The Shallow Seas (36 page)

“George, you cannot divorce Maria. It would ruin her. And what of the child? Where would he live? Maria could not stay in Singapore with the whole town talking about her. The child would have no father. Think of it.”

George rose and went towards the door. “Yes, I have to think.”

Charlotte, too, knew she had to think.

That evening she went to Zhen's house. When she could come to him, she sent him a note to the godown in the afternoon. Tonight, as soon as she entered, she moved into his arms.

“My husband will arrive soon,” she told Zhen. “I will be going back with him.”

Zhen nodded and held her tightly. Then they went to the kitchen, and he began to make her tea. Charlotte sat at the square table and watched him moving slowly, setting out the cups, rinsing the tiny brown pottery teapot he liked to use, with a monkey lid, taking the tea from the shelf next to the Kitchen God's altar, pouring the boiling water until it bubbled frothily over the side. She watched every simple gesture. He had a grace of movement in everything he did. Not just in lovemaking or when he practised the flowing movements of the
tai chi
, but even in these small domestic chores. This grace was inside him. For a big man, he had elegant hands, and she watched them as he poured the fragrant tea which smelled of jasmine blossom. When he concentrated, he opened his eyes wider, as if his almond eyes could not quite take in the whole scene.

I love you, she thought. He sensed her eyes on him and turned his head and smiled at her. She would always wonder at the effect he had on her. He was so solid, yet so like air, so simple, yet so complex. He was filled with richness. He made her fly. She rose and floated into his arms, pulling his lips to hers, stealing his kisses.

“It is fortunate that the Kitchen God is still out of house, or he would certainly report me for such things. I do like Zhang Dan. Kissing a woman not my wife!”

He smiled as he said it. She knew he was not in the slightest bit superstitious. In his life he adopted, for his health and his body, aspects of the
Tao-chiao
, the religious school, but for his mind he followed the
Tao-chia
, the philosophical school, and especially the writings of Master Chuang. In his bedroom he had a black-and-white brush painting of the
Seven Sages in the Bamboo Grove
. It had an ethereal quality. The tiny figures were seated in a misty grove, drinking, playing instruments, under the towering bamboo trees. Charlotte did not think much about art, but she liked the peaceful, other-worldly effect the painter had made, so unlike anything she had ever seen in Scotland, where paintings favoured hunting scenes and dogs holding poor dead birds in their mouths. There was writing on this painting: a poem, he said, but he could not read the old Chinese. Between lovemaking, lying in each other's arms, he had explained something of these things to her, asked her about Western philosophies. He liked the sages' playful and irreverent attitude to life, the
qing tan
, a freedom of conversation and action, a love of nature, a harmony with the universe.

She looked up above the stove now and saw that the paper effigy of the Kitchen God had disappeared. He had long ago told Charlotte about Zao Jun, the master of the stove.

Zao Jun had once been a mortal man named Zhang Dan, who was married to a virtuous woman. However, Zhang Dan fell in love with a young girl and left his wife for her. From that day, he was plagued with bad luck. He was struck blind, the young girl left him, and he had to resort to begging.

One day, while begging for alms, he came across the house of his former wife. Being blind, he did not recognise her. Despite his shoddy treatment of her, she took pity on him and invited him in, gave him a sumptuous meal and tended him lovingly. He related his story to her and began to cry. As he did so, his eyesight was miraculously restored and he recognised this benefactress as his wife. Overcome with shame, he threw himself into the kitchen hearth. His wife tried to save him, but he was consumed by the fire, and all that was left of him was his leg.

His wife lovingly created a shrine to him over the fireplace where he had died. Heaven took pity on Zhang Dan's tragic story and instead of becoming an undead Jiang Shi, the usual fate of suicides, he was made the god of the kitchen and reunited with his wife.

Still today in China, Zhen had laughed, raising his eyebrows and brandishing the fire poker, we call this Zhang Dan's leg.

