A Different Sky (20 page)

Howard approached Teddy's small terraced house in trepidation. He had the feeling that the nimble libertine Teddy claimed to be might soon be threatened by reality. As they entered the house Olive's deep voice could be heard even before she was seen. She emerged from a back room to confront Howard, a large-busted woman with a dark florid face and penetrating eyes. Teddy shrank in her shadow, lapsing into uncustomary silence, his eyes apprehensively upon her.

‘So, you are the young man Teddy feels is in need of some fatherly direction.' Olive's voice bounced about; her chin appeared to be lost in her neck. Under her scrutiny Howard understood that, to ensure his own survival, Teddy might well have described him as a reckless young man in need of guidance.

Already Howard realised, with a pang of loss, that Teddy's adventures were all in his mind. It was impossible to imagine his stringy limbs entwined with those of his fleshy wife, bending to perform the numerous contorted positions of penetration he had copiously described, his lips wet with vicarious desire.

‘I am sixty next week,' Teddy told him proudly when they sat down at the table for dinner. ‘As a retired man I will have more time for the ladies.' Teddy winked, his mournful eyes lighting up a narrow face. Olive was busy instructing a servant to add more
belachan
paste to the rice on the next preparation and did not hear Teddy's whispered comment.

‘What will you do with yourself when you retire?' Howard enquired
with a nervous smile. He did not like the hollow ring of the word ‘retirement'.

‘We're going home,' Teddy explained, his face full of pleasurable anticipation.

‘But Malaya is your home, you were born in Malacca,' Howard answered in surprise.

‘Singapore is nobody's home, boy,' Teddy chuckled. ‘We're going home, to England. Our daughter lives there, as you know. We'll be with her for Christmas.'

‘But you have never been to England, how can it be home?' Howard argued.

‘A homeland is where your heart is, young Howard. England is our heartland,' Olive announced in her booming voice, returning to the conversation as the servant departed.

‘The King, God bless him, has taken good care of me. It would not do to be ungrateful. I'm happy to sing the National Anthem until the day I die.' Teddy smiled, bulbous eyes earnest in his gaunt face. ‘My great-grandad on my mummy's side was a Mr John Rogers from the town of Fleetwood near Blackpool. And on my daddy's side Great-Grandad was a Plymouth man, a Mr Prince, I believe. There has been a lot of intermarriage out here of course, which accounts for the name of de Souza that I now bear. And, although Olive was born a Remedios, her great-grandaddy actually hailed from Scotland. But through it all we have always looked homewards. Now the chance to return has come.' Teddy's deep-set eyes lit up as he spoke.

Howard looked at his thin dark face and the strands of grey hair that flopped over his brow and wondered at his future in the land of Calthrop.

T
HE MATTER OF
M
EI
Lan's marriage began to obsess Second Grandmother. She would not let the matter rest until Lim Hock An and Boon Eng both took up the refrain. ‘It's time you were married. You do not need more education. You're not a man; you've no need to earn a living.' Once the men of the household were of her own mind, Second Grandmother wasted no time in calling the matchmaker, who immediately suggested as a prospective bridegroom the eldest son of an abalone cannery millionaire. A bride viewing was suggested and Mei Lan's protest dismissed.

‘Only seeing you,
lah
. Can do at distance in hotel tea lounge. You sit one end of the room and he sit another,' Second Grandmother suggested with an impatient wave of her blood-coloured nails, the scent of
Schiaparelli
and mothballs wafting about her.

It was unbearable. Mei Lan locked herself in her room and would not come out, anger and fear drumming through her. She threw herself down on her bed and listened to Second Grandmother beat her small fists on the door.

‘Do you want to be an old maid?' Second Grandmother screamed.

‘Yes!' Mei Lan screamed back. Outside the door she heard whispering and knew Ah Siew was also there.

It was unbearable. She was nineteen; it was almost four years since her mother died and her life was being squeezed into a box. After finishing at the Chinese Girls' High School she had expected to continue on to Raffles College where, she secretly hoped, she might win a Queen's Scholarship and go to England to study law. It was a shock to have her plans so brusquely thwarted. At last they left her alone and she heard the tiny shuffling steps of Second Grandmother, supported by Ah Siew, fade away down the corridor. After a while she got up and, opening the window shutters wide, observed the slender branches of the Mexican lilac pushing up beneath the sill, wondering if it would hold her weight.

