A Different Sky (37 page)

Later, Ava showed Mavis and Rose the lavatory, taking them out of the house and down a short path to a bog house with a warped and splintered door. This was built out over a fishpond, and waste dropped straight down into the water.

‘Several other families share the bog house with us. The fish feed off the waste in the ponds; that's why they're all so fat. The bigger ones wait near the surface and jump for their food as it drops. You'll never find one of these fish on
my
table,' Ava assured them with a raw laugh. Rose nodded, sick and shocked and beyond protest. Ava's eyes, full of amusement, rested questioningly upon her. Instinctively Rose knew that, despite Ava's affability, she would be watched for superior ways.

After a dinner of chicken curry from a bird Lionel had killed that morning in anticipation of their arrival, they slept. The
kapok
poked through the Belvedere sheets with which Rose had covered their pallets, and the mosquito nets rigged up above them were so full of holes that insects entered without compunction. The scuttling of rats was
everywhere. In the darkness Rose closed her eyes and wept. From the dark chambers of memory rusty images pushed into her mind. Charlie had never seen the home in Malacca where she had been born. Rose had met him in Singapore after she had been adopted; he had known only Aunty May's small but immaculate house in Queen Street, and she was thankful for this. In Malacca she remembered a similar house to Lionel's home. She remembered another lavatory with a disintegrating door reached by a path through
lallang
. Between the splintered gaps in the wood she had once, as she squatted over the toilet, watched a neighbour's boy pleasure himself while crouching in the tall grass. She tried to shut away these distant memories, and thought instead of Belvedere in which soldiers must now be preparing to sleep stretched out upon her walnut bed, a wedding gift from Charlie's family. Beside her Howard slept, exhausted, and from Mavis there came small snores. She stared up at the star-filled sky above the open balustrade of the veranda. A night bird squawked, and there was the rhythmic crash of waves on the nearby shore, the smell of the sea was about her. With a sob she pressed her palms together and began to pray.

Just at the time Rose and her family left Belvedere, Bougainvillaea House had also been visited by the military with a view to commandeering the residence. Because of Lim Hock An's death, the family were given an extra two days in which to arrange a funeral and vacate it. They had buried Lim Hock An hastily in the local cemetery. The city was full of rotting corpses in need of quick interment and no one had time to conduct a formal funeral. Lim Hock An had bought his coffin many years before, and this handsome item had waited for him in the storeroom of Bougainvillaea House along with his boxes of jade. He would have been happy to keep it on prominent display, but Second Grandmother had objected vehemently because of the space it took up in so small a home. At least, she had sighed during the funeral wake, they had not had to search out a coffin in such fraught times. Bougainvillaea House's ancient houseboys, Ah Pang and Ah Fat had been sent to a funeral shop in Sago Lane. The undertaker had refused to prepare the body for burial in the house as Second Grandmother wanted, but after much persuasion had agreed to collect the corpse, taking it back to Sago Lane for dressing. Rigor mortis had already set in by the time the undertaker arrived with an extra trishaw.
Eventually, with difficulty, Lim Hock An's body was installed inside the vehicle at an upright angle and a hat placed upon his head to disguise the fact that he was a corpse. He was then pedalled back to Sago Lane to be washed and dressed in white before being returned to his family. Later a Taoist priest held a makeshift ceremony to release Lim Hock An's soul from Purgatory, so that he might escape the places of suffering in the eighteen levels of Hell. No paper money could be found to throw in the fire, nor could effigies be made to burn of the many things he would need in the other world. No band walked before a grand hearse to frighten away bad spirits. Everything had been done with unseemly haste and it was less than a pauper's funeral. Second Grandmother moaned that Lim Hock An's spirit would wander for ever seeking revenge for such treatment. Bertie had stood about miserably, silently watching proceedings, picking at a scab on his face.

When the time came to leave Bougainvillaea House, there was no place to go but Little Sparrow's small home on East Coast Road. Trishaws could still be found in Katong and Little Sparrow had promised to send several of the vehicles from there to transport them. Although they waited, none arrived at the designated time and Mei Lan decided the only way to transfer Second Grandmother to East Coast Road was to put her in a wheelbarrow. At this prospect Second Grandmother grew angry, insisting that the lack of trishaws from Katong was Little Sparrow's way of humiliating her.

