The Scarlet Macaw

by S. P. Hozy

  Life soon settled into a comfortable routine with Annabelle doing the marketing in the morning then the washing and cooking, and Francis sitting at his kitchen desk, pen in hand, blank page waiting for his imprint. They ate a lot of boiled cabbage with onions and salt, and sometimes a bit of bacon or sausage and boiled eggs, which were always fresh because the shells still had bits of wet chicken dirt stuck to them. Annabelle had no idea how to cook some of the exotic vegetables she saw in the market. They were mostly green and leafy, but like nothing she’d ever seen before. There was also lots of garlic and ginger, and about a dozen different kinds of peppers that she dared not try because she was pretty sure they were all chili peppers of some sort or other. If the butcher had mutton bones or chicken backs and necks, she would make a pot of soup, splurging on a potato and a carrot to go with the cabbage and onions.

  Every Sunday Sutty invited them to the hotel for dinner and they gladly accepted. He made it quite plain that he invited them for the company, and that since they were struggling and he was not, it was a good deal all round. He made sure they had plenty of roast beef with gravy, Yorkshire pudding, potatoes, and custard or trifle for dessert. And whatever was left over, he insisted the kitchen pack it up for them to take home. He would hear no protest from either of them. He insisted, saying that when Francis was a successful writer with an income to match, they would not only have to feed him every week, but let him come for tea whenever he wanted. It wasn’t charity he was offering them, but a helping hand from a friend while the road was bumpy.

  “And you shall name your first-born after me,” he said, jokingly.

  “What?” said Francis, feigning horror. “Edward Sutcliffe Stone? Sounds like something out of Wuthering Heights.”

  “Yes, it does, doesn’t it?” said Sutty. “Well, all right, then. I’ll settle for Edward. He must be Edward something or something Edward. That’s fair.”

  “Francis Edward,” said Annabelle. “Francis Edward Stone. It has a certain dignity, don’t you think?”

  “Indeed,” said Sutty. “It does.”

  “Done,” said Francis. “He shall be Francis Edward.”

  And they all laughed.

  In 1819, an official with the East India Company, Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles, bought the island of Singapore from the Sultan of Johor. It was almost two hundred and seventy square miles of swamp and forest but it provided a natural harbour in a strategic position for English merchants travelling to and from India, Australia, and China. At the time, it was nothing but a fishing village on the south end of the island on what would become the Singapore River, peopled by less than two hundred Orang Laut, ethnic Malay “sea gypsies” who plied the coastal waters of the Malay Archipelago and more often lived on boats than on land.

  That had been more than a hundred years before Francis, Annabelle, and Sutty came to the island, and in that time, Singapore’s growth had been haphazard. Living conditions ranged from the basic shanties of the very poor to opulent homes of the wealthy, mostly Chinese and British. In between were the shophouses with their five-foot overhangs that allowed one to walk shaded from the scorching sun and protected from the monsoon rains. Sir Stamford Raffles had decreed that these buildings be made of brick to reduce the risk of fire. Raffles had also decreed that the plan of the town be divided along ethnic lines, which created a Chinatown, Kampong Glam for the Malays, and Kampong Chulia for Indian immigrants, of which there would be many. By the 1920s, the population of Singapore, in all its ethnicities, had grown in leaps and bounds through both immigration and rising birth rates. The colony that Francis, Annabelle, and Sutty inhabited was now a busy, congested place. Its English rulers occupied the area north of the Singapore River known as the Colonial District, which also included the neoclassical-styled Parliament House, Town Hall, and the Victoria Concert Hall. Adjoining these was the Padang, the grassy playing field where cricket had been played for a century by young men in the service of government and commerce.

  For Annabelle and Francis, just walking through the colonial district on a Sunday morning after church and before they met Sutty for their once-a-week meal, was the most peaceful and serene part of their week. They would attend services at St. Andrew’s and then take a leisurely walk over to the Padang to see what games were up. Then they might walk down to the river, past the concert hall and Parliament House, and take a boat ride from the site where Sir Stamford Raffles had first landed in Singapore, appropriately known as Raffles Landing.

