Bitter Sweet Harvest (21 page)

Hussein held his head in his hands, clutching handfuls of hair in desperation. He felt the entire world was slipping from his grasp. Then he looked at Shalimar. He did not know what to believe. He saw the tears in her eyes and, against his will, he felt compassion. Perhaps, he thought, she was telling the truth. In truth, he had no recollection of what happened that night. Perhaps, she was willing to share him with An Mei because she was placed in this wretched position. Only by becoming his wife could she protect her reputation and give a name to the child that he had fathered.

“Your father and mother are very happy. Please tell me that you are also happy. I will make it up with An Mei. I will explain that it was an outcome of... of your intoxication; that you did not know what you were doing when you were brought to my bed. That you thought I was her.”

In the fern-filled, glass-covered courtyard, Faridah and Rahim were holding court. Tea had been laid out. The long table that the servants had earlier carried with great difficulty into the courtyard was resplendently covered with a white damask tablecloth; its intricate weave of silk, linen and cotton gleamed richly. The table groaned with food; plates piled high with cakes sat next to savoury offerings. Glutinous rice cakes filled with coconut shavings cooked in dark molasses competed with tureens of curries served with turmeric rice. Their aromas mingled: sweet, spicy with hints of heat to tickle the tired palette.

“High tea! High tea!” Faridah exclaimed to her guests. “To celebrate our good news. In a few minutes, my son and his wife will be here to join us, but do eat.
Tak payah tunggu
. Don’t wait. We are very informal.” Her excitement was evident in her pink cheeks; her eyes glittered as she searched the room to engage her guests in her joy.

“By wife, she must mean
Tengku
Shalimar. She can’t stand the other one, the Chinese one he brought back from England,” whispered one of the guests to another.

“Hush!” replied the other, “she is here.”

The room went quiet. All eyes turned to stare at An Mei.

An Mei stood awkwardly for a second and then turned hurriedly. She had not realised that there was a celebration, a party. She had come into the courtyard in search of Hussein. Now, blindly, she turned unaware that Hussein was behind her. He had also entered the courtyard with Shalimar trailing after him in search of An Mei. He held her for a moment, and then released his arm.

“Come, come, just in time for tea and our celebration. Sit, sit,” commanded Faridah beckoning her son and Shalimar to come into the room. Her eyes, as usual, swept passed An Mei without acknowledging her presence.

“No, mother. Later,” said Hussein. He ushered both An Mei and Shalimar out of the room, gripping their elbows firmly.

“Please excuse my son,” said Faridah nonplussed. She quickly recovered to hint darkly that something was amiss, her eyebrows lifted in an arch, like a question mark, and nodded in the direction of An Mei. “Jealous,” she remarked.

“Let go of my elbow,” An Mei hissed, seething with anger.

“Don’t you dare touch me!”

“We’ll explain. Come into this room,” he pleaded, pushing the two ladies into a room. It was the study. He locked the door behind him and leaned heavily on the closed door.

“I am sorry that you had to learn about this in such an unpleasant way. I did not know myself. I had no idea,” he said.

“No idea?” An Mei asked, her eyes incredulous. “No idea?” she repeated. “That you have fathered a child?”

“I don’t,” he replied. “Shalimar now says that I am the father, but I have no recollection, none at all, as to what happened the night I was found in her bed.” He looked to Shalimar, his eyes pleading for help.

Shalimar felt ashamed but could not retreat from her course of action. She could not bear to look at the two people before her, the only ones to befriend her in her time of need.

“He thought I was you,” she said. “He was feverish, calling your name; he did not know what he was doing. He seemed so intoxicated, so drugged. I... I... could not fend him off.” Shalimar’s eyes remained focused on the floor. That part about Hussein’s state of intoxication was true, but everything else was a lie.

“Please An Mei,” begged Hussein. “I cannot vouch if what she says is true or false, but what do you want me to do? I love you. Even if it did happen, it was not a conscious act. It does not change anything between us.”