It was not easy to reach the tree without falling from the window but at last she grasped a strong branch and swung herself forward, her feet scrabbling for a hold against the trunk. Almost at once she heard a loud crack, and fell with the branch the short distance to the ground. Her leg was scratched and her shoulder bruised but nothing more, and scrambling up she ran off through the gate of Bougainvillaea House to flag down a rickshaw on Bukit Timah.

She remembered a hairdresser near Robinsons that her mother had used, and directed the rickshaw to take her there. The bell rattled as she pushed open the door, just as it used to when her mother had entered. Inside Mode Elite, Madame Chan, who had always created the elaborate coifs Ei Ling demanded, greeted her in amazement, not having seen her since her mother's death.

‘Cut it off,' Mei Lan ordered as the woman undid the long plait, weighing the thick hair in her hands.

‘Really modern women nowadays not only cut but also perm their hair,' Madame Chan solicitously advised, pointing to a fearsome contraption of electrical wires. It reminded Mei Lan of a picture she had seen of a machine invented to milk cows.

‘It's the latest thing from England,' the hairdresser informed her.

For several hours Mei Lan endured the torture of having her hair wound about the rods hanging from the monstrous machine. Rubber pads were placed upon her head, her hair was doused with vile-smelling liquids and then heated and steamed like a turnip, burning her scalp. At last it was done, and in the mirror Mei Lan saw an unrecognisable face framed by a frizzy halo of curls; it was just the reincarnation she wanted and she smiled in delight. Even the birthmark on her jaw seemed to gain authority. She wiggled her lips to make it move, pleased suddenly that it was there.

Bougainvillaea House was in an uproar when she returned. The open window and broken branch had been taken as an indication of dire events. Workmen had been summoned to force the locked bedroom door, and policemen were searching the neighbourhood for her. Ah Siew and Second Grandmother grew apoplectic at the sight of her as she came into the house. Boon Eng, who had been called home from the office, shouted and raised a hand as if he would hit her, although he did no such thing.

‘
Aiyaah!
Look like someone pull her out of a bush. Who will marry
her now?' Second Grandmother screamed, while Ah Siew scowled behind her. Mei Lan pushed her chin up determinedly; what was done could not be undone and this small triumph was pleasing. Only her grandfather, who had come into the room at the commotion, remained silent, staring at her enigmatically. The next day Lim Hock An made his decision known to the household: the question of Mei Lan's marriage could wait until she was of a more pliant state of mind.

Within weeks of Mei Lan's haircut, Lim Hock An suffered a stroke and lay in a coma for days, plunging everyone in Bougainvillaea House into foreboding and depression. Mei Lan wondered guiltily if her behaviour had added to his stress, as Second Grandmother angrily insisted. Yet, defying the doctor's worst predictions, Lim Hock An opened his eyes one morning as calmly as if awakening from sleep. Second Grandmother struggled from her chair with a gasp, startling Little Sparrow who had been allowed into the house to sit at her husband's bedside to await his death. At once Bougainvillaea House, sunk for days into a state of lowered voices and black reverie, regained its old momentum. The kitchen bustled with the preparation of elaborate dishes, gardeners were summoned to trim the trees, the barber was called to the sickroom, cars and rickshaws deposited a stream of visitors at the door, delivery boys from Robinsons and Cold Storage were forever begging entry with gifts. Lim Hock An was at a loss to understand the celebratory atmosphere in the house or the incredulous shaking of heads that afflicted whoever observed him. Little Sparrow rashly suggested they light firecrackers in celebration. Second Grandmother looked at her askance and soon withdrew permission for further visits to the house.

‘While you were in your long sleep could you hear what we said?' Second Grandmother asked her husband, the smell of her decayed teeth covering his face.

‘Did you say things I was not to hear?' he demanded, wanting at once to get up but finding his legs would not hold him. He could no longer bear the smell of his wife's rotting teeth.

‘Get some more gold ones,' he told her as she threw aniseed into her mouth.

Mei Lan woke early. Ah Siew rubbed her ageing arthritic limbs and brought hot tea for them both. She drew the curtains and plumped
up the pillows behind Mei Lan as the sun streamed in. Already, Ah Siew was opening the cupboard and asking what she would wear that day so that it could be ironed. Mei Lan gave directions from her bed as she stared out of the window at the distant turrets of Lim Villa and the shutters of her old bedroom; the loss of Lim Villa was still felt keenly by the family but no one spoke about it. Although his great fortune was lost, Lim Hock An had recovered enough for them not to have to live too frugally, but everyone understood they would never move out of Bougainvillaea House.

