House of Trembling Leaves, The

by Lees, Julian

‘‘You eat like a swan,’’ Sum Sum declared with delight.

  He smiled, waggled his head and dipped his hand in a fingerbowl before drying it with his napkin.

  Stan cleared his throat. ‘‘So, tell me, what’s your story? What are you both running away from?’’

  ‘‘What makes you say that?’’ Lu See said indignantly.

  ‘‘You’re either running away from somebody or you’re running to someone. Which one is it?’’

  ‘‘I don’t know what you mean.’’ Lu See folded her own napkin. ‘‘Why on earth do you think we’re running?’’

  ‘‘Instinct. I’m a policeman, remember.’’ He tapped the side of his nose. ‘‘And my pal here rarely lets me down.’’

  ‘‘Why can’t we just be travelling, off on a European grand tour?’’

  ‘‘At your age, without a chaperone – unlikely.’’

  ‘‘Well, you’re wrong.’’

  ‘‘Am I?’’

  ‘‘Yes.’’

  ‘‘Ha!’’

  Lu See felt Sum Sum give her a kick under the table. ‘‘Well, all right, if you must know I’m running from someone my family wants me to marry.’’

  ’’Heading for?’’

  ‘‘England.’’

  ‘‘To Picalilli Circus,’’ Sum Sum added.

  ‘‘Where I hope to get engaged to the man I love.’’

  ‘‘You hope to get engaged.’’ Stan tilted his head.

  ‘‘Yes. I also HOPE to win a place at a top university.’’

  ‘‘University, eh? Well … good luck. And how about your cousin? Sum Sum, what about you? Are you in love with a man too?’’

  Sum Sum smiled, blushed, and smiled once more. ‘‘Aiyo, nobody to fall in love with. I’m not pretty like Lu See.’’

  ‘‘Begging your pardon, for it is here that you are grossly mistaken, young bibi.’’ It was Aziz speaking. His head was dancing on his shoulders. ‘‘You are vastly pleasing to the eye and if I may be so bold to saying you remind me of the village cows in Hyderabad.’’

  ‘‘Cows, lah?’’

  ‘‘Most engaging creatures. Strong udders and noble facets, bibi.’’ He held his palms upwards towards the ceiling, tilting his face to one side in appeasement. ‘‘We have very pretty cattle in my home village. Their eyes are like sparkling Indus river water flowing over pebbles from an enchanted mountain stream.’’

  Sum Sum’s mouth broke into a wide grin. She looked at the well-groomed Indian and coloured.

  Stan shifted uncomfortably in his chair. ‘‘A man of fine taste is Aziz. Rarely says much, but when he does he sounds quite poetic, don’t you think?’’

  ‘‘Your skin is very pale for an Indian man,’’ observed Sum Sum.

  ‘‘My grandfather had Pathan blood.’’ Aziz wobbled his head and grinned boyishly.

  ‘‘Why do Indian men do that shaky-shaky with head, lah?’’ asked Sum Sum.

  Aziz raised a finger in the manner of a professor. ‘‘It is a quiet way of saying you may trust me, that I meaning you no harm. That I am your trusted friend.’’ The finger brushed the skin of Sum Sum’s hand and from some place deep inside her she felt a warm tingling, first inside her tummy and then spreading gradually to her chest.

  ‘‘Aiyo Sami!’’ She squirmed. ‘‘You speaking like a snake in the grass now. Quit talking and eat, lah. Too much talk-talk causes hindi-gestion!’’

  Time drifted like the sea. During the day, full of repressed mischief, the girls occasionally slipped grapes into the shoes left outside of cabin doors and told tall stories to the Chinese cabin boys, declaring that they were Siamese princesses, running off to join a Catholic convent, becoming postulants, trainee nuns. In the afternoons they took part in shuffleboard contests and attended tea dances while at night, sipping from tall glasses of lemonade along the Lido deck, Aziz showed Sum Sum the constellations, pointing out the stars whilst singing Urdu folk songs to the moon. ‘‘If only, bibi, we had Galileo’s tube I could show you the furthest-away planets.’’

  Sum Sum didn’t have a clue what he meant. A telescope maybe? She didn’t really care. They sat in the darkness for hours until Lu See, playing canasta with Stan in the salon, came in search of her.

  The boat left Colombo. With Sum Sum so distracted Lu See borrowed some paints and brushes from Stan Farrell and drew nautical scenes and portraits of the stewards. When Stan craned his neck to sneak a peek at her pictures he said, ‘‘Y’know, Lucy, you’re pretty good. Have you ever painted before?’’

