A Different Sky (56 page)

The bungalow had recently been modernised at Raj's insistence, to the delight of Yoshiko. They had also rebuilt the factory; the sheds were now solid brick and concrete constructions, with modern ovens and fans and the latest machinery. A new biscuit cutting machine was on its way from Germany. Mr Ho would not know the
place, all he would recognise was the shape of some biscuits: the strawberry or pineapple jam centres, chocolate fingers and vanilla rabbits for children.

As Raj left the car, Yoshiko was returning to the house from the factory and they climbed the steps together. She had remained slim and bright and her hair had not greyed. The boys were grown and now helped with the running of the factory, and looked upon Raj as a surrogate father. He sat with them often in the evenings and it was rewarding to dispense advice and have it appreciatively received; he no longer missed not having a nephew.

‘See, Uncle is right again. He always knows what he is talking about,' Yoshiko frequently told the boys, and it pleased him to hear her say this and to know the family depended upon him.

He was now a man of property. Beside the Waterloo Street home he had bought houses in exclusive areas of town for rent to Europeans. Ho Biscuits had given him the dignity of industry, always more weighty than trade.

‘They're still picketing at the post office. Gurkhas with guns are everywhere,' he told Yoshiko as they climbed the steps.

‘Our workers held a meeting today, so tomorrow you can be sure they'll have fresh demands. Maybe we should offer more; we don't want trouble,' Yoshiko suggested with a sigh.

‘Management means strength. If you give workers an inch they'll demand a yard because they think you're frightened,' Raj replied firmly.

Ho Biscuits continued to have labour problems. Yoshiko bargained ferociously whenever the factory went on a go-slow and threatened to strike. Raj had not noticed this hard-nosed facet of her personality when she was married to Luke Ho. He had come to admire her, and also to desire her. Her face was still wet with the heat in the factory and the scent of vanilla and cinnamon rose from her. Raj walked slightly behind Yoshiko as they climbed the steps to the veranda. He had a fine view of her neatly shaped buttocks in the fashionable slacks she had recently taken to wearing beneath her Japanese apron. Lust, he suspected, did not have a place in Yoshiko's orderly mind, but marriage might be acceptable. The thought had been with him for some time. It would be a far more physically substantial arrangement than his weekly visits to an establishment on Lavender Road. In return,
he would officially assume the position that he had unofficially held for so long: that of head of the Ho household.

On the top step Yoshiko stumbled and he reached out to support her and prevent a fall. He found himself with his arms about her, her small breast cupped in his hand, his mouth against her hair, its lingering vanilla perfume filling his nose. With his free hand he reached beneath her apron and slid his hand between her thighs. Yoshiko did not move, but he heard her breath quicken and her heart fluttered beneath his hand.

‘After the cutting machine arrives from Germany, perhaps we should get married,' he suggested into her ear, and moved his hand to cover her crotch. Yoshiko pulled away and continued into the house as if nothing had happened.

‘The machine will take many months to come. It is better we marry before,' she replied over her shoulder, as the darkness of the house enveloped her.

As often happened, Raj did not return from the factory in time for dinner but ate with Yoshiko and her sons at Ho Biscuits. Krishna sat sullenly before his wife at the table while a servant served them their meal. Leila had hurried home early from Manikam's, but had not been in the house to greet Krishna as he'd expected, on his return from St John's. Her absence had shocked him deeply; it was not right for a wife to ignore a husband's homecoming after an absence of two years. Observing her across the table, he noted the authority with which she ordered the servants, and the briskness with which she ate. He was surprised to find she had evolved into a different person in the time he had been away; she had learned to live without him.

‘You cannot live by ideals alone,' she told Krishna in the new commanding voice she used. ‘Those striking post office workers are only encouraged by people like you. You must find proper work and not waste your time any more with politics.' Leila gestured to the waiting servant to spoon more rice on to her banana leaf. The Ramakrishna Mission School wanted nothing more to do with Krishna, considering him an unsuitable person to mould young minds.

