A Different Sky (67 page)

Little Sparrow waited with Mei Lan in the Police Inspector's office. Her hands were shaking and her face hollowed out by worry. Soon the inspector, an Englishman with a hearty voice and a few sparse grey hairs combed over his balding head, accompanied Greta into the room.

‘Since she has obviously been badly misled and then threatened with her life, we have found her to be of no great danger to the world. I have decided to release her. However, let this be a warning. Should anything similar happen again we will not overlook it. It is not possible to arrest every Chinese Middle School child in town, but if need be we shall try,' the inspector sighed.

Greta was pale and subdued and looked down at her feet, not raising her eyes to her mother or Mei Lan. Little Sparrow jumped up with a cry as she came into the room, and ran forward to embrace her daughter, who burst into tears and sobbed.

‘Take her home. A good meal, a nice bath and early to bed,' the Police Inspector advised.

‘What will happen to the baby?' Greta asked, looking up at the inspector as Mei Lan steered her to the door. The child had been taken
away from her on arrival at the police station and she had seen nothing of it since. The echo of its pathetic screams now haunted her, as did the knowledge that the many children of the vermicelli maker had all been purchased for convenience by the Party.

‘All the children, including the baby, are already in the care of a good Christian orphanage,' the inspector smiled.

Each morning Rose settled for the day on the chintz sofa beside the open windows in the dining room. The shock of the accident during the afternoon of the Hock Lee bus riot had brought on a heart attack. Although it was a mild attack, the doctor said she should be thankful people from the fish farm had found her so quickly. Now, it was rest and more rest and she was too tired to protest; wherever she turned it was to be confronted by the imprisoning bars of disability. The only thing that lightened her mood was the regeneration of life in Belvedere and Cynthia's delay, however temporary it might be, in leaving for England. Wilfred had gone ahead to take up the post of senior editor on the
Observer
newspaper. He had also become something of a celebrity after the sensational publication of his book,
Lost Paradise
. Observing her daughter over a cup of Horlicks, Rose could not deny that Cynthia looked brighter and happier at the prospect of life in England. She spoke with animation of the things that now lay ahead.

‘We've found a house to move into near Wilfred's old uncle in Surrey, and I've been promised a job as senior staff nurse at the local hospital; they say I could even be promoted.' Cynthia effervesced with news; it had surprised her to find that in Britain merit and experience was given more acknowledgement than in colonial Singapore.

‘Wilfred's novel has been such a success we can almost live on the royalties; he's now writing a book about the psychology of war crimes,' Cynthia informed her mother.

Rose no longer felt anxiety when she observed her daughter, she had a feeling things would now be all right. Maybe at last she could look forward to being a grandmother. About Howard she was not so sure. She worried when, if ever, he and Mei Lan would marry. Even at church, people discreetly enquired about the situation, politely refraining from pointed remarks. Rose found herself uncomfortable with the strangeness of it. Howard and Mei Lan were together all the time, yet things seemed to go neither forwards nor backwards.
Whenever she broached the subject with Howard, he shrugged and said, ‘I'm waiting for the right moment.' When that moment would come, Rose had given up asking, although she continued to pray each night for God's positive interference in the matter. Mei Lan herself was in Belvedere most days.

All the necessary papers had been quickly signed, and the sale of Belvedere to Mei Lan had gone through easily. Immediately it was done Rose was filled with relief, realising only then the anxiety the place had become to her. Just as Mei Lan had promised, nothing changed in her life except that she was no longer responsible for Belvedere's upkeep. In every way she lived as before, and Mei Lan was grateful for her help in supervising the place. Many of the women from Bougainvillaea House had already moved in and Ei Ling, who was now capably running everything the other side of the canal, had overseen the opening up and cleaning of Belvedere's mouldering, long-shuttered rooms. As Rose rested on the chintz sofa she was conscious of the hustle and bustle about her all day; voices from the kitchen outhouses, the cry of a child, the running of water, the clank of obstinate pipes, and a constant step on the stairs. To hear the old house shake with life once more brought a lump to her throat. New tables and chairs had been purchased for the dining room, and professional polishing returned the red Malacca tiles to their former mellow glory. The roof was retiled and ceilings replastered. The kitchens gave out the constant smell of cooking, the garden was orderly, the bathrooms refurbished, and Mei Lan had insisted on covering once again Rose's old chintz sofa. Rose had worked around the doctor's orders of enforced rest by making her day bed a centre of operations, drawing a desk up beside it and planning menus and shopping lists and doing Belvedere's accounts, as she had always done. Sometimes, looking up from a ledger, she stared across the dining room to Belvedere's vestibule, and remembered the day long ago when she had first seen Wilfred standing there, wiping his sweating neck with a red spotted handkerchief, suitcases beside him, solar topi in hand, and wondered at the passing of the years.