“Please,” pleaded Shalimar, “the baby is all that I have in this world. I will not intrude on your love.”

An Mei looked from one to the other. She felt torn between compassion for Shalimar and jealousy; anger against Hussein combined with a desperate wish to believe in him. In all her tormented moments in Oxford when her thoughts reeled through all the pitfalls of a union with Hussein, she had not anticipated anything even remotely like this. To have to share him with someone else within months of their marriage, to be so hated, so isolated from the family that she had married into, and worse still to suffer Hussein’s recent reluctance to share his thoughts with her. What chance had she, now that Shalimar was to have Hussein’s baby, to redeem herself with her mother-in-law?

She stood rooted to the floor, unable to answer. Slowly, her legs gave way. She sank down to her knees and held her hands to her face and wept. Once she had begun, she could not stop. She felt utterly lost; what could she do? What future was there for her?

M
ei Yin rushed into the office at the back of the restaurant in Oxford. In her hand was the telegram that was delivered to her when she was in the foyer overseeing the arrangements for the day. Flowers had been delivered fresh from the covered market that morning and she had helped to arrange little posies of pink and white for the tables. Her next job would have been to see the cook in the kitchen to go over the preparations for the lunchtime guests. She would normally tick these against the menu for the day and go on to her task of tasting: sauces, soups, and stock broths, even the size and crunchiness of the thinly sliced vegetables did not escape her attention. It was while she was joking with the assistant cook, about how her waistline had expanded with her kitchen duties that the post boy came with the telegram. She took one look at the thin slip of paper that was handed to her and all semblance of joviality was wiped from her face.

She manoeuvred behind the desk and sat down on the wooden chair. She looked at the clock on the wall; it was just 10.45 in the morning. She reached for the phone. She made a quick calculation of the time difference. Nelly should be still in the store, she thought, but her staff would have left. They should be able to talk.

“She is absolutely devastated.
Seong sam do mo tak gong
, her heart is so wounded that she cannot speak. She just weeps,” said Nelly. Her voice over the phone sounded hoarse as though she herself had been crying. “My fault, entirely my fault. If I had not come back and given her an excuse to stay back in KL, then this might never have happened.”

“Don’t blame yourself. As I said many times before, she would have married or gone with him anyway; she was so smitten, so in love. She would not have risked her father’s anger by running away with Hussein otherwise. Who could have anticipated that his family would go to such extreme measures to push them apart? Why did Shalimar change her story? And can we believe Hussein? It seems... it seems...”

“A tall story? I too have my doubts, but I cannot say that to An Mei.”

“So what is she going to do? Tell her we love her; that she can always come home.”

“Are you going to tell Ming Kong?”

A long silence followed. Mei Yin struggled with her thoughts. They were in limbo. “What do you think?”

“Yes; this time we should tell him, but we must break it to him gently.”

Ming Kong smiled as Mei Yin tucked the rug around his knees. This was the time of the day that he liked best; when she was back home with him, just playing a game of cards, watching television and eating the restaurant delicacies she had packed into a tiffin box for him.

“Is this the tiffin box that you used to bring food to Nelly when we had our first shop?” he asked. Cream and painted with red roses, the chipped three-tiered box had clearly seen better days.

“Mmm...” she nodded, “I brought it all the way here, as a reminder of how we started business; a humble reminder.” She tried to smile back in return, but she couldn’t. Her mind was busy, scrambling to find an opening statement to introduce the subject.

“You’re back early,” he commented, noticing her reticence. “How was it today?”

He loved her daily accounts of what went on in the restaurant, content to take a backseat, at least for the moment. He hoped that his lethargy would soon lift; he felt unaccountably tired. He could not explain it. On the business front, things were working out. Nelly was keeping the Malaysian side of his business going; in Oxford, Mei Yin seemed to be thriving. He was blessed with two wonderful women, more than he deserved, he acknowledged silently.

“Good, the day was good. The restaurant was full this lunch time,” she replied. She saw that he sensed something was not right. He was looking at her intently, expectantly. She made up her mind to tell it straight. “I have news of An Mei. It’s not good.”

