by Dawn Farnham
Robert sounded irritated. ‘These royal potentates are absolute rulers in their fiefdoms. They are an indulgent lot, lazy and greedy. They give no benefit to their own people, who are oppressed and taxed into virtual slavery. Even the munshi agrees that this is so. He is harder on them than any of us. Why, the present sultan’s run off in disgrace with his catamite or some such.’
Charlotte was dismayed at the storm she had caused and, laying a hand on Robert’s arm, said, ‘Crimoney! Forgive me, Robbie; I am very new here. I don’t understand everything, but rulers everywhere oppress, do they not? I heard that the Chinese headmen here also use the poor men who come from China in the big ships. Do not we also take advantage of the natives for our benefit throughout the empire? Mr Hume and Monsieur Voltaire—’
‘For heaven’s sake, Charlotte.’ Robert interrupted her. ‘This is not the place for philosophical discussions.’ He softened his voice. ‘This is a frontier town, not Marischal College. My job is to understand and keep the peace as well as I am able.’
Charlotte said no more but thought it rather hypocritical of Robert to criticise the sultan and lay no fault of exploitation at the doors of the other communities. After morning lessons in her grandmother’s house, she had often been left to her own devices. Her cousin, Duncan, would come and see her and take her sailing, a pursuit her father had taught his children in Madagascar. She would go for long walks on the hills around Aberdeen. This semi-solitary existence was not unpleasant. She did not care much for the company of the silly Scottish lasses she met at lunches and tea parties, all giggles and gossip. She had also spent hours reading in her grandfather’s extensive library, and this had framed ideas she knew few women were privy to. She had thought she might talk of these with Robert. The sudden realisation came to her that there might be few people in Singapore with whom such ideas could be discussed. Robert himself had altered, was more serious, even had a stronger Scottish accent than when he had left Scotland. When she had taxed him on this, he had merely answered,
‘Almost everyone here is Scots. Why, most of India is Scottish; it serves well.’
She thought of her Aunt Jeannie and her cousin, Duncan, with whom she had spent hours in such talk. Even her grandmother, though strictly Kirk, had indulged the family in intellectual debate. Her beloved husband had been a professor of Greek, a scholar and polemicist. Robert, too, when he was down from university, played a central part in these debates. Charlotte realised at that moment, and to her surprise, that she was grateful to her Scottish family for the expansion of her mind. Had they stayed in Madagascar, no matter how hard their father might have tried, they might have been what Robert now despised: ignorant and lazy. Whether they were happier for not being so, she was not sure.
These musings were interrupted by the arrival of the other ladies. Isobel da Silva showed her a pretty muslin, which she had bought. Charlotte realised that she must turn her attention a little to her wardrobe and, as she questioned the girls on materials and tailors, they made their way down by Mr Johnstone’s gloomy godown, to Battery Road. The sea on their left was filled with ships and boats transporting goods to the long jetties of the godowns along the seafront.
The sun was, by now, so hot that Robert proposed a short stop at Mr Francis’s refreshment rooms, and they made their way along the edge of the elegant little square to a shuttered building on the corner of Kling Street.
Here, in the cool ground floor, they sat as Mr Francis placed orders for lime juice for Charlotte and Mrs Keaseberry, pineapple juices for the girls and a cool India pale ale for Robert. John Francis was a Cockney who had served as a ship’s mate for many years, before settling down in Singapore to open the first public house, in Tavern Street. His language was a little rough and ready, but Charlotte liked him. Since his tavern was meant for the ships’ crews who ebbed and flowed like the tide, his rough ways did not offend the majority of his clientele. His hotel often took in sick sailors for a pittance which, in the absence of any hospital, was an act of some charity.
Refreshed, they made their way along the north side of Commercial Square towards Malacca Street. Here, Charlotte noted the first women she had seen in the town. Two dark-haired Indian women were sauntering around the square arm in arm, dressed in pretty pink and green saris. As they passed, Isobel giggled and whispered something to her sister. Mrs Keaseberry threw them a hard glance and they stopped.
‘Ladies of the night, my deah,’ she said with a moue.
