SQ 04 - The English Concubine (29 page)

But those who died of unnatural causes were trapped forever in limbo, unable to enter the Underworld until they themselves had lured another unfortunate soul in to replace them. They were feared for this reason.

Zhen was not permitted to leave. He was the deceased’s father-in-law and the only living man in the family able to placate the spirits. It would be eternally his duty to keep Qian and Ah Soon from visiting the earth and stealing another soul.

Zhen was relieved when, finally, the coffin was taken from the temple on the hill and carried to the cemetery and interred near his father. More money and incense was burned, the black smoke carried far into the sky. The mourners shrieked, the priests chanted, and then it was done and the gravediggers began to fill in the grave.

Zhen made his way down the hill ignoring those who tried to speak to him. Wang watched discreetly.

His mother-in-law had spoken to him of Lian going back to River Valley Road. What better place to birth her child and raise it. But Zhen knew this was the worst possible outcome for Lian. He walked to the house in China Street and went into the hall.

‘Lian,’ he called. The house smelled of incense and he knew she had been asked to light it at Ah Soon’s shrine. Her life, now, as his widow, was to placate him in death. If a son was born, then it would fall to him. He shook his head. These rites made his head ache.

Lian appeared and he put his arm around her. She had been crying and it was not for Ah Soon.

‘The maid will bring your belongings. You are coming to Market Street to live with me until the baby is born.’

Lian threw her arms around her father. Her greatest fear was that she would be sent back to River Valley Road.

‘After the baby is born then we shall see. I think to make over the medicine shop to you.’

‘Oh, Father,’ she said smiling. ‘Wait please. I shall get a small bag.’

Zhen nodded. This was the right thing to do. After five minutes she returned holding a small carpet bag. She ran to get her hat.

They walked slowly and silently to Market Street and all Lian could think of was Alex. What would he do when he found out? Their plan was in tatters. As she was now a widow, Alex had no reason to ask her to come to Batavia.

Zhen took her up the stairs to the first floor. Here was her bedroom and a sitting room. Here she could be private and away from them all. Lian looked around and threw open the shutters.

‘Thank you, Father.’

‘I shall not always dine here,’ he said. ‘And it is not customary for men and women to eat together, but I have become somewhat English with the years with Xia Lou and here, in the privacy of this house, we shall do as we like. Will you eat with me tonight?’

She smiled. ‘Yes, Father.’

When he left she watched him walk from the house towards Boat Quay. What was life to be for her now? Well at least it was not to be with her grandmother. She would wait to hear from Alex. In the meantime, she planned to convert to Christianity. Not the least because Christian widows could remarry. Tomorrow she would go and speak to Father Beurel at the Catholic church.

She touched her waist. Two months pregnant. Alex’s child lay there quietly inside her and it was a comfort. ‘Come to me,’ she said and sent her words out across the sea.

Zhen walked to the godown. He saw Hong approach with two of his henchmen. Wang came to his side. Hong bowed and passed on. To say this man was a threat was an understatement.

He went over the accounts with his Eurasian bookkeeper and spoke to his brother-in-law, who had been at the funeral. They liked each other, these two, and together ate the meal from the tiffin carriers that his second wife had sent down.

Wang appeared.

‘Come,’ Zhen said. ‘Join us. There’s plenty and Ah Teo’s wife is a good cook.’

‘Thanks,’ Wang said, ‘but I’ve got toothache.’

Ah Teo and Zhen shared a look. The man’s mouth was a nightmare.

‘This mail has been sent to you from the Post Office. It is addressed to Ah Soon, but the man said you should take it.’

‘Oh,’ Zhen said and put down his chopsticks.

He went to his room and took up the letter opener. The letter was from Batavia. It must be from Alex. He sat and slit open the envelope and took out the papers.

There were two. One was an offer of employment for Ah Soon. Alex offered him to work in the office of Manouk & Sons trading house. The salary was generous. The passage for him and his wife would be paid.

Zhen contemplated this letter. Did Ah Soon know about this and would he have gone? He put the paper down and opened the second letter.

