The White Amah (26 page)

Lada was famous for the wine she made by soaking raw glutinous rice in hot water and she had made sure her granddaughter learned the process, warning her about its potency. Mei Li often helped her blend yeast and rice before storing the mixture to ferment. Just once, she and some friends had sneaked a taste. Revolted, she had resolved to stick to cocoa-nut milk.

But the acrid taste of rice wine was nothing compared to the fiery jungle juice her grandfather had mischievously invited her to try when her grandmother’s back was turned. Entri made
the brew by extracting sap from an unopened coconut bud and allowing the liquid to trickle into bamboo containers. Collecting the sap was one of the few jobs he could still manage and every day he hobbled down the jungle paths collecting a bottle of juice from each tree. One day he showed Mei Li how to make a powder from the palm tree’s bark, the special ingredient that gave his native brew its distinctive bittersweet taste.

‘Let that be a lesson to you,’ he said when she pulled a face, gagged and spat out the fierce, fiery liquid. ‘Stick to your grandmother’s wine. Only real men can take jungle juice,’ he boasted.

David looked in on Mei Li later in the morning. ‘Are you going to stay in bed all day?’ he asked.

‘Go away,’ she groaned. ‘I’m dying.’

‘Drink this down,’ he said, and watched as she drank the two Beroccas. ‘You’ll feel better if you have a shower and get dressed,’ he said with a sympathetic smile. ‘I’ll be back in half an hour. We’ve got to talk.’

The shower revived her but she wasn’t looking forward to talking to David. He was being kind, but what he would do when he got her on her own? Entri had never taken a stick to Lada, but it was impossible to hide violence when the entire village lived in one longhouse and Mei Li saw how women suffered when they displeased their menfolk. She’d been an idiot to try to make him jealous. She wouldn’t blame him if he did beat her.

‘Good, that’s more like it,’ David said when he returned. ‘Let’s walk into the village. The fresh air will do you good.’

They left through the kitchen garden gate to avoid the persistent paparazzi. It had rained overnight and David led
her down a mud-covered country lane, chatting to her about the storm damage as if she was a neighbour who’d dropped by rather than the disgraced fiancée who’d humiliated him in front of his family. Pollarded willows bowed in the wind as a fast-running stream turned the meadows into a flood plain. Drenched sheep, their wet fleece heavy, huddled under the hedgerows in sodden fields. In the distance a lone figure struggled against the wind to drive the cows toward the solitary hillside farmhouse, hidden by the gathering mass of storm clouds in the leaden grey sky.

‘We better go back. This wasn’t a good idea,’ David shouted over the wind.

A scowl marred Mei Li’s lovely face. ‘I’m going for walk,’ she said with a toss of her long black hair and strode away, too proud to let him see her crying. It was obvious that David didn’t love her anymore. He was more interested in speculating if the old elms had weathered the windstorm than questioning her about what had happened between her and Pau.

David’s heart sank as she broke into a run. For the last twenty minutes he’d been trying to whip up the courage to tackle her about last night but it was useless. Even Blind Freddy could tell she didn’t want any more to do with him. He watched apprehensively as the slight figure fought to keep upright in the buffeting wind while ragged leaves clung to the threshing branches. His heart lurched as she tripped and fell heavily.

‘Have you had enough now?’ asked David as he sprinted over to help her out of the puddle she’d landed in. Her pants and top were soaked. He took off his jacket and silently handed it to her.

‘I don’t want it,’ said Mei Li, emphasising the personal
pronoun. His criticism of her knowledge of English grammar still rankled.

David could tell she was freezing; even her teeth were chattering. ‘Don’t be stupid, you’re wet through.’ He placed his jacket round her shoulders and wiped the mud off her cheeks with his handkerchief.

In the fading light she looked thin and pale and he could see dark circles under her eyes that hadn’t been there before. ‘You better take my arm,’ he added as the wind whipped her tangled hair in her eyes.

She pushed his arm away and glared at him.

