Authors: Meira Chand
âI'm not fussy, a small room upstairs is fine,' Wilfred replied but rethought his remark as they reached the upper floor.
Climbing the stairs he had been aware of a rise in temperature, and already wondered how he would cope with the humidity and heat. As the rickshaw had turned off Bukit Timah into Chancery Lane on its way to Mount Rosie, he had been delighted to find that the shady, equatorial street, so far from its staid London namesake, was a road of lush jungle foliage, thick twisting vines and tall rainforest trees. Beneath the constant whirr of crickets and cicada, he sensed the drowsy silence at the heart of each tropical day.
Rose walked ahead of him to unlock the double doors of his room and he followed her inside, looking apprehensively about. The window shutters were closed against the afternoon sun and the small room vibrated with trapped heat. Looking up at the ceiling he saw, from the abrupt end to a line of wooden beading, that it appeared to be partitioned off from a larger area. Yet, the whitewashed room had the same fresh feel as the rest of the house, the rattan chairs with their chintz cushions looked new, the bed linen crisp with starch and on a carved desk was a small bowl of yet more flaming flowers. He was pleased with what he saw.
âYou have a nice view,' Rose announced, walking over to the window to open the shutters and filling the room with light. The garden was lush with tall clumps of red-stemmed lacquer palms, white spider lilies, ginger flowers and orange heliconia that he thought resembled lobster claws. A frangipani tree laden with pale, fragant blossom stood outside the window.
âEveryone leaves their room doors open; it gives some through breeze. You'll still have your privacy with the swing doors closed.' Rose pointed to a set of short louvred flaps filling the middle of the door frame. She turned again to the window to adjust the slats of the shutters. None of the windows in the house had glass, Wilfred noticed, just these heavy louvred shutters.
âThis time of year we have the monsoon. The rain comes down suddenly and if it's at night you'll have to let down the
chiks
yourself, otherwise the room will be drenched,' Rose said, touching the rolled up bamboo blinds before the window.
âThe room rate includes your meals but not a Boy to clean, wait at table and attend to valet duties.' Rose mentioned this fact as casually as she could and saw the expected consternation in his face; she knew he would be earning the meagre starting salary of all young European men on a first tour of duty in the Straits Settlement.
âUsually, most of the gentlemen here are glad to share a Boy. I will speak to your neighbour, Mr Boffort. However, I'm afraid there is no way around the cost of the dhobi,' Rose added.
At the door she hesitated and then turned back to face him. âIt is not my business, Mr Patterson, but I would advise an outlay on some white cotton suits. It is what all the gentlemen wear here.'
Wilfred looked down at his woollen clothes and the colour deepened in his face. âI had not expected quite this degree of heat, Mrs Burns,' he replied stiffly, but then asked in a lower voice, âHow many suits do you think I will need?'
âAt least twelve or fourteen, that would be my advice,' Rose replied evenly.
âFourteen.' Wilfred's face dropped in dismay. He sat down on the bed and looked up at the mosquito net gathered above him on a tall frame.
âA fresh suit must be worn every day, Mr Patterson. They go to the
dhobi
for laundering only once a week, so you need a week's supply in hand,' Rose explained as gently as she could.
âYou will not have to pay the tailor immediately,' she added, hoping to relieve his despondency. âIn this country you sign a chit that can be paid off with a minimum sum every month, or later.'
âI don't want to get into debt. Do you sign chits?' Wilfred regarded her in a worried way, seeking reassurance.
She gave a slight smile, knowing he meant no insult. âAs a local person I have to pay my bills promptly each month. Come, let me show you the bathroom.' She walked along the corridor towards the back of the house.
âWe have a flush system now for the toilets, not like the old days,' she assured him proudly. The bathrooms had been built out over a veranda with their own flight of stairs to allow coolies to carry up bathwater and, before the flush system had been installed, collect the buckets of waste from the toilet. A strong smell of disinfectant hung about the tiled bathroom but could not quite cover the odour of drains.
In a corner stood a huge Shanghai jar of water with a metal dipper. Rose turned to him apologetically.
