The Hills of Singapore

by Dawn Farnham

  She looked back too, at the Chinese town, along Boat Quay for the first time. She could see the little wooden bridge which crossed the stream at Circular Road and further along her father’s and her husband’s godown. A stream of Chinese men, carrying baskets, was crossing the bridge. Intent on their tasks, eyes down, most ignored her completely. They were making for the marketplace, she could see, their loads strung bouncing from poles across their shoulders. She only vaguely understood that the fruit and vegetables were grown over here, somewhere on this side of the river. Usually she went to the market early to get the best vegetables, and it occurred to her that she had never before thought about where they came from.

  Buoyed by this small discovery, she walked to the other side of the river. She hesitated a moment, touching her toe to the earth as if the land on this side of the bridge might not allow her to pass. Then she smiled at her own timidity and took a step off the bridge onto the road of the European town. She walked slowly down, alongside the wall of the Chinese compound, which accompanied her somewhat reassuringly to the street which led back to the river, in front of the ship builder and the English building. She thought for a moment but did not like the look of this street. In front of her lay the open field where, she knew, her father came sometimes, for one of his concubines lived on this side of the river somewhere.

  She decided the safest way was to walk along the road in front of the big houses. The one on the corner was a big hotel, she knew. But now it was quiet. All the houses were quiet, only some Malay and Indian gardeners moved amongst the bushes, and she was shielded from view by the tall shrubberies. Nothing was moving on the plain, and she looked over its expanse to the prettiness of the sea beyond. She had never really looked at the sea. At Telok Ayer, from the market, it was pretty, the view, out to the fishing stakes on the bay, but here it was wide, a huge world spreading away to the furthest horizon. It was the first time she had seen the ships of the English and the other strange craft which seemed to fill the blue bay. Her world, she realised suddenly, was so small, so constricted. Her whole life was Market Street.

  She had arrived at the big English temple and felt afraid. She could see the tree and the bridge in the distance, the place where this woman came in her carriage at nine o’clock. Nobody seemed to be paying the slightest attention to Noan, though she felt terribly exposed. She moved quickly past the temple averting her eyes. It was said that sacrifices had been made when this was built; she had heard stories about them burying the heads of young children in the foundations.

  She turned into the road which led along the edge of the freshwater stream. The wind was brisk and cooling. She could see children playing from the boats which were anchored in the bay—children like her own, but not like hers: naked children, jumping into the water.

  She began to feel tired. She rarely walked so far or so quickly. Her belly felt heavy, and she needed to sit down. She was very glad to arrive at the big shady banyan tree. Some native men ran off when they saw her, and for the first time she felt the strangest sensation. She was not afraid of these men, though they were odd to her. They were more fearful of her.

  Her fatigue had overcome her fear, and she sat down on the low wooden bench, her back to the tree, looking out to the sea. Her head was beating. It did that often now. And her limbs felt heavy. She waited, breathing slowly. When she felt rested, she turned and looked over the little bridge which crossed the freshwater stream, towards the big building which she knew from Lilin was a school.

  She felt safe in the shade of this big tree. Her headache had receded slightly, but she felt it gripping her eyes. She closed them and leaned back against the tree, into the arms of the buttressed roots. She must have dozed, for when she opened her eyes next she was looking into those of a turbaned Indian man. She started and let out a cry. She tried to leap to her feet but felt suddenly a great weakness.

  “What is it? Is she all right?” Noan heard the voice speaking English. She knew it was English, for Zhen spoke it sometimes in her presence. But she could understand nothing.

  “A Chinese woman, memsahib. She looks pregnant and unwell.”

  Charlotte got down from her carriage, and Alex too leapt off lightly. Noan roused herself enough to sit. Charlotte came up to her syce.

  “Can you speak Chinese, Ravi?” she said to her syce.

  “No, memsahib,” he replied.

  Alex came forward quickly. “I can, Mother.”

  “Yes, yes. Of course, darling. Ask her if she is feeling very sick,” Charlotte urged.