‘The Year of the Snake is gone and now we have the Horse.
Aiyaah
. What kind of a Horse Year is this? Some mad kicking thing intent on killing us all?' Tears rolled down her cheeks as she screamed at Mei Lan.

Silk cushions were placed in a wheelbarrow and Second Grandmother was installed upon them to be pushed along by Ah Pang. Ah Fat handled a top-heavy cart piled with belongings. Bertie walked silently beside the wheelbarrow holding his mother's hand, lost in a world of his own. The terror of witnessing JJ's violent death had turned his soft brain even softer. Since his return he had not spoken, and they had no way of knowing what he had endured.

Second Grandmother's feet, in embroidered leather shoes laced with gold string, dangled over the edge of the barrow, her ivory-topped canes rested on her knees, tortoiseshell pins secured her hair. Although
she wore a long, dark-coloured
sam
in keeping with the sad formality of the occasion, her face had the wild look of the sea tossed about on a windy day. Around her waist her jewels were hidden beneath her clothes in a roll of silk. Her favourite pipe and a supply of opium were packed beneath the cushions, and Ah Siew carried the case of unguents and bandages that must be used upon her feet. When the moment came to leave Bougainvillaea House, Second Grandmother sobbed and clung to Mei Lan with her little hands, turning her head into Mei Lan's shoulder so that she would not see. From Second Grandmother's embroidered silks Mei Lan breathed in the perfume of mothballs and beneath this the familiar scent of
Schiaparelli
, so old now it had thickened and darkened in its crystal bottle. Mei Lan realised suddenly that she was now the head of the family and that each decision must be made by her. She gave one last look at Bougainvillaea House and the roof of Belvedere beyond it, and drew a determined breath. They had already reached the main road when the trishaws sent by Little Sparrow at last arrived. Second Grandmother climbed aboard with an angry grunt and Mei Lan took the seat beside her.

At the East Coast house Little Sparrow waited, no thought in her mind but to see her son. Senior Wife was no longer a Lustrous Pearl but a cantankerous old woman without any teeth and Lim Hock An was dead; all that mattered now was Bertie. Little Sparrow had prepared for the arrival of her husband's wife as best she could. Bertie was to be given his sister Ching Ling's bed, next to his blood mother's room. The girl was moved with the baby, Greta, into Little Sparrow's own bed. Little Sparrow did not care if arrangements were not to Lustrous Pearl's liking. Even if she was Senior Wife, their husband was gone and the house on East Coast Road was now the property of Little Sparrow.

In the late afternoon the sea took on a new density, darkening so that Howard imagined the depths below the surface where sharks might circle silently. Clouds were blowing up over the horizon, later there would be rain. The sand was hot beneath his bare feet and rubbed between his toes. Each day his mind was full of Mei Lan. He had considered trying to find Little Sparrow's house on East Coast Road to seek news of her, but had yet to do so.

Cousin Lionel's home was made tolerable for Howard by the
proximity of the beach. He went there at night to play his saxophone and sometimes Lionel joined him with his guitar. There was also John James, an old friend of Lionel's from Malacca who lived nearby and played the accordion and the piano; his brother Cyril was good on the double bass. They could make a band, Lionel suggested. Each night from his pallet on Lionel's veranda Howard looked up at the star-filled sky and listened to the crash of waves. Above the house in the coconut palms Lionel kept earthenware pots for tapping liquor from the trees. Everyone bought toddy from Lionel: the house was always full of his tipsy friends drinking the potent brew. Ava worried about the
kempetai
, for it was now illegal to produce such illicit liquor.

Although the Japanese were asking staff to return to the Harbour Board to get the port working again, Howard preferred to stay out of the authorities' eye for the time being. Each day he reported to a nearby labour recruiting centre, waiting for work with other men on an open piece of ground. Usually, he was employed by the Health Department as a grass cutter or an oiler. Malaria and dengue fever were rife and the battle with mosquitoes required never-ending vigilance. Grass verges or open fields must be kept cut, every drain needed attention; old tyres or receptacles left out in the rain must be tracked down and sprayed with DDT. Every day, Howard pulled on a filthy uniform impregnated with evil-smelling insecticide, strapped a tin drum to his back and set off on patrol with a cart and a couple of other men. Besides drains, every puddle must be sprayed with a film of oil to prevent mosquitoes breeding. Work began at seven in the morning and was finished by one. He received $2.50 a day and a food ration. Howard sensed a growing feeling around him of people finding their bearings, settling down resignedly to life under the Japanese. In Katong, soldiers were less in evidence and life was relatively undisturbed.