Ever since, Zao Jun went annually to heaven to report on the activities of the household to the Jade Emperor. To speed him on his way, offerings of sticky rice cakes and sweets were made and firecrackers lit. A little melted sugar had been put to his lips to sweeten his words and his paper image burned. He had left a few days ago and would stay away until New Year. Charlotte could see his shrine had been cleaned by Ah Pok, Zhen's servant.

As they sipped the tea, Zhen rose briefly and took a package from the shelf. He put it in front of her. It was a box covered in black silk, closed with a Chinese toggle of scarlet cords. She opened the case and inside there was a book, a Chinese paper book which unfolded like a concertina. It had a dark blue damask silk cover, and the stitched binding was of white silk cord. She opened it and read what was written there in Chinese and English.

Union is bliss, parting is woe
,

Agony is boundless for a lovelorn soul
.

Sweetheart, give me word
,

Trails of clouds drifting by and mountains capped with snow

Whither shall my lonesome shadow go?

As he saw her reading it, he said the words in Chinese. She opened the pages of the book. Each of the ten pages contained a poem. He sat down next to her, his arm touching hers, her head against his shoulder, and read the verses to her in Chinese as she followed the text.

“
Wa ai lu
,” she said.

“Yes, Xia Lou,
wa ai lu
,” he repeated, correcting her tones and grinning.

Smiling, she finished her tea, entwined her fingers in Zhen's and led him up the stairs to the bedroom.

29

Charlotte stood on the steps of the old Police House which had been her home. The view from here was still breathtaking, especially now as the golden evening was drawing in. The rocks in the mouth of the river had changed shape. She had remembered them as long and pointed, one rising like a swordfish from the waters which swirled with eddies and whorls like green snakes. On the opposite bank, cleared of trees and growth, she could see the place where formerly a huge red stone covered in ancient text had stood like a sentinel. She had visited this stone with George. The rock had been hewn in two, the two sides facing each other, some distance apart, but leaning in towards each other as if to whisper some age-old secret.

Their inscriptions on the interior side were faded and worn. She had run her fingers over this antique script. He had told her that many had tried to decipher their meaning but none had succeeded. The stone had stood as a mute witness to an older time. She had watched it from this verandah, changing in aspect and colour as the sun moved around the sky, a massive shadowy presence in the moonlight. It had felt like an old friend.

There was a legend about this stone in the Malay Annals. She tried to recall it. It was about a man granted great strength by a ghost of some sort. What was his name? His fame spread to the Rajah of Singhapura where he became the king's champion. He had won a contest of strength for his lord against the champion of the Rajah of Kling by lifting a mighty stone and throwing it into the mouth of the river. When this Herculean hero finally died, he had been buried here, and the admiring Kling Raja had sent two stone pillars to mark his grave.

Now all of this was gone: the stone, the grave, the legend, and Charlotte felt a deep dismay. Abdullah had spoken of it to her, for he had been incensed at such destruction. The engineer of the settlement, Captain Stevenson, had ordered it blown up a year ago to widen the passage to the river and make space for an extension of Fort Fullerton. A piece, she had heard, had been taken to Govenment House and was being used as a seat for the sepoys. She shook her head and sighed. Now no one would ever know who had dwelt here. Shelley's “Ozymandias” entered her mind; it had been words only before she had seen the stone, but now so potent as she stared at this annihilated place.

“
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare

The lone and level sands stretch far away
.”

She looked up to the flagstaff on the hill. It announced the arrival in Singapore waters of the
Queen of the South
, signalled from Pulau Blakan Mati to Government Hill. She had watched for days and finally seen Tigran's flag raised. The ship would not anchor in the harbour until after dark and would not disembark until morning.