She took his hand and told him, leaving nothing out.

He sat quietly and listened. Once upon a time, he would have ranted and raved; he would have threatened and rushed out to make good his threats. Now he just sat listening, his face full of sadness. Like Nelly blaming herself, he considered himself responsible for the situation.

“Perhaps my sins are revisiting my child,” he said softly, so softly that Mei Yin had to bend low over him to hear.

“Nonsense!” she said. “Completely different context. You were much worse!” she teased in an effort to lighten his mood. She was worried; his face had turned virtually grey.

“An Mei needs someone to talk to and perhaps it is not us. She needs to clear her head. She has to get away from Kuala Lumpur, from Kemun, and think and talk it over,” she said.

“Casey!” he said suddenly. “She was her best friend in Oxford and seems to know Hussein. So what she says An Mei would not interpret as being biased against him. If it came from us, she probably would.”

“You might be right. Casey is young like An Mei. Our way of thinking is different from theirs. Siew Lin, her mother, says she is level-headed. I’ll speak to her.”

“I
t’s a matter of grave concern,” An Mei heard the man say. She glanced up and caught his eye. He smiled politely, bowing just a fraction to acknowledge her existence before continuing his conversation with the group of men standing by the bar. “It is not a matter that is covered in this conference and we are not here to discuss it, but informally...” he paused, casting his eyes around the room, “people are talking. Just like us. In the corridors, behind closed doors, people are commenting on the new directions. The long term results that surely must arise from such short term considerations.” His voice droned on.

An Mei was aware of the glances in her direction, a lone woman in the room, distinguished from the other suited delegates by the lack of an official badge that would give her title and credentials. A large poster announced that an international conference was underway. She was waiting for Casey. Casey had said that she might be able to pop out to see her for a few minutes in order to arrange a reunion tonight. She warned she might be late because much would depend upon how the conference was going. As an interpreter, her hours were determined by the proceedings. But surely, An Mei reasoned, she should be able to get away now that the delegates were taking a break in the bar. She looked around the room uneasily. She felt like an intruder.

“You see that woman sitting there,” she heard a delegate say, “look what she is wearing. It did not use to be like that here, but, increasingly, this is a common sight. A swing to ... to ... conservatism would you say?”

She knew instinctively that she was being examined and lowered her head to let her
hijab
fall forward to cover more of her face.

“An Mei?” a voice asked cautiously.

She looked up. “Casey!” she said, jumping up and grasping her friend’s hands.

“Why are you dressed like this?” asked Casey. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said that,” she apologised immediately. “I am late because of the working group responsible for drafting the report. There were some difficulties with some of the words used by the interpreters. Suddenly every delegate in the group became a self-appointed linguist. They combed each word to ferret out all possible nuances. We had to liaise with the translators preparing the report of the conference.”

She paused for breath.

“Look! I can’t stay,” Casey continued, “I have to return immediately now the break is over because we have to be back in the interpreters’ booths ready for the resumption of the session. Here, meet me at my hotel,’ she said pushing a piece of paper into An Mei’s hands. “It is wonderful to see you.” Casey gave An Mei a hurried hug and rushed off, but her face was taut with anger. “How dare Hussein reduce her to this plain, shrouded woman, with fear and anxiety written all over her face.”

An Mei stood in the middle of the hotel room examining the clothes strewn in chaotic disorder on the big bed.

“Find a place to sit, will you,” Casey shouted from the bathroom. “Just push the clothes aside. I will be out in a minute. I just need to make myself nearly decent. There! I am ready.”

She came out of the bathroom, wrapped in a big fluffy towel, a smaller towel wound round her hair like a turban.

Suddenly, An Mei felt like she was back in Oxford in the digs she shared with Casey. The hotel room was bigger, more luxurious, but there was the same chaotic assembly of clothes, books and paper. Even the smell of Casey’s bath soaps and powders were the same. She could not help smiling.

“How did you manage to create such a mess in one day? You have only just arrived.”