SQ 04 - The English Concubine (16 page)

And Qian had become distant, indulging the young man, neglecting his family. And then his mother had died and he had mourned her beyond anything for she had been an extraordinary woman who held the entire family together. She had loved him, been so proud of this son who spoke English and was a scholar. Then everything had erupted like a volcano. Within six months, the business had failed, the compound sold; he’d been summarily removed from the Institution, his education curtailed, and thrown into the brothels like some filthy pimp.

By the second pipe, Ah Soon wept on Alex’s shoulder and Alex held him and read between the mumbling lines. He had taken to opium, perhaps to forget all this, perhaps to spite his father and now the drug owned him body and soul.

By the third pipe, Alex’s head was reeling and Ah Soon had sunk into the torpor of his dreams.

Alex longed to help Ah Soon but he had no idea how to do it. He dozed and the vivid dreams of the opium fumes filled his head, the brothel and the girls’ faces, drawing him in. He was wrenched from slumber by a hue and cry from below. He rose, his hand to his temple.

He opened the door and went onto the landing. A group of servants was talking loudly in the middle of the hall, the women wailing. Alex was about to open his mouth and tell them all to shut up when his mother came out to the landing.

‘What is this noise?’ she cried as Dr. Little came rushing through the door.

Malik ran into the hall, a child in his arms, and Charlotte let out a scream. Alex watched as his mother raced down the stairs.

Dr. Little spoke quickly to Charlotte, and Malik carried the child into the living room.

‘What is it?’ Alex cried and Charlotte looked up at him, her face so distraught and distorted, that he gasped with alarm.

‘Mother,’ he shouted and raced down the stairs.

She collapsed against him and he held her tightly and led her to a chair.

‘What is it, Mother, for heaven’s sake?’

‘Lily,’ she said. ‘She’s been bitten by a snake.’

She began to sob, her chest heaving.

Alexander had no idea what on earth was going on. He rose and went to the door. Dr. Little was leaning over the child examining her.

‘What is it? Who is this child?’

The younger servants were screaming, the Chinese nursemaid tearing at her hair, the Malay maids beating their cheeks.

‘Be quiet,’ Alex yelled and a shocked silence momentarily fell. ‘What is going on? Who is this girl?’

His mother rushed into the room and with a face as pale as a ghost and stood, waiting. Dr. Little rose and shook his head. Charlotte screamed and screamed.

Alex was utterly rooted to the spot.

‘Lily,’ Charlotte wailed.

Alex suddenly remembered. The daughter, the child his mother had with Zhen, was lying dead. He went to his mother and took her in his arms.

17

‘Were you alone with the child?’

The Chinese maid looked at the big Englishman and listened to the interpreter. She nodded.

‘Did you see the snake?’

The maid shook her head. ‘Only when it bit the child,’ she said.

The coroner returned a verdict of accidental death. Lily had been asleep in the heat of the afternoon on the low hammock outside under the trees where it was cooler. The mistress had gone into the house. The Chinese maid had just stopped rocking her and fallen into a slumber for the day was so hot and airless.

She was awakened by the child’s cries and found a viper slithering away, its long tail disappearing into the bushes. The snake had slithered over Lily and, it was presumed, she had moved under it and, surprised, it had bitten her on the face, delivering a fatal dose of venom. From the maid’s description, the snake was identified as a Malayan pit viper, an ill-tempered, poisonous serpent known for the sudden rapidity of its strike.

Evangeline took Charlotte’s arm and led her away from the gravesite. For three days they had come. The flowers for Lily were curled and rotted and Evangeline took them away. The tombstone had been put up and Charlotte stared down at the grave of her and Zhen’s child. It was a tombstone not only on Lily, sweet little Lily, but on them. She realised that Robert, who had ordered the stone, had named her Lily Manouk, though on her birth certificate Zhen was marked as the father. They were not married and so Lily was not considered a Tan, the name he had adopted when he married his first wife. She felt it terribly. Why had they not given this child his name? Lily was no more a Manouk than Alex, but two of his children carried another man’s name. She felt the terrible injustice of it and a sudden deep understanding of his feelings.

He had not come, not to the funeral, not to see her, not to grieve with her, not now, even when their daughter lay dead in the ground. She had received no letter from him. It felt as if he had simply cut away all that part of his life.

