A Different Sky (18 page)

He had come home from school, and had run to seek out his mother, pushing open the door of her bed-sitting room. He heard first a soft mewling sound and then the rough whispering of a man. The door swung open and he saw that one of the lodgers, Mr Woodstock, was holding his mother down on the bed, a hand on her shoulder and a knee between her open legs. The man's face was hidden from him but the red neck, the pomaded hair and the patches of sweat on his shirt awoke Howard's worst fears. His mother's skirt was pushed up about her thighs and the buttons of her dress were open revealing the soft flesh of her breasts spilling out for all to see.

He stood in the doorway, terror spinning through him, sure his mother would soon be dead. In a rush he ran to pull frantically at the man, who turned his head with a look of fury and surprise. Howard still remembered the lax wet mouth, the unhinged expression on his face. He had pulled and pummelled, not caring what happened to him as long as his mother was released, and screamed for her to escape. The man had raised a hand and struck Howard hard in the face. Then, tucking his loosened shirt into his trousers, he strode from the room cursing loudly, slamming the door behind him. Howard flung himself sobbing upon his mother who had quickly buttoned up her dress and gathered him to her breast. He heard the rapid beating of her heart against his ear and remembered her words, soft as a sigh.

‘It's all right. It won't happen again.'

‘Tell him to go,' he had sobbed, his tears darkening the print of her dress.

And indeed, Mr Woodstock left Belvedere almost immediately. Yet, on the day the man departed his mother had cried as if her heart were broken. Suddenly, as he stood in the garden staring up at Cynthia and Wilfred together in the Lodgers' Lounge, he wondered for the first time if he had saved his mother from a fate she had desired. The thought was hot and overwhelming and he could bear it no more. He blew a powerful ripple of notes into the mouthpiece of the saxophone, repeating the same pounding sequence of sound until no breath was left in his body.

A
T
S
IMMONS'S SUGGESTION
W
ILFRED
went into Chinatown for the first time. Get the feel of the place; write me something interesting, Simmons said. Wilfred's guide in Chinatown was Chen, a Chinese Eurasian who had lived many years in England and joined
The Straits Times
on his return to Singapore.

‘There's to be a big raid on the opium dens tonight. Miller, the Chief Detective Officer, knows we're coming. They're looking for arms and drugs. Singapore can be a rough place,' Chen explained as they walked along Chinatown's dark crumbling alleys and Wilfred peered up at the filthy, peeling façades of houses festooned with poles of dripping washing. Stray dogs and ragged, skeletal men slipped in and out of the shadows. He thought of the unhurried world of the Cricket Club with its ubiquitous white-uniformed waiters, the beer and ceiling fans, and the vast green Padang floating always serenely before it. These images returned to him in a wave of unexpected nostalgia. Yet he knew that this visceral place was the true essence of the town, not the world he so easily inhabited. Everywhere here he sensed death, cunning and despair, bound together by the teeming tide of the living. He saw now that there were two towns on the island, as distinct from each other as summer and winter, each all but unknown to the other.

‘That's Miller,' Chen said, recognising the Chef Detective Officer, a tall gaunt man who stood head and shoulders over his local detectives. Wilfred saw a group of men working on the door lock of a ramshackle house by the light of their torches.

As Chen and Wilfred joined them, the door swung open and they followed the men inside. Immediately, an overwhelming stench surrounded them, a stench that Wilfred now recognised as the odour of poverty-stricken Chinatown; a thick miasma of sewage and garlic, opium dross and the rancid fermentation of old cooked rice. The detectives quickly disappeared up an almost perpendicular stairway, Chen
behind them; Wilfred climbed more cautiously, unused to the steep, shallow stairs. He found Chen with the detectives, who were shining their torches upon several men lying inert on the floor of a large unfurnished room. Chen nudged one of the addicts with his foot. The man looked up with a glazed expression.

‘Everyone else has fled, they must have had word we were coming,' Miller said over his shoulder as he turned to search the house, emptying half-eaten bowls of rice, opening cupboards, raking through baskets of decaying vegetables, and probing the warm ashes of the kitchen fire. No drugs or arms were to be found in any of these locations and Miller's frustration was obvious.