Mei Lan came in each day to visit Rose and inspect operations in Belvedere, always followed by her ancient nursemaid. The old woman now suffered from dementia and often did not know where she was, clinging like a child to Mei Lan's hand. From the sofa Rose stared out
of the window at the decrepit mangosteen trees that Mei Lan had at last persuaded her must be cleared. Nests of cobras had been found under the roots of two of the trees, and Mei Lan had set about Rose immediately.

‘You know the trees will have to go; they have been half dead with a blight for years. The cobras will return; they always do.'

Rose reluctantly agreed; the house belonged to Mei Lan now and she knew she clung foolishly to the wasting trees that had become a danger to them all. The gardeners were coming the following week to clear the orchard and she could hardly bear to think about it. It would be the end of something for her when the trees came down.

M
EI
L
AN HURRIED AFTER
Ah Siew as they walked beside the canal. The old woman's mind wandered easily, rooted in a previous time. Nothing else mattered to her but to find Ah Pat, Ah Ooi, Yong Gui and all the other sisters who had shared her
kongsi fong.
As often now happened, Mei Lan had seen Ah Siew open the door of Bougainvillaea House and let herself out and had followed her, fearful the old woman might tumble into the canal; nowadays someone must watch her all day. Ah Siew stopped and looked about anxiously as Mei Lan caught up with her.

‘The sisters were here a moment ago. They're trying to hide from me because I said we must take Ah Pat to the Vegetarian House. She is so far gone the place may already refuse to take her, and send her straight to the Death House. In the Vegetarian House the nuns will look after her and prepare her for death,' Ah Siew worried.

Mei Lan remembered the growth on Ah Pat's neck and her bare feet sticking off the end of the sleeping shelf. She remembered the riot at Kreta Ayer and the bodies of men in the road. She remembered a day of growing up that had never ended. The old woman shuffled along in thick-soled cloth shoes, bent heavily over her stick. It had rained excessively the last few days and the canal had a flow of water. The smell of lichen came to them, and looking into the stream Mei Lan saw a crayfish and thought of Howard.

‘What do you want for your birthday?' Mei Lan asked to distract Ah Siew, steering her away from the edge of the canal; the old woman's birthday was not far away. Nobody knew Ah Siew's real age, nobody knew her birthday, but one had long ago been decided for her and Mei Lan remembered it faithfully. Every year Ah Siew gave the same answer to Mei Lan's question, that she desired nothing but a peaceful death, but now a thought came to her.

‘Before I die I want to sail the great sea again,' Ah Siew unexpectedly
replied, a faraway look in her cloudy eyes as she remembered the long-ago voyage from China when the power of the ocean took her breath away.

Mei Lan turned in surprise. The old woman was panting from the exertion of walking, her mouth open upon toothless gums, the black
samphoo
tunic and trousers voluminous on her scrawny limbs; what remained of her hair was scraped into a tiny knot. She had shrunk to birdlike proportions, her hand a little claw on the knob of the stick, her skin slack and creased and as soft as old chiffon, blotched with the spots of age. Mei Lan was frightened by Ah Siew's talk of death; she had never known a time without the old woman.

‘I watched from the rail of the ship each day; they could not drag me away. The sea was so wondrous and without end. I was never seasick.' Ah Siew turned to Mei Lan, her cloudy eyes alive with memory. Ah Siew's wish must be fulfilled for indeed, Mei Lan thought sadly, it might be her last.

‘There is a large junk, an ornate Chinese tourist boat, that sails out from the island into the bay,' Howard suggested when Mei Lan told him about Ah Siew's wish.