After a breakfast of rice porridge, Mei Lan made her way to her grandfather's room. As soon as he saw her Lim Hock An pulled himself up on his pillows; there was now no joy in his life like the joy of this granddaughter. Mei Lan, who from her own parents had received little more than a lukewarm love, subject always to their self-absorption, saw her world increasingly now in her grandfather. His love once of child brides and bound feet seemed part of another man. The most important thing about her grandfather, Mei Lan realised, the strength that accounted for his enormous success before the Depression, was his ability to embrace the new and leave the obsolete behind him.

Lim Hock An was hungry for news of the world and especially of China, afraid too much might have happened while he slept in his coma. His mind appeared to be working as usual but illness had shrunk him, his skin hung loosely upon his wide jaw, his eyes were clouded and rheumy. There was the smell of old age about him.

‘What news of the China Relief Fund?' he asked.

After the haircut, which she had not regretted, Lim Hock An had suggested that Mei Lan become involved with the China Relief Fund to keep herself busy. The Japanese had pushed through China with unimaginable brutality to occupy most of the country. So great was the distress of the Chinese community in Malaya at these events in their homeland, that a relief fund was formed in Singapore to collect and send money to China; there was also a boycott of all Japanese goods. The China Relief Fund was the idea of Lim Hock An's old friend Tan Kah Kee, who was chairman of the Fund Committee. Contributions were demanded from all Chinese; even poor coolies and rickshaw runners were encouraged to give what they could.

Mei Lan had become a Youth Leader in the China Relief Fund, and helped to raise money by organising the selling of handmade paper
flowers and flags. There was also the making of bandages to be sent to wounded soldiers in China, scarves and sweaters to be knitted for the troops, medicine and food to be collected. Dances, concerts, Chinese opera and patriotic plays, food fairs and boxing tournaments were organised; every Chinese in the colony was involved in the effort.

‘Japanese goods are being boycotted everywhere,' Mei Lan reported as she sat beside her grandfather's bed.

‘If we need to pledge more money to the fund, we can sell off some jade. Whatever it takes, we must give.' Lim Hock An closed his eyes, his voice unfamiliarly reedy. His famous jade collection, still packed away in stout wooden crates and stored in a shed behind Bougainvillaea House, remained unopened since the move from Lim Villa

Soon, the day nurse approached Lim Hock An brandishing a thermometer. Behind her Second Grandmother hobbled forward upon her two canes, her slave girls hovering at her side.

‘Grandfather, open your mouth,' Mei Lan chided, and the old man obeyed with a sigh.

He looked up at the three women standing about his bed and knew himself reduced. He shut his eyes and his memories slid into a previous time when there had been no limit to what he could do. Thoughts came to him constantly now of Chwee Gek, his first wife, the mother of Mei Lan's father, his son Boon Eng.

‘Chwee Gek.' He allowed himself to murmur her name.

Mei Lan looked at her grandfather in surprise; she had never heard him say First Grandmother's name. She glanced at Second Grandmother in trepidation and saw the shock on her face.

‘Chwee Gek.' It was a low groan on the old man's lips. Second Grandmother turned upon her two sticks and hobbled hurriedly away.

The long days of coma had been dreamless but now whenever Lim Hock An shut his eyes the past rose up to claim him. Above all it was Chwee Gek's dead and reproachful face that he saw, the brandy beside her, the remains of his best opium clutched in her hand, her eyes staring at him. At other times there was his Second Wife, Lustrous Pearl, her feet so tiny in their red silk slippers that they fitted into his palm. Chwee Gek's large and unbound feet became hideous to him after they settled in fashionable Singapore and a new life claimed him. Then, the sight of them sticking out from beneath the quilt on their bed repulsed him; such feet proved her a peasant. In Singapore he now mixed with
men of sophistication who frequented high-class brothels. There, to satisfy the nostalgic taste of a certain generation, women with bound feet could still be found. Now, he remembered Chwee Gek's long toes covered with mud at the time of rice planting when she had worked barefoot in the fields beside him. Love was not something Lim Hock An knew much about; lust was what he was familiar with and this was all he expected to feel. The warm ache that sometimes hollowed him out when he thought of his first wife, his dead wife, was something for which he had no explanation. Only now did he realise she was the only woman he had loved. And she had loved him more than life.