She turned and went to George Coleman’s grave and touched it. Evangeline waited then wandered away to the grave of a friend. A figure approached and Charlotte looked over, hoping it was Zhen, but she recognised the slight and lonely figure not of him, but his daughter, Lian. Her maid waited by the entrance to the cemetery, fearful of entering this ang moh spirit ground.

Lian knelt at the little grave and placed a lotus bud against the stone. Charlotte watched from a distance then walked slowly over to the girl.

‘Thank you,’ she said, and Lian turned. She put out her arms and Lian fell into them.

‘I loved her too,’ Lian said. ‘I wanted someone from her other family to be here.’

Lian wiped the tears from her cheeks and Charlotte put her arm around the girl’s waist.

‘Why, why does he not come?’ she said and Lian felt so sorry for this woman who had tried to do something incredible for her. She had heard from Ah Fu about the visit to Hong Kong Street. It was the talk of all the Chinese town. Zhen, the new leader of the kongsi, had broken with the English concubine in a great fight at the brothel. She had interfered and shamed him and, white woman or not, she had been summarily dismissed. His prestige had soared.

‘Miss Charlotte, come.’ Lian led Charlotte to the stone bench under the banyan tree.

‘I have to explain some difficult things to you and some of this is secret. You must not speak of it to your brother or anyone for if you do they will know it and they will know it is me and that is dangerous. You understand.’

Charlotte nodded.

‘My father has become what they call the lord of the kongsi. You understand. It’s like a sort of prince. Prince of the Chinese. Does that make sense? Thousands of men swear an oath of loyalty to him.’

‘Lord? This is what he had to do? This is why he couldn’t be with me? Because I’m not Chinese. And because of this he cannot mourn his daughter?’

Lian shook her head. ‘A man like that, who becomes such a prince, he cannot have women he does not control, who defy him publicly. It’s impossible. You see. Ah Fu says that in China you would have been killed.’

Charlotte’s eyes opened wide with shock.

‘There is that part, and then it is forbidden, in Chinese tradition, to openly mourn a child who dies young. You see, if a child dies young it is considered bad luck on the family and the child must be put away and not mourned or talked about as if it had never lived.’

Charlotte stared at Lian. What tradition did not mourn a beloved child?

‘As the mere daughter of a concubine, in a Chinese family she is considered worthless. Forgive me, Miss Charlotte, I’m trying to explain. Perhaps he doesn’t feel that in his heart but for all those reasons he cannot show any public grief for her.’

She could hardly believe what she was hearing. She shut her heart from him.

‘Mother.’

Charlotte turned to see Alexander approaching. She rose and so too did Lian.

‘Alex, oh my boy.’

Alex put his arm around his mother’s shoulders and kissed her. He walked to Lily’s grave and placed the orchids he had gathered next to the lotus bud. Lian and Charlotte followed. He rose and looked at Lian, suddenly remembering her.

‘Lian?’ he asked, putting his head to one side.

‘Hello, Alex,’ she said. ‘I heard you were back.’

He smiled. He’d forgotten how beautiful she was. He felt pierced by her slender grace, her quiet assurance. Lian ignored him and turned away, back to the grave.

‘I don’t care about what I said to you. That is my father’s affair. I’ll come here and be her Che Che, her big sister, and light joss for her.’

Charlotte took Lian’s hand. This thought was a great comfort. Lily would not be alone.

‘Thank you. Lily thanks her big sister.’

‘Thank you, Miss Charlotte, for what you tried to do for me. I will never forget it.’

Alex opened his mouth to speak but Lian turned and walked rapidly down the hill.

18

‘Things are so terrible in Aunty Kitt’s house.’

Amber put her handkerchief to her eyes. Sarah and Lian sat on either side of her. The three girls were seated under the branches of the great banyan tree which spread over the edge of the stream. On the ground, behind the tree, lay their three maids. Ah Fu’s snores punctuated their conversation.

The tide was out and they all gazed out over the vast mud flats and the small army of pickers, all concentrated, heads down, gathering the creatures that appeared at every low tide, clams, crabs, sea snails and whelks. A squawking flock of gulls wheeled above the flats, one occasionally diving down and snatching up its prey. Lian recalled doing this picking with Ah Fu when she was a child.

‘No-one talks of my marriage to Alex.’ She began to wail, a high keening with occasional great sobs.

Sarah stared at her friend in astonishment.

‘You are to marry Alex, your cousin? Why, he has just arrived. When did this happen?’

Amber ceased her wailing and shot a look of annoyance at Sarah.

