The Hills of Singapore (11 page)

But she would like to have a few words with this brother of hers.

11

Boat Quay was teeming with its usual crowded and noisy bustle. John Thomson's bridge felt sturdy underfoot. It had replaced the Monkey Bridge built over twenty years before, which had become so shaky, worm-ridden and unsafe that it had been demolished, leaving Coleman's seven-arched brick span as the only means to go, by foot or carriage, from one side of the river to the other. The walk was longer and since most people went on foot, there was a great brouhaha. Butterworth had gotten into a tussle with the merchants; it was not the government's business to replace the bridge and they might as well get used to it for he would not change his mind.
The Free Press
had been full of the business and the matter was resolved, ultimately, when someone had searched the records and found that indeed, the government had engaged to maintain a bridge at this place. With a great deal of annoyed mutterings, Butterworth had been forced to find funds and Thomson had been engaged.

The bridge was a simple wooden construction joining North and South Bridge Roads. A footbridge on one side allowed a view down over the town and river. Charlotte stopped and gazed on the town. Adam, at her side, knelt, holding the railings and peering down at the mass of kajang-roofed boats lying below. A young native boy looked up at him curiously. Adam smiled and waved but the little boy remained expressionless.

He looked up at his mother and she shrugged. He was little and loving and wanted everyone to be his friend, even the little boy on the boat, so far removed from him in everything. His
babu
trailed behind them, and when she saw Adam pout a little she came up quickly and took him into her arms, hugging him. Charlotte shook her head—such a spoilt child he would be if she let him. But she let it go, and they continued over the bridge and down onto the quayside.

Alexander was in school. She had arranged to lunch with Teresa on Commercial Square and to view the extraordinary new invention from America, the Howe's Automatic Sewing Machine, which was being demonstrated at Little, Cursetjee & Company.

She deliberately chose to direct her steps in front of Baba Tan's godown. She would greet him if he was there. Why not? She knew him well. And if Zhen happened to be there too, well … The little rush of blood to her face she brought under control immediately and fanned herself.

Whampoa greeted her. He was outside his vast godown, which serviced the British Navy. They knew each other well. Whampoa's English was formidable. He spoke it as well as any Englishman and better sometimes. Charlotte knew now, that his real name was Hoo Ah Kay, Whampoa being the island of his birth and the name taken by his father for his business. They chatted a little while, Adam, shy, hiding his face in the
babu's
sarong.

Whampoa whispered a word to a boy and he ran off, returning within a few minutes with the old sweet maker, his daughter and his cart. Charlotte smiled. She had seen the sweet maker at work before but Adam had not.

He was making dragon's beard, a Chinese sweet. The man took a pliable yellow disc of palm sugar. He began to knead and stretch the disc until it had a large hole in the middle. He wrapped the disc around his hands, dipped it quickly in rice flour to prevent sticking and began to pass it through his fingers, like a skein of wool, stretching and folding. As if by magic the one strand became two, then four. He dipped again, the rice flour flying and floating as the strands doubled and redoubled. Again and again, that's eighty, now two hundred and twenty, more rice flour, now six hundred and forty. Whampoa smiled at Adam's face, watching entranced as the sugar became more and more strands, finer and finer, the rice powder filling the air like snow. Finally the man stopped; the yellow orb was transformed into the finest silk-like threads, ten thousand of them, shimmering like a snow maiden's hair, as the powder drifted down to the ground, surrounding the sweet maker in a field of white.

The man laid the delicate bundle of threads on a tray. He cut them quickly into short lengths. His young daughter sprinkled roasted peanuts, sesame seeds and shredded coconut into each of the beards and folded them into a cocoon. The whole entertainment had taken no more than a few minutes. Adam's mouth was standing open.

Whampoa took one of the sweets and offered it to him. All shyness fled. He took the dragon's beard candy and put it into his mouth, then smiled. Whampoa gave some coins to the sweet maker, who quickly wrapped the remaining sweets in a banana leaf cone, handed the cone to Adam's
babu
and with a toothless grin, moved off.

