A Different Sky (12 page)

‘Must have been horrible for you,' she said, handing him some wadding at last and the bottle of Mercurochrome.

‘No more than for you,' he answered, as he knelt to dab the crimson antiseptic on his wounded toe. She looked down on the bent head of dark hair that curled with a life of its own, and felt that something was sealed between them.

‘Don't you have a brother?' he asked, remembering a boy who had darted about Lim Villa's tennis court with his friends.

‘He sailed for England last week, to go to university, to Oxford,' Mei Lan replied.

Howard listened, feeling a pang of envy at the mention of Oxford. He had hoped to go there himself or to Cambridge for further study; Rose dreamed of her son becoming a doctor or a lawyer. At St Joseph's Institution he was near the top of the class, and had been encouraged to try for the Queen's Scholarship which allowed a handful of bright local boys to continue their education in England at the government's expense. When the scholarship had gone to someone else, Howard felt wounded by the disappointment, felt he had failed his mother. Without a Queen's Scholarship he had no hope of paying for higher studies, even locally at Raffles College, let alone a university abroad. Although they lacked nothing, they lived on Rose's careful accounting, and luxuries were few.

‘When you finish school you will just have to work like everyone else,' Rose told him firmly, struggling with her blighted hope.

His mother's sorrow weighed upon him, for his success would have proved her sacrifices worthwhile. Observing the European lodgers who passed through Belvedere, Howard did not miss the condescension
shown his mother. He saw her swallowing her pride, ignoring the endless daily humiliations that must be braved as a landlady. She was a woman alone in the world and he knew it could not be easy for her. Mei Lan's brother had no need of a scholarship, Howard thought bitterly, his fees at university would be easily paid by his wealthy family.

‘After all that has happened, we can't afford the fees at Oxford. A friend of Grandfather's is helping us.' She felt as if she read his mind, seeing herself as he must see her, and to her own surprise preferring to denigrate the House of Lim rather than risk his disapproval. He smiled again and his presence swept through her, filling her with amazement that, although for so many years he had been so near, she had had no knowledge of his existence.

From then on, each afternoon during the school holidays, Mei Lan stole out to the canal to meet Howard. They found they could squeeze through a gap in the new fence that now divided Bougainvillaea House from the Lim Villa estate. Mei Lan led him to a clearing amongst a copse of trees, to the cast-iron gazebo that Lim Hock An had once imported from Glasgow. She saw that although gardeners visited the place to trim the grass and keep down snakes, the gazebo was forgotten, with vines twisting thickly around its supporting columns above a wrought-iron bench. However, nothing could ever be hidden from Ah Siew, no matter how careful Mei Lan was. As she prepared to make her way to the canal one afternoon, Ah Siew barred her way.

‘I know,' Ah Siew screamed. ‘I know!' The
amah
shook a finger, incensed in a way Mei Lan had never seen before. ‘Girls of good family do not behave like this, running out to meet boys. Remember who you are.' Mei Lan tried to protest but Ah Siew was not yet finished.

‘He is not of your race; you are Chinese and he is Eurasian. If the elders find out I cannot protect you,' she warned.

‘You are not to tell anyone,' Mei Lan instructed her angrily and for a moment Ah Siew hesitated, used, however grumblingly, to obeying Mei Lan's orders.

‘You are my servant,' Mai Lan shouted. Reminded so forcefully of her position, Ah Siew drew back, lips pursed to contain her fury.

‘You will do as I say,' Mei Lan demanded imperiously, the thought of Howard waiting for her overriding every other emotion. One way or another, she would see him; she would have her way.

‘You are a wilful girl. The world will not be kind to you,' Ah Siew replied bitterly before turning away, slamming the door behind her.

‘What do you know, you're only a servant,' Mei Lan shouted after her, tears filling her eyes.

