by Elaine Chong
Colin immediately retreated to his study with the cheese on toast and told Siti to bring him a beer. I went straight to bed knowing that in the morning we would both act as though nothing had happened, but every little skirmish tear at the threads of our relationship. It’s like an old patchwork quilt, which has been lovingly sewn together, but over the years is slowly breaking apart stitch by stitch, seam by seam.
It’s still dark outside, but I know that Siti will already be at work in the kitchen making coffee and preparing breakfast for Colin. She’s a good girl, I like her, but she won’t stay. They like company, these young girls, and it won’t be long before our elegant and generously proportioned apartment begins to feel like a prison. Here there are no lively children to mind, no elderly relatives to nurse, no family dinners to cook and serve. I feel sorry for her, but when she leaves, I’ll just replace her with somebody else.
I quickly get dressed in freshly laundered gym wear. It’s a short walk to my ladies-only workout studio and it’s part of my early morning ritual. I deliberately avoided nasty, sweaty exercise when I first came out here, but back then I was one of those women who could eat and drink as she pleased without having to think about counting calories. The menopause has put paid to those advantages. These days I have to grind it out like all the other fifty-somethings if I want to stay a version of my younger self.
The place is already buzzing with activity when I arrive. Music seeps out into the surrounding darkness. When I glance inside the brightly lit interior, I can see that every piece of equipment is being energetically pushed or pumped or pulled by an array of lycra-clad women. A large proportion of them are successful, young professionals, who approach their working lives with zeal and commitment and see keeping fit as a necessary part of the package. I envy them their smooth skinned, well-toned bodies, and their financial independence. Of course, I have my gallery, but the income I make from selling glassware wouldn’t pay all the household bills and I couldn’t lead the kind of carefree existence I now enjoy.
I hurry inside because outside the acrid smell of woodsmoke permeates the air. Microparticles of ash are falling from the sky, blown to the island from neighbouring Indonesia where fires are burning day and night to clear the land.
Air pollution is a growing problem here in Singapore – something the colourful and expansive guidebooks fail to mention. It isn’t unusual to see people wearing masks to cover their nose and mouth – it helps, but it’s impossible to completely protect oneself from breathing in the toxic air on days like this. I love Singapore, but you only have to scratch the surface metaphorically speaking and you soon discover that it isn’t always quite the tropical paradise our government promotes to the rest of the world.
I quickly find an empty locker in the changing room and leave my purse and phone locked inside it. As soon as one of the treadmills lined up in front of the window has been vacated, I reset it to a brisk walking speed at a ten per cent incline and jump on. I have a routine and I like to stick to it. My on-going goal is to maintain my weight at around 120 pounds. I know I look good for my age, but it is – quite literally – an uphill struggle.
By the time I’ve completed a circuit of the equipment and gone through the motions of the obligatory cool-down, I’m ready to leave. If I’m not showered, changed and sitting in the car by eight, Colin will leave without me so it’s always a race against the clock.
I grab my stuff from the locker and am racing out of the exit when a breathless voice suddenly calls out to me, “Wait up, Julia!” Moments later I feel a hand on my shoulder. Nancy Sullivan drags me to a standstill in front of the building. “We have to talk, honey,” she says hoarsely then she’s overtaken by the need to cough. She fumbles in her bag for her inhaler, pushes the plastic nozzle between her lips and takes a deep breath. Nancy, my only true friend in the whole of Singapore, has asthma. She can barely breathe. “Fuck this!” she gasps. “I swear to God the air pollution gets worse every year.”
“It won’t last much longer,” I try to reassure her. “Go inside and get a drink of water.”
“I’ll be fine in a moment,” she says. She stands just inside the doorway, lays a trembling hand on the centre of her chest and makes a conscious effort to breathe slowly and evenly.
“Okay?” I ask her.
“Okay,” she says.
“I can’t talk now, Nancy. Call me later.”
“You need to hear this, Julia.”