  ‘‘Only garden furniture!’’ she replied with a giggle in her voice, before admitting that she’d had some lessons. She looked about her. ‘‘Any idea where Sum Sum’s got to?’’

  ‘‘She went off with Aziz.’’

  ‘‘They’ve been gone for ages.’’

  ‘‘He’s probably teaching her a few more of his Urdu folk songs.’’

  Lu See dropped her brushes into a jar of water and then cleaned the paint off the bristles with a square of newspaper. She had just finished drying them with a rag when she saw a man standing by some deck chairs about twenty yards away, looking in her direction. He was wearing a hat that shadowed his face entirely. How strange, she thought, as she put her brushes away, one of his shoulders is higher than the other.

  Nine days later the yellow basalt of the Gateway of India swept into view as a white-throated cormorant rose into the drizzling sky, wet post-monsoon rains rippling its wings.

  Lu See and Sum Sum leaned against the ship’s railings, waving. They threw paper streamers overboard and shouted their goodbyes to Stan and Aziz. The men waved back. Sum Sum cocked her arms like chicken wings and took several snaps with the Kodak Retina. Stan blew a kiss and smiled like a donkey as Aziz pressed his right hand to his heart and mouthed Sum Sum’s name. They paused for a moment. And then they were gone. As Lu See turned and moved her hand up to her eyes to shield them from the sun, she saw the same man she’d spotted several days earlier. He was standing by the deck chairs again. His face was still hidden by his hat, but she recognized the irregular slope of his shoulders. She wheeled around and tugged at Sum Sum’s sleeve. When they looked back he was gone.

  Later, in her cabin, Lu See stretched into a yoga asana, into an Upward Facing Dog pose. After several minutes she relaxed, slipped into her pink terrycloth bathrobe, and picked up her book of Cambridge poetry. Then she put it back down again.

  ‘‘Do you really think it could be him?’’

  ‘‘Was there mole on his cheek?’’

  ‘‘I couldn’t see his face.’’

  ‘‘But his shoulder was same-same like this, meh?’’ Sum Sum demonstrated by allowing her left side to drop away like a caved-in roof.

  ‘‘Yes, just like that. Do you think it really could be him? I bet he’s been hiding in his cabin all this time. Maybe he’s been waiting for Stan and Aziz to leave and now he’ll come after us.’’

  ‘‘Or maybe you only imagining, lah. How come I never see him?’’

  ‘‘Well, just to be safe, I think we should stay in our cabin and take our meals here.’’

  As the rain sluiced down the window, she pictured Stan Farrell standing outside, his blue blazer with gold buttons drenched from the earlier downpour, his white linen trousers clinging tight to his thighs. How she’d love him to be here now. She turned to Sum Sum, who was reclining on the floor, in a lotus pose, inspecting her brass toe rings and mouthing the bars to ‘Night and Day’, a melodious song she’d heard the band play.

  ‘‘You’re going to miss him, aren’t you?’’

  ‘‘Who?’’

  ‘‘Aziz.’’

  She looked crestfallen. ‘‘Aiyo, too much, lah.’’

  ‘‘I’ll miss Stan too.’’ Lu See peered out the cabin window at the waterfront jammed with rickshaws and donkey carts and beggars with their begging bowls. The rickshaw wallahs were wreathed in waterproof capes made from palm leaves. She could already hear the vendors gathered at the gates of the Taj Mahal Hotel s
hrieking and shouting as bare-chested porters rushed about with bags hoisted on their heads. Lu See pictured Stan confronted by this landslide of humanity as he left the ship, and then plunging into the slow clumsy sway of the crowd, until his blue blazer was subsumed, out of reach.

  As she stared into the rain, through the glass, she questioned not for the first time why she was doing this – running from her family, repudiating everything that was sacred and secure. She thought about her mother and father sitting at the dining table; their wilting, forced conversation followed by the inevitable brooding silence. Ah Ba, the esteemed banker C. M. Teoh, stabbing at his food, wondering what his employees at the bank would be thinking, what the Turf Club members would be saying about his errant daughter. And her mother, obdurate and wounded, looking more and more like a wide-eyed fruit bat; nervously scratching at her palms; blaming Lu See’s brothers, James and Peter, the servants, the school, everybody but herself, for Lu See’s desertion.

  ‘‘Do you think what I’m doing, turning my back on my parents, is defying nature?’’ she asked Sum Sum.