Sometimes, he brought his saxophone with him and played for her, modern music of the kind her mother had danced to in the ballroom of Lim Villa. The music, although sometimes broken by a lack of breath or a squawking trail of notes, curled through them both. He told her interesting, irrelevant things such as how the rain tree had come to Singapore from South America or that a jellyfish was not really a fish and was without a brain. He always carried a book, was always reading. Sometimes he brought fishing nets with him and they kicked off their shoes, scrambling down into the shallow water of the canal. Tucking her dress into her knickers, unashamed, Mei Lan stalked crayfish with him amongst the weeds and slippery lichen. They always took care to keep to that part of the canal that was hidden from Bougainvillaea House by overhanging trees. Peering into the green and aqueous world at her feet Mei Lan watched minnows brush her ankles. He stood close, showing her how to net the shelly, long-legged crayfish and tip them into the lidded basket he carried; she felt his breath on her cheek. Later, they drank the soft drinks and ate the biscuits she had stolen from the kitchen of Bougainvillaea House. He added mangosteen from the gnarled Belvedere trees and thick slices of his mother's
sugee
cake. In the gazebo on the bench she sat close to him, their bare legs touching while he told her about himself.

‘I wanted to go to university in England but I did not get a scholarship. Now, if I am lucky I'll probably get a job at the Harbour Board,' he informed her resignedly.

‘I want to be a lawyer,' she admitted.

‘Women don't become lawyers,' he replied, disapproval filling his voice. Mei Lan fell silent, unable to explain about Ah Siew, Second Grandmother, her own mother and Little Sparrow and how she did not want to be like them but free in the world, like her brother JJ.

One day Howard came with a gift wrapped in brown paper and secured with old string. She struggled with the complicated knots and at last lifted from the paper a small wooden box. Opening the lid, she saw a compass nestled within.

‘It's to help you follow your dream. It belonged to my father,' he said.

Impulsively, she put her arms around him and for the first time felt the moist softness of his lips against her own, smelled the musky odour of him.

‘When I first moved to Belvedere I set the needle in the direction of my old home, so that I would always be able to find my way back there,' Howard told her as he drew away, embarrassed and aroused. The taste and the feel of her filled him so powerfully that he felt dizzy.

‘How does it work?' she asked, to cover her own embarrassment.

‘You set the red needle to the Direction of Travel and it's never wrong.' As he showed her how to set the compass he noticed the trembling of his hands.

The hours together were filled with a strange expansion she knew he also felt. In the secret clearing under the gazebo with the rustle of insects in the vines above them, she stretched out on the wide iron bench. He lay beside her, pushing her hair out of her eyes and off her damp forehead to kiss her, exploring the hollow of her neck, the slope of her cheek, the soft place between her breasts. She felt the hardness of his arousal against her and understood the control it took to pull away as their emotions grew. Anything more would break the spell, the fragility of what they had; both were conscious of something held back, something that must wait its time. Only when she was away from him did she know that this was happiness. At night she remembered his face and slept.

The school holidays were almost finished when Second Grandmother saw her from a window of Bougainvillaea House, hauling up a large grey crayfish that struggled stiffly in the net. He had his arms about her, helping her hold on to the long-handled net so that she would not drop the creature and she laughed, her cheek against his neck. Then, in a moment Ah Siew came running and through the open windows of Bougainvillaea House Mei Lan heard the sound of Second Grandmother's voice screeching high alarm.

The next day Lim Hock An had a tall bamboo fence erected along the canal. The view of green water and kingfishers was gone. All Mei Lan could see now above the fence were the distant windows of Belvedere turning gold with the afternoon sun.

‘I warned you,' Ah Siew told her tartly.

Mei Lan waited to see Howard's face at a Belvedere window, but he did not appear. Sometimes, in the evening she heard the notes of his saxophone beside the canal and knew he was playing for her, but could see nothing. The fence soared above her, pushing her back, cutting her off from herself. Only the compass remained with her, hidden in a drawer. She held it in her hand and just as he promised the red needle held steadfast, pointing always to Belvedere, her Direction of Travel.

Some days later, through the servants, Rose came to know the reason for the construction of the bamboo fence before Bougainvillaea House and confronted Howard angrily. Tall as he was, he cowered before her.

‘Making a spectacle of yourself, shaming us with your behaviour,' Rose screamed, her face aflame. Howard hung his head, his heart cracking open as his mother continued to fly at him.