He read it through from beginning to end and then read it again. He sat back and looked at Ah Teo finishing his lunch. Wang was drinking tea and complaining about his teeth.

Zhen folded the letters and put them in his pocket. A noise began outside. Another skirmish. All this was to do with Hong. The man was a menace. The confiscation of his stash of chandu had hit him hard but it was time for even more drastic measures.

He signalled to Wang.

‘Go to Hong’s house tonight when he’s in bed and asleep. I have heard he likes to smoke a pipe or two so he will not wake. Kill the two thugs who guard him. They’re responsible for more deaths than I can count. Tie the servants and lock them up. No dead servants or women. I don’t want a reputation for cruelty, only swift justice. Understand?’

Wang nodded.

‘Take their heads and put them in bed with him and leave the laws of the brotherhood by his bed. Be silent, be quick. In the morning I want him to wake up alone with a bed full of blood and two corpses at his bedside. Paste news of my just retribution all over Chinatown. Everyone must know what happens if they threaten my life or my authority.’

Wang nodded and smiled. This was the correct decision. If the Shan Chu did not act now, all his authority would evaporate. Even his sore teeth couldn’t stop him enjoying this.

When Zhen returned to Market Street in late afternoon, the maid said Lian was bathing. All her things had been moved to this house. He dismissed her and went to Lian’s room. On the bed was the carpet bag.

He opened it and took out the two letters from Batavia. He read them and his jaw tightened. This had been the plan all along. Alex was a clever boy, a boy with the same passions and obsessions as he himself. He had acted just the way Zhen had acted for love of Xia Lou, bold and reckless. He put them in his pocket alongside the others.

He went to his bathroom and bathed, washing away the incense and smoke, the heat and sweat of the day. At the dinner hour Lian appeared, fresh and clean. What a lovely girl she is, he thought, this daughter of mine. He felt a great sorrow swell inside himself.

When the dishes had been served he dismissed the servants. Lian was shy. It was unusual to eat with a man, even her own father, and she selected morsels from the plates silently. He waited until she had eaten her fill. He took some food and finished his rice. Then he lay down his chopsticks.

He took out the letters and laid them on the table.

She looked up and suddenly realised what they were. She rose and he lifted his hand.

‘Sit down, Lian.’

She burst into tears and threw her hands to her face, filled with shame. Zhen began to speak and, as he did, she took her hands away from her face and shame was replaced with horror. She began to sob and looked down at her belly. She touched herself there and her hands began to shake uncontrollably. Zhen called the maid who arrived, terrified at the sight of her mistress.

‘Go to bed, Lian. I am not angry.’

Lian stumbled upstairs and threw herself on the bed.

‘Get out,’ she screamed at the maid and the girl rushed from the room. Lian pulled her hair and began to wail.

When the house was silent, at midnight, she slipped out of the back door. She knew the samsengs watched this house but they were creatures of habit and mere men. Both of them were dozing. She walked quickly along Telok Ayer Bay looking neither right nor left. She passed the slumbering fishermen in their boats, their silhouettes caught by moonshine, their craft lulled by the soft waves lapping the shore, passed the towers of the mosque and the peaceful temple with its odours of incense. At the end of the street she turned and began to climb up the hill. Without a moment’s hesitation she walked to the edge and out into the void.

39

Alex looked up as the servant brought the tray with the post. He sorted through it swiftly. Still nothing. Four weeks and still nothing. Tonight he would write again. Or perhaps he should just take the
Queen
and go back and get them. Yes, that would stop all this waiting. But the
Queen
was on voyage to the spice islands and wouldn’t be back for two weeks. He thrummed his fingers on the table and felt his agitation.

He finished his coffee and walked down to the river. It took half an hour and he walked off his energy in the cool of the morning under the spacious arms of the rain trees. The auction had gone reasonably well. Several bidders had driven up the price. The debts had been paid and more than enough money was left to begin repairs on the house. And build the river house of teak. The massive teak logs had arrived and work had begun.

At least he had his own apartment now and could wake alone without Amber’s cloying attentions. He lost himself for days in the work of the estate, riding out to survey the rice paddies and speak to the kampong people in his barely remembered rudimentary Javanese.