  Alex went up to Noan and stood in front of her, bowed quickly and put forward this question in Hokkien. Noan opened her eyes wide, understanding almost nothing of what the boy had said. She was too overcome, looking at him.

  This was the boy of the white woman, the woman Zhen loved. She took her eyes off his handsome face and looked up, almost fearfully, into Charlotte’s eyes.

  Her eyes were blue, so strange. She had never seen blue eyes—never. In any other moment, she would have been afraid of these blue eyes, light, like the eyes of a ghost, but Noan read there a look of intense concern.

  And the woman was so beautiful, her pale skin and pink lips framed by jet-black hair. Her eyes were round, large, limpid and not, Noan thought, like her own, narrow and dark. She was dressed in a robe of peach-coloured muslin, her figure like a willow, the way Chinese men liked their women, she knew from the picture books.

  Her eyes returned to the boy, and she understood instantly that this was Zhen’s son. This boy was her husband’s son. She saw it in the line of his jaw, the way his face was made. She saw it somewhere in his eyes which looked like Lian’s. All this had taken but a second.

  Alex realised immediately his mistake. She wasn’t Hokkien of course. The women who spoke Hokkien to him and tousled his hair hung around the doors of the houses in Amoy Street and Chinchew Street and didn’t dress like this.

  “I think she is Nonya,” he said looking at his mother. “She speaks Baba Malay. I know only a little from Ah Soon and some of the children in the town.”

  Charlotte turned to Ravi. “Get some water from the carriage, quickly. A cup for the lady.”

  Ravi left, and she addressed Alex. “Ask her if she is all right, Zan, please, if you can.”

  Alex nodded. He knew her language was mostly Malay and, struggling, he said, “Sick, you, please?”

  Noan looked at him and a feeling of tenderness swept over her. He was a handsome, clever and kind boy. Just the kind of boy she wanted for Zhen. She said, “Not well, a little weak. Can you take me home, please?”

  Alex was so pleased she understood him, and he smiled broadly. He had understood only a few words: “not well, home.”

  He turned to his mother. “She is not well. She wants to go home.”

  A moment later Ravi arrived with a cup of water, and Noan took it, nodding her head in thanks. It was cold, and she drank it all, grateful. Charlotte came forward and took the cup from her hand. Noan was surprised at this gesture. Charlotte handed the cup to Ravi and then sat on the bench at Noan’s side.

  “Alex, she is so very pregnant, poor thing. What can she be doing here? Tell her I will take her home in my carriage. Where does she live?”

  Alex addressed Noan again. “Your house where? Mother take you.”

  Noan looked into Charlotte’s eyes and read there a great kindness. The white woman was concerned for herself, another woman, a woman in distress. Noan knew this instinctively, as all women know and recognise the marks of genuine goodness towards each other. It was a deeply feminine feeling which neither language nor culture could blur. She was pregnant, and this other women, who was a mother, wanted to be of help to her. Noan smiled shyly. “Thank you. The temple on lau la keng khau.”

  Alex smiled too. He knew this was Philip Street, what the Hokkiens called “the mouth of the grandfather temple”, for the old Teochew Wak Hai Cheng Bio temple. He and Ah Soon had been countless times inside this temple, offering joss paper to the po
werful deity, Teh Kong, the Dark Lord of the North, who they both worshipped for his fierceness.

  Alex loved visiting this temple and inhaling the heady scent of the spiral joss which hung from lines over the courtyard. Alex knew his father and mother did not go to these temples. Occasionally he went with his uncle to the church and remembered the faith of his father, but what did it have to compare to the wonder of the Chinese or Indian temples, with their colourful and powerful array of gods, their magic rituals, their odours and sights?

  He relayed the information the Nonya had given to his mother, and Ravi came and waited by Noan’s side to help her to her feet. Charlotte too put out her hand to help her, and Noan forgot all fear of these foreign people and put her hand in Charlotte’s and her arm in Ravi’s and allowed them to guide her to the carriage. Alex picked up Noan’s umbrella, opened it and handed it to her, to shelter her from the sun.