The urgency in her tone is real, which suggests that what she has to tell me isn’t merely a piece of salacious gossip. But I really haven’t time to linger in the doorway, so I ask her to meet me later at the gallery. “We can have lunch.”
“You don’t do lunch,” she says, and again her voice betrays a genuine concern.
I begin to move away from her. “I will. I promise.”
“Promise?” she calls out to me.
One glance at my wristwatch is enough to encourage me to break into a run, so I answer with a wave of my hand.
Siti is serving Colin breakfast when I get back to the apartment. He glances up from his newspaper, tells me to hurry and that he won’t wait for me. He says the same thing every day. One day he really will leave without me.
I shower quickly and change into my work uniform – a simple, black, linen shift dress. I always wear pearls with it – pretty earrings and a double string of plump, luminous stones. I like to look coolly elegant, which isn’t easy in this climate in spite of the air-conditioning. I also like the glassware I sell to be the star attraction in the gallery. All the goods are displayed on clear, Perspex shelves with subtle backlighting so that the beautiful colours are shown off to perfection with no distractions, and that includes me.
I opened Glück Glass nearly twenty-five years ago. I was bored because I didn’t work, and I was often lonely – expats tend to socialise amongst themselves and all the other wives had children, so I was never included when they met up during the day. But then I met Nancy at The Americanas Club – a much nicer and much less formal version of The LingLang. It was the usual thing: dinner, drinks and talk about the rapidly advancing Tiger Economies of the Far East. We struck up conversation at the bar while our husbands were working the room.
Nancy and her husband, Bill, had only recently arrived in Singapore. I don’t know why, but we hit it off immediately. She asked me how I occupied myself and when I told her she said, “Jeez! You need to get a life. Why don’t you start your own business? Isn’t that what this place is all about?” She questioned me at length about what I liked doing and when I said buying nice things, she told me, “So, buy nice things and sell them to other people, who like nice things.”
I made a list of all the nice things I liked to buy and top of that list was glassware.
Colin wasn’t keen to fund my fledgling enterprise – I think he was still hoping to hear the sound of tiny feet pattering on the marble tiles of our lovely apartment – but I convinced him to advance me a modest a start-up capital, and promised him that if the business didn’t turn a profit by the end of the second year I’d give it up. The rest, as they say, is history.
As soon as I’m ready, I join Colin in the dining room. Siti places a bowl of fresh fruit and yoghurt in front of me and asks if I would like tea or coffee. “Green tea with a slice of lemon, but don’t make it too hot,” I tell her.
Colin folds his newspaper and slowly gets to his feet. Unusually, the bad feeling from the previous evening seems to be lingering – the tension between us is palpable. “Are you serious about going home?” he asks in a disgruntled tone. “If you are, I want to know exactly when you’re leaving and when you’re coming back.”
“Singapore is home, Colin.”
“You know what I mean.”
“I’ll be arranging my flight as soon as I hear from Richard, but I can’t give you a detailed itinerary at this point because there isn’t one. When I know what I’m doing, you’ll be the first to find out.” I offer him a smile. “Priority notifica
tion.”
“I think we both know that’s not true,” he says sourly.
I’m saved from responding to this last rancorous remark by the appearance of Haziq at the dining room door. He says, “Traffic really very bad this morning, Mr Crane Sir. I think we should be leaving pronto.”
Haziq’s estimation of the early morning traffic is infuriatingly precise and I’m all but pushed from the moving car at Dhoby Ghaut Station at the eastern end of Orchard Road. I walk to the shopping mall at Orchard Oval and take the lift up to the sixth floor. I’m feeling flushed and fretful because I’m twenty minutes late and I can see Connie sitting on her heels in front of the gallery with her nose pressed to her phone.
“Get up!” I bark at her. “Why haven’t you opened up yet?”
“Sorry, sorry, I left my keys at home,” she says, scrambling to her feet.
