He stopped and looked at me appraisingly. “Does this make you detest me?” he asked.
“Not at all,” I assured him. “Quite the opposite. —What kind of work did you do?”
“Police work. I started as an ordinary bluebottle—walking the streets, writing traffic citations. Lying about my age—I was sixteen when I started. I kept my ears and eyes open and worked my way quickly through the ranks. Do you know what my main advantage was?” he asked.
Your golden hair, I thought, but I certainly didn’t say it aloud.
“I never needed as much sleep as the other fellow,” he said. “I’ve never slept well, not through the night. I have a watchful nature. Three o’clock comes, and I’m wide-awake. It’s amazing what you can accomplish simply by being awake. Amazing what you see in the small hours of the morning, when you’re not supposed to be watching.”
I stood as close as I could without actually leaning on him. Somehow, Geoffrey Brown was not the sort of man you felt you could lean on. He put an encircling arm around my waist. He smiled at me, that dazzling, crooked-toothed smile. “I’m talking too much,” he said.
“—So what did you accomplish, in the middle of the night?”
“I learned how to talk, for one. Listening to records. Shakespearean actors, usually. —Did you know I come from County Tyne? Do you know how they sound up there?”
I shook my head.
“Like bleating sheep,” he said, “for good reason. —And then, let’s see. I taught myself history. Politics. Philosophy. Thought I’d become a philosopher. Wrote essays and everything, pages and pages.”
“When I was about eleven,” I said, “I wanted to be a poetess. —I was awful!”
“Much the same thing,” Geoffrey said, drawing me closer. “Both of us dreamers.” He rested his chin on the top of my head a moment, lightly. The bones of his face were sharp enough almost to hurt. “But I never felt at home until I came to Singapore,” he said. “That’s the truth of it. So many thousands of miles away. I just—fell in love,” he said. “Never saw a place so beautiful. Never met people so beautiful. Face after face, you would see them in the street. So open and pliant and trusting.”
“My grandmother is anything but pliant,” I told him. I might have added, “And I take after her,” but we were still in that honeymoon phase, when you don’t tell the other person everything you are thinking. You believe you can become the person they want you to be, an idealized version of yourself.
“Your grandmother is Chinese,” Geoffrey said. “Peranakan. You are Singaporean.”
“I am a mix-up,” I said.
“You and me both,” he said. “Mutts. I never belonged in England. Too many hundreds of years of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. I knew as soon as I set foot in Singapore I could make it my own. I felt I had come home.”
He drew his head back just far enough so that he could look, long and hard, at me. I don’t know what he saw. Because of the angle of the light, his face was almost entirely in shadow, while mine was illuminated. He may have seen himself reflected in my dark eyes. He must also have seen the tenderness and admiration I could never disguise. He kissed me then, deep and slow, his arms twining around me, his tongue sliding into my mouth. I had never been kissed like that by anyone. I felt overwhelmed, as if something were being taken away from me—my breath drawn right out of my body. I was as shaky on my feet as a new colt. I could tell no one about this—not even Bridget. It felt secret, sacred, and I wanted to keep Geoffrey all to myself just a little while longer.
Soon enough, I knew I’d have to share him with the world. But he could remain my secret for a little longer. Let no one say that young love is generous. It is selfish and hungry. And I knew the dangers of the Hungry Ghosts. Hadn’t we placated them every festival season, assuaging their hunger with sacrifices of paper food? But you cannot tell a young person anything—least of all a young person head over heels in love.
Meanwhile, there was my new work at the Singapore Gate evening edition to keep me occupied, and there were unexpected perks of being a newspaperwoman. There were only two other women in the office, both in their sixties, one secretary and one bookkeeper, best friends to each other, and we would occasionally go out for glasses of tea at the Pek Sin Choon tea hawker on Mosque Street. But I could tell they disapproved of me, and that stood in the way of giving and accepting confidences. They dressed very plainly, in loose-fitting shifts. I was a true 1920s girl, complete with heels and bobbed hair. I loved elegant clothing, and strangely enough, my work at the newspaper fed that weakness.