Charlotte turned then to see what Whampoa was looking at. It was the top-hatted figure of Baba Tan, who had come up to her. She curtsied very deeply to him and made Adam bow. She knew very well Baba Tan was utterly charmed by these English gestures.

“Mrs Mah Nuk, how sad to see you in this way, but how nice you have returned to Singapore.”

She nodded at Baba Tan and introduced him to Adam. As he shook hands cheerfully with the little boy, he took her in. She was even more beautiful than before.

Children had not affected her figure, still willowy and graceful. She was dressed in that tight fashion, the bodice revealing curves the way the English women did so immodestly for one's delectation but yet so modest, he supposed they thought. The bodice was high for daytime dress but Tan had attended enough English dinner parties to know that the neckline ebbed a good six inches after sunset, revealing the white European bosom, sometimes to excellent effect depending on the wearer. Charlotte's skirt was full and flowed gracefully around her. The colour was very becoming, a dark blue muslin, trimmed in white, her hat the same. She was in half-widow's clothes. He prided himself on knowing a great deal about the customs of these quaint people. He was also curious as to what would happen when she saw Zhen whom he knew was working in the godown today with Ah Teo, his other son-in-law, on the accounts.

Tan knew a thing or two about Zhen and Charlotte, the main one being that they had been lovers: before she married and after. The other was that it was over, he had been assured. But then she had been away; now she was back. He hoped he would not have to be severe with Zhen. He could see her appeal though. Most English women he found appallingly unattractive but her … jet-black hair, beautiful, exotic eyes, like a princess from a far land. An ebbing neckline would, he knew, look very well on her. She was the sort of woman, he imagined, that if you were rich enough you sought as a foreign concubine. He dismissed these thoughts as a little unworthy but was plagued still with curiosity.

Tan invited Charlotte into the shade of the verandah, for the day was getting hot but she declined charmingly and with just the barest glance into the cool, dark shadows of the godown, she opened her parasol. The
babu
swept Adam into her arms and they quickly walked down the quay to Tavern Street and turned, disappearing from view.

Zhen turned back into the godown. He had watched from the darkness as she talked to Tan and had looked at the little boy by her side. He could see a resemblance to the father. He had made love to her as she carried this child, caressed the swelling belly, felt its movements under her skin. It was as if it was his own, as if he had nurtured the seed inside her, given her the strength of his very essence.

He had known his resolution would be difficult, but until now, he had not realised how difficult. Every emotion was the same as the day he had seen her on this very spot years ago. She was like light, surrounded by light. He loved her. It was irresistible, this feeling for her, like a mighty bore on a river, swamping the banks of his heart. He clenched his fist and stayed his mind from running down these uncontrolled ways. But he was filled with gladness that she was here on this island.

He heard Tan come in from the street and moved quickly to the back. He could not bear to talk of her to anyone just now.

Charlotte swallowed her disappointment. She should not long to see him as she did but her thoughts would not always obey her. Then she smiled and took a deep breath. Meeting was inevitable, and how she would smile at him and wish him happy. She took Adam's hand and he began skipping by her side.

12

Charlotte put down her cup and gazed around her. This was a room she knew very well. It was the drawing room of the Mission House on the corner of Bras Basah and Victoria Streets, where she had so often sat with Benjamin Keaseberry's first wife. The second Mrs Keaseberry was Elizabeth Scott, niece of the harbour master.

When first they met, Elizabeth had been a flame-haired, buxom thirteen-year-old. Now she was twenty-two, still buxom and flame-haired, with very white skin which she took pains to protect from the sun. She was also very pregnant.

Elizabeth was irate and Charlotte suspected that she was often irate or at least irritated. Benjamin, she had told Charlotte, was as scandalised as herself. They were discussing the actions of Butterworth in relation to her uncle. Under the pretext of the man having entered his illustrious presence dressed incorrectly—that is, as he always dressed—Butterworth had dismissed him and replaced him with a favourite of his own. After so many years of service. It had taken him down, yes. Certainly he was very low. “Poor Uncle,” she wailed and Charlotte waited for her to regain her composure.

