The Hills of Singapore
Page 32
“Alex,” Charlotte said quickly. “Alex is Zhen’s son.”
Robert stared at her. There was a silence. Robert frowned.
“What?” he said at length. “How?”
Charlotte opened her mouth to speak, but Robert had leapt to his feet.
“What?” he repeated. “Alex is Zhen’s son—what on earth? You were pregnant when you left, before you married Tigran?”
Charlotte nodded.
“Sit down, Robert, for heaven’s sake and let me explain.”
Robert did not sit down. He began pacing back and forth. Charlotte sighed.
“Tigran knew. There was no deception. He accepted Alex as his own son. Alex knows nothing. For him, Tigran is his father. But he is close to Zhen. They have spent a great deal of time together. Zhen has also accepted that Alex cannot know of this. It would serve no purpose now. He is an English boy—”
Charlotte stopped speaking as Robert sat down abruptly and interrupted her.
“Zhen knows?”
“Yes,” Charlotte said. “He knows, but as I was trying to say, what he can accept for Alex he will not accept for this child.” Charlotte put her hand to the small bulge at her waist.
“This child he wishes to acknowledge, boy or girl. This child he wishes to raise together with me.”
Robert was silent.
“Do you understand, Robbie? That is why I must be with him, let him be the father of this baby. Let him be my husband. Yes, ‘husband’; it is not too strong a word. He considers us married by the Chinese rites.”
Robert took a drink of tea.
“I should have seen it. Now you say it, it seems obvious. Alex looks like him. But what of his children with his wife? Good lord, the man has children by two women!”
Charlotte smiled.
“Yes, yes, I know. And so, Robert, do you.”
Robert looked at her and made a moue.
“Yes, I suppose that’s true. Sounds appalling when it’s someone else, but rather more acceptable when it’s oneself.”
Charlotte laughed.
“But what kind of life can this child have with an English mother and a Chinese father?”
Charlotte looked down at her waist.
“I have no idea. We are in uncharted waters, it is true. We can only love this baby and wait and see.”
Charlotte leaned forward and took Robert’s hand. “Can’t we, Robbie? We can all love this baby, no matter what?”
Robbie smiled and patted her hand.
“Yes, Kitt. We can love them all. After all, we too were disgraceful little half-bloods to our own grandmother. Jeanne did not care, and we turned out quite well.”
He grinned at Charlotte who nodded. Then she sat upright, practical suddenly.
“Zhen knows we shall raise this child with both an English and a Chinese education. He wants the child to have the advantages of a European upbringing, and he will teach it about its Chinese culture. Zhen is a Taoist, Robbie, they are quite different. This baby is a natural extension of Zhen’s love for me: that is how he sees it. He is a sensible and loving man. A man I can talk to. We have discussed this at length, I assure you.”
Robert listened, and when she had finished he said, “Well then, the devil take the hindmost. What shall be, shall be.”
Malik appeared suddenly, waiting. Charlotte looked up.
“A gentleman, memsahib, to see you. A Chinese gentleman.”
Oh dear, Charlotte thought. Robbie and even the whole town might accept what she was going to do, but she was certain Malik would never like it. His tone of voice said it in volumes. She would nip this in the bud immediately.
“That gentleman will be spending a lot of time here, Malik. In fact that gentleman will become like the master here. Please adjust your attitude and show him in.”
Malik looked scandalised but bowed.
“Yes, madam.” He turned quickly.
Charlotte sighed and looked at Robert. “Trouble already, eh?”
Robert shrugged.
“He’s missing Jeanne. He adored her. Get used to it, Kitt. The servants are the worst. Little snobs some of ’em. And, you’re a woman. What I do, well, no matter what, I am a man. Other men accept it more easily. Many of them are in similar situations here, you know. Not so openly admitted, but nevertheless. Men think of me as a policeman first. What I do in my own home is not of much interest to them. Butterworth more or less admitted it. I have been officially called to account, and so long as Teresa does not make a scandal and I don’t introduce Shilah to polite society—at least his—then least said …”
Charlotte bit her lip. She knew what Robbie was saying was true. As a woman, her open life with a Chinese man would be disgusting to all. Her wealth might shield her somewhat, but she would have to get used to this attitude. The little life inside her was not going to go away. Still, a shadow of doubt and fear crept into her mind.
Then she looked up as Zhen came into the garden. He was dressed in a black silk Chinese gown and trousers over his high-soled Chinese shoes. Handsome, straight, powerful. As her eyes met his, she sighed and rose. There was no going back. This man was part of her spirit. He would not fail her, and she must not fail him. Robert stood too and went to greet him.
Zhen bowed to Charlotte and shook Robert’s hand. They sat down and Charlotte, smiling at Zhen, called for Chinese tea.
54
Zhen took Charlotte by the hand and helped her from the carriage. They had followed the road to Tanjong Pagar and up into the hills of Telok Belangah, the seven hills of what the Malays called the Telok Belangah mukim. The one they were climbing now was Bukit Jagoh—Champion’s Hill. She had smiled when he told her of this place he had bought. Her champion, for that he was. He had bought it many years before, when she had left for the second time. She had not realised how much he had wanted her, planned for a life together. It made her feel secure, this knowledge of his constancy.
