much; the Purdey is another expensive Acton relic, like the good silver and crystal glasses that he’s lugged halfway round the world. Why bother, when his family has as good as disowned him anyway? It’s because titles and breeding open doors everywhere, even if he pretends to scorn them. Perhaps that’s what drove him to get the gun out: thinking it would be a grand gesture to fire a few rounds into the darkness and scare off a tiger. What a fool he is!
All his mistakes have been made when he’s been overly emotional. In fact, he had misgivings earlier that evening, but he’d thought it was about Nandani and how he must disentangle himself from her. When he walked out of the house, the gun under his right arm in the field carry that his father had taught him so long ago, he had another moment of doubt, but it was too late, even though the girl had screamed for him to stop.
How had she known, that girl Louise, that the rustling in the bushes was Ren, and not an animal? If he closes his eyes, he can still see her, running out of the darkness into the pool of light spilled by Ah Long’s lantern. Pale blue dress, face tight with terror. And even then, the dark part of himself that he’s always tried to suppress found her panic alluring, with those slender legs and long-lashed eyes—like a frightened doe.
Thank God he’d loaded it with number-six shot. If it had been buckshot, even at that distance and with the inevitable scatter, Ren would certainly have died. Rawlings said it was one of the messiest injuries he’d seen on a child. One of the fingers on his left hand had been shot raggedly off. The fourth finger, the ring finger. William finds himself wondering illogically whether that means Ren will never get married because there’s nowhere to put a ring. But such thoughts are useless because Ren, inexplicably and despite all the care that he’s had, is dying.
* * *
He can’t understand it. Nobody can. The wounds were cleaned and stitched up. No vital organs were hit. Perhaps it’s the shock. William has heard of men on battlefields who drop dead, their hearts stopped like clocks. Still, it doesn’t explain Ren’s precipitous decline. The fear is sepsis, especially in the tropics where injuries rapidly turn putrid.
“How old is this boy?” Rawlings had asked that night, as they worked on, searching in the bloodied mess for the shot wadding. It was vital to remove as much of it as possible, there being little to combat infection other than rinses of carbolic acid.
“Thirteen, he said.”
“Nonsense! He can’t be more than ten or eleven at the most.”
William felt himself shrink in shame. Of course he should have known. If Ren dies, nobody will really care. William will be made out to be the fool who shot his own houseboy, but it will all blow over because Ren is an orphan with no one to speak for him. Except for me, thinks William.
* * *
When William goes out to the car, he finds Ah Long standing next to it. He’s holding a steel tiffin carrier, the kind they use for packed lunches. The lines on his face look deeper than ever.
“Tuan, let me go to hospital.”
“You want to see Ren?”
A nod.
“All right.” William feels a stab of guilt. Of course the old man must be fond of Ren.
At the hospital, William reviews Ren’s chart. Not good. He’s continued to run a low fever. Worse still, the boy’s face has begun to take on the sunken look that William dreads. Ah Long puts the tiffin carrier on a table and sits by Ren’s bed, speaking to him quietly in Cantonese. Ren doesn’t respond; his eyes are closed and there are blue shadows under them. There’s nothing more that William can do. Irresolute, he stands there wondering what Ah Long is saying.
“Sleeping, is he?” he asks.
“Or wandering.”
William frowns. That makes no sense at all. Ah Long fumbles in his pocket and produces something in a small slim glass jar, the kind that anchovies come in. William looks at it in disbelief. It’s the shattered end of a child’s finger, floating in tea-colored liquid.
“Is this Ren’s?” he says, trying to swallow the bile in his throat.
“Yes. I look for it.”
God. It’s so terribly sad. It reminds him of MacFarlane’s finger, the one he had to amputate because of blood poisoning on that trip they took, but