Some weeks later, when Leila had returned to Manikam's after lunch, Krishna left the house on his own and made his way into Chinatown, to a noodle stall where he was to meet a cell member known to him
only as BK. The boy appeared no more than eighteen, with hair that stood up all over his head and two smouldering slashes for eyes. Krishna had received a message to meet BK concealed in a bun of steamed rice, secretly passed to him by a food hawker as he left the house on Waterloo Street. These were the slippery ways by which communist cell members communicated. After ordering some noodles, Krishna sat down at a rusty table in the filthy alley, and waited. When the boy at last appeared he circumnavigated the stall several times looking for undercover spies, before ordering noodles and then joining Krishna. The table rocked on the uneven cobbles and rats ran boldly about in the evil-smelling effluent that overflowed the shallow gutter. BK was dressed in the disguise of a common labourer, in a dirty singlet, torn shorts and wooden clogs, although in reality he taught calligraphy in one of the Chinese Middle Schools, and was usually decently dressed. To Krishna, he appeared no more than a political upstart, full of smart-alecky ways. BK slurped up the hot noodles and began the meeting by listing untrustworthy people who had all recently been assassinated, accused of treason by the Party.

‘Traitors must be exterminated, that is the rule. However, you have a chance now to prove your loyalty to the Party.' BK did not look up from his chopsticks as he continued.

‘Party discipline is so strict that once a termination job is done, comrades must surrender their guns. Then, at the next assassination order, they are handed the guns to use again. Between assassinations the weapons must be hidden. Only people the Party trusts completely are given the task of hiding weapons. We have selected you for this task.' For a moment BK stopped eating and glanced furtively about to be sure no one had heard him. Krishna started in alarm on hearing the nature of his task. His hands trembled so badly as he lifted his chopsticks that the noodles sipped back into the soup.

Krishna found he had returned from St John's to a different world; during his years in detention everything had changed. Boldness was now in style. Daylight assassinations on crowded streets were happening every day. The Malayan Communist Party, in the secrecy of numerous political cells, decided who was an enemy of the people and killer squads were activated to liquidate offenders. This sudden change of tactics shocked Krishna deeply; not only the new lawlessness and brutality, but also the youthfulness of Party members. It was clear the
age of gentlemanly subversion was over.
Freedom News
still operated deep underground, and were glad to accept his articles through the many devious routes of delivery they devised. Yet, the front line Krishna had stood at all his life had now moved so far forward he did not know where it was. The old rules no longer applied.

‘I'm an old man, this is young men's work,' Krishna protested, knowing the test he had waited for since joining the cell was upon him; he had not yet been passed for full membership of the Party. BK nodded agreement.

‘But an old man can still be useful, and show his loyalty to the Party. Young or old, loyalty is the same. Selection for a task like this is an honour.' BK leaned forward to suck up a hank of noodles.

‘Young men take risks more easily than old men. I have proved my loyalty,' Krishna argued. He could imagine BK with the other cell members gleefully hatching this test for him.

‘Then you should have no problem with the order,' BK frowned. His noodles finished, he sat back and searched for a cigarette in the pocket of his shorts.

‘You live in a big house. Your brother-in-law is a respected man, a rich man. No one would expect to find guns in the house of such a man. There is also a garage that opens into a storeroom with a large padlocked cupboard,' he added.

Krishna struggled with the panic of knowing he was watched. His home had been reconnoitred in minute detail, and he had known nothing about it. A sudden spurt of anger gushed through him. Such tactics were nothing but an alternative form of oppression, and he had always stood up to oppression.

‘I cannot do this,' he said firmly, looking BK in the eye.

‘Cannot or will not? Comrades happily give their lives for the Party, if they are true believers. Are you saying you cannot be trusted?' BK replied coldly, shaking his head as he pushed back his stool.

Krishna watched as he disappeared into the crowd. His own noodles remained untouched on the table, the fat congealing in an oily ring around the sides of the bowl. The stench of sewage rose up about him from the road and he watched a large rat scuttle along the side of the alley. He had never been frightened before.