  ‘‘Ayo Sami! Having sex with a goat is defying nature. Being born with three ears instead of two is defying nature. All you’re doing is following your dreams, lah. You always complaining how much your parents control your life and how they’re forcing you to marry One-eyed Giant, it only natural you rebel, no? By Dharmakaya heaven, I’d run like hell too from him if he wanted to marry me!’’

  ‘‘They’re still precious to me. I’m abandoning them, throwing my past away with a wave of a handkerchief.’’

  ‘‘Aiyoo! Why you being so mego-dramatic, lah!’’

  ‘‘I wonder if Sarojini Naidu went through all this when she told her parents she wanted to go to Cambridge.’’

  ‘‘Did she run away too?’’

  ‘‘No, her father wanted her to become a mathematician, but she was only interested in poetry. When she was 16 the Nizam of Hyderabad was so impressed by her poems he arranged a scholarship for her to study in England. Now she’s known as ‘The Nightingale of India’.’’

  ‘‘And you’ll be known as the ‘Mego-dramatist of Malaya’, is it?’’

  Lu See paused, feeling a slither of regret. ‘‘Do you think Mama’s furious?’’

  ‘‘I’m sure she’s damn-powerful bloody livid.’’ Sum Sum clicked her tongue just to show how livid.

  Lu See stretched her willowy legs. ‘‘I still can’t believe they wanted me to marry the One-eyed Giant.’’

  The One-eyed Giant was their nickname for Chow Cheam. He lived five miles away and was the sole heir to the Chow Titt Municipal Bank. At the age of eleven he’d been blinded in his left eye whilst playing badminton. The shuttlecock had struck him before he could blink. Now, aged twenty-three, he was a squinting, arrogant, flat-footed brute, with dog-fart breath and a face studded with pockmarks.

  ‘‘Your father believed it was good for the family business. But deep down Mama probably understands, lah. She was in love once too, you know – she married your father after all, even though the fortune teller said he was unsuitable. Besides,’’ she puckered her lips, ‘‘it’s not the first time you’ve run away.’’

  Momentarily bewildered, Lu See frowned. Then, raising her eyebrows, she tilted her head at the memory: it was the day her aunty Mimi was getting married. She was playing in the garden and heard her mother calling for her. ‘‘Come on now, we’re late! Where you gone, hnn?’’ But Lu See didn’t want to be a flower girl, standing in front of all those people, with everyone staring at her. Even then she’d yearned to be free, to be like the village children – running shoeless through the fields, hunting butterflies, climbing trees and picking mangoes. So she went and hid under the hibiscus bush. ‘‘Where are you, Lu See? Lu See!’’ Later, much later, she went and took cover down by the river. Mr Bala, the gardener, eventually found her and brought her home. It was dark by then.

  ‘‘I’ve disgraced them,’’ she sighed.

  ‘‘Could be worse, lah.’’ Sum Sum’s tone was gently teasing. ‘‘You could’ve gotten pregnant.’’

  3

  7.45 a.m. Mid-February. The Customs officer in Felixstowe took his stick of yellow chalk and marked her eel-skin trunk with an X before ushering the girls on their way.

  Instinctively, Sum Sum looked over her shoulder to see if anyone was following, but she saw no sign of the ‘mole man’. In fact, there had been no further sightings of him since Bombay.

  A porter took the luggage and, choking with anticipation, they hurried past the bookstand and into the greeting enclosure. A group of about twenty people had gathered. One woman held up a banner saying ‘Welcome Home Albert.’

  ‘‘Can you see him? Is Adrian here?’’ asked Lu See.

  ‘‘Aiyo! I don’t see him. He’s probably still in front of the mirror doing his hair, lah.’’

  ‘‘He must be somewhere. He wrote to say he would be here to meet us. I sent word giving him our arrival date.’’ They looked at every face but there was no sign of Adrian. ‘‘Come, he must be waiting outside.’’ They hurried through the main doors to stand on the street outside the wharf buildings. From high up the sounds of seagulls floated down. By the docks a crowd of labourers gathered by a hut, thrusting their black books forward, baying for a job as the stevedore yelled ‘‘Call off –’’ and chose his men for the day.

  ‘‘Wahhh! So cold, lah! Like sticking your face in an ice-cube!’’

  The roads were grey and wet. Unlike the succulent pigments of the tropics, Felixstowe looked sucked dry of colour, as if coated in an eczema of dust blown from an old book.

  ‘‘There he is!’’ Sum Sum yelled.

