A Different Sky (4 page)

Her ancestors carried the names of disparate European cultures: Pereira, Martens, Rodrigues, de Souza, O'Patrick, Thomas, McIntyre, van der Ven. Washed up upon the shores of Malaya these men married local women, and their children then intermarried again and again until a hybrid people was formed. There was Cousin Ella with round owlish glasses who might be mistaken for a plump English matron but for the narrow tilt of her eyes. There was Agnes Martins, wife of Thomas O'Patrick, first generation Eurasian son of a tavern keeper in Penang. Thomas's dark face had the boning of a European while beside him Agnes, thin as a bird in her European clothes, had features and colouring more Indian than Dutch. Seated in her garden Matriach Thora, stern in a black dress with lace collar was surrounded by six daughters and their husbands. On these faces the patterning of genes shifted even as Rose looked at them. The darkness of hair and eyes, the depth of a feature, the angle of an eye or a cheekbone, each traced a unique heritage. We are a people of shadows, Rose thought looking up into the darkness above her. A further weak flash of lightning revealed the worn paintwork of the ceiling and the damp stains of mould on the walls.

The chance to acquire Belvedere had arisen unexpectedly for Rose soon after Charlie's death. The place had once been the residence of a British government official but had later been converted into a boarding house. It had never taken flight as an enterprise and was eventually abandoned lying derelict until Rose, looking for accommodation and the means to support her family, was shown it by a house agent full of apologies for its state. With the sale of the house in Upper Serangoon and the little Charlie had left her, she had enough to consider buying it, provided she made careful plans. The house crowned a low rise, and stood in beleaguered dignity like an ageing dowager reluctant to admit infirmity. Whatever its faults and state of decay, the charm of the place overwhelmed her. Rose was taken by its black and white timbered gables and elegant whimsy that seamlessly combined Tudor, Gothic and colonial elements in a graceful symmetry. Built of brick below and whitewashed wood above, the red-roofed house was longer than it was wide. Verandas running along both floors were a distinctive feature but the double portico, originally built to shelter a horse and carriage, appeared like a generous afterthought in an otherwise compact plan. The neglected orchard bore little fruit,
and mosquito and snakes had laid claim to the place. The crumbling kitchens were the haunt of vagrants and stray dogs, the tennis court was invisible beneath a waist-high field and the dining room ceiling had partially collapsed; but the price was a bargain and Rose had seen possibilities at once. She also liked its location at the base of Mount Rosie. Long ago, the road had been named after a Rosie de Souza, pretty Eurasian wife of a German, and Rose was drawn to this strange connection. I shall be Rose of Mount Rosie she had told the house agent and, even as she spoke, she knew she was destined to live there. After the purchase she had set about Belvedere's restoration with enthusiasm.

Although Rose had bought Belvedere two years before she was still surprised to find herself living in this part of town. Bukit Timah was largely an enclave of wealthy Europeans. Only the odd Chinese family, such as her neighbour, the business tycoon Lim Hock An, dared venture beyond Chinatown on the wheels of their new money. In her old home in Upper Serangoon she had been surrounded by other Eurasian families but here there was no sense of community; few people knew their neighbours. Each large house was an island in a sea of manicured lawns, people kept rigidly to their own social stratum and the races never mixed. In Upper Serangoon, a place where everyone knew everyone, locals chatted over garden walls, borrowed flour and sugar from each other and attended church and musical evenings together. If she had not been so busy, first renovating Belvedere and then attending to the young men who were her lodgers, it would all have been unbearable, she thought.

Rose was an orphan and when she married she had hoped Charlie's family would become her own. This had not happened. The family's European ancestor was no more than a generation removed and this showed in their fair skin, especially in Charlie who, much to everyone's delight, could easily pass for a European. The desire of the Burns family to distinguish themselves from other Eurasians and associate with Europeans, even if those Europeans would have little to do with them, proved a stumbling block for Rose. She was not what the Burns family needed. They considered she had trapped handsome Charlie into marriage by the age-old ploy of pregnancy. It was feared his promising career at the Asiatic Petroleum Company would be stunted by the presence of Rose. She had also been born in Malacca of a confusing line
of swarthy intermarriage, and could not trace her Portuguese ancestry to any white-skinned individual. At every turn her Asian roots showed through, from a love of salt fish pickle and
belachan
shrimp paste, to an enjoyment of eating with her fingers. She had no sense at the beginning of her marriage of what was ‘done' or ‘not done' in the Burnses' code of behaviour. Although she worked hard to eradicate her faults, the family never accepted her. In spite of marriage to Rose, Charlie did well at the Asiatic Petroleum Company, but merit had its ceiling for all the local communities and this inevitability had had a profound effect upon him. He grew depressed, and finally suffered a fatal heart attack. Even at the funeral Charlie's family offered Rose little comfort, already blaming his early demise upon the frustrations of his marriage. His death was an opportunity to cut all contact with her.