  Sometimes they splurged on a rickshaw and rode out to Goodwood Hill where the well-heeled — colonial officials and important businessmen and their families — lived in stylish “black and whites,” Tudor-style bungalows on a quiet, tree-lined street that Annabelle loved to imagine herself in. “Elegant,” she would say to Francis. And she meant not only the stately homes, but also the people who inhabited them. She could only dream of such a life, and so she did. Dreams were free, after all.

  Three months after she married Francis, Annabelle began to feel tired and ill, especially in the morning. Even the thought of a piece of bread or a cup of tea before nine o’clock made her nauseous. At first, she feared the worst, but there was no fever accompanying her other symptoms, so she began to think she might be pregnant. She kept her suspicion to herself, however, because she didn’t think Francis was ready to think about having a baby. She would have to wait a while before telling him, and she hoped she would know the right moment to do so. In the meantime, she blamed the heat when he asked if she was feeling ill, because she often looked quite pale. But, luckily, Francis was absorbed in his work and often didn’t notice if she didn’t eat in the morning or took a nap in the afternoon.

  The prospect of having a baby in Singapore did not appeal to Annabelle. In fact, it terrified her. Was there a hospital nearby with a doctor who spoke English? Would they be able to afford to go to a proper hospital where the doctors not only spoke English but were English? Maybe she would ask the vicar’s wife when the time came. Plenty of time for that, she thought. At least seven months, she was pretty sure: Time for her to get used to the idea; time for her to figure out when and how to tell Francis.

  The Phantom Sophie

  A Short Story

  by

  E. Sutcliffe Moresby

  C.K. Manners was a writer of some repute, known mainly for his short stories and a few well-crafted novels. But nothing he wrote ever paralleled the events of his own remarkable life. Born into a well-to-do barrister’s family, he was raised mostly by nannies and tutors, but the dominant figure in C.K.’s life was without a doubt his mother, Emmaline. A stern, intelligent woman, who grew up during the heart of Queen Victoria’s reign, Emmaline loved her only son with the ferocity of a lioness and communicated that love in the only way she knew how: by noting and criticizing his every mistake so that he would become the person she believed he was capable of becoming. When he chose to roam the world and write stories about what he saw and the extraordinary characters he met and consorted with instead of following in his father’s footsteps, Emmaline was faced with a difficult choice. She could either reject him as a failure or accept him for what he had become: a man who made up stories for a living. She chose the latter and became his most valued and demanding critic. She would not allow so much as a misplaced comma to go unattended.

  C.K. was often away for months at a time, usually on a sea voyage on some kind of rusty old tub that carried freight and that took him to parts of the world Emmaline preferred not to think about. Judging from his stories, he encountered the kind of people she would not want to keep company with, the kind who frequently made her fear for her only son’s safety. C.K. kept up a steady correspondence with his mother, but luckily his letters arrived long after his latest adventure had ended and she could only sigh with relief that he had survived.

  She didn’t mind so much when he went to Europe, say, Italy, France, or Spain, though she never failed to warn him about everything from the food to the water to the toilets. But when h
e went to the Far East — usually for months at a time, with nothing but a valise and a bag of books — she despaired. There was nothing to be done but wait and worry. This was where the real degenerates went: the merchant sailors, the remittance men, the dancing girls and prostitutes who had lost their appeal. At least, according to his stories, those were the unsavoury types who ended up in the jungles of Malaya and Burma and Thailand.

  So when C.K. arrived home one day after a long sojourn in the East, carrying a child in his arms, Emmaline did not know what to think. The baby, a boy, was no more than one year old. His skin was white, thank God, but who was his mother? And was C.K. his father? What on earth had he been up to?

  “Charles Kenneth,” she said, “you need to explain this.”

  “I know, Mother,” he replied. “And there is an explanation. But it’s a long story.”

  “Begin at the beginning,” she said. “I’m all ears.”