‘Why are you carrying on like this?’ he asked, the rage he’d been fighting to control all day finally exploding. ‘First of all you throw me over for no good reason, and next thing you’re down the pub with Pau. Why did you go out with him, Mei? I thought you loved me.’

‘I do love you,’ whispered Mei Li. ‘It my fault we quarrel. All day I want to tell you sorry,’ she confessed, ‘but when you no come home I think you not want me.’

‘So you immediately go off with the first man who asks you out?’ he yelled, more disappointed than angry. He’d hoped her feelings were as strong and unshakeable as his own.

‘I wanted to make you jealous so you love me again.’

‘Now let me get this straight. Are you telling me that the only reason you went out with Pau was to make me jealous? It wasn’t because you fancied him?’ he asked, looking into her eyes intently.

‘I love you.’

‘So you didn’t really mean it when you said you’d changed your mind? Does this mean you still want to marry me?’

‘Sometime love not enough,’ she replied, playing with the shining ring she’d hurled at him in temper only yesterday.

‘I don’t agree,’ replied David passionately. ‘I believe our love is worth fighting for and if you don’t then you’re not the girl I think you are.’

Mei Li was torn. It would be so easy to throw her arms round David’s neck, but she was afraid that unwise love would one day turn to hate. All through the troubled night her head and heart had battled, and as dawn’s soft light vanquished night Mei Li had made a hard decision, a decision worthy of Lada’s granddaughter: the only way she’d agree to marry David was if he could prove he respected her people and valued their way of life. David had been very quick to offer financial aid to her grandparents, but she didn’t want charity if it went hand in hand with contempt for everything she held dear. She knew David was proud of his heritage and birthright – well, so was she. No matter what it said on a piece of paper, she was a Dayak through and through, and there was no hope of long-term happiness if the man she loved looked down on the beliefs and customs that shaped her character.

Hesitantly, she tried to explain what it was to live in a close-knit community where the natural world still held sway. ‘Longhouse life not better than here, just different …’

‘What an arrogant sod you must have thought me,’ said David when she finished telling him about the richness of tribal life. ‘I behaved like an insensitive boor. No wonder you got mad. Yesterday, after I’d cooled off, I got to thinking about what you said and you’re right, it isn’t fair that families like yours are being forced off their land. I’m going to talk to Pa and Mr Ling about
it. There are better and fairer ways of doing business, and if I’m going to represent the company I’m going to make damn sure it operates ethically, because from now on, Mei, your people are my people.’

David kissed her and she put her arms around him and nestled into his chest. Patches of blue began to open up in the watery sky, grey clouds raced seaward and the stormy afternoon turned into balmy evening, unnoticed by the preoccupied lovers.

David was the first to make a move and Mei Li moaned in protest when he disentangled himself. ‘Still got a headache, sweetheart?’ he asked, looking down at her in concern.

‘No,’ she whispered and reached up and pressed her lips against his.

It was thrilling the way Mei Li responded so passionately to his lovemaking. David felt so protective towards her and his blood boiled when he thought about Pau and what might have happened if she hadn’t passed out. He wouldn’t put it past Pau to have spiked her drink. Thank goodness he had come back from town when he did. His active mind conjured up images of Pau forcing himself on his depressed and vulnerable girl.

‘Pau didn’t try to kiss you, did he?’ he said.

Mei Li shook her head. Most of last night was a blank, but she would have remembered something like that. Fragments of conversation came back to her and she remembered Pau promising to persuade his father to stop logging the jungle.

‘We just talk. Pau good man. He wants to stop the logging too.’

David blinked in disbelief. Pau was such a fox. It was just a ploy to get on Me Li’s good side. David had made a few phone
calls to a colleague who had a younger brother at Oxford, and his comments confirmed David’s own suspicions about their client’s elder son. The brother was sure Pau had got someone to sit his finals. No one ever saw him at lectures and he wasn’t the type to spend his nights swatting. Apparently it was even rumoured that he had badly beaten a girl he’d been seeing but no charges were ever laid. The speculation was that Pau’s rich father had paid the family off.