Her grievance was justified. William Scott had been harbour master for twenty years. To be summarily dismissed on such a flimsy accusation! It was a sign of things to come, she was certain. Soon the new people coming from England would be at home as much in this wonderful exotic island as they were in Watford! The thought was shudderingly awful. The two other women present sighed in sympathy.

Maryanne Norris was the wife of the Assistant to the Resident Councillor. She had just finished bemoaning the terrible situation for civil servants. The officials were in a pitiable way. The East India Company ran Singapore on a shoestring. Government salaries had remained the same for more than fifteen years despite the steep rise in the cost of living, the quadrupling of the population and a threefold increase in trade. It was a disgrace.

The government in Calcutta was obsessed with reports and statistics and with no literate clerical class, it fell to all the civil servants to spend pointless hours in their compilation. The schemes which had formerly existed to pay tuition fees and bonuses to officials who attained proficiency in Malay, Siamese or Chinese had been abolished years before. Charlotte had read about this in
The Straits Times
.

There is no government anywhere in the world so inadequate at addressing its people as that of the Straits
, the editor had written.
Chinese translations of new laws must be made in Hong Kong. Judicial work falls to the Governor and the Resident Councillor almost entirely without help. Cases go unheard for months and the jail is packed with men awaiting trial
.

Charlotte found a great deal of sympathy with Mrs Norris, for Robert too, worked so very hard with too few ill-paid policemen. A force of 130 men was left to deal with a population which, she read in the paper, had grown in ten years or so from 17,000 to 50,000.

Keeping his policemen from the corruption of bribery was a great headache and Robert could not even blame them, their salary was so poor. He was forced, through a lack of senior officials, to double up as Magistrate and Officer of the Court. It was not his salary which had made him comparatively rich. Like all the government officials, they sustained their existence by property development or plantations in the countryside. It was Robert's properties in the town and his coconut plantation at Katong which provided the bulk of his income.

Isabel da Silva, who had fidgeted during this conversation, sighed with relief at its end and now found a degree of animation. Isabel's engagement to the man from Manila had fallen through. He had got some other woman pregnant and been forced to marry her. She had not wanted the man from Manila, but now that he was no longer available Isabel bemoaned her fate and found that she had been almost in love with him.

Charlotte was sure that Maryanne, Isabel and Elizabeth spent many hours together discussing these and other injustices at length. Currently, Isabel's mother was seeking a new husband for her daughter. Appeals had gone out to Isobel, her twin, to find a husband like her own, an English merchant. Unfortunately, Charlotte could see, the strain told somewhat on Isabel. Her face was bloated and red, and she had gained weight. She had never been a pretty girl and now … well, she was well over twenty, with looks waning.

“Actually, I am rather glad the Manila gorilla fell through. I would much rather have Captain Maitland.”

Charlotte looked up from her tea. Isabel had designs on Charles Maitland? Why not, she supposed, but thought Isabel must surely be disappointed. She was certain Sir Henry, Foreign Secretary to the Indian Government would balk, no matter how unfairly, at the prospect of a mixed-blood merchant's daughter marrying his brother. Also, Captain Maitland hardly struck her as a man in search of a wife, or even remotely interested in women.

“Have you met him, Charlotte?” Isabel asked, picking up another piece of cake.

“Yes, briefly. He seems a rather introspective sort of man.”

“Oh, no! Not at all. He is not the least like that. Serious perhaps but I admire a man of science. But he comes often to our house for musical evenings. He sings very well and he is part of the players at the Theatre Royal in the Hill Street Assembly Rooms.”

Charlotte was astonished. The seemingly taciturn Mr Maitland, a player?

“Why, there is a performance next Saturday night of
The Merry Monarch
. He plays Mary Tree.”

“He plays females uncommonly well,” Elizabeth added and Isabel nodded, cramming cake into her mouth.

The prospect of the dour Mr Maitland in female apparel was too good to be missed, and Charlotte agreed to attend. Isabel said that she would go immediately to Little & Cursetjee to pick up the tickets.