âWater pressure is low and sometimes stops altogether. You have to sluice yourself down from the Shanghai jar for your bath, but you will get used to it, just like the heat,' she smiled, shutting the door. âDinner is at eight.'
Leaving Wilfred Patterson, Rose made her way downstairs, returning to her place at the table and old chintz sofa near the window, to put away the week's accounts. Ah Fong brought her a cup of tea and she drank it gratefully. The new lodger had filled her last vacancy, and she was surprised to hear him say that he found Belvedere beautiful. All she saw was a worn expanse of red Malacca tile, the dusty wooden fretwork below the high ceilings and the innumerable small dining tables that she had bought from a bankrupt restaurant owner. Still, it pleased her that Belvedere had established a good reputation; all the big firms recommended it to young men coming out to Singapore on a first tour of duty. She felt she had more than proved herself, but to whom she was not sure.
With the main doors and windows of his room open, Wilfred found there was some cross-ventilation as Rose had promised. He was intrigued by the novel arrangement of short swing doors spanning the entrance to his room; his head could be seen above them and his legs below. He remembered a book he had liked as a child, where each page with a picture of an animal had been cut into three. Flipping over the separate sections created beasts of fantastical design, the head of a dragon joining the belly of a bear and the feet of a duck. He thought he must appear just such a creature to anyone looking in from outside â head and lower portions visible, the middle part still blank. Inwardly, he felt no less cut about and abstracted, his battered emotions left at sixes and sevens by his sudden entry into this tropical world.
When he lay down upon the bed he was relieved to see that, at the horizontal, the swing doors assured his privacy; no one could see him from the corridor. He lay there for some time, the pith helmet sitting where he had deposited it on the bed, a resting place for his ankle. He had paid far more than he had wanted for the thing, which had come from Heath's in Bond Street. Although he had been offered a
cheaper variety made from cloth-covered cork, he had liked the importance of the bolder shape, representative of the adventure ahead. At last he was back in Malaya, at the very centre of his memories, back where he had been born on a rubber estate near Johore. Already, Wilfred was beginning to see his life as a series of ever widening circles. Above him the mosquito net was bunched up in a gauzy cloud, bringing back to him memories of his childhood, of hot nights when he slept wet with perspiration, the enraged whine of a mosquito near his ear beyond the white shroud of netting. And always, in his memories, there was the distant sound of his mother's voice, shrill or broken by sobbing.
He remembered his mother's excited smile as they sailed back from England to Malaya to join his father after a long spell of home leave during which his father had remained behind. When at last they arrived back at the rubber estate, his father had shown him a new swing hanging from the mango tree, and happiness had exploded within him. His mother too had laughed, happy to be back. Yet, within days her expression changed to one of anger; she began to complain of the heat and humidity, of dust and untrustworthy servants. The bungalow was whipped into a frenzy of polishing and scrubbing, but whatever it was his mother wished to erase, it would not go away. He had run each day to the mango tree, the tree he now called âhis tree', with the sun-warmed swing. He had pushed his body backwards and forwards, looking up at the sun through the dark pattern of leaves, moving higher and higher until at last he flew with the clouds, the vast jungle sweeping away on all sides beneath him.
Wilfred stood up and went to the window, throwing off his unbearable woollen suit, stripping off his shirt as he pushed back the louvred green shutters. At once the hot sun poured over his flesh and he closed his eyes in pleasure. This was how he remembered it, running bare-chested and barefoot as a child in the compound of his home on the rubber estate with the servants' children. Although this was Singapore and not upcountry Malaya, a familiar smell drifted to him, of hot damp undergrowth and frangipani, of spice and carbolic and excrement. Already, some part of him had come home.