  When everyone was installed, Charlotte too put up her parasol. It was a lovely thing, this umbrella, Noan thought irrelevantly, white cotton lace floating in the air. Charlotte actually at that very moment was thinking the same thing about the delicate bamboo and paper umbrella adorned with butterflies, most delicately and beautifully painted.

  Ravi began to pull the horses quickly away from the tree. He crossed over the freshwater stream and into the yard of the school. Alex leaned forward and kissed his mother on her cheek and smiled, leaping down from the carriage. He bowed towards Noan respectfully. “Please be well,” he said and with a wave ran off into the building. Noan watched him go.

  Ravi turned the carriage and returned over the bridge and along the road by the beachside. Noan was feeling much better. The water had refreshed her, and the air blowing around them from the sea was reviving. The novelty of riding in this carriage was intense. She had ridden in carriages of course. Her mother had one and her father. She used one to go to River Valley Road. It was not that which was novel. It was this sensation of riding with a woman of such a different world, the world, she understood, vaguely, of the people who ruled Singapore. She had never given this any thought before this moment, but now it struck her. This woman was outside everything she understood, yet they shared one thing, one intense and very personal thing. The most unlikely thing: they both loved the same man. And they both had children by this man. All his children, but not equally so. Noan had daughters, but this woman had his son.

  When the carriage stopped before the temple, Noan got down. Charlotte smiled at her, and Noan bowed her head in thanks. Charlotte understood. They could not speak to each other, but she understood.

  Charlotte spoke to Ravi and the carriage moved away. Noan turned and retraced her steps to Market Street. She knew now that what Lilin said was true. Zhen could not help but love this woman. And she had given him a son. Nothing she, Noan, could do would change anything. She was nothing, meant nothing to him.

  She went inside the ornate hinged double doors of the house, climbed slowly upstairs to her room and closed the door.

  23

  Charlotte was standing in the light of a high flame, shadows flitting around her like spirits. He gazed at her, his eyes drinking her in. The glassy waters of the bay reflected the half moon, the glints of stars and the myriad lanterns strung along the beachside. The hill by the Temenggong’s village was called Bukit Chermin—Mirror Hill—and the name seemed chosen by gods as he gazed at these reflections.

  He recalled a poem he had read, the first verse only; the rest he could not remember:

  “The red gleam o’er the mountains

  Goes wavering from sight,

  And the quiet moon enhances

  The loveliness of night.”

  A vast feast was laid out on tables spread throughout the village. This was the feast of Hari Raya. Zhen knew of it, but this was the first time he had attended such a festivity. He understood little of this faith of the Malays other than that they fasted for a month and then held this large festival to celebrate its end. His own invitation had come because of the business he was conducting with the Temenggong: the purchase of opium and arrack farming rights in Johor. These different customs and faiths, which he had discovered in Singapore, felt entirely natural. Each people kept to its customs and enjoyed their celebration.

  The English government discouraged some festivals, he knew, like the Hindu ceremony of Pooja. This ceremony attracted vast crowds to the plain at Serangoon to watch the men swing from high poles with hooks attached into the skin of their backs. He himself had gone and found it fascinating: the noise of the drums and conches, the dusty heat and the men flying around the pole, seemingly unhurt by the deep hooks. It was, he understood, a form of penance. But the British did not like it, and it had recently been forbidden. Other than that, by and large, the government interfered little. At the Chinese New Year, gambling, usually frowned upon officially, was openly allowed for a month—not, however, without disapproval in the English newspapers, which he always read.

  He was joined now by his two companions, part of the syndicate. They examined the groaning tables of food. Zhen liked these Malay dishes. Over time he had grown to like many of the different dishes which were hawked daily round the town. Many were familiar, resembling the food on the table of his wife’s family. He took up some saffron rice and the bamboo skewers of chicken with the spicy peanut sauce. These he particularly enjoyed, especially when he was drinking in the town.