‘The trip only takes a couple of hours. I will come with you,' he decided. Seeing the concern on her face, he wanted to pull her towards him, but did no more than reach for her hand. He no longer expected anything perfect, was too aware of the haphazard process of growth. What he wanted was to regenerate her, to bring back the wild soul she had lost. Use my heart to live, he wished to tell her, until you are whole again. He loved her now without illusion and knew he must trust where love would take him. Mei Lan nodded, glad that he would accompany her and Ah Siew on the birthday outing.

The birthday fell on a Sunday and from early morning Ah Siew was excited. She took out a worn white
samfoo
blouse with elaborate frogging; her old black trousers had been washed and ironed the night before. She wore a jade bangle, Mei Lan's birthday present to her, as protection on the ocean, and a pair of black embroidered shoes that was Howard's gift.

The junk was a massive vermilion affair with gold-painted railings running around its several decks. Small gilded guardian lions, ferociously carved, were perched here and there on balustrades. The highest deck was topped by a small pavilion room of red lacquer pillars
crowned with a fluted green-tiled roof. Looking up in awe, through failing eyes, Ah Siew saw this great sea monster only cloudily, but she saw enough.

‘It is not a boat, it's a palace. I did not come here on a ship like this.' From the quay Ah Siew gazed at the vessel. For a moment Mei Lan feared the ship might not be to her liking, but a smile broke across the old woman's face.

‘I'm going home in style,' Ah Siew croaked, as Howard and Mei Lan helped her up the gangway.

Part of the first deck was glassed in for passengers' comfort with some seating of tables and chairs, and here they settled with Ah Siew. They ordered coffee from an attentive waiter and orangeade for the old woman, while watching people stepping from the gangway on to the deck of the boat. It was a popular trip on a Sunday afternoon and families with excited children predominated. Small boys and girls ran irrepressibly about, chased by anxious parents screaming caution. The deck moved gently below their feet on the swell of the waves.

The pickled odour of the sea mingled with leaking oil from the junk, the aroma of delicacies steaming or frying in the galley below, drifted up to them. The smell of the sea returned Mei Lan to the coconut estate and the wooden shack near Lionel's house, and the palpitating hours so long ago that she had spent there with Howard. She remembered her body dissolved and weak with pleasure, and the roll of the waves on the beach where light and water ran together. She looked at Howard across the table as he inserted a straw for Ah Siew into a bottle of orangeade, bending attentively to the old woman, and knew how much she tried him. Even now she could not overcome the distance that separated them even in love, and that left her always detached. Her faith in the transformative had been lost, and experience had wasted her. She watched Howard helping Ah Siew, his hands as kind and patient in gesture as he was himself, and wished for an end to the isolation that laid her bare so painfully. He believed in her, and hoped this belief would work deep within her. Lifting his eyes, Howard caught her observing him and smiled across the old woman's head, his gaze intent upon her, shutting out all else but what they shared together. She saw the query in his eyes and sadness moved through her as she held out her hand to him; Ah Siew put her lips to the straw and sucked orangeade greedily with a gusty noise. Howard laughed and Mei Lan
was glad to join him, to toss aside the darkness that gathered so quickly and easily in her.

The junk was drawing away from the quay and pushing out into open water. ‘See, land is already far away,' Mei Lan told Ah Siew as the green coast slid slowly by, but with her poor eyesight and a wall of thick glass before her Ah Siew could see nothing.

‘Let's take her out on deck,' Howard suggested and Mei Lan nodded, helping the old woman up.

‘There must be a fine view from that top deck,' Howard said as they emerged into the sun, squinting up at the pavilion with its vermilion pillars and green fluted roof.

‘Go up and have a look, I will stay here with Ah Siew,' Mei Lan suggested, knowing how much he wanted to do this.

As Howard began to climb the stairs to the upper decks, Mei Lan steered Ah Siew towards the rail, where passengers were wedged shoulder to shoulder, to observe the passing scenery. People were reluctant to make a place for the old woman, but near the bow there was more space. Mei Lan guided Ah Siew along the deck, which was now rolling beneath them, and soon found places for them further down. A cool breeze lifted off the sea, blowing the hair across Mei Lan's eyes.