Of course, thought Charlotte. This is a port.
Charlotte found much to admire in the interesting architecture of the square. Most of the houses were three-storey buildings ornately decorated with shutters, porcelain tiles and painted eaves. The architecture of the town was unusual, and she had asked Robert about it. He had merely said that, as far as he knew, it was Raffles who had decreed that all the buildings should be uniform and ordered Coleman to ensure that they all be fronted by a five-foot way to allow shelter from the sun and the rain. ‘Proper smart chap, that Raffles.’ For the rest she should speak to George Coleman, who ‘knew bally everything about architecture and much else besides’.
Just beyond the auction rooms they stepped into the building which housed Mr Keaseberry’s mission press. A dull thump-thump could be heard coming from a back room.
Robert hailed Benjamin Keaseberry—a tall, thin man with a slightly florid complexion—and his companion with a loud ‘Greetings, gentlemen.’ Mrs Keaseberry went up to her husband, who took her hand, and greeted the other man somewhat coldly, Charlotte thought. Having curtsied to Mr Keaseberry she was introduced to Mr Coleman.
So this is the man who knows bally everything and has the heart of Takouhi Manouk, thought Charlotte. He took her hand lightly and bowed slightly.
‘Miss Charlotte Macleod, by the saints, Robert has not been telling lies.’
He had a way of looking directly into her eyes which was very seductive.
‘Welcome to our little world. As sure as the Pope’s a Catholic, we shall be best friends.’
The da Silva girls both kissed him warmly on his cheek, for they had known him all their lives. He was a favourite at their musical soirées, where he sang Irish songs in a pleasant baritone.
Mr Coleman was at the mission press to pick up personal items of printing and, when pressed by the da Silva girls, revealed that they were invitations to a ball that he would be giving in honour of a visit by Takouhi’s brother and to which, they, much too young, were not invited. After a great deal of pouting they convinced him to relent, and he confessed that they might be on the guest list.
He explained to Charlotte that he was interested in the printing process as part-founder of the settlement’s newspaper, the Singapore Free Press, although this journal was printed on its own presses in Battery Road.
‘It’s only four pages long, and there’s some rather drear commercial stuff which the others insist on. But it gives the settlement a voice in a time when the lordships in Calcutta pay little interest to what goes on here. I fear there is not profit enough for them in Singapore. Only the Chinese and Arab merchants make the fortunes. So they rather see Singapore as a glorified fishing village or a repository of convicts. Yet we are frugal. The government lives off the vices of the population, taxes only the gambling, liquor and opium farms. There are no port duties, no tax on trade. We have a chamber of commerce but no hospital. We have crime aplenty but no one willing to subsidise the police force. So we rail and bemoan our sorry lot. Directly beside a letter groaning about the state of our thoroughfares, there’s an editorial against the imposition of carriage taxes, which are to go to improve them. Free trade, that’s the clarion call. So the lord must take care of the rest. Is it not delightful, Miss Macleod?’
Mrs Keaseberry looked on disapprovingly at this bantering tirade for although she agreed with the sentiments, she had never warmed to Mr Coleman’s sense of humour, nor could she countenance his habit of dressing like the natives. She had even seen him in a turban. It was to
o much.
Coleman smiled wryly, took possession of his bundle and departed with a wave.
They made a tour of the premises, and Mr Keaseberry explained enthusiastically and somewhat at length the working of the press and the merits of Koenig and Bauer’s steam-powered single machine and Applegarth and Cowper’s four-cylinder machine versus the older Stanhope iron-frame lever press. When they took their leave. Charlotte’s head was spinning and the da Silva girls looked as if they might cry. Mrs Keaseberry had declined the remainder of the tour and stayed to help her husband.
Stepping outside into the sunshine, the three women looked at each other and suppressed a desire to laugh until they had moved very quickly across the pretty leafy square. The girls then ran gaily into a handsome shophouse directly across from the mission press, which was the dispensary of Dr da Silva and the place of work for his mercantile interests, as well as of Thomas Crane, his son-in-law by marriage to Maria, one of his many daughters. They occupied the upper rooms.