  They joined other Chinese merchants at a table on the foreshore, but Zhen kept a discreet eye on Charlotte. He had suspected she would be here. He felt the urgent need to speak to her, but not yet.

  Governor Butterworth and his wife were standing in the company of the Temenggong and his son. Charlotte and Robert went up to greet them. Charlotte thought that Ibrahim looked magnificent. His costume was of fine black silk with gold thread, the high collar embroidered with writhing forms in gold. His headdress was more elaborate than usual: gold and black raised in a high curve and studded with diamonds. At his waist was a belt with a large oval buckle of heavy gold work and one large diamond. In addition to his own bejewelled kris, he wore the ceremonial sword which Governor Bonham had presented to him in recognition of his role in reducing piracy in the Straits.

  His first son, Abu Bakar, was dressed in similar if less ornate fashion and stood at his side. Charlotte had been introduced to his principal wife when she arrived, but his women kept to the palace. Everywhere the children ran about in the most colourful costumes like so many brightly feathered birds, the village women serving food and bringing new plates to the tables. Ibrahim moved on, greeting his guests. Each time he moved, a gamelan struck up loudly and a drum began beating.

  Charlotte greeted Jeannette Butterworth. Robert returned to Teresa and several of his companions. The noise was intense, with the gongs of the gamelan beating, the sounds of children playing, the din of conversation on every side. Finally the governor motioned to his wife and bowed to Charlotte. Jeannette pressed Charlotte’s hand and turned to greet the group of Arab merchants who had arrived. Charlotte, momentarily, was at a loss and turned to see where Robert might be. She gazed over the crowd and began to make her way towards the large party of Europeans gathered in the verandah of one of the houses. As she moved off, she felt a hand take her arm. She turned swiftly and looked into the eyes of Charles Maitland.

  “Charles, how nice to see you. I thought you had departed for Sarawak.” She smiled, very glad to see him. Her annoyance with him had lasted a few days and then she had forgotten it. After all, he owed her nothing. She hardly knew the man.

  “Charlotte, I am sorry. I feel I owe you some explanation.”

  “Why, not at all,” she began. She thought he looked truly fine in his red uniform with the sash and sword. It was the first time, she reflected, that she had seen him in neither casual dress nor women’s garments, and it suited him very well. Men, she thought, should always wear a uniform.

  Charles took her by the hand and turned, seeking a quiet place. He had thought and t
hought about their last meeting. He was anxious he should not leave with her angry at him. He had made a mess of some magnetic calculations and had to start again. He moved her away from the food, away from the houses, down to a quiet place under the palms on the beachside. Boats were coming from the islands, pulling up on the beach and at the short jetty, but the noise was greatly lessened here.

  “Please allow me to talk to you. My journey is delayed until after the visit of Lord Dalhousie. My brother Henry is accompanying the party.”

  Charlotte nodded. She knew of this imminent and much-anticipated visit by the Governor General of India, the first ever made to Singapore. The government and the merchants were in a state of heightened excitement, for they hoped this visit might herald a new interest in the prosperity of the settlement which would be expressed in much-needed public funds and the cessation of Singapore as a penal colony.

  Robert, sceptical, was unconvinced. Dalhousie was on a sea voyage for his health, he had pointed out to the Chamber of Commerce, and would be barely more aware of Singapore after his visit of two days than he was before. However, the merchants were determined to put on a show. Charles’s brother Henry was the Foreign Secretary to the Government of India, and naturally Charles would stay to meet him.

  “I see,” said Charlotte, guarded, when he had explained this to her.

  “Immediately following Dalhousie’s departure, I shall leave on the Isis, with Captain Mundy, who is voyaging through the archipelago.”

  “I see,” Charlotte said. Really the man was infuriating.

  “Please, let me say this. I must depart, but I would like, would be most grateful, if you would allow me to write to you.”

  Charlotte looked at him and read an intensity in his eyes. As she was about to speak, a sudden clamour rose from the bay. A party of English soldiers in their red uniforms had arrived in their longboat and recognised Charles. “Charles, you old dog! Good to see you. Join us!” they all yelled.