He had visited Amber more often than he had thought he would. It wasn’t just to keep her satisfied, he needed to relieve the sexual tensions that threatened to overwhelm him when he thought of Lian. Last night Amber had told him she thought she was pregnant. She begged him to sleep with her but he had left. He didn’t care if she was disappointed.

He heard her calling and ignored it. He strode out to the river and greeted the men. The carpenter and he went over the plan. It would be beautiful, four rooms, all in glowing teak wood and a great verandah overhanging the swift flowing waters of the Kali Krukut, the most beautiful river in Batavia. At the back the cookhouse and servants quarters separate, at a distance from the house.

Amber turned away, disappointed. Charlotte contemplated her. She had missed by two weeks. She was probably pregnant. Perhaps now it was time for her to explain. That Alexander was building this river house was a sign. He intended it for another woman at some stage. Alex spent a lot of time with Matthew and Pieter and knew how things worked for men in the Indies.

She put on the coat which covered her thickening waist. She knew now that she could not do anything but keep this child. He or she would be the last piece of Zhen she would ever have. In a few weeks she would announce it to Alex and the devil take the hindmost.

Takouhi had gone into town. She had decided, now that Charlotte was back with Alex, that she would go and live in her old house at Nordwijk. It had been tenanted a long time and needed refurbishment. It was smaller and closer to all the fashionable shops and hotels.

Charlotte heard a carriage drive up and went to the windows looking down to the drive. She had just begun to plan the great reception for Alex and Amber. Now before Amber began to show. This might be the man from the Harmonie Club. She intended to hold this great banquet and ball in town.

She went out onto the landing which gave down onto the blue and white Dutch tiles of the hall. A figure entered, dressed in a black silk coat, under the great shield of the VOC and the coat of arms of Van Riemsdijk, the owner and builder of this great house.

He looked up and she gazed into the eyes of Zhen. She couldn’t believe it and staggered slightly. He stood, looking up at her, unmoving.

She did not want to go down, but she knew she had to. She buttoned the loose coat over her dress and walked down the stairs and his eyes never left her. As she came up to him he bowed. He looked thin, she thought.

‘You, here.’

‘Xia Lou. I have come to speak of serious things.’

‘Come outside.’

She led Zhen out to the long verandah which occupied the entire back of the house and looked down from the knoll out and over the lawns and down to the river. From here she could not see Alex for the house he was building was at a bend in the river where the rocks stood up and the water was particularly fast and brilliant.

She turned her gaze on Zhen. He was looking at her and she suddenly blushed. How did he do it? But he did not smile.

‘Would you like something?’

‘Yes. Something. Some water perhaps. Soda water. Do you have it?’

‘Yes.’ She called a servant.

She sat and he sat, too, and looked over the estate.

‘Beautiful. I never came here. Only up to the house in the hills.’

‘Yes,’ she said and a feeling of tenderness came over her. He had saved her from the opium, up there in the hills. She felt the flutter in her womb. If she had never been pregnant she would never have noticed it, but she knew it was his child, moving inside her. With Lily they had shared this moment, his hand on her belly, his lips too, overjoyed to be together. She gazed at him.

‘Zhen, I want to say I’m truly sorry. How we left everything.’

He nodded. ‘Yes, I too. But that is not why I’m here.’

Amber came out onto the terrace and approached them. ‘Oh. Mr. Zhen. What a surprise. How nice.’

She threw a glance at her aunt. This man’s presence was incomprehensible.

Zhen did not rise. Charlotte smiled. Chinese men did not rise for young women. She sensed him tense. ‘Amber, dear. Leave us for the moment. I want to speak to Zhen alone.’

Amber bobbed a curtsy. ‘Of course.’ She turned to go, then hesitated. ‘I hope Lian is well,’ she said but as nothing was answered, she departed, out across the lawn and down to the river, seeking Alex.

‘What is it?’ Charlotte said. Something was very wrong.

The servant arrived with the water and she contemplated Zhen as it was decanted. ‘Enough,’ she said impatiently and the servant scurried away.

He drank. ‘Ah Soon died of an overdose of opium.’