As they emerged into the fresh air of the night, two figures ran off along the side of the house and up an alley. Miller gave a shout and with his men raced after them. At the corner the fleeing men turned and unexpectedly raised guns at the detectives. Before they could shoot, Miller fired his own revolver, the loud crack of the shots breaking open the night. Wilfred jumped in shock at the sound. One of the men was hit and collapsed in the road, the other took to his heels.

Even as he ran after Miller and Chen, Wilfred had the feeling that nothing he was experiencing could be real. Reaching the body, Miller bent to pick up the man's discarded gun then walked off without a word to a police car waiting at the top of the road. Wilfred stared down at the lifeless body. By the light of Chen's torch he saw a growing patch of blood spreading over the man's loose shirt; his eyes, still open in surprise, gazed up into Wilfred's face. Chen appeared unperturbed by the corpse.

‘Gang members will come later to collect the body. We can go home now,' Chen announced unemotionally, walking ahead, looking for a rickshaw.

Soon Wilfred was on his way back to Belvedere, while Chen departed in the opposite direction. A cool breeze blew about him as the rickshaw gathered speed. The rasp of the runner's breath mixed with the sound of the wheels bowling unevenly over the road. A light rain had started to fall, Wilfred felt his shirt grow damp on his shoulders and found he was trembling. He had never seen a man killed before, shot like a hunted animal, and the scene returned again and again to his mind. When at last he reached Belvedere and lay in bed, his dreams throbbed with voices and faces. Rain beat against the window
shutters and spat on the lowered bamboo
chiks.
A gecko clucked on the ceiling and he was conscious that the mosquito netting was entangled about his leg. Childhood memories welled up confusedly, pushing free of their hidden place.

He remembered the rubber estate where he had been born. He remembered a time when his mother had gone away, to stay with the wife of a neighbouring planter and he had been left alone with his father. She had departed with angry tears that frightened him, but it had been a companionable few days for him and his father. They had drunk the strong Indian tea his father liked, and he had been allowed to dip his finger in the evening
stengah
and suck the hard raw taste of whiskey. They had trekked together through the jungle and his father had examined the oozing wounds of the rubber trees and shown him the small cup of sticky white sap that would eventually make tyres for motor cars. Then, one day, the woman had arrived.

A little horse-drawn cart had stopped by the house and she had descended wearing a smile and a wide straw hat with blue ribbons. She sat with them on the veranda and spoke to his father as if he were a friend. She did not have the pale beauty of his mother; her skin was the colour of polished bronze, her mouth wide and red, and dark hair curled lavishly about her shoulders. He had thought her beautiful and, he remembered, the emotions had been thick in his father's face. Wilfred was sent to play and when he looked back to the house from the swing his father and the woman had vanished from the veranda, their drinks untouched upon the table. He thought something must have happened and ran back into the house. The door to his father's bedroom was locked; inside there was only silence and no one had answered his knocking. In the end a servant had pulled him away and he had returned to the swing, anxious and confused. Then, as abruptly as they had vanished, his father and the woman reappeared upon the veranda, as if they had never left. These shadowy images were all he remembered. His mother's death from a snake-bite a short while later he had all but blocked from his mind. After her death he had returned to England, to go to boarding school, sailing back in the charge of a missionary family, and was met at the dock by an uncle. He never saw his father again for he died of cholera one year later and the uncle adopted Wilfred.

Freeing his leg from the mosquito net, he flung it over the long thin
bolster that Mrs Burns called a Dutch wife. He pulled it close and wished that instead of the kapok-stuffed case he could feel Cynthia's smooth body beneath him.

