. It may have threatened her idea of me as her innocent little companion.

We had stayed for some time in ‘Uncle Les’s’ villa up on a leafy hillside, but I slept in a guesthouse in the garden. He must have been a boyfriend, a lover, but I had no sense that they were in any way ‘in love’. My mother would say that you didn’t just kiss a frog and he magically turned into a prince; that was just a fairy story. In real life you kissed a frog and then ‘set your mind into turning him into a prince’, but it was hard to imagine how much effort it would take in the case of Les. He was a pleasant man, friendly, but impossible to remember when you weren’t actually with him. Even looking at the cine films or photographs later, it was difficult to recall anything about him. Poor Roger from the cruise was memorable, and I could even recollect George from the Kill Devil Hills for his sad awkwardness. But Les never said or did anything to surprise you, although my mother would tell people that Les was quite the life and soul of the party. His house was very big, so



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