  Lu See felt a rush of liquid weakness in her knees.

  Tossing his silk-lined trilby high into the sky, Adrian rushed up to Lu See and lifted her up by the waist, swinging her around and around. ‘‘You look beautiful,’’ he said into her hair.

  She had missed him so much that the bones in her chest ached for him

  She clung to his neck and they only separated when a horse-drawn Express Dairy cart trundled by stacked tall with 10-gallon steel cans.

  Adrian led them to a scruffy looking Austin Chummy with tall, thin wheels parked across the square.

  ‘‘New motor-car?’’ she joked, draping a tartan blanket across her lap.

  He shrugged, tipping the porter who touched his cap with thanks.

  Adrian slipped on a pair of string-backed driving gloves. ‘‘Who are you looking for?’’ he asked, noticing both Lu See and Sum Sum were watching people coming through the crowd.

  ‘‘I think your cousin, the one known as the Black-headed Sheep, was on the ship.’’

  ‘‘Lu See thinks he is following us,’’ blurted Sum Sum.

  ‘‘Why would he do that?’’ Sum Sum explained why, keeping her story short. With a dubious frown, Adrian climbed into the driver’s seat. ‘‘Well, the less you have to do with him the better.’’

  The car clattered down a narrow lane passing a horse-cart laden with straw.

  In the back seat Sum Sum sang snatches from an Urdu folk song.

  ‘‘Enough room back there?’’ asked Adrian.

  ‘‘Plenty,’’ replied Sum Sum. ‘‘Enough to fit six people and a goat, lah.’’

  Minutes later they were racing through the village of Little Piddle, leaving behind sleepy pubs and hedgerows and thatched cottages, heading northwest towards Ipswich. Theirs was the only car on the road. Lu See saw cows in the fields, horses in their paddocks, sweeping pastureland that stretched on and on over the hills. It was a picture of tranquillity; a collage of winter greens and browns. Two hours later, she caught a signpost that said they were a mile from the Corn Exchange. She’d already been impressed by the panorama of wheat and grasslands at the town’s perimeter, but as soon as she entered Cambridge proper her eyes lit up with animation. Although she had never been to Cambridge before, had not seen King’s Chapel, nor its river and punt boats and the newly erected Universit
y Library, it was all strangely familiar to her from Adrian’s letters.

  As they rolled down Castle Street, leaning back as they descended the steep slope, crossing Chesterton Lane, and passing Magdalene College on the left, Lu See noticed how the town’s cobbled streets were lined with bookshops and antique stores and every thirty feet or so she came across another sculpted-stone façade. ‘‘St. John’s on your right, Divinity School on your left,’’ exclaimed Adrian. ‘‘Here’s Trinity College, and over there,’’ he said, pointing, ‘‘behind that massive horse chestnut tree, is King’s Parade.’’ Everywhere she looked she saw Gothic spires, Tudor arches, gargoyles, steeples, turrets and towers. Here and there she spotted students clad in black college gowns and squares; some sat on wooden benches reading, others stood about chatting, warming their faces in the wan morning sun.

  Lu See turned to Sum Sum. ‘‘What do you think?’’ she asked.

  Sum Sum gazed up at the turrets and towers and gables. ‘‘Everywhere looks like Dracula’s castle.’’

  The jalopy coughed just as Adrian spoke again. ‘‘I found you some digs on Portugal Place. I told the landlady, Mrs Slackford, all about you and your plans for Girton. You and Sum Sum can live there until we get married.’’

  ‘‘And when will that be?’’

  ‘‘In the summer. Let’s get you settled into Cambridge life first.’’

  At the entrance to Park Parade, Adrian left the Austin Chummy near the Laurel Tea Rooms and, travelling trunk in hand, steered the girls up a crooked cobbled pedestrian street to a blue painted door with the number 23 trimmed in red. ‘‘Now remember,’’ he said in a stage whisper. ‘‘There are different formalities in England. Discretion and restraint is the hallmark of class. We’re the only Chinese people your landlady, Mrs Slackford, has ever met so–’’

  ‘‘Yes, yes, don’t worry. We’ll be on our best behaviour. I’ll try not to spit on the rug and belch noisily after each course.’’

  He rolled his eyes. Looking eager, Lu See lifted the heavy brass knocker and let it fall.

  A hunched, silver-haired lady appeared at the door, squinting at her as though she was peering through a pall of cigarette smoke. She was dressed in a brown housedress and thick woollen stockings. ‘‘Yew must be Miss Teoh.’’