She came and knelt in front of the fire and took a sip of claret and said: ‘I thought I could marry Doctor Ross, Julietta. I agreed to be his wife in good faith. And I have tried very hard to love him. But I think I cannot go through with it.’

She turned and saw Julietta staring at her with an expression of alarm and was disconcerted that this should be the case. She had expected Julietta to understand her predicament immediately and to sympathise with her decision to abandon her marriage to Ross. After a long moment, Julietta said, ‘I hear what you are saying, Jane dearest. But what are you going to do about the other great matter, then?’

‘You mean about you?’

‘No. I will always be here for you. I mean about your state.’

‘What “state”?’

‘Oh. You didn’t know, Jane? You didn’t know that you are pregnant?’

Jane gaped at Julietta. Like the maid, moments before, she could find no words.

‘I suppose you hadn’t realised, my poor darling,’ Julietta went on. ‘But I know. When I give la langue to a pregnant woman, the perfume of her cunt is different. I am never wrong.’

WHAT TAMINAH KNEW

It was at about this time that the White Rajah fell into a depression.

He tried to fight it off, but didn’t seem to have the right weapons. Drinking arak lifted his spirits for a while, but then the darkness closed in on him again. Walking in his garden, seeing the bright parakeets in their aviary and the scarlet lilies all aflame in the sunshine could make him glad that he had ownership of these beautiful things, that his eye alone had seen how they might bring him solace, but then he would remember the hammocks, side by side, where he had lain with Edmund Ross and listened to his New Testament readings and he would feel his mind sliding down once more into an abyss of sadness.

After he had been shown Edmund’s body, already decomposing in the forest floor, he had made himself help the Dyaks with the terrible task of digging it up, and transporting it on a cart to the grounds of his house. Here, not far from where the hammocks had once been strung, it was reburied and Sir Ralph reluctantly summoned one of the Catholic missionaries from Kuching to intone a Mass over the dead man’s grave. Some of the Malay servants had attended this Mass, crossing themselves from time to time and showing careful respect for the foolish ‘Englung man’ who had perished in the forest, but Leon had stayed away.

Later, he asked the rajah why he wept for the ‘Jesus boy’ and accused him of taking Edmund secretly as his lover. And when he said this, Sir Ralph did a thing he would never normally think of doing: he slapped Leon’s face. For a moment, it looked to Sir Ralph as though Leon was about to begin one of those physical fights they sometimes indulged in, both of them growling with anger and mortification and conflicted desire, but Leon only nursed his cheek, looked at him with disdain, then turned and ran away. He ran out of the house and was not seen again for three days.