In the afternoons, like almost everyone else, Howard became a black-marketeer. This work had begun with a Belvedere sheet that he sold to buy his mother some shoes. Next, a silver ashtray from Belvedere bought curtains to rig around their beds on Lionel's veranda. There was enough money left over to buy a typewriter and two dozen boxes of coconut oil shampoo. These things he soon sold for a profit, amazed at the ease with which deals were struck; in the evenings he was part of Lionel's new band. They played one-night stands for the Japanese that Lionel came by through a Chinese agent; what Howard received
in tips was more than he earned by day. The Ioki, a popular restaurant on Middle Road, gave them the most engagements. There were always requests for Japanese songs and Lionel borrowed records from which the band could learn.

He had been oiling an open drain the other side of the coconut estate when he noticed the abandoned shack, its roof collapsed, the floor splintering. Inside, it was dry and smelled of rotting wood. He began to go there each day, putting in a black market mattress, a chipped cup and a crate of black market soft drinks, savouring the time away from the cramped chaos of Lionel's home. Mostly he read, the books he had brought with him from Belvedere or those he could find on the black market. Or he just lay on the mattress listening to the distant slap of the waves, thinking of Mei Lan. The sun came through the warped windows beneath the sagging roof and fell in warm lozenges over the floor.

Now, standing before the darkening sea, he picked up a shell and threw it far out and watched it pitch about without purpose. Before him the waves crashed and receded. Three days earlier he had stood on the damp sand with people from the estate, staring silently at a swollen body washed up under the palms. The man's hands were tied behind his back, sharks had savaged his torso and a bullet hole scarred his forehead. Another day part of a leg was found, chewed off at the knee by sharks but still wearing a rubber shoe. The body was hurriedly buried, as was the leg, and nobody spoke of the rumoured massacres or the bodies thrown into the sea.

In the distance someone was approaching, an androgynous figure dressed in red shorts with bare legs and short tousled hair. As the figure drew nearer Howard saw that it was Mei Lan and stared at her unbelievingly, his pulse lurching as she came into focus, walking towards Cousin Lionel's house. The breeze ruffled her shorn hair and her feet were bare; she held her shoes in her hand.

‘I was trying to find you,' Mei Lan said as she reached him. She began to explain about the commandeering of Bougainvillaea House, and how Little Sparrow's home was not far from Lionel's place. Her face was drawn and he sensed the worst even before she spoke.

‘Grandfather and JJ are both dead,' she whispered. He reached out and took her hand. Behind her he saw the old nursemaid approaching, hovering uncertainly in the road when she saw Mei Lan with Howard.

‘She never leaves me now,' Mei Lan explained, seeing he had noticed Ah Siew.

From the beach he led her into the shade under the palms behind Lionel's house, and from there they walked along the beach to a breakwater where he often sat. Before them the sea was the colour of pewter and the setting sun glowed above as she told him all that had happened at Bougainvillaea House. Ah Siew crouched down to wait beneath a palm some yards away, her eyes resting anxiously upon them.

‘Grandmother is half out of her mind,' Mei Lan whispered, looking down at her hands as she told him about the death of Lim Hock An.

Every time she shut her eyes brutal images of his arrest and the callous manner of his return filled her mind, and she knew they would be imprinted within her for ever. It was impossible to know what JJ had suffered and whenever she tried she saw only a darkness before her. At night she woke often, struggling to be free of nightmares; her teeth were always clenched. Second Grandmother no longer wailed in sorrow but spent her days with her opium pipe, scraping out the dross in the bowl, kneading it into new pellets to be smoked again and again, eking out her small supply. What she would do when this supply was finished, Mei Lan did not know. Ah Siew appeared suddenly shrunken and forgetful, her energy focused on Mei Lan with such vigilance that the
amah
's unrelenting concern had become a trial for her. Little Sparrow absorbed herself with the traumatised Bertie; Second Grandmother, silent with sorrow, was glad to hand over charge of her son to his original mother. Any decisions of importance were left to Mei Lan to make, and the weight of the grieving family hung heavily upon her.