I point at the phone. “Switch that thing off and put it away. I don’t want to see it one more time today. Understand?” She quickly slides it into the back pocket of her trousers, so I reach behind her and pull it out again. “You put this in the bottom drawer of my desk, and you leave it there.” The expression of contrition on her young face is immediately replaced with fear and confusion – the idea of being separated from her phone is almost unthinkable. But I can think it and, more importantly, I can insist that it happens. She takes the phone back from me with shaking hands.
I use my own keys to unlock the steel shutters which protect the windows and entrance of the gallery then let myself in. Connie follows me inside and rushes into the office to switch off the alarm. “I’m putting my phone away now,” she calls back to me, and she makes a point of closing the drawer in the desk as loudly as she can.
I take a quick look around, check that Aysha has dusted the shelves and vacuumed the carpeted floor, and finally cast a critical eye over the new display in the window – it’s a carefully staged collection of vintage Swedish Art Glass. Although every single piece is more than fifty years old, the bright colours and bold shapes lend them a strong, contemporary feel. I prefer my glassware to be delicate and romantic, but I still appreciate the workmanship and artistry that created these.
At my request, Connie spends the morning checking the contents of boxes which arrived late yesterday afternoon while I serve customers and answer enquiries over the phone. When it gets to midday, I take pity on her and allow her to take back the phone for her lunch break. She looks suitably grateful and dashes off, promising to return promptly at one o’clock.
No sooner has Connie left than Nancy arrives, pale-faced, breathless. I usher her into the office space at the rear of the gallery and insist that she sit at my desk and drink a glass of water. “For goodness sake use your inhaler. You have got it with you?”
She nods. Once again, she goes through the ritual of breathing a metered dose of medication into her lungs via the little, plastic pistol she keeps in her handbag. “If this smog doesn’t lift, I’m leaving,” she gasps. “I’m thinking a couple of weeks on Hua Hin beach.”
I give her an affectionate pat on the shoulder. “We all love a break from the pace on a beach in Thailand, but you’d get bored after 48 hours.” (Nancy gives private tuition to stressed-out Singaporean school children – it’s her life. Our education system is one of the best in the world, but it’s also famously been described as a ‘pressure cooker’. Teenage suicide rates have increased year-on-year – another worrying statistic that’s given little publicity.)
When I explain to her that I can’t go to lunch till Connie gets back, she leaves then comes back with coffee and a warm croissant. “I can’t eat this,” I tell her.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” she snaps, and she places the paper-wrapped croissant in front of me.
Reluctantly I pick it up. The folded triangle of feather-light pastry suddenly feels heavy in my hand. “What you came here to tell me … is it bad news?”
“It’s not good news, honey,” she says. “We had dinner at the Club last night. Jian was there with his wife.” Nancy reaches across the desk and grasps my hand. “She’s pregnant.”
I know this can’t be true. Jian – my Wenjian – is married to his wife in name only. I wrench my hand away from hers. “They’re not together. It was an arranged marriage.” When Nancy gazes back at me, her eyes bright with tears, I insist it’s not true. “It couldn’t possibly be his baby,” I tell her.
“They were very much together, Julia,” she says.
“I don’t believe you!” I cry, but I do believe her because Nancy would never lie to me.
The world, my precious, secret world, has stopped spinning on its axis. I close my eyes and feel it topple and fall.
Richard
I slip into the dining room overlooking the gravel drive and watch Maggie walk away. I expect her to glance back over her shoulder – I don’t know why – but she doesn’t even hesitate. One moment she’s crunching yellow stones beneath her feet and the next she’s disappeared from view behind the tall, unclipped privet hedge that marks the boundary with the road.
Something vaguely sinister has just happened, but I’m not quite sure what it is.
In spite of what Maggie has said, I make a note to call someone to check out the radiator in Julia’s old bedroom. I’m certain she’ll want to sleep in her own bed even though it hasn’t been her bed for a very long time. Then I make a second note to buy Maggie something nice to thank her. I realise I have no idea what she’d like – Flowers? Chocolates? The fact that I know so very little about her, even after all these years, strikes me with some force. Her loyalty has never been fully rewarded and certainly insufficiently appreciated, except perhaps by my mother.