Dr Jose da Silva was a man of some sixty years, tall and slender with thick silver hair and a patrician face. Charlotte could see that he was attractive and was no longer surprised at the remarkable number of wives he had possessed. He greeted them distractedly. Although he cared for all his children, since there were some twenty of them, he often had trouble with their names.
He had been a ship’s surgeon on board a Portuguese man-of-war and had fallen, by chance, into the merchant business when an enforced stopover in Singapore had turned his language skills into an opportunity he could not afford to miss.
In the face of the north-east monsoon, a Portuguese and a Spanish vessel, bound for Macao and Manila respectively, could not proceed with their voyage and were detained in the harbour for four months. Wishing to sell their cargoes to meet expenses, they consulted Dr da Silva and he agreed to act as their agent and help sell the cargoes at auction. This proved so successful that some fifteen years on Dr da Silva was a very wealthy man.
Maria Crane had come down to greet them and invited them to lunch after their visit to the Chinese town. She was a pretty dark-haired, almond-eyed woman, a daughter of her father’s second wife, a Portuguese Chinese whom Dr da Silva had taken as a wife in Macao. Her motive in extending this invitation was not entirely altruistic. She had several unmarried brothers for whom Charlotte was entirely suitable. Since he had taken up his post of police chief, she had also had her eye on Robert as a potential match for one of her daughters, sixteen-year-old Teresa. Though she had not wished to extend the invitation to her twin stepsisters, she could see no way of avoiding it.
When they departed, the small party headed towards Telok Ayer Street, where Robert had arranged to meet Baba Tan outside the Chinese temple.
As they went along, Charlotte could only wonder at the extraordinary variety of goods on offer at the small shophouses. Each shop they passed held a powerful appeal: the boot makers, oil shops, locksmiths, ivory carvers and jewellers as fascinating as the ship’s chandlers and the paper lantern seller. Down side streets, Charlotte could see carpenters and coffin makers, soap sellers and opium shops. Every tiny space along the side roads contained stalls as well, with men selling vegetables and dried fish, small goods, thread, pickled plums, kajang mats and baskets. The speed of fingers on the clacking abacuses was mesmerising, the noise of it like the incessant chirping of crickets in the jungle. She saw a man writing the picture language with a black brush on white paper. The streets rang with hammering and calls, everywhere around her the incessant clatter and chatter of these wondrously industrious people.
The clamour died down as they went along the bay but, suddenly, a clear strong voice rang out into the air.
‘Allah O Akhbar! The call to prayer,’ said Robert, ‘from the mosque in South Bridge Road.’
He led her to the shrine built by the Chulias from south India, traders and money changers, who were Mohammedans and followed a god called Allah. This building was small but exquisite, rising like a lacy green multi-tiered miniature palace, surrounded by pierced balustrades, topped by tall minarets. He greeted the guard outside, who rose in salaam, and they moved past and stopped in front of the Chinese temple.
As they stood waiting, Charlotte took in the lovely curve of the bay and its occupants. Here were some women, at least, Malays, around the fishing boats. Children, too. She had seen the Malay women in the market and noticed that they and their men alike seemed to chew what Robert explained was betel. The peppery leaf was wrapped round ground cinnamon, sometimes cloves or other spices. Some people liked to add tobacco. Inside there was a slice of crunchy areca nut. The whole was a mild stimulant. He had not especially enjoyed it, and prolonged chewing left the mouth red and the teeth blackened. The practice was so commonplace that one simply didn’t notice it after awhile. Chinese men never chewed betel, he added, or the women who came from China. But amongst the wives and daughters of the local Chinese it was de rigueur. Charlotte could not immediately make sense of these fine distinctions and chose to let the subject drop.
She turned her attention to the roofs and walls of the temple. Fierce dragon creatures with curled tails and long tongues adorned each curved roof angle, a mirror beset with flames in the middle of the roof over the main door. Tree-like carved pillars rose on either side of entrance doors which were painted with fearsome men richly dressed in robes of gold and black. The black doors on either side of the main façade were decorated with images of writhing, golden dragons with long sharp teeth and bulging eyes.