M
EI
L
AN FOUND A
stool and carried it out into the garden. On her return from England some months before, she had found Bougainvillaea House in a derelict state, still scarred by bomb damage, squatters inhabiting its decrepit shell. She had immediately set about reclaiming the place. For a time then she had lived with Little Sparrow in the East Coast home while Bougainvillaea House was being repaired and the vagrants moved out. Ah Siew was still hobbling around serving Little Sparrow, weathered skin loose on her bones and eyes blue with cataracts; during her time in England Mei Lan had missed the old woman more than she liked to admit. Ah Siew was now a great age, although no one knew exactly how old she was. She squatted down on her haunches beside Mei Lan in the garden of Bougainvillaea House, breath rattling in her stringy chest, chewing on toothless gums. A lack of teeth now limited her choice of food, her joints needed rubbing with medicated liniment and her mind was developing holes, but she was still around. The old woman placed her sleeping pallet at the foot of Mei Lan's bed once more, and each night the sound of her snoring reassured Mei Lan, as it had when she was a child.

When the decision to return to Singapore was made she wrote to Mr Cheong of Bayley McDonald & Cheong who had always handled Lim Hock An's legal business. Mr Cheong agreed to take her into the firm, although he made it clear that he was setting a precedent by employing a woman.

The garden of Bougainvillaea House was once again furrowed with open runnels, and bare-backed coolies threw up spade after spade of damp soil just as they had when Lim Hock An buried his precious jade and opium and Second Grandmother's jewellery. Now, at Mei Lan's order the treasure was being exhumed. The remaining sickly bushes of bougainvillaea had been ripped up and lay in a pile, black-clawed roots exposed. Mei Lan was filled with a sense of déjà vu and
fought to control her tears. One by one, the stout wooden boxes of Lim Hock An's jade were hauled up into the light, dark and damp from long burial, clods of earth dropping from them. Although neglect and shelling had destroyed the garden and few of the original bougainvillaea bushes remained, Mei Lan knew exactly where to find her grandfather's priceless cache. His ghost seemed to sit beside her, wrapped like old porcelain in his ancient purple dressing gown, Second Grandmother beside him. As each box was unearthed her throat tightened with emotion for all that had befallen the great House of Lim; apart from soft-brained Bertie, there was no male line of descent. Her father, Boon Eng, had died in Hong Kong in an air raid, but this news had not come to them until the war was over.

Once Lim Hock An's treasure was unearthed she vowed to restore the garden, planting fresh bougainvillaea. Already she had taken down the fence her grandfather had erected so long ago along the canal, to stop her meeting Howard. During the war the Japanese had built a narrow walkway across the storm drain and the two lots of land were now firmly linked. Bougainvillaea House, its dark corners filled with memories, even if painful, comforted her. She had made a bedroom habitable and also part of the sitting room with a desk and a sofa and a small dining table. For the moment she needed little more, and the other rooms of the house lay empty. Mei Lan had been away almost seven years. As the boxes of Lim Hock An's valuables emerged from their damp grave, they were carried into the house and temporarily stacked in the old dining room.

‘Belvedere boy coming home,' Ah Siew croaked out the news suddenly, chewing her gums, squinting up at Mei Lan with unusual lucidity. Mei Lan looked at the old woman, her grey hair now so thin the scalp could be seen beneath, the tight knot of once luxuriant hair no bigger than a walnut, and felt the shock ripple through her.

Whenever Mr Cheong had a case concerning a difficult female, Mei Lan was called in to participate; she was the only woman in the office of Bayley McDonald & Cheong. Otherwise, most of her work centred upon the bread and butter issue of conveyancing, and was not what she had imagined herself doing on her return to Singapore. As Mei Lan entered the office after the trying weekend with Lim
Hock An's treasure, she was told that Mr Cheong wanted to see her urgently.

‘The woman is in prison for attempted murder of her husband. It would be useful to interview her; the husband has enough means to take legal action and has approached me. I am undecided whether or not I should take the case.' Mr Cheong sighed, and Mei Lan recognised the bored note in his voice at the thought of yet another neurotic woman.

‘He wants her committed to a mental asylum. He says she is mad. You had better go and hear her story before I consider the case,' Mr Cheong added. Most of the cases Mei Lan worked on with Mr Cheong involved women living in polygamous marriages and Mr Cheong could never hide his lack of interest; it was rumoured that he himself kept a concubine.