‘Well, Aunty and Father spoke of it. It is Aunt’s wish.’

‘Oh, gosh, really,’ said Sarah. ‘Did they? But now it’s off?’

Amber quietly sobbed anew. ‘I hope not. I love him.’

‘I knew it,’ crowed Sarah. ‘You have been such a liar.’

‘Does Alexander want to marry you?’ Lian said.

Amber stopped sobbing and shot a sharp look at Lian. Then she lifted her handkerchief to her eyes.

‘I … I … I don’t know. It doesn’t matter.’ She looked up suddenly, defiantly. ‘If Aunt Charlotte says he must marry me then he must.’

Lian watched the pickers amid the constant screeching of the wheeling birds. Since the sea wall had been built, children rarely came to play on the beach anymore. The Malay Orang Laut, the sea people, with their blithe spirits and happy dispositions, whom she remembered from her childhood, had disappeared from the town. It was sad. The town here, on the European side, had lost any liveliness it might have possessed and, in its empty, quiet vastness, felt half-dead.

‘Goodness, Amber. If he doesn’t love you, it would be jolly horrid,’ Sarah said, her eyes flashing with pleasure. ‘You always said we should marry for love, didn’t you? Doesn’t that mean Alex too?’

Amber stood up, angry.

‘You’re the one always prattling on about marrying for love. Well I am. I love him so it’s all right. Anyway people marry who do not love each other. Look at Lian. She must marry Ah Soon, whom she despises.’

Lian looked at her friend. She raised an eyebrow.

‘And if it came to pass I would hate him. Do you want Alex to hate you?’

It was as if Lian had stuck a dagger in her friend’s heart.

Amber staggered backwards, her eyes blazing, then turned and walked quickly away.

Sarah shot a glance of triumph after Amber but Lian regretted her words.

Sarah and Lian parted, the mood of their easy friendship soured, and Lian made her way along the edge of the sea, Ah Fu trailing her and yawning noisily. The air was cool and clouds obscured the sun throwing a greyness on the scene, bleaching colour from the day.

She had hurt Amber. Had she meant to? And why? What did she care if Amber married Alexander? She had barely said two words to him at the cemetery, but that did not mean she had not taken him in. He was not bluff and red and pompous but tall, broad-shouldered and handsome. He was, perhaps, a little arrogant, but also had an easy charm and she recognised in him the boy she had known and liked so much. She knew instinctively that Amber, so rigid and worried, was not right for him.

She felt sorry and gave a deep sigh. Too much was happening. Lian had been brought up in such chaos, in the uncertainty of strange and unpredictable behaviour, that she craved peace and quiet. Mother Lilin sometimes forgot she was around, especially in the morning when she was busy with her Chap Ji Kee betting slips or with the shamans who visited her daily, two nonyas and one Malay, leeching money out of her, or with the jewellery hawker who always came by to listen to her incessant chatter knowing he would end up the richer. These were the happy hours. At noon the mee hawker and the Tamil fried cake seller and the dumpling man would call and she would eat everything she could lay her hands on. Then she spent hours in front of her mirror, combing her thinning hair incessantly, the comb filled with strands, then blood as furrows of scarlet formed on her scalp.

Lian knew her aunt would sleep at three o’clock and tried to stay away until then. It gave her an hour of calm before Mother Lilin needed her to prepare the sireh and make Lian sit with her whilst she raved, or play cards with her which always ended up in anger, or play the piano which she had bought, or bring her sweets and crystal ginger and read in English which Lilin could barely understand. Then there would be the half an hour when Lilin was virtually inconsolable, howling, and could only be calmed with the opium pills in wine. She was ill, Lian knew it, and it had got so much worse recently. She needed to speak to her father of it but with the tension which lay between them and the loss of his child, no matter what outward manifestation he made, she dared not.

A feeling of desolation crept over her and she walked over the footbridge at the river’s mouth to get lost in the noise and bustle of Chinatown. Ah Fu trailed along, chatting to acquaintances. One such stopped her and Ah Fu, lost in her chatter, ignored her charge. It happened so often that Lian no longer gave it a thought. She wandered amongst the shops and the food stalls, the hawkers calling their wares, the shoemakers banging, the clacking sound of wooden clogs a constant refrain. A pack of mongrels began fighting over a scrap and she went into the Thien Hock Keng temple to escape and sit with the Buddha, who asked nothing from her except serenity, resting in the peace of his smile, listening to the women chant, until three o’clock, when she turned for home.