Charlotte took a last walk around the old house, its rooms now standing empty. It had stood for almost the entire duration of the settlement, but now was to be demolished to widen the mouth of the river. A coal store was to be built. How hideous, thought Charlotte. A coal store in such a lovely place. But the new steamers, which appeared increasingly in the harbour, were hungry for this fuel. She thought it ironic that the coal for the steamers came in sailing ships! But she had been on one, the
Victoria
, a strange mixture of sail and steam. Tigran had booked cabins, out of curiosity and because he thought these ships might be the future and was considering adding some to his fleet. It had been the inaugural voyage to Penang, stopping in Malacca, an experiment to see if there was interest enough to establish a permanent steam line between the three ports of the Straits Settlements. It was enjoyable: the ship could travel in any direction, against the wind, against the tide; it was comfortable and reliable. But they were ugly things, and dirty, with their noisy engines and paddles and their squalid sooty noses. Nothing, she felt, equalled the beauty of sail.

Some old chairs and an ancient table stood forlornly on the verandah. Robert wanted to send the house off with a little celebration with his policemen. She watched the sunset falling rapidly.

Robert lived in a large old house on Beach Road. The really wealthy merchants now all owned estates in the surrounding countryside. Robert had done well for himself, investing wisely in land leases, a coconut plantation and a house on the beach at Katong, which he rented for holiday weekends and honeymoons. He wanted two or three more, for nothing matched the peaceful and pretty seclusion of this part of Singapore. He planned to marry Teresa before the year was out.

Charlotte had finally made sense of what was happening with him. Some other fellows had been paying court to Teresa, who was now seventeen and very pretty. He had, with the greatest trepidation, finally told Teresa about Shilah, for he had decided he could no longer submit to blackmail. Be damned! he'd said. If she was shocked and wouldn't have him, then so be it! Better to know right away.

And to his amazement, Teresa had told him it was all right. She was not as innocent as that. Most men had one of these women, and children and so on. You couldn't live in a family of scores of cousins and dozens of aunts and uncles and not know a thing or two. At least three of her cousins, to her knowledge, kept such a girl. She did not like it, though. It must stop, she had said. He had agreed. She was tired of waiting. They would get engaged immediately and marry as soon as possible. He had nodded vehemently. And she had kissed him passionately and told him she was very tired of being a virgin. He had dropped his jaw, and she had patted his hand.

Charlotte smiled. Teresa had set her sights on Robert, and now he was hers. They would be a good couple. Teresa was just right for Robert. Charlotte had vague forebodings about Shilah, however, for she knew that Shilah loved Robert and would very much resent this marriage and his subsequent withdrawal of affection. But she could not worry about that now.

She stood and looked along the river towards the Chinese town. It was not visible from here, for the river made a bend, but she could feel its bustling energy bursting over the waters. Throughout the Chinese New Year period she had not seen Zhen. He had been intensely involved in the celebrations with his family, his wife and children. It was impossible to ignore the festivities, for the deafening noise floated across the whole town. This, more than anything else, had reaffirmed the impossibility of a life, other than this transient life, with him. She could not share his world. For these months she had tried to justify it, reconcile it, write mental treatises about it, but there it was. She lived in one world and he in another and, like the cowherd and the weaver girl in the Chinese love story, they could only meet over the magpie bridge.

She had not yet said good-bye to Zhen; she was going to him now. Charlotte walked down onto the riverside and hailed a sampan to take her there, to his house.

He was waiting for her. She entered his house and took a look around. Love's last adieu, she thought. It was like a tormenting refrain. She put her hand to his cheek and, without a word, climbed the stairs. The last time. It bit into her brain. She did not want to speak to him. She disrobed, leaving only the pearl necklace, and started to climb up on the high bed awkwardly, her belly getting in the way. She wanted to watch him take off his clothes. Zhen smiled and teased her a little, patting her bottom, pretending she was too heavy for him to move, and she turned and scolded him. He laughed and picked her up easily in his strong arms and put his lips to hers and placed her on the bed. She lay back. The thought of robbing her eyes of his beauty caused her physical pain.

She was big now with her child, and he lay next to her and brought her head into his shoulder, moving her so she was nestled in his arm, her leg over his to rest her belly. He had bathed before she came, and his skin was cool and fragrant. He knew her husband had come to take her away, that this was farewell. He caressed her hair. Charlotte traced with her fingers the tattooed image of Guan Di on his chest, and they lay silently together for a long time.