Now he pulled the carriage to a halt on the fringe of the tree line. The path wound away to the right. They walked, hand in hand, until it fell away into a grassy knoll, Zhen stopped. Charlotte could not believe her eyes. A white mansion stood on the top of the knoll. A mansion with a high porte-cochere, and a lacy parapet above. They drew close, and Zhen looked at her. She felt his tension. He had waited years for this, she now realised. He had been building this house all the time they were apart.
She turned and put her hand to his face. “How long?”
“Finished two years ago. Waiting for you.”
She moved into his arms and pulled his face to hers, brushing her lips along his. He smiled and pulled her close, kissing her. She felt his body relax as his arms tightened around her.
They walked into the house. It was unfurnished, waiting for her hand. The lobby had a vast chandelier at its centre. It looked like the entrance to Tir Uaidhne, Takouhi’s house, and Charlotte realised that he wanted to offer her this house the way George Coleman had built a mansion for the woman he loved. She squeezed Zhen’s hand, thanking him. They walked on through the lobby, between the double arms of the staircase towards French doors. Zhen went ahead quickly and threw them open wide.
Charlotte stepped out onto the wide covered verandah and gasped. Before her, down beyond the green lawn, beyond the parapet which edged the hill, out there lay the ocean, the sparkling, glinting blue of the Straits of Singapore, all the shapes of the islands lying in the haze along the horizon. A ship, like a toy, scudded over the sea, far away. It was breathtaking. They walked down to the parapet. To either side of them lay the great sweep of the ocean and the land curving away into the distance, rising and falling in gentle and undulating wooded hills and valleys.
The hills of Singapore, their retreat and their home. A refuge, Charlotte thought fleetingly, then moved into Zhen’s arms, wrapping them around her like a cloak of protection. He put his lips against her neck and his hands to the swollen belly where his child lay. A flood of happiness swept through her. There would be doubts and fears,
troubles perhaps, in the future, but here, at this moment, she knew there was no other way. He was her fate and her destiny.
About the Author
Dawn Farnham was born in Portsmouth, England in 1949. Her parents emigrated to Perth, Western Australia, when she was two. She grew up a sandgroper, barefoot and free, roaming the bushy suburbs and beaches with her friends. In the 1960s she, like so many other young Aussies, left on a ship for London, aged seventeen. In the Swinging Sixties she met and married her journalist husband, moved to Paris, learned French and travelled round Europe in a Volkswagen Beetle.
As a foreign correspondent, her husband was posted to exotic locations and they lived in China, Hong Kong, Korea and Japan in the 1980s and 1990s. During this time she raised two daughters and taught English. Back in London she returned to school, doing a BA in Japanese at The School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) and a Master’s Degree at Kings College.
She and her husband now live in Singapore where she is a volunteer guide at the Peranakan Museum and the Asian Civilisations Museum. It is in this thriving port city-state that she found her muse and began to write, finding particular pleasure in Singapore’s colourful and often wild past. This is the third novel in The Straits Quartet and continues the story of Charlotte Macleod from The Red Thread and The Shallow Seas.
For more information about Dawn Farnham and her books, visit www.dawnfarnham.com.
The Red Thread
A Chinese Tale of Love and Fate in 1830s Singapore
Dawn Farnham
Like Chinese silk, The Red Thread is, by turns, gentle and strong, exploring a love that breaks through the divide of race and culture, a love that is both deeply physical and a marriage of souls. Set against the backdrop of 1830s Singapore where piracy, crime, triads and tigers are commonplace, this cultural romance, and the first volume in The Straits Quartet series, follows the struggle of two lovers: Zhen, once the loweliest of Chinese coolies and triad member, later chosen to marry into a Peranakan family of Baba Chinese merchants; and Charlotte, an 18-year-old Scots girl and sister of Singapore’s Head of Police. Two cultures bound together by the invisible threads of fate yet separated by cultural diversity. This is the first volume in The Straits Quartet series.
By incorporating real figures from Singapore’s historical past, Dawn Farnham brings to life the heady atmosphere of Old Singapore, where exotic beliefs and customs clash and jostle in the struggle to make a life and create mutual understanding between peoples from different worlds.
The Shallow Seas
A Tale of Two Towns: Singapore & Batavia
Dawn Farnham
Fleeing the scandal of an illicit love affair, young Charlotte Macleod arrives in Batavia under the protection of one of the richest merchants in the Dutch East Indies. Marriage to him will give her security, but can she forget the man she left behind in Singapore, the lover whose child she is carrying? Against the background of the most cosmopolitan city in the Far East and its extraordinary mix of slave, Portuguese mestizo, Arab, Dutch, English and Chinese Indies culture, Charlotte must struggle to come to terms with a marriage to a man she does not love in a city she does not understand. This is the second volume in The Straits Quartet series.
Drawing on real-life historical personalities of that exciting period, Dawn Farnham deftly mixes fact and fiction to paint a vivid portrait of mid-19th century Javanese royal courts; Java’s vast, sprawling colonial capital, Batavia (the city we know as Jakarta); and its annoying commercial rival—the young, ambitious Singapore.
First published in print in 2011 by Monsoon Books
This electronic edition published in 2011 by Monsoon Books
ISBN (epub): 978-981-4358-39-2
ISBN (paperback): 978-981-08-5433-1
Copyright©Dawn Farnham, 2011
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
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