The twins thought them hideous, but Charlotte found them provoking.
Baba Tan suddenly appeared from a side street and joined them, apologising for his lateness. He motioned them to enter the temple between the two stone lions. A heady smell of incense assailed them as they stepped inside. He explained the legend of the temple’s principal deity, Ma Chu, Goddess of the Sea and Queen of Heaven. As a young girl from a maritime province, she had been distinguished for her chasteness and devotion to Buddha. He did not explain who this Buddha was, but Charlotte presumed some higher god. Ma Chu had miraculous powers of prophesy and was deified. She became patroness of seafaring people. Every Chinese man or woman who travelled on the sea invoked her name before departure and gave thanks on their safe arrival. Charlotte thought her rather haughty and distant behind her headdress of glassy beads.
Giving some coins to an old man in the corner of the temple, Baba Tan presented some bundles of incense to his guests and showed them how to light each stick and place it in the urn. Charlotte found the scent of the sandalwood enticing. Now she understood Robert’s references to the ‘perfumed Orient’. The spices of the market, the aroma of cooking, the scents of incense and oils: these were the perfumes of the East. Charlotte was quickly falling in love with this wonderful town, as varied and facetted as a fabulous jewel.
To the right and left of the goddess stood other figures, her constant companions: two huge carved figures with grotesque faces. The green-faced one pointed to his ear, the red-faced one had bulging eyes. According to Baba Tan they symbolised the virgin’s all-seeing and all-hearing powers. Before the goddess stood two gigantic imitations of wax candles, eight or ten feet long and painted red, and three or four great false joss sticks. Baba Tan explained that, during festivals, oil lamps are placed inside them and give a fine effect.
On the altar before the goddess stood immense brass incense urns, porcelain vases and flower ornaments and, under the table, stone carvings of a tiger, tigress and cub. It was customary, Tan explained, in a land of tigers, to offer incense to the tiger spirit to induce him to keep away from humans. Charlotte thought this rather charming if somewhat ineffectual. If Robert was to be believed, it didn’t seem to help the poor Chinamen of the interior who, he claimed, were carried off with regularity.
Before each of the three deities Baba Tan pointed out two short wooden sticks both having a flat side and a curved one. He explained that these were the puey, the oracle blocks. Before a man set off on any
enterprise, he consulted the virgin or the other gods to intercede on his behalf with the higher deities.
Baba Tan took up the sticks in front of the God of Medicine. He threw them in the air, and they both landed with their flat sides uppermost.
‘Lucky side, gods are pleased. If the other way, the business must be given up. If the blocks land one flat side, one curved side, this is best omen of all. Most lucky sign.’
Tan offered the sticks to Robert and Charlotte but they politely declined. Charlotte was not sure why, but this ritual felt a bit like the voodoo she had seen a little of in Madagascar. Nevertheless, she thought, she could see little difference between this and the adoration of Jesus or praying to Mary.
Really, she thought, at bottom humans just can’t rely on themselves. What we can’t control we relinquish to the gods and, if we fail, it’s their fault.
As Baba Tan began to lead their group into another courtyard, Charlotte noticed a group of Chinese women enter the temple. The sight of women was so unusual, and their silk costumes so attractive, she dropped back to watch them light bundles of incense. A great fog of pungent-scented blue–white smoke swirled round the courtyard.
Then, as the smoke moved here and there, she saw two Chinese men emerging from an opposite courtyard. She turned her head in their direction, and one of the men suddenly stopped walking and gazed towards her. As his dark, hooded eyes met hers, she felt her heart give a sudden thump; her eyes widened, and blood rushed to her face. She put her hand to her throat, but when she tried to move her legs, she found she could not. The incense seemed to thicken around her, enter her brain, befog her mind. She stood like this, seemingly for a long time until she heard Robert call to her. His voice broke what she could only think of as a kind of spell, and she turned and quickly rejoined her party. She could make no sense of her reaction and, saying she was somewhat hot, fanned herself lightly and gathered her composure, quietly listening to Baba Tan explain one of the fearsome-looking idols with a long red tongue.