  The child was the unfortunate offspring of a writer of C.K.’s acquaintance, who had died rather suddenly in Singapore. He had been set upon by thugs one night, during one of his “thinking” walks. He liked to wander the streets after dark on those nights when he had trouble sleeping. Unfortunately, he occasionally strayed onto those back streets where derelicts and undesirables went to find a scrap to eat and a corner to sleep in. He was less than a mile from home when the thieves struck. The sad thing was that he had less than the equivalent of half a pound on him at the time of his death. Being a writer, he was a poor man, not the wealthy planter the thieves took him for. His wife was three months pregnant at the time of his death, and it drove her mad, losing him like that. When C.K. tried to take her away, she had refused to leave Singapore, even though she hated the place.

  “You see,” C.K. told his mother, “I think the balance of her mind was affected. She couldn’t bear to stay but she couldn’t bear to go. She believed her husband’s soul was still in Singapore and she could not bring herself to leave him behind.”

  C.K. gazed at the child while he spoke of its mother. He was a beautiful boy with a head of soft, curly, flaxen hair, bright eyes the colour of a summer sky, and skin as smooth as fresh cream.

  “Six months after Alexander’s death, Sophie gave birth to her son, and named me godfather. We had always joked, the three of us, that they would name their first-born after me because I had been like an older brother to both of them.” He smiled, remembering the good times and conversations they had shared over a meal that C.K. usually insisted on paying for. “You shall name your first-born after me,” he’d told them. “You will be giving me the gift of immortality. That’s thanks enough for me.” When the baby was born, Sophie had kept their promise. The boy was named Alexander for his dead father, and Charles for his godfather.

  Alexander Charles made a sound like water flushing through a drainpipe. It was his happy sound, C.K. explained to his mother. He was a happy child, despite the tragedy of his beginnings.

  “When Alec was killed,” C.K. told his mother, “I stayed on in Singapore and called on Sophie every day. She had very little money and I usually stopped at the market and bought fruit and vegetables for her, and tea and biscuits from a shop run by an Englishman who knew Sophie’s story and often added a few extras to the order, like a tin of beef or a small jar of jam. ‘Can’t you get her to go back to England?’ he’d ask me, almost every day. ‘I’m trying,’ I’d say, ‘but she won’t have it. She insists Alec would want her to stay.’ We agreed it didn’t make any sense, but it wasn’t as if we could bundle her into a steamer trunk and put her on a ship against her will.

  “After Alexander was born,” C.K. continued, “Sophie seemed to lose whatever fortitude she had, both physical and mental. It was as if she had put everything she had into this child giving him life, and there was nothing left over for her. She was as thin as a sapling, while he was robust and strong. I know she loved the boy with all her heart, but he reminded her daily of her beloved husband who had not lived to see his child born, and her grief seemed only to intensify.

  “I didn’t know what to do,” he said. “I could only stand by and watch events unfold. I felt as useless as I’ve ever felt in my life.”

  Emmaline reached out and patted her son’s arm. He was a sensitive man, and she realized that he would not have succeeded had he become a barrister. He would have wanted to compensate every victim by reaching into his own pocket. His heart would have broken on a regular basis as he witnessed injustice, cruelty, and evil.

  “How very sad,” she murmured, wondering what was to become of this beautiful, unfortunate child.

  “I lived in constant fear that something terrible would happen to her or the child, or both of them. She was determined to raise him herself in an alien land with few friends and little money. Such was the condition of her mind that she thought it was possible to do so. I contacted her landlord and arranged to pay the rent every month, and I left money in a jar every now and then, so she would find it and think she had put it there. I didn’t want her to think it was charity. Luckily, young Alexander flourished, in spite of everything that might predict the opposite. Sometimes I took him to the park for the afternoon so Sophie could have a sleep — she was always too afraid to sleep at night after her husband’s murder. Is it any wonder? She had terrible nightmares and would often sit up all night watching over the child.