I decide to make myself a cup of coffee before I start work, but I’ve only just seated myself at the table to begin when the telephone suddenly shrills.
“Ciao, Ricardo!” Silvio’s light, melodious voice sings loudly in my ear. “Dove sei? Where are you, mi amore?” He shouts in an effort to raise his voice above the noise in the restaurant kitchen behind him.
“I’m still here at my mother’s house.”
“Perché?”
“Why am I still here? That’s a good question.”
“I call your office and they say you don’t work today. I don’t understand. You told me this project is priority. Molto importante, you said.”
“I’m working here this morning. I’ll explain what’s happening when...” Our conversation is interrupted by a series of loud crashes and bangs, followed by an angry tirade of abuse punctuated with four-letter expletives. It sounds like someone in the kitchen is breaking plates. “Why don’t I call you later?”
“Call me later!” he yells, and then the line goes dead.
I feel the smile in my heart before it reaches my face. It’s a sense of belonging; a consciousness of kinship. Every single person who works in their restaurant is a member or at the very least a close friend of the Mazzi family. Blood ties – they matter. Not that Silvio’s ever-extending family welcomed me in the beginning, but that was more about Silvio than me. The Mazzis are a proud Lombardy family, and Mamma Mazzi had ambitions for her youngest son. Needless to say, they didn’t include me, a pale, poker-faced, gay Englishman. But now everything is good. L’amore conquista tutto, Mamma always tells me. Love conquers everything. The Mazzi family has become my family.
I met Silvio about three years after my marriage broke up. I use this well-worn phrase, but it wasn’t really like that; it wasn’t a sudden, tearing apart; it wasn’t a dramatic rending asunder of a once loving relationship. In fact, Sarah told me she’d long suspected that I only proposed to her in the first place because my father liked and admired her, and back then what my father liked was important to me. I hope that wasn’t true because Sarah was and still is a good friend. I wish I could have loved her better, but then I wouldn’t have married her.
After the divorce was finalised, everything changed. I could finally be the person that I wanted to be, the person who met and fel
l in love with Silvio. My mother was sympathetic if at first uncomprehending. My father showed me the door. In fact, we’d sat at this very table while I tried to explain, but he didn’t want to listen, didn’t want to know. He ordered me to leave, so I left.
I decide to send Silvio a brief text then I settle down to work.
It’s completely quiet in the house except for the ticking of the large, longcase clock in the hallway. I’m engrossed in a complicated spreadsheet when I become aware of another noise above my head. It’s very faint but quite distinct: a soft, shuffling sound. I stop working and listen. The noise is so faint, so soft, that I wonder if it’s nothing more than the sound of the floor-length curtains in Julia’s bedroom being swept back and forth across the parquet floor by a breeze. But that would require an open window, I think to myself, and then I recall that Julia has a small balcony in her room so we’re actually talking open doors. I can’t imagine for a single moment that Maggie would leave the house vulnerable to burglars, but the shuffling sound is unmistakable, so I feel obliged to investigate.
I make my way upstairs, irritated by the intrusion into my precious time.
I find the curtains in Julia’s bedroom snugly closed. When I check, I can see at once that the doors have been securely locked with a key from the inside and bolts fasten both doors to the floor. Seized with curiosity, I draw back the curtains and at once the room is flooded with light. I don’t know what I expected to see, but it wasn’t this. Every surface is covered with a thick layer of dust; a grey coating of microparticles so compact that I could clearly write my name in it. Even the floor bears the imprint of my shoes. I’m utterly bewildered by this discovery because I know that Maggie has kept everywhere else in the house clean and dust-free.
It’s still very cold in the room so I check the valve on the radiator and am not surprised to find it turned off. I try to turn it back on. It’s too stiff to move more than a fraction without the proper tools, but I can now hear water seeping into the system. This, at least, explains the chill air inside the room.