‘If you were smaller I'd give you a caning. Don't I have enough trouble? It takes years to build a reputation and only moments to break it. Watch yourself, son. Eurasians mix with Eurasians, Chinese with Chinese, Malays with Malays, Indians with Indians; the races keep to their own.' Rose turned away, speaking to him only when necessary for the next few days.

R
OSE
B
URNS SAT AS
always at the long table before the window. The white shutters were folded back and the afternoon light blazed behind her. In the half-wild garden beyond the window the sun was caught in the mangosteen trees. The fruit hung heavily, the colour of burgundy and resembled a mass of hard cricket balls. From where she sat Rose had seen the new lodger arrive. Hamzah had helped him in with his luggage but, sitting in the alcove at the end of the room, she would not immediately be in his view. She continued with an account of the week's expenditure, one list for the wet market, another for Cold Storage where the greatest expense was the meat; it was her policy to put the best before her lodgers. Local mutton was no more than goat meat and the local fowl so tough it drew complaints; only Cold Storage with its imported produce, its Scotch beef and New Zealand lamb, could be relied upon.

She looked again at the new arrival who was just as young as she expected and saw he wore a woollen suit and that his face was wet with perspiration. Two large suitcases, an umbrella, a tennis racquet and a bulging attaché case stood on the floor beside him as he looked anxiously about Belvedere's dim vestibule. In his hand was a spotless white pith helmet of an expensive English brand Rose recognised. She wondered how much longer she could keep him waiting. It was her habit to hold back until the last moment from personal encounters or demands.

Already, Rose noted, even in the cool of the vestibule the man had wiped his face and neck several times with a large red and white spotted handkerchief; most of her lodgers used pale monogrammed handkerchiefs of fine Egyptian cotton. The man was growing restless now, taking small steps to the right and the left of his luggage, clearing his throat and coughing politely in the hope of attracting attention. She pushed a stray hair into place and straightened her skirt as she stood up, preparing to make herself visible.

‘Mr Patterson?' Rose queried as she walked towards him. ‘Welcome to Belvedere.'

‘You must be Mrs Burns,' Wilfred Patterson answered in relief, stepping forward to hold out his hand, observing the short, thickset woman before him, hair pulled back severely into a coil on her neck. Her pale powdered face contrasted with the darker, moist skin of her neck.

‘Did you have a hot journey?' Rose asked as he mopped his damp face once again. He had needed two rickshaws to bring him from the dock, one for himself and another for his luggage. Rose had heard the sharp crunch of metal wheels on the drive and knew he must have had an uncomfortable ride. As a new arrival he would not have known that for a few extra cents he could have taken a rickshaw with rubber tyres for a less bone-shattering ride.

‘Did no one from your company meet you at the dock? You would have been more comfortable in a motor taxi than an old rickshaw,' she suggested as she led him inside.

‘Someone was supposed to meet me. I waited about but no one came. On the ship I was advised that taxi fares were exorbitant, and rickshaws were just as good,' he explained as he followed her into Belvedere's cool and cavernous interior.

His nose was crooked, Rose noticed, as if it had once suffered a break and his open, pleasant face with a narrow moustache above a generous mouth was lit by eyes the colour of stagnant water. It was not an attractive comparison, but she thought of the lichen-covered pond in the garden and knew the colour a perfect match. Cynthia too had eyes that colour, although they appeared the more startling against her olive skin.

‘I'll show you to your room. Hamzah will bring up your bags,' Rose said, surprised at how she had warmed to the young man.

‘It's a beautiful house,' Wilfred remarked as he followed Rose up the stairs. Over the banisters he looked down upon the open space below, the red Malacca tiles of the floor swimming away beneath him. Belvedere's high ceilings and white latticed woodwork gave the place an airy, stately feel. Both downstairs and on the landing before him, large bowls of bright tropical flowers he could not name brought a graceful vibrancy.

‘The ground floor rooms are more expensive. They are larger and
cooler, but are usually shared by two gentlemen. They have their own bathrooms and a private veranda,' Rose informed him.