Howard made his way to the orchard. Already it was dark, the tennis court invisible in the shadows beneath the trees. There was a seat here near the shed where the gardener
,
Rama, sat in the day to smoke a
bedi
. Light from the kitchen outhouses, which were separate from the house and linked to it by a covered walkway, diffused the darkness so that he could make out the tangled branches of the mangosteen trees behind the shed. As the night descended Belvedere's windows brightened and the smell of frying fish came to him from the kitchen. There was no sign of the girl they called Nona. Part Malay, part Chinese, she was the least attractive of Belvedere's servants but raised no objection to assignations. Howard had only to appear at the kitchen door and within minutes she would make her way to where he always waited, by the shed that housed the heavy roller used on Belvedere's lawns and the gardener's scythe and shears.

The humid scent of the undergrowth, damp after a sudden shower, filled his head. In the distance the open doors of the candlelit dining room gave him a shadowy glimpse of the lodgers gathering for drinks before the evening meal. Beyond the mangosteen trees he could see the roof of Bougainvillaea House. As he did so often, he remembered Mei Lan, the taste of her lips, the smell of her hair, and the way she had made him feel, as if their lives ran together. Over the years he had only occasional glimpses of her in her small garden surrounded by bushes of bougainvillaea, the old nursemaid always beside her. In the beginning, after the fence was put up, he sometimes took his saxophone down to the canal and played in the hope that she might hear.

His mother's voice came to him ordering the servants about in the kitchen, and he was filled with shame for what he was doing. He came here despite his fear of scorpions and snakes, driven to risk such dangers by the heat of his need. There was still no sign of Nona and he paced about, his body full of anticipation. At last he heard the soft clack of her sandals coming towards him and saw her dark, squat shape emerge from the shadows about the shed.

He pushed open the door and Nona squeezed past him releasing an odour of cooking and perspiration. As soon as the door was closed
he was ready and aching, but she held up a hand for patience, folding back her
sarong
. Unable to wait, he pulled roughly at the skirt as he forced her back against a pile of heavy sacks. He thrust into her but within a few moments pulled back from her warmth, spilling himself over her plump thigh. Teddy de Souza at the Harbour Board had told him to withdraw before the climactic moment, insisting that this one small sacrifice in a waterfall of pleasure would save him from disaster nine months later. Nona sat up and stared sourly at her wet thigh. He had come so quickly she had not even begun her usual heavy breathing and groaning.

‘No having good time,' she hissed at him, small eyes glowering. Howard pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and she snatched it from him to wipe her thigh. Sometimes he closed his eyes and imagined it was not the sluttish Nona beneath him but Mei Lan, and afterwards was ashamed. Retying her sarong Nona departed angrily, slamming the creaking door behind her and taking the handkerchief to add to Belvedere's laundry. As the door shut and the blood no longer hammered through his body, the odour in the hut of manure, sacking and dry soil forced Howard to think again of scorpions and snakes. Hurriedly he left, letting himself out of the shed into the dark grounds of Belvedere.

This violent awakening to himself was all the fault of Teddy de Souza who, amazed at Howard's innocence, had seen it as his duty to instruct him in the ways of the world and had shown him some photographs besides. Teddy was married with a grown-up family, but although he was already a grandfather no moral restrictions appeared to pin down his life. Tales of his escapades with women raced around the office, and as his special protégé Howard was privy to the choicest of details.

In the office Calthrop made no further effort to hide his dislike of Howard. One morning he observed the rain sluicing down outside with the accompanying loud cracks of thunder, and fixed his eyes upon Howard; he ordered him to take some paperwork to a warehouse some distance away.

With the rain every rickshaw was suddenly in use, and roads flooded as drains overflowed. Cars and trams, bicycles, carts and rickshaws clogged up the streets, honking horns and ringing bells. In exasperation Howard removed his socks and shoes, rolled up his white cotton trousers and waded under his umbrella through the deluge. Soon, his
trousers were sodden and muddied and his shirt stuck wetly to his back, but as the rain lessened he found a rickshaw at last and quickly delivered the damp bundle of papers. By the time he emerged from the godown the rain had stopped and the sun was already pushing open the sky. By the waterfront a Tamil tea vendor was removing the tarpaulin from his stall and washing thick china cups in a bucket of murky water.

‘You'll have to wait a few minutes. I had to shut everything down because of the rain,' the man said as Howard approached, setting a kettle of water to boil on a small spirit stove.