  “Then one day I went over to take her and Alexander out for lunch, and she wasn’t there. The boy was in his crib and, luckily, had not climbed out. He’s a placid, good-natured child and he was happily playing with a pile of wooden blocks I had given him. I searched the rooms again — there were only two — and my heart sank as I realized she was definitely not there. I would rather have found her in a dead faint than not at all. Where could she be?

  “I ran downstairs to the bookshop below and asked if anyone had seen her. They had not. By then I was frantically worried. She would never leave Alexander on his own. I was certain of that. But clearly something had taken her away. Had she been gone five minutes or an hour? No way of knowing. The baby’s nappy was dry, so I assumed she hadn’t been gone that long. I went back up and got Alexander and went back outside to look for Sophie. ‘But which way to go?’ I asked myself. Left or right?

  “I chose right simply because it was the direction to the cemetery and I thought maybe she had got a notion to visit Alec’s grave. She did that frequently, but she always took the boy with her. I didn’t really think she’d gone there, but I had no other ideas.”

  At this point, Alexander started to speak, rhythmically repeating one word, “MumMumMum,” as if he knew his mother was being talked about. C.K. smiled at him with affection, but the smile fell from his lips as he remembered what had happened.

  “She wasn’t at the cemetery, although there were fresh flowers on Alec’s grave, so I knew she had been there recently. Then I just started wandering, with Alexander in my arms, hoping I would see her on the street somewhere. Eventually, I hailed a rickshaw and told him to drive up and down the narrow streets of Chinatown and Little India, hoping against hope she would be there for some unimaginable reason. Finally, as it began to get dark, I took Alexander back to the rooms over the bookshop, thinking that if she had returned, she must be worried sick to discover him gone. I realized the poor little fellow hadn’t eaten a thing all day. He was getting cranky — and rightly so. We stopped and had some soup and rice, which I couldn’t feed him fast enough, and then proceeded back to Sophie’s rooms. We arrived there by about seven o’clock. But she wasn’t there.”

  C.K. stopped talking at this point, and Emmaline saw that there were tears in his eyes. She dreaded hearing the rest of the story because she knew what he was going to tell her.

  “Why don’t we have tea,” she said in as gentle a voice as she could muster. “I’m sure little Alexander is hungry. I’ll just go and tell Jane to fix us something.”

  C.K. nodded and took the boy in his arms. He tried to get Alec to sit on his lap, but the child
was too interested in his new surroundings to sit still for long. He preferred to climb on the furniture that C.K. himself had climbed on as a child. The chairs were high and well stuffed, which made them great fun to climb on top of or hide underneath.

  When Emmaline returned, she noted that Charles’s eyes were red, and she wondered just how fond of this Sophie person he had been. As a boy, he had cried easily, and his father had frequently scolded him, telling him he was behaving like a baby, or worse, a girl. Emmaline tried not to interfere, but it distressed her to see that as her son grew, he developed a stammer when in the presence of his father. Finally she insisted that he leave the boy alone and not be so hard on him. Emmaline didn’t know anything about psychology, but she knew cause and effect when she saw it. Charles responded better to kindness.

  They had their tea and the boy drank warm milk with honey. C.K. was patient and gentle with the child, and Alexander appeared to be very fond of him. Charles resumed his story.

  “I didn’t find her,” he said, his voice heavy with sorrow. “I searched for a week. I even went to the police, but they had no record of finding a woman of Sophie’s description. Nor of her body.” Again, he wiped the tears from his eyes.

  “And so, finally, after a month, I decided to come home. I brought Alexander with me because there seemed no other choice. He is my godson, after all.” Alexander looked up at the mention of his name and smiled at C.K., who smiled back and said, “Aren’t you, my boy?”

  Emmaline sighed. Then she smiled. “I was beginning to think I’d never be a grandmother.”

  The boy grew and flourished. He had been too young to remember his mother, and loved his godfather and his grandmother as the only family he knew. He was the centre of their lives and when he went away to school, they missed him and couldn’t wait for his return.