Rose was a taciturn woman, often called withdrawn. Full busted, small waisted and ample hipped she had worn, even as a young woman, dresses with high necks and demure collars. It was her sister, Heather, who had been ever anxious to reveal her creamy décolletage and her shapely arms. Rose was the elder of the sisters, watchful and responsible. Their parents' deaths, one after the other, had placed responsibility upon her early in life. The girls were taken in by a childless aunt and uncle; Rose had been fourteen and Heather eleven. Aunty May and Uncle Reg looked to Rose to keep her young sister in order. Yet, even at that tender age men's eyes rested on Heather; Uncle Reg was no exception. Whenever Heather sat beside him, his hand sought out her bare knee. Later, Heather learned the full power of her attraction and as a consequence many cruel things had been said about her. Fate extracted its comeuppance when she died after a crude abortion. Rose thought now of Cynthia, of her auburn hair and wide green eyes, so like Heather's, with a pang of fear. And Howard, once he became a man, would be no less vulnerable to accident through a careless spreading of his seed. Had Charlie not been so moral and God-fearing a man, her own fate might have been no different to that of her sister. Instead Charlie married her and gave her a good home, allowing her to send bits of money to May and Reg, even though he advised it was best not to see them.

Whatever her feelings about the part of town she now lived in, Rose had been surprised at her relief on returning to the area after the events of Kreta Ayer. Bukit Timah Road, shaded by rain trees, with huge
epiphyte ferns nesting like plump roosting birds on their branches, was now comfortingly familiar. The calls of cicada and birds filled the lush profusion and a sweet fragrance of blossom pervaded the air. Sometimes, the European residents of nearby bungalows could be seen on a veranda, languid in basket chairs, glasses of refreshment beside them while from tennis courts the soft thud of balls was heard. Rose was even glad to see the turrets of Lim Villa before she turned into Chancery Lane and the approach to Mount Rosie. The back of Lim Villa's estate adjoined the end of Belvedere's garden and was the extravagant whim of the enormously wealthy Lim Hock An. Part French château and part Norman castle, Lim Villa could be glimpsed from Belvedere, which was at a higher elevation, across a dividing storm canal behind a fringe of trees.

Lightning no longer flashed and the roll of thunder was gone. Rose turned in her bed to look again in the direction of Charlie in his silver frame. Frozen in time, these photographs were like the flowers she pressed between the pages of books, devoid in the end of the very life she wished to retain. In the dark room the only sound now was the grumbling of Belvedere's ancient water pipes.

S
OME TIME AFTER
R
OSE
and Howard returned to Belvedere, Mei Lan and her
amah
rode in a rickshaw up the shady avenue of Bukit Timah. Lanterns burned before the wrought-iron gates of Lim Villa, and Sikh watchmen stood to attention. The gates swang open and the rickshaw proceeded up the long drive to the turrets and towers of Lim Hock An's great mansion. Already, shadows were dense amongst the trees, although a streak of pink still clung to the darkening sky. Marble statuary gleamed dimly on great swathes of lawn. The day's experiences settled uncomfortably in Mei Lan like an over-rich meal. She rested her head against Ah Siew's flat breast, glad to return to Lim Villa where she slept in a bed of soft down pillows and not upon a wooden shelf in a dark smelly room, like Ah Siew's sisters in their
kongsi fong
. Her mind was so full of the
fong
and the exciting things she had seen and learned that she had almost forgotten the shouting men and police with guns that had delayed them at Kreta Ayer.

