The Hills of Singapore (42 page)

She turned and put her hand to his face. “How long?”

“Finished two years ago. Waiting for you.”

She moved into his arms and pulled his face to hers, brushing her lips along his. He smiled and pulled her close, kissing her. She felt his body relax as his arms tightened around her.

They walked into the house. It was unfurnished, waiting for her hand. The lobby had a vast chandelier at its centre. It looked like the entrance to Tir Uaidhne, Takouhi's house, and Charlotte realised that he wanted to offer her this house the way George Coleman had built a mansion for the woman he loved. She squeezed Zhen's hand, thanking him. They walked on through the lobby, between the double arms of the staircase towards French doors. Zhen went ahead quickly and threw them open wide.

Charlotte stepped out onto the wide covered verandah and gasped. Before her, down beyond the green lawn, beyond the parapet which edged the hill, out there lay the ocean, the sparkling, glinting blue of the Straits of Singapore, all the shapes of the islands lying in the haze along the horizon. A ship, like a toy, scudded over the sea, far away. It was breathtaking. They walked down to the parapet. To either side of them lay the great sweep of the ocean and the land curving away into the distance, rising and falling in gentle and undulating wooded hills and valleys.

The hills of Singapore, their retreat and their home. A refuge, Charlotte thought fleetingly, then moved into Zhen's arms, wrapping them around her like a cloak of protection. He put his lips against her neck and his hands to the swollen belly where his child lay. A flood of happiness swept through her. There would be doubts and fears, troubles perhaps, in the future, but here, at this moment, she knew there was no other way. He was her fate and her destiny.

About the Author

Dawn Farnham was born in Portsmouth, England in 1949. Her parents emigrated to Perth, Western Australia, when she was two. She grew up a sandgroper, barefoot and free, roaming the bushy suburbs and beaches with her friends. In the 1960s she, like so many other young Aussies, left on a ship for London, aged seventeen. In the Swinging Sixties she met and married her journalist husband, moved to Paris, learned French and travelled round Europe in a Volkswagen Beetle.

As a foreign correspondent, her husband was posted to exotic locations and they lived in China, Hong Kong, Korea and Japan in the 1980s and 1990s. During this time she raised two daughters and taught English. Back in London she returned to school, doing a BA in Japanese at The School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) and a Master's Degree at Kings College.

She and her husband now live in Singapore where she is a volunteer guide at the Peranakan Museum and the Asian Civilisations Museum. It is in this thriving port city-state that she found her muse and began to write, finding particular pleasure in Singapore's colourful and often wild past. This is the third novel in The Straits Quartet and continues the story of Charlotte Macleod from
The Red Thread
and
The Shallow Seas
.

For more information about Dawn Farnham and her books, visit
www.dawnfarnham.com
.

The Red Thread

A Chinese Tale of Love and Fate in 1830s Singapore

Dawn Farnham

Like Chinese silk,
The Red Thread
is, by turns, gentle and strong, exploring a love that breaks through the divide of race and culture, a love that is both deeply physical and a marriage of souls. Set against the backdrop of 1830s Singapore where piracy, crime, triads and tigers are commonplace, this cultural romance, and the first volume in The Straits Quartet series, follows the struggle of two lovers: Zhen, once the loweliest of Chinese coolies and triad member, later chosen to marry into a Peranakan family of Baba Chinese merchants; and Charlotte, an 18-year-old Scots girl and sister of Singapore's Head of Police. Two cultures bound together by the invisible threads of fate yet separated by cultural diversity. This is the first volume in The Straits Quartet series.

By incorporating real figures from Singapore's historical past, Dawn Farnham brings to life the heady atmosphere of Old Singapore, where exotic beliefs and customs clash and jostle in the struggle to make a life and create mutual understanding between peoples from different worlds.

The Shallow Seas

A Tale of Two Towns: Singapore & Batavia

Dawn Farnham

Fleeing the scandal of an illicit love affair, young Charlotte Macleod arrives in Batavia under the protection of one of the richest merchants in the Dutch East Indies. Marriage to him will give her security, but can she forget the man she left behind in Singapore, the lover whose child she is carrying? Against the background of the most cosmopolitan city in the Far East and its extraordinary mix of slave, Portuguese mestizo, Arab, Dutch, English and Chinese Indies culture, Charlotte must struggle to come to terms with a marriage to a man she does not love in a city she does not understand. This is the second volume in The Straits Quartet series.

Drawing on real-life historical personalities of that exciting period, Dawn Farnham deftly mixes fact and fiction to paint a vivid portrait of mid-19th century Javanese royal courts; Java's vast, sprawling colonial capital, Batavia (the city we know as Jakarta); and its annoying commercial rival—the young, ambitious Singapore.

First published in print in 2011 by Monsoon Books

This electronic edition published in 2011 by Monsoon Books

ISBN (epub): 978-981-4358-39-2

ISBN (paperback): 978-981-08-5433-1

Copyright©Dawn Farnham, 2011

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

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