Cynthia Burns, walking along the drive of Belvedere after leaving her rickshaw, looked up at the house to see a naked man in the frame of
a window. She was well used to the presence of young bachelors in Belvedere, and over the years had grown adept at deflecting unwanted attentions, so she quickly lowered her eyes before this unexpected sight. But when she looked up from under the rim of her straw hat, the man was still at the window. She saw then that he was oblivious to her presence; his head was thrown back and his eyes were closed. He had blond hair and muscular shoulders, and resembled the narrow-hipped plaster cast of a Greek god she had once had to draw in school. She put up a hand to secure her hat as she tilted her head for a better view, but lost her grip on the books she carried. Her hat slipped from her head as the books fell about her, and bending to retrieve them she cursed loudly in annoyance. As she straightened up she saw that the man at the window was now staring directly down at her. An expression of embarrassment filled his face and he closed the shutters quickly. Cynthia was left with an abrupt sense of loss.
At eight o'clock after a rest and a bath, Wilfred made his way downstairs to the sound of a melodious gong. As Mrs Burns had said, water pressure was low, and he had sluiced cool water over himself from the Shanghai jar in the bathroom. Although he could see there was a constant attempt to scrub it away, traces of green algae clung to parts of the tiled bathroom wall and floor. A high window filled by wire mesh let in filtered light. He recalled that childhood house in Malaya where spiders as large as a man's hand had stalked a similar window above a similar Shanghai jar. Now, as he walked down the stairs for his first dinner at Belvedere, he was surprised to find himself descending into a world of candlelight; everything appeared charmingly unreal and he looked about with pleasure. From across the room Rose saw him and came hurrying up. She had wound her long hair high on her head for the evening and crimson lipstick brightened her face above the lace collar of a dark silk dress. Although not beautiful, Wilfred decided, she was what was called a handsome woman and carried herself with dignity.
âI've arranged for you to sit with Mr Boffort since he is your neighbour and you'll be sharing a Boy,' Rose said as she showed Wilfred to one of the small tables, her smile almost motherly.
The glow of so many flickering candles gave the large dining room unworldly appeal. Doors and windows were thrown open to the warm
tropical night and the powerful scent of the garden. Light from the kitchen outhouses illuminated part of an orchard of mangosteen trees, their branches knitted together in impenetrable darkness. A dog barked. For the first time that day Wilfred felt there was no need for a fan. Looking up he saw the extraordinary height of the ceiling, far higher than those of the second floor rooms. A single old-fashioned punkah of yellow cloth had been electrified and hung above the long table where Rose sat with her children at each mealtime.
A fleshy-faced man a few years older than Wilfred now came hurrying up to the table, his hand already extended in greeting from a distance away. Even before he was seated, Arthur Boffort began to explain that he was coming to the end of his first tour of duty and would soon be returning to England.
âGetting married. Valerie has been waiting five years. No firm will allow you to marry on a first tour of duty here.' He spoke forcefully, projecting spittle across the table from beneath a ginger moustache.
âWhen we return as a married couple, Mrs Burns will be giving us one of her big, cool ground floor rooms. I should be able to afford it on a second tour; promotion and salary raise and all that.' Boffort worked for Stewart and Lloyd, a British firm dealing in pipes and fittings.
âGas, water or steam. Large stocks always on hand. Sole agents too for United Engineers.' Boffort stretched across the table to a pile of bread and began to butter a slice industriously. He asked no questions of Wilfred, speaking, even as he chewed, of his home in Manchester and his mother's battle with asthma. He absorbed without comment the information that Wilfred was a journalist and had come out to work for
The Straits Times
. Yet, on hearing that Wilfred had been born in Malaya on a rubber plantation his father had managed, Boffort paused in the midst of his buttering and looked up.
âI suppose that makes you half native; better be careful of going all the way. It's not done for the races to mix here, you know,' he murmured, returning to the bread.
âI have only the most shadowy memories of Malaya. I was seven years old when I returned to England, to go to boarding school. I never came out here again until now.' Wilfred was irritated but broke off as a Chinese man in a high-necked white uniform appeared beside their table. Boffort turned upon him impatiently.
âFood at last. Took you long enough. Need to learn to hurry yourself,' Boffort admonished before turning to Wilfred and gesturing in the direction of the man. âBy the way, this is our Boy.'
Wilfred nodded to the middle-aged Chinese, who placed a bowl of thin soup before him. âWhat's his name?' Wilfred asked Boffort, unsure if the Chinese spoke any English.