David was convinced that Pau was dangerous, devious and totally lacking in scruples, but he knew Mei Li had trouble enough with the dreadful business over Rubiah, the shock of finding out her real mother had abandoned her and guilt about her grandparents, so he kept his opinion to himself. He would just have to make sure Pau didn’t get another chance to be on his own with Mei Li, and the best way to guarantee her safety was to bring everything out into the open. Pau wouldn’t dare make a move on her once he and Mei Li were officially engaged.

‘All this secrecy has got to end, Mei Li. We’re going to tell my parents and the Lings we’re getting married. And I don’t want you worrying about Ma. She’ll be fine, you’ll see.’

Mei Li smiled up at him and David said a silent prayer of thanks; he’d almost given up hope of seeing her smile again.

He looked at her tenderly. ‘Mei Li, from now on it’s just the two of us. I want us always to be there for one another, best friends as well as lovers. I know I’m going on a bit,’ he apologised, ‘but I want you to understand that no matter what I’m on your side.’

It was the way her grandmother spoke to her – intimately and lovingly – and she realised there was another special person in her life, one who loved her unconditionally. Since she’d left
the longhouse there had been no one to confide in, no one to share her hopes and sorrows. She’d tried to get close to Rubiah and been shut out. Now she had David. She had come within a hair’s breadth of losing the best man in the world just because she was stubborn and proud. She made a promise to herself: she was going to try hard to learn David’s language so she could tell him how much he meant to her. There were going to be no more secrets.

She felt in her pocket and handed him the crumpled envelope.

David scanned the letter, hoping there wasn’t more bad news in store for Mei Li.

‘It’s from your mother. She wants to see you.’ He sat down on the stone wall and pulled Mei Li onto his lap. Secure in his embrace, Mei Li listened to David read her mother’s plea.

Dear daughter,

Daughter … how special is that? I never knew I had a daughter because I was anaesthetised when I gave birth, and when I came round the nurse told me you were stillborn. How was I to know that the doctor who befriended me when your father ran out on me was planning to steal my baby? But I was just a young, defenceless girl on my own in a strange country.

Now I realise I was too trusting, but I was only seventeen. If I’d known you had survived, nothing – nothing – on this earth would have stopped me from finding you. I have no right to expect anything from you and I wouldn’t blame you if you simply tore up this letter. All the same, I am asking … begging for your help. I am being framed for a murder
I didn’t commit and I don’t know what to do or who else I can turn to.

If I could see you, even just for a few minutes, it would mean more to me than anything else has for the last seventeen years.

I don’t know how to finish this. I don’t feel I have the right to sign myself Mother. Maybe I will one day!

Crystal Brooke aka Tuff

Please God, let this woman be genuine, David thought, noting Mei Li’s flushed face and excited expression. My poor girl’s been through enough. David didn’t know if she was strong enough to stand another disappointment.

‘It certainly sounds like we might have misjudged her,’ he said cautiously. ‘How do you feel about meeting her?’

‘I want to talk with her very much.’

‘Leave it to me then. Remand prisoners can have visitors every day except Sundays. I’ll take you up to town tomorrow, darling.’

‘Oh, David, I’m much scared.’

‘You don’t have to be. I’ll be there.’ He squeezed her hand. ‘Come on old thing, buck up. It’s getting late and I want to tell my parents our good news.’

For a moment he’d sounded just like his old-fashioned, warmhearted father, and Mei Li had a flash into her future as the wife of this kind and honourable man. She would even try to win over Mother Dragon if it would make him happy because this was the man she wanted to spend the rest of her life with.

F
LASHLIGHTS POPPED LIKE LIGHTNING
as Mei Li stepped out of the car and a forest of boom mikes were thrust at her. David elbowed aside a zealous photographer who poked his camera close to Mei Li’s startled face, determined to get the first photograph of Tuff’s elusive love child. David couldn’t hide his indignation. Someone must have tipped them off. There had to be at least sixty guys out there.