It was Mei Lan who had requested the treat of a trolley ride; a chauffeured car usually ferried her about. The day before, her parents had sailed for Hong Kong, and Second Grandmother had been glad to agree to the outing as long as she was with Ah Siew. Once the trolley was free of Kreta Ayer and had begun to move again, they soon reached their stop. Mei Lan had been hungry and so they walked towards People's Park for a bowl of steaming noodles. Mei Lan sat on a stool at a small table beside a stall and watched the
mee
stirred and tossed in a huge pan, pork, noodles and vegetables all jumping around together. At the other tables half-naked coolies and rickshaw pullers played cards and rattled dice; as she ate, an acrobat turned cartwheels beside her. Mealtimes at Lim Villa were nothing like this. Mei Lan must eat decorously and keep silent, sitting at a separate table from the adults with her brother, JJ.

After the noodles they walked past the house in Chinatown where
Ah Siew said Mei Lan had been born; she stared at it in amazement. They had moved to Lim Villa when she was a baby and she remembered nothing of it. After the soaring façade and endless lawns of Lim Villa, it seemed a poky place with a confusing number of courtyards and gates. In the road before the house two watchmen sat on upright chairs just as they had when the family of Lim Hock An lived there. They allowed Mei Lan to peer through the gate into the house where she had been born.

‘First Mistress was still alive when we lived here,' Ah Siew murmured. Mei Lan looked up in surprise; no one ever spoke of First Grandmother. Mei Lan knew only Second Grandmother who lived with Grandfather in Lim Villa and had feet as small as a doll.

‘Did Second Grandmother also live here with First Grandmother?' Mei Lan asked and Ah Siew nodded.

‘First Mistress died in this house; it was before your grandfather, Ancient Master, built Lim Villa,' Ah Siew said softly and her face grew sad. Mei Lan was eager to hear more about First Grandmother but Ah Siew fell silent.

Ah Siew's
kongsi fong
was not far from People's Park and she took the short cut through Sago Lane to the room she had once shared with the friends she called her
sisters
. Sago Lane bustled with the business of death and the discordant clamour of funeral parlours. Cymbals and gongs accompanied the droning chant of priests; percussion bands led wailing mourners seeing off the dead. Shops selling candles, joss sticks, coffins and wreaths lined the road and above these the dying awaited their time in Sago Lane's many Death Houses. Next to the coffin maker, whose deep boxes were stacked to the ceiling of his shop, were paper effigies of worldly things the dead would need in the afterlife. Sleek limousines, many-windowed mansions, beautiful women, a boat, servants, a bicycle, a mah-jong set and stacks of paper money would be consigned to the flames for transition to the afterlife. Mei Lan ran ahead along the narrow street towards the big Death House that Ah Siew had earlier pointed out.

It was not easy to run in Sago Lane so thick was the traffic of the bereaved, vagrants, lepers, hawkers of food, stray dogs, beggars and keening women singing the Song of Mourning. Food stalls and confectioners catered to the road's never-ending wake and smells of sugar and roasting pork floated on the perfume of incense. At the rickshaw
station the big-wheeled carts were clustered closely together, hoods erect like an army of spiny insects. The runners smoked and chatted, washed their vehicles or sucked on bowls of noodles. The odours of food and sewage and joss sticks filled Mei Lan's nose; she had never been to Ah Siew's
fong
before.

‘Slow down,' Ah Siew panted but Mei Lan ran on.

The mouldering buildings, infested with cockroaches and human suffering and festooned with laundry on bamboo poles throbbed with a pulse that excited Mei Lan. Hardened undertakers and red-eyed mourners turned to stare at this manifestation of starched pink linen, complete with black patent pumps, clean white socks and shining well-brushed hair.

When at last Mei Lan drew to a halt before the big Death House its grim façade, devoid of colourful laundry, appeared suddenly daunting. A grey-haired coolie slept on a bench outside and through the open door a yellow-robed priest could be seen moving about. The dark interior was filled with rows of wooden bunks upon which lay the sick and dying. As Mei Lan wondered if the departed spirits who roamed the house were visible to those inside, Ah Siew came running up to take her hand.

‘Not here, little goose. We have not brought sister Ah Pat here yet,' Ah Siew said and pulled Mei Lan into a narrow alley leading off Sago Lane.