For example, I had a great fondness for hats, which I had never in my poverty-stricken life been able to indulge. Scraping together the money for my school uniforms created enough havoc with the family finances. I seldom allowed myself even a glance into a milliner’s store. I did not envy my wealthy school girlfriends their many silk dresses, but I longed for a decent straw hat and an unsoiled pair of gloves.
Nei-Nei Up, Uncle Chachi’s late wife, had shared my taste in fanciful hats, and when she died she bequeathed to me two beauties. The first was a black felt hat decorated with long kuong feathers. The other was an evening cloche decorated with violet glass beads and a veil. Neither hat was appropriate for the Raffles School, but I could have found occasions to sport one or the other. Instead, I kept them locked away. I took them out of their boxes only once in a great while, to admire them in the mirror and then put them away again. This was foolish. I thought that by keeping the hats unworn, I could preserve them for all time. Instead, time nibbled away at them, as indeed it had my two inherited kebaya, one from Nei-Nei Up, one from Nei-Nei Down.
Moths had eaten holes in both kebaya, which Nei-Nei Down and Sanang painstakingly, grumblingly repaired. These kebaya I wore only on festival days, or during really special family celebrations. These kebaya were true works of art, covered with birds and peonies and intricately twisting vines and swimming gold carp—though Nei-Nei Up’s cream-colored kebaya hung a bit loose, and Nei-Nei Down’s crimson a bit wide. I am ashamed to admit I would have traded either one for a nice modern, fashionable hat.
Once I became a bona-fide newspaperwoman at the Singapore Gate, I could visit the millinery stores whenever I pleased—in fact, it was my job to do so. You could not write a puff piece about a store if you weren’t thoroughly familiar with its wares. I spent time lingering over shelves of kid gloves, trying on scarves, shoes, eyeglasses, and hats. Storekeepers were eager to show me their latest arrivals. They told me gripping stories about shoplifters and swindlers, family business deals gone sour—however, I could include none of these histories in my fashion pages and society columns. My pages were relentlessly cheerful. I had offered to write obituary notices, but Mr. Singh told me in no uncertain terms that there was no place for death in Society.
Instead, I wrote about the new bicycle craze and offered tips for photographers who wanted to take better snaps. I wrote pages covering engagements and marriages, charity bazaars and festival balls, church concerts; I invented letters about society events, and I wrote glowingly about every business establishment.
Advertisements in the Singapore Gate became more regular and numerous. I began receiving invitations to store openings. One milliner even told me if he liked what I wrote, he would send me a free hat—but I knew what to make of such promises. I took my job quite seriously. I wrote judiciously, enthusiastically, and soberly about every single establishment. Above all things, I told myself, I was a journalist. I put a great deal of time and effort into my articles, choosing each phrase with care.
I must have done especially well by the milliner, for a few weeks later I found on my desk at the Singapore Gate a hatbox emblazoned with gold letters, and inside, a small green cloche covered with blue pansies. I wore that hat everywhere, and wrote afterward with even more deliberation and care, but the miracle was never repeated.
The managing edit
or of the Singapore Gate was a Mr. Williams, who always signed himself Mr. Wms, as if he could not be bothered to write out his own name. He was Mr. Singh’s opposite—large, bulky, blond, and brusque. His hands were neatly manicured, and he smelled chokingly of men’s cologne. Every word he spoke he issued at full volume; he seemed to be in a perpetual state of rage. His tantrums were legendary. I stayed as far away from him as possible—but complete avoidance was not to be had.
One day, he collared me in the hall and thrust into my face half a recipe for chicken salad, then told me to finish it and have it ready by the next afternoon. The recipe broke off midway. I scanned it anxiously.
“Where is the other half?” I asked.
“Lost!” he barked. His eyebrows were like two enormous, angry yellow caterpillars. “Can you do this or not?” It was not a question but an accusation. I never felt he approved of my being allowed in the office at all. I was, to that point, the sole woman writing at the Singapore Gate, morning or evening edition. I must forge my own destiny, I told myself, unconsciously echoing things that Geoffrey had told me. I nodded.
“Tomorrow, then. It’s too late for tonight’s paper.”
“I’m not familiar with chicken salad,” I said.
“Ask your mother,” he growled.
If I admitted that I was a motherless girl who could not cook, I could have lost the job entirely.
So I brought the scrap of the recipe home sheepishly to Nei-Nei Down. She scowled at it and made her disparaging Tschuck! sound at the list of ingredients. “Celery!” she scoffed. “Reasonable people do not like their meat dishes to crunch like bones.”
“But we must follow the recipe,” I begged. “Chicken Salad for an Elegant Luncheon.”
She rolled her eyes. “Elegant. A salad made of bird and mayonnaise.” But she took pity on me, as usual. “We will add a few things and salvage the dish,” she said. “We will do this Singapore-style.”
That is what I renamed the dish: Chicken Salad for an Elegant Luncheon, Singapore-style.
The recipe proved surprisingly popular. It provoked an unsolicited letter to the editor praising the long-overdue acknowledgement of Singapore cuisine, a letter Mr. Singh was only too glad to publish. Heretofore, the Singapore Gate, like all other popular Singapore newspapers and magazines of the 1920s, had limited itself to British recipes and British dishes. The letter writer had signed off, A Champion of Singaporean Cuisine and Culture.
Mr. Singh was pleased enough to ask me to contribute another recipe, Singapore-style. Nei-Nei Down obliged with Flattened Fried Chicken, Singapore-style. This drew three letters to the editor—two from housewives arguing politely with the frying method, and another glowing encomium from our Champion of Singaporean Cuisine and Culture.
Not since the Singapore Mutiny of 1915 had the Singapore Gate received three letters on a single subject. Mr. Singh took this as a public referendum, and from then on Singapore Style became my regular column. The recipes were all Nei-Nei Down’s, and she seldom earned fewer than two or three responses from our readers. Her recipe for Chicken Rice, Singapore-style, drew eight replies, half of them offering alternative recipes. When it came to food and Singaporeans, it seemed we had struck a nerve. Our Champion remained our most loyal correspondent, but the public’s interest was stirred.
Geoffrey was also impressed by my new success as a social columnist. He had a great respect—almost too great—for public opinion. “You are as the world sees you,” he declared more than once.
Mr. Singh raised my salary from $7.75 Straits dollars to $8.00. I shared my rise in pay with the true author of Singapore Style. At first, Nei-Nei Down tried to refuse all payment. I explained that I would never have achieved the magnificent sum of $8.00 per week without her culinary aid. She was unmoved until I threatened to resign from the newspaper and close down the food column altogether.
“If that happens, all of Singapore will mourn,” said Uncle Chachi, who now interested himself intensely in everything relating to the Singapore Gate evening edition. He reported, for instance, that at both his Singapore Gentleman’s Club and the Lion’s Head Business Club, the Singapore Style column often went missing, a sure sign of its success. He suspected that an influential member of the Lion’s Head might be our secret Champion of Singaporean Cuisine and Culture. “You have friends in high places,” Uncle Chachi said. “You must not resign.”
“It would be a great loss,” I agreed.
Only then did Nei-Nei Down accept the four dollars I bore home for her each week. It was the first money she had ever earned after marriage, she informed me. She treated the Straits dollars as she would have treated fine linen. She hand-ironed each bill individually and kept them in a cedar-lined box. Never would she have spent a King George V half-cent coin if I had not coaxed and begged and teased and tormented her. When I accused her of being tightfisted, she broke down and bought a few things for the household—never for herself. Mostly, of course, she used it for British Grandfather, though his failing health seemed far beyond her meager reach. Still, she spent it on herbs and medicinals, on remedies, and even on occasional visits from a local Hindu healer. This man was very famous among the Hindi in Singapore. His skin was as brown as a piece of old leather, and he had only one good eye, a bright-green one, with which he peered at me as suspiciously as I did at him.
On his first visit to British Grandfather, I happened to be passing through the kitchen when I came upon what looked like a handful of grass bubbling away in an old copper pot. It had turned the water a brownish green, the color of an alligator, and it smelled like lemons. I thought it was one of Nei-Nei Down’s crazy concoctions, and I made the mistake of joking about it. That’s when I saw the healer standing in a corner of the room, watching me, watching the medicine boil.
He shook both hands at me, chasing me away from the stove. “Don’t breathe on it, foolish girl!” he said.
I apologized, as I had been taught to do whenever I offended an elder, but I must have looked amused.
“You think it is a joke, this?” he said. “To heal, one must first have a healer’s nature. A healer must first of all be interested in seeing truly, hearing truly, understanding truly, and acting truly.”
I bit my lips. I was not sure what to say in response that would not make him even angrier. I didn’t want him to harm my grandfather. That much I believed.
“You see why this will never be a popular vocation? Most men would rather have power than to see and hear correctly. Remember my words.”
I nodded and scurried away. The next time I saw him, he gestured for me to come nearer. My uncle Chachi was watching us both with interest. I knew better than to argue with Nei-Nei Down when it came to matters of health. “Look up!” the healer demanded. I looked at the ceiling. As usual, I saw more cracks, more plaster peeling. And was that a new leak? “Put out your hands,” he said. I held them out in front of me like a sleepwalker. “Palms up!” he snapped. I turned them over, warily. But the healer did not strike me. He never even came close to touching me. “You are out of balance,” he said. “Remember my words.”
One afternoon in late January, Geoffrey surprised me at the gates of the Raffles School. It had been nearly a week since we had been able to contrive any way to meet, and that meeting had been brief, for I was on my way to the newspaper office. I had not realized until this moment that Geoffrey even knew where I went to school—I hadn’t remembered telling him.
There were numerous educational opportunities for high-school girls in Singapore. The island was very forward-looking in that regard. I might have attended the Nanyang High School had it not been located so inconveniently far, in the Bukit Timah area. Many of Uncle Chachi’s acquaintances sent their children and grandchildren to the Chinese High School, though it was looked upon as a school for outsiders—visiting Chinese, not true Singaporeans. Nei-Nei Down called it “the school of revolving principals,” and indeed the
y had trouble finding and keeping a head of the school. But Nei-Nei was really being snobbish about the Chinese High School, a fine educational establishment, simply because it had had its beginnings as a lowly shophouse at No. 7 Dhoby Ghaut.
The Raffles Girls’ School, on the other hand, was dignity itself. I had gone there for elementary school, and now, in high school, the boys and the girls studied together, if not side by side. Our school had just moved that year to Queen Street from Beach Road—also known locally as College Street, or “mouth of the old jail,” or even “beside the seaside English big school.” For years, the Nanyang girls had worn a badge of pale blue. That year, upon our move to Queen Street, we Raffles girls began sporting our own badge of green and white and black. Our motto was “Daughters of a Better Age.”
We daughters of that better age spilled out from the white-columned school wing like a swarm, crowding around the tall trees for shade, since the hottest part of the day coincided with our school dismissal.
Geoffrey, a handsome, pale specter, looked out of place among these Singaporean high-school girls. It was as if a man from inside a moving picture had stepped down among us, bringing with him all of the background noise and music, the white light of Hollywood, California. His gold hair, set against our black, looked like the crown of a royal prince.
He lounged against the metal gates with his usual grace, though his smile looked less certain as I approached.
My classmates glanced from Geoffrey to me and back again with undisguised amazement and, in more than a few cases, something near to disbelief. In fact, partly due to my height, most of the boys and girls overlooked me completely, gazing quite literally over my head. For me to have captured this god must have seemed